The write stuff

July 28, 2014

I met a young man on Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich, Conn. who asked me if I had a moment for gay rights. Why yes, I do, I said as I presented him with my card for “The Games Men Play” series and blog and told him about “Water Music,” the first novel in the series, about four gay athletes and how their professional rivalries color their personal relationships with one another.

I’m sure my sales pitch was not what he wanted to hear as he had one of his own. He was trying to sign up people for the Human Rights Campaign, which seeks equal rights for the LGBT community. Right now, he said, it’s still legal in 29 states to fire someone on the basis of homosexual orientation. That’s appalling, I thought.

But I didn’t sign his petition.

Are marriage and career incompatible?

July 28, 2014

celebrity couple. It was an enviable lifestyle for those yearning to be rich and famous, but McIlroy’s main motivation was to be remembered for his golf. So in May, with the wedding invitations on the way, he broke off the couple’s engagement.”

Let’s set aside the implication that marriage to Wozniacki would’ve necessarily produced a sort of Duke and Duchess of Windsor lifestyle, with the pair jet-setting from one party to another. And let’s leave off the devastation McIlroy’s last-minute exit caused Wozniacki – a subject I’ve blogged about before...

Today 6:30-8p @ Athleta Scarsdale – "Water Music" Reading and Book Signing by Georgette Gouveia

July 24, 2014

Sexy, smart and sporty, Athleta and "Water Music" go together. I'll be reading and signing "Water Music" at the Scarsdale Athleta this Thursday, July 24 from 6:30-8 p.m. Sip some drinks, do some shopping.

RSVP: 914-723-0961, sue_wald@stores.gap.com

Antigone at Grabovo

July 24, 2014

In one of the most moving of the Greek myths, the Theban princess Antigone is condemned to be buried alive for honoring the desecrated remains of her brother Polynices, an enemy of the people.

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, the French playwright Jean Anouilh presented his version of her story as a metaphor for the French resistance. But then, Antigone has always spoken powerfully to modern artists, as everything from the heroine of an opera to that of a comic book.

I thought of Antigone and all those Civil War Antigones – the Southern ladies who decorated the graves of the Union and Confederate soldiers alike, giving rise to the tradition we know as Decoration, or Memorial, Day – as I looked at the front page of the July 23rd edition of The New York Times.

Colin Kaepernick and the ambivalence of desire

July 21, 2014

San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback Colin Kaepernick has a huge, new tattoo of a snake coiled around a rising, Michelangelo-esque hand grasping at dollar bills that riffs on “the money is the root of all evil” biblical theme, Katie Dowd writes on the SF Gate blog.

But St. Paul didn’t write that “money is the root of all evil.” He wrote that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” That’s something quite different and in keeping with a fascinating piece in The New York Times’ Sunday Review by Arthur C. Brooks, “Love People, Not Pleasure.”

Brooks contends that the pursuit of pleasure – money, fame, sex – is the root of unhappiness, which is pretty much the tenet of every major religion but particularly Buddhism and Christianity. They hold that nonattachment – which is vastly different from detachment – alone brings peace. Or as Jesus says, “for whosoever will save his life shall lose it.” That nonattachment – not so much an absence of desire, but an understanding of it – is real power, not the kind that comes from a scepter or an army but from within.

Dressed – and undressed – for success

July 20, 2014

Caught up with a few new mags this weekend, include Hello magazine’s exclusive on the Nole-Jelena wedding. I must say as an Emma type that there is nothing quite so satisfying as a wedding – particularly when it’s not your own and you can just sit back and enjoy the pix. After seeing the happy couple, I must add that I am in love with her dress. The Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen creation – she did the Duchess of Cambridge’s superb gown – was the perfect look for a pregnant bride and a seaside ceremony. The strapless bodice with the sweetheart neckline was embellished with a leaf motif that subtly climbed the hem of the gown and its train. The dress seemed to capture the bride’s uncluttered beauty and the couple’s love of nature. (Nole looked beautiful, too, in a pale gray suite by Dolce & Gabbana.)

As much as I enjoy a well-dressed couple, I relish an undressed man even more – artistically speaking. The ESPN Body issue has plenty as usual, including Michael Phelps.

Novak Djokovic, champion of peace

July 18, 2014

War, Novak Djokovic once observed, is the worst thing that can happen to anyone.

I sincerely hope he’s not destined to become a male Cassandra, bearing witness to the horror of the inevitable. But it certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?

In recent days, we’ve all been forced to bear witness to the kind of rage, terror and desperation that he no doubt experienced as a child of the Balkan conflict of the 1990s.

The former Yugoslavia at the 20th century’s sunset, New York at the 21st century’s dawn, Nigeria and Ukraine today, Israel and the Palestinian people eternally – the names change, the borders and media circus shift, but the stories are always sickeningly the same. Little boys mangled and murdered by mortar shells. Teenaged ones burned alive or kidnapped, never to return.

And now some 300 souls blown to smithereens on another ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane, plucked out of the air as it were and scattered in pieces on the ground. And for what?