Fleeing in front of Winter Storm Linus, I arrived in the city last night before the snow started. After a light dinner, I snuggled in and feel asleep reading, warm in the comfort of the little New York apartment where I stay when I am in town.
The Super Bowl, of course, was last night. I didn’t watch but do know the Patriots won in a heart stopping finish and Tom Brady has been declared by some to be the best Quarterback of all time.
Today I had a couple of meetings, one with Touchcast, which is a video technology that is REALLY cool, allowing you to interact with a video playing over the internet, on your desktop, tablet or phone. Way cool, the kind of cool that gets me incredibly geeky excited.
During the afternoon it snowed in New York but it stayed warm enough that everything is slush. Soon the temperatures will drop and all that slush will freeze. And so I expect that by time I finish dinner at some friends’ apartment, the sidewalks will be perilous. Hope I make it home without skidding too much.
Upstate they are buried in two feet of snow. It stops. It starts. It stops. It starts. Good thing I came to town yesterday.
Obama’s four TRILLION dollar budget was released today. It includes a couple of trillion dollars in new taxes, which isn’t going to happen with the Congress he is facing.
Sorry. I have trouble getting my mind around that number. FOUR TRILLION!
Over in the rebellious part of Ukraine, the military leader there is calling for 100,000 men to be called up to service. Some have pointed out there may not be 100,000 men in the rebel controlled region to be called up, so many have fled. And some are speculating that it is just a cover for more Russian “volunteers” to come into Ukraine, which, of course, Putin denies.
The stock market had a good day and that was good. Oil is rebounding a bit and there seems to be rejoicing about that. The dollar is stronger which is good for tourists but not so much for industry. Our exports cost more but a meal in Paris is less expensive.
My friend Arthur returned from his gastronomical pilgrimage to Paris conducted within days of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and saw little evidence in the streets of Paris of the terror attack. He had expected gendarmes on every corner but there weren’t. It felt mostly normal to him.
In Egypt, they are making a tradition of mass convictions of criminals, herding them off to be executed. Today it was 183 men found guilty. 188 had been charged. Two were acquitted. One was given ten years because he was a minor and another two were off the hook because they had died.
Amnesty International is outraged. The UN calls the mass convictions “unprecedented.” Thousands have been sentenced to death or life in prison since the overthrow of Morsi. I want to see the pyramids but don’t think this is the time to do it, for lots of reasons.
Sitting in the conference room of my friend Todd Broder’s company, the sky has turned dark and everywhere lights burn. Soon I will head out for dinner, braving the cold and snow, looking forward to a long and lazy evening with old friends and good food.
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Tags: Egypt, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Morsi, Obama's Budget, Putin, Super Bowl, Todd Broder, Tom Brady, Touchcast, Ukraine, Winter Storm Linus
This entry was posted on February 2, 2015 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 02 02 15 Amidst the snow and cold…
Fleeing in front of Winter Storm Linus, I arrived in the city last night before the snow started. After a light dinner, I snuggled in and feel asleep reading, warm in the comfort of the little New York apartment where I stay when I am in town.
The Super Bowl, of course, was last night. I didn’t watch but do know the Patriots won in a heart stopping finish and Tom Brady has been declared by some to be the best Quarterback of all time.
Today I had a couple of meetings, one with Touchcast, which is a video technology that is REALLY cool, allowing you to interact with a video playing over the internet, on your desktop, tablet or phone. Way cool, the kind of cool that gets me incredibly geeky excited.
During the afternoon it snowed in New York but it stayed warm enough that everything is slush. Soon the temperatures will drop and all that slush will freeze. And so I expect that by time I finish dinner at some friends’ apartment, the sidewalks will be perilous. Hope I make it home without skidding too much.
Upstate they are buried in two feet of snow. It stops. It starts. It stops. It starts. Good thing I came to town yesterday.
Obama’s four TRILLION dollar budget was released today. It includes a couple of trillion dollars in new taxes, which isn’t going to happen with the Congress he is facing.
Sorry. I have trouble getting my mind around that number. FOUR TRILLION!
Over in the rebellious part of Ukraine, the military leader there is calling for 100,000 men to be called up to service. Some have pointed out there may not be 100,000 men in the rebel controlled region to be called up, so many have fled. And some are speculating that it is just a cover for more Russian “volunteers” to come into Ukraine, which, of course, Putin denies.
The stock market had a good day and that was good. Oil is rebounding a bit and there seems to be rejoicing about that. The dollar is stronger which is good for tourists but not so much for industry. Our exports cost more but a meal in Paris is less expensive.
My friend Arthur returned from his gastronomical pilgrimage to Paris conducted within days of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and saw little evidence in the streets of Paris of the terror attack. He had expected gendarmes on every corner but there weren’t. It felt mostly normal to him.
In Egypt, they are making a tradition of mass convictions of criminals, herding them off to be executed. Today it was 183 men found guilty. 188 had been charged. Two were acquitted. One was given ten years because he was a minor and another two were off the hook because they had died.
Amnesty International is outraged. The UN calls the mass convictions “unprecedented.” Thousands have been sentenced to death or life in prison since the overthrow of Morsi. I want to see the pyramids but don’t think this is the time to do it, for lots of reasons.
Sitting in the conference room of my friend Todd Broder’s company, the sky has turned dark and everywhere lights burn. Soon I will head out for dinner, braving the cold and snow, looking forward to a long and lazy evening with old friends and good food.
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Tags: Egypt, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Morsi, Obama's Budget, Putin, Super Bowl, Todd Broder, Tom Brady, Touchcast, Ukraine, Winter Storm Linus
This entry was posted on February 2, 2015 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.