The New Yorker magazine appears online and stays there, so those of you who missed the print edition (the double issue of Feb. 14 and 21) can still find a fine Talk of the Town piece by Gay Talese about the Metropolitan Opera’s controversial production, “Nixon in China.” The article (if not the opera) features Winston Lord, Henry Kissinger’s China expert at the time of Mr. Nixon’s trip and later America’s first ambassador to Beijing. Winston told Talese that he enjoyed much of the opera but not the portrayal of Kissinger, which he found a mean-spirited caricature — a view echoed by my old boss at the New York Times, Max Frankel, who also made the trip to China, attended the opera’s opener and wrote a review of it for the Times.
Winston and his wife, Bette Bao Lord, were among those invited to the official State Dinner for President Hu in January, where Winston sat next to Barbara Streisand, and — I’m only guessing here– more than held his own. (Not an easy thing to do. I met Ms. Streisand at the 2000 Democratic Convention, where she explained democracy to me and my then boss, Howell Raines, in some detail.) Bette, I am informed, was one of a handful of people who briefed President Obama on China’s human rights record before the visit.
One of the pleasures of this winter and early spring has been to follow the fortunes of Yale’s incredible hockey team. Always alert for opportunities to get people together, Ben Gertz corralled two dozen or so hard-to-get tickets for the final game of the season, a 4-1 victory against Cornell. Among those on hand for dinner at Mory’s and then the game–some with spouses, some with offspring — were George Buchanan, Paul Fitzgerald, Austin Hoyt, Gerry Jones, Charlie Kingsley, Bob McKean, George Piroumoff, Frank Porter, Rick Templeton, Jim Wade, E . Packer Wilbur and Ben Zitron.
Meanwhile, Bob Ittner, Tom and Linda Leon, Bruce Morrell and Fred Vanderkloot were among the attendees at Ben’s monthly Friday lunch at the Yale Club, along with a Calhoun student guest, Uriel Kejsefman from Buenos Aires.
Shorter notes: Evan Weisman and his whole brood (wife, children, grandchildren) recently joined Yale roommate Dan Schweikert and his wife Judi for skiing in Deer Valley. Retired from his medical practice in Atlanta, Evan has taken up acting, appearing most recently in the role of tthe stage manager in “Our Town,” and Bellomy (one of the fathers) in “:The Fantasticks.” Curt Kamman, another retired ambassador,
hooked up with Charlie and Jo Simons after the Chicago mini-reunion and introduced them to the Michigan sand dunes in Fennville.
Our condolences to T. Anne Jackson and the three children — John, Martha and Benjamin — of the Rev. John T.P. Jackson, who died in February following a stroke. John, who lived in Lancaster, N.H., and Tobey Island, MA., became an Episcopal minister after graduating from Westminster, Yale and the Berkeley Divinity School, serving in various parishes around the country, most recently in the Dioceses of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He served variously as a school chaplain and volunteer chaplain of the fire department.. He sailed enthusiastically on Cape Cod and made numerous birding trips to the Galapagos, Costa Rica and Mallorca. Memorial donations may be made to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 113 Main Street, Lancaster, N.H. 03584 for the church’s food pantry.