It is a sunny Wednesday afternoon, with just a bit of haze, as I ride the train toward Hudson, to spend a few days at the house. I’ve been moving from meeting to meeting to meeting the last couple of weeks and I have a ton of follow-up work to do and I thought, why not do it on the deck at the cottage rather than office in New York City? So I am off for four days to organize my life and enjoy the view from my deck.
It’s been a pleasant day, a couple of meetings and a phone call and then off to Penn Station to catch the 2:20. I’ll get home, change clothes, refresh a bit and then head down to the Red Dot for dinner with my friend, David, who is spending part of every week in the Berkshires helping his ex-wife deal with her husband’s terminal stage Alzheimer’s. He likes to take a mid-week break and come down to Hudson for dinner. It’ll be nice to join him and catch up, not having seen him for a few weeks.
At Penn Station, I dropped a worn slipper at Drago’s Shoe Repair for a stitch job. It is going to cost twenty-five bucks, which is about twice what the slippers cost but they’re my favorite pair. It is interesting what we do for things we have come to love.
Last fall, I spent the money to have a desk made by my grandfather repaired. It just seemed so wrong to let it go. My home is filled with things with meaning and I like to say that everything I own, pretty much, has a story. There are three wooden plaques I purchased as a young teenager in the market in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and a settee that my mother napped on as a little girl.
Speaking of things we treasure, it was 130 years ago today that the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York harbor, carried on a ship into New York in 300 pieces. Once assembled, it has become a national treasure and a forceful symbol of all that America hopes to be.
In an unexpected happy ending to a story that hit the press last week, Disney has decided not to terminate 35 employees whose last task for the company was to train their replacements, lower cost overseas employees provided by an outsourcing company. If they didn’t, they would not receive severance.
Mickey Mouse was making out like Simon Legree.
Word leaked out. An investigation was announced. The layoffs were rescinded. No one at Disney nor the outsourcing company is returning calls. The employees are told to act as if nothing had happened. Until further notice.
That sounds a little ominous: until further notice. Until the hoo hah has settled down?
I wish this were a happy story but it’s not. European leaders seem to be battening down the hatches and preparing for the “Grexit,” Greece departing from the Euro Zone. There is a meeting tomorrow but it is doubtful an agreement will be reached. As Bette Davis said as Margo Channing in “All About Eve, ” “Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” I am not sanguine about it though there is nothing I can really do. It feels a bit like a crisis that didn’t need to be, to me, at least.
As all of us know by now, I suppose, Donald Trump has jumped into the race for the Republican Presidential nomination saying he will restore “America’s Brand.” Jon Stewart is delighted. This, he says, will make his last six weeks his best six weeks.
Trump will provide many a comic with interesting fodder though Stewart will be the sharpest critic of them all, I suspect.
At some point I signed up for AT&T Wireless. Part of the reason was the promise of unlimited data. Then in 2011, AT&T began to throttle that data after a certain point of consumption. I was one of millions of unhappy customers though not so unhappy I changed companies. But it rankled. Today the FCC fined AT&T $100,000,000 for having “unlimited” that was not “unlimited.” I smiled.
I’ll be signing off for today. We’re on the last leg into Hudson. The Catskills are covered in a blue grey haze while the river resembles burnished silver. It’s been a lovely ride home.
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Tags: All About Eve, Bette Davis, Disney, Donald Trump, FCC, Grexit, Hudson, Jon Stewart, Margo Channing, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Red Dot, San Pedro Sula, Statue of Liberty, Unlimited Data
This entry was posted on June 18, 2015 at 9:34 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 06 17 15 On the meaning of unlimited and other things…
It is a sunny Wednesday afternoon, with just a bit of haze, as I ride the train toward Hudson, to spend a few days at the house. I’ve been moving from meeting to meeting to meeting the last couple of weeks and I have a ton of follow-up work to do and I thought, why not do it on the deck at the cottage rather than office in New York City? So I am off for four days to organize my life and enjoy the view from my deck.
It’s been a pleasant day, a couple of meetings and a phone call and then off to Penn Station to catch the 2:20. I’ll get home, change clothes, refresh a bit and then head down to the Red Dot for dinner with my friend, David, who is spending part of every week in the Berkshires helping his ex-wife deal with her husband’s terminal stage Alzheimer’s. He likes to take a mid-week break and come down to Hudson for dinner. It’ll be nice to join him and catch up, not having seen him for a few weeks.
At Penn Station, I dropped a worn slipper at Drago’s Shoe Repair for a stitch job. It is going to cost twenty-five bucks, which is about twice what the slippers cost but they’re my favorite pair. It is interesting what we do for things we have come to love.
Last fall, I spent the money to have a desk made by my grandfather repaired. It just seemed so wrong to let it go. My home is filled with things with meaning and I like to say that everything I own, pretty much, has a story. There are three wooden plaques I purchased as a young teenager in the market in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and a settee that my mother napped on as a little girl.
Speaking of things we treasure, it was 130 years ago today that the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York harbor, carried on a ship into New York in 300 pieces. Once assembled, it has become a national treasure and a forceful symbol of all that America hopes to be.
In an unexpected happy ending to a story that hit the press last week, Disney has decided not to terminate 35 employees whose last task for the company was to train their replacements, lower cost overseas employees provided by an outsourcing company. If they didn’t, they would not receive severance.
Mickey Mouse was making out like Simon Legree.
Word leaked out. An investigation was announced. The layoffs were rescinded. No one at Disney nor the outsourcing company is returning calls. The employees are told to act as if nothing had happened. Until further notice.
That sounds a little ominous: until further notice. Until the hoo hah has settled down?
I wish this were a happy story but it’s not. European leaders seem to be battening down the hatches and preparing for the “Grexit,” Greece departing from the Euro Zone. There is a meeting tomorrow but it is doubtful an agreement will be reached. As Bette Davis said as Margo Channing in “All About Eve, ” “Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” I am not sanguine about it though there is nothing I can really do. It feels a bit like a crisis that didn’t need to be, to me, at least.
As all of us know by now, I suppose, Donald Trump has jumped into the race for the Republican Presidential nomination saying he will restore “America’s Brand.” Jon Stewart is delighted. This, he says, will make his last six weeks his best six weeks.
Trump will provide many a comic with interesting fodder though Stewart will be the sharpest critic of them all, I suspect.
At some point I signed up for AT&T Wireless. Part of the reason was the promise of unlimited data. Then in 2011, AT&T began to throttle that data after a certain point of consumption. I was one of millions of unhappy customers though not so unhappy I changed companies. But it rankled. Today the FCC fined AT&T $100,000,000 for having “unlimited” that was not “unlimited.” I smiled.
I’ll be signing off for today. We’re on the last leg into Hudson. The Catskills are covered in a blue grey haze while the river resembles burnished silver. It’s been a lovely ride home.
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Tags: All About Eve, Bette Davis, Disney, Donald Trump, FCC, Grexit, Hudson, Jon Stewart, Margo Channing, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Red Dot, San Pedro Sula, Statue of Liberty, Unlimited Data
This entry was posted on June 18, 2015 at 9:34 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.