I took a few days off. I needed the break.
It was a lovely day to go into Manhattan today. I walked over to Rockefeller Center about 1PM. Usually the streets and plaza would be packed. Look at the photos and judge for yourself where we are during the pandemic. It's reassuring that most people around here are taking it seriously, not like the Trump Zombies and yahoos.
Today the predicted thunderstorms in the afternoon never materialized, or they hit elsewhere. I did get out for a walk and as I promised myself, I went over to Fifth Avenue and also strolled through Rockefeller Plaza. As you can see from the photos I'm posting today, not much going on. There are handfuls of people in the plaza, but nothing as you would expect for a pleasant August afternoon. Pall Mall barbers were offering complimentary hair-cuts, and I thought to myself, since they were promoting how good the recipient would look, that maybe they should have called them complementary haircuts. The usual crowds at St. Patrick's Cathedral was just a few people. I did see some tourist and even helped a pair looking for "the cable car that goes over New York." I directed them to the Roosevelt Island Tram, explaining there is no cable car over NYC. He is from the state of Georgia, she from the Philippines.
The tidal wave of lies and misstatements continues to flow from the mouths of the Trump zombies. They say he is the only one who can fix the problems, but all the problems occurred on his watch. The atrocious, murderous response to the Covid-19 pandemic can be laid at his feet. It was his orders that dismantled the pandemic response office, his magical thinking that it would all go away by mid-April - and now it's August, his refusal to wear a mask and then politicizing it so his team and his zombies refuse to use the easiest and most effective ways of preventing the spread. And now he calls for law and order, but the disorder is happening while he is president and instead of looking at the causes he wants to militarize the problem. He is such a dangerous man he must be removed from office.
Now he is calling for drug tests before he debates Biden. Show us your TAX RETURNS crooked Donald Trump and then we can talk about drug tests.
Unelect Trump. Flip the Senate.
Joe Biden for President.
The photos;
Permalink https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/08/today-predicted-thunderstorms-in.html
When I get up in the morning this late in August, the sun has not risen yet. And now, when I finish cleaning up after dinner, the sun is already down and it's twilight. Is the summer of 2020 winding down already? Despite the pandemic, despite only going into the city three days per week, despite having theoutside of my home power washed, sanded, repaired and repainted, despite not getting away, it still seemed to fly by. Soon it will be time to hum Kurt Weill's lovely, bittersweet tune, "September Song."
Trump, the Doofus Donald, is using the office of the Presidency to self-promote. Meanwhile, his son will face a choice of being deposed or jailed for contempt when he is served a subpoena to testify in the civil investigation into the Trump Organization's financial shenanigans over the past number of years. It's one of the investigations grinding its way through the NY state legal system, one which the President cannot pardon anyone out of. They can call it a witch hunt, but if they did nothing wrong, they'd be in there singing a song. So the refusal doesn't look too good.
As for the convention, the usual litany of misrepresentations, buck passing, exaggerations, misdirection and just enough fact to lend it all an aroma of a spritz air freshener over the garbage dump. You can perfume the prostitute but you don't sell her as chaste.
Photos of poets, novelists and artists. From the top: Yuko Otono, Carl Watson, Istvan Kantor aka Monty Cantsin, Bonny Finberg
It's late August, a time when the city's residents and workers often take vacation, but also the time when the city is packed with out-of-towners. I think I saw a couple of tourists walking on Park Avenue. I should head over to Fifth and see how deserted that is. I think I've been avoiding it, anxious that it will be too quiet. Maybe I'll go when I am next in the city.
The deconstruction of the JPMorgan Chase headquarters that occupy the entire block from Park to Madison, and E. 47th St. to E. 48th is busy. There are always hardhats of various types around on all corners and in between. The mid-block intersection of Vanderbilt Ave. and E. 47th is the main egress for the dumpster hauling trucks. When one is ready to load, the gates swing open and the truck backs in. The team of laborers maneuver the big dumpster full of construction debris into place and the truck hauls it onto it's bed with a screech of metal on metal and metal on concrete. It drives off to wherever it's taking the stuff, and another backs in and leaves an empty.
Meanwhile the crane that's brought the full one down has an empty attached to its cables and is already hauling it to drop off on the current roof level of the building. It's quite a sight.
Day one of the RNC was completely unsurprising. The air was filled with lies and exaggerations playing directly to the Repulsive Republican base, leaving the non-repulsives with a Hobson's choice of playing along and supporting the beast, voting for the opposition, either vocal or quiet depending on whether they have a job on the line, or just staying home.
The way I see it is that the people who already know they are going to vote for Trump will, no matter what happens, no matter what new revelations come to light. The people who are opposed will stay opposed, also no matter what Biden does or says. It's the ones who are in-between that matter now. Who are they and how are they leaning? For the life of me, I don't know.
Anyway, here's a few photos of the hard working crew at the base of the deconstruction project.
Permalink
https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/08/tuesday-city-is-still-quite-but-i-sense.html
I was bad enough that we got clobbered by a tropical storm a few weeks ago. It was also unusually early for that sort of storm, but now two storms are aiming at the Gulf Coast and even one strong storm, hurricane force or tropical storm force, will do much damage to the low lying areas along the Gulf.
A few years ago, already beginning to be convinced by climate science's sounding alarms regarding climate change, I was willing to not attribute individual events or seasonal variations to climate change. But as these events pile up, and the weather becomes weirder, observations reinforce what those who make their living studying these things have published. There are more hurricanes and tropical storms and the climate models demonstrate why this is so, there are more extreme weather evens and again, the models predicate and nature delivers. It's very scary.
Our President - soon to be ex-President if we work hard enough as a nation for it - only believes in the parts of science and knowledge that agree with how he wants things to be. He disbelieves and belittles all disagreement. In his own mind he is god, but to us looking at him, he is barely a man
His actions on the environment are destructive, his attempt to muzzle scientific discourse - probably because he knows that these discussions make him look bad, like a man with a sharpie and a map - are damaging to both the necessary discourse and to the already shaky belief by many Americans that science matters.
We should not forget that when a governmental agency tasked with working with scientific evidence doesn't bend their announcements to what he wants to hear, he says, "they are making me look bad."
No Doofus Donald, you make yourself look bad, and you hurt most Americans in the process.
Unelect Trump.
Kick the Repulsive Republican Senate majority in the minority.
Elect Joe Biden in 2020.
Photos:
Three triptychs of my friend Ron Kolm. He is a terrific poet, writer of fiction and editor.
Prints are available.
Permalink https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/08/monday-weather-threatens-gulf-coast.html
It's late August and the weather feels more like the first half of August. Strange times. Meanwhile, tropical depressions are becoming tropical storms and some are strengthening to become hurricanes. We had one major storm here in the northeast already, and looking down south, I wonder what this year's hurricane season will be like.
Doofus Donald's sister had some choice words to share with Mary Trump, and lucky for all of us, Mary Trump secretly recorded them and now we get to hear them. When the sTrump'et zombies bitch about the timing, they are being hypocritical. Look back to 2016 and the timing of the Wikileaks releases that Doofus Donald was so happy about.
Enough. They are all worthy people, worthy of being kicked out of office, that is.
Joe Biden for President 2020.
Some escalator pictures.
Permalink https://kayester.blogspot.com/2020/08/sunday-heat-is-back-bannons-indictment.html
The question is, does the President think our memories are defective, or is his, or is he just lying again?
Let's make a list,
Steve Bannon - charged and arrested for this week. He has been telling people that he spoke to the president recently and that his work on the privately funded wall had the president's approval.
Roger Stone - charged, convicted and sentenced.
Michael Flynn - charged, convicted and sentenced.
Paul Manafort - charged, convicted and sentenced.
Rick Gates - charged, convicted and sentenced.
Michael Cohen - charged, convicted and sentenced.
Cohen was Trump's personal attorney from 2006-2018.
In every one of these instances, when the shit came down sTrump'et made every effort to distance himself from them and not in a nice way. He belittled them, claimed to either not know the person, or only had minimal contact or knowledge of them, regardless of how long the relationship or how deeply embedded in his political life the person was.
In each case, you can say that Traitorous Trump threw the person under the bus or worse. In particular his betrayal of Cohen was most pathetic and resulted in a Cohen having an apparent epiphany, recognizing how much wrong he had done for the person he was so loyal to for so long, and seems to be making an attempt to atone. His tell all book might be revenge, it might be atonement, it might be both, but it has to be making people around the President wonder who's next and how bad will they be treated when their time comes.
The point I am making first is that here are ten examples of Trump lying about his personal and working relationships with people who were caught breaking the law on his behalf, and every one of them was rewarded with the force of the law. Stone has been granted clemency and will probably be pardoned. And every one of them was denied by Trump as Peter denied Jesus. The difference is that Trump has no conscience and won't recant his lies.
And what are we to make of Trump's assertions that he hardly knew these people? Is it a matter of a faulty and declining memory? Is it a fear that these criminals' misdeeds will be pinned - perhaps correctly - on the President himself? Or is it just that he can't help but lie, and hope that everyone else will have forgotten the truth by the next thing to come up in the news? You decide.
We must Unelect Trump.
Joe Biden for President.
'nuff said.
I'm running late tonight. I watched a movie that made me think. Very appropriate to our moment, as are so many things James Baldwin said and wrote in his time. It's "If Beale Street Could Talk." Watch it.
Here's a few more deconstructing Manhattan from a different angle, midtown Manhattan, mid-August, mid-pandemic. The dance of the dumpster.
Also, 'nuff said.
