Order out of Social Chaos

So much going on this week, when I sat down Wednesday night to make a list of all the parties I'd gone to so far, the list had 10 items on it. And it was only Wednesday.

Now it's Saturday, I technically have the day off, but I have a baby naming in Brooklyn soon (yay Abigail!). Before I go, though, I'm going to sort through the week and give you the highlights.

It started last Saturday, when I started covering events at 11 a.m. and didn't finish until 12:30 a.m. Sunday -- but hey, I interviewed Billy Joel, heard They Might Be Giants, and even hit a "non-work" social event, my friend Raya Papp's pre-half-Ironman/Kentucky Derby party -- she's racing today, and so far her pacing is excellent. Go Raya!
And so I wrote it up as a day of training for weekends in Hamptons:
http://nysun.com/out-and-about/east-end-training-begins-1

Sunday I sat and gazed at trees for a few hours. They are beautiful things. And not something I wrote about it. But I did get to write about a beautiful garden on Tuesday morning, when Elissa Cullman held a ceremony to unveil the Garden of Hope she designed and dedicated to her late friend Hedi Kravis.
http://nysun.com/out-about/garden-blooms-bedford-stuyvesant

On Monday, I got lucky, because I heard a great cover of a Billy Joel song by Kelli O'Hara at Joe's Pub. See, Mr. Joel didn't play himself Saturday night, and friends that I boasted to about seeing him hadn't seemed impressed. But Kelli's song reminded me at least just how amazing he is. And of course, I got to see how amazing Kelli is.
http://nysun.com/out-about/new-yorks-own-wonder-woman

Monday was also the day I first saw the Costume Institute at the Met Superheroes exhibit. Everyone knew about this party. I went to the Paperbag Players 50th anniversary party, and one of the honorees had already left to go to it. It's that kind of social event: of course it's all right to skip out on your own party to go to it.

I sat down and looked at about 1200 photographs from the event taken by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's house photographer, Don Pollard, inside the museum (as opposed to those dreadful red carpet on the stairs shots). And I ended up writing two pieces about the event.

Some of the photographs from the Met became a broader piece about how mothers and daughters are loving going out together these days.
http://nysun.com/out-and-about/moms-and-daughters

And then I made a larger select of photos -- almost celebrity-free, but full of artists, moguls, and N.Y. social types -- to show with a web-only story reflecting on the party and the Met's new exhibit. Check it out to see: Oscar de la Renta, Cindy Sherman, Rachel Feinstein, Sofia Coppola, Blaine Trump, Gillian Miniter, Elyse Newhouse, Julie and David Koch, Emily Rafferty (who, yes, wore the same Oscar de la Renta that Renee Rockefeller wore), Philippe and Edith de Montebello, and Hamish Bowles in a too amazing black spacey biker jacket.
http://nysun.com/out-and-about/where-superheroic-meet-super-fashionable

Tuesday night I went up to the New York Botanical Garden for an extraordinary gathering in celebration of a symposium on Charles Darwin.
http://nysun.com/out-and-about/no-headline-0

Did Darwin observe how creatures make themselves stand out to survive? If so he would have loved attending the big hat lunch in Central Park, on Wednesday. I took photos and recorded some audio from the event that became an Out & About podcast. You can find links to them here:
http://nysun.com/out-and-about/making-their-own-shade-central-park-lunch

To the hat lunch, I wore a beige cloche-fedora hybrid I found at Bloomingdale's on Monday and fell in love with on the spot. In fact, I never took it off Wednesday, meaning I wore it to two galas on Wednesday night. It proved quite the conversation piece. At the Phoenix House benefit, I learned that Mort Janklow's grandson loves hats -- pork pies, fedoras, he's rarely seen without one. Of course you won't find a picture of me in my hat in my photo albums from the Wednesday night galas:

Phoenix House
http://www.shutterfly.com/pro/nysun/outandabout/20080509pHouse

New York Philharmonic
http://www.shutterfly.com/pro/nysun/outandabout/20080509nyphil

I haven't yet told you about the luncheon for the Albert Einstein Medical School at Yeshiva, or the Joyce's 25th anniversary gala, but stay tuned. Lots of fun moments, I promise.