Quote of the Day (Jeff Greenfield, Proposing a Different Kind of Morning News Show)

“With some 315 million Americans living in homes with TVs, there is clearly a huge market inefficiency here [in morning news shows] that is waiting for a visionary network TV executive to fill. How? With a morning program that fearlessly embraces the morning misanthropy that defines the emotional state of so many of us; that provides an offering that lets us embrace the sour spirit with which we begin the day.”—American author and longtime political, media and culture reporter Jeff Greenfield, “How About a Morning Show for the Sullen and Sleepy?” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 8-9, 2025

The image accompanying this post, showing Jeff Greenfield talking about his book, Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics, was taken Oct. 3, 2011 by and at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, Charlottesville, VA.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Ernest Hemingway, on Visiting Pamplona Cathedral)

“At the end of the street I saw the cathedral and walked up toward it. The first time I ever saw it I thought the façade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think how I would make it, and thinking of making money reminded me of the count, and I started wondering about where he was, and regretting I hadn’t seen him since that night in Montmartre, and about something funny Brett told me about him, and as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time.”—American Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, short-story writer, and memoirist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), on Pamplona Cathedral, Spain, in The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Quote of the Day (David Brooks, on Moderates Vs. a Narcissist Who Will ‘Reap a Whirlwind’)

“Moderates don’t operate from the safety of their ideologically pure galleons. They are unafraid to face the cross currents, detached from clan, acknowledging how little they know. If you have elected a man who is not awed by the complexity of the world, but who filters the world to suit his own narcissism, then woe to you, because such a man is the opposite of the moderate voyager type. He will reap a whirlwind.”—Opinion columnist David Brooks, “What Moderates Believe,” The New York Times, Aug. 22, 2017

Very interesting to come across this, nearly eight years later. Sadly, it hasn't dated a bit.

Photo of the Day: Saddle River County Park, Ridgewood, NJ

The Northeast has had its share of low temperatures and damp conditions since the official start of spring. But warmer days (think: high ‘70s) have alternated enough with these periods to lure out the buds on at least some trees.

That was certainly the case the other day when I walked in Saddle River County Park, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. I was especially taken with the landscape in this image, with cherry blossoms springing to life with the park’s wild duck pond and fountain in the background.

Quote of the Day (Bill Ervolino, on Expensive Pet Food)

“If you go to the chewy.com website you can find a 64-ounce bag of [actress and animal rights advocate Katherine Heigl’s] ‘complete grain-free chicken air-dried dog food’ for $104.99…. I’m sorry, but $104.99 seems like a lot of money for a bag of dog food, especially when you have a large dog who can jump onto kitchen counters and polish off 64-ounces of meat in roughly seven minutes.”—Humor columnist and comedian Bill Ervolino, “Sinking Canine Teeth Into Human Food,” The Bergen Record, Aug. 25, 2024

Quote of the Day (Ruth Fainlight, on Female Poets)

“There's this image of the poet – the 'Romantic poet' – and it seems to me that it's much more of a problem for men than it is for women. The problem of really trying to write poetry, rather than waiting for the moment of inspiration. Women are less susceptible to it because they’re more humble. They’ve been cut down to size.”— UK-based American poet, short story writer, translator and librettist Ruth Fainlight quoted by Helen Bain, “Ruth Fainlight's Life in Verse,” The Financial Times (“How To Spend It” supplement), Mar. 14, 2025

Quote of the Day (Brock Colyar, on the ‘Disney Prince or Superman Aesthetic’ in Male Plastic Surgery)

“What men are aspiring toward, Dr. Lara Devgan, a Park Avenue plastic surgeon, tells me, is what she describes as the ‘Disney Prince or Superman aesthetic.’ And they often have an actor in mind. Among the celebrities most cited as inspiration in recent years, surgeons say, are Henry Cavill [pictured] (famous for playing Superman) and a ‘young Brad Pitt.’ Dr. Douglas Steinbrech, a surgeon in New York, makes a point to count his top-requested faces annually. Last year’s included Chris Hemsworth, Ryan Gosling, David Beckham, and Cristiano Ronaldo, all of whom have especially snatched jawlines. Dr. Garth Fisher, of Extreme Makeover fame, believes men are more hesitant about upper-face procedures lest they wind up looking like Robert Redford, Kenny Rogers, or Matt Gaetz, who has what is referred to in the industry as a ‘Spock brow.’”— American journalist Brock Colyar, “Chins Are In,” New York Magazine, Jan. 27-Feb. 9, 2025

Quote of the Day (Frank Bruni, on the Importance of Writing Often)

“Show me someone who writes correctly and ably — and who knows that — and I'll show you someone who probably also writes more. Such people's awareness of their agility and their confidence pave the way. Show me someone who has never been pressed to write well or given the tutelage and tools to do so and I'll show you someone who more often than not avoids it and, in avoiding it, is deprived of not only its benefits but also its pleasures.”—Op-ed columnist Frank Bruni, “Our Semicolons, Ourselves,” The New York Times, Dec. 25, 2023