Rambling in America

   From the title you might assume that this post is about one of the many speeches given recently by President Trump. That is not the case. Instead, I am offering a suggestion for a book to read, once the weather turns. If the weather had not been so good for so long, I had planned to review the book myself, but will now provide remarks and reviews by others since we are about to leave for a few weeks in British Columbia and the weather is still too nice to be blogging. 

Walking From Washington, D.C. to New York City

   Here is how it begins:

  "Our house stands along a row of white maples nine blocks east of the U.S. Capitol, as it has since Ulysses Grant was president. Tens of thousands of times in our twenty-two years there I have opened the wrought-iron gate between the garden and the sidewalk for trips to work, dog walks, early runs, quick jaunts to the store for a clutch of bananas, or with daughters in hand on Christmas morning.
   This trip was different. On a fresh morning in late March, I stepped past the threshold of our front door, tugged the garden gate closed behind me, and set off to walk to the city of New York. A slow stroll, I liked to say, down a fast lane. An easy walk along a founding swath of the country that most travelers want to put behind them....No hastening anything on this trip. I wanted nothing over. I kissed my wife, Shailagh; said goodby to my brother Jeff; scratched my Airedale behind the ear; and turned north. I was off to talk to America, to listen to her, to examine her, to wonder over her, at what we all hoped was the end of one of the roughest patches in our history. I wanted to think about what we are, and once were, and still yearned to be. To poke among the graveyards of our past and brush the moss off forgotten things. To chew over this American project and come to some hazy conclusion over whether America was still possible or had seen its best days."

   As the author acknowledges, the walk from downtown D.C. to Manhattan is not a difficult one and anyone familiar with the general area would likely choose to ramble around just about anywhere else in the U.S. For example, although the title of Chapter 21 seems promising -- "Cresting the Great Mound" -- it is about climbing the Edgeboro Landfill in New Jersey. And, even though the author offers again a warning that much of the walk will be about wandering through a wilderness of warehouses, rather than the other kind, it is still a journey you should take with him.

   "There's nothing heroic about walking to New York, It is a humdrum feat by any measure. It is no trail through Appalachia to the peaks of Maine. No Everest looms along the way to surmount. No Grand Canyon to get across. No Cyclops to gobble me while sailing home from Troy. No Amazon requiring a machete in the belt for vines or snakes, No warlords or highwaymen along the way to loot one's knapsack. The gravest threat was a driver looking at his phone."

Believe the Blurbs

"This is a near perfect book, an exquisitely seen and felt memoir of an American journey; it's not just a geographic journey, full of keen observations and thoughtful insights, but a spiritual one, finding in our complex and sometimes contradictory landscape a mirror in which King's own inner life awakens as he wanders. Amazing."

— Ken Burns

"Part travelogue, part history, American Ramble is a thoughtful, warm-hearted guide to the country that we’ve inherited and that we’re making." — Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction

"A 61-year-old journalist, recovering from cancer, sets out to walk from Washington, D.C. to New York City. Where we might see monotony and sprawl, overpasses and rest stops, he finds time and nature, humankind in all its variety, and even, at moments, rapture. Go with Neil King on this fascinating, enchanting, and rewarding journey." — Evan Thomas, author of the New York Times bestselling First: Sandra Day O’Connor and Being Nixon.

"Beautifully written, American Ramble is packed with keen observations, surprising discoveries, and wise reflections. Readers will be rewarded at every turn in the road. It is a journey both through a landscape most of us never see and through the tangles of America’s history. It is also about perseverance and renewal. Neil King is a gifted writer, and this book is a gift." — Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize and The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.

Sources:
   Reviews are easily found and always adulatory. The book is readily available and for those in London, copies are found in the London Public Libraries. 
   Unfortunately, King had been diagnosed and treated for cancer before the walk and did not live long after it. Here are two obituaries.

"Neil King Jr., Who Wrote of a Long Walk of ‘Renewal,’ Dies at 65," Trip Gabriel, NYT, Sept. 27, 2024.

   "Neil King Jr., a journalist whose book, “American Ramble,” told of his 330-mile trek from his home in Washington, D.C. to New York City while in remission from cancer, an account that lyrically evoked the people, history and back roads of the Mid-Atlantic region, died on Sept. 17 in Washington. He was 65.

   Mr. King’s travelogue-cum-memoir, whose subtitle is “A Walk of Memory and Renewal,” was based on a 26-day hike he began in late March 2021, when the country was emerging from the Covid lockdown. (He modestly called it a “humdrum feat by any measure.”) It crystallized for many readers how the pandemic had heightened a sense of life’s urgency and fragility."

   "Neil King Jr., Who Walked the Byways on His ‘American Ramble,’ Dies at 65," Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2024.
   "The idea for his ramble germinated over decades, fed by his fascination with history and inspired by the treks of other writers such as Patrick Leigh Fermor’s hike through Europe in 1933 recounted in “A Time of Gifts” (1977) and Bruce Chatwin’s travels in Australia’s Outback in “The Songlines” (1987).

   Then, over a few turbulent years, Mr. King felt a deep urgency to make his journey. He had bounced back after cancer surgery but knew there were risks that the disease could return. The pandemic lockdowns amplified the pull of the road, he said. And the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by supporters of President Donald Trump left Mr. King wanting to observe America’s deep political fissures from the modest vantage point of a lone wanderer.

“I had set out with a wonder first stirred by a sickness,” he wrote. “A jolt of fear had opened a seam of freedom, and I had slipped through. I went out to seek and give meaning, with the giving being a key part of that conversation.”

 On March 29, 2021, Mr. King slipped on his gray-and-green backpack, put on his tweed cap, gave one last stretch to his lanky 6-foot-5 frame and walked down the front steps of his Capitol Hill townhouse."

Cormac McCarthy's Library

 

   I often write about libraries, and about a dozen posts relate to the libraries of individuals, not the institutional kind.  The last one, about Darwin's Library, contains links to some of the others. Scholars like to browse through them, looking for influences, while many of us are just curious about the books to be found on the shelves in private homes. 
   Little was known about Cormac McCarthy's library since he led a rather solitary life in a house near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Apart from writing he would hang out at the Santa Fe Institute which is a scientific research center. Perhaps that explains why his collection of over 20,000 books (with more in storage) covers many subjects. The group of scholars attempting to organize and catalog the collection have already discovered that,

 "discernible in his work but confirmed beyond doubt in his library, was that McCarthy was a genius-level intellectual polymath with an insatiable curiosity. His interests ranged from quantum physics, which he taught himself by reading 190 books on the notoriously challenging subject, to whale biology, violins, obscure corners of French history in the early Middle Ages, the highest levels of advanced mathematics and almost any other subject you can name."

   In my small collection, I do not have any books by McCarthy, although I did read The Road and saw the movie, No Country For Old Men. His library, however, contains books by a wide assortment of authors as this description indicates:

   "Giemza marveled at the heavy-duty philosophy books they were finding. “Seventy-five titles by or about Wittgenstein so far,” he said, referring to the Austrian philosopher of mathematics, logic, language and the mind. “And most of them are annotated, meaning Cormac read them closely. A lot of Hegel. That was his light evening reading, apparently.” 
   In the living room was a pool table piled with books and a leather couch facing two tall windows and three sets of nine-foot-tall wooden bookshelves designed by McCarthy that held approximately 1,000 books. Moving closer, I saw they were nearly all nonfiction hardbacks with no obvious system of organization.
   One shelf held volumes about Mesoamerican history and archaeology, along with Charles Darwin’s collected notebooks, Victor Klemperer’s three-volume diary of the Nazi years, books about organic chemistry and sports cars, and an obscure volume titled The Biology of the Naked Mole-Rat (Monographs in Behavior and Ecology). Another shelf held books about Grand Prix and Formula 1 racing, a great passion of McCarthy’s, and the collected writings of Charles S. Peirce, the American scientist, philosopher and logician, in six fat volumes of dense, difficult prose."

McCarthy wins a MacArthur
   McCarthy grew up in Knoxville in a relatively wealthy family, 'but Mr. McCarthy wrote for many years in relative obscurity and privation." In the early '80s, however, he did win a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, a fellowship that comes with a considerable amount of money. He was, of course, very successful in his later career, and at the end of it he sold his archives to Texas State University for $2 million. One reason he had so many books is that he did not use the Internet or a computer. His Olivetti sold for $254,500 at auction. 

The Bonus: 
   Apart from books, he also left behind a few automobiles. Here is a description from the article by Richard Grant, cited below:

   "I parked behind the house between a silver 1966 Buick Riviera rusting on deflated tires and a weathered red Lincoln Mark VIII. These were among the last survivors of McCarthy’s little-known vehicle collection. Dennis had sold 13 other cars, including two Allard racing cars from the early 1950s, a 1992 Lotus and a Ford GT40 racing car. McCarthy, who labored in obscurity and chronic poverty until he was 60, became a multi-millionaire later in life and freely indulged his desires and obsessions, with classic sports cars high on the list. Most of the money came from Hollywood, which turned three of his novels—All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men and The Road—into star-studded movies."

Sources:
    The quote above and the picture of the typewriter are from this obituary: Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89: “All the Pretty Horses,” “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men” were among his acclaimed books that explore a bleak world of violence and outsiders," Dwight Garner, New York Times, June 13, 2023. For another obit: "Cormac McCarthy, Spare and Haunting Novelist, Dies at 89," Harrison Smith, Washington Post, June 13, 2023.
   The description of his library is from this very good article and the title indicates that examining private libraries can be revealing: "Two Years After Cormac McCarthy’s Death, Rare Access to His Personal Library Reveals the Man Behind the Myth," Richard Grant, Smithsonian Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2025. 
   For more about his library see: The Cormac McCarthy Library Project. There is a Cormac McCarthy Society and they produce one of those single-author journals which I have often discussed, The Cormac McCarthy Journal. See, for example, "Periodical Ramblings (8)". 

ON Scrapple

 Everything But the Oink
   Scrapple consist of the scraps left over when a pig is slaughtered and it is typically fried and served at breakfast. You are reading about it today because I found this piece from about seven years ago. I had saved it because the Delmarva Shorebirds had decided to rename the team the Delmarva Scrapple, for one day - the day that happens to be my birthday. They may not have known that. Here is part of the scrap I found which is from Ballpark Digest, June 14, 2018:

The Delmarva Shorebirds (Low A; Sally League) are planning a cuisine-inspired one-game name change, as they will become the Delmarva Scrapple on August 18. 

   "Scrapple is a breakfast meat that is extremely popular on the Delmarva Peninsula and in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Whether you enjoy your scrapple thin and crispy or thick and mushy, on an egg and cheese sandwich, with ketchup, grape jelly, or with maple syrup, this celebration is for you.

   The Shorebirds will sport specialty scrapple jerseys and caps on Saturday, August 18 in honor of this delicious breakfast meat. The specialty scrapple jerseys will be auctioned off during the game on the second level concourse and will resemble a package of scrapple that you can find in your local grocery store. The specialty scrapple caps show a brand new scrapple, egg, and cheese sandwich logo."

   If you search for scrapple in Canada on the Internet, the AI generated response may indicate it is available here, for example, at Walmart. I don't think so and if you able to get it, it is likely to be from an online source. 
   Since it is popular in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., you may not want to order it from that area because the U.S. is not popular these days. But, consider that scrapple was likely 'discovered' by the Pennsylvania Dutch, not the 'Americans'. Plus, surely we have some extra pig parts up here and can learn how to make our own. That is not the case with soft-shelled crabs which I miss much more than scrapple. 

Sources:

   The Wikipedia entry is the place to start and for more see "Scrapple" in The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.   Recipes are easily found, even if scrapple is not. For all sorts of good, old recipes, see "Food History" and especially the TIMELINE buried in it. I didn't find scrapple, but I did find a recipe for "Pigs in blankets" from 1956 and how to do - PORCUPINES, which begins this way:

"In the culinary world, there are three edible porcupines:

1.A uniquely armored nocturnal game animal providing protein and fat to hungry people in both Old World & New

2.A neatly formed ground meat dish resembling this quilly creature

3. A stewed apple dessert sporting nut "quills": Apple Porcupine & Porcupine pudding.
   You are reminded that the cooking of SQUIRRELS is described in, "ON Squirrels."

Margaret Munn versus Western University

   Given that my last post was about a professor suing a university in the United States, I will now offer one about a student suing a university in Canada.  
   The student is Margaret Munn and the university is Western (often still referred to as UWO - the University of Western Ontario - in the sources provided below.)
   The major purpose of this post is to provide sources for information related to Munn's experience at Western and the lawsuit which has resulted. The litigation is ongoing. When the case is resolved, and if the result is reported, these background references may be of interest.
     I was unable to find any London reporting about "the Munn Affair", which is not unusual given the state of the local press, and the Western-related publications may be reluctant to approach the subject for other reasons, not-the-least of which is that the case is currently being litigated.
    The sources offered below are the ones that were found after a fair amount of searching. If they appear to be skewed in favour of Munn, that is in fact the case, but they were the only ones found; there were no critical ones to be excluded. Admittedly, less searching was done on social media sites where I did see a few negative comments about Munn and about the quality of the sources I note below. Here is one example from Reddit: "If you believe Jonathan Kay's reporting verbatim you need better critical thinking skills. He is highly ideological and sees himself as an anti-"woke" crusader." 
   I am choosing to say nothing about "the Munn Affair", or the quality of the sources. You can do some searching on your own, or read or listen to the sources provided and decide for yourself.

To Get Started:
       The lawsuit is outlined in this "Statement of Claim" filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Jan. 10, 2025. At the time this is being written, the 22 page document is available to the public and can be accessed by clicking on this link: MARGARET MUNN and THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO. (a summary can be generated.)

Ledrew and Laywer Lisa Bildy (a UWO grad.)

  For a short interview with Munn's lawyer which offers basic background information see: "The Case of Margaret Munn VS University of Western Ontario," Stephen Ledrew, Hosts Lawyer, Lisa Bildy, The News Forum, n.d. The introduction is found by clicking on the link above and lasts 4:50. The rest of the 20 minute interview is found under, "Political Correctness and Censorship at Canadian Institutions," The News Forum. 
  More about Munn, her "offences" at Western and the actions by some in the Faculty of Education and the reaction by the Western Senate, is found in this summary provided by the Free Speech Union of Canada: "Margaret Munn v. University of Western Ontario," May 12, 2025.

  For Additional Background:
   The first article about Munn's experiences at Western is this very long one: "Lessons From a Teacher-College Battle Over Free Speech and 'Decolonization': University of Western Ontario Instructors Spent Months Denouncing an Outspoken Education Student Who'd Asked Awkward Questions About Indigenous Reconciliation - Until a UWO Tribunal Concluded They'd Violated Her Rights," Jonathan Kay, Quillette, Nov. 29, 2024. The entire article is available by clicking on the link above.
   For those who would rather listen than read, the author has more recently offered this account which is 25 minutes long. A link and an indication of the contents are provided here:
"Why This Student Was Punished for Asking the Wrong Questions at University of Western Ontario?" Jonathan Kay, Quillette, May 20, 2025.
   "In a speech at the University of Western Ontario, Quillette editor Jonathan Kay shared insights from his investigation into UWO’s teachers college, focusing on a controversy involving Margaret Munn, who questioned the curriculum's decolonization focus. Munn's inquiries led to a backlash, with UWO's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion committee pushing for her expulsion. However, UWO's Senate Review Board Academic ultimately vindicated her, emphasizing the need for free speech and academic freedom. Kay highlights systemic pressures and incentives in academia that prioritize ideological conformity over open dialogue, urging reforms to support intellectual diversity."

00:15 The speaker’s legal career struggled due to moral dissonance with clients
01:39 Journalism reveals institutional pressures over personal morality
02:19 Margaret Munn faces challenges as a non-traditional student at UWO
04:40 UWO's decolonising pedagogy course is criticised as overly ideological
08:07 Munn questions decolonisation narratives, disrupting academic orthodoxy
10:24 UWO’s EDI committee seeks to expel Munn for ideological dissent
12:42 Curriculum changes and staffing reflect institutional haste and pressure
18:31 Administrators prioritise ideological trends over academic integrity
22:12 University reform requires changing incentive structures
23:09 Lena Dagnino defends academic freedom and Munn’s rights
23:37 Judgment critiques constraints on Munn’s academic expression
24:21 Panel defends intellectual freedom and academic values
24:49 Call for scholars to uphold academic principles
25:03 Based on a speech promoting liberty and rule of law

   A response to the reporting by Kay about the "Munn Affair" is found here:

"Schooled in DEI: UWO Sued for Ideological Teacher Training," by Jamie Sarkonak, National Post, May 24, 2025. Here are the first three paragraphs:

   "The point of the University of Western Ontario's education program should be to teach its students how to teach - but instead, it seems to be teaching students what to think by sabotaging the success of students who don't agree with decolonization.

   That's at least the impression you get from a lawsuit served upon the university by alumna Margaret Munn. She alleges she was subjected to unfair treatment and ideological pressure during her studies, including harassment-like behaviour from her faculty dean, and is now seeking more than $1 million in damages with the help of the Free Speech Union of Canada and her lawyer, Lisa Bildy. Her allegations are detailed in a statement of claim that has been made public, and have yet to be proven in court. Potentially years of proceedings lie ahead.

  The University of Western Ontario was only recently served and must file a statement of defence; its spokesperson, Stephen Ledgley, told the National Post on Friday that he was unable to comment on ongoing litigation."
   Essentially the same article by Sarkonak is also found under this title: "Education Student Punished For Questioning Decolonization Sues UWO," Postmedia Breaking News, May 26, 2025.

Professor Timothy L. Jackson Wins $725,000 Settlement

          Facing the Music

   Professor Jackson will receive $725,000 from the University of North Texas. Five years ago he was accused of being a racist by some of his fellow faculty members and students at the UNT. Jackson was removed as editor of  the journal he produced at North Texas and its publication suspended. He will now continue to teach there, and  have his course load reduced and resume his editorship of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and have a half-time Research Assistant to support the journal and receive the $725,000. Not bad. In addition, someone suggests that “We all owe Professor Jackson thanks for showing universities what will happen if they give in to woke mobs.”
   You likely are reading this post because of the mention of $725,000. It is highly unlikely that you read my earlier post, The Journal of Schenkerian Studies.  In it you will find a full account of the situation which led to the lawsuit, so you can have a look at that post for additional background.
   When I wrote it, the case was not settled and Professor Jackson did not yet have his own Wikipedia page which he now does. If you click on, Timothy L. Jackson, and go directly to the section, "Journal of Schenkerian Studies issue 12", you can avoid my longer account and feel more confident about the information provided.
  And, here is some CANCON, you will learn from the Wikipedia entry that Jackson was born in Ottawa and went to McGill!
 Sources:
      You are unlikely to need more, other than those already provided. If you do, you will find additional articles about the subject since many were written after the settlement in July, 2025. A sample is provided below and it is the source for the photo above. Professor Jackson also was able to keep his library privileges.

 "University Music Theory Professor Wins $725,000 in Settlement," Josh Guab, North Texas Daily, July 25, 2025.

   "Timothy Jackson, a 66-year-old distinguished university music theory research professor, continues to teach after settling a five-year-long lawsuit against the university and facing backlash over a controversial article....
 Jackson wrote an article about the controversy surrounding the historical Jewish music theorist, Heinrich Schenker, in which he compared Schenker’s work to that of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein in the field of classical music theory. 

   Jackson’s lawsuit began in 2020 after Philip Ewell, a music theorist at Hunter College, labeled Schenker as a lead influencer in the “white racial frame” of music theory. The professor included Schenkerian scholars as contributors to the “racist” framework. In response, Jackson defended Schenker in an article in the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and received national backlash from music theorists and students. 

   In Jackson’s response, he said Ewell’s claim “scapegoats Schenker and Schenkerians and paucity of African Americans” in music theory and was anti-Semitic. In the article, his argument focused on Schenker being Jewish and Schenker's predominantly Jewish student base being anti-Nazi and warned of academic ideological justification for a second Holocaust of Israeli Jews. 

  “All but one of my doctoral students dropped studying with me,” Jackson said. “In some ways, I really don’t blame them because they felt that they would be tainted by me.”

   University graduate students and faculty endorsed a statement that called to dissolve the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and apologized for Jackson’s “racist attacks.” Jackson said the university decided to close the journal, which was the primary incentive of the Center of Schenkerian Studies. Jackson said the journal’s elimination caused the center to close. 

“One of the things about this cancel culture that really, really hurt me and upset me was that I’ve always treated students with love and kindness,” Jackson said. “I was shocked and still am to this day, about how some students behaved towards me.”

   Jackson sued the university after the Journal of Schenkerian Studies closed. The university settled in early July, paying Jackson $725,000 on counts of defamation and violating his freedom of speech. 

   According to the Denton Record-Chronicle, $400,000 will be allocated to Jackson, and the remaining $325,000 will cover the initial legal fees in the case. The agreement stated the university was not admitting any fault by settling and Jackson must drop his first amendment and defamation claims against colleagues and the administration. 

   “The agreement ensures that journals published by the UNT Press, including the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, will apply the academic rigor and ethical practices expected of peer-reviewed journals within top-tier research universities,” Kelley Reese, the senior associate vice president of University Brand Strategy and Communications, said in an email to the North Texas Daily.

   Michael Lively, a music theory senior lecturer at SMU and Jackson’s former student, said people observed correctly that Schenker made racist comments, but the university dealt with the situation wrongfully. 

   “Under the interests of intellectual freedom, scholars are supposed to be able to express a wide range of ideas,” Lively said. “If other scholars disagree with them, then they should do that through the normal process of debate and discussion, instead of the sort of condemnation and ad hominem attacks, which were unfortunately part of the controversy.”

   Jackson said he will continue teaching at the university because he wants to rebuild the Center of Schenkerian Studies and teach students not what to think, but how to think. 

    “We need to be teaching students at UNT and all across this country to look at problems dialectically, how to argue one position in a different position,” Jackson said. “We’ll never get the absolute truth, but we’ll get closer and closer, like an asymptote of the truth by just persisting in this dialectical thinking.”

   Lively wrote a research article that suggests renaming Schenkerian Analysis instead of disregarding Schenker’s contributions, which will be published in the Music Theory Spectrum journal in 2027. He wants to rename the discipline to Katzian Analytical Theory, after Adele T. Katz, an early female Schenkerian theorist. Lively said this values diverse scholarly perspectives. 

   On July 9, the Columbia Academic Freedom Council recognized Jackson in his fight to affirm academic freedom and viewpoint diversity with the Columbia University Academic Freedom Prize. 

   “Academia is in a very difficult place right now in the country and it was important for me to fight the battle that I fought,” Jackson said. “I’m glad this very distinguished group of scholars has deemed that I should be among the first recipients of this award.”

   Jackson also founded the Lost Composers and Theorists Project in the Center of Schenkerian Studies during his 28 years of being a tenured professor. The project recovers music and research from composers who concealed their work during World War II under the Nazi regime. One recovered piece was performed by late university professor, Joseph Banowetz, who was Grammy-nominated in 2011. 

The Lost Composers and Theorists Project had 10 composers, including Schenker and Reinhard Oppel, a friend and colleague of Schenker. Jackson introduced Oppel’s work with help from his son, Kurt Oppel. Jackson said he lost contact after the controversy and is trying to reconnect with the Oppel family without success and the family was “profoundly dismayed by UNT’s behavior.” 

   “We’re in a situation where academic freedom has basically been thrown out the window because people are routinely threatened by extremists on both sides of the political perspective,” Lively said."

Serving The Ridiculously Rich

 

Olivia Ferney - Western, BMOS'22 Grad
  I wrote recently about Nadeen Ayoub, Miss Palestine, who may become Miss Universe, because she is in the news and Western University is mentioned (see, Miss Universe.) Another Western woman is in the "breaking news" and here are some of the stories in case you missed them. 
   The rather fetching Ms. Ferney is now in Miami working for Top Tier Travel, where she cares for the needs of very wealthy people who are used to having them met. Some of the requests are extremely extravagant and outlandish, but apparently requestors don't mind that they are exposed on, travelwithlivii, Olivia Ferney's Instagram account. Click on that link to learn more, or have a look at the articles below, where some of the more egregious examples of the demands of the rich and famous are provided.
    I will begin with the interview in The Times (the one in London, the other London) from which the illustration above is taken. It is from an article done by Paula Froelich on July 18 and it does not appear to be behind The TIme's rather high paywall, so read it at the link just provided. Other, rather lower-tiered British papers also offered stories including examples of the type of demands Ms. Ferney deals with daily. See, for example:
"Meet the Luxury Travel ‘fixer’ Whose Calls with Demanding Mega-rich Clients Have Made Her a Social Media Star," The Independent, Aug. 10, 2025.
  "Olivia Ferney has fast become one of the world's most sought-after luxury travel organizers, with Instagram videos of her staying cool in the face of absurd requests from ultra-high-net-worth clients earning her nearly 300,000 followers. She revealed her clients’ wildest demands to US Travel Editor Ted Thornhill." 

   On this side of the Atlantic, The New York Times has this story and I had to look up the sports car mentioned, since it has never been mentioned by anyone in my rather pedestrian group of friends: "They’re Rich, They Travel and They Love to Complain: A Birkin Bag Overnighted to Capri. A Pink Brabus Sports car for a Gen Z Birthday Party. Olivia Ferney, a Travel Agent to the Ultrawealthy, Has Heard it all," Guy Trebay, Aug. 21, 2025. Here are some examples from behind the NYT wall:

   “We work with many billionaires and hundred-millionaires,” Ms. Ferney said, referring to her employer, Top Tier Travel. “The main word I use is ‘particular.’ Rich people like very particular things.”
   Just how particular? There was the client who authorized $100,000 charged to his credit card for his daughter’s vacation, provided she agree not to contact him. Another client demanded a last-minute doctor’s consult before boarding a private jet, fearful that her new breast implants might rupture.
   And then there was the woman who insisted on being extracted from a charter boat when rough seas prevented her from reaching a Greek party island. She complained that the waves were not even that high, adding that the captain was no longer speaking to her....
   Raised in Dundas, Ontario, population 20,000, Ms. Ferney grew up in a middle-class family that was as incredulous as her online fans were about the stories she posted.
   After attending the University of Western Ontario, she lit out for Miami, where she met Troy Arnold, the founder of Top Tier Travel. She joined the company as a fixer for those who pay $2,500 to $8,500 a month for above-and-beyond services.
   And what are those services? A custom pink Brabus 800 for a 22-year-old’s birthday party. Spring water shipped to a Caribbean island for a client annoyed that shampooing with the local tap water gave her an itchy scalp. A $75,000 Shadow Birkin from Hermes overnighted to Capri, Italy."

   We shouldn't feel too badly for Ms. Ferney since she has to travel to the top tier places and, as the article indicates, "Her therapeutic neutrality in the face of outlandish behavior may be rooted in the fact that she takes many of her calls poolside."
   If you would like to listen to more information about Ms. Ferney, she can be heard on the CBC where she was interviewed on "Afternoon Drive", with Matt Allen on Aug. 26 - "Dundas Woman Who Serves Ultra-wealthy Shares Stories of Clients in Viral Videos." 

   If you would like to take a vacation of this type and talk to Ms. Ferney, here is the website of Top Tier Travel.

The Pretty Work of Mary Petty

    

   The New Yorker has been celebrating its centenary year for most of this year and the single issue for Sept. 1&8 comes with two covers. Inside there is a short piece about Mary Petty who "contributed a series of thirty-eight vividly colored, magnificently detailed, and flawlessly composed covers, which, at least in this New Yorker cover artist's opinion, have never been surpassed in their complexity, their richness, and, most of all, their humanity." The author adds, "they're brilliant watercolors of exquisite construction, set pieces with the charm and detail of a doll's house." Petty also published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker.
   The author of the article about Perry and the covers she produced notes in the first sentence that "In the pantheon of New Yorker artists, the name Mary Petty hardly registers." Given that she is relatively unknown and given the beauty of her work (which should not be judged by my poor photo above), I thought it worth calling your attention to her.
   During almost 40 years as a contributor to the magazine, she produced 273 drawings and 38 pen-and-watercolor covers. A collection of her drawings is found in This Pretty Pace which, a reviewer notes, we should all have a look at if we are interested in "sheer perfection." The book also includes an essay by James Thurber, "Mary Petty and Her Drawings" and on the dust jacket, she is compared to Hogarth and Daumier. Harold Ross, The New Yorker publisher gave her cartoons his highest rating of "AAA" one "A" more than the cartoons of Thurber.
   Apart from producing covers and cartoons, she also provided illustrations for books by others. Her last cover for The New Yorker was on Mother's Day, May 19,1966. It is the one on the bottom right above and if the image was better you would see an older woman in an elegant room pulling a cord which breaks. 
   Apparently Petty quit abruptly when two of her cover submissions were rejected. She had lived a rather reclusive life with her husband, Alan Dunn, who also was a New Yorker cartoonist. It ended tragically. 
   "In early December, 1971 she disappeared, and was found by Dunn in a hospital, having been badly beaten in a violent assault. Permanently brain-damaged, she lived the remainder of her life in a nursing home, dying five years after the attack, alone." 

Sources: 
   I can assure you that a search for her art work is worth the effort. The article referred to above is: "The Mysterious Cover Artist Who Captured the Decline of the Rich: Mary Petty was Reclusive, Uncompromising, but She Peered into a Fading World With Unmatched Warmth and Brilliance, Chris Ware, The New Yorker, Aug. 25, 2025.
  The Wikipedia entry is helpful as usual. In it there is mention of the fact that she was assaulted, but I did not find any evidence of it in the New York papers. The American National Biography entry does provide additional information: 
  "Petty's career was tragically cut short when on 1 December 1971 she was assaulted and badly beaten by a mugger. She was found on Ward's Island three days afterward, bruised and incoherent, and never wholly recovered. She died five years later at the Pine Rest Nursing Home in Paramus, New Jersey."
  The book review of This Pretty Pace is here: "The Art of Mary Petty", Russell Maloney, NYT, Nov. 11, 1945. Her obituary: "Mary Petty, Cartoonist, Dead; Chided Wealthy in New Yorker," Barbara Campbell, NYT, Mar. 11, 1976,
   A major source is found at Syracuse University. See: "The Alan Dunn and Mary Petty Papers", which provides additional biographical information. 

CANCON: 
 For New Yorker covers by a Canadian see: "Bruce McCall RIP-1935-2023".
 Another Canadian, Barry Blitt, has done some, and here you will find a couple that depict two recent American presidents: "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words."