Ron Charles, the former editor of the Washington Post Book World, has a delightful essay on Substack about getting laid off after 20 years doing a job he loved. “Delightful” because, as depressing as the subject is, the piece has moments of humor.
I’ve seen a few pieces by former Post writers, and I’ve read them with sympathy – I too was laid off (after 19 years doing a job I loved) – and envy (I got none of the attention and support that they are getting). I worked for a smaller, much less acclaimed newspaper in Florida, and I didn’t write about books, or sports – I wrote about travel. To most people, even probably some in the newsroom, my layoff simply meant an end to my ridiculously sublime gig of being paid to take vacations. To me, it meant the demise of the section that informed readers about the world. But this was 2008, and I had no Substack to turn to with my thoughts on my dismissal. And of course no media reported on my departure. I simply cleaned out my desk – I was given an afternoon – and filled a shopping cart with the contents, atop which I placed the Green Eyeshade award I had received a few weeks earlier.
Over the weekend we had guests from Philadelphia, and Saturday I gave them my tour of Miami. We started with a quick drive through Coconut Grove – cafes on Main Highway, peacocks on a residential street – before heading across Route 1 to Coral Way with its banyan trees. At the end of Miracle Mile we found a farmers’ market next to the Coral Gables City Hall, parked, and strolled the stalls (blue cauliflower anyone?) and food trucks. Back on Coral Way, the live oak section, we turned onto Columbus Ave. and crawled past the statuesque ficuses and handsome Spanish revival houses until the Giralda-like tower of the Biltmore Hotel appeared. Inside, we admired the lobby, and the birds in their covered cages; outside, we gazed down at the swimming pool, where one brave swimmer made his way across an immensity of blue. The Venetian Pool, just down the street, was also quiet, and we were allowed past the entrance to examine the black-and-white photos of the place in the 1920s.
Lunch at Bulla – gazpacho, ceviche, crispy calamari, shrimp in garlic sauce, shishito peppers, croquetas de jamón – followed by cafecitos at Versailles. In Little Havana we walked with the tour groups to Ball & Chain – I showed our friends the Pineapple Theater in the back – and Dominos Park.
Then we drove through Brickell – almost Manhattan-sized crowds at the intersection where the Brickell City Centre stretches – across the Miami River, and up Biscayne Boulevard, pointing out Bayside, the Freedom Tower, the Zaha Hadid-designed residential tower (“like the gills of a fish,” said Helena), the Arsht Center, the former Bacardi headquarters.
In Wynwood we crawled again down the side streets, admiring the murals that covered every inch of wall. One showed a smiling woman streaked with blood getting attacked by a school of sharks. Steve and Helena, who have lived abroad, said they’d never seen anything like it.
Onto the MacArthur Causeway in time to see the line-up of cruise ships – including the world’s largest, the Icon of the Seas. On the beach, we cruised down to Joe’s Stone Crab (“not new, not improved”) and then headed up Collins. We parked on 15th Street and walked to the beach, then down Ocean Drive, stopping for photos and a rest in the lobby of The Betsy, one of the house labs lying peacefully behind the reception desk. (Our friends were amused to learn that the hotel’s full name is The Betsy Ross.)
Drove past the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center and the award-winning Herzog & de Meuron parking garage before getting on the Venetian Causeway just as the sun was going down, painting the sky orange. Back on the mainland, I pointed out Trinity Cathedral and then finished in the Design District, where crowds of people strolled the brightly lit designer shops.
Our friends were dutifully impressed. Seeing Miami through their eyes, I realized again how rich the city is, possessing incredible variety in its neighborhoods, from lush to elegant, from artsy to resorty, from urban sleek to urban gritty. And, thanks to the water and the bridges, it throws in dramatic scenery as well.
Sunday’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks has me remembering a seafood restaurant I went to several years ago in Seattle. The menu offered three soups: New England clam chowder, Manhattan clam chowder, and New Jersey clam chowder.
“What is New Jersey clam chowder?” I asked the waitress. “I grew up in New Jersey and never heard of it.”
“It’s half New England clam chowder,” she told me, “and half Manhattan.”
I went with the Manhattan.
Social media yesterday was full of outrage at the Washington Post, which laid off large numbers of people and terminated the book and sports sections. Almost all of the posts I saw were from current or former journalists, many with ties to the Post; almost none were from readers. Which made me wonder: Are journalists the only Americans who care about journalism? Has the public distrust of journalists gotten so bad, or has the profession become so irrelevant in most people’s lives, that the gutting of a great American newspaper makes little difference to the general public? There’s also the possibility that over the last year we’ve all just become inured to the wanton destruction of vital, once-cherished institutions.
Speaking of music, Saturday evening we went to Miami with our friend Joe to hear Yefim Bronfman and the Cleveland Orchestra play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, aka “The Emperor Concerto.”
When it was over, Joe said: “If I were a baseball player, that would be my walk-up music.”
My complaint about last night’s Grammys, apart from the music, was the In Memoriam segment. The dead took a backseat, literally, to the living. Most of the time, the camera focused on the musicians who were playing, ostensibly, in homage to the deceased, while the faces of the deceased, much of the time, appeared on a wall behind the musicians. Often, I had to squint to read their names and identities. The Academy Awards, lately, has been doing something similar, distracting from the moving montage of the departed – especially moving at the Oscars because the photos are often stills from movies – with lavish, and lavishly shot, musical numbers. Why not tone down the performances and let the dead have their day?