New York
‘ I Heard a Man Behind Me Explaining the Work to His Group’
Artful
Dear Diary:
My trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art typically include a stop to see Seurat’s Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” a precursor to his much larger “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.”
That painting, almost certainly the artist’s best known, has been viewed by countless visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago, and by many others who have seen a certain popular 1980s movie in which the piece has a small, but meaningful, role.
On my most recent visit to the Met, I heard a man behind me explaining the work to his group: And there’s another one at the Art Institute of Chicago that’s three times as big as this one, he said.
I turned around.
“You really know your stuff,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I saw ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.’”
— James Devitt
Bathtub in the Kitchen
Dear Diary:
Now he’s sleeping the sleep of a dead man,
In a flat on the Lower East Side.
Oh, we tussled and wrestled,
Then we spooned and we nestled.
He’s a master of love, and I’m satisfied.
But I’m leavin’ that boy on 10th Street,
There is something that I cannot ignore.
Much too glaring and numbing,
Has to do with the plumbing.
Turns out it’s an undeniable flaw.
He’s got best-sellers and electronic toys,
He likes clean fun and connubial joys.
Now I don’t care he’s not rich an’—
Still it breaks my heart.
He’s got a bathtub in the kitchen.
(I have to wash my back with a roasting rack.)
What a daunting dilemma,
After scarfing up the lamb vindaloo.
It just isn’t nice ’cause when I scrape off the rice,
Gotta move all the sponges and the Prell shampoo.
Yeah, we like our sushi and our bagels and lox,
Our steaming pizza fresh right outta the box.
All of our dinners are quite bewitchin’
But it tears me up —
He’s got a bathtub in the kitchen.
(Gotta wash my toes with a rinsing hose.)
It doesn’t matter that he’s great in the sack,
I know for sure that I won’t ever be back.
He’s intelligent and kind, but I still have my gripes,
Don’t want bathroom water in the kitchen pipes.
Now, I’m no stranger to heartache,
Trouble has knocked at my door.
But I’ll go it alone and I won’t answer the phone,
Leave his gritty Ajax and his strange décor.
Adios my man, keep your fryin’ pan.
Later for you bachelor and your ladle and your spatula.
You’ve got a bathtub in the kitchen.
— Lou Craft
Sounds of the ’60s
Dear Diary:
I was taking an uptown express to the Upper West Side. A trim, older man with a well-worn accordion got on at 34th Street.
He immediately jumped into a set of ’60s rock classics. Man, he rocked. Among the highlights was his version of the 1966 Rolling Stones hit “Paint It Black.”
As we both prepared to get off at 96th Street, I gave him a nod of approval and put some money in his cup.
He grinned and rushed toward the uptown local that was waiting across the platform.
He said, “96th Street, ‘96 Tears.’”
— Chris Parnagian
Northbound Traffic
Dear Diary:
It was about 10 years ago. I was in the passenger seat of our Toyota, my husband was at the wheel and we were stuck in northbound traffic on the West Side Highway.
It was warm out, and we had the windows down. I had a copy of “Life of Pi,” with its distinctive blue dust jacket and orange spine, on my lap.
I heard a man’s voice that sounded like it was next to me but much higher up. It turned out it was coming from the open window of a cab on a tractor-trailer that was idling next to us.
“Great book,” the voice said.
I looked up and saw the truck’s driver looking down at me. His elbow was resting on the edge of the open window. Beneath it was a copy of “Life of Pi,” open so I could see the dust jacket.
“Great book!” I said.
Slowly, traffic began to move.
— Connie Beckley
What Will You Have?
Dear Diary:
It was lunchtime in Midtown, and the deli counter line snaked its way along a refrigerated unit filled with cheeses, salamis and tomatoes.
It was all new to me, a recent arrival from Ireland. Finally, it was my turn to order.
“Yeah?” the counterman said.
“Do you have whole wheat?” I asked.
The counterman furrowed his brow and nodded.
“Do you have Cheddar?”
“Yes.”
“Do you … ”
I felt a tap on my shoulder.
Turning around, I saw a short, older man wearing a pork pie hat and a bow tie and peering at me though his glasses.
“Stop asking questions,” he said. “Tell him what you want.”
— Tommy Weir
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee
New York
Driver Who Killed Mother and Daughters Sentenced to 3 to 9 Years
A driver who crashed into a woman and her two young daughters while they were crossing a street in Brooklyn in March, killing all three, was sentenced to as many as nine years in prison on Wednesday.
The driver, Miriam Yarimi, has admitted striking the woman, Natasha Saada, 34, and her daughters, Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5, after speeding through a red light. She had slammed into another vehicle on the border of the Gravesend and Midwood neighborhoods and careened into a crosswalk where the family was walking.
Ms. Yarimi, 33, accepted a judge’s offer last month to admit to three counts of second-degree manslaughter in Brooklyn Supreme Court in return for a lighter sentence. She was sentenced on Wednesday by the judge, Justice Danny Chun, to three to nine years behind bars.
The case against Ms. Yarimi, a wig maker with a robust social media presence, became a flashpoint among transportation activists. Ms. Yarimi, who drove a blue Audi A3 sedan with the license plate WIGM8KER, had a long history of driving infractions, according to New York City records, with more than $12,000 in traffic violation fines tied to her vehicle at the time of the crash.
The deaths of Ms. Saada and her daughters set off a wave of outrage in the city over unchecked reckless driving and prompted calls from transportation groups for lawmakers to pass penalties on so-called super speeders.
Ms. Yarimi “cared about only herself when she raced in the streets of Brooklyn and wiped away nearly an entire family,” Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said in a statement after the sentencing. “She should not have been driving a car that day.”
Mr. Gonzalez had recommended the maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
On Wednesday, Ms. Yarimi appeared inside the Brooklyn courtroom wearing a gray shirt and leggings, with her hands handcuffed behind her back. During the brief proceedings, she addressed the court, reading from a piece of paper.
“I’ll have to deal with this for the rest of my life and I think that’s a punishment in itself,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “I think about the victims every day. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve done.”
On the afternoon of March 29, a Saturday, Ms. Yarimi was driving with a suspended license, according to prosecutors. Around 1 p.m., she turned onto Ocean Parkway, where surveillance video shows her using her cellphone and running a red light, before continuing north, they said.
At the intersection with Quentin Road, Ms. Saada was stepping into the crosswalk with her two daughters and 4-year-old son. Nearby, a Toyota Camry was waiting to turn onto the parkway.
Ms. Yarimi sped through a red light and into the intersection. She barreled into the back of the Toyota and then shot forward, plowing into the Saada family. Her car flipped over and came to a rest about 130 feet from the carnage.
Ms. Saada and her daughters were killed, while her son was taken to a hospital where he had a kidney removed and was treated for skull fractures and brain bleeding. The Toyota’s five passengers — an Uber driver, a mother and her three children — also suffered minor injuries.
Ms. Yarimi’s car had been traveling 68 miles per hour in a 25 m.p.h. zone and showed no sign that brakes had been applied, prosecutors said. Ms. Yarimi sustained minor injures from the crash and was later taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
The episode caused immediate fury, drawing reactions from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams, who attended the Saadas’s funeral.
According to NYCServ, the city’s database for unpaid tickets, Ms. Yarimi’s Audi had $1,345 in unpaid fines at the time of the crash. On another website that tracks traffic violations using city data, the car received 107 parking and camera violations between June 2023 and the end of March 2025. Those violations, which included running red lights and speeding through school zones, amounted to more than $12,000 in fines.
In the months that followed, transportation safety groups and activists decried Ms. Yarimi’s traffic record and urged lawmakers in Albany to pass legislation to address the city’s chronic speeders.
Mr. Gonzalez on Wednesday said that Ms. Yarimi’s sentence showed “that reckless driving will be vigorously prosecuted.”
But outside the courthouse, the Saada family’s civil lawyer, Herschel Kulefsky, complained that the family had not been allowed to speak in court. “ They are quite disappointed, or outraged would probably be a better word,” he said, calling the sentence “the bare minimum.”
“I think this doesn’t send any message at all, other than a lenient message,” Mr. Kulefsky added.
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