Returning to Vancouver from New York City

Laura and I returned home from New York at 3 am this week.  First we were very thankful that we got to JFK on time. Redbury Hotel staff were very helpful and the taxi driver was a delightful Punjab young man who discussed spirituality and humour the whole ride with us.
Next we were thankful to get through security without trouble.  In the past it’s been a  major kerfuffle when they've found Laura or I carrying guns, ammunition, or hunting knives in our baggage. Laura really likes having her own luggage now and resists borrowing any of mine. .
I was thankful to have my aisle seat. I do like to stretch my long legs. Having been in a plane crass I always feel less claustrophobic. Older I like to pee and remember this young woman on a flight back from London saying to me, “Do you have to go again. You just peed.”  I had got up twice in an 8 hour flight and did not kill her outright because she was young, stupid, ugly,  and unlikely to be good eating.
I was thankful too to have our luggage overhead and the Philippine Airline Staff so helpful and pleasant and solicitous.  It was really gratifying when the plane took off so well and we didn’t have to Scully in the Hudson River. I really just wanted to have an uneventful flight.  They even served us a lovely meal.  Philippine Airlines is truly delightful to fly with.
I slept some. Watched a couple of television episodes. Took a couple of trips to the loo.  5 hours passed before we knew it.  I was then thankful that the unloading went quickly and smoothly and that customs didn’t delay us.  The best part  was getting our luggage off the carousel. It arrived in tact.  I am just really thankful when I see my luggage and feel the relief that comes with that.
Vancouver from the taxi looked great. It was all still there.Ugly with snow and ice but known.  When I’ve been in  the strange I feel really good coming home to the known.
I actually got a few hours of sleep before finding enough clean clothes to go out to work.  I loved driving in my little Miata.  It’s just such a friendly little car.  Then I was at work and all the people there were great to see. I really am blessed to work with some of the finest doctors and staff around.  It’s comforting and reassuring.  I liked seeing my patients and getting back into the routine.
I was thankful then to see my home was still there. No terrorists bombs, fires or floods had taken it away.  There was heat.  The water lines weren’t frozen.  I changed the propane tank and turned up the heat  to make the place cozy and warm.  It hadn’t been burglarized.  It was still untidy and disorganized and desperately in need of a cleaning lady. I blame Gilbert but his contribution is only to the toy and ball strewn floor.
Then Kaloo Kalay I drove over to pick up Gilbert from Mida.  Mida Hannah and Hannah’s brother,  the whole family and his dog girlfriend Hacchi had cared for Gilbert while we were away.  Gilbert was excited to see me as usual.  He’s a bit shocked for a moment and then goes nuts.  Lots of barking and running about in circles.  Lovely to see Mida. Just great to be reunited with Gilbert.
In the car ride home he was licking my ears and snuggling. A real suck. At home I was throwing ball and he was fetching. Then he was lying on top of me whenever I tried to read. He slept the night with his little body pressed up against mine.
I was thankful too for the electric blanket. I turned the heat down. The electric blanket is a god send.  It really was cold outside. I
I was thankful for sleep. While I loved the Redbury Hotel and the modern shiny bathroom it really was great to be home with my own toilet and sink and shower.  It’s comforting. I especially loved making my own stove top expresso coffee and sitting on my own couch and relaxing before getting ready for work.
I’ve said a whole lot of prayers and meditated a bit too.  It really was a blessing to go to New York. It was a wonderful vacation and a thorough joy to see the amazing creativity of my fellow man and woman in the shows and museums and galleries. I still can’t get over telling people how millions of people from every race and culture interacted together with respect and civility. We were wall to wall in bodies but no one was having road rage or being obnoxious. It was wonderful.  Some of it was the Christmas season. People were collectively thinking of the baby Jesus. But even in the Pagan New Year’s celebration there was no attacking of women en mass like they did in Cologne. The New York police were the very best in the world.  New York is an amazing city.
I really am thankful to be back in Vancouver. Despite the perfection of the shows in New York I really can say I love the Symphony, Opera, Early Music, theatre and our Art Gallery really does have excellent visitting works. We have shows like U2 that come here. There’s culture and art and It really is world class.  There’s a profound ‘excellence’ that one encounters in New York, an A+ team of the best of the best on Broadway but we get glimpses of that here and overall aren’t deprived.
I remember a story my friend ,who was Canada’s leading ballet dancer, told me 40 years ago.  “I was standing in a Broadway audition line feeling pretty sure of myself as the foremost dancer of Canada until I asked the guy ahead of me, what he did. He told me he was the lead dancer for the Russian Ballet and the guy behind me was the lead dancer for Germany.  It turned out everyone of the hundred people in that line were the leads from their countries. Frankly I didn’t feel too badly I didn’t get the job. Getting the audition was a pretty big thing..”
CATS in New York will forever be the most ‘perfect’ production I have ever seen.  The dance and song and acting were simply incredible.
I loved the architecture of New York.  I loved the churches of New York: Trinity, St.Paul’s, St. Patrick’s and Riverside I loved the galleries and museums:  the MET, the Neue, the Guggenheim, MoMA,  The Museum of Sex was fun as well.  I loved being able to go into the historic and beautiful Trump tower.  I loved standing again on top of the Empire State Building.  I loved the Ferry Ride to Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty. It was moving to  visit the 9-11 memorial. I loved walking around New York, 5th Avenue,Park, and Madison, Central Park, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Bowery, Midtown.  I loved our Redbury Hotel and the local Bread and Butter,nearby MacDonald’s and the Churchill.  I am so thankful the weather was so good. I’m thankful for the taxi and subways.   I am so thankful for sobriety,spirituality and service.
I am very thankful to have such a beautiful, exciting, caring companion in Laura as well. Her joy and enthusiasm and good spirit made everything so much richer.
There was one thing I haven’t seen in Vancouver that I appreciated in New York, and London and Dublin before. It’s ‘big theatre’.  I love the excellence of little Pacific Theatre but was thoroughly moved by Chekhov’s Present with Cate Blanchet. Part of the charm was the number of characters,all of who were great and I realized I’ve not seen such a memorable play here. The other thing that really moved me was the Lincoln Centre. What a truly outrageously perfect opera and symphony centre.  I expect Vancouver would do well to consider an arts and cultural centre because we truly have the talent.  Enough with the bike lanes!
Yes, I’m thankful to be back.  I was really thankful to see my friend George. It was great to see Dave. I love known faces and the reassurance that comes with realizing after such novelty of vacation, that here I have friends.   I liked talking with my nephews and loved getting another  wonderful warm sweater from my sister in law Adell. I’ve been feeling truly cherished every time I wear Anna’s hand made scarf and realize how much love I’ve been blessed to know.  It’s a good life.  Getting thousands of miles away and returning really does wonders for gratitude.
No doubt bureaucrats and wankers will begin again to suck the very life out of me, people will threaten my life and my dog, liars will tell lies, takers will take,  but at least for a day or two I really  can feel relaxed and  alive again.  Today I  am truly grateful for this life.  I think some of the relief too is getting through the ‘holiday season’ when the drunkeness and drug abuse in Vancouver maxes out.  I’ll never forget Laura saying how much she enjoyed New York because there wasn’t marijuana smoke everywhere.  I loved the smell of fine perfumes and colognes walking through the crowds and sitting on the subway.
Now I’m thankful for this Saturday and the sunny blue sky day.  My truck engine wouldn’t turn over. I have to  jump the battery.  That means I have to get off this couch.   Maybe I'll make another coffee before showering and shaving. But really, isn’t God great.
Thank you Jesus for all your blessings!  Thank you Thank you Thank you.

Riverside Church, New York City

We were visiting the GSO Archives next door where there was a picture of John D. Rockefeller and Rev. Fosdick, the founding pastor of Riverside Church.. Leaving GSO in the Interchurch Centre we saw the sign for the Rienhold Neibuhr place. He’s famous for the Serenity Prayer.  The location by the Hudson River was certainly  a serene place despite the inclement weather.  I loved the famous Heinrich Hofmann painting of Jesus praying in the Gethsemane Chapel in Riverside Church.  The church is Neo-Gothic and opened 1930.  It was conceived by John D. Rockefeller and Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick as a larger interdenominational church.  Martin Luther King Jr. gave his Riverside Church speech in opposition to the Vietnam War there. Jesse Jackson, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Dietrich Bonhoeffer have spoken at the Riverside Church.  Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro and Cesar Chavez have also spoken there.
We were just glad to be in this wonderful place of God, stopping to pray for family and friends and give thanks to those who have gone before.

GSO , New York City

It began as Work’s Publishing. It’s a  special destination for writers if only given the number of books sold.  There are tours daily and 17000 people visitted last year. I asked if I could take pictures in the Archives and was told that was okay.  I love the history.  I have been blessed to have chatted with Ernest Kurtz who wrote Not God and the Spirituality of Imperfection with Ketcham.   I loved both books.  Dick B is another of my favourite historians. I’ve been blessed to communicate with him as well.  It was great to see his histories of the books that the originals read and books from their libraries at Stepping Stone and in the Archives.
I loved learning about Works Publishing.  I want to come back to New York if only to visit 17 William Street in New Jersey and 30 Vesey Street, New York.   We actually walked by where the offices had been on Lexington.  I’d love to go to Calvary House 61st East 21st Street New York City.  It was where the Oxford Group met. I’m not sure if it’s anything today.   We did get to a most uplifting meeting near there in the Chelsea area last night. The first meeting in Canada was in Toronto.  Now it really is international and there’s an International desk in the GSO to address all the correspondence and communication from all around the world. Another desk was the conference desk, this aiding with divisional conferences ,as well as the world service one, the next being in Detroit.
We learned at Stepping Stones there was place in Vermont where you can stay in one of the historic houses.  Akron is definitely a place I really want to go.  I’d just love to see where the Mayflower and hospitals were.  I loved hearing Bob and Anne’s son Smitty at the North Shore Round Up talking about being a kid with all these strangers having coffee in his kitchen.
The tour of Central Office was informative and most enjoyable.  I certainly wish government ran with such apparent modesty and efficiency. A hundred are employed and given the millions touched it’s so very worthy.  When I asked Jocelyn who showed us about if that was the Hudson River, she said, yes and added that some of the people there had seen Scully’s plane landing.  Prayers and miracles.
I learned that when they first approached Rockefeller he refused their request for $50,000, a huge sum in the day, but gave them $5000 for basic support.  He gave Bill a living subsidy for a while too.  Bill got a royalty for the sale of the book but it wasn’t until the famous articles Morris Markey and Jack Alexander wrote that sales increased.
The building the GSO is in is called the Interchurch Building and was developed by Rockefeller as an interdenominational location. The Riverside Church which he was a member and benefactor for was next door. It’s inter racial and inter denominational. A picture of the founding pastor, Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick was on the wall alongside John D. Rockerfeller’s picture in the Archives.
I loved seeing a picture of Rev. Shoemaker, Dr. Leonard Strong and Henrietta Sieberling. I’d read about all these people but loved seeing photographs of them in the Archives.  They have the most amazing things in the archives, newspaper clippings going back to the 30’s.  I’d seen pictures of Sister Mary Ignatia who worked with Dr. Bob but loved seeing these again.
I  first learned of Hank and the Honor Dealer’s at Stepping Stones. Bill’s  “Wits End” desk ,with it’s cigarette burns along the edge, came from Hank’s. Their secretary Ruth Hock was a really beautiful girl and was quoted as saying the Big Book ‘wouldn’t have been written without Bill, and it wouldn’t have been published without Hank.”  There are just so many important people in this whole story which so often gets reduced to the two founders.  Roland and Ebby are just another couple of characters in the whole long line of participants in this great story, called the miracle of the 20th century.
Having just been to Stepping Stones Laura and I enjoyed seeing the picture of Bill with his violin and Lois at her piano.  There were so many great pictures.  We loved it.  Everyone was so friendly and helpful too.
After we left the Interchurch Building we went next door to the Riverside Church which is really a great Roman Gothic edifice. In the Gethsemane Chapel there is a famous picture of Jesus praying.
It certainly was an afternoon of history and spirituality.  Spiritus contra Spiritum.

New York City Rainy Day Walk

We’ve been to all the places in New York City which I’d listed before coming as most desired to see. There’s endless urban activities here.  If one wanted to visit bowling alleys or dart playing venues or military museums or textile works they could. I just wrote down what Laura and I might wish to visit as a priority and we’ve  actually done it.  In 10 days we’ve visited all the places we really wanted to visit.  In addition we’ve attended the shows I booked on line back in November and really enjoyed the experience.
New York has been sensational. I spent a week here 30 years ago and have been back for brief jaunts since but this time I’ve just been so impressed with the friendliness of people, the civility, the cleanliness and law and order. In our experience , it really has been a safe place for a  tourist.  Of course we’re not out partying at 3 in the morning and Laura is not passed out drunk on the street.
I’ve visitted cities around and love London most but New York is comparable.. Nothing compares with Singapore as a safe and welcoming tourist destination.  However Mexico City and Athens, outside of a very limitted prescribed tourist district, stand out as  scary. I’ve actually been astonished at how civilized Manhatten has been. New Yorkers were once said to be as offensive as Parisians but today I really have only had one negative business experience.  As I experienced in Morocco one has  to be very much on guard with buying things because other cultures rather celebrate taking advantage of strangers in a ‘sharp deal’.
We took a taxi by the UN Building. Axis of Evil.
Yesterday  I asked Laura what would be the highlights we’d recommend for someone visitting Vancouver.  I really think Vancouver Canada would be a fabulous tourist destination for people around the world. Everyone I know who has visitted has spoken so highly of the scenery and location. Granville Island, Gastown, Davie Street, Robson Street, English Bay, Commercial Avenue, Lonsdale Quay, Stevenstons Fish and Chips,   Grouse Mountain, Christ Church Cathedral, Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Seven Sails Restaurant, the Art Gallery for the Emily Carr,  Museum of Anthropology at UBC  for the native art, the Aquarium, QE Park.  I’d recommend Pacific Theatre, the Vancouver Ballet and a Canucks Game.
I feel today on our last day here that I’ve experienced New York in much the same way.  It’s been a whirlwind tourist experience but God it’s been incredible. The Art Galleries and Museums are unsurpassed. I loved Moscow, St. Petersburg, Washington DC, Jerusalem, Instabul and London for the same experience of great art and sculpture and history well presented.
Vancouver has, to my mind, the best dining experiences in the world.  Frankly I prefer my own cooking of wild fish, foul and meat I’ve caught or shot and cooked myself.  Here in New York we’ve really not eaten out that much, loving a English Pot Pie at Churchill’s , the hotdogs and pretzel’s on the street, lobster and steak on Staten Island,  pizza at Marta’s.  We’ve actually had MacDonald’s burgers and mcMuffings on several occasions because there was one conveniently beside the subway a block from our Redbury Hotel.  We loved the Bread & Butter deli and Pret Manger.  The coffee at Redbury was great. We often stopped for coffee and a snack disappointed by Starbucks because there was so little seating and one actually didn’t have a washroom. We didn’t like the Nescafe’s because they didn’t have wifi. This LaColombe Torrefaction Coffee and Tea place is great.
I wanted to take a break from work. I was really tired with work and grief and getting older.  I’ve been so disappointed in our Trudeau government with his party boy elitism, increasing taxes , wasteful spending, communism and scientific ignorance. If he’s not smoking dope on a daily basis he sure acts like a stoner with the public purse and his platitude speechifying.
I’m actually feeling rested and  ready to return to the horrors of cancerous Canadian bureaucracy.  We just talked to a woman who had moved here from Finland. She was so frustrated by the taxation and government interference in every walk of life that she’d moved to the States for the “Freedom”.  Americans really do love Liberty. It’s something that one no longer feels in Canada,  once called the ‘true north, strong and free’.
It was good to be reminded of our insignificance amidst so so many people. Nothing offends me more than CBC talking about Canada’s position on the ‘world stage’.  Every Canadian should be required to come to New York and stand in Rockerfeller Square and feel how little they are.  CBC has been too long a propaganda instrument with its head  seriously up it’s ass.  Travelling always helps me see the propaganda and ‘fake news’ more clearly. There’s perspective 5000 miles from home
I’m not alone in the middle of the Pacific sailing across an ocean but there really is something being in this sea of people and feeling God’s grace is ever present.
I love Jesus.  I love Christ.  This Christmas season has been a true gift. I love the spirituality that seems alive in New York City  today. The excellence in the performances here and the genius in the architecture is something to behold.  We loved the service in St. Patrick’s last night.  We had a great dinner  English pot piles and gravy mashed potatoes at Churchill’s Tavern around the corner from the Redbury.
Laura has been a wonderful companion. We both miss Gilbert but together tolerate the absence of our furry friend better.  It’s been great knowing that he’s safe with Mida and Hannah.
Oh well, more just hanging out in New York today. Laura has been buying gifts for family. She mailed her post cards from Central Park where we had kosher hotdogs. I’ve been taking pictures. Loved the New York Library building.  It feels a bit like a weekend day in Vancouver back home. We had to buy another pack sack to bring back the shirts, books and stuff I bought. I had planned to wash clothing but I found such sweet deals on shirts and socks that it was cheaper to buy than to launder.  If one lived in New York the possibility for deals is endless. It’s a place of wheeling and dealing.  There are markets on the streets and who knows what falls off trucks but this is the place with the widest range of prices.
We joke, asking why did God create WASPS , white anglo saxon prestestants, ‘Somebody had to buy retail.”  That’s the flavour of this place. I confess I like Macy’s and stores with fixed prices that are true because I don’t want to put the time into haggling but if I lived here I could see that one would have to simply because it really is an expensive city.  Millions for apartments. Like Paris and LA there’s a high end to things. We walked into Tiffany’s and they didn’t even have prices listed. “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” came to mind.
I’m a peasant. A doctor. A physician.  A glorified guildsman.  There’s always a wealth of the George Soros and Warren Buffet set, the new monarchs and emperors.  I’m a mere working class man.  I can understand the revolutionary. There’s frustration in the elitism but I ‘don’t want a revolution’. All that happens it seems, is we get a different flavour of the month.  I’m too jaded and old.  But I’ve done well enough. The whole world is improving relative to poverty and disease.  The problem continues to be corruption more than anything else.  There’s entitlement too.  I can still be hopeful.
New York City makes one hopeful.  There’s so much life and vitality and creativity here.  I’m thankful we came.
EVIL UN  BUILDING