Showing posts with label Miami Herald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miami Herald. Show all posts
Monday, September 5, 2022
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Friday, July 28, 2017
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Thursday, March 26, 1998
Miami Herald features Richard Grayson's essay "Dinner with W.E.B. Du Bois"
The Miami Herald today (Thursday, March 26, 1998) features Richard Grayson's "Dinner with W.E.B. Du Bois," winner of third place in the Miami Herald/NBC6 Black History Month Essay Contest.
Sunday, August 7, 1994
Richard Grayson reports on Legislators in Love Scandal in Miami Herald's TROPIC Magazine
Richard Grayson reports on his involvement in Florida's Legislators in Love scandal in the Miami Herald's TROPIC Magazine this Sunday (August 7, 1994).
Sunday, May 9, 1993
Gainesville Sun & Miami Herald on Richard Grayson's "Twelve Step Barbie" in MONDO BARBIE
The Gainesville Sun (May 9, 1993) and Miami Herald (May 4, 1993) have articles on Mondo Barbie, edited by Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole (St. Martin's Press) with work by Denise Duhamel, A.M. Homes, Sandra Cisneros, Kathryn Harrison, Margie Piercy, Alice McDermott, Gregg Shapiro, Lynne Barrett, Lyn Lifshin and others, including Richard Grayson, represented by his story "Twelve Step Barbie."
Sunday, June 10, 1990
Miami Herald Article About Donald Trump's Business Failures Mentions Richard Grayson's Trump Rescue Fund
NEW YORK--Billionaire. . .er, embattled billionaire. . . make that, embattled former billionaire. . .heck, just call him Donald Trump.
He's in trouble. Trouble with the wife, trouble with the bond-holders, trouble with the banks. Trump's got them lowdown cash-flow blues.
But you know that already. What you may not know is that, in an incredible outpouring of warmth and sympathy, America's comics, cartoonists and commentators are rallying to the side of the wounded entrepreneur, comforting him in his sorrows even as they once rejoiced in his successes.
Just kidding.
They're loving every minute of the Trump Slump. The Donald is down, and they're kicking him like crazy.
But New York has a special relationship to Trump -- as shown by writer Richard Grayson's campaign to raise money for the Trump Rescue Fund. All last week he worked the streets, tongue firmly in cheek, soliciting funds to help the Baron of Blowhards through difficult times. So far, no one is chipping in.
Meanwhile, headline writers at The New York Post, the city's sauciest tabloid, are in heaven. The day of Trump's announcement, they came up with this for the front page: UH-OWE!
Saturday, June 9, 1990
Miami Herald reports on Richard Grayson's Radio Free Broward
The Miami Herald reports today (Saturday, June 9, 1990) on Richard Grayson's Radio Free Broward protest, mailing copies of 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be to South Florida, where a federal judge has declared it obscene.
Friday, March 7, 1986
Fort Lauderdale News and Miami Herald report on Richard Grayson's Legal Challenge to Senior Discounts
The Fort Lauderdale News today (Friday, March 7, 1986) reports on Richard Grayson's legal challenge to senior discounts and his complaint filed with the Broward County Human Relations Division alleging age discrimination by AmeriFirst Federal Savings and Loan Association.
Text of other reports:
The Miami Herald
March 6, 1986
Section: BRWD N
Edition: BRWRD
Page: 1BR
MAN CHALLENGES S&L'S AGE-BASED DISCOUNT
JUSTIN GILLIS Herald Staff Writer
A droll writer of short stories launched the first attack Wednesday on thousands of discounts offered to Broward's senior citizens.
Richard Grayson, a Davie man who once ran for president on a platform of moving the U.S. capital to Davenport, Iowa, filed a complaint with Broward's human relations division against a thrift that he said discriminates against the young.
Grayson, 34, accused AmeriFirst Federal Savings & Loan Association of refusing to sign him up for free checking and a chance to win a free trip on Delta Air Lines because he is younger than 55.
Broward officials said they would soon notify AmeriFirst of the complaint and ask it to respond, the first step toward a formal ruling on whether senior-citizen discounts are legal.
"We are doing nothing that other banking institutions don't do," said AmeriFirst Vice President Bernard Lipskin. "It is common practice among financial institutions to target programs at specific segments of the market."
Grayson's complaint and a similar complaint filed in Dade County last week call into question the widespread practice of giving breaks on banking, bug exterminating and many other services to the elderly.
The complaints were filed after Dade County officials ruled that a Miami Beach apartment discount for young people was illegal.
Officials in Broward and Dade who enforce human-rights ordinances have said they think the senior-citizen breaks -- never previously questioned -- also amount to illegal age discrimination.
After reading remarks by Broward officials to that effect in the newspaper Wednesday, Grayson marched to the Governmental Center to complain that AmeriFirst had turned him down the day before.
"I called the bank at Broward Mall," he said. "The first thing they asked was, 'Are you 55 or over?' I said, 'No, I'm 34.' They said, 'Sorry.' "
Grayson is no stranger to issues that attract the media.
His campaign for president two years ago included not just the pledge to move the capital to Iowa -- a blatant attempt, he admitted, to influence the caucuses there -- but a call for immediate nuclear war.
"If we don't have a nuclear war now," Grayson said at the time, "we might as well never have one."
Grayson does have a serious side. His books of short stories, some of them favorably reviewed, include Eating at Arby's -- The South Florida Stories.
He apparently is serious this time, pledging to pursue his case against AmeriFirst until age discrimination in South Florida is crushed.
"It would be offensive if they had special banking services for white people only," Grayson said Wednesday. "Under the law, age discrimination is as illegal as racial discrimination. I don't want these benefits when I'm 65. I think it will lead to younger people resenting me."
Herald Writer Tim Brightbill contributed to this report.
_________________________________
The Miami Herald
April 2, 1986
Section: BRWD N
Edition: BRWRD
Page: 1BR
WRITER REJECTS SENIOR BENEFITS
PAUL SHANNON Herald Staff Writer
Richard Grayson, the Davie writer challenging discounts offered to senior citizens because they discriminate against the young, said he rejected an unusual settlement offer Tuesday that would have made him an "honorary senior citizen."
Grayson, 34, filed a complaint in early March with the Broward County human relations division against AmeriFirst Federal Savings & Loan Association, alleging AmeriFirst refused to give him free checking and a chance to win a free trip because he isn't 55 years old.
At a meeting at the division Tuesday, called to try and reach a compromise before a formal hearing, Grayson said that AmeriFirst representatives offered to enroll him in the plan that offers the free services and contests to customers 55 or older.
The offer was contingent on him keeping quiet about his special status, he said. "If I had taken the offer, I would have negated the point that I was trying to make in the first place," he said.
AmeriFirst Vice President Bernard Lipskin declined to comment on the meeting.
Lipskin has said the savings and loan association offers discounts to senior citizens to attract them as customers, a common practice among South Florida financial institutions.
Grayson's complaint and a similar one filed in Dade County are the first to question thousands of discounts offered senior citizens in South Florida.
Both complaints came after Dade housing officials said a discount offered young renters, known as the Yuppie discount, amounted to illegal age discrimination.
Grayson, known for his run for the U.S. presidency two years ago on a platform promising to move the capitol out of Washington, D.C., to Davenport, Iowa, said he wants a ruling that would brand senior discounts discriminatory.
After compromise attempts fail, discrimination complaints typically are heard by Broward's Human Rights Board, which would decide whether the discounts are discriminatory.
Illustration:photo: Richard Grayson
_________________
The Miami Herald
April 30, 1986
Section: BRWD N
Edition: BRWRD
Page: 3BR
BOARD WON'T HELP TEACHER GET DISCOUNT
PAUL SALTZMAN Herald Staff Writer
A 34-year-old college teacher from Davie who wants to put a stop to discounts based on age isn't going to get the Broward County Human Relations Division to do that for him.
Richard Grayson had filed a complaint with the county agency in March, accusing AmeriFirst Federal Savings & Loan Association of discrimination. The savings and loan had refused to give Grayson free checking and a chance to win a free trip -- a deal it offered to anyone older than 55 as a way to attract business.
After his complaint, the savings institution offered a settlement: Grayson could have the over-55 deal. He refused.
In a letter Tuesday, county human relations director Gloria Battle told Grayson that he could take that deal or leave it, but the county agency could do no more for him.
"There isn't anything else we can offer him," said Kay Zwick, the assistant human relations director.
Grayson said he wanted a blanket ruling barring such deals. But the human relations office can't do that.
"I think I made my point," Grayson said. "I wanted to bring up the wider issue of the inequity between the generations."
Grayson said news reports of his complaint brought him "a lot of positive response and also a few threats, you know, 'You want to get rid of senior discounts, we'll get rid of you, Grayson.' "
They also brought the county agency a similar complaint, from William L. Main, 35, of Fort Lauderdale. He says he ought to get the $2.99 "senior citizens' special" dinner at Denny's restaurants.
Illustration:photo: Richard Grayson
Sunday, October 17, 1982
Miami Herald reports on Richard Grayson's $3000 Florida Arts Council grant to write EATING AT ARBY'S
The Miami Herald today (Sunday, October 17, 1982) reports on Richard Grayson's $3,000 Florida Arts Council grant to write Eating at Arby's: The South Florida Stories.
Sunday, April 4, 1982
Miami Herald publishes feature story on Richard Grayson
Today's Miami Herald has an article about Richard Grayson, "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog's Author," on the front page of its Living Today section:
The Miami Herald
Sunday, April 4, 1982
Living Today
Section G, Page 1
Lincoln's Doctor's Dog's Author
'Giving It All Up for Computers, and Other Stories'
By MIKE WINERIP
Herald Staff Writer
Thirty-year-old Richard Grayson was sitting in his furnished Davie apartment, six months into his eight-month lease, rereading the New York Times Book Review from March 14:
"Richard Grayson's first book carried the title, With Hitler in New York. Some reviewers liked the book, at least one detested it, and readers ignored it in droves. It sold only about 500 copies, according to the author, who teaches English at Broward Community College in Davie, Fla.
"When it came time to compile a new book…he decided to appeal to a broader constituency. Having heard that books about Abraham Lincoln, doctors and dogs usually sell well, Mr. Grayson is calling his new hardcover book…Lincoln's Doctor's Dog, and Other Stories."
Except for an extra sentence or two and a couple of adjectives, that was the whole thing in a nutshell.
A friend who is into Eastern culture called Grayson and congratulated him. A lady from Queens with a handicapped kid wrote asking for Grayson's autograph if he wasn't too busy.
He wasn't, though he is considering taking up computer programming this summer at the community college.
*
Richard Grayson, who has published 150 short stories in dozens of obscure literary magazines, recently was teaching a Compare and Contrast lesson to his beginning English class at Broward Community College. Something about the American Revolution versus the Russian Revolution. Only one student knew what a Bolshevik was.
Grayson was making the point that a good Compare and Contrast didn't have to be one paragraph about Russia followed by one on America (although that was one way to do it). You could have both revolutions in the same paragraph. It wasn't clear if anyone was getting this concept.
There is no other way to put it: Broward Community College does not feel like the kind of place anyone one would be doing serious writing. It feels like a place where future pharmacists, computer programmers and dental technicians will learn to write sentences without comma splices if they pay close attention. It feels very clean and scrubbed, very healthy and wholesome. Lots of tanned young people wearing very little clothing hurry up and down geometrically pleasing stairwells. You could cast Brave New World here. Almost no one looks fat or excessive or impolitic. It's the kind of place that might make one of Richard Grayson's elderly characters say: "So many sensational young people and nice teeth, too."
Graffiti from radio
The graffiti covering desks in Grayson's classroom are not literary. They're mostly from the radio. A sample desk in Grayson's class says: "Styx…Trash…For Sure…Lou Reed…Rock and Roll Forever."
More than once Grayson has thought that were Melville or Hardy around today he might go electronic.
"I know most of you, when you get the urge to read, lie down until it passes," he says, though not in a mean way. The tone is of a man being left behind.
Still, Grayson remains faithful to the course curriculum. He talks about comma splices.
"I once had a student who said, 'Don't you put a comma every fourth word?' We're going to have a very animated discussion on commas Monday…We'll have a real good discussion on the dash. The dash is wonderful. When all else fails – use the dash."
*
Richard Grayson, whose favorite food is the hamburger, likes life in Davie. He is making the most money ever in his life, $14,000 from the community college, plus a $3,000 grant from the Florida Fine Arts Council. And there are perks: Teaching at the college entitles him to take computer programming at a reduced tuition rate.
This is his ninth college teaching job. To make ends meet he has worked at places like New York City Technical College, where, his resume says, he was a substitute adjunct lecturer.
He does not consider any of this noble.
His fiction has never paid much. Taplinger Co. gave him a $500 advance for the first short story collection, With Hitler in New York. The book didn't sell enough copies to cover the advance. Nor does he expect to make anything on Lincoln's Doctor's Dog, scheduled for release in May. There was no advance for that one.
Most literary magazines that publish his stories count circulation in the hundreds, not thousands: Apalachee Quarterly, City, Writ, Shenandoah, Texas Quarterly. The big ones pay $50. The small pay nothing. Welter, the University of Baltimore's literary review, just accepted one of his stories. His compensation will be two free copies.
The story is about a painter who becomes a computer programmer.
*
Richard Grayson started writing regularly at 18. He had just spent a year in his room, scared to come out. Grayson didn't know it then, but he was suffering from agoraphobia, a fear of mixing with crowds. It was a nervous breakdown of some sort. When he reappeared in the spring of 1969, everything seemed fresh. It was a classic case of being rehatched.
"I wasn't the best in my creative-writing class. I was maybe in the middle of eight. But I kept at it. I'd keep sending my stuff out when it was rejected. I sent out the same story over and over. Others gave up."
*
The absurd is on Richard Grayson's mind.
He takes major historical figures and drops them into mundane American settings like his native Brooklyn. There's absolutely nothing funny about Hitler, right? Grayson's Hitler flies into Kennedy on a Laker flight, smokes a joint on the Belt Parkway, eats Szechuan in Brooklyn Heights.
Constipation is sad and private, right? Richard Grayson wrote this about one of his characters:
"When he was very young, he was constipated. Sometimes he did not go to the bathroom for weeks. His grandmother would cry that the boy's appendix might be on fire…In the summer, people would come into his grandmother's bungalow to watch him straining at the stool. The bathroom door would be open wide and sometimes people would bring their guests for a weekend barbecue….
"When there was a bowel movement his grandmother would make a party. It was more for the adults than him."
*
His stuff is autobiographical. At times he doesn't bother to disguise it. In the middle of a short story about a lawyer he interrupts the narrative: "The 'I' of this story is really me, Richard Grayson, and not some literary device….Please, you can see I'm a sick person. What would it take, a few pages in your lousy literary magazine, to make me happy?....If I can't have your respect I'll settle for your pity."
"Pitiful," wrote Kirkus Reviews.
"I used to get rejections saying, 'Grow up.' Truly cruel ones. The kind that level with you: 'You have no talent. Give up.' They discourage you for a couple of days."
The Los Angeles Times thought he was funny; Newsday said he had a wild sense of humor, yet some telephone company official stringing reviews for the Minneapolis Tribune almost had a nervous breakdown:
"This is the worst book I ever read in my life," he wrote, "a cornucopia of crap."
The telephone review man said he planned to give Grayson's book to someone he despised.
*
In his spare time Grayson cooks up minor media events. It amuses him and brings a little of the recognition you don't get when you're trying to do something enduring in Davie. He started a campaign to run Burt Reynolds for U.S. Senate.
Burt refused.
Grayson ran for Davie Town Council as a lark last month, saying horses should be given the vote and the council should be abolished because it didn't do much. This offended local newspaper editorial writers, who have a genuine concern about the quality of leadership on the Davie Town Council.
Grayson lost.
When his grandmother, Sylvia Ginsberg, was lonely and depressed last year, he sent out press notices saying she was a superstar and that he was starting the Sylvia Ginsberg Magazine and fan club.
She died.
*
Grayson expects ts to be famous.
"I have a feeling I'll be discovered in my 70s. I can't really say why. I just feel that's the way it is. It's fate.
"I've done things a lot of people tried to do and couldn't. I've had books published by a commercial publisher. I'm young, too. Maybe I'll go on for 10 years without having a successful book, and all of a sudden I'll have one.
Wilder slept there
Two years ago Grayson was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H. A small group of promising writers, composers, painters and sculptors spends the summer at a wooded retreat. You work in your cabin all day and gather for discussions in the evenings.
"You're treated so well," Grayson remembers. "Like you're important. I wasn't used to being treated well."
He lived in the same cabin where Thornton Wilder once worked. At the desk where Grayson sat, Wilder wrote Our Town.
Each year, when the summer's over, the fellows write their names on the wall of the cabin where they stayed.
As he added his to the long list, Richard Grayson scanned the other names. A few were familiar.
*
"Of course sometimes it hurts me that I have friends who make $70,000 doing what I might call trivial things.
"My best friend Linda I've known since first grade. She's the editor of a magazine. She owns two houses in Washington, D.C., as investments. She's written a book. But I have things she doesn't have. Her book's about roller skating. She's doing a story about travel in Costa Rica. The magazine she runs is for weight watchers. I don't think she has the same feeling toward her material that I do. I have the freedom to write what I want."
A couple of years ago Richard Grayson was depressed about not being known. Then a Mount Holyoke professor sent him an English 234 paper. It was a detailed analysis of "Summoning Alice Keppel." A short story. By Richard Grayson. That kept him going a couple of extra days.
And there is more:
"Linda has a friend who taught high school in Wisconsin. He was going around the class, asking everyone their favorite writer.
"And one kid said, 'You've probably never heard of him, but Richard Grayson.'"
Wednesday, March 10, 1982
South Florida Newspapers Cover Defeat of Richard Grayson for Davie Town Council
The Miami Herald, Fort Lauderdale News and Hollywood Sun-Tattler today (Wednesday, March 10, 1982) cover the defeat of Davie Town Council candidate Richard Grayson, who received only 357 votes, just 25% of the total, in yesterday's election.
Wednesday, February 24, 1982
Miami Herald reports on Richard Grayson's campaign for Town Council in Davie, Florida
The Miami Herald today (Wednesday, February 24, 1982) reports on Richard Grayson's campaign for the Davie, Florida, Town Council.
Thursday, July 30, 1981
Miami Herald Article on Florida Arts Council Grant of $3,000 to Richard Grayson
Wednesday, February 4, 1981
Miami Herald Feature Story on Richard Grayson & His Superstar Grandmother Sylvia Ginsberg
The Miami Herald today (Wednesday, February 4, 1981) has a feature story on Richard Grayson and his superstar grandmother, Sylvia Ginsberg.
Saturday, April 19, 1980
Miami Herald's People Column features item on Richard Grayson taking refuge at the Pervuvian Consulate and demanding passage to Miami
Today, Saturday, April 19, 1980, the Miami Herald's People Column, written by Jay Maeder, features an item, "Candidate Wants Passage to Miami":
IN NEW YORK CITY, meanwhile, vice presidential candidate Richard Grayson -- Grayson is the guy who has promised that if elected he will name Fred Silverman to the presidency -- has taken refuge at the Pervuvian Consulate and is demanding safe passage to Miami. "I can't take these horrible conditions any more," says Grayson, citing "the brutalities of the Mayor Koch regime" and a general standard of living comparable to "being trapped in a room with Tom Snyder." He urges Miamians to express solidarity by honking their car horns.
Sunday, January 6, 1980
Miami Herald reports on Richard Grayson's Candidacy for Vice President
The Miami Herald today (Sunday, January 6, 1980) reports on Richard Grayson's candidacy for Vice President in an article in the Political Scene column by Michael Silver and Pat Fisher titled, "Him, Vice President? Is This Some Kind of Joke?" on page 14BR":
The campaign is in full swing now. It's easy to tell because Richard Grayson has at last become adept at throwing out this timeworn phrase whenever he can't answer a question that needs an answer: "I'll have no comment on that." Six words dear to the heart of every politician ever caught in a bind, whether it be intellectual, moral or criminal. That's where the similarity between Grayson - writer of satire, teacher of English at Brooklyn College in New York City and your everyday politician ends.
GRAYSON, IN case you haven't heard, is a candidate for vice president.Of the United States. He's not running for president because being the country's top leader takes too much out of a person. "Look how Carter's aged," he said. Grayson was in Broward last week campaigning. He'll be here this week too. And maybe the week after. But don't hold your breath waiting for his pitch. He's hardly on a whirlwind popularity-seeking mission.
AFTER A week in Broward he'd made only one public foray. He went from his parent's home in Davie to the Broward Mall, where people laughed at him, he said.
This is a man who'd be too young to be vice president even if, by some twist of fate, he were elected. Grayson is 28, seven years too young to live in the house that the Navy built. Grayson has these plans, should he somehow land in the lap of power in Washington D.C.: Fred Silverman, president of NBC television, would be president political scene michael silver pat fisher of the United States. Silverman may not comply. "He seems unwilling to take a salary cut to become President," said Grayson.
Gloria Vanderbilt, whose signature adorns the blue-jeaned derrieres of women everywhere, would be Secretary of the Treasury. "The dollar bill may go In if her signature was on it." Little funnyman Gary Coleman would be United Nations ambassador because "he says cute things." Honorary titles would abound: Things like Baron of Broward, Duke of Davie, Marquee of Miami Beach .... • Governors of states would compete for gasoline allocations on a TV show called "Bowling for Gallons," hosted by James Schlesinger, former U.S. energy czar. An evening with Tom Snyder would replace the death penalty as the most severe punishment meted out to the county's Godless criminals.
THE HUMOROUS platform is nothing new. Every big election year joke candidates air their unbalanced philosophies and expend energy on haphazard missions to win highest re offices of the land. Maybe they're frustrated or angry or just crazy. For his part, Grayson is sick of the system. The system, he says, stinks.
The campaigns are too long, "Politics is now show business, completely,' and politicians care more about "popularity polls than programs."
"WE DON'T elect the best person, we elect the best candidate," he griped. Something ought to be changed, but Grayson doesn't know what. So he's poking a little fun. Would he like politics if he won? "I'll have no comment on that," he said.
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