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general were. He would tell me all sorts of stories about Americans, who were always named Bud or Dick, and always the Americans were funnier, greater, smarter, and more attractive than anybody else, including him. At the end of every story about Americans, whom he always referred to as the Yanks, he would say, “Oh, the Yanks are a crazy bunch, but they have ideas, and you can’t stop a man when he has ideas.” But the thing my father said about Americans that made me love them the most was “The Yanks are great. Listen, if a Yank ever asks you if you can
do something and you can’t do it, don’t say ‘No,’ say ‘I’ll try.’” My father was a snobby, critical, dignified man, who usually said very little about anything. It was from him that I got the full meaning of the term “It doesn’t measure up.” And I knew that if he felt the way he did about Americans, you could forget everything else. When I was nine years old, I added an extra plea to my prayers. Up to then, I would say the Twenty-third Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, and I would pray that God would bless my mother and father and make them live long enough to see me become a grown woman, and would bless me and help me to be a good girl. But when I was nine years old I started adding, “And please, God, let me go to America.” I did this for six years straight. As I grew older, I got my own ideas about why I wanted to go to America. It had to do with pink refrigerators; shoes that fall apart if you get caught in the rain (because that way you can get a new and different pair); the flip in Sandra Dee’s blond hair as she played a pregnant teen-ager in the movie A Summer Place ; Doris Troy, the way she looked and the way she sang “Just One Look”; and, of course, Negroes, because any place that Negroes are is cool.
    On Sunday, I thought about all those things. I thought about them because it was the Fourth of July and America was two hundred years old and I found myself among millions of Americans celebrating it by looking at a bunch of ships sail up a river. It sounds silly, but that is one of the coolest things I have ever done. I walked around and I saw some French sailors mistakenly walk into an all-male bar on lower Tenth
Avenue looking for girls. I saw a group of black boys climb all the way to the very top of a steel arch on the abandoned West Side Highway to get a better view of things. They looked so neat—like a Cartier-Bresson photograph. And I met four natives of Poland who told me that after spending a week in New York they were sailing down the Mississippi to make a documentary on Mark Twain for Polish television. I felt tremendous, and for the first time in the eleven years I have lived here I felt like an American. I am very grateful to my father, who told me in his special way that, no matter what, I should always go with the cool people.
    â€” July 19, 1976

Boz Scaggs
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    We went to the Wollman Memorial Rink, in Central Park, the other evening to hear Boz Scaggs, a singer who comes from Texas, perform. There are a few things we have always liked about Boz Scaggs. We like his performing name (Boz Scaggs) and we like his real name (William Royce Scaggs). We like the songs he sings, which are mostly his own compositions and are mostly about bad boys (as in a song called “Lowdown”) and bad girls (as in a song called “Georgia”). When we saw him in the Park, we found other things to like. For instance, his live singing voice isn’t at all far removed from his recorded singing voice; he talks with a nice Texas drawl; and he never once asked the audience if everybody was feeling all right or to accompany his singing with handclaps.
    Boz Scaggs is not a new performer or a widely popular old performer. During the late sixties, he was a member of the Steve Miller Band, a San Francisco rock group. Since then, as a solo performer, he has had