Justice Day

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice..." MLK
With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.
“I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

Just one lawmaker rose to speak against the bill: Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx, the only Democratic senator to cast a no vote. Mr. Díaz, saying he was offended by the two-minute restrictions set on speeches, repeatedly interrupted the presiding officer who tried to limit the senator’s remarks, shouting, “You don’t want to hear me.”
“God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage, a long time ago,” Mr. Díaz said.

I Love New York

I saw Paul Simon last night at the Beekman, a classic Art Deco Theatre on Broadway in the 70’s in New York.

My brother called about 4:00 with an extra ticket, so I hustled into New York’s Penn Station and then walked almost 40 blocks uptown to the theatre. I have been working in New Jersey for years, and when I get the chance to get back on the streets in the city, there is a part of my that rises to it, embraces its rhythm, wants to ingest its pure essence in massive doses. I love New York.

I grew up here really, arriving like a 21 year old hick with a dumb cowboy hat which attracted all manner of miscreants and was soon purposefully lost. But the stink of my small-town-ness lingered on me, codified who I was even as I adapted completely to the habitat. There is something comforting and same about the metropolis even as it is morphs slowly and at times with great speed into something again, unrecognizable.

Walking through Penn Station, you see them in rather large numbers. Not sure if they are Army or National Guard, but they are unavoidable. Soldiers, mostly men, in full camo, and I think body armor, and even for me unmistakable, The M-16’s. M-16’s!!! And no doubt radiation detectors. This, too, is what we are now, or at least it is the sea we traverse across each day. They are there for our protection, I know this. But one has to wonder what became of the dream, more than 40 years after the summer of love, almost 50 years after I Have a Dream, this is our world. The whiff of failure looms in their presence.

Penn Station is a bustling place, but it has weird dark blue lighting and one cannot escape the hollow, vacant faces of those that are hurting, so reaching the street is a relief. Marc Cohen’s Walking In Memphis is on my IPod, as I come up the stairs on Seventh Avenue across the Street from the Penta, Formerly the Stadler where I landed in 1978. It has had three owners since. But when I arrived and stayed in that old monster that August, it often seemed like the streets around that hotel would melt from the heat.

New York was dirty then. And dangerous. And I know this is wrong, but I loved it. The energy attacked your nervous system. There was sensory overload. Hot, crowded, impossible to absorb or comprehend what was around you.

Some of that is still there. I started up 7th Avenue as I have so many times, weaving thru the rush hour crowd, mostly moving in the opposite direction of the hordes hustling towards Penn Station and their trains home. I am a pinball, bouncing back and forth between the suits, tourists, and immigrants. Mink Deville’s Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl comes in with the slapping guitar and triangle. I see a young woman with flip flops and a business suit, and I think, “Really? Still?” Two teenagers with funny glasses, announcing themselves as prey, are stuck on the corner of 34th looking at their map.
7th Avenue north of 34th quiets down quite a bit until you approach 40th and get close to the new Times Square.

In Times Square, business people evaporate, excepting a few suits with their jackets off, over their shoulders, escaping their midtown hotels. Crowds are lined up here and there, for reasons one cannot know. A big Jewish crowd is gathered at the entrance to the Radison. Everywhere there are handbills. My family could recycle for a decade and never compensate for the waste.

Back in the day Time’s Square was bright at night, but now it is a wildly lit media center. TV newspeople stare down at the masses from their studios, and about half way up Times Square there is a nearly half block long screen with a camera shot of those below. Everyone waves to see themselves on the big Screen above the square until they realize that they have been suckered when their image is replace by a half block long advertisement. I stop and look, but don’t wave. In the Theatre District the women are dressed in their finery, the men compliantly matched, for their evening on the town. Steely Dan’s Haitian Divorce sneaks through the buds in my ears.

People complain about the encumbrances to traffic in the Square now, but to me it is neither better nor worse. Like much of the change on this hard to hold place, it just is. But is massively easier to walk through now and I make good time.

From the late 70’s to the mid-80’s Times Square was a mosh pit of danger, tourists and culture. The Clash played at the Bond Night Club there, and even for me the place was too big, dark looking and foreign to venture in. To the New York of drag queens, hard core club kids, and danger I was still a frightened little tourist with a map, but no guide, but Oh Lord how I loved it. Springsteen played Max’s Kansas City in early 1978. Just before me, but I probably would have missed it anyway for similar reasons. It takes a while when you arrive to not feel and act like a tourist or a transient.

I continue with a swift step uptown. Avoid unnecessary eye contact, keep moving, and disregard or refuse the ubiquitous handbills, all classic maneuvers. Cat Steven’s Father and Son lingers with me as I walk. I use to hear this as the son, but now both my daughter and my son age too quickly, and I am the father trying to sort things out.

“I was once like you are now, and I know that it’s not easy
To be calm when you’ve found something going on
Take your time, think a lot,
Why, Think of everything you got
You may still be here tomorrow, but your dreams will not…”

But then I am rattled out of my nostalgia and longing by a women wearing leg warmers, sandals, and a skirt and blouse. A Madonna convention? Perhaps I was too hard on the flip flop girls. I am mesmerized and consider the fashion choice for a quarter block as she approaches. The couple draws near arm in arm. I see now, she is of that age that would have worn the leg warmers when Flashdance was in the theatres. I saw it, in New York in a movie theatre back when it came out. Can’t recall for sure, but I think I took my friend Calvin.

It masqueraded as a chic flick, notwithstanding the famous dance scene with the water cascading down Jennifer Beals. The woman approaching me wanted to be the maniac, check that, wants to be the maniac. Crazy how some things will make one chuckle inwardly. The horns in Al Green’s I Can’t Get Next to You pelt my brain.

North of the Square I pass the bar I paused at on 9-11. Literally outside the Sullivan theatre where Letterman has been doing his thing for years. The bar where I first saw the videos of the towers coming down is gone. I had stopped in for a drink, in grief and I think shock, walking towards the George Washington Bridge from 33rd street. 180 blocks. That was my plan. In its place, the bar has been replaced by another faceless pizza parlor. An irreverence to me, is a convenience for those that replace me in this space.

The acoustic guitar opening from Pete Townsend and Ronnie Lane’s Street in the City builds as I approach Columbus Square, forever transformed by the new Warner building complex. I worry as I walk about my employment situation, but my thoughts do no stay there long.

I keep passing Muslim women. I don’t recall seeing many in the 70’s. Now I see some with just headscarves. Then I pass a couple, the man walking with the woman, but a pace or two ahead, accident of the crowd or expected I wonder. Headscarves I can absorb. So many religions and cultures cover their head’s to please the heavenly god they worship. But the absolute fear of women that inspires the burka or the Hassidic wig and headscarves I cannot fathom. These are the days of miracles, wonder and primitive fear. And then right in front of that glistening tower, I see a woman in a burka, hailing a cab, complete head to toe covering, carrying a brightly covered book bag, with the slogan “2 Teach a child is to affect them 4ever”.

Getting ready for Paul Simon, I click the IPod to Graceland and then Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, Ta Na, Na, Na Na, Ta Na Na Na Na…

Lincoln Center now. The cultural Mecca of the city. I have walked though the courtyard dozens of times. Recall vividly more than once drifting into the background of tourist photos there, an old trick that used to amuse me. Still does. I always hoped that people would get home from their trips, scattered to the four corners, and wonder, “Who's that guy?”I have used the interior facilities, pristine as Seinfeld’s George noted, but never once entered to see a concert. But the massive Chagall, The Triumph of Music, is still there. The angel blesses those who stand in the greatness of her beauty. Just to the west, on that apartment building on 64th street, the other statue of liberty.

Here and there ballet dancers pass, hair drawn tightly into a bun, rail thin and athletic. Dance studios still abound in the area for smallish young men and women with biggish dreams. Back then I used to love to have breakfast in one of the nearby diners and watch them come and go. Calvin lived on 66th Street, so I came though here often in the late 70’s and early 80’s. From the projects you could see the Hudson and dream of escape across the river or anywhere. But now one of Trumps piggish castles blocks the sun. And the view of escape. The projects now bounded on all sides by opulence, pointing the neglect inward, so those on the edges can easily look away and ignore it. In another block or two I pass the Museum of Modern Commerce, the Apple store, all slick surfaces and minimalist displays, but every gadget has a customer fiddling with it.

I Get the news I need on the weather report
I can gather all the news I need on the weather report

The Only Living Boy in New York, with Garfunkel’s soaring harmony carries me the rest of the way to the Beacon. Out front I find Mark quickly and we both note that we are younger than the average audience member. People arrive in walkers, and as we wait a van pulls up and the back door slides open as Grandma de-vans with her wheel chair. Sidewalk Stub-Hubbers pedal their wares.

Inside the retirees are a surprisingly lively bunch. Next to us a contemporary of my mother sings quietly to almost every song. But her version of Here Comes the Sun, one of Simon’s encores raises the most longing in me. She sings neither well or poorly, but there is something in there of the guitar masses from 1969, something in the way my Mom sung those secular songs, reverently, joyfully, and yet somehow flatly, something about not wanting to stick out in the crowd I think. Sometimes made you wonder if they ever understood the profound affect they had on us and the changes we were going though and what the country was going through as well. Not just the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, but all of it. From the Kinks to the Clash. Dylan and Ian Drury, Stokely and King.

Around here it’s still the ’69 Mets, the joyous miracle. But in my memory, it will always be the ’69 Cubs, the wretched collapse. Lost something then. Learned something too. Sometimes life is loss, sometimes even when it seems you are close, you are so much farther then you know.

On the way home it lingers with me until I have to acknowledge it. We grew up. I grew up. Of course Mom knew, because she had to travel the same road of change, and loss, and hopefully, finally acceptance.

And all at once I just want the change to stop. That engine that has propelled me and this great city has gone too far, and something that I needed is gone. I forgot something back there, and I just need to sneak back in to get it. You know that feeling you just feel instinctively you’ve left something so you start patting the pockets, and as I do the space below my neck where I always sling my reading glasses. I want to go back. I need to go back. Alright maybe I’ll lose that hat.

But I want to go back. I Just want… I Just want… I Just want to do it all over again.

Peace, and many thanks and muich love to Brother Mark...

The Big Lie

Republicans say they can do something about the budget while continuing to cut taxes. Democrats say they will do it while making minmal adjuments to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But perhaps the biggest lie of all is that it matters. It does not. Middle class people pick sides between the political parties-- both morally bankrupted by their addiction to campaign cash and the big money interests that spend it-- and the poor struggle to survive. All the while those both rich and powerful have made off with the bank. Not a single conviction for the meltown on Wall Street which has set economic development back 20 years, the housing market perhaps further farther. Wall Street is rocking again up to nearly where it was before the crash, while the unemployment rate barely moves, real wages stagnate or drop, and the housing market remains stubbornly stuck in the tank. I am a long term progessive, a liberal even, but I am sick to death of all of it. While we argue over the crumbs, someone stole our house, actually drove it away in the dark of night.

The Brilliant Lewis Black

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/03/watch_lewis_black_endorse_dona.html

Obama for President

I have really been struggling with McCain over the last few days. Despite it all, I still think he is an honorable man, though I don't think his campaign has shown much of that. The Palin thing was a catastrophe and showed the country the worst elements of McCain's personality. But some part of me is recoiling against the false hurt that some of Obama's supporters have shown. John Lewis is a great man, but using the the actions of some in McCain and Palin's crowds to compare McCain's campaign to that of George Wallace seems to me at least overwrought, if not overtly political code for the Democratic base of Liberals and minorities.

Yes, some of the McCain ads have been horrific, and Palin's "Paling around with terrorists" remark was dangerous and disgusting (though not that surprising coming from her. What a hack!). But I like to think, and I do believe that McCain himself has shown little stomach for the mud slinging. It's been odd really, and a little cowardly I guess.

But if McCain were willing to really "Willie Horton" Obama and if he had made a sober choice for VP I think the polls would be closer, though the landscape would probably feel meaner. And Christ it feels mean enough already. In the end, I just don't believe McCain's soul is that black.

Palin's crowds behaved at times like they were at a Klan rally, but I was deeply touched that McCain stood up three or four separate times last Friday, and even against the boos of his own crowd put down the stupidity of the ill-informed rabble and called Obama an honorable church going man that no American needed to fear. I know there are some who will say he did it out of political expediency, but I am not as cynical as that. Not yet, anyway, but ask me in a few months. Anyway, I would bet a hundred bucks that that woman that called Obama an

A-Rab really wanted to drop the N-word on him. But that woman is not McCain's fault and he did the righteous thing in taking the mike from her and responding the way he die. For me last Friday was the highlight of the either man's campaign, and I am trying now to remember if and when Obama showed such grace.

 McCain seemed genuinely disappointed last night that Obama did not agree to the Lincoln-Douglas town halls that were previously agreed to. The William Ayers thing was a red herring, but McCain clearly does not have an affinity for the argument. He has laid off Jeremiah Wright completely, which even to me was at least partially fair game.

And while I believe that the US should absolutely apply a more even hand to the till in the Middle East, Reverend Jackson's comments recently smacked of a sense arrogant entitlement that I found troubling. If he really used the word Zionist (I really don't trust the Post when it comes to the Rev) -- dripping as it does with the memories of "Hymietown"-- then Jackson needs to move on. This is no time to fight that battle, or settle old scores. And Obama needs to be careful not to get drawn into some "Don't Ask Don't Tell" trap in the first 100 days. These are very serious times.

Obama backed out of the town hall meetings, and public financing, as well as a handful of progressive policy decisions after his nomination. All of it was safe. Can't blame him I guess, but it does not make him flame retardant. To me Obama hid out for much of the campaign. I only hope that the cool that he exhibited belies a passion for fixing things, because this is no time for political caution. If he fritters away the next four years on school uniforms and highway projects, than the democrats deserve purgatory for the next 50.

So I do have some cold feet on Barack too. Perhaps we American's just have to learn to have to live with less certainty.

The country needs sound management not an ideologue. I am not at all sure that Obama will be able to work across the aisle and get things done. Somehow I think McCain would. What is unclear with McCain though is how much he would govern from the right. He certainly has run from the right.

So even though it'll probably cost me some dough I will still vote for Obama, with hope in my heart and the sure knowledge that even though McCain himself has recaptured some of what was honorable in him, there is no way he can fill 50,000 political positions without appointing hundreds if not thousands of the same political hacks, leeches, incompetents, and yahoo ideologues and that have populated Bush's completely failed presidency. It is time for a change.

I hope the kids are right about Barack. I really do.

Palin is a Boob

Palin is a boob, a useful idiot to distract us from the pitiful reality that the Washington power structure has created for us. Palin is Paris Hilton for the political chattering class, someone that makes everyone who sees her feel superior. There is not one among us as stupid as that, and not one among us that so brazenly would attempt to suggest her real lack of curiosity in the ways that world works as "down home", or more real than others. I don't know which is more annoying: Her parochial simplistic view of the way the world works, or her absolute insistence that those who don't agree are east coast twinks. F#$% her.

Plenty of blame to spread between the re pubs and the dems on this meltdown in the finance world. The repubs have been deregulating Wall Street for two decades. the dems just had their little nest egg with Fannie and Freddy. Both were looking for campaign grease. The culture of money is the real culprit, and neither McCain or Obama will tell you the real truth about that. Both will raise more than $100 million and a lot of that will come from will connected slobs looking to buy the trough at which they feed and which sucks the life from the rest of us. Both parties have bee n completely dishonored. For the first time in my life, I am really disgusted with the lot of them, and I really don't see one party as more pure (even with with qualifications) than the other.

If either of the candidates really told the truth and made indications they were really willing to do something about the obscene culture of money, I might vote for them. Even Mc Cain, even with Palin. Whatever McCain and Obama have said up until now is just platitudes, protecting the taxpayer, hitting the CEO's bla, bla, bla... Shut up already. I was born at night, but not last night and I really do believe that the parties that both of you both represent are completely corrupted by money. I understand that Obama must point to the Repubs efforts to to deregulate the financial industry, and that McCain and his cronies will point to=2 0Freddy and Fannie.

When one of them says, look Washington looked the other way because we wanted the campaign cash, then I will accept that there is seriousness. Not to worry, there is NO chance of the truth dripping from the lips of either of them. The system is completely corrupt

Wave That Flag

Old friend, I really get your disappointment now that Edwards has exited stage left, but are you really so down on Clinton and Obama, especially Obama? You're really bummin' me out.

Edwards spoke to issues that have been a concern to me for most of my adult life, but I still could not connect with him. Maybe I missed it, but it seems a lot of others did too. Edwards never seemed to connect with people the way that either of the Kennedy brothers, McGovern, or Jackson did. Maybe the media didn't give him a fair shake-- the debates were a joke, pissing matches between Clinton and Obama-- but I like to think that if he really had something I could have registered with I would have and could have found it. I give him credit for starting and ending in New Orleans, but at least for me he was not the right messenger.

So we are left with two, and in recent days we have seen again the ruthless nature of Clintonian politics. I heard Carville say yesterday that the Clintons are not racist, and I believe that it so. But they are ruthless and we have glimpsed again the compromises they are willing to make. I used to like that fighter’s spirit in Bill Clinton-- the idea that he could give as good as he got, until giving and getting was all we were seeing. It was ugly. These days have reminded me of that. But that’s a messy thing, not a deadly thing, or evil thing, and there’s a difference.

Obama is a great orator, but I have yet to connect with him. It seems to me he would be a center left-- as opposed to Clinton's center right-- leader.

I would like to think that both Clinton and Obama know fairly bright jurists to appoint to the court, and I would hope that both would discontinue the absolute assault we have seen on the Bill or Rights and Constitution. In Iraq both will bring the troops home. Though honestly, I doubt either will do it on a faster schedule than the other once they sit in the oval and have to face the possibility of genocide if they move too precipitously. At this point it is not even clear to me that either would move much faster even than a McCain. All will be under enormous pressures to bring the soldiers home while avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe, and I would think even the Democrats will be somewhat hemmed in by a desire not to give impression that everything that was lost has been for nothing. To some extent all of them will have to play out Bush's hand now, which is what he and Rove wanted once the realized the reckless course they had set us on.

The worst president in our lifetime…

On the economy Obama and Clinton, it seems to me, can both be counted on to at least level the field some with the tax cuts. I would hope both would likely rein in—all evidence to the contrary, I know, I know-- spending and tax cuts and getting closer to a balanced budget. The Republicans and Bush in particular, without a plan or organizing principle other than the ownership of power, have been reckless with the budget.

Both Obama and Clinton are clearly committed to doing something about health care reform. Clinton's proposal may be more progressive than Obama's, and neither was as forward thinking as Edward's plan, but all of them will have to compromise substantially to get something done. I do not see even the most conservative plan coming into law as currently proposed.

Neither will outlaw abortion or scapegoat the poor, gays, or emigrants.

Anyway, we were spoiled with Martin and John, and our old friend Bobby. Even “Tear down this wall” is pretty inspiring-- Would have been more so if Reagan also asked the South Africans or Israelis to tear theirs down as well. I have yet to be inspired. Gore and Kerry didn’t reach me much either. Two images; Gore inn the deabbtes talking about that f'in "lockbox" for Social Secuity, and Kerry Wind Surfing. These they brought on themselves.

But I am getting too old for the inspiring thing. If inspiring is not available, I'll be happy with professional at this point, Gore and Kerry might not have inspired, but neither one of them would have been so uncaring about the suffering in New Orleans even up to today, or blundered into Iraq.

Maybe we won’t see it again in our lifetime, and so far as hoping for it maybe that’s someone else’s deal. There’s a lot of time between now and the general though and I definitely perceive some fire in Obama. But even if they never nurture the flame. I am still Ok.I could still live with Clinton, though I am leaning towards Obama.

On second thought, Al might have been inspiring. And Clinton may be Satin. Maybe I am full of it, but at least our long national nightmare will soon be over.

Peace Brother,