Israeli firm Delek has begun the process of selling off its 31.25% stake in the country’s 10 tcf Tamar offshore gas field, as required by 2016’s Gas Outline.
Delek Group last week set up a special purpose vehicle, Tamar Petroleum, to market an initial 9.25% via a bond issue and an IPO.
Delek says it expects to raise a combined $1-1.2bn through this week’s bond issue of 5% of Tamar, with a further 4.25% floated via an IPO next week. The upper $1.2bn valuation implies...
72 u.s. JOURNAL: NE W YORK E-A TING OUT I RECENTL)7 met someone who had collected information about four hundred Ne\v )70rk restau- rants and stored it in a computer in Cupertino, California. In the context of the conversatIon we were having at the time, it struck me as a natural enough thIng to have done. We were having dinner at the apartment of some frIends of mIne, Peter and Alessandra Wolf, where the conversation often turns to food even before the first course is served. Peter, who grew up in Nevi Orleans, and Alessandra, who is an immigrant from Fort \Vorth, are basically regional loyalists who eat or prepare other types of food as a kind of casual sideline-the way some tournament-class tennis player might mop up all of the paddle-tennis and table-tennis competition at the local clu b if It'S too cold to play the real game. Peter is such a discriminating consumer of his home town's cooking that when a trip allows him time for only one or two meals in New Orleans, the one Amel ican city most citizens as- sociate with French cUIsine, he is likely to take them at Italian restaurants- Italian restaurants that specialize in Jj ÞdI Y g í '\ \\ I - -... ì i W', ",-- " ! "" t\- '-Jf / - J1- > " I % ... ^"" -- f ' ..; . \ J [1 ...- something like baked oysters or cracked-crab salad, it's true, but still Italian restaurants. Peter once discov- ered in an upper-Broadway Szechwan restaurant a dish called Red Soup, which he claimed was the best Chinese dish available in New )70rk for those who like their Chinese food flavored hot, but the claim turned out not to be subject to independent confirmation, since Red Soup was so hot that only someone who had trained on Cajun peppers for twenty or thirty vears could eat enough of it to find out what it tasted like. Alessandra lived in France for quite a while, but she hasn't al- lowed that to ruin her cooking. She can turn out a first-rate French meal, of courSé, and she is one of the few OCCI- dentals in New )70rk whose Chinese cookIng does not evoke sympathy for the organizers of the Boxer Rebellion. But I think of dinner at her house as celebrating a special occasion when she serves something called Chili Texas Party Style-a Fort \V orth meat deli- cacy that each guest flavors to taste by adding chopped onions or sour cream or shredded lettuce or Monterey Jack cheese or, In my case, all of the above l' l4J 1> ) I 1M · l .I!i:1/ '! 1 f ',- [i!ì wW J) " ì " } . ç to" ((For God's sake! pzck 1itp Y01itr own damn money!" (In such situations, I have yet to add anything less than everything. I like ev- erytlung with everything, and I find people who don't impossible to fathom except as victims of the Puritan Ethic. Failing to add everything, it seems to me, demonstrates not the presence of restraint but the absence of curiosity- the kind of healthy curiosity that im- pels me to try every single cheese on the cheese board no matter how many times the French waiter with the tight smile emit'; one of those impatient sighs he practices in the kitchen during slack hours.) I believe it was merely an ex- quisite French meal we were being served by Alessandra when the subject of New )70rk restaurants worked its way into the conversation and I learned that one of the other guests, an invest- ment banker named Anthon) Lam- port, could summon data on four hun- dred of them simply bv strolling over to a computer terminal he had installed in a sm'll] office one flight above his bed- room and punching a few keys. Those who consider Lamport's fa- CIlities, well, more than the situation calls for have never developed a serious interest in eating out in N ew York. I don't mean dining out-showing up at the kind of East Side restaurants that are often mentioned in gossip columns and expense accounts, restaurants that prosper or languish for reasons other than how the food tastes. There 1S, of course, always plenty of that going on in Manhattan, and there is also plenty of business for the fast-food operators. McDonald's, which got a late start in the city, is now doing the kind of vol- ume that restaurant people speak of In the tones theatre people reserve for dis- cussions of Neil Simon's box office, and lately there has been a spreading rash of Steak & Brevv. outlets, Steak & Brew being a chain that has done for steaks '-' what Astroturf did for outfields. My friend Fats Goldberg, the pizza baron, believes that, the appeal of limited- menu, fast-service operations being what it is in New )7ork, a restaurant en trepreneur could enrich himself by creating a midtown restaurant based on a two-way conveyor belt moving with- in a building between, say, Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Streets. The customer who entered on Forty-fifth would pay for one of three or four set lunches, sit down at a table on a slow-moving con- veyor belt, and, after eating his fill and perusing some advertlsing displays on the wall and nodding to a few ac- quaintances who have passed slowly in the other direction, be dumped out on Forty-sixth Street. People who are serious about eating out have to work a territory way be-
from defeat in a dispute about the num- ber of rows of kernels on an ear of corn. During a pause in a conversation at a socIal gathering, a Middle Westerner stated that no ear of corn had ever been known to have anything but an even number of rows-usually twelve. " Oh "o d S " Th , no, sal tout. ey some- tImes have eleven and sometimes thir- teen." This was a wicked invention on Stout's part. An old Middle "'7' estern corn grower himself, he knew that na- ture always makes a point of fixing up an ear of corn with an even number of rows of kernels, but the spirit of con- tradiction had seized him. He felt that the man was shoving people around with unnecessary and irrelevant information. He is a sworn foe of the ] ohnny Appleseeds who go about donating little facts to com parative strangers. He had a special reason for be- ing in a fanatical mood <- at that particular time. Scores of his fellow mystery writers had fallen into the hahit of dosing their readers with horse pills of mis- cellaneous erudition. The pattern had been set by S. S. Van Dine, who peppered the old cops-and-corpses for- mula with quaint learn- ing. Readers who de- sired only an honest bath in blood found themselves wallowing o 0 0 In ceramIcs, mosaIcs, sphragistlcs, metaphys- ics, and other matters totally unrelated to who croaked Cock Robin. Van Dine's stories were good in spite of their dogged informative- ness. His popularity produced imitators, and manslaughter was "- largely taken over by twittering dilettantes. You could hardly read a crime story without being briefed on what gave in 1066 and which came first, the Greeks or the Romans. The average mystery wnter disregarded the sage words of Uriah Heep, h ' d " I ' w 0 saI, won t pro- voke my betters with knowledge." Then a reaction set in. Stout and many others rebelled against uncalled-for culture. It was during this trying period that Stout was sud- denly stung to the quick by the gra- tuitous information about corn. He couldn't bear the man's wanton Instruc- tiveness. He felt absolutely driven to con tradict him and to fight the issue to the last ditch of prevarication. In desperation, he finally bet a hundred dollars that he could furnish ears of corn with an odd number of rows of kernels. The argument took place in. the winter. Stout was allowed a rea- sonable time to search for evidence. He seemed face to face with certain de- 27 feat, but he couldn't let down his cru- sade against unsolicited information. He hrooded and meditated. One spring morning, he took a safety-razor blade and slipped out to his corn patch. Peel- ing back the husks from an ear that was about the size of his middle finger, he removed a row of kernels and care- fully replaced the husks. He repeated this on a hundred other ears. At harvest- time, he found that the operation had been a success in a dozen instances. He mailed four perfect eleven-row ears to the corn-belt man, who immediately sent his check for a hundred dollars Stout returned it, saying that he wouldn't collect a bet on a sure thing. Nero 4\
Arnie Kantrowitz is a writer, educator, and gay activist who was integrally involved in several gay activist groups in the 1970s and 1980s including the Gay Activists Alliance, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee. The Arnie Kantrowitz papers date from 1951 to 2008 and contain personal papers and organizational records chiefly reflecting Kantrowitz's activities as a writer, gay rights activist, and English professor. The collection consists of correspondence from friends, fellow writers, and readers; diaries and notebooks; records concerning his involvement in various gay rights organizations; files relating to his teaching career at the College of Staten Island; notes, drafts and manuscripts of his published and unpublished writing; sound and video recordings; and personal memorabilia.
Arnie Kantrowitz, writer, gay rights activist, and retired professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1940. Having received a bachelor's degree from Rutgers in 1961 and a master's degree from New York University in 1963, he taught English at State University College at Cortland (New York) before accepting a position in the English Department at Staten Island Community College (now The College of Staten Island, City University of New York) in 1965.
After many years of struggle with his homosexuality, including psychotherapy and two suicide attempts, Kantrowitz came out in 1970 and quickly became active in the gay liberation movement in New York City. He joined the recently established Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), served as its secretary and, later, its vice-president. In addition to participating in GAA's non-violent protest "zaps," and speaking out for gay rights on national television, Kantrowitz also put his writing talent at the service of the movement. He contributed first to GAA's newsletter Gay Activist and then several other gay publications. By 1975 he had become a popular regular contributor to the Advocate and Christopher Street. Kantrowitz became known to an even wider audience when his autobiography, Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay, was published by William Morrow and Co. in 1977. A new edition of Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay with expanded foreword and afterword sections was published by St. Martin's Press in 1996.
Kantrowitz was an activist in the classroom for over thirty years. In order to present a positive role-model for gay students and increase the understanding of gay men and lesbians among all students, he made it a policy to formally discuss his homosexuality in each of his classes, and to invite responses from the students. He was also among the first to teach undergraduate courses on gay and lesbian themes in the early 1970s, beginning with his "Homosexuals in Literature" course in 1972.
In 1985 Kantrowitz became a founding member and officer of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), an organization devoted to advancing fair and accurate portrayals of gay men and lesbians in the media. He continued to write frequently about the gay experience for the gay and popular press, and his essays have been widely anthologized, including in Personal Dispatches: Writers Respond to AIDS, 1990; Hometowns, 1991, Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice, 1991; A Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families, 1992; Friends and Lovers: Gay Men Write About the Families They Create, 1995; and Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage, 1995. He is also the author of Walt Whitman, a biography of the American poet written for the Chelsea House series Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians.
Kantrowitz remained active in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community causes in the 1990s and 2000s, frequently serving as a juror for the New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, attending LGBT fundraising events, and serving as Grand Marshall of the Staten Island Pride Parade in 2008.
Kantrowitz currently (2015) lives in New York City with his life partner, fellow writer and activist Lawrence D. Mass, MD, and has retired as associate professor of English at The College of Staten Island.
The Arnie Kantrowitz papers, which date from 1951 to 2008, contain correspondence; diaries; professional and organizational files; published and unpublished writings; and audio and videocassettes documenting his career as a writer, teacher, and gay activist. Much of the collection is composed of notes, drafts, and various states of his published and unpublished writing, including student essays, poetry, drafts of a novel about and biographies of Walt Whitman, as well as copies of his published essays on aspects of the gay experience, and his two full-length works, a biography of Walt Whitman and his autobiography, Under the Rainbow.
Gay activism is documented in records he kept as an officer and/or member of the Gay Activists Alliance, Gay Academic Union, Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, as well as sound and video recordings of his public appearances and GAA "zaps," notebook and diary entries, buttons, and in clippings of interviews, news stories, and announcements of his public appearances. His later efforts on behalf of gay rights are also documented by the many letters to the editor written in response to news stories and public statements about gays.
Kantrowitz's teaching career is well represented in the Professional and organizational files series. Students' responses to his classroom activism and course materials documenting Kantrowitz's inclusion of gay and lesbian themes within his curricula beginning in the early 1970s, are included in the teaching files.
The correspondence in the collection, chiefly incoming letters, highlights his friendships and collegial relations with fellow writers and former students. Included are letters from such prominent gay and lesbian literary figures as John Preston, George Heymont, Douglas Sadownick, Rita Mae Brown, and most notably, his close friend, Vito Russo. There are also numerous letters from his readers among the general public expressing their appreciation for his work, and relating details of their own lives and struggles as gay people.
The collection also contains numerous day planners, pocket notebooks, travel diaries, a few photographs, sketches, and personal memorabilia such as cards from his life partner Lawrence Mass and documents of his friends Vito Russo and Jim Owles.
The correspondence series contains letters written and received by Kantrowitz during the years 1964-2008. Among his correspondents are friends, lovers, family, fellow writers, gay activists, teaching colleagues, students, and members of the general public who sent him their reactions to his work. Most correspondence prior to 1995 is arranged chronologically. Later correspondence is arranged by subject or the correspondent’s name.
The general correspondence consists of letters Kantrowitz received and about a half dozen of his replies. The letters from friends relate details of their lives and relationships, including discussions of pride parades, gay writing, bashing incidents, and in the 1980s and early 1990s, the loss of friends to AIDS. Writers discuss their work and the difficulties involved in writing and finding publishers. Of particular note is the folder of letters from Kantrowitz's closest friend, the film historian and gay activist Vito Russo. The letters, 1972-1988, relate his activities, comment on the gay scene in New York City, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and London, and discuss films and theater. The letters are full of intimate detail, humor, and eventually sorrow and rage at the AIDS epidemic and the illness of his lover. Correspondence about Russo following his death and letters from Vito’s mother, Annie Russo, are also included. There is one file of Kantrowitz’s letters to his father Morris Kantrowitz, dated 1973 to 1985. Other correspondents in this series include Daniel Bar-David, Pat Califia, David Doyle, Arthur Evans, Adrienne Gilde, George Heymont, Duff Kreitzberg, Herb Liebman, Lawrence Mass, Douglas Sadownick, Bob Tavani, and Randy Wicker.
The correspondence regarding Kantrowitz's writing contains responses of friends, fellow writers, and many members of the general public to his writing, particularly his essays in the Advocate, his memoir Under the Rainbow, and his Walt Whitman projects. In addition, there is correspondence regarding the publication and editing of his work, including efforts to have Under the Rainbow published and reprinted, and correspondence with John Preston and Advocate staff members, Boyd McDonald, Robert McQueen, and Mark Thompson about the publication of his essays as well as their comments on his work.
Among the letters are expressions of gratitude from many readers telling how moved they were by his work and inspired by his example as a man with an open and positive gay identity. Kantrowitz seems to have responded to most of these letters (although the responses are not in the collection) provoking additional letters in which the individuals relate their own struggles to come out and their views on gay issues. This section also includes letters of numerous gay writers and activists, which range from simple congratulations to extended discussions of issues of importance to the gay community. Included is an exchange of letters with Arthur Evans in 1988 regarding Kantrowitz's review of Evans' book The God of Ecstasy. Other prominent correspondents include Rita Mae Brown, Pat Califia, Louie Crew, Daniel Bar-David, Bette Davis, Lenny Giteck, George Heymont, Toby Marotta, John Preston, Michael Rumaker, Charles Shively, Donald Vining and Randy Wicker.
Public Statements, 1964-2003, include letters to the press and politicians expressing his opinions on current events. The earliest letters are written to the editors of the student newspapers at the State University College at Cortland and Staten Island Community College regarding teaching and university affairs in the 1960s. Letters from the 1970s on are written chiefly to editors of gay and general interest publications regarding stories touching on homosexuality and gay rights, especially responses and corrections to unfair, inaccurate or incomplete portrayals.The files contain clippings of his letters and the articles that provoked his responses as well as typescripts of his remarks, which were not published. The letters from 1985-1987 include those he wrote as secretary of GLAAD and letters that he, Darrel Yates Rist, Vito Russo, and the board of GLAAD wrote in response to a story which appeared in the Philadelphia Gay News about internal strife among GLAAD board members.
A file of letters from students, 1993 to 2008, largely conveys appreciation for the care and tutelage provided to them by Kantrowitz as an English professor at the College of Staten Island. Ongoing correspondence developed between numerous students and Kantrowitz, lasting well beyond their courses with him and their graduations.
This series contains documents relating to Kantrowitz's activities as a professor of English at the College of Staten Island, as a writer, and as a gay rights activist. The professional materials include publishing correspondence and contracts, 1982-2001; teaching files, 1970-2008; and files documenting Kantrowitz’s involvement with the National Writers Union.
The teaching materials chiefly concern courses he taught (boxes 38 and 39) and his applications for promotion (boxes 41 and 45). Included are curriculum vitae, faculty evaluation reports, committee involvement, conference attendance, grant applications and proposals. A file of letters from students, 1971-1992, found in box 7, contains responses to Kantrowitz's open discussion of his homosexuality in his classes and in presentations to other classes.
The organizational materials include files he kept as an officer of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and as a panelist at the Gay Academic Union 1974 annual meeting. GAA records include carbon copies of meeting minutes, May-December 1970, and executive committee minutes, September-December, 1970 as well as correspondence, notes, flyers, newsletters, name and address lists and other documents concerning the planning of the GAA 25th reunion in 1994.
The Gay Academic Union materials relate to the 1974 annual meeting keynote session panel on gay and lesbian separatism, including Kantrowitz's notes for his talk, his response to a call for conference papers, two letters from George Whitmore of the Program Committee, and a copy of the conference program.
The records of the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, which later became Heritage of Pride, concern the plans for the 1976 Gay Pride parade in New York City. Included are copies of Kantrowitz's correspondence as secretary, holograph meeting notes, original typescripts and photocopies of Steering Committee minutes and attachments, attendance sheets, and related documents submitted to the Committee.
Kantrowitz was a founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (originally the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Defamation League) and acted as secretary and member of the Steering Committee. His files, November 1985-June 1986, contain photocopies of Executive and Steering Committee minutes, articles of incorporation, by-laws, and copies of treasurer's reports.
A file on the New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, 1992-2005, documents Kantrowitz’s frequent service as a juror in the festival.
This series contains seventy-eight notebooks and diaries, including forty-three spiral bound pocket memo books, one typescript covering the 1960s to 1986, and thirty-five day planner diaries covering 1971 to 2005.
The notebooks, found in boxes 9 and 10, contain a wide variety of material including lists, addresses and phone numbers, poetry, notes for essays and novels, random reflections on life, teaching, the passing scene, notes from a Gay Male S/M Activists meeting, descriptions of a mescaline trip, and a night at the Continental Baths. The content varies from book to book, from single lines to extended essays. Of particular note are three lengthy travel journals written in 1972 when Kantrowitz traveled to Europe and across the United States.
Kantrowitz also kept extremely consistent daily dairies, briefly noting at least a few words for nearly every day of his life from 1971 until 2005. These day planner diaries, which are found in boxes 42 through 44, record aspects of the author’s activist, professional and social activities. Details include protest events, short notes for his classes, travel plans and notes, who he voted for on election days, which films he was seeing, who he was dating, and friends he was having dinner with or caring for during the AIDS crisis. These day planners may have been helpful to the author in reconstructing specific events for Under the Rainbow and other autobiographical writings.
The European journals (2 vols.) contain his impressions as a tourist in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Italy, and Greece as well as remarks on the gay bars and night life, and comparison of social attitudes with those prevalent in the United States. There are also meditations on his feelings of loneliness and varying degrees of self-consciousness as an American, a tourist, a gay man, and a Jew.
The journal documenting his transcontinental trip with his close friend and former GAA president Jim Owles describes visits to Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Billings, Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Denver. Kantrowitz met with members of other gay organizations in nearly all of those cities and set down his reflections on the prevailing state of gay liberation and activism or social repression in those locales. He also describes the bar scene, gay and/or "hip" nightlife and his own sexual activities. The journal contains his thoughts on GAA and its failings, the Metropolitan Community Church, political action and the counter-culture, natural food, and varying modes of dress and personal expression. Much of the journal is devoted to discussion of his spiritual journey to discover an ideal life and love through which he could express his true identity, and ends with his ultimate disillusion and return to New York City.
This series contains copies of Kantrowitz's writing in all genres from his student years through the 2000s. Included are college and graduate school examinations and papers, pieces written for the college newspaper, extensive files of poetry, public service announcements and advertising copy written for WNEW-TV, theater reviews for Show Business, and notes for speeches as well as drafts, typescripts, and published copies of his better-known essays and his two full-length published works, his autobiography, Under the Rainbow, and a Walt Whitman biography. Files in this series are arranged by subject or title.
Files containing notes, drafts, proofs, and typescripts of the 1970s and the 1996 editions of Kantrowitz’s autobiography, Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay can be found in boxes 20 through 22 and in box 49. Files in box 49 document revisions, additions and expansions to chapters, in memoriam, foreword, and afterword sections.
Files on Kantrowitz’s various projects pertaining to Walt Whitman are included in this series. Many notes, drafts, and revisions for an unpublished novel inspired by Walt Whitman, The Poet of the Body (also called Song of Myself), can be found in boxes 23 through 27 and box 50. Typescripts and notes pertaining to Walt Whitman, a biography written for the Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians Series (published by Chelsea House) can be found in box 50 as can documents relating to an encyclopedia entry on Whitman written by Kantrowitz.
The series also contains issues of Gotham, a short-lived magazine for which Kantrowitz acted as managing editor, and a few typescripts and photocopies of scholarly articles, and other writing not by Kantrowitz but sent to him by the authors. Also included is an unpublished collection of his essays, Stonewall's Children.
The personal papers series contain clippings, ephemera, photographs, sketches, greeting cards and artifacts saved by Kantrowitz. Included are press clippings and other printed material about Kantrowitz or in which he is mentioned; cards from his life partner Larry Mass; documents and memorabilia of his two closest friends, Vito Russo and Jim Owles; clippings and notes about Cary Yurman, a friend who set off a bomb in Sir Harry's bar in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; and a box of gay liberation movement buttons.
Files on Vito Russo are found in boxes 32 and 51 and tube 1 and include copies of Russo’s published essays and interviews, excerpts and transcripts of selected passages from Russo’s journals, and posters of film events Russo hosted.
Kantrowitz also collected fliers, mailings, and calendars from private sex clubs devoted to gay sadomasochism, the leather scene, and bear subculture, which can be found in box 52.
This series contains sound and video recordings documenting public appearances or interviews with Kantrowitz, 1971-1994; activities of the Gay Activists Alliance; the creation of the Hetrick-Martin Institute's Harvey Milk School; memorials for Vito Russo and Jim Owles; and twelve segments from Our Time, a series focusing on the gay community, written and produced by Vito Russo, which aired on WNYC-TV in 1983.
Compiled by Melanie A. Yolles in 1997. Additional materials were processed and integrated into the collection by Heather Halliday in 2015.
A few incoming letters have been closed until 2056 to protect the privacy of the correspondent. These items have been replaced by photocopies of the original letters with the correspondent's name removed.
Rights © 2013 by the University of Houston-Downtown. Contact the University Archives for more information.