are married, 1904.  See yesterday's post.  As I was saying, the seeds of our destruction were planted long ago.

  Love in the Time of Chernobyl.

In "Arsenals of Folly," reviewed in the March 6th issue of the NYRB, Richard Rhodes writes that "Far from victory in the Cold War, the superpower nuclear-arms race and the corresponding militarization of the American economy gave us ramshackle cities, broken bridges, failing schools, entrenched poverty, impeded life expectancy, and a menacing and secretive national-security state."

I feel as though this is a part of the Reagan legacy we are neglecting lately, so I urge you all to read the review, and I note in passing that this issue of the NYRB is an especially rich one, which I intend to be referencing in future posts.  I'm just saying. 

A slew of deaths has also caught our attention, and for convenience sake I direct you to the main page of the Telegraph Obituaries in order to make your selection from the following:

Natalia Bessmertnova, leading ballerina of the Bolshoi for 30 years.

Alec Wildenstein, art dealer with a bunker of Old Masters in the Catskills, once married to the notoriously frightening Jocelyne, the "Bride of Wildenstein."

Alain Robbe-Grillet, confusing French novelist and author of the script for "Last Year in Marienbad" which was considered unreleasable at one time and then was re-released and made no more sense than it did the first time around. 

Richard Burton, the "stylish motor-racing boulevardier" whose obit includes valuable information which could save the lives of those having sex while downhill skiing. 

And in passing, (no pun intended) Dorothy Podber, peformance artist and mad muse who once shot a stack of Warhol "Marilyn" portraits.  According to her New York Times obit, Billy Name, a habitue of the Factory, brought Dorothy to visit.  After putting a bullet through a number of paintings she left and Andy said to Billy, "Don't bring Dorothy here again.  She's too scary." 

As Justin and I were commenting the other day, we used to know people like Dorothy.  These days we find it best to keep our distance from them. 

Of course there was also a time when we regularly dined at the Waverly Inn, which was long before anyone thought fake West Village townhouses by Robert A.M. Stern starting at $13.5 million would be a good idea, which only goes to prove how dramatically life has changed.

As though the title to Jonathan Demme's 1984 concert film of the Talking Heads was a kind of directive to the world, the meaning of which would become clear only later.