Walking from Concourse B to Concourse A at the Atlanta airport takes you through this walkway, which features leaf-like objects overhead, subdued lighting, and the sounds of a swamp. At least, I think it’s supposed to be a swamp, complete with croaking frogs, buzzing insects, and chirping birds. It’s a nice change of pace between bright, bustling concourses.
Just another reason to walk the big airports, rather than jamming onto generic underground trams with a hundred of your closest friends.
The Metropolitan Opera cancelled the last act of its performance of Rossini’s classic opera Guillaume Tell on Saturday afternoon because an audience member spread what police believed were cremated remains into the orchestra pit during intermission. The opera to be performed on Saturday night also was cancelled as a result of the incident.
According to the New York Times, a man in attendance told other audience members that he was at the opera to spread the ashes of his mentor. During the second intermission, the man was seen reaching into a black bag and sprinkling a powdery substance into two parts of the orchestra pit — which caused the cancellation of the rest of the opera because the powder was viewed as a potential threat and was subjected to testing. The man apparently has been identified through video surveillance footage, and police are trying to reach him. A follow-up story in the Times identifies the man, who apparently has posted on his Facebook page that he plans to leave some of the ashes at every opera house he and his mentor have visited.
Apparently, spreading cremated remains in a place like the orchestra pit at the Metropolitan Opera isn’t a per se offense under New York law — at least, if you aren’t acting with criminal intent — but rather is simply a health code violation.
It’s weird to think that someone would decide that it was appropriate to spread cremated remains in the midst of an actual performance of an opera — or for that matter, any live event, whether it’s a football game or a rock concert. It’s pretty selfish, too, when you think about it. This guy’s mentor evidently was an opera lover, and yet the act of spreading his ashes caused opera performances to be cancelled. If I were one of the people holding tickets to a performance that was cancelled — especially if I’d travelled from out of state to see the Met — I’d be furious.
We have a “junk mail” filter at work. Most of the time, the filter just moves what is obvious spam into a “junk mail” folder without me looking at the email or doing anything to it.
Sometimes, though — for reasons not known to me — particular junk mail will make it through the filter and be brought to my attention under the heading “Incoming Message Quarantined by Web Reputation Monitor.” I’m not sure whether the filter concludes that such emails are more likely to be legitimate, or because they come from more plausible email addresses, or some other reason. In any case, I recently got one of those messages, checked to make sure that the email wasn’t sent by somebody I know, and then stopped dead when I saw the “re” line: “Trump reveals groundbreaking secrets to triple your income.”
Of course, I didn’t try to open that spammy email . . . but I have to admit I was sorely tempted. Aren’t you curious about what income-tripling tips “Trump” might offer? Tips like: Be sure to inherit millions from your parents? Become a reality TV show star? Contribute to the political campaigns of every candidate for every office, regardless of their party affiliation, so you have ready access to the levers of power? Make liberal use of the American bankruptcy laws? Invest in “Man Tan” franchises?
Having seen the Trump income-tripling “re” line, I found myself thinking of other spam email “re” lines that would just be too tantalizing to pass up. Here are a few that I came up with:
“Hillary Clinton’s Guide to Data Security and Personal Ethics”
“Rappers and Buddhism: A Perfect Combination”
“Choosing A Soul Mate The Anthony Weiner Way”
“Personal Humility in the NFL”
I’m sure there are others.
Last night we joined some friends on one of those pedal carts you see rolling up and down High Street in the Short North area. We labored mightily to move the cart a few blocks, waved at passersby, slowed traffic, listened to music provided by three very nice young women dressed in Beyoncé outifits, and visited two bars as well. It was a fun time, and you feel like you’re getting some exercise in the process, too.
Part of the fun was provided by our hostess and driver, who apparently suffered a catastrophic beer can-related forehead injury shortly before our arrival and obligingly posed for the photo above.
Just when you think — and fervently hope — that we’ve finally heard the last of Anthony Weiner, he turns up in the news again. He’s the proverbial bad penny on the national political scene.
When the world learned recently that Weiner was “sexting” with a 15-year-old girl, I didn’t write about it because, frankly, I think enough attention has been paid to a guy who is obviously a disturbed and narcissistic loser. He clearly wants attention of some kind or another, so why feed the creep’s ego? But now the investigation into Weiner’s texting with an underage girl has shaken up the presidential campaign, just when we thought it was about over. In their investigation of Weiner, the FBI seized his laptop, as well as his iPad and cell phone — and yesterday FBI director James Comey sent a letter to Congress stating that, in that unrelated investigation, the agency found emails that relate in some way to their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices. The New York Times is reporting that the FBI found tens of thousands of emails involving Huma Abedin, a long-time Hillary Clinton aide who is married to (and now estranged from) Weiner.
There’s not a lot of information about the emails on Weiner’s server. Comey’s letter to Congress says only that he felt he needed to supplement his prior congressional testimony that the investigation into Clinton’s email server was completed, that the FBI has now learned of emails “that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” that Comey had been briefed on the findings, and that he agreed it was appropriate for agents to determine whether they contain classified information. The letter concluded that the FBI can’t yet assess whether the emails on Weiner’s laptop are significant, or when the FBI will finish reviewing them.
So we don’t know much about the emails right now and, given the pace of the FBI’s prior investigation, we probably won’t know much more until after the election is over — which is why some people are criticizing the FBI director for calling attention to the issue at all. The disclosure obviously roiled the presidential campaign at a crucial time, with less than two weeks to go. I would note only that I appreciate the fact that the FBI director obviously takes his obligation to truthful in his testimony to Congress so seriously.
I’m not going to speculate about what might, or might not, be found in the emails. I’m just going to groan at the fact that we have to hear about Anthony Weiner, again — and hope that we don’t learn that this creepy, apparently sex-obsessed jerk had any kind of significant national security information on his laptop. Anthony Weiner is about the last person I’d want to have access to sensitive information.
I guess I’m surprised that they sell political t-shirts at Reagan National Airport — but they do. There, side by side, you will find Hillary and Trump shirts and other paraphernalia. So, if you haven’t already gotten your political fix just by being in D.C., you can buy a t-shirt on your way home to publicly proclaim your loyalty.
The cashier reports that the Hillary t-shirts are outselling the Trump t-shirts by a considerable margin.
A few days ago the Washington Post carried an interesting confession by a suburban Mom in Maine. She admitted and she and two of her friends became so enraged by the presence of a bunch of Donald Trump signs on their street that they went out one night and tore them down. Unfortunately for them, their act of vandalism was seen by the police, and the next day she received a summons to appear in court, because the owner of the property that displayed the yard signs — who just happened to be the chairman of a Maine PAC supporting Trump — was pressing charges.
Why did the woman suddenly engage in an act of vandalism? Because she hates Trump, and is angry about his crass comments about women, which remind her of her own experience with a crude boss who propositioned her for sex, and she thought that the number of yard signs supporting Trump were destroying the “equilibrium” of her neighborhood. She writes that she and her friends “felt assaulted by the number of signs. The idea of “cleansing” our streets seemed like the fastest way to restore balance and alleviate our election stress.” Now she regrets her conduct and recognizes that she momentarily snapped — and will have to face her day in court.
As the Post article notes, this election is raising temperatures nationwide, and the hard feelings are being acted out through Facebook rants, yard sign thefts, acts of vandalism — all the way up to tossing a bomb into a Trump campaign headquarters. It’s sad to think that this wretched campaign might bust up friendships or family relationships, and it’s even sadder when suburban Moms decide — even if only momentarily — that they have the right to trample on a neighbor’s exercise of their rights to free speech. Whatever you might think of Trump, you have to at least acknowledge that his supporters have the right to at least express their opinions, just as you have the right to vehemently disagree with those opinions — and if you don’t acknowledge that reality, then we’re really in the process of losing something fundamental and immensely valuable about America.
But here’s the saddest thing: the Maine Mom hasn’t even met the man whose yard signs she stole. She didn’t try to talk to him to tell him how she and her friends felt, and he didn’t try to talk to her before deciding to press charges. You’d like to think that neighbors could at least talk to each other and try to bridge the gap, before resorting to stealing yard signs on one side and going to court on the other. Maybe if they’d sat down face to face they might have realized that they were dealing with a human being, acquired an understanding of how the other person felt, and perhaps changed their mind on how to proceed.
But these days, it seems, no one talks anymore, and the first response is to escalate — which is how the courts in Maine are going to be hearing a case involving a suburban Mom who stupidly stole some yard signs because she thinks Donald Trump is a jerk.
One key theme is Donald Trump’s presidential campaign could be summarized — using one of Trump’s favorite adjectives — as “disastrous trade deals.”
Basically, Trump argues that, for decades, American leaders have been taken to the cleaners by foreign counterparts and have negotiated trade pacts that have cost countless American jobs, as cheap goods manufactured overseas have flooded the United States while companies have moved their operations to countries where products can be built more cheaply. It’s a theme that Trump sounds whenever he comes to the industrial Midwest and can stand in front of an abandoned factory.
Today the Washington Post has an article that adds a bit of nuance to the globalization debate. It’s about a Chinese billionaire named Cho Tak Wong who has bought a former GM factory in Moraine, Ohio to manufacture automotive glass. Moraine is one of those “rust belt” communities that have been devastated by the departure of good-paying, steady blue collar jobs that used to be a staple of the Ohio economy, and local officials are hoping the factory will help to reverse that trend. The Post reports that the purchase is part of a shift in globalization fortunes, as wealthy Chinese businessmen look to parlay their profits in China into purchases of American businesses.
Nothing is ever as simple as a presidential candidate presents it, and trade certainly falls into that category. And blaming “trade deals” doesn’t recognize the impact that other decisions — like laws imposing increasing wage and benefit obligations on employers, or the ongoing pressure from the American consumer for products at cheaper costs — have had on the exodus of American jobs to places where labor and benefit costs are substantially cheaper. You can argue the merits of “globalization,” but the reality is that we are in a global economy whether we like it or not. It will be interesting to see whether what’s happening in Moraine, and elsewhere, will ultimately shift the debate.
Twenty years ago Kish and the boys got me this jacket. I hardly ever wear it, because it’s a bit flamboyant, and it’s hard to find the right occasion.
I’d say Game One of the Series qualifies! Tonight I’m wearing it proudly.
After the Tribe won, it was time to mix with the mass of people outside the ballpark, high five any happy random stranger wearing the team’s gear, and take photos to help cement your memories of a wonderful night of baseball.
There’s a lot of hoopla at any championship game, and the World Series opener is no exception. The crowd got to the game early, with the Chicago Cubs being well represented, and by the time a giant American flag had been rolled out and the National Anthem sung, the fans of both teams were ready to play ball. The last few minutes before the first pitch seemed to last forever, but then the hoopla ended and a pretty good ballgame broke out.
There were some protesters on the Ontario Street side of the ballpark, advocating for changing the Tribe’s name and Chief Wahoo. I agree with them about Chief Wahoo, and I get the point about the name — but it’s hard to imagine a Cleveland baseball team being called anything but the Indians. And, I think “the Tribe” is a pretty cool and inclusive nickname.
The protesters look like they have an uphill battle, as the photo below suggests. Chief Wahoo was seen pretty much everywhere.
Russell, UJ, and I had a blast at Game One of the World Series last night. Downtown Vleveland was packed before the game, and the area between the ballpark and the Cavs’ arena — where the Cavs were to play, and win, their season opener — was especially jammed. Two big screen TVs were set up to play season highlights and get both the Cavs fans and the Tribe fans fired up.
Let the Series begin!
By the way, I know it’s officially called Prgressive Field, but I will always think of it as The Jake.
Tonight the Chicago Cubs face the Cleveland Indians in the first game of the 2016 World Series. For most of recent baseball history — say, for the last 60 years or so — if you’d predicted that even one of those teams would make it to the Series, people would have laughed at your brashness. Predicting that they both would make it would have been viewed as compelling clinical evidence of insanity.
That’s because the Cubs and Indians have an unmatched record of futility in major league baseball. The Cubs haven’t been to a World Series since 1945, and they haven’t won a Series since 1908. The Tribe, on the other hand, last won a World Series in 1948. When you’re looking back to the Truman Administration, or the Roosevelt Administration — as in Theodore Roosevelt, not Franklin — for your last Series triumph, that’s pretty frigging sad. For decades, generations of fans of both teams have experienced unrelieved heartache and losses, have believed in jinxes, and have been convinced that the fates are against them and they and their teams are cursed.
But this year, one of those teams, by definition, is going to win the World Series. One of those beleaguered fan bases is finally (finally!) going to see their favorite ball club hoist the championship trophy, setting off a celebration that will never be forgotten. I’m guessing that this year the TV ratings for the Series will be through the roof, not because there are enormous numbers of Chicago and Cleveland fans in America, but because the prospect that one of these lovable losers is going to bring an end to decades of outright failure is just too intriguing to miss.
And by the way, it should be a pretty good Series if you’re a baseball fan. The Cubs are the heavy favorite to win the Series and the overwhelming choice of ESPN’s panel of experts. That’s not dissing the Indians, but rather recognizing that, this year, the Cubs were easily the best team in baseball, from start to finish. They won more than 100 games, had a bunch of their players make the All-Star game, have a powerhouse lineup of hitters and pitchers, and have a guy in the bullpen who throws 103 m.p.h. And, unlike the Tribe, they haven’t seen their roster of starting pitchers decimated by injuries and drone accidents. If you watched the way the Cubs mauled the Dodgers in the last three games of the National League Championship Series, you’d pick the Cubbies to win, too.
As for the Tribe, they’ve been the scrappy underdogs all year, and the World Series will be no different. The Indians have made it this far because Terry Francona has managed his tattered pitching staff with historical deftness, and the starters and relievers have performed brilliantly when called upon. The Indians batters collectively hit just .168 in the American League Championship Series, which is well below the Mendoza line — but the few hits they got were timely hits, knocking in just enough runs to hand the game to the bullpen after the fifth inning. And, unlike the Dodgers, for example, the Tribe played stellar defense and helped the bullpen make sure that those one- and two-run leads held up. It was the kind of baseball John McGraw and Tris Speaker would have appreciated.
I’m convinced that tonight’s game is a crucial one for the Tribe. They’re facing Jon Lester, who was 19-5 in the regular season and has already won three games in the playoffs, and are going with their best remaining pitcher in Corey Kluber. Given the anemic performance of the Indians’ offense this postseason, the Tribe simply can’t afford to fall behind and count on big innings to catch up late. Kluber will need to somehow quiet the Cubs’ powerhouse offense, the Indians will need to scratch and claw for a few runs, and the bullpen will have to come through once again.
It should be a great Series. Go Tribe!
Webner House 