"When you walk in by yourself, the look on the host or hostess’s face changes. It is sometimes a look of panic..."

"... like ‘What are we going to do with this person?’ Or sometimes it is a look of sympathy. I am just so tired of being treated like a second-class citizen."

Said Rajika Shah, "a lawyer in Los Angeles," who "is often led to the worst table in the dining room, neglected by her server, and then rushed out at the end of the meal," quoted in "Why Is Dining Alone So Difficult? With solo reservations on the rise but many restaurants still restricting tables to two or more, solitary Americans often feel left out or stigmatized" (NYT).

The assumption that people need to be coupled or grouped goes beyond restaurants, said Bella DePaulo... author of the 2023 book “Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life.”... Dr. DePaulo also pointed to a recent, highly circulated article in The Atlantic, “The Anti-Social Century,” which links practices like solo dining to reclusion and loneliness....

“People who are lonely are going to stay home,” she said. “They are not going to go out to a restaurant. People who go out on their own are confident.... We are a nation that really romanticizes romantic coupling and marriage, .and stigmatizing people who are single or do things alone is part of that”....

Here's a picture of me 17 years ago with my fisheye-exaggerated hand on a Bella DePaulo book, "Singled Out":

Obviously, I'm not alone. I've got Obama! I mean, I've got my tablemate, my photographer, and he was audaciously hoping, while I was preparing to do a Bloggingheads with Bella. And that Bloggingheads turned out to be momentous. It played a role in connecting me to Meade, as I described a bit later in a post called "Flashback '08: The Audacity Althousity of Hope."

So I'm always happy to see Bella DePaulo's name come up in an article, even though the important matter of living well while single isn't my personal concern anymore. I still care about it! And you don't have to be single to find yourself in situations where you need to or would like to eat alone in a restaurant and you waste part of your mind on the possibly disapproving expression on a restaurant employee's face and the way the other diners might be thinking, oh, that poor woman, no one loves her.

At least Obama loves us!

"He eschewed computers, often writing by fountain pen in his beloved notebooks."

"'Keyboards have always intimidated me,' he told The Paris Review in 2003. 'A pen is a much more primitive instrument,' he said. 'You feel that the words are coming out of your body, and then you dig the words into the page. Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.' He would then turn to his vintage Olympia typewriter to type his handwritten manuscripts. He immortalized the trusty machine in his 2002 book 'The Story of My Typewriter'.... Such antiquarian methods did nothing to slow Mr. Auster’s breathless output. Writing six hours a day, often seven days a week, he pumped out a new book nearly annually for years...."

From "Paul Auster, the Patron Saint of Literary Brooklyn, Dies at 77/With critically lauded works like 'The New York Trilogy,' the charismatic author drew inspiration from his adopted borough and won worldwide acclaim" (NYT).

You can see by the headline that the obituary stresses the place — Brooklyn (even though Auster was born in New Jersey).  It quotes the author and poet Meghan O’Rourke:

"She and I discussed that her desire to stake out this kind of public position and join in public protests isn’t compatible with being a journalist at The Times..."

Said Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, quoted in "New York Times Writer Resigns After Signing Letter Protesting the Israel-Gaza War/The writer, Jazmine Hughes, who has won awards for her work, had signed another letter of protest this year" (NYT).

"A barely visible boundary around Brooklyn, strung with fishing line from telephone pole to streetlamp all around the borough, allows observant Jews to carry items — keys, prayer shawls, children — on the Sabbath."

A photo caption for the NYT article, "For Observant Jews in Brooklyn, the Sabbath Expands/For the first time, an exception to the prohibition against 'carrying' on the day of rest includes most of the borough, allowing, among other things, children to be pushed in strollers."

"As part of the park’s redesign, roughly an acre of concrete slab will be covered with a thermoplastic mural printed with rainbow stripes and planted with eight-foot-tall sculptural flowers as a tribute to [Black trans activist Marsha P.] Johnson..."

"... who often wore flowers in her hair. Locals are livid that the redesign doesn’t include a major expansion of green space or real flower beds. They also say that local residents never had a chance to offer meaningful feedback.... The new design was announced last August, but state officials waited until a few days before the park was set to close for construction in January to present it to Brooklyn Community Board 1....  'It’s almost stereotypical at this point. People just think, Oh, it’s queer people so we’re going to make a gay flag as a park,' said Mihalis Petrou, a horticulturist who has worked on North Brooklyn parks and who identifies as gay. 'It’s just redundant and uninventive and it’s going to have an impact on the local wildlife. We could have a nuanced tribute that honors marginalized people by celebrating nature. It’s a missed opportunity.' 'Olmsted must be rolling in his grave,' said Katie Naplatarski, a North Brooklyn parks advocate and longtime Greenpoint resident. 'To coat a park in plastic? Are you kidding me? That is so fundamentally wrong.'"

From "North Brooklyn Locals Do Not Like the Plastic Mural Proposed For Their Park" (New York Magazine).

Plastic, flowers, rainbows — when is inclusivity insulting? Is there ever a point when those who are designated for governmental uplifting rebel and say this is trite, childish, and just plain bad design?

Elegant split-screen editing as Nike hopes to inspire togetherness.

Details at AdWeek: "Clever Video Editing Portrays a Message of Unity in Nike’s Latest Powerful Spot/Wieden+Kennedy produced the third ad in 'You Can't Stop Us' campaign."

Like the other two spots in the campaign, “You Can’t Stop Us,” which has the same name as the overall campaign, draws on the sense of community from being socially isolated during a global pandemic. However, unlike the other two spots, the third 1.5-minute video also touches on the feelings stirred by the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement following the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.

The voiceover narration is done by Megan Rapinoe, the soccer player.

Ah! I'm glad to see that I didn't just imagine that I'd created a tag "oneness."

ADDED: I had to publish this post and click on the tag to see where I got the idea the idea that "oneness" was going to be important. I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I see that the last time I used it was on November 15, 2008 for "The Office of the President-Elect speaks!/Listen up!"



Oh, my Lord, did I think Obama was going to bring us together? No, no, actually not. I had my cruel neutrality:

"She attended college at Brown, and spent a summer in Los Angeles trying to become an actress and a model, and going to clubs with Leonardo DiCaprio."

"('It was the summer before Romeo and Juliet came out,' she said. 'It was right after Gilbert Grape.') When Hollywood didn’t pan out, she graduated and moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion media, landing writing jobs... 'I was like, drowning in makeup and cigarettes and booze and cool people'.... In 2005, she took a break from the work force to get an M.F.A. in creative writing. She ended up selling a novel to Grove Atlantic, but 'it sort of turned into a disaster,' she said. She returned the advance and the book was never published.... After her wedding in 2011, she landed on the idea for Stone Fox Bride... [Instagram] became a place where Ms. Guy would share photos of her daughters and her husband. 'In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done any of that,' she said. By 2016, her marriage was coming to an end, and selling wedding dresses, in person and online, stopped being so fun. Ms. Guy closed her studio 'the day Trump got elected,' she said, and started selling her inventory out of her Williamsburg apartment, while her estranged husband lived in an Airstream around the corner.... Now, Ms. Guy said she is working on a memoir... Her brand, she said, has evolved to represent 'women in transition.'... [She teaches a] 'crash course writing workshop' for 'foxes in flux.'"

From "What Happens When a Weddings Influencer Gets Divorced?/Stone Fox Bride made Molly Rosen Guy the face of bohemian weddings. Then her marriage ended" (NYT).

Apparently, it's Trump's fault.

IN THE COMMENTS: Sally327 said:

I can't read the article so I don't know if it addresses this or not but I wonder if this business was profitable. I mean, enough to live on. Possibly not having a husband around to pay the bills made a difference?

I responded:

"As shown by the arc of my relationship with Jamie—and the many other Jamies who populate the New York writing scene—Trump is as much a symptom as a cause."

"His appearance in American politics coincides with a larger trend on the left that now serves to elevate every form of personal disappointment into a symptom of 'systemic' abuse. The result hasn’t just been that my erstwhile friends are afflicted with debilitating persecution complexes: It also has destroyed their ability to exercise independent thought. For free thought requires the free use of language, which is impossible when smart people like Jamie or Daniel are required to push the round peg of art and creation into the square hole of political sloganeering.... Is this process of submission—and the resulting discordance between ideology and one’s own authentic stream of thought—what drove my friends to states of miserable, anti-social agitation? I don’t know, because I am no longer in touch with either of the two men. I also have parted ways with my long-time girlfriend, who got swept up in these same currents, and who once literally wept in my presence because I had made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia."

From "Confessions of a ‘Soulless Troglodyte’: How My Brooklyn Literary Friendships Fell Apart in the Age of Trump" written under the pseudonym Lester Berg (Quillette).

"As a queer, trans, disabled person who goes by they/them, I'm this SJW snowflake. I don’t want to sit down with cops. The Christian right is making strange bedfellows right now."

Said Dakota Bracciale, the owner of Catland, quoted in "Inside the Brooklyn Witches’ Antifa Hex on Kavanaugh/Despite protests, the Brooklyn antifa witches’ hex on Brett Kavanaugh went on. Both vengeful hate and intense love filled the event" (The Daily Beast).

Bracciale — "who goes by they/them" but calls themself "I" — made "strange bedfellows" with the police to arrange for security during Catland's planned event purporting to call violence down upon Brett Kavanaugh.

Catland is a Brooklyn shop that sells "spiritual literature, healing crystals, tarot cards, burnable incense, and other occult accoutrements."

Occult — from "classical Latin occultus secret, hidden from the understanding, hidden, concealed, past participle of occulere to cover up, hide, conceal" (OED) — means "Of or relating to magic, alchemy, astrology, theosophy, or other practical arts held to involve agencies of a secret or mysterious nature; of the nature of such an art; dealing with or versed in such matters; magical." Historical example:

1711 Ld. Shaftesbury Characteristicks III. Misc. ii. i. 53 From this Parent-Country of occult Sciences..he was presum'd..to have learnt..judicial Astrology.

Judicial Astrology!

Anyway, this Catland shop has done a fine job of getting publicity. And the Christians who protested did the hard work of making this stupid story viral.

But I want to talk about Judicial Astrology. Is it anything that our cursèd Supreme Court might do? Wikipedia — I love Wikipedia!! — has an article, "Judicial Astrology"!

You call that "LIVING"? Or: Let's pose him so his head looks like a pineapple.

This is just so delightfully absurd...



... at The NY Post. I love everything about it — the name Randall Bellows III, the way the shirt pattern matches and clashes with the sofa, the long-fingered hand gesture, the plant on the top of the shelf that (just by chance?) makes Bellows's head look like a pineapple, the fact that I have no idea what Venmo is, the goofy smile that seems not to be anxiety but actually could be a very particular kind of anxiety that I have not yet encountered, the kind of anxiety known as "Venmo anxiety." Personally, I feel no anxiety at all. I'm just amused and bemused by Randall Bellows III and the quirky ailment-of-the-moment he seems to be experiencing — without ostensible pain — in Brooklyn, where — apparently — one dispels anxiety with a roll of the eyes and an insouciant hand flourish.

Okay. Now I'll read the article:

Whenever Caroline Keane opens the Venmo app, she always intends to just go in and out. But, inevitably, she gets sucked into the mobile money-transfer service — specifically, its social feed, where she can see friends and co-workers requesting cash from one another for drinks, dinners and Ubers. Scrolling through the app gives the 23-year-old PR professional a particular sense of anxiety: Is everyone hanging out without her?...

The solution is: Put down the phone and get back to writing Nancy Drew mysteries.



ADDED: I read the headline to Meade and he said, "Ben Wa?" I repeated the word more clearly, Venmo. He said: "I know what Ben Wa balls are."

"The Bubble. It's Brooklyn. With a bubble on it."

Glad to see "Saturday Night Live" figured out how to do at least some humor in the election aftermath.

By the way, did you know that Buckminster Fuller actually — not just humorously — proposed a bubble to enclose part of NYC?



Looks like Trump Tower is just inside Bucky's bubble.

"Bob Dylan Painted The Most Instagrammed Spot In Brooklyn."

"Yes indeed, Robert Zimmerman has painted the Manhattan Bridge from DUMBO—that spot is located at Washington Street, between Plymouth and Front streets...."

"You are invited to the young and wonderful town of Brooklyn in 1857... watch them play their bright, sunshiny game of ball called 'base'..."

That's an ad that appeared in The New York Times on June 11, 1950, right under a review of another book about Brooklyn (called "Brooklyn Is America").



I arrived there searching the NYT archive for the word "politicize." That use of "politicize" is the older meaning — to talk about politics. It's similar to "philosophize." It's a style of talking.

I was interested in going back to the past and then, once there, seeing how they talked about their past. Brooklyn has changed a lot since 1950, 65 years ago, and back then, there was a novel that was supposed to entertain you with what Brooklyn was like a century before that, before baseball was called "baseball," and it was a game of ball called "base." Is that even right? I'm checking "Origins of baseball":

Pushback against white-privileged hipsters and their crocheted mural is "spiraling out of control" in Bushwick.

A flea market and some hipster crochet glued onto the side of a building that's owned by one of the pre-gentrification residents of the neighborhood.

In other Brooklyn gentrification news, there's "White Guy Who 'Settled' Downtown Brooklyn Tells Us Why He Lashed Out At Stroller Couple":

"When I came down here, Myrtle Avenue here, it was abandoned. When I used to go down to the liquor store down there, the black people would all run, because they thought I was a cop! So when I tell you I’m having a fight about white privilege with this man, I’m slightly guilty because I’m moving in to gentrify a neighborhood, except I’m the first one here when nobody wants to live here."

The most charming bookstores in the world...

.... here... including that one in DUMBO that fit the path of my wanderings 7 years ago during my exile in Brooklyn.

Oklahoma boys training for rodeo make the New Yorker writer think about "a playground near my house in Brooklyn, in Park Slope."

"A couple of years ago, it was beautifully renovated by the city, with a rock-lined stream meandering through it and an old-fashioned pump that children could crank to set the water flowing. The stream was the delight of the neighborhood for a while, thronged with kids splashing through the shallows and floating sticks down the current. Yet some parents were appalled. The rocks were a menace, they declared. The edges were too sharp, the surfaces too slippery. A child could fall and crack her skull. 'I actually kept tapping them to check if they were really rocks,' one commenter wrote on the Park Slope Parents Web site. 'It seemed odd to me to have big rocks in a playground.' Within two weeks, a stonemason had been brought in to grind the edges down. The protests continued. One mother called a personal-injury lawyer about forcing the city to remove the rocks. Another suggested that something be done to 'soften' them. 'I am actually dreading the summer because of those rocks,' still another complained."

From "The Ride of Their Lives/Children prepare for the world’s most dangerous organized sport" by Burkhard Bilger.

"She has her hands all over him... Why is she touching him like that?"

"He’s just been hanging out with the wrong crowd. I told him he has to stop hanging out with those boys."

Said the mother of a 13-year-old who was allegedly chased down and held in a "bearhug" by a woman who wanted her cell phone back.

"He was so pudgy and was slowing down, so that’s why I caught up to him," [the victim, Clara] Vondrich said, adding she felt sorry for the kid.

The teen was wearing sneakers and Vondrich, 36, had on wedgie sandals that didn't even have a strap around the heel to hold them on. And we're told she held onto the kid for 2 minutes until the police arrived. This happened in Brooklyn, and of course, there are photographs of the scene, published in the NY Post, which withholds the name of the alleged thief but not the photographs of his face and the body-shaming statements about him.

ADDED: Two women compete in a game called "Empathy."

"And down the street is a retro-chic bakery, where... the windows are decorated with bird silhouettes — the universal symbol for 'hipsters welcome.'"

From the second paragraph of a NYT style article titled "Creating Hipsturbia" about NY suburb such as Hastings-on-Hudson. That bird business called to mind this segment from the TV show "Portlandia":



Anyway, the article is interesting and amusingly written, even if you don't worry about how suburbs can adapt to the tastes of "the type of alt-culture-allegiant urbanites who once considered themselves too cool to ever leave the city."

"Hipsturbia" is a good portmanteau word (if "good" includes making people who are trying to feel good about something feel bad).

To ward off the nagging sense that a move to the suburbs is tantamount to becoming like one’s parents, this urban-zen generation is seeking out palatable alternatives... and importing the trappings of a twee lifestyle like bearded mixologists, locavore restaurants and antler-laden boutiques.

How are they supposed to ward off nagging senses with the NYT dogging them like this? Don't these people know they are never ever ever supposed to leave the city — not for fresh air, not for adequate housing at a remotely decent price, not for good enough public schools, not for anything? If you leave you will be punished. You may try to get something that reminds you of the Real Life that can only be had in Brooklyn, but you will be pleasuring yourself with antlers.

The Brooklyn police officer "pointed at my outfit and said, 'Don't you think your shorts are a little short?'"

"He also stopped two other women wearing dresses... pointed at their dresses and said they were showing a lot of skin."

He said that such clothing could make the suspect think he had "easy access".... She said the officer explained that "you're exactly the kind of girl this guy is targeting."...

Flashback to the Canadian cop who caught hell and sparked the Slutwalk movement. He said, you may remember: "I've been told I'm not supposed to say this – however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

You'd think by now the cops would have figured out how to broach this touchy subject. Look at this response from the woman quoted at the first link: "I can't wear shorts? Besides the fact that I wasn't wearing anything that was inappropriate or provocative…. I don't think that should be part of the problem. At all." Of course, she's right, but the annals of crime are full of innocent victims. The cops would like to encourage people to defend against crime, but advice from an authority figure feels like a restriction of your freedom... which the police know and use to control people.

I'm shocked, shocked to learn that semi-clad models are writhing in the law library!

"... Brooklyn Law School officials rented Diesel its library expecting a tasteful photo shoot for a jeans ad -- but what they got was a steamy display of writhing young models in skimpy lingerie grinding against books and computers."

Wait. Why did they expect a tasteful photo shoot?

"It's gross. I work on those computers every day!" fumed a female student, referring to a shot showing two bra- and panty-clad women climbing over the machines toward an open-mouthed man....

The frisky photos, shot last spring, show off the hot bodies of male and female models as they prowl around the library's floors, tables and bookshelves -- while wearing tight-fitting panties bearing various seductive messages.

If the law school — I emphasize law school — did not impose restrictions when it took Diesel's money then it has nothing to complain about.

"We are as shocked and mortified as you must be by these photographs," interim dean Michael Gerber wrote in an e-mail yesterday to students, faculty and staff.

"When the school gave its permission to do the shoot, the school was assured that the photos would be in good taste. They are not."

"Assured" "good taste" — that's not specific enough to make me believe Diesel violated a contractual term. The school took Diesel's money and had to know that any advertising for clothing for young adults is likely to involve some display of sexuality. Especially if the scene is a library. That's what I'd expect.

What exactly was the school assured of? The models aren't naked. They've got on underwear. And what is even so gross and shocking about this? Man, Diesel is getting way more great publicity than its stupid underpants deserve. Where did this controversy really start? I'm inclined to suspect that the administration is only shocked* after the fact and only because some students have managed to create the impression that the school might be accused of contributing to a "hostile environment" form of sexual harassment.

As for the young woman who is grossed out that a model in panties writhed in the vicinity of a computer she uses... do you realize how many people type on those things with hands they didn't wash after they went to the bathroom?

----------------------------------------------

*Shocked!