This morning I woke up in Manhattan, in the pied-a-terre that I have here. For a moment, as the alarm was going off, I was sure that I was in my bedroom in the cottage and only slowly realized where I was. It was interesting to have that sense of momentary confusion. The Bose radio at the cottage is ivory; the one in New York is grey. Seeing the grey Bose reminded me where I was.
With bright sun blurting down on the city and with the temperatures in the twenties, it felt positively balmy.
The apartment is on the Upper West Side and my meeting was on the Upper East Side so I jumped in a taxi, being met with one of the most garrulous taxi drivers I have encountered for quite some time. We had a romping conversation about the weather and the newly posted speed limit in the city. You cannot drive faster than 25 miles per hour and only 10, which I didn’t know, at cross walks.
Following my morning meeting, I made my way to one of my favorite places, Café du Soleil, at 104 and Broadway and had French Onion Soup and grilled salmon for lunch, with a good, cold, crisp glass of Sauvignon Blanc. While eating I chatted with Jeff, who like me, was seated at the bar. When not chatting with him, I read the NY Times on my iPhone.
It was a pleasant ninety minutes. Finishing, I returned to the apartment to do today’s blog and then I am off to drinks with a friend and a screening of a documentary about Pope Francis, the man who will, I am sure, one day be a saint.
As usual, the world is not a pretty place.
In Ukraine, the fragile truce is not holding near Debaltseve, the vital rail hub. Nearly 8000 Ukrainian troops are pinned down there, surrounded by rebels and fighting for their lives. Neither side seems to want to honor the truce in this strategic town.
The US has said that it is not in the interests of anyone to wage a proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine, a sign, perhaps, that this country is considering carefully whether it will supply any arms to Ukraine.
In another side effect of Ukraine, Fifa has awarded the World Cup to Russia in 2018. It is now wondering if they made a mistake, given that by 2018, if things continue as they are, Russia will be an international pariah. Not that that will change Russian policies.
Hungary, which has been leaning towards Russia for some time now, was rewarded with a gas contract, showing that it pays off to play nice with Vladimir [Putin].
In Paris, a Jewish journalist, Zvika Klein, walked around for ten hours with a camera. He caught all the anti-Semitic things said or done to him on video. It is disturbing.
The Boko Haram detonated bombs that killed 8 in Nigeria, while attacking Cameroon at the same time. Cameroon responded and claims to have killed 86 of Boko Haram, which, by the way, means “western education is forbidden.”
Having made such a splash with the burning to death of the captured Jordanian pilot, IS has now burned at least 45 to death in a captured town in Iraq.
In a much lighter note, and we know we need lighter notes, Chelsea Handler tweeted a topless photo of herself from Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Not that I wanted to see her topless but evidently she has a penchant for showing skin.
The market is back over 18,000 today as hope rises that some deal will be done with Greece.
And our favorite international bon vivant, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on trial for pimping, has had the prosecutors in the case recommend his acquittal. It is up to the judges. The prosecutors never wanted to move forward in the first place but were overruled by the judges.
Mad Men, our favorite show about that wonderful time, the 1960’s, will be honored by having Don Draper’s suit, fedora and bar cart put on display at the Smithsonian!
As we go into the final episodes, Don Draper’s future looks uncertain. Mine, however, for at least this evening, is rock solid. I am off to drinks and a screening.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 06 12 15 Of the price of eggs and things…
June 12, 2015It’s a lovely day in New York, warm but not too muggy. I’ve enjoyed being outside today though as I was sitting at lunch my phone dinged with a message from The Weather Channel that there were tornado warnings until 11:00 tonight. That didn’t seem too nice.
Because I wasn’t feeling well last night, I went back to the apartment and curled into bed with a good book and after fending off sleep for some time, slipped away into the arms of Morpheus, waking to a fresh day.
It’s been pleasant, a couple of short conference calls and a quick lunch at The Greek Corner, a very basic coffee shop on 28th and Broadway that I have begun to habituate, enough that the young Spanish waitress there knows me and that I like Diet Coke with my lunch. It’s comforting to go into places where they know you.
What is not comforting is that at a meeting in Bratislava, EU Ministers have actually discussed the possibility that Greece will default, formally. It still seems that no one wants that to happen but the brinksmanship continues. Tsipras speaks confidently about an agreement being reached on June 18, the next meeting of the Euro Zone creditors with Greece, while others scratch their heads and wonder: what is Tsipras thinking?
Markets have been wobbly because of all of this. It’s not a comfortable place.
But comforting for those who aren’t keen on human interaction is the news that RealDoll is working with robotics experts to make a sex doll that moves and chats. The prototype is named “Harmony.” Let’s hope she doesn’t get the hots for the Dyson in the closet.
Do you tweet? Lots of us do. The CEO of that company, Dick Costolo, resigned yesterday, rewarding the company with a brief uptick in its stock price at the joyous [to investors] news of his departure. Not well liked, he oversaw a company whose share price has fallen by 50% and seen a number of high profile departures, including Vivian Schiller, formerly of The NY Times, NBCUniversal and NPR.
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome [MERS] has taken hold in South Korea. One man contracted it in the Middle East and now nearly 4000 are in quarantine. The cities have become ghost towns while everyone hides until the outbreak is contained. Officials are encouraging people to continue their normal lives. They’re not listening.
David Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, of Standard Oil fame, turns 100 today and has had six heart transplants. To celebrate his birthday, he is giving away $2,000,000 worth of coastal land in Maine to the non-profit Land and Garden Preserve. He has been going to that part of Maine, near Seal Harbor, since he was three months old. He was born on the site of today’s MoMa, once the location of the family residence, largest in the city of New York. His mother, Abby, helped create that institution and so MoMa threw a grand party for him. According to Forbes, he is the oldest billionaire in the world.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the randy French politician, has been acquitted of the charge of pimping. He attended sex parties around the world, he admitted. It gave him recreational release while he was helping the world through its global financial crisis. But he didn’t pimp. The jury believed him. Free to go but probably he won’t be running for office again.
Wholesale prices will be up this month, partially because the price of eggs will be at its highest level ever. Avian influenza wiped out millions of birds. Oil is up too, again, though still below its record levels of a year ago.
And in sad news, the Iowa Straw Poll, conducted every year since 1979, has been called off this year. Too many candidates decided it wasn’t worth it. Another tradition gone away.
Tags:Bratislava, David Rockefeller, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Dyson, EU, Greek Debt Crisis, Grexit, Harmony, Iowa Straw Poll, Korea, Land and Garden Preserve, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, MERS, Price of eggs, RealDoll, Seoul, Sex Toy, The Greek Corner, Tsipras, Vivian Schiller
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