2004/07/19
For Sale or Lease
This Space for Sale or Lease.
No reasonable offer refused.
Please contact owner at his new place of blogging:
If you have linked to this site, may I politely request that you update your link to the new address above?
P.S. Figures I'm leaving just when they made it so much easier to create posts!
2004/07/12
Changes afoot
Hi, y'all! There will not be a lot of activity today as I am in the process of changing webhosting. I have been invited to join the Munuvians over at Mu.Nu and am starting to reestablish my blog over there where I will be found at RandomPensees.mu.nu. This is a very cool thing and I am very excited. I will most likely be neglecting my work today as I try to figure out how to get it all set up and how to move my archives over. I invite you to join me there and to update your links/favorites in the near future.
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2004/07/10
Saturday Observation: Vol. 3
I went to an independent bookstore in our little village to track down a proper copy of AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh to begin reading to my daughter. Upon entering, I was immediately distracted by the bookshelves to the left of the entrance that were devoted to the recent publications. I can enter a bookstore with the best of intentions, with the steeliest of resolves, with the belief that I cannot be distracted from my mission to procure one, single title and no more and I can and will fail each and every time. This time, however (while I did briefly consider a new edition of the Journals of Lewis and Clark), I was too distracted by the overwhelming number of anti-Bush publications with not one pro-Bush book. Is it true, I wondered, that not one author has put pen to paper in defense of the President? I doubt that.
So, after locating my Pooh, I approached the counter and asked the woman why the display was so unbalanced. I was pleased when she responded that she had received a lot of complaints about it. I was pleased about that because maybe, even in this very Democratic party village, people were still concerned about the chattering class treating them like idiots (at least I hope that's why). And then she told me that this was what was being published and maybe they had a point. I responded that I didn't know if they had a point, and regardless of where I stood on the President (and actually I support the man even if I did not vote for him the first time around), I was tired of these authors treating me like I was not a fucking adult. Stop pandering and actually engage in reasoned political debate and conversation. To my surprise, this woman agreed with me and took out a clipping from the NY Press which excoriates the new Michael Moore movie. The NY Press is not known for its conservative point of view.
I walked out somewhat cheered. Maybe the rest of this little part of the country is tired of the polemics, too.
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Saturday Observation: Vol. 2
While driving today from one errand to the next, during nap time for the children, I went past Heathcote Hill in Mamaroneck, overlooking the Mamaroneck Harbor. There is an historical marker there to commemorate a small battle during the Revolutionary War. I give it a mental nod of the head whenever I pass by in recognition of the sacrifices past. Today, getting out of a Japanese car, in front of the historical marker, were three Indian women dressed in their saris. It made for an interesting juxtaposition of America past and America present. As I've said in this blog before, if we are still attracting immigrants, like the ones who fought at Heathcote Hill, for instance, we are probably doing better than the pundits would like us to think.
By the way, here is a little information I found on the net regarding the battle:
Heathcote Hill, to the north of the Post Road, is now covered with dwellings, but is rich in both historic and literary associations. It was named from Colonel Heathcote, who built a large brick mansion burned before the Revolution. The post-Revolutionary Heathcote Hall is now a road house.
In 1776 it was the scene of a surprise attack by a Delaware regiment upon the Queenes Rangers, a battalion of Loyalist Americans, who were worsted. This is interesting as an occasion where Americans fought Americans. The dead were buried near the hill in a common grave, "Rider and horse,×friend and foe, in one red burial blent."
A great-grandson of Colonel Heathcote's, Judge DeLancey, who succeeded to the estate, had two daughters, one of whom married John MacAdam, the inventor of the road which bears his name, and the other, James Fenimore Cooper.
Cooper lived for some time on the slope of the hill and here were written his first two novels, "Precaution" (1820) and "The Spy." The scenes of the latter are almost wholly in this `Neutral Ground,' which lay between New Rochelle and Stamford, where were respectively the lines of the British and the Continental armies.
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Saturday Observation: Vol. 1
While walking past a tavern, I noticed the following sign: "Gentleman: Please No
Tank Tops".
Has it really come to this? Gentlemen need to be told to leave the tank tops at home?
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2004/07/09
Let's play a game
A friend sent me this. It's an extract from a Christopher Hitchens article from the Weekly Standard:
"I used to play two subliterary games with Salman Rushdie. The first, not that you asked, was to re-title Shakespeare plays as if they had been written by Robert Ludlum. (Rushdie, who invented the game, came up with The Elsinore Vacillation, The Dunsinane Reforestation, The Kerchief Implication, and The Rialto Sanction.) The second was to recite Bob Dylan songs in a deadpan voice as though they were blank verse."
I feel inspired. Anyone want to play?
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More on Moderates
Just a quick post to call your attention to the discussion Mark is continuing about political moderates. He makes a lot of good points and is clearly got way more to say about this than can fit in a comment on my blog. Thanks to Mark for continuing the discussion in such a thoughtful way!
And if you haven't checked out his blog generally, get thee hence!
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A lovely compliment
I received such a lovely compliment from Jim at Snooze Button Dreams, who, in adding my blog to his blog roll writes: "Found from tracking back comments or maybe from the New Blog Showcase. Fantastic mad writing skillz. Talk about erudite - if I could write half as well..."
I wrote to thank him there and I write to thank him here. You all should go visit his site. He writes beautifully and fluently about a whole range of various topics. He also has a slightly different point of view on bogus tort claims from my post below and I think it will make you laugh while making you think.
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Time Suck of the Day
Inspired by the anniversary of William Jennings Bryan's famous "cross of gold" speech, given today in 1896, I ventured forth to look for the text of the speech and found this cool site: Great American Speeches (80 Years of Political Oratory). You will lose much time in here and probably quite profitably. Also, you might want to check out: Famous Speeches from USA Info.
In the meantime, check out this selection from the Bryan speech:
Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose --the pioneers away out there [Bryan points westward], who rear their children, ear to Nature's heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds--out there where they have erected school houses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and cemeteries where they rest the ashes of their dead--these people, we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these people that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and our posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more! We defy them!
and this, the conclusion:
No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bi-metalism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bi-metalism, and then let England have bi-metalism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns! You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!"
Good stuff.
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Tort reform? No, courtesy reform.
I do not intend to weigh in at length on this emotional and complicated subject. I write now only to make a limited observation based on my own personal experience.
As some of you may know, I am a lawyer. I practice almost exclusively complex commercial and corporate litigation and do some ancillary corporate work for clients who trust me and think I can't possibly screw up their work as badly as the last lawyer who got them into all the trouble they needed me to solve through litigation. Is that a ringing endorsement, or what? I got a referral for a personal injury claim the other day. I don't do PI work. Not my specialty. But, as a courtesy, I listened to the fellow's problem and agreed, at the end of his presentation, that he had a claim. I was about to type the details of his claim, but thought better of it. Even if he did not retain me, I would feel wrong about going into detail. Suffice it to say his wife was injured at a hotel they were staying at. I asked this fellow, at the conclusion of our chat, did anyone at the hotel offer to waive the bill, reverse the charges for the service than injured her, or even apologize. And he said, no, not a thing. This brings me to tort reform. I am beginning to think that a lot of tort cases are brought because the defendant acted like an asshole. If the manager of the hotel had acted like a gentleman, I doubt this fellow would have been on the phone to me looking for compensation.
Maybe this post isn't about tort reform at all, now that I re-read my scribbles to this point, maybe it's really just a continuation of the discussion we've been having about moderates and courtesy. Maybe the real point is not that we need tort reform but that we need courtesy reform. Stop treating each other like idiots, apologize promptly when something's your fault, be sincere, and I am willing to bet the number of lawsuits would go down.
I know that someone might comment, if they feel moved to do so, that the manager of the hotel could not have apologized because it would be seen as an admission of responsibility and an invitation to a suit. I disagree and I'll explain why. If the manager were my client, I'd advise him that he was going to get sued anyway since it took place in his hotel and due to actions by his employees who were acting within the course and scope of their duties as employees. Of course the hotel is a target and saying you're sorry will not make it any less of a target. So, I would counsel the manager to apologize promptly, send flowers, comp them to the room, pick up the medical bills, and make whatever other nice gesture he could think of. At best, he might just avoid a suit and pick up some nice good will out of it. At worst, well, he's probably going to get sued anyway. But, by not apologizing, the idiot has absolutely bought himself an all expenses paid visit from the process server.
So, my personal experience leads me to think: more courtesy, fewer law suits!
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Oh, the pain, the pain (to be read in fake falsetto)
Late night out last night with friends who we had not seen in a couple of years. Too much cheap Spanish red wine. Stayed up way too late on a school night. Ate too much excellent Turkish food. Came home to collapse in my bed only to be awakened three hours later, at about 3:30 a.m by a request from the girl child for a tissue. She needed her nose blown. I, of course, stumbled out of bed and immediately complied. I told her to go back to sleep and she sang, "ooookaaaay", at me. And wonders of wonders, she actually did go back to sleep. I settled happily back into my pillow and still warm duvet and began the process of going back to sleep. Then, from the other monitor, I hear, "da da da da da". A pause. Then more chatter. My wife, deciding that there must have been a Three Mile Island type incident in the vicinity of the boy's PJ's, valiantly dons the Hazmat suit and rides off to investigate. No hazmat incident. Just a little boy who's up and wants to play. He wants to play really badly. He delays for a long time accepting our kind invitation to return to his untroubled slumber. You may wonder, however, was your hero (read: me, the author) daunted by this yo-yo sleep/not sleep night? No, I shout triumphantly in return and thank you so much for asking. I am made of sterner stuff than this! When my alarm bleated its anemic electronic whine at 5:30, I promptly, without undue delay, jumped out of bed at 6:27. There's a lesson in this for all of us, somewhere. I think it might be that there's always going to be a later train you can take.
Speaking of going out late on a Thursday, by the way, when I was young and childless and living in New York City, Thursday night was considered connoisseur's night out. Then I think it became Monday night. Friday night was strictly for amateurs and the B 'n T crowd. Ever hear that somewhat offensive expression? It refers to those who need to avail themselves of either a Bridge or a Tunnel to get into Manhattan. There are a ton of social stereotypes bound up in that three letter expression. Some of them may even be true. But, I am so out of touch now that I don't know what night is hot anymore nor if anyone even use the B 'n T expression.
By the way, the couple with whom we dined last night? We met them shortly after the birth of the girl child in what feels like it has to be an only in NY story. My wife and I, faced with her impending return to work, placed an advertisement for a Norwegian speaking nanny in the Irish Echo, the newspaper of choice for those seeking domestic employment. We received something like 40 replies. I was thrilled, until I listened to all the voicemails stacked up on my cell phone. Then I realized that cultural diffusion had reached new heights. What else could explain why so many women were calling about the Norwegian speaking nanny position and leaving messages with the beautiful lilt of the West Indies and Jamaica in their voices? I am a big fan of that accent, I find it very musical. But it ain't Norwegian. There was one other message, however. It was from a guy who was also married to a Norwegian woman and they had also just recently had a baby. He said that they had not considered even advertising for a Norwegian speaking nanny and he wondered if I would be so kind as to send over his way the many women we considered and rejected for the position. I called him and explained that we received not one single qualified applicant and invited him and his wife over for a drink. They accepted and we have passed many happy hours with them since and our daughters like each other, too. I love this story. Anyway, they have now also sold their apartment in NYC and bought a house out in Westchester, one town over from ours.
So, here I am. Armed with Advil and coffee, I am off to convince two new potential clients that I am their man for the dispute they are having with their former hedge fund employer. I will not slobber on myself and I will confirm I have put each button of my shirt in the appropriate hole. Hopefully, they won't notice anything amiss. Wish me luck!
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2004/07/08
Hit the showers
I happened to come across this article earlier today and I left the window up on my screen all day, thus ensuring that I would note it and also ensuring I would forget how I came across it. In any event, 60 per cent of German men didn't shower today, according to the article. And there is a downright icky number of them not changing their underwear. Just thought people might want to know, in case they were making European travel plans this Summer.
Actually, this reminds me that during the late 80's, there was a similar survey done in Austria concerning teeth brushing. My wife told me about it once. If I recall correctly, some 3 out of 10 Austrians were not going to touch a toothbrush for their entire adult lives. Quick google search turns up nothing on point. I'll have to ask my wife for more details.
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The Girl Child -- a little pride
My wife reported to me as follows. She and the children were out for the evening constitutional, while I was preparing dinner, and they ran into our neighbor who works at the school where the girl child is attending camp. Our neighbor told my wife that she was watching the girl child run through the sprinklers at camp yesterday and one of the counselors came up to our neighbor and said, "do you know that girl, she is so smart". I think she's smart, but I'm biased. It was nice of our neighbor to share that with us.
And just to round things out, last night, when she called me upstairs for the "extra hug and a kiss" that has become part of her going to sleep ritual, I simply popped right into bed with her, which caused her to give me a very bemused look, since I very rarely if ever do that when we are trying to get her to go to sleep. So, I'm lying there with her, and she looks at me with those huge blue eyes, and says, softly, "I missed you today". And I melted. I seriously considered not going to work today. Ah well, back to the coal mines.
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Zimbabwe, again
Long time readers may recall my post some time ago concerning Zimbabwe and the horrible political and social and economic situation there. I wrote about my disgust with the other African governments and their failure to even attempt to deal with this problem. Well, I came across this today in the NY Times: African Leaders Failing Zimbabwe, Prelate Says. Want to know why he said that?
Mr. Mugabe scored a diplomatic victory last weekend when the 53-nation African Union, meeting in Ethiopia, voted to table a sharply worded critique of Zimbabwe's civil-liberties record prepared by a committee on human rights. The report, which was leaked last week, accused the government of "failure at critical moments to uphold the rule of law" and of tolerating arbitrary arrests and human-rights violations.
Apparently, by the way, this report dates from 2002!
What a disaster.
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Hope for the moderates
I posted a question yesterday: what happened to the moderates? I have been concerned for a long time about the coarsening of political discourse, not to mention simple every day discourse, and as I said in that post, Michele at A Small Victory wrote a great item about this lack of civility.
Well, I think we found the moderates. They were here on my comments board and I'm going to reproduce them for the general readership who doesn't look at the comments (and if that's you, you are missing some very good and thoughtful writing).
Amber writes:
I'm always afraid to attach myself to any single label for fear of putting myself in a box. I have voted both Democrat and Republican. I would call myself a conservative/liberal or liberal/conservative too.
I'm all over the place on the issues. No one party suits me, since I'm strongly for the death penalty and strongly for abortion rights. And I'm that way about all the issues.
I don't like the term "moderate" because I feel it's such a tame word...and I'm *passionate*. That's what I am: a Passionate! *grins*
I wish we didn't have a two-party system, I know that.
Amber | Email | Homepage | 07.07.04 - 2:42 pm | #
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Mark writes:
The moderate-to-liberal Republican has a long pedigree in New England and once was a readily identifiable species in Massachusetts, but is on the Endangered List. (See the Ripon Society)
Is it possible to be vital, passionate and moderate?
Mark C N Sullivan | Email | Homepage | 07.07.04 - 3:58 pm | #
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I write back to Mark:
I think so, Mark. I am passionate about defending the old Liberal traditions of free speech, passionate that the only remedy for bad speech is more speech, and passionate that discourse conducted between committed people needs to be civilized.
Maybe all of us could join Amber's new party!
Random Penseur | Email | Homepage | 07.07.04 - 4:04 pm | #
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Mark replies:
You might be on to a new slogan, RP: Extremism in the defense of moderation is a virtue.
Might the position you describe also be called centrist? Whatever the terminology, I'd say a great number of voters share your tendencies: in Massachusetts, for example, unenrolled independents outnumber Republicans and Democrats.
Mark C N Sullivan | Email | Homepage | 07.07.04 - 5:24 pm | #
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Stolypin writes:
RP,
1. I want the elected left side of the aisle to stay out of my pockets;
2. I want the elected right to stay out of my bedroom;
3. I want my streets cleans and my schools well funded - and will pay sufficient taxes to ensure that.
4. I want those schools to focus on academics, music, sports, arts, etc. I will take care of God - and expect other parents to do the same - even if they don't share the same belief system or have no belief system at all.
5. I want every child to have a full range of educational opportunities - and if race is a factor so be it - but I would be happy to have economic background without regard to race considered as well. A coal miner's kid from West Virginia is not a child of privilege and could also use consideration in admissions decisions.
6. I want people to wave thanks when I wave them into 'my lane' during rush hour on I-95.
stolypin | Email | Homepage | 07.08.04 - 12:02 am | #
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So, where are the moderates? I now think that they are all around us. The people Stolypin is waving into traffic, the people Amber saw at the pillow fight during the 4th of July, and the people Mark may know at the Ripon Society. The only thing is that while these people may vote, they may not get out there and add their voices to the mix. They may not appear in focus groups from which political messages are crafted. And they may not be counted on or appealed to. All of which is too bad. We could all use a moderating influence, no matter how "passionate" we are in our belief that "Extremism in the defense of moderation is a virtue".
Thanks for restoring my faith in the moderate, y'all.
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No slots at NY racetracks
As reported this morning in the Times, a New York appellate court has tossed out the law which permitted slot machines at NY ractracks. If you are curious, the 52 page opinion can be found here. This is a good thing. As the article reports, the Governor planned to use the revenues from these slot machines to make up for the imbalanced school aid provided to the public schools in New York city. Another court found the formula by which school aid was provided to be unconstitutional. So the State needs to find more money.
Let me be unambiguously clear about this, something I normally hesitate to do, I loathe the idea of lotteries and gambling being used to fund any State program or purpose. Such a thing is merely taxation by other means, indirect taxation if you will. Yes, I know that it is the choice of the participant to play and thus be taxed and if I don't play then I escape that tax. Still, that means nothing. Why? Because revenue raised this way is objectionable for at least two reasons. First, the unfair impact on those who pay. Second, I think that this form of indirect taxation defeats accountability by allowing the government to disguise the true costs of services it provides.
Unfair Impact: Who buys lottery tickets, for the most part? I believe I have read that it is the working poor and lower middle class. How do they buy them? With after-tax dollars, of course. So, if you agree that this is an indirect tax, then you will have to agree that those who purchase these tickets, and pay this tax, are doing so with money which represents a greater proportion of their after tax earnings than, say, my after tax earnings. $10 spent on lottery tickets is going to mean more to the person from a lower economic group than it will to someone in a higher economic group. I am certain that this is recognized by the politicians yet they do not care that the group least able to afford to dispose of their income in this fashion is doing so. And the politicians are abetting it. This is unfair. If taxes need to be raised to support a program, then doing it indirectly and on the backs of those least able to pay for it is unfair. And that leads me to point two.
No Accountability: I said above, "if taxes need to be raised to support a program. . ." If you fund a program from lottery or gambling monies, then you effectively remove from the public forum any reason to debate the need for the program or its funding level. Why talk about, after all, if the taxpayer isn't paying for it? I think of it as the governmental equivalent of an off balance sheet vehicle like Enron used. The result is that no one has to talk about it so no one will discuss whether what the government is doing is right. I think that governments abuse power when the possibility of open review is removed. We are supposed to have government in the sunshine and with freedom of access to information. Laws have been passed to that effect. If we as a people permit the government to sweep a program under the rug by financing public programs with tax money raised indirectly from those who can least afford to pay it, then I submit that we have a problem. Also, if there is no one to complain that the money raised is coming out of their pocket, who is going to complain that the money is not being well spent, which is an issue apart from whether the money should be spent. This system changes the oversight mechanisms built into our participatory democracy and I don't like it.
Finally, governments are like crack addicts -- they can't stay away from the cheap money. Once they go to that well, they'll keep going back. And no one will care enough to make sure it's proper. Well, my thanks today go to the Appellate Division, Third Department, of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, even if they did it for a reason other than the ones I've enunciated here.
Here endeth today's rant.
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More Architecture
The NY Times this morning ran a gushing tribute to Paul Rudolph today, one of the great modern architects. The article mentions how he was the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture and how he designed the "heroic" and "magisterial Art and Architecture Building at Yale, which has nine floors and some 30 different levels". I already said gushing, right? What does the article fail to mention? Well, how about the fact that the students hated the building so much that they actually tried to burn it down? That strikes me as a fairly pointed piece of criticism. How about how Rudolph placed the sculpture studios at the top of the 30th level with no elevator access to get sculpture materials, like, say, marble, to the studio. Or finally, how about how the building was covered with this rusticated concrete on which Rudolph left the imprints of the wooden molds which held the concrete while it dried, thus leaving the building with this sort of sinister and unfinished looking air. Actually, I kind of like that treatment, but many don't, and in the hands of an untalented hack it is pretty awful. I suppose that these issues would reduce the impact of the article some.
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2004/07/07
What happened to the moderate?
What follows is a draft thought I had been kicking around for awhile and never got much further with:
Did he or she disappear? Is the moderate an endangered species? This is a question I have been pondering, off and on, for a long time. I have no answer but I have formed some thoughts I'd like to jot down about political culture and identity.
Identity. First off, I have identified myself before on this blog as a South Park Republican -- someone who combines the belief in the need for "a hard-ass foreign policy", is "extremely skeptical of political correctness”, but also is socially liberal on many issues. That's me. Not a true Republican and not a true Democrat. Somewhere in between. Perhaps a Liberal conservative. Or a conservative Liberal.
* * *
I was going to come back to this and write about the political culture side and expand on the identity section, but Michele at A Small Victory has done so today in a post that is just so good that I urge you to go check it out: A Social Civil War.
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Too much vacation . . .
makes Hans an unemployed German worker as his job moves to Hungary. According to the NY Times this morning, Europeans may seek to lengthen work week and cut back on vacation. You may be shocked to learn, as the Germans and French are, that cutting the work week back to 35 hours has not led to an economic boom and that, counterintuitive as it may be, some bonuses in Germany may now be linked to productivity and profits, as opposed to just being handed out no matter how well the company was doing. This has been a sore point for me for a long time as all of my European friends and some of my wife's family think that we Americans work too hard and should adopt the European leisure-state model. According to this article, it ain't working out so great over in Europe any more.
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The Boy Child Speaks
I have not written a lot about the boy child here. He is 16 months old and has the face of an angel. He is exceptionally blond and fair with piercing blue eyes. He looks a lot like my wife's pictures at the same age. In other words, he looks nothing like me and everything like every picture of smiling, happy Norwegian babies you might have ever seen.
In that regard, by the way, I refer you to the beautiful Summer in Norway pictorial collection in Aftenposten, where the only picture of a child is actually a happy child of apparently Asian descent, which is not exactly what I had in mind when I sent you there. No matter, the pictures are still beautiful.
In any event, up until very recently, he has not spoken much beyond Dada, Na-na-na (for banana) and trying to say his sister's name. Now, he has begun to speak. A little, maybe, but still. If you hand him something, he looks at you and says, quite emphatically, "Ta". We are quite certain he is saying "takk", or thank you in Norwegian. He may not say much, but he is endearingly polite.
Also, last night, my wife responded to his cries of distress occasioned by his having jettisoned his blankets from his crib. His new game. However, he becomes completely disconsolate when said blankets are no longer within reach. He loves these blankets, which is nice because my mother knit them for him. My wife came in, picked up the blankets, and asked him to sit down. He looked at her, said "sitte", and sat down.
While I have been eagerly anticipating his powers of speech, my wife points out that the power to talk is the power to talk back. She has a good point, but then, she usually does.
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2004/07/06
I took my own advice today
and took myself off to the NY Public Library to see the exhibit of the Thomas Jefferson handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence in which he underlined the bits taken out by the committee before its adoption by the Continental Congress. I posted about this exhibit before here.
I had a number of different impressions. First, I was surprised how legible his handwriting was. He clearly, at least to my inexpert eye, used a quill pen. Second, his spelling was conventional. He spelled the word course as course, and not "courfe", as the contemporaneous newspaper printings of the Declaration did. Third, the ink was brown and faded but packed an emotional punch. I can't explain it, but I was quite moved and actually blurted out loud, "oh, my", when I read the first sentence. Fourth, the draft penned by TJ actually contained a scathing denunciation of slavery and he blamed the King for importing the institution to the colonies and then for inciting the slaves to take up arms against the colonists. I thought it was interesting enough that I will type it out here from the copy they gave out at the library. It appears in the section of the document listing the colonists grievances against the King:
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase the liberty of which he has deprived them by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
If you are in or can get to NY, I highly recommend going to see this.
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Ever feel like this?
"I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights, so it looks like I'm
the only one moving." -- Steven Wright
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Odd, but interesting
I give you today's odd but interesting historical juxtaposition. Today:
in 1854, the first official meeting of the Republican Party took place in Jackson, Mich.
-and-
in 1923, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed.
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I sit here and itch
I received quite a nice sunburn this weekend. I had my shirt off, outdoors, for the first time in at least a year and I chose to do it while sitting in the kiddy pool with my daughter, without sun screen. Oh, I remembered to put sun screen on the girl child but forgot to protect myself. Result? A predictable bad burn on the shoulders, chest, and upper arms. I have been slathering myself with aloe, spraying myself with dermaplast, and stoically whining about it ever since to whoever would listen to me (that's you at this moment, gentle reader). I sit here now as my chest itches, and my shoulders feel like someone is occasionally sticking a pin in them. You know what, though? It was worth it. I heard from my daughter probably three different times over the weekend how much fun she had when I came in the pool with her. So, I'm going to do it again. Just with sun screen next time.
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Stolen Identity
Another good reason why you should always be careful with your wallet: you may end up married without knowing it. At first this seemed really odd, but upon reflection it makes a lot of sense. You need a residency permit, you steal the identity of a woman, you marry her, you stay. I wonder how often this happens.
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Creation of Time Zones
I came across this little snippet, about how the US time zones came to be created, in the NY Times this morning in an article about timekeeping in Grand Central Station and wanted to share it. I thought it was fascinating and I had never given it any thought before:
Indeed, timekeeping, as it is known today, was essentially invented out of necessity in the late 1800's by a collection of railroads, including the New York Central, a predecessor of Metro-North. Before the railroads, time was a local matter, set in each town according to the sun. Therefore, noon in Cincinnati, for example, would be slightly different from noon in Cleveland. But this was obviously a problem for railroads. Coordination of traffic on the tracks, as well as schedules for picking up passengers, depended on a standardized time system.
"A train could leave Syracuse at 12 o'clock and come into Utica, and it would still be 12 o'clock," said Pierce Haviland, a Metro-North employee who is also a railroad historian. "That wasn't working."
At first, railroad managers set up 100 different railroad time zones, but that proved too complicated. Finally, on Nov. 18, 1883, four standard time zones - Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific - were adopted by the railroads. At noon on that day, the time was transmitted by telegraph from the United States Naval Observatory in Washington to all the railroads in the United States and Canada. Twice a day thereafter, railroad clocks were resynchronized with the Naval Observatory's clock.
However, it was not until 1918, when Congress passed the Standard Time Act, that the railroads' time zones became the standard for everyone in the United States.
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Chivalry's dead? I didn't even know it was sick. . .
I was thinking, off and on this weekend, about a letter I read in the Westchester section of the Sunday NY Times. A woman wrote in to complain that no one would give up their seat for her on a morning train going into the City when she was rather visibly 9 months pregnant. She closed her letter by asking whether chivalry was dead. Is it? Should it be? Should she have had any expectation that she would have been treated differently because of her sex? My answer is yes, it is dead and no, she should not have any expectation of more favorable treatment because of her sex.
Putting to one side the issue of the pregnancy, because I happen to believe that is not an issue open to discussion. Simply, she should have been given a seat because of her physical condition, just like you give your seat to a person with a cane, for example. That is based on disability. That said, I can recall numerous instances of offering a seat to a pregnant woman on a City bus or subway only to have them decline the offer. And, there is another school of thought that says you do not ask or suggest a woman is pregnant unless you are actually seeing them give birth. As in, what if you're wrong about the pregnancy? But enough, let us return to the chivalry question.
chivalry, at its beginning, was a code of conduct according to which Knights and the nobly born aspired to live their lives. There is plenty of information floating around about it on the internet and some of it might actually be correct. It included within it, the Courtly Love tradition, which had various rules for courtship and marriage and taking lovers. Chivalry has come to mean, I think, a manner of treatment of women by men. Women are exalted by virtue of the fact of their being female. I think that this is meant to memorialize the belief that women were the weaker sex and were to be treated accordingly, better really than the way men treated other men. So, we come back to our question: is it dead?
Yes, I think it is and it ought to be. First, the belief that women are the weaker sex is obviously false. They do not need better treatment out of weakness. Second, I think that the social contract has been redrawn over the last 30-40 years in the US. The playing field is much more level. Yes, I know that there are still glass ceiling issues and pay parity issues, but just the same, I think that women are competing fairly evenly with men now in the workplace, in school, on the athletic fields (at least since Title IX), and every where else. Such competition precludes any claim to chivalrous conduct. I think that it is somewhat a question of having your cake and eating it, too. I think that pregnant women does not deserve a seat on the train because she is a woman. Indeed, if she was not pregnant, she would have no right to complain. Her claim to that seat based on some outdated notion of chivalry rings false.
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2004/07/02
Another girl child story
As I mentioned below, I was feeling fragile this morning and I even slept in until 7:30, a good 2 hours later than usual for me. I was just finishing toweling off in the shower when I get a very demanding knock on the bathroom door and a little voice sings out cheerfully, "goooood moooorning". So I invite her in and she keeps me company while I shave. We then go to her room to take her out of her pj's so we can go downstairs. I wanted to be quick upstairs because I wanted to fix her breakfast. She asked me to so nicely.
So, we get into her room and it smells funny. Like sun tan lotion. I ask her, why does it smell like sun tan lotion in here? And she tells me. "Oh, I was just putting some on my animals yesterday". Why, I ask. "So they won't get sunburned. The flamingo got some on his toes and the pony got some on his nose and his sides". She was covering the vulnerable spots, I gather. It was very sweet, even if it smelled kind of funny.
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Another thank you
I would also like to thank the nomad(s?) at The Greater Nomadic Counsel for linking to me. Go to their blog if only to view the very cool painting they have chosen as their header. Otherwise, it is a very interesting and literate read.
I would also like to say thank you to Red at Red Said for her kind words regarding my post at the New Blog Showcase. I have not had a lot of time to page through her site but I intend to over the weekend. She is clearly a person of great taste and discernment! :)
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Oh, the fragility of it all
I was overserved last night. I take no responsibility for any of my actions last night and I blame the bartender and my so-called friends. It wasn't my fault. Ok, maybe a little bit.
We took a friend out for drinks and dinner for her birthday last night. We met for drinks at Aquavit. (I am compelled to share with you this picture of the urinal at Aquavit which I found doing an internet search for the restaurant. I had no idea that restaurant urinals was the subject of such fascination and I post this in order to squick you out, too. Share the joy.) Aquavit makes its own flavored aquavits -- I particularly liked the lemon/mint one and we had a couple of those. We then went next door to a private club and had a little bourbon. Then upstairs for dinner, where we had two excellent bottles of wine. One of the best things about dining at a private club is that the wines are not marked up like they are in a restaurant. We drank, at about 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of a similar bottle in a restaurant:
Volnay 1er Cru 1996, Caillerets Ancienne Cuvée
Carnot
Bouchard Père & Fils
and
Vougeot 1er Cru 1996
Les Cras Domaine Bertagna
They were so tasty. And the second bottle was even better than the first.
Then, home late, up early, and back at work where I feel somewhat less than my usual sparkling self.
Note to self: drink more water before going to bed after nights like last night.
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No access, no cry
Sorry so quiet, we had no internet access from the office (from where most of my blogging takes place) until just now. It was giving me itchy fingers, too. The title of this post is, of course, a take on "no woman, no cry", which is the song currently playing in my head this morning.
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2004/07/01
Some overdue thank you's are in order
I have been linked to by some very smart people and I owe them a thank you note, which they will get, and a link on my page (because they are deserving, not because they linked to me first) which I will do soon. But, before I add them to my list, I want to thank them publicly and call your attention to them (in no particular order) as they are all worth a visit:
Irish Elk is a beautiful looking page with fantastic pictures integrated with smartly written text;
Zya's Ramblings is an interesting page written by a poet/accountant who is a Portuguese/American/Aussie going to University in Australia;
Hannah's Collection is the work of an American IT student living, studying, loving, and growing up in the Netherlands;
Indigo Blues is a page that veers from the comic to the searingly sad as this woman, cloaked in anonymity, writes openly, movingly, and beautifully about her life and struggles and hopes for the future;
Photojournaliste is a blog by a Canadian who works internationally as a photo-journalist.
Thank you all for finding me "link worthy"!
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America, etc.
I am feeling pretty damn dapper today. I have a rare victory under my belt from yesterday, and let me tell you, what I convinced the judge to do yesterday is something rarely accomplished. I am wearing a seersucker suit with an orange* and blue tie and I stopped to get my shoes shined in Grand Central Station before continuing on to work. Yes, pretty dapper indeed. I haven't worn these shoes in a long time and they are beautiful -- purchased before I had children -- monk strap shoes from J. M. Weston.
So, I was sitting there, feeling dapper and relaxed as this very nice young man from somewhere below the U.S. Southern border with Mexico (I really don't know where he was from and didn't want to ask) put a mirror shine on these shoes. (Digression: If you haven't worn your shoes in a while, get them shined, the leather needs the polish and will soak it up. Also, use shoe trees when you take your shoes off). It's an interesting feeling to sit down in Grand Central and watch the ebb and flow of the race tide as people hurry this way and that way in their haste to get to work. You sit elevated when you get your shoes shined and so you are looking down, a little, at this pageant of humanity. They have newspapers at the stand, but I am a people watcher and I prefer to watch the crowd. No startling observations to report from my crowd watching. In fact, as there were way too few attractive young women in light summer dresses to observe, I turned my thoughts to the young man shining my shoes.
He did a first rate job. Shining shoes is not complicated but it is very hard work to do right and to do it right all day long. Some people just swipe the polish on and leave a surface shine when they are finished. This fellow worked the polish into the leather of the shoe. To do that requires the application of some force. I tipped him $5 on a $3 shine when he finished and thanked him sincerely so he knew I noticed how hard he worked and that I appreciated it. Remember, the money is nice but the kind word lingers in the memory long after the money is spent.
But, I was thinking about this young man as I walked away in my shiny, spiffy shoes and I realized that there must be something still very special about this country of ours that people think it is worthwhile to cross dangerous and guarded borders to come here and shine shoes. That they will have a better life here. That they may be shining shoes today, but they will be paying someone tomorrow to shine their shoes. This is still the land of opportunity for many, many people. We may forget what a special place we live in, but look around you more carefully and I bet you can find reminders all around you of people who have risked much to live here.
This thought seems particularly appropriate today as today is the anniversary of the first vote, taken in 1776, on the Declaration of Independence. You know, the men who signed that document were courageous, don't you? That these men were marked down on British lists for execution as traitors if captured, their lands forfeit, their families thrown out onto the street. These men knew that when they signed this document what they were risking. This makes them heroes in my book because they took the risks knowingly and willingly and not in the heat of passion. Would they sign it today? Would you? Interestingly, I recall that sometime in the 80's, the Declaration was reprinted in the form of a petition and college students in Iowa (or maybe Kansas) took to the streets to ask people to sign it. Distressingly, most people did not recognize it and a startlingly high number refused to sign on the grounds that the document was too radical.
So, today, as I walk the streets of Manhattan in my dapper little suit, with my shiny shoes, I feel grateful to be an American, grateful that my ancestors took the leap of faith and got on that leaky boat in Europe and came over here, and I feel even more grateful that this is still the country which attracts those ambitious people who want to build a better life for themselves and their families. I think that as long as remain a magnet for these kinds of people, we will endure.
Anyways, that's my little thought for the morning. Thanks for reading.
* As for the orange tie, I am, perhaps, leaving myself open to being accused of making an unintentional political sartorial statement today. Today, in 1690 the army of England's Protestant King William III defeated the Roman Catholic King James II in the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland (Now celebrated on July 12 as "The Battle of the Orange" ). I intend to give all Irish bars a miss today and hope no one notices!
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The Brits are really funny
I was paging (on-line, so, maybe I was clicking) through the Spectator and came across the following description of a religious service the author attended which made me laugh and I thought I'd share it here:
To cheer myself up, I went to a Sunday service at the evangelical Anglican church, Holy Trinity Brompton. Some of my best friends are happy-clappies, so about once a year I try and fail to sit through an HTB service. This year I lasted 15 minutes. For the first 10 minutes I successfully opened my heart to the power-point projectors, acoustic guitars and expressions of ecstasy. I even held out my hands and swayed, all the while terrified that I would have a religious experience and have to go to HTB for the rest of my life. Then the priest approached the microphone. ‘I think you’ll agree with me,’ he said, ‘that God is a great guy and deserves a round of applause. C’mon, everybody, let’s give God a big clap.’ Saved again.
Now, in all seriousness, can you imagine something like that taking place in a Mosque in Pakistan?
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2004/06/30
We have a winner
All the hard work over the weekend paid off today in spades as the judge granted my motion in full after a good 45 minute oral argument. I completely turned her around from the beginning, when she said that she thought we were going to need to hold a hearing to take testimony just like the plaintiff wanted, to the end, when she said, "well, now that we've really parsed the issues it's clear that no hearing is necessary for me to decide this motion". To review, quickly, I moved to disqualify plaintiffs' lawyers on the grounds of a conflict of interest and to compel these lawyers to turn over all of the files they had since because of the conflict there could be no attorney client privilege. Oh yeah, almost forgot, I also moved to have the law firm return to the company all the legal fees they charged for this conflicted and improper representation. We had one session of argument with the judge prior to this and she allowed the other side to submit additional papers. I worked all weekend on the reply papers.
It was about as close to a complete and total victory as you can get. It's nice when the good guys win one.
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Now I'm really hungry!
Did anyone see the NY Times dining section today? Wednesdays are always my favorite newspaper days because the dining section comes out. If you share this interest of mine, I highly recommend checking out Saute Wednesday, a great food website which, among other things, links to practically all of the newspaper food sections around the country and to some international ones as well. Perusing the different sections makes for a fascinating study of regional food differences.
Today's NY Times made me hungry and, at least initially, make me regret my low-carb diet. Why? The recipe for homemade marshmallow sauce and the recipe for homemade butterscotch sauce . They also had hot fudge and other homemade ice cream toppings. I have a weak spot for butterscotch. I don't know how I will pull through without trying this recipe. I include both of these recipes below in case my wife is reading today and feels inspired!
Now, just when I thought the Times was sadistically taunting all of us low carb types with this great ice cream sauce recipe collection, they did publish a marinade for flank steak that I am going to try this weekend. I'll report back if anyone is interested.
Marshmallow Sauce
1 egg white
3/8 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 tablespoon gelatin
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
1. Place egg white in bowl of standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment, and set aside. Measure sugar, and set 3 teaspoons aside.
2. Combine remaining sugar and the corn syrup in medium saucepan with 1/4 cup water, and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to combine. Cook syrup without stirring until it reaches 240 degrees, using a candy thermometer.
3. As sugar cooks, pour 3/8 cup cold water into small saucepan, and sprinkle gelatin on it. Let stand 5 minutes. Put pan over burner on very low heat, and stir to dissolve. Do not overheat. Leave pan on warm burner.
4. Just before sugar syrup reaches 240 degrees, beat egg white on low speed until foamy. Add 1 teaspoon of reserved sugar and the salt. Increase heat to high, and continue beating, sprinkling with remaining 2 teaspoons, until medium-stiff peaks have formed. With mixer running, pour syrup into egg white. Beat on high speed 2 minutes. Add dissolved gelatin. Beat until fluffy and cool, about 5 minutes. Add vanilla. Sauce will hold at room temperature for 4 hours. After refrigeration, sauce may be heated over a double boiler until lukewarm, and beaten in a standing mixer until fluffy.
Yield: 4 cups.
Butterscotch Sauce
3 1/2 cups heavy cream
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons dark rum.
1. Pour cream into a large saucepan, and bring to a simmer over low heat. Pull saucepan almost off burner, and reduce cream until thickened and measures about 2 1/2 cups, whisking frequently, 30 minutes. Pour hot cream into 4-cup glass measurer, and set aside.
2. In the same saucepan, melt butter over low heat until foamy. Add sugars and corn syrup, and stir with wooden spoon until melted and bubbly, about 1 minute. Pour cream into saucepan, whisking constantly, until sugars have dissolved completely and sauce is smooth, about 1 minute. Remove pan from heat. Add salt, vanilla and rum. Serve warm. To reheat sauce, warm in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. Do not boil.
Yield: 3 cups.
Grilled Flank Steak
1/2 cup bourbon
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 1/2 pound flank steak.
1. In small bowl, whisk together bourbon, soy sauce and half a cup of water to make a marinade. Pour marinade into a gallon-size self-sealing food storage bag. Put steak in bag, and turn it over several times so that the entire cut is coated. Marinate in refrigerator 2 hours, turning steak once after an hour. Pour off marinade and blot steak dry with paper towels.
2. Prepare a fire in the grill. When flames have subsided and coals are glowing, grill steak 4 minutes on one side for rare, 5 minutes for medium rare. Turn steak, and grill 3 or 4 minutes more, to taste.
3. Transfer steak to a cutting board, lightly cover with aluminum foil, and let rest 5 minutes. Slice steak crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick slices.
Yield: 6 servings.
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Ethics Czar?
I saw someone reading a newspaper on the train this morning and the headline caught my eye: Soon-to-be-governor names special ethics czar. What is an ethics czar? I don't approve of the use of the word czar by our government. The definition from dictionary.com includes, besides the Emperor of Russia, the following: "A person having great power; an autocrat". I don't know when this first started, this trend towards naming government officials after the title once held by Peter the Great, but I don't care for it. How is an autocrat, no matter who styles him that, compatible with our system of representative government? It ain't. It's silly and I wish they'd stop naming people czar.
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2004/06/29
[the sound of crickets chirping]
I know it's been mighty quiet today, but I've been in and out of the office all day. A breakfast meeting with someone who is becoming a new friend, I think. That's awfully nice. He's a little younger than I am but has led quite an interesting life -- government agent to B-school to the brave world of venture cap investing. It's exciting to make new friends and I think it happens less and less often as we get older. Friendships form from shared interests or shared experiences and, as you get older, I think you may become less open to all of these things and more focused on your home and home life. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about this tendency in his brilliant book, "Democracy in America". He thought that we as Americans had a tendency to withdraw into our little fortresses and hold off the outside world. Personally, I think he was projecting a bit from his experiences growing up in France where the motto might as well be: "Strong fences make for good neighbors". Although, that didn't work as well as they liked, of course, with the strongest fence they ever built -- the Maginot Line (caution, this link is to a real Time Suck of the Day site). He also thought that community democracy as practiced through the concept of "self interest properly understood" was the only saving grace which could pull us out of our caves. I love Tocqueville. I think he was a genius. He was also only 26 when he wrote that book. I felt quite depressed when I got to 26 and had not managed an equivalent accomplishment.
Someone wrote that you should never apologize for not blogging. I don't really understand why that would be, but so be it. I'm not apologizing for not blogging today. Instead, I regret that I was not able to blog. I was thinking about it while I was waiting for the judge to call our case in the bankruptcy court today and I was looking around the courtroom trying to imagine the interior lives of the other people. This, to some extent, is a reflection of my interior life. I have to think everyone has one. I just don't know how rich it is. Do they reflect on things as they happen? Do they question their observations? Or is it all one long variation of reality television for them? Something not at all like "all the worlds a stage and I am just a player" because they remain too passive and don't even rise to the level of a player? You follow me, right? I suppose everyone has dreams, but do they critically examine their dreams or are the dreams just disconnected images of nice cars and swish clothes purchased with that lucky lottery ticket? What were the people in court thinking about today? Their dry cleaning? The next case? It's a total mystery to me. I'm glad I have this, though. It makes me happy to write and happy to reflect. It forces a discipline on my own meandering process of reflection which I think can only redound to my benefit. It's also a creative outlet in a career where creative writing takes a mighty big back seat to persuasive writing.
I mentioned in a comment that I'd post an example of a snarky line I included in a brief this weekend. It was in reference to a motion I was working on -- and am going to argue to the court tomorrow -- to disqualify opposing counsel on the grounds that they are engaged in a conflicted representation, having represented my client in the very recent past and are now suing my client. As Canadian counsel asked me, are you allowed to do that in NY because we certainly can't in Canada? No, I told him, we cannot either. In the affirmation in opposition put in by opposing counsel, she discusses how she met her current client, the plaintiff, in connection with the representation of a another client seeking capital financing which that client unsuccessfully pursued through the plaintiff. It occurred to me that opposing counsel just violated another disciplinary rule by disclosing without permission, confidential information concerning the representation of a prior client. Look at it like this, would you like your lawyer putting into publically filed documents that you Mr. Joe Smith had been turned down for a mortgage and credit cards? This was the equivalent, it seemed to me. She had also revealed client confidences of my client in her papers. So, I referred the court to this gratuitous piece of information, and asked, "Has this law firm ever met a client confidence it felt compelled to keep?" There, you just read a lot of text to get to one snarky line. I hope it was not a disappointment.
Wish me luck for argument tomorrow. I feel very good about it now. That could change in a heartbeat tomorrow.
The title is meant as a reference to the sound you might have heard if you pulled up the blog today and found. . .nothing. At least, until now.
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2004/06/28
The Power of a Kind Word
Sorry so quiet today. Not feeling the blogging mojo so much, I guess. I was here all weekend working on a reply to papers I was served with at 4:45 on Friday evening. (Go ahead, you know you want to say it: prick!) I put in two over ten hour days this weekend and have it totally turned around on my honorable adversary (read: the prick). I sent my draft papers in reply (a memorandum of law, an affirmation for me to sign, and an affidavit for the client) to my client for his review and comments and he called me and said:
"You know, when we spoke on Friday after you saw their papers, you sounded kind of glum and when I read their papers I thought we had a real problem. Well, I read your reply and I cannot believe how you turned it around in just two days. You did a great job, I'm really impressed."
And just like that, the tiredness fell away and I was re-charged and re-energized to fight the good fight.
A little appreciation, and a kind word, can go a looooong way (I type this as I am still drinking from Saturday's open can of Diet Coke and not even minding it much).
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Today in History
Today in history is full of interesting things. In:
*1778 Mary Ludwig Hayes "Molly Pitcher" aids American patriots
*1820 Tomato is proven nonpoisonous
*1838 Britain's Queen Victoria crowned in Westminster Abbey
*1905 Russian sailors mutiny aboard the battleship "Potemkin"
And, I must confess I did not know this and am struck by the coincidence, if it was,
*1914 Assassination of the heir to the throne of Austria, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia, in Sarajevo by a Serbian Nationalist,Gavrilo Princip. This incident precipitated a war with Serbia, eventually starting WW I (note, they just found the pistol used in that assassination)
-and-
*1919 Treaty of Versailles ending WW I signed
In between the assassination and the treaty, a grand total of:
*65,038,810 people were mobolized;
*8,538,315 of whom were killed;
*21,219,452 of whom were wounded;
*7,750,919 of whom were taken prisoner or were missing; and,
*37,508,686 of whom constitute total casualties.
*57.6% of those mobilized were casualties.
source for above figures.
Is it no wonder that it was called the War to End All Wars?
* * *
Finally, and on a lighter note, we have some birthdays:
*1577 Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish Baroque painter (Circumcision)
*1712 Jean Jacques Rousseau, social contractor (Confessions)
*1902 Richard Rodgers, composer (Rodgers & Hammerstein) who I mentioned here before.
*1926 Mel Brooks comedian/actor/director (Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs)
*1946 Gilda Radner, comedienne (SNL-Baba Wawa)
*1966 John Cusack actor (Stand By Me, Sure Thing, Better Off Dead)
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2004/06/27
Two funny things from the girl child tonight
1. As we were discussing an upcoming event, I asked, rhetorically, "If not now, when?" only to hear from the girl child -- "Thursday". It's as good an answer as any.
2. The doorbell rang and it was the local Democratic Party chief looking for the previous owners of our house. My daughter and I answered the door. I explained that the previous owners had moved and he looked at us and said to my daughter, "so, are you a democrat?" And my little 3 1/2 year old looked back at him and just said, "no". He was nonplussed and that ended the conversation. I swear I did not coach her before hand and I managed not to laugh. But I did find it very funny.
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Declaration of Independence Exhibit
There is a very interesting looking exhibit at the NY Public Library, main branch at 41st and Fifth, on the Declaration of Independence. The Library is displaying the copy of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson's hand, several other landmark versions of the document, early newspaper printings, and a letter from Benjamin Franklin to George Washington. This handwritten copy by Thomas Jefferson is one of only two complete copies known to be in existence. I'm going to definitely get over to check it out. Anyone want to come see it with me?
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My problem with gay pride parades
It's probably not what you think. The Gay Pride Parade is going on right outside my office and the music totally rocks. I LOVE the gay house/dance music. Seriously, I go buy the Gay Pride CD every year down in Chelsea. How the hell do these people expect me to be able to concentrate on the memorandum of law I am drafting for submission to the Court on Tuesday (for argument on Wednesday) with this excellent, get up out of seat and dance, music pounding away just steps from my building? The music is killing my concentration! And it makes me want to get down there, join in, cheer, and "stand by my man"!!!
Let's hear it for gay marriage! All of you other Republicans who want to join me on this issue, come on out of your closets, so to speak!
Update: Now, I wanna be, a macho man.
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2004/06/25
S'mores
I have big plans tonight. We are keeping the kids up late and taking them over for a beach bonfire and s'mores party. My daughter has never had one but grasped the concept immediately upon explanation. I told her that you take graham crackers and chocolate and marshmallows and you melt them. And she chimed in, "and then you eat it, right?" She is very excited. And she should be. We will, of course, have to restrain the boy child in a stroller during the bonfire as it seems like a less than ideal time to teach him the old, fire-hot lesson. Sounds like fun, no? I also think it sounds like something right out of the 1950's, but that's ok. I like the idea of wholesome and old fashioned.
And you can't beat the beauty of sugar-rush, past their bedtime, over stimulated whining. And I mean me, of course.
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Thoughts about Detroit
My post below, with the great pictures of the Old Penn Station in NY, got me to thinking back to the days when I used to spend weeks at a time in Detroit, MI on depositions. While taking taxi rides to and from airport, I would pass the time looking out the window for snipers. And that's when I saw this building, Detroit's Abandoned Michigan Central Station. It sits all by itself with nothing around it. It is a magnificent looking structure. You should check out the pictures in the link. Here is an old postcard of the building. And here is another excellent site with two fascinating photo essays, one called either Joy Road or Easter and the other the Detroit Train Station. Detroit was a very scary place. We spent very little time outside in the city itself. We'd go from hotel to office and back and eat all of our meals at the hotel. A large part of the time there, we stayed at the Detroit Athletic Club, which was this magnificent palace, as you can see from the link.
There was one day, however, when I had nothing to do and so I took myself off to the Detroit Institute of Art. Remember, if you will, that Detroit had a lot of money at one point and citizens who wanted Detroit to be able to hold its head up high in comparison to Chicago, for instance. Result? The DIA. This was a nice collection, as I recall some almost 10 years later. The real treasure there is Rivera Court , a series of murals painted by Diego Rivera showing the industrial process of the creation of cars. I could not find a link to Rivera Court at the DIE site and have, instead, linked to the museum store. But I did find this cool photo archive of Rivera at the DIE with views of him creating and showing his murals.
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Architecture -- today in history
Today is the anniversary of the murder, in 1906, of architect Stanford White. White, the most prominent architect of his day, was shot in Madison Square Garden, which he designed, by Harry Thaw. Thaw was the playboy / jealous husband of Evelyn Nesbit, a dancer. Let's look back, shall we?
This website has a rather long and detailed account of the murder. White was a notorious womanizer. Thaw was the son of a mining and rail road baron from Pittsburgh and was the heir apparent to that fortune. Thaw was also considered to be mentally unstable for most of his life. The trial that followed the murder was dubbed the "trial of the century" and the court-room was packed. I suppose it was the OJ trial of its day. There were fantastic allegations of drugged champagne, girls swinging on velvet swings, illicit sex (and isn't that the best kind?), and other scandalous and shocking revelations about high society. Thaw got off on insanity grounds. The movie, Ragtime, was based on these events.
One site has eleven of the great Stanford White buildings online, if you are curious.
White's firm designed the old Pennsylvania Railroad Station in New York, pictures of which can be found here. As you can see from the photos, it was magnificent. It was torn down in 1963. The destruction of Penn Station led to the formation of the historical preservation movement in NY and was directly responsible for the creation of the Landmarks Commission.
P.S. While poking around, I came across this link to Lands End, a White house for sale on the Gold Coast of Long Island.
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Today in History, Military Edition
On this day in …
* 1876, Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana;
* 1942, some 1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany, during World War II; and,
* 1950, war broke out in Korea as forces from the communist North invaded the South.
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Quite a car
I saw an Aston Martin Vanquish this morning tooling down Madison Avenue. It made my head spin around. I did not drool, however. I have some pride, you know. Still, this is quite a piece of machinery. If you are curious, the cheapest one they list under their certified pre-owned program was just below pounds sterling 120,000. The thing is, I bet it actually costs a lot more than that in England because I suspect taxes on beasts like this are quite high.
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2004/06/24
50 Great Novels?
I came across a very interesting post about 50 Great Novels at the site, a fistful of euros. I was struck by how few of the authors I knew. The list was compiled by a large German newspaper and many of the authors are German, of course. Still, it was a thoughtful post and an interesting insight into another culture's view of great literature. I recommend going to check it out.
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More Architecture and More Archeology!
This morning's reading was a veritable trove of good stuff today. Ok, two articles may not make a trove, but why quibble on such a beautiful morning?
The famous horde of Bactrian gold has been brought back out of hiding in Afghanistan. In the late 70's, a joint team of Russian and Afghani archaeologists discovered "20,600 pieces of gold jewelry, funeral ornaments and personal belongings from 2,000-year-old burial mounds". Everyone thought that this gold was lost under the Taliban, who had a habit of destroying the Afghani past and heritage. You can see a picture here of how beautiful the workmanship was.
As for architecture, we travel now to Ohio, to see an entire community of Frank Lloyd Wright inspired houses. I'd never heard of this community before, but you should follow the link and check out the pictures. I gather that the Ohio community was an offshoot of the one Utopian Community that FLW himself planned in Pleasantville, NY. Here and here are some other links to information about the Westchester community.
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Look. See.
What's the difference? The difference is being open and willing to become engaged by what you are looking at it. Most of the time, we look but don't see. Last night, coming home on the train, I saw. It just lasted a moment, but I saw. I'll try to describe what I saw.
I was on the train. We had passed over the bridge going from Manhattan to the Bronx and were entering this little canyon where the tracks are depressed and the walls on either side are high. I happened to look up out of the window for a moment and I saw a building, all alone, with nothing else around it. It was silhouetted against the sky. It was brick painted a tan or beige color, probably about 8 stories high, maybe 10. It was at an angle to me so that I was looking at its corner. And it was set against the sky, all alone. The sky was like thirty different shades of blue, streaked by some small clouds floating here and there. All of those shades of blue melded together into a blue that was achingly perfect and made more perfect by the small imperfections of the clouds. And this building thrust itself up against this perfect sky and looked, maybe because of the position of the angle or because of the juxtaposition of the three basic colors, two dimensional. It was like a painting.
The train moved on and it was evanescent. I think I gasped quietly at the perfection of that moment. I hope I conveyed it here.
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2004/06/23
The youngest member of the NY Bar
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the youngest member of the New York Bar, my daughter, aged three and a half. Last night, I came home to hear that she had behaved very, very poorly. I told her that I was sad to hear that she had done all of these things and asked for an explanation. She said the following in reply to me: "First, you were at work so how do you know what I did?"
Something along the lines of, "you can't prove a thing, counselor". I'm so proud. Sort of.
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"A Global Power Shift in the Making"
This article, A Global Power Shift in the Making, caught my eye today. Most of the time, I think that I have been more concerned about the threat to our way of life posed by the Islamisist movement and the idea of global economic realignment has been flying a bit under the radar for me. This article brought it out into the open for me very well by examining growth rates and Asia-specific tensions. I had all of the pieces floating around in my head, but the author brought them all together for me. I don't know that I agree with all of his assertions, but it is a thoughtful and interesting essay. Let me know what you think.
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Tiny New York
I was looking for a little something on Sniffen Court here in NYC and I came across this link to Forgotten Alleys in New York. Sniffen Court is a cool little enclave of buildings in the East 30's. When I went through the places they listed, I noticed that they left out Pomander Walk, so I did a quick search and found this link from the same site which has a picture of Pomander Walk. I loved Pomander Walk when we lived on the Upper West Side. The neighborhood was a bit dodgy then but it seemed like such a romantic place to live.
P.S. Here's a link to an apartment for sale on Pomander Walk.
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Odd historical artifact turns up
This is just sort of a weird historical footnote that people might find interesting. The pistol used to assassinate Arch-Duke Ferdinand has been found in Austria. As you all know, this killing was the spark that started WW I.
I didn't know it was missing in the first place.
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Tell me he's kidding
This website has to be a joke, right? He's not serious, is he? He's counting down to her 18th birthday? Why?
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Archeological find in Norway
They have dug up some interesting artifacts in Stavanger. The find includes Women's jewelry, a spinning wheel, a bowl-shaped silver-plated bronze buckle, and an amber pearl. Amber is something that you see a lot of coming from the Baltic region so this would be an indication of trade patterns, perhaps.
The oddest statement was made concerning a piece of stiffened pine resin which the project leader speculates was used as chewing gum: "All of us have tried to chew on stiffened pine resin at one time or another". All of us? We have? I must have been absent that day.
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2004/06/22
Showcase of new blogs
Simon is running a Showcase of New Blogs. People are being invited to send him posts from blogs which are under three months old for his consideration. My blog is young enough to qualify. I thought I'd ask my readers to send him a post that they particularly liked, assuming there are any, because I'm not sure I can choose. If you'd like to, pick the link and send it as follows:
Submissions
If you want to submit a post please title the email "Showcase entry" and include the following information in the email:
1. Your blog's name and URL
2. Your post's title and permalink
3. An excerpt or precis of the post for me to put up here to tempt people to read and link to your site.
4. Your name and a contact email address (for verification purposes only)
If there are particular requests you have, please include it in the email and I will do my best to accomodate them. Please try and include all this information as I don't have the time to go hunting for it.
The email address is simon[at]showcase[dot]mu[dot]nu
Thanks, in advance, to anyone who wants to submit anything to Simon from my blog.
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Three other articles from the NY Times today
Three other articles caught my attention today and I wanted to share them with you.
The first was about a young man who came here from Vietnam with nothing, got a job in a hardware store, put himself through Hunter College with a 3.96 GPA and is headed off to a doctoral program at Harvard in September. This was the American story and illustrates why we are still a draw for so many in the world. It is still true that you can realize your ambitions in America. It made me happy to see that what worked for my family is working for his.
The second story is about the other side of immigration. It is about the women who cook for illegal Mexican immigrants on Long Island. The women provide these men with a taste of home and a shoulder to cry on as the men, packed three to a bedroom and a dozen to a house, chase their piece of the American dream. The difference between these men and the young Vietnamese boy above? Education and language skills. The drive to succeed is the same.
Finally, this story made me very sad and I decided not to ever buy an SUV. A man in Long Island ran over and killed his 2 year old daughter on Father's Day. He didn't see her behind the SUV. The article says these accidents are more common with SUV's than with other cars. I wonder how this man will live with himself or whether he will commit suicide. The guilt and grief must be more than any one person can stand.
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Bad bosses
There was an interesting article in the NY Times today about bullying bosses. Have you ever had a boss who was a bully ("BB")? I have. I still do, in fact. My BB is named Stinky, because he is English and he doesn't always wash enough. So if you get real close to him at depositions, for instance, it'll break your concentration. Stinky is a bully. One associate who used to work here, and that reminds me that I owe her a call, used to throw up in the morning before coming to work on the days that she had to work with Stinky. On the days I worked with him, in the beginning, I used to come home from work, take a beer out of the fridge, sit down in the big, black comfy chair and not speak for about 20 minutes or so. Not one word until I was able to let the bad place go. I've seen three other associates quit rather than continue to work with him.
One associate, R, liked it. He became a mini-Stinky until the other associates practically slapped him upside the head. The article discusses this phenomenon, too.
The article also says that there is insufficient data about workers confronting their BB's. Well, I confronted him a couple of times. The first was in the beginning when he told me that I seemed to have a problem with his criticism and I told him that I did not have a problem being criticized, but the "manner in which he did it was positively lacerating". With that, he turned and walked out of my office and did not speak again to me for weeks. It was bliss. I'm still not sure why that was such a horrible thing to say, but it worked.
Stinky has class problems. He brought them with him from the England in the early 60's where he grew up in a large Irish-Catholic family in London when, I bet, it wasn't so easy to be Irish-Catholic in England. He claims to have no class problems at all. Untrue. Let me give you an example. I said something to him, not that long ago, and said, "that was not criticism" and he snorted and said, "how could it be? You are an associate and I am a partner, you couldn't criticize me". See what I mean? That's a social position/class issue in my mind.
Stinky also has this faux-hail-fellow-well-met persona. You never know if he's actually angry with you or just in a good mood. That keeps you off balance and guessing.
I dislike working with him and I hate reporting to him when I have to. He is one of the big reasons I don't think I want to become a partner here.
I'm not taking this much further today down memory lane with him because almost none of them are good.
Have any of you had BB experiences? I bet you have.
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Envy?
Envy is an ugly and destructive emotion. Most of the time I am free of it. One person, upon reading this post of mine from yesterday asked why I was envious of my friend. So, I went back to re-read my post to see if I did convey envy. I don't think I did. Was it a model of clarity? No and I acknowledge that at the end. I do not envy my friend his success. He has worked very, very hard for it and made sacrifices I would be unwilling to make. Indeed, I turned down a job offer doing criminal fraud prosecutions for the Department of Justice, pretty close to my dream position, because travel would have been a minimum of 50% of the time. That price was too high for me to pay and that sacrifice of never seeing my children was too great to make. He's paying that price every day.
So, no envy here. I instead am using my friend's career as a yard stick to measure my own against and I felt that it comes up a bit short. I think that my friend seems to have more options than I do right now. As I said, I'm feeling a bit trapped at the moment. This happens periodically and probably means that I need a vacation.
Still, there was a job opening I saw yesterday for my wife's skill set in New Zealand and I have to admit that I asked her to apply. . .
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2004/06/21
Tha Shizzolator
This was funny. Go here and type in a url, like maybe a blog address, and check it out as Snoop'll "traaanslate it from tha shizzle to da shiznit". Official government websites come across as interesting, too. Hat tip to Amber who left us this little offering while she recharges on a short vacation. Thanks, Amber!
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Cool concept
Came across an interesting article on Jewish World Review today, which I though I'd share with you. It's about how to get deals in new computer equipment. Among the helpful suggestions was this little gem, a listing of the websites which aggregate the special promotional codes used at various websites. If you don't feel like following the link, here it is:
Secret codes. Most online merchants provide an opportunity during the checkout process to enter a promotional code. Type it in and your total amount is automatically reduced, or you might get free shipping. Think of these codes as you would a coupon or gift certificate.
Getting those promotional codes is easy so long as you know where to look. Here are some Web sites that list codes and online coupons:
*CurrentCodes
*CoolSavings
*DealCatcher
*eDealFinder
*DealHunting
*Hot Deals Web
*BargainDog
These sites get the codes from retailers looking for free advertising. Promotional codes are distributed by the retailers to improve sales. Many regular customers of these stores get the codes by e-mail or regular mail. The retailers hope that by stealthily "leaking" promotional codes, their marketing efforts will expand as recipients pass the information on to friends. Tip: These companies are going to add your e-mail address to marketing lists. If you don't want to end up with a lot of junk e-mail, create a new, free e-mail account at www.yahoo.com or www.hotmail.com that you use when visiting these sites.
By the way, Jewish World Review is an interesting website/news letter. It collects and publishes interesting essays on current affairs and politics. It has a conservative bent. It's a daily glance for me.
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Life's Progression
If you read below, you'll see that I had a lengthy dinner with a dear, old friend Friday night. It got me thinking about the progression of life, about our movement through things. Up to now, most of our progress has been about preparation. We've been to school and maybe taken graduate degrees. We've studied, we've trained, and we've spent the first 21 years or so of our lives doing it. Then, we were set free to wreak havoc on the workforce, to find our way. To apply our training and our studies. To learn to live on our own. The living on our own part is interesting to me, too, because for the first couple of years it feels like you're playing house. That continues for years.
This is the growing process, post school. This is what we are probably at the end of now. I say probably because it will be only with the benefit of hindsight that I will be able to say whether I had it right or whether I was just being self-importantly pretentious. Probably a combination of the two.
Are you happy about where you are in the progression? I feel as if I am not nearly accomplished enough. I read today in the NY Law Journal that Columbia University Law School has appointed a new dean to head up the place. He's 35. One year younger than me. Ouch. Things like that make me reevaluate my own progression and I am not thrilled with how I am measuring up of late. I'm feeling a bit stuck. Stuck in NY, stuck in my job, stuck in my career. I think I'd like an adventure. Indeed, I encouraged my wife to post for a job in San Francisco, even though I am not admitted in California.
My old friend also makes me feel stuck. He's lived all over Europe practicing law. I feel as if he too is doing more and more varied interesting things than I am. I want a change.
Sometimes, by the way, it can be hard to perform this type of analysis. I'll share a little story with you by way of explanation. My wife and I were at a dinner on Thursday night and someone said that they thought I looked a good ten years younger than I really am. I was surprised by this and asked my wife about it later. She said that she couldn't really judge because to her I always kind of look 17. So, it can be difficult to use the people around you as a mirror.
Sorry about the rambling nature of this post. I guess my thoughts are not too well organized on this topic. That means I'll probably come back to it, but I did want to at least start the conversation. Have to start somewhere, right?
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Today in History
The Constitution of the United States of America came into effect today in 1788 as the 9th State, New Hampshire, ratified it. Cool, huh?
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Cute turn of phrase
My daughter mangled a turn of phrase Saturday night. She wanted another cashew before being packed off to bed. She looked at me and said, "Can I have another one for the street?" That was much cuter than, "one for the road".
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Old friends
My wife and I met a dear old friend for drinks and dinner on Friday night. I have known B (my friend's initial) since we were about two years old. Longer, in other words, than I have known my sister. His father was a Norwegian diplomat and his mother is the person who introduced me to my wife. It's been about a year since I last saw him. He lives in Vienna, Austria now and is a lawyer for a multi-national American company. He travels too much, I think, but he enjoys the work. I'll have to share some of his stories about Moscow.
This is a unique friendship for me. We've lived apart more than we've lived together. There were some years together in Boston and later in NY. We were never living in Europe at the same time. But it never mattered. This is the type of cliche friendship where it seems like yesterday even if it was more than a year. We've gotten better about staying in touch together as we've gotten older and the one time it was ever awkward was when we once let it go for seven or eight years before seeing each other again. That awkwardness probably lasted for all of a half an hour. This time was no different. There was no pause, no problem, we just picked it right back up from where we were last time. The comfort derived from such an encounter, when you have shared experiences and shared memories with another dearly loved person dating back more than 30 years must be the psychic equivalent of slipping into a warm and gravity free bath. You are comforted and upheld and relieved of all stress. You know that there is probably nothing you can say to offend this person or make him think less of you. You have the ultimate security leavened with about a million old stories that you and he can pull out, and retell, and savor again. Sure, the fish may get bigger in the retelling, but you still recognize it. We've also lived through a lot of bad times together and supported each other through them. We even went through puberty together. We had the life altering conversations that you have to have with these kinds of friends. We've lived together a couple of times. Hell, he even moved in with us once or twice when relationships went bad.
We laughed and ate and drank through at least two sittings at this restaurant on Friday. It was bliss. It's always this way when we get together. We hung out for five hours together. You know what? Not enough time. Never is, really.
I miss him already.
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While you wait
While I keep you waiting for something substantive, I give you this Ugly Pregnant Prom Dress to marvel at. It was emailed to me by a friend who takes great delight in such perversities.
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2004/06/18
Today in History
Interesting fact. Today, in 1815, the battle of Waterloo was fought. An interesting link can be found here, where you can see the Turner painting of the battle and, if you scroll down, a great description of the battle. Here is another description of the battle which, while the author describes it as slimmed down, is relatively comprehensive.
By the way, also today, in 1812, the U.S. declared war against Great Britain in the War of 1812.
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Unemployed prostitutes in Norway
Too much supply and not enough demand for prostitutes in Norway cause them to take it on the road. What's the problem? Cheaper imported woman from the former Eastern-bloc countries are pricing the Norwegian prostitutes out of the market. Interesting application of market force.
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Too pissed off to post
Sorry to all of you who dropped by yesterday looking for something new. I was too pissed off to post yesterday after oral argument in front of a judge who was not prepared to the argument. As it turns out, it wasn't entirely her fault, as the clerk stamped over the front of my motion and obscured a portion of the relief I'd requested. It started out like this:
Court: Mr. RP, I don't understand why you think you are entitled to get all of the files and papers from the other law firm.
Me: Because the Court of Appeals says I am, your Honor. (For you non-NY lawyer types, the Court of Appeals is the highest court in the state).
It sort of went downhill from there until she figured out that she had not known what I was asking for in my motion.
Before that, though, the attorney for the plaintiff pretty much lied to the Court about the extent of his firm's activities. This was a motion to disqualify his firm from continuing to represent the plaintiff against the defendant because this firm had represented both parties at one point. That's a big no. In any event, my opponent way underplayed what they had done for my client.
At the time my opponent was speaking, the court room was fairly noisy as the attorneys who were waiting their turn for argument were chatting. When my opponent finished, I got to go. I may have been a little more dramatic, but I had outrage on my side. When I finished my presentation, I noticed that you could hear a pin drop in the court room.
Unfortunately, she gave the other side extra time to brief the issues. I, of course, get extra time to reply. And that is why I was so pissed. This should have just been submitted. The other side should not have been given another bite at that apple.
That said, an older lawyer once warned me that you should be extra cautious when a judge grants all of your smaller applications leading up to an ultimate resolution. He or she may just be creating an appeal proof record. I hope that is what is happening here.
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Great lyricists
In honor of the birthday, today in 1913, of Sammy Cahn lyricist (3 Coins in a Fountain), I thought I might list a few of my favorite lyricists. I have a lot of them. I am a great fan of the golden age of Broadway and I can sing along to most of the musicals. The old musicals, not the new ones. So, who makes my list?
*Johnny Mercer, of course
*Irving Berlin
*Cole Porter
*Frank Loesser
*Ira and George Gershwin
*Lorenz Hart
*Oscar Hammerstein
*Stephen Sondheim
*Alan Jay Lerner
*Jerome Kern
*Harold Arlen
*Richard Rodgers
*George M. Cohan
Ella Fitzgerald does songbooks of many of the above. I love all of them unreservedly.
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2004/06/16
Comments and Civility
I received an off topic comment from Ivan last night which I thought merited a longer response than normal. He noticed that I had posted a comment on another website, where he had also commented, and he asks: "Is it just me or is the average level of discourse extremely acrimonious [on that site]? Yours and Erins are light years ahead in civility imho."
First, thank you for your comment, the compliment, and for putting me in Erin's company.
Civility has gone by the boards in some of what passes for web based discourse. Too many people take shelter in their anonymity and snipe away. Happily that has not occurred here or on Erin's board, as Ivan points out. Why is that? Beats me. I feel fortunate in the people who choose to come to read my offerings leave comments that are well written and thoughtful. No one here, yet, has left a comment for the purpose of trying to show just how much smarter he or she is than me or the other readers. That kind of person is a bore. So far, no bores here. They do exist on other boards. In fact, some of you may remember that I got banned from another blog for disagreeing with the author. I did it politely but even polite disagreement was too much for that fragile soul and she banned me. I blogged about that experience here. I welcome people to disagree with me but my momma raised me right, even if it almost killed her, and I doubt that I'd tolerate people attacking each other or being rude here.
Finally, when I leave comments on other people's boards, I try to re-read the comment before I post it. I often go back and tone things down. Maybe that's all that's needed on that other site. Or, maybe, people are too busy trying to impress each other.
Either way, I'm grateful and thankful for the intelligent readers who visit and comment here. Thanks!
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Some words to contemplate
Today, in 1858, after being chosen as the Republican candidate for the upcoming U.S. Senate election, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous speech: "A house divided against itself cannot stand".
I reproduce here, some of what he said, because I find it moving and rousing and beautiful and because there is still something we can learn from it today. This is the conclusion of the speech:
Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends-those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work-who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all them to falter now?-now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail-if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.
I am struck by the parallels to the current war on terror. We need the same national cohesion and steadfastness of purpose Lincoln called for so that, for us, victory is sure to come. I hope we can find it somewhere.
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A gift
I have received a very nice gift from Catherine at unrequited narcissism (thanks again, Catherine!). She passed along to me an invitation to establish a GMail account. This is the email service that Google has just started. If you'd care to email me there, the address is "randomjd at gmail dot com". I'm curious to see how the thing works. The premise is that Google will provide you with 1000 MB of space in return for which you agree to accept that their computers will scan your incoming email and, based on word recognition, place advertisements for you to read along the margin when you open that email. Privacy advocates are, as expected, in quite a snit. I have no problem with it since I consider email to be the electronic equivalent of a postcard anyway. By which I mean, everyone can read your email just like everyone can read the back of the postcard. Your employer probably does or at least can do it. So, if you don't want your email coming back to haunt you, treat it like a postcard and put nothing that could embarrass you on it.
And as one my clients can't seem to learn, don't send drunken emails to your former employer telling them, in detail, what you perceive their sexual inadequacies to be. Friends don't let friends write drunk.
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A guilty pleasure read
I just whipped through The Devil Wears Prada. I was curious about it and it was about $7 at Costco. I was willing to take a chance for $7 since you pay more than that in NYC to go to the movies. This was not a good book. It was not well written. It did not sketch a reasonably good explanation for how the protagonist let herself become so totally submerged to the point where her ego became almost zilch. In fact, almost none of the characters were well developed. If you don't know about the book, it's a thinly veiled fictional account of the time the author spent as the personal assistant to Anna Wintour at Vogue. (Another excuse for reading this, by the way, is that I represent a former employee of Vogue in litigation with the publication and its corporate parent). So, basically, the book as a book really sucked.
That said, it was an amusing, light, easy read and a perfect guilty pleasure. Take it to the beach. If it gets wet, no big loss.
If you're still reading, let me give you a link to a very interesting review of the book that I found from the National Review. It contains a great little dig at the NY Times for savaging the book based on at least one totally self-interested reviewer.
UPDATE: John Bruce kindly points out that the National Review link doesn't work. Let me instead give you this link to a Google search which should bring up, as the first result, the National Review article which you can go to from the Google search page.
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Happy Bloomsday!
Today is the 100th anniversary of the travels of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's famous work, Ulysses. It will be celebrated at Symphony Space and if you happen to be in NY and can get up there, it looks like it will be a lot of fun as more than 100 actors read selections from Ulysses, including performances by Frank McCourt, Malachy McCourt, Stephen Colbert and Fionnula Flanagan as Molly Bloom.
Sadly, I will slave away here and miss it.
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China
I came across a startling assertion in the NY Times last night on my way home from work and I have not been able to get it out of my mind. Let me put it in context first, I'm sure you are all aware that China is in the midst of a super hot economic boom. Not news to anybody following the papers, right? In fact, all of the discussion of late has been about how China is going to try to slow the expansion down, to create a soft landing without bringing the whole thing down like a pack of cards. As I said, I've been aware of this been perhaps did not fully understand the significance of the boom. That changed last night. The article in the Times was about the building of a new opera house, or something like it, and the reporter noted that since 2000, floor space in China has doubled. This was without reference to any statistic or any support, but, taking it at face value anyway, this is staggering! I cannot really wrap my mind around it. They doubled the size of the entire built environment in 3.5 years! Can anyone really comprehend the significance of that? No wonder they want to cool things down. How can anything continue at that pace?
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2004/06/15
Magna Carta
I want to chat about Magna Carta (the Great Charter), signed today in 1215 by King John at Runnymede. Well, I did want to chat about it, but I don't think I can improve much on what the British Library has to say about it:
Magna Carta is often thought of as the corner-stone of liberty and the chief defence against arbitrary and unjust rule in England. In fact it contains few sweeping statements of principle, but is a series of concessions wrung from the unwilling King John by his rebellious barons in 1215. However, Magna Carta established for the first time a very significant constitutional principle, namely that the power of the king could be limited by a written grant.
King John's unsuccessful attempts to defend his dominions in Normandy and much of western France led to oppressive demands on his subjects. Taxes were extortionate; reprisals against defaulters were ruthless, and John's administration of justice was considered capricious. In January 1215 a group of barons demanded a charter of liberties as a safeguard against the King's arbitrary behaviour. The barons took up arms against John and captured London in May 1215.
By 10 June both parties met and held negotiations at Runnymede, a meadow by the River Thames. The concessions made by King John were outlined in a document known as the 'Articles of the Barons', to which the King's great seal was attached, and on 19 June the barons renewed their oaths of allegiance to the King. Meanwhile the royal chancery produced a formal royal grant, based on the agreements reached at Runnymede, which became known as Magna Carta (Latin for the 'Great Charter').
I would like to add this, though. Prior to the signature of this document, it was understood that the Kings ruled by divine right given from God. Upon the signature of the Magna Carta, the divine right of Kings was curtailed by Man. The significance of this development cannot be overstated and should be evident to all.
While you are at the British Library web site, assuming you've followed the link, I highly recommend taking a moment and exploring the treasures of the British Library. There are some fascinating things there.
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Time Suck of the Day
Been awhile since I posted a good time suck, but I give you the Postmodernism Essay Generator. It will give you a different postmodern essay filled with the finest in scholarly gobbledygook with every visit or every time you hit refresh.
Jut think, you may get a gem like this:
If one examines the pretextual paradigm of discourse, one is faced with a choice: either reject the posttextual paradigm of reality or conclude that reality is unattainable, given that Debord's essay on the pretextual paradigm of discourse is invalid. However, the subject is contextualised into a capitalist materialism that includes consciousness as a whole. The characteristic theme of Bailey's[1] analysis of neostructuralist depatriarchialism is not discourse, but subdiscourse. From "Expressions of Futility: Dialectic narrative, feminism and the pretextual paradigm of discourse", by Hans Tilton and Stefan D. de Selby.
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Elevator etiquette
Up and down all day long in a small cabinet the size of two or three old fashioned telephone booths. If you are lucky, you have the place to yourself for the trip. If not lucky, you've caught the local on the way down and it feels as if you've stopped on every floor for someone to get on or for someone to hold the door open until it buzzes while they're waiting for their friend to catch up.
What button is worn down to the plastic cover on an elevator in NY? The "close door" button. Not the open door, the close. In fact, you regularly hit the close door button before you push your desired floor button. Helps to keep the rif-raf out, don't you know.
What happens if you end up in the local -- crowded or otherwise? The etiquette is interesting. First, the make up of the cabin helps determine the etiquette. Perhaps your fellow travelers include the nice woman from the African country UN Mission a couple of floors up. Well, then you chat with her in French. You discuss only the weather. Nothing more, nothing less. You hope you do not see her more than once in a day. If you do see her, hope that the weather has changed in the meantime. Maybe the elevator contains the mailman or the FEDEX guy. These guys you say hello to. You know them and it's important to be friendly. To them, a quick word about sports is in order.
Then you may have a cabin filled with strangers. What do you do then? Again, while it depends on the kind of stranger, you can't go wrong following the general Urinal Rule. Men will be familiar with this rule. The Urinal Rule means you look only down or up and never to the side. Translated for the elevator, you look only at the floor indicator as it changes or down at your watch or keys or shoes. No eye contact. Do not check out the young woman no matter how little clothing she may be fashionably almost wearing. Not polite and probably even vaguely threatening to her when she's locked up with you in that small space. Try to tune out other people's cell phone calls or conversations. The exception is the messenger. The messenger always wants to talk. Maybe he doesn't get a lot of human interaction. Whatever the explanation, he'll want to pass the time of the ride in conversation of sorts. Indulge him. It's safer that way.
The thing I've noticed the most though is that when strangers are thrust into close proximity with each other in a confined spot like an elevator cabin in a big city, mostly, they all pretend that no one else is in there with them. They pretend so hard, that they are clearly acknowledging the other people.
It's odd. But at least, usually, it smells better that the urinal.
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2004/06/14
Mural desecrated in France
A mural, painted by Jewish children deported by the Nazis during WW II was desecrated in France. This makes me sad. First, the Nazis took these children from their parents and sent them to a transit camp. While at the camp, I gather, the children painted a mural. They made a record of their existence on this planet. They set their hands to the wall with paint so the world could remain, however mute, a witness to their suffering. Then, I assume, they were killed. The mural remained. The French put up bars around it to preserve it. Then someone came along and, again I am assuming, motivated by hatred tried to wipe out the memory of their lives and their passing. This person killed them again, it seems to me. What else can you call the attempted eradication of memory? Murder by proxy. Denial that these children existed.
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Borrowed time in Spain
Borrowed time in the botellon, by Michael Carlin, a Fulbright Scholar living in Spain is a rather savage indictment of Spain, Spanish society, and the Spanish response to the tragedy of 3/11. At heart, his view is that another 3/11 is inevitable and that Spain, such as it is, is rotting from within. I don't have enough background to know whether I agree, but I thought it was an interesting read.
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It's not supposed to work like this
Usually, when you and the radio come into contact, it's by way of you turning on the radio and tuning into a particular station or even program. It's not usually because someone calls you on the phone, from the radio station, to request that you listen to that station. I just got a call from Z-100 to tell me that if I listen and hear a certain song it could be worth $1000 to me. I explained that I was at work and not really able to listen to her station and she thanked me and got off in a hurry. I mean, she'd have to be in a hurry, wouldn't she? She must have over 7 million other New Yorkers to call to beg to tune in.
How crappy does a radio station have to be if they call you and ask you to listen?
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This Day in History
In the spirit of the truly random, I share with you a few things which happened today in history:
*1623 1st breach-of-promise lawsuit: Rev Gerville Pooley, Va files against Cicely Jordan. He loses
*1642 1st compulsory education law in America passed by Massachusetts
*1775 US Army founded
*1777 Continental Congress adopts Stars & Stripes replacing Grand Union flag
*1801 Benedict Arnold dies in London
*1834 Sandpaper patented by Isaac Fischer Jr, Springfield, Vermont
*1850 Fire destroys part of SF
*1876 1st player to hit for the cycle (George Hall, Phila Athletics)
*1900 Hawaiian Republic becomes the US Territory of Hawaii
*1923 Pres Harding is 1st US president to use radio, dedicating the Francis Scott Key memorial in Baltimore
*1940 Auschwitz, largest of the Nazi concentration camps, was first opened near Krakow, Poland. Before its liberation by the Allies in 1945, over 3 million Jews would be exterminated there.
*1940 German forces occupied Paris during WW II
*1942 Walt Disney's "Bambi" is released
*1944 1st B-29 raid against mainland Japan
*1951 1st commercial computer, UNIVAC 1, enters service at Census Bureau
*1952 Keel laid for 1st nuclear powered sub the Nautilus
*1953 Elvis Presley graduates from LC Humes High School in Memphis, Tenn
*1961 Boy George O'Dowd was born (Culture Club)
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Nice weekend
I hope you all had nice weekends. The weather here in NY was beautiful -- high 70's and barely a cloud in the sky. It was perfect. Marred only by the slight runny nose the boy child had. Slight runny nose for the little portable germ warfare factory translates into near death experience for me. I have a sore throat, runny nose, head ache, extreme tiredness and am whiny and feeling sorry for myself. The boy, of course, seems fine.
We had a mini reunion this weekend. All four of us who lived together in college for all four years got together this weekend at my house. R has moved himself out to the middle of Indiana where, for like six bucks and a collection of old bottle tops, got 14 acres of land and build himself a palace of a house. He came for the weekend without wife or children. M lives in New Jersey in a very tony suburb. He came with wife and two children. We took them all to the beach to watch the kids run around and ooh and aah over the dead jellyfish.
It was interesting to see how, 15 years after graduation, my friends have changed. None of the important things have changed. They are both the same fundamentally decent guys they always were. R has become more satisfied with himself. He is a lawyer in a small city in Indiana and does mostly personal injury work, not the kind of work that is necessarily intellectually stimulating. Also, living in a smaller more homogeneous place has left him without any of the daily challenges to his world view and value system that life in NY throws at you where you may have a dozen different languages and cultures in your face on any given day. He's happy, I think I'd find it stultifying. He showed us a video of the house though and that was like a playhouse gone wild: 6500 sq. ft., a wine cellar, an office with a smoke eater for his cigars, a fire pole down from his office to the second floor, a gym, a full bar next to the entertainment center with a massive big screen television. And I swear, in comparison to NY, he got the thing built in exchange for three packs of chewing gum.
M is someone I see regularly, actually. Not as regularly as I'd like, but still regularly. He's an up and coming executive type at a major life insurance company. His wife is charming and their kids are beautiful and smart. He works too hard but he's got the whole package. He is also the nicest guy I've ever known.
After the beach, we all adjourned to my house for the kids to nap together and the adults to drink some wine. At least we managed to drink the wine. The two little girls played in my daughter's room instead of napping. I believe that copious amounts of old Easter candy were consumed. Wrappers were discovered later. But they got along like two peas in a pod, which augurs well for future time together. I really wanted them to get along. It makes things easier for us all.
We all went out for an early dinner. Indian food is not readily available in R's corner of the world. My daughter fell and cut her lip during dinner. She was very brave and let me hold and ice cube to it to cut the swelling down. Then she noticed that she had gotten blood all over her shirt. She wanted to get down off my lap then and go show "Mr. R" and M her shirt. For some reason, she decided that R should be called Mr. R. Maybe because he's over 6 foot 5 inches tall. Either way, she walked over and stood between R and M and showed them her shirt and they made all of the appropriate noises about how brave she was and she just stood there and gleamed. It was an interesting and kind of odd feeling watching these two guys, people I've known in all sorts of stupid situations, interact with my daughter. It was kind of surreal. But very sweet.
Eventually, of course, all tired children melted down, we cut things short, over tipped and left.
Other than being sick today, it was a nice weekend all around.
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2004/06/11
Duke of Devonshire
I was reading the Atlantic over lunch today and came upon Mark Steyn's piece on the death of the Duke of Devonshire. Apparently the Duke came up against the Inland Revenue Service in the matter of some death taxes (80% of the value of the estate) and he fobbed them off for 17 years. Why, you may ask, did it take 17 years to close this estate? Because the Duke noted how long it took the Inland Revenue people to answer his letters. He then adjusted his calendar by taking the same amount of time to send his reply but subtracting one day from that period. Genius. Pure genius.
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How shall I put this?
Was I ethnically insensitive today when I laughed out loud while walking past the Polish Consulate upon spying a young woman who, after exiting the consulate and while chatting on her cell phone, put a cigarette to her lips and promptly lit the filter? Was I engaging in the worst kind of ethnic bad joke propagation? Or am I doing that now?
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Celebrity Assistants
I read the following article in the NY Times some days ago about celebrity assistants and was immediately reminded of P.G. Wodehouse's fictional Club for Gentlemen's Gentlemen: The Junior Ganymede. The big difference is that the members of the Junior Ganymede were required to jot down embarrassing details about their employers and the Celebrity Assistants' Association would never tolerate such indiscretion. Or so they say.
I do love P.G.'s books and short stories.
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Big, strong and frail
I heard on the radio this morning that Sammy Sosa, the mighty home run slugger for the Chicago Cubs, has been out of the lineup since last month with a strained ligament in his back. He's not expected back in anytime soon. Ever see a picture of this guy? He's huge and very powerful looking.
Then the DJ told us how Sammy hurt himself. He pulled that ligament in his back while sneezing. That must have been one hell of a sneeze, huh?
Good to see all that strength training doesn't come at the expense of stretching and flexibility.
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EU, USA and the growing economic gap
Came across this article about the growing gap between the EU and the US economies. It references a Swedish study which has some fairly startling results. Apparently, according to the study, "Europeans are at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia", not exactly the leading US economic powerhouses among states.
This leads to the question, also posed by Robert Kagan in his book, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, which was an expansion of his essay here, if you don't feel like buying the whole book, which is: Can Europe afford to play the heavyweight in international affairs? Mississippi certainly cannot.
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Warning: sad article link
This was a beautiful story about a dying young man and the relationships he formed.
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The Berkeley Intifada?
This was an interesting and thought provoking look at anti-Semitism on the UC Berkeley campus: The Berkeley Intifada.
I would consider reading that in conjunction with this article, which is a long piece from the NY Observer about the rise of modern anti-Semitism. This is a very well written and terribly sobering piece.
You may ask yourself, why should I care about this? You may think, I'm neither Jewish nor Israeli and it's a world away. Someone much more clever than I once said that the Jews are like the canary in the coal mine for the world. When the atmosphere turns poisonous for the Jews, it's only a matter of time for everyone else.
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2004/06/10
Talk to the Animals. . .
Every dog owner already knew this, but, according to the NY Times, Research Shows Dogs Can Comprehend Words. Hell, our old dog could understand commands in English, French and Norwegian. The only command I wished I had ever changed to another language, though, was: "Don't hump the guests!" That one, our un-neutered beast, only understood in English and we usually had to give it before the unfortunate guest knew what the dog was thinking. We could discern a certain twinkle in his eyes when he looked at certain guests. . .
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Fun with telephone sales calls
The phone rang through here at the office so I picked it up:
Her: May I speak to John?
Me: Who may I say is calling?
Her: Donna with Opinion Marketing Research.
Me: Please hold.
Me: John, do you want to talk to Donna with Opinion Marketing Research?
John: No. Tell her that if she wants my opinion on an issue, she should call my wife [delivered in joking tone].
Me: Donna? I'm sorry, but John says that if you'd like his opinion, you need to call his wife.
Her: Oh. [silence for a second]. Does his wife make the decisions regarding the company's telecommunications needs?
Me: Most probably. Have a nice day. [hangs up].
Was that as funny to you as it was to me? Or do I need to get out more?
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Vocabulary Test
I took this vocabulary test that I saw at a small victory while on a conference call yesterday. It was kind of fun. Beware though, my wife tried to access it and her corporate overlords had blocked that site.
Curious about my score? 167/200.
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And by the way. . .
Since I've managed to mention Norway in every single post I've put up today, I suppose I ought to say that yesterday was the day in 1940 when Norway officially surrendered to the Nazis.
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Sperm Delivery Service in Norway
This is too funny. Apparently, in Bergen, Norway, you can call up and have sperm delivered to your door. The sperm was donated by local donors in Bergen. To think, who needs bars anymore to find an anonymous sperm donor?
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Ever try learning a language by yourself?
I am trying to fill in a gap, one of many gaps, in my education by teaching myself Latin. I have a textbook, Wheelock's, and am trying to make my way through it. This is really the first time I've ever tried to teach myself a another language. I speak French fluently. In fact, I had a very nice conversation in French last week on the train with a French woman who was surprised to learn that I was an American. I offer that as proof that I can actually parlez-vous, so to speak. I can also speak Norwegian, probably to any three year old in Norway. I learned Norwegian from my wife, from classes at the Norwegian Seaman's Church, and from language immersion weekends. Those were easy compared to Latin.
I think part of the problem is that I have no teacher to push me. I have to be totally self-motivated. That is both good and bad. Good in the sense that I am in no hurry and can take my time. Bad in the sense that I have no one to schedule how fast I should be learning or to explain the more difficult material (almost everything, by the way!). Also, I have time problems. I figure that I can get maybe an hour a day to myself. This time is spent on the train. Not optimal for learning -- hard to spread out when all you can occupy is one seat and hard to write when the train is moving. Also, I am usually pretty beat when the time comes to hit the train and lately I have been sleeping on the way home. That cuts my time, too.
Have any of you studied Latin? Can you offer any encouragement? Or suggestions?
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Seal Hunting for Tourists
As Aftenposten makes clear, it is now possible for a tourist to go seal hunting in Norway. The bill has cleared the Norwegian Storting (legislature) and foreigners can now take part in what was once an exclusive pass time for Norwegians. But wait, first you need to pass a shooting test, so don't run out to your travel agents immediately. I thought clubbing was the preferred method, not shooting.
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2004/06/09
Zimbabwe
Is everyone else following the fascinating events taking place in Zimbabwe? The NY Times carried an article today, buried in the middle of the paper, entitled Zimbabwe Announces a New Plan to Seize Land.
A little background, from memory, is in order. Forgive me if I make any mistakes, but this is all from memory.
Mugabe is killing if not already killed his country. He, in order to correct what he perceived to be inequities in land distribution and the legacies of White rule, nationalized many farms. The plan was to give them out to landless peasant types to farm. The result was that most of the farms seized were given to high ranking government and party figures, including, in one memorable instance, Mugabe's wife.
So what happened and why is it interesting to me? It's interesting to me because for over four years now, I've read good British reporting detailing the step by step collapse of civilization as we understand it in Zimbabwe. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
First, the land distribution scheme destroyed the economy. All of the main exports from Zimbabwe were agricultural based. Cut flowers, tobacco and beef were high in that list. These things require expertise to grow for international markets. The ability to produce these things was destroyed as the farmers who could do it were terrorized into leaving their land. Result? No hard currency for Zimbabwe. As the NY Times reports today, inflation is at 620%! Can you even imagine that? As the agricultural sector collapsed, so did the chemical and machine sectors.
Second, as the economy spun out of control, Mugabe faced political pressure for reform from an opposition party and from the newspapers. Result? Beat and jail the opposition. Kill the ones you can't intimidate. Shut down the newspapers and pack the courts and threaten the judges if the editors are stupid enough to sue. Bring out the army if people protest. Create youth wings of your political parties and use them to commit acts of political violence. So, political freedom disappears at the same time that prices go up by 620%.
Third, I am stunned still by the refusal of South Africa to criticize Mugabe. M'bake won't do it and he won't permit it. All in the name of African solidarity against former colonialism. Meanwhile, the hospitals in Zimbabwe have no money for supplies and all the nurses and doctors are leaving to go to Canada. That is coming close to criminal behavior by South Africa, in my opinion.
Fourth, international political pressure fails. The only countries willing to pressure Zimbabwe in public are England and the United States. Of course, there is the Commonwealth which has either excluded Zimbabwe or criticized Zimbabwe thus causing Mugabe to resign from the Commonwealth. Either way, lots of nice words and nothing done about it. Well, nothing accomplished. I do seem to recall that Britain offered to pay for the land taken by farmers to allow Zimbabwe to buy it, but that came to nothing and the terror and violence against the white farmers continued.
So, here we are today. Zimbabwe on the brink of total meltdown and the government acts swiftly and decisively to preempt the crisis. How, you may ask? Well, first, "Zimbabwe's government says its economic problems have nothing to do with the land seizures and can be laid to drought and a Western plot to restore colonial rule." Did you get that? The government is the victim of an evil conspriacy and the weather. So, clearly the best thing to do is to nationalize all the remaining land.
The "government planned to take control of remaining farmland, abolishing all deeds, and turn it back to farmers under 99-year leases. Leases on wildlife conservancies would be limited to 25 years, he said, because that land is considered more valuable than farmland".
May I point out that nationalization and collectivization of farm land in the Soviet Union was a stunning triumph for the State Planning School of Economic Thought?
Here is a further complication, by the way. No deeds to the property mean no one will lend to the farmer. No title, no collateral, no lending. Simple, no?
"At present, none of those awarded portions of seized white commercial farms have title to their lands. Those peasants' inability to raise money to begin commercial farming on their own has been blamed by some for the nation's dismal harvests over the last three years." There is a fascinating book about the role property rights and of title to land in economic development by Hernando De Soto called, The Mystery of Capital.
Of course, there is another, even more sinister explanation for this move by the governing party. "The opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, expressed concern that state ownership of all land would merely give the government another means to exert control over the population."
Why don't more people seem to care about Zimbabwe?
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More historical fiction
Erin O'Connor, over at Critical Mass (a daily read for me), has taken up the torch on the reading list that I started below and pulled in some really great comments and made some very interesting looking recommendations herself. Thanks, Erin, for your kind recognition and for more than tripling my summer reading list!
I'm going to add four more suggestions here:
One, the books of Allan Mallinson, serving Brigadier General in her Majesty's Calvary. His first book, A Close Run Thing, is a good place to start. Basically, Gen. Mallinson tries to do for the Calvary during the Napoleonic wars what O'Brian did for the Navy. Not as well done as O'Brian, but highly diverting. Side note, as a result of these books and their covers, my daughter believed until very recently that any man on a horse was a "Dragoon".
Second, I really enjoyed the Walking Drum, by Louis L'Amour. I don't know how good the history really is, but it's a great read.
Alexandre Dumas. Read him in French if you can. If you can't, no matter, the Three Musketeers is still one of my all time favorite pieces of historical fiction.
Finally, another straight history recommendation: Low Life : Lures and Snares of Old New York, by Luc Sante. This is a terrifically readable book about the Lower East Side of New York and the criminals, swindlers, con-men, and prostitutes who lived there.
Happy reading!
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Summer in the City, etc.
It's going into the 90's today in NYC but the weatherman claimed that with the humidity, it will feel like over 100. As Mark Twain said, everyone complains about the weather but no one does anything about it. Well, I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to offer a hot weather tip I garnered from years of living in Louisiana. Wear undershirts men! Seems counterintuitive, right? Get hot, take off clothes, not put them on. That's the impulse, right? I tried this with great skepticism in New Orleans when I was urged to by a friend and native. He was right. A nice cotton undershirt will help keep you cooler. And you thought your mother was a nag for always telling you to dress in layers, right? You owe her an apology. Probably for a lot of reasons!
Another thing about summer in the city. In the residential neighborhoods, when liquids drip on you, most of the time that's not someone emptying a bed pan out the window. No, it's what I like to think of as "building spit". It's the discharge as the window AC units suck humidity out of the apartments and spit it on you as you go walking along. Not pleasant, but not as disgusting as you might initially think.
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Comments Down?
It appears that my comments boards are down. I hope that doesn't inconvenience anyone. In the meantime, feel free to use my email address if you feel pressed to express yourself! Thanks and sorry!
9:30 a.m. and comments seem to be back.
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"Reeks of late nights and youthful indiscretions"
I liked that phrase a lot. I read it this morning in the NY Times in a restaurant review. The reviewer was describing a dish that went by her on the way to another table. But it got me thinking, what foods do I associate with late nights and youthful indiscretions?
* 3 a.m., French Fries with gravy at a diner.
* Pizza from the place on the corner that used to stay open until 5 a.m. At that time of night, all pizza is good pizza.
* Texas Fries. These were served at a long gone and much lamented 24 hour joint near where I grew up. They were chili cheese fries with minced raw onion on top. It is the taste of heaven.
* Couscous with as much Harissa as you could stand to make up for the night before.
* I-Hop. That's all, just I-Hop.
* The famed Lucky Dog of New Orleans purchased and consumed on the street between bars.
* Long, still drunk, dim sum breakfasts.
* And the ever popular, cold, leftover pizza the next day.
* Whatever you raided from the vending machine in college as you stayed up all night to debate whatever issues impassioned you at that time.
I'm certain there are more, but these are the ones that come to mind immediately.
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Another amusing cell phone
If you've read some of my other posts, you may know how much I love to overhear cell phone conversations on the street. Last night's call was a good one. I overheard this very handsome young man, in a beautiful suit, earnestly updating his friend as to the new developments in his life. This budding young Master of the Universe (remember that phrase?) says to his friend: "So, did I tell you? I'm learning Farsi". I don't know why it amused me so much, but it did and I share it with you.
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2004/06/08
History Recommendations
Jester asked me for some history recommendations after reading my post below about the decline in teaching of history in schools. After some thought, and after looking through my book shelves, I decided to make the following recommendations. It was fun to take a tour back through the book shelves. I have a lot of books, most of them I love. I eliminated some of the more obscure things, like The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (Regents Studies in Medieval Culture), and tried to think of a good selection of well written works which did not require a lot of background to enjoy. I could put up many more books and I realize, as I review this that I am leaving many of my favorites out. Perhaps I'll revisit the subject if people find it interesting but I must call a halt to this post now. I hope you enjoy this post, it took me a rather long time to put up.
I include not just straight history, but biography and historical fiction as well. Biography is history and should be thought of as such, it seems to me. Biographers always put their subjects into historical context and, by concentrating on one key figure, provide a good focal point to view an era. I also like historical fiction because much of the good stuff is based on fairly rigorous research and can be a great entree into an area for someone who is seeking an introduction. But, more below.
HISTORY:
Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950, by Martin Russ. This is riveting, can't put it down kind of stuff. 12,000 U.S. Marines were trapped during the Korean War by 60,000 Chinese troops and conducted a fighting retreat. It's a brilliant book.
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. Anybody read Kim, by Kipling? Fabulous book and it got me interested in this period. The struggle between Russia and Great Britain for India, played out all over the region. This is a great book about this period. This topic has become more relevant considering how much strife in the world is currently traceable to this region. I also, in the same vein, recommend: Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia.
The First World War, by Keegan. Keegan is one of the foremost military historians writing today. This is a great book which takes you from the start to the end. This was one of the most important world events of the last century and gives the reader a greater understanding of what followed.
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943, by Antony Beevor. This reads like fiction, it's so well written. This was the ultimate armed conflict between two morally corrupt ideologies, fought in the streets and gutters of a destroyed city. Also great information about the cult of the sniper. Highly readable.
Six Days of War : June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael Oren. The author had access to archives in Egypt, the US, and Russia. He interviewed former Israeli and Egyptian soldiers. This is riveting, can't put it down history. It also helps explain the roots of the current situation in the Middle East. This is very topical.
Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century, by Mary Hollingsworth. This was a great read, although it may be out of print. Basically, it suggests that the role of patronage was under-credited with respect to the Renaissance. The painters and sculptors needed patrons who could afford the art and were willing to collaborate in the creative process. Esoteric but enjoyable.
Hannibal Crosses the Alps: The Enigma Re-Examined, by John Prevas. Where did Hannibal cross the Alps to strike at Italy and Rome? How did he do it? Prevas claims to have figured it out. It's a terrific little book.
John Julius Norwich is one of my favorite authors and I'd send you out to check out at least two of his works. A History of Venice was originally two volumes when published in England but one volume here in the States. Another great read. The history of the rise of the Republic is fascinating and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I think that study is what led Norwich to write the three volume series on the Byzantine Empire. This is another great contribution to a poorly understood, at least by me, era.
The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933, by Amos Elon. I never realized the incredible contributions the Jews made to German society and culture before I read this book. Jewish integration makes what followed all the more incomprehensible. A sad but fascinating book.
Carnage and Culture : Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power, by Victor Davis Hanson. This is a very interesting and timely book about what makes the West special in terms of civic virtues and economics. It details the critical battles and gives terrific historical background in chapters devoted to each battle. A wonderful survey.
Now, a little lighter history. The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn. When baseball was an art and writing about it a game. This is about the mid-20th-century Brooklyn Dodgers and how Kahn grew up while following them around and writing about it.
BIOGRAPHY
Cicero, by Anthony Everitt. I read this one over Christmas vacation last year by the pool. Another terrific read. Gives a lot of detail about the history of the Republic and the rise of Caesar and Marc Antony. Cicero was considered Rome's greatest orator.
Lafayette, by Unger was a very readable biography of an important figure in both the American and French Revolutions. Not too many people spanned both. One of the things from this I was surprised by was learning how close a thing the American Revolution really was to failure. They don't teach you that in school.
John Adams, by David McCullough is another revolutionary war figure biography. This was a long book but it never dragged. It won a Pulitzer Prize. Adams was an American hero and I recommend the book.
A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century, by Witold Rybczynski. Olmsted was the first great landscape architect in the US and this is a terrific read. A little obscure for some, but a good look at the building of Central Park in NY. I enjoyed it a lot.
HISTORICAL FICTION
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara, details the battle of Gettysburg and specifically Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine regiment of volunteers held the Union's left flank on the second day of the battle at Little Round Top.
Gates of Fire : An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae, by Steven Pressfield is a novel about the battle where 300 Spartan knights and their allies kept some 10,000 Persian invaders at bay. This is hard to put down.
Sharpe's Eagle, by Cornwell. This is the first of the series. I've read them all. They deal with the exploits of an officer in the 95th Rifles during the Napoleonic Wars. Sharpe was raised from the ranks. Cornwell ends each book with a nice historical essay about the events which inspired the book. Warning: highly addictive series.
Master and Commander is the first of the Patrick O'Brian series about the Napoleonic War and the Royal Navy. These are the equivalent of literary crack. Don't pick these up unless you are prepared to lose a lot of time. My wife hates it when I re-read this series, which I've done about five times. All twenty books. It may be time again soon, come to think of it.
Dark Star, by Alan Furst is gripping. Most of Furst's work is set in the period just before the start of WW II and he evokes a time now long gone and made more poignant by knowing that it was on the edge of extinction. All of his book are fantastic and I await the next one with keen anticipation.
Happy reading, Jester (and anyone else who might enjoy the above)!
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Those Scary Highways
We took the kids to visit some of friends of ours who live in a really charming little town called Katonah. As an aside, one of the places I keep meaning to visit in Katonah is the John Jay Homestead, the farm John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, retired to at the conclusion of his long and distinguished public service.
Anyway, we're on the road, I-684, on the way home when I spy in front of us the thing which scares me the most on the highway: a church van. I see the church van and I am convinced we are only seconds away from a dramatic disaster or explosion. I am somewhat serious. It seems that I regularly read about accidents involving church vans. These accidents almost all involve fatalities. Why are they in so many accidents? Well, perhaps the driver is not a trained bus driver. Or perhaps it's the condition of the vehicle. This one was no winner. It was a late model van and it looked like it was held together by prayer. I accelerated quickly to pass it. I wanted my family no where near it when the inevitable accident occurred. Inside the van, I could see singing and clapping. Some of them waved. That just made me more nervous and I hit the pedal harder.
Irrational? Maybe. But I know I breathed a sigh of relief when we got past that van.
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2004/06/07
Fox News Item
Someone in my office called the following item from Fox News to my attention. I am appalled. A lawyer in Oregon is planning, in defense of his client, to introduce an expert witness to testify that the reason that the defendant "whipped and broke his [two year old] son's neck and ribs [is] because he suffers from post-traumatic slave syndrome." Evidently there is some "academic" out there who, in the words of Fox News, "claims that because African Americans never got a chance to heal from slavery and still face racism, oppression and societal inequality, they suffer from multigenerational trauma."
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like a crock of sh*t? Seriously, it seems to me that makes us all prisoners of our ancestral past to the point where each of us can disclaim responsibility for our actions based on some historical slight. No matter how long ago. Hopefully the judge will think this is a crock, too.
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Buzz
Buzz has at least two meanings in this post.
The first meaning is derived from the fact that I have been running all morning. I have that lethal combination of caffeine plus adrenaline. I am buzzing, almost physically vibrating. I've had meetings, phone calls, and written snide and nasty letters to those who deserve snide and nasty. I have been Mr. Productive. I've also gotten nothing off of my to do list -- all of these things are from new problems! I am, I must admit, a little bummed about all of this fabulous effort I've put forth today and I have nothing really tangible to show for it. That's buzz one.
Buzz #2 refers to the word on the street about someone. There is good buzz about me, I guess, as I got a nibble on some new business today. I also got new business thrown my way on Friday. Just when it is clear that I can barely handle everything I have on my plate now, my new business possibilities are set to full steam ahead. Soon, it may very well be that there will be people, including partners, servicing the business I am bringing in. This would be odd. I am merely a senior associate and I will, for all intents and purposes, have partners reporting to me on business I generated. But I did have a partner come into my office today, sit down, and ask me if I'm free for lunch tomorrow or the next day to go over the details of one of the cases I've just brought in that he's been asked to do some work on. It just goes to show, the old law firm golden rule is still in existence: he who has the gold makes the rules. I suppose I don't really care what they call me here, associate or counsel or partner, as long as I keep bringing in the business then I will have de facto control over the economics of the situation.
Anyway, back to work.
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Pool
I got a request to explain a couple of games I mentioned in an earlier post. If you don't play pool, you may not have heard of them. I assume everyone has heard of nine-ball, eight-ball, and straight pool.
Cowboy is a game apart and the link will take you to the rules. What may not be clear from the link is that this is a combination of pool and billiards. The pool part is sinking balls to score a particular number value. When you hit a particular number, you switch to billiards, or what the link calls carom shots. A carom shot is when the cue ball strikes two balls in the order you called them in. You then win by scratching off the one ball. That means you have to pocket the cue ball after the cue ball has made contact with the one. Also, the balls traditionally used in cowboy are much bigger and heavier than the typical pool balls. This makes it harder to score because you have less margin for error around the pockets. It is a very challenging and fun game. You can lose hours on this one.
The rules to Cut-throat can be found at that link. Basically, you divide the balls into three groups of five. One group is taken by each player. The person who breaks chooses first. The object is to shoot at the other groups and hope you can sink them before they sink your group. The last one with a ball on the table wins. This is a very social game and involves all sorts of conspiracies as you make alliances with other players and then break them.
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2004/06/06
92 days? Is that all?
According to a copy of Philadelphia magazine, which I purchased last week, there are only 92 days of Summer. That does not seem like nearly enough days. This last Winter was so brutal that 92 days, especially rainy days like today, barely seems like sufficient compensation. 92 days. That's it. I never quantified it before. But, all of a sudden, I think it's too little and it's going to fly by. Remember how when you were a kid and Summer dragged along, nice and slow, and it seemed like school was never going to start again? Remember those hot days when you'd stick to the fake leather in the car? And ice cream was the best thing ever after swimming? Of course, that was the Summer before lyme's disease, before not putting sun screen on a kid was child abuse, and when all you had to worry about was whether you could stay up late enough to try to catch lightening bugs in the yard before your parents made you go to bed.
I also have fond memories of going with my father to the last of the old fashioned soda fountains in Westchester when I was a kid. They made the best root beer floats ever. I still have quite a weakness for the root beet float.
Anyway, I am trying so hard to focus on the unlimited opportunities of 92 days, rather than how few days there really are.
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Random Capitalization
We were riding home on the train together, my wife and I, after a lovely Friday night out. We had cocktails, shot a little pool with another friend, and had a great dinner. Cut Throat is a terrific game to play with three people. Although, my favorite game is probably Cowboy. Ever play that? If not, leave a comment and I'll explain it.
On the train, my wife looked at the back of her ticket and informed me that she loved random capitalization because you could usually use it to figure out what other people made acronyms from in other lines of work. For example, Off Peak Train, she reasoned, must be abbreviated by the letters OPT by the railroad workers. I thought that was an interesting thought which she wouldn't mind me sharing.
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2004/06/04
Unprofessional Email Address
I just happened to come across an email address for a lawyer in way, way, upstate NY. Almost Canada, practically. It started with: always golfing, followed by the email provider service. Can you imagine a less professional image to share with a client? I will be golfing instead of attending to your problems.
That said, if I was a country lawyer, I'd have a sign to hang on my door: Gone Fishin'. A little legal work followed by a lot of fly fishing.
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Reading the Iliad
May I direct your attention to a very interesting project that Amanda is running? She is a classics professor and is sponsoring an online reading group to re-read the Iliad. She went to see the movie, Troy, and left thinking that not one single person associated with the film ever read the book! So, she started an online reading group to re-read this classic. She is posting: back ground information to put the epic in context; guided reading questions; and, hosting discussions on her comment boards. It is an extremely cool thing to do and I, for one, am very grateful that she is willing to volunteer her expertise. I admit to having fallen a bit behind, and I plead the all the normal quotidian pressures, but I am still enjoying it very much and plan to catch up this weekend. Go check it out. And then go either buy a translation or borrow a copy from the library!
Thanks, Amanda!
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Joyce Kilmer
How many of you remember Joyce Kilmer, the poet? I came across a very nice article about him that I recommend if you have a moment. He was much more than just the guy who wrote about trees.
I don't know abou the rest of you, but there is not enough poetry in my life.
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Latin Thought for the Day
How many times have you heard a politician accused of being a hypocrite? I believe that this is an accusation I may have even heard levied at our current President. Well, guess what, it ain't nothing new in politics. I translated the following line from my Latin book:
"Fortunam et vitam antiquae patriae saepe laudas sed recusas." -- Horace.
Roughly, and for me, all Latin translations are rough:
"You often praise the fortune and way of life of the old fatherland, but you reject them."
In other words, while you praise the virtues of yore and the old fashioned life style, you don't live your own life like that. Sound familiar? Sound like, you talk the talk but you don't walk the walk? Interesting, I think, to see the same charges levied by Horace that you see repeated today. La plus ca change, etc.
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Warning: Sad
There was an article in the NY Times this morning about the opening of the new Maria Fareri Children's Hospital in Westchester County. The beginning of the article, describing how this new hospital came about and why it was named after Maria, made me terribly sad.
The parents of the dead girl, Brenda and John Fareri of Greenwich, Conn., helped build the new hospital after they found the existing pediatric department lacking in accommodations for anxious families.
When 13-year-old Maria was dying of a rare case of bat rabies in 1995, the couple felt she received top-flight care. But there was no way for them to sleep in her room, no place to shower, nowhere to share a cuddle.
"It was very difficult because she asked me to lie in bed with her, but her bed was too small," Mrs. Fareri said during a tour of the hospital earlier in the week. That moment of closeness "got taken away," she said. "So you would never want to think that that could happen to another family."
Holy sh*t. All that dying little girl wanted was her mother to lie in bed with her and she couldn't. If that does not touch you, deep, deep down inside . . .
I read this at around 5:00 this morning. Why was I up so early? My daughter woke me at 4:15 because she "needed an extra hug and a kiss". I gave it to her, of course, but was not thrilled to have that sleep snatched away. I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep. So I went downstairs and rode the recumbent stationary bike with the newspaper and kind of grumbled to myself about being awakened so early.
I bet Mrs. Fareri would give everything she owns to have traded places with me this morning at 4:15. I don't mind being up so early any more today.
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2004/06/03
Damn Lies and Statistics
According to my little site meters, if my average number of daily unique visitors stop by today, I will hit and surpass 1000 visitors. I think that's really very cool. Seems like a milestone, of sorts, and I wanted to mark it. In the period since I started this blog, I've put up 149 posts and almost 30,000 words. I think I must be neglecting my day job!
Thanks for stopping by and reading the output of my fevered little brain.
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End of History?
I read two interesting posts the other day. The first, at Joanne Jacob's site, concerned how teaching about WWII has ceased to be about the war and is only about social history, including, inter alia, our crimes against the Japanese interned in California. The second, at Erin O'Connor's blog, Critical Mass, discussed how the teaching of history has suffered as schools concentrate on reading and math in the elementary schools to the exclusion of social studies.
Are we at the end of history? Or at least teaching about history?
I have no clear recollections of what I was taught in school about WWII history because I was largely self-taught. I devoured every book I could find in the school library on the topic in middle school and continued reading well into college. Any holes I had were self-filled.
History is not only critically important but it appears to be both undertaught and also the prisoner of ideological constraints. If we spend all our time in the class room learning about our horrid treatment of Japanese/Americans, we miss out on the good and the great that we as a country accomplished in WWII. The good and the great needs to be acknowledged so we don't raise a generation of children who think that the US is the greatest terrorist state or who think that calling for a "million Mogadishus" is civilized criticism of US foreign policy. After all, how do we know where we are going if we don't know how we got here?
That said, kids need to be able to read to learn about history. Math is obviously terribly important, too. The emphasis on these subjects, to the exclusion of history, in order to push up test scores, concerns me greatly though. The effects of a lack of historical knowledge will be seen as a cascade, it seems to me. Kids will be less prepared in history in high school and thus, probably, less prepared to do advanced work in college. They will be less prepared and less able to challenge historical error and deliberate distortion. In short, they will be less able to act as responsible citizens. That is probably my biggest fear. I hope I'm over-reacting.
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Cultural explanation for achievement gap?
A press release from Penn State recently came to my attention. It seeks to explain, in part, why black children are performing less well on achievement tests in schools than white children.
Parenthetically, I think that the achievement gap is an issue that should concern us all. We as a society need to encourage all of our children to reach their highest potential because we all benefit.
The explanation tendered by Penn State is certainly controversial. It suggests that the answer is to be found in black v. white family dynamics: "recent research points to differences between African-American and White family interaction when children are very young."
According to the study, the problem is that there is a major difference in how often black parents speak to their children and how often they vary their vocabulary. I don't know where or how these figures were obtained, and you'll notice that all of a sudden the press release stops breaking the figures out in terms of race and uses socio-economic class instead, but: "[b]y the age of three, professional parents had spoken an estimated 35 million words to their children, working- and middle-class had spoken about 20 million words, and lower-class parents had only spoken about 10 million words."
The release picks back up on the racial difference later on: "'By 18 to 20 months, the vocabulary growth trajectories of the children of professional parents had already accelerated beyond those of other children,' Farkas adds. According to his research, there seems to be both a social class, and controlling for class, a Black-White difference in children's oral vocabulary growth from infancy to adolescence. Preschool vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor of reading performance in early elementary school, and early elementary reading performance is a strong predictor of later school performance generally."
The study found that "greater verbal interaction between parents and young children improves students' performance on standardized tests". In other words, if you talk to your children a lot, and use a varied vocabulary, you are likely to have children who do better in school than their peers who did not have the benefit of the same interaction.
The study offers no explanation for how or why black family dynamics are different from white family dynamics. I know very little about family sociology. But, I wonder, did the authors control for whether the families they studied were single parent families? I understand, anecdotally from the NY Times over the years, that there are more single parent households among black families than white families. If this is wrong, feel free to correct me. If so, that would automatically halve the number of adults around to speak to the children. Further, a single mother (or father) is going to have less energy to spend with a child to begin with. Also, the more children you have the less time you can spend with any single child. Did the study look at multiple children families? Would that make a difference?
I spoke to my daughter, my first born, a lot. With both of my children, I use adult vocabulary and try to vary my vocabulary as possible. I do this partly because I love the English language and delight in its rich vocabulary, partly because I abhor baby talk in adults, and partly because I like nothing more than delivering a good monologue! My wife loves to tell the story of how she came out of the shower one morning to find me and the then under three month old daughter on the bed discussing evolution with me saying to my daughter: "vestigial, can you say vestigial?" Before she could speak, I treated her to the monologues on some of the following subjects: the rise of the merchant class in mediaeval Europe; social stratification in feudal Japan; and, the differences between English and French Renaissance landscape architecture. That last one, delivered while my little one was in the baby bjorn and we were standing in front of a florist's window looking at topiary garnered more than a few quizzical looks from passers-by. According to this press release, I have been doing exactly the right thing. My wife does the same thing, only she does it in Norwegian.
So, where am I going with all this? I'm going here: all the money in the world spent improving schools and paying teachers more and wiring schools up to the internet won't significantly overcome a lack of sustained, intelligent parental attention. You can pass all of the No Child Left Behind laws you want, but if you don't fix the problem at home, you may not be able to help the child catch up. We need these children to catch up, if for no other reason than the selfish reason that they will be paying our social security and pensions. But it sounds like first, we need to fix the family. How do you do that? I have no idea. Do you?
By the way, feel free to comment on this. I'm very curious about your reaction to this press release and this post.
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2004/06/02
Poughkeepsie?
Ever been to Poughkeepsie before? It's upstate NY. A Judge of the Bankruptcy Court sits there and I've got to go tomorrow for a hearing. It's pretty much a whole day adventure.
I am posting about this, not because I assume you are interested in my little travels, but because you may not be from NY and you may think that NY State is one big burnt out section of the South Bronx, repeated ad infinitum up to the Canadian border. It isn't.
Poughkeepsie is located in Dutchess County, a beautiful part of the State including some of the Hudson River Valley. The beauty of the Hudson River Valley inspired an entire school of painters in the 1800's. Frederick Church's home, Olana, while not in Dutchess County, is a grand place to visit if you want to learn more about that school of painters.
But, you may ask, what to do in Poughkeepsie when not attending hearings at the Bankruptcy Court? Well, Vassar College is there. If I have time, I'm going to nip over there to see the exhibit on Renaissance print making. The campus of Vassar is one of the most beautiful college campuses I've ever visited and I hope I get some time to walk around there. I may bring a change of clothes, come to think of it, so I am not imprisoned in my suit and tie all day.
But what about food? Surely, you ask, there is nowhere worth eating when you get that far from civilization? Well, among other things, you can eat at the Culinary Institute of America's restaurants. The CIA has trained some of America's top chefs and it's a short drive from Poughkeepsie in Hyde Park. Hyde Park is also home to FDR Museum and Presidential Library, the Vanderbilt Museum and House (a stunning house with exceptional Hudson River Views) and, just down the road in Rhinebeck, is the Old Rhinebeck aerodrome where you can see historic planes and other vehicles from the 1900-1935 era. After the planes and museums, you could also pop in to stay the night at the Beekman Arms, which claims to be the oldest operating inn in the country. I've had brunch there and at least can vouch for the brunch if not for the historical claims they make.
Upstate New York is beautiful. If I had more time before today's deposition, I'd post more about this terrific area. Hope it inspires you to travel there!
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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The last military leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gave an interview on Polish television. It was published and translated by Chrenkoff. This is a strong voice, to borrow a favorite expression of the far left, for freedom and justice. Mr. Edelman is a realist. Go and read it. You know you want to.
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Different kind of matchmaking
We have a live in nanny who takes care of our children because my wife and I both work full time. She is a lovely 19 year old young woman from Utah. She is also a twin. She misses her twin and her twin misses her. Her twin has decided that she wants to come out to be a nanny, too. Enter me, stage right. I have a train buddy and he and his wife recently had their second child and he told me that they were thinking about getting a live in nanny. They bought a new house with more room and his wife also works full time. I told him about my nanny and her sister. I passed along phone numbers and talked to him about our experiences and, voila, the twin arrives to begin work on July 15. I wish everything were this easy.
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New Viking Ship Excavation
I hope I'm not the only one who thinks that a new Viking Ship excavation is a really interesting occurrence. Because that would be sad.
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2004/06/01
Sorry so quiet today
I've spent most of my day in deposition listening to a witness lie and perjure herself. The Court Reporter and the Videographer all agree that she was not telling the truth, that she was slimy, and that she was not reliable. She found out for the first time that the IRS had tax liens against her and her husband during the deposition on Friday and claimed, today, that she did not discuss that fact with her husband over the weekend. Credible? Hardly. We're taking the husband tomorrow. That's going to be very interesting. I can't wait to take this one to trial.
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Blind Date Success?
Buddy just reported in from his weekend. Success? I think so. Dinner and movie went well. They had a good time. And not only did they discuss getting together again, she actually called him last night to confirm their plans!
I am getting the warm, self-congratulatory glow that comes from the feeling that you did a good deed.
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Actually, it appears that the welfare state has some limits
There may be some limits after all, despite what I wrote about below. A man claimed too much in benefits and was prosecuted. He was not convicted. Why? Too dyslexic to understand, perhaps. However, it does appear from this that you can't just claim for whatever you want and keep it, regardless of your situation or income level.
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Gotta love the social welfare state
According to Aftenposten, the biggest Norwegian daily newspaper, a family has won compensation from the local welfare authorities to help pay for the effects of their 11 year old son's chronic bed wetting. They had to go to court to get it, but they are going to receive something like $1,100 a year. The article doesn't address this, but I imagine that they are also going to get their lawyer fees and court costs paid as well. The social welfare state will pay for just about anything, I think. Can you even imagine making an application for something like this?
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2004/05/31
Small loss of patience
I lost my patience with the girl child tonight and told her that if she didn't start listening to her mother, I was going to be very angry with her and she was going to end up crying. She stopped screwing around immediately and followed her mother into the bathroom to brush her teeth, which is what her mother had been trying to get her to do with no success. When she got in the bathroom, I heard her say to her mother as follows: What's. His. Problem?
My wife was, of course, convulsed with laughter. I felt quite put in my place. I fear the coming teenage years.
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Thank you
I just wanted to drop a short note to thank all of you for your kind comments and encouraging and thoughtful words. I may not have been able this weekend to individually acknowledge or respond to all of them but I do want to thank you for taking the time to read, reflect, and respond. So many of them are so well written and carefully considered. This blog experience is still a fairly new thing for me and I doubt that I would have kept at it this long without the encouragement I have received from some writers for whom I have great respect. Thank you.
I have long subscribed to the belief that you are known by the company you keep. If I can be said to be keeping company with the likes of those who have been leaving comments, I'm doing just fine.
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Sleep that knits, etc.
I totally crashed yesterday. I took two naps, just like my son. A shorter morning nap for about an hour and a longer afternoon nap for a solid 2.5 hours. I have no idea why. I think that I have been under a lot of stress lately and my body just needed, very badly, to rest and recuperate. And it did. I'm feeling better today but yesterday was totally lost in the haze of sleep. I'm hoping that it proves to have been the sleep that knits the ravelled sleeve of care, but there's no telling. Sleep aside, I'm actually shocked by how quickly this whole weekend has just slipped away. I conceived of this weekend as an oasis of infinite time and instead, it has quickly and quietly passed without notice. I should have learned by now that the weekend is never as long as a two day period during the week.
I hope everyone is taking a moment today to remember those who have made our leisure time possible.
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Odd turn of phrase
I came across this odd turn of phrase while reading the NY Times this morning. It was in an article about a hot new area in Korea where the US Army is supposed to withdraw from and turn it over to the Koreans. One Army officer said that he thought it was never going to happen because, while it had been considered before, the Korean government had never been able to find another suitable site for relocation. The officer said that he thought that it was politics as usual:
"It is a great political platform for some people. It's a self-licking ice cream cone."
Self-licking ice cream cone? No idea what it means but I like it just the same. Anyone ever see this little gem before?
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2004/05/30
So Proud of Her
This is another story about my daughter. We, as a family, had a wonderful day yesterday. We spent a few hours at the beach -- we joined a beach club not far from where we live. In fact, it is only 1.9 miles from our driveway to the entrance of the beach club. The kids played on the beach all day and ran in and out of the waves and dug in the sand and ate a big lunch and took long naps. The weather was beautiful and it was really quite perfect.
After naps ended, we returned for dinner. You can have dinner very casually outside. When we finished dinner, we went for a walk along the shore and my daughter, who had picked up an old tennis ball, saw some kids playing a sort of baseball game on the big lawn with a tennis ball and tennis racquet. She got very excited and ran over to watch, about a hundred yards away. At that point, the boys hit their ball into a flower bed and couldn't find it. My daughter went over to the flower bed, too. I suppose she just wanted to see what the boys were doing. The boys, by the way, were probably about 10 or 11 years old and towered over my little 3 1/2 year old daughter. Two of the boys saw that she was carrying a ball and took her ball from her. I was too far away to do anything more than watch here but she told me what happened when I did arrive. The boys said to her that it was their ball. And she stood up for herself and said that, no, it was her ball and she brought it with her from dinner. And so the boys gave it back. This is what she told me when I got there. Then she said to me, in a very quiet voice, that she was too shy to say thank you to the boys for giving her the ball back. So I told the boys thank you for her.
I was so proud of her for standing up for herself to these older kids. I was also quite grateful that these were nice boys who let her stand up for herself. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I want to raise a strong woman who never lets anyone push her around. I have worried that she is too nice, that she lets other children take her toys and that she, in essence, won't push back when the world pushes her first. Well, she pushed back last night, when she was outnumbered, outsized, and all alone. And she did it calmly and didn't cry. I hope that she learned a lesson from this. I know I did.
Someone once wrote that when you have children, you have given hostages to fortune. I have felt that way all along. I want to protect her from everything and I know that I can't. So, instead, I concentrate on building character in small ways, so that the big ways will come naturally and more easily. I am trying to make a person here. I am trying, because I can't protect her always, to give her the tools to protect herself and to stand up for herself and, especially, to have the self confidence and to instill in her the belief that she is valuable, valued, and intrinsically worth standing up for. She made me so proud and, as I reread this post, I don't think that I managed to convey even a portion of what I was feeling and how I reacted, inside, to this little incident. I lack the skills and feel it too keenly.
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2004/05/28
Favorite Old Time New York
With the closing of Zito's Bakery (see below), I thought it might be interesting to do a partial list of some of the old time New York stores and restaurants which give NY its special character. I've talked about some of my favorite NY buildings, now maybe it's time to focus on the people and businesses inhabiting some of those structures. This is a hard list to create because it means sitting back and trying to visualize different parts and streets in NYC. It's a big city, folks.
*Keene's Chophouse or Steakhouse (1885)
*Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station (1913)
*The Ear Inn
*Macy's (the escalator)
*Zito's (thanks for the memories)
*Fraunces Tavern (1763)
*Pete's Tavern (O'Henry did a lot of writing here)
*Old Homestead
*Lexington Candy Shop (malteds)
*Ferrara (1892)
*White Horse Tavern (where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death)
*Elk Candy Company
*Schaller & Weber
*Yorkville Packing House
Like I said, a partial and quick list. I'll be back to this when I get some more time.
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Deposition
Ever given a deposition? Or more accurately, ever had an attorney TAKE your deposition? It's a series of questions and answers recorded by a court reporter and done under oath. It's like testifying in court except there's no judge to rule on objections or to make sure everyone behaves. They can be a lot of fun for a lawyer to take. We did one once where the deponent later became a client of the firm and he refused to ever set foot back in the conference room where we took his deposition. That was an interesting day. I am out of the office for the majority of the day today where I will be taking a deposition of an incredible fraud artist. He regularly gets written up in the papers and never seems to pay the price. Without being melodramatic, the noose is tightening on him this time.
I love to wear the white hat.
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End of an era?
Zito's Bakery (scroll down to bottom for picture) is closing. I think that a lot of people don't realize that NYC is made up primarily of small businesses, many of them family owned. If you live your life in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where I visited once, you believe that chains are normal and natural and your needs will be met by the large corporations. Not in NYC. Here the real estate, with some exceptions, is too expensive to support the big chain business model. You can see those guys in their planning meetings wondering where they're going to put the parking lot, can't you? Also, it's tough to make deliveries here. So, when a landmark hangs it up, it's sad. I know change is part of life, especially in NYC where it seems to happen so quickly, it's just that these guys had a special place in the Village and when they lock the door that last time there will be a hole in the fabric of that society. Maybe not a big hole, but a hole nonetheless. And the bread was really something!
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2004/05/27
Something just hit me
When I was at the Memorial Day Ceremony today (see below), a fellow I know slightly came up to me and re-introduced himself and his friend and he introduced his friend as his "law partner". Now, I know the first guy is a lawyer and think that I would have understood what he meant if he just said, hi, here's my partner. But "partner" has taken on a meaning all of its own outside of the legal community and I guess you can't just go around calling someone your partner and leave it at that. Now, if he had said his legal partner. . .
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Beverage Blast from the Past
Just had a Fresca. When was the last time you had one of those? It was actually just fine.
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Memorial Day, continued
I just got back from the Memorial Day ceremony. We had some soldiers there and I wished the turnout was larger. Otherwise, we were reminded that our freedoms today were paid for in some soldier's blood or suffering. It is an important reminder. And we bowed our heads in prayer for those who died and those still in harm's way.
I came back to the office sad and then I got a phone call from my daughter at home. She wanted to tell me that she was having lunch and she missed me. She was using cookie cutters to cut shapes out of her sandwich for lunch. She was excited. It made me feel a whole lot better.
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Annoying Phone Call of the Day (so far, and it's early yet)
Just took a call from Mary at Verizon. It rang through to me because it's too early for receptionist types to be in. It went like this:
Mary: Can I speak to Mr. A?
Me: No, he's not in yet.
Mary: Can I leave a message?
Me: Sure. Just let me get a pen [as she starts speaking quickly and stops].
Mary: Tell him Mary from Verizon called and said that a technician has been dispatched, to his house. That's d-i-s-p-. . .
Me. Wait a second. Are you actually spelling dispatched for me?
Mary: Yes.
Me: You know what? I have seven years of higher education. I think I can handle this big word on my own. Anything else?
Mary: No.
Me: I'll give him the message.
P.S. According to spell check, just so you know, I managed to spell dispatch here, too, without any assistance.
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Another story about the girl child
We have been having problems getting the girl to go bed and stay there once she's put there. I've been thinking that maybe we've been putting her to bed too early. So, we decided to keep her up extra late.
We put her in her pj's and brought her back downstairs to keep us company for dinner after we put the boy child in his crib for the night. She joined in with a little snack, just to be sociable.
Then, we retired to the living room to watch the Yankees and the Orioles play. I sat on the sofa and got to share a blanket with her as we cuddled and watched some of the game. It was Norman Rockwell, old fashioned sweet. She was interested in the game -- the noise of the crack of the bat, how fast the ball moved when pitched, and all the running and sliding. I told her that this was a special treat because she was such a good girl and then I also told her that it was also a treat for me, which was much more true. We watched for a little while, with the lights in the room on really dim.
Then we muted the game and read two night time stories. After story time, we went into the kitchen because she was hungry and she had a snack -- a couple of goldfish and a little smoked Gouda.
Then off to bed. And she stayed in bed, more or less, and went right to sleep. I label it a qualified success.
Oh, and one funny thing, I took a piece of cold steak (love the leftovers!), popped it in my mouth, and then ran my fingers through her hair as she sat at the kitchen table. She looked up at me and said: "Did you wipe you fingers? I hope you didn't wipe your greasy little hands on my hair". I'm still chuckling as I write this.
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It's like thunder . . .
That was a hell of a thunder and lightening storm last night that rocked my area. It woke me up out of a relatively sound sleep at 12:24, according to my trusty clock.
I lay awake in bed for a little while afterwards. I was warm and drowsy and I just lay there as the lightening lit up the room with these intense, and sometimes sustained, flashes of light. The thunder was shockingly loud, too. I kept waiting for the kids to wake but they slept through it.
It made me feel like a kid again. I used to love lying in bed during these kinds of storms. I would feel so safe as the fury of the storm broke on the walls of our house. I hadn't thought of those times for years and the feelings, and the memory of that little bed, all of it seemed to come back very vividly.
There's something magical about a good storm. It cleans the sidewalk but it can also clean your mind. Everything feels fresh the next day. For me, last night, it brought back old and almost forgotten memories of childhood. This memory was one of those special, private memories. The kind of thing that, as a child, you'd probably keep tucked away from other people's regard. The storm cleaned out the cluttered pathways behind which this memory remained, still tucked away.
It was nice to take it out and hold it again for a little bit. It's comforting to feel safe like a child again.
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Memorial Day
Memorial Day approaches this year with more poignancy than I can ever recall before. So many of our nation's soldiers have been killed or hurt. So many others have committed acts of bravery and self-sacrifice so stirring and exceptional that they seem almost unimaginable to me as I sit in the calm of my office. I ask that all of you take some time this weekend and reflect on the sacrifices made by those who came before us and those who are fighting today.
Today we will have a wreath laying ceremony at an organization I belong to in honor of these men and women. I co-chaired the committee arranging this ceremony and I invite you, at 11:45 A.M. (EST), to join in virtually and take a moment in silence, bow your head, and join us as we pay tribute and remember and honor.
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Adventures in Blind Dating, continued
Buddy and the girl are building on the stunning success that was the Australian wine tasting and are getting together tomorrow night for the classic American date: dinner and a movie. As details become available, I will share. Keep rooting for 'em!
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2004/05/26
Time Suck of the Day
I give you the Guess the Dictator/Sitcom Character Game. This one is insidious. Great time suckage potential here. Enjoy!
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Quote of the Day
From Belle de Jour, who has quite a way with words:
"Isn't the concept of sausage odd? Minced pig stuffed into part of a pig's digestive tract. With herbs. It's more like an anal necrophiliac bestial fetish than a foodstuff."
I happen to like sausage, actually. But this may cause me to re-evaluate. We'll see what happens next time I come across one.
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Noticed something kind of interesting
I've been looking at job postings for in house counsel positions of late. It's part of my considering something new phase. Anyway, I've been noticing something kind of interesting about the requirements posted for some of these jobs. After they list the substantive legal experience they want you to have, and the academics, and the big firm, they go on to say that they want someone with "stable work history". Isn't that interesting? They put it out there right up front that if you've bounced around, they don't want to talk to you. I guess I always knew that was a red flag. When I've done interviews for my firm, I've noticed if people have had too many companies or firms on their CV, but I never saw it as an up front issue. The hiring company doesn't even want to discuss it. There could be plenty of good reasons. Spousal relocation comes to mind, for one. I suppose they don't want to take the chance that you either are flighty and likely to take off if the breeze from the ocean blows too hard or, and more seriously, that you have been found wanting by all of your previous employers. Interesting, no?
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More on fountain pens
Jester left a comment on my post below concerning fountain pens in which he said that he forgets that he has them. And that got me to thinking that I bet that a lot of people not only forget that they have them but also may not know how to take care of them. Here are some suggestions I came across on the web:
CARING FOR YOUR FOUNTAIN PEN
*Always cap the pen when not in use.
*Hold it upright and place the cap on top of it to avoid ink in the cap.
*Always use fresh ink (less than one year old).
*We recommend you clean your fountain pen every two months. Use room temperature water, never hot water, alcohol or synthetic cleaners. If the pen is very dirty, use a solution of 2/3 cold water and 1/3 non-sudsing household ammonia. Shake out any excess water and dry the nib with a soft cloth.
*If you wont be using your fountain pen for a while, flush it out with cold water and dry it before storing.
*If you are traveling on a plane, either fill the pen completely, or leave it empty. Remember to always remove the cap with the point of the pen upwards. These tips will help avoid problems that could occur due to sudden changes in cabin pressure.
*Always try to use a protective case (e.g. leather) for carrying your pen, to prevent any scratches or nicks.
This Parker Pen website has some good information. And Glen has an interesting site with a great page of links for all sorts of fountain pen websites. Borderline obsessive, but in a good way.
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Feeling blah today
It's a gray day today out there. And it feels kind of gray in here. There is so much work to do today and so time and then there is the motivation question. What motivation question? Well, I'm typing this aren't I instead of the Civil Appeal Pre-Argument Statement I should be knocking off, right? So, there must be a motivation issue somewhere. Maybe it's just overtired. Or overextended. It's just another day when I think that I am not doing as good a job as I should be anywhere, practically. Set phasers to whine! No, I'm not having a little self-pity party, I am just sort of recognizing a fact -- I am not performing anywhere at 100%. I hope what I am putting out in terms of effort and quality is good enough, but I'd be lying to myself if I said it was 100%. I don't like to lie and I especially won't tolerate my lying to me.
So, what to do? I've taken small steps this week. The creation of a to do list every morning with the most pressing items and a desire not to carry any of them over to the next day, although that has proven to be a tad over-ambitious.
I think that what I really need is a vacation. I'm putting a lot of hope into this coming weekend for some recharging. I hope, weather cooperating, to spend it playing with my kids at the beach. That should go a long way, and I need it to, because it is shaping up to be a crazy summer at work. Usually things slow down in the summer, right? Well, not this one. I think it's going to be real hot at the office with, probably, a lot of weekend work. My wife will hate that.
I will try to tune in later with something a little lighter. You can't be gray all the time, right?
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2004/05/25
Iraq
What to believe about Iraq? Well, one thing that the war has done is thrown up into stark relief the fact that I am significantly less trusting of the major news organizations. None of them seem to report the news without attempting to score a point, one way or the other. For awhile, I was more comfortable with the Fox approach because it seemed that there was no conservative point of view being communicated and, while I might not automatically trust/distrust one point of view over another, I liked having the choice. Best is when I could compare points of view by getting both the Fox side and the NY Times side of the same issue. But that gets old and besides, who has time every day? 9/11 was a major turning point for me and the American news system. I started to turn more to the web as I think many others have. I still read the NY Times on a daily basis, but I find I trust it almost not at all. I tried to read the Christian Science Monitor every day for a three month period, but I perceived that they had a huge anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian point of view and the reporting was slanted. I cancelled that subscription. I tried the NY Post, more conservative with a better editorial page, but ultimately less interesting than the Times. So what do you do if all you see in the media are tales of defeat coming out of Iraq? You turn to primary sources, as you were taught to do in historiography classes in college. And you seek out letters from soldiers in Iraq to find that their view of what's happening in Iraq is very different from the editorials passed off as news articles you get in the press today here. I found that letter to be very interesting and much more hopeful than the "news" (as I borrow the scare quotes from Reuters).
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Tribute to Fountain Pens
Who out there writes with fountain pens anymore? Besides me, I mean. I started writing with them in law school, which feels like it was a million years ago. In dog years, by the way. It's not so easy for a lefty to write with a fountain pen. You generally drag your hand across the page when you write with your left hand and you risk smearing the ink. So, I use fine point nibs and tend to prefer the Waterman ink as it dries relatively quickly.
I like fountain pens for two broad reasons. The first is practical. I write with a very bad hand. I always wanted nice handwriting and have always admired people who do have that. Fountain pens force me slow down and increase the chances that I will be able to read what I just wrote later when I need to refer back to it.
The second reason is aesthetics. First, generally, fountain pens are beautiful to look at. I have probably six or seven I've acquired over the last 15 years. They range from the expensive Montblanc type to the $2 plastic Waterman used by French school kids that I bought in Paris. They each have a different style and I like them all. They feel different in the hand, too. They are all heavy, with the exception of the $2 one. Second, writing with a fountain pen is a sensuous experience -- the rasp of the nib; the resistance on the page as your hand angle changes; seeing the ink flow from the nip; and seeing how much darker and more beautiful the fountain pen ink is. Even your daily to do list looks better with the fountain pen. And slowing down to write your list helps you concentrate and think better about what you're doing.
When's the last time any of you wrote with a fountain pen?
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School Ends Today
Today is the last day of school for my daughter. It was her first year at school and she's grown there. My wife took the morning off from work to take our daughter to school and the little one was so excited that her mommy was taking her. My wife is going to stay for the little celebration picnic afterwards. I have court related obligations I could not get out of so I could not attend, much to my great disappointment.
It seems like her little school year has flown by. I was so sad when we took her to school and she was so excited. I remember that the school had social workers standing by in case there was separation anxiety and I went up to one to see what she could do about MY separation anxiety! I was only partly joking. I was not ready for my little girl to leave the house.
And now the year is over. I don't think that she understands what it means, that she won't see her friends or teachers anymore, if ever again. I wonder how she will process this change and how she will integrate it into her life. I believe that she was popular among her class mates because other mothers kept calling to say that their kid wanted to have a play date with our child.
She changed there, from parent teacher conference in the fall to the spring. In the fall, her teachers said she never spoke and was shy. That she preferred to play by herself. My wife and I were mystified because at home she was a chatterbox and very outgoing. By the Spring conference, it was totally different. She came out of herself and never looked back. She become talkative, voluble even. One story her teacher told us went something like this. She came over to the teachers to tell them that Jeffrey, a class mate, was throwing sand out of the sandbox again. The teachers asked my daughter to tell him to stop because they had tried and it didn't work and maybe if my daughter tried it would. My daughter then put her hands on her hips, looked at the teachers, looked at Jeffrey, looked back at the teachers and said, "well, I doubt it" and walked away.
So, another milestone is reached. It matters much more to me than to her, I think.
In some ways, this blog is turning out to be an extended love letter to my children. In other ways, it seems to be a way for me to mark and comment on the little and larger changes in my life. Either way, I'm comfortable with the direction this is taking. Are my readers?
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2004/05/24
A Small Disappointment
Got today rejected for a new job I had applied for. Of course, I only know that because I called the human resource idiot to follow up. I had a screening interview, was told that the hiring manager would definitely want to meet with me, and then was told today that there "were more qualified individuals" in the pool. I sort of doubt that but think that it was a shitty way to tell someone. I have been toying with a career change of late and this would have been interesting. So, I am a little disappointed.
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Chuckle of the morning
|Norwegian speakers unite!
This weekend, my daughter actually garnered an advantage from speaking Norwegian. We attended the third birthday party of one of her little friends. It was held at a place called "Art Farm" in New York City. By the way, we scored the holy of holies: a parking spot right in front of the door to the place on the street in NYC.
The party was cute. There was a guy with a guitar and then art projects and then, in the basement, a little petting zoo. I'm not sure how much I approved of the petting zoo in the basement thing -- how much natural light do any of these animals see? Be that as it may, the two people in charge downstairs were Swedes. And when they heard my wife and daughter speaking Norwegian, they were delighted to have fellow Scandos there. So, they kept letting my daughter hold all the cool animals first because they'd speak to her first, in Swedish, and she'd answer them in Norwegian. First time I've ever noticed her gain an advantage from Norwegian language skills.
I asked one the Swedes later if they had birthday parties like this in Sweden and he said no with a sort of funny, almost judgmental, tone in his voice. So, I remarked that these kinds of parties are common in NYC because people have very small apartments and don't have the space to have 16 children over to run around and play. He looked kind of surprised at that, as if a reasonable explanation other than American excess hadn't occurred to him. I just smiled and left it at that.
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Stray observation while driving
Perhaps this is a condition confined to the North-East, but, while driving around this weekend, it seemed to me that if I saw a car festooned with bumper stickers those bumper stickers conveyed a strictly liberal message. In fact, except for very seldom sighted Bush-Cheney 2000 sticker, I can't recall ever seeing a conservative bumper sticker. Why is that? How did the bumper become a platform for exclusively one point of view? Also, the cars most likely to carry the most bumper stickers here -- the Subaru or the old Volvo.
Still a big fan, by the way, of the "Nuke the Gay Whales for Christ" bumper sticker of the late 80's.
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2004/05/23
Can't go home again
After work Friday night, and after calling the plumber, we all trooped off down the street to see a house that just came on the market. When we were looking to move out of the City, this was the first house we looked at and we had even made an offer that was accepted on it. Then the owners refused to go to contract since they could not find another house in town. So, it fell through and we bought our current house. We were always kind of bummed though. In our memories, house #1 was always bigger, with a mansion sized plot of land, an airplane hanger sized kitchen, and a bathroom around every corner.
Our memories were very strong, and like as not, probably distorted as memories always are. But they were hard to deny. So, when the agent called to tell me that the house was back on the market, I was happy to go and check it out, as was my wife.
I think, in part, that this house represented close to the iconic image of a house. For all Americans, the house plays an important role as something much greater than merely shelter. A house as a man's castle, and so on. Briefly, even if you don't aspire to own a house, you understand this because you have been inculcated with it and because it runs through all of our history. Some of our first bill of rights items concerns are ability to be free from government interference inside our homes --- no right to quarter troops. Then, we have always venerated great homes -- Monticello, for instance, was justly celebrated even at the time of its creation. It is a theme of many television programs and was the driving impulse behind our settlement of the West, which you may recall the great historian Turner viewed as the single greatest event that formed the special American character. But that impulse was really to get land and house.
By the way, one more digression, do you also hate it when a real estate agent talks about showing you or selling you a home? Bullshit. I have a home. You want to sell me a house where I can put the home. The home is my family and the house is the place that holds it.
So, in any event, we went and saw that first house. And it put memories to rest. Which is good because I think we were ready to put our house on the market to try and buy this first one. The rooms were smaller, the flow/plan of the house was less favorable, the garage was smaller, the street was not as nice, and, frankly, it would have required some real money in renovations. I walked out liking my house better than when I went off to see the first one again, plumbing problems included. So, we stay here for awhile longer, I think.
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My son, yesterday
My wife was off on an appointment all morning yesterday and I had the kids. One of the things we did was put on some music and we listened to music and danced and played for about an hour and a half. For 45 minutes of that, my son wanted to sit with me and be held. He had just gotten up from his morning nap and may have not been totally awake yet. Anyway, while his sister jumped around and continued to demand "Jump in the Line" by Harry Belafonte, he was content to sit in the crook of my arm and cuddle. It was terribly sweet. Cuddly babies are the best. It touches you in a way I can't really describe but is very elemental. We did that until required to dance by my daughter. I have to say that I really enjoyed having the kids all to myself. Sometimes I think that if we had to choose one of us to stay home with the kids, I might be the one who'd want to do it more.
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Stolen Time
I stole some time this morning before the kids got up to write a little bit. Although, I could have done anything I wanted with it. Read the paper, drink coffee, and kick back is the usual choice. No one is up and I love being by myself before the house starts humming. I hope everyone has the chance to experience this kind of solitude and peace today. Pax tibi!
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Plumbing
We have a plumbing problem. Got home on Friday to find the basement doing an imitation of a swimming pool, well, a wading pool, and a pipe making a noise like a faucet. If you have a problem picturing what that must sound like, take a handful of money and pour it from your hand to the floor. The plumber, a lovely guy by the way who lives just down the street, was over in about 45 minutes. We shut off the valve on that pipe which means that the only part of the house which gets cold water is the bathroom next to the master bedroom. And so it remains until Monday. If any of you thought lawyers were expensive, you've never had a plumbing emergency.
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2004/05/21
Time Suck of the Day
I give you Fund Race, a site where you can punch an address in and see who gave how much to which Presidential candidate, where these people live, and what they do for a living. Very interesting and huge time suck potential. Where did that last half an hour go?
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If you are not reading this. . .
If you are all not reading this serial by John Bruce entitled, "Killer App", you ought to be. It is a riveting story about, inter alia, corporate greed, ineptitude, political machinations, frustration, and one man's integrity. It's a must read. I check it out every day.
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Adventures in Blind Dating, Report from Last Night, 2d Edition
Just got the update from my wife. The girl "liked Buddy and would see him again". Success! This is what happens when you combine charm, unlimited amounts of wine, and social pressure to drink as much of that wine as possible. I have advised Buddy to contact her immediately because she is clearly still drunk and he needs to strike while her mind is still clouded!
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Notes from the wine tasting
I made notes on the wines I tried last night and thought I'd share them for those who might care about these sorts of things. It was a tasting of Australian wines. I was not overwhelmingly impressed.
Preliminarily, I deplore the trend in wine making to amp up the alcohol content in wines. I blame the Wine Spectator and their ilk. When your wine is going to be tasted in a group of 200, you need it to pack more of a punch to have it stand out and one way to do that is to push the alcohol content higher. So, when I saw a Wine Spectator rating in the 90's on any of wines I tasted last night, I went back to check the alcohol percentages. I favor the French view, that reds should not exceed a range of 12.5% to 13.5% of alcohol. Otherwise, it seems to me, that first taste is akin to pure, raw alcohol and I find that to be unpleasant.
I tasted the wines by taking several glasses at a time within a style to make my own flights so that I could compare within styles and still try to evaluate them on their own merits. Except for the whites, where I just had one glass.
First remarks: Please note that each wine was fruity yet pretentious, they all pulled my pants down and mocked me. They made me feel like a little schoolgirl in the first full bloom of freshness. With that out of the way, on to the tastings.
(G# means Glass #).
White:
Chardonnay, Stonehaven "Reserve", Padthaway, 1999 ($35): produced by Australia's biggest wine producer, the Wine Enthusiast said: "Peach and vanilla aromas and flavors take the lead, with buttered popcorn and alcoholic warmth. . ." My view: it was merely ok. That was all I wrote about it.
Reds:
Cabernet Sauvignon:
G1: Barton Vale, "The Lazarus", Eden Valley, 2001 ($65)
G2: Yalumba, Clare Valley, 1999 ($32)
I tasted them in that order. G1 here, my notes say, was too fruity and had no depth. The overwhelming impression was berry fruit, mostly blackberry. It was intense and stayed throughout the finish, even overlaying the tannins at the end. It had no balance but a big mouth feel. G2 had better balance and less fruit but was thinner and had less of a big presence in the mouth. I tasted apples in this one. Overall, I liked neither very much.
Shiraz (or Syrah):
G1: Reilly's "Stolen Block, Clare Valley, 2001 ($40)
G2: Brown Brothers "Patricia" Reserve, Victoria, 2000 ($30)
G1 got a 92 from Robert Parker who called it "sensational and stunningly proportioned". I disagree. This was, not a surprise here, 15% alcohol. The first taste was raw alcohol and then the fruit comes through afterwards. The fruit was not worth waiting for. G2 had a 14.3% alcohol content and consequently, to me, had better balance with more fruit and was pleasingly dry. I give the nod to G2 here as the better tasting wine.
The Blends:
G1: Haan "Wilhelmus", Barossa Valley, 1999 (1.5L) ($40) (40% Cab, 28% Merlot, 18% Cabernet Franc with a bit of Malbec and Petit Verdot)
G2: Turkey Flat "Butchers Block", Barossa Valley 2001 ($30) (44% Mataro, 36% Shiraz, 20% Grenache)
G3: Keasler "Avignon", Barossa Valley, 2002 ($30) (58% Grenache, 31% Shiraz, 9% Mouvedre and 2% Viognier)
My favorites were here. Of course, by this time I'd had a fair amount to drink and probably had my taste dulled by the high alcohol content of some of the other wines. G1, at 13.5%, was spicy with a lively mouth feel. It had good fruit and was still dry. I liked it. G2, at 14.5%, was dense, thick and chewy. Parker gave this one a 91 and I'm inclined to agree. G3, at 15%, was surprisingly yummy to me, although I might have been numbed at this point by all the alcohol. It was supposed to be a Rhone style wine but it lacked the spiciness I associate with Rhone wines. Still, it was really jammy with a punch of fruit that tasted like sunshine in a bottle. I liked it a lot. I think that I choose G2 as my favorite here. It was interesting to try three wines, from the same valley, from different years, with different grape makeups and see if I could discern anything from the location. I was probably too drunk at this point to know, but I think that they all had a lot of body and great fruit.
Dinner:
I ordered a French Burgundy, 13.5%, to go with dinner ($55). I wanted to compare it to the Aussie wines generally and, in the opinion of everyone at the table, it was superior to everything we drank at the tasting. It was just a better wine with better balance.
Conclusion:
I still prefer the French wines to the Australians I tried last night. All in all, though, it was a lot of fun.
Hope I didn't bore anyone who managed to get this far.
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Your sign that the apocalypse is upon us
The NY Times has run a story concerning the "sport" of extreme ironing. Words fail me but they may not fail you, gentle reader.
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Adventures in Blind Dating, Report from Last Night
We did the group date last night at the wine tasting, as I posted yesterday. I will post later about the wines. The date was successful. No one ran screaming from the room or tried to leave early to go home to "wash their hair" or "walk the cat". They seemed to like each other. I doubt it was love at first sight or that anyone swooned but I think that this was at least a qualified success.
The woman was easily as advertised. She was blond, athletic, tall, pretty, smart, and interesting to talk to. The total package. A lot like my wife, actually, except for the tall part.
We drank and compared wines and they all made fun of me for being a wine nerd and actually taking notes on the wines and trying to taste them in flights. I didn't mind since it immediately gave them something in common to share -- teasing me.
Once I was sure that conversation was flowing, I tried my best to flit off for long periods to give privacy and allow them the opportunity to get to know each other. Also, I had a bunch of friends at this thing who I wanted to catch up with.
My wife and her friend had arranged a signal in case the date was going poorly. So, when I felt that 9 glasses of wine constituted an elegant sufficiency, I asked whether people wanted to go have dinner. I know that I needed something to eat after 2 hours of drinking. The signal was not passed and we adjourned for dinner.
Dinner was fun. Buddy and the girl shared an appreciation for bad old television and movie trivia. The girl did her best Muppet imitation and Buddy replied with his best Muppet. It was just that kind of evening. Both of them have cats, did I mention that? It seemed significant to them that they each had a cat.
We broke up to catch a 10:00 train home with the girl joining us as she lived farther up the line from us.
I await a report from my wife as to whether her friend would welcome further contact from Buddy, at which point, I will bow out.
Sorry if this post lacked it's usual polish, but, I am feeling every syllable of the immortal advice of Dean Vernon Wormer, in Animal House: "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son". I'd have been ok if my daughter had not favored me with a 2:10 wake up call this morning to go to the bathroom and then a 3:00 request to fix her blankets, which were all twisted.
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2004/05/20
Today in History, Transportation Edition
Random interesting coincidences in world transportation history. Today in . . .
* 1506, Christopher Columbus died in poverty in Spain.
* 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on his historic solo flight to France.
* 1932, Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
* 1939, regular transatlantic air service began as a Pan American Airways plane, the Yankee Clipper, took off from Port Washington, N.Y., bound for Europe.
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Adventures in Blind Dating, continued
As you faithful readers may recall, my wife and I are in the process of trying to fix up one of co-workers -- Buddy. I have posted about this before, first here, then here, with the conclusion of the first fix up over here. The introduction to the newest date can be found here.
Tonight is the night for date #2, an attractive, blond, athletic, co-worker of my wife. Buddy has gotten himself ready by getting a hair cut yesterday. Looks good. As I mentioned before, the date will be more of a group thing at a wine tasting of Australian Wines. Actually, having been to wine tastings at this place before, you should know that they do not serve you just a thimble of wine which you are supposed to suck through your teeth while looking thoughtful and maybe moved by the experience. Nope, this place serves you a whole damn glass of wine "to taste". These evenings usually end with at least one guy putting another guy in a headlock, rubbing his head with his knuckles, and saying: "I luv you, you little fucker, I really luv you". I've never done that, of course. Nope, not me. Anyway, get the idea? If this event cannot break the ice and knock down social barriers, I don't know what will.
One memory I have of one of these evenings, before I became a responsible father (read: too tired to stay out drinking], was wandering over to the pool tables after to watch some guys shoot pool. One guy made a really terrible break and his friend looks at me and says, "he breaks like a woman". [Which, if you watch ESPN2 at all, you know is just ignorant]. I replied, "yes, but he cries like a little girl."
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This made me smile today
From the NY Times today, a story about the son of the First Violinist of the NY Philharmonic in his conducting debut with the Philharmonic during the first rehearsal:
"Take a moment like the passage in Wilhelm Stenhammar's Serenade in F, when the four first violins have exposed solo lines, one after the other. One comes in a tiny bit late. What do you say?
"Mom!" Alan Gilbert said, when faced with this situation in rehearsals for his Philharmonic debut in 2001.
The orchestra musicians tittered. Then, as the remark sank in, they roared.
"I've been waiting to do that for years," Mr. Gilbert said with satisfaction when they had quieted down. The laughter then began all over again."
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Giuliani heckled
Members of 9/11 families attending the commission hearings being held in NYC heckled Rudy Giuliani yesterday when he gave testimony. I understand their pain. I lost family in the Towers that day -- my cousin died there. I don't understand heckling Giuliani. He was the best thing that happened to the city that day. I watched every news conference he held during the days following 9/11 and he helped me a lot as I waited for news about my cousin and my friends and my neighbors, some of whom did not come home that night. Giuliani was a great man under exceptional circumstances. I wish he'd run for President.
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Fender Bender
My wife and I work full time so we have a live in nanny ("Nanny") for the children. She's a lovely 18 year old girl from Utah. Yesterday, while driving the children, she got into a little fender bender. Not a big deal and everybody is just fine. They did not even exchange insurance information, which is a relief. I certainly see no need to involve my insurance company, even if a new bumper for the car may well cost about $1,000. Parenthetically, not the greatest time for us to shell out a $1,000, but what are you going to do? Nanny offered to let us take it out of her salary but there is no way we're going to do that. It was an accident and these things happen.
All the above was background for what Nanny told me my daughter said. Right after they hit, Nanny turned to check on the kids and asked my daughter if she was ok and she said she was. My son, evidently, was not fussed in the slightest but since the power of speech, as we understand it, still eludes him, who knows what he was thinking? Then Nanny burst into tears. Indeed, she was still shaking when we got home some five hours later. As she was crying, my daughter said to her, emphatically, "Look at me!". When Nanny looked at her, my daughter leaned forward from her car seat and said more softly, "you're ok, it's ok, you don't have to cry."
Nothing like getting verbally slapped out of your hysterics by a three and a half year old.
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2004/05/19
Random observations on the Lexington Avenue Subway
I was going to/from Court this afternoon and made the following random observations I want to share:
* I am the only person on the subway without a knapsack/brief case on wheels;
* Carrying a band-aid for over ten years in your brief case pays off eventually when you slice your thumb open trying to close your piece of crap umbrella;
* People on either side of you, on the subway, seeing you are struggling with trying to get a band-aid open and applied to your thumb will actually offer to help and not be deterred by the fact that a stranger is bleeding and could have who-know's-what disease;
* New Yorkers will walk people to the correct subway stop even when it's out of their way;
* If you do drugs, don't buy a sundae at McDonald's and try to eat it on the train, people (read: me) will watch you as you try and try again to get the spoon into the container, then get the spoon into your mouth, and then watch as you zone out and let the hard won ice cream drip slowly out of your mouth and onto your shirt which will cause you, like on the shampoo container, to rinse and repeat;
* Attractive women ride the subway at 2:00 p.m. and hard core lesbians will ogle them; and, finally,
* What do some of these attractive young women see in the punks they're hanging out with?
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9:00 and already running
It's going to be a busy day. I don't know how much time I'll have to blog today. I've been in since 7:30 and have already written one nasty letter, started another one, and begun yet a third. Settlement discussions in a case have broken down, mostly due to the other lawyer's stupidity. He told me that this litigation we're involved in is really threatening his client's ability to obtain new financing and he can't understand why we just won't settle. I actually had to remind him that if the litigation is a problem, he can just WITHDRAW HIS COMPLAINT! He started it, get it? There was silence on the other end of the line for awhile. Someone once told me that the winner in litigation is the one with the least incompetent counsel. Right now, that really feels like it's gotta be my client.
I also sent out a couple of letters in support of my candidacy for a new job. We'll see what happens but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I was very close on this one 8 months ago when they had an opening. I hope this time's the charm. It would mean picking up sticks and moving, but, why not? Life should be an adventure. I mean a good adventure, not the kind where you're picking ticks off each other and saying, gee, isn't this fun? More on this later as the situation hopefully warrants.
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2004/05/18
A quote for the evening
From the Wind in the Willows. This cynical little bit amused me:
"After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working."
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Consider the source
While out procuring lunch, I overheard two women speaking. The first was complimenting the second on her new 'do ("I love it!!"). The problem, from my perspective [warning: inner queer eye approaching], the first women was dressed poorly, had nasty hair, and bad taste in makeup. Should you consider the source? I mean, if someone gives you a compliment on something about which they, according to all outward appearances, have no qualifications on which to base such compliment, does the compliment mean less?
In a similar vein, my wife does not understand when someone says something like this: "Normally I don't like XYZ, but this is terrific XYZ!" My wife thinks that if you normally don't like something, how are you qualified to critically evaluate it? In other words, what do you know about XYZ if you don't like it?
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Be careful stealing gas
If you plan on stealing gas this summer, as gas prices climb and climb be careful where you put the hose before starting to suck.
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And Jupiter aligns with Mars . . .
Very cool thing. On June 8, for the first time since 1882 Venus will be visible moving across the surface of the Sun. The article warns people not to look directly at it because you could suffer damage to your eyes. And if you look directly at it with a telescope? Instant damage or even blindness. I'm going to wait to look instead at the photographs of it. Except, I'm going to look at the pictures while wearing sunglasses!
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Spring has sprung
Does it depress you? I've read about seasonal affective disorder and I seem to recall that it hits hard in the Spring. Do you think that feelings of mild depression or even just sadness are exacerbated by the season? Or is it just hooey?
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Time Suck of the Day
New York edition: on line "walking" tour of NYC. Very cool. Go explore and waste some time.
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Wonderful film
My wife and I got totally sucked into a wonderful film last night on cable. I was too tired to read anything serious and was all out of everything frivolous -- you need some attention to start that biography of Gustave the Great or continue reading Kagan's Peloponnisian War -- so on went the television. No Yankees game and no antique road show (shamefully, I am an ARS junkie). So, taking advantage of the fact that my wife was called upstairs by the girl child for a potty visit, I flipped like mad through the channels. Why is it that women seem to have little tolerance for what I regard as the essentially male trait of channel surfing? It's not just my wife.
Anyway, she was back downstairs in time for me to settle on Mostly Martha (or Bella Martha). Unusually for us, we were immediately sucked in. Maybe because first, we wanted to know what language they were speaking -- German. Second, because I am trying to lose some weight (low carb works pretty damn well) and the food looked splendid (the star is a chef). Third, it had the whole little kid goes to live with career obsessed aunt after mother dies angle. Seriously, we stayed up late and it absolutely plucked at the heart strings. We both got teary. It was a great film and I highly recommend it.
Also, unusually, we both felt more relaxed and rested after seeing it. The last time we went to the movies or even watched a decent film was back in January when we played hooky to see the final Lord of the Rings film on the big screen. I forgot what a good film can do for you.
Actually, I am leaving one out -- we saw, also in January, a great Norwegian film -- Kitchen Stories. Another film I'd highly recommend, if you have the chance to see it.
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2004/05/17
Getting out of bed
I met today with a client for about an hour and a half. He is being sued for millions of dollars. He is freaked out. He sat in my conference room and said that the only thing that is keeping him from crying was the knowledge that I would defend him and protect him to the best of my abilities. That is one small reason I feel good about what I do. It is an awesome trust when a client puts his life into your hands. Knowing that I can inspire that trust and confidence, knowing that I can protect him, and knowing that I can stand between my client and the storm makes me feel good about being a lawyer. He walked out of my conference room understanding that he can mount a real defense, that he has options, and that he did not have to be scared. That was worth getting out of bed for today.
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Gonna be one of those days
I have already finished a large coffee and feel as if I may need to seek emergency intervention from a licensed caffeine provider. I'll check with my insurance company first to see who, in may area, may be able under my plan to administer a large dose of espresso intravenously. Seriously, I feel nothing from the first cup. My wife was telling me that a doctor once told her that coffee is a toxin for the body because when you stop drinking it, you crave it like a drug. No one, she was told, ever craved broccoli when they stopped eating it. Seems reasonable to me, but what do I know? Besides the fact that I need more coffee.
I have already had two bad phone calls. One client has just been sued for $21 million dollars. I have not seen the complaint yet, but I suspect it's going to prove to be a load of bullshit. The second is concerned that he may have come to the attention of an important regulatory agency. That would be a matter for grave concern. I see that my to do list for the day is already out-dated before I even finished composing it. All the benefits derived from a whole weekend at home with the family, as opposed to being spent at work, have evaporated. Poof! Just like that.
And the phone rings again as I try to communicate with a client who is in a bad cell phone area.
I hate the phone.
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A Generation Passes
Ever read the obits? I do. Not every day, but fairly often. They are usually fascinating. First, at many papers, they are written by new journalists who are just learning their skill and you get the impression, sometimes, that these newbys try harder. Second, you get to read a mini-biography about someone who has usually accomplished something interesting.
Eventually, you begin to notice a pattern, though. The pattern I've been noticing for a very long time now is that the generation who fought in WW II is passing. I recognize that this is not a new observation and, in fact, I sort of doubt that there is such a thing as a new observation, but that is a topic for another time.
The WW II generation has been lauded in books and films and I distrust romantic appraisals even as I am persuaded that this generation exemplified virtues which we are in need of again and which I worry we may never see. Forget the films, though. The place to learn about the individual accomplishments is in the obituaries.
The obituary of Captain Charles Moore is a good example. Most of the best obituary writing, by the way, is English, not American. Captain Moore was an SAS officer dropped into France in 1944 and charged with providing WT (wireless transmitting) facilities to the other SAS groups occupied in sabotage and preventing German reinforcement in Normandy.
"The sound of machinegun and rifle fire reverberated in the woods as groups of Maquis engaged the Germans, and for several days they were involved in a series of running fights with the enemy before they were able to make contact with Squadron HQ.
For the next three months, Moore maintained wireless contact with base despite repeated enemy attacks; and, at great personal risk, he prevented the WT equipment, some of which was highly secret, from falling into the hands of the Germans."
The obituary makes clear that he was an ordinary guy who did some extraordinary things, went on to a career in food sales, and stayed married to the girl he married in 1939.
I wonder, as this generation passes, do we have what it takes to replace them?
Also,the fellow who wrote "Danny and the Dinosaur" died. The book grew out of his sketches for his daughter when she became very ill with a childhood disease.
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God 17 Mai!
To all of you Norwegians and Norwegian-o-philes, I wish you all a god 17 Mai! Today is Norwegian Constitution Day. It is a day to spend with families, to wave the flag, and to have a cook out. My wife and I will be at work instead. I hope everyone has an excellent 17 Mai!
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2004/05/16
Statistics
I have had, according to one of the site counters I put up, almost 500 unique visitors to my blog in the short time I've had this web site. Visitors from other countries, other continents, some who reached me because they were looking for "Le Penseur" and I can only assume they mean the Rodin sculpture. I wonder what those people made of my little essays, totaling almost 16,000 words (including quotations)? Well, either way, I am enjoying this so far. It's an interesting community, those people who blog. I suspect that everyone gets something different out of it. I think I started mine with the idea of exploring difficult life issues and moved quickly instead to writing for the joy of writing. I am enjoying the anonymous interaction with other people, those who leave comments here and other blogs where I leave comments. I have no idea where it's going to go, but I am looking forward to the trip.
As I mark this small milestone, I turn to the words of the great sage of the East (eastern division of the American League): "Thank you for making this day necessary." (Yogi Berra, 1947 on the occasion of Yogi Berra Day).
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2004/05/15
How you see your world
A very kind reader left an interesting comment:
"It seems to me that blogging about experiences is very much like wandering around with a camera at hand--when I have an eye out for a photo, I tend to see more along the way because I am really looking. I find that even knowing I have an outlet for my personal observations helps me to pay more attention to the things happening in my life, especially the little things I sometimes forget."
I have kept her words in mind over the past week or two and think that she's really on to something. I look at life differently now, since I've started to blog. I pay more attention to my own internal dialogue to see whether it contains anything interesting enough to write about. I take more mental snap shots.
Mental snap shots are something I've done for a long time. I remember sitting in Paris one night, about 10 years ago, with a very dear friend. He had his camera and took many, many pictures. I had a camera and took very few. We were sitting behind Saint Sulpice, it was night time, and he wanted to take another picture. I suggested instead that he take a mental one, something I was doing. I was worried that on this, his first trip to Paris, we wasn't taking the time to appreciate the details of what he was seeing. The camera, I felt, gave him the illusion of having seen something because he could put it to his eye, click, and turn away, secure in his belief that he had now seen the thing he took a picture of but never having actually seen it. So, we sat and I tried to show him to look instead closely, to live in that moment of observation, and to fix it in his memory. I still have a good recollection of that evening and how the building looked. I'll have to ask him if he does.
There, I think I may have just said the same thing she said but in many more words.
The one thing I'm concerned about with this, however, is that I don't become too detached, too much the observer and too little the participant. If you are always looking, you forget to play. Then, the blog makes you like my friend with the camera. Something to reflect on, perhaps.
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2004/05/14
Last Frasier
Does everyone agree that the final episode of Frasier was something like 30 times better than the final episode of Friends? Better written and better acted.
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Random observations while walking in NY
I was out getting my lunch and running errands and I had the following random observations which I've decided to inflict on you:
*I hate walking behind people who are smoking;
*with respect to the newish fashion of low rise pants on women, without attention to personal grooming that borders on the obsessive, we're all going to know whether that woman is a natural blond;
*some conversations should not be held loudly on cell phones while walking down Madison Avenue at 1:00 ("I'm not doing hormone replacement for like the next 15 years just to have your fucking kids");
*"If you don't know me by now" is actually a nice song to hear coming out of some guy's box;
*Europeans need to stop complaining about the dress of American tourists based on the nasty examples of fashion faux-pas's attached to foreign accents; and, finally,
*three fire trucks pulling up to a building across from the NY Public Library are kind of impressive.
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Learn a new/old language?
I once very much wanted to learn Latin. I've always loved classical history and took some Roman history classes in college. Amanda's post reawakened that dormant urge and I've been investigating self-study books. Wheelock's Latin seems to be the way to go. Any dissenting points of view? Amanda, if you pop by, do you have any suggestions? I am seriously considering it.
P.S. I went by the aptly named Coliseum books to check out the choices and was surprised by how many Latin course books were out there. Wheelock's looked pretty good in comparison but I'd like to get some advice.
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Technical Issues
I am having technical issues getting my sidebar to look the way I want it to. I am going to have to take a lot of time, it would appear, to learn how to edit a CSS. Before this, I didn't even know what a CSS was. Live and learn!
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A Happy Moment
This morning, as I tried to sneak out of the house to catch my train, my daughter heard me on the stairs and called out, "I'm awake, I'm awake". And then she started to cry when I did not come back up, or so I gather. My wife came out and then gave her permission to come down the stairs by herself, carefully, to give me a hug and a kiss goodbye. So, holding on to the railing, she came down about three steps and stopped. She sat down and took the hem of her shirt in both hands. She pulled her little pajama top up and wiped her eyes and her cheeks, oh, so delicately, got up, and continued her way down the stairs to give me my hug and kiss. It was terribly cute.
Last summer, when we had just moved in to the house, she came to the screen door as I was leaving for work and said: "Don't run on the stairs, papa, you might fall and get hurt, I love you!" And I replied, "I love you, too and I'll see you tonight". To which she said, "See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!" She was 2 1/2 at the time.
Little girls are the best.
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More Blind Dating?
Well, my wife has introduced B, via email, to her colleague, who we shall call C, for cute. I am told that she is cute, blond, early thirties, and is looking for an introduction to a nice guy because her past experience, when following her own judgment, has not been satisfactory. B has responded and his response has been looked upon favorably and the Gods of the Blind Date have arranged another adventure. However, your keen observer will also be there. Why? Because, in order to ease the awkwardness, this will be a small group thing. We four will be attending, next week, a tasting of Australian wines. I know little about Australian wines and look forward to slugging back, er, I mean, sipping with appropriate decorum, the offerings from the land down under. I will not, however, spit (unless it is nasty).
I will report back. Perhaps B's luck is about to change? I hope so.
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Ever just want to . . .
keep going past your stop on the subway to work in the morning to get out at a totally different place just to see what's there?
spontaneously whistle or sing for no good reason?
get in the car, pick a compass point, and drive till you hit something interesting?
go to the movies in the middle of the day when you should be doing something else?
be totally and utterly irresponsible?
tell your boss you think his or her judgment sucks?
Tell me that it's not just me, ok?
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Have I found my political identity niche?
This resonated with me (sorry, I forgot to get the link):
"Andrew Sullivan dubs the fans of all this cable-nurtured satire “South Park Republicans”—people who “believe we need a hard-ass foreign policy and are extremely skeptical of political correctness” but also are socially liberal on many issues, Sullivan explains. Such South Park Republicanism is a real trend among younger Americans, he observes: South Park’s typical viewer, for instance, is an advertiser-ideal 28."
I'm a bit older, but the rest may fit pretty well. By way of illustration, I support the rights of gays to marry and of women to choose freely concerning abortion. I also support a strong military and a foreign policy that does not depend on or require the permission of France or the United Nations before we take actions in our interest. So, clearly I would not be at home in either of our two tradtional political parties. But I do have a home in South Park, I suppose.
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2004/05/13
Take me away!
If you could get away for a weekend, a week, or a month, where would you go?
Weekend: New Orleans (without children) to eat, drink and be merry.
Week: Trieste and the Adriatic coast in Italy
Month: Who am I kidding? Who gets a month to travel? But if I did, New Zealand is high on my list.
Can you tell that I am totally unmotivated to work today?
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Far away visitors
I gather that this is an obligatory post for a new blogger. Still, it's kind of cool to see that I have been attracting visitors from the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, Canada, France and the U.K. Feel free to leave comments, y'all. I'm sure that you see the world differently from me.
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More thoughts on rights
I was thinking more about the concept that rights should, maybe, recognize limits and I read a very interesting article by Theodore Dalrymple in the Spectator last week. Dalrymple is a brilliant man and a great writer. He works as a shrink in a big, inner-city hospital in one of the large, decaying cities in England. His articles are always a treat to read and, among the topics which concern him, is the fraying fabric of British society. One of his points is that the concept of "it's my right" has not been met with growth in the concept of "it's my responsibility" with a deplorable result:
"Considerations of rights, which are deemed by much of the population to be inalienable, unconditional and metaphysically unassailable, drive out considerations of kindness, decency, tolerance, mutual obligation and so forth: all the considerations, in fact, that make civilised or dignified existence in a crowded society possible. Everyone becomes an atom of an inert gas in a vacuum, whose rights act as physical forces to prevent him from combining sociably with other such atoms.
Thus a man in a tower block believes he has a right to play his music at all hours of the day and night; his neighbour, on the other hand, believes he has a right to peace and quiet. How is this conflict between two absolute but opposite rights resolved? Trial by baseball bat, since the vaunted protections offered by the legal system do not exist in cases such as this. Hell hath no fury like a man who believes his rights are being violated.
The idea of human rights, then, when extended beyond a few very general and negative rights, does not liberate us; it turns us into feral egotists who are at the same time dependent. This effect can be seen in our schools, where children do as they please because, with the native cunning of youth, they have realised the permissive possibilities inherent in the notion of their rights. I can only say how relieved I am that I shall not be around to see the full flowering of the human-rights culture in the years to come."
A provocative thinker. I highly recommend his book, "Life at the Bottom: the Worldview that Makes the Underclass.
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Favorite Museums (a partial list)
I have been struck by the itchy travel bug. You know it, the one that makes you want to head to the airport, step up to the ticket counter and say, "I'll take a seat on the next flight out, no matter where it's going". I've never actually done that, but I've wanted to. So, to try to stave off that urge, I'm thinking of reliving some of my favorite musuems. Going to museums has always been a big part of travel for me. Here's an off the top of my head partial list of favorites (I'm sure I'm leaving out dozens), I'd be interested in hearing about yours:
Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner
New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York: The Frick Collection
New York: West Point Museum
London: The Wallace Collection
London: The National Portrait Gallery
Lisbon: Gulbenkian
Upstate NY: The Catskill Flyfishing Museum
Oslo: Norsk Folke Museum(Cobalt works museum is cool, too).
Paris: Rodin
Paris: Quai d'Orsay
Venice: Really, the whole city
Chicago: Field Museum
Midland, TX: Confederate Air Force Museum (name changed in 2001 to Commemerative Air Force, by the way) See also, main organization web page
Mexico City: El Museo Nacional de Antropología
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2004/05/12
This guy should buy a lottery ticket, he's that lucky
So, this contractor was renovating a building in North Carolina when he dug a civil war cannon ball up. He thought the cannon ball would make a grand gift to the Cape Fear Museum. Only problem, it still had a live fuse in it! How lucky was this guy -- can you picture him chucking the damn thing into the back of his pickup to drive over to the museum? It was live! And, as a colleague of mine points out, how many times do you think he hit it with his backhoe first? Definitely needs to buy a lottery ticket!
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This made me laugh
Mimi Sheraton was the first female restaurant critic at the NY Times and she could really write. The following made me laugh and I wanted to share it:
"What finally prompted me to lose weight was a view of myself in a hairdresser's full-length mirror when I was seated and wearing one of the salon's floral print robes and realized that I looked like a slipcovered club chair."
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Sad
I don't really know what else to call this one. I had a dear, old friend over the house last night. He was in from out of town. He stayed over and came into the city with me this morning for meetings. Then, he heads back home. We talked on the train out last night, after dinner when the kids were asleep, and this morning on the way in.
His life is falling apart -- work, marriage, kids. The whole thing.
Work: It stems from this, maybe. He lost his job. The fourth one in a row. He's a lawyer, from an Ivy League law school, who had jobs with two of the most prestigious law firms in NY, a big investment bank in NY, and a law firm in the Mid West where he and his family moved after he lost his third job. The fourth job he lost was in the Mid West where the firm had recruited him and had also been happy to employ his wife as a lawyer. She was working at a big firm in NY. She is now happily on her way to a lucrative partnership at this new firm, probably by next year.
So, effect? Well, succinctly, he feels like a failure and she wonders, he says, whether she married a bum who can't keep a job. That leads us to marriage.
Marriage: Their marriage has always been filled with tensions, any observer would agree. Too many, in fact, for me to go into here. Let it suffice that I note that even before the job issues, there were tensions. I think that she feels trapped. Trapped because of the kids, who, as a nurturer type, she'd like to stay home and take care of. Trapped into being the main bread winner because she not only can hold a job, she excels at the practice of law (she does real estate law). Clients love her and the firms she's worked at love her. She's scared. My friend is dealing with feelings of failure and loss and self-esteem issues. To cope, he's thrown himself into a start up venture to which, based on hearing the business plan he's going to present this morning to some investors, I ascribe a very low possibility of success. That means he works at night a lot, after the kids are in bed. What does she do? She watches television and drinks a little wine. Maybe, my friend worries, more than a little. What do they not do? Well, clearly talk. Forget about having sex, which I think you will agree, is an essential component of a good marriage. But they are not even talking. Or if they are, I wonder, are they listening to each other? Does he understand how she needs reassurance that this won't be forever and does she understand that he needs to be told that she does not think he's a shiftless bum (his words there, by the way). Do they remember that they are playing for the same team? Do they still love each other even? Did I mention, as a complicating factor, that her mother lives with them now? Like it couldn't get any worse, right?
It is naive to think that love is the answer or that all you need for a good marriage is love. No, a good marriage takes work. It is a partnership, it is constant compromise, it is giving of yourself and receiving from the other. Love is the reason you do it, but love is just the starting place. Sorry, here endeth my sermon on marriage and love.
Nevertheless, the tension in that house is apparently so thick that, forget the knife, you would need a skill saw to get through it. That brings us to the kids.
Their boy is not yet three and the girl is closing in on one. The boy is clearly troubled by the tension and, according to my friend, ungovernable and uncontrollable. The friend and the wife are not talking, so forget about coming up with a consistent plan to manage the boy, who after all, they should be able to handle and out think. And, if they do have a plan, it does not survive the guilt feelings the wife has from not being home more. Children are naturally manipulative and my friend says the boy plays on the guilt and that makes it nigh impossible for them to present a united front.
I despair of being able to help him or his wife, who I dearly love. By nature, I want to help my friends. I want to make everything right. No way I can do that here. I am watching him hold on with whatever he has left inside and I worry that it won't be enough.
We trooped off to bed on the early side because my friend has his meeting and my wife has another job interview this morning.
I got into bed with my wife after we said good night to our friend and I held her extra close, and I told her I loved her a little more emphatically than usual, and I told her how lucky I felt I was to have her, and I reflected on my comparative good fortune. As I drifted off to sleep, I realized that in many of the important ways, home, marriage, children, we are blessed. [Excuse me now while I spit three times to avert the evil eye.] Seriously, I think of my friend and I wonder if, there but for the grace. . .
I wonder how many of us are truly just one pay check away from watching our whole lives disintegrate. Too many of us confuse our identity and our self-esteem with our job. I hope I don't. My wife and I have talked about this before. When it seems like her career is going better than mine, we prioritize her career and I pick up the slack at home. Why? Because we are a team and I am as proud, prouder even, of her successes than I am of mine and because supporting each other is what we do. When mine is going better, the reverse. We simply do what's best for the team. I would not hesitate to quit my job and fly off to wherever with her if she was presented with an outstanding career opportunity and I know that she would do the same for me. Again, it's what's best for our team that matters. I worry that my friends don't see the world like that.
So, today, I start my day sad. Sorry for the long post, but I needed to write it. Can you think of a better title?
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"Listening Skills" continued
I got home last night and asked my daughter if she had gotten her listening skills back from her friend Eli (see below for background). She told me, "no, he still has them". And so, I said, that was too bad because I had a present for her that I would only be able to give her if she had her listening skills back. She exclaimed, "Oh, he did give them back". No fool I, I asked, all of them? Only to be told, "yes, but a shark ate some of them so I don't have all of them". Well, I said, maybe you can go get the shark and make him give you back the rest and she said, "no, he's a nice shark, I don't have to make him". I said to her, well, he's in the living room so go ask him now so I can give you your present. And she ran into the living room, calling, "Hi, Mr. Shark, can I have the rest of listening skills back? Ok? Thanks!" Then she called back to me, "got 'em!" and so she received her new books and happiness reigned throughout.
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2004/05/11
Time Suck of the Day
Whatever became of Psychoexgirlfriend.com or Kozmo? Go check out the ghost site articles and find out. Guaranteed time suckage. Especially if you are foolish enough to go listen to the old mp3's of the psycho ex-girlfriend voice-mails. Not that I did that. Nope. Not me.
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New books for the kiddies!
On my way back from the post office, I popped into Coliseum Books, a nice independent bookstore, and picked up a couple of old childhood favorites which are too old for my daughter, and way too old for my son, but which I'm going to try to read to her anyway. Anyone else have fond memories of "A Wind in the Willows" and the Paddington Bear stories (by Michael Bond)? I can't wait until story time tonight!
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When did Hockey lose its relevance?
Assume with me that you are a sports fan and that hockey was relevant to your little sports world. When did that stop?
I was reading the sports section this morning and it reported on the progress being made in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It's May 11 and it's gonna hit 80+ degrees today in NYC. And they are not only still playing hockey but they don't even know who's going to be in their championship.
Am I the only sports fan who just doesn't care about hockey anymore? Is it my fault or did the NHL blow their brand up?
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The 80's Teen Movie
Anyone else out there go to high school or college during the 80's? There was a decent article in the NY Times this past weekend on John Hughes which included an interview with Molly Ringwald.
Molly had an interesting comment about 16 Candles and why it meant so much to so many kids: "It is part of their youth, and everyone (or most everyone) looks back at when they were a teenager with an incredible amount of nostalgia. The drama of youth (barring a horribly dysfunctional, abusive childhood) is preferable to the drama of adulthood."
I miss the 80's movies. How many people still have fond memories of the Breakfast Club? Or Caddyshack? Diner? Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Fletch? Top Gun? Real Genius? Or Repo Man ("A Repo Man is always intense")? I suspect that this line of movies marks a generational dividing point. I have not seen Road Trip, for instance. And those who have seen Road Trip probably have not seen History of the World, Part I.
And let me just say, as time marches on, there will always be a part of me who is 14 years old and carrying a torch for Ally Sheedy as Jennifer in War Games.
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Gemstones have the coolest names
Citrines, Peridots, Chalcedonies, Rubies, Garnets, Coral, Aquamarine, Beryl ,Chrysoberyl, Diamond, Emerald, Hiddenite, Kunzite, Opal, Sapphire, Spinel, Spodumene, Topaz, Tourmaline, Zircon. Go here for an extended list of names.
If you could be any gemstone, which one? Today, I feel like a peridot.
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And speaking of children. . .
Last night I told my daughter that her uncle was coming to visit. She had some very practical questions: do we have enough beds? Where will he sleep? Does he need two pillows? When will he arrive? I could only answer about half of her questions.
This discussion followed a little tiff we had about her, as my Southern friends might say, minding me. I got angry about her not minding me. Before she went to sleep, I told her that I was sorry that I got angry with her and I asked her to say she was sorry for not listening. I am a big believer in never, ever, going to bed angry or before you've said you're sorry and cleared up whatever problem you may have had. She told me that she couldn't say she was sorry. I asked her why not and she replied: "Eli (her friend) borrowed my listening skills and didn't give them back so that's why I didn't listen to you". Gold star for creative explanation. She said she was sorry later.
When I came upstairs to go to bed, she called me into her room. She should have been asleep. I went in and she said that she had a wet diaper. She is potty trained but wears a diaper at night to avoid, as the Army might say in connection with a training incident, accidental discharge. I asked her why didn't she call out to tell me that she needed to go to the bathroom. She has a giant Paddington Bear doll in her room, by the way. Her response: "Paddington Bear told me at night I should pee in my diaper". I changed her, gave her a kiss, and told her to stop listening to Paddington Bear who was clearly a bad influence.
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You need a license to own a dog, right?
At what point do advocacy groups lose sight of the forest? At what point do they become so myopically focused on their issue that they forget that or refuse to acknowledge that there may be limits on whatever right they feel requires a passionate defense?
I am talking here about women's reproductive rights advocates. To be clear, I am not talking about a woman's right to have an abortion or receive reproductive counseling (things which I support).
A Judge in upstate New York has ruled that a couple may not have any more children until they show that they are capable of doing so by regaining custody of the four children of theirs who are currently in the care of the state. Each child, all born since 1998, has tested positive for cocaine at birth. The Judge ruled that this was too much of a burden on the state to continue to care for the children this couple was having. I was surprised to note that the women's reproductive rights groups immediately denounced the decision and vowed to do something about it.
I think the Judge was right and the groups were wrong. One, I do think that the state has the power to regulate behavior. That concept is really beyond cavil. This behavior has an impact on the state, the other children in the state system, and sucks up resources (state and medical) that could be used elsewhere. The state, it seems to me, has a compelling interest in regulating this behavior. Two, what about the children? Studies have shown that children born to mothers who abuse cocaine face significant problems in their lives: lower birth weight; cognitive issues; and physical/health issues. Why don't these groups take into account the lives these future children will face if born to a cocaine abusing mother?
I think you can push the concept of rights just too far. If the judge can fine me for having a dog without a license . . .
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2004/05/10
Eastern Wisdom* -- Yogi Quote of the Day
As we search for wisdom and understanding, and further ponder the deeper metaphysical implications of change, we should contemplate the sayings of the greatest Yogi of them all, for in contemplation, lies the road to wisdom. In that spirit, I give you the Yogi quote of the day:
"If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
* By "Eastern", you should, of course, understand that to mean the Eastern Division of the American League.
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Papers out!
Stinky was not nearly as bad as he usually is and the papers have gone out to the other side and to the judge. Woo hoo! And the best part is that no animals were harmed in the making of the opposition to this motion. I will blog more about Stinky tomorrow, when I've caught my breath.
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Very Troubling
I only have one side of this story and am aware that there could easily be another explanation, but I will not let the fact that I am not in possession of all the facts stop me.
I have an acquaintance. He is dying from an incurable brain tumor. When another friend arrived at the hospital to visit him, he found the fellow's girl friend there with some "sleazy accountant". It transpires that the girl friend, a woman of uncertain character, is now the wife. It further appears as if this has taken place very quickly and the will has been changed with equal rapidity. All who are aware of this fellow's condition believe that, as a result of the effects of the tumor, he lacked the capacity to marry, to change his will, or to make practically any decision as all.
Maybe there is a reasonable explanation, but I am hard pressed to see it. To quote my little girl, I am, absolutely, so sad.
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Adventures in Blind Dating, Conclusion of this Adventure
Quick update: I was right, those crazy kids are not going to make it. I got an email this morning from L asking me to let B down gently, explaining (to the extent that what follows constitutes an explanation, not that she needed to provide one), that she didn't think it was going to go anywhere. The French say that when you meet someone, there has to be a "flash". No flash here, evidently.
And the dating goes on. . .
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Ice Cream and Naps, although not in that order
This past weekend was the first weekend in a long time I did not have to work. It was delightful. I already wrote about Saturday.
Sunday was Mother's Day. Another in a long line of what my wife and I think of as Hallmark Holidays. We had lunch with my parents and my grand-parents. Not the high point of my day, at the risk of sounding like a less than dutiful son. My daughter collapsed in tears in the restaurant, and I had to carry her out, upon hearing the pronouncement that there would be in dessert. She was vastly overtired. In fact, she went to sleep almost as soon as we got her home. The boy child did as well. He actually was very well behaved at the restaurant.
So what, you may wonder, did I do with the two and a half hours of free time given to me by my children? Well, I wasted a half an hour doing I know not now. The other two hours I spent in serious nap on the sofa. Ah, the bliss that is the afternoon nap. Actually, I was not feeling too well which is why I crashed out for two hours. I felt a bit loggy when I awoke. The kids were up very shortly after I was. I cooked dinner for us all, which my daughter refused to eat, preferring toasted bread and cheese, which we made for her. The boy ate his, after a fashion, meaning that half made its way into his mouth directly, a quarter was waved about in the air for a time before being eaten, and the remaining quarter went straight on the floor, much to his mother's consternation.
We finished dinner early and it was a beautiful evening. So, we loaded the boy into the baby bjorn and the girl into the stroller and off we went into the village. It's about a 10-15 minute walk into the village and it was delightful. Many of the flowering trees and bushes are budding and some are fully flowered. It smelled delicious and every where we looked there were vivid pinks and purples. However, we did not take too much time to stop and smell the flowers. No, we were on a mission. Ice cream. There is a place in our little hamlet that makes its own ice cream. Our daughter wanted strawberry and our son, my wife decided, really wanted toasted almond, although how she got that from his babbling is beyond me.
In any event, ice cream was procured, tasted, pronounced perfect, and happiness pervaded our merry little band. And to top it off, on the way back, we got to watch a bunny rabbit for a couple of minutes before he (or maybe she) decided our attention was too much and hopped away.
It was a perfect, almost Norman Rockwell, evening. I'm trying hard to fix it in my memory to keep it to refer back to when we get the anti-Norman Rockwell moments. It's hard, though, isn't it? I mean, to keep hold of the good times when you are experiencing the bad times. The bad times, somehow, seem more vivid and immediate and long lasting than the good times. Speaking of which, I am off to get some papers out today. I am working with Stinky, the partner I love the least. Wish me luck and patience.
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2004/05/09
Another Change
No more babies and booze. Yesterday was the last babies and booze event as we've known them in the past. What, you may ask is babies and booze? It was the last gasp of formerly very social adults who suddenly found themselves with child. We were four couples, all of whom were somewhere between friends and very good friends. All of whom reproduced at or about the same time, certainly within a year of each other. All of whom used to hang out and often drink a little too much. None of whom wanted to bring a baby to a smoky NYC bar and all of whom considered themselves to be responsible parents. Solution? Pick an apartment and all get together for a 5-6 hour, sometimes longer, visit. We'd divide the 8 into 2 teams of 4 and into 2 shifts. The first time, the guys went to see the first Lord of the Rings movie while the women watched the kids. The second shift involved the guys with the kids and the women imbibing at a local Mexican place. It was a huge success and for awhile there we were getting together like this every 4-6 weeks.
Last night was one of the last with the original 4 couples. We had it at their apartment in Greenwich Village. This couple is moving to Pennsylvania where he will be a professor at a law school there. They live in a very trendy building in the far West Village -- think J-Lo or Tony Soprano guy. They sold their apartment for an obscene amount of money, bought a house in rural Pennsylvania and are going, so the thinking goes, to bury themselves out there in the middle of nowhere. So, they hosted.
We broke with tradition by all staying together the whole time such that it was more like an extended play date with wine. We had all divided up food responsibilities and I took cheese. Shopping for cheese, with almost no constraints because you're buying for 6, is so much fun. I went to Murray's Cheese, one of the top cheese shops in the City, and told the nice woman behind the counter that I wanted 6 cheeses -- three stinky and three non-stinky -- and that she should dazzle me with her suggestions. Well, maybe she was new, but I was not dazzled. For instance, when I asked for the most unusual stinky cheese, she gave me a cheese with truffles in it but where the rind had been rubbed with cinnamon. Sort of yummy, not stinky at all and the cinnamon detracted from the earth richness of the truffles. So I intervened and ended up buying an: Epoisse (very stinky washed rind); two goats; a Tur (goat and sheep, creamy but stinky); a petit Muenster (stinky like old socks); an aged Gouda (almost crunchy); and, for a seventh, they had a cool Norwegian cheese with cloves in it.
We took the kids across the West Side Highway to a very cute playground and ran around with them until we decided it was time to go. We convinced the kids by saying the magic word, "snacks". Of course, they did not expect snacks to include boiled shrimp or smoked salmon, well, with the exception of my kid, maybe, who thinks smoked salmon is about as good as ice cream. No kidding. She used to make her ice cream noise for smoked salmon and nothing else. She did put away so much shrimp though that I sort of apologized to our host who, being inherently a kind person, told me not to worry about it.
We also drank some yummy wine. Our host covered the labels on 2 bottles and had us taste and compare. It turns out that they were both the same wine, a Chateau Talbot, but 10 years apart in vintage. Not to blow my own horn, but I got it immediately on the first sip of each, much to the surprise of my host. I like wine and, while it's hard to talk about wine without sounding pretentious, it's not a complicated subject. Taste, think, describe. Where's the great mystery?
Anyway, it was a lovely day with great cheese, great wine, good friends, adorable and well behaved children, and a perfect way to say good bye to a wonderful little tradition. I don't know if we are ever going to do it again and even if we do, with just the three couples or if we add another one, the dynamics will be different.
So that is another change. Another chapter ended. I'm still going to post about some other changes later. I just need to reflect on them some more, or maybe, I'll just use this to reflect out loud.
Sorry if this one ran rather long. Thanks for reading to the end.
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2004/05/08
Eastern Wisdom -- Yogi Quote of the Day
As we search for wisdom and understanding, we should contemplate the sayings of the greatest Yogi of them all, for in contemplation, lies the road to wisdom. In that spirit, I give you the Yogi quote of the day:
"We may be lost, but we're making good time." -- Yogi Berra, 1972
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2004/05/07
Change
My wife made me tape the final episode of Friends because we were going out to dinner last night and she wanted to watch it. So, we saw it tonight. Actually, it was pretty vapid. However, one scene resonated with me. That was the last one where the cast all put their keys on the table and shut the door to the apartment.
Every time we've moved, I've always insisted on being the last one out the door and I turn to the apartment, say good bye, and shut the door. Silly, maybe, but it helps me with the change. I am probably (my wife says, certainly) not good at change. I contend that I love change, as long as it doesn't interfere with any of my little daily routines. Changing living space is a tough one, because it changes all of your daily routines.
So I always say good bye. I feel as if I have a vivid recollection of the last three places we lived, of the front door closing, of the sound of the door and the clunk of the locks. Even the smell of the hallways and the quality of the light. I sort of miss all of these places. I have happy memories of all of them. But I always have to say good bye.
I am contemplating some other changes, future changes, life/career changes. I'll address them later. Remind me if I forget, ok?
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Addition to Favorite Buildings (NYC Edition)
This will probably be the first of many, but, walking down Fifth Avenue last night I realized I had forgotten about the Cartier Store/Plant Townhouse. This is the last surviving example of golden age Fifth Avenue domestic architecture. Yes, at one point, Fifth Avenue in the 50's was residential and very, very expensive. Cartier recently restored the building and it looks pretty great.
Also, a kind reader wrote in about the Cunard Building downtown, which has the most kick ass ceiling. This reminded me of the Customs House at Bowling Green. The NYC harbors were where much of the nation's wealth landed from cross-Atlantic trade. All the duties paid on that trade were paid here. Specifically, the counting room in the rotunda, which you can sort of glimpse in one of the photographs at the link, has the most incredible murals and the original desks where merchants stepped up to pay the duty on their cargo.
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Adventures in Blind Dating, Update
Well, those two crazy kids may not make it after all. [Wipe tear away, here] B has reported in. He tells me that they stayed for another half and hour and chatted. B says she was cute and he enjoyed the set up. However, when he asked her for another drink or if she'd like to go get a bite to eat, she told him that she had to be up early tomorrow and would have to pass. So, B, ever the gentleman, walked her back to the train where she said, "this was fun, let's do it again sometime, email me". Sounds like the kiss of death, right? Time will tell, but, to paraphrase from old silent films, it doesn't look good for our hero!
However, another prospect has come out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. My wife has a candidate from her job who just broke up with her boyfriend. Stay tuned and we'll see what develops in my quest to help B achieve couplehood.
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My Brush, however faint, with Fame
My wife and I had dinner last night in the City (NYC). All by ourselves, no kids, no other people. It was grand. The food was good, the wine was good, the conversation flowed (or at least did better than just dripping) and sparkled (there were moments, ok), and we felt for a brief and shining moment like adults again. She looked beautiful (and I'm not just saying that because I know that she tunes in from time to time).
After dinner, we were enjoying a post prandial stroll down Fifth Avenue to catch a train back home when, suddenly, who should I spy jumping out of a Town Car and ducking into the NBA Store but none other than Al Sharpton. Remember Al? Democratic Presidential candidate? Racial rabble rouser? Huckster?
He cut his hair, otherwise, he looked pretty good. I wonder if we'll see him at the Democratic National Convention, especially since I've been seeing articles concerning Kerry's failure to reach out to minorities and include more minorities in his campaign.
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Freedom of the Press in the European Community
Journalist arrested for investigation into fraud. It appears that there is a vast scandal brewing in the European Union over fraudulently diverting Commission money into private hands. Classic corruption. Here, in the United States, a journalist who exposed such a scam would be heading for the Pulitzer Prize. In Europe, he's gone to jail, had his lap top seized, had his records taken, and had his bank statements reviewed. No such treatment has been meted out to those accused of the fraud. The crime this journalist has committed? Insufficient fervor in support of the EU and giving ammunition to the anti-Europeans (read: British). The thing that got me, among others, was the bit about the television station called Euronews. The author of the article, a British MEP (member of European Parliament) had this to say about Euronews:
"[W]hen it reports directly on the EU, impartiality goes out of the window and we are treated to Soviet-style items about millions of workers waking up to higher standards thanks to the Commission. I found the contrast suspicious, so I put down a written question asking Romano Prodi [EU President] whether he gave Euronews any money. His reply was beyond parody. Yes, he said, he did give it grants, but such grants 'in no way restrict the editorial freedom of the beneficiary, who must, however, respect the image of the European institutions and the raison d'etre and general objectives of the Union'." (emphasis added)
I have always had strong views about state funded media. This just confirms them. Remember Prodi's response, please, the next time you read a European newspaper attacking the United States press for being a tool of the administration. Remember that the journalist may have filed that attack while on his or her way to the bank to deposit his or her check from the EU administration.
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2004/05/06
Time Suck of the Day -- A Question
I saw this at another blog during my travels and thought it a very amusing question. So, with thanks to Jen, who came up with it:
"If you had a theme song that would play as you walk down the street or enter a room, what would it be?
Discuss."
For me: Either, "Hey, hey we're the Monkees" or "Sympathy for the Devil".
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Some Favorite Buildings -- NYC Edition
The built environment fascinates me. If you enjoy architectural history, you can never be bored in a city. There is always too much to see, to react to, to think about, to consider, and to enjoy. Here are some of my personal favorite buildings in NYC, in no particular order:
Lever House (Gordon Bunshaft)
The University Club (Standford White) or this link
The Flatiron Building
Grand Central Station
The Chrysler Building (pick a photo)
Citibank Center (couldn't easily find a picture)
New York State Supreme Court (60 Centre Street) (scroll down for picture)
New York Yacht Club
New York Tenement Museum (when my family came to NY, they lived in something that looked very much like this, I'm told)
Seagram Building
Century Association
Woolworth Tower (a cathedral of commerce, said the architect)
Colannade in Greenwich Village
Also check out this resource for pictures.
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Remember the movie, Chariots of Fire?
Well, today in 1954, medical student Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.
Cool, huh?
Also, while we are on a today in history review, today in 1889, the Paris Exposition formally opened, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower. I am working on a small architecture post in its honor.
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Taking himself too seriously?
From the NY Times this morning:
"I'm thinking about gardening as a radical political act," said Fritz Haeg, 34, an architect who teaches in the environmental design program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. "It means completely questioning the way we live, the way we get our food, the way we use and abuse natural resources, the way we occupy public space."
I guess I should pay more attention to the flowers I plant. Or, maybe, I just mock what I do not understand. Still, I think he's taking himself way too seriously. He might want to try some of those decaffeinated brands.
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Adventures in Blind Dating, Chpt. 1 (see prelude below)
The Meeting.
Last night, I took B to meet with L at the Royalton Hotel bar. The Royalton is a very cool space. It was one of the first of the now ubiquitous boutique hotels in NYC. Designed by Phillipe Starck, the doors to the hotel entrance are unmarked and the space inside is low lit with low tables and chairs. Some of the chairs look like small animals with huge bases and small backs comprised of thick metal bars bent to provide some type of embrace. This is the lobby, by the way. You know, where you check in and say king size, no smoking, please. The check in desk is in the middle of the cocktail lounge and quite a bit smaller than the bar. There are these odd looking glass rhino-horn light fixtures jutting out from the wall every five feet or so. I did not like them. The bar is a great people watching place. Not to be too NYC bitchy, but you get the tourists who wandered in wearing matching sweat suits with bright new sneakers and very big hair (I think it was a mother/daughter team) and you get the Euro-trash types who have not been told that this bar is, to quote a friend, so two weeks ago. Interesting mix and they are all looking at each other trying to figure out what the other one is doing in their bar or hotel.
Then there was blind date table. B and I were in suits and ties. B looked quite dashing in a dark suit, pink shirt, and pink and purple tie. Not very lawyerly but certainly nice for a date. When we arrived, L was already there. She snagged a table for three and was drinking a light beer. She was as I remembered her and we quickly introduced each other and sat down.
Quick first impressions. What do you base these on? What a person orders from the waitress? Well, I did not expect her to be drinking a beer as she seemed more of a Cosmo type but a beer gives a good, honest, down to earth impression. B had a martini with a specified type of gin I had never heard of before. What does that make him? Fussy, perhaps? I just had a single malt scotch. I'm married so I don't care what it says about me particularly, except, I suppose, it says, hah, he's doing a low carb diet!
The conversation flowed easily and I'll be curious to hear B's reactions when he gets in to work today. I thought she was nice, but. . . . I have to admit, I was distracted some of the time by trying to figure out whether she was chewing gum while drinking her light beer. If so, turn off for me and I suspect for B who is really quite picky. Hmn, did I say fussy before based on the drink choice? Perhaps there is some truth to that.
In any event, I think that they got along. I stayed with them for a half an hour and then rushed to catch a train to see my children before they went off to bed.
B is usually in to work by this time. I will not read anything into the fact that he is late. I will wait for the report, which I will share with you, dear readers. Do the adventures continue? Tune in and find out!
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2004/05/05
Update on being banned
If you were to visit the blog which banned my comments (see below), you will find the blogger has now deleted all of her posts concerning the murder and her reactions to it. I wonder why. Almost.
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Time Suck of the Day
South Park Scripts are the Time Suck of the Day. Go forth and waste time.
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I could not finish this article
Evidently, some sick, twisted excuse for a human being has been selling fake baby formula to people in China. The result? The babies received zero nutrition and starved to death. I couldn't get past the first two paragraphs of this article on the train this morning.
I'm not going to cry about this. Really, that's what I keep telling myself at least.
The saddest detail of all, if you are not crying yet, the parents' mistook the fat cheeks for a sign of growth and health as opposed to a sign of starvation.
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Germany following Israeli lead on terrorism?
I guess everyone who reads newspapers is aware of the typical European government reaction when Israel assassinates a terrorist leader. The Europeans freak out and say that such extra-judicial actions are illegitimate and threaten the peace process. So, how is this for hypocrisy then:
"The German interior minister, Otto Schily, has expressed strong support for new measures, saying in recent interviews that the German police needed ways to deal with people who present what he called "a massive threat" to Germany.
Mr. Schily caused a stir when he told a German magazine, Der Spiegel, last week that in cases in which there was a direct danger of terrorism it should be possible to take a suspect into preventive custody, or, under extreme circumstances, to carry out assassinations.
"Is there not a right of self-defense against terrorists who plan mass murder?" he asked. "That leads to the question whether in extreme cases it is justified to kill that person in self-defense."
So, it's ok when Germans do it but not Israelis? By contrast to the state of affairs in Israel, I can't recall a single major terrorist action on German soil since the 1972 Olympics.
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2004/05/04
I got banned!
I actually got banned from leaving comments at a blog today. The woman who runs Sofiya the Grouch has decided, I guess, that I cannot post comments there anymore. She deleted the comments I left and banned my ass from ever darkening her comment boards again. I am sort of amused. She is, I gather, a graduate student in music school at U.T. Austin where one of her professors was allegedly killed by another student. I left a message of sympathy on her blog comments.
When next I tuned in, Sofiya posted the following concerning her reaction to the arrest. She said, if you don't want to follow the link, that she is sure the alleged killer is disturbed and she wants to interview all of his fellow students to present some sort of petition to show that the alleged wacko should not get the death penalty. Oh, and she wants to send him a care package.
Did you read the article above concerning the murder? The alleged killer used a meat cleaver to kill a woman with multiple sclerosis. That is absent from Sofiya's blog. Read her comment on this and you will be sure, as she is, that the alleged killer is being "vilified" and needs our help. So, I left a message on her comment board, as best as I can recall since she deleted it, to state that: one, the guy used a cleaver; two, she may not be in the best position to judge the guy's sanity; and, three, that she could easily muck up his defense by running around contaminating all of his witnesses and in doing so would be doing no favor for the guy.
She replied to my comment by noting that unless I know her personally I have no right to comment on her blog like this and she seriously doubts that she could do anything to gum up the system. That's as best as I can recall.
In any event, I replied to her that I had not been rude on my first comment but that contamination is an issue. Also, I figured that a blog is a public space and I could comment as I pleased. But, since she did not want to have anyone commenting who might disagree with her, I would refrain from doing so in the future. [Digression: I am a big believer that the remedy for speech with which you disagree is more speech, not banning the speech. It's a principal that has worked well for this country for a very long time].
So, I went back later to see if she had any reply and found that not only had my earlier comments been deleted, but I was now banned.
What have I learned from this? That if you consider yourself on the right side of an issue (here, death penalty), don't bother with facts (here, how the legal system works). It may be more important to do good (i.e., her investigation and petition), than to do right (refrain from f*cking things up for his attorneys). I gather that for Sofiya and her friends taking action is a comforting end in and of itself which will without question make them feel better about themselves. No room there for a messy discussion about whether it is the right thing to do. Nope.
How very odd. So much for civil discourse.
So, what are the rules for my comments' board? Well, I like lively discussions and hope to have some here. That said, I expect civil discourse. We're all adults here. Whatever happens, though, I highly doubt that I will ban someone for challenging my world view, however narrow my view may be.
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My wife has viewed my blog
I finally decided to tell my wife about my blog. I realized that I did not want to wall off a section of my life from her. Generally speaking, we (or at least I) don't keep secrets from each other. This was not a big secret but we've been married for 10 years and I decided I did not want to start now. So, last night, while we were getting ready to go to sleep, I told her about it. Her reaction surprised me. She was excited for me! She thought it was a great idea and she encouraged me.
Well, now she has actually read it. She said she liked it a lot and reminded me that the contraction of "its" takes an apostrophe when it is short for "it is". Duly noted.
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Silence
I came across this article today and it put into words some of the amorphous feelings I have had lately after hearing about the shooting of the pregnant woman and her daughters in Israel. And the world remains silent Just why does it seem that no one is prepared to protest the shooting deaths of a pregnant woman and her four daughters? These people were shot, execution style, up close and personal. Some animal had to make a decision AFTER he saw them, to kill them. Where is the outrage in the European capitals? These great European humanists who fill the streets when Israel takes out the people who send these criminals to kill young women and children. Why does no one protest these deaths? Do you remember the young child who was shot in his bedroom, hiding under his bed after terrorists invaded his home? No one protested that death either. Instead, you see rallies in Gaza and the West Bank to celebrate this "triumph" and marches in Europe to press the Palestinian cause. Are we back to a place and time where Jewish lives count less? Is that the only conclusion we can reach? I think we all know that this is so in the Arab world in general where they want to push the Jews back into the sea. But is it the case once again in Europe, too? Sometimes, I just despair.
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Adventures in Blind Dating, Prelude
Well, its official. If I write about this, I cannot tell my friend, my co-worker, about this blog because it will chronicle one of his adventures in blind dating. Still, it may prove to be too delicious to keep to myself.
My friend, who I need to give a name to for this blog, shall be known herein as Buddy. Ever play Lacrosse? A buddy pass is something you don't throw to a buddy. It has a big looping arc which gives the other team time to arrive at your buddy's location at the same time the ball does and hammer your buddy. Having hooked my friend up once before with the dating equivalent of the buddy pass, I shall call him Buddy (or just B) for this adventure.
B is a clean cut, nice, funny, smart, well-dressed, conservative guy who works with me. I think a lot of him. I wish my sister had dated him instead of the dirt bags she seems to prefer.
B is single. Not that he doesn't try. He's just kind of a freak magnet. No, that's too strong. But, he generally gets the girl who, by way of example, has her mother as her best friend and tells her mother everything, including details of her sex life. Too much for B. And probably for most men. I mean, it sort of puts three in the bed with none of the advantages. B is in his early thirties and would like to meet a nice girl and settle down.
I have tried to help him by introducing him to some nice girls (one of whom turned out to be buddy pass girl, more on her later, perhaps). Why? I am happy in my marriage and would like to see B happy, too. Also, I probably have a small streak of yenta in me.
So, on to the new possibility. What to call her? How about Lass or L? She appears to be a sweet Irish lass. She may just be covering up her inner psycho, and don't we all, but time will tell. L is the same age as B. She is blond and I don't know much more about her. She seems very nice. She had a tattoo on her ankle. Normally, I don't care for that but on her it looked cute.
I met L on the train going home from work one night. We had a lovely conversation -- unusual but not unprecedented on the train -- occasioned by train problems and our relationship with the train service. During our chat, it came out that she was single and looking. So I asked whether she'd like to meet a nice young man and I described B to her. She replied, in words or substance, sure, why not? As she said, she had just told a complete stranger that she was single and had a less than fulfilling social life, so why wouldn't she be open to the possibility of a complete stranger introducing her to another complete stranger. So I gave her my email address and, to my surprise, she emailed me the next day.
At that point I asked B to join me in my office and to shut the door. I described the situation, the woman, and the setup. He did not think I was out of my mind for trying to pick up a girl for him on the train and was interested in having a drink with her.
We are getting together tomorrow night for drinks.
The stage is set.
Are you all interested in me reporting back on this as it develops? Or should I not bother?
(Spell check claims I got every word right, a first! Must be a mistake in the spell checker.)
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My brush with corruption
There is a lot I cannot write about here concerning my job as an attorney. I am a repository for confidences and every time I mention anything to do with my work, I sanitize it the best I can. I make it more general to distill the point I'd like to make without compromising confidentiality. I'm going to be extra careful with this post. Yesterday someone suggested that if I was interested in taking on a fraud case, evidence could be found to support whatever proposition I needed to have supported to bring the lawsuit. I guess I'm naive. I was shocked. Still shocked, actually. Sure, I've had clients shade things in their favor every day. That's just a fact of life. Everybody shades things to put themselves in the best possible light. Indeed, there is an old legal truism that you never know the real story about what happened to your client until your client is being cross examined on the stand. But this was the first time anyone ever suggested to me that evidence could be, well, created or fabricated. I should note that I shut the conversation down immediately, told this person that I was not interested in their case, and that I'd return the documents they sent to me right away. I have very high moral standards and I am not about to compromise them by accepting a tainted representation. How the hell would I live with myself? I guess I had heard that stuff like this happens. You read about insurance frauds all the time. I just never thought it would come so close to me. And you know what the truly invidious thing is? The way it was put to me was so subtle and so nebulous that there isn't anything to report to anyone. Why? Because it was a matter of interpretation. I felt the message was clear but the person who made the statements to me could deny it. I feel as if I brushed up against something dirty. I need some fresh air.
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2004/05/03
I owe the Judge an apology from yesterday's post
I said yesterday I expected to appear before a judge who had not read my papers or prepared for oral argument. I anticipated writing today a very cynical post about the failures of the judicial system in NY State Courts. Happily, it didn't turn out that way.
This morning I was before a judge who was prepared, courteous, focused on the issues, asked targeted questions, was polite to counsel (most of the time), and decisive. It was a pleasure. I have no idea how he will rule on the motion to dismiss I put before him, but I am certain he will give the motion his proper attention. This was an example of how a court room should be run. In part, this may have been because we were in the Commercial Division of New York State Supreme Court, which only hears commercial disputes above $150,000. So, he's accustomed to hearing and deciding the special kinds of issues complex corporate litigation presents.
Today was really one of the best parts of my job. I love being at the sharp end of the stick, facing a skeptical judge who's asking hard questions as you try the best you can to respond to his or her questions and make your points and arguments. You feel totally alive because you are completely engaged, both intellectually and emotionally. It is exhilarating and leaves you pretty spent afterwards. The thing is, not only do you have to listen and respond, you have to judge how best to respond. In that, you are an actor. You modulate and change your tone of voice to emphasize points and to capture the interest of the judge. By the way you change your tone, if you do it right, you can silence the entire room. I did that today. I had everyone's attention. I could feel it, almost physically, when I took pauses in my argument. No question, oral advocacy rocks.
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2004/05/02
Getting ready to behave
A quick note: I just called home to tell my wife what train I'd be taking and I spoke, briefly, to my daughter. I asked her if she was being a good girl for Mamma and she replied, "no, but I'm getting ready to be a good girl for the rest of the week."
I can't believe how well she already has me figured out. I think that kids are naturally manipulative.
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Life's a beach, when you're three
I am at work today (Sunday) preparing to go to Court tomorrow morning and argue with a judge who probably has not read the papers I spent hours preparing -- more on that later, I think.
But yesterday, despite the hangover and because my wife's was much, much worse, I took my daughter out of the house for several hours in the afternoon so my wife could rest without interruption while the baby was napping.
We went to the beach, about 10 minutes drive from the house. There was practically no one there. When was the last time you were at an empty beach? It smelled of the sea. It was this iodine like decomposing rich smell. There were mussel shells all over the place. We came on a whim, so we were neither dressed for it nor in possession of toys. Still, I took off her shoes and rolled her jeans up to her knees and did the same with my pants and shoes. And off we marched. The sand was warm from the sun and went right between our toes. Then we hit the high water mark (and clearly the tide was out) and the sand there was wet and hard packed from the ocean rolling in and over it. That sand was a little cold. I stood there for about an hour watching my daughter run in and out of the waves as they rolled over her feet. She shrieked and shrieked with laughter. We threw sand at the water and I tried to show her how to skip rocks (doomed to failure, but still). The sun was strong on our heads -- it was over 80 f. It was a beautiful moment.
We sat on the steps leading down to the beach afterwards to let our feet dry so we could get the sand off and I picked her up and pulled her onto my lap. She was happy and I was happy.
Her hair smelled like sunshine and all was right with my world as we watched the waves roll in.
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Appropriate Language
I use curse words all the time. Don't blame my mother. Partially, its a professional habit. All litagators swear and do so way too much. Partially, I spent a summer in China when I was 18 and when no one can understand what you saying on the street, the societal control over your language just disappears and you begin to express yourself in ways that are limited only by your imagination. That was a pretty salty time. Anyway, it took years before I could get over that kind of freedom. I'm better now.
Except when driving. Which leads me to the thought I've been kicking around. Maybe there is no such thing as bad language, maybe there is only language that is appropriate to a situation and inappropriate but no word is intrinsically bad. Even if I can't envision a situation in which certain racial epithets are ever appropriate doesn't mean I have it wrong here, since my imagination is limited. This, anyway, is what I am trying to teach my kids. Well, my daughter since the boy doesn't speak yet.
When we moved out to the suburbs, my daughter spent a lot of time with just me in the car because my wife was put on bed rest with the second pregnancy. So she heard a lot of language that maybe was not appropriate for her situation.
We were all in the car together, backing out of the driveway to take my daughter to the doctor for her two year check up when she said, "shit, fuck". Everyone in the car looked at me. Not her, me. So I told her, "Honey, those are daddy's car words and he only uses those while he's driving." "You can't use them until you are driving". Not bad words, just words that are inappropriate for a then 2 year old.
I'm told I also use those words when reading the NY Times and I've been asked to stop reading that paper around her.
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Victor Borge
Does anyone remember him? He died some years ago. Borge was a Danish Jew who, while a classically trained pianist and musician, made it big in the United States as a comedian and musician. He had impecable timing and was so funny without ever needing to joke about sex or use inappropriate langauge you had to explain to a child. I think that one of my favorite bits was the inflationnary language. To wit: you look wonderful tonight becomes you look two-derful three-night. Or, instead of I ate a tenderloin, I nined an elevenderloin. Or, he was a cap-eleven in the air five-ce. You kind of have to hear him to it but you get the idea.
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2004/05/01
Last Night
Too. Much. Red. Wine. Still hurts. In bed by 12:30 and child up by 6:00. Even after coffee and other fluids, still hurts.
But it was worth it. My wife and I had an adult evening out. Men in tie and jackets and women dressed up, too. Just getting dressed up for dinner changes the whole tenor of the evening. You want to act better, enjoy sparkling conversations, be witty. It starts with the cocktail -- the Sidecar. Ever have one? You feel like the star of a 1920's film, all dinner jacket and cigarette holderish. This is a serious cocktail that, in the words of PG Wodehouse, slips its hand trustingly into yours like a little sister and ends up with you trying to explain yourself to the Magistrate. You don't notice how lethal it is until it is too late.
We had cocktails for about an hour or more. Then dinner. More conversation. Two bottles of Burgundy (Pommard, for those who care). It was heaven. Like we didn't even have kids. I had the Asparagus Vinaigrette followed by Blue Cheese encrusted steak. And more wine. And espresso. Dinner lasted another 2 1/2 hours. More conversation. Home to bed for mildly drunken adult entertainment.
Then, 6:00, "Dada, I need to go to the potty". And the real world returns. Only, this time with a hangover.
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2004/04/30
Feeling kindly disposed
I am feeling kindly disposed to the world at the moment. No good reason why. The sun is shining and its a beautiful day outside of my office. I got retained on a new matter this morning. That's always good.
Mind you, it will change shortly. I am having a meeting shortly with some scumbags who will no doubt piss me off. I don't know why some lawyers confuse aggressive behavior with effective dispute resolution. Ok, maybe I do. Sometimes its inexperience, but sometimes that is the only reasonable position they can take for their client. If you can't pound the facts, or the law, pound the table. I think I am in for some table pounding shortly. Oh, joy.
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Bar culture in New Orleans
I posted the following comment on an article on taxi cab safety in NY at Gothamist (which is a great NY City website) and wanted to share it here. I thought it might amaze some people that this actually happened:
"Back in New Orleans, in the early 1990's, it was not uncommon to see drunken people left in bars, propped up in corners, with their addresses and $5-10 pinned to their shirts, as their friends continued on the next bar. When the bartender had a few moments, he or she would call a cab and the cabbie would take the person home. I never heard stories of that going awry or of a cabbie, assuming he was from United Cabs, misbehaving.
Can't picture that in NY, can ya?"
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RIP: The last Oldsmobile
I saw a photograph this morning in the NY Times showing the last Oldsmobile rolling off the production line. That's it. No more Oldsmobiles. It got me thinking a little bit, as much as I could since it was 6:30 a.m. and I had not had any coffee, about the automobile as icon in America. This, I grant you, is not an original thought (but there are not many original thoughts anyway, so WTF -- sorry, still no coffee).
The car is romance and possibilities. There was another article in the Times talking about GPS and road trips. Road trips are what I mean by possibilities. If you grow up in the suburbs, nothing much happens without the car. For me and my family, that was the Oldsmobile.
My father was very clear on this point: America has been very good to our family and we will only buy American cars. So, for me, growing up meant that when I turned 16, it was driving the Delta 88 with a v-8 engine that just blew away my friend's cute little BMW. Not that I would ever do that. Driving too fast on I-287. Nope, must have been some other idiot with Iron Maiden or AC/DC (hey, I was 16!) blaring out of the speakers so loud that I blew one of them.
The car was painted a truly ugly brown. I loved it, especially because it smelled like old cigarettes and spilled coffee. It used to be the car my father drove to the train station every day. That smelled forbidden and grown up and serious. Everything I probably wasn't but desperately wanted to be.
That really brings me to the point I had been thinking about for a couple of days now. The car is not just the American icon, it is our special meaningful smell memory (damn, I can't get this phrase right). If France, thanks to Proust, has the madeleine, we have the smells of cars that bring us back to our youth. Can't most of you close your eyes and remember the smell of the school bus? That mix of diesel fumes and plastic and rubber and who knows what else that when you smell it you are a kid again? And you haven't done your homework?
That's why, for me at least, the car is an icon. That damn smell makes me think of my childhood. And I still miss the sound of that Oldsmobile peeling out of the school parking lot. Oh, I also miss the sex we used to have in that car.
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2004/04/29
"to most collegians in the United States, haiku is some kind of Turkish beer"
The Hatemonger's Quarterly
The results are in on the "First Annual Horrible College-Student Poetry Competition". Worth a look even if it does not qualify as my "Time Suck of the Day".
Hat tip to Joanne Jacobs who runs a very interesting education blog.
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At least the police in Chinatown ain't rapping about it
'I got a story I really need to tell'
Holy Shite! The Chief of Police and his Chief Assistant (who I gather is a woman), in Wales? Can you imagine the embarrassment? I can feel it from here. Its like your parents trying to rap. Its just wrong. I do wonder how it sounds in Welsh, though:
"I'm just a white boy called the Deputy CC / They said I'd never make it as a bitchin' MC / You got it all wrong, cos now here I am / Giving it for real in the North Wales BPA jam
They call me Roxy, or Ms Dynamo on stage / Unlike my brother here, I never look my age / I'm goin' to spill it all about the boys in blue / Show you what it's like within the not-so-solid crew
So listen! Watch a doin' here today / Checkin' what the Heddlu Gogledd Cymru gotta say / Put away your cameras and your note pads for a spell / I got a story that I really need to tell
Bein' in the dibble is no cakewalk when you're black / If you don't get fitted, then you'll prob'ly get the sack / You're better chillin', lie down and just be passive / No place for us just yet in the Colwyn Bay Massive"
It continues. You owe it to yourself to check it out.
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Who guards the guardians?
Chinatown Says Police Parking Makes Its Streets Too Tight
This is a very old question, perhaps first asked in Latin: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" When the guardians, those people charged with the duties to protect you and to protect society, misbehave, to whom do you turn? Who is it who watches over the guardians? And then, of course, you are have to ask who is going to watch those who are watching the guardians?
It is my impression that the effects of 9/11 on NYC's Chinatown may not have received much in the way of national exposure. Chinatown got hurt badly. Chinatown's businesses and restaurants got clobbered as people stayed home. Those who tried to venture down there may have been deterred by travel restrictions and checkpoints. We are talking about people who were struggling to begin with. Now, if you take a peek at the article I linked to, it appears that the guardians are abusing their privileges, by parking where they shouldn't, and the people in Chinatown are taking it on the chin.
Basically, it works like this: Chinatown is congested; businesses need to have deliveries to stay in business so they have things to sell; the only street parking -- including loading zones -- appears to be taken up by police officers and corrections officers parking their private vehicles there. Result? Business getting hurt again. Remedy? Well, there is no easy remedy if the only people you can call to have cars towed won't tow the cars of their fellow officers. So, who guards these guardians?
The civil courts and the lawyers the merchants have hired. That is what the whole system of checks and balances is supposed to be about and the only way we've managed to answer the question. We don't give final authority to just one institution, just one guardian. All the guardians, in a sense, watch each other. Its not elegant, but it works most of the time in practice. But as one Frenchman once famously asked, yes, it works in practice, but does it work in theory?
post script: I know that the officers have no other place to park, that they are hard working joes (and janes) too, and that they are performing vital and critical functions. I support them and I thank them for their service. Indeed, after 9/11, I regularly thanked these guys in the streets in person. I just wish they'd take public transportation.
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2004/04/28
Today's time suck: Church Sign Generator
Church Sign Generator
Go forth as God has commanded and create your very own Church sign.
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Feeling quite useless today
So, I am suffering from a severe case of sleep-deprived lassitude today. The last two or three nights, my children have been waking up at irregular intervals resulting in my sleeping in stretches only. Even if you don't get out of bed when they wake up, for instance, if the baby is just chatting to himself in his crib, you still have interrupted your sleep cycles. I understand that messing with the sleep cycle is something that is done to prisoners to disorient them and make them more amenable to interrogation. What is has done to me is just leave me feeling wasted and useless today.
I am also stressed because my wife had a job interview yesterday for a job she really wants. However, the horrible thing is the waiting to hear period. Will she get called back? Will she just get the "thanks but no thanks" letter? Who knows? And the waiting is hard because you don't want to hope because that sort of magnifies the disappointment if you don't get it and yet you can't help yourself from hoping. So it created this odd tension. I told her to immediately begin aggressively pursuing other job options so that if this one doesn't come through, she can say something to the effect of, "ah, well, but I have all of these other live possibilities". It might also distract her from the waiting. The funny thing about a deeply intimate relationship is that I think sometimes her disappointments are harder for me than for her -- that I feel her pain more deeply because I have no power to jump in and try to fix it. Maybe its love. Maybe its just bullshit and I am being stupidly self-centered to think that I can feel her disappointment more keenly than she can. Beats me. I just know for certain that when she is hurt I feel it.
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Didn't see this in the U.S. press: "Bloody Day in Muslim Province in Thailand
Le Monde.fr : Bloody Day
If you read French, the above is an interesting article on what's happening in Thailand where, "combat between the forces of order and the separatists has resulted in about 95 deaths, according to official estimates."
I saw nothing in the U.S. press about this. According to the article, this has been going on since January where, in this underdeveloped province, "majority muslim and where the tenants of radical islam are rapidly gaining ground", "policemen, village leaders, buddhist priests, civil servants, and tourists are the targets of the separatists".
This is wild (to me). I always thought Thailand was a relatively stable democracy with strong royalist traditions, to the extent I thought about it at all. Even the author of the article thinks this sudden violence is inexplicable.
However, it is interesting that there were multiple "coordinated" attacks. Is this the start of something bigger in Thailand?
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2004/04/27
If a tree falls in the forest, etc.
If I write, and no one reads it, have I written? Maybe, if it helps me work out some questions and some thoughts. I had a professor in graduate school who told me that he thought that a person didn't know anything until they were forced to write it down. So, based on that, I think I'll continue writing. Even if almost no one is reading.
That said, I wonder how other blogs first attract writers? Perhaps its all word of mouth.
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Another kid story
I yelled at my daughter last night. I mean really yelled. She was trying to kick her brother and she needed to have that behavior corrected firmly. We have been trying before to do this, but without great success. I know that she loves him and he is like a little puppy dog following her around, but she can't hit or kick him. We won't tolerate that. In any event, I hated every second of yelling at her. Afterwards, I picked her up and carried her into the living room where we sat in the dark and discussed it. She told me that she understands that she is not to kick her brother. She also said that I scared her (which made me very sad, even though I was trying to scare her a little bit). And she said, "You have to be careful with little people like me because you might scare them." That was like a punch to the heart. And I think she knew it because she asked me if I was happy and I told her that I was sad that I had scared her. So she asked me if a hug might help make me feel better. And I told her I thought it might and it did. For both of us, I think.
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BLACKFIVE: Taking Chance Home
BLACKFIVE: Taking Chance Home
This made me, if not quite cry, certainly choke up. We live in a wonderful country and are fortunate to have men and women like this in our armed forces.
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Train Buddies
I mentioned before, in passing, the concept of commuting time as not being real time, as existing only in the interstices of your day. It is time defined more by what it isn't than what it is. What I mean is that it is time where you aren't: at work; at home; running errands; seeing friends; or playing with your children. See what I mean? It is time that doesn't fit nicely into the niche that is your daily life. It is time that is defined by the fact that it isn't any of those activities which constitute your daily existence. So what is it? I think of it as bubble time or time that is caught between your daily activities, which is why I consider it to be existing in the interstices -- its in between time. I think its a fascinating concept.
If, like me, you commute to work by commuter rail then you are probably in a seat, in a quiet train with relatively considerate fellow commuters who also value quiet (assuming you commute at rush hour or before). Maybe you read, maybe you sleep, maybe you listen to music. Maybe you just exist. If you are a to-do list, goal oriented person, maybe this is the only time of the day you can't be that, so you sort of shut down and exist. I can't explain it any better than that but if you look around the train in the morning you see people who are doing nothing and have such blank, sometimes almost slack, faces. Personally, I read the news paper or a book or a magazine on the way in. On the way home, much the same for me. Many people bring cocktails or beer or wine on the train home. That can make it a very civilized ride and I speak there from occasional but personal experience.
So, perhaps you agree with me that commuting starts out that way, at least. But what happens in the time you are waiting to commute. You know, you get to the station a couple of minutes early to get a good spot on the platform because the doors open more or less at the same spot every day. So you get there early to make sure you get your choice of seats on the train. But you are not alone. People are creatures of habit and more often than not will pick their group or spot on the platform. What happens when you see the same people every morning? Well, no matter how early it is, you eventually start to talk to them. Then you get your train buddies.
Train buddies are people who also only exist for you in this in-between world. You may never know their names. Sure, you may have exchanged names but you don't really remember them and the fact is that the names are not important. You know them by details and that is how you think of them. There is Bond Trader who sometimes commutes with Pretty Blond Fiancee. There is Euro Trader. There is Bow Tie guy. There is Real Estate Lawyer. There is Fire Lieutenant Jacket guy, who is always first at the platform. There is English guy. That's about it. By the way, almost all of them are men at 6:15 in the morning.
So, these guys exist in the margins only. What's odd, though, is the intimacy of the relationships. Fire guy knew I had applied for a new job that would have taken me to Florida to live. Something my parents certainly did not know. I know where Euro Trader's daughter is going to college and what she plans to study. I know about Bond Trader's former dating habits in the local bars (lots of foreign nannies) and his new wedding plans (his fiancee is a doll). I know about English guy's medical issues. I know that Bow Tie's wife just lost her job and he talked about how that will effect their house renovation plans. This is intimate stuff. And you know what else? All this takes place in no more than a 5-10 minute period shortly after 6:00 each morning. It stops when you get on the train because then you are in your bubble and no one wants to talk any more.
But, these guys are your train buddies. Keepers of intimate details of your life. You only see them for a couple of minutes a day and you may not even know their names. Maybe that's why the relationship works. Maybe we can only be intimate with others outside of our social/family circle if the main characteristic of the relationship is its anonymity.
Either way, I remain fascinated by the concept of time that you inhabit that exists only in the intersections of your life and filled with people who exist there with you.
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2004/04/26
Quebec Finds Pride in a Greasy Favorite
Montreal Journal: Quebec Finds Pride in a Greasy Favorite
Since we were talking about beer, it seems to me that this would be just a very fine accompaniment to a (now) cheap Norwegian beer. It consists of french fries, covered with melted cottage cheese curds, and gravy. Perhaps the new breakfast of champions?
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Beer in Norway
A beer is probably an odd start to the day. Indeed, I have not enjoyed the breakfast of champions (leftover beer and a handful of chocolate chip cookies) since freshman year in college.
However, I feel compelled to share this random thought about beer and Norway. Beer holds a special place in Norwegian society. The first beer of the year taken outside when the weather is nice and taken with friends is a traditional and quite wonderful tradition. Still, with all that, the Norwegians Health Authorities are taking swift action to prevent a beer war. Retailers are lowering prices! Can't have that!
Social control over alcohol in Norway is very tight. Indeed, as a result of the high prices, every year or so someone dies from home brewing or wine making accidents -- usually from the bad hooch itself, not from the process of making it.
"The retailers cut the prices on some local beers to a point where only the state is making any money. The NOK 6.50 doesn't even cover taxes (which amount to NOK 6.61 on a 0.33-liter bottle), much less the cost of production or distribution. The retailers are absorbing the loss, figuring they'll make money elsewhere by luring customers into the stores. Norway has the highest beer taxes in Europe, equal to NOK 19.70 per liter. Denmark, by comparison, charges NOK 3.75 per liter."
And I used to jokingly refer to Norway as the land of the ten dollar beer.
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2004/04/23
Work/Life Balance
(finally figured out how to put titles up!)
So, I was right -- I totally missed the lunch. I am told that she was a very good speaker. Ah, well.
One of the many (well, one of the two) comments I received touched on the issue of work/life balance. How do you achieve it? You don't, really. You cheat. All the time. Either you are taking time away from your kids or your work. In the end, there is not much time left for yourself and when you take that, you know you are depriving either children or wife.
And I think I do mean depriving. Let me take my daughter, for example. I have seen studies which I have found credible that suggest that girls who have a healthy and strong relationship with their fathers have a better life -- more likely to stay in school and less like to marry a dirtbag or end up in an abusive relationship. You see, these studies found, a girl is less likely to enter a relationship looking for the love she didn't get from Daddy if she actually had a Dad who made it clear that she was loved all the time and without reservation. So, deprivation because I feel a responsibility to make sure my daughter doesn't end up making a bad choice out of the fact that she had a poor relationship with me (perhaps through my own neglect) or because I did not spend enough time with her making sure that she has a strong enough personal values system to make good decisions in morally ambiguous situations.
So, where does that leave you? You prioritize your kids because they need you and you have serious responsibilities there, not to mention the fact that most of the time they make your heart go ~squish~. You prioritize work, because it pays the mortgage and the bills and because you have duties that you owe to your clients -- they depend on you to represent them to the best of your abilities. Where are you in this?
For me, I've come to rely on the quiet time on the train home from work when I can just read to myself or catch up on the enormous to-do list that runs my life. Thank goodness for the train. You have enforced time that you can't be with anyone -- its like time caught in the interstices of your day. But a half an hour a day is really not enough to recharge batteries.
Equally, where is your wife? Remember her? She needs time and attention and you need her time and attention because you know that she is struggling with the same issues you are with respect to time management. And if you don't find time to be with her, than what was the point of the exercise in the first place? Besides, you may never have sex again! At best, you may get to go out once a week for dinner and you try really hard not to spend that time discussing logistics for the coming week and all the garbage that remains on the master to-do list, because, that is not a relationship. And frankly, come Friday, you might even be too damn tired to go out at all.
So, you cheat. You steal time from one to give to the other. And it probably isn't enough in any sense. But its the best you can do and you hope its enough.
I suspect every parent in America is struggling with this. I certainly had fewer problems with work/life balance before I had kids.
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Just a quick note this morning while I am waiting for edits to come back on the papers I am preparing which absolutely have to be served today.
My daughter and I were talking last night and she reminded me of the time last week when she and her little brother were playing with the door to my bedroom and he shut the door, pinching her fingers. And she said to me, very solemnly last night, "I was absolutely so sad". She just cracks me up. I had not intended this to be a place where I was just going to post cute stories about my kids, but it is an important part of my life and likely stories will show up just about every day.
I am supposed to go today to a lunch for the presentation of a painting of Barbara Bush which honors Mrs. Bush as being only the second woman in the United States who is the wife and mother of a U.S. President. May not make it based on work pressures. It is kind of interesting that she is being honored for her association with other people. There is a message in there about being a woman of a certain age, I suspect. I just think its odd that she is being honored not for something intrinsic to herself, or because she accomplished something wonderful, but because she married and gave birth, something women are doing all over the world. Or, considering watching my wife do it, maybe that's reason enough in and of itself to honor her, considering she was on the world stage.
Just another random thought.
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2004/04/22
I was musing about anonymity all the way to and from Court this morning on the subway. Should I remain cloaked? Should I tell my wife about this little exercise? How much personal detail should I reveal about myself and my life? I think my answer is this: remain anonymous and treat this as if I were talking to myself. In other words, don't censor the thoughts I intend to put down and give myself the freedom to expound and expand at length without concern for what people think about me. That freedom, though, must come at a price. The price, keep this a secret from my wife and co-workers, my friends and colleagues. That way, when Stinky (one of the partners with whom I work) does something to piss me off, I can write about it with impunity and without fear that he will recognize himself in the description.
That said, I think it will be hard to keep this to myself. I ain't good at keeping MY secrets (fine with other people's) and it would feel like lying to my wife or intentionally excluding her from a part of my life. Especially if this form of dialogue (monologue) supplants instead of supplements the dialogue I have with her about my feelings and concerns. I would hate if this results in my building a wall, however unintended. Anyone here have this experience? Assuming anyone is reading, that is.
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I need a vacation. An honest real vacation. Something that takes me away from daily life, from leaving the house before sun-up, from the whole damn shooting match. I am so weary that I am afraid I am making mistakes. My daughter asked me this morning, at 5:50 when she should not have been up but for an unfortunate diaper incident, if I would get into bed with her an cuddle. It was an exceptionally sweet invitation and if I took her up on it, I'd never have made it to work. The thing is, I am tired of deadlines and the qoutidian pressures. I'd like to go to a beach house for two weeks and spend every day on the sand, playing with the kids, grilling in the evenings, and getting to know my wife again.
Sorry if this is too whiny, it is just how I'm feeling today. When I told my daughter last night that I wasn't feeling too well, she (age 3 1/4) asked: "Will you be available for a kiss and a hug later?"
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2004/04/21
So, while I am waiting for a new client to arrive to tell me about their problems, I thought I'd take a couple of minutes and get some outrage out of my system about a topic that is probably well, if not over, covered at many other thoughtful places: Israel and the Left. I've had a very unpleasant experience when I left a post at another blog recently where I took issue with what I perceived to be anti-Semitic comments where someone felt that the legitimacy of the State itself was called into question by its "genocidal" policies. This outraged me. I kept it in check on the other website because it wasn't my place to spew outrage all over someone else's house, but, still. So, I got motivated to open my own shop.
Genocide, it seems to me, is a term more accurately used in connection with the Palestinians and the Arab states than it is with Israel. First, it is genocidal for the Arabs to want to cleanse the region by pushing the Jews into the sea. Second, the role of the State controlled press in the Arab states is to incite racial and religious hatred. Let's not even mention what is going on in the State sponsored mosques. Israel does not practice genocide against the Arabs. Hell, it may be the only country in the region that actually permits full participation in a democracy to its minority population.
The Left confuses me with their insistence that Israel is practicing genocide. Why are they so blind to the pain experienced by Israel? Why is only Palestinian suffering "legitimate"?
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Email added! Check on the links portion. Click on email me and then edit the information to make it work.
So, how does someone actually attract readers to a new blog? If anyone stops by and wants to share their ideas, I'd be happy to have them. I hope to have some lively discussions as time goes by.
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This is my first post to my new blog. I am writing this now as opposed to doing all of the work I should be doing today. Therefore, by necessity, this will be kept short. My goal here is to create an outlet where I can comment on the things that piss me off, interest me, amuse me, or will do any of those three things to my readers. In short, this will be a general interest blog for catholic (with a small c) interests. I welcome your participation in my little experiment. I will be adding more later, including email contact information.
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