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I’m sure you heard about this Opinion Piece from Norman Lear. Everyone is talking about it. Here is your very own copy.

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

On My 100th Birthday, Reflections on Archie Bunker and Donald Trump

By Norman Lear

Mr. Lear, a father of six, is an Emmy-winning television producer and a co-founder of the advocacy organization People for the American Way.

Well, I made it. I am 100 years old today. I wake up every morning grateful to be alive.

Reaching my own personal centennial is cause for a bit of reflection on my first century — and on what the next century will bring for the people and country I love. To be honest, I’m a bit worried that I may be in better shape than our democracy is.

I was deeply troubled by the attack on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 — by supporters of former President Donald Trump attempting to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Those concerns have only grown with every revelation about just how far Mr. Trump was willing to go to stay in office after being rejected by voters — and about his ongoing efforts to install loyalists in positions with the power to sway future elections.

I don’t take the threat of authoritarianism lightly. As a young man, I dropped out of college when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and joined the U.S. Army Air Forces. I flew more than 50 missions in a B-17 bomber to defeat fascism consuming Europe. I am a flag-waving believer in truth, justice and the American way, and I don’t understand how so many people who call themselves patriots can support efforts to undermine our democracy and our Constitution. It is alarming.

At the same time, I have been moved by the courage of the handful of conservative Republican lawmakers, lawyers and former White House staffers who resisted Mr. Trump’s bullying. They give me hope that Americans can find unexpected common ground with friends and family whose politics differ but who are not willing to sacrifice core democratic principles.

Encouraging that kind of conversation was a goal of mine when we began broadcasting “All in the Family” in 1971. The kinds of topics Archie Bunker and his family argued about — issues that were dividing Americans from one another, such as racism, feminism, homosexuality, the Vietnam War and Watergate — were certainly being talked about in homes and families. They just weren’t being acknowledged on television.

For all his faults, Archie loved his country and he loved his family, even when they called him out on his ignorance and bigotries. If Archie had been around 50 years later, he probably would have watched Fox News. He probably would have been a Trump voter. But I think that the sight of the American flag being used to attack Capitol Police would have sickened him. I hope that the resolve shown by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and their commitment to exposing the truth, would have won his respect.

It is remarkable to consider that television — the medium for which I am most well-known — did not even exist when I was born, in 1922. The internet came along decades later, and then social media. We have seen that each of these technologies can be put to destructive use — spreading lies, sowing hatred and creating the conditions for authoritarianism to take root. But that is not the whole story. Innovative technologies create new ways for us to express ourselves, and, I hope, will allow humanity to learn more about itself and better understand one another’s ideas, failures and achievements. These technologies have also been used to create connection, community and platforms for the kind of ideological sparring that might have drawn Archie to a keyboard. I can only imagine the creative and constructive possibilities that technological innovation might offer us in solving some of our most intractable problems.

I often feel disheartened by the direction that our politics, courts and culture are taking. But I do not lose faith in our country or its future. I remind myself how far we have come. I think of the brilliantly creative people I have had the pleasure to work with in entertainment and politics, and at People for the American Way, a progressive group I co-founded to defend our freedoms and build a country in which all people benefit from the blessings of liberty. Those encounters renew my belief that Americans will find ways to build solidarity on behalf of our values, our country and our fragile planet.

Those closest to me know that I try to stay forward-focused. Two of my favorite words are “over” and “next.” It’s an attitude that has served me well through a long life of ups and downs, along with a deeply felt appreciation for the absurdity of the human condition.

Reaching this birthday with my health and wits mostly intact is a privilege. Approaching it with loving family, friends and creative collaborators to share my days has filled me with a gratitude I can hardly express.

This is our century, dear reader, yours and mine. Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future

Just finished “James Patterson on James Patterson.” He had a major confession. It was difficult to believe considering Patterson is such an upstanding citizen. In the 1960’s, he actually stole a two-tone Pontiac GTO convertible, powder blue and white, for a joy ride. The owner left the keys in the parked car at a state fair in upstate New York. Jimmy spotted the opportunity, jumped in, revved up the engine and took off. Lucky for him, he was able to return the car without getting caught. I just can’t imagine this best selling author taking such a chance. You and me maybe, but not Jimmy.

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Report: In New Memoir, Jared Kushner Says He Wasn’t Willing to Turn His Back on Saudi Prince Over One Measly Murder-by-Bone Saw
He’s also pinkie-promised that the $2 billion investment he got from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund had nothing to do with sweeping the killing under the rug.

Read in Vanity Fair: https://apple.news/AvB7lpKpCSq-lgaVoBeucqA

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Joy Behar is immune to cancellation
After 25 years on The View, Joy Behar knows the strong reaction she provokes in people. She’s fine with it

Read in TIME: https://apple.news/AaKkB7y2sRYS_k6UdLCqvDA

So when you take a photo with me, keep that in mind. Last week I had dinner with a plastic surgeon. I’m sure I ruined his appetite when he had to stare at my turkey neck. Never did a man desire to overtake a woman in his life. I will probably stay knife free forever. If I change my mind, you will be the first to know. It may be too late for me to be a Vogue girl.

30 Pictures That Prove Goldie Hawn Is an Ageless Summer Beauty Muse

BY LAUREN VALENTI

From her iconic golden shag to her famous sunny disposition, Goldie Hawn embodies the spirit of summer. It only makes sense she’d shoot right to the top of our beauty moodboard as the temperatures begin to soar.

Throughout her four-decade career, Hawn has served up an irresistible summer beauty aesthetic: a bright, fluttery gaze, a fresh-from-the-beach glow, and variations on effortlessly cool, slightly rumpled hair. An aspiring dancer, Hawn first came into public view in the mid-’60s with a windswept blonde bob that paired perfectly with a set of kittenish flicks. She then came out swinging on the late ’60s scene in sketch variety show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,dazzling viewers with her comedic chops and an It-girl cut: a tousled pixie with eyelash-grazing fringe.

Into the ’70s, Hawn let her blanched crop grow down to her collarbones, her extended lengths shaped into a smooth, feathered shag that would come to be her signature. Who could forget the bloom-adorned half-up style and stacks of false lashes she wore to accept her Oscar for 1969’s Cactus Flower? Looking nothing short of the California girl the Beach Boys waxed on about, Hawn spend the rest of the decade (a standout moment being her turn as wannabe actress Jill Haynes in 1975’s groovy Shampoo) and the ’80s finessing the texture of her shaggy mane, embracing everything from crispy waves to a fanned-out blowout with a sun-kissed complexion and a slick of shimmering lip gloss. It’s no wonder her longtime partner, Kurt Russell, fell for her on the set of 1987’s Overboard, their relationship a Hollywood love story that’s as enduring as Hawn’s charm.

As Hawn continued to rule the silverscreen in the ’90s—for proof, look no further than 1992’s Death Becomes Her or 1996’s The First Wive’s Club—she rounded out her 40s and rung in her 50s by sticking to her smoke-show signatures including her tell-tale golden shag, full lashes, ruby-tinged lips, and flushed cheeks. And proving there’s no age limit on a true bombshell, over the last two decades the one and only Goldie Hawn has continued to be a year-round summer beauty muse. See some of her standout hair and makeup moments over the years—and get inspiration for your own seasonal style—below.

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Don’t ever let me hear you say another negative word about Biden’s walk, speech, age, hugging, and family. Biden is a prince amongst men. We owe him a lifetime of thanks for being exactly who he is. I love him no matter what.

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Dear Ron,

You really need to worry about your soul. All the hate you have for people who want to live in the modern world is going to poison your health and the health of your immediate family. Change before it’s too late. You are going to wake up years from now and realize you lived a life of negativity. You spent your best years trying to destroy others. You are suppose to be helping, not grandstanding on hateful issues. Look in the mirror. Do you want to be remembered as a clueless politician who was an old school thinker? That’s exactly what is going to happen to you. Your children will have to spend their adult years apologizing for what you said and did. Don’t do that to them. I pray you see the light.

Love,

Lois

NBC News

Beyond behavior, a person’s genetics, T cells and the effects of inflammatory conditions like allergies could influence their Covid risk — but only to a point.

by Aria Bendix | NBC NEWS

Most people in the U.S have had Covid-19 at least once — likely more than 70% of the country, White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said on Thursday, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Many have gotten infected multiple times. In a preprint study looking at 257,000 U.S. veterans who’d gotten Covid at least once, 12% had a reinfection by April and around 1% had been infected three times or more.

This raises an obvious question: What is keeping that shrinking minority of people from getting sick?

Disease experts are homing in on a few predictive factors beyond individual behavior, including genetics, T cell immunity and the effects of inflammatory conditions like allergies and asthma.

But even as experts learn more about the reasons people may be better able to avoid Covid, they caution that some of these defenses may not hold up against the latest version of omicron, BA.5, which is remarkably good at spreading and evading vaccine protection.

“It really takes two to tango,” said Neville Sanjana, a bioengineer at the New York Genome Center. “If you think about having an infection and any of the bad stuff that happens after that, it really is a product of two different organisms: the virus and the human.”

Genetics could decrease the risk of Covid

In 2020, NYU researchers identified a multitude of genes that could impact a person’s susceptibility to the coronavirus. In particular, they found that inhibiting certain genes that code for a receptor known as ACE-2, which allows the virus to enter cells, could reduce a person’s likelihood of infection.

Sanjana, who conducted that research, estimated that about 100 to 500 genes could influence Covid-19 susceptibility in sites like the lungs or nasal cavity.

Genetics is “likely to be a large contributor” to protection from Covid-19, he said. “I would never say it’s the only contributor.”

In July, researchers identified a common genetic factor that could influence the severity of a coronavirus infection. In a study of more than 3,000 people, two genetic variations decreased the expression of a gene called OAS1, which is part of the innate immune response to viral infections. That was associated with an increased risk of Covid-19 hospitalization.

Increasing the gene’s expression, then, should have the opposite effect — reducing the risk of severe disease — though it wouldn’t necessarily prevent infection altogether.

“It’s very natural to get infected once you are exposed. There’s no magic bullet for that. But after you get infected, how you’re going to respond to this infection, that’s what is going to be affected by your genetic variants,” said Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson, the study’s lead researcher and chief of the Laboratory of Translational Genomics at the National Cancer Institute.

Still, Benjamin tenOever, a microbiology professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine who helped conduct the 2020 research, said it will be difficult for scientists to pinpoint a particular gene responsible for preventing a Covid infection.

“While there might still be certainly some genetics out there that do render people completely resistant, they’re going to be incredibly hard to find,” tenOever said. “People have already been looking intensely for two years with no actual results.”

T cells could remember past coronavirus encounters

Aside from this new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, four other coronaviruses commonly infect people, typically causing mild to moderate upper respiratory illnesses like the common cold.

A recent study suggested that repeated exposure to or occasional infections from these common cold coronaviruses may confer some protection from SARS-CoV-2.

The researchers found that T cells, a type of white blood cell that recognizes and fights invaders, seem to recognize SARS-CoV-2 based on past exposure to other coronaviruses. So when a person who has been infected with a common cold coronavirus is later exposed to SARS-CoV-2, they might not get as sick.

But that T cell memory probably can’t prevent Covid entirely.

“While neutralizing antibodies are key to prevent an infection, T cells are key to terminate an infection and to modulate the severity of infection,” said Alessandro Sette, the study’s author and a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.

Sette said it’s possible that some people’s T cells clear the virus so quickly that the person never tests positive for Covid. But researchers aren’t yet sure if that’s what’s happening.

“It’s possible that, despite being negative on the test, it was a very abortive, transient infection that was not detected,” Sette said.

At the very least, he said, T cells from past Covid infections or vaccines should continue to offer some protection against coronavirus variants, including BA.5.

Allergies may result in a little extra protection

Although asthma was considered a potential risk factor for severe Covid earlier in the pandemic, more recent research suggests that low-grade inflammation from conditions like allergies or asthma may have a protective benefit

The researchers found that T cells, a type of white blood cell that recognizes and fights invaders, seem to recognize SARS-CoV-2 based on past exposure to other coronaviruses. So when a person who has been infected with a common cold coronavirus is later exposed to SARS-CoV-2, they might not get as sick.

But that T cell memory probably can’t prevent Covid entirely.

“While neutralizing antibodies are key to prevent an infection, T cells are key to terminate an infection and to modulate the severity of infection,” said Alessandro Sette, the study’s author and a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.

Sette said it’s possible that some people’s T cells clear the virus so quickly that the person never tests positive for Covid. But researchers aren’t yet sure if that’s what’s happening.

“It’s possible that, despite being negative on the test, it was a very abortive, transient infection that was not detected,” Sette said.

At the very least, he said, T cells from past Covid infections or vaccines should continue to offer some protection against coronavirus variants, including BA.5.

Allergies may result in a little extra protection

Although asthma was considered a potential risk factor for severe Covid earlier in the pandemic, more recent research suggests that low-grade inflammation from conditions like allergies or asthma may have a protective benefit

“You’ll hear these stories about some individuals getting sick and having full-blown symptoms of Covid, and having slept beside their partner for an entire week during that period without having given it to them. People think that they must have some genetic resistance to it, [but] a big part of that could be if the partner beside them in any way has a higher than normal inflammatory response going on their lungs,” tenOever said.

A May study found that having a food allergy halved the risk of a coronavirus infection among nearly 1,400 U.S. households. Asthma didn’t lower people’s risk of infection in the study, but it didn’t raise it, either.

One theory, according to the researchers, is that people with food allergies express fewer ACE2 receptors on the surface of their airway cells, making it harder for the virus to enter.

“Because there are fewer receptors, you will have either a much lower grade infection or just be less likely to even become infected,” said Tina Hartert, a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who co-led that research.

The study took place from May 2020 to February 2021, before the omicron variant emerged. But Hartert said BA.5 likely wouldn’t eliminate cross-protection from allergies.

“If something like allergic inflammation is protective, I think it would be true for all variants,” Hartert said. “The degree to which it could be protective could certainly differ.”

Avoiding infection is more challenging with BA.5

For many, the first explanation that springs to mind when thinking about Covid avoidance is one’s personal level of caution. tenOever believes that individual behavior, more than genetics or T cells, is the key factor. He and his family in New York City are among those who’ve never had Covid, which he attributes to precautions like staying home and wearing masks.

“I don’t think for a second that we have anything special in our genetics that makes us resistant,” he said.

It’s now common knowledge that Covid was easier to avoid before omicron, back when a small percentage of infected people were responsible for the majority of the virus’s spread. A 2020 study, for example, found that 10–20% of infected people accounted for 80% of transmission.

But omicron and its subvariants have made any social interaction riskier for everyone involved.

“It’s probably far more of an equal playing field with the omicron variants than it ever was for the earlier variants,” tenOever said.

BA.5 in particular has increased the odds that people who’ve avoided Covid thus far will get sick. President Joe Biden is a prime example: He tested positive for the first time this week.

But even so, Jha said on Thursday, “I don’t believe that every American will be infected.”

Lois Whitman-Hess
Miami Life Editor
The Three Tomatoes
https://www.thethreetomatoes.com/miami-life-ivana-espanola-way-boating-polo-week

Ivana Trump lived in our Miami condo building, the Murano at Portofino, for many years. She only spent the winter months with us. Her other home was the New York City townhouse. It’s interesting to note that she lived in Miami, not Palm Beach. We would see her all the time in the lobby, walking her dog, at our beach club, and at condo meetings. She was friendly to all and was always smiling. The staff loved her because she stopped and chatted with them every chance she got. She called them by their first names. They were all very flattered.

I just don’t believe she accidentally fell down the stairs in her townhouse and instantly died. Something doesn’t add up. The Guardian just reported that on last Thursday afternoon, emergency responders investigating a call from Ivana Trump’s home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side found her unconscious.

No one ever says who made that call. Why was she alone? Most folks of her fame and fortune have staff that live in. I know she had a personal assistant in the past. Whenever I called her New York residence for business over the years, the same woman answered. Where is she now? Why would Ivana live alone in a large, multi-level, townhouse? I find that strange.

The newspapers quoted the police who said they found her dead at the scene and noted that there did “not appear to be any criminality.” Appear to be? There should be a full investigation. I just feel that something else happened and someone close to her should keep digging for the truth.

Again, I don’t buy that Ivana died accidentally of blunt impact injuries to her torso. This sounds like jargon to me. What were the exact details that caused her to stop breathing? Someone is hiding something.

The New York City’s chief medical examiner announced that there would be no further comment on the death of Ms. Trump, 73. Why was a statement like this ever made so quickly?

The U.S. health officials consider falls to be the leading cause of injury-related death for people who are 65 years of age or older. About 64 out of 100,000 elderly people die as a result of accidental falls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I want to know what the injury was that caused her to die. Don’t talk to me in euphemisms. Give it to me straight. Otherwise, I will just keep publicly asking.

A Podcast ———
.

At 73 years young, Doug Garr has jumped out of a plane more than 2000-times. Doug has been on several age-group formation world record skydives.

He’s part of the SOS Skydiving Over Sixty and JOS Jumpers Over Seventy
Doug has a professional exhibition rating, which allows him to jump into stadiums. His website is douggarr.com

Doug is also a Member of the Author’s Guild since 1999 and today is mostly a retired writer and editor.

Fun Fact— Doug was New York State Governor Mario Cuomo’s speech writer from 1992-94.

Please listen to our podcast with Sky-diving Senior— Doug Garr

Happy Birthdays

Lily Safra, Star-Crossed Socialite and Philanthropist, Dies at 87

Her life was marked by tragedy, including the bizarre death of her fourth husband, but that did not stop her from giving away millions.

By Clay Risen

Lily Safra, a Brazilian-born socialite and philanthropist who led a star-filled, star-crossed life with enough jet-setting ups and tragedy-filled downs to fill a dozen Danielle Steel novels, including the bizarre death of her fourth husband, the banker Edmond J. Safra, died on July 9 at her home in Geneva. She was 87.

A spokesman for the Edmond J. Safra Foundation, which she directed, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Mrs. Safra, who was known to the press — especially the British tabloids — as “the Gilded Lily,” led what at first glance might seem to be a charmed life: As one of the richest women in the world, she owned homes in New York City, London, Paris, Geneva and Monaco; amassed a world-class art collection; and counted Prince Charles and Jacob Rothschild among her close confidants.

She used her wealth to great ends — building synagogues and schools, funding medical research, endowing hospitals and museum wings around the world. Much of her beneficence came through the Edmond J. Safra Foundation, but she also gave spontaneously, and from her own pocket: After reading articles in The New York Times about people in need, she gave $500,000 to the newspaper’s Neediest Cases Fund.

But the glamour was offset by heartbreak. Her second husband died by suicide in 1969; her son Claudio was killed in a car accident, along with her grandson, in 1989.

The worst came in 1999 when her husband, the founder of Republic National Bank, died during a fire in their penthouse apartment in Monaco. Mr. Safra had locked himself and a nurse — he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and needed care — in a bathroom that doubled as a safe room, and refused to come out.

Mrs. Safra, who was in another wing of the apartment, escaped unharmed.

As a private banker for some of the world’s richest people, and as a very private person himself, Mr. Safra was the subject of constant baseless rumors about the Russian mafia, Colombian drug dealers and other people said to be clients, and about the services he might have provided them.

The rumor mill began again after his death. British tabloids were filled with stories about two knife-wielding assailants, masked in balaclavas, who had come in through a skylight to kill him. When they failed to break through the bathroom door, it was said, they set fire to the house and escaped, stabbing Ted Maher, another of Mr. Safra’s nurses, in the stomach and thigh along the way.

But the real story was more intimate, and even more strange. A few days after the fire, Mr. Maher, a former Green Beret, admitted to setting a wastepaper basket on fire and stabbing himself. His plan, he said, had been to alert the authorities and save the day, winning his employer’s good graces. Instead, the fire raged out of control.

Despite Mr. Maher’s admission of guilt, it took almost three years for the case to go to trial. During that time, gossip swirled and was spread not just by British reporters, but also by an American, Dominick Dunne, who wrote several extensive, innuendo-filled articles about the case for Vanity Fair.

Mrs. Safra decamped for London. She bought a six-floor belle époque townhouse in Belgravia, one of London’s most exclusive neighborhoods, and began to make a name in the city’s social circles. In 2001, Vanity Fair photographed her sitting beside Prince Charles at a dinner at Buckingham Palace; a year later, she and Jacob Rothschild co-sponsored a 5,000-pounds-a-plate charity event they called “An Evening With Elton John.”

Although (or perhaps because) she was welcomed by London’s elite, she became an irresistible target for the city’s tabloid press. Some reporters dragged up unfounded hearsay about her second husband’s suicide; others recycled conspiracy theories about Mr. Safra’s death, despite Mr. Maher’s conviction in 2002.

They were especially suspicious of her charitable work. One newspaper, The Independent, blamed her for single-handedly making London’s elite social scene more like that of New York, where, quelle horreur, “social position is defined not by what you have, but by how much you can afford to give away to worthy causes.”

Mrs. Safra was not an especially litigious person, and she seemed content to let the yellow press do its job. But she came close to filing a lawsuit in 2005 when Lady Colin Campbell, a biographer, wrote a novel about a woman who murders her way to great fortune; several details from the plot mapped closely onto Mrs. Safra’s own story.

After Mrs. Safra quietly threatened legal action, the book was pulped.

Though many journalists tended to portray Mrs. Safra’s life as a rags-to-riches tale, it was nothing of the kind, except in the sense that almost everyone who ended up extremely wealthy was much less wealthy to begin with.

Lily Watkins was born on Dec. 20, 1934, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Her father, Wolf Watkins, was a British engineer who had moved to Latin America in search of business opportunities and found them while servicing the region’s booming rail industry. Her mother, Annita (Noudelman) Watkins, a homemaker, had fled her native Ukraine in the face of antisemitic pogroms.

Mr. Watkins owned a rail car factory in Mesquita, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where he soon moved with his young family. He became a town elder, and even today the town’s main street, Rua Mister Watkins, bears his name.

When Lily Watkins was 19, she moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, where she married Mario Cohen, a hosiery magnate. They had three children but a rocky marriage, and they soon divorced.

She returned to Brazil, and in 1965 she married Alfredo Monteverde, a Romanian immigrant who had been born a Greenberg but Hispanicized his surname. He made a fortune owning a chain of appliance stores, but he also struggled with depression. He died by suicide in 1969, leaving her some $200 million.

Mrs. Safra’s survivors include a daughter, Adriana Cohen; a son, Eduardo Cohen; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Complete survivor information was not immediately available.

After Mr. Monteverde’s death, she moved to London. She met Mr. Safra, the scion of a Lebanese merchant family, when she asked for his help in handling her sudden wealth. They began dating, though his religious Sephardic family disliked his more secular Ashkenazic girlfriend, and they broke up.

She was briefly married to another businessman, Samuel Bendahan, but they split after just a few weeks, and she soon returned to Mr. Safra. They married in 1976 in a ceremony attended by, among others, Ronald and Nancy Reagan and the Aga Khan.

The Safras lived in Manhattan for several years and established themselves among the city’s elite through the 1980s. Mrs. Safra sat on charity boards and even managed to pull her famously withdrawn husband out of his shell long enough to attend the occasional gala.

Though they had homes across Europe, they eventually settled in Monaco and the nearby French Riviera, where they bought a villa once owned by the king of Belgium and said to be one of the continent’s most expensive properties.

The Safras were already known as generous benefactors, and Mrs. Safra continued to build on that reputation after her husband’s death. Their foundation endowed the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, the Edmond J. Safra campus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience in Brazil and the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital in Israel.

Outside the foundation, her personal beneficence was vast and eclectic. She paid for students to visit Auschwitz and to study at the Paris Opera. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the campus of Dillard University, a historically Black institution in New Orleans, she gave the university $500,000 for its recovery.

Many of her donations came through selling pieces of her vast art collection. In 2012 she sold 70 pieces of jewelry, including a 34.05-carat rectangular-cut diamond ring, to benefit 20 charities, including one that aided impoverished Rwandan children.

By then, Mrs. Safra had largely fallen out of the public eye. She had sold her townhouse in exchange for something smaller and more manageable (though still in Belgravia). Her dinners were now more likely to be low-key, intimate affairs among friends than grand galas. She was said to prefer the company of her grandchildren to that of lords and ladies.

The British papers wondered where she had gone, and why she had seemingly given up on pursuing power and fame. But it was also possible that they had misread her from the start.