I bet it was Governors Island. Parts of it became a National Park (or Monument or something, anyway the Park Service deals with it) and parts of it got handed over to New York. New York, of course, has no idea what to do with it. Competing agendas abound, one day you hear that there’s going to a big casino resort…

I agree with you. The Pentagon has reportedly been hacked repeatedly by hostile entities, not just 13-year-olds screwing around for the hell of it. I would assume the same thing happens at State. SoS Clinton might have done us a favor by setting up a server no one knew existed.

I’ve read the book four times and I hate it more with every rereading. I keep thinking age and perspective will allow me to “get it” but I don’t.

I was at a party over the weekend and got talking to a writer, a satirist. She told me it’s almost impossible to write satire about New York because everything’s been done already in real life with the utmost seriousness and earnestness. I will have to let her know about Puppeteer Camp on Governor’s Island. Strike…

I am being completely sincere here: Good for you for bringing up Aneurin Bevan and Anthony Eden and the Suez Crisis! I’m a huge history nerd and an American Anglophile.

Not true. Apparently Canadians don’t tip very well so the Spanish and the French and the Italians (my experience) put up with my booboisie compatriots because we always leave lots of money on the table and my fellow Americans are like, “Wow, this is NEAT!”

Have you ever been to Spain? To the Spanish I look like I could be British or German or Canadian or American. When the Spanish learn that I am American they will say the equivalent of, “Thank God you’re not German or British.”

Power through, VMA survivor, you know you can.

Years ago my now-husband and I were driving up to Montréal and somewhere around Burlington VT I got sidetracked, I had some idea of some feature that we couldn’t miss, and I drove and drove, and finally I came to a gas station with a strange pricing system and asked for directions. The guy said, “You realize you’re in…

Sadly, no, he’s incredibly well-coordinated. I literally trip over my own two feet and my dog, who’s huge. Or as The Donald would say, “yoooge.”

Clam diggers, yes! That’s what they are called. And we were going to East Hampton where we would go clamming, was that the idea on my husband’s part? Who knows. It ended up being a drunken week of everyone hanging around half-dressed, I think I wore the same two outfits for seven days, people constantly stopping by, a…

In my own defense my husband bought them for me. We were going to a beach house and it was pre-Sept. 11th so this was before “The Death of Irony.” They weren’t marketed as capri pants and he thought they would show off my butt and calves to best advantage. And they did, but the day I wore them out I said to him,…

I had a pair of beige capri pants 20 years ago. I’m a guy. :/

I had a friend who worked at a very high-end restaurant and the most obnoxious customers always ordered coffee at the end of their meals, but always decaf. No one at the restaurant could figure out why. They all got triple-shot espresso to round out the nights!

Or you smelled weed and you suspect they’ve got something on the boat. We wouldn’t hear from them for the next 40 years, even if they were white.

We’re moving that way. I’ve been married for 29 years to a black guy. My cousin is married to a black woman. My teenage relative has a mixed-race black boyfriend. Nobody bats an eye and I grew up in one of the most racist parts of the country (Boston. It makes 1960s Selma, Alabama, look like the Rainbow Reading Room.)

I wonder why anyone really believes that Jews are out to destroy the society that they live in? Millennia of persecution, finally there’s an Israel to go to, the civilized parts of America and Canada aren’t anti-Semitic, I can’t believe all my Jewish friends and neighbors want to bring about the downfall of the US…

Of course they were. They were outfitted by the the Third Reich’s favorite designer, Hugo Boss.

Evan Osnos is Jewish. I knew his father Peter. I saw Bar Mitzvah photos. That said, what does this have do with anything?

Hamilton might never get to you, now that I think about it. It’s a musical completely sung in rap about Alexander Hamilton, whch sounds completely insane but apparently is really well done.