This month’s edition starts off with more than normal family-oriented stuff because I have some good stories.
This week our kids started Summer Day Camp. It is a real right of passage — they are now out of the house every day from 8am to 5pm and come home exhausted. We are sooo happy. We visited this day camp about 45 minutes drive away and it was a real nice place — nothing like what I went to as a kid. Plus, they have a great propaganda department that keeps sending us cool videos of what the kids are doing in camp. They have 400 staff members for 1,000 day campers. The staff stay on the property overnight — they are probably having the biggest party that side of Nyack, New York over there.
Best thing about our kids’ growing level of literacy is that now, instead of shaking us every 25 minutes and screaming “FINISHED”, our kids can operate the DVR remote control and flip to a different TV show of their choice.
I feel that the iPad and the iPhone are like the proverbial coca cola bottle in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. Every time my kids get a hold of these appliances, they are overjoyed but soon start killing each other over who gets to play with it. Other kids can’t get through the sabbath without texting other kids or wanting to play the games. It’s probably the worst shabbat-killer ever created. I got my wife to take the games off her phone and our kids just know they can’t hope to play with this stuff at home at any time. Side note: I went with my wife to a Doo-Wop concert a week ago at a local theater in NY. Most of the audience were in their 60’s and 70’s (it’s 50’s music) and it was really funny to me as the guards were frisking everyone’s bags looking for guns and knives (no tattoos or flatheads in this audience). This concert takes place at the Beacon Theater every Fathers Day Weekend and it’s been going on for 30 years; Dick Clark used to host it. Some of the original vocalists are now in their 70’s and they can still belt them out real good. One guy was in obscurity until the Lion King picked up their song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and the next thing they know they’re at Number One in 35 countries. He said that his grandchild brought him to kindergarten for Show and Tell. Funny where people wind up. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that this guy sitting next to me sat through the whole first hour of the show staring into his telephone and texting people and looking for texts back. People are just bypassing life on an experiential basis and living through their phones. Instead of paying $90 a ticket to sit in the fifth row, I don’t know why he didn’t just watch the concert on the internet.
On Father’s Day, Jeremy came to my room to tell me that the pancakes Karen made for breakfast (choice of plain, blueberry or chocolate chip) were “scrumptious” as only Jeremy can say it.
Jeremy is of the age where he can start wearing a jacket and tie sometimes. I looked at Ralph Lauren online and saw that a standard blue blazer was $295. I’m in shock — I went right over to JC Penny’s online and bought one that we thought looked virtually the same for $45. Karen found Jeremy a new tie for 79 cents at Children’s Place. People are spending a bloody fortune on brands. Doesn’t matter — within 5 minutes whatever Jeremy wears will be stained with jelly, paint, berries, grape juice or whatever.
He and I went on an exciting field trip this month — an overnight trip to the Charlotte Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina, to see fast cars race at the Great Summer Shootout, a child’s night event. After flying an hour or so to Charlotte, the speedway is half an hour drive from the airport. We stayed at an airport Hyatt House hotel which was pretty good. At the speedway, highlights included watching school buses race each other (one fell over on its side and several of the them tried to knock each other off the race track), a fire truck came by and they drenched all the kids in the stands with a fire hose (Jeremy just loved that), there was the bouncy castle and lots of junk food, and of course there were car races. My ears rang for an hour after we left but Jeremy thought it all wasn’t as loud as he was expecting. He gave me lots of hugs and kisses as we sat in the airport and says he loves his dad because he always keeps his promises.
We had a nice weekend at Skytop in Pennsylvania, a family resort about 2 hours drive away. We’ve been there several times before but this time with grandma in tow visiting from Australia. Elizabeth went to a fishing class and caught her first fish in the lake. We played laser tag and hiked to a waterfall. Even grandma made it to the waterfall with lots of coaxing. Highlight of the weekend was the elimination dance in the lobby on Saturday night with an orchestra. I’ve probably told you in the past about this event; it is a tradition in the hotel dating back to 1928 and it is real hokey but lots of fun — everyone runs to a corner when the music stops, they spin a wheel and eliminate people as their corner number comes up on the wheel. At the end everyone marches around the lobby and around the hotel in a big conga line as the band plays hokey pokey songs such as God Bless America and M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E. There was this 50 year old rather good looking lady in a low-cut bright green dress in the dining room and Jeremy, in his jacket and tie, kept going back to the dining room to ask her to dance. He was so excited when she finally said that she would come out and dance with him in 20 minutes. She did and there was this hilarious scene of the two of them boogeying on the dance floor and him giving her a big kiss at the end. Here are some pictures.
Elizabeth is going into second grade in the fall; she is going to be in a class with one other girl (perhaps 2) after several girls switched schools. It is not an exciting prospect for her.
Now, to World Stuff.
Story of the week of course is this guy Snowden camping out in the Moscow airport transit area amid Ecuador stating that they will take months to decide on his asylum application hoping he will just get the hint and get himself arrested in the meantime. Nothing new in any of the revelations — I’ve known about all this for about 10 years. The Western allies all have a deal that they spy on each other’s citizens so that each country doesn’t have to spy on its own citizens since they all have laws prohibiting their versions of the CIA from spying domestically. There is a story in the NY Times today about the CIA embedding agents with the NY City Police Department using some kind of loophole — in that case, an agent being on an unpaid leave of absence (and hence allowed to spy domestically on US citizens). Nobody should be surprised by any of this. The truth is that these prohibitions are not practical today in a world where every person has the world at their fingertips, and people should stop trying to expect such a clean division between domestic and international spying by governments.
Don’t underestimate the Republican Party’s ability to self-destruct if they fail to pass the immigration bill in the House of Representatives, despite the fact that the bill just passed the Senate. The Republicans are dead as a viable political force in the US if they don’t pass the immigration bill. There are just not enough white men in the country being born to vote for them, and the last election proved it.
In the You Can’t Win Category comes news that cleaner air over the past few decades (less pollution due to attempts to control it) has had the unintended consequence of making hurricanes stronger. Turns out pollution might have helped keep air temperatures cooler. See the journal Nature Geoscience and article in the NY Times Science Tuesday June 25.
Kerry is slated to be a naif as secretary of state. People are trying to be polite to him but don’t expect anything to come of his efforts. He is basically working alone and doesn’t know the ropes or the neighborhood. He hasn’t spent 2 weeks in DC since he took office. Half the executive level positions in his department haven’t even been filled. You can at least give him credit for trying to get his hands dirty; Clinton just did photo-ops and avoided anything that might muck up a future run at the presidency.
Let me just state for the record that Libya is not working out very well. It is pretty much a country in chaos and despite the fact that it has oil, it is so disruptive a place that nobody seems to be making any money pumping it and it doesn’t look like the major oil companies view much opportunity there in the near to medium future.
One problem in Syria is that Qatar and Saudi Arabia have opposite desires and each is funding rival groups. The Saudis are funding the secularists and the Qataris are going with the Moslem Brotherhood, whom the Saudis can’t stand. This is a tough time in the region — Turkey making oil deals with the Kurds in Iraq who are acting like an independent country, Lebanon having Hizbullah dragging that country into the Syrian quagmire, and discord in Iraq itself. Perhaps one result of all this will be that the Lebanese at some point will decide it is not good to have Hizbullah be more powerful than the Lebanese army and basically running slipshod across that country for Iran’s benefit. I think it is a good bet that chemical weapons are going to wind up with some Al-Qaida rebel group and come back to bite Obama.
Israel’s gas reserves — politics, both domestic and neighbor-wise, means that these reserves will primarily be used for domestic consumption. The government has moved very slowly on the relevant issues. Also, a lot of the figures put out about possible production are based on estimates of gas reserves, not proven reserves. It may turn out there is less there than you think.
Japan has quickly gone from being the flavor of the month at the beginning of June (their stock market was up over 50% this year) to dog as it declined later in the month after all the hype. I’m not convinced — the country has had several false dawns before and it is not clear that fundamental reforms are taking place. So far it is more hope than substance. Case in point: On May 21 I went and bought $10,000 worth of stock in the I-Shares Japan Index Fund. On Thursday the 24th the Japanese stock market went down over 7%, mainly on reports about China’s economy and the US Federal Reserve. The issue was people buying Japanese stocks as part of a reallocation of assets based on other world factors. The 7% drop had little to do with the performance of Japanese companies. The question is whether the previous rise had anything to do with it either.
Notice several countries — Pakistan, Japan, Israel and soon Australia) — have prime ministers who are successful now and who were failures at an earlier time in that office. Just shows you can stage a comeback in that office.
Rafsanjani is 78 and not really presidential material at this point, which is why he had no chance in Iran’s recent election. The problem is that the clergy have limited candidates to one faction; Iran has had a history of more pluralistic elections. This election may alienate a lot of urban voters and it might make agitation leading to regime change more fruitful during the coming years as the government appears less legitimate even though the person who actually won the presidency is not particularly offensive.
Al Jazeera is running a documentary series about the creation of Israel in 1948 and the “dispossession” of the Palestinians. I just watched an hour of it expecting the worst and yes, you get the worst up through and including Jews telling of Jews lining up Arabs in cemeteries to dig their own graves and then shooting them dead. Of course, the story runs counter to just about everything I’ve been told, even though I have always known that I’ve heard a version of history that is self-serving and been warned “don’t believe the propaganda of the Arabs.” So let’s discuss. Al Jazeera is not exactly the BBC but it’s not the Hizbullah Broadcasting Corporation either. Look, the documentary has a lot of convincing stories that make you wonder what really happened, many of them told by Jews. One interesting statistic cited is that no more than 24,000 foreign fighters with lousy weapons and training came into Israel during the 1948 war from all the Arab countries around it, fighting among themselves and the Jordanian king and army general having cut a deal with the Israelis not to engage them in return for getting to keep the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Arab story is of being thoroughly abandoned by their brethren and a “phony war of 1948.” This is interesting because the Israeli narrative is of this fledgling state being surrounded by millions of enemies vastly outgunned. The British are described in the program as having virtually given over the country to the Jews and having helped expel the Arabs from the main centers; the Jews always say that the British favored the Arabs from beginning to end. Whatever the truth of it all, it is a good thing that today you have all these versions coming out via networks such as Al Jazeera that have the means to get the word out. It probably won’t change anything because not enough people out there really care and might usually makes right in the world — just look at Syria with 100,000 dead and nobody cares. But I personally would like to know the truth of what really happened and I admit that I have no personal knowledge having not been there in 1948 to see it myself. All I have is stories, and frankly that’s what the current generation of Arabs also have. It’s good for everyone to hear the parties say their piece and, as Fox News says, You Decide.
Another point about Al Jazeera — I was just traveling for a week in the UK and inside the UK nobody carries CNN and the BBC News channel is of a domestic focus. In a good hotel, you basically get your world news from Al Jazeera because they don’t fool around — every half hour they tell you the news. This channel is picking up steam because they are sticking to the basics and getting themselves on hotel screens everywhere the world traveler who cares enough to be informed wants to be.
US and State Deficits — Funny how quickly deficits get cut and either become surpluses or “shrink too quickly for the good of the economy.” I always thought the deficits were endemic to our economy and wouldn’t ever go away. At least this one wouldn’t go away. California now even boasts a surplus. I think both sides of the aisle are right — in bad times, you need to spend money to stimulate the economy. But if the economy improves and if spending is controlled, it will create taxes to bring down deficits. So invest during downtimes and save for a rainy day during good times, if you are a government. Hotel chains do that — best to renovate your properties when they aren’t busy.
Interesting that so much off-shoring takes place in major financial centers such as London, Paris and even with US corporations. You don’t have to go to the Cayman Islands or Switzerland to find funny business going on. Just look at Delaware.
There’s a good reason why you see the Libyans giving so much money to the likes of Sarkozy. Egypt has had only a few million dollars returned to it; tons of the ill-gotten wealth of the Mubaraks are sitting in London and the Brits have been paid off handsomely to make sure it stays there.
I think it’s fair to say that Hizbullah has alienated itself in the Arab world by becoming a stooge of Syria and Iran and it will never be a player as it was. Also, I think that the outcome of Syria will probably be determined by Israel. If the Israelis want Assad to fall, he’ll be out the next day. Notice the Israelis and Turks met recently; I don’t know if the head of the Mossad met Erdogan but these days Erdogan is being challenged by the protests in Turkey and it is noticeable that even his own supporters are estranged from him by his power-hungry moves. I also notice that Obama has gotten off the fence by admitting the Syrians are using sarin nerve gas and is going to supply the rebels in some more significant manner and perhaps a no-fly zone in the future. But not really any more than absolutely necessary to not look like a wimp in the world with the Russkies and Iranians on the other side of this.
I don’t care much for Erdogan. Power seems to have gone to his head and he just wants to enshrine himself there forever. It looks like the cities don’t like him but the rural areas do. Whether or not this is enough to keep him in power is an open question. It is not only a matter of majority votes but of momentum and disruption. He is safe but bloodied for now. If he doesn’t get the message that Turkey does not want to be become an Islamic republic, he will probably get the boot in another year or two. Overall, I think this is the year that the Moslem Brotherhood was tested across the Mediterranean in places such as Turkey and Egypt and found itself discredited as a ruling party. I think they haven’t come to terms with the idea of being an Islamic party that is part of a democratic republic; they appear to want to change the essence of countries into something closer to an Islamic state. You can see that the Egyptians and Turks don’t want it, even though certainly in Egypt Islam is a major part of people’s lives. They want Islam, but they don’t want the state to use it to dominate their lives and tastes. There’s a difference.
A final thought — I read an article about the addictive nature of potato chips and one of the key things is the “bliss point” — the point at which this flavor hits your mouth and travels to your brain and makes you feel good, but it is not so memorable that it overwhelms you and you get tired of it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t eat so much of it at one time. Every time I eat a bagel or a roll with Philadephia cream cheese, I figure that those guys must be making a fortune off getting the “bliss point” perfect with their product. It just feels good every time it hits my mouth but I can never quite put my finger on the flavor. But try it with crackers and it’s not the same sensation. Sometimes it just tastes like nothing. Perhaps the manna in the dessert was Philadelphia brand.
Travel Notes — Scotland and Dublin Environs, Ireland
Aer Lingus to Edinburgh via Dublin was fine and half the price of the nonstop on United. It was 5 1/2 hours to Dublin from JFK on an Airbus 330 and business class service was fine. There is a full breakfast at the airport lounge in Dublin. 1 more hour to Edinburgh and the flight had lots of people from the US using the connecting service. Dublin’s airport is much larger than it was last time I visited in 2001 and it is generally nice except very few water fountains and bathrooms far apart. They could use trolleys in the departure area. There is a US customs pre-clearance area in the airport with a terminal wing built especially for flights to the USA (the only such facility in Europe). If you have Global Entry, you can and should use the kiosks so you go right through. It can be a mad house in there and take up to an hour to clear the room otherwise.
Gleneagles: From Edinburgh airport it is an hour by taxi to Gleneagles Resort which is generally known as a golf resort but I had a very nice time even though I don’t know anything about golf. Virtuoso Travel has a great deal — book a regular room and get a suite. They gave me a beautiful “Legends” suite on the 4th floor of the main building that was very nicely decorated in an updated Art Deco type style. The property is large and there is plenty place to walk around; a maze in the garden and paths along the golf courses. Nice spa and excellent facilities for health and fitness. This property gets a 3 hummingbird rating from Andrew Harper and deserves it. Food and beverage were outstanding; meals in the dining room and the Italian restaurant were actually memorable and the menus were innovative, food tasty, and service friendly without being snotty. The pianist in the main dining room had a particularly interesting playlist. Call ahead for spa appointments in this and any large hotel — when groups come in, they just take over the place. There are lots of American companies having meetings in Scotland. If you call ahead and ask for a morning check-in, the hotels tend to oblige. This resort had lots to do for kids — off road driving in child-appropriate cars for kids ages 5 and up; falconry for families; learning how to hunt using dogs; horses; great play areas. I went with car and driver in the Scottish Highlands and over roughly 6 hours we made a nice tour of sites within an hour of the hotel: Blair Castle (pretty inside rooms and gardens with children’s playground), the town of Pitlochry, House of Bruar (supposed to be a mall featuring Scottish goods but mostly foreign stuff — and even the Small size here is still bigger than the American medium size), the Yew (oldest tree in Europe supposedly); Queens View (pretty vista point). Most people rent cars; the hotel takes about 5 people a month sightseeing and I wouldn’t want to try driving around here. You get little sheep wandering onto the roads; there are many twists and turns and it is pretty enough to enjoy watching the scenery instead of the road. Scotland is not just for golfing and the food all around was much better than I was expecting. You can chalk that up to more good hotels and immigration resulting in more diversity in the kitchens. I spent 2 nights here and found it a good place to relax after arriving from overseas.
Edinburgh — It is an hour by taxi from Gleneagles to the center of Edinburgh, pronounced Edinboro. I spent about 24 hours here to get a taste of the city. The Balmoral Hotel is centrally located and a very good city hotel; don’t pay extra for a castle view because the castle is far away from the hotel. Hotel had a spa but no jacuzzi. Dinner at “Number One” restaurant in the hotel was excellent. A 10-15 minute takes you to the Castle and at 1pm they fire a cannon which is no big deal. At the castle, see St. Mary’s Cathedral which is a little room and is the oldest structure in the city. Next to the Castle is a tourist attraction known as Camera Obscura which was a lot of fun. You go in a dark room and they have a big camera which zooms in on anything in town that you want to zoom in on such as people in the street and you can have some fun. There are several floors of exhibits featuring all kinds of optical illusions. National Museum of Scotland is nearby and it is free. Upper floors give you a good depiction of modern Scotland. Giles Cathedral is near all of this. King Mary’s Close is another attraction that looks fun with kids — you go underground and see ancient streets and hear stories about life in the city centuries ago. I didn’t spend the hour there but I’d come back with the kids. A big objective of mine was shopping for some children’s summer clothes and I did well at the major department stores that are all along Princes Street, on the same street as the hotel. Jenners is the local department store and then you have the London names such as Harvey Nichols, John Lewis, Debenhams, BH, and Marks and Spencer. There were tons of sales going on in mid-June. Not nearly as much selection as in London but plenty enough.
Central Edinburgh is fairly compact and most things you want are on one of 3 or 4 streets. You can pretty much walk anywhere in the center within 20 minutes. There are tons of buses running around and the city’s new tram system is due to be operational by next summer 2014. The Balmoral is across the street from the railroad station. The city has beautiful architecture that has been preserved, nice parks and streets, and is rather lively with lots of festivals going on and a generally good vibe. In August you have the Fringe Festival and the Royal Military Tatoo. I saw the program for the Fringe Festival and it has tons of stuff for kids. A friend of mine from London tends to go there with his kids. In the late evening (it gets dark around 11) I took a 15 minute walk from the hotel to Calton Hill which is a very pretty hill with old fortifications and monuments overlooking the city. Wear good walking shoes with good grips as the city is not flat. The airport is 30 minutes from city center and has grown a bit with a new departure wing so expect a lot of walking — no trolleys in the departure area and no water fountains so beware of walking around with lots of shopping bags.
I didn’t know that Glasgow and Edinburgh were about 40-50 miles apart, but anyway people say Edinburgh is worth seeing and Glasgow is more industrial for the tourist. I didn’t see anyone in kilts except for greeters at hotels and some people in the airport. Aer Lingus charged for water on the flight from Edinburgh back to Dublin. I didn’t have any European currency in my wallet so I couldn’t get any water. I thought that was pretty damn funny especially since I was thirsty on board the plane. I can’t wait for them to charge for the rest rooms.
Dublin Area, Ireland — My mission overnight here was to visit a resort known as K-Club as a possible conference destination for our companies. They had a very nice spa and gym facility and pretty grounds, especially if you like golf. I didn’t stay there because they were fully booked but they claim to have excellent food and beverage and are a highly rated property. The rooms are very large in all categories with nice bathrooms. They are just over 30 minutes drive from Dublin airport and outside the city. Nearby Barberstown Castle handles their overflow at half the price and it was a very nice property with surprisingly good food and decent rooms with 4 post beds and unusual bathrooms. No gym there. No air conditioning either but it didn’t matter the night I was there. It’s fine for a night. The Irish Times newspaper has been redone and looks like most other papers; last time I was there it was all of 8 pages on pink paper and all the world news was on the bottom of page 2. On the evening news in Ireland the discussion was about who was responsible for the itinerary of Obama’s children who looked bored during their visit to Ireland that week. Always interesting the navel-gazing that countries such as Ireland with 4.5 million people engage in (Scotland has 5 million people). Flight back to NY was close to 7 hours and the service and food were fine. All 4 days of my trip I had sun and weather around 70-75 degrees with no rain. The area defied its stereotypes in terms of lodging, food and weather. No sheep eyes or mutton at breakfast or dinner. Either I was lucky or this region is under new management.
Generally speaking, I had a good time on this trip, which I can’t say has been the case on the previous two trips I took by myself. It was nice to think about nothing for a few days and have no phone calls, internet or email. The locals seemed friendly. Looks like a nice place to come back with wife and kids.
A policy note: I’ve basically decided that these days there are so many pictures and videos on You Tube and other sites with pictures of things to see in cities of the world that my pictures can’t compare. So I basically have stopped putting up galleries of pictures of things I see in cities unless there is something super special that I saw that I want to share with you. Generally, there are just a few pickies of me on site for the record and that’s about it for pictures.
Dress for Travel Note: I found it really useful to wear Gap T-shirt and sweat pants and a mid-layer garment with hoodie from North Face. That last item has been the greatest innovation I have ever enjoyed in terms of getting through most of a NY winter. You can really travel well with these clothes no matter from 50 to 80 degrees, on a plane and in the rain. The mid-layer has lots of zip-lined inside and outside pockets and you can put your phone, wallet, lip balm, pen and passport there while you are traveling (all you really need) and it basically makes you pick-pocket proof and safe from stuff falling out of your pants pockets in a taxi or when bending down, and it wears well if you want to lie down on a plane. Besides, there is really no reason to dress up for travel these days except for dinner in the dining room if they require it.
