Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Monday, October 9, 2023
New York Times Article, "Biden Allies Try to Quash Third-Party Candidates, Fearing a Trump Win," Mentions Richard Grayson
Friday, May 26, 2023
Monday, February 11, 2019
Richard Grayson Letter in The New York Times, Encouraging Women's Voices: Part 2
To the Editor:
Like Kimberly Probolus, I encourage more women to write more letters to the editor. But I would also like to encourage men to write fewer letters to the editor.
Having had over 20 letters published in The Times, I will never submit another one. I’m sure that almost nothing I have to say can’t be said better by another person — preferably one who is female.
Richard Grayson, Brooklyn
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Richard Grayson letter in The New York Times: "And the 2016 Nominees May Be . . . "
Today, November 8, 2015, Richard Grayson has a letter in The New York Times, one of a number of letters under the title "And the 2016 Nominees May Be . . . ":
Obviously, Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the presidential nominee of the Democrats, and her vice-presidential candidate will be the youngish HUD secretary, Julián Castro, to help her get the Hispanic vote against the Cuban-American Rubio and win Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado.
RICHARD GRAYSON
Brooklyn
The writer was a Democratic candidate for Congress in Wyoming in 2014.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Richard Grayson letter in The New York Times Sunday Dialogue: "Grading More Fairly"
Ms. Wissner-Gross need not fear grade deflation from the majority of today’s college instructors: poorly paid, job-insecure part-timers whose continued employment is usually determined by each semester’s evaluations by their students. Why would adjuncts, making only $3,000 for teaching a class of 25 or 30 students, grade low and thus ensure bad evaluations by angry students? As I used to tell my students in the years when I was a part-time professor, “B+ is the new C.”
An average grade in my class was an A-, and no administrator ever chastised me as long as the students were happy. When students complained about their grade, I didn’t argue but just raised the grade. Given my low salary and lack of benefits or job security, it was just too much trouble to invoke “standards” when the three or four colleges hiring me every semester didn’t seem to care about them.
RICHARD GRAYSON Brooklyn
Friday, June 26, 2015
Richard Grayson letter in New York Times: "The Justices Rule on the Health Law"
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Richard Grayson letter in New York Times: "Health Rollout: Troubles and Fixes"
Sunday, August 12, 2012
New York Times Sunday Dialogue, "Daring to Tell the Truth," includes letter by Richard Grayson
Sunday, April 22, 2012
New York Times Sunday Dialogue, "Books in a Digital Age," includes letter by Richard Grayson
Monday, May 23, 2011
Monday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Grand Opening of Bagelsmith at Metropolitan Avenue and Lorimer Street
We were thrilled to see today's grand opening of Bagelsmith at the southeast corner of Lorimer Street and Metropolitan Avenue, which has been vacant forever.
It's the newest branch of the great Bedford Avenue place. There are entrances both on Metropolitan and Lorimer. If we can remember back to 1997, when we first stayed at our current location, this actually used to be two different stores.
We remember getting the New York Times from a newsstand-type place on Lorimer Street the day our op-ed about New Jersey appeared back then. The corner store was variously over the years different things, we think: a bodega, video store, maybe even a liquor store.
Bagelsmith is a big improvement.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Richard Grayson Poem Published as Letter to the Editor in April 24, 2011 New York Times Sunday Styles Section
Today the New York Times published four letters to the editor of the Sunday Styles section in response to David Carr's brilliant April 17 piece, "Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You."
One of the letters was our poem:
•
To the Editor:
This afternoon, being in the dentist’s chair for 40 minutes seemed an absolute pleasure. More and more, those moments in life when I don’t have any chance to glance at a screen are a joy that I treasure.
Richard Grayson, Apache Junction, Ariz.
•
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Richard Grayson Comment on Indie Bands Published in Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure Section Print Edition
The print edition of tomorrow's Sunday New York Times, October 17, 2010, features a comment by Richard Grayson on indie bands on the second page of the Arts and Leisure section.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Forty Years Ago Today in Brooklyn: May 13, 1970: Brooklyn College reacts to Kent State
From our diary:
Wednesday, May 13, 1970
A warm, sunny day punctuated by a morning rain shower. I was very dizzy last night and didn't get much sleep. Mom spent the day shopping downtown and she got me a Wallace Beery-type shirt.
I had lunch near the college with Howie and Linda, who was on her lunch hour from her job/ Howie may get a job announcing the news on Saturdays on a Long Island radio station; he's auditioning on the air on Friday. They make a nice couple - it's obvious they're in love.
In Boylan Hall, I was walking around and saw that riverrun [college literary magazine] was on sale. When I told them who I was, they gave me three copies free. The story, "Reflections on a Village Rosh Hashona," [a revised version appeared in the London-based Transatlantic Review in 1976] is just the way I wrote it. It was elating to see it in print. I didn't let anyone read it, however - too embarrassing.
I briefly joined Esther on a picket line and went home to lie in the sun and finish the Mailer novel. [Robert] Morgenthau dropped out of the race for governor. The hardhats and those dandruffy clerks in their Robert Hall shirts were out [on Wall Street] shouting "U.S.A. alla way."
Thank God for Sec'y Hickel - I made a mistake in opposing his appoointment. [Vice President] Agnew was on David Frost, taking a cue from his boss, coming on quiet and sincere. God, sometimes I wonder late at night what would have been had Bobby Kennedy not gotten shot.
The day's New York Times contained an article by Paul L. Montgomery, "War Protests Continue; Colleges Poorly Attended," reporting on the previous day's events related to the campus strikes, which began
The State Court of Appeals in Albany ruled yesterday that law students must complete the specified number of classroom hours and take final examinations to be eligible for the State Bar examinations.and went on to say
Attendance was small at many of the larger colleges in the metropolitan ara, including New York University, Columbia, City College, Long Island University, Hunter College and Brooklyn College.The article had a photograph taken near the New York Stock Exchange with the caption
. . . On the lawns at Brooklyn College, students put on guerrilla theater skits about the state of the nation. . .
POLICE BAR CONFRONTATION: Helmeted policemen guarding barricades set up around student antiwar demonstration in Broad Street just south of Wall Street. Helmeted construction men and other workers, foreground, were kept away during the meeting.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Facing Declining Sales and Possible Bankruptcy, Dumbo Books of Brooklyn Announces "Buy One, Shoplift One Free" Policy
At a time of economic crisis and sputtering holiday sales, today's New York Times has a front-page story detailing how the only rising retail trend is shoplifting ("As Economy Dips, Arrests for Shoplifting Soar").
According to a nationwide nonprofit association, more than $35 million in merchandise is stolen each day nationwide, and about one in 11 people in America have shoplifted.
Authors, publishers and bookstores are urging people to buy, buy, buy books to keep the industry afloat -- to little avail, it seems, as Borders teeters on bankruptcy and New York publishers announce massive layoffs. As our very smart friend Jason Boog writes today in Salon:
On Dec. 3, now known as "Black Wednesday," several major American publishers were dramatically downsized, leaving many celebrated editors and their colleagues jobless. The bad news stretches from the unemployment line to bookstores to literature itself.
As Tom Engelhardt writes in The Atlantic:
Traffic at many bookstores nationwide has evidently slowed to a trickle. Book orders have reportedly fallen off a cliff. It's now being said that, in this Christmas season, no popular book is selling so well as to be unavailable. In other words, if you want it, it's going to be at your local Barnes & Noble. For publishing, that's like an obituary.
As at most retail outfits, the only action in bookstores these days is shoplifters surreptitiously stuffing volumes under their coats. Melville House has announced the publication of Tao Lin's how-to guide Shoplifting from American Apparel in 2009.
Dumbo Books is facing the same problems as General Motors. People are not buying our quality American-made products. So, in order to stave off bankruptcy and financial ruin and disgrace, etc., we are announcing this new policy:
BUY ONE, SHOPLIFT ONE FREE!
That's right. Dumbo Books has made arrangements with the retail outlets that carry our books that any shopper buying one Dumbo Books book will be allowed to shoplift a second Dumbo Books book of equal, greater or lesser literary value absolutely FREE -- free of any chance of criminal prosecution.
So you too can experience the thrill of shoplifting without putting yourself in legal jeopardy if you buy a Dumbo Books book today!
(Illustration stolen from the very talented artist James Yamasaki.)
BUY ONE, SHOPLIFT ONE FREE!
Happy holidays!
* * *
(This offer not valid for any other publisher's books. Limited by availability. Contact Richard Grayson, Esq. for any legal advice.)
Saturday, October 4, 2008
On the First Monday in October, Don't Forget to Turn Back Your Clock 100 Years
Former constitutional history professors like us are always interested in the cases appearing before the Supreme Court, whose new term begins on Monday. Adam Liptak, succeeding the retiring Linda Greenhouse as the New York Times's SCOTUS correspondent, gets in perhaps the funniest line we've read in a Times legal article in his Sunday roundup of the "lighter fare" on the Court's docket this year:
Federal courts in California have issued injunctions limiting the use of sonar in Navy training exercises off Southern California on the ground that it harms marine mammals. In Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, No. 07-1239, the Bush administration argues that the training is vital to national security and that the courts should not interfere.
In Summers v. Earth Island Institute, No. 07-463, the court will consider who has standing to challenge environmental regulations. Winter and Summers will be argued on Wednesday, and decisions are expected by the spring.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Joseph McCrindle, RIP
We are very sorry to hear about the death of Joseph McCrindle.
The headline on the New York Times obituary by William Grimes was "Joseph McCrindle, 85, Connoisseur of Art," and although his many contributions to the art world are probably what he is best known for, his contributions to American and British literature in the middle of the last century were also immense.
As the Times noted, he was at one time a literary agent who represented such great writers as John McPhee and Philip Roth. But, perhaps selfishly, we are most grateful for Mr. McCrindle's London-based Transatlantic Review, published from 1959 to 1977. Half-jokingly, he said he started the literary magazine as a way to promote the kind of writers whose work he couldn't sell to book publishers: writers like us.
We started reading Transatlantic Review in the mid-1960s, when it was available on larger newsstands. Often we'd buy our copy at the Eighth Street Bookshop. As the Times obit stated, "It offered an eclectic mix of knowns and unknowns -- John Updike, Harold Pinter, Anthony Burgess and Iris Murdoch among the known -- along with drawings, film criticism and interviews with writers."
We still remember the kind and generous acceptance letter we got from Transatlantic Review for a story called "Reflections on a Village Rosh Hashona 1969," which we wrote when we were only 18, in our freshman year at Brooklyn College. It had been rejected 24 times before that by other magazines.
Our story was published in issue 57, Winter 1976, along with the winning story in the Erotica Award contest by our friend Jerry Stahl, a wonderful piece about a man whose penis looks like George Washington. Finding the issue on a Manhattan newsstand, seeing that bright red shiny cover, alongside the names of famous writers like Penelope Gilliatt and D.M. Thomas, as always tickled to see the price in pounds and pence as well as dollars and cents, we bought three copies. At least one is in a box in an Arizona garage.
Transatlantic Review published only two more issues after that, a double issue, 58/59, and then the Summer 1977 issue, number 60, with a Bruce Jay Friedman interview; a John Updike essay; fiction by William S. Burroughs, Paul Bowles, Harold Pinter, William Trevor; and poetry by Iris Murdoch, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and others. Also, if we remember correctly, a wonderful story, "Promising Young Composer Dies Bizarre Death," by one of our Brooklyn College friends, Peter Cherches. (Of course at our age, memory fades, so it might have been published the year before.)
After he closed down Translantic Review, in addition to amassing his brilliant art collection, including over 2,500 drawings by old masters -- which the McCrindle Foundation will now donate to about 30 institutions in the U.S., including the Brooklyn Museum, the Morgan Library & Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum -- Mr. McCrindle continued his contributions to literature, particularly in helping younger writers. As the Times obit noted, the annual prize to promising creative writing students he funded has gone to Walter Mosley, Mona Simpson, A.M. Homes and Ethan Canin, among others.
The Times also called Joseph McCrindle "reserved and self-effacing" and said he "moved relentlessly though life, traveling constantly, moving from one project to the next..." The world will miss him.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Tuesday Evening at the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble: Joseph Berger & "The World in a City"
This was posted to Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Wednesday, October 3, 2007:
Tuesday Evening at the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble: Joseph Berger & "The World in a City"
Last evening I went back to the neighborhood where I lived part-time from 1984 to 1990, specifically to Broadway and West 82nd Street to the Barnes and Noble that opened after I left the area. When I lived there, part of the bookstore was a Chase Manhattan branch I wrote about in my story, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Citicorp," which originally appeared in the Lower East Side litmag Between C and D.
I always liked that Barnes and Noble store when I'd visit in the 1990s because it was one of the few bookstores in New York that carried my books. (So I didn't mind that they caused Shakespeare and Company a block down to leave; not only wouldn't they carry my books, they were pretty snobby about it.)
By 7 p.m. a big crowd was there to see New York Times reporter Joseph Berger discuss his new book, The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York.
Berger began by noting the changes in New York's ethnic makeup since the relaxation of the immigration laws 40 years ago. Old neighborhoods are no longer the bastions of one nationality; for example, Astoria is still somewhat Greek but now more Arab and Brazilian; Bensonhurst is still Italian, but the Chinese -- who love Bensonhurst's brick homes -- are beginning to dominate parts of the area depicted in 1977's Saturday Night Fever.
This is because as Italians, Greeks, Jews, Irish, Germans and ethnic groups established in this country for over a century become more affluent, current generations see no allure to the old neighborhood and light out for the suburbs, the Sun Belt, and posher places in New York City.
The Grand Concourse, where Berger grew up in the '40s and '50s as the son of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, now has many West African residents -- and stores that sell homes in Ghana to its immigrants who want to show their relatives and friends that they have truly "made it" in America.
While New York's newer immigrants often lead hard lives -- Berger tells the story of a Palestinian woman who has the incredible daily commute from Bedford Park in the Bronx to Jamaica, Queens, all for a $7-an-hour job as a home health care attendant -- they are usually better off than they'd be back in their native lands, and that's why they keep coming.
To anyone who explores the various neighborhoods of New York by bus and on foot as I do, none of this should come as big news. Flushing has been Chinese and Korean for a long time now; I have Guyanese friends who've dominated Richmond Hill (along with other West Indians, South Asians and Indo-Caribbean people) for years.
A lot of what Berger talked about also echoed what I'd heard at Saturday's lecture on Brooklyn by historian Mike Wallace, who, like Berger, mentioned the incredibly diverse Ditmas Park -- a neighborhood familiar to me all my life and now home to great restaurants like The Farm at Adderly and the righteous coffeehouse Vox Pop.
Berger discussed material in the book that came out of stories he did for the Times, such as the Little Neck controversy over the Korean-language signs over the stores once dominated by the neighborhood's Italians and Jews; why you can find so many ballroom dancing places in Russian Midwood and Brighton Beach; how Bukharian men in Rego Park have responded to their adjustment problems and being financially dependent upon their more adaptable wives by resorting to domestic violence; and how an Ecuadorean couple in Jackson Heights go to a videoconferencing store to be a presence in the lives of the teenage children they were forced to leave behind (they can't go back to visit for fear of never being able to return to the U.S.)
Berger discussed the last story in light of how the nature of immigration has changed. While Italians, Irish, Jews, Germans and others who came over decades earlier essentially lost nearly all contact with the old country -- Berger's mother could communicate with her only relative in post-Holocaust Poland through occasional aerogrammes back when international phone calls and airfares were prohibitively expensive -- technology and cheaper prices have made it possible for immigrants to have much more contact with their homelands.
Any New York immigrant can watch satellite channels found in her native land, Berger said. I still have the fan I got at the Dominican Day parade for Television Dominicana -- advertising the ability to get ¡Toda la emoción de tu tierra está aquí!
Younger people adapt more easily. Berger said he used to exhort his parents, "This is America! Speak English!" and today's young immigrants often chafe under their parents' old-country ways and rules, such as the Queens Afghan girls who rebel by wearing makeup and who dread arranged marriages. (I heard recently from an Indian teenage girl who bemoaned this "tradition" she knows will be forced upon her.)
There are also conflicts between more established immigrants and the newcomers from their homelands, Berger said. Just a few days ago, a friend who's lived her whole life in Chinatown complained about the Fujianese who have recently come to the neighborhood, speaking not Mandarin or Cantonese but a dialect she can't understand, as well the "smelly fish" from this province that she gets a whiff of every time she goes home.
Berger took many questions and his talk was fascinating. He emphasized that while New York is unique, the world is coming to cities and suburbs and even rural areas all over the country. Asked what New York's new rising immigrant might be, Berger guessed the Mexicans, who have largely taken over the stores in East Harlem, once the barrio of Puerto Ricans, who've moved on to the suburbs as they became more affluent and educated.
After I left Barnes and Noble, I walked along Broadway in the neighborhood I called home two decades ago and wondered what happened to the Korean greengrocer, the Lebanese hardware store owners, the Chinese-Cuban and Sichuan restaurants that were once the local specialty of the Upper West Side. As they used to say in Liverpool, Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.
Back in 1980, when I was living in a Rockaway neighborhood once known as Irishtown (and not so Irish anymore), my friends Marie Cincotta and Stuie Hershkowitz from Brooklyn College took me along to a party at the apartment of their friend Carol.
It turned out to be in the building on East 54th Street between Snyder and Church Avenues where I lived till I was eight. Most of the people at the party were West Indians from the neighborhood. When I told Carol that I used to live just a few houses down as a little kid -- of course I didn't say that the block was all Jewish in those days -- her reaction was one I'll always remember because it illustrates how we all idealize the past: "It must have been beautiful back then before the Haitians came and ruined it."
Arthur Avenue is more Albanian than Italian now, and the Albanians own many of the city's "Italian" pizzerias. No doubt some little Albanian boy fifty years from now will go back to the neighborhood of his childhood and say that some other nationality has ruined it.
Meanwhile, as Berger said, New York's population has gained a million residents since the nadir of the 1970s, and we'll have nine million people here in 2020.
Joseph Berger, who currently writes the education column for the Times, is an engaging speaker as well as an excellent stylist. I look forward to enjoying his book as much as I have his reporting.
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