Going through dress-up clothes in advance of tonight’s Brattleboro Retreat fundraiser gala and found this artifact. Remember the Tiffin Room?
Christmas cactus not waiting for Christmas
Sailor take warning
Toronto Canada
27 hours on the ground to present a an important demo, with the requisite last minute changes, rehearsals, and near disasters.
Photo ops limited.
Luckily, my cab went right by the giant tower, and all the Instagram-influenced filters make an otherwise dull gray sky look ominous or atmospheric or whatever.
A few last trees hanging on to their colors. The sun reflecting off the river here foreshadows the ice to come.
Mystery on Main Street
Mystery on Main Street is the name of our local mysteries-only bookstore. The man who owns it is always there, and always has great recommendations. We don’t go in as often as we might like, or probably should, because it’s even easier to buy Kindle books at 2:30 in the morning.
This morning, we saw something else that might qualify as a mystery… Why is somebody upstairs flying the Iranian flag? But then again, why not? It is Brattleboro, after all…
There but for a week or so, go I
8 days ago, I was standing at the Virgin America check-in counter at LAX. Nothing dramatic happened.
Today, the people who were standing in that very spot had something awful happen, and they could do no more about it than I could have done if it had happened last week.
Of course, today’s tragedy had nothing to do with me, and it’s only the hard-wired need to make patterns out of randomness that prompts me to consider today’s shooting in the context of my own experience… it feels much more visceral than a tsunami in the Pacific, for example, or even a meltdown in Japan, even though those events are far worse on many measurement scales.
There is so much going on in the world, good and bad, that we’re close to something momentous every day. Maybe not national headline momentous, but still, people are born, die, and everything in between, all around us, every single day.
Whether I was ever there or not, and in spite of the bravery and efficiency of the security response, another mass shooting is another stupid waste of blood and treasure. I hope we can change the laws or the rules or the technology or something so that we can talk about almost anything else at the water cooler next year.
HI MAY I HELP YOU!!!
Ate dinner last night at Gates barbecue. It’s an institution here in Kansas City, where I am doing some software training this week. When ever anybody walks in the door, they are greeted with a clarion chorus of, “hi, may I help you!”
I don’t know where they get so many people with such big voices, but they do. And, I don’t know how they make people participate in such a silly corporate policy, and still maintain an atmosphere of genuine service, but they do.
And the ribs are good, too.
Another one bites the dust
I was sad, but not completely surprised, to see this sign in the window of the recently opened Little City Baking Co.
I’m reading a book called Thinking Fast and Slow, which talks about the various cognitive “quirks” we humans have built in when we try to make decisions. The author specifically calls out entrepreneurial optimism as a trap to watch out for… Most small businesses fail!
Leaving Los Angeles
It’s hard to know what to memorialize as I head home from a trip to la-la land. On the one hand, I was only an hour or less from where I spent my formative years, but that was worlds and lifetimes away.
Every place name, street name, is famous or familiar: Hollywood Blvd, Santa Monica Blvd, Wilshire, La Brea. But somehow when you see these magic places by daylight, passing through en route to a client call, it’s a little seedy, mostly, out on the west side, down by the airport. The cloud of … something … that keeps the sun hidden didn’t help.
On my jet-lagged predawn runs I saw all the magic tropical plants, always photogenic, but not in the dark. I saw homeless people with their overloaded shopping carts, and exuberant architecture from too close to appreciate. On lunch break, I saw skinny blonde girls with big shoes and bigger sunglasses, surely she is Somebody, perhaps a Starlet. She totters between the Orthodox guys with their fringes and hats and an Asian family who may or may not feel a need to fit in. And I saw so many fancy cars, you leave your 911 on the street at night because you only have a 1-car garage.
I also saw Dad and Judith, and we had a nice belated birthday visit with Greek food and a pumpkin beer ice cream float ( which would have been the perfect dish if it had only included a strip of bacon ).
All memorable but all hard to capture for one reason or another. And then with an hour to go I saw this trash can at fine dining spot LAX Tacos, and met my day’s muse. Such pride, such exuberance these taggers have! Such flair!
Now I know why Randy Newman loves it here.
Tonight we attended the grand reopening of the Latchis main theater. Ken Burns came to show off an episode of his new series on the Roosevelt presidents.
As always with Burns’s films, there’s a lot of detail, indeed there are seemingly few details left out. He is equally thoughtful in the Q&A, affording me a chance to post this note during the answer to only a couple of questions.
On the plus side, however, I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard anybody use the word ‘hagiographic’ in real life…
And the theater? Looks great, especially the new lighting on the murals and statues, and the new seats are comfy! Now all we have to do is find the one seat that has our names on a little brass plaque.
Vote for Horwitz
A very long time ago for a marriage that ended pretty quickly, this guy gave Lee a nice Royal Doulton serving dish. Now he’s running for cover… Er, i mean, running for office.
Sunrise over the river
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 