May. 4, 2009 - May 4, 1970 12:34 PM Ravenna, Ohio

if you are old enough, you will remember what happened then at Kent State University. (If not, Wiki is your friend.) Could my memory be right? I have a strong recollection of learning about it that afternoon from looking over someone's shoulder at a NY Post front page (within 4 hours; it must have been an extra edition). It was then a liberal rag.

R.I.P. Allison Beth Krause, William Knox Schroeder, Sandra Lee Scheuer and Jeffrey Glenn Miller

(Miller grew up in my home town; his mother worked in the Principal's office of the local high school; my dad was then President of the local school board.)

There are not many images from that time more searing than this Pulitzer Prize-winner (this is the original, uncropped, un-brushed):  one student dead, one 14 year-old wailing, and a bunch of people shocked. Surreal: but no one is running....

Once again, R.I.P. Allison Beth Krause, William Knox Schroeder, Sandra Lee Scheuer and Jeffrey Glenn Miller.

Jan. 20, 2009 - best cold day EVER

it's a brand new day
I am writing this Monday, for posting on Tuesday at the precise moment the new President takes the oath of office. By that time (this time) I will have been standing at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue for nearly five hours (if all goes to plan) and will be watching the Inauguration from there on big screens.

Three hours later, the Inaugural Parade will start and should take 15 minutes or so to begin to pass in front of us, headed by the President, Vice-President and their families. Then, a host of bands....

happy cold
I believe that the crowds along the Parade route and on the Mall will make up the largest collection of happy people ever assembled in this country. Also, probably the coldest large group.

Sun won't be up until 7:23 AM, when the forecast temperature is 22 degrees ("feels like" 12). The high looks like 29, at noon until 4 PM ("feels like" 18). We should be off PA Av by 5PM, as the temperature begins to drop and there is a chance of snow flurries for a couple of hours by then.

Think warm thoughts. Choose hope.

© Sandy Mattingly 2009

Dec. 18, 2008 - quote of the day / avoid PR war with a PO'd writer

is this a fair fight?
Today's NY Post provides a quote that almost put coffee on my screen. Nothing to do with real estate (that would be Glengarry Glen Ross), but the story about Jeremy Piven's 'health' issues keeping him off the Broadway stage in Speed The Plow has this nugget:

Ouch. To be terribly crude for a moment, that works on so many levels. (what, you thought I only read the NY Post for the real estate news??)

© Sandy Mattingly 2008  

Nov. 26, 2008 - R I P Herbert Watnik 9.21.1921 to 11.25.2008

Personal note here, that feels appropriate to 'express' on *my* blog though this must surely violate someone's notions of etiquette ....

My father-in-law died last evening at 10:21 PM of (in my lay terms) complications from pneumonia after having been in Intensive Care since Halloween (seems hard to believe now that it was so long, but he never got out of ICU). His four children (with three spouses) were with him for the last few hours.

How rapid a development was The End, despite weeks of need-good-news-but-there-ain't-ever-no-good-news? I got a call from my wife at 3:51 PM, when I was 50 feet from turning into the Holland Tunnel to take my daughter to Newark Airport (we did not make that turn).

He leaves 8 grandchildren and one brother (and sister-in-law), having lost a sister only 10 weeks ago and his wife 12 years ago. Bunches of cousins, in several generations, survive.

As my brother-in-law said, "he had his issues, but he was a good guy". Is that such a bad thing? (hint: NO)

I am pulling together thoughts for a Friday eulogy; here's a start. (Isn't "blogging" another way to say "thinking out loud"?)

Like many men of his generation, he seemed more comfortable as a grandfather than as a father. But he *provided* for his family. Among many other things, he made sure my wife's cars had clean oil and fully inflated tires (she still gives me a hard time if our gas tank gets almost empty in winter). He uprooted his part of the family from the family compound in Queens when he thought his young teen (now my wife) needed a new environment. He was thrilled to provide a home for some grandchildren in a wonderful Long Island school district.

A veteran of World War II (he is the only person I know to have been through the Suez Canal), he chose college over minor league baseball, and the NYPD over a 'real job'. His 20 years in blue included being at a desk as a sergeant when the FALN exploded a bomb at his (the old) Police Headquarters. I well remember when we were able to take him and his wife to a grand steak dinner at Peter Luger's to celebrate his next (and final) retirement ('cut' that steak with a spoon; honest). He liked his food!

He was ... less than patient (an inherited trait, I see). Woe to the person between him and the front of the buffet line. And listening to him yell at the Mets bullpen (through the miracles of television) could be ... uh ... jarring. He could be VERY critical of things and people he cared about deeply. But he was loyal -- to the Mets, and to his family. He watched every Mets game (rooting, yelling, rooting, yelling, yelling, yelling ...) through the most bitter of ends (in baseball terms, at least). He spoke to his sister by phone every day, for years.

He did not often (or easily) speak of L O V E, and he responded to people and things that were most important to him on his own terms, of course -- but don't we all make such arrangements?

He lived in The Present, largely without complaint, to a degree that seems remarkable to me. Stuff that just didn't concern him today, just didn't concern him. (The wisdom of age? I am still waiting ....)

Whether that was whether This Family Member was talking to That Family Member, or whether "that procedure" he had on his colon years ago was cancer (it was, but he did not seem to care, or even recall) -- once it was 'done' and 'clean', he was done with it. His retina guy never could seem to restore vision to one eye, but he accepted that (though he kept going for treatments that were part of a hoped-for-but-never-achieved improvement) and used a huge magnifying glass to scour the many newspapers in his life. He was not a happy camper when we took the car keys away, but he acquiesced; I never heard a word of complaint about that.

He had food, shelter, health (largely excellent-for-his-age, until a month ago), and family. Why would he want more?? ("Because most people do" was irrelevant to him, I am sure without asking.)

He had many more than his biblical allotment of three-score-and-ten, but we shall miss him.

Thanks for listening. Perhaps I will update this as I continue to Think Out Loud....

Yes, the circle of life continues. We will host Thanksgiving tomorrow for 17, including one pregnant cousin. While not likely to be entirely celebratory, we are definitely looking forward to that celebration with family.

BE THANKFUL for what you have, people. Peace out.

© Sandy Mattingly 2008

Oct. 15, 2008 - fuggedabowdit (or not) / polite New Yorkers?

There are few generalizations about the 'character' of New York (and its denizens) that are more (... well ...) general than the image of the irascible New Yorker -- too busy running slow-moving out-of-town pedestrians over to offer directions, or even a smile. Or to hold a door. Or to help pick up your dropped papers. I will admit to feeling a bit of rueful recognition (through clenched teeth) when I see one of those fugly T-shirts hanging from a pole in touristy shops:

. (What's

favorite New Yorker rudeness story?)

The good folks at Reader's Digest are having none of it, as they set out to measure how polite 36 different cities are. New York is the only US city on their list, so Minneapolis may still have something to say, but the list of 36 global cities touched every inhabited continent. Their unscientific survey measured reactions to 3 situations: whether people entering a building held the door for the person trailing them; whether they helped someone pick up papers dropped on a busy sidewalk; and whether shopkeepers said thank you to people making small purchases.

New York not only out-paced cities such as Zurich, London, Paris, Auckland and Montreal, we kicked the proverbial rear-ends of Mumbai, Moscow and Helsinki.

is from the website of the Canadian Reader's Digest.

I think the Canadians were surprised by the results:

Fuggedabowdit!

(hat tip to

of The Atlantic Monthly)

Jul. 3, 2008 - when in the course...

BIG Holiday! 'See' you Sunday or Monday. In the meantime ...

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

I got the text here.

Apr. 3, 2008 - 40 years ago

Mar. 30, 2008 - mea culpa

Feb. 14, 2008 - happy holiday, especially to the women …

Dec. 24, 2007 - tree on the elevator / 1 year + 400 posts ago – merry merry

Dec. 23, 2007 - irony abounds / NY Times on geography + internet

Nov. 30, 2007 - no open houses for me Sunday

Oct. 23, 2007 - Old Grey Lady plays on obit page

they did it on purpose
I usually look at the NY Times obituary page, and often read it. (I learn so much there.) Props to a buddy for pointing me towards it today, before I had gotten a chance to look.

There are only two 'featured' obits today, and they clearly got it, as one refers to the other. Bless their wry hearts.

Headline 1: "Peg Bracken, 'I Hate To Cook', Author, dies at 89".
Headline 2: "Vincent DeDomenico, 92, an Inventor of Rice-A-Roni"

May they rest in peace. May they enjoy easily prepared feasts. THX Chet!

(C) Sandy Mattingly 2007

Oct. 15, 2007 - PBJ

a day's journey
I walk past a condo construction site on my way to the office from the subway and in the morning there are often constriction workers up and down the sidewalks on both sides of the street, some working, some on break, some doing who-knows-what. There are enough of them that is sometimes a puzzle making the way down the sidewalk.

This morning's trip coincided with breakfast (or 8:30 lunch) for some of them. As I approached one guy in front of a deli, he was sitting on his haunches, leaning against the building, eating. Prototypical young construction worker: big, brawny, tattooed and chiseled.

As I made sure to give him a wide berth, what he was eating only registered in passing.

made my day
When I realized it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (whole wheat bread, I think) I could not help but smile. Just a big kid....

(C) Sandy Mattingly 2007

Oct. 8, 2007 - Talking Heads on NY Times op-ed page (not those talking heads)

of course there are talking heads there, but...
I happen to be a big Paul Krugman fan. Krugman is -- of course -- one of the talking heads who regularly writes on the NY Times op-ed page. I find him witty and wise and definitely opinionated. A good combination in an op-ed columnist.

Being that he is more or less my age, he often makes a cultural reference that resonates with me, and probably with the other 'boomers out there. Does it have the same resonance for younger-but-still-mature readers??

In today's column about the Republican Party (Same Old Party) he truly cracks wise.

How many people who read to the end of his column got the Talking Heads references?

Now, as they survey the wreckage of their cause, conservatives may ask themselves: "Well, how did we get here?" They may tell themselves: "This is not my beautiful Right." They may ask themselves: "My God, what have we done?"

But their movement is the same as it ever was. And Mr. Bush is movement conservatism's true, loyal heir.

Lovely, Mr. Krugman. Simply lovely. Same as it ever was...same as it ever was... (Once in a lifetime)

(C) Sandy Mattingly 2007

Aug. 16, 2007 - democracy in the death notices / from Agel to Ballard with a stop at Astor

Jul. 3, 2007 - July 4 - 'nuff said

Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Jun. 29, 2007 - even titans get the blues / NY Times on blog risk at The Bear

Dec. 24, 2006 - happy condos to all, and to all a good night

 

So happy condos to all!

 

And to those of you of the other persuasion, happy coops as well. If you do not celebrate either condos or coops, then just a happy-happy to you!

 

And Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!

 

© Sandy Mattingly 2006

Dec. 18, 2006 - Old Grey Lady lets her hair down in obits