Posts Tagged ‘New York’

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Letter From New York 07 28 15 Wisps of fogs and matters of grieving…

July 28, 2015

It feels a little later than it is; the sun is shaded by clouds and I’m sitting in a darkish office in Chelsea, doing some work and getting ready to meet a friend for dinner.

It was a magic morning coming into New York today. Fog clouded the road from Claverack into Hudson, a wisp at every turn. As the train moved south, the fog followed; sometimes it was so thick it was impossible to see the river. Flotillas of pleasure boats floated on the river, shrouded by the fog.

The city was warm today and I lunched at the Bryant Park Café, outside, with Neva Rae Fox who works for the Episcopal Church here in New York in the Communications Department. Over the years I was working with Odyssey we became friendly and I haven’t her seen for a while.

We talked of their recent conference in Salt Lake City and the vigil that was held to honor victims of gun violence. It is one of the things they will be focusing on, that as well as racial reconciliation.

It seems strange to be back in the city after a week in the country. When I have been away from New York City for a week, I always have a little trouble re-inserting myself into the bustle and the crowds and sirens. So it was today. I gingerly left Penn Station and threaded my way through the rush hour crowds and felt I had reached an oasis of civility when I got to the office.

It is a languid time and a contemplative time, with my mind juggling all the opportunities for my future. Stay here? Live up in the country? I am allowing it to flow through me, as I know the answer will reveal itself. A friend advised me, should I go to the cottage full time, to give myself time to grieve for the life I was leaving behind. Thinking about it, I realized I would mostly grieve for the friends I wouldn’t see as often.

My “grief” is a very first world problem. The families and friends of 25 killed by a suicide bomber in Nigeria are experiencing deep grief, the kind that time softens but does not really “heal.” A fire in a furniture factory in Cairo also killed 25. Grief walks there, too.

In Yemen, a five-day humanitarian truce appears to be crumbling. At least 6.5 million people are on the edge of starvation and some are calling the Saudi Arabians “war criminals” for preventing supplies from reaching the populace. 21 million Yemenis, 80% of the population, is in need of assistance.

I am sure that grief is walking there, too. The Saudis have been relentless in their bombing. The lack of food is also partially because there is no infrastructure to disperse the goods, roads having been destroyed by bombing and no fuel delivered for vehicles.

Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, son of Col. Gaddafi, once ruler of Libya, was sentenced to death by shooting in a court in Tripoli. He was not there; he is being held in a prison in Zintan, a hundred miles away. The Zintan group hates the Tripoli group so much they probably won’t turn him over. It’s not that they love the son; they despise him. Famous for lecturing people and pointing his finger at his audiences, the Zintan group chopped off the offending finger when they captured him.

One of Trump’s lieutenants stepped in it. He said there was no such thing as raping your spouse. In fact, it is a crime in all fifty states. Michael Cohen has apologized. The topic came up because of a comment by ex-wife Ivana Trump some twenty years ago, one she has backed away from. In their bitterly contested divorce, she allegedly accused him of the act. Today she says the accusation is “without merit.” She and The Donald are “the best of friends.”

Mr. Cohen had some other choice words for the reporter who published the story in the Daily Beast.   He used several Anglo Saxon expletives.

The Donald is still leading in the polls and it looks like he will be in the first Republican debate. Not that will be something to watch.

Also worth watching is the clock. I’m getting close to the time when I need to be heading for the restaurant to meet my friend Mitch and get his take on his newly married life.

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Letter From New York 07 17 15 On theft and homelessness at home…

July 17, 2015

It is the end of the week and in about an hour, I will walk the short distance from the office where I work and get on the train to head to the cottage for a full nine days of working from home. I am so looking forward to being there, to doing my work at the table on the deck, to watching the creek flow by while I am on my laptop or reading off my Kindle.

Today is the second sun blessed day in New York, bright, warm and lacking in humidity. I started the day with breakfast with my friend Nick Stuart, catching him before he leaves for a week in Southern California with his daughter, Francesca. Then I worked in the office, lunched at PJ Clarke’s with Maria Santana, a treasured member of the train community.

After lunch, I discovered one of my cards had been cut off. Someone tried to use my number at a Target in Brooklyn. The bank shut it down and I’m glad. Whoever was stealing my numbers was attempting to get away with almost $600.00 in merchandise.

It is a bane of the age, the electronic stealing of our credit card numbers, our identities, and our digital selves that are almost as close to ourselves as our physical selves. Ten years ago someone got my information and opened an account at Home Depot and charged almost $7,000 worth of goods without my knowledge. When Home Depot called me to collect, they realized we’d both been scammed but they were the ones who were taking the financial hit.

Stealing is not in my DNA. Too much guilt goes with it and was never worth it to me. But that’s not the way it is with some; they like the thrill of getting away with it, until, of course, they don’t. The brother of a friend of mine was like that. He went from state to state, scam to scam, until one day my friend had to visit her brother in prison. He never really changed.

It troubles me on some profound level and fills me with disgust. Once, years ago in Rome, I gave some money to beggars and they pickpocketed me. I lost about a 1000 lira but they left me my passport and credit card. My friends said it was ironic I was the one they targeted because I was the one who actually gave their begging hands money.

It was a mother and her little girl. And I suspect the little girl has grown up to be like her mother. It was the life for which she was being trained.

Last night, my friend Robert and I walked through the Garment District to a restaurant for some dinner and to watch a bit of the Tour de France. Robert commented to me that the number of homeless on the streets has begun to rise again. We passed dozens in just a few blocks.

Is the social safety net failing more than before? Are the police not working on the problem because they are annoyed with our Mayor, Mr. DeBlasio?   Robert is right though, when I think about it I have noticed more homeless and mentally ill folks on the streets. I wrote about one yesterday.

It worries me. Help is needed. Where is it?

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Letter From New York 06 09 15 From gloomy days to bright news…

June 9, 2015

Yesterday, I spent the day in meetings and in transit. On the train coming back to New York, my laptop was low on battery power and the outlet seemed a bridge too far as I was in an aisle seat on a train going north and the outlet was near the window, occupied by chargers owned by the young lady sitting next to me. So I settled in and napped and read a book. She got off the train at Metro Park and I powered up as much as I could in the short time between there and New York City.

The result: no letter yesterday.

Today is another grey and gloomy day in New York, as it was mostly grey and gloomy in Baltimore over the weekend, as it has seemed mostly grey and gloomy for the last month or so, which, according to reports, was the wettest May in years, hence the grey and gloomy.

In a bit, I’m off to have lunch with my sister-in-law’s sister and her husband, who are in New York. Cliff and Barb are lovely people and we attempt a lunch or dinner whenever they are in New York.

Mostly, I am in a good mood this morning though I wonder what my mood would be like if I was Albert Woodfox, a Louisiana man who has spent forty-three years in solitary confinement. He has been ordered released though Louisiana says they are going to fight it. He was accused of killing a prison guard in a riot. Twice tried, and twice the verdict was overturned.

I think of myself as reasonably self-reliant but forty-three years alone would cause me to go over the edge, I suspect. Louisiana has temporarily blocked his release though hope remains.

In other prison news, the search is on for two killers who escaped from Clinton in upstate New York. They used power tools to escape – and one wonders how they got power tools – cutting through steel, down six floors, through a steam pipe, out the steam pipe and through a manhole. Authorities are guessing they had inside help. They are questioning a female prison employee but have not charged her with anything.

They could, at this point, be anywhere and the search has expanded across all of North America. I am sure they are looking for a new life though it is going to be hard to find when everyone is looking for you.

As Caitlin Jenner starts her new life, some things are still following her from her old life. When still Bruce Jenner, she was involved in a car crash in Malibu that resulted in a fatality. The dead women’s stepchildren have filed a lawsuit, as has the woman who owned the third car involved in the pile-up. At this point, it is not expected that Jenner will be charged.

There was an extensive article today from the BBC outlining life in Mosul under IS. It does not sound pretty. Woman must go out in black from top to bottom and their faces must be covered. If a man is convicted of adultery, he is thrown from the roof of a tall building; a woman is stoned. Thievery is punished with the removal of a hand. Minorities are being persecuted and thus areas of Mosul once occupied by them stand empty as minorities have fled for the most part. You will probably be flogged if you are caught smoking a cigarette. People seem to be living in terror and stay shut up in their houses.

As we all know, it is the summer of Presidential candidates. Rick Santorum is stumping through Iowa and an astounding four people showed up at an event. There were more reporters than voters. Rick brushed it off and said it was all part of “the plan.” Jeb Bush will likely announce his candidacy next Monday. Probably about time – he has begun to get questions about acting like a candidate without actually having declared his candidacy.

Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, declared his innocence today of lying to Federal investigators about movements of money, allegedly made to “Individual A” as a result of “past misconduct” on Hastert’s part. He’s been accused of sexual abuse to male minors during his time as a wrestling coach in Illinois but that’s not what he’s been indicted for; that’s for lying about the money movements.

The Fifth Circuit Court, highly conservative, upheld the toughest provisions in Texas’ Abortion Laws, which might result in 13 of 21 clinics closing in that state.

102-year-old Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport, was denied the right to defend her doctoral thesis in 1938 because she was part Jewish. Today, the University of Hamburg awarded her a Doctorate after her successful oral defense. According to the University, she was “brilliant” and not just for her age.

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Letter From New York 05 06 15 One hundred years later…

May 7, 2015

It was a day in which rain was predicted in New York but with the exception of a few sprinkles this morning, the day was dry – cloudy but dry. I had an early morning meeting and then went to have lunch with a business friend. We worked out that we had both been on a panel at Silver Docs down in Maryland back in the early 2000’s. He had wondered where we had met each other.

I had a good catch-up call in the afternoon with a friend, Bill Graff, who has just been chosen to head up the American end of a Chinese Documentary Festival. I was able to give him some leads for speakers.

Then I went to have dinner with Kevin J Malone, whom I refer to as my nephew. He is not. He is the only child of my oldest friend, Sarah, whom I have known since I was about three. He grew up thinking I was another of Sarah’s siblings and went through a small existential crisis at nine or ten when he realized I was not actually a brother of his mother.

We have had an extraordinary relationship. When I first met him, he was nine months old and was lying on the floor next to another baby, cooing for all the world was worth. He was born happy and has remained happy.

For two and a half years he served in the Peace Corps in Zambia where he met the woman who is now his wife, Michelle. I attended their small but wonderful wedding fifteen months ago in DC, where, right now, Kevin is a cog in the wheels of the American Empire. He works at the intersection of Medicare and Medicaid, striving to make the two systems work together. I can only imagine the difficulties.

Tonight, more than ever, I realized he had grown up. It was marvelous to have witnessed his progression from child to adult, an adult that is intellectual, engaged, striving to do good, with good humor and great grace. He is one of the most remarkable human beings I have had the privilege to encounter.

Returning to the little apartment, I sorted the laundry that had returned and sat down to write today’s Letter From New York.

The world is in its usual shambles. To no great surprise.

Netanyahu has managed to form a coalition at the last possible moment and now must present his plan to the Knesset. It is a fragile coalition and is not expected to last for long but who knows what miracles “Bibi” might pull off.

Britain, too, has elections tomorrow and from all accounts the very active betting markets in Britain are flummoxed by this one. No one has an idea on how it is going to turn out. As my friend Caroline Ely pointed out to me, David Cameron should have had this one in the bag but that’s not what happened. His Conservative Party will probably get the most seats but not enough to form a government on its own.

Horse trading will be happening in the UK as it did in Israel today.

In what is not good news for any of us, the numbers of refugees and internally displaced people has risen to the highest number in a generation. Combined, there are over fifty million people who have had to flee their homes because of violence. The ongoing tragedy of these people is unlike anything seen since the end of World War II.

IS is responsible for many of the displaced persons in the world. In Iraq, over two million have fled them as nearly a million have in Nigeria. Count in the numbers who are displaced in Syria, well that’s at least ten percent of the count. But IS has reopened a five star hotel in Mosul for its commanders so they can relax and recuperate. It is being called the “Hotel Caliphornia or the Shariaton.” Seems out of context with the kind of state the Caliphate seems to be working to form.

Tomorrow is May 7th. One hundred years ago tomorrow the Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine. It did not immediately pull the US into World War I but was a contributing factor to the decision to enter the war two years later. Over one hundred Americans perished in the catastrophe out of a total of 1198. “Remember the Lusitania” became a rallying cry in the run up of our involvement in WWI.

Now it is the end of the day and I am headed off to sleep. It’s been a good day if a little disjointed. But aren’t many days like that? Good night.

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Letter From New York 04 15 15 An Indian Reprise…

April 15, 2015

Yesterday, I emailed out a Letter From New York. I have been writing one nearly every day since mid-November but I don’t email many of those out, not wanting to clutter email inboxes.

If you’re interested, you can see them at www.mathewtombers.com. I realized yesterday that I hadn’t emailed one about the trip to India. I have been there and back again.

India is still not the easiest of trips but it’s certainly different from the India I first visited twenty years ago. Delhi is changed, and most westerners would think it for the better. The acrid smell of burnt rubber doesn’t cling to the streets as it did twenty years ago and the streets are no longer lined with people living in tents. The city has been freshened and is more colorful than I remember.

They still drive like madmen and I found the only way I could really deal with the four different road trips I took while in India was to close my eyes and surrender my safety to the universe. Whenever I opened my eyes it seemed death was rushing at me at sixty kilometers per hour.

I was in India to give a speech at the Indian Institute of Technology at Roorkee, one of the five branches of the IIT. It is a four-hour drive from Delhi, generally to the northeast. I was riding with another gentleman and he asked the driver to be a little more careful as he was scaring the American guest. I didn’t notice much difference but, at the end of those trips, I am alive and now back in the States where people, mostly, obey the rules and drive on their side of the road.

On the Saturday of the Conference at which I had been asked to speak, I went with another American speaker, Ron Eglash, an ethno-mathematician whose specialty is fractals, to Haridwar, one of the seven holy spots in the Hindu religion. I strolled along the edge of the Ganges, near where it flows into India, watching people bathe in its holy waters.

The speech went off without a hitch. I was pretty good, if I say so myself. The speech was to last for 60 minutes with questions and they were still being asked after 90. Shortly after that I told them to go enjoy themselves. It was great fun.

For the three days I was there I had two “minders” whose job was to see that I was fed and cossetted and had what I needed. They were the ones who arranged for Ron and I to go to Haridwar.

Returning to Delhi for a couple of days, I shopped some and rested and walked around Connaught Place, a central shopping area in Delhi that I had visited when I was first in India.

Twenty years ago it was pretty run down; today, there is a new coat of paint and the stores have been upgraded. Every third store was an international brand. Once, like all of Delhi, it was crowded with beggars but now there are few. My friend, Raja, who has now lived in Delhi for eight years told me they have all been moved out of Delhi into some other area, far enough away that they’re not visible. Another friend said that was more work and so fewer beggars. The difference was notable.

India though is still India, with wrenching gullies of poverty. Road trips take you past buildings that could never have been new and new ones that were old before they were finished. India has had a building boom and bust, too. Structural skeletons pockmark the landscape, looking as if they had been abandoned.

In Jaipur, I had the best meal I had in India at the Royal Heritage Haveli, a royal villa converted into a boutique luxury hotel. I wandered the Amber Fort and the City Palace and stared up at the Palace of the Winds.

In Jaipur I had a night of discomforting “Delhi belly” that came and went swiftly but left me tired.

India is a riot of colors, a visual feast if you can and are willing to take it all in. As I was driven to the airport to depart, I remember noticing the curbs were painted mint green.

Returning to New York, it seemed everything was beige. I felt color deprived.

It is comforting to be home, splitting my time between the little apartment in the city and the cottage upstate, where the brown of winter is beginning to yield to the green of spring.

It was my fourth trip to India. If the opportunity came, I would go again. I still would like to go to Goa and to the mountain town of Mussoorie, a hill town populated during the Raj by Brits fleeing the deadly heat of the plains.

It is a land that is both mystic and a bit mystifying. After my first trip I described the adventure as the most wonderful, horrible, awful, magnificent, transcendental experience I had ever had. It is less horrible and awful and still wonderful, magnificent and transcendental.

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Letter From New York 04 14 15 Working to see with tourist’s eyes…

April 14, 2015

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.”

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Letter From New York 04 09 15 A grey day with grey thoughts…

April 9, 2015

As I was driving from the India Habitat Center to the airport last Sunday, I drove past the nearby Lodi Gardens. Somehow, it imprinted on my mind the gay colors of green that the curbs were painted. I was thinking of those green curbs while walking back to the apartment after a late lunch at a local diner, Big Daddy’s.

New York is not so festive though I am delighted to be drinking New York water again. It’s one of the great freedoms one has in America; the water from the faucet is almost always good to drink. In India, I went through my fair share of bottled water.

It has been a good day, if a little melancholy. My friend Lionel and I rode the train in together this morning, the last time we will probably do so for a long time. On Sunday, he and Pierre leave for Baltimore as Lionel starts his new job with AOL on Monday.

I will miss he and Pierre swinging by on their way to the train to get me. It will be another new adventure once they are gone. On Saturday night some of the neighbors are gathering for a little farewell.

Life moves on, doesn’t it?

There was a morning meeting for me and another one later this afternoon. In between I ate and read and ruminated about life a little.

It’s a complex world out there and as I was sitting down to order my omelet, a news flash came to my phone saying that Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, would only approve a nuclear deal if all sanctions went as soon as it was signed. That is not how I think the West envisages this happening. So maybe no deal will get done after all.

It was yesterday, I think, I read something about celebrations in the streets of Tehran at the possibility of a deal though as Khamenei made his remarks this morning there were the usual shouts of “Death to America!”

It increases my lack of envy for John Kerry.

As was to be expected, the family of Walter Scott, the South Carolinian shot to death as he was running away from a police officer, is prepping a lawsuit. The cop who shot him has been fired and arrested for murder.

Feidin Santana, the man who shot the video that resulted in the murder charge, almost erased the video out of fear for his life. But he didn’t.

French TV5Monde, a French television network and its digital properties, were shut down by a cyber attack; the trail seems to lead to IS, which brings a new wrinkle to the conflict with them.

Continuing their winning ways, IS has released photos of a man being stoned to death for being gay as well as another photo of a beheading. They have also announced killing 52 Iraqi border guards, who have been captive since their post was overrun last year.

The election campaign in the UK, the election to be following this month, is too close to call but it has been an off week for the Tories. David Cameron, who has been more popular than his opponent, Ed Miliband, has lost that edge this week. The odds layers are still predicting that the Conservatives will pull off a win but this week the Conservatives have been bumbling about and off point. And there are only four weeks until the election.

These were some of the grey thoughts that were tumbling through my mind after I had my omelet and was walking back to the apartment, thinking it would be fun to have the curbs painted green to brighten things up a bit.

When you are traveling, there is some respite from the workaday and events of the world can seem further away than they do when you’re home. Today, both my mind and my body felt as if they were pretty much in the same time zone. And I am definitely home and the events of the world seem all to close.

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Letter From New York 04 06 15 Back in the US of A…

April 7, 2015

Late last night I arrived back in New York and pulled up to my apartment building 24.5 hours after I had left the India Habitat Center, buttressed by a few hours sleep and some good service on the flights home. I did a few things of straightening up and then slipped into bed, awaking just a few hours later but then I slipped back to sleep and managed to clock near eleven hours.

As I drove through New York toward the apartment I was struck by both the familiarity of the skyline and how alien it seemed to me, as if it had been centuries since I had last seen it.

It was a familiar route, one I had traveled often in the last years, going from JFK to the apartment. Yet, somehow, it felt different this time. As if I was approaching it from a long way off, as, indeed, I was.

George, the doorman, helped me in with my luggage.

Waking at six, I rolled over and went back to sleep until 11:15 and then got up to have lunch with Nick Stuart at Le Monde, one of our haunts.

It was a great introduction back into the Western world.

After lunch, I went back to the apartment, gathered my things together and went north with my good friends, Lionel and Pierre, who were returning from a visit to their New York vet before leaving for Baltimore. They wanted Marcel, their dog, to have a final looking over before they left.

In the meantime, I’ve had little contact with the outside world and its events.

I could go on in this blissful ignorance but choose not too.

However, there seems to be little of great consequence happening in the news – and for that I am grateful. Too often I look at the news and see word of some great slaughter somewhere.

Today, we have Rolling Stone magazine caught in a scandal of bad reporting on a Virginia rape case. Reporters won’t be sanctioned but lawsuits are being prepared.

Last week, as reported, Misao Okawa passed away, having held the crown for being the world’s oldest person. The crown then passed to an Arkansas woman, Gertrude Weaver, who passed away today.

It’s been a bad week for living old.

In not a bad week for some. McDonald’s is raising its basic wage though not enough to stifle the protests of many. Starbucks is offering college tuition to its employees though I can’t tell you many details, as the story seems frozen on my computer.

Kenya has struck back at al-Shabaab in an air attack on two of their strongholds, following the deadly attack on students at University in Garissa.

So the violence goes on, while I sit at my laptop putting together the day’s events, even as I attempt to manage my jet lag.

Arriving in Claverack, Lionel, Pierre and I went to the Red Dot. Alana, the proprietress, was genuinely glad to see me and I was genuinely glad to see her.

It amazes me that I am still alive after my Indian road adventures. I thought, for sure, I would be road kill on one of those trips across India by car. But I am here, alive, and better for the journey.

It is 11:30 at night in Claverack. In India it is 9:00 in the morning.

I am sure that soon my body will catch up with my time zone.

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Letter From New York 01 18 15 On the value of friendship…

January 18, 2015

It is a quietly miserable day in Claverack. When I woke yesterday the temp was 8 degrees; when I woke this morning it was nearly 38 and a steady, dank rain has been making an icy mess of the driveway. All through the Northeast, the roads are reportedly terrible.

I only ventured out to make a quick trip to the grocery store for supplies for tonight’s dinner; friends are coming over.

The rest of the day, I have huddled inside and stared out at the grey and misty mess outside my windows. I can hear rain steadily falling on my roof. It’s a day that could feel quite hopeless. Returning from shopping, I put on some big band music to lighten the mood and turned on a bevy of lights to combat the dark.

It was a typical Sunday, waking to read the news on my NY Times app while sipping some dark, rich coffee. Waking early, I dozed back to sleep for an extra hour despite my best intentions to get the day going. It is that kind of day.

The fall in oil prices has not been good for Wall Street but it is making a huge difference on Main Street where winter heating prices are being alleviated by the fall in oil. In Maine, it could make up to a difference of $3,000 to the average family of that often brutally cold state.

Days like this are meant for contemplation or conversations with far away friends, which I did this morning, having a long call with my old, dear friend Tory Abel. We met in Los Angeles a long time ago and are still close despite not having lived near each other for a long time.

So it was good to catch up with her and plan a get together in the summer.

Ah, it is 4:15 and my deer have just crossed the yard, picking their way slowly across the ice. It’s what we’ll all be doing in the morning, I’m guessing, picking our way carefully over the ice.

Shortly, I will light a fire in the Franklin stove and settle in for the evening. I am fixing simple things for dinner this evening, salad, chicken, risotto, green beans. Tomorrow I go back to the city to have lunch with an old friend who is in from Minnesota on some business. Kevin went to high school with me and we reconnected some years ago and see each other whenever he is in New York or I am in Minnesota.

I’m lucky. I have friends who go back to grade school and high school and one from college days. I always thought that I would have more friends from my college days but almost everyone seems to have scattered across the globe and fallen out of touch.

But it is good to have old friends who can commiserate with you on what it was like to have Sister Neva teach you in third grade – an experience that is indelibly etched into the psyche of everyone who was her student. Ah, Catholic Elementary School!

But now as this grey day grows darker, I will wrap up and begin to prep for dinner and be grateful for the coziness of the cottage, while reminding myself of the luck I have in friendship.

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Letter From New York 01 12 15 Venturing back to the city…

January 12, 2015

Last night, I returned to New York City to have dinner with a friend, David, who was in town from Delaware. It was interesting stepping off the train and throwing myself into the mild mayhem that is Penn Station, so much grittier and grim than Grand Central Station.

There is always, now, a moment when I take a deep breath before plunging in to the swarm. Really, it is an assault on the senses. Parts of the station seem to be falling apart. Tarps lined one of the ceilings to keep rain from falling on our heads, I guess.

Meeting David at his hotel, we went just a half block to Angus’ in the Theater District and had a meal and a drink and a good catch-up. As I don’t have cable either at home or at the little apartment in New York, I watched the Golden Globes with David. The moment that stood out to me was in George Clooney’s acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award. He said something to the effect that everyone in the room had managed to grab the brass ring, they were inside the tent and getting to do what they wanted. And it is true, people in that room, for the most part, had grabbed the brass ring. Good for him for saying so.

This morning when I left the apartment building, William, the daytime doorman, reminded me it was raining outside. I thanked him for the warning but ventured out without an umbrella. I had forgotten that all the umbrellas are at the cottage. It was a wet, chill day in New York, grey and somber, streets slick with rain and everyone a little damp and miserable.

In contrast to the bucolic setting of the cottage, the city makes it easy to be reminded of all the things happening in the world. Sirens blare, ambulances screech through the streets, police cars race from one point to the next, lights all rotating madly, enough to give one an attack of some sort. Here it is possible to feel close to the chaos that was Paris last week.

Sitting waiting for an appointment, CNN Breaking News as well as the BBC announced that ISIS had hacked into the twitter account of Centcom, the US Military Command. I wondered if we had moved into the era of total cyber warfare? Centcom defined the attack as cyber-vandalism. When does vandalism cross into being an attack?

I feel less dispassionate in the city. The world is very close to you. The reality of trouble is only a fingertip away. Winding my way through the streets and traversing the subway, I felt a greater need to be alert, to be a bit more careful. Part of me wanted to slip away as quickly as I could, to once again bathe in the calm of the cottage. I am here tonight, gone tomorrow and then back again on Wednesday for a dinner meeting. I’ll stay, probably, the rest of the week. It will be interesting to see how I adapt to city life again after so much time in the country.

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