James expressed joy at creating a fundraiser that doesn’t require picking flowers and a gown. Instead, at the Arthur L. Loeb Cup Bridge Tournament, which raised $85,000, she gets to introduce friends to a pursuit she loves.
Another trick up her sleeve is an annual biography lecture at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A few weeks ago Brenda Wineapple detailed her adventures researching the lives of Gertrude and Leo Stein and Nathaniel Hawthorne. James, a past chairman of the Graduate Center Foundation, talked over dinner with Robert K. Massie, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Peter the Great.
As Tenenbaum said, "If you have to go, you might as well have fun."