What They Said: June 2026

“This conflict is ripe for conclusion,” said Thomas Graham, a longtime American diplomat. “The mood has changed in Moscow. The battlefield is different: The Ukrainians have frozen the front line. The economic problems in Russia are building, and some political discontent is bubbling up. Conversations inside the Kremlin are on ‘How do we present this as a victory?’” 

“The coding focus is what makes this filing interesting,” said Shashi Bellamkonda, a director at Info-Tech Research Group, a technology research and advisory firm. “Anthropic didn’t try to be everything. No browser, no image generation, no commerce layer. That discipline is now a $47 billion run rate.”  (New York Times, June 2)

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“I’m interested in the intersection of technology and storytelling, and seeing how that can push the bounds of creativity to create deeper and richer experiences for audiences,” director Martin Scorsese said in a statement explaining his embrace of AI as a storyboarding tool. “Remember, cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve.” 

“This is the new battle line in New York City and urban politics,” said Michael Lange, a writer in New York's 7th Congressional District, an area he has described as the "Commie Corridor."  “There are going to be plenty of neighborhoods and districts where the past establishment has receded, and the frontier is now socialists versus progressives,” he continued.  (New York Times, June 3)

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“I like his in-person self better than his Twitter self,” Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of Space X, said about Elon Musk on the Stanford business school podcast. “In fact, they feel like two different people to me many of the times.”

“The [U.S. Supreme] court just seems really hellbent on getting lower federal courts out of any policing of redistricting,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard and an election law expert.

“This is where hope has a home,” said Tina Tchen, executive vice president of programs for the newly opened Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.  (New York Times, June 5)

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“It’s like everybody’s got a fishing pole with a carrot, and you’re the rabbit, and they’re pulling it right, and pulling it left,” said Robert Van Winkle, better known as Vanilla Ice, bemoaning how several entertainers had cancelled their participation in Freedom 250 because of the concert's affiliation with the White House. “This country is not what it was in the ’90s, man.”  (New York Times, June 6)

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“She [Marilyn Monroe] can be anything to anyone. She is the American dream in darkness and in light — her rise story comforts us to think dreams can come true and her decline story comforts us to think maybe we’re better off if our dreams don’t come true. From the feminist angle, she is equally versatile: She can be seen as defiant or a victim of exploitation, an artist or an object. Also, you can’t underestimate what dying young does for your longevity!,” said Hollywood historian Sam Wasson, explaining Monroe's enduring appeal a century after her birth.  (New York Times, June 7)

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“What was this all for?” asked Amirali, a 62-year-old engineer in Tehran. “They bombed and destroyed our country, our airports, roads and factories in the name of regime change so they could bring Ahmadinejad [Iran's president from 2005-2013]? This shows the goal was never to make Iran better or free.”

“Cellphones have come between people,” Madonna said about her recent performance at Coachella. “I came to this earth to be a doer, not a watcher.”  (New York Times, June 8)

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"My hope is that the leadership of Paramount will say to themselves, this isn’t working," said Scott Pelley, the recently fired correspondent for CBS News who began working at the network in 1989. "We have broadcasts that almost don’t get on the air. We have respected journalists saying that there is a thumb on the scale for one political party over another. We have a broadcast that is among the most important in America. The most successful in the history of all television. It was doing great, so why are we making these changes? We need adult supervision and at the moment we don’t have it. We have people who’ve been installed in these jobs who through no fault of their own have no experience in television. They don’t know what they’re doing. And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at '60 Minutes' before, or at CBS News before. So that is my hope: a return to sanity. We can save this. It’s possible to land this plane. But right now, CBS News is on fire."  

“Having workers tied to an employer for their legal status, their wages, working conditions, their ability to return, creates such a power differential that really exacerbates vulnerability to forced labor,” said Rachel Micah-Jones, executive director of the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, which advocates on behalf of migrant workers.  (New York Times, June 9)

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“Most Bicycle Boys are not married and probably never will be, at least not until they give up their bikes,” Candace Bushnell wrote in a 1995 "Sex and the City" column.  (New York Times, June 11)

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“I believe the only true knowledge is through experience,” photographer Duane Michaels once said. “You read a love story, and then you fall in love — then you realize the difference. I want to know what something feels like, not what it looks like.”  (New York Times, June 12)

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“Every time I make a little progress, I’m back in the hospital,” said Earl Monroe, now 81, who played with the New York Knicks when they last won the NBA championship in 1973 but who has since endured more than 40 operations, including a knee replacement, two new hips and spinal fusion. “Mentally it’s hard, because I know I can’t do things anymore. It’s disheartening. But then you think about people facing harder things. I say something for them in my prayers at night.”   (New York Times, June 13)

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“He’s trying to put his face on the money,” Georgia senator Jon Ossoff said. “Did you see that? He’s building a monument to himself. But see, Atlanta, he’s doing these things now because no one will honor him when he’s gone, because he’s a failed president and a national disgrace.” 

“There’s this tsunami of garbage,’’ James Murdoch, new owner of New York magazine and Vox, said of AI-generated content. “Something that is editorially crafted, either by an individual writer or by an editorial mind across a number of different writers and subjects — I think that value is very clear, and I think it actually becomes more valuable.”

“A dancer dies twice,” Martha Graham said. “Once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful.”

“I think everybody’s carrying around a bag of heroin in their pocket, and it’s called an iPhone,” Hunter Biden said on California governor Gavin Newsom's podcast. “It is the dopamine hit of choice for 350 million of us. And what we do is that we are fed this lie that this country’s divided, that everybody hates everybody.”

“There’s nothing else like being in New York,” Sofia Coppola said. “You have to really earn it. It weeds out the wimps, I think.”  (New York Times, June 14)

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“It’s pure — there it is!” Bill Bradley, the Hall of Famer from the last title team, said from his watch-party chair after the Knicks won Game 1. “The ball either goes in or it doesn’t. There is no ambiguity and no doubt about what has just happened.” 

“I worry that A.I. will be to high-school-educated women what deindustrialization was to high-school-educated men,” said Molly Kinder, a former researcher at the Brookings Institution who is starting an organization focused on A.I.’s impact on workers and the economy.

“Marriage is a patriarchal, antiquated institution that I will never be interested in unless I meet a billionaire. Maybe then I’ll get married with a prenup,” Laverne Cox, trans pioneer said, laughing.

“A lot of my late-night debates with my friends about the state of the music industry involve me saying very loudly, ‘Sombr is the future, and he does it all on his own, and he doesn’t need A.I., the kids are fine,’” Taylor Swift said in a speech after she was the youngest person ever to be inducted into the Songwriter Hall of Fame.  (New York Times, June 15)

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“This is a social phenomenon that has grown exponentially,” said Dr. Louis Daigle, an emergency physician in Quebec, the world's leader in legal euthanasia. “A lot of people now idealize this way of dying, with dignity, so much so that I think there is a belief that there are now two good ways to die: either suddenly or with medically assisted dying.”

“[David Hockney] loved the sunlight, the weather, the boys,” said Richard Benefield, a veteran museum executive who served as the first director of the David Hockney Foundation. “L.A. was the place he could go and be completely free; he could be gay and not worry about everything people were so hung up about in the 1960s in the U.K.”  (New York Times, June 16)

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“If any geographical point can be suddenly weaponized and leveraged for money, and then closed again at the whim of a certain government or authorities, of course, that’s for us — it’s a concerning development,” said Vincent Clerc, the chief executive of the shipping giant Maersk, after the details of America's peace deal with Iran were announced. “You have to wonder then what’s next.”

“[Jon Ossoff] is not trying to be a national star,” said Jason Carter, who is the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter and has run for statewide office in Georgia. “He’s trying to be a good senator. If being a good senator turns you into a national star, we’ll all watch and see.”

“It’s all out there, there’s no hiding and I think that’s allowed his wardrobe to be what he wants it to be,” said Simon Chilvers, who wrote frequently about David Hockney’s outfits over the years.. “There was a freedom in the way in which he expressed himself.”  (New York Times, June 18)

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“The Knicks did not just win for New York City, they won like New York City,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. “What is New York if not your back up against the wall?”  (New York Times, June 19)

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“Iran’s new leadership views Lebanon as part and parcel of its own national security, as previous Israeli advances against Hezbollah in 2024 paved the way for a direct conflict with Iran,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “For Iran, the end game is an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.”

“I wouldn’t believe him if his tongue was notarized,” hotelier Leona Helmsley once said of Donald Trump.

"I remember as a kid hearing from either Judd Apatow or Garry Shandling that you work your way up through Hollywood, and eventually you are led into a room alone with Jack Nicholson," Seth Rogen said.  "It’s just you and him in a small room together. And that’s when you’re like, I did it."  (New York Times, June 21)

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“There’s a fundamental idea that the [nation's capital]  conveys about public value being first and foremost over private interest,” said Thomas Luebke, the longtime secretary of the Commission of Fine Arts, which was created by Congress in 1910 to help shepherd the city’s evolution. “That idea that we come first as a group is somehow conveyed in the scale and design of the city.”  (New York Times, June 24)

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“Let them come here for three months without bodyguards and then go to a supermarket to see if this has improved,’’ said Álvaro Espinoza, 56, a jeweler in Los Teques, a commuter town outside Venezuela's capital, Caracas, referring to American officials. “It’s all a lie.”

“In the world that we live in right now, this is the only thing you can come to and you can be fully present the entire time,” said Jake James, 2026 winner of a Jimmy Award, which honors excellence in high school musical theater.

“This is not journalism. This is history told to you through the telephone,” said Guy Branum, a 50-year old gay comedian, actor and writer. “This is trying to get the energy of an older gay guy in the back room at Akbar telling you a thing that you didn’t know before.”

“[Buc-ees] brings everything that’s American into one spot,” said Jeroen Boersma, a 30-year-old World Cup fan from the Netherlands. “America is a lot of big foods, a lot of crazy foods. It is driving culture. It is big cars.”  (New York Times, June 25)

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“Motherhood is siblings bickering over who can look out of which window and who started it and who you love the most even though you love all of them the same but at the moment you don’t like any of them in the slightest,” Jill Smokler once wrote on her blog "Scary Mommy."   (New York Times, June 26)

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“Once you go down the pricing scale, people pay less attention to ethics or morality,” said Matthias Schmidt, an independent analyst in Berlin who tracks electric vehicles sales. “Tesla’s product has become so appealing from a price perspective, it’s almost too good to refuse.”  (New York Times, June 27)

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“I’m a left wing, two-state, pro-peace Israeli, but I’m not blind or crazy,” said Asaf Zamir, a deputy mayor of Tel Aviv. “I know what the situation in Israel is, and we’re not those things we’re being called [genocidal & apartheid]. And yet, more and more Americans are buying into and voting on those grounds. That troubles me.”

“Everyone shows up to vote for president, but no one shows up to vote for dogcatcher,” said Kenny Blight, 38, who is part of Promise Keepers, an evangelical men’s ministry. “I want a biblical dogcatcher.”

“I thought irony was having a day,” said Karolyn Sharp when she learned that Iran and Egypt would be featured in Seattle's World Cup Pride match.

"I embrace new technology all the time, but it tends to be sold to people at the expense of systems that might still be valid and viable," said director Christopher Nolan.  "That’s what I saw in my industry — throwing the baby out with the bath water. We almost lost film!"

“[Marilyn Monroe] showed an interest in intellectual subjects which was, to say the least, disconcerting,” remarked George Sanders, her co-star in All About Eve. “She was somebody in a play not yet written.”  (New York Times, June 28)

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“Loner and loneliness are not the same,” said Jerry Moriarty, a painter who shunned the art world. “Everybody has been lonely, but not everybody is a loner. Jack is alone, but he is not a loner. I am a loner, and I fully understand why that makes me strange to society. I am not lonely. Being alone is total freedom for me.”   

“I think we can say we [human beings] are the masters of laughter,” said Chiara De Gregorio, a research fellow at the University of Warwick in Britain. “We can have a small, polite laugh in front of the Queen of England, and then we are in the pub with our friends, and we laugh so much in a different way. We can even laugh in a way that communicates to the other person that we actually didn’t find the joke they said funny.”  (New York Times, June 30)

Giant (5*)

Like Walt Whitman famously once said, "I am large, I contain multitudes."

The Brit Roald Dahl certainly did:  son of well-to-do Norwegian immigrants, RAF pilot during World War II, children's book author, animal lover, devoted father, unfaithful husband, caretaker, and crank but in Mark Rosenblatt's brutal Giant, audiences leave the theater with his "truth" ringing in their ears:  at his embittered core, he's an unrepentant anti-Semite.  Having never read any of his classic books--although I did love the first filmed adaptation of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Matilda on Broadway--it may be easier for me to reach that conclusion than others because I don't have any childhood allegiance to lose.

The first hour of the play seems like deja vu, as have most debates about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during my lifetime.  It's almost possible to sit on the fence while Dahl (John Lithgow, a 6' 4" curmudgeon extraordinaire) shouts it out with Jessie Stone (Aya Cash, pitch perfect in a bright red dress), a Jewish sales director at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, over an impolitic book review he has just published alleging that Israelis have morphed into Nazis by bombing Lebanon where innocent children have died or been maimed.  It's 1983, by the way.

Both his very assimilated British agent, who managed to escape Germany via Kindertransport, and his paramour of the past 11 years (during which time he remained married to Patricia Neal, the Academy Award winning actress with whom he had five children and whom he helped nurse back to health after she had a serious stroke during pregnancy), recognize that Dahl needs to atone if his genius for seeing the world through a child's eyes is to remain profitable. They offload the heavy lifting of persuasion to the forthright American, as a representative of his biggest market. Stone, whom Dahl derisively refers to as "Stein" after asking point blank if she's Jewish, delivers a full-throated defense of her people (if not the Israelis) that ends the first act with a moral authority that still resonates with anyone who grew up in the long shadow of the Holocaust but now seems increasingly out of synch with world opinion.

During act two, Stone spends much of her time off stage as Dahl resists entreaties from the characters whose income and home renovations his talent supports to walk back his inflammatory remarks which they attribute primarily to his contrarianism.  But once Dahl crosses a red line with his two most trusted confidantes by accusing his agent of being a "house Jew," he turns to his cheery young cook and estate manager for their support. Rosenblatt uses them as proxies for the British people and the difference in their reactions reflects the same kind of generation gap that divided many Americans during the Civil Rights era.

For reasons that remain opaque, Dahl finally agrees to do an interview with a sympathetic journalist, much to the relief of everyone except Stone.  Even though she's not entirely immune to author's manipulations, she understands in her heart that genuine concern for all children--even her own disabled son--can co-exist with anti-Semitism. 

I'll say this for Dahl: for whatever reasons, he had the courage of his convictions; Lithgow, just two inches shorter than Dahl, expresses them--VERBATIM--with shocking odiousness in the play's final scene, during a spontaneous interview with a persistent journalist. Rosenblatt and director Nicholas Hynter (firing on all cylinders, as usual) leave the audience in a bind, particularly those members with young children or grandchildren:  does an author's documented bigotry merit the cancellation of work which his agent has earlier described so meaningfully from a humanist's point of view?

Giant also left me wondering about the very early, controversial and longstanding pro-Palestinian  advocacy of Vanessa Redgrave, surely one of the greatest actresses of my lifetime, whose artistry was also fertilized on British soil.  No doubt she contains multitudes, too.

 

Like a Cork Bobbing in an Ocean of Memory

Early April in Lake Worth Beach feels a little like August in the Pines.  You enjoy it more because imminent departure makes everything a little sweeter.  

I accompanied Chris to the fancy mall in Palm Beach Gardens.  His expensive watch (who knew?) needed repair.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that Venchi, where I enjoyed the last gelato of my trip to Northern Italy last fall, had a store in a South Florida luxury mall.  Or on Columbus Avenue, less than 20 blocks south of 47 Pianos.  Mercantile homogeneity is one of the downsides of globalization, particularly for the well-heeled.

The Folly Chariot makes it so much easier to vary my walk routine, with final excursions to Winding Waters where a lightning-struck tree offered insect housing,

. . . and Wakodahatchee Wetlands, 

. . . where I hoped the nests I had visited with Anthony and Zoltan before spring's arrival would be filled with fledglings instead of eggs.  They were but faint chirps provided the only evidence.

Flying into Manhattan, with sky-high perches, still thrills this old snowbird.

The colors may not be natural but they ARE intense.

I don't think I've ever taken a prettier spring photo in Central Park thanks to azealeas blooming and reflecting in the Ramble's Gill stream.  

Both the park and my photography have come a long way since the 70s and 80s.

It didn't take long to resume my steady diet of art and theater.  Since returning from Florida I've seen 19 exhibits at eight museums and galleries, and seven shows, not including various public art installations like "All One" in Hudson River Park.

The exhibits included "Two Strikes on a Snowman" in Chelsea

Collage by Lucy Sante

. . . and "Fool Disclosure" in Long Island City.

"The Trojan Horse" by Pat Oleszko (1980)

I couldn't tell if Ohad Meromi's "Sunbather" is affiliated with the nearby Sculpture Center or not.  It's definitely a good landmark if you're looking for the museum, just around the corner.

Since I retired from the Health Department 12 springs ago, the neighborhood is almost unrecognizable.  The contrast of sunlit building materials can be eye-catching.

The walk back over the Koch Bridge reminded how thankful I am to have lived in Manhattan for as long as I have, if sometimes a little bewildered by the pace of construction.  The longer your life, the more change it encompasses.

Since my return in mid-April, I feel like a cork bobbing in an ocean of memory.  Blame my reading choices (an oral history of Hollywood and Sammy Davis, Jr.'s autobiography as well as steady strip mining of 30+ years of stored Vanity Fair magazines for collaging material, begun last fall.  Who could have predicted the awful trajectory of this recently remarried mercurial buffoon in 1993?  Former editor Graydon Carter probably can take some consolation that his snarky cover isn't hanging in the White House.

New discoveries at the Guggenheim like Gabriele Münter (who's waiting in vain for Kandinsky, her lover, to arrive in Sweden at the beginning of the first World War) 

"At the Clockmaker's"(1916)

. . .  and old passions at the International Center of Photography provided welcome distractions from the unceasing greed, corruption and belligerence that characterize the current commander-in-chief.  On more than one occasion in the Diaries, Andy complains that 47 and Ivana, wife number one, swindled him.

And I just hate the Trumps because they never bought my Trump Tower portraits.  (May 2, 1984)

Photo by Stephen Shore

Until "Matisse:  Pursuit of Harmony," I can't remember ever having to line up outside a gallery.  The demographic definitely skewed older but the show was definitely worth the wait, especially for odalisque fans.

"Nu couché" (1921)

An exhibition of hunk portraits at the Artists Space lured me downtown.  I followed Broadway past Madison Square Park where "Alfarero del Barrio" by Roberto Lugo celebrates Lin-Manuel Miranda, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Roberto Clemente on this gazebo

. . . and "Dreamland Sirens" by Charlotte Colbert flanked the Flatiron Building.

"Paul Anthony" by David Armstrong (Jefferson Avenue, Brookly, 2004)

On the graffitied alley outside the Artists Space, one man computes on a landing, while another runs past.

Photography isn't permitted at the Frick so I had to stick my camera through an iron fence to get this shot.  Would you believe it was my first visit to the building, if not the collection, which moved to the old Whitney while the Fifth Avenue mansion was being renovated?

I went to see "Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture," which turned out to be more interesting than I anticipated thanks to back stories of his subjects, like this young singer whose husband--the much better known English playwright (The School for Scandal)--forced her to give up her career before she died of tuberculosis not long after giving birth to his child in her late 30s.  A beautiful portrait of a haunted woman becomes a tragic one.

"Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan" by Thomas Gainsborough (1785-87)

These pooches almost compensated for the absence of the artist's most famous work.  It hangs in the Huntington, which does permit photography.  The Frick Collection needs to get over itself, although there's no question that it hangs in one of Manhattan's most beautiful interiors.

"Pomeranian and Puppy" (ca 1777)

Keith Haring at the Brant Foundation gave me an excuse to walk uptown.  I never tire of his work and will finally get around to reading the latest biography by Brad Gooch this summer.

Untitled (1982)

Keith might have appreciated the snacks scattered on the sidewalk outside the Brant.

 They echo the lines of his work a bit.

Untitled Vinyl Tarp (detail, 1982)

I stopped to take this photo on the corner of First Avenue and East 11th Street because I'd never seen so many parked delivery bikes. Only later did I notice the split-image mural of Michael Jackson who is definitely having a moment among amnesiacs. Apparently, it's easier to ignore the transgressions of some artists than others. Just listen to this podcast for the reasons why.

A less controversial mural loomed above the colorful exterior of an empanada restaurant.

Believe it or not, the Tifereth Israel/Town & Village Synagogue has roots in the German Baptist Brethren who built it as their own house of worship.  Ukrainians turned it Eastern Orthodox in 1926, adding the domes. Jews have observed Shabbat here since 1962; New York City finally landmarked the spiritually versatile building in 2014.  

St. George's Episcopal Church, another landmark building, looms above Stuyvesant Square. Two spires were decapitated in 1889, although you'd never know to look at it now.  

"Knots," a second exhibit of collages by Lucy Sante, took me for the first time to another long-established institution,  the American Academy of Arts & Letters in Upper Manhattan.

I walked back downtown on Broadway from 155th Street.  My alma mater has redeveloped Manhattanville, an area I haven't frequented since I stopped parking Herr Cucaracha in a cheap garage on W 134th Street in the early 90s.

Grad students and faculty have new housing that actually resembles an ivory tower.

It must offer great views of the Broadway local train, which is elevated at 125th Street, the Hudson and New Jersey.

The Union Theological Seminary emphatically observes Pride month!

"Memory," by Augustus Lukeman, gazes out over Straus Park on West 106th Street, which honors Isidor, co-founder of Macy's department store, and his wife Ida.  Before going down on the Titanic--together, she refused to get into a lifeboat without her husband--they lived around the corner on West End Avenue. Check out the magnificent Straus tomb in Woodlawn Cemetery, adorned with an Egyptian funerary barge.

Back to Chelsea again for a show of Gerhard Richter landscapes at the David Zwirner gallery.  At 93, he may very well be our greatest living artist.

Chapel (1995)

"GIVE US MOM!!!" by Nora Turato doesn't require quite the intellectual bandwidth of Richter's oeuvre.  It "channels an urgent collective plea for nurturing and protection," a void in my life since 1975.

My usual reading bench in Central Park is a great place to observe other people's morning routines, including dozens of sweet, wide-eyed pre-school children with their minders, a friendly woman with a walker who always wears the same floral print dress and hijab, a sleepy dog walker in dreadlocks whose look suggests a pit bull should be at the end of his leash rather than a cuddly poodle mix and a greying man in a Stephen Sondheim t-shirt that boasts "I'm Still Here."  

Four shy young Koreans, who barely spoke English, approached while I was deeply absorbed in John of John.  Using sign language they asked me to complete a one-minute survey about a scented shampoo bar, including questions about where it should be sold and how much it should cost.  Could they have found a less likely consumer of their product?  Only in New York!