Travelogue part 3 of 3

The trip was, like most, over too soon. As we waited for the return flight from La Guardia, we were lucky to find seats near the gate. We actually found three, so I put our carry-on bags in front of the seat between me and a gentleman who was engaged with his laptop. A moment later, a lanky fellow ambled over, clearly wanting to speak with the laptop use. In part 1, I mentioned having seen the mayor. Guess who the lanky fellow was.

Hizzoner chatted up the other dude, who is apparently involved in the expansion of the Denver Art Museum*. The mayor went on at some length as to how impressed he was by NYC’s scheme of free hot chocolate and sleds for free use in parks following a big snow. So, guess what to look for after the next big snow in the dusty cowtown.

A boisterous woman interrupted their chat to report, with great disdain and profound disappointment, that no Democrat would challenge Bill Ritter for the nomination for candidate for governor.

It’s worth noting that all recent Denver mayors have left behind monuments to themselves – not just big projects, but big projects bearing their own names, viz:

• Wellington Webb Municipal Office Building named for the mayor who built and opened it ;
• Pena Boulevard named for the mayor who built it;
• William H. McNichols, Jr. Arena (no longer in existence): and
• Currigan Hall (also gone) named for oh, come on, you can guess it!.

The next bit of conversation proved why I could never be a journalist. It disclosed a possible Hickenlooper monument (although I hasten to add that I doubt that the current mayor would seek to name this project after himself). Since this was a preliminary discussion, I won’t publicly post the ridiculous scheme I heard. It was a rather ambitious plan to enhance one of Denver’s most notable parks at an estimated cost of $80 million. It sounded like the mayor had spoken with some pretty knowledgeable architects and engineers as he mentioned specific problems and how they’d be addressed. The architect was enthused – then again he may have been dazzled by the prospect of his cut. (NB: the other night I was at a dinner party and talked a bit about specifics with another guest – an engineer; he didn’t think the project could be done for under $120 million.)

*Yes, it looks like origami.

Travelogue Part 2 of ?

Both my wife and I are very fond of dogs, perhaps even too much so. Part of the reason for the timing of our NY trip was to attend at least parts of the 130th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. We’ve watched it on TV more years than we care to remember and have attended other shows in the past. Not that we’re big dog snobs, after all our dog is a mutt. It is interesting to see the groups of purebreds – and what makes one better than another - and to see the breeds one doesn’t see often. We had high hopes for this show because of the practice of “benching”, meaning that the dogs were to be in a specified area where we could see them up close for most of the day.

Our seatmate on the eastbound flight was a breeder who was exhibiting at the show. She described both the benching area and the breed judging as a crowded nightmare. Still, we had the tickets and wanted to take our chances.

My wife’s tastes in dogs tend to the pretty and cuddly: Golden Retrievers, Bernese Mountain Dogs, Rough Collies and the odd Corgi. I’m partial to the more lupine Alaskan Malamute and Siberian Husky, the vulpine Finnish Spitz, American Eskimo Dog, and Shiba Inu, and the odd Borzoi. (Fittingly our dog is a mix of Golden Retriever and some Malamute or Husky.) Given that we had advance purchase Powerball tickets, I daydreamed about retiring to the country to raise dogs. I’m at the office today.

Madison Square Garden is full of signs reminding that it’s the world’s most famous arena. It’s also among the most decrepit and dated in North America. It is a breeze to enter from Penn Station, though. Later in the week plans were announced for the replacement of the arena – and not a moment too soon.

The benching area wasn’t nearly so bad as we had been led to believe. We even spotted our seatmate and wished her luck with her pup, though to no avail. Even with thousands of folks about, most were quite pleasant, even if some were rather oddly familiar. I guess when you spend most of your time around critters that stick their noses in their peer’s butts, you lose some sense of social boundaries.

The highlight of the show was meeting a few of a dog we’d hitherto only seen on TV: the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever a/k/a the Toller. This is a little (~35 lb.) dog who looks a lot like a miniature golden, but with a great deal more energy, initiative and curiosity. There aren’t very many of this dog, so getting one from rescue or shelter (as we’re prone to do for our next dog) doesn’t seem highly likely. Another highlight of the show proper was a visit with an exuberant Brittany – a less uncommon breed to which I’d previously given little thought.

We got together with a friend to have lunch at Lindy’s, and found that its noted cheesecake isn’t as good as the one my wife makes that’s supposedly the same recipe.

Travelogue part 1 of ?

In early December I wrote about how cold it was here. After that we had several weeks of warm dry weather, until two days before our February vacation when the cold and snow returned. Little did we know it would be an omen of the whole vacation – then again, who recognizes foreshadowing when it occurs?

In the Denver airport, we noticed that Mayor Hickenlooper was boarding our plane. He didn’t sit near us. Instead we sat near a pleasant woman who had some plans for the trip that were similar to ours. We landed in New York amid some snow and wind, the forecast was for total accumulation of 6 – 12 inches.

As we’ve done in the past, we rented an apartment on the upper West Side (of Manhattan) – that’s both more convenient and more affordable than a hotel. We lucked out with a location overlooking a small park and the Hudson. Building and neighborhood were both nicely quiet. Since time was tight, we just went to the closest market rather than to Balducci’s, Zabar’s, or even Whole Foods to get staples to keep us going for the week – you know coffee, orange juice, muffins, Pilsner Urquell, etc.

We drove to Jersey to see several of my wife’s cousins, including one of a couple removes who’s barely six months old. Didn’t stay long as the snow and wind were both getting heavy enough to seriously impede visibility. The trip back into the city took nearly three times as long as the trip out, but we made it in without event.

When we awoke the next morning, it was clear that this was no ordinary snowstorm. It turned out to be the heaviest snowstorm in NYC since they started keeping records of that sort of thing. Mayor Bloomberg came on TV a few times. The first time he asked everyone to stay put, so we did. We also cancelled our plans for the day, including another evening trip to Jersey. A few hours later the Mayor came on again saying that mass transit was working fine, that all Broadway shows would go on and that the city was providing hot chocolate and free use of sleds in selected parks. This announcement affected us, as we had tickets for a 3 pm matinee.

The subway stop was only three blocks away, but the blowing snow and the piles of sonw in intersections made it a chore – particularly for my better half who is rather disabled. As we paused in front of an ugly gray building, I belted a few notes. She looked puzzled. I explained that I now can say I sang at Julliard.

We got to the theater plenty early, so we enjoyed a drink in the basement bar before the curtain went up. Our seats were in the second row on the (ironic) extreme left of the theater. Advice for travelers to NYC: see Spamalot. (Yes, they did horrid things by (1) omitting the witch trial; (2) including the nihilist anthem“Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” and (3) buggering up the story and the whole concept of comedy late in the second act to further the worst political idea on the planet, but those things aside the play is fun and funny.) At the intermission we exchanged greetings with our seatmate of the previous day, who was sitting in the mezzanine.

The snow had stopped while we were in the theater, but the wind hadn’t. It had also gotten much colder. We grabbed a bite near Times Square and caught a cab back. To no one’s surprise, the cabbie was a Pakistani who had been here for twenty or so years. I mentioned several Pakistani physicians of my acquaintance and we chatted quite amiably amid relatively light traffic. All went well until the last few blocks when the cabbie started railing about the pernicious influence of Jews on conservative Americans. I bit my tongue and slashed his tip. After the Jizya, the hatred of Jews is the worst feature of Islam and apparently one of the most intractable.

Olympic Observation

The sport of curling is really best suited to folks in the field of applied physics.

If you're like me, hockey is a better bet. Who wouldn't want to lay a hip check (a la Rob Blake) into a colleague at least once in a while?

Vacation, all I ever wanted . . .

Except for one small detail. Catchya around the 20somethingth.

It is indeed sadness

to read this. It’s a chat by Fr. Richard Rohr, himself referenced in this fascinating post at Open Book. What makes this all the more sad is the propensity of a particular local priest to speak highly of Fr. Rohr.

Welcome

to the reader in Saudi Arabia (!) who found this site on the query "seex videos". No matter how much one seex, one won't find videos on this site. Try this site for a different take on Video.

Bwahaha!

A big thank you

to everyone who has sent kind words or prayed for me in my recent funk. Between your great kindness and avoidance of a major irritant, I'm doing a bit better.

A modest proposal.

As the culture wars rage on, it occurs to me that a great many culture war issues – and most of the biggies – can be grouped under the broad rubric of “privacy concerns”.

The law of “privacy” in the U.S. has undergone massive changes in the past half-century or so.

In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court, citing a relatively recent dissent in a similar case, cited a right to privacy that precluded the state from regulating the use of contraceptives by married couples. Seven years later, Eisenstadt v. Baird expanded on this case and struck down a law barring the sale of contraceptives to unmarried couples. In 1973, Roe v. Wade extended the privacy conceit to include abortion in some cases. Its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, created a giant loophole so as to bring about the current regime of abortion-on-demand. The most recent major case in the Griswold line is Lawrence v. Texas (2003) that effectively prevents state action based on any moral considerations.

Today a large segment of society is upset about surveillance conducted within the United States, also under the guise of “privacy”. At the same time, the Federal Marriage Amendment seems to be heading down the same road that the Human Life Amendment has already gone down.

The “right to privacy” as such is not in the text of the Constitution. If it were there, it could be circumscribed appropriately.

So I propose that an amendment along the following lines be added to the Constitution:

To the extent that any unenumerated right may be inferred or imputed from other provisions of this Constitution, such right shall at all times be subordinate to those rights explicitly enumerated herein.

Thoughts:

. . . as to why I haven’t been posting much lately:
• I’ve worked up a few “big idea” posts but chucked them for a variety of reasons;
• I’ve been pretty busy with work; and
• I’ve been unusually angry and depressed lately.

. . . as to why I’ve been angry and depressed lately:
• Our culture’s increasing velocity on it’s seemingly inexorable trip to hell in a bucket;
• My own continued moral failings; and
• A bad influence.

. . . as to my own continued moral failings:
• On further review, there is some progress there – I engage in one particular long-ingrained bad habit less than 10% as frequently as I did only a few years ago (too bad we’re not charged with being only 70% as perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect!); and
• Many of the failings at least have the salutary effect of showing me how little reason I have for my too-frequent Pride.

. . . as to the bad influence:
• I remember a time a few years ago when I was vexed by anger and depression and simply avoiding one particular blog really helped;
• The recent anger and depression seem to hit me roughly in proportion to the frequency of my reading a particular blog; so
• That blog is now off-limits.
(It's quite difficult to refrain from commentary describing that blog, but such comments probably wouldn't serve any good purpose.)

Also this seems like it could be a real reason to rejoice.

I do have a new “big idea” cooking. So far it seems like both a good idea and a good potential post. I hope to think it through just a bit before typing it up.