Truman Capote And The Secrets Of The Affluent

One book that should be optioned for a motion picture, if it hasn't already, is The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin (Delacorte Press, 2016). This page-turner, which gives the reader a fly-on-the-wall view of events, is a fictionalized account of Truman Capote's befriending and betrayal of five wealthy Upper East Side women-- he called them his swans-- including Barbara "Babe" Paley, the wife of William Paley, the founder of the CBS broadcast network, and the swan with whom Capote had the closest relationship.

Capote wrote  a short story called " La Cote Basque, 1965" that was published in 1975 in Esquire magazine. The story revealed the secrets of the aforementioned women. These secrets were told to him with the belief that he would keep them confidential. When he didn't, they felt hurt and betrayed and as a result they shut him out of their lives. Capote never recovered from this ostracism.

It's too bad the late Philip Seymour Hoffman isn't around to reprise his portrayal of Capote in a possible film adaptation of The Swans of Fifth Avenue.

Note: The New York Times ran a story by Joseph Berger with the headline, "Cote Basque, A Society Temple, Is Closing" (September 18, 2003) that described the restaurant as "the high-society temple of classic French cuisine [located in Manhattan] that became the setting of a catty and thinly veiled excerpt from an unfinished novel by Truman Capote...."

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Saving New York From Rising Sea Water

Donald Trump, our 45th president, is more concerned about building a wall along the southern border than he is building a sea wall in New York harbor to keep rising sea water from flooding lower Manhattan and other low-lying areas of the city. The wrath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 should have been a wake-up call.

Note: I posted the above comment on Facebook on April 7, 2018.

Tomorrow is Earth Day.

One Hundred Women Hidden From History

I recently started reading She Caused a Riot: 100 Unknown Women Who Built Cities, Sparked Revolution, & Massively Crushed It by Hannah Jewell, a Washington, D.C.-based writer (Sourcebooks,2018).*

The book is intriguing although the author's use of profanities, anachronistic comments, and levity got under my skin a bit. I'm old-fashioned when it comes to books of biography and history. I prefer a serious, scholarly approach. I suppose in order to grab and hold the attention of millennials (the intended audience, I suspect), you have to be as entertaining and irreverent as possible.

The thing that drew me to the book, other than the provocative and attention-getting title, was the subject matter. This was the opportunity to learn the names and the life stories of women heretofore unknown. (I should point out that a few of these women are not as unknown as the book's subtitle would have us believe, such as actress/inventor Hedy Lamarr and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett.)

The book spans continents, time periods, races, and ethnic groups. Unfortunately, the black female mathematicians featured in the hit movie Hidden Figures are missing from the table of contents. Despite that oversight She Caused a Riot is a useful introduction to the accomplishments and concerns of one hundred women hidden from history. They are potential role models for young women and maybe young men as well.


*The book was published in 2017, in the United Kingdom, with the title 100 Nasty Women of History. Obviously a reference to Donald Trump's characterization of Hillary Clinton at one of the 2016 presidential debates.

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A Smoker's Island

As a non-smoker, I applaud the bill introduced by New York city councilman Peter Koo (D-Queens) to ban smoking while walking down the street. (See New York Daily News, March 20, 2018.)

I can recall numerous times being subjected to second-hand smoke by someone walking in front of me. I have often thought of carrying one of those hand-held paper fans you see women in churches using as a way to disperse the smoke.

Perhaps the City Council should designate one of the abandoned islands in the East River as a haven for smokers, providing them with free ferry service to and fro.

Environmentalists would probably protest vehemently such an idea, but it's worth considering--smokers with an island of their own.

Two Prose Poems Set In Greece

The following poems were written by Velma Jean Robinson Reeb.

"For the Shepherd at Amorgos"

He wears part of one of his sheep upon his back, a skin for a water bottle and a gray sheep calls him from the rocks above but he does not heed now for he speaks with the monk, a singular word or phrase, just momentarily before picking up again his staff and turning eastward to the road where it meets all the landscape on the way to the village. But he is not village-bound. His is the life of mountains to climb, bells ringing from the necks of his sheep, the sheep with whom he lives the life he loves, his own life, one he inherited, he does not disturb the landscape of water, mountain, sea, and air. I remember my surprise at his youth and handsomeness, his figure only slightly bent. He is so different, this real shepherd, from the ones in books.


"For a Greek Woman Watching the Sunset"

She sits, her dark head turned towards the light that fades in the West, fading gently, slowly, but never failing, only ebbing its way toward its destination, this light, this colored light and the woman waiting patiently, looking, lost in the world of that light, not hearing the shriek of Western music jarring the sunset as the ferry boat plows through the little waves, a little ferry boat in a timeless sea; no horizon and no destiny. There is only the sunset.

Velma Jean Robinson Reeb, a former Upper Manhattan resident, now resides in Portland, Oregon. She briefly lived in Greece with her son.

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Note: April is National Poetry Month.