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A Tale of Two Towns

August 16, 2009

A Tale of Two Towns

August 16, 2009

Woodstock bellowing in the tunnels of time…

This weekend marked the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, the music fest that helped define a generation – peace, love, drugs, sex, rock and roll. All of that was present at Woodstock.

Thinking on it over this anniversary weekend, I am glad I wasn’t there. I hate crowds. In a field? No in-door plumbing? My sister will tell you that camping, to me, has always meant a Holiday Inn. Music? I’m tone deaf. It was not an event made for me, personally. Yet, it is one of the iconic moments of a generation. It was instantly romanticized and remains so today. It became a symbol for what baby boomers hoped they would be and, unfortunately, on many levels, not what we turned out to be.

Once the threat of service in Viet Nam disappeared, the boomers [I am one of them] turned their energies away from creating a better society towards the golden calf of consumerism. Many of my friends post-college started their professional careers in social services which they soon left for real estate, law school, corporate careers that paid well. Hippies became Yuppies. Instead of trading lines of poetry, a generation turned to trading tips on the newest gadgets.

Timothy Leary gave a speech in 1966 that included the catch phrase: turn on, tune in, drop out. By 1976, turning on, tuning in and dropping out was passé. Corporate careers were the next new big thing. A movement that promised a better mankind came and went in a decade. Boomers surrendered to their bread and circuses, gadgets, careers, bigger homes, flashier cars, accumulating experiences as some other group would collect postage stamps.

Lessons learned in psychedelic trances, in the muddy fields of Woodstock, in the solidarity of opposing war, coupled with the intoxicating possibility of changing society, all slipped away in the responsibilities of being “grown up.” And out of danger.

As boomers face the final acts of their lives, I am wondering if others of my generation are wondering if we let opportunities slip by – that our choices may not have been the best in the long run, that the wonderful youthful innocence with which we once faced the world was replaced by a veneer of worldly sophistication, the ennui of “been there, done that.”

I am asking these questions of myself as I face the third act of my life. My contemporaries are doing the same I suspect. It is interesting to watch the results of the current economic malaise upon the boomers I personally know. Many have been put out of good jobs and find themselves “on the beach” looking for the next gig. There is not one I know personally who is not asking themselves what they want to do next and there is not one who has not articulated to me a desire to do something now that will “make a difference – the feeling it is time, again, to do something to make a difference.” Admittedly this is non-scientific and I am extrapolating this to many in my generation, yet it is universal among the individuals with whom I have spoken.

I don’t know the entire motivation behind these impulses. Is it that we desire to make amends for profligate ways, that facing mortality there is a desire to go eventually into that good night with some more good deeds under our belts. Is it that we feel life has given us a chance to “do-over,” to actually do a bit of paying it forward? I do not know a boomer who is not asking hard questions of themselves and about their time on earth. Is it that we, as a generation, are asking ourselves if we did not allow ourselves to be seduced by the very culture we were repudiating? That once Johnson had given us “the Great Society” our obligations had ended?

Part is confrontation with economic reality, part is facing mortality, part is being reminded by anniversaries like Woodstock that there was another time and another consciousness in our lives and that perhaps we have failed to pay as good attention to that time and consciousness as we – perhaps – should have?

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Tale of Two Towns August 5, 2009

August 5, 2009

Doesn’t matter what town…

Not so long ago I wrote about the woman who was on the cleaning staff of my office building who was murdered. One of the elevator operators has been arrested for the crime. It was shocking and since then I have not been comfortable in the building. It is hard not to think about that act of violence; it hangs on the building, a heavy shroud of violent sadness I sense whenever I am there – which won’t be for much longer as I am moving offices shortly.

That particular blog elicited a large number of responses – many emails simply repeating the same two words: very disturbing. My beloved sister-in-law wrote me a long note. She “wonder(ed) how we can ever get back to a civilized society? One without such a dark side.” That line has tumbled around my brain ever since. I think it is common to believe things were better in the past, that we were better beings previously and that we have descended into a dark morass, darker than ever before but from which we can escape.

I don’t think man has ever inhabited that kind of Camelot.

The dichotomy in mankind that inspires and repulses at the same time is that we are so capable of goodness and we are so capable of darkness.

The 19th Century lithographers, Currier & Ives, are associated in today’s mind with a time that is frequently recalled as that kind of a Camelot – they captured all kinds of aspects of American life, including those we now associate with all the good things about Christmas. Yet as Currier & Ives were capturing those bucolic images of American life, we were sending cholera infected blankets to Native Americans as a way of thinning their numbers.

Cruelty to other members of the human race has been one of the things we humans have excelled at since the dawn of time. Get conquered in war and chances were during most periods of human history it was a death sentence – or at best you got sold off into slavery. Slavery – now that’s a fine institution that’s done a good deal for us; we’re still dealing with the aftereffects of American slavery and will continue to deal with it for a long time to come even though long strides have been made.

Everyday, everywhere human beings do terrible things to other human beings. Yet, despite that, there are things we are doing as individuals and as groups that show the other side of the two-sided human coin. Somewhere in the world today someone will risk their life to save another life as well as someone who take one. We live with this two faced aspect of man everyday when we walk the streets of any town, anywhere. Could be Hudson. Could be Claverack. Could be New York City. Walking the streets anyplace means we will be exposed to the possibility of evil and the possibility of goodness.

We’ve come a long way since the days of the human sacrifice of children to the god Moloch. I’ve been thinking about that the last couple of weeks as I am working on an initiative to help bring attention to the International Day of Peace celebrated on the 21st of September. Odyssey is working to get a million people to take a minute and think about, pray for or envision world peace – a world without nuclear arms. At least hundreds of thousands of people have participated in the past twenty-two years, probably millions. I don’t recall a time in history when such large groups of people have joined together to promote a concept that has been mostly alien to us – peace. It gives me hope. And it is hope that drives us towards goodness.

Put it in your calendar. On the 21st of September take a moment to think about, pray for, envision a world with peace breaking out everywhere. Help make it a million minutes for peace.

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A Tale of Two Towns, July 27, 2009

July 28, 2009

Letter From New York
July 26, 2009

A Tale of Two Towns

Anniversaries…

This past Saturday felt like an old-fashioned summer day; warm to the edge of hot, muggy to the edge of insufferable, sun showers – crowds swarming Warren Street, moving from shop to shop with the riverfront swelled by crowds looking to study the Halfe Maen [Half Moon], the half size replica of Henry Hudson’s vessel which was docked in Hudson as part of the 400th Anniversary Celebration of Captain Hudson’s historic voyage up the river that bears his name.

Standing on the waterfront, looking at the half sized Half Moon I thought: at full size I might have trusted it to carry me up and down the river but across the Atlantic? No. I prefer something more the size of the Queen Mary II for that voyage. Looking at the wooden craft, I imagined 400 years ago. It must have taken tremendous courage – or foolhardiness – to set sail from the old world for the new. The Half Moon may have been the height of maritime technology at the time but it’s not very spectacular four centuries later when we can compare it to the Queen Mary II – the Half Moon would probably easily into one of QM II’s holds.

While I was attempting to imagine crossing an ocean in a ship twice the size of the craft I was staring at, I found myself thinking of another anniversary that occurred last week – the 40th anniversary of man’s landing on the moon. Apollo 11 was the height of space technology at the time and yet the further we get from that moment when Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” we now know that their craft was the space equivalent of the Half Moon, best available but crude at best.

A few months ago I read somewhere that the Apollo 11 mission was not expected to succeed. In fact, speechwriters worked hard at crafting words for President Nixon so that he could announce their deaths to the world should the mission, as expected, fail. The best-case scenario seemed to be that Apollo 11 would probably have to abort and return to earth without successfully landing on the moon.

However, the Eagle did land.

Standing on the riverfront while appraising the Half Moon, I found tears coming to my eyes as I thought of the courage of Hudson and his men willing to toss themselves out onto the cold Atlantic in a voyage of exploration. The feeling was intensified when I thought of the men of the Apollo 11 mission: Collins, Armstrong, Aldrin, men who chose to risk their lives to learn more about the unknown, to stretch man’s reach to the moon if not yet to the stars, to begin the long hard journey out into space – “the final frontier,” to toss themselves out in the coldness of space in a voyage of exploration.

The only autograph I have ever asked for was from Buzz Aldrin, one of the Apollo 11 three. At the request of my friend Howard Bloom, I orchestrated a meeting for him at History Channel. As he was about to get into the car to head for the airport, I couldn’t resist and it sits framed in a place of pride in my home office. I want to be reminded of that kind of courage as often as possible.

Life often seems daunting and impossible, occasionally causing even the most stalwart of souls to edge on despair. It is good when edging on those moments to think of those who risked their lives to stretch the horizon of the world inhabited by other human beings.

Thankfully, Nixon did not have to give that speech and the first three men to the moon are still alive and were able to celebrate their anniversary. Hopefully, by the 50th anniversary of their feat we will have returned to the moon and start the long march to the stars – because it is the “final frontier” and the human race seems to do best when it stretches its imagination and efforts to know the unknown, to find the wonder of being human.

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A Tale of Two Towns: July 19, 2009

July 19, 2009

A Tale of Two Towns

Death comes as the end…

My mother was a great fan of Agatha Christie; I believe she read everything Ms. Christie wrote as Agatha Christie; if memory serves me correctly Christie also wrote books under the name of Mary Westmacott. I don’t recall those having much space on our bookshelves.

Christie, if it was possible, made murder elegant – people rarely died violently, often of poisons, and almost every one of her characters were ladies and gentlemen – or those who served them.

Unfortunately, murder is rarely so neat and never elegant. Christie type deaths don’t happen in real life – something deeply clear to me this past week. A week ago Wednesday a general notice went out to everyone in my office building not to come in – there was a “police action” happening in the building. In this post 9/11 world that has come to have terrifying connotations with immediate thoughts of bombs.

What actually happened was that one of the cleaning people, Eridania Rodriguez, had gone missing the night before and could not be found. The surveillance cameras caught her arriving; they could not find her leaving. For four days the police searched the building until the following Saturday, Eridania’s body was found in an air conditioning duct that was scheduled to be sealed off. Her hands and feet were bound in tape, a gold crucifix was draped over the tape that covered her face and which had been the instrument of her death; she had been asphyxiated.

Nothing in her life would indicate that she could be a candidate to come to a gruesome end. Eridania [Iris] Rodriguez was a single mother of three children, a hard worker, who lived in the northern tip of Manhattan. People who knew her characterized her as a good person, a good mother, and a caring individual. Not a person who deserved to be gruesomely murdered. She came from the Dominican Republic in the early 1980’s looking for a better life with her parents and siblings. She was working the American immigrant dream. And it ended in an American nightmare.

In looking at the pictures of her that have appeared in the paper, I am sure we had passed each other in the hallways and in the elevators. It is not unusual for me to know the cleaning staff of any building in which I am working; I frequently am still working while they are working. There is almost no degree of separation between this poor woman and me. In addition, her brother is a world-class body builder, Victor Martinez. He’s competing in the Mr. Olympia competition [the one that made Arnold famous] and is developing a reality series about his efforts with a producer friend of mine.

Not only is it profoundly disturbing that this poor woman has been murdered working in my office building, it is also, and perhaps even more so, haunting that no one knows who murdered her. The police believe it is someone else who works in the building; there is a suspect but not enough evidence to arrest. Walking the hallways with me is very likely someone who has committed murder. It leaves me – disturbed, deeply. I do not feel at ease there anymore. I am concerned for my colleagues who work nights and wonder what provisions are being taken to keep them safe.

Eridania’s murder reminds me that life can be capricious and unjust; unexpectedly ended, reminding me to do my best to leave nothing unsaid that needs to be said, to not forget to say I love you to someone, to hope that I forgive rather than resent, to admire the beauty of a moment.

DEATH COMES AS THE END was the title of one of Ms. Christie’s novels and death is the end, at least this side of paradise. The cruel death of this woman reminds me of the fragility of life and the random cruelty that walks the planet and the gruesome cruelty with which we often deal with one another, one human to another.
This just in:
A 25-year-old male elevator operator in the building was arrested for Eridania’s murder when DNA tests of skin under her fingernails matched his.

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Tale of Two Towns: Living the Great Recession, July 10, 2009

July 11, 2009

A Tale of Two Towns
Living in The Great Recession

July 10, 2009

For those who follow closely, you will have noticed there was no missive last week; it was the 4th of July weekend, there were masses of papers to be sorted through for work and there just wasn’t time for everything. It was a quiet 4th; the holiday night was spent with a friend at Tannery Pond, listening to exquisite chamber music where the fireworks were aural rather than visual. Particularly wonderful were several Beethoven from the early 19th Century. Following, at home, I continued the path of solitary thinking that has been part of my spring and summer – assessing life – mine and the world in which I find myself living.

It is an interesting time, the one in which we are living. The economic malaise has now become an ongoing reality of our lives; it is more a chronic illness than a transitory one. As I write this it is a weeknight and I am at the cottage – a rare thing now for weekdays – but our train crowd gave a “furlough” party for our friend Ty West who works on a PBS Production. Donations and corporate support are at a nadir so it has become incumbent on their survival to furlough employees and it is Ty’s time. He is, being the man he is, taking the difficulty with good grace and understanding. I suspect it is not easy for him; it would not be for me.

His story is one of many that I know; pullbacks are everywhere. The friends who went down with the LPD bankruptcy are all still “on the beach” looking for the next thing, which is elusive. It underscores the grace under which I have been living – a fact that plays into the contemplative state in which I have been living since that shutdown.

On the party train tonight one of the “regular” passengers who joined our celebration was a young stock analyst from one of the boutique firms that inhabit “Wall Street.” As I tended bar [my task on train parties (for each one I must come up with a theme drink, tonight’s was the “Furlough Tini” a mixture of vodka, lemonade, crème de Framboise and crème de cassis, producing a concoction that had shades of pink [pink slip] but wasn’t quite, hence: furlough – an unpaid absence from a job with the opportunity to return and a clear indication of a sad economic reality], this young man opined that the market was headed lower and that at the end of the day it would all be better in some future we aspire to. It made for poignant conversation regarding depleted portfolios, delayed retirements and returns to work from retirement by men such as his father.

We are living in a poignant time. On many levels, individuals live as they always have though comprises are everywhere. Retirees return to the work place, home buying is deferred, roommates are taken in, purchases and vacations deferred or downsized, friendships matter more and values are reevaluated. Friendships feel more potent; what are we without people, people who love us.

In this current economic crisis, the most profound since the Great Depression, we are all in trouble. Yet our trouble is still quite modest compared with much of the world – the world in which 60 to 70 % of its population must walk three hours to find fresh water. It does put it all in perspective, doesn’t it? When I got off the train tonight I left behind three sinks full of ice, unused, melting into oblivion and completely normal for the western world in which we live. It was the young stock analyst who pointed out to me that the majority of the world is desperate for what we take for granted – still.

What gnaws at many of us is that there may soon come a day when we can’t take for granted the ice we’ve paid for melting casually in any kind of sink… Everyone I know senses some new day ahead of us. While unsure what that day may be, more people seem anxious than eager while also suspecting it might just be a time with sounder values.

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A Tale of Two Towns: June 26, 2009

June 26, 2009

Contemplating it all…

A long time ago in that faraway country that was my youth, I wrote papers for school in long hand and then typed the final product on a black Royal portable that had been around our home since long before I was born. Were I now my age when that portable Royal was young, I would be sitting in front of it with a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray with a martini to accompany them while I typed with the hard, tough strokes of a manual typewriter, working to make sense of the world in which I was living — rather like a Walter Winchell [anyone remember him?] or a Hemingway or Fitzgerald, were I to aim very high.

It has been that kind of week — the kind in which the world needs figuring out. Half way across the world, protests continue to sputter in Iran over the election as the Twitter posts also sputter. Once separated by nanoseconds, minutes if not hours now separate the Iranian posts. What remains to be seen is the lasting changes that will come from this. And there will be lasting changes – Iran, as much as the Mullahs may pretend, will never be the same.

There was a piece of video I watched last weekend, uncorroborated when I saw it though later it was, of a young woman shot and dying on the streets of Tehran. It was shocking, horrible, real: it was the ultimate price people pay for protest. Neda was her name, a 26-year-old graduate student who wanted to lead tours; she went out to protest the elections and was killed with a bullet fired, probably, by the pro-government paramilitary Basiji. The video has become a rallying image around the world for the Iranian Protest Movement. It will be an image that will live on and haunt the Iranian government. Beautiful, full of life and now gone, her power to galvanize will remain.

As “#Iranelection” is trending downward on Twitter, soaring upwards in the world of internet chatter are tweets about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, two icons who died yesterday and who are being remembered by the legions who idolized them. Both of them will be remembered for their great influence on pop culture in their time and for the feeling that something went wrong for both of them, with Michael Jackson the winner in that dubious category. From beloved superstar to very, very weird dude it was a long hard bumpy ride down the superstar slope. Still beloved by many, he had become to many others a parody. Dogged by rumors of pedophilia, drug abuse, and just plain over the top weird behavior, Michael Jackson will remain a symbol of all that can go wrong with a superstar life and will be up there with icons like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland – talent that got very lost along the way.

Farrah was the epitome of beauty for every straight boy when I was much younger and the poster of her in that red bathing suit was ubiquitous; you couldn’t ignore it if you tried. That’s what she’ll be remembered for – that and some later life behavior that seemed to indicate drug troubles. What probably won’t be remembered is the depth of her performance in THE BURNING BED or the haunting portrayal of heiress Barbara Hutton in the mini-series POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL.

So it’s come to this: I think the ’70’s and ’80’s are now officially done – they have just moved into that past that is that foreign country. The iconic links we had to them, pop culture wise, are gone and we are left with individual memories, adrift now in our remembrances. Pop Culture is only part of the essence of those times.

More important than Farrah or Michael were events like the fall of Saigon and the iconic photo of the helicopter retreat from the U.S. Embassy and the crash of the Challenger. Pop Culture seems to define us while somehow failing to be the essential substance of a time.

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A Tale of Two Towns, A Tale of Two Worlds

June 19, 2009

A Tale of Two Towns, A Tale of Two Worlds
June 18, 2009
An interesting week…

When I started writing this I was filled with images from my college-like road trip with several friends as we attempted to get home last Friday night when service was halted due to a rockslide on the tracks. My desire to sleep in my own bed was visceral and shared by my companions also wanted to be at hom. Four hyper-responsible adults became young adults again, momentarily celebrating the joy of being on the road. We laughed, exchanged stories, commiserated and celebrated ourselves while sharing wine and food as we were being driven north. It was a remarkable moment incorporating youth and adulthood. I cannot completely share its wonder with words. Finally we all reached home and hearth and I slipped into the welcoming arms of Morpheus.

The following day was centered on the Flag Day Parade that consumed Warren Street [think Main Street] in Hudson; Flag Day is Hudson’s 4th of July – the parade went on for two hours with every volunteer fire department, school marching band, etc. making its way down the street to the riverfront. It was a celebration of small town America, of a way of life that seems slipping away.

A column in the NY Times mused on how Hudson’s Parade was perhaps no longer a town celebration but a show for the upscale newcomers. I don’t agree with that – Hudson is an interesting mixture. The town’s inhabitants and newcomers are mingling together and there is an interesting community evolving. Beyond Warren Street the earthy grittiness of tough town Hudson still exists, a town once best known for its brothels – not the antique stores that have recently made it famous.

While we were celebrating Flag Day, across the world a drama was beginning to play out – Iran was holding elections. We were celebrating the adoption of the flag, our symbol for all that we feel America stands. Going into the Iranian elections there was a sense of buoyancy. The generally unpopular Ahmadinejad looked to be toppled by a rival, Mousavi, in the June 12 election.

Iran and the world seemed giddy at the chance for change. When results were announced Ahmadinejad was said to have won by a landslide.

Iran is a young country; a majority of the population is under thirty. That majority, largely supporting Mousavi, did not take the announcement well, smelling a rat in the ballot box. The protests have now been going on for four days and look like they will be continuing – the marches continued today to mourn those who have died. The protests have taken on the mantle of something larger. Internally and externally, the protests are being carefully watched to determine if this might not be a brewing revolution.

Thirty years ago youthful Iranians brought down the pro-Western and much despised Shah. Now youthful Iranians are chafing under the rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran and were pinning their hopes on Mousavi. All polls pointed toward his winning. Against them the landslide nature of Ahmadinejad’s victory did not seem plausible, hence the beginning of the protests.

To the surprise of ruling elders, efforts to suppress the protests have been outmaneuvered by the use of Twitter. Yes, Twitter. While the current rulers are curtailing access of regular reporters, young Iranians are using their mobile phones to “twitter” out pictures and short commentaries that are now being followed breathlessly around the world. Major news organizations are closely scrutinizing the photographs to make sure they are real and most seem to be.

Social networking tool, Twitter, is being used by Iranians to coordinate the actions and disseminate information when normal outlets have been closed to them. So significant is the role of Twitter in this series of events that what is going on in Iran is beginning to be called “the Twitter Revolution.”

Twitter is helping Iranians move toward a day when they can have a Flag Day for themselves, hopefully to celebrate the same kinds of freedoms we honor on our Flag Day. One of their flags colors is green; it’s become the color of protest. I will wear some green in solidarity today.

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Letter From New York: A Tale of Two Towns

June 12, 2009

Letter From New York
June 10, 2009
A Tale of Two Towns

With credit to Kate Thorsey

Anyone who has followed my musings for the last oh so many years is aware much of my heart lives in the Hudson Valley, in Claverack, on its named creek, on my God’s little two acres. A good portion of my life resides around that spot and when I am gone too long my heart yearns for it in a way it has for no other place I have inhabited in my life. That cottage is my home, the refuge I have preserved against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – the place I have clung to through the ups and downs of life and the place I have retreated to in order to heal.

Yet there is the reality I must, in my business, travel extensively, spend huge amounts of time in New York City and I have learned, particularly in the last weeks, a part of my heart resides there also. Long, long ago when I was living in Los Angeles I recall a time returning from New York when I breathed a sigh of relief as the flight crossed the Rockies and headed into the west that was then my home, a relief that grew deeper as we flew closer to LA over the sandy desert colored its many shades of burnished ochre. I feel that same feeling now when I bounce through the rutted streets of New York City on my return from some journey. I feel it even more when I fly into Albany International Airport, working my way south to the cottage passing familiar places that make my face smile – such as the turnoff to my friends Chris and David’s home where I have had so many memorable times, including one awesome lobster adventure that caused all attending to imagine they were at a Roman bacchanal.

Like many people I know in Columbia County I call it home and must, for various reasons, including psychological and financial ones, remain attached to the buzz and jive of New York City, appreciating that and the bucolic ideal of the Hudson Valley. Would I appreciate Claverack as much if I did not have the contrast of New York City? Perhaps. I do have the contrast so I am deeply appreciative. I also know the limitations of the countryside; while wonderful there is the siren call of the bright lights of the big city. We humans seem to want both and – lucky me – I have both. I can revel in the city yet know I can jump a train north [thanks to my ten pass ticket] and in two hours be home. Because when all is said and done it is Claverack that wins the battle for my heart and will be the place, God willing, where I’ll be at the end of my time.

Though I have been there eight plus years this is still a new feeling for me – it’s one I have never had before. In the rare times people have spoken to me about jobs outside of New York I have always known I did not want to give up that place, that one small place where I have had a sense of home — in most of my life I have let career choose where I live. Now my choices include that place which gives me a sense of home.

It’s not perfect; no place or situation is. It is better than any other place I have been. I feel torn between two worlds – as do many of the folks I know in the Valley. While they would like to be there full time there is not a sufficient platform to support us so we must remain divided between two towns. I must labor in the city to enjoy the pleasure of “home.” The labor in the city is less burdensome because it supports “home.”

I expect I will live for a number of years more in this “tale of two towns” and at the end I expect I will follow my heart home. May everyone be so lucky.

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Letter From New York June 5, 2009

June 5, 2009

This week’s letter is not the usual letter; it’s abbreviated and has only one go through by me. Usually I sit down on the weekend and write a draft which gets honed over a couple of days and then gets out on Tuesday evenings.

Last weekend, my brother Joe came for a visit and we had a wonderful New York weekend: dinner on Friday with my friend Gary, Saturday a leisurely brunch at a little slice of Britain, Tea and Sympathy, a restaurant that could have been transported from any British village to the West Village of NYC, followed by a leisurely stroll past Ground Zero, which is now mostly a construction site and which is still a magnet for people who want to come and see where the future we’re now living was born. We spent part of the afternoon on the sundeck of my apartment building, having eschewed the country for the delights of the pagan city and then went to a long, leisurely dinner at Café Luxembourg before seeing an Off-Broadway play starring Tracy Thoms, daughter of my good friend Donald Thoms. She is one of the stars of CBS’s COLD CASE.

Sunday late morning he left and I became involved in some impromptu business meetings between shopping and catching TERMINATOR SALVATION. Between all that and keeping up with the email stream there really wasn’t time for a rough draft, Monday was chock a block with meetings and on Tuesday evening I had dinner scheduled with my friends Annette and David Fox. It seemed more important to have dinner with them than to put my fingers to the keyboard. In a sobering time, and it is a sobering time in which we are living, it is better to take time to connect with other living beings than to labor over the computer.

General Motors has gone bankrupt… It is almost unimaginable — and would have been when I was a child. “What is good for General Motors is good for the country,” was a phrase famously said by one of its CEOs. Well, if that’s true, bankruptcy would be good for the country and there are those who are concerned that we might just go the way Argentina did a decade ago. The Chinese Economic Minister is busy lobbying behind the scenes for a new reserve currency, afraid the American dollar will cease to be effective. He’s getting some good listening to by others who have the same fear. It’s a bit self-serving, of course, as China sees this as a time when the Yuan can find itself in the position of the dollar in the foreseeable future as China works to make the 21st Century the Chinese Century.

It was sobering that an Air France Airbus went down – anyone who flies with any regularity has been on an Airbus and they have had a sterling record. This particular plane disintegrated over the Atlantic, reasons unknown though today it is being speculated that the plane may have suffered a computer glitch that cascaded into tragedy. Computers! The blessing and the bane of our time. Everything is being computer automated which is lovely when it works and possibly catastrophic when it doesn’t. Yet we could not return to the pre-computer world – without these machines we couldn’t handle the velocity we have created with them.

It has felt in the last few weeks that I’ve been living under the tyranny of emails – the volume has become ridiculous; 300 a day is not uncommon. When friends ask me what I read in my spare time I jokingly respond: my emails. It’s not a joke and I haven’t learned yet how to get through it all and I must or soon it will seem I have no life beyond my Mac. The volume and velocity is becoming almost terrifying. So, on Tuesday evening, when normally I would be getting out my LETTER FROM NEW YORK, I took a deep breath and went to visit friends. Let’s all do that this week – visit with someone and get our faces off the computer screen.

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Letter From New York: Memorial Day Memories

May 26, 2009

Letter From New York

Memorial Day Memories…

Memorial Day originated to honor the dead of the Civil War; it has grown to become a major holiday, primarily honoring the fallen dead of our wars and has had added to it the opportunity to honor all those we have loved who have gone before us in death. There will be parades; wreathes and flowers will be put upon graves. There will be picnics and barbeques; I write this as I am waiting to go to one while savoring the inchoate beauty of sitting looking out at the creek while surrounded by my two acres of trees with somewhere off in the distance the safe sound of someone mowing their lawn.

This is the kind of day when things seem right with the world, safe and welcoming, a suggestion there will be happiness, fun and camaraderie during the summer ahead. We do know there are no guarantees but on days such as this it almost seems as if the universe is willing to offer the promise of one, the soft sweet illusion that the world is really as perfect as the day, as much in harmony as this kind of day. We can momentarily shove aside the harsh realities of such things as the possibility of another nuclear test by the crazy North Koreans, riots in India, the battle with the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan with its overflow into Pakistan, the pirates that plague the Gulf of Aden, and all the other travails of our planet.

As a child I recall neighborhood parades, marching down local streets, full of flag waving and drums, adults and children with smiles on their faces, laughing while dragging makeshift floats and making cacophonous music. There will be parades today, I am sure, in the towns and hamlets scattered through Columbia County. Up in Kinderhook at the café an older gentleman who had once appeared on the Ed Sullivan show did a musical march through the songs of our wars. A friend who found it wonderful phoned his performance in to me.

The Memorial Day weekend is the beginning of the official summer season in the United States; while summer does not officially come for nearly another month, the summer “season” for Americans has arrived. Forward from this day we will march boldly into summer, folding back the tarps covering tennis courts, filling swimming pools and washing down picnic tables while stocking up on citronella.

As I woke up this morning, the local PBS station, much like the man in Kinderhook, was airing a history of patriotic songs, probably going back as far as the Revolutionary War; I, however, didn’t wake up until World War I, followed by WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, the first Iraq War, the second Iraq War. It was an intriguing musical history of America, bringing a flood of memories and reactions. Not born until after WWII, I felt a stir of emotions as veterans described their memories of D-Day, the loss of Glen Miller, the meaning to them of the songs of the Andrew Sisters.

The moral ambiguity that came to the Viet Nam conflict was caught in song though I believe that perhaps the most important outcome of Viet Nam may have been to teach my generation to separate the soldiers from the conflict. While most Americans have come to believe the second Iraq War was, at its very best, a flawed enterprise, it also did not mean we needed to execrate the soldiers returning from a war of which we did not approve. We have felt free to embrace and uphold them and to celebrate their service even if we did not approve of the war to which they had been sent to fight.

That, on this Memorial Day, is a thing for which I am grateful.

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