Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Here are the belated links because I semi-forgot which day it is.
Links
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is incredibly dark, as Caitlin Flanagan explains here in this very funny piece. (While we’re on the holidays, a funny piece from 2004 on Christmas music.)
This story on several nail salon owners and manicurists in New York is quite sad, but very well reported, on the ways the work was a mix of necessity but sometimes the realization of a small-business dream — and times are now very difficult.
The Cut called up the woman who showed Princess Diana around the Henry Street Settlement (she is the former executive director of the charity) in the 1980s — which is a nice read with some great details.
Also, on the royals front, Elizabeth Anson who was a top party planner in the UK, including for Queen Elizabeth, passed away. In 2016, the New York Times profiled her, though, and it’s a great read with a number of delightful asides and actually really good event planning advice therein. But sample:
Instead, she attributes her success in part to being “terribly, terribly shy” — she still bemoans a party she never quite made it to years ago where, dressed in a red velvet trouser suit and with her hair freshly done, she stood by the elevator watching people go in, unable to summon the nerve to do the same.
And so she arranges party spaces with the timid in mind. “The downfall of any party in the countryside is to walk into a hall and be confronted by a dance floor,” she said. “And some young man has driven you down, so he’s got a girl on both arms, and what do you do with yourself?” Her solution: a well-lit bar, which she calls a “picking up and dumping ground.”
Vanity Fair posted some behind-the-scenes photos of Obama pre-2008, including one of him walking around Central Park unbothered in 2004 (people in the photo are looking away from him and continuing about their day), which both makes sense and is weird to see for anyone of that cultural prominence.
Martha Stewart reports she is fine, but her house is too empty.
If you like retro college gear (or if you went to Vandy and are accustomed to their normally hideous merchandise), this place has some good t-shirts.
A note on all this
Thanks for subscribing. Hope you enjoy. The goal here is just to offer up some links you may have missed, and maybe the occasional commentary on something in politics or a book I may have read that you, the reader, might enjoy. If you have thoughts on any of this, hit me up at katherinemillernyc@gmail.com or just tweet at me.