Credit Ralph Gardner, Jr.
Suspecting that the Trump presidency marked a rocky but historic ride for the American people I started collecting front pages of the New York Times on November 9th, 2016, the morning after Donald Trump was elected.
“Trump Triumphs,” the first headline announced in what I believe to be the newspaper’s second largest typeface. The jumbo distinction has been used only five times: “Men Walk On Moon,” “Nixon Resigns,” “1/1/00” for the new millennium, “U.S. Attacked,” after 9/11, and “Obama,” to mark the first black President’s election.
My intention was to accumulate any issues of the “Newspaper of Record” with similarly bold headlines and, at the end of President Trump’s first and hopefully final administration, transform it into some sort of art project. I recall a memorable illustration from the Watergate era. It showed Richard Nixon’s face covered in the lies like an especially odious skin condition that led to his
GHENT, N.Y. â The Russian Tea Room in New York City used to keep its Christmas decorations up year-round. We donât go that far at our house but their staying power seems to have grown over the years.
Our Christmas tree still proudly stands in the corner of the living room, fully lighted, lavishly ornamented and freshly watered. And will for at least another week. My wife calls it the 45 days of Christmas.
And why not? I read somewhere (actually it was in the New York Times when I searched the Russian Tea Room and came upon a 1981 story about its decorations) that itâs bad luck to leave your tinsel and trappings up for too long.
Credit Ralph Gardner, Jr.
I wrote most of this commentary on Wednesday morning before the Capitol was stormed. Such cataclysmic events have a way of dividing life into before and after. But after rereading it I think it still applies.
My wife didn’t understand my sense of wonder when I plucked a yellowing postcard from a stack of them the night of the Georgia runoff elections and tried to explain its significance to her. It was a postcard sent to my mother, signed by her parents and their friends, in August, 1946 from a restaurant called Le Café Arnold, It was located at 240 Central Park South in Manhattan. The card showed the interior of the restaurant – tidy rows of set tables apparently meant to convey refinement in post-war New York. There was also an insert of Arnold himself over the words “Host to the discerning”.
Credit Ralph Gardner, Jr.
My wife asked me to write this year’s holiday newsletter. Why me I’m not sure except that I suppose I am the alleged writer in the family. But I rarely read other people’s missives when they include them in their holiday cards. I frankly don’t care that Johnny graduated Michigan State cum laude. That friends have welcomed a beautiful new grandchild named Liam into the family. Or that Susan mastered the paddleboard in her fifties.
Besides, we’ve never enclosed a newsletter with our card before. We prefer to let the card do the talking. This year’s features our Christmas tree and dog Wallie, her head dropped onto the coffee table as if she can’t bear the weight of current events. At least that was my initial interpretation. A condolence card might seem more appropriate than a greeting card. Sometimes that starts, “Words cannot express…”
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