On the New York Times list of “Places to Go in 2026,” Revolutionary America is #1 and Warsaw is #2. I generally pay little attention to such lists, but the recognition of Poland’s capital – so often overshadowed by Krakow – is well-deserved and personally satisfying. I have been writing about Warsaw since the late ’70s, when it was a little-visited capital behind the Iron Curtain, and I have delighted in seeing its evolution into a world-class city. In 2011 I wrote about its resurgence for National Geographic Traveler (yes, the New York Times is a little late to the party) and the story appears in my book The Joys of Travel. It is completely different from the story the magazine published, which is a story unto itself, one that – now that Warsaw’s in the spotlight – I might try to publish.
I had dinner last night with a conservative friend who admitted that the president he voted for was starting to lose it. Larry is an intelligent, highly cultured man – unlike many in MAGA – and the thing, he said, that really turned him against Trump was his renaming of the Kennedy Center. He also was in disbelief over the president’s designs on Greenland, noting that Denmark has been one of our staunchest allies.
Yesterday morning I took the car to the garage (hence my absence here) and then walked to the café, where I found my friend Dave sitting with his Wednesday morning coffee group. Talk was of current events.
“We now live in a dictatorship,” one of the men said. “That’s what Trump’s created.”
Walking back to the garage through Hardy Park I saw four people in white playing croquet. Even in a dictatorship, I thought, life goes on.
Though for one woman in Minneapolis yesterday it tragically ended.
Tony Dokoupil is the new anchor of the CBS Evening News, replacing John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois. He’s handsome and likable and earnest, judging by his sermon that was pasted on to the end of Friday’s newscast. He denounced the elitism traditionally found in New York City newsrooms and painted himself as a man of – or at least a deliverer of news for – the people.
Clearly, the new chief of news at CBS, Bari Weiss, sees Dekoupil as someone who can bring in the new generation. At 45, he’s 12 years younger than the boyish Dickerson, with little sign of his predecessor’s political acumen. Which, Weiss probably believes, is to his advantage.
It all reminds me of my last year at the Sun-Sentinel (2008) when everybody – editors, managers, reporters – racked their brains trying to come up with ideas, innovations, graphics that would bring in the younger generation. It was, I knew even then, before we all had screens in our pockets, a hopeless endeavor. There was nothing we could come up with that would get young people to read the newspaper. That ship had sailed.
It's the same situation with the evening news. No young people are going to sit down at 6:30 to watch a man read from a teleprompter about events they are uninterested in or have already gotten wind of on social media. The days of widely read newspapers and widely watched news shows are over. And no pretty face is going to bring them back.
PS Dokoupil was called into service early, on Saturday evening, for the Venezuela story. At one point, speaking of Maduro, he said “the apprehending of he and his wife.” With grammar like that he’s going to lose viewers like me.
I had a cartoon – the first of the new year – all ready to go and then current events intervened. The new one, which I posted about an hour ago, shows two men, one saying to the other: “Everyone thinks Trump’s obsession with Venezuela has to do with oil, forgetting that the country continually produces contenders for the Miss Universe title.”
Yesterday I did what I do every New Year's morning: I went to the kitchen and hung the two calendars. One is of vintage food and wine posters (January is an ad for Amatller Chocolate in Barcelona) and the other is classic travel posters (Bavaria leads off this year). And, Luddites that we are, we actually use the first one to mark appointments and activities.