From the Writer's Desk

Umpteen years ago there was a book of sayings from Communist China's Chairman Mao Tse-tung. This is in no way meant to compete with it.

______________________________

• When I play music in my workshop, I'm always in a different decade. Who am I kidding? It's always a different century.

• Most of the people whose music I listen to have passed away.

• Dear Elon: If you do away with the penny—and that's been considered for years—you will cancel culture Benjamin Franklin who famously said: "A penny saved is a penny earned." Or now it should be "a billion saved, is a billion earned."

• Now having achieved solid septuagenarian status, I get through the newspaper much faster. I don't need investment advice since I have little money. I've nearly outlived it. I don't need to decide if I should take early Social Security. I already did that years ago.

• Additionally, I don't need relationship advice since this October my wife and will be married 50 years.

• Some might think that qualifies me to give advice. Here it is: In order to achieve sustained longevity in a relationship, two things are important: Two TVs; two rooms. Over the years one of you is likely to want to watch with a passion Fox News and the other one isn't going to want watch Fox News. Overhearing it is enough. I get all the news I need to know from TV just by walking past it. (Nod to Russell Baker on learning of the progress of the O.J. trial.)

• And I don't need guidance on what to wear. I put on whatever is clean and don't care how I look.

• Have you ever seen a British miniseries, or Mystery episode where the Brits fail to remind you of what train travel was like?

• A front page teaser for a special section of the WSJ on April 14, 2025 leads to a rather long piece on health. The teaser asks: "When is the best time to tell friends and colleagues you have Alzheimer's?"

Uh, before I forget?

• Rory McIlroy won The Masters at about 7:15 P.M. on Sunday, April 13th. The NYT, that likes to tell the world it deals in "All the news that's fit to print" should change their motto to: "Yesterday's news tomorrow," because Rory's story appears in Tuesday's NYT.

• Despite the daily commercials by Renewal by Anderson for replacement windows and doors, and the mail box flyers, we do not need new windows and doors.

• Every morning I wake up I feel my contract has been renewed.

• When I put the morning news on, it occurs to me that there a lot of people who've gotten up before me.

• Rebecca Lowe, anchor desk broadcaster for NBC/Peacock telecasts of Premier League Soccer, talks so fast, but distinctly, she could auction off cattle.

•A Jeopardy clue the other night revealed why a knife can be called a "pen knife." Ready? When there were no pens as we know it today, writing was done with a sharpened quill point—a bird's feather. And that sharpening was done with a small knife, which became called a "pen knife."

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What's A Sestercentennial?

Sestercentennial is a word I've never come across before. My guess is that famous sesquipedalian William F. Buckley Jr. managed to work it into a conversation over the years, but I only gathered from the context of the story about The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere that appeared in the NYT on April 21, 2025 that it means the celebration, or acknowledgment of something from 250 years ago.  

And that is how long ago it was that Mr. Revere (born with a French name Rivoire, anglicized by his father) went galloping through the Massachusetts countryside announcing an impending invasion by the British. The American Revolution had begun.

The 16-mile ride was made after nightfall on April 18, 1775, but leave it to the NYT to acknowledge the 250th anniversary three days later. To their credit though they started the story on the first page of the first section below the fold, and jumped it further into the paper with four full color pages about the route and what Paul would have discovered today if people still traveled by horse through Massachusetts towns. Answer: diners, restaurants, a laundromat, pizza, and an Islamic Cultural Center. (The publication on April 21, 2025 did coincide with Patriots' Day in Boston, so there is that connection.)

As a youngster in the 1960s I collected stamps. Commemorative stamps were then and are still issued to acknowledge a milestone event, like 100 years, (a centennial); 150 years (sesquincentennial). Since the United States was not yet 200 years old in the 1960s, anything bicentennial was something for the future. And certainly sestercentennial was even further off.

Will there be a commemorative stamp for the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's ride? Turns out there will be. Can't seem to find it yet, but the U.S.P.S. did one for Betty White, so I guess Paul's is in the works.

A few years ago I attended a book singing at the Union Square Barnes and Noble overlooking the park,  where Caroline Kennedy and the artist Jon J. Muth were going to discuss and sign their collaboration "Poems to Learn by Heart." It was 2013 and Caroline entered wearing an orange caftan to a nice round of applause.

At that time Ms. Kennedy was doing work for the NYC public schools and became interested in poetry groups with the students. She and the artist and students put together a gorgeous book of 100 poems with watercolor illustrations by Mr. Muth.

"Casey at the Bat" is there; "The Cremation of Sam McGee" is there; even a couplet by Ogden Nash gets a page with an illustration. And of course "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" is there. 

Caroline recounted a story of being a kid at a family gathering when her Uncle Ted (Ted Kennedy, her father Jack's brother) would launch into a recitation of the Longfellow poem. The NYT story made me look at the book again and I was taken by how long "The Midnight Ride" is. Uncle Ted could not have possibly gotten much past the first stanza. Perhaps appropriately, there are 13 stanzas.

Now that there is a new grandchild in the family, I'm going to be giving the book to my daughter Susan and Matthew so that he too can learn of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere."

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Lou Nasti

I have little in common with Mr. Nasti other than his photo from March 20, 1965 that appeared in the NYT as they did a story on Mr. Nasti as a teenage prodigy for building robots and other forms of animation.

No, I didn't just read that edition, but I probably did buy the paper that day. In 1965 Mr. Nasti was 19; I was 16 and still in high school, but even then a daily reader of the paper.

Mr. Nasti is seen in the lively, appreciative story by Philip Dougherty as what a typical, well dressed teenage boy in Brooklyn, or NYC in general looked like then; white, tab collar shirt, thin tie, hair in a pompadour. He is Billy Joel in the song 'Keepin' the Faith.'

I wore a white shirt all through public high school, but not the thin tie. Mr. Nasti graduated Midwood High School in Brooklyn in 1963, when you could still go to a Dodgers home game at Ebbets Field; I graduated Stuyvesant in Manhattan in 1966.

The above photo is part of the March 28, 2025 obituary for Lou Nasti, 79; Charmed Brooklyn and the World With Mechanical Magic written by Ash Wu.

What attracted me to the obit, other than it was an obit, was the 1965 black and white photo of Mr. Nasti at the controls for the robot, Mr. Obos, named after the Sobos glue Lou used. (I used Duco Cement glue —still on the market—to build the balsa wood houses for my HO train layout.)

Lou and I seemed to have gotten similar Christmas presents. He and I, Tinkertoys, that he animated; me, I only put them together.

Additionally what also attracted me to the obit was the caption used under the reprinted 1965 photo saying it "made the front page of the New York Times in 1965." This I had to see for myself. I really couldn't imagine a story like the one for Mr. Nasti could land on a 1965 front page. 

Years ago I would have had to go to the library to gain access to digital stories from publications. Hello Internet. A little digging, front page yes, but in reality the front page of the second section, page 29 in a L++ edition, two sections, eight columns in those days. (And a lot cheaper; 10¢ for daily; 25¢ for Sunday. But money is relative.)

This hardly diminishes Philip Dougherty's story, written in a lively style with details you wouldn't find in a story today.

Mr. Nasti's home address in given, 1866 Flatbush Avenue. The lede is lively in that it goes: 

"The other fellows around East 38th Street and Flatbush Avenue have had a pretty busy winter, what with shooting pool at Cannon's, going to dances and all that.

But where has Lou Nasti been? He's been in the basement of the Styling by Silhouette Beauty Parlor every free minute, and what he's been doing has really become a neighborhood topic. No wonder, for how many fellows are building 6-foot 5-inch copper colored robots around Flatbush Avenue these days?"

The young Mr. Nasti turned down a scholarship to M.I.T. in order to work, eventually building a thriving animation business with international jet set clients. Had to gone to M.I.T. he likely might have helped design the Lunar Landing Module for NASA. But by the narrative of the obituary, it sounds like Mr. Nasti had much more fun on his own without being part of a giant government bureaucracy.

Dyker Heights in Brooklyn is famous for its over-the-top Christmas decorations, and Mr. Nasti's company completed commission for clients there. The neighborhood is so famous at Christmas time that A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours makes sure it goes by at night.

Getting back to the 1965 article, Mr. Dougherty describes Lou Nasti's mom, Mrs. Marie Nasti, as of course proud of her son, but also adds that she has a "plump 5-foot frame, unable to hold all her pride." The story is a Valentine.

Mr. Nasti's endeavors also came to the attention of the NYT in 2017 when Helene Stapinski did a colorful piece of Mr. Nasti and his crew as they decorate one of the over-the-top homes in Dyker Heights, the home of a lawyer, Alfred Pollizzoto.

To the credit of the editor of the obit page, a color layout was part of the obituary. Mr. Nasti's life was so full of color, it would have been a shame if his obit wasn't. Color is found in the paper, these days, but not everywhere. 

A good obit is made even better when there is a kicker at the end, a humorous aside that further captures the personality of the deceased.

Mr. Nasti's two daughters worked in his company. Margot Craven said for all her father's decorating of other people's properties, for his own family, "he has a three-foot Christmas tree. He had the ornaments glued on and he had it in a plastic bag, He would unroll the plastic bag, and that was Christmas. He really was the shoemaker with holes in his shoes." Another Valentine.

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Achille DeLuca

There is a new streaming detective to pay attention to, Detective DeLuca, an Italian miniseries with Italian subtitles currently available on Mhz Choice.

New to us here in the States that is. This is a 2008 production, one season, four episodes, that was on BBC Four, based on crime novels by Carlo Lucarelli. It is set in several parts of Italy during 1938-1948, pre and post war Italy.

Achille DeLuca is a handsome chick magnet, who in every episode falls into bed with an appealing female, sometimes twice. He might remind someone of Marcello Mastroianni. He smokes unfiltered cigarettes, leaving clouds of blue smoke that almost make you want to open a window

There is no backstory to DeLuca. "I'm a policeman," he'll explain to anyone who wonders about him. There is no ex-wife; no children; no mother and father to provide home cooked meals. In fact, for an Italian, he's not much on food, but he does like his coffee.

There are only four episode in the single season. Why more were not produced is not known. DeLuca solves crimes is politically charged atmospheres, but doesn't always get to see final justice dispensed. He is honest, and will not fall in line with those who want quick closure to cases. 

As such, his career starts in an Adriatic Coast town of Rimini, and with his success of at least closing the case, gets promoted to Rome, but we next see him in Bologna. He gets bounced around a bit.

The series is a period piece with careful attention to detail. The police take photos of crime scenes with a twin lens Rolleiflex cameras in leather cases; the "horizontal staff," i.e. the prostitutes in brothels all wear boxy underpants.

If the British love to show off their trains, the Italians are showing off their Fiat police cars that look like large toys, seating four.

Achille wears three piece suits, almost always with his fedora. He has clear, light blue sad eyes and a Continental, neatly trimmed mustache; no belt, always suspenders.

The setting is Italy in its Il Duce, Fascist period. In fact, Deluca is initially part of OVRA, the Italian secret police, an association that follows and haunts him a bit even as Mussolini is deposed and the war ends  

The OVRA, unofficially known as the Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism. The first episode has a lot of clicked heels and Fascists salutes and references to Il Duce. Mussolini is briefly portrayed, surrounded by his body guards, walking along the beach shoreline

Episodes move through time quickly, and DeLuca finds himself in Bologna as the war ends and elections are going to be held. His love interest is a gorgeous prostitute, Valeria, who ultimately helps him solve the last case.

The music is subtle, and very much like Bernard Hermann's score for Vertigo. You can always tells the mood through the music.

In the third episode DeLuca is cut loose from any police association and is trying to make his way to Ferrara, as he poses as an engineer. Trouble follows, and he is on the run, eventually helping a local, inexperienced Carabinieri solve a crime. Their friendship is renewed in the last episode.

Four episodes were not enough. Perhaps they moved through time too fast. The author, whose book the character is based on, wrote nine novels, so certainly there would have been more material.

I'm going to miss Detective DeLuca. And I'm going to miss his girlfriend.

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Chickens and Eggs

Unless you're a modern day Rip Van Winkle and just waking up from  layers of cardboard and newspaper under your favorite overpass, you probably have already heard the news about chickens, bird flu and the price of eggs.

The price of eggs has skyrocketed, and is only now coming a bit down to earth. Massive flocks of chickens had to be euthanized to keep bird flu from jumping from birds to humans. Supply and demand. Supply of egg-laying chickens goes down, the price of eggs goes up.

I have to say I'm unaffected by whatever eggs cost. My wife will eat them now and then, but that's it. Perhaps when I was 10 I declared I was allergic to eggs. My mother made some holiday eggnog and I got sick.

I never remember her even cooking eggs. Growing up food was not prepared much in my house. I hate the smell of eggs. And when my daughter Susan visits, she and my wife dig in for a breakfast with eggs, or bring back a Mickie D's Egg McMuffin, I leave the kitchen.

I cringe when I see the commercial for the happy family at breakfast tucking into plates of Eggland Best eggs, smiling with joy at consuming that white and yellow sulfurous goo. Did I tell you I hate eggs?

I'm old enough to remember when there was an oil crisis in the 70s due to an Arab boycott exporting it, causing a massive gasoline and home heating oil shortage. There were those intrepid souls, even on Long Island, who went into woodlands of Suffolk County to harvest firewood for their newly purchased wood burning stoves they were using to heat their homes.

This was a very short lived adventure, because as soon as the embargo lifted, the suburbanites put their chainsaws away and did probably put the stoves outside.

And so it is with eggs. There are those who are shoe- horning chickens into their backyards in an effort to gain what they view will be "free" eggs.

The always reliable WSJ has done an A-Hed piece on this: 

Raising Chicken Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be
Backyard egg-layers can be messy, costly; 'We put the kibosh on it.'

The belief that the eggs will be free is dashed when it is revealed that the first egg for these suburban farmers will come at a cost of nearly $1,500.  No Golden Goose there. 

As usual, the A-Hed piece does its best to insert as many puns as possible, starting with the headline, "cracked..."

"...a surge in egg prices—has sent Americans flocking for their own poultry. There were 11 million households with backyard chickens in 2024, up from 5.8 million in 2018..."

"Local regulations often throw up red tape, or neighbors squawk..."

"But when it comes to saving money, chickens aren't all they're cracked up to be."

"Nervous new chicken parents could shell out up to $2,495 for a "Smart Coop," a poultry condo equipped with automatic doors and cameras that alert owners via an app when predators like racoon are nearby. They can activate alarms to scare predators."

That sounds more sensible than coming out the backdoor with a shotgun and scaring everyone with badly aimed blasts.

..."lobbied her town to change the rules to permit backyard chickens over a decade ago—and she's glad to see the hobby take flight..."

One town is trying to strike a balance between the backyard barnyards and the concerns of others over rats that eat the grain. No roosters.

Aside from food and eggs, consider what idioms and slang chickens have given us:

•chicken shit: insignificant things
•chicken feed: insignificant information. Spy novels are filled with references to chicken feed.
•playing chicken: daring someone to not..."chicken out."
•lay an egg: not succeed.
•goose eggs: zeroes on the scoreboard.

All the news lately of chickens and eggs has got me thinking. Not what came first, but what is the biology that leads a hen to lay eggs? They just didn't cover that in any school I went to. But now there's Google.

A laying hen's ovary holds thousands of tiny ova, or future egg yolks. Birds are unique among animals because only one ovary (the left) matures to the stage where it releases eggs. When a yolk is ready, it moves out of the ovary and into the oviduct - a tube-like structure that is divided into different sections. 

Ovulation (release of the yolk from the ovary) occurs every 24 – 26 hours regardless of fertilization (so a rooster is not needed). A hen ovulates a new yolk after the previous egg was laid. It takes 26 hours for an egg to fully form (white and shell added), so a hen will lay an egg later and later each day. 

"So a rooster is not needed."

Thus, like a lot of guys, he's worthless and noisy.

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Saddie and the Speedball

Joe DePugh is not famous for being famous. He earned a tribute obit in the NYT because he was Bruce Springsteen's boyhood friend and was the inspiration for one of The Boss's rockin' anthems to friends and days gone by, "Glory Days."

It is a tribute to the NYT obit desk that Joe is recognized, because certainly all things Springsteen are recognized. Michael S. Rosenwald's informative obit tells me at least, why Springsteen seemed to call a fastball—which would have fit into his song, two syllables—a speedball. Bruce stunk at baseball and probably didn't care what anything was called. No broadcast announcer from the booth has ever called a pitcher's pitch a "speedball." I never understood until now why "fastball" wasn't used in the lyric.

The great thing about an online obit edition is that imbedded in the obit is a link to a video of Springsteen and the E Street Band playing "Glory Days." Everyone looks so young.

The above photo is from 2005, and I would have thought it would have been older. Saddie—as in sad— was Joe's nickname for Bruce because Bruce was an indifferent Little League player whose inability to catch a routine fly ball in right field cost the team the game. The ball actually hit Bruce in the head. He could have been nicknamed Charlie Brown.

My wife remembers Bruce as a teenager playing in the cellar of Gordon (Tex) Vineyard's house in the 60s in Freehold, New Jersey. She spent half her summers in Freehold staying at Aunt Helen's place on Jerseyville Avenue, hard by the Nescafé plant.

Aunt Helen and Uncle Bill had four kids. They were contemporaries of Bruce's and followed his growing up in Freehold. Tex was Bruce's first manager who got him dates in all the bars he knew of, and he knew plenty of them. Tex was a bit a garrulous guy who worked at the local hospital. His wife was Marion, and they had no children.

I remember Tex at Aunt Helen's when my wife and I visited in the '70s. I never met Bruce, but his Aunt was a hairdresser at Bamberger's department store where cousin Eileen worked. Everyone in Freehold knew of Bruce. They all said he was the nicest, most genuine type of guy.

After Tex died Bruce bought a house for Marion to live in. Bruce had remained devoted to Tex for getting him started and chose to go to his funeral rather than Roy Orbison's, who passed away at the same time. Bruce provided for those he cared about. Tex was actually born in Oklahoma, and figures in one of Bruce's songs. 

Marion was a childhood classmate of Uncle Bill, and when he was widowed and needing medical care, she provided what was really hospice care in her home. My wife and I visited Uncle Bill there and in the finished cellar were several gold/platinum records Bruce had given Marion.  I'm not sure Marion is still alive.

I've never been to a Springsteen concert. I'm not sure I could stand up that long, because surely no one remains in their seat. Perhaps oddly, my wife never liked Springsteen. She didn't like him as a teenager, and doesn't like him now. She says, "he yells."

No matter. I think next to Billy Joel he's a total talent, and it turns out my own contemporary. When my father was in the final stages of cancer at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx in 1987, some patients were treated to music on the veranda that was of their era, WW II songs like "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."  I thought to myself they'll be playing Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen if I wind up in the same place.

Bruce never  did a Christmas album. Perhaps thankfully. However, one of my favorite Springsteen songs is "Santa Claus in Coming to Town." "Hey band" followed by questions about their awareness of Christmas and their behavior will always have me turning up the volume, much to the annoyance of my family because I'll do it even if it isn't Christmastime. It's about being with his buddies, to whom he will always be steadfastly loyal to.

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Reinaldo Herrera

The coolest man on earth has just passed away, and most of us have missed the funeral Mass.

Yesterday's NYT tells us in more laudatory, breathless words than I ever thought possible, that Reinaldo Herrera, 91, Essence of Style At Vanity Fair and Around Town has passed away on March 18 and that the funeral Mass has already been held at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

I don't think the obituary writer, Penelope Green, has failed to leave out a single complimentary word found in the English language. The man had no faults.

Ms. Green's lede tells us all we need to know, but leaves us wanting to know more about an "indispensable story wrangler and all-around fixer for Vanity Fair magazine where he served as a contributing editor for more than three decades. That's a long time to be at a magazine and not piss off the wrong people. There should be a sub-category to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Herrera was born into South American nobility (he was a Marquis, not to be confused with the Marriott hotel or the lighted signage in front of a theater.) Ms. Green tells us, "after attending Harvard and Georgetown Universities and working as a presenter for a morning show in Venezuela, he joined Europe's emerging jet set, mingling with Rothchilds and Agnellis, Italian nobles and British royals."

He married his younger sister's best friend, Maria Carolina Josefina Pacanins, who became known as Carolina Herrera, a famous fashion designer. In fact, Carolina Herrera's name became so well known that one could be forgiven if they thought that he took her name when they married. 

Ms. Green piles the encomiums on in a pair of paragraphs that ooze charm in themselves. 

•he was old school and old world
•he wore bespoke suits with immaculate pocket squares
•his jeans were crisply pressed
•his manners were impeccable
•he spoke classical French without an accent
•his voice was described by Graydon Carter, a former editor of Vanity Fair, as a combination of Charles Boyer, the suave French actor, and the Count von Count, the numbers-obsessed Muppet. (When you come out ahead as being described as a Muppet, what wrong can you do?)

And here's where I'm sent to the OED.

"By the late 1970s, the Herreras were part of a frothy mix that defined Manhattan society at the time—socialites, financiers, walkers and rock stars, along with a smattering of politicians, authors and artists, who dined on and off Park Avenue and danced at Studio 54."

Walkers? Surely not dog walkers? No, stupid. The 10th definition of a walker as found in the OED tells us it can mean: "A man who accompanies women as an escort at fashionable social occasions. US slang. L20. ("Do you think Reinaldo is available?")

In the early 1980s, Tina Brown was editor of Vanity Fair, and after being introduced to Reinaldo Herrera, who so entertained her with story after story, that she hired him on the spot. "Ms. Brown knew the news value of a man like Mr. Herrera."  

She wrote of him that he was like a "golden retriever in a dinner jacket," who brought her back dispatches each morning from the evening's parties.

When being compared to a Muppet and a dog is high praise, I have to say I regret not ever hearing of Reinaldo sooner.

"Mr. Herrera was very good with royals. He was friends with Queen Elizabeth's II sister Margaret. "He used his title—a marquis—only in countries that had functioning monarchies." (A marquis is historically defined as a nobleman ranking below a duke but above a count.) 

The Reverend Boniface Ramsey recounted at Mr. Herrera's funeral Mass at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue, that Reinaldo was good at protocol in all sorts of areas. Father Ramsey recounted the time Mr. Herrera, an ardent Catholic, pointed out that the yellow and white Vatican flag outside the parish was hanging upside down. (An upside down flag means peril, so maybe there was a reason it was flying upside down. Just saying.)  

Mr. Herrera earned his chops at parties. He apparently believed a successful evening was achieved if it included a controversial figure. Claus von Bülow was a friend he often called in from the bullpen to add intrigue, spice and a sense of malevolence to his parties. Claus famously was acquitted of the attempted murder of his heiress wife Sonny.  Mr. Herrera told the NYT in 1987 that "Claus is a great catalyst."    

I once read that someone would try and have a few leggy blondes in attendance at a party who might carelessly cross their legs as being indispensable.

There are those amongst us who have dream teams, a hypothetical collection of all-stars all on the same side. Mr. Herrera once thought a great gathering of invitees would include Jean Harris, who in a blackout rage gunned down her lover Dr. Tarnower, famous for creating the Scarsdale Diet, and Ivan Boesky, the corporate rider charged with insider trading at the same soiree. 

The duo never made it to one of Mr. Herrera's parties since when he thought of it, they were both in prison at the time. The wardens sent the RSVPs back as could not attend. (I made that up.)

I don't know who it was, but they imagined a chance meeting of Greta Garbo, Jack Nicholson, and maybe Marlene Dietrich, each carrying Bloomingdale shopping bag, getting stuck on the same Manhattan street corner waiting for the light to change. All it takes is imagination.

Tina Brown wrote, "Over the years, I came to see Reinaldo's impeccable comportment as a moral quality. He felt it was on him to elevate the room and leave people feeling better about themselves."

I wish I met the guy.

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