Big Easy

I don’t know how New Orleans got that nickname, but for sure, it has the most unique combinatorics of any city this traveler has ever visited.
Not that it matters, but contrary to movie and TV stereotypes, natives pronounce the name of their city “New Orleans”, not “Nawlins”; those parts of the city through which the Mississippi flows are above sea level; and violent criminals do not lurk on every corner. I walked around unaccompanied during daylight hours, and saw plenty of other people doing the same.
The downtown area seems to have recovered from Katrina. We stayed in a hotel across the street from Harrah’s, and that part of the city, the Warehouse/Arts District, is dedicated to tourism, with hotels on every block.
We got to “the Quarter”, Bourbon Street, took the free ferry across the Mississippi River and back, and in a deliberate homage to New Orleans as literary muse, I made it a point to ride on one of her famous streetcars to the Garden District.
The cuisine is fabulous, out of this world, especially for fish lovers. Every meal, including the Rotary food festival across the street from the hotel where I took supper one evening, was savory and delicious.
The city is very walkable because it’s so flat, but it was hot and humid enough even in mid-April that a half-hour stroll left me totally drenched.
I came back so exhausted that when we got to Boston, I couldn’t find my car or house keys, which it turned out had lodged in the previously undiscovered bottom liner of my overnight bag.
My sympathetic boss, who had volunteered to schlep three of us from Logan, went out of his way to drop me off at a local motel. I insisted on this because of the late hour; by the time I checked in, it was after midnight, and I figured a better plan than the one that was suggested on the way back (pound on my son’s door for a ride to my house, at which point I would gain entrance by breaking my least-favorite window) would present itself after a decent night’s sleep.
I have never quite been convinced of an afterlife, but two things happened on the trip back home, which followed my friend Carolyn’s passing, and they’ve given me pause.

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Perspective

I’ve often heard it said that people gain perspective when a loved one dies, but having had that experience this past weekend, I don’t think that’s accurate.
Rather, it’s a reaction to the fact that a catastrophic event has just blasted into smithereens every ounce of your soul’s psychic energy at the rate of about 1,000 metric tons per second. You are simply unable to care about whether a waiter botched an order or someone gave you the evil eye because you have been depleted of the ability to do so.
In other words, the so-called perspective isn’t wisdom, but exhaustion.

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The Elephant in the Room

Last evening, I visited a very dear friend who was diagnosed with cancer in November 2006. At this point, not only is she confined to her home, but she’s unable to eat or from the look of it last night, unable to keep down liquids as well.
I hadn’t planned on it, but at one point, I told her how much I will miss her. It was totally spontaneous and while it certainly made sense to acknowledge that most gigantic of elephants, it feels like I’ve betrayed my friend by giving up while she is still battling to remain with us.

You’re Kidding, Right?

Michael P. Lewis was the Project Director for the notorious Big Dig, a job which made him second only to disgraced chairman Matthew Amorello in the line of responsibility for all the failures of that disastrous project.
Those failures include a 500% markup in the cost, from $3 billion to $15 billion, and the death of a Jamaica Plain woman due to shoddy workmanship.
In spite of this, the Turnpike Authority Retirement Board approved payment of an enhanced pension over 3 times the normal benefit: $72,578 versus $23,000 a year.
Adding insult to injury, Lewis is now employed as Rhode Island’s transportation secretary at $130,000 a year.

So Long

I’m finally rid of my old hosting company, a big relief.
When I started with them, they were a small local reseller, two geeky preppies with a lot of ambition and technical savvy.
A lot changed through the years; they moved out of state and stopped taking phonecalls, asking that tech support questions be emailed. No one seemed to know where they were or even what business they were in.

Continue reading So Long

Conundrum

Take a look at the pictures of this married couple from Clackamas County, Ore. and consider how you would describe their faces: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4550151&page=1
Arrogant?
Insolent?
Absent of remorse?
Smug?
Good-looking, well-groomed, healthy, maybe even financially comfortable*?
These are the faces of couple who let their 15 month old baby die out of some kind of perverse so-called religious belief.
I look at these people, who have everything going for them, and wonder how they could have been so selfish, or so weak, or so stupid, when someone like me, who had none of their advantages, managed to raise a child to adulthood.
“There but for the grace of God” I understand, but this? I just don’t get it.
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*Clackamas County, Ore, ain’t exactly Hooterville: the county’s median income in 2004 was $67,900.

But She’s Got Murtha

I don’t care how many second-rate politicians with dreams of personal payoff have endorsed the Pretender – Hillary Clinton has Murtha.
Not that you’d know this from the MSM, who have been cackling with joy about the endorsement of Obama by Pennsylvania’s anti-choice senator, Bob Casey, for days.
I’ve said it before: when books are written about the Democratic party’s nomination process for the 2008 election, there is going to be enough dirt uncovered to fill Colorado Convention Center.
Meanwhile, as of this hour, 82% of the respondents to a poll on the Boston Herald think that Massachusetts would be better off without Obama’s clone, Governor Deval Patrick.
Caveat emptor.