Memorial Day 2017: a worrying recklessness

“His bluster creates a generalized anxiety such that the President of the United States can appear to be scarcely more reliable than any of the world’s autocrats.”

One of the things I want in life more than almost anything is a government that does not, willy nilly, add to the number of people that we remember each year on Memorial Day.

There was a point in the last couple months where the sabre-rattling made me fear that the United States might be going to war in North Korea. AND Syria. AND Iran. Possibly at the same time. OK, we’re already fighting in Syria, but I mean against the Syrian government.

The notion that the current regime wants to increase military spending by tens of billions of dollars is troubling enough. The fact that the plan has been offered by an amateur chicken hawk bereft of military experience is terrifying. Yes, he has some military brass in his Cabinet, and indeed, arguably, an overabundance of them. But the defense of the United States is supposedly under civilian control.

From The Atlantic, way back in December 2016: “‘Appointing too many generals would throw off the balance of a system that for good reason favors civilian leadership,’ writes The New York Times’ Carol Giacomo. ‘The concern is not so much that military leaders might drag the country into more wars. It is that the Pentagon, with its nearly $600 billion budget, already exercises vast sway in national security policymaking and dwarfs the State Department in resources.’ In The Washington Post, Phillip Carter and Loren DeJonge Schulman warn that ‘great generals don’t always make great Cabinet officials’ and add that ‘relying on the brass, however individually talented, to run so much of the government could also jeopardize civil-military relations.'”

And when the person purportedly in charge doesn’t seem to stand by the very words he says, it’s a scary time. He praises international strongmen, such as in the Phillippines and even, seemingly, North Korea.

The New Yorker’s David Remick: He “flouts truth… so brazenly that he undermines the country he has been elected to serve and the stability he is pledged to insure. His bluster creates a generalized anxiety such that the President of the United States can appear to be scarcely more reliable than any of the world’s autocrats… When [he] rushes to congratulate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for passing a referendum that bolsters autocratic rule in Turkey—or when a sullen and insulting meeting with Angela Merkel is followed by a swoon session with Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the military dictator of Egypt—how are the supporters of liberal and democratic values throughout Europe meant to react to American leadership?”

This letter to the editor of the News Tribute gets to my concerns: “The administration displays a worrying recklessness, and disregard for both international law and constitutional separation of powers. These actions threaten our security and democratic governance. The administration appears to have no/little concern for diplomatic means to conflict resolution.”

My hope and prayer is that the reckless policy does not add to the numbers we memorialize today, but based on history, that is an unrealistic wish.

See what condition my condition was in

Some of you have asked what was the condition my blog between about 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. on Sunday, November 20, Eastern Standard Time, which is who knows when where you are.

I saw this DNS page when I got up:

I emailed the provider at some point early that morning, but then I was in church for several hours, and I didn’t get home until 2 p.m. Around 11:30 a.m., I had received a message that the blog was fixed, but I couldn’t see it, literally.

Briefly, though, I could actually access an altered version of my blog – no pics – long enough to actually copy the text of my current post and throw it on my Times Union blog.

Soon, even that ability went away, and I got first:

Error 520 Ray ID: 304f0526d2f8220a • 2016-11-20 21:33:25 UTC

Web server is returning an unknown error

Then back to the weird ad shots.

When you’re IN the situation, you don’t always record the situation, and afterward, one may not wish to revisit it. Fortunately, the wise and wonderful Dustbury explains it rather fully HERE, and note my comment there as well.

OBVIOUSLY, I need to post the song Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In). It was [listen to all] , written by Mickey Newbury, “recorded… by Teddy Hill & the Southern Soul, [covered by] Jerry Lee Lewis… and a hit for Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.”

The Lydster: are we bad parents?

I came across this article 8 Things Kids Need to Do By Themselves Before They’re 13. The premise is this: “How do we raise competent adults if we’re always doing everything for our kids? Walk away from doing these 8 things for your teen this school year.”

How did the Daughter’s parents do?

1. Waking them up in the morning

Guilty, and it’s usually me. I think it’s a function of the fact that I HATE waking up to the alarm clock, which I hear every weekday morning, not for MY sake, but for my wife’s. The Daughter DOES wake up occasionally on her own.

It’s been a real change from sixth grade, when she could literally wake up 20 minutes before school started, still getting there before the late bell, and now, which involves taking the bus, which sometimes comes early.

I HAVE stopped repeatedly nudging her, though, because that was too exhausting for ME!

2. Making their breakfast and packing their lunch

She usually gets lunch at school, and she could get breakfast if necessary. Still, I’d rather make breakfast, because the cleanup afterwards is much less for me. And left to her own devices, she might just ea that pizza for breakfast that I was planning for lunch.

3. Filling out their paperwork

The only really complicated one involves names and phone numbers of our friends and relatives as emergency contacts. I’m just happy she brings out the paperwork in a more timely fashion, usually.

4. Delivering their forgotten items

I have done that once recently, before a field trip when she needed money to eat lunch on a field trip. I delivered her cash just in time, and I received a rare public hug. OK, I’ll try to do better.

5. Making their failure to plan your emergency

This tends to be more her mother’s failing, getting stuff for her she needs at the last minute, but the Daughter has gotten much better over the school year.

6. Doing all of their laundry

Her mother does do most of the laundry, period. But the summer will be a good opportunity for Clothes Washing 101.

7. Emailing and calling their teachers and coaches

Interesting, a couple teachers have contacted US, saying the Daughter is doing well.

8. Meddling in their academics

In the first marking period, she was doing less well in her favorite subject, probably because she hadn’t handed in some homework she had actually completed. I know this because I’ve sat with her when she did it. But I never got involved with her teachers, mostly because keeping track of her 12 classes in 8 periods was too complicated for ME. And she’s come to do more of her school work on her own.

I’ll admit, though, that I like knowing what she’s learning. 7th grade math that I wasn’t doing until 9th grade. Manifest Destiny, NOT as a given good. And there’s the occasional exercise I find annoying, such as finding words in a puzzle across, down and diagonally, the learning value of which I found dubious; both her parents helped her find those backwards diagonals.

Boy, are we the terrible parents or what? To be fair, she has learned a lot about self-reliance this year, and I’m guessing next year will be more of the same.

The year after that, she’ll be going to high school, and she’ll be able to walk there, which I am looking forward to, a lot.

Kismet Mediterranean Grill replaces Pine Hills Bruegger’s

Were we going to be their first customers?

There was an announcement back in February 2017 of a Mediterranean restaurant called Kismet coming to my Pine Hills neighborhood. It would be replacing the Bruegger’s bagel shop that had been there for over three decades.

I used to frequent Bruegger’s there, at a site downtown, and up at Stuyvesant Plaza. I liked the sandwiches – my favorite, tuna salad on cinnamon raisin (don’t judge) – but they started to become parsimonious with the cream cheese and the like in the period before they all closed.

On Saturday, May 13, my wife and I walked by the place at the corner of Madison and South Allen at about 1 p.m. The brown paper that had covered the windows was down, the table settings appeared to be in place, but the sign read CLOSED, so we went further that block and had lunch.

Yet by the time we walked back towards home an hour later, the OPEN sign was showing! So we walked in. The server, Colin, jumped out of his booth. Were we going to be their first customers? Well, no. But the place looked really nice, so we said we’d back on Monday, which happened to be our anniversary.

Two days later, return we did, around 6:30 p.m. three or four tables were occupied when we got there. Colin remembered us. The food was delicious; mine was a beef and rice thing with a side salad. And the prices were reasonable.

Indeed, there was a point where most of the tables and booths were filled, mostly with pairs of people, though there was also a party of six. But the service was fine. But the service was fine, and the chef/owner came out to meet people at the various table. The two women at one side of us happened to see that the place was open, but the pair on the other side were friends of the chef from cooking he had done elsewhere and had encouraged him to start his own place.

Apparently, from the Yelp reviews, others were equally impressed by the new restaurant. See much better pics than mine, taken on my Amazon Fire tablet, from the All Over Albany article.

The real short-term failing of Kismet, as Colin acknowledged, is that the website is inadequate. It doesn’t have the MENU, for one thing. Ditto the Facebook page. This, I trust, will be rectified.

The Tulip Festival and politics

In November, New York State is going to vote on whether there shall be a constitutional convention.

There has been an annual Tulip Festival in Albany on Mother’s Day weekend for decades in Washington Park in Albany. If I go these days, it’s always been on Saturday, because Sunday involved us driving to somewhere south of here to have dinner with my various in-laws.

But THIS year, my parents-in-law were in Florida that weekend, and since the Saturday weather was pretty rotten, we went after church. We listened to some music; Radio Disney’s version of White Room was OK instrumentally, but not so much with the teenage female vocalist. We ate some food, went to some vendors.

How the city gardener gets the various plants to usually come up at just the right time is impressive. My buddy Chuck Miller took some nifty photos of the flowers here and subsequently.

My favorite part is going to the activist ghetto, where the school district, some religious organizations, environmentalists, and more are set up. In November, New York State is going to vote on whether there shall be a constitutional convention. The NY Civil Liberties Union and others, such as the ad hoc No New York Convention.org against it, noting that the LAST time this was held, about 50 years ago, most of the people selected as delegates were sitting politicians. Plus the ideas they came up with were voted down by the voters.

We saw this scene after the Tulip Festival on the way back to the car, in a window on State Street in Albany, the photo taken by the Daughter. It made us wonder about the back story. Who put up the sign first, and was the second sign in response? Are these adjoining apartments, or posters in the same one?

Which reminded me: My friend Sarah and her husband Darin were recently interviewed as part of series on married couples with divergent political views. The producer was particularly interested in the incident in which she unfriended him on Facebook. “Better that way,” she says, and that is certainly true. Oddly, I’m still FB friends with him, but I usually stick with comments about minor league baseball player Tim Tebow.