I woke early this morning, daylight savings time dark outside. Making coffee, I came back to bed and flipped open my laptop to see if Putin had made an appearance. He had. Some said he looked a little pale. Others said he looked very healthy. But he was back on the scene in St. Petersburg, his hometown and Russia’s second city.
He is also appearing in a documentary on Russian television. In the interviews, he rattles the nuclear saber – a very frightening thought. He is very likely communicating that 1) he is in charge and 2) he has no intention of negotiating on Ukraine.
In Ukraine, the feeling is growing that the Minsk accord is “hope, not reality.”
The temperature at the cottage was relatively warm, almost 50 degrees, with a chill wind blowing across town. It’s my plan to make spaghetti carbonara tonight, something I have never tried before.
I am a little late in writing this; I spent some time today working on the speech I will give in India plus I spent some time organizing things I will need to take with me. It’s only a few more days and I will be off.
The dollar is a bit weaker and the markets were happy! The Indian Rupee to Dollar exchange has been pretty steady which makes me pretty happy.
Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day and I might try cooking an Irish stew recipe I found online today.
Tomorrow is also voting day in Israel. Netanyahu is proclaiming today that there will be no Palestinian State while he is Prime Minister. The chance of his losing is growing and he has warned his supporters he could lose.
One of the things I found out while reading about the Israeli elections is that American billionaire Sheldon Adelson has founded a free newspaper in Israel that blatantly supports Netanyahu. Wonder what will happen to it if Netanyahu loses?
McDonald’s has been having trouble making marketing magic of late, sales have been down and the Golden Arches have been a bit tarnished the last year or so. Now it is being hit by claims from employees about unsafe work conditions. Allegedly, some employees were told to treat burns with mayonnaise. OHSA is looking into the situation.
The death toll is rising in Vanuatu but nowhere as high as I might have thought. It could still go higher as there is still no communication with outer islands. Almost every house has damage and there is a desperate need for fresh water.
It is now official. This was the snowiest year on record for Boston. It has been a slow moving catastrophe for that town. Floods come quickly with their devastation. This has just gone on and on and therefore the disruption from this winter has attracted less attention.
And also in that city, gay groups are going to be able to march in the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
In Egypt, Mohammed Badie, head of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as thirteen others has been sentenced to death for planning attacks on the state. He has been sentenced to death several times but each time the sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment.
The Syrian Civil War has cost approximately 220,000 lives. Speaking on CBS News, Secretary of State John Kerry suggested peace talks could include Syrian President Assad, marking a change of stance toward the Syrian President. Assad welcomes any “sincere” change of attitude.
Sincerely happy is Sir Martin Sorrell, who heads advertising group WPP. He has been awarded a pay package for 2014 that comes out to about $60,000,000. That’s quite a pay packet. WPP’s stock is up over 100% over the last few years.
Not unexpectedly, Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers have sagged since the email flap. They are their lowest since 2008 but the news is not all bad. 57% of Americans said they’d be proud to have her as President.
I’m off now to cook my carbonara and a soft night of British mysteries on Acorn TV.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 03 17 15 The many aspects of nature…
March 17, 2015Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
This is an odd day for me, always has been, as I am of German/Scandinavian descent and so there isn’t a lot of resonance in my background with the day. And the feel of the bacchanal that accompanies the day was far from the emotional bandwidth that resided within my family of origin. We were good German Catholics.
If you are celebrating today, be careful. Apparently tomorrow is a great day for dentists, having to deal with the results of fistfights from tonight.
It’s been a grey, grey, drear, damp day in Claverack with sudden bursts of sun breaking through the dark clouds for a few seconds, teasing one to hope for more.
Just back from a walk around from the neighborhood, I immediately went online to see if there were any updates on the Israeli election. There aren’t any yet. It’s a tight election and tomorrow we may know more but there are likely weeks of wrangling ahead to see who can actually form a government. Poised for the first time to be a power are Israeli-Arab voters who have joined together their numerous small parties under a single banner for this election.
Netanyahu has claimed they are coming out in droves and has said it is US money that is hiring buses to bring them to the polls. It has brought accusations of racism upon Netanyahu.
The result of this bitterly fought election, as ugly as anything American politics serves up, is important to America. Israel and the US have been historically close and I believe the majority of Americans would like to keep it that way but right now the relationship is frayed.
Chris Borland, a player for the SF 49ers, has decided at 24 to retire rather than to face the possibility of permanent brain damage. He is one of the best rookie players in the league.
Every year during “The Upfront,” billions of dollars are exchanged between networks and advertisers, buying great swaths of advertising inventory in exchange for what is hoped will be an advantageous price. NBC is facing a particularly trying Upfront this year with lingering problems from the Brian Williams situation, Today being in second place among the morning shows and has a ratings slump occurring at MSNBC.
It will be very interesting to see how the Upfront plays out this year. Discovery’s head, David Zaslav, has announced that he thinks this year will be “tepid.” Money is beginning to move toward digital alternatives.
I follow this because this was once part of my life, when I worked at A&E and Discovery.
Veering from advertising to humanitarianism, the island nation of Vanuatu is beginning to run out of food and supplies. While the death toll has been low so far, communications are still down and needs are going up. One organization ramping up to help is Save the Children, http://www.savethechildren.org/.
Living alone, as I do, gives one a great deal of time to think. My friend, the writer Howard Bloom [“The Lucifer Principle” and others], calls nature a “bloody bitch.” And when I consider situations like Vanuatu, I have to agree. It will be years for it to recover. 40% of its income comes from tourism, cruise ships stopping by mostly. That is indefinitely suspended.
Nature is wonderful and awe inspiring. It is also destructive and capricious.
Right now a vast solar storm is occurring. If it gets bad enough, you might see damage to satellites, overloading of power grids and other fun things. And should you be living in the high latitudes, it will also be beautiful to behold.
Do you remember the movie “The Breakfast Club?” It was released thirty years ago and there was a special screening of it last night at the SXSW Film Festival. Amazing; seems like yesterday. Its stars Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy were there, also a little in disbelief that it had been thirty years.
Twenty years ago, Microsoft gave us Internet Explorer. Now they are going to kill it off and will launch a new web browser, specifically oriented to mobile users and integrating Cortana into it [their version of Apple’s Siri]. It doesn’t officially have a name but is codenamed Project Spartan.
Now I must finish up and go to the drugstore to pick up a prescription so I can keep getting everything together for India.
Tags:A+E, Brian Williams, Chris Borland, Claverack, Cortana, David Zaslav, Discovery, Howard Bloom, Internet Explorer, Israeli Elections, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Netanyahu, Project Spartan, St. Patrick's Day, The Breakfast Club, The Lucifer Principle, Vanuatu
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