You can begin to feel the social frenzy ebbing. Many are preparing to take some time off, travel, and with hopes of chilling on the slopes, on a beach. In the meantime there have been a raft of holiday cocktail parties, office parties, holiday lunches, etc.

Last Thursday night it started to sleet when I left the house. Slippery underfoot. I went to Anne Ford’s for a holiday cocktail. Someone told me that Dominick Dunne slipped and lost his balance as he entered the building. He was gone by the time I arrived.

Mrs. Ford, like her sister (Charlotte Ford), is elegantly understated in her style. There must have been forty or fifty at her apartment. There were excellent hors d’oeuvres including the irresistible “pigs in a blanket” (although these were half the size, as if they’d been sliced – geez, but easy to rationalize eating more) and excellent champagne.

A lot of the women including the hostess and her sister were wearing various shades of red – wools and velvets, lighting up the room festively. I planned to stay for ten minutes (because I had a dinner party to go to and it was slow going outside) but between the pigs-in-the-blanket and the excellent champagne and the wonderful company, I stayed for more than a half hour.

Mitch and Sarah Rosenthal with General Barry McCaffrey and his wife Jill

By the time I left the sleeting had stopped but the temperature had continued to drop. The sidewalks were icy. There were no cabs vacant. There were lots of livery and private limousines lining the curbside waiting for their charges, but alas that’s out of my league. So I had to walk the eight blocks north to Mitch and Sarah Rosenthal who were having a small dinner for General Barry McCaffrey and his wife Jill.

There were twelve of us including a former ambassador and his wife, two periodical editors and their wives, the widow of an ambassador and a media executive and myself. I hadn’t known until I arrived that the McCaffreys were to be the guests of honor. Nor did I know that the general serves on the board of Phoenix House, Mitch Rosenthal’s highly successful drug rehabilitation organization.

Phoenix House was founded in 1967 by Dr. Rosenthal when he and six heroin addicts came together at a detoxification program in a New York hospital. They talked about the struggles of staying clean and decided to help one another through the tough days ahead. Together, they moved into a brownstone on Manhattan’s West Side and lived as a community, encouraging and helping each other to stay sober. That is how Phoenix House was born. What made it work was the structure and approach to treatment brought to the fledgling program by psychiatrist Mitchell S. Rosenthal, M.D. and counselors from New York City’s Addiction Services Agency (ASA). As deputy commissioner of ASA for rehabilitation, Dr. Rosenthal made Phoenix House the model for a citywide treatment network.

In the 38 years since its inception, Phoenix House has grown to become the nation’s leading provider of substance abuse treatment and prevention services operating more than 100 programs in nine states. They’ve treated more than 100,000 substance abusers. Currently, they care for a population of more than 6,000 at residential centers for adults; residential Phoenix Academies combining long-term treatment and schooling for adolescents; outpatient; afterschool; and day programs. To learn more go to: www.phoenixhouse.org.

Meanwhile, back to the dinner — I’m not a television watcher, as I’ve written here ad nauseum, but I had heard of General McCaffrey and I did know he was Bill Clinton’s “drug czar.”

I was the last to arrive. No sooner had I got in the door and was talking with my host, when the general came over and introduced himself. He’s got personality and he’s a charmer. He’s also smartly informed and has the manner of a teacher in the way he imparts his information and expertise. It’s a disarmingly pleasant contrast to the stock military image (probably clichéd) of stiff, unyielding authority that’s in my consciousness.

The general and his wife live just outside of Washington. He comes up to New York (State) once a week to teach a class at West Point. And, of course, he appears on NBC television frequently. Once at the Rosenthals’ dinner table (which is high up above the town and surrounded by windows looking out on the sparkling nighttime skyline), conversation soon turned to Iraq and the general was soon bombarded (politely of course) with direct questions about our situation over there.

His responses were full of information and insight into all kinds of things – the players, the generals, the armed forces, politics, personalities, the Middle East and its complexities. It was like having a lesson in history, warfare, politics, psychology and geography by the best informed professor, a man who has the ability to express himself in a way that is intellectually accessible. There was so much to absorb that I was left only with impressions. In the end, the general related a kind of military optimism but a realistic assessment that left me confused about the possibility of an optimistic outcome.

When one sits at table with a man of his background, experience and stature, one is impressed by the seemingly confidential information although I have no doubt that the general’s television audience has the same access because of his natural professorial style. His critical insights gave a strong impression of a man-on-the-inside and an overlying highly diplomatic attitude of respect for his superiors as well as those who serve.

He loves the forum television has given him. He told us that one night after a day of appearances at MSNBC he got a joint call from his two daughters, both of whom live in Washington State. He said they are the most honest and sincere critics of his appearances. They told him that after the day of shows he was great in every way. He asked if there were anything he said that stood out in their minds. “No,” they answered, because they both watched him with the sound turned off.

I asked his wife Jill McCaffrey how she met her husband. It was a blind date, when she was living in Washington, D.C. with her parents (her father was an officer in the military also). She wasn’t interested in a blind date. She decided she’d watch his arrival from an upstairs window and if she didn’t like his looks, she’d have her sister go on the date. However, the young (21) officer arrived and she thought: “He’s cute.” So she went. She was eighteen at the time. He asked her to marry him that night. I don’t think she said yes right away but she finally left college and married him.

Her parents, especially her father were naturally not impressed that their daughter was leaving college to marry. Eventually, two grandchildren (the daughters) later, they came around. That was somewhere around forty years ago. She looked down to the other end of the table where her husband was sitting. “I still think he’s cute,” she said with a laugh.

I left the Rosenthals’ evening illuminated by listening to Gen. McCaffrey describing the matters at hand with so much intimate expertise. Under most circumstances I would be inclined to take his word for it. He certainly is more knowledgeable than I or most people I know. However, like most of us, I have my opinions about the situation at hand and it is difficult to be optimistic. Although the general’s optimism beats an alternative.

I’m reading A.N. Wilson’s sequel to his fascinating The Victorians (written about in these pages last year). It’s called After the Victorians, namely the history of England up to the Second World War. Wilson remarks in passing that the 20th century was the most murderous in human history. It would be nice to think that now that the century is over so is the killing. It would be nice.

Meanwhile, on Saturday night, I went downtown to a holiday drinks party given by Darren Walker and his partner David Beitzel at their spacious apartment in what was once a commercial building and is now a luxurious residential building. From their living room they look north, west and east, off in the distance (a half mile or so) the tower of the Empire State was alight with red, white and green.

My hosts invited about 100 people. I’ve written about Darren Walker on these pages before. You can see him on The List. He’s a Texas boy, born and bred, who came to New York and made good. And made the acquaintance (I daresay in his case, the friendship) of many many people, many of whom are remarkable like him.

Generally speaking I was in the company of a few score thirty- and forty-something people of notable accomplishment and achievement in the arts, in politics, and in finance. Eventually I felt compelled to take out my little palm-sized Casio so that I could get a picture of some for the record. It’s very unusual, frankly, to go to a cocktail party even in New York (for me anyway) where the diversity is so stimulating and impressive. And fun. And everybody was having a good time, apparently attitude-less (another element one often has to deal with in the company of those who are accomplished/achievers).

For example, one man, Alphonse “Buddy” Fletcher Jr., is a Wall Street money manager who last year at age 38, created a $50 million dollar fund in honor of the 50th anniversary of "Brown Vs. the Board of Education” to fund individuals and organizations working to complete the unfinished work of the Civil Rights movement. Another guest, Jay Peterson executive produces “Classic Now,” a show that airs every Monday through Friday at seven on ESPN. Peterson’s cousin, Holly Peterson, has just finished a novel and signed a $1.6 million book and film deal for it. Another, Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims was the first African-American curator at the Met (she was hired by Tom Hoving) and along with another guest, Thelma Golden “saved” the wonderful Studio Museum of Harlem. Dan Motulsky and Dr. Robert B. Bhisitkul are old college friends from Stanford (the doctor was in town on a conference). Dan is a managing director at Lazard Freres here and Dr. Bhisitkul is a professor of Ophthamology Disease and Surgery of the Retina and Vitreous at University of California at San Francisco. Justin Rockefeller who hails from a political family on both his mother and father’s side has created an organization called “Generation Engage” which is essentially a plan to energize and engage young people to get involved in getting out the vote. His girlfriend, Indre Vengris, is a ballerina.

And then there was the most serious guest of all – and in her own fashion, the most accomplished – Beulah, the in-residence canine of Walker and Beitzel. Beulah had been at the doggie spa around the corner when I arrived but soon stationed herself at the foot of the buffet where there was a lot of freshly carved ham for the guests. One of the guests who shall remain unidentified was thoughtful enough to serve Beulah with an occasional lob of the ham (she’s an excellent catch).

NYSD readers have so enjoyed the two last Mondays’ montages of prominent friends that we are continuing the series this week with Somers White Farkas. Somers is one of the most inquired-about personalities on the NYSD. People want to know about her relationship with her husband (ex-husband?) Jonathan Farkas, and whether or not she eats more than a stick of celery (or a carrot stick) a day. (Answer: she does; I’ve seen her often dining at Swifty’s.)

Hailing from Virginia, Somers has been in the big town for at least a decade (I’m guessing now). She’s active in a number of philanthropies – by which I mean she works – including Audubon, the Horticultural Society and the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, along with many others.

If there’s something big going on in New York, you’re very liable to see Somers in the crowd, or on the podium or in the reception line. She and Jonathan are very active on the social scene.

The reason you see them photographed so often is because they are THERE. They both love getting around. They are very popular – Somers has a lot of women friends. She’s one of the few people that people speak kindly about ALL the time. She’s also one of the most fashionably dressed women in New York. She loves fashion, as you might have gathered. And Jonathan appreciates as much too, so that he supports rather generously as these photographs testify.