Alix Strauss

As the travel editor for CBS News, Peter Greenberg spends much of the year outside of New York, where he has homes in Manhattan and on Fire Island, the latter of which was built by his parents 55 years ago. “I love Fire Island,” he said. “It’s the Hamptons without the attitude.” During the summer, he takes up residence in Ocean Bay Park, on Fire Island, when he can.

For decades Greenberg, now 69, was a bachelor who was opposed to marriage. “As a journalist I was covering a lot of public figures who kept getting divorced,” he said. “Even my own parents, who should have divorced, stayed together for the kids. With that as my model it wasn’t something on my list.”

But in 2016, Greenberg met Hande Bayar, 47, a graphic designer, at a television premiere. “I didn’t know what love was until I met Hande.” In July, the two were married in Central Park.

BEFORE SUNRISE I only need four hours of sleep so I’m up at 4 a.m. This is when I do my best writing. I’m working on my next book and I’m doing magazine pieces, top editing my scripts, writing my producer for my radio show. I also return emails. I get about 450 a day. I don’t like coffee so I start the day with a ginger ale.

PAPER RUN Around 7:30 I get on my boat to go shopping. I pull into the dock, run into the Seaview store and get as many newspapers as I can. Then I zip back.

HANDE At 8ish I make breakfast for my wife. In September 2017, a hole in my stomach that I didn’t know I had got bigger and became life-threatening. When I got to Mount Sinai I gave the hospital my sister’s number and texted Hande, who I had just started dating, and who I was supposed to get together with that night, to tell her I wouldn’t be able to make it.

I woke up three days later with 15 tubes everywhere in the ICU. There were two people who never left my side, my sister and Hande. Our relationship grew from there. It was a life-challenging moment that became a life-changing moment. And when it came to marriage, “never” became “when.”

FRATERNITY We watch “CBS Sunday Morning” and read the paper. Then I go down to the firehouse for a one-hour meeting, presuming there are no fire alarms. Growing up, all the kids would run to the firehouse when the alarm rang.

On my 17th birthday, they told me I would qualify for certification the next year, which is what I did. Now I’m a firefighter with 50 years with the department. In a given year, I’ll respond to about 50 alarms, some are false; some are real. It makes you a true member of the community. It was and still is my coed fraternity.

BOATING While I’ve been at the firehouse, Hande has made a picnic lunch. By 1ish we’re on the boat. It’s a Pro-Line 30-foot Center Console. It takes 32 minutes for the ferry to go across the bay; I can do it in 11. We go out about 5 miles and once there we turn off the engine. There’s no radio. The only sound you hear is the water slapping up against the boat. It’s intoxicating.

We eat first, a salad with snap peas and green peppers and wine for her; maybe a grilled cheese for me. We swim and then read on the bow. I would rent a boat as a kid for $5 an hour; my parents never knew. I had to earn every penny to buy my first boat, which I did at 14 because I had six different jobs. I still have that boat. It’s a restored 13-foot Boston Whaler. It’s a classic and a museum piece.

TIME TO GO By 4:30 we go back home to shower and change. Then my wife drives me to the airport. During the summer I don’t slow down, I redirect. I spend as much time as I can out here. I’ll get to JFK around 7:30 for a 9:45 flight.

TRAVEL DEAL This time I’m going to Warsaw because I have a meeting the next day with the prime minister. I always leave on a Sunday, and I’m usually back by or before Thursday. The deal is we are never away from each other for more than three nights. If we are, then she comes with me.

TWO KINDS OF LUGGAGE On the plane, I’m a window guy because I don’t want anyone climbing over me. I take a Spartan view of air travel; I’m not there for the food or the seats. There are two kinds of luggage; carry-on and lost. I’ve FedExed my bags to my destination for the past nine years. I get 16 newspapers and 35 magazines every day so I bring a small carry on and a huge blue duffel filled with reading material. The goal is to get off the plane with an empty bag.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/nyregion/how-peter-greenberg-travel-expert-spends-his-sundays.html" id="519bb784-80c4-3c76-a0a8-1bb01bf51e49">The New York Times</a>.

How Peter Greenberg, Travel Expert, Spends His Sundays

(Sunday Routine)

In May 2002, Francesco Clark’s life radically changed when he dove into the shallow end of a stranger’s pool. His neurosurgeon at the time said he had a permanent spinal cord injury, rendering Clark paralyzed and unable to speak.

Soon, he had moved back in with his parents in Westchester County, New York. “When I saw the hospital bed in my parents’ home where I used to play the piano, I burst into tears.”

But after years of rigorous physical therapy, Clark has proved much of the original prognosis to be wrong, while also starting a successful skin care business called Clark’s Botanicals. A national ambassador for the Christopher &amp; Dana Reeve Foundation, Clark, 41, lives with his father, mother and an aide, Silvia Golle, in Bronxville.

TALK TO ME Alexa wakes me at 8 a.m. Voice-activated software has made my life easier. I talk to her 50 times a day. Over the past 17 years I’ve regained my ability to speak and breathe on my own and use my arms. Sleeping is less painful since I got a special mattress that gently turns me while I’m sleeping. I also sleep with splints on my hands and feet.

TEAM WORK My mother makes me a triple cappuccino and gets my concoction of 30 different vitamins and supplements organized. I have three aides and two different nurses who help me. Silvia has been with us for 11 years. She’s part of the family. She helps me shave and gets my workout clothing from the closet. Then a Hoyer lift and net get me out of bed and into a waterproof wheelchair.

LAB RAT After the accident, I felt like my life was on pause while everyone was moving light-years ahead of me. Aside from being paralyzed, my body didn’t sweat. My skin looked terrible and became clogged and I broke out. The last thing I wanted to do was look in the mirror. My father and I started Clark’s from a hospital bed. I’m the lab rat. I test a lot of the products we make in the morning. I have a roll-in shower so after testing I wash everything off.

PROGRESS My workout uniform is Uniqlo pants, Lacoste shirt, navy blue Adidas sneakers. For the first three years I didn’t go out. I shaved my head. I wore the same paper hospital pants everyday until Christopher Reeve passed away. That’s when I realized I needed to take responsibility for my life. By 10 I’m in my manual wheelchair and can use my arms to groom myself. At my desk I’ll read emails. In the last five years my fine-motor movements have come back.

BODY WORK The garage used to be a horse stable before we turned it into my workout and work space. I have a standing frame that looks like an elliptical machine, and my assistant and aide get me in it. It’s nice to be standing again and to defy what people said I’d never be able to do. This moves my hands and legs and prevents osteoporosis, relieves pain and stretches my muscles. My iPhone is tied to the handle bar. During the week, this is how I make a lot of my business calls.

ENDORPHINS For the next hour I do bike rotations on my back for muscle and spine stimulation that allows for aerobic activity. I used to run 7 miles a day and was on the crew team, so this is a stress release. I’m up to 3,000 rotations, which is 6,000 steps. Then I return emails and review my day and the week.

TRIP TO THE CITY My mother and aide get the van ready. Buying the first van was a way to re-establish my independence. It was a huge step in my recovery and gave me a sense of self. I recently started looking at town houses on the Upper West Side. I’m ready to move out on my own again. I like being near Lincoln Center for the opera and the Museum of Natural History.

The biggest challenge will be finding a property where I can add an elevator and build a ramp. If I’m not doing that, we’ll all go to the Met. I grew up in Italy, so I love looking at historical work, especially from Van Gogh.

FAMILY DINNER My brother and sister and their families all live nearby. They come over for our Thanksgiving-like Sunday meal. I text everyone what to bring and when to show. My brother grills steak, my mom makes gnocchi and tagliatelle, my niece does dessert, my nephew makes and serves the cappuccino. Someone is setting the table. Someone else is picking the wine. There’s a sense of intention to all of this; that’s what’s changed in my life.

THERAPY My physical therapist comes over. I’m relearning how to crawl. I do planks and moving around on my elbows. I love it. I’m listening to music — Abba, Erasure, Lady Gaga, Donna Summer, anything pop and upbeat.

THE CLASSICS By 11:15 I’ve been helped back into bed and will watch a movie. I love old ones, especially Hitchcock, like “Dial M for Murder.” I like the elegance and can catch something different every time I watch it. It’s not just Grace or Tippi, there’s this element of suspense.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/nyregion/clarks-botanicals-francesco-clark.html" id="cda3e452-9e2f-3264-af32-55fa7936aa4c">The New York Times</a>.

Always Moving, and Chatting With Alexa

Dr. Deepak Chopra, the alternative medicine and New Age megastar, spends his Sundays meditating, walking and contemplating life. “Sunday is a day of reset. It’s not a day of obligations,” he said. “There’s nothing that important if you miss it.” For the past five years Chopra, 72, and his wife of 48 years, Rita, 70, have lived in a luxury green apartment, complete with vitamin-filtered showers and antimicrobial coating on high-touch areas, in Union Square, Manhattan. “The air and water are filtered,” Chopra added, and “there’s no outside sound." This year he will introduce a podcast on the Cadence13 podcast network and is on schedule to finish his 89th book.

GENTLE START I’m up at 5 a.m. I’m a morning person. We have circadian lighting in the bedroom, which changes from total darkness to predawn to morning light. Then I stare at the ceiling for 10 minutes doing nothing.

STILLNESS For the next two hours I sit in bed and meditate. When my wife wakes, she meditates with me. Then I practice body and breath awareness while asking myself, “How can I have the most joyful day?”

STRETCH From 7:30-8:30 I do standard yoga. Three times a week I go to a class in the building. Right now I’m using a purple mat someone gave me. It has my name on it. People keep giving me mats. I have six or seven of them.

DOCTOR’S ORDERS I make coffee and drink three cups before noon. Then, no coffee after that. I used to have only one, but my brother, who’s a doctor, convinced me to have more. He thinks everyone should have five cups, but that’s too much.

GETTING THEIR STEPS IN Around 9:30 my wife and I take a two-hour walk. We do Central Park or ride the subway to Queens or Brooklyn. I specifically go to ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown and Little India because it’s different. I enjoy sensory experiences like color, taste and people. Living in New York is like living in the rest of the world. We walk a minimum of 10,000 steps. Usually it’s 20,000, or 5 to 10 miles.

MEAL SELECTION First we decide if we’re going to have a big lunch or dinner. I only have one big meal a day. I leave that to my wife. I’m not a foodie but I know every restaurant in the neighborhood. I love anything that’s different from our own Indian cooking, which my wife will do if the kids are here.

ALONE TIME I’m not a social person. I’m alone a lot because my wife has many interests. She loves to go to movies and museums. She’s learned to do it by herself when her friends can’t join her.

BOOKS For the next two hours I work on my new book, “Meta Human.” This will be my 89th. I’m going to write one more and then I’m done. I’m juggling 20 different books because they pertain to what I’m writing. I go on the internet and will find a title that’s tantalizing, like “You Are Not Your Brain.” Right now I’m reading two from Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus.” He tracks our existence to the Big Bang. Also “Wings of Death: The Last Poems of Rabindranath Tagore,” which is inspiring. I’m obsessed with death these days.

PREP I write or jot down notes that have been incubating in my head for the next 30 minutes. Or I prepare for a talk I’m giving.

LET IT GO From 5 to 5:30 I do a second, short meditate on the day that has passed by, which I do in my gray chair. Everyday reality is a lucid dream, and I reflect on that. Then I detach from it and let it go. Experience is ungraspable. It’s all snapshots.

CATCH-UP My wife comes home. We talk about each other’s day. Mine was not as interesting as hers. She updates me about what she did and who she saw.

SNACK I don’t eat after sunset, so I’ll have a small meal, yogurt or an everything bagel with cream cheese, or lentil soup.

WALK AND REFLECT From7 to 7:30I may take a second walk by myself. I’m a loner. I don’t have a social life. I try not to reflect during this time. To just be and enjoy the sound, color, neon lights or the flavors that New York assaults on your senses.

SCREENS I don’t watch TV, so from 8 to 8:30 I check the news on my computer. I look at The Times or CNN. I catch up with my emails and communicate with my kids, and grandchildren, who I might FaceTime with. I talk with them every day. It doesn’t matter where they are.

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND By 9 I get into bed and do yoga nidra for 10 minutes where I consciously shut off sensory experiences. I drift into the infinite, fall asleep, hoping to see the world for the first time the following day.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/how-deepak-chopra-wellness-expert-spends-his-sundays.html" id="e980e793-df2c-3655-acf0-7c8a276fc603">The New York Times</a>.

Yoga, Meditation and Lots of Coffee: How Deepak Chopra, Wellness Expert, Spends His Sundays

He asked if they could immediately join a protest at the Stonewall Inn. It was 2 a.m.

“He said he couldn’t talk but needed as many bodies as possible, so we got dressed,” Leslie recalled. “When we got there it looked like the end of the world. It was a horrible scene with people screaming and fighting. But that was only the beginning. That one night was not the end. There were other demonstrations.”

It was quite the season for gay rights. Leslie and Lohman, who had 500 people attend their first exhibition (they had predicted 100, max), decided to curate more shows. Each one became more popular than the next. “We realized it didn’t have to be all erotic,” Leslie said. “People came with wonderful political art, romantic art and sociological art.”

In 2016, the gallery and foundation, which had moved on from the couple’s loft years before, officially became the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. The museum, at 26 Wooster St., has amassed over 30,000 objects, and is the host to six major exhibitions a year. Its current show, “Art After Stonewall 1969-1989,” runs through July 21.

Lohman died in 2009, but Leslie has stayed committed to the museum. Last month, Leslie spoke about his work as a curator, and what has changed culturally over the past 50 years.

The following interview is an edited and condensed version of the conversation.

Q: How has gay life in New York changed since Stonewall?

A: Before Stonewall if you went to a gay bar they had dancing in the basement. A red light would flash on and off if someone suspicious came in. You had to stop dancing and pretend you were there with a buddy having a beer. Places were being raided, people were being taken off to jail for socializing with each other. After Stonewall, when the city finally realized they had to do something, the changes were absolute. It didn’t happen all at once, it took some time. Sophisticated straight New Yorkers began to come together saying this law needed to be changed, it was undemocratic. There was a movement of sex positivity and sexual freedom, and an acceptance of premarital sex.

Q: Did the pride parade play a part?

A: The parade was monumental in that it began something; it was like a juggernaut. The moment people were willing to come out in public became crucial. That was in 1970. Once it started, it couldn’t stop.

Q: When you started showing art in your home, was it hard to find artists?

A: Not at all. Many gay artists who worked in homosexual contexts had been denied venues all their lives. It didn’t matter how brilliant the work was, if they showed it to a museum director or gallerist, it was shunned. Artists flooded in; not all of it was good, but it was all wonderful.

Q: Which pieces have earned you the most notoriety?

A: Marion Pinto did a dual nude portrait of Fritz (my partner) and myself, and included us in her successful show, “Man as a Sex Object.” We exhibited Keith Haring, David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Q: In 50 years of being a gallerist committed to gay and lesbian art, what are you most surprised by?

A: That it took 50 years to become a museum. There was so much stacked against us in the beginning. We couldn’t get any attention for decades. We had wonderful artists and wonderful shows, but we couldn’t get anyone to look at them. Finally The New York Times writer Holland Cotter came to a show in 2007. At the end of his piece he said: “This new space is a pearl beyond price.” That put us on the map.

Q: What did each decade represent to you?

A: The ’60s was the barest beginning. You had gay art and straight kids taking off the shackles of the Eisenhower years. The ’70s was like a flower opening up. There was hedonism. Everything got surprisingly gay: art, music, dance, theater. The ’80s was a terrible shrinkage because the plague got everyone. The ’90s was about recovery. We discovered artists didn’t go into hiding; there were still a few private venues that showed work. We reestablished ourselves. During the new century things were sort of back to normal. This new decade has brought a new audience of people who weren’t even born when the AIDS crisis was here.

Q: Your first gallery on Wooster Street closed in 1982. Why?

A: AIDS stopped everything. Everything closed in New York: the baths, bars, social clubs. People were afraid to go into public venues. They stopped coming to the shows. Your friends were dying; we were at memorials, at bedsides, two men died in our home. It was a horrible decade.

Q: What happened to the art scene then?

A: It shrunk. Gay art became more AIDS-focused. They documented it because mainstream art didn’t. People are disturbed by images if it doesn’t suit their psychology. A still image is very powerful, sometimes in a negative way.

Q: Throughout the AIDS crisis, you salvaged queer art from destruction.

A: Art is worth rescuing. When people died from AIDS, their families threw out these amazing things, so we started tracking collections. We’d call people and inform them if they found art they didn’t want because of a homoerotic element we’d make them an offer, or take a tax deduction, and that resulted in some gifts. Over 10 years we saved 50 to 80 items. We would go anywhere in the east; Maryland, Vermont, Connecticut, to save whatever we could.

Q: What’s one of the most memorable items you salvaged?

A: Gustav Von Will did these enormous paintings on the walls of the old piers at night. When they tore down the pier we hired a company to cut them out. It was illegal, but we did it anyway.

Q: What are you most proud of for this current show?

A: That we’ve resurrected some of the early work by artists who first attracted people, like Marion Pinto, Delmas Howe, Sandra DeSando, John Burton Harter, Michela Griffo and Arthur Tress, because we were not allowed to show anything that was out of the mainstream.

Q: What was your vision regarding the importance of gay work?

A: I had no vision at all. I’m a compulsive doer. It had to do with some vague concept of gay liberation. When people are confronted with imagery, it finally helps them overcome biases and prejudices.

How a Self-Taught Art Curator Became a Gay Rights Champion

NEW YORK — In June of 1969, Charles W. Leslie and his partner, Fritz Lohman, were basking in the success of their first homoerotic art show, which they had put together the month before in their SoHo loft, when they got a phone call from a friend.

How a self-taught art curator became a gay rights champion

Fisher, 56, a marketing executive, also works with Laura Solin-Valdina, owner of wardrobe makeover company NYCStylist. For the past year, Solin-Valdina has organized and curated Fisher’s outfits at the rate of $350 per hour (with a 20-hour minimum).

“She cleaned out my closet, updated my wardrobe and brought 10 department stores to my apartment,” Fisher said. “It was rack upon rack of clothing. It was transformative.”

Fisher is trading time for money, and she is part of a growing number of people who invite human service providers into their homes to help them with time-consuming, errandlike tasks that require skill and focus. “I don’t want to spend my time shopping online or at the stores,” she said. “I would rather spend time connecting with family, staying fit or reading. Having someone shop for you whether it’s clothing or food is very efficient and cost effective. And both do a better job than I could.”

Many people in the city joke that what makes them real New Yorkers is that they never leave their apartments unless they have to. It’s getting easier to do just that, especially for those with money.

Once the province of the ultra rich, employing an array of personal helpers has begun to filter into everyday life for many New Yorkers of means.

Grocery and meal delivery services like FreshDirect, Amazon Fresh and Seamless have become all but normalized in much of the city. But bespoke house calls are a different beast altogether, delivering actual people to perform actual services. These can include massages, yoga classes, facials, hair treatments, manicures, blowouts, makeup sessions or even time with a professional cuddler.

“At home they’re not fighting with the masses; my clients don’t want to wait to see a size or color, or interface with a salesperson who is going to upsell them,” Solin-Valdina said. “When we do our fittings, we have a tailor on hand, and fit clients in their home, with their lighting, so they don’t see the harsh lighting of the store’s dressing room.”

Marie Douat is a shirt designer who often makes house calls before or after typical office hours, between 7 and 9 a.m. or 6 and 10:30 p.m.

“My customers work a lot. They want a different experience,” said Douat, who owns DOU.K, the company behind the custom shirts. Her clients are lawyers, financers and entrepreneurs who spend between $300 and $900 on a single shirt. Last year she had 50 customers. Within the first three months of this year, she has surpassed that number.

“They like that I’m just focusing on them and talking about their life, that there isn’t another customer,” Douat said. “Then they can go back to work once I leave.”

To be sure, these services are still a luxury; they are not exactly mainstream. Many busy urbanites who have bigger budgets than windows of free time are rethinking how they want to use that time, said Pam Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, in Newport Beach, California. “The only way to get more time is to be intentional about how we use it, which is what people are doing.”

Privacy in the age of transparency is also a factor, said Ellis Monk, assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University. “There’s this idea in the age of social media that privacy has become a rare commodity,” he said. By purchasing at-home services, “they are buying privacy and exclusivity simultaneously.”

They are also buying human contact. Carried Away Chefs charges $500 for a cook to prepare three four-person meals in a client’s home. But last year, the company added a stay-and-serve offering, where for a $200 surcharge chefs remain in the home to present the meals. The feature has proved popular; it has increased revenue by 20 percent, said Kate Homes, founder and chief executive of the company.

In-home services “dovetail really well with New Yorkers who have to negotiate everything — subways, taxis, people. We all dream of having everything done for us,” said Don Grant, a media psychologist and addiction specialist.

And although Grant may not make house calls, other mental health experts do (at a steep price, of course). House Call Psychiatrists is a network of board-certified and licensed psychiatrists in Manhattan who, for $1,500 an hour ($2,000 on evenings and weekends), will send one of their professionals to your home, office or hotel room. Its clientele is a mixture of high-risk patients and wealthy individuals who prefer to stay put in their homes.

But convenience comes not with just a price tag but a social cost, too.

“These can absolutely have a negative impact on our sense of connection with others,” Grant said of constant home visits and services. “There’s a loss of value of community. We are social animals,” he continued, who have become “disengaged and have lost the art of small talk.”

Rutledge shared some concerns as well. “If you have tendencies to be a hermit, you can support all this by cutting back on the interactions that give you discomfort,” she explained, replacing many of them with house call or delivery services.

But tell that to a busy, overextended New Yorker with Greta Garbo-esque sensibilities, especially when the results are positive. Fisher, for example, has a whole new wardrobe toshow off the 20 pounds she’s lost, which she attributes to having hired her at-home team.

“Having a stylist is like a having a shrink or doctor, but is a lot more fun,” Fisher said. “It’s a treat and an indulgence, but I’ve still accomplished something that adds value and another dimension to my life.”

Meanwhile, in an old-fashioned but nonetheless dramatic turn of events on the Upper East Side, the members of the Bolster family have actually been eating the same meal — at the same time — since hiring the services of Carried Away Chefs.

“Most nights we are four people ordering from four different restaurants,” said Brian Bolster, 47, a married father of two teenagers, who works in finance. “The joke used to be: You know it’s dinner time when you hear a knock at the back door.” For the past month, instead of myriad takeout orders, the family has used a personal chef, which has had a unifying effect on them.

The togetherness is even happening with leftovers. “My daughter texted last week and said she and her brother just heated up the prepared food and ate it together. I don’t know the last time they did that. I’m still trying to picture what that looks like in my head.”

Personal Chefs for Everyone: Bespoke House Calls in the Digital Age

NEW YORK — Every Monday, chef Daniela Mass arrives at Beth Fisher’s Upper East Side apartment with grocery bags full of ingredients like spaghetti squash, salmon, sweet potatoes and Swiss chard. In the Fishers’ kitchen, she prepares three four-person meals for Fisher and her husband, along with snacks. The weekly cost for a visit by Eat Well Food by Daniela, Mass’ service: $300.

Personal chefs for everyone: Bespoke house calls in the digital age

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