Out & About
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Lunch at Shirley’s
“We are all substance at this end of the table,” the founder and president of the Foundation for a Civil Society, Wendy Luers, said of her lunch discussion yesterday with the New York director of the Center for Security Policy, Amanda Bowman, and the city’s public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum. Topics included terrorism and democratization.
She didn’t need to push the point: As far as ladies luncheons go, this one was full of substance. What else would one expect from the hostess, author and Vogue contributing editor Shirley Lord Rosenthal, the widow of one of the giants of the New York Times, A.M. Rosenthal?
Literary agent Lynn Nesbit explained the marketability of mysteries and thrillers. Allison Cowles Sulzberger said she has spent the last year taking care of her husband and tending to her two passions: Central Park and the nonprofit ski and snowboard area she established at Mt. Spokane. “Last winter they named a run for me,” she said.
Over a three-cheese soufflé, Paula Root told me about her fund-raising work for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and the New York Philharmonic. Arlene Alda talked about her children’s books. Interior decorator Mica Ertegun commented on her daily activities: “I’m known for turning houses upside down,” she said.
Perhaps the most non-ladies-luncheon topic was the cars at the National Motoring Museum at Beaulieu in England, run by Lord Beaulieu and his wife, Lady Fiona Montagu of Beaulieu.
Lady Montagu of Beaulieu, the luncheon’s guest of honor, said one of her favorite cars in the worldrenowned collection is Marlene Dietrich’s Auburn. In the museum’s library are copies of early legislation in England allowing a speed limit of 16 miles per hour.
