Take Note

The "Metropolitan Diary" features anecdotal stories in the Times on Mondays about living in New York City. They are mostly about catching a bus cross-town or observing a quirky NYC moment but we at TOR have taken umbrage with the fact that it has too often become a column where prissy NewYorkers gloat about themselves. It's not uncommon for a writer to add a small glib of information which is irrelevant to the story but allows them to take a bow for being a good samaritan. We have read stories of people who had a bus-driver entertain them with a funny saying when they add a small detail like "while I was on the way to rescue dogs from the shelter" which turns your stomach.

Today's edition actually took a different take but contains three TOR strikes

Dear Diary,
On Oct. 9, my father, Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, who had been the chief interpreter at the Nuremberg trials and Hermann Göring's personal interpreter at the end of World War II, passed away.

As we finished sitting shiva, our customary week of mourning, and took the traditional walk around the block, we concluded with a regular breakfast, at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side. Just after we sat down, Caroline Kennedy sat down at the adjacent table.

During the eulogy at his funeral, I shared my father's most admirable qualities but avoided dwelling on the others. Steely and courageous and disciplined, he was not a man of soft or visible emotion. The only time I had remembered him crying was during the taping of the biography I filmed on his early years through Nuremberg, when he wanted us to remember the few good people in Germany who had saved others' lives, like those of my grandparents, at the risk of their own.

But during the shiva, other members of my family remembered another time my father had cried: one Friday night in November 1963 when President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. I had cried, too, they remembered, at the age of 8, wondering aloud what would happen to the president's young children.

John Jr. is gone now, too. But how odd that within minutes of ending the formal shiva for my father, I should find myself next to Caroline, who looked happy and radiant, even in casual clothes. I agonized over whether to invade her privacy with my story and decided against it, but I couldn't get it out of my mind.

Life goes on, and we should savor every coincidence that weaves the invisible fabric of life.

Michael W. Sonnenfeldt

Thanks for a copy of the phone-book.

First of all, this is not an obituary page.. Your father sounds like a great person and a swell guy but the minutia of his life story is not needed but more importantly your little addition makes me want to gag.

Why you felt the need to add your line about yourself at 8 can only be reasonably assumed because you crave attention. We understand that you were probably a remarkable child who had a deep understanding of the human psyche but please leave your self-serving fluff out of my Metropolitan Diary. The story (and your father's legacy) was fine without it and was made worse by it.

And lastly the fact you left Caroline alone isn't something to be commended but instead should be expected. Why you think that she needs to hear your sob story is beyond selfish, leave her alone you insensitive prick. The fact that he cried probably puts him in the company of millions of other Americans and if Caroline had to field every one of those stories she would no longer look so radiant.

I swear that I don't only read this section to police it.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry