Posts by Benjamin
Karen Baum Gordon’s “Last Letter”
I tell this story often. By the fall of 2013, it had become apparent to me that regime change was imminent at MTV News. One morning, I told Abbi that I’d done three things to foment my exit: I hired a resume coach to sharpen my cv, and An executive coach to hold me accountable…
Read MoreDear Elizabeth
I spent a lot of time on my fire escape back then; Hell’s Kitchen just made better sense from just a few flights up. My first apartment, there on 56th and Tenth Avenue, was across the street from a New York City public high school. We looked right in on the classrooms. In those early…
Read MoreEverything Is Unsettled
These days, I feel like I’m brand new to weather. For years, I have watched the sun, clouds, rain and snow track across glass, concrete and stone. I perceived weather in large blocks: cold today, rainy tomorrow, and stormy for my commute. I was, as my friend Justin likes to say, “institutionalized,” hermetically sealed from…
Read MoreThree Little Birds
It is possibly one of the top ten most sacred texts in the last 50 years of contemporary music. Its author is an icon, a revolutionary, a martyr and a legend. I honestly can’t believe I released a cover version of this song in 2012 in the first place, let alone the remastered, repackaged and…
Read MoreShaking The Nonsense Out
“Hey, this is Reggie,” a man with a Brooklyn accent said on my voicemail. “I’m callin’ from The New York Times. I wanna get your voice into the narrative that I’m writing for your, yunno, announcement.” Inconsistent as it might sound, I’ve been an avid and enthusiastic reader of The New York Times Weddings &…
Read MoreRestoration
New York City is defined by its neighborhoods: Hell’s Kitchen, Upper West, Upper East. Each has its place, it’s people, its institutions and landmarks. When Maggie was a toddler, we used to walk around the Upper East Side singing “Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood,” while introducing ourselves to everyone from the dry cleaner,…
Read MoreWe’re All Gonna Die
I was sitting on our front steps Saturday morning, reading the paper and drinking my coffee, when I heard the hollow thud of bone on cement. I looked up, but no one was there. I looked down and saw a small squirrel, immobile but alive, in the street just a few feet in front of…
Read MoreInto Your Arms
September 4th was, by any other account, a Saturday like any before. I woke at dawn, well prior to Abbi and the girls, rolled out of bed, and tip-toed down the steps. I brewed a cup of coffee (half and half, teaspoon of sugar in the raw), cracked the front door quietly, and stepped outside.…
Read MoreInto The South, Part 3
I burst through the doors of Fame Studios like a deer in headlights: wide-eyed, disoriented, and out of breath. I’d stumbled through a side door just seconds prior, and been rebuffed and redirected by a cluster of young, handsome, chain-smoking rock ‘n rollers. I blew unwittingly past the studio’s matriarch, Linda Hall, beneath a hand-painted…
Read MoreInto The South, Part 2
“10 bucks for parking,” I thought. “Of course.” The lot was shimmering like a National Guitar: sunbaked, half empty, dotted with slow-shuffling Elvis fans. I turned off my rental (a Kia Sportage, natch) and stepped towards the collection of white corrugated-aluminum sheds that constitute Elvis Presley’s Graceland. Not his house, but the dozen or so…
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