Larry And Diane

Larry and Diane walk down the "isle" and I note the petals, gently laid by cousin Jake and Madeleine, who took her responsibility seriously wearing her new dress. Given how fast she grows, this will probably be its only showing. The last time Larry made the stroll with Susan in July, 2002. Can it really be seven years already? No doubt, he is a proud father and everything around us attest to Larry and Marcia's parenting skills.

So we are back to London Monday morning greeted by Natasha and powering through jet-lag. Been here before. I have plenty of work catch-up and Sonnet groans: "Opinions Day" when the museum open once a month to the general public who introduce their various treasures to the curators for an opinion (NB this is not a value-appraisal). Somewhere inside Sonnet's job there is a New Yorker story waiting to be written. Our Big Trauma upon re-entry Madeleine's toy bag left on the plane. These include a penguin, 'Tuddles,' 'Tyson, who is my second favorite,' a goat a tiny bird "which was already broken," a small turtle and a leapard. I dutifully head to BA's baggage retrieval and fill out a claim: "lost stuffed animals." When BA learns that a tearful seven year old involved, they crack into action and I imagine ten beefy guys scouring every plane at Heathrow. At least I hope so as Madeleine's sorrow genuine and my heart breaks - these lost guys her friends who have been with her in some cases for many years. Finger's crossed.

Eitan: "I'm getting a gold fish, a parrot and a hamster when I turn 11."

Madeleine: "Eitan, you can't have all of them!"

I ask: your favorite part of the holiday?

Madeleine: "I can't choose."

Eitan: "Being in CT and swimming in the lake and water tubing, the Yankees game and Vermont."

Sonnet: "The last night on the dance floor with the whole family."

Tie and Cuss

Poor Eitan, who hates anything fussy. We battle over his suit, his tie and tucking in his shirt. He whines. He cries "life is so unfair" and et cetera &c. My forced discipline nets about two hours of
obedience or enough to get us through the wedding - Eitan handing out programs, you see. Shortly after the ceremony I spot him running around jacket gone, shirt crumpled and tie lost forever. Sigh. He does clean up pretty good though and this the first time in a month hair combed (Sonnet, pre-wedding: "I am going to scrub you to within an inch of your life"). He, as most boys I observe, really most happy in muddy football gear, black knees and dirt behind the ear.

The kids track my language charging me £1 for words like damn and hell and £2 for fuck, shit and crap. We debate 'bitch' and 'bastard' while the youngsters avoid stating same using the first letter like "you said the 'F' word!" So far the pot up to £26. On occasion I let them cuss with abandon -after all, these things on the tip of their tongue (Sonnet BTW does not really go with this program). The kids have their ears open for anything new and Gracie gives them "mother fucker" which we all agree: this one bad. I am reasonably confident they have no idea what it means but somehow having Grandma involved makes it a three-pounder.

Madeleine: "Dad, whistling is no way to make me hurry up."

Sonnet And The Graduate

Here is my Sonnet, as lovely as the Green Mountains behind her (I note to her that if I was in college she would be Mrs. Robinson - that joke didn't fly so well). Thinking of 'The Graduate,' Dustin Hoffman in town for the premier of his new film "Last Chance Harvey" where he plays a divorcee who arrives in London for his daughter's wedding only to find himself on the edge of things like disappointment and loneliness - with Emma Thompson, he wonders around London. Sort of like 95's "Before Sunrise," where Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy dealt with similar narcissisms but in their 20s. And in Vienna. So The Graduate: Hoffman was 30 or 42 years ago when he made the film and was his stardom certain? "No" says he in Time Out. "The opposite. In those days I hung out with Ropbert Duvall and Gene Hackman and we were certain we were never going to be romantic leads. I was waiting tables and Duvall was working all night at the post office." And further: "we just hoped to be character actors who could earn enough to make a living for the rest of our lives. When 'The Graduate' came about, I didn't even want to try for it. I'd read the book and I thought it was a role made for Robert Redford. I was always going up for 'character juvenile' roles - which meant you weren't attractive." Well, this is all fine and good but those of us from Berkeley grumble that Elaine's college UC Berkeley shot on UCLA's campus; or that Benjamen's drive to Berkeley on the top of the Bay Bridge which heads away from the East Bay .. but these are small trifles in a film I first saw in 8th grade.. then again during orientation week at Brown, and again several years later in New York and most recently in my 30s on a transatlantic flight. It provides a wonderful insight into the conservative side of the 60s and post-college misery and its freedom -- who can forget the last scene on the bus? It is nice to be reminded of this from time to time, especially in middle age. Letting go is never easy, even when young at heart and nothing to lose.

"Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose.
"
-- Simon & Garfunkel

Country Club

Katie and I at the Dorset country club before the rehearsal dinner. The statesmanly bartender Mark, with a handle-bar moustache and who I cozy up to for a while, tells me that when he was a kid, Dorset had 27 working farms and today there are none. He remembers his childhood summers without a care in the world. It is good to have a place like this; those who don't drink his liquor. Katie gives Diane an excellent toast retaining a letter from Diane, age 11.

Katie twitters: "to make an effective argument, you must assume your critics are intelligent and moral."

Gracie and Moe. The BNP

My parents have resisted "Grandma and Grandpa" or any varient to the old standard, instead going for "Gracie and Moe." This reminds me of "Grandma and George" on my mom's side, which I am unable to decouple in my mind's memory - like chalk and cheese. Or Abbott and Costello. What is one without the other, afterall? I am delighted BTW to see that my father is wearing a trendy La Coste and has the coller turned up which is the current fashion.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, the far-right British National Party makes in-roads as Nick Griffin, who heads the BNP, and his colleague Adrew Bons elected to the European Parliament granting them a platform, >£80K salary and staff. As to Enoch Powell's comment that the BNP's success would lead to "rivers of blood," says Griffin: "The divisions are already there. They were created by that monstrous experiment: the multi-cultural destruction of old Britain. There is no clash between the indigenous population and, for instance, settled West Indians, Sikhs and Hindus. There is, however, an enormous correlation between high BNP votes and nearby Islamic populations. The reason for that is nothing to do with Islamaphobia; it is issues such as the grooming of young English girls for sex by a criminal minority of the Muslim population.

Pre-Party and Smoking Kills

Madeleine (and Doggie) checks out the pre-Reception space at the marvelous Wilburton, overlooking the Green Mountains of Vermont and comprised of the Appalachians and the Berkshires. Soon Madeleine to be surrounded by 150 wedding guests, many of whom I know from as long ago as college thanks to Bronxville holiday dinner-parties. 

The resort's 23 acres covered with objets d'art - some work like the rusty New Mexico sculptures while others miss, like the house-size gold Wicker Man which oversees the bonfire area (appropriately enough for those who saw the classic '73 horror movie). 

The Wilberton owner, I learn, an Irish collector who supports mostly local artists and part of "The Sculptural Trail" which I think a hippy hang-over from a by-gone era. A lot of grass once smoked here, I am sure. Dorset, the proprietess informs me, has changed considerably from blue-collar and working farmland to college preppy. I confirm this by jogging past a lacrosse tournement, marked nature trail and ski-head waiting patiently for winter. 

On the same run, I note Norther Harwoods, Beech, Yellow Birch and of course the Sugar Maple, which is Vermont's famous state tree. All vibrantly green yet the time to see them, famously, is autumn when they explode colour.


Oxford University reports an increase in the cost of smoking to the NHS - about £5.2B per year or double previous estimates. Oxford calculates that in 2005 around 110,00 people died as a direct result of cigarettes , accounting for almost one in five of all UK deaths. It is amazing to me that anybody smokes in this day and age - we know the facts despite years of deception - and we know it is deadly. 

The UK has some of the harshest anti-smoking labelling anywhere: on each box "Smoking Kills" pretty much says it all. No doubt this has worked: >50% of British men smoked in 1980 and today it is 22%; for women it is around 20% (Cancer Research UK). Yet a nasty little fact is that by age 15, 20% of children are regulars despite it being illegal to sell tobacco to under 18s. Girls smoke more than boys: 24% compared to 16% in 2006. 

I have mixed feelings when I see the poor slobs huddled outside some office with fag to hand, often cold and usually looking pretty miserable. I hate their second-hand smoke and am unafraid to ask them snub it out when my kids nearby. Yet smoking no easy thing to quit. I've never been addicted to cigarettes yet Wayne and I used to puff away while drinking Cuba Libres and dreaming of eye glasses (this with Help The World See, pre-MBA). 

No, it is not easy so I also feel sympathy for those unable to win their battle against nicotine. But only to a degree.

Swoosh

Pity Gordon Brown, who went against character for ten long years as Chancellor of the Echequer while that lightweight Tony Blair caught, and rode, the New Labour wave (we can still hear Brown's teeth grinding from way back then). Talk about selling your sole to the devil - and now, as PM, the devil collects dues: since his leadership, it has been nothing but downhill and last night's European election sees new lows for the Labour party who take a horrible beating, coming in third after the Conservatives and the UKIP who I have never, ever heard of. The UKIP, I learn, aims is to git England the hell outta Europe (says they officially: the UK"shall again be governed by laws made to suit its own needs by its own Parliament, which must be directly and solely accountable to the electorate of the UK." The UKIP founded in 1993 by Alan Sked and other members of the all-party Anti-Federalist League members - I have yet to know if this the emergence of the Far Right, similar to what we have seen with Le Pen in France (a worrisome early nod: Aiden Rankin, co-author of the party's 2001 manifesto, was once involved with the Third Way, which was founded by former members of the National Front, Alistari McConnachie, a five-time UKIP candidate and National Executive member, was expelled from UKIP for his views on the Holocaust). Stay tuned.

What we do know for certain is the last two weeks has seen a crisis for the government and if not for the fact that Brown Labour, he would most likely be gone by now (as in the US, the conservatives in Britain ruthless. Who can forget Maggie getting bumped from power whilst traveling abroad, unable to defend her thrown?). Yet Gordon soldiers on though he doesn't have a snowball's chance. We, the people, have had enough - recall Super Gee has never faced an election. It ain't just me: six Cabinet Ministers have resigned on top of a recent re-shuffle and ultimately the voter voted in the EU polls. We will have a next election no later than June 2010 but it is pretty clear who will rule pssst the initials "DC." But don't feel too sorry for Brown: despite his fiscally conservative approach as Echequer, his "austerity" programs got us here today: de-regulation, property bubble fueled upwards and now fiscal budgets chucked from the top window of 10 Downing. Who would have believed that the Conservatives, who took such a thrashing in '97 that some pundits thought they were gone for good, would be back in top form so quickly. They have seized the golden opportunity and are sticking the knife in.

The query is freezing most of the year and today no exception. Eventually it will warm to maybe 70 but now it is like 62 or 63 from the snow melt and before warmed by the summer. It reminds me of the Pacific Ocean in Norcal without wet-suit. Forget it. The kids and I dare each other forward until I'm gone - pictured.

"We need to make our economy more pro-competition and pro-enterprise. Wherever there are barriers to companies, we will remove them."
-- Gordon Brown, 2007

"The Arctic Monkeys really wake you up in the morning."
-- Gordon Brown in the 2006 summer issue of New Woman magazine.

Diane

Diane is the bride-to-be, and also my cousin who has always been vocal. How I remember her joy from early visits to NY or Paris when she always had a tune or some chatter. Not surprisingly, then, she is the co-anchor of the three hour morning show on FOX23 News which reaches a couple million people. Im-pre-sive. From her profile: "Diane Lee co-anchors the three hour morning show on FOX23 News. The New York native joined the team in August of 2006. Before that Diane was the main anchor for WYOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She got her start as a one-woman-band at WRNN in Kingston, NY, and was eventually promoted to “Valley News Live” Anchor. Diane's investigative reports on topics like battered women, prostitution, nuclear power and the homeless have been recognized with awards in excellence from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters (2006) and the New York State Broadcasters Association (2002)." How cool is that?

The only down-side to her glamourous career are the hours: she is "on" from 2AM which is a full three hours before my wake-up call back in those hard-ship days of swimming. Believe you me, I know how difficult it is to pull one's tired self from bed to face the far-away dawn (it also never helped that Moe sang "it's uppy, uppy , time" in his good spirits which usually made mine, ahem, worse). Diane I learn goes to bed at 5PM but this does not deter her week ends where she converts to "normal time" usually in the Big City at dinner parties or on the town. She has the energy to do it. So today she prepares last minute vows for Saturday and soon-to-be Kenny.

I almost forgot to mention Diane's singing voice, which is butter: in 2005 Diane produced a charity Christmas CD that raised >$20,000 for the Children's Miracle Network. Bravo.

Dorset

We arrive in Dorset, VT in anticipation of Diane's Big Day and a bit nervous about the weather - forecast has been for rain and apparently snow at 1,500 feet the other night. Plus the last ten days here apparently cold and wet - sounds like England to me. My photo from Marcia and Larry's porch. I have shot the pond before and it is always different, beautiful. Larry, who is a serious photographer in his semi-retirement, and I discuss the view which he has captured "many tens of thousands of times" he chuckles and while it never grows old, there is only so much space on a wall. Instead, Larry traveling the country or the world taking images, according to Marcia, of things that may not be around. I see shots of rusting bridges or unused barns, old trucks and empty highways; in China, there is a craftsmen doing work that otherwise churned out by factory. We spend some time talking about photography's change awknowledging that we may never to return to the dark-room, much to my regret, having learned this craft after a considerable investment in time when the kids were young (I cherish my B&Ws BTW which, unlike digital, rest in a stack that I continue to study). Any way, today is about reunions as cousins Kelly, Susan, Diane, Katie and Me together with the three Aunts Grace, Marcia and Carla (note that I am proudly the only male in the lot, oh how my Grandfather Manning must have rejoiced)+husbands+the next generation of DNA. Sonnet/My DNA re-acquant themselves with Jake, Joey and the mill pool. It is a lovely afternoon and when the mosquitoes arrive at dusk, we move inside until the children beg for bed.

Hawthorne Rd

Marcia and Larry's home in Bronxville has been a wonderful presence ever since I can remember. Ivor and I stayed here the two weeks before Brown and somehow by ourselves, oh dear. Following several nights at The Palladium and Tunnel, we were out of money fast and spent our time eating bologne sandwiches and watching James Bond since Larry owns the collection starting with Dr. No. During this time we were joined by Berkeley High friends Dan, on his way to Cornell, and John. We tripped around Manhattan checking out girls and being 18. New York was a bit grimier then and the subways graffiti covered. Still, the boom was "on" in '85 and insider trader scum like Ivan Boesky "greed is good" celebrated by our culture and appearing on the cover of Time. These fuckers never go away.

Katie and I also used Bronxville as home-base in college on our way into the Big City and then of course First Boston post-college a night here was bliss away from commanding Managing Directors who all wanted my ass. Being in Bronxville equivalent to a five-star hotel - one knows they are in good hands. The grass groomed, flowers seasonal, shops charming and everybody knows each other. Catching the morning train to Manhattan the gentlemen wear similar outfits (tan Burberry if rain; Brooks Brother tie; black wing-tips) and absorbed in the WSJ. The wives have the kids and the kids have each other: the Bronxville school from K to 12 and one of the best in the county. Marcia and Larry have been important contributors to the community too - Marcia being the mayor and Larry recently becoming a Board Trustee of Sarah Laurance College. On the week end or whenever, they have Vermont where we are soon off to for Diane's wedding. Life is good.

New Yankee Stadium

I like the sunset from where we are sitting off the right field line. The sky's colour matches the diamond. Much of the new stadium incorporates design elements from the previous Yankee Stadium, paying homage to the Yankees' history including 'Babe Ruth Way' where we meet Katie and Jeremie.

Although construction here began in '06, the project has spanned years and faced all kinds of controversy, including the destruction of residential buildings and greenways. Financing for the stadium has also been divisive, with many criticizing a new sports venue instead of other pressing issues like, you know, schools, bridge works, water maintenance and so forth. But this is New York City, afterall, the home of baseball and what's a couple billion for a new ballpark? The cost to date $1.5 billion and the second most expensive stadium in the world after - you guessed it - ding ding - Wembley Stadium in London (we need a bunch of Chinese on spec and on time like their Olympics or the Beijing Airport). At least in NY the field sees at least half a baseball season while Wembley costs maybe £10 million an event (my estimate) based on depretiation and maintenance cost against a disturbingly low usage rate.

The Bronx BTW made some serious concessions to keep the Yankees as George Steinbrenner played hard-ball threatening to move the club from New York. As if. In return for giving up park space, the Bronx keeps the old Yankee's ball field while the existing infrastructure torn down. Everything else becomes parking, still under construction, and financed (of course) by the New York City taxpayer, God bless 'em (total parking construction cost >$70 million). Georgie got a pretty good deal and so did his sons, who now run the club. Moe tells me that Steinbrennner didn't trust his offspring to take over the team gifted management to his daughter's husband, he being George's son-in-law. Well, shithead divorced and now the boys in charge. They all must hate each other so let us hope they do a good job protecting the city jewel given the tax payer's investment. Regardless of the prattle, it is a magical place to see a baseball game with near-perfect visibility from every seat. There is an over-abundance of media screens offering live coverage and the Jumbotron (or whatever the hell it is called) enormous. Bathrooms, beer and services abundant and the only inconvenience finding your seat. Totally appropriate for America's biggest baseball market and the fans, well, forgetaboutit.

So here are the comps between old and new:

Characteristic	Old Stadium [as of 2008]	New Stadium
Opening Day	April 18, 1923	April 16, 2009
Capacity	56,866	52,325 (includes standing room)
Seat width	18–22 inches	19–24 inches
Legroom	29.5 inches	33–39 inches
Concourse width (average)	17 feet	32 feet
Cup holders	None	All seats in general seating bowl
Luxury suites	19	56
Team stores	6,800 square feet	11,560 square feet
Restroom fixture ratio	1 per 89 fans	1 per 60 fans
Public elevators (passenger lifts)	3 (OTIS Traction)	16 (KONE traction)
Video scoreboard	25 feet by 33 feet (Standard Definition LED)	59 feet by 101 feet (High Definition LED)
Distance from Home Plate to:
Backstop	72 feet 4 inches (22.05 m)	52 feet 4 inches
Left Field	318 feet	318 feet
Left Center	399 feet	399 feet
Center Field	408 feet	408 feet
Right Center	385 feet	385 feet
Right Field	314 feet	314 feet
Source: The New York Yankees

Today we have another most excellent New York afternoon seeing "West Side Story" at the Palace and then dinner at The Oyster Bar before our train. I have what I always have: New England clam chowder and seafood salad. Why mess around?

"When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way! from you first cigarette to your last dyin' days. "
-- Riff, singing

Hot Dog

The kids wiggy with baseball, crowds, junk food and hot dogs, Auntie Katie, Jeremie and the grand-parents as the Yankees play the TX Rangers. Life does not get much better than this. Eitan remembers the rules from the Rockies while Madeleine just goes with the adrenaline. A pounding, seven run third inning puts NY up for good and Madeleine and I high-five each other and pump our fists for joy. Go team. Eitan reluctantly admits that he enjoys the national past-time but nothing like football, where his true love placed. He spends his pre-game watching DVD highlites of Manchester United from previous seasons. Since he has seen it a gazillion times before, he alerts me: "watch this shot by [Ryan] Giggs!" or "Ronaldo is going to make the penalty shot." The re-plays allow him to actually enjoy the game - any true blooded football fan will tell you the anticipation during a match murder and ManU's recent loss to Barcelona pins and needles (Eitan to me during the game: "Dad, please don't talk to me now."). After baseball we take the MetroNorth straight to Bronxville concluding a perfect New York evening.