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.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 01 10 16 Thoughts in a worrisome world…
January 11, 2016It is Sunday evening and I am at the dining room table, looking out at the creek, lit by the floodlights I have set up to illuminate the creek at night. Soft, classical jazz plays in the background.
For the most part, Christmas is behind me. The tree is down and headed for recycling now that most of the lights have burned out. I think I’ve had seven years from the tree so I can’t complain.
Though I realize as I look around I forgot a few things which I’ll have to take down over the coming week. There is still a wreath on my door and one hanging in the dining room. How I missed that I don’t know.
My heart is not into taking down Christmas. I tend to become a bit melancholy in the process and apologized to young Nick about my moodiness as he dismantled Christmas while I assiduously cleaned up after last night’s dinner party.
While I sit here writing, the world is gearing up for the Golden Globe Awards, which I won’t watch but is the official opening of awards’ season. I did my PGA voting as soon as it came in because I didn’t want to forget.
The question being asked in this awards’ season is whether “Revenant” will finally propel Leonardo DiCaprio towards an Oscar?
I don’t know nor do I much care, truth to be told.
Since 1992 I have been a member of the Television Academy and my membership is up for renewal and while I suspect I will renew I am not sure why. It feels much less relevant than it did when we were fighting to make cable an integral part of the Academy and then to make a place in the tent for “new media.”
I salute my friend Bob Levi, retired now from Turner, who with Jeff Cole and myself and a few others fought and fought hard to make a place in the Academy for those digital pioneers way back in 1999. Jeff and I were the Founding Governors for the Interactive Media Peer Group though I have discovered since then there are others who make that claim. Excuse me! I was there.
It’s Sunday night and most people are wondering what the market will do in the morning. Continue to swoon or make a comeback? Don’t know. I’ll check the futures in the morning.
Sean Penn did an interview with Mexican Drug Lord “El Chapo” at his HQ in the Mexican jungle. It appeared in Rolling Stone. Some laud it, some hate it but it is interesting reading. Celebrity triumphs in journalism in this case…
Ted Cruz was born in Canada of an American mother. Donald Trump is questioning whether is he meets the legal requirements to be President. Some time ago Ted Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship but that hasn’t stopped Trump who is currently trailing him a bit in the polls in Iowa.
I think it will get worse between now and the caucuses in Iowa.
The world is an unbroken trails of woes right now – and I’m not talking about the Republicans.
Merkel’s generosity to refugees is under question after New Year’s attacks on women by men described as North African or Arabic.
We have people of white origin holding a bird preserve in Oregon demanding a rollback of Federal control of lands in the West.
North Korea may or may not have tested a hydrogen weapon but it did test an atomic something which is always worrisome.
And, you know, everything is worrisome. It always has been and will always be so and so tomorrow I will get up and live my life as best I can in this worrisome state.
Tags:Angela Merkel, Bob Levoi, Claverack, Donald Trump, Golden Globes, Jeff Cole, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Mexico, New Media, North Korea Hydrogen Bomb, Obama, Oregon Standoff, PGA, Revenant, Rolling Stone, Sean Penn, Ted Cruz, Television Academy, The Donald
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