These are my most cherished sunglasses. Yes, they are Ray-Ban Wayfarers, the everyday spectacles of millions. But unlike those of recent years, these have no brandname on the glass. I hate wearing labels, especially above my eyes. Bought new, they are now very vintage, like me.

For the record, I counted more than 30 stories within the last week in the New York Times on the wedding of a pop star and a football star. I feel sure there are more to come.

Farewell to Bobbi Queen, a fashion editor and fashion plate without peer, whom I met at Women's Wear Daily and who continued to illuminate my life with the startling sparkle of fireworks. Her style was as incisive and instinctive as her wit, her curiosity as big as the world.

And suddenly, we're stuck in the opening number of Act Two in "Sunday in the Park with George."

Happy 100th birthday to that laughing pioneer Mel Brooks, who changed the course not just of screen comedy but of the Broadway musical. His taboo-busting stage version of "The Producers" parodied with passion, tickling and hugging a classic genre into a state of giggly rapture.

I mean, look at that sky.

Few performances capture the anesthetizing, quiet confusion of deep grief as artfully as Quincy Tyler Bernstine does in Bubba Weiler's "Well, I'll Let You Go." This soft-spoken drama, at Studio Seaview, sucker punches you, hard, when you don't expect it. Rather like grief itself.

I live among shades of green.

I wake up to discover that two of my favorite artists have won Tonys. Lesley Manville and Laurie Metcalf. Each -- Manville in "Oedipus" and Metcalfe in "Death of a Salesman" -- rendered moments of angry, incandescent pain that rank among the truest, most searing acting I've seen. Brava and brava!

While I wish everyone involved many broken legs, I will not be watching the Tony Awards this year. Once they leave CBS, I will return to my usual cheering section.

This very faded picture was taken around the time I realized that I was who I was, as it were. Though I knew I would be keeping a secret for a while, I didn't feel cursed. I felt confident, for the first time, that I was going to be just fine. So it has proved. Happy Pride Month.

This weekend, I learned the word for a condition I have lived with since childhood, and it is good to at last have a name for it. That's abibliophobia, the fear of being without a book.

This is essential for anyone interested in the state of theater and of human identity in the age of perpetually mutating self. Kip Williams rediscovers Genet's "The Maids," at St. Ann's Warehouse, as a prophecy for an era when existential uncertainty becomes public performance.

I admit I'm kind of excited about this. I love this play, an expertly tailored, old-fashioned family drama with a new-fashioned heart. And Dreyfus in a part she can make a meal of? And Ed Harris? And Janney and Rabe? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/t...

A book that was made for a rainy Memorial Day weekend.

Farewell to Rex Reed, one of the rare critics to acquire something like movie star status. (In fact, he was the man who became Raquel Welch in "Myra Breckenridge.") He was also the first writer to attack me in print. I was thrilled. It felt more like a baptism than a slap.

At LaGuardia departure lounge, where I encounter a frequent flyer who seems destined to take off long before I do.

I am so pleased that this won the Pulitzer. Bess Wohl's "Liberation" hit me with a direct emotional impact I hadn't experienced since the "The Normal Heart" revival. It felt immediate and personal, and I saw my mother's life and my sister's life with a vividness that stung.

And today, the rose-breasted grosbeak arrived.

When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear....

It's not just the fashion industry that has changed since the original "The Devil Wears Prada." Could anyone twenty years ago have imagined Meryl Streep participating in the kind of exhausting, storm-the-beaches, flood-the-zone press campaign that has attended the sequel?

Every morning, I go to the window and, everywhere I look, the world has gotten greener -- I mean, deep, explosive, all-pervasive green. Hey, we have arrived in the land of Oz!

Taylor Swift breaking down the craft of songwriting -- the origins, process and aftermath -- in the New York Times is my favorite interview in ages. Bonus: It's a guide on how to stay sane while famous. Lucid, funny, self-aware and so artful and illuminating in its use of detail.

It's the knife-like voice of the dead girl, sung by Vilma Jaa, that I can't get out of my head this morning. That and the subliminal chorus that floats that seems to have its roots in your own memory. Simon Stone's Met production of Kaija Saariaho's "Innocence" is a night at the opera like no other.

I had a swell weekend of revitalized (and revitalizing) theater - on Broadway, of all places: "Death of a Salesman," "Becky Shaw" and "Cats: The Jellicle Ball." Each, in its way, testifying to how theater can reframe the world. Like Orban's defeat, a reason to hope this spring.

Something I never thought I'd say: I cried at "Cats." A musical that celebrates rebirth has found its ideal form in "Cats: The Jellicle Ball" on Broadway, which presents ballroom culture as the most joyous, transformative church you could ever belong to.

The expert Broadway reincarnation of "Becky Shaw," Gina Gionfriddo's corrosive comedy about the damage that damaged people do, is pretty close to perfect. It's the tart tonic I hadn't even realized I was thirsty for - the kind that goes down easily but with a sting that both tickles and alarms.

It's the BIRTHday of BETte DAvis, who brought a new kind of nerviness to American screens. I interviewed her in my first job in New York, for W. She really did talk in emphatic, parsed, capital-letter syllables. She told me that in terms of female screen types, she was a BROAD.

The first daffodils to emerge here out of this creeping spring -- next to a stone wall, under a thicket of thorns.

The original Broadway Grizabella hits the ballroom to check out her latest successor and likes what she sees. A lovely generation-bridging piece by Betty Buckley. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/o...

The times have made April Fools' gags superfluous and close to impossible. Read the headlines today, and so many of them seem ripe for an "April Fools!'" postscript. If only the last ten years of American history could be erased with a celestial voice booming, "Just kidding!"

The first day this year that had that softness in the air that for me is real, pure spring. You're startled by its gentleness. And suddenly you feel vaguely hopeful.

Farewell to Valerie Perrine, who had a wry erotic forthrightness that made sex a healthy matter of fact. She won an Oscar nomination as Lenny Bruce's wife, but she first won my heart as Marge from "The Last American Hero," when she told Jeff Bridges, "I'm not nice, I'm perfect."

Spent last night soaking up international angst a la Abba, having finally caught "Chess." Was dazzled by Nicholas Christopher, who emerges here as a true Broadway star. His rich baritone and charismatic centeredness transmute propulsive pop into something close to grand opera.

It is the birthday of the possessor of this amused, defiant, penetrating gaze, which was applied in the creation of some of the wittiest, wisest, most coruscating theater ever written. Raise a glass of rubbing alcohol (Martha: "never mix, never worry") to Edward Albee.

It is, impossibly, the 80th birthday of Liza Minnelli, the star of one of the greatest movie musicals ("Cabaret") and the most sizzling musical television revue ever ("Liza with a Z"). Celebrate by putting on a bowler, cocking a hip and throwing your leg over the back of a chair.

A gentle day closes as a prelude to spring.

A seasonal debut.

And lo and behold, as the clocks moved forward, heralding a new season, the snows that had lain on the land for many weeks dissolved into a mist that enfolded all the countryside. And there was celebration amid the mud.

n the New York Times, I ponder Jonathan Groff's evolution into a bona fide matinee idol. A very rare example of a nice guy finishing first. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/t...

At the risk of being redundant....

This evening: a spectral possum in the snow.

Good morning. Sigh.

This picture taken at twilight -- just before the next storm -- to commemorate a brief period in which there were visible patches of grass near the roots of trees.

Here it comes again. The view through my windshield this morning.

"Awe allows for a neurobiological reset." Oh, so that' why I get the shivers (or "skin orgasms") watching Malinin and company. Kelly Corrigan winningly explains the physiology of watching the Olympics and why it's good for you in stressful times. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

It is the 99th birthday of the wondrous Leontyne Price. Celebrate by listening to her feasting on the pain and passion in Verdi or capturing lost time in Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915." These are sounds to wrap yourself in against the cold.

Yes, I know they're unloved by many, as carriers of ticks and devourers of shrubs. But my heart still flutters when I wake up to the vision of these elegant beings in my backyard. I feel as if I've somehow slipped into Narnia.

Somewhere in this picture is a driveway. It is 5 degrees Fahrenheit at 2 p.m. in Columbia County, and the (newly fallen) snow is blowing like sand in a desert dust storm. And yet I continue to drink my coffee iced.

And this is what our corner of the world is going to look like for the foreseeable future. Remember melting?