Yesterday, the day of the big blackout, I went to the Whitney with MG, hoping to visit Tim Baum at the same time as his gallery is only a block way. Well, we never heard from Tim, so Mike and I did the Whitney, after passing through a blockade of very aggressive fund raisers. I t was lucky that Mike and I had the benfit of fighting for Coach Quinn on our old HS football team, Mike as a first string tackle and me as a benchwarming guard. Anyway, we cross blocked the little old lady and soon found our selves on the admission line.

Following our Whitney experience we went for a walk through Central Park, stopping for sandwiches at the Boathouse. We talked about soulmates and decided, basically, that they were very hard to come by. Comprimise seems to be the order of the day, especially at this age.

I was to have dinner in Great Neck with a neighbor from the old days on Willow Lane, and so I left Michael and took the "C" train from 79th and CPW to Penn Station where I made the last train that made it all the way home before the blackout. I arrived at Great Neck at 3:59 PM and went to 5 Continents to pick up some cheese for cocktails with Vesta and Maria. At 4:10 PM as the cheeseman began to weigh the cheese on an electronic scale he lights went out. The Cheeseman paniced and ran out of his store, leaving me alone with the cheese. Resisting the natural impluse to steal all the cheese in sight I waited for him to come back in. But now the electronic scale couldn't weigh anything--not even Mr. Cheeseman's thumb. He was reluctant to sell me anything, even though he had already cut my cheese. So I convinced him to estimate the weight--and finaly just stuffed some cash in his hand and took the cheese.