Sailboat for Sale!

My daughter has moved up to a bigger boat, so her Optimist racing boat is for sale!

McLaughlin Pro-Racer.  New Racing Sail purchased from North Sails before summer 2016 and raced one season.  Boat bought pre-owned in the summer of 2015 and sailed through September 2016.  Includes dolly, cover, and everything for practice and racing:  2 sails, 2 sets of blades (racing blades not pictured due to stuck zipper, to be unzipped), 2 bailers, cleaning supplies.  Pick up from Center Island, New York.  

"Moonbeam" logo designed by Rosemary Ellsworth, painted by her Mother, Anne Yoakam Ellsworth (and made into a sticker, so peels right off if new sailor prefers.)   Lots of cool stickers.  Not painted to ensure maximum speed.  "It's a fast boat."

Photos here (technical difficulty posting to blog):   http://longisland.craigslist.org/boa/6234325643.html

Book Review: Where the Light Falls

Bestselling Author Allison Pataki has brought her brother, Owen, in as co-author of a new book released today called Where The Light Falls.

Acclaimed by the great American novelist of our time, Tom Wolfe, this work of historical fiction captures in graphic detail the gore of the guillotine in Revolutionary France.

Though deliberately confusing to build the shadowy anxiety of the time, I suggest reading the Author's note at the end first, which clarifies the similarities in name choices to real historical figures, like Murat vs. Marat.  Though the setting is solid, the story line seems more fictional than Allison Pataki's earlier works, The Traitor's Wife, The Accidental Empress, and Sisi, Empress on Her Own.

The novel adds the perspective of the middle-class experience, a young, idealistic lawyer risking the lives of his own family to serve justice.  Whereas novels like Les Miserables highlight the plight of the poor, and the outrages that impelled people to revolution, and movies capture the ridiculous excess of failing monarchs, the Patakis offer what it was like for the middle ranks, the young and educated, not the merchant or bourgeois class, but those building simple lives in a changing and dangerous world.

Owen Pataki's education and experience in the U.S. Armed Services enhances the description of Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign, and brings the reality of combat, death and sacrifice into the story as no career civilian could.  The global swaths of history are layed out in brilliant color readers can hear, feel, and almost smell.  The bad guys who go too far are defeated, those who weren't that bad and survived are brought back into service, and though tragedy and loss are sustained, a new, fairer Government emerges with strength.

From the streets of Paris to the desert battlefield, the dramatic story emerges.  I highly recommend this both as a great summer read if you like fiction, and as a historical work by highly educated  Authors with family background in politics and France.  If it hasn't been already, it should be translated into French.  Here is a link to the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Light-Falls-French-Revolution/dp/0399591680/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1499770984&sr=8-1&keywords=where+the+light+falls&linkCode=sl1&tag=hlg2-20&linkId=cf85669eb99753815e1f408c89f6f148

Opening Tonight! May 18 6-9pm 5th Ave @ 89th

Steinway Ribbon Cutting

Gold scissors cut the golden ribbon at the new Steinway Hall.  The new Spirio technology turns a new Steinway into a player-piano that you can still play, and record your own playing into your iPad app.  If we have a good filmstrip of Grandpa playing the piano, that can be recorded in and replayed, phantom-of-the-opera style.  They've got music playing all day long at 43rd and 6th Ave.  http://www.steinway.com/spirio.

PRIMARY

Tonight is opening night of PRIMARY, a play directed by my cousin.  http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2483539PRIMARY

$9 tickets available on TDF

Art Show Sailing Benefit

One of the best things about living in the city is getting out of the city.  An hour away by car or train you can sail or go to the beach.  

I have donated one of my oil paintings to benefit Oak Cliff Sailing Center.  Please come see the show and enjoy a champagne brunch at the sailing center on beautiful Oyster Bay!

Nancy Reagan's Birthplace

http://www.ny1.com/nyc/queens/news/2016/03/7/before-she-was-first-lady--nancy-reagan-s-roots-began-in-flushing.html

I would like to go back and lay flowers and a flag, with friends in case the man jumps out of a box on the porch and yells at us again.

There is even a homeless person at Nancy Reagan's birthplace.

When I opened the newspapers after she died to see beautiful photographs of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, I didn't expect to learn reading the New York Post that Nancy Reagan was born in Queens, New York.  I drove right out there to look at the house.

The grape vines and cedar trees may well date back to when she lived there.  I haven't read her book, so didn't know that she and her Mother overcame real adversity.  She got out of Queens, the hard-working middle-class community with such American treasures as the Steinway piano factory.  Nancy Reagan's Mother had to go back there to find her ex-husband who had abandoned them, the only way she could marry the man who would adopt Nancy.

From her new life in Chicago, Nancy went on to Smith College, became an elegant 1940s movie star, then First Lady of the State of California and the United States of America.

I knew from President Reagan's book that his early life was fraught with challenge, yet I didn't know that Mrs. Reagan's was, too.

What I remember about them in person was their warmth and energy filling the Superdome as they spoke at the Republican National Convention before Vice President Bush got the nomination to run for Presideht.  The youth caucus got to run out and stand right in front of the stage.  It was very exciting.  

As was working on that campaign in California my Freshman year of college, which was so strong economically compared to my home state of Oklahoma, one of the few in a slump due to the low oil prices that helped the American economy overall.  I really got to live in "a shining city on a hill" called The University of San Diego.

While this wood frame house in Queens is not the side to Nancy Reagan many people knew, I think the Reagans could be proud that it is under renovation in an entrepreneurial community of new Americans.  

I don't know what they'd say about the "greeter" on the front porch.  I don't know what their homeless policy would be.  Where it would fall between leaving the guy alone and the private property rights of the owner.  They would want him to have a job and own a home, yet they wouldn't want to force anyone to hire him.  So a business?

The RNC recently announced plans to open an office in Queens.  The former First Lady's birthplace would be a great location if they haven't already picked one.  However, the real estate price of such a gem would be prohibitive.  Then again, after "The Big Short", who knows, the owner might donate the place (which I don't think is legal for a campaign, but a  charity, fine.)

Though it may not be the glamourous monument we'd imagine for them, it is the heart and spirit of the Reagans to inspire people to work hard and pull themselves up from the boot straps, visibly alive in the community around Mrs. Reagan's birthplace.  The Reagan Democrats in New York helped turn the whole country around.  If a little patch of Reagan soil could be preserved here in their memory, to continue their ideals, whether it be for small business, for children, or for "Just Say No", New York would be a better place.

Thank you for all that you did for our Country, Nancy Reagan, Rest In Peace.