mackenziecarpenter.com

2010-11-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

A very, merry Thanksgiving was had by all -- with Pap-Pap Rotstein in attendance! Leslie, what is UP with those torn JEANS!!

2010-09-25T16:56:00.000-07:00

A cool autumn breeze is blowing through my window... I am ready, I suppose, but I still don't want to give up the memory of this family vacation to St. John in the Virgin Islands this August... one of the best ever. My kids had a swell time, we all had a swell time. Now, though, it's time to pull out the sweaters. I can't believe it.

Embracing the heart of winter before it dissolves into mud

2010-03-13T14:50:00.001-08:00

Blogs must be fed frequently, I know... but I don't have time. Still, as this wondrously snowy weather fades into the mud season, I must at least post some cell phone pics from my trip last week to Vermont to visit some dear old pals... and to ski... at Stowe and at Mad River Glen, an amazing old-timey place in the 60s/hippie/crunchy/ski bum sense of the word... with views of Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks on one side... 60 miles to the west? and Mt. Washington, xxx? miles to the east... this picture does not do it justice (Blackberry cameras are not alas very good) but that fine white line you see is Mt. Washington in NH... but here we are on the other side with NY's Adirondacks in view... incredible. Oh, and the skiing was pretty challenging, but I did okay on what MRG calls "the easiest" trails. They would be intermediate anywhere else, believe me.

Mad River also boasts a single chairlift, probably the last one in these United States. And NO snowboarders!!!

Only in Pittsburgh

2009-10-25T07:10:00.001-07:00

.... Could I spend the day working (it was the Saturday shift) and end up covering a public meeting which reminded me, once again, about why I love Pittsburgh. For nearly two hours, nearly 100 people stood and told the mayor and a host of public officials about their love and need for Pittsburgh's public libraries... founded by Andrew Carnegie more than 100 years ago. Four of those libraries are slated for closure because of budget problems, but perhaps, given the public outcry, that will be averted. I was amazed at the cross-section of people in the audience and at the microphone... retired schoolteachers, young moms holding babies in their arms, philosophy students, nuns, a jazz trumpeter (who played "When the Saints Go Marching In" at the end of his comments, in tribute to those who had filed into St. Mary's Lyceum in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood to speak their minds), the young man from Holland, here getting his doctorate in neurological science, another young man who said he does "menial tasks" for a living, the 11-year old girl from Hazelwood who softly told the crowd she goes to her library after school to write her essays on the library's computer (she doesn't have one at home). Norman Rockwell should have painted the scene... but all I could do was write about it.

Anyway, after work I headed over to see the Pittsburgh Opera's "Falstaff" with the PG's music critic Andrew Druckenbrod, who had a spare ticket. Mark Delavan played the title role and Andy says he could be America's next Wotan, as James Morris eases out of those Wagnerian roles.... As it was, Delavan seemed to be channeling Sherrill Milnes (I saw Milnes do Don Giovanni in a Met traveling producting in 1972-3 while at college in Boston. Have never forgotten it) Falstaff isn't a great singing role -- he kind of gets drowned out in the last act... but it's certainly good enough... and that ravishing last act as staged by the Pittsburgh Opera was all magical, moonlit masquerade... exquite music, children's voices.... "Chimes at Midnight." there's a wonderful video on Post-Gazette.com showing Delavan having his makeup put on for the role. It is hilarious... If you do nothing else today, click on this link, you will love this guy (especially when he goes into Clint Eastwood mode).

P.S. Only in Pittsburgh could I go to the opera, and in the space of a half hour run into the three doctors who have changed/improved my life: my longtime, beloved family doctor and doctors Ray Capone and Dan Gagne... 'nuff said. Pittsburgh IS a small town, with very cultured doctors! :)

Happy Birthday Mom!

2009-10-14T05:42:00.000-07:00

My mother turned 80 yesterday, and my youngest daughter Annie and I drove down to Charlottesville, Va., to celebrate with her and some of my sisters, their progeny, et al. A long drive through the mountains, six hours total, even though I suspect that, as the crow flies, C'ville and Pittsburgh are at most three hours apart, if that. Nonetheless a great time was had by all. Here's a photo of some of us (Mom is at the far left) at cousin Carter Speidel's cross-country meet.

Sister Sophie ran her fourth Ultra last weekend. She gets a lot of cool stuff to wear from the race's sponsor if she wins or places at the top, which she frequently does. Here she is in her kitchen that evening after the UVA/Indiana football game whipping up some homemade chicken soup... shirt by SmartWool. You can't really see it in this photo, but I really WANT it.

And here's another photo of Mom's birthday dinner Sunday night at Duner's, a tasty tasty restaurant whose menu boasted lots of good things to eat. There was great people-watching to be had, typical Charlottesville: crunchy/hippie/counterculture people, horsey people, outdoorsy mountain bikers/hikers, good ol' boys, UVA profs and... us! (we defy description). Everyone in the restaurant sang happy birthday to Mom when they brought out a chocolate mousse cake slice with a candle in it!

It's great to have a mom whose birthday is in mid-October because I was able to get my fall foliage fix on the way down. Here's an old Victorian in Bedford, Pa, where my husband lived for two years when he was editor of the Bedford Gazette. Alas, it was getting dark so the photo doesn't quite do justice to the tree's colors... but that HOUSE!

Here's the venerable old Bedford Springs hotel (once the summer White House for James Buchanan, and where the Supreme Court met). When Gary was living there in the late 1980s, the hotel stood vacant, waiting for someone to fix it up. Well, someone finally did:

In some ways, the most beautiful part of the weekend was the trip on Sunday to Carter's Mountain, near Monticello. It was a gorgeous Indian summer day -- and while the view reminded me of the Napa Valley, the vast crowds who came to the mountaintop (not pictured!) reminded me of the battle of Dunkirk.. but never mind. The just-picked apples and cider donuts made it all worthwhile... I just had to take a picture of the donuts, still hot, glittering with sugar... oh my oh my.

.

You can't really tell from these photos, but on one side of Carter's mountain, the view is of ridge after ridge of mountains... while on the other side, the view is of coastal plain, flat as a pancake. I have to wonder what the first settlers thought when they ascended this mountain and looked out on the other side....

At day's end, Sophie, me, my daughter Annie and her cousins Grace and Virginia decided to take the trail down Carter's Mountain... it was a gorgeous hike. Here are some pictures of them that I took before we headed down:

My Excellent Pittsburgh G20 Summit Adventure

2009-09-27T06:34:00.000-07:00

Call me insufferable and narcissistic, but I just HAD to share the White House pool reports (see below) I filed during Thursday's Phipps reception for the G-20 foreign leaders and Michelle O's incredible CAPA visit yesterday morning. They resulted in this story
and this story...

What an experience, especially hearing CAPA's own Jason Yoder, a mop-haired, reedy 10th grader, accompany cellist Yo Yo Ma in an exquisite rendition of Saint-Saens' "The Swan." I've been privileged to see a lot of great musical performances in a lot of places but this one seemed especially freighted with meaning, in that A) it was taking place at a school whose students include some of my childrens' friends; B) the golden sound of Yo Yo Ma's cello in such a small space seemed miraculous; C) I love "The Swan," in part because it's the piano piece my youngest daughter has been trying to master for the past year; D) Members of the audience in that little auditorium included Michelle Obama and the wives of the world's leaders. My heart just swelled with pride even though I know I was supposed to be a jaded, hard-hearted journalist ... NOT.

Here is another take on the CAPA event from Kate Hannon, one of the many foreign journalists at the event, very nice, very astute -- and National Political Editor of the Australian Associated Press. Surely I was luckier than some of my braver PG colleagues, some of whom were tear-gassed, pepper sprayed or, in Friday night's final protests, were arrested and spent the night in jail IN HANDCUFFS. Here's a gripping shot by the Post-Gazette's Mike Henninger of that long, long night (you can see much more at www.post-gazette.com). Those PG photogs and reporters were the ones doing the really hard work at this extraordinary event. I am simply too old/cowardly to do that sort of reporting [Although I did interview a young man who was forced to kneel, in handcuffs, with the Chicago policee for a "group photo." Harrowing.}
Better yet, I didn't have to write any analysis pieces of global monetary policy, thank GOD -- but Jim O'Toole did a typically nuanced, elegant analysis of the summit here. I DID wander in to the news conference Obama held yesterday morning at the convention center with the British prime minister and the French president. Clearly these three leaders weren't speaking to the coffee-sipping, backpack toting journalists in the room, but to the world. I kept thinking, oh my, this is the David L. Lawrence convention center, and yet at this moment it is also the center of the WORLD... Can I be in the same spot where I took my kids to PiratesFest a few years ago???

Even though the subject -- a stern warning to Iran about its nuclear ambitions -- was dramatic, and would dominate the headlines coming out of the conference (AND perhaps, one day, the history books) the scene in the half-empty auditorium seemed casual, almost anticlimactic. Perhaps the space was simply too big to accomodate all the journalists, but whatever the case, you could kind of mosey up the aisle past some empty rows of seats and stand pretty close to the president. Notice the empty seats in this picture I took on my BlackBerry... and note, too, that the photo of the three men onstage (between the heads of these two men in the foreground) was splashed across the top page of the New York Times the next day...

All the hassle of getting through one security checkpoint after another pays dividends, I suppose. And you can be sure that getting through to the convention center was onerous... a bunch of us spent TWO nights at the Post-Gazette sleeping on cots so we could be sure to get to our assigned spots the next day. Here is a photo of our newsroom on Thursday night as protests started to ratchet up and calls started coming in from reporters who'd been pepper sprayed in the protests.
(you can dimly make out photog Larry Roberts, exec. editor David Shribman, asst mng editor Virginia Linn, G20 coverage coordinator extraordinaire Lillian Thomas and managing editor Sue Smith).
It was like camping out, kind of fun, but walking up to the Mellon Arena at the crack of dawn each morning from the newspaper, toting laptops, was fairly challenging. And Downtown did NOT look its best, by any stretch... a ghost town,post-apocalyptic... but Pittsburgh's civic boosters needn't worry, these world leaders were in a bubble the whole time, escorted from one lovely Pittsburgh spot to the other, seeing our BEST self, not this weirdly deserted Downtown. The Phipps, in particular, looked ravishing at night all lit up from within. I hope some photographs eventually emerge of that dinner... I would love to see what it looked like. Here's a photo of the press gaggle, with my former Post-Gazette colleague, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Martha Rial, in the purple shirt in the foreground:
Most surreal moment: Sitting inside the security "bubble" at the outdoor Phipps entry, during a lull between leaders arriving, all quiet... across the road, Schenley Park's Flagstaff Hill looked eerily, uncharacteristically deserted. Then someone in the press pool remarked they heard some faint shouting. I logged onto the Post Gazette website and saw this headline: "Police battle protesters in Bloomfield"... apparently near Ritter's Diner. That's a headline I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. Apparently the faint shouting was from somewhere near Schenley Park where students and protesters were gathering for what would turn out to be a wild Thursday night... but you wouldn't have known it from where I sat.

Here's a photo of the risers BEFORE things got going... to the left is the small entryway where the Obamas would greet guests:I will always remember the nearly two hours spent Thursday evening in close quarters "with" the President and First Lady in the Phipps' outside foyer as they greeted foreign leaders, who just kept coming, in wave after wave.... I guess I was the U.S. print press pooler (didn't see any other print reporters although some may have been there) along with hundreds of camera crews and photogs from all over the world. We were jammed on a small three-step riser probably 30 feet from the First Couple, in this very intimate space. Sometimes it spattered raindrops, and when it started raining steadily State Department aides handed out black garbage bags to us in the risers... so I ended up sometimes filing reports wearing a black garbage bag over my head!

The First Couple joked and interacted with aides AND with us, the disheveled media gaggle... UNBELIEVABLE!!! Carla Bruni Sarkozy was ALSO quite a piece of work...vamping with Obama, who did a little "samba" when he walked over towards her... you could tell he was quite taken. Carla is simply the slinkiest thing -- so gorgeous and SHE KNOWS IT. When she walked out of the reception, sans husband, heading to Teresa Heinz's dinner, she looked over at the (mostly male) press pool and batted her eyelashes. "Bon soir, M'sieur," she cooed at one photographer and kept on walking, her hips swaying like she was on the runway at New York's Fashion Week. PULEEZE....

A grizzled photographer standing near me squinted at her as she sashayed away. "SHEE..it!" he said, in clear admiration.

Fashion note: photos did not do Michelle's dress (Thakoon) justice. It was the most shimmery, delicious thing... gorgeous against her skin. I also loved inspecting all the fabulous clothes worn by the 20 and 30-something women who obviously have Very Cool Jobs at the State Department and the White House. I was particularly struck by one woman, a State Department official, who I later learned is from Kazakhstan (sp?) but looked like a Japanese princess: tall, pale, exquisite, wearing this silk jacket in some indescribable pattern... she announced all the guests as they arrived.

Ahem, I was wearing a very nice gray print Banana Republic wrap dress I bought there a month ago. This photo taken by a cute BBC cameraman, before everyone arrived: But my poor little Diane Von Furstenberg-esque dress didn't stand a chance against Prada or Thakoon or Dries van Noten... and I was definitely having a Bad Hair Day, but... um... I don't think anyone noticed.

Most of the fashion worn by the female journalists at the G20 was severe and gray. Not much in the way of stilettos or J.Crew, which seems to be the uniform of the young female White House staffers.. Even Michelle Obama's social secretary, the uber-chic Desiree Rogers, went with the program (altho this photo I snapped of her at CAPA school doesn't show her leapard print stilletos!)

Menswear, in gray flannel, is very big, even on beautiful women with long hair chattering away in languagesE I didn't always recognize... Although I was washing my hands in the ladies room when one reporter's cell phone rang. "Oui?" she said, when she picked up. LOVED that.

Finally, here's a picture that shows the "darker" side of the G20... note the banner on the Hilton Hotel, "Pittsburgh Welcomes The World"...
and the police in the foreground. Here's a story by my esteemed PG colleague Lillian Thomas that sums up the disconnect... between the excitement of the event and the street violence that erupted.

If you want more good dish, tune in to my "Omnivore" webcast next week on our PGPlus site (premium PG content, subscription: $2.99 a month) where I'll do an IN DEPTH analysis of our video of Carla Bruni Sarkozy and what it all means (I told you "Omnivore" is smart AND shallow)... along with an interview with my PG colleague, columnist Brian O'Neill, who has just written a gem of a book, "The Paris of Appalachia."

Okay, for those who STILL haven't had enough of this, here are my WHite House pool reports. Then I will stop, I promise.

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-734760-2242769@list.whitehouse.gov on behalf of White House Media Affairs Office
Sent: Thu 9/24/2009 6:14 PM
To: Mackenzie Carpenter
Cc:
Subject: Fw: PA Pool report #1

President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle arrived at Phipps Conservatory at 6:05 p.m. in a light rain. An aide sheltered the couple with an umbrella. Mr. Obama nodded to photographers and thanked an aide in the doorway before walking through the conservatory's lower entrance.

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-734761-2242769@list.whitehouse.gov on behalf of White House Media Affairs Office
Sent: Thu 9/24/2009 6:34 PM
To: Mackenzie Carpenter
Cc:
Subject: Fw: Pool Report #2

After backing up under the Phipps' entrance canopy to avoid the spattering rain, Mr. Obama could be heard saying, "Not bad, how you been? I'm with my first lady." Mr. Obama was in a dark blue suit. Michelle Obama was wearing a long pearl necklace and a Grecian-style draped dress in a beige and pink print, with spaghetti straps.

First to arrive was Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato and his wife Shelley. Mr. Obama greeted them by saying, "Dan, how are you, thanks for welcoming us, good to see you... my wife Michelle." The foursome posed for photographs, and Michelle put her arm around Mrs. Onorato at one point and made conversation with her.

At one point the rain intensified so Mr. Obama went inside the entrance, but called out to the press: "Sorry about how all you guys are waiting in the rain."

While waiting for the dignitaries to arrive, Mrs. Obama turned to the press and said, "Somebody talk, somebody sing!" Mr. Obama started joking with with aides about their singing abilities.

Around 6:18, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl arrived with his wife. Mr. Obama called out, "How are you? How about those Steelers, Man? " Mr. Ravenstahl could be heard saying, "How are you Mr. President?

They were followed by U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, the finance minister for the Republic of Singabpore, the chair of the Commission of the African Union, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and other finance officials.

Pool Report #3
Following the arrivals of Thailand's head of state and Sweden's prime minister, Mr. Obama greeted Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, and his wife. Mrs. Harper could be heard chatting about her daughter with Mrs. Obama. A few minutes later (6:44 pm?) Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, arrived alone and posed for the cameras with Mr. Obama (but not Michelle Obama).

Pool Report #4

Mrs. Obama's dress was designed by Thakoon Panichgul, who outfitted Mrs Obama for the final night of the Democratic National Convention and the first debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. She has a J.Crew cardigan, but she's not wearing it at this time. Robert Zoeller, president of the World Bank, has just arrived, posed for photographs and engaged in a quiet conversation with the Obamas before heading inside. South African President Jacob Zuma and his wife have just arrived. Mrs. Obama just took Mrs. Zuma by the hand to pose for photographs separately. Your press pooler could hear Mrs. Obama say "I'm very honored," when she shook Mr. Zuma's hand.

Pool Report #5

After greeting the head of the governments of Spain, The Netherlands, and Ethiopa, the Obamas greeted German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, who arrived alone, shortly after 7 p.m. Mrs. Obama greeted the prime minister with a kiss on both cheeks. They posed for pictures, and there was apparently some joking between the Obamas and the prime minister at the doorway before Mrs. Merkel went inside. She was followed by India's prime minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, Mrs. Gursharan Kaur, clad in a brilliant orange sari.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd arrived at around 7:10 p.m. with his wife, Ms. Therese Rein, followed by the Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdgogan and his wife, Emine Erdogan. At 7:12 p.m., British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah. Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Brown had a warm conversation while Mr. Brown and Mr. Obama posed for photographs.

From: bounce-734797-2242769@list.whitehouse.gov on behalf of White House Media Affairs Office
Sent: Thu 9/24/2009 7:34 PM
To: Mackenzie Carpenter
Cc:
Subject: Fw: PA Pool #7

Your press pooler's numbered reports are getting a bit mixed up due to the steady stream of foreign dignitaries who are arriving. My apologies.

Darkness is beginning to fall around the Phipps Conservatory, but the rain seems to have held off, at least temporarily. The Korean President Lee Myung Bak and his wife, in cream satin robes, were greeted by the Obamas, who then went inside the Phipps, coming outside again shortly afterwards to greet Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, followed by the head of Indonesia's government and immediately after that, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla, who was dressed in simple dark blue (or black ?)sheath. The couples engaged in conversation, with Mr. Obama walking over to Mrs. Sarkozy, asking if she was well. Mrs. Sarkozy laughed and motioned to Mrs. Obama and said, "we're having a good time tomorrow," in apparent reference to Mrs. Obama's tour of Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts High School tomorrow morning with the spouses of the summit's leaders. Mrs. Sarkozy then gave Mr. Obama two air kisses on each cheek before she ented inside the Phipps. Mexico's president Felix Calderon Hinojosa arrived shortly after that.

Mr. and Mrs. Obama greeted China's President Hu Jintao, who arrived shortly after 7:35. Mr. Obama could be heard saying, "Thank you so much, it's good to see you." Mr. Jintao gave a hearty wave to the press corps before going inside. China's president was immediately followed by Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell (who I suspect may have been late -- Mr. Rendell could be heard mentioning that he'd been at a memorial service).

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and his wife Svetlana, arrived at around 7:40 p.m. Not much conversation once they arrived with the Obamas at the Phipps entry, but there was some laughing and joking between Mrs. Obama and Mr. Medvedev before the Medvedevs went inside. They were followed a few minutes later by Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his wife Marisa Leticia.

Mr. Obama's aide, Reggie Love, at one point walked outside the building and was joking with reporters. Something dropped on a secret service agent's head form the balcony above, where there are photographers. The agent said something into his sleeve, but the incident appears to have been shrugged off.

At 7:52, Japan's Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama and his wife arrived, Mr. Obama thanked the press corps, and the two couples went inside for the evening's reception. Your pool has nonetheless been asked to wait until the spouses of the world leaders depart from the Phipps for dinner at Teresa Heinz's farm Rosemont, in Fox Chapel.

Please note: an earlier press pool report mistakenly identified Angela Merkel as Germany's prime minister. She is Germany's CHANCELLOR.

Message-----
From: bounce-735229-2242769@list.whitehouse.gov on behalf of White House Media Affairs Office
Sent: Fri 9/25/2009 1:10 PM
To: Mackenzie Carpenter
Cc:
Subject: FW: PA pool report CAPA

Shortly after 10 am., the wives of the G20 summit's 20 leaders arrived at Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts High School, a colorful, modern, multi-story building along the city's Allegheny River just a few steps from the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Other spouses from various international organizations were included too, including those from United Nations, ASEAN, World Bank, etc.

After being greeted by First Lady Michelle Obama, they were broken up into five groups, visiting two different classes that represent the school's program, which offers six different majors: visual arts, literary arts, theater, instrumental music, vocal music and dance. Each group was accompanied by a teacher and a student from CAPA who was on hand to explain what they were seeing.

Mrs. Obama's group included Marisa Leticia da Silva, wife of Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Carla Bruni Sarkozy, wife of France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy. They were guided by Jackie Hale, a teacher, and CAPA student Laneece Patterson, visiting a ballet studio and the high school's orchestra room. The total visit took about 20 minutes.

Then, at 11:05 a.m., the spouses of the world leaders gathered with Mrs. Obama in the high school's "Cabaret Room" for a group photo. Last one to arrive was Mrs. Sarkozy, who was escorted onto the stage. When she turned around and saw the photographers, she seemed surprised. "Oh my gosh! Hi!" she said to the assembled media. The group was asked to stand on a short stage for the photograph by the press pool. As flashbulbs and cameras clicked frantically, the women laughed and joked amongst themselves. "Tell us when we can stop," Mrs. Obama said, laughing, adding, "Cheese!"

After the photo opportunity, the media was escorted into the school's auditorium and seated in the back. The auditorium was filling up with excited students, while in the balcony, the spouses took their seats.

Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt said he was honored to have the First Lady visit, noting that the students of Pittsburgh CAPA "have big dreams and they are displaying for you their commitment to doing all the hard work to reach those dreams." He also announced that the school was one of only two high schools in Pennsylvania to be named a national blue ribbon school, which which honors schools that are either academically superior, or have made dramatic gains in student achievement and helped close the gaps in achievement among minority and disadvantaged students..

At around 11:27, CAPA's principal Melissa Pearlman took the stage to introduce each summit spouse, who stood up in the balcony as their names were annouced, to cheers from about 250 students seated in the auditorium (not visible to your press pooler). When Ms. Pearlman added India at the end of the introductions -- she had inadvertently omitted it – the young audience erupted in cheers for India.

Then, at 11:30, Ms. Pearlman introduced Mrs. Obama, who was greeted with wild shrieks from the audience. She was wearing a boldly patterned purple and white silk dress from one of her favorite Chicago designers, Maria Cornejo of Zero, and a wide studded leather belt.

She greeted the students with a “How are you all doin’ today?” More screams and shrieks. Mrs. Obama went on to deliver a 12-minute speech about the importance of arts education, telling the students “you can literally say the whole world is watching you today,” and telling the spouses that they were about to see “some of the hottest up-and-coming young talents in the nation – that would be you.”

Mrs. Obama also thanked award winning composer Marvin Hamlisch and Carnegie Mellon University professor Gregory Lehane for their role in auditioning the students for today’s performance.

She praised the three artists performing with the students – Cellist Yo Yo Ma, country singer Trisha Yearwood and noted that Sara Bareilles’ songs – “Gravity” and “Love Song” have “gotten me through many a day, ach, I love her.”

She noted that “my good friend” Carla Sarkozy expressed amazement during their tour that “here in America, here you have people who can sing, while in France not often you get all those talents wrapped in one.”

“The arts aren't just a nice thing to do if you have a little time,” Mrs. Obama added. “It’s not just a hobby although it can be a very good hobby. [Barack and I] believe strongly the arts aresomehow an extra part of our national life, through.music, literature, drama and dance we tell the story of our past and express our hopes for the future.”

SEE CORRECTION OF ABOVE QUOTE

“ Listen to your parents and your teachers,” Mrs. Obama called out to the audience after she ended her speech.

While the program focused on the performing arts, 9th grader Miller Schulman of Squirrel Hill -- a student in the school's visual arts department --presented his artwork on the theme of "Pittsburgh Transforming," as a gift to the First Lady.

Musical highlights? Impossible to pick. The CAPA choral ensemble sang a song written expressly for the occasion, accompanied by Yo Yo Ma: “Welcome, welcome G20 summit/We’re glad you came and hope things will change…”

Yo Yo Ma's performance of "The Swan" from Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals," accompanied by Jason Yoder, a CAPA junior, on percussion – whom Mr. Ma introduced as “my buddy” -- was another highlight. The students also seemed truly thrilled by Sarah Bareilles, who easily got the most raucous reception after her performance of her No. 1 hit “Love Song”

“I was doing jumping jacks in the back because I thought I was cold but I'm just really nervous,” Ms. Bareilles told the audience, to laughter.

The program ended at 12:15. All the participants came out on stage for their bows, earning a standing ovation. The guest artists agreed to stay for a “talkback.” (Your pooler was being ushered out with the rest of the media when she heard Yo Yo Ma ask the teenage audience -- "Are any of you ever moody?")

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2009-09-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

Mid-September thoughts

I know it's early, but with the cooler nights I am already thinking about flame colored trees and remembering last year's incredible visit to New Hampshire in October. I was there for work, to cover that state's primary and a speech by John McCain, but I sneaked in some leaf-peeping in the White Mountains and southern N.H.... there is truly something about New England's foliage that just knocks me senseless. I think it's simply that there are so many, many maples...?

These pictures, however, were taken in West Virginia in 2007, on my way home to Pittsburgh from Charlottesville, Va.... absurdly brilliant...

This photo, taken of a side road somewhere in the mountains right at the border of Virginia and West Virginia stirs me, too. I wonder where it leads....

My trip took nearly all day. It was starting to get dark, and I was reminded of one of the spookiest/Halloweeniest lines in all of Shakespeare, from Macbeth, I think, which I memorized in high school: "Light thickens and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood... good things of day begin to droop and drowse, and night's black agents to their prey do rouse..."

2009-09-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

So, call me a self-promoter, but you read the subtitle to this blog so you know what you're getting into... I am now taking the opportunity to promote PGPlus, our new innovative premium content web site. The Guardian of London has even written about us!!! And I shamelessly sent out this email to friends, which I will now post here:

If you're bemoaning the slow demise of the print newspaper, and of all that excellent journalism that seems to be vanishing, here's a way you can help! The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has come up with a ground-breaking new initiative that we hope will create something of a new business model for ALL newspapers. We learned from the NYTimes failure of "Times Select" -- when they made people pay for all their favorite columnists and writers. It was a flop. We are NOT going to take away ANYTHING that people already get online now at www.post-gazette.com... for free. Rather, we have a new initiative being unveiled on Tuesday that we hope will make money for the paper. It's called PGPlus, and for the low, low price of $3 a month you get access to all sorts of NEW online "extras" -- but original content nonetheless.

It's a way to address the fact that we have millions of unique users who pay nothing for our first-rate journalism provided online.

And hey, that's okay... except that even journalists need to eat!

We have lots of talent in this newsroom, lots of professional journalism experience, that we can offer in this new format. Most of PGPlus, frankly, is aimed at Pittsburgh's huge sports audiences who cannot get enough of the Steelers, Penguins, Penn State and Pitt football or basketball -- or even the miserable Pirates.But there will be other things in the mix besides sports.

I will be hosting a ten minute weekly webcast (with guests!) called "Mackenzie Carpenter's Omnivore," loosely modeled on Tina Brown and her "Daily Beast," where I talk about whatever suits my fancy -- in politics, culture, books, gossip, lifestyle and try to interview smart, funny people about these issues without being too stuffy.

One recent show noted, for example, that the New Yorker's online "Book Bench" blogged about and linked to my story a few weeks ago on the lively independent publishing scene in Pittsburgh -- prompting an online fight in their comments section about the merits/demerits of Pittsburgh! In THE NEW YORKER!!!!

PG Plus will also have book critics, movie critics, food writers, photographers, cartoonists all offering their own content too. Again, for $3 a month, you can help us invent a new business model that's rich in content, fun AND will help save newspapers and ... DEMOCRACY!!! :)

To learn more, go to www.post-gazette.com and click on PG Plus...

2009-08-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

Just finished a week of following Netroots Nation and its counter-conference, Right Online. These bloggers are so interesting... and I got to see Bill Clinton wag his finger at a heckler while frantically racing to file a story on deadline, because, of course, he was late late late to address the liberal bloggers...
I did manage to play blogger tourist and shoot this pic of Daily Kos himself, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, taking a break (he's slouching on a clear plastic chair). He was pretty much the first to do political blogging on a wide scale... Daily Kos is the biggest community website in the world. He was very nice. And so was Austin James, a very young blogger for the American Majority, a conservative group.

Sublime summer weather

2009-07-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

It's July 18th and the air is fresh and cool... it could be Maine, it could be Oregon... but it's Pittsburgh, and it's the best sleeping weather you could imagine... no air-conditioning unit in the window yet, and it's July 18.
The hydrangeas have been outstanding... as you can see from this photo taken on my rather lame BlackBerry camera. That's the tent my daughter Leslie pitched in our backyard as soon we returned home from our New England trip... she just couldn't bring herself to sleep in her own bed, I guess. She and daughter Annie were a delight all throughout the trip... here they are outside the Plaza Hotel in New York... where we stumbled upon Mariah Carey preening for the papparazzi. Inspired, I told my girls to preen for me:

They were pretty amazed, but, hey, anything can happen in Manhattan... and here they are on a friend's Vermont porch, preparing to go inspect the bullfrogs in her pond...

And, to top it all off, here's a photo from another front porch I really like ... far far from Vermont, but just as beautiful!

If there is a heaven it must be early June

2009-06-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

Every day, I walk outside and think, the the garden cannot become any more beautiful. Then, it defies me and becomes more beautiful.

How is this possible? I do not have a particularly grand garden... my house, while atmospheric in its late 19th-C.-farmhouse-ness...
is a tad shabby around the edges (although the dining room looked awfully nice the other evening for my annual strawberry shortcake fest... I baked up a whole lot of the richest shortcakes and dumped them on the table, and voila! Abundance....)

I honestly believe, though, I live in a palace -- at least I do when it's early June. I told a friend that one evening not long ago, I came home from a hard day at work, stepped out the back door, and glimpsed this sight... all the while inhaling the sharp, sweet fragrance of honeysuckle. I felt I was the richest woman in the world, although technically I am far from that:

2009-05-04T17:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a fabulous article about Mary Chapin that I had to share...

Lovely, lovely May

2009-05-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

It's the month of May, the month when we gardeners go out of our minds with delirium. Just when I'm thinking NOTHING is more beautiful than the marble pink of magnolia soulangeana blossoms against a stormy gray April sky, May presents herself with lilacs, daphne, and glossy green, lime green, lettuce green, velvet green green green green... if we're lucky, we get some soft spring days before summer's fiercer heat... but Pittsburgh's Mays are generally chilly and rainy. So we shall see.

This year's cherry tree bloom was a bit anemic, which worries me, so I'm posting a photo of last year's bloom, which was spectacular... right outside my window...

Back in the real world, I was in Washington, DC, last week, reporting on how the city has changed or not changed in the first 100 days of Obama. You can read about it here.

Better yet, check out my video version of the story at http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=101823

Dreaming of magnolias

2009-03-18T04:53:00.000-07:00

Pittsburgh's magnolias are nowhere near close to bloom... but I am already starting to fantasize... maybe three weeks from now? Here is one magnolia whose buds I captured for posterity a year ago... it's on the way to work... I nearly drove off the road when I saw it. Please ignore the yewball right beside it. I would like to hurl a Molotov cocktail at these horrible foundation plantings... they're magnets for bugs and mice and peeing dogs... and ugly to boot. But oh, those magnolias!!!!

dreams of summer gardens

2009-03-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

I have finally finished Shirley Hazzard's "Graham on Capri" and by the end, of course. was completely beguiled ... less by Graham Greene (what a grouch) than by Capri and Hazzard herself... she writes very sweetly about Harold Acton which makes me remember when my friend Wistar and I, eager teenagers, incongrously served the great Florentine aesthete spinach hors d'oeuvres on the back deck of her parent's house in Princeton. (Here father, Alan Williams, was Acton's editor for his book "Memoirs of an Aesthete" which, sadly seems out of print but you can buy it here for about a gajillion dollars.)

Here is a gorgeous passage about the garden of an abandoned cliffside villa on Capri Hazzard and her husband used to wander through which made me want to go there immediately... I did visit the island in September of 1975 during my senior year in college and I've never forgotten its extravagant beauty. I must go back before I die...

For the moment, though, this passage makes me long for green shade and warmth and damp earth smells...

"Inexpressibly romantic in its solitude and decline, it was cared for by a custodial Caprese family who for years intrepidly occupied the kitchen quarters at the landward rear of the building, while the haunted drawing rooms, shedding stucco and gold leaf, teetered ever closer to the limestone brink. The damp garden, tended by the housekeeper, was ravishing: suitably overgrown, encroached on by a cloud of ferns, creepers, acanthus, agapanthus, amaryllis; shadowed by umbrella pine, and by cypress and ilex; lit from within by massed colors of fuschia, hortensia, azalea and all manner of trailing mauves, blues, purples -- wisteria and iris in spring, solanum and "stella Italia" in high summer; in autumn, plumbago and belladonna lilies. Geraniums were the size of shrubs, and of every red and coral gradation. The different jasmines flowered there, on walls and trellises, in relays throughout the year.

"In September and October, great crowds of wild cyclamen, small fragrant flower of the Italian woods, sprang from crevices... a garden of mossy textures and dark dense greens, with impasto of luminous flowers: a place of birdsong and long silence; of green lizards and shadowy cats, and decadent Swinburnean beauty."

aaauurrghhhh!!!!
--

TODAY AT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

2009-02-03T17:51:00.000-08:00

It's just occurred to me that I've been at three "centers of the universe" in the past three to four months. I.e., in the middle of huge crowds who were ecstatic about something.

First, it was Grant Park in Chicago on Election Night.

Then, it was the National Mall during President Obama's Inaugural.

And then it was today, sitting at my desk, while outside an estimated 400,000 people gathered to celebrate the Steelers' victory. I took this photo with my BlackBerry from my window. It's not great, but you get the idea:

Actually, we were kind of stuck in the office for the most of the day. It was like being lodged deep in the internal gears of some huge vast machine that was grinding away... and you could HEAR the grinding... BOM BOM boom BOM BOM boom WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU...

Et cetera

My favorite scene, which we have on our web site: Troy Polomalu doing the Mosh Pit thing:

You can see the video of Troy at our Post-Gazette web site here.

How I found out we'd won the Super Bowl

2009-02-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

I think this is a picture of Bruce Springsteen from the Super Bowl. That massive, leonine head...

Someone should sculpt him.

I should note that I once slept on a sidewalk ALL NIGHT LONG so I could get tickets to one of his concerts. Needless to say, on this particular night, I found him wonderful and riveting in a sad way. It was as though a long lost boyfriend had emerged from the past and was as virile and gorgeous as ever while I was old... so OLD...

Okay, Mackenzie, you're 54. Get over yourself.

The New York Times and other critics didn't agree that Bruce was so transcendent. You can read about that here.

Anyway, towards the end of the second half, when Kurt Warner caught that touchdown I thought, well, this can't be good. Sure, they have two minutes left, but what are the chances...?

This kind of football is actually almost painful to sit through. Especially when your newspaper, the place where you work...the place you plan to cling to until they pry it loose from your cold, dead hands... is probably going to reap all kinds of extra ad revenue if the Steelers WIN. So, if they LOSE, it's not just bad for Steelers Nation, it's bad for the Pittsburgh-Post-Gazette (One of America's Great Newspapers).

So, I bid youngest daughter Annie-belle farewell and wandered into my room to lie down in darkness. I lay there, thinking, it's okay, Mackenzie, be still your beating heart, it's only A FOOTBALL GAME.

Then, from the house across the street on our small city block, I heard a strange sound. It was Kent Tarpley, a RABID Steelers fan. He sits in his front living room during games watching it on his big screen TV. Basically, you can follow the play-by-play from his howling, his hollering and his "yowzas."
(He's also the guy who saved our house from burning down a few years ago. You can read about that here.)

Out of this silent night, I suddenly heard this kind of "HMHhPHFFFF!!!! harfmfff!!! YEOWWWWWff!!!

And I thought, hmmm, something must have happened? I got up and wandered out into the family room. "What happened?" I asked Annie-belle.

"Oh," she said in her tiny little 14-year-old voice. "The Steelers got a touchdown, they're winning and there are 23 seconds left."

HMHhPHFFFF!!!!

harfmfff!!!

YEOWWWWWff!!!

Suddenly I heard the sound of firecrackers going off out on the street below.

I opened our window. Neighbors were coming out onto their porches, yelling for joy.

"Mom, don't do it. Don't be embarrassing!" Annie implored, as I leaned out and screamed in a strangled voice, "GO STEELERS!!!"

Inaugural... Super Bowl... Inaugural... Super Bowl...

2009-02-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

IN PITTSBURGH WATCHING THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS IN THE SUPER BOWL
I'm trying to finish my posts about the Inaugural, but the Super Bowl is on, and our Steelers are in it. Hard to concentrate. Somehow, the Inaugural is receding into the mists of time... already it seems so five minutes ago... Groundhog day is upon us... then Valentine's Day... then St. Patrick's...
Oh, never mind.

My daughters are sacked out on the sofa in our second floor family room, stubbornly refusing to explain to me what is going on. It's 10-7, but, I wonder aloud, vaguely, is the momentum with the Cardinals? ... How would I know?
Leslie and Annie will also not cooperate with my attempts at picture taking.

The Cardinals just received a 5 yard penalty but I'm still not sure what it all means. My husband is at the Post-Gazette, having volunteered to work that evening... do you think it was to get away from my questions? I'm not sure why. Indeed, there is so very, very much I am not sure of in this world... But one thing I DO know is that Maira Kalman's piece in the NY Times about the Inaugural was far more artistic than anything I would ever post. You can look at it here.
Anyway, let's make a long story short: On Monday, Jan. 19th, I went down to 14th and U to meet Bob Witeck, a K Street lobbyist for GLBT causes... he's extremely nice and very plugged in. He told me he was going to the Huffington Post Ball that night. We had lunch at a Thai restaurant, then walked down the street to Ben's Chili Bowl, which Obama had visited a few days earlier. Here's a picture of him emerging from the eatery, having just ordered and consumed a chili "half-smoke."
By the time Bob and I got there, it was bedlam. Long lines of people outside, snaking back into the alley, patiently waiting for a chance to visit what had become something of a shrine. Here are not-great photo from my BlackBerry of the lines heading back into the alley behind Ben's Chili Bowl:

And here are some folks in the street in front of Ben's. The police had parked in front and were politely asking people to get on the sidewalk.

Oh. Back to the Super Bowl. James Harrison just ran down the field and nearly broke his neck making a touchdown for the Steelers. The longest play in Super Bowl history. At least I think he made a touchdown. They're reviewing it.

John Madden just said James Harrison ran like James Brown. Bob Costas says it's one of the biggest turnarounds in Super Bowl history. They're already calling it the Immaculate Interception.

Okay. Back to the Inaugural. It's a good thing that I was down at 14th and U that day... I hadn't planned on doing much reporting, trying to save my energies for the next day down on the National Mall. But at 5 pm, while I was preparing to move from my dad's apartment to Georgetown to camp out overnight at a Washington Post editor's apartment -- within walking distance of the Mall -- I got a call from the PG: Seems that the editor had decided we needed an Inaugural "set up" piece for the next day's paper.

He decided that at 5 pm, and they needed me to write it.

I was furious. Ready to quit. They'd had ALL DAY to figure this out.

After having a few nervous breakdowns, and cussing in front of my father, who was driving me to Georgetown ("I don't mind, I understand," he said. What a great guy.) I let myself in to my friend's apartment, hooked up my laptop and started writing. I had only a few hours to do it, and had to interrupt my work with a trip back to my father's apartment to pick up a credential I'd left behind. My sister Camilla came to pick me up. There she is, on the left, in this photo taken about ten years ago, since I don't have anything more recent... our stepsister Carolyn is on the right.

Camilla was a calming influence... Broadway show tunes were blaring on her XM satellite car radio, and when Edie Adams came on, as Eileen, to sing "I'm a Little Bit in Love," from the musical "Wonderful Town" -- the VERY SONG I HAD SUNG when I played Eileen in the Princeton Day School musical -- I knew it was a good omen. Especially with my sister Camilla (THE musical comedy queen in Princeton's Triangle Club, ca. 1977-78) right there!

Anyway, I wrote the Inaugural setup story. It's perfectly fine, but it could have been better. I died a thousand deaths while writing it, though. You can read it here.

TUESDAY, Jan. 20.
I got up early and headed towards DuPont Circle, my old stomping grounds. I used to live on O Street, between 21st and 22nd. Memories came at me from every corner... the Rathskeller... Second Story Books... the CVS (in my day known as People's Drug Store).
I got on the DuPont Circle Metro. The trains were crowded but not unmanageable. When I emerged from Metro Center onto the streets of downtown Washington (near 11th and G?) I was greeted with an extraordinary sight: wide boulevards thronged with people, not cars, moving inexorably towards the mall, only to be rerouted around whole city blocks, past vendors hawking organic food and cappucino... a carnival atmosphere... two million people, most of whom seemed to be in some kind of state of euphoria. At some point, when I can figure it out, I will post videos that I shot with the Flip camera the newspaper gave me that document that extraordinary scene. But I haven't figured quite how to do that yet.
I think it's time to stop now and watch the end of the Super Bowl. To be continued...

Obama's Inaugural

2009-01-24T15:27:00.000-08:00

I didn't take this picture from my cell phone. Allison Price, former Western Pa press spokeswoman for Barack Obama's campaign, did. Allison, who I am still in touch with, posted this photo on her facebook page and I pilfered it. Thanks, Allison!

I was too busy back at the Lincoln Memorial shooting video... which I never was able to send due to technical difficulties... to take still pictures of what was going on around me. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I went down to Washington on Friday, Jan. 16, after finishing two preview stories and flying out the door into single digit temperatures... It was COLD..... the snow blowing across the fields as I drove into the Laurel Highlands. But I had Gabriel Faure's Requiem playing on my Mp3... and when I heard the exquisite, ethereal final movement -- "In Paradisum" -- all my anxieties about the challenges of the upcoming week melted away. I think music has that affect on me... whenever I get nervous about an assignment, I just put on some Ravel or Chopin and I'm fine.

You can listen to Kings College Choir of Cambridge's version of "In Paradisum" here.

D.C., thankfully, was warmer than Pittsburgh... I arrived at Rebecca Trafton Frischkorn's fabulous Washington apartment that evening, and after some social time with the dear girl and her great and good friend Dodge and a few others, collapsed into bed.

Here's a photograph from my BlackBerry of lovely Becky/Rebecca the next morning, sipping cappucino made FROM HER OWN MACHINE:

And here's a photograph(below) of what she USED to look like, back in Wyonegonic days. She's the little girl on the far left, deeply immersed in sewing something on her teddy bear -- or at least PRETENDING to, for the photographer.... I actually remember when they made us pose for those pictures. I think I'm at the table but obscured by the girl in the white headband (sigh).

Oh, wait... I was supposed to be writing about the 2008 presidential Inaugural, not Wyonegonic camp, circa 1963. But it's late and I will write more about my incredible adventures tomorrow....

SUNDAY JAN. 25th...

Okay, where was I? Oh, yes. Here's a picture of your correspondent, blogging and bleary eyed, the next morning (Saturday, Jan. 17) in Rebecca's apartment (actually POSTING TO THE BLOG is a more correct way to put it, I've been told... in this case to the "Early Returns" blog). You can read some of the blog postings here and here and here and here and here and here and here
and here.

That Saturday was spent gallivanting around visiting old friends while posting to "Early Returns" which is mostly a product of my colleague Tim McNulty (who also writes great pieces like this on about Steelers Nation ) but since it was the weekend, I was on duty. Maybe it was crazy, or rude, or both, but I was tethered to my laptop, posting things that I found on the Internet that I thought might be relevant to our readers. We don't always do original reporting on blogs; we serve as aggregators -- hunting down interesting fragments of information and color that might otherwise get lost in the blogosphere...

Then it was on to Dad-and-Ele's apartment, just a a short ride away. D&E were a Godsend on this trip... they not only gave me a free place to sleep, and free food, but free parking in their apartment building with AN AUTOMATIC GARAGE DOOR OPENER!!!!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank D&E -- there they are in a photo from Thanksgiving a few years ago, with my husband, Gary Rotstein. And props to you too, Gary, for holding down the fort while I was gone.

At any rate, after depositing bags in D&E's apartment, it was time to head to the Walter Washington Convention Center to pick up media credentials: a mission undertaken with some dread, given the talk of traffic gridlock.

It was not to be: there was a parking spot right in front of the Convention Center, and after being ushered through four security checkpoints, I found myself in media credential land. As there were NO OTHER REPORTERS there... the Inaugural volunteers actually seemed glad to see me. They gave me a packet of credentials, some hand-warmers, which would prove INVALUABLE, and I was outta there.

Then it was time to visit Jayne Clark, the lovely, effervescent, tart-tongued travel writer for USAToday:

She was battling a cold but received me graciously in her charming little Georgetown house and allowed me to post to my blog in her living room while she tended to some family business. Then we headed over to her colleague, USAToday columnist Craig Wilson's equally charming Georgetown house. Here's a picture of Craig from USAToday:

There, we had drinks with him, his supernice partner Jack (who works in health care statistics and probably contributes far more to society than I ever will) and Olivia Barker, another extremely nice USAToday reporter. Is all this friendliness a USAToday thing? Sure, we talked about how the troubled newspaper industry, but generally, the mood was cheery and even a bit riotous... as it will be when reporters get together to gossip.

The next day, Sunday, it was up bright and early to meet PG columnist Tony Norman in front of the Georgetown Starbucks to head over to Capitol Hill to pick up yet more media credentials. Tony has been to DC before but I drove him around a bunch of neighborhoods he'd never seen, to help him get the lay of the land. Again, despite all the dire predictions, Capitol Hill on Sunday morning was empty too. I ventured into the Russell Senate Office Building, where I'd spent so much time as a young aspiring field producer for public television, and again, I was the only print reporter in line for credentials.

Of course, all of this quiescence wouldn't last... I gather it was bedlam up there on Tuesday... but I wasn't to see it, since I was down at the other end of the National Mall, thank goodness. More on that later.

After dropping Tony off near DuPont Circle, I headed over to the Washington Hilton to cover the wild n' crazy Emily's List lunch for Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, et al.

There, I ran into my old colleague, former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summer intern Indira Lakshmanan, now, after a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe, the diplomatic correspondent for Bloomberg. I've run into her a few times on the campaign trail... she is delightful. We sat in the back of the room and laughed hysterically when U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore banged her high heeled shoe on the podium to emphasize a point.

I filed a breaking news story about the lunch for the Web, and, later, a more polished print version. But, I have to confess, a far better piece on this event was penned by Salon's Rebecca Traister. She said everything I wish I could have said -- but I had only 12 inches allotted to my story, after all...

Sigh.

That evening it was out to dinner with D&E and Aunt Anne, at DeCarlo's, a terrific restaurant in Spring Valley. We had a great time. I felt so blessed to be spending time with them, especially since all three are the liveliest, most acerbic, most fun dinner partners you could ask for -- and they don't mind if you steal bites of their dessert!!!!

More later.

Going to the Inaugural

2009-01-16T05:21:00.000-08:00

I am headed to Washington, D.C. this afternoon for five days... to cover Barack Obama's Inaugural. Let's hope I don't encounter this scene along the way. But I probably will, so I might as well just relax and enjoy the experience. This whole year has been so extraordinary.

Tonight, I will be staying with my dear childhood friend Rebecca Frischkorn. We've known each other since we were nine years old, at Wyonegonic Camp in Maine, when she was Becky Trafton (tall, strong, a true leader) and I was Kenzie Carpenter (short, pesky, and a chatterbox).

We will probably spend the evening singing camp songs together from memory. I will post a photo of us from those days when I get a chance.

Today, Rebecca is an accomplished garden designer, writer and lecturer and host of the acclaimed PBS series, GardenStory.

Isn't she beautiful in this picture?

Kitchens R Us

2009-01-15T08:08:00.001-08:00

My sister called me up today and harangued me for not posting photos of my kitchen. Well, in one last act of procrastination before going back to finishing a story about the Obamas, here they are.

It's a pretty unfancy kitchen... the chairs are mismatched, painted in different shades of pale green, lime, celery... and the countertops aren't granite, but what the heck, it's like a palace to me... I especially love the old pine table we found 20 years ago at an outdoor antiques fair in southern Massachesetts. My only splurge: pale green glass drawer pulls from Restoration Hardware... (will post those after I take a picture of them).

Back to work!!!!

Go Steelers N@

2009-01-14T04:37:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling great about Pittsburgh today, even if it is 12 degrees out. The Steelers are playing in the AFC championships, Pitt's basketball team is number one in the country, and the Post-Gazette remains a media organization to be reckoned with, even as the newspaper industry crumbles all around us.

Here is a great story in today's Post-Gazette by the great Bill Toland about how great Pittsburgh is...
And here's a link the the New York Times' FRONT PAGE piece the other day on how great (sort of) we are...

design blog madness

2009-01-13T05:49:00.000-08:00

Here is a gorgeous blog header to one of my favorite design blogs, mynottinghill.blogspot.com, which I featured in a story in the Post-Gazette today about my secret passion, interior design, and about some fabulous design blogs that my sister alerted me to. You can read about it here. Three of the blog designers hail from the Pittsburgh area, which must tell you something!!!!
And here is a list of fabulous blogs that I referred to in the article:

http://habituallychic.blogspot.com/
http://www.allthebestblog.com/
http://barefootintheorchard.blogspot.com/
http://www.ctcottageindustries.com/
http://www.historical-home.com/
http://londoncallingloudly.blogspot.com/
http://mynottinghill.blogspot.com/2008/12/need-some-christmas-cheer-click-here.html
http://russellversaci.blogspot.com/
http://shelterinteriordesign.blogspot.com/2008/10/feeling-fall-inas-new-digs.html
http://www.smallplacestyle.blogspot.com/
http://brookegiannetti.typepad.com/velvet_and_linen/
http://whiteandwander.blogspot.com/
http://bunnytomerlin.blogspot.com/

Amy Stanley!

2009-01-05T17:21:00.001-08:00

We had a visit from the fabulous University of Chicago historian Amy Dru Stanley, her husband Craig Becker and their adorable boys, Tom and Isaac, who stopped overnight with us on their way to Washington D.C. I've known her since she was in 9th grade and I was in 11th grade and she was hanging out with my sister Camilla and at the Williamses' house et cetera... I have an elegant side table that I call the "Amy Stanley memorial table" because my little sister Sophie carved Amy's name in it -- probably because she was mad at Camilla for some reason and wanted to get her in trouble.

Flash forward many years later: When I was covering election day in Chicago, Amy took me all around Hyde Park, to Obama's polling place, past Bill Ayers house, past Obama's house, etc etc and in short was just tremendously helpful. I wrote a breaking news story later that morning in her kitchen and quoted her, which was fun. I should probably send it to the PDS alumni weekly: one PDS grad interviews another!

Great Rooms

2009-01-01T06:31:00.000-08:00

News flash: As I slide into my dotage, my interior design style is evolving.

I used to prefer the spare and the pale, and still do love it... in my living room, for example, featuring Aunt Anne's childhood writing desk and two prints I bought from my friend Jane Roesch at her exquisite antique shop, Merrivale Antiques, years ago...

More globally, here's British designer/aesthete David Mlinaric's exquisite London dining room, courtesy of the fabulous HabituallyChic.com blog... tranquility, defined.
BUT...

I also find myself drawn to that particularly British phenomenon, the Great Room/Library... there's more clutter here, to be sure, but there's something about all those books and paintings and comfortable sofas that just pulls me in and wants me to plant roots. I like warmer colors, too.
Something like this:

This is our dining room -- except when it isn't. Now, it's kind of an all-purpose reading, piano playing, hanging out room... for me, anyway (there's no television so there's not much appeal for the rest of the family). I love a dining room with walls of books... actually, I don't have a WALL of books, alas, but I found a respectable looking bookshelf at Target for $80 which does just fine. See a glimpse through the front hall, below:

Actually, that shelf is twinned with a smaller farmhouse bookshelf in the room. They're not exactly symmetrical, but I don't care, I love their quirky, mismatched quality. Annie's piano doesn't exactly make an elegant decorating statement either, but I love it because it's old (a Wurlitzer, which, it is rumored, once bedecked a dance hall) and she learned to play lovely music on it. The color, a kind of pumpkin, is an experiment for me. I just got tired of pale pink, and so far I like it, although the jury is still out...

On a far grander scale, but nonetheless still inspirational, here is Oscar and Annette de la Renta's Great Room, as designed by Ernesto Buch, in their Connecticut house...

You can look at more pictures of their house here.

John Richardson's library/great room in his country house can't be found online, alas, but I scanned some photos from an old magazine which might give an idea of how alluring that space is:

You can read about Richardson's quest for a similarly comfortable place to work in New York City in a Vanity Fair piece here. Richardson, author of an acclaimed series of biographies on Picasso, didn't have an easy time of it, but oh, to have such problems:

"... the English grainer and marbleizer Malcolm Robson came up from Virginia to glaze the walls with the colors that paint-mixing machines can never approximate. As I had hoped, everything glowed with light, and the spaces opened up into one another as attractively as they would in an 18th-century English country house. Unfortunately, the scale of the layout upstaged my battered bits and pieces of furniture. Nice little Regency tables looked forlorn; everything seemed to have shrunk..."

Then, of course, there's Nancy Lancaster's hugely legendary great room at Ditchley, a room that is a tad grand, perhaps, for my tastes, but oh, to have seen that room, just once (see photo, below).

David Cecil, in his wonderful biography of Lord Melbourne, captures this particular sensibility -- born in the 18th C. -- perfectly:

"The great Whig country houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are among the most conspicuous monuments of English history. Ornate and massive, with their pedimented porticoes, their spreading balustraded wings, they dominate the landscape around them with a magnificent self-assurance. Nor are their interiors less imposing. Their colonnaded entrance halls, whence the Adam staircase sweeps up beneath a fluted dome; their cream and gilt libraries piled with sumptuous editions of the classics; their orangeries peopled with casts from the antique; their saloons hung with yellow silk, and with ceiling a doorways painted in delicate arabesque by Angelica Kauffmann...

"Yet they are not palaces. There is something easy-going and unofficial about them. Between library and saloon one comes on little rooms, full of sporting prints and comfortable untidiness... even the great rooms themselves, with their roomy writing tables, their armchairs, their tables piled with albums and commonplace books, seem designed less for state occasions than for private life -- for leisure and lounging, for intimate talk and desultory reading. And the portraits that glow down from the walls exhibit a similar character. The gentlemen lean back in their hunting coats, the ladies stroll in their parks with spaniels snapping at the ribbons that dangle from the garden hats slung on their arms. In big and in detail these houses convey an effect of splendid naturalness...

So, you get the general idea. Great rooms are great!

Resolutions

2008-12-31T11:11:00.000-08:00

Okay, here are my New Year's Resolutions, in no particular order. In 2009, I want to:

-- cook more tasty, nutritious meals for my family
-- be a better mother and wife
-- be perfect, in fact
-- scrub the kitchen floor more frequently
-- go skiing
-- learn to speak more softly
-- listen more
-- complain less
-- appreciate, appreciate, appreciate
-- take the path of least resistance
-- avoid malicious gossip, while enjoying fun gossip
-- enjoy my newfound energy and health
-- to get through the Inaugural without disaster striking
-- to go to New England this summer to visit my friends
-- to practice my French with Patricia Hermenault, my neighbor up the street, and learn a little more German from the Awodeys next door
-- relish every day, even difficult days, as a gift

So long, Christmas, hello snow, hello Izzy and Smokie

2008-12-31T10:52:00.001-08:00

It's been a snowy day today, as I've already noted. A nice gift after the other day's warm spell.Despite the tranquil setting, though, even with a little snow, the hilly, wind-whipped city streets can be... as they say in Pittsburgh-ese... quite "slippy."

Meanwhile, inside the house, Izzy gazes at me with those indigo eyes of hers... heart-rending...

While Smokie is parked on the radiator by the window, her favorite place to snooze all day...

Upside down...

Here's another closeup... notice how dark her eyes look, like she wants to claw my eyes out...
What a little clown!

Here's our front hallway, all Christmasy... until tomorrow, New Year's Day, when it all goes away...

Sigh.

New Year's Eve snow

2008-12-31T06:39:00.000-08:00

We got winter back today, albeit somewhat lightly. One of the great gifts of living in Pittsburgh is the blessing of lake-effect snow, even if it only dusts things sometimes. But the wind is howling and the snow is flying and Smokie, our cat, is at the window by my easy chair (God, I sound like an old geezer; Eliza, fetch me my slippers!), riveted. The children are padding about the house, talking baby talk to our dog and our cat -- always a sign that they (the children, anyway) are feeling cozy and happy.

Happy New Year!

Peet's Coffee

2008-12-30T05:08:00.001-08:00

My favorite time of day: an early winter's morning, sitting in an easy chair, books all about, in a silent, sleeping house. At least everyone else is still sleeping but I'm reading or blogging or checking emails. sipping Peet's mail order coffee (which I swear is the best I've ever tasted and actually is better than the Peet's you buy at the supermarket... here's a picture of their original coffee shop on Fillmore Street in San Francisco which I hope to visit someday).

One is sort of in a quiet, if a bit caffeinated, communion with the world...

Tarte Tatin

2008-12-28T05:54:00.000-08:00

I made a wonderful Tarte Tatin yesterday. I recommend doing this while playing Andre Previn's "A Carnegie Hall Christmas" in the background. Frederica Von Stade and Kathleen Battle are sublime. And so what if it's Dec. 27? It's important to keep Christmas in the house for as long as possible -- especially yesterday, when the temperature outside, bizarrely, nudged 70 degrees.

The tart was gone by midnight... demolished by little chickens pecking away.

Here's the recipe, courtesy of Gourmet magazine. The secret is to have good puff pastry on hand (I got mine from Trader Joe's) and to cook the apples in an iron skillet, enough to steam away a lot of the apple's juices so the caramel takes center stage. Some recipes call for more butter and sugar, but it's not really necessary.... the result is still rich burnt sugar goodness.

I'm dreaming of... watching Christmas movies with Annie

2008-12-27T05:59:00.000-08:00

Last night Annie asked me if we had any Christmas movies we could watch. I pulled out my old favorite, "White Christmas," which I've always loved but have probably have seen too many times -- just as with "A Christmas Story" and "It's a Wonderful Life." Still, no Christmas is complete without seeing the first half or third of it.

Impressions after the 53rd viewing: Bing kind of phones it in, and looks completely middle aged and flabby in his tee-shirt, but, oh, that voice! The lush Rosemary Clooney is spilling out of her dress, but, oh, that voice... Danny Kaye is trying a little too hard, but he is adorable nonetheless. Vera-Ellen, I'm sorry to say, is almost unbearable to watch -- painfully thin, indeed anorexic/bulimic -- and in her big, fabulously cheesy/tacky dance scene in Florida with Kaye, she mugs shamelessly for the camera.

But Dean Jagger beats them all, as the gruff-with-a-heart-of-gold major general. What a great, great actor. I should look up what else he's been in.

Two of magical movie moments: when the four leads sing Irving Berlin's "Snow" while choo-chooing on the train up to Vermont ("It-won't-be-long-before-we'll-all-be-there-with snoooooohhhhhwww"), and...." I'll soon be there with snow (Danny Kaye goes chsh chsh chsh chsh in the background) .... I'll wash my hair with snow....And with a spade of snow/I'll build a man that's made of snow...I'd love to stay up with you but I recommend a little shuteye/Go to sleep/And dream/Of snow, snow, snow, snow, snow!"

And then, the lovely, comforting song sung late at night over milk and sandwiches (sheesh, doesn't anyone drink in this picture?) by Bing and Rosemary: "When you're worried/and you can't sleep/Just count your blessings/instead of sheep/and you'll fall asleeeeeeep/counting your blesssssssinggssss."

Sigh.

Anyway, right around this time my 14-year old daughter got a little restless and informed me she was going to bail. This movie, in all its formulaic, schmatzy, late-period-Hollywood Technicolor glory, hadn't grabbed her, needless to say, "You can keep it playing in the background while I go on the computer," she told me.

Sigh.

2008-12-26T04:40:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to say how blown away I am by my sister's new Christmas CD, "Come Darkness, Come Light." It is so quiet and strong and subtle. I would have a tough time saying it's the best thing she's ever done since she has so much other wonderful work out there, but somehow, arriving as it did this Christmas, at the end of My Favorite Year, makes it especially meaningful. Why? Not just because of the pleasure I derive from listening to it, but from knowing that she is happy and creatively fulfilled. And when my family is happy, I'm happy.

Here's a nice Q & A she did about the CD with Julia Reed, that wonderful Southern writer, on wowowow.com, a lively website for women. I actually did a short article on Julia's new cookbook/memoir, "Ham Biscuits and Hostess Gowns" after meeting her when she was in Pittsburgh in October. Her spinach and artichoke casserole is unbelievable.

Santa and me

2008-12-25T16:08:00.000-08:00

As Christmas 2008 winds down, I just wanted to add this photo of me with Santa taken sometime probably around 1957 or 1958... I can't say I look thrilled but at least I'm not screaming my head off.

2008-12-25T16:01:00.001-08:00

Here are some pictures I took of Christmas morning at the Rotstein house, with the kids camped out on the couch, ducking my camera and otherwise snuggling with various cats and dogs...

2008-12-25T05:37:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas morning. Everyone is still asleep, but me. Britten's A Ceremony of Carols is playing on the radio, and our cat, Smokie, is sitting near the window, observing the brown and gray world outside. No white Christmas this year, alas.

But I am savoring the memory of last night: Christmas Eve, 2008. As far as I'm concerned, it was the best we've ever had with our children, except perhaps, when they were tiny and still believed in Santa Claus. These days, they're so mature and pleasant. And, shockingly, they seem to enjoy being with us -- within reason -- as we saw last night.

I had to work at the Post-Gazette yesterday. It was actually sort of nice -- a much smaller staff than usual, in a newsroom that seemed quite empty. The day before, we'd gathered there to mourn the death of our beloved colleague Joe Fahy, but on this afternoon -- for a few hours, anyway -- most people seemed determined to be in a lighthearted, it's-Christmas-Eve mood, joking, eating Christmas cookies and peppermint bark (awesome) and the booziest rum cake that Joyce Mendelsohn had brought in from a bakery in Mt. Lebanon. David Shribman, our editor, went around shaking hands and thanking each of us for our work this year, which was nice. We can only hope that we'll be here next year to do it all over again. I'm confident we will be.

But my true reward came last evening, when our family went into Squirrel Hill to The Silk Elephant, an upscale Asian restaurant where Leslie works a few evenings a week as a hostess. After her shift ended, we all sat down for a terrific dinner (Did I say the food there is terrific?)

Over Pad Thai and other fragrant, spicy dishes, we went around the table and talked about what made us happy. The children were so interesting and sensitive and... kind!

Leslie seemed especially adorable and beautiful last night, wrapped in an exquisite red silk Pashmina scarf her best friend, Hannah Hall, gave her. She is proud of the restaurant, I think, and her place there, of the people she's met, and then she made this observation: "I think it's really helped me with my shyness."

That surprised me. I never really observed that Leslie was shy, because she's HARDLY shy at home.

"Why would I be shy at home?!" She said to me indignantly. "It's HOME!"

And then: "I am happy that I have a loving family," my almost-17 year old son observed somberly, giving us a meaningful look.

Hah! You could have knocked me over with a feather. Who knew that this kid, who spends most of his time shouting into his headset while playing video games with his buddies, would ever harbor such a thought?

Annie said she liked school and was happy to have made "new friends" this year, both from camp and from school. She also made the observation that Leslie is the most talented of all of us. I, in turn, observed that she, Annie, is so sensitive and gentle and adored -- not a small gift. I also said I was grateful to see that Steve has such leadership qualities... and is a nurturer, too.

"He'll be a teacher," his father observed.

"No," Steve responded, back in his teenage-boy-knucklehead mode.

"I want to make lots of money. I want to drive a really expensive car. I want to try for colleges like USC."

We all sputtered and guffawed at that. It will be interesting, though, to see what Steve does do with his life. I'm confident that he has good values and ultimately will do what's right for him -- while taking some tumbles along the way.

We also, somehow, got into a debate over the value of having a family dinner every night. I never make dinner for the kids -- when they were young, our babysitter, Diane, did it. She's long gone, though, and over the years, they've learned to make it themselves (Steve makes the precise dish of pasta with Prego meatball sauce each and every night. He wants nothing else). Leslie likes doing it for herself, while Annie wishes for more connection around a family table each night.

"And better food!" she added. "There's never anything good to eat in our house!"

Oh, cry me a river, Annie.

Still, since Gary and I don't get home until 6:30 or 7 most nights, we've let it slide over the years. Sigh.

I told her I could try to make dinner more frequently -- and that she and Leslie should cook together, too.

Amazingly, they seem to have forgiven me for this failure on my part. Indeed, last night, all seemed forgiven.

It's startling, actually: here are these three people who I've lived with all these years, who were darling as children, somewhat trying as adolescents and now, have grown into the most delightful young adults. I guess I always knew it would happen, and now it has happened.

Later, Leslie, Annie and I went to the midnight Christmas Eve service at Calvary Episcopal Church. They had wanted to go -- I think they're at the age where they're hunting for more meaning in our Christmas rituals, and, certainly, they found it at Calvary.

The service was transcendent: full of candelight, 15th C. carols, trumpets, processions, a robust, invigorating sermon from the Rev. Harold Lewis, and a diverse congregation, an eclectic mix of old money types in Brooks Brothers and mink plus funkier looking folks -- young people, gay people, blacks, Asians, even two rabbis (from Rodef Shalom and Tree of Life -- Rev. Lewis introduced them from the pulpit, to applause).

People seemed rapt, almost overcome with wonder at the beauty of this old, elegant church -- with the most glorious music, from Bach to Rachmaninoff to Gounod.

Of course, there was that slightly startling moment when the older gentleman standing in the pew in front of us reached over to the woman next to him - resplendent in diamonds and mink -- and grabbed her... um... backside while she rubbed his shoulder in a disconcertingly intimate way, while my two daughters rolled their eyes.

!!!

For all the divisions in the Pittsburgh Episcopal diocese, Calvary has remained a beacon of tolerance, while respecting tradition and beauty and old hymns -- and most wonderfully, the girls loved it. I took them to church when they were young but they hated it, so we stopped. Now they seem to want it again, especially Leslie, who seems drawn to faith.

Then, this morning, I picked up our newspaper. On the cover was the most exquisite reproduction of a 19th C. snowscape, "Old Saw Mill," by the Western Pennsylvania artist, Alfred S. Wall. Patricia Lowry wrote a lovely story about it -- noting that sentimental though it may seem at first glance, "this is a painting about conquering the great divide of the Allegheny Mountains."

Moreover:

"The luminous, late afternoon light comes from the northwest, casting lengthening shadows on the snow under a darkening sky..."

Exactly.

This Christmas day painting on the front of the Post-Gazette has become something of a tradition, apparently. Every year, for the past three years, the publisher and editor go to a local museum, look at the paintings, talk to a curator and select one to be put on our newspaper's front on Christmas Day.

I can't imagine anyone at Gannett or the Tribune Company doing that

Then (ego alert) what was especially nice was that they put my story about a miracle mom and her miracle baby on page one. I feel so honored that this story, about this wonderful, beautiful mother -- a small bowel transplant recipient whose own childhood was so full of pain -- is featured under that lovely painting. How lucky and blessed I am.

Indeed, what a gift 2008 has been. Getting my energy and health back, and covering that amazing election, and having such great kids.

What a Christmas!

2008-12-16T17:05:00.001-08:00

I am sitting in the living room with my children, about to decorate the Christmas tree, with Charlie Brown's Christmas on the television. Perfect contentment. Gary is bringing out the champagne, which for the first time we are allowing the children to drink.

"I think the holiday stresses Dad out," said Leslie, sitting in the corner munching on the Chocolatinis we bought at Costco this morning, while Gary struggled with the champagne bottle. Our dog Izzy seemed interested in Snoopy.

"She's so weird!!!" said Leslie, reading over my shoulder. "Is she writing this in real time or something?" Gary asked. Leslie has champagne on her breath. I am a corrupting mother.

"They're under 21, are you going to write about that!?"

Leslie has taken charge of the ornaments... and I'm sitting here next to our cat. Hmmm. What to blog?

Oh, wait...

2008 has been My Favorite Year. I feel energetic and healthy and challenged... I love my job, even as newspapers -- ours included -- struggle for survival. I covered the presidential campaign for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, traveling to Florida, Texas, Denver, Virginia, New Hampshire... in March and April, Pennsylvania's primary, which meant that suddenly meant a big market for political reporters from Pittsburgh... I was interviewed by the BBC, NPR, Greta Van Susteren (for about 10 seconds and she didn't seem to care about my answers), and, most nerve-wrackingly, on Jim Lehrer's NewsHour. See the link, here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec08/battleanalysis_10-08.html.

That's it for now.

My first blog post

2008-11-24T05:44:00.000-08:00

Hello friends. I am new to this, and feeling a bit tentative, so bear with me. I actually have no idea how I'm going to structure this blog. Be back later.