All around me the city of New York is thrumming, filled with the sounds of a city growing, being alive. Sitting in the office of a friend doing some work for him, the street below is filled with the clatter and the clanging of building.
This morning, as I was waking and sipping my first cup of coffee, I decided that I wanted to look at the world a little differently, as if I was a tourist in spots that were well known to me, to keep my eyes and ears open for new sensations and experiences.
Walking to the subway, I noticed the play of grey light on the sidewalk, through a cloudy sky that was hinting of rain, which didn’t seem to want to come.
There is a plastic milk box between what was the Radio Shack store and the upscale mart for sports shoes. Every day there is someone sitting on that box, begging. But it’s often a different person and today it was someone I’ve never seen before. I wonder if it is first come, first seated or do they change shifts during the day?
Certainly, it’s been an interesting day out there in the world. I’ve attempted to keep up with the world while I’ve been hunched over my laptop, doing research for my friend/colleague Todd Broder.
I have discovered that we haven’t discovered any other life in the hundred thousand galaxies we have been searching. We thought that if some civilization had advanced enough that it could have a galaxy wide imprint, we might be able to detect them but no such luck. But there are more than a billion galaxies out there and a hundred thousand is just a small fraction of the possibilities.
It is also noted today that it’s Equal Pay Day though it remains to be seen if employers will step up to achieve equal pay for equal work for women. But we have a day to mark the effort to that goal.
And also today is the 150th Anniversary of the shooting of Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, the first assassination of an American President but not the last.
150 years – an amazing amount of time and a huge chunk of American history has happened since then. The Republic wasn’t yet a hundred years old when Lincoln died.
The somber visage of Lincoln stares out at us from those haunting photographs, a window into a time long gone and just beginning to be chronicled by photography.
In Washington, Obama wants to set Cuba free by lifting its designation as a state sponsoring terrorism. If that happens, the floodgates will open. There was also a story of how ubiquitous the American flag has become in Havana, flying everywhere and on t-shirts and painted on jeans.
Currently at the Acela Club in New York, there was a huge delegation of important people heading out on the 6:00 Acela to Washington. There were police guarding the doors and the group and then they slipped out and down to the train. One was a military figure from some European nation. Everyone seemed to be paying a great deal of attention to him.
A great deal of attention is also being paid to what is happening on the first steps taken on the campaign trail. Hillary has driven to Iowa and is doing her listening. Paul Rand is back from a five state tour and Marco Rubio is facing scrutiny about his immigration and tax stands. No news of Ted Cruz today.
Today Space X successfully sent another capsule toward the space station, carrying supplies. Its first stage attempted once again to land on a platform at sea. It hit the platform but too hard.
Still, to me, it’s a step forward. Have to admire Elon Musk and his steadfastness to his vision.
The markets today seemed to do well though Google will likely face anti-trust charges in Europe.
The world in the Middle East is still very complicated. A drone attack killed a leading Yemeni Al Qaeda cleric. Russia is planning on selling missiles to Iran. Iraq’s PM was in Washington, where he got some money and a warning that Iranians in Iraq should be reporting to Baghdad.
And now I am going to go out into the streets of New York and do my best to keep my eyes open and see what I can see, with open eyes. I am off to get a martini and a bite to eat, while I continue reading a very good book, “The End of Life Book Club.”
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From The Train 08 26 15 Keeping vigil for the fallen…
August 26, 2015Waking up shortly after 6:30, I was having my first cup of coffee at about 6:45 this morning, reading the New York Times, looking out the window at the pristine morning at the cottage. At the same time I was peacefully sipping my coffee, a man who called himself Bryce Williams, shot and killed a young reporter, Alison Parker, 24, and her cameraman, Adam Ward, 27. Bryce Williams was the name used by Vester Flanagan when he worked as an on-air reporter for WBDJ7, the same station Parker and Ward were working for at the time of their deaths.
Flanagan/Williams sent a 23 page fax “manifesto” to ABC News. He described himself as a “powder keg.” An African-American, he felt outraged by what he saw as discrimination at work and over the deaths of the nine people earlier this year at a church in Charleston.
The shootings occurred during a live interview with Vicki Gardner, Executive Director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce. She was talking about tourism in the region. She, too, was shot and is in stable condition.
This happened on live television, shocking viewers and control room crews.
Pursued by police, Flanagan crashed his car and when officers approached, discovered he had shot himself. He died later.
The train is moving north, the afternoon sun is glittering off the Hudson River, the world in front of me seems so peaceful, pure, simple and untarnished but two young people at the beginning of careers, are dead because a man, apparently unhinged by his anger, could take no more and killed people from his former workplace, knowing it would be live, on television.
Josh Earnest, the White House spokesperson, stated he hoped Congress would pass legislation that would have a “tangible impact on reducing gun violence in this country.”
Today I spent a fair amount of time in the Acela Club, Amtrak’s answer to United Airlines Red Carpet Club, where people hovered about the television monitor listening to the live reports on CNN about the shooting. There was a quality about them of individuals keeping vigil for the fallen.
As I move north, past the river and the luscious green of late summer, I, too, find myself feeling like I am keeping a kind of vigil, attempting to comprehend something that is not comprehensible, to me.
Tags:Acela Club, Adam Ward, Alison Parker, Bryce Williams, Hudson River, Josh Earnerst, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Smith Mountain Lake shooting, Vester Flanagan, Vicki Gardner, White House
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