Posts Tagged ‘New York’

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Letter From New York, May 21, 2011

May 21, 2011

Or, as it seems to me…

I am crossing the country by train with my friend Nick; outside the window of the compartment are the fields of the great farms of the American Heartland – having moved south from Chicago, west into Iowa, through Nebraska during the night and now across Colorado as I write. The sun is making an effort to come out through the gray overcast. On a stopover in Chicago, the sun blessed the day as we met an Odyssey member, Robert Black, of the Chicago Sunday Evening Club and his Director of Development. We had a lovely lunch and then began the long journey from Chicago to the West Coast aboard Amtrak’s California Zephyr, reputedly one of the two most beautiful rides in America on the train.

It is bucolic and beautiful, peaceful and languorous, as we move along, gently swaying, a soft clacking of the equipment becoming a steady backdrop to the ride. Despite some intrusions of small crises from the office needing to be sorted, it has been extraordinarily pleasant since leaving New York. I’m glad.

Glad that is pleasant because, after all, I am facing, we are all facing the beginning of the end of the world, starting today, the 21st of May, about 6:00 p.m. according to certain Evangelical Christians. They believe that the Rapture [where good Christians get uplifted to heaven while the rest of mankind is left behind to suffer the Apocalypse] begins today and, according the reports I have been reading, anyone still alive but not raptured will be gone by sometime in October.

So, if that’s going to happen, I thought that being on a train, moving through the beauty of the American West, is not a bad place to be. I will do my best to be sipping a very good champagne when 6:00 p.m. rolls around – seems a civilized way to meet the end of times or at least the beginning of the end of times.

Also, if it is the beginning of the end of times and I do survive the initial catastrophe that will be ushering in the end, I am sure I will be far too busy to be doing my normal letter plus who knows if the Internet will still be on line? So I thought I should scurry a bit and get out a letter in advance of this potential end, reach out to all of you who have been kind enough to read my epistles over the years! Been a privilege to write them, sharing my thoughts, quirky though they may sometimes be, with all of you.

I am sanguine right this minute. I don’t think the world is going to end today. It was supposed to have ended several times in my life, once even on the day my father passed away. The same man who is predicting that it will end today, predicted it would end in 1994. When asked about why he was right now when he was wrong then, he announced that previously he had not fully considered the Book of Jeremiah and that was where he had gone astray. I don’t have time now between and the end to study Jeremiah so I won’t be able to venture a guess as to where the good Reverend went wrong.

So here I am, in Denver, momentarily, approximately ten hours from the end of times – or not. As it approaches, and I am sipping my champagne or martini, I will be thinking of all of you. If it is the end, it’s been interesting writing this for almost ten years! Thanks for reading.

And if it is not the end of times, which is more than likely, I’ll be back next week, more thoughts, more adventures, and after I have done some more thinking about what it might mean to be present at the end of times. Until then! Or not…

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Letter From New York, September 25, 2010

September 25, 2010

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Letter From New York

September 23, 2010

Or, as it seems to me…

Fall is in the air; the leaves have begun changing on the trees that overhang my creek and litter my land.  Soon they will begin to fall and will literally litter my drive, unattended they are daunting and so weekends will begin to be devoted to clearing them away.  I both love and hate the fall.  I embrace the brisk wind and the wild tension between the encroaching winter and the summer that wants to linger, a autumnal ballet of seasonal forces, a lovely, painful dance as the world sinks into winter.

As that dance progresses, the world has been watching the tiny island of Manhattan for two events that occurred there, one following the other.  The first was glamorous – the all important, celebrity studded Fashion Week; the rich, the beautiful, the fashionistas, the models, the mavens all squirreled in and through the tents at Lincoln Center, all sponsored by Mercedes Benz.  The city could barely sustain the excitement of all this elegance, luxury and excitement; every morning the city woke to yet another display of fashion fabulousity.

The second event was the General Session of the United Nations.  World leaders gathered; Obama addressed the General Assembly, hoping to elicit the support of others in the world to buoy up the Mid-East Peace Process.  Every leader comes with an agenda, a shift they would like to see the world take in the way it sees their efforts on the world stage.  Thursday, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, took the podium and used his time to decry the United Nations, the United States, capitalism, Zionists, laud the wonders of nuclear power and declare that the majority of Americans think that 9/11 was orchestrated by the U.S. government.

Delegates from many nations walked out on him.  It was, as the United States spokesperson said:  predictable.  Ahmadinejad has used his annual trips to the UN General Assembly to further distance himself and his country from the rest of the world.  The scariest part of this scenario is that this man runs a country with an army, a pretty big army that has been testing missiles that seem to go farther each time they test them.  The saddest part of all of this is that the Presidency of Iran held by someone more rational could wield a huge influence for good in that desperate part of the world.  Iran is using its influence to stir up anti-Israel feelings all over the world and plays its hand on the world stage with a fistful of wild cards.  No wonder he makes the West crazy.  He hates the West.  Likes our toys, like nuclear power, but doesn’t like what we stand for…

Also in that part of the world is poor Pakistan, ravaged by floods, [have you donated anything to help Pakistan?] being torn apart by religious and political strife, the secular being clawed at by religious fundamentalists with a virtual civil war going on in the north west.  And, oh yes, they have a stockpile of nuclear weapons and they rattle that saber once in awhile.

When I think about these things, I feel great disquiet.  No wonder the fabulousity of Fashion Week is so attractive to so many – it diverts us from the fearsome realities that are just across town as the UN General Session met with frightening men like Ahmadinejad standing up there with all the other world leaders, completely free to rant against the organization hosting him and reminding us that he is running a country that is quite capable of the worst kind of mischief.

There is another Iran, the one that doesn’t want him and who marched in the streets in the spring but we saw what happened to them.  Who will ever forget the pictures of the young girl bleeding to death on the street, an event twittered around the globe.

It is fall, the season that precedes the long winter, a time when the mind roams to all the things that could go bump in the night.  And right now I hear a bump.

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Letter From New York, September 17, 2010

September 17, 2010

Or, as it seems to me…

On the anniversary of 9/11 I found myself at a baby shower, thrown by two of the conductors of the trains I ride for two of the passengers. Sixty people were there, forty-five of them from the train community. We laughed, we played games, had a couple of glasses of wine, watched the mothers receive gifts and visited among ourselves. The somber background of the day was not forgotten. On the radio in the morning there was the backdrop of the reading of the names, the remembrance of the gloriously, sweet, beautiful day that was 9/11/2001, a day that could not have been more beautiful, a day that was in perfect juxtaposition to the horror of the day.

At the party, people talked of it, the anniversary. Many commented that there were an unusual number of social events planned for the day. Several at the baby shower had more than one invitation to a social event and there was speculation that many people were holding special events that day because they wanted to leap over the pain of that day, to begin to imprint upon their brains some happier memories – and yet all felt a little a guilty about doing something pleasurable on 9/11. It is a somber day, a holy day in some ways, a day that may remain with us for always as a secular Good Friday, a day in which we will remember the terror that changed our world, forever.

And, at the same time, people are struggling to have life go on in this new reality, which includes terror and tension, fear and fright. Because on September 11, babies are born and folks pass from this earth, love needs to be celebrated and we have to come to terms with the great pain of 9/11 and the reality that the world continues on. Perhaps that’s why this year, more than in years past, there were parties on 9/11, because people are beginning to integrate the reality, the horror of 9/11 into the calendar of their lives.

It was the following day that I felt the spirit, the ethos of 9/11 more than I did on the day itself. I had to return to the city from the cottage early so that I could help with video coverage of a march organized by Religious Freedom USA. Founded by two young men, one a rabbinical student and the other an evangelical Christian, it has devoted itself to fighting intolerance of religious groups in America and right now their focus is on Muslims because they are the group receiving the brunt of intolerance right now.

The day started with speeches at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, around the corner from the proposed Cordoba Center, buildings united, said the pastor of St. Peter’s, by the fact that both were damaged by debris from the same plane hitting the World Trade Center. Josh Stanton, the Jewish half of the founding team, recalled the story told him by his still living grandmother who, as a child, found herself huddled in her home with her parents as a mob surged through the streets of lower Manhattan, ranting as they went, torches in hand, that it was time to kill the Jews.

He was organizing because he did not want a surging mob in the streets calling for the killing of Muslims. At the end of the speeches, there was a mile long march through the streets of lower Manhattan, through the rain, past places in the process of rebuilding, rebuilding from that terrible day that has shifted history. Walking with them brought all of that day back to me and brought back all the weeks following and all the horror, standing on a friend’s rooftop, staring down into the still smoking pit, a miasma of broken buildings and lives, smoldering weeks later, still spewing death.

But out of that horror, out of that smoldering cauldron, the resultant mix should not be hate and bigotry. We should have learned something from our mistake of putting Japanese Americans in camps during WWII, that not all members of a group are the same. My mother told me of our family attempting to downplay our German background during World War I [and II?] because of fear that people would think we were one with the ones we were fighting. Let us look at our history and learn from the mistakes made and do our best not to repeat them.

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Letter From New York September 8, 2010

September 9, 2010

Or, as it seems to me…

Saturday will be September 11th, the ninth anniversary of 9/11, a day that will not be forgotten by anyone sentient that day and this side of paradise. We, as a country, are indelibly marked by the events of that day.

A friend asked me what I thought I had learned from 9/11. How had the world changed? Were there any good things that had come of this?

Good, I wondered. Good? What good things could have come from that day?

I find myself staggered, still, by the acts of loving kindness I saw between people that day. There were two African American women who took an elderly Jewish man under their wing and commandeered the universe to see that he got where he was going. There was a bus driver who just did his best to keep everyone moving, moving away from Ground Zero. There was a woman who spoke Connecticut lockjaw but who took her time to take a man, not from her social class, under her wing and see that he got where he was going.

New York changed with 9/11. Already on its way to being a better city, it has become a much better city. The ranting for which New York was so well known has subdued. It began with the need for quiet following 9/11, when any loud noise sent tremors of fear through those who heard it.

One of my favorite stories following 9/11 was that of one of the trade unions here in New York. The man who had the coffee cart at the corner near their office was Muslim. Realizing he might be an object of vindictive behavior by fellow New Yorkers, the union set up guards to make sure he was not harassed, not troubled, not hurt. I weep when I tell that story.

What’s been positive about this?
For one, I know I need to understand and pay attention to one of the great religions of the world. Islam. Incredibly complicated and incredibly nuanced. Just like Christianity. I am beginning to learn the differences between Shia and Sunni and Sufi. The folks who are building the reviled Cordoba Center are apparently Sufis, who are reviled by Osama Bin Laden. Which demonstrates that Islam is not a united front. And if Osama Bin Laden reviles them, should we?

General Petraeus recently asked the group down in Florida that is planning on holding a Quran burning party not to do it because it will endanger troops. I yield to the Commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan. If he tells me to stand down, I think I would. We need to think about the implications of actions. And to learn that is a good thing.

What I have learned has grown from the pain and suffering of 9/11, from breathing in the acrid smoky air of the city that day and the days that followed, from walking through streets, litter filled with debris blowing up from Ground Zero, from walking shell shocked through the empty, quiet streets of the busiest city in America. I was there. I walked it. I breathed that air. I smelt death in the streets; no amount of washing the sewers could completely cleanse that smell from where I was, two blocks north of the evacuation zone.

We have entered into a brutal age and unless we become clear about whom exactly we are fighting it will become an even more brutal age and that is not what we need. The Crusaders brought blind brutality to the Holy Land and we are still paying the price of that. What 9/11 has taught me is to acknowledge the huge work that needs to be done if we, the human race, are going to survive, to live in peace. And that is, at best, a distant golden goal when facing some who look to the past and not the future. To acknowledge that, to face that squarely, is a positive thing.

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Letter From New York May 6, 2010

May 6, 2010

con·tain·ment
   Show Spelled[kuh n-teyn-muh nt]
–noun
1.
the act or condition of containing.
2.
an act or policy of restricting the territorial growth or ideological influence of another, esp. a hostile nation.
3.
(in a nuclear power plant) an enclosure completely surrounding a nuclear reactor, designed to prevent the release of radioactive material in the event of an accident.

http://www.dictionary.com

I’ve been thinking a lot about containment the last few days – there are lots of things happening that seem to need containing.

First of all, there is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that definitely needs containing – the slick is spreading and is reaching shore, threatening the fishing industry in the Gulf region, another in a series of catastrophes that have bedeviled them since Katrina hit five years ago. Deep beneath the ocean surface, crude keeps burbling out – at five times the rate originally thought, now covering an area larger than Puerto Rico. And the efforts to stop the well from spilling have so far proven ineffective – not all of British Petroleum’s men and efforts combined with those of the U.S. government have been able to put this Humpty Dumpty together again.

BP’s CEO Hayward was heard to say: what did we do to deserve this? Perhaps not pay enough attention to well safety? Eleven men are missing and presumed dead. Some are already declaring the fishing industry in the Gulf dead on arrival, not seeing a way that they will recover from what is becoming the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

There is a lot of effort going into containing this catastrophe with its attendant ecological and political fallout – the Obama Administration is scurrying to contain accusations that it moved too slowly in responding to the situation, desperate to avoid comparisons to the Bush Administration’s response to Katrina.

And while BP’s Hayward is doing his best to contain the oil spill and the corporate backlash, another CEO, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs is doing his best to contain the potential damage to his financial behemoth as it faces both civil and criminal investigations over the way it handled sales of mortgage back securities. He appeared before a very hostile Congress, where some comments from lawmakers had to be bleeped because the language was so strong. He did a good enough job in Washington that most think he will save his job. Friday night he appeared on Charlie Rose, again elegantly and eloquently defending his company while promising more careful oversight going forward as a result of current corporate soul searching. It was exactly what you’d expect from the CEO of Goldman Sachs after being taken to task so severely by Congress. It was a worthy effort at containment.

The State of Arizona is working to contain the fallout that is resulting from passing a tough immigration law. While the majority of Arizonans favor the law [as do, apparently a majority of Americans] there were protests held in something like eighty cities this past weekend and many are calling for boycotts of the State of Arizona. This was not unexpected though what was unexpected, according to an Arizonan interviewed on NPR, was that some Arizona companies are taking about boycotting Arizona.

And, certainly sobering to me, was waking to the news on Sunday, that a car bomb had failed to go off in Times Square on Saturday night – a failure on the part of the men who assembled it. New York has been lucky in containing such threats as these, having stopped a crew intent on bombing the subway last year and saved this time by apparent incompetence. But it is a sobering thought, and I am grateful that this incident did not result in death and destruction. Awareness is heightened that we are vulnerable and efforts are continuing to be made to wrack mayhem on us. And this will be a condition that will be hard to contain.

Thinking about the news of the week, it seems that it has all been about the “act or condition of containing,” fighting back ecological disaster, corporate catastrophe and political fallout. Legions are engaged in stopping the oil spill, legal and public relations legions are engaged in walling off BP and Goldman Sachs from their troubles, and so on and on…men’s efforts to enclose and contain the toxic results of acts of other human beings.

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A Tale of Two Towns: July 19, 2009

July 19, 2009

A Tale of Two Towns

Death comes as the end…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Tale of Two Towns, A Tale of Two Worlds

June 19, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Letter From New York: A Tale of Two Towns

June 12, 2009

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

With credit to Kate Thorsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Letter From New York June 5, 2009

June 5, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Letter From New York: Memorial Day Memories

May 26, 2009

Letter From New York

Memorial Day Memories…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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