There’s an Alice Neel exhibit at the Met. Years ago, I went to a marvelous dinner party. Among the guests was one of these lads and his wife. When my companion, Pei Yi and I were invited, I got in touch with a friend who was the Scholastic editor of a monthly arts journal for teenagers. ”Who’s Alice Neel?” I moaned. My friend gave me one of her journals about Neel. I read all two pages and acquitted myself, I hope. In the Met photo, the Neel son at the party is on the right. He didn’t see well but made delicious cocktails. Pei Yi eyed me, guessing that I’d swatted up for the dinner party. He and the son got into an interesting discussion about the Rudolf Steiner School that the son had attended. The son was enjoying himself (fine food, lovely wine, charming hostess) and started to talk about his father’s escapades. The son’s wife called a halt to that and steered the conversation to ecology.

Michael Collins, the astronaut who flew the Apollo  11 around the moon in 1969, has died. “I have been places and done things you simply would not believe. I feel like saying: I have dangled from a cord a hundred miles up; I have seen the earth eclipsed by the moon, and enjoyed it. I have seen the sun’s true light, unfiltered by any planet’s atmosphere. I have seen the ultimate black of infinity in a stillness undisturbed by any living thing.