- Events for September 20-22, 2008
Saturday
9:30 a.m. Obama supporters attend grassroots training workshop with Teamsters, City Employees Union Local 237, at 216 West 14th St.
9:30 a.m. International conference on feminism and its role in politics continues, at Columbia University's Low Library, 535 West 116th St.
10 a.m. Walk Against Rape begins at 103-23 103rd Ave. in South Ozone Park and continues to the 103rd Precinct, 168-02 91 St., Queens.
10 a.m. Matthew Modine hosts "Bicycle for a Day" celebration, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will speak. At the South Street Seaport Concert Stage, Pier 17, at Fulton and South streets. (Until 5 p.m.)
Noon. Assemblyman Lou Tobacco hosts a Community Fair and Family BBQ at his district office, 4062 Amboy Road, Staten Island. (Until 4 p.m.)
1:30 p.m. Jim Gennaro speaks at the Kerala Samajam of Greater New York's Onam Celebration, at the Glen Oaks High School, 74-20 Commonwealth Boulevard.
Sunday
11 a.m. Urban Divers host a guided eco-cruise in and around the Gowanus Canal. Tour meets at Second and Bond streets in Carroll Gardens. Reservations required, call (347) 224-5828 or e-mail urbandivers[at]yahoo.com.
11 a.m. -Discussion on “The Hidden War at Home” with Aziz Huq of the Brennan Center for Justice (also the author of Unchecked & Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror), at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, 53 Prospect Park West.
1:00 p.m. African American Day Parade, David Paterson, David Dinkins, Al Sharpton,Charlie Rangel, Bill Thompson and others to march with community members. Begins at Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard and 111th Street.
3 p.m. Women for Obama hold a press conference in support of his campaign. Speakers include Kathleen Turner, Nydia Velazquez, Besty Gotbaum, Liz Krueger, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Lillian Rodriguez-Lopez, Letitia James, and others. On the City Hall steps.
Monday
10 a.m. Discussion of the current situation with the development of Randall's Island, with members of the city Parks Department and Recreation Committee. City Council Committee Room at City Hall.
11:45 a.m. "Stop Iran" rally at First Avenue between East 46th and 48th Streets.
6 p.m. Christopher Hitchens debates Catholic priest Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, author of God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity. Moderated by Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn. At the Pierre Hotel, 2 East 61st Street.
6 p.m. Screening of Rezoning Harlem, a documentary that follows longtime members of the Harlem community as they fight the 2008 rezoning. In Hunter College’s Lang Auditorium, North Building, 4th Floor, 69th Street between Park and Lexington.
7 p.m. Cuban Delegation to the U.N. discusses recent hurricanes and the case of the Cuban Five. At Church of the Intercession, 550 W. 155th Street. Tickets are $5 and must be reserved. Call 212.926.5757 or email ifco {AT} igc.org.
7 p.m. League of Humane Voters of New York City hosts a screening of Blinders: The Truth Behind the Tradition, about New York City carriage horses. Will be attended by Ally Sheedy, Kristen Johnson and Nellie McKay. A panel discussion afterward will feature filmmaker, Donny Moss, LOHV-NYC’s executive director John Phillips, Tony Avella, Council candidate and civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland and one of the activists featured in Blinders. At the AMC Theater at 1230 Third Avenue.
- Bill Keller's Wife, Emma Gilbey Keller, Writes 'Breezy, Feel Good Book,' Says Times
Emma Gilbey Keller, the wife of New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, has a book review this Sunday in The New York Times Book Reviewfor her new book, The Comeback: Seven Stories of Women Who Went From Career to Family and Back Again.
Eugenie Allen, the reviewer for the book, is a fan. Ms. Allen says the book is a "breezy, feel-good book," and only quibbles with Ms. Keller's choice of people for the book to fit her larger theme of women who transition back to work after they leave to raise the kids. (Ms. Keller argues all her subjects are middle class; Ms. Allen disagrees.) Otherwise, Ms. Keller "chats and charms her way through the book," according to Ms. Allen.
As for Ms. Allen, we weren't entirely familiar with her work, though her biography at the end says she "has written for Time and Parenting magazines, among other publications."
We did a quick Nexis search and we found 7 bylines: New York Times bylines in 2007, 2006, 2000, 1999, and 1998; one for The Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1999; Parenting in 1997. There are an additional 21 bylines on the Time web site.
It's very possible she's been using a byline that's different than the one in the Book Review this Sunday, but just putting that out there.
- Jocelyn Zuckerman Remembers Editing DFW's 'Consider the Lobster' For Gourmet
Jocelyn Zuckerman's original idea was to send David Foster Wallace to the Oxford Food Symposium, an academic conference for wonky food historians. Mr. Wallace couldn't go because the thing was being held in September and thus interfered with his teaching schedule at Pomona College. Determined to get him into the pages of Gourmet, Ms. Zuckerman came back with another pitch-the Scotch Whiskey Festival—only to find out that Mr. Wallace didn't drink. So she suggested the Maine Lobster Festival.
Mr. Wallace took the assignment.
The first thing he did, Ms. Zuckerman said this afternoon from a hotel room in Berlin, was ask for an assistant to send him everything that Gourmet had ever published on the subject of lobsters. Ms. Zuckerman gave him some books by Michael Pollan, too, which impressed him greatly. "He called them 'marvels of lucidity,'" Ms. Zuckerman said. "He was impressed and inspired by them."
The piece she received from Mr. Wallace upon his return from Maine—a rigorous, heavy-hearted inquiry into why so many people think it's okay to boil lobsters alive—was unlike anything Gourmet had ever published before. First off, at over 7,000 words, it was long. But more importantly, it was dark and confrontational in a way that the magazine's readers were not used to. (In one particularly gloomy footnote, for instance, Mr. Wallace wrote that to be a tourist was to be "alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit.")
"I thought it was brilliant," Ms. Zuckerman said. "I was sitting at my desk cracking up and I just thought it was great. But I didn't know what Ruth [Reichl, Gourmet's editor-in-chief] was going to think. She hadn't read him before and she didn't know what she was in for."
When Ms. Reichl did read the piece, the verdict was that it could run provided the hostile tone of some of the passages was softened, and what looked to her like a flattering portrayal of PETA removed.
"There was a little bit in there that just at a certain point got a little bit sanctimonious," Ms. Zuckerman said. "And Ruth sort of said we need to tone it down... When I first told him, he was very resistant. There were negotiations and he said, 'I don't want to make this change. We can just drop the story.'... But then Ruth said, 'I'm not gonna run it if it's like this,' so there was a little bit of a standoff. He was totally sweet the whole way, but you know, he puts a ton of thought into every punctuation mark."
The negotiations were tough, by the sound of it, and at several points the piece came close to dying on the vine. Luckily, though, a compromise was reached, and afterwards, Mr. Wallace told Ms. Zuckerman he was glad Ms. Reichl had demanded what she did.
"He said, 'Can you thank Ruth for me? Because she was right, the tone got a little harsh,' Ms. Zuckerman said. "He was happy that someone called him on it because he so didn't want it to be that."
Mr. Wallace never wrote for Gourmet again, but four or five months ago, Ms. Zuckerman received a letter from him on behalf of one of his students who wanted to be a food writer.
"It was in this tiny handwriting in purple magic marker," Ms. Zuckerman said. "It started out saying: 'Dear Jocelyn, You may remember me as the reporter who went to Maine for your magazine."
- Jocelyn Zuckerman Remembers Editing DFW's 'Consider the Lobster' For Gourmet
Jocelyn Zuckerman's original idea was to send
