Around nine years ago I wrote a fast letter to the New York Times ironically supporting a psychologist I would end up blogging with at Psychology Today It was the first letter I had ever written and actually sent–by email which makes everything easier. I forgot about it until later that day when I was in my brother-in-law’s car. I assume we were going to dinner at some truly good Long Island restaurant. I missed the phone call but began screaming when I heard the voice mail.

OK I easily impress myself. An editor wanted to know if it was alright to print it. No, I wrote it to fill up bandwidth Several days later, very coincidentally, I was offered a reporting job, not for The Times.

Yesterday I was reading an article on NYTimes.com about Facebook and just had to comment. I knew it was too late to make “readers recommendations” and sent it off without editing or editing some more, In all five comments I have submitted in the past several years I only checked one and that made “readers recommendations.” For some reason I checked and it was an “editor’s pick.”

1177 Comments
NYT Pick
Dec. 13, 2011 at 4:54 p.m.

last week I was the object of derision on a Facebook group for people with an invisible disability. But without Facebook I would have never met so many people who share the same disability
For the first time in my over 50 years on this earth I’m learning to accept me for me thanks to Facebook
My family is closer than ever thanks to Facebook. I’m in touch with people from my entire life span. Seeing myself through their eyes was eye opening, humbling and wonderful.
A lot of people on Facebook are dedicated to being real. You just don’t have to tell what you had for lunch or who you had sex with when. Facebook is there for you to make your own experience with.

Damn I should have edited it. I should have edited it!
Yes I didn’t use my name nor did I link to a blog as many people do but….This means goods things are around the corner. The whole year has been great. Overwhelming but life affirming; filled with writing recognition and family old and new!!!

The sad but adorable irony wasn’t lost on me that I then went on Facebook and updated my status–even before calling my sister or best friend.

I will be back with a Chanukah post–The Miracle of the Ipad–an absolutely true story about how my Ipad might have saved my life. It’s more exciting than this post and never once mentions a newspaper. My sister called my Ipad story, “a sign from God.” She wasn’t sure about what!

Ever since last week’s Mad Men I’ve been singing songs from Bye Bye Birdie. My parents said I could see any Broadway play I wanted to for my tenth birthday. No choice. It had to be Bye Bye Birdie. For some reason my mother thought it was about juvenile delinquents and “researched” it. As we read the same sources–The New York Times and The New Yorker I found this strange. Of course she found out that it wasn’t about delinquents. On my birthday, July 19, 1960, we went to the Brooks Atkinson Theater to see it. Can’t believe I remember the theater but it was a momentous event in my life and we didn’t take my younger sister which made it all that more sweet. (Sorry Elka)
Two years later my grandmother died shortly before my sister’s tenth birthday and I guess my mother wasn’t in a celebrating mood. Elka was going to see a play for her eleventh birthday–November 24, 1963. Unfortunately all theaters were closed.

For a brief while there really had been Camelot. I have a friend who argues that the most significant happening in 63 was the arrival of The Beatles and he makes some valid points but then I ask if he divides our childhoods into “before” and “after.” The security that we all felt, and it might have been fake, faded quickly away. Maybe it’s better for children not to be so innocent, but we had a rude awakening. I think our (cohort) behavior later in the decade answers that question.

And can you imagine having all theaters closed two days after a president’s death now? Basically everything was closed. The bowling alley wasn’t and my parents made me go bowling. I missed Jack Ruby killing Oswald but did see the birth of the instant replay. I never did fully forgive my parents for that.
I wasn’t in love with Robert Kennedy and had a hard time forgiving Teddy Kennedy for what happened around my birthday in 1969. However, he turned into one of the best damn senators and I realized that he had paid the ultimate price a Kennedy male could pay–he could never become president. Being a big believer in universal health care–I think it a marker of a civilized progressive affluent country, and a fervently fearful person as I pay premiums for my whole body but it’s only partly covered, I hope his death brings people together. I’m afraid it won’t. I have already seen Kennedy satires ( I liked the Dead Kennedy’s) and they just ain’t funny, right now.
(A bit of politics–most Democrats never wished Bush dead, gone yes, dead no, nor compared him to Hitler and I find every Republican who silently condones either Teddy Kennedy jokes or Obama equals Hitler statements filled with blame and shameful) End of politics.

Cooper has a Pet Clark (as she says) song from Finian’s Rainbow up this week, and it stirred something in my soggy brain. Then I read Bob Herbert in the New York Times and I finally remembered one of my all time favorite songs, “Look to the rainbows.” I used to be a romantic and it’s about the most romantic of songs. I couldn’t find the Dinah Washington (I think) version, but Patti Labelle’s is damn good. I prefer it to Aretha’s.

Herbert uses this line “Follow the fellow who follows a dream,” as an epitaph for the Kennedys. It’s always been romantic to me and I loved this song in secret as I was damned if I were going to follow any man, but yes it’s perfect and it’s perfect for any man who follows any woman also. And I no longer secretly love it
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOBQ63Gc7k&hl=en&fs=1&]

Here’s a beautifully written opinion piece on Ted Kennedy that goes into much much more. It shows how words might be distorted and made whole again. I might not agree with the “distortions” but….

It’s raining. The soft then intense rain forms different relaxing rhythms almost like multi jet showers. When i buy a house the one thing I know I’m doing aside from taking out any carpeting is making the master bath into a shower room. And there has to be an outdoor shower. Oh yes. Can’t live near the beach without one
•••••••••

An actual phone conversation with my bff Lucia
Me: Guess who The Times endorsed?
Lucia: Obama, of course
Me: No, McCain.
I can sound like Steve Wright so she believed me.
Love how “biased” most media is. Though the editorial was all substance. We’re not going to take it anymore. The erosion of the Constitution, the economy, two wars and so so so much more.
I can’t wait until 11/05 as I’m sick of this election but just found out that I have pledged to do many things–Lucia’s sister pledged me and this is the election of our lives

The Obama endorsement was so beautiful

I’m not going to pretend I’m in debt but I have considerably less money than I would have had if I closed six weeks ago–and let’s not even go into a year or two ago. The apartment would have gone for more and my portfolio. So I can’t complain.

But I’m so gun shy about spending money. I’m scared to buy a house which is stupid and I hope to get over that shortly….

These are frightening times. When people talk about the similarities between now and 1929–unprecedented prosperity–they don’t get that most Americans were poor to begin with. The money went to the privileged few. It is different now and for people to pretend otherwise only shows they don’t understand how the economy worked then and how it works now.

I have a few degrees in social welfare related subjects so yes I do know. I was going to add some classic books but why? People google things and believe that is research

We are in a deep recession. It will get worse before it gets better. But to wish for a depression so that people will learn values is beyond my understanding. A depression now will be the battle of the fittest and by that I mean the meanest and hardest.

There’s a whole generation of teenagers I love and want to see live in a world without limits. Or good limits.

I won’t go into the differences between now and 29. They’re too big to go into. One quick thing: FDR was able to do The New Deal as there weren’t programs in place. No red tape to snip.

We were ignoring regs or cutting them and are paying for that now.

Yes I cried when I read about Obama’s visit with his grandmother. I cried because it was a wonderful thing to do. I cried because he has his priorities right. And selfishly I cried because he was able to visit with her.

Am I a pro-American because I moved to South Carolina? Or an anti-American because until last week I lived in New York where I will be every three weeks for the next several months?

They’re trying (and I guess succeeding to bring back the great divide of the 70′s) Watch Life on Mars< /em> it brings back that time so vividly. So many of us are 80′s focused. It was a time of greater prosperity, America wasn’t at war, there wasn’t a divide. But I’m so glad I lived through the 70′s. I had a front row seat at the changing of America and wasn’t even aware of it then.

Only one more Tuesday until the election. It damn better be honest.

The Times asked for letters in response to this. I guess I was too late. I have so wanted to write this

Dear Youthful bidder

Two years ago you and your parents coveted my pre-war Upper West Side Manhattan coop–the small one with the open city views, courtyard and northern views not the river and park views–for you. It has a major fault, a small non designer kitchen but you and your parents were willing to overlook that and offered me more money than I thought possible. I wasn’t ready.

Then you went apartment hunting some more and fell in love with the new buildings you know you can’t possibly afford. Even if they do have breakfast served to you in bed on Saturdays, mediation rooms, libraries, gyms, gardens, washers & dryers. Your parents told you that you must buy those apartments on your own. They will help you buy mine.

I priced my apartment fairly. I understand that the one bedrooms with great kitchens and river and park views will go for almost a million and my apartment will go for just over half that. In some ways I feel as if I’m giving it away.

When I bought it almost eleven years ago, maintenance (monthly charges) hadn’t gone up in three years. It has gone up every year since. You will get small fair increases. I bought it during the giddy 90′s and my building was determined to be “world class.”

This has many advantages for you. The lobby has been redone to somebody’s very expensive taste. The basement is a showplace. Bikes are stored, laundry is done, and if you’re lucky like me you might get a large storage cage for $40 a month–in Mnahattan that’s priceless.

We’re a two doorman at prime hours building with state of the art digital security. I have stood at the doorman’s stand and marveled at the security monitor.

You’re never going to have the problems I have had. I took off the hideous wall to wall carpeting in the bedroom as the many floods ruined it and I hate carpeting anyway. The building gave me beautiful plank wood flooring.

You will never have the many many floods I had as there’s a new schematic showing where all the pipes are, many pipes were replaced with copper and the all important steam risers are new. You won’t spend the year (G-d forbid this ever happens again) after a terrorist attack and your mother’s sudden death with the super and/or many workers replacing just about everything. Your new from home business won’t suffer the omigod there are too many workers in here affect.

What the building didn’t fix I did. I had no idea plastic pipes weren’t up to city code but who wants to drink out of plastic? You will have copper. I don’t think you will want to replace the kitchen faucet that cost $400 at Gracious Home eleven years ago. I got it for less but by the time it was installed….It is a faucet of beauty.

For years I was entranced by the black granite foyer, the marble master bath with huge shower stall and huge tub that’s whiter than the whitest teeth. My best friend designed the living room wall unit and a then carpenter now well know cabinet maker executed it.

You won’t get a 40% assessment with one months notice. Our building had the foresight to pay down its mortgages, replenish the building fund for capital improvements and emergencies during the glory years. I understand that you’re too young to think about reserve funds but they are important.

I was in the lucky position of paying cash so I can afford to sell for less than most people, but by the time taxes, fees and other costs are factored in the profit will be lessened. I didn’t get much of a tax deduction. Just the $400 Bloomberg rebate for “owning in these difficult times,” and a small deduction. I’m not a financial expert but in my humble opinion I’m giving you a prime apartment in a prime building in a prime neighborhood and should make the maintenance and assessments (our other rebate went to that one) back.

I’m giving you an apartment that’s steps from Riverside Park. The new park that goes all the way round the city. How I yearned for that in my 32 years in the city. You can bike ride anywhere from my building. I dreamed about that when I was your age and lived across from Central Park. My tires were constantly going from glass shards and other things on the street. I would be accosted in the park if i wasn’t with friends. The parks are so safe now people forget…

When I lie down in bed at night with the windows open the only sound I usually hear much of the year are birds. It sounds like an aviary. The whirl of traffic really does sound like the ocean or white noise. People are amazed by how quiet and country like my apartment is.

You will just a few blocks from Citerella and Fairway. To not have a weekly Fairway experience is too not really live in the Upper West Side. It’s a quick walk to Central Park, though I’m still obsessed with Riverside Park and you can walk many places. But once you see our newish subway station you too will be hooked on the subway and the beauty of the small park outside it.

I’m not just giving you my apartment but the full Manhattan experience. The new buildings can never offer you anything near a renovated pre-war one. I’m giving you a life unlike any you will have ever experienced before.

Your new offer was insulting. I did the mortgage calculator and I dare you to find a quality rental at this price. And your quality of life will be incredible. Fernando the doorman will watch out for you, but in a nice way. Some of the other doormen will flirt with you and any one of them might introduce you to the love of your life.

I’m offering you an affordable alternative to the fancy kitchens and zen gardens your parents admit they can’t and won’t buy for you. Do you really want to live at your parents home or with four roommates until you’re 40?

Sincerely,
Pia Savage

This is an article about how New York was saved in 1975. No thanks to the federal government Read more…

Am I the only person who thinks Gail Collins looks like Laura Bush but has great things to say anyway? This is about the Supreme Court and equal pay for women. When it comes to money, I can be called a feminist to the core. The most senior woman at a corp made less then the most junior man. McCain would–read the article. It did make me remember why I’m a Democrat

This article shook me to the core. I’m reprinting it here as it’s so unbelievable, yet so America in the millennium.

The PEN American Center, the literary organization committed to free expression, is honoring an American most people in this country have never read or even heard of: Laura Berg. She is a psychiatric nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital who was threatened with a sedition investigation after she wrote a letter to the editor denouncing the Bush administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.

That’s right, sedition: inciting rebellion against the government. We suppose nothing should surprise us in these days of government zealotry. But the horror and the shame of that witch hunt should shock everyone.

Ms. Berg identified herself as a V.A. nurse when, soon after Katrina’s horrors, she sent her impassioned letter to The Alibi, a paper in Albuquerque. “I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government,” she wrote. “We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”

Her superiors at the hospital soon alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and impounded her office computer, where she keeps the case files of war-scarred veterans she treats. Then she received an official warning in which a Veterans Affairs investigator intoned that her letter “potentially represents sedition.”

It took civil rights litigators and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico to “act forcefully” in reminding the government of the Constitution and her right to free speech. The Department of Veterans Affairs retreated then finally apologized to the shaken Ms. Berg.

Even then, she noted, one superior told her it was preferred that she not identify herself as a V.A. nurse in any future letter writing. “And so I am saying I am a V.A. nurse,” Ms. Berg soon boomed out in a radio broadcast. “And some of my fire in writing this about Katrina and Iraq is from my experience as a V.A. nurse.” Thus declared Ms. Berg, well chosen to receive the new PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award.

•••••••••••••••••••••••
We need a president who will begin to undo the horrors of the past seven years. It’s more than a recession, a wrong war, the bungling of Katrina, Iraq and I will add 9/11. It’s the consistent undermining of our Constitution and its Amendments–the foundation upon which this country was formed.

More people would listen to Laura Berg if she identified herself as a VA nurse than if she didn’t. As bloggers we pat ourselves on the back for saying such profound things as “f–k Bush.” We believe we’re incredible for stating the obvious without putting our lives and/our careers on the line.

We’re not. Laura Berg is.

I can’t think anymore. It has nothing to do with Southern heat as it’s not hot, and everything to do with fear. There were reasons I wanted my apartment on the market, earlier, very valid reasons. I wasn’t sure what was going to go wrong with the economy next but I had faith that it would tank.

I’m an American Jew and my loyalty is to America as are Obama’s. Jews, Blacks, and Muslims more than most groups should understand the question of “divided loyalties.” Nobody ever says to an Irish-American, “so you believe in Ireland over America?” Can we get over this and focus on the issues?.

Watching George W. Bush address the New York financial community Friday brought back many memories. Unfortunately, they were about his speech right after Hurricane Katrina, the one when he said: “America will be a stronger place for it.”
“You’ve helped make our country really in many ways the economic envy of the world,” he told the Economic Club of New York.

Read the rest of the article.
I’m selling the most adorable apartment in Manhattan. At this stage of my life adorable doesn’t cut it.

Not one politician has addressed what’s happened to New York since 9/11. But GWB’s the one who began the spiral.

All my single without children, girlfriends in the arts and “helping professions” left before I did. Nobody cares. There are rich people to take our place.

Collins doesn’t rant on that part. It’s a brilliant article on Bush’s non-responsiveness and really would anybody with half a brain give that speech yesterday?

The stock market has been tanking for months. Sadly the market is the heart and soul of New York. Yesterday felt like The Depression. It was another day filled with horror filled phone calls and emails. Everybody I know who works for Bear Stearns and I know a few–panicking. Everybody I know who has an account there is panicking. It’s a lot more than Bear Stearns.

Bush reacted as he did to 9/11, to Katrina–read the damn article. I’m too out of control and having to learn how to respond to tornado warnings to think about writing.

Read this article please. It’s brilliant.

This is a very scary time for me. Getting ready to leave all that is known. I bitch about New York all the time but I have only lived here except for two years in Cambridge in my early 20′s–and all over the place before then. But I was young, very young and had few things. I was impulsive then and am so the opposite of impulsive now.
I don’t know how that happens. Becoming settled. Thinking of everything that can go wrong, when once I just did. I have such deep roots here yet I know it’s time to shake the roots.
Writing has become so important to me. Once it was a hobby. Something I did to amuse myself. Something I did better than other people at work or in school. It’s the anchor that’s almost making me do this. Lately I have been scared that I’m losing my talent or whatever makes me unique. I begin to think that I’m too old. That great books and articles belong to the young(er) and I never gave myself the chance before. Serious writing requires an organizational skill I lacked until modern computers.
I have an entirely different side. In person I’m funny. In many emails and some comments, but here…I think I need to be settled.

The title of this post refers to my great love of Frank Rich–and how he’s writing about people I can’t stand. I so hope Judith Regan is Rudy’s Linda Tripp. But often I think he should be the Republican candidate as nobody in New York can imagine him winning. We have been wrong before. I remember going to vote in 2000 and a woman said “if everybody on the Upper West Side stands a certain way we can win.” I thought she was crazy, but have thought about what she said she often–that was before that night, and the Florida results. Maybe we didn’t stand the right way.
The quote from the Frank Rich article is beneath all this–If anybody can explain how RudyG can be so truly devoid of morals yet be so popular when Clinton was crucified I would love an explanation.
and click the help stop global warming link
Have to decide what to give away and what to keep. Not easy. My apartment will be on the market shortly. I know there’s still a market in New York for apartments like mine. Not sure how to price it.
Help stop global warming. Got this from Little Luce who got it from her school.
Frank Rich on Judith Regan and Giuliani. Read more…

I’m trying to stick to fiction as it’s fun and right now I need all the fun I can get.
But sometimes…I do have three more chapters written and plans for many more. I made a page for it. And really like Wednesday’s chapter. Just need the words.
The only true way we can honor Vets and troops serving in Iraq is by ending that war now. Lately I have been thinking it’s easier to keep that war going than to think, or do anything, about the very real problems in America.

Wrong track is a euphemism. We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon.

This is an especially wonderful article by Frank Rich. After three readings I’m convinced Rich is the person who can save the USA. OK, I worship him, but for a good reason. He’s a brilliant writer and thinker. Though I quote Senator Schumer in another post he has been one of the biggest disappointments to me. I won’t go further than that. Rich says it all.

Here’s a love of my life, Frank Rich on Rudy and the end of our country’s being influenced by the radical right. Here’s The Evangelical Crackup People ask how I, a card carrying ACLU member can move to South Carolina. Bloggers taught me that to be an Evangelical doesn’t usually mean being a member of the radical right. My Evangelical friends have as much in common with them as I, a cultural Jew, have with the Ultra Orthodox Jewish fanatics. Blogging did open this country to me. It is because of bloggers that I can make this move. I am much more American than I was three years ago. I am also open to many more wonderful possibilities.

As it was the first real Fall day I spent it outside with friends. I had forgotten how wonderful Autumn crisp weather feels. We went to the weekly Sunday street fair at IS 41 off Columbus Avenue. Usually I dislike it but today it was fun and I know that when I come back to New York as a tourist it will be on the list of things to do. Oh I love talking to the people who have booths there. We speak the same language—New York but I will learn to speak other American languages.

When I put the apartment up for sale in a few weeks I will probably go to Myrtle Beach so as not to mess it up. it’s easy for me to keep a townhouse looking company ready and oh so difficult to keep two and a half rooms in perfect order

Hopefully I will find a person or persons who will go into contract quickly, but you never know. Then they have to prepare the Board package, the Board has to review it and interview them. That process will take at least six weeks which will give me time to see all the doctors I need to see before a move to South Carolina which in some ways does feel like a foreign country to a Fourth Generation New Yorker. Though many people have told me medical services are better and have the personal touch I so miss, it feels strange. I am so ready for this move and so fearful.

I fear my apartment being judged by realtor’s and prospectives buyers. This fear is worse for me than most people because I live in fear of being judged. But I fear it less since learning about Non Verbal Learning Disorders

I am woefully behind in everything that I have to do but feel an energy surge coming on.

I dared not go out from Thursday through Saturday for the rain at time was a fierce pouring one and all I could think about was my stress bronchitis turning into pneumonia. Any other time I would have risked it but this coming Saturday is my niece’s Bat Mitzvah and I come as both myself and my late parents older daughter. That thought is causing me joy, sadness, and more than a bit of nervousness as many of the guests are from my sister and my extended family.

I was asked to go on a cruise this spring that begins in South America and ends in Europe. I felt too unsettled to say yes. People tell me not to buy for six months at least but I have become used to home ownership even if it’s in the form of shares in a corporation. I have checked the owner box for so long, I will probably forget or feel like a vagrant or weird somehow. Though it will be nice to have the false feeling of being rich when I look at the balance in my brokerage account. False cos I ain’t, not in this world at least and that’s one reason I’m making this move.

People here do act as if money is made by the ATM and I fall into that warped mentality at times.

I have been writing fiction, experimental to the edge fiction. I have four more chapters to my 3WW. If I didn’t have so much else to do I could work on it all day and night. It’s made me love writing once again.

When I move I hope to work on it constantly. I hope I have room in the condo or hopefully townhouse for a studio to paint and play with photographs

I will very much miss this apartment. In the morning sun streams in so strongly I feel as though I’m getting a tan. My bedroom is perfect. It feels like a jewel box but really how much time do you spend in one? I watch TV in it. When I move I will watch big screen TV in another room and the bedroom will be used for the two functions a bedroom is supposed to be used for

I am beginning to feel psyched again both about moving and life. I made it in New York. I can make it anywhere I used to feel that I felt so at home and made friends so easily here because it was the only place I knew well. That’s partially true but I’m friendly. When I would make friends other places I would put it down to the phases of the moon and many other variables.

The street face I wore too well for too long is gone replaced by a smile that can’t get me in trouble as I am a New Yorker, street smart and wary.

Everything I have to do will fall into place quicker than I think. I don’t know why I believe what so many people have been telling me but I do. After the Bat Mitzvah I can focus full time on the move. What seemed so overwhelming just a week ago seems almost fun now—but I was having my yearly stress bronchial attack so….I wish my body could be satisfied with stress headaches.