Posts Tagged ‘Claverack’

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Letter From New York 07 19 15 A weekend in Claverack…

July 19, 2015

It has been a grey weekend with very little rain but constant threats of thunderstorms. As I exited the car tonight there were the rolling sounds of thunder and my phone has alerted me there is a tornado watch in effect.

My friends Lionel and Pierre arrived on Friday night for their monthly visit. We met at the Red Dot, a group of us, Lionel, Pierre and me, as well as another three from Christ Church Episcopal. We had a great evening and then came home, Lionel and I having our traditional “cleansing vodka” while catching up with each other’s lives.

Saturday was a particularly difficult day. Lionel awakened to two texts. One of them informed him that our mutual friend, Nick Wright, had been diagnosed at the age of thirty something with an aggressive lung cancer and had been transferred to Sloan Kettering for treatment. The other message was that the man who was largely responsible for Lionel and Pierre meeting had committed suicide the night before at the age of 35.

Devastating news from every corner.

On Saturday, my friends Mary Ann Zimmer and her partner, Mitch, arrived and Lionel, Pierre and I gathered again with them at the Dot with Bill and David and their friend Laurel, having a lunch rendezvous as they were returning to New York. There was an afternoon nap, some reading of a mystery novel, an appearance at a fundraising event for the Hudson Library and then dinner at Lionel and Pierre’s. Mary Ann and I stayed up until two, catching up.

There was a long morning drinking coffee on the deck, reading the NY Times, followed by a lunch with Larry Divney. Mary Ann, Larry and I all worked at A&E Networks in the 1980’s. There were reminiscences about our time there and the people we had worked with, known and, in many cases, loved in our own special way.  The three of us formed a bound there that has lasted through the years.

Six months after I purchased the cottage, a mutual friend told me I couldn’t be far from Larry and his wife, Alicia. I was in Columbia County and they were in Columbia County and Columbia County is only so large. I got their local number, left a message and went to Walmart for a shop.

He and Alicia were there, stunned to find me. With my now ex-partner, we went back to their house and sipped champagne and it was the beginning of an enhanced friendship. Since then we have celebrated Thanksgivings together and Christmases and Sunday afternoon lunches, parties and long talks.

It has been one of the most satisfying parts of my life here at the Cottage, to know these two people and have them as friends. Last year we were together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving was at their house and Christmas was at mine.

I am very lucky. My friendships are deep and rich. I live in a very special little corner of the world. I look out the windows from the desk at which I am writing and there is a panorama of green. I am doing my best to soak in every moment and aspect of my world here.

Soon, I suspect, I will leave the city of New York and become a full time resident of Claverack, to watch the seasons come and go, to revel in my couple of acres of wilderness, to sit on my deck and read books and to enjoy the latter years of my life.

Here the world feels far away. But it is still very available, thanks to technology.

Donald Trump has stepped in it with his comments about John McCain. He questioned McCain’s classification as a war hero. It was finally too much and the pack of Republican candidates are doing their best, at last, to distance themselves from Trump.

His comments on Mexicans didn’t provoke them but his comments on McCain were too much.

Trump still leads in the polls and is unapologetic.

Greece is struggling to make sense of the deal they have done with the EU. In this round, David lost and Goliath won. But there is some talk of debt relief, which might mean, in the end, Tsipras has accomplished something.

It is both national and world news that someone has drowned in Demi Moore’s pool. Why?

Despite the sound of thunder when I arrived home there is no rain, only the grey that promises that it might happen. It is the end of a lovely weekend of friends and food and joy while the world has ticked on.

May it tick well for you.

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Letter From New York 06 29 15 “You’re fired!” and other things from the day…

June 29, 2015

We are reaching the end of June and I find that a bit mind-boggling but here it is. On this, the penultimate day of June, the sun has come flirting with us at the end of a day of mostly grey with a refreshing warm/cool feel to the air. Coming in to the city today from Claverack, I rode past the Hudson River, churning brown with all the recent storms, just as the creek was as I left the house this morning for the train station. One of the conductors said the Hudson reminded him of the Danube, and I agreed.

It has been a wild day for the international money markets, all seriously rattled as the Greek crisis is playing out in real time. Prime Minister Tsipras of Greece has called for a national referendum on the deal for Sunday. The banks and markets there are all closed. If you are a Greek citizen you are allowed to only withdraw 60 Euros a day. Foreigners are exempt. The German market was down over three percent as was the French CAC 40. London and New York managed to hold to a 2% loss. It will be interesting, exciting and maybe a little frightening to watch what happens the rest of this week.

Tomorrow could be the day when Greece goes into default. Europe is warning Greek citizens a “no” vote on Sunday means an exit from the Euro. We will all be holding our breath, hoping the Greek conflagration doesn’t disrupt the world economy. Greece’s is a small economy, smaller than many of our individual states but the significance of current events is also around what this means for the Euro overall.

Puerto Rico also says it can’t pay its debts. Wonder what is going to come of that?

Sunday was Pride Weekend in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco with wild celebrations in the cities over the Supreme Court ruling to legalize gay marriage. Not everyone was celebrating. Texas is resisting, to no one’s great surprise, offering to defend clerks who refuse to issue licenses. Texas Senator Ted Cruz is going to make the issue front and center in his campaign for the Republican nomination for President.

Upstate New York is breathing a sign of relief as the second of two escaped murderers was apprehended. David Sweat was captured around 3:20 yesterday afternoon, shot twice when he refused to thrown down his weapon and as he almost reached a line of trees that could have offered shelter. He is in Albany Medical Center in critical condition. His fellow escapee, Richard Matt, was killed five days ago.

Tunisia has arrested some suspected of having offered support and weapons to Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi, a 23 year old IS recruit, who gunned down 39 people, 30 of them British. IS has claimed responsibility; Britain is in shock.

While IS has lost a quarter of its territory in its “Caliphate,” it still controls some major cities and has demonstrated its abilities to strike by such actions as the recent taking of Palmyra. And it is exporting its religious terrorism to other places.

Boko Haram in Nigeria, which declares fealty to IS, has been using captured girls as fighters. Some of them have been trained to slit the throats of Boko Haram captives. As some are rescued as Nigeria and its allies experience some military successes, the plight of those who remain in captivity is being revealed.

Egypt’s highest prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, was killed in a bomb attack on his convoy.

“You’re fired,” has become an iconic line in the U.S. due to the popularity of “The Apprentice,” starring Donald Trump, a recent addition to the race for the Republican nomination. He made some choice remarks about Mexicans at the time and today NBC has told him, “You’re fired!” They have dumped his beauty pageants, as has Univision [no surprise] and underscored he will not be part of “The Apprentice” anymore.

And I’m fine with that.

The evening is arriving and I’m going off to have a bite to eat and then continue my consumption of a Louise Penny mystery, “A Fatal Grace.”

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Letter From New York 05 18 15 Of a grey day with some things interesting, some tragic…

May 18, 2015

As I trained into the city today from Claverack, the east bank of the Hudson River was shrouded in a fog, hiding the foliage on the far bank of the river, casting a ghostly pall across the landscape. It felt like the first shot in a Gothic romance set in the Victorian Age.

Closer into the city, the fog dissipated but New York has been grey all day, a heaviness that seems to have affected the citizens. Smiles have been hard to find today. One crossed my mouth as I passed through Penn Station this morning on my way to the subway.

I have almost gotten to the point where the soldiers blend into the background and are simply a part of the scenery. Today one soldier was tapping his foot to the rhythm of the music being played by a busker a hundred feet away. I smiled.

While on the train and the subway, I scanned the headlines of the day.

Blazoned across all the news outlets was the story of the fall of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, hard fought for by American soldiers twelve years ago, now in the hands of IS. Iraqi soldiers were reported fleeing as fast they could. 25000 civilians fled the city, seeking safety in the capital. Reports have indicated at least some have been turned away from Baghdad.

It is also grimly reported that IS has slaughtered at least 500 as they overran the city, specifically seeking any soldiers or policemen.

In Waco, Texas there have been at least 192 arrests of bikers after a fistfight got out of control in front of a Twin Peaks restaurant, ending with nine bikers dead and eighteen others wounded. There are rumors that bikers from around the country are riding toward Waco, an image that calls up scenes from Mad Max, the older one, as I haven’t seen the new one yet. Police have cordoned off exits around the area and have said they’re ready.

At least five different motorcycle gangs were involved, including the Cossacks and the Bandidos.

Speaking of Twin Peaks, do any of you remember that quirky, creepy television show “Twin Peaks” from twenty-five years ago? It’s coming back. David Lynch will return to direct. Kyle McLachlan will be back to play his character, Special Agent Dale Cooper. Showtime has committed to a new series, picking up the crazy thread of a show that had everyone confused most of the time, while contributing regularly to nightmares. Will the “Log Lady” return?

The southern boundaries of Europe have seen increasing migrations of people desperate to depart Africa, much of the traffic coming from Libya and organized by criminal gangs involved in human trafficking. The EU has proposed launching a naval campaign to destroy their boats, thus disrupting their business. It awaits UN approval.

It appears the smugglers are being allowed by IS to operate out of the part of Libya they control in exchange for half their profits.

Macedonia’s crisis continues. The opposition is demanding the departure of Prime Minister Gruevski and he has been saying: no way, Jose! The opposition has rallies. Gruevski gets out his followers. Violence is in the air. Gruevski is saying this is all the result of foreigners.

That sounds familiar.

What is unfamiliar is that President Maduro of Venezuela may face real opposition in the next elections. Sentiment is growing against him. Polls indicate that if elections were held today, he would be out on the street.

In less dramatic news today, the President of the United States got his own twitter account. @Potus. There was some kidding back and forth between Obama and Bill Clinton [@billclinton]. Apparently the twitter handle will go to the next occupier of the Oval Office.

Also, little Elian Gonzalez, who was found floating off Florida in 1999 by some fishermen is now grown up. His mother died attempting to get the two of them from Cuba to America. His arrival caused a tug of war between those who wanted him to stay and those who thought he should be returned to his father. In a dramatic moment, armed men stormed the house where he was staying with one of the rescuing fishermen and forcibly removed him so as to return him to Cuba.

He now would like to return to America to express his love for this country, he has said in an exclusive ABC interview.

Speaking of ABC, George Stephanopoulos has found himself in some uncomfortably hot water. Apparently he has given $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation without telling his bosses at ABC. They consider it an honest mistake. Republicans are, not unexpectedly, calling for some version of his scalp.

Today has been full of events, some just interesting, some like Ramadi, tragic, and it would be possible to continue longer but it’s time to wrap up.

I’m off to seek some sustenance at the end of the day and see if I can shake the weight of this grey day.

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Letter From New York 05 17 15 Beauty contrasting with tragedy…

May 17, 2015

It 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.

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Letter From New York 05 15 15 Of sunny afternoons and death sentences…

May 15, 2015

There was no Letter from New York yesterday; the day was simply too full for me to pound one out. From fairly early in the morning until deep into the evening, I was scurrying from one end of Manhattan to another. There was a breakfast, a lunch, a wine meeting, a couple of conference calls and everything else in between.

Today is a sunny afternoon on a spring like day in New York City and in a couple of hours I’ll begin to make my way to Penn Station to head up to the cottage for a weekend retreat. I’m looking forward to a weekend of catching up. I’ve spent the day plowing through all manner of emails but don’t feel like I’ve managed anything too productive.

B.B. King died today, the man who brought blues into the mainstream, the man whose name emblazons a club here in New York, an 89 year old living legend is now gone. Fans went to his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to lay flowers but most were washed away by the rain sweeping through Los Angeles, a welcome wetness though according to meteorologists not enough to break the drought.

The Iraqi city of Ramadi seems to have been mostly overrun by the IS forces. Suicide bombers killed ten police officers. Washington calls the situation “fluid.” It’s been a back and forth battle for weeks and this is probably one more of those. In the meantime, nearly 150,000 people have fled the city, mostly to Baghdad. Ramadi lies in the center of the area where many Sunni Muslims live.

To the east of Ramadi, in Syria, IS is advancing on the area where lie the ruins of the ancient city of Palmyra, a city that was at the crossroads of the Greeks, Romans and the Persians. The ruins there are probably the best set of extant classical ruins in the world today. IS is not directly targeting the ruins but if the area falls under their control it is feared they will have more opportunities to film themselves destroying ancient artifacts, as they did in Nineveh.

We are now halfway through the five day truce that was to allow for the dispensing of emergency aid in Yemen and it is looking as if there will not be enough time to get all the emergency aid needed, dispersed.

On Tuesday of this week, a U.S. helicopter on an aid mission in Nepal went missing. It has been found on a mountainside at 11,200 feet. It does not appear that there are survivors.

In the U.K. David Cameron met with Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP [Scottish National Party]. He will consider more powers for Scotland but won’t think about another referendum on independence, thank you very much.

Prime Minister Xavier Bettel of Luxembourg has married Gauthier Desteney, his long time partner. He is the first EU Prime Minister to have married his gay partner. The first European Prime Minister to do so was Johanna Sigurdardottir, Premier of Iceland, back in 2010. Luxembourg legalized gay marriage in January.

Having met with Putin at Sochi, Kerry jetted back to D.C. for meetings with Arabic leaders and he is now heading to China, where he will arrive tomorrow. He and his Chinese counterparts will be hammering out details of the Chinese leader’s visit to Washington in September.

They will also be working to defuse the situation in the South China Sea. Like good little beavers, the Chinese are building up some small islands into bigger islands. On one of them, it is constructing a runway that could land even the largest planes. It is a source of tension, particularly with Japan and the Philippines. Both sides are eager to defuse the situation but this seems to be a must do project for Mr. Xi and not something he can gracefully back away from. Tensions will mount.

Boko Haram in Nigeria has been in retreat the last few weeks but now is in a counteroffensive and has retaken a key village. They just won’t go away.

In Pakistan, the military has begun an attack on the Taliban in the Shawal Valley while the President of that country has issued a rare public rebuke of the Taliban, calling them “terrorists.” Imagine that. But it is evidence of new toughness toward the group.

And in an ending note, the jury has returned a judgment on young Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston for the Marathon bombings. He has been sentenced to die.

I have never felt the death penalty accomplished anything.

It is closing in on four o’clock. I am going to post this and then probably gather my things and head toward the train station, rolling north to sit tomorrow on my deck and admire the new grill I will be acquiring.

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Letter From New York 05 01 15 May Day

May 1, 2015

Sitting in my friend Todd’s office, the sun is shining down on New York City, a pleasant day, warmish temperatures and soon I will be leaving for Claverack, where I will see how the new paint in the living room and dining room looks. I’m a little nervous; I went bold and chose a red that I thought would work at the cottage. We’ll see.

I’ll be riding up on the 5:47, which is the weekly get together train for the train community. It’s a time to see one another, get caught up and to enjoy the end of the week together.

I look forward to it whenever I am able to make that train.

This morning, while the day was deciding whether it was going to be sunny or not, I sat at the apartment and read the Times, always an interesting way to start the day, finding out what I had missed while I was asleep.

One of things I learned was that “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” is opening this weekend. I will probably not attend. So is “Far From The Madding Crowd,” which I saw at a screening earlier this week, getting generally good reviews, a “rom con” version of Thomas Hardy’s book, something I think he would have been surprised about. Makes me want to watch the Julie Christie version of the film. Perhaps I will this weekend.

Those were light bits in the morning.

The harder bits had to do with the continuing difficulties in getting aid to survivors of Nepal’s earthquake. While getting slowly better, it’s not very good. Nepal is appealing to the international community for more helicopters to help them out.

The death toll has now risen above 6,000 and thousands are still missing.

Food and water are needed as is just plan old information. The BBC’s Nepali service is broadcasting regularly news and information, as are many Nepali national radio stations, attempting to disseminate whatever information they have and to counter the plague of rumors racing across the countryside. Google and Facebook have set up services to help people connect and people are being encouraged to text rather than phone to lessen the burden on the cellular infrastructure.

As I sat in the office doing some research my phone buzzed a couple of times with breaking news notices. They informed me that six police officers are being charged in the death of Freddie Gray. The speed at which the charges were brought has left everyone feeling surprised.

The city’s police union insists that none of the officers involved is responsible for Mr. Gray’s death.

Scheduled protests over the death will go on as planned.

Do any of you remember “Bridgegate?” About eighteen months ago, there was a period of a few days during which there were painful delays on the George Washington Bridge, a major entry point into New York City from New Jersey.

Today, David Wildstein, a former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official, pleaded guilty to his role in causing major traffic jams near Fort Lee, NJ, as retaliation for that city’s Mayor not supporting Gov. Chris Christie’s bid for re-election.

His guilty plea triggered indictments for Bridget Kelly, Christie’s now former Deputy Chief of Staff and Bill Baroni, who was Christie’s main man at the Port Authority. Wildstein did not implicate the Governor himself but this can’t be good news for a man who is contemplating a run for the White House.

Today is May Day, a national holiday in some countries, celebrating International Workers Day. The idea for it started here in the United States when strikes were called on May 1, 1886 to institute an 8-hour workday. But we celebrate it on Labor Day.

Istanbul is pretty much under lockdown to prevent much May Day rallying. There are protests in Seoul, South Korea over labor practices and last year’s ferry sinking. In Greece they are marching against the austerity imposed by the European Union. In Berlin, it seems pretty peaceful, only fifteen were arrested. Tens of thousands marched in Moscow, waving the Russian tricolor flag. The Communist Party organized their own demonstration, calling for support of those fighting in the Donbass region. That’s eastern Ukraine.

In Milan the police used water cannons to disburse the crowds after a car was set on fire and marches in Madrid were calm. They’re protesting an unemployment rate that is nearly 30%. It’s a holiday in India, too, but I haven’t seen any coverage from there.

I have not marched anywhere today. I did stroll from the apartment to the subway and from the subway to my new favorite diner and that’s about it. I’ll stroll in an hour or so over to Penn and catch my train north to see how the paint job turned out. Fingers crossed.

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Letter From New York 04 26 15 Bright day mixed with cloudy news…

April 26, 2015

Last night, most of our train community showed up for Dairo’s 39th birthday party, held in a deconsecrated church in Tivoli, about 30 minutes south of Claverack. It was great seeing old friends, especially ones who aren’t riding the train that often anymore. My friend Ty West was there with his wife, Cathy. Now that he is working in mid-town he takes Metro North into the city rather than Amtrak.

We traded stories of “the old days” of ten years ago before the Great Recession cost so many their jobs. We held parties on the train, great sumptuous feasts of parties, celebrating holidays and special events. We held a particularly raucous baby shower for Kelly and George, complete with blue and red “babytinis.” They had chosen not to know the sex of their child before birth so we had a drink for each potential sex.

Getting home not too late, Lionel and I stayed up for awhile chatting and catching up. He went home and I went to sleep, to wake to a day that was brighter than predicted with dreary news to be consumed.

While I was partying in Tivoli, there was violence in Baltimore as a thousand people came out to protest the death while in police custody of Freddie Gray, whose family appealed for calm.

The situation in Nepal remains dire. Aftershocks have rattled the country regularly, some as large as 6.7, resulting in more avalanches on Everest. People in Katmandu are sleeping in the streets, leaving almost no space for anyone to get around. Katmandu is a village that has grown into a city and is relentlessly crowded and shoddily built. The area affected by the earthquake is home to six million people. Roads have buckled and communications are out, hampering international efforts to bring relief.

The NY Times had many an article this morning on the Nepalese earthquake, all sad.

Here is where you can go to donate to UNICEF, if you should want to: www.unicefusa.org/nepal.

Fighting is escalating again in Yemen. There were bombing raids on Sana’a, the capital. The ex-president has called for peace talks but the current, Saudi Arabian supported President’s Foreign Minister has ruled that out.

In Syria, Assad’s regime is striking back after losing a strategic town yesterday, sending warplanes into bomb. 34 people were killed in a market, with the death toll expected to rise as many were seriously injured. Many were women and children.

In not so violent but still very disturbing news, hackers have been reading President Obama’s email but not the classified ones. Still… The White House is not pointing fingers at anybody but conventional wisdom is suggesting the Russians are the guilty parties.

And while we are thinking about Russia, they have arrested three women for twerking in front of a World War II Memorial. One was sentenced to 15 days in jail; the other two to ten. They were accused of “hooliganism,” the same charged hurled at Pussy Riot a couple of years ago. This is the second arrest in two weeks in Russia for twerking. What I wonder is why would anyone want to imitate Miley Cyrus?

Last night was the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner where President Obama made fun of everyone but mostly of himself. Alfre Woodard, who plays the President on NBC’s “State of Affairs,” said that President Obama “has a wicked sense of humor.”

This week, also in Washington, the Supreme Court will begin to hear arguments about gay marriage. There are a lot of people who will be tuning in closely on this on both sides of the equation. Opponents to gay marriage rallied on the Mall in Washington on Saturday but they are increasingly in the minority. A recent survey mentioned by Voice of America indicates 61 percent of Americans now favor gay marriage.

I have to say, this isn’t something I expected in my lifetime.

But what I have come to expect in my lifetime is that when the dishwasher is full, you have to go empty it. That’s what I am about to do.

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Letter From New York 04 25 15 A good day for a party…

April 25, 2015

It is nearing 5:00 and the sun is beginning its slow fade to dark. I am sitting at my desk, looking out at the drive and the yard, still waiting for the trees to bloom. While the sun was bright today, it was none too warm.   Not bad but not a full blown spring day.

Trees in the city are beginning to bloom but not here in Claverack, a hundred miles to the north. And I’m eager for the weather to improve so we can begin to see some green. Usually by this time, the daffodils out the living room window have bloomed. This year they are barely out of the ground.

Over my morning coffee, I read that Bruce Jenner announced that he is really a woman and will continue his transformation, which, of course, will be covered in a reality series.

In far away Nepal, fifty miles outside the capital of Kathmandu, an earthquake struck and, at last count, nearly 1500 have died. It was a magnitude 7.8 quake that struck, huge, 22 times stronger than the 7.0 earthquake that ravaged Haiti.

Kathmandu was seriously affected; its narrow streets and old buildings were vulnerable to the quake. The death toll will likely mount. Perhaps hundreds are trapped under rubble. Hospitals are treating people in their parking lots as the buildings themselves are either compromised or overrun.

Lionel and Pierre are living in Baltimore now and that city is being disrupted by protests over a black man who suffered a spinal injury while in police custody and later died. His name was Freddie Gray.

Also in police custody in New York is a coyote that was cornered down near Battery Park City in Manhattan. The city has been experiencing an uptick in coyote sightings as they become less afraid of the big city and find good hunting in it. There was one in Chelsea earlier in the week as well as one not far from my apartment.

Despite international protests, Indonesia is going ahead with executing nine foreigners convicted of drug trafficking. If the protests do not change the mind of Indonesia’s President, they will die by firing squad perhaps as early as Wednesday.

Islamist rebels have seized a city in northeast Syria, Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province.

It is a key city and the loss is a blow to Assad’s government. As seems to be the norm with Assad, his troops executed detainees before fleeing the city. It also appears many civilians were killed in the thirty air strikes that were done by Assad’s Air Force in an effort to break the Islamist advance.

The Italian navy has rescued 274 migrants in danger of drowning in the Mediterranean. Recent tragedies have not slowed the flow of refugees.

Tonight, I am going to a birthday party for my friend Dairo; it’s his 39th and he intends for it to be memorable. I am sure it will be.

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Letter From New York 04 19 15 At the end of a weather glorious weekend…

April 19, 2015

The weekend is winding down in Claverack and it’s been good. Dinner at the Red Dot with my friend Paul, his daughter, Karen, and her fiancé, Andrew on Friday, followed by yesterday’s lovely lunch with Jack Myers, which itself was followed by an evening of glorious violin and piano music. Yevgeny Kutik was on the violin; Dina Vainshtein on the piano. It was two hours of music by luminaries such as Prokofiev as well as lesser lights such as Cesar Franck. Everyone in the audience was appreciative of the music coaxed from their instruments.

In the afterglow of the concert I went for a cocktail at Ca’Mea where I ran into a couple of people I knew as well as a lady who had, too, just been to the concert. We both liked the Prokofiev the best.

Then I wandered home and curled up with a few more episodes of “The Unbeatable Kimmy Schmidt” on Netflix, binge watching until later than I should have.

Morning brought church with a good sermon by Mother Eileen and a quick bite to eat before getting paint samples for the living room. It’s looking stale and so it’s time for a change.

Walking around the circle, I listened to the news on my iPhone, off my Newsbeat app, and soaked in part of what has been a weather glorious weekend.

While it is perhaps antediluvian of me, I still have an AOL email account. I have had one since something like 1992. Can’t read any messages for the last two days. Every time I try to open an email, I get a technical error message. And their help desk is pretty thin unless you pay the monthly charges, which I quit doing years ago. So I’m a little frustrated.

Frustrated, too, is the gentleman who flew a gyrocopter onto the Capital lawn, resulting in a full security review. Doug Hughes wanted to raise awareness about the need for campaign finance reform. He brought with him 535 letters, one for each member of Congress. Instead of focusing on the message he was carrying, news media have been focusing on his security breach.   He is unhappy his campaign reform message has been lost in the din.

In another Mediterranean tragedy, another boat capsized north of Libya with perhaps as many as 950 on board, with hundreds said to have been locked in the hold and unable to escape. So far only 28 survivors and 24 bodies have been recovered. If the numbers hold, this will have been the worst single tragedy for refugees seeking a better life in Europe. 3,500 died last year attempting to make it from Africa to Italy or Malta.

Many of these refugees, including the ones on the capsized boat, are setting out from the Libyan coast. On that very coast, a new video has been released purportedly showing IS members beheading 16 Ethiopian Christians while footage later in the video captures IS shooting 12 more Ethiopian Christians in the back of the head out in the desert.

The ugliness of absolutism beats on.

It is also raising concerns about IS finding a good foothold in Libya, not all that far from the Italian coast.

Back in India, Rahul Gandhi, heir apparent to the Congress Party, has returned from a two month “sabbatical” and is locked with current Prime Minister Modi in a battle of words to proclaim how “pro-poor” each one is.

In Yemen, the Houthis mock suggestions they will surrender under the air barrage led by Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, the Kurds have pushed IS out of an oil refinery and have broadened the buffer zone around Kirkuk, an oil rich city. Iran is seemingly determined to make it as difficult as possible to get a deal done by June 30, a deal being made even more difficult by Putin selling missiles to Iran. With western sanctions, Russia needs the cash.

Needing to perhaps hit a restart button is the Director of the FBI, James Comey, who published a piece in the Washington Post that suggested that Poland and Hungary helped the Nazis during WWII, quietly complicit in what was going on. Poland was not amused. The US Ambassador was summoned this afternoon for an apology.

Unapologetically, the sun is beginning to set and the day is fading to grey. I have a few tasks to do around the house and then I am going to curl up with a good book or may be a few more episodes of “The Unbeatable Kimmy Schmidt.”

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Letter From New York 04 11 15 After a pause…

April 11, 2015

Yesterday, there was no Letter From New York. As the afternoon wore on, I felt pensive and uninspired. My mind was full of thoughts from my lunch with Isaac Phillips, a young entrepreneur whom I had met at a New York Video Meet-up. He is working on several apps and is whip smart in technology.

We had a wide ranging conversation about technology and then the general state of the world. After Isaac departed, I stayed and answered a couple of texts. Feeling discouraged about the state of the world based on my conversations with Isaac, I couldn’t seem to motivate my mind to move my fingers for a blog post.

Even though the day was grey, damp, and chill in New York, I had entered it with a good attitude and was feeling upbeat about most things. But if you look out on the global landscape, it’s hard to be upbeat. And I was thinking globally yesterday.

Today, I am thinking very locally. Tomorrow my friends Lionel and Pierre will be driving off to Baltimore so that Lionel can start his new job with AOL’s Ad Tech group. Tonight, I am having several neighbors over for a little farewell splash at the cottage so I need to be organized and moving today.

Falling asleep early last night, I woke early and decided to get my morning coffee, peruse the Times and do a blog early, so that it wouldn’t be on my mind as I prep for this evening’s serious nibbles and drinks.

While Lionel and Pierre have only been living across the street for eighteen months, they have been regular visitors at the cottage since the very beginning. Having them across the street brought another layer of security and hominess to this little neighborhood in Claverack. They hope to get up on a monthly basis and I am going to attempt to get down on a monthly basis to see them but it won’t be the same as having them in residence.

What will be in residence in all our lives for the next eighteen months will be the build-up to the 2016 Presidential Election. It will kick off with seriousness tomorrow when it is anticipated Hillary Clinton will officially enter the fray. She heads off immediately for Iowa after her Sunday announcement and our lives will be pummeled by politics until the last vote is counted.

In the background, Obama has been quietly praising up his former Secretary of State. It will be interesting to see what role he might play in the campaign ahead.

In financial news, GE is selling off its financial unit, GE Capital, to refocus on its core manufacturing skillsets. Being a financial giant doesn’t look as good today as it did before the financial crisis and GE is making a bold move to reshape itself.

In a low key but historic moment, Obama and Raul Castro shook hands at the Summit of the Americas being held in Panama. There will be, I’m sure, other encounters through the weekend.

Today, Saturday, Walter Scott, the South Carolinian shot in the back by a police officer, will be buried while a number of Southern Californian deputies are suspended after video surfaced showing them beating a suspect after his capture.

Captured in Yemen were two Iranian officers, allegedly offering support to the Houthis. If true, this will ratchet up the tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia, both vying to be the big guy in the Middle East. In the meantime, Yemen is in chaos.

Outside my window, the sun is streaking down, cutting a path of light across my bedroom carpet. Today is supposed to be cloudy, grey and maybe a little rainy so the morning sunshine is deeply appreciated.

I still feel a little melancholy today but it should pass as I prepare for the evening’s fete. It will be a good day!

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