From the Forbes Gallery, still traffic anxious, I hoofed it over to the subway on 14th Street and Union Square, to head uptown for a book party for Paige Peterson and Chris Cerf at John and Joan Jakobson’s Park Avenue apartment. You’ve already read about the Peterson and Cerf collaboration for this child’s book called ”Blackie: the Horse That Stood Still.”

I got there about eight o’clock, fairly late for a party that began at 6:30. There were about eighty guests. A lot of these people are real friends, part of a great New York network which includes writers, lawyers, business people who share times at benefits, at social gatherings, private parties and in the Hamptons in the summertime. Many have brought up their kids together, gone through the whole process of New York life and come out whole and still thriving. A little more comme il faut than the so-called power brokers who like the most highly polished dinner tables, their connections, friendships and family (ex’es, etc.) reaches far, high and wide in metropolitan and even national life.

So it is at a party like this that the hostess (Joan Jakobson) and one of the co-authors, Chris Cerf can team up at the piano after the books are signed and the hors d’oeuvres are gone and do a little doo-wop and Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, and a really good time down Memory Lane and the Old Days which now actually do seem Good. And not really that old either. Time plays tricks, no?

I took a few pictures and then ducked out, hungry and not far from Swifty’s, with a night’s work ahead of me. Swifty’s was teeming with diners and talktalktalk. I saw Anne Slaterand John Cahill entertaining friends. John, who is a lawyer, is also a deep sea diver. He’s the only deep sea diver I’ve ever known. And he’s traveled all over the world having his swim-and-looks. He just returned from Fiji. He’s swum the sardine flow with the sharks off South Africa (that IS interesting) and anywhere else you can think of. His explanation of life among the marine life is fascinating, insightful and thought-provoking. Anne stays home when John takes these trips. She’s a landlubber and one of the most glamorous New York has ever had and continues to have.