"Life Stories: profiles from the New Yorker"

[fiefoe]

Travels in Georgia (Carol Ruckdeschel) / John McPhee (1973)

    From Carol's notebook: 'Dissolve mouse in nitric acid and put him through spectrophotometer - can tell every element.'

    Here's another clue about the heroine (and I don't mean heroine in the fictional sense): her travelling companion Sam said he kept a raccoon's baculum in his wallet because it made a great toothpick.

simonize: to polish with wax
riparian: of, on, or relating to the banks of a natural course of water.
_________________________________________________
The Man Who Walks on Air (Philippe Petit) / Calvin Tomkins (1999)

    Religion comes into it, in a nice way.

    Favorite phrase in the article - 'a delirium of suspense and delight'; favorite piece of knowledge - 'there is a very treacherous (third) movement (of the wire), which is inside the cable - a kind of torque, with the cable moving on itself'.
_________________________________________________
A House on Gramercy Park (Benjamin Sonnenberg) / Geoffrey Hellman (1950)

"Perhaps because his profession is such a modern one and, in his opinion, so intangible, Sonnernberg like to surround himself with solid appurtenances of the past." Took a page from banks, didn't he?

Naturally, this prototypical PR titan himself had the best way to put things:

• I love to own things. Being a host is part of ownership, since, in a way, you own your guests. .. I suppose it's the philosophy of a man of property.
• I think a really good dinner party should consist of an archbishop, an authoress, a lady of easy virtue, a tycoon, and a Powers model. [cf.]
• I am a great reader of biographies, because they give me a tincture of reality as to the notions of people who made out O.K. in other periods, and how.
• My procedure is that when I find that a problem is wrong, I first bring it to Greenwich time, instead of dead center, and I neutralize it, and then I plus it.
• In the olden days, your only forum was a courtroom. At the present time, you are tried ... in the bar of public opinion. .The (man) can survive only by the consent of the consumer, and by the consent of the multitudes.