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The Frick Young Fellows Ball: Helping Keep the Arts (and a Good Excuse to Wear a Gown) Alive
One of my favorite museums in the world is the Frick Collection in New York — and I am a museum junkie. A lavish early 20th-century mansion built by industrialist Henry Clay Frick to house his priceless art collection, the Frick is also one of the most beautiful. My mother, a former art teacher who…
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Astrology for 2010: Susan Miller on your year for career and money
I was recently having dinner with an old friend, discussing astrology over steamed dumplings. While my friend was skeptical, I insisted I believe in it. I suggested she check out the only published horoscopes I swear by — in Elle magazine. They have proved, in my experience, uncannily accurate. The next day I received an…
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Ford Awarded the First “Don’t Give Up the Ship!” Award by Washington Hot Spot
Around the same time Michael Weinstein, the C.E.O. of Ark Restaurants, was wading through the horrors of our health care system trying to help a friend pay for a critically needed surgery, he got a call from another friend, a Democrat in the House of Representatives looking for money for his campaign war chest. The…
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Consumer Power: A Silver Lining in the Supreme Court’s Radical Ruling?
January 21, 2010. A day that makes me feel as though we are living our very own Star Wars Episode 3. For all the wonderful people and places in Washington, DC, let’s face it, Bush’s legacy is still making our government seem more and more like the Death Star. With the Supreme Court’s radical decision…
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The future of Ford’s cars: biodegradable?
Imagine fertilizing your garden with car parts. That’s the dream of Debbie Mielewski and her team of bio-engineers at the Ford Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn, Mich. I was invited to check out how Mielewski’s Plastics Research Group is engineering an earth-friendlier plastic, at a time when crisis-levels are choking the Pacific Ocean. The…
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Savvy Santa: Buying Luxury at the Dollar Store?
Trying to do a story on a dollar store is like infiltrating a Chiquita Banana compound in Columbia. Everything is so secretive because dollar stores carry the goods that manufacturers are desperate to unload, which means said goods could still be available in mainstream stores and at fancier prices. So if it’s more or less…
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New York Writers Coalition: Writing Saves Lives
In a letter to friends, F. Scott Fitzegerald wrote, “A writer not writing is practically a maniac within himself.” Those bitten by “the bug” would agree, but what about writing as a soothing outlet for everyone? That is the idea behind the New York Writers Coalition, a Brooklyn-based non-profit that organizes writing workshops for historically…
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Flocabulary: The New Schoolhouse Rock
Remember Schoolhouse Rock!? Meet Flocabulary, a program that teaches science, Shakespeare, SAT words and ancient civilization through hip-hop. The music, developed by producers who have worked with Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige, is the reason students take it seriously — it’s used in more than 10,000 schools. The idea for Flocabulary came when Blake Harrison,…
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Dean’s 50 State Strategy Can Help Combat Racism
One thing volunteering for the Obama campaign in southern Virginia reiterated to me is that racism is alive and well in this country and there’s something that needs to be done about it. We were in the rural town of Lawrenceville, VA–about thirty minutes north of North Carolina, on a rainy election day. Lawrenceville and…