Thanks so much for finding this site, which will keep growing in days to come.
Thanks also for the hundreds of sweet notes on the NYT web site and in the social media in the past 24 hours (my kids keep me posted.) My ongoing enjoyment of my colleagues and the bond with readers has me glowing since I filed my last regular Sports of the Times column. In a day or three, as the first entry here, I will file one favorite postcard from 2011. My plan is to take some good swings in the NYT sports section on occasion, and regularly write about other stuff here – older role models (nonagenarians) who are still working, my love of music and radio and cities and grandkids, and maybe I will write postcards from some exotic new place my wife chooses. First things first: we’re taking one of the grand-daughters out for Xi’an lamb in Flushing Chinatown. Talk to you soon. GV
Dr Jay Chandler
12/17/2011 04:13:36 am
Thank you, George! You are one of the great ones.
Richard Leather
12/17/2011 05:37:25 am
I've read you on the LIRR from Port Washington, on the Concorde, on red-eyes from LA, at the breakfast table, and in the hospital (as in, this morning). I don't read the Sports Section of the NYT and I don't care about sports. So how is it that I know your name and must have read any number of your columns? I don't know! Can it be because you write about sport as the human condition? Can it be because you take the banality out of endless competition and focus on the humanity of sport, sportsmen and sportswomen? Good luck with your non-Rword future endeavors.
Steve Vengrove
12/17/2011 06:11:55 am
Hopefully the best is yet to come.
Ken Gleason
12/17/2011 06:21:13 am
good luck, George. you're as clear as when i interviewed you & Marianne for a hofstra chronicle feature on the yearbook's co-editors. you made it--gloriously--to the NYT; i missed it. as a former bklyn dodger fan, this is your only blemish as far as a former NY (now SF) giants fan is concerned.
Steven Springer
12/17/2011 08:05:27 am
So glad to see that you'll still write for the Times on occasion, but especially glad you'll be writing here regularly! I'm looking forward to see your continued work and view of the world.
David Tandy
12/17/2011 08:13:54 am
George,
Carlo
12/17/2011 09:33:27 am
Many thanks, George, for vastly broadening my understanding and appreciation of athletics, athletes, and competition, for the years of your insights, and for your wonderful prose. I'll miss you badly in the NYT, but will look forward to your occasional contributions there and your comments here. Buon viaggio!
Mike Knobler
12/17/2011 02:34:14 pm
Thanks, George, for all your great work over the years and for your constant professionalism. I look forward to continuing to read what you have to say. 12/17/2011 06:26:56 pm
All the best in your next phase, George. Some long-suffering baseball fans would be ever so grateful if you would shed some light on MLB's ridiculous regional blackouts (see the website) that are ripping off and turning off the fans. The suits just don't get it.
Kathryn Kitt
12/18/2011 12:25:43 am
From all of us in the Kitt Family, we wish you the very best! We enjoyed reading your column! 12/18/2011 02:43:18 am
Bookmarked (with a big smile)!
Laura Vecsey
12/18/2011 03:20:16 am
Great website! Can't wait to read your posts! 12/18/2011 04:06:57 am
George: Like a man ordering a Sam Adams at a Boston bar, you've made a great decision. I love the column, will come to love the blog but will always love and admire, the man. It was a pleasure to work with you and to find you a quiet place to write, whether it be seated on a staircase or in a small locker in the old Boston Garden. My best - TL
Lazar T
12/18/2011 04:49:24 am
Best of luck with the new direction. Will never forget that after I wrote you a letter in 1996 or so (I was 21), you actually wrote back. You're class.
John
12/18/2011 09:44:14 am
John
12/18/2011 09:45:52 am
So glad to see you continuing to write. You are now on my RSS feed - nice tunes as well... 12/18/2011 09:57:45 am
George,
Mike Connors
12/18/2011 12:36:43 pm
George, all the best to one of the best. A great person with a truly human approach to sports and life. I am blessed to have met you and talk about more than sports.
anjali vecsey
12/18/2011 05:03:00 pm
hi pop. i miss you and i am going skating with a friend. ps. love the website. miss you have fun in the big NY and tell gram hi and have a good day love lot!
Pat Millen
12/19/2011 01:40:12 am
George, I, too, remember well the Duck dinner in Seoul that Steve Goff referred to in his WashPo blog tribute. I have a great pic of you sitting next to Grant Wahl with a decimated canard as witness at your feet. I look forward to continuing to read your excellent writing. All the best with this new chapter.
Jeff Findley
12/19/2011 02:16:31 am
I am grateful that you will continue to share your thoughts in this space. Without elaborating to any extent, I have admired your writing for some time, and my life would experience a void without it. Label me a fan.
Dave Shelles
12/19/2011 08:38:07 am
Though I've read precious little of your work regularly, it turns out you're the writer I aspired to be — shining a light on the philosophy and humanity of sport.
nick s
12/20/2011 07:44:51 am
All the best for the future, George: as an expat in the US, I've truly appreciated how you've conveyed the way that soccer enchants so many around the world, helping to turn an unfamiliar audience into one increasingly familiar with the beautiful game.
Tom Hoffman
12/22/2011 10:30:15 am
That must be Xi'an Famous Foods. I'm at their East Broadway location almost every Saturday for a lamb burger.
George Vecsey
12/24/2011 01:41:00 am
It's the one on Main St. Flushing in the downstairs arcade. Our grand-daughter loved the lamb and a noodle dish, too. I got a taste for the lamb patty in Beijing, in an old neighborhood (the hutongs.) It had a soft dough surrounding it that I haven't found in NYC. Thanks for the tip. GV
Michael Green
12/24/2011 07:51:49 am
Mr. Vecsey, it's a pleasure to see you here, and you will be bookmarked (if you aren't sure what that means, the grandkids will tend to that). I'm glad you're going to write even more than you suggested in your last Sports of the Times column.
Mike Epstein
12/24/2011 03:50:11 pm
Chanced upon this site reading the Washington Post tribute. I consider it my Christmas present. As a closet GV enthusiast, I feel I have finally made the silent majority, although I would never have voted for Nixon.
Decades ago when I was studying film and TV, once a week I'd hang out in the J-school library in the pre-Internet days. I'd read you, Red Smith, Dave Anderson, Dave Kindred, Ira Berkow, Jim Murray, Blacky Sherrod, Shirley Povich, Peter Gammons, Bud Collins, and some other immortals whose names time and a heart attack have robbed me of, at least until I click that "Submit" button. 5/24/2012 01:03:23 pm
Good blog, I believe that many people like to see you write something, because I also like to come see what you wrote, is indeed very good, so I know more things usually not found. 5/24/2012 01:11:56 pm
Good article, really opened my eyes, I found a lot of things I usually did not find suddenly become clear. Thank you.Your share will make more people to get help. 8/14/2012 09:24:06 am
So glad to see that you'll still write for the Times on occasion! 9/19/2012 08:05:35 pm
You made a great point right there. I made a investigation on the topic and found many people will agree with your article. Any way I'll be subscribing to your feed and I wish you post again soon.
Robert Hallett, M.D.
6/30/2018 07:12:57 pm
George, Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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