A great tribute to a great artist…
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Both Sides of Desire with Rickie Lee
July 27, 2015Letter From New York 05 17 15 Beauty contrasting with tragedy…
May 17, 2015It has been a beautiful, summer like day in Claverack. The creek is still and the trees that overhang it are reflected back in the mirror that is the water. The trees have bloomed and a canopy of green has arrived to the view in front of me as I write. The days are longer and when I have finished today’s letter, I will find myself something to eat.
Today, I took the day for myself, caught up on my cluttered email inbox, luxuriated in waking early and reading The Times along with a mug of good, strong Honduran free trade coffee picked up a couple of weeks ago at the Farmer’s Market, on the day it opened its summer season in a parking lot at 7th and Columbia in Hudson.
I am relaxing in my freshly painted living and dining rooms and have had a lovely day. Yesterday, while doing some work I discovered that my vehicle inspection was now seriously overdue and so I went and had that done. I plowed through two weeks of mail, so much of it that it came home in a Post Office plastic bin.
Other than the vehicle inspection and picking up my clothes from the laundry, I have not wandered from my two little acres on the creek.
The news is not good. Ramadi has apparently fallen to IS, giving them a foothold seventy miles from Baghdad, which is closer than comfortable I would imagine if I were sitting in the Presidential Palace there.
In Syria, in a rare ground involvement, the US Army’s Delta Force made a daring nighttime raid Friday, killing Abu Sayyaf, a leading IS figure who had a commanding role in IS’s finances. They scooped up buckets of data before they departed with his wife, Umm Sayyaf, who is now being held in Iraq. She, too, was in the know about many things and is being “debriefed.”
Ukraine is claiming to have captured two Russian soldiers near the rebel held eastern zone. They are shown in a video, which has not been independently verified. More to come on this, I’m sure.
Whenever I hear the word “Macedonia” I think of Alexander the Great, who hailed from there. But it is a real country, once part of the former Yugoslavia, and it is in crisis. Tens of thousands of Macedonians have taken to the streets to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister, who has been revealed to be pretty dictatorial in a series of conversations that had been recorded. Think the Nixon tapes. He says he isn’t going anywhere and there is a chance this could become ugly.
In Nepal, the toll in the earthquakes which have ravaged the country are now climbing toward 9,000, surpassing the death toll in the last great earthquake in 1934. Six American Marines and two Nepali soldiers died when their helicopter crashed. Their bodies have now been recovered and returned to Kathmandu. They died on a mission to evacuate survivors.
Pope Francis, who never ceases to amaze, has canonized two 19th Century Palestinian nuns. He has also called Abbas of Palestine “an angel of peace.” The Vatican has implicitly implied that it recognized the “State of Palestine.” I am sure this is causing deep concern in Tel Aviv.
The canonization of the Palestinian nuns is seen as a way of offering encouragement to Middle Eastern Christians who are more embattled today than they have been for centuries.
In Egypt, former President Morsi has been condemned to death and the sentence has gone in front of Egypt’s Grand Mufti for consideration. I was once at a panel on which the last Grand Mufti sat. He resigned shortly thereafter. I think he didn’t want to have to deal with issues like this.
There is a very good chance that Ireland’s voters will vote in gay marriage. Stunning for a country that is heavily Catholic. In a recent poll, 63% were in favor. The Church’s influence in Ireland is on the wane.
Obama has said that full gay rights won’t be won overnight. And it’s very true. Even if the Supreme Court legalizes same sex marriage in June there will be other, local battles to be won. Discrimination against gays is not forbidden in many states and then we have Mike Huckabee…
Outside the room in which I am writing, I hear the distant sound of birds singing. A stray cat has wandered over my deck, calmly until it noticed me. It is a stunningly beautiful night.
Letter From New York 03 25 15 First full day in Delhi…
March 25, 2015It is late afternoon in Delhi and I am just back at India International Center where I am staying, after spending the afternoon with my friend Raja Choudury. We made a drive past Connaught Place where I commented that it was much better looking than I remembered it. He said yes, they had done much to clean it up over the last years. It was, twenty years ago, one of the great shopping areas of Delhi but it also looked like a rundown claptrap of a place. Now it is white and shiny again.
We went on from there to the Oberoi Hotel where we lunched at Taipan, a dim sum restaurant on the top floor with views out across Delhi, the sky tinged with the pollution for which the city is famous. It was a long and leisurely lunch; with Raja catching me up on the work he is doing, including the launching of a new web adventure, onegreatidea.com.
This was the first time that Raja and I had met in person. We have known each other for years. He encountered me on LinkedIn and asked me for some help with a project that he was working on, which I was, luckily, able to provide. We have continued talking and skypeing but in all this time we haven’t met each other in person so today was a good day.
Tomorrow, all of India will come to almost to a halt. It is the day of a cricket game between India and Australia and is, according to reports, the biggest game in years. A huge number of Indians are going to call in sick. It’s the game NOT to be missed, a bit like asking people to work during the Super Bowl in the U.S.
So I should be able to get around quite easily tomorrow. I am going to delve into my tour books and determine what I would like to see. Today, I visited India Gate and drove by the President’s House and the Houses of Parliament, great, grand structures built in the last days of the Raj. Back then; I think the President’s House was the Viceroy’s Palace.
It was in the 90’s here but not yet humid so it didn’t feel so bad. In my room, I have the air conditioning running and the fan turning. The IIC, India International Center, is a private club on the nature of the Yale Club or Harvard Club in New York though very Indian in feel. The accommodations are nice if rather Spartan compared with the Oberoi but very adequate with excellent Wi-Fi.
As far as I can tell, I am the only American staying here; the rest are from all over India. In the bar, groups huddle together discussing business or art. Last night, I read and sipped Johnny Walker.
Being in India, I am very careful about the water. No ice cubes. I only drink what can be drunk neat.
This morning there was an Indian paper at my door, mostly filled with news I had read online before going of to bed.
Getting back from tour round Delhi, I went online and found the, to me, blockbuster news that Heinz and Kraft Foods are to merge, becoming Heinz Kraft, in a deal nurtured by legendary investor Warren Buffet with a Brazilian investment company.
My, oh my!
There is a new Steve Jobs biography out, “Becoming Steve Jobs” that is reputedly better than Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs.” He still comes across as monumentally conflicted but a bit more human, according to reviews.
In a case of life imitating art, Jon Hamm, Don Draper in “Mad Men,” has just exited a 30-day program for alcohol rehab. Years of playing the world’s most famous alcoholic may have found its reflection in Hamm’s own life. I wish him well. The last season of “Mad Men” starts soon.
In the category of the world is challenging: The UN last year announced that same sex married couples could receive the same benefits of married straight couples. Russia introduced a resolution to withdraw benefits from same sex married couples. 43 countries, including India, China and the UAE, supported it. It was defeated. 80 countries voted against the resolution and 37 abstained.
The day is drawing to a close as the day begins in America. I am going to work on my speech again and then go read for a while before an early night. I feel good but one more good’s night sleep would be a great thing.
Letter From New York 03 13 15 Greater love than this…
March 13, 2015It is around nine in the morning as I begin writing; early for a Letter From New York but I fear if I don’t write this on the train ride down to New York, it just won’t happen today. I will arrive in the city in time for a meeting, then a lunch and then another meeting and then home on the 5:47, which tends to be occasionally a riotous ride as it’s the train many “Empire Regulars” take home on Friday. Unlike most trains on our route, it has a bar car as it continues on past Albany to Rutland, VT. Then I am scheduled for dinner with friends, making a long and busy and probably fun day, despite this being Friday the 13th.
It was a little hard to wake up this morning and I hit the snooze feature on my phone twice before actually rising so I scurried through my morning rituals this morning and only began to peruse the Times as I was sitting having coffee at Relish, the little restaurant across from the Hudson Train Station.
The morning lead story in the NY Times app was that IS [or ISIS or ISIL] is still fighting fiercely, attacking Ramadi while being pushed back at Tikrit. In months of heavy bombing, they have actually lost relatively little territory and are proving to be a tenacious enemy. Islamic groups in Africa, Boko Haram in Nigeria and a group in Libya, have claimed allegiance to the “Caliphate” as has a group in the Sinai Peninsula.
Various groups in Iraq, such as forces loyal to Shiite Cleric al-Sadr, are beginning to join the fray, sensing victory in Tikrit and jockeying for places of power in the event of a win.
While tenaciously fighting, IS is having some internal struggles to fight while governing. They are viciously executing anyone they suspect of wanting to flee the fighting. There is a nascent resistance to them that seems to be slowly growing and while about 8,000 have been killed, they are being reinforced by approximately a thousand foreign recruits each month.
Some IS fighters are repulsed by the violence of the group, causing restlessness in the ranks. And there is tension between the locals and the foreigners who are leading IS.
After the shooting of two officers, protests have resumed in the streets of Ferguson, MO. The protests were calm.
The House Oversight Committee is going to formally ask for answers from Hillary Clinton about her State Department email. Not unexpected. They also want the electronic versions and not the printed copies she gave to State.
A Univision host said on-air that Michelle Obama resembled a character in “Planet of the Apes.” He was fired.
In a sad note, Michael Graves has died. A postmodern architect, he is perhaps best known for the household wares he designed for Target, Alessi and Disney. He continued vibrant work even after he was paralyzed from the waist down in 2003 as a result of a spinal cord infection.
Perhaps the most awaited literary event of the decade, if not the century, is the release of “Go Set A Watchman,” the sequel to Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird.” The announcement set off a great debate as to whether Harper Lee, now 88, had been manipulated into agreeing to publish the book. The State of Alabama started an investigation to see if there had been elder abuse. It has now closed the investigation, saying its questions had been answered to its satisfaction. The debate had divided the small town in which she resides in an assisted living center.
In a move that will make little girls around the world swoon, Disney has announced a sequel to “Frozen.”
Sweden is sending people to the UK to question Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, who has for the last few years received political asylum at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, over sexual assault allegations.
The world has a new island, created in Tonga by the eruption of an undersea volcano.
As we know, Tim Cook went on to replace Steve Jobs at Apple when Jobs died. What we didn’t know was that Cook offered part of his liver to Jobs to attempt to save his life when he was rapidly declining before actually getting a liver transplant. Jobs angrily refused, shouting at Cook almost before the words were out of his mouth, according to a new book, “Becoming Steve Jobs.”
Greater love than this, no man has…
Letter From New York 03 10 15 Some feeling pressure…
March 10, 2015It is late morning and I am settled in at the Acela Club at Penn Station, having done some emails and doing some work before I go to my afternoon appointment. I’m catching up with my old friend, Peter Kaufman, who was one of my first clients. The day is pretty grey but it’s going to warm up to fifty degrees here in the city and that’s pretty marvelous! Rain may come this afternoon.
The ride into the city on Amtrak was a feast for the eyes. Near Hudson, the river was an almost solid sheet of ice. A Coast Guard icebreaker had cut a narrow line through the ice and a barge was majestically threading its way down the river. Further south, the ice became loose with small floes bobbing on the water.
As the train’s Internet service was going in and out, I often found myself staring out the window at the magnificence rolling by. Lately, bald eagles have been flying along the river, across from the train. A lone coyote has been seen making his way across the open ice. West Point sails by in all its sturdiness.
It will be a long time and perhaps never before the ice thaws between the current President and the current Congress. There is brutal chill right now due to the open letter sent to the Leaders of Iran by 47 Republican Senators suggesting any agreement with Iran wouldn’t outlast Obama. It resulted in a blistering response from Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif, pointing out to the Senators that what is being negotiated is not a unilateral agreement with the US but with the US and the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.
Zarif has a point.
Four officers rescued an 18-month-old baby who had survived for fourteen hours upside down in her car seat while in a vehicle in a river. Her mother had passed away. After the ordeal, she is gradually improving. All four officers claim they heard someone calling for help within the car. They are not sure where the voice was coming from.
In another accident, 55 were injured when an Amtrak train struck a semi stalled at a crossing. The accident was in North Carolina. The train was New York bound.
In Argentina, three French sports stars and five members of a French television crew, along with the pilots of two helicopters, died when the two copters apparently collided. They were on the way to shoot an episode of a French reality show called “Dropping.” France is in mourning.
Ukraine has been quiet the last few days though today the Ukrainian military authorities are claiming that the rebels are using the truce to amass major weaponry.
Reaching critical mass is the cry for Hillary Clinton to say something about the email fiasco. She is expected to do so today. The right is digging its teeth into this, hoping, I expect, for another Benghazi moment. Some on the left are rising in support but most are just asking her to explain herself. Quickly, before it gets worse.
Wikipedia and the ACLU are suing the NSA over privacy concerns. Among the thousands of documents Edward Snowden leaked was one that showed the NSA was particularly targeting Wikipedia, among others, including CNN.com. Wikipedia joins a long list of corporations and foundations suing the NSA over their snooping. It will probably keep growing unless some come to court and receive rulings.
What is definitely growing is pressure on “Bibi” Netanyahu at home, facing elections. They promise to be extremely close. Some recent polls have shown him falling behind and he is claiming a worldwide effort to get him out of office. Commentators in Israel see him showing the stress.
Also facing pressure from a crumbling economy is President Maduro of Venezuela, who is facing the challenge by asking Parliament for extraordinary powers to face down “imperialism.”
Not looking very imperial today is the Euro, which has hit a twelve year low against the American dollar. It costs $1.08 to buy one Euro, a bargain for travelers but a challenge for businessmen attempting to sell their goods on the continent. The market is responding by diving lower.
And now it is time to close up for the day and head off to meet my friend Peter up by Columbia University. He suggested hot cocoa but it may actually be a day for iced tea.
Letter From New York 03 09 15 Not at all, all bad…
March 9, 2015The Weather Channel app indicated today was going to be warm but rather cloudy. Instead, the sky is blue and the sun has beamed down happily all day, warming my part of the world to a stunning 48 degrees; I even wandered a bit with only a fleece jacket on for a while.
The trees are casting sharp shadows and there is the sound of water dripping as icicles melt. Perhaps we are on our way to spring at last!
Tonight I am trying my hand at Shrimp Scampi accompanied by a white Cote de Rhone. My friends Lionel and Pierre are coming and I am savoring what time I have with them as soon they are off to Baltimore, where Lionel has a new job.
The news of the day is not all bad. Strange in places but not all bad.
Forty-seven Senate Republicans have sent a letter to the leaders of Iran warning them that a deal with Obama might not last beyond his administration. Something like this is unprecedented, I suspect. It feels wrong to me. Not surprisingly, the White House is furious.
IS continues to feel pressure. The Iraqi forces continue to put pressure on them in their drive to retake Tikrit. The US led coalition has bombed their oil fields, which once got them somewhere between $850,000 and $1,500,000 a day. Between the raids and the oil glut, oil is no longer their biggest source of income.
Divisions seem to be rising, with Syrian and Iraqi fighters resenting the privileges given to foreign troops in the form of better pay and postings. A resistance movement seems to be forming; several militants were gunned down in a drive-by shooting recently.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, has admitted in a documentary that he cooked up the plan to retake Crimea long before he originally said. The trailer, with this piece in it, was shown on Russian television last night. No date for the actual documentary screening has been set. It is called “The Path to the Motherland.” Well, we suspected, now we know.
While the world’s archeologists are attempting to save Syrian and Iraqi artifacts and ruins, the Vatican is attempting to get back a letter written and signed by Michelangelo. It was stolen back in 1997; a ransom request was received today. The common thinking is that this was an inside job.
And in Israel, three men found a trove of Hellenic coins and jewelry while spelunking and have turned the treasure over to Israeli authorities.
Today, speaking of treasures, the Apple Watch was unveiled. It starts at $349 and goes all the way up to about $17,000. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, promises it will be like a friend on your wrist, a coach. I am going to be interested to see if it catches on. The report I read indicates it is not as user friendly as the iPhone.
And in another bright moment for Apple, HBO Now, HBO’s OTT offering, will be exclusively available on Apple devices for the first three months.
What also was shown today is a new MacBook, which is light and wonderful and gold and almost stole the show.
What is not stealing the show, is Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco, which continues to brew and boil and bubble. Politico speculates that she will address it at a press conference scheduled for sometime in the next few days.
In 2006, Helen Mirren won an Oscar for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in the film, “The Queen.” She is back as Elizabeth II in a Broadway play entitled, “The Audience.” Though my Bachelor’s and Master’s are in Theater, I rarely attend. However, this is one play I intend to see, once I have returned from India.
Ah, the day has reached that state when all seems cast in shades of brown. I must go set the table and prepare for dinner. A martini awaits.
Letter From New York 02 10 15 Of sex and politics and other things…
February 10, 2015Taking advantage of the fact it rocketed to just above freezing today, I went for a walk to break the spell of cabin fever that has settled upon me as it snowed and snowed and snowed. It is both above freezing and the sun is brilliant, causing me to squint as I walked. It appears that the weight of the snow has felled a couple of trees in the neighborhood.
Early this morning, Nick, who helps me out at the house, and his sidekick, Bernard, arrived to finish digging me out. It was while they were shoveling and knocking down icicles that a report came in from the BBC that, indeed, Kayla Mueller, the last American hostage in the hands of ISIS, was dead. It is not clear yet whether she died in the Jordanian bombing of Raqqa or if she had died at another place and time.
Regardless, she is dead and my heart goes out to her family. Her “crime” was that she was an American, helping refugees. She paid with her life for her humanitarianism.
Tomorrow, my brother goes to Honduras to bring medical care to places that have no medical care except when teams like his venture there. He has done this for many years. Honduras has a place in his heart; he ran a clinic for children in El Progresso, Honduras, after finishing his internship. Yearly, I worry because Honduras, never the safest of places, has devolved in recent years and is now one of the most violent countries on the planet.
Jeb Bush continues to groom himself as a Presidential candidate. Today he released the first chapter of an eBook about his time as Governor of Florida, filled with emails from his first weeks. Chris Christie, current Governor of New Jersey, is being dogged by tales of a lavish lifestyle to which he has managed to grow accustomed. After all, he said, he is just “trying to squeeze the last juice out of the orange.” The King of Jordan picked up a tab for him for $30,000 to pay for a vacation in that country.
Once upon a time Dominique Strauss-Kahn was considered a front-runner for President of France. Today, he is on trial in Lille, France for pimping. He denies it, not for a moment believing that the provocatively dressed women at the “swingers” parties he attended were prostitutes. He has a “horror” of sex with prostitutes. His sexual activities have been under the microscope since 2011 when he was accused by a housemaid at the Hotel Sofitel in New York of forcing himself upon her. That was settled out of court. He had to step down as President of the IMF. He has been attempting to rehabilitate his reputation since then. I don’t think it is working.
In other sexual/political news the High Court in Malaysia has upheld the sodomy conviction of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar. He was convicted in 2008. That conviction was overturned and now that overturning has been overturned. Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia defended the decision, even as criticism of him is mounting in that country. As Imelda Marcos had a thing for shoes, his wife has a thing for handbags, the kind that can cost as much as $150,000. She has lots. He doesn’t earn that much as a politician. And no one seems to quite believe the story of family money from somewhere.
In Minsk, tomorrow, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany are meeting. They are going to discuss creating a de-militarized zone in the southeast of Ukraine where the September truce is being broken by both sides on a daily basis. While dialogue may continue, it is beginning to feel as if the door on diplomacy is closing. The US is talking of arming Kiev and the EU is against it. Putin maintains his inscrutability.
All of this is news and if this were a normal week, Brian Williams would be leading the dissemination of it on NBC. It is not. NBC says they will resolve the Brian Williams crisis in the next day or two. According to a Rasmussen Reports poll, 40% of Americans think he should resign.
This weekend the highly anticipated film, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, will premiere. The film version of the naughty book of the same name will probably do well at the Box Office though first reviews of the film aren’t particularly good but then reviews of the book were awful but it didn’t prevent it from lingering for what seemed forever on the best seller lists.
I’ll wind down now and get ready to go to the local Mexican restaurant, Coyote Flaco, for some dinner. The sun is setting and the temperature is supposed to dip again, making this the longest cold stretch I can remember in the fourteen years in Claverack.
Letter From New York 01 06 15 Facing the challenges of the new year…
January 7, 2015The cold that has held the Midwest throttled for the last two days is heading east and will be with us tomorrow.
It is time to pull out the long underwear and the heavy sweaters and to be concerned that pipes don’t freeze.
This will be a short letter as I have spent the day in languid pursuits, a long leisurely lunch with my friend Larry Divney at his favorite place, Ca’Mea, the best northern Italian north of New York.
We met so I could return to him the various containers in which he had brought wine to Christmas celebrations, part of the best Christmases I have ever had. He and Alicia, his wife, are very special people and fill a special place in my life. We celebrated both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together and it will remain with me as two of the best Holidays of my life.
The market is volatile. The world is volatile. The New Year did not bring some magical changing of the tenure of the times. The troubles of the old year have blended into the New Year and we continue on.
The Republicans have taken control of both the Congress and the Senate and so I suspect we will have a very rocky couple of years while they do their best to demonstrate they can govern as opposed to being the party of “No!”
I grew up Republican, one of those good cloth coated Republicans that Nixon described in his famous “Checkers” speech, back when we actually believed in Nixon. My parents did. They were one of the few people in our neighborhood who supported Nixon when he ran against John Kennedy in that long ago, much studied election.
But I haven’t been able to recognize the Republicans in the last couple of decades. They seem so far away from the party I grew up. Now they have the entire Congress and it will be interesting to see if they can govern and govern with some sense of responsibility, which I haven’t felt they’ve had for quite some time.
Boehner is once again the majority leader in the Congress but not without some pushback within his own party.
The Republicans seem fractured. They are trying to hold it together but I’m not sure they can. It will be interesting to watch. I would like to see them manage but I’m not sure they can.
So, on this first day of the new Congress, I hold my breath and wait to see what occurs.
In the meantime, I must head for bed as I go back to the city for the first time in three weeks to begin facing the challenges of the year.
