It's been an unbelievable week. First up was a photographic shoot with the New York Post at 3272 Decatur Avenue in the Bronx -- my Nana's house where I lived for five years after the death of my mother. The shoot was followed by an interview with Jane Ridley at The Post, who did an excellent job summing the issues. Included below is the hyperlink to her story as it appeared in The Post. What fun it was watching the story "trending".' Early in the day, it followed a piece on Clinton-Trump, but by midday, it was leading the pack. To read more, click below.
http://nypost.com/2016/05/05/my-mom-died-and-nobody-told-me-for-5-years/
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Dear Friends,
Thanks to all who pre-ordered Veronicas' Grave. The outpouring of support and the praise lavished on the book has been most heart-warming.
For those of you in and around the city, I wanted to let you know that in conjunction with the official publication on May 9th, when the book becomes available at booksellers nationwide, I will be at Barnes & Noble on East 86th Street (Lex- 3rd) Monday, May 16 at 7 PM.
That evening I'll be discussing Veronica's Grave with Sande Boritz Berger the author of The Sweetness: A Novel, having to do with family secrets and survivor guilt after the Holocaust.
It would be wonderful if you could join us. And if you have not purchased a copy of Veronica's Grave, but intend to do so, perhaps you might hold off doing so until that evening. After all, it's what allows B & N to so generously host the author discussions and signings.
What are the French reading? To find out I drop by Albertine, a bookshop that's an arm of the Cultural Services Department within the French Embassy. Their mission is to promote the best of French literature, cinema and the arts in America. Once past Cupid at the entryway, you will find the library at the rear of the building.
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Walking Madison Avenue, I discover a très chic jewelry shop with the unusual name of AUrate. Thinking it might be French, I step into an elegant space with white-washed walls and gold jewelry set out on white counters. Scattered throughout the shop are books with intriguing titles and towards the back some photographic equipment.
What gives? Is AUrate a jewelry shop? a photographer’s studio? are they getting ready for a shoot? New York is such a photogenic city that as a resident one is accustomed to visitors snapping photos of the city, from any and all angles, and accustomed to the super-long silver Haddad cast and makeup trailers lining the streets.
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Francofonia, the latest from the Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, is a mediation on the twisted threads of culture, politics, history and art. At the opening, we find the director in his cramped book-lined study, talking via Skype with Captain Dirk, who’s piloting an ocean-going cargo ship that's foundering in high seas. Heavy-laden with priceless artworks from a museum, the ship begins taking on water, endangering both cargo and crew.
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Coming soon is the Barbara Donsky Author website. We’re stepping into a whole new world, but the devil is still in the details. Under construction and nearing completion, there are a few snags that need to be ironed out. I’ve become quite fond of this website, as have a number of you, but after two years, it was time for a change. We’re hoping to launch next week. Stay tuned.
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I wake up in the morning and take my coffee to the window where I look at the flower beds and the buildings lining Park Avenue, at the joggers and the dog walkers, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the distance, and I tell myself: You’re going to miss this when you’re gone.
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On a bitter cold day in New York—thunder-grey skies, snow threatening—we headed for Benoit on West 55th Street. When so many bistros in New York are pale versions of those in Paris, such is not the case with the charming Benoit, owned by Alain Ducasse. Indeed, this Benoit is a reincarnation of the century-old Benoit in Paris, likewise owned by Mr Ducasse, and featuring many of the old reliable standards of French cooking.
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Hi Guys and Gals!
There are days when you can’t get to first base and days when you hit a home run. Thursday I hit a home run when an article I had written, In Search of Lost Loves, was published by Journeys Thru Grief.
If you click on the link, it will bring you to the site.
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To support the publication of Veronica's Grave, May 9th, an article I wrote was published last week in
Grief Healing: Voices of Experience.
Both the article and memoir were written in the hope of drawing awareness to the problem that children are often left to grieve the loss of a loved one alone. Such losses may be due to death, incarceration, or even divorce. I wanted to share this piece with you, for in an ideal world no child would ever be left to grieve alone.
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You could easily pass it by. I know I did. Until the day, when heading for lunch at The Mark, I found the doors at 25 East 77th Street, steps off Madison Avenue, wide open. Within was one of the smallest and coolest bookshops in town—an outpost of the luxury brand Maison Assouline.
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At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, membership previews were held this week for: Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France. Hers was not a name I was familiar with, yet she was French, so I rushed right over to investigate. Installed in the Special Exhibition Gallery, #199 on the first floor off the Roman and Greek wing, the show with eighty paintings has come to New York by way of Paris.
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Home is where the heart is, home is where you long to be. So goes that old-time saying in which we find a good deal of truth. For many of us, 'home’ is our parents' home, the place where we've spent our formative years, a place hopefully filled with endearing memories. For others, ‘home’ is the place they’ve created for themselves, possibly the very opposite of what they experienced growing up. As readers of this blog well know, this heart of mine periodically finds itself longing to be in Paris, my spiritual home. Why Paris? Well, there are reasons for that, to be sure, but they are too complicated to explain in a blog post. To understand the undying lure of Paris—how it all began so many years ago—I highly recommend you read Veronica’s Grave: A Daughter’s Memoir, to be published in May. (Click here. )
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"Shaken, not stirred" is a catchphrase attributed to # 007, the British Secret Service agent James Bond, one he used when ordering his martini. The phrase would appear in many of the Bond films, but was not spoken by Bond himself (played by Sean Connery) until Goldfinger (1964). And, according to my source, Wikipedia, in the film You Only Live Twice (1967), the drink was wrongly offered as "stirred, not shaken.” As the martini is my favorite cocktail, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to use that phrase to great effect. The excellent classic martini above was imbibed at a neighborhood "French", one I've yet to share with you.
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Back by popular demand, another piece from the cutting room floor: Sleepless on the Upper East Side . This had been the opening of the original 144,000 word manuscript, a part that did not make the final cut.
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What’s on your night table? At the side of my bed, atop a small table, is a stack of books waiting to be read. This week’s collection includes the latest issue of Writer’s Digest; Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover; and a heart-breaking debut novel, The Sweetness, by Sande Boritz Berger, published by She Writes Press who will be publishing my memoir, Veronica’s Grave, in May.
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On the early side for lunch at Chevalier, I cross to MoMA intent upon revisiting ahandful of long-standing friends, including one staggering beauty -- "The Dream "by the French painter Henri Rousseau (1844-1910). This would be Rousseau’s last painting, the one he exhibited at the Salon des Independents in the spring of 1910, only months before his death in September of that year.
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