sentence of the day: who's on first?

Abigail Adams is one of the women being honored on a twelve-foot-tall triumphal arch in Washington Square Park in New York City (a block and a half from where I used to live). The public art installation entitled WE STAND is sponsored by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation in honor of Women's History Month. It celebrates the life and work of the women of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, including Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marsha P. Johnson, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Lorraine Hansberry, Sonia Sotomayor, and Rachel Maddow.

I love the description of her position as "First Second Lady, Second First Lady." In Doug Emhoff from 2021-2015, we had the first Second Gentleman of the United States.

sentence of the day: women at the podium

"There's only one woman I know who could never be a symphony conductor, and that's the Venus de Milo." -- Margaret Hillis, as told to the New York Times in 1979. She substituted for Georg Solti in a 1977 Carnegie Hall concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

sentence of the day: banish hatred

"There was something wondrous in the human journey of a young fighter who carried a rifle and grew into a gentle prophet of nonviolence. When he was asked some years ago what he wished to bequeath to the generations that would follow, he answered: Banish hatred." -- tribute to Lucien Lazare, a Nazi resister in France, who died on 22 September 2026, at his home in Jerusalem, quoted from the Substack of his son-in-law Avraham Burg in the obituary in the New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/world/lucien-lazare-dead.html

sentence of the day: benevolent autocrat, with taste

"In a world of autocracies, may we have one benevolent autocrat with taste?" -- Reinier de Graaf, architect with OMA, in an open letter to Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania, quoted in an article in the Guardian entitled "'Starchitects go home': what's the truth behind Albania's astonishing building boom?" by Oliver Wainwright. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/oct/02/starchitects-go-home-albania-building-boom-edi-rama 

By the way, I've read a few books by Reinier de Graaf, and recommend them.

sentence of the day: racist tropes

"For instance, Trump’s lie about millions of undocumented immigrants voting illegally is a moth-eaten cloak he pulled from America’s closet of racist tropes." -- Ron Charles, in a review of Stealing elections, American style, by David F. Walbert (Bloomsbury), on his podcast for September 18, 2026

sentence of the day: momfluencers

"She has a doctorate in sociology for which she researched momfluencers, the 21st century's retort to Tupperware party hostesses." (review by Alexandra Jacobs of The story or your life: how social media shapes the way we experience everything, by Kathryn Jezer-Morton (Viking), in the New York times book review, August 23, 2026)

https://clickamericana.com/topics/home-garden/the-history-of-tupperware-parties-tupperware-ladies

sentence of the day: The drowned world and Tilt

Noah's Ark

from the Nuremberg Chronicle

"The Drowned World," though, remains an odd, woozy bird in his catalog -- a book unusually attuned, as Martin Amis wrote for the 50th anniversary reissue, to the 'world hum' of the 'near-after.'" (in a review of The drowned world by J.G. Ballard, 1962)

She's like Odysseus in an ill-fitting lavender maternity romper, crossing great landscapes of hardship and memory with one holy, imperfect goal: getting home. (in a review of Tilt by Emma Pattee, 2025)

Both sentences come from "Read like the wind. Beautiful disasters / by Leah Greenblatt," New York times book review, Sept. 6, 2026, p. 19