With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
February 18, 2008 - 12:43 p.m.
I'm just going to start off writing, no excuses no preliminaries.
Well, OK make that no excuses.
Five minutes ago I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. Who stole the idea from my brain? Why did I read that article on Earl Monroe in the Times? I should have just started writing.
No that isn't a excuse. This entry is going to be great. At least it won't suck.
Yesterday I had dinner with Alison. She was in the neighborhood making a shiva call. The question is should I have gone too? My mother's friend died. I knew her my whole life but she wasn't somebody I was close too. Alison and Sue were friends with her daughters. I wasn't friends with any of her kids. To me that makes a difference. In any event I didn't go.
Alison and I always have a debate about where to eat. She wants some exotic ethnic food that she can't have up in New Paltz and my tastes are meat and potatoes. Despite this we almost always find a place that makes us both happy. Last night the exotic ethnic group whose cuisine we indulged in was Jewish, we went to Ben's Deli. We split a hot pastrami sandwich and friends and I had a knockwurst and Alison kasha varnishkes. How can Gella say I'm not a good Jew?
Alison wanted to desert and I suggested the Italian bakery by the LIRR station that we'd pass on the way back to my house. It was closed but we discovered a new place across the street. It is pure New York, a Korean pastry/gelato shop. We had gelato. The place really needed some feng shui or at least an interior designer that understood the needs of the customers. We asked to taste some gelato. The problem was that they didn't have a place to dispose of the little spoons. We had to walk to the garbage can. That's the other problem The garbage was at the back of the store instead of by the door so you can drop off your garbage as you leave. Have the people who run the place never been to a place where you bus your own tables? The gelato wasn't great either but we still enjoyed it. It was just so neuro.
This was my second meal with someone else in three days. There have been stretches where I have dined alone for months at a time. I don't mind eating alone but it gets very lonely when that's all I do.
I got an email yesterday about Oliver Steck. Somebody had set up a MySpace Page for him. In the course of which she did some online research and found what I wrote about him on FHDC. She asked my permission to use it. It is the The Coolest Man on Earth segment of the About Oliver Steck section. Carey wrote the you too can join the army for just a minimal fee section. It is very unfair that her writing was so much better than mine. The whole thing brought back wonderful memories.
Now go friend Ollie.
So is this the entry I'm going to write about moral relativism? Nope, I'm hungry.
Tonight will be interesting. I have an evening planned in and out of my musical element. First I'm off to Rockwood Music Hall to see Eva Hilliard and Jess Klein; my typical folk music show. Then Christine Lavin invited me up to Birdland a jazz icon, where she is guesthosting (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) Jim Caruso's Cast Party, part of the Broadway theater world. There is more to it than that but I'll save it for tomorrow's entry. Lets just say that I'm looking forward to it but I'm also a bit nervous.
I've been hearing a lot of music. That's a good thing.
I forgot to post a song of the week on my classes' blackboard pages! That's a bad thing. I better run and do that right now. Don't go anyplace. I took care of it. This week's song is Namaste by The Kennedys. I have a lot of Indian students. I wonder what they'll make of it.
Now I'm going to have my brunch. Adiós Compañeros.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile February 18, 2008
