USA

New Years Eve in NY

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Bob left for Thailand on the 29th. Josh had to work at the restaurant so Amy and I spent New Years Eve drinking wine and champagne…good conversation with my daughter-in-law…and watching “Wedding Crashers.” She spent the night and then left with Josh in the morning to join some friends upstate for a couple days for a little break in the action.

New Years for me was spent cleaning the apartment with a little time to watch “Crash,” set in LA and the best depiction of racial problems in America I have seen.

A town car arrived at 7pm to take me to Kennedy airport for my 10pm flight to Bangkok. Where are you from, the tall elegant driver asked. Oregon, I answered…where are you from? Africa, he said. Yes, I said, but what country? Sudan was the answer. Oh, I said woefully, much trouble there now. Oh, no, he said, no trouble!! Then he spent the rest of the trip analyzing Bush’s foreign policy…most of which I agreed with. He wasn’t married but said that if he ever had children he wouldn’t raise them in New York City, where he has lived for the last 12 years, but that he would return to Sudan. But his insistent denial of trouble in his country that have left thousands dead left me mystified.

Ellen Makes Happy

Posted on by Laughingnomad

One of the things I will miss when we leave for Thailand is watching Ellen DeGeneris on television. Her recent reruns of her shows produced in New York City…a stunning view of Columbus Circle through a three story wall of windows behind her…was wonderful. The windows, she said, cost $10,000 each time they are washed. That’s New York. Her stock exchange visit on Wall Street was hilarious….asking serious questions of unsuspecting brokers…and then giving ridiculous responses….like asking if she can buy “chicken stock!” Then she picked up the phone like she was ordering a stock offering but instead left all the exchange workers with delivered pizza.

A Christmas Gift Brooklyn 2005

Posted on by Laughingnomad

After rack of lamb marinated with fresh oregano, thyme, garlic and olive oil; tender gratin of baby spinach in a bechamel sauce with snow crab and east coast clams; brussel sprouts braised with bacon and deglazed with cream sherry; spaghetti squash with maple syrup, butter and cinnamon; tiny green beans with garlic and thyme; a salad with carmelized pears, shaved fresh fennel and a crumbled rare blue cheese; tiny boiled red potatoes bathed in herbs and olive oil…multiple bottles of wine and champagne, and finally Amy’s apple pie, the eight of us at Christmas dinner last night are still full this morning!

Josh and Amy arrived at our apartment Christmas morning loaded up with flowers, sacks of Christmas stocking stuffers, an “egg bake,” a family Christmas morning tradition in her family, and sacks of ingredients to be used for cooking the evening meal. This was in addition to the two huge boxes of food that Josh had ordered from http://www.freshdirect.com and had delivered to the apartment the night before!

Josh and a friend of Josh’s from Eugene Oregon, Gabe, who is also a chef here in New York City and worked with Josh when he was at the Savoy, spent the entire day preparing an incredible dinner…Josh’s Christmas gift to Bob and me. Gabe brought pink roses and a malange of rare cheeses for an appetizer. Gabe’s mother, Bonny, in town for the holidays, joined us as did Gabe’s girlfriend who brought a huge tin of cookies baked by her mother. Later, another chef who worked with Josh at the Savoy and is originally from Bend Oregon and his wife, who was at the New England Culinary Institute with Josh, came by. We toasted Oregon with three Willamette Valley Pinot Noir wines, one of which was a highly respected St. Innocent…the winemaker, Mark Vlossak, formerly a Pediatric practitioner we knew in Salem.

Josh’s restaurant, Toqueville, also has a catering business. It is not unusual for Josh and selected wait staff to provide an in-home cooked dinner for a client…usually business-oriented…costing upwards of 10 to 30 thousand dollars for parties of 10-50 people…Josh often getting as much as a $1,000 tip. Josh is proud that clients often request him personally. Fancy expense accounts. And we are in pretty fancy company!

During the conversation, the “New Yorkers” started making fun of tourists who, emerging from underground subway exits, clog mid-town sidewalks and stumble along with eyes bugged skyward…while the locals frustratingly shoulder their way forward…always in a hurry. Gabe’s bright mom, who is one of Eugene’s city councilwomen had the perfect come-back. And what about those north-bound east coast tourists who clog up the freeways at 30 miles an hour gaping at snow-capped Mt. Hood or the RV’s backing up traffic on Oregon coastal highway 101! A good laugh then!

Twelve bottles of wine and champagne later we ended the meal with a delicious flaky apple pie Amy had baked that morning.

This was the first Christmas we have spent with Josh in the last ten years. And more Christmases than that since the whole family was together…and the first Christmas in three years that we have not spent in some foreign country alone. Thank you dear Josh! Now if only we could have had our other sons Greg, who is in Las Vegas, and Doug, who lives in Thailand, with us…

More On Mao

Posted on by Laughingnomad

We are grounded by the subway strike so have been reading more of the biography of Mao by authors Jung Chang, the author of the wonderful three-generation epic “Wild Swans,” and her British husband Jon Halliday.

What is especially interesting so far, is that this biography reveals much heretofor unknown information about Mao Tse Tung and the Cultural Revolution in China. Mao, for decades, held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population and was responsible for “well over 60 million deaths in peacetime,” more than any other twentieth-century leader. He used terrorism to try to establish China as a world-wide military nuclear power and to seat himself as it’s leader. To do this he wanted to draw draw Russia and America into a world war. Russia, hoping to appease Mao, allowed him to start the Korean War…Korea’s Kim even taking his orders from Mao. Mao sent thousands and thousands of troops into Korea thinking the Americans would never know the difference between Chinese and Koreans…and he was ready to sacrifice untold millions of people. He knew the Americans wouldn’t tolerate the body bags. Stalin (“The Master”) held the line, but when Stalin died, Khrushchev pulled the plug.

The detail illustrates Mao’s premeditated cruelty unprecidented in modern history. The authors had access to the Russian archives, interviewed hundreds of key people that are still alive…Russians, Chinese, Americans and anyone else who had a role during this time.

Values in China are carried forward by the culture…not by any ethical or civic standard. I could feel reverberations of China’s past during our several months in the country.

Human Rights In China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Yesterday, as Bob and I stepped out the door of the Thai Consolate on E 52nd St. where we were applying for our visas to Thailand, we were met by about 50 Chinese people holding up banners condemning the beating of Falun Gong practitioners by police in Thailand last week. As I reported in an earlier blog, China is sending out agents to other countries to monitor the activities of not only mainland Chinese but also Chinese citizens of other countries. But we were surprised that Thailand of all countries would apparently support China in this horrendous persecution of such an innocuous activity.

Falun Gong claims it is a form of meditation with gentle exercises that cultivates inner balance by teaching truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. Falun Gong is becoming wildly popular in China and in over 60 countries worldwide. Practitioners claim that Communist Party head Jiang Zemin, fearing that Falun Gong’s widespread popularity will overshadow his own legacy, has ordered the traditional Chinese practice “eradicated.” This means that 100 million citizens are apparently cast as criminals. In the past five years, up to one million people, practitioners claim, have been illegally detained, with many tortured in slave-labor camps, psychiatric hospitals and prisons. More than 1,060 are confirmed dead with the actual number estimated to be more than 10,000. Practitioners are fined, fired from jobs, denied graduation, forced to divorce and flee their homes.

All Chinese press is state-controlled and people are told that the meditation is evil and drives people crazy. A couple years ago, Bob and I ran across a young girl who was waiting on us in a restaurant in a small southern town who was horrified that I thought Falun Gong was not dangerous!

Dr. Charles Lee, an American citizen was sentenced in March 2003 to three years in prison for planning to broadcast information on state-run TV about the persecution of Falun Gong. Dr. Lee has been subjected to force-feeding, brainwashing, beatings and slave labor, and denied contact with friends, family and U.S. consular officials. (http://rescuecharles.org).

US businesses and government officials supportive of Falun Gong have also been pressured and intimated to the extent that on Oct 4 2004, in response to the many cases of harrassment and violence by Chinese agents on U.S. soil, The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed House Resolution 304 that said “The Government of the People’s Republic of China should immediately stop interfering in the exercise of religious and political freedoms within the U.S. such as the right to practice Falun Gong, that are guaranteed by the US constitution.

The NY Times runs stories, many front-page, almost daily about human rights abuses in China. Today, we read about one lawyer, Gao Zhang, who travels the country filing lawsuits over corruption, land seizures, police abuses and religious freedom. His opponent is usually the same: the ruling Communist Party. As a result of his successes, he has had his license revoked and has finally fled to the hills of Shanxi where he is persuing another case against the party on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners.

Yesterday on the front page was an article about the sleepy fishing village of Dongzhou, just 125 miles north of Hong Kong, the scene of a deadly face-off between protesters hurling homemade bombs and the police gunning them down in the streets. The article says “many facts remain unclear about the police crackdown” on a Dongzhou demonstration on Dec 6 protesting against the construction of a coal-fired power plant that the villagers knew was not approved by the central government. Residents say police fired into the crowd of demonstrators killing 20 or more people. But one thing is certain: The government is doing everything possible to prevent witnesses accounts of what happened from emerging by offering people money to keep quiet.

“Rural confrontations are increasing in China as local authorities confiscate land for construction of factories, power plants and other projects,” says the NY Times.

New York City Trivia

Posted on by Laughingnomad

A friend from South Africa sent me some geography trivia:

The term “The Big Apple” was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930s who used the slang expression “apple” for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City is to play the big time – The Big Apple. There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.

More Life in Brooklyn

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According to the winter issue of BKLYN magazine, Brooklyn, N.Y., barkeep Andy Heidel has drawn a line in the sawdust, posting the following on recent Sundays outside the Patio Lounge in Park Slope:

“THE STROLLER MANIFESTO”
“What is it with people bringing their kids into bars? What, just because there’s no more smoking, it’s okay? I’m sorry, it isn’t. A bar is a place for adults to kick back and relax. How can you do that with a toddler running around or crying, getting changed on the table next to you, or being breast-fed? And is a bar really the kind of environment a child should be exposed to? I know in Europe it is commonplace, but hey — this is America, baby. Besides, bars are “21 and over.” Just because a 5-year-old obviously won’t get served, it doesn’t mean they should be in there. And don’t get me started about the strollers blocking access to the bar, seating, and the looks I get when I ask someone to move their stroller because it is obviously in the way of not only me but also everyone else. Doublewide strollers are the bane of Park Slope…

…I’m sick of kids and strollers in bars, and so are a lot of other people. If you can’t find a sitter and have to go out with your child, for the love of god, go to a family restaurant like Two Boots or the Tea Lounge, for I declare today and all future Sundays, Stroller Free.”

Babies Take Manhattan

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Nanny’s pushing babies in strollers are everywhere in Brooklyn, we noticed soon after arriving here, so it was no surprise when the New York Times ran a story December 1 called “The Children Are Back” … “Babies Take Manhattan” a reference to a Leonard Cohen song.

After a decade of steady decline, the story goes, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan increased more than 26 percent from 2000 to 2004. The preschool population reached almost 97,000 in Manhattan alone last year, the most since the 1960’s. The growth seems to be at both ends of the economic spectrum…the growing number of immigrants…and professional families who apparently are wanting to avoid the daily commute into increasingly more expensive suburbs in the outer boroughs and New Jersey.

And…I would venture…the decision by younger educated career moms to balance out their lives closer to the workplace with one of the most important values in a person’s life….family. As for the increasing number of Mexican immigrants in the El Barrio of east side Manhattan…I am willing to bet there was never any question.

Museum Of Natural History

Posted on by Laughingnomad

When we were in southern China last year we spent some time hiking and driving through parts of mountainous Yunnan Province that are populated primarily with, not Han Chinese, but with “minorities.” (Their word.) So when I saw that the museum was offering a special photo exposition of the Yi and Naxi peoples, we were off…walking on a gorgeous sunny day through Central Park to the museum on the west side.

A non-profit organization had given cheap point and shoot cameras to over 200 locals who were asked to take pictures of their surroundings and daily life…a project intended to be empowering for them. The project included a first exposition of the photos in their own towns…the Yi in their big black tri-tipped hats and the Naxi in their blue and white…and it was tear-jerking to see pictures of absolutely delighted people looking at photos of themselves…for many a first experience.

Minorities in China have always been brutally discriminated against by a country that has considered them to be subhuman. But now that the government has discovered that the colorful minorities have become a tourist attraction and can bring money into these areas…all of a sudden they are being given special status. High in the mountains of Guizhou Province, in a tiny Miao town during their New Years celebration, I was told by a young urban Han Chinese college student from Fujian Province that it was his “duty” to volunteer in the local school without pay because he had so much and the farming people here had so little opportunity.