Nearly 100 years before Britney Spears donned a snake at the VMA’s, Gilded Age heiress Aimée Crocker shocked society while delighting the press and the public by doing the same. Here is a brief look at her fascinating life.
Despite an utterly conformist appearance to the outside world, I’ve always had a romantic yearning to be untethered to middle-class entrapments. That is one of the reasons I wanted to visit Slab City, and unincorporated desert community near the southeastern shore of the Salton Sea.
While we ostensibly went to Indian Wells the other weekend to watch tennis, Me being Me and Brendan being Brendan, we usually tack on a side excursion. In this instance the weekend coincided with the beginning of the 2019 Super Bloom. I had also always wanted to see the Salton Sea. We combined the two, resulting a day of sights and experiences that rendered the expression “living desert” a vast understatement.
Brendan and I went to see the Christmas lights in Dyker Heights last week and the experience did not disappoint, to put it mildly!
A Macabre Walk Around the ‘hood
By eliminating competition, consolidating power and controlling their respective industries, trusts such as Standard Oil, US Steel, American Tobacco and the American Sugar Refining Company gave rise to many of the colossal fortunes which helped fuel the era and add a little more “gild” to it. While the Titans of Industry who ran these trusts were powerful men, that didn’t mean that the ladies didn’t want in on the action.
Finding myself with a free day on a trip to LA last month, I decided to explore Downtown, something I had always wanted to do. While I quickly learned that it is best done with a little advance planning (It proved impossible to get tickets to the Broad Museum or the temporary Museum of Ice Cream without advance purchase), at the very least I could visit a bookstore I had read about and finally see the Walt Disney Concert Hall. ...
In a rare instance of planning ahead, we had bought tickets to see the evening fountain show at Versailles on our third night in Paris. Since it ended at 11pm, we opted to stay out there instead of dealing with a late night train or car service.......
With the restrained uniformity of its elegant residential boulevards punctuated by palaces, churches, and flamboyant public buildings, Paris can feel coolly intimidating to the visitor. Yet behind the pale limestone walls and beaux arts edifices untold riches abound. Color, texture and dynamism reward both those who trod the well-worn tourist paths as well those intrepid souls who scratch below the surface seeking out its hidden gems. To follow are some of the highlights of our recent trip there.
A Rich, Full Life, Cut Tragically Short
Pauline Payne Whitney was born in 1874 to William Collins Whitney, financier and political leader, and Flora Payne Whitney, daughter of Senator Henry B Payne of Ohio and sister of Col. Oliver Payne, a board member of Standard Oil. The Whitney’s were immensely rich, and immensely popular.
