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When you're brought up on The New Yorker….

December 8, 2004 By pia

Today would have been James Thurber’s 110th birthday.

I taught myself to read from looking at the words in The New Yorker’s cartoons. It, and the cartoonists and writers have always been part of my family.

During President Clinton’s impeachment I began doing volunteer work for a first amendment group. They had me calling celebrities because I don’t get all starry voiced. I’m rather blase:
“Oh X how nice that you had dinner with Brad and Jennifer last night. But tell me about the food.”

When I reached Calvin Trillin’s name I couldn’t make the call. I was afraid that if his wife, Alice, (who died later, the same week as my mom), I would say something stupid:
“Alice, let’s eat.”

I was afraid to speak to Calvin Trillin because some of his New Yorker pieces are some of my favorite writings. I was so star struck, I was afraid that if Alice didn’t answer, I would lose my ability to speak and hang up the phone. While this has never happened in my adult life, there’s always a first time.

I gave the phone number to a starry voiced, starry eyed volunteer, who couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to make this call, after all, his last name wasn’t Klein.

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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