Sara Paretsky, Writer

As many of you know, I love espresso. My preferred drink is the cortado. Wherever I travel, my first concern is finding a good coffee bar nearby. For my taste, the best espresso in North America is at Zibetto's on 6th Avenue, between 57th and 56th.
It's a hole in the wall, sandwiched between a nail salon and a bicycle rental shop.
I have my own pretty good quality home machine, but I never produce the rich syrupy espresso or the perfect foam that Zibetto makes. On a recent trip, I asked the man behind the counter if he would give me a lesson.
"I could come in at 5 when you're setting up," I wheedled.
He gave me a look - the look of a New Yorker who thought he was beyond being shocked, disgusted or offended by anything someone could say to him, only to find that I had tested his outer limits.
"It is not possible to teach you." was all he said.
I still paid for my drink, and still go back every trip.
But I began to imagine myself as a billionaire, able to indulge my slightest whim. I would offer to pay Zibetto a vast fortune to move his shop to Chicago, perhaps next door to me. But he is a proud man, wedded to New York City. He refuses to move.
So then I imagined my billionaire self digging up and moving the entire west side of 6th between 57 & 56th - the indie pharmacy, the nails, the bikes, the souvenir shop - to my neighborhood.
But then I thought, Zibetto is a proud man, he will trash his shop before he will make espresso on demand in a strange city.
So I have come up with a solution, not ideal, but workable. My staff flies me in my private jet to New York every morning. My helicopter is waiting when we land. We hover over 6th Avenue while one of my staff is lowered to the street where he buys my cortado. I relax in my chopper, sipping my drink, oblivious to how much annoyance the chopper blades and noise are causing everyone else - I'm a billionaire. Does anyone else count?
And then I fly back to Chicago to go on with my day.
(As you can see, I am dedicating too much of my imagination to espresso, not enough to writing my next book)
The first photo in this set is Zibetto's cortado on the plastic wicker table they have set up on the curb. The others are from random coffee bars around the world

Nicole Hollander, the fierce funny feminist cartoonist, died last week.Her Sylvia cartoons helped me survive many of the hard stressors the world throws at us - when we became friends I was incredibly honored. With Ann Christophersen from Women & Children, we went to Washington in 2004 for the March for Women's Lives - the two photos here were at that march.

Nicole actually used something I said for one of her strips. We were having lunch one day during Janet Reno's confirmation hearings.* It came out that Reno's mother had wrestled alligators for a living. I casually said to Nicole that if your mother wrestled alligators, there's nothing you couldn't do with your life. She used that in the attached strip, which I have kept taped to my wall for the past 33 years.

Nicole's passing has created a disturbance in the force. If you want to hear her in her own voice, check out Pamela Beere Briggs' documentary, FUNNY LADIES.
https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/funny-ladies-portrait-women-cartoonists

*1993, to be Clinton's Attorney-General. Remember when someone had to be qualified to be in the cabinet? Remember when a woman cabinet officer was a rarity?)

We the People did this! I believe that we will save the constitution and the republic.

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