Big Rob D

Just a kid from Pompton Lakes turned Upper West Sider, I was lucky enough to be in a wide orbit around the incredibly exciting scene(s) that exploded out of the territory South of 14th St.  This is the way "The Plague" played out before me.
There were a lot of needles and spoons around in the music scene.  You could sell your blood, by the pint in Times Square or that place on Third Avenue (12th St.).  More than half of my friends were gay and New York was "the" place to be in that world.  Lots of nice people, great parties and club happenings.  It was a great time.

A rumor started making the rounds about the guitar player in a very famous band.  "He had some kind of weird disease, where, like, he can't fight off any cold for flu that might hit him".  In less than a year, the press was telling us about Aquired Immune Difficiency Syndrome.  AIDS.

In the first year or two, there was confusion everywhere.  The first realization was that this disease was a death sentance.  This was even before the HIV virus was known (or being reported about).  Sunamis of misunderstanding about "how you get it".  Sunamis of misunderstanding about how to stay safe from it.  An awful lot of mean people had a voice about keeping the dying away from them, if you know what I mean.

If only you younger folks could have experienced how it felt in the next 5 years, or so, to hear of several deaths a month.  To have a half dozen friends who were certainly going to die.  They got skinny, sunken faces, and frightened eyes, increasing almost daily.  The first (thousands) of victims were caught in the irony of not knowing anything about this disease when they were contracting their demises.  You could see that irony in their faces right along with their disappearing life energy.  For me, it was horrible.

And remember boys and girls, this story comes only from a clueless kid that had the nickname of "Beaver".  I try to imagine the losses of many others.

It is profitable to pray for your dead.

Shrines to her are in many homes, patios and courtyards.  Large, expensive shrines seem to "appear" along the roadsides of the major highways.  These shrines are rumored to be financed by Mexican drug gangs.  The Mexican authorities tear the roadside shrines down, only to have them return elsewhere on the road.

RIPS IT UP WITH LATEST RELEASE: “CONEY ISLAND WINTER”

I was waiting for something like this. 
In case you hadn’t noticed, times are tough out there.  There is a burgeoning underclass of working poor, barely being able to make minimum payments.  In a sane world, or even a broken republic, nothing would be more American than for the so-called downtrodden to develop a cry in the tradition of American folk movements, as in the past. 
Of course, with this kind of picture, one might expect Guthrie/Seeger/Dylan-esque lamentations rolling out of the great Northwest in a flannel shirt and an extra set of banjo strings.  Myself, I wouldn’t have imagined a legit, folk-like expression of this type to come rattling down the NYC Subway tracks, closing in on Manhattan, like a freight train, rather than the R train. 


The song starts out with a nice, stripped down combo setting up a thin, dry thread of hypnosis, while Garland dreamily sets up his poetics to lament a life “too close to the edge of the street”.  For me, the lyrics sting with a picture of a middle class descending to working poor.  Or even further towards the streets. 
The back line eventually gets sucked into the angst and starts churning.  The synergy develops and before you know it, you’ve got a two chord anthem coming at you like a freight train.  The simple, yet rising momentum keeps you excited yet lets you focus on the interplay of the lyrics with the pulse. 
Seems like every time I listen to Garland Jeffreys, I notice the excellent musicians that he works with.  This track is no exception.  Everyone on the recording seems to get each other’s juices going.  This tune is a 70 mph steamroller; just short of frenetic – and that’s class!.  The expertise and sensitivity of this ensemble is evident.
With “Coney Island Winter” Jeffreys is telling our story.   And that, cousins, is folk music.  Nobody said you couldn’t deliver it with a sledgehammer. 
Jeffreys has been an important part of the New York City music scene, as well as nationwide top 40 airplay/touring act, for well over 40 years.  For almost as long as I can remember, he’s been the real thing in singer/songwriter/AOR Rock & Roll.  For a New Yorker, a local hero on a world stage.
His rep got started with that early 70’s AOR hit, “Wild In The Streets”.  He got some good mileage out of that one.  Then basically, he was putting out an album per year from 1977 thru the early 90’s.  He’s been surfing the top 40 markets throughout several periods of American Rock.  Every time he records, he gets respectable airplay.
Jeffreys is diverse and true to several genres.  He is best known for his middle class suburban NYC native Rock & Roll.  He branches out into some pretty good interpretations of a diverse collection of styles.   One that comes to mind is the  seven inch “roots reggae” single, “Miami Beach” packaged with his  1980 Escape Artist album. 
This dude is the real thing.  He’s back.  And he has local gigs coming up in the greater NY metro area this month.  Check it out, and I’ll see you there!

Blogger's Note: Virtually all my friends and readers would question the value of such an every-day subject as Paypal.  Millions of people are using Paypal, but not all even know what it is.  This article is for them.

It happens all the time.  One single dad pulls another (his buddy) aside.

"My ex let the fuel oil run out.  I sent up every penny.  Ya got anyting in your PayPal account to get me to lunch for the week?". 
This is a sacred single dad thing.  You step right up.
"No sweat dude, just give me a chance to power up".

So you get online and log into your Paypal Account.  You put money there every once in awhile.  Maybe to buy something without stressing my $500 limit credit card, that I use for online stuff.  Me and that buddy swap lunch money all the time with PayPal.  But mostly I keep money there because I have kids spread out all over the place.  It is instant money for them.  It is safe and legit.

In my memory, Paypal sprang up as a payment vehicle for start up entrepreneuers going online.  This market was mostly electonic deliverables (like software and ebooks), but  I learned about the system from an avid baseball card trader - so there you go with the grassroots thing.

I thought Paypal was dopey.  I thought "if you were going to do e-commerce, you would want to have all those Visa and Mastercard logos".  Online credit card merchant accounts were very, very difficult to qualify (pay) for in those days.  The gateways for which the data passed were clunky and unreliable.  It was a mess, but you still wanted those logos.  So I stopped thinking about PayPal a long time ago.

Well, although I must have ignored about a billion images of Paypal logos blasted at me in the next decade, or so, it never went away.  Visa/MasterCard/Amex/Discover merchant services had certainly come a long way.  But PayPal was still there.

Well, now its more than 10 years later, and I have to get some money converted into euros and sent to my kid to some address in Italy, to some person.  Hmmm.  Time for Western Union. 

Now you would think of Western Union too, I'm sure.  So off, I go, looking for my local Western Union office.  Let me tell you.  They are not the tellers behind the brass bars with the beautiful mahogony all around (were did that visual come from?), anymore.  Nine times out of ten, your local Western Union Office is a hole.  A hole where you pull out 9 hundred dollar bills and give it to a guy that isn't too good at English.  That being said, it all worked.  Stiff exchange rate, though.  But that's where the money is made.  The cost of getting it done.  No complaints.

Now, although the Western Union transaction was immediate across the continents, I could have done this just as quickly, if not quicker, from my PayPal account.  Not only could I have done it online, but I didn't have to find a Western Union office or go to it.  In all fairness, Western Union, also has an online interface, but it just plain sucks.  I have an account that I created on the fly - just to get the story - that I will never remember.  Yuk.

I've been seeing Paypal logos on web sites for over 15 years now.  That is, more or less, the early days of the public Internet.  It is not a small thing.  It is not a bank.  It just seems even more stable and efficient as any of the iconic names of Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and even Western Union.  Sure, Western Union has been a household name for several generations, now.  But Paypal has to be considered a proven brand to even the most skeptical of online purchasers.

Here's how it works:

• You open a free Paypal account
• You tell Paypal what they need to know about your checking account.
• They perform two test transactions in/out for (I think) zero dollars.
• Then you log into your Paypal account and tell them how much money you want them to take out of your checking account.
• That takes a few days.
• In the mean time, apply for a Paypal debit card (This is how you turn your Paypal money into greenbacks at the cash machine).
• Then go buy stuff and the seller has no clue about your money (even if you fill out forms).
• Send money to your kids.
• Lend money for lunch

Author’s Note:  This article is merely an overview of the story of an amazing life and legend.  I have tried to keep to only the anecdotes which involved me directly.  However, most of this story comes to me second-hand from trusted (by me) sources, whom I have known for decades.  This second hand reporting is easily corroborated by others who knew him.  However, there are fewer of those people around, these days.  Therefore, this ‘rough sketch” comes to you without much qualification other than my personal experiences and corroborated anecdotes of others who knew him.  But it’s a story that needs to be told, no matter how shabbily.  I hope this will get some other certain people writing.
Throughout his life, Archbishop Theodore has been known by several names.  In the Russian Orthodox clergy, names can change often.  This article will refer to him as, solely, Theodore.  Titles like Archbishop, Bishop, Father and Vladyka are, in this story all interchangeable.

THE LITTLE WHITE FATHER OF JUAREZ
In the 1980’s he was known as “The Little White Father Of Juarez”.  After 20 years of prayer, as a hermit, in Alaska, Archbishop Theodore was guided to Juarez to “help poor children” (his favorite expression).  His reputation as a clairvoyant and miracle working elder spread quickly among the poor in Juarez. 
But this is nearly the end of his story.
I was fortunate enough to spend weekends with Archbishop Theodore during the last seven years of his life.  He was the elder of my elder.  He spent the last years of his life at a small monastery in Northern New Jersey, as a simple monk.  I was around there a lot in those days. 
He spent hours on end, in total silence, praying.  Aside from the occasional cantankerous lesson, he did little else.  During Liturgy, he would sit in the bishop’s throne, in the sanctuary of a basement chapel, and become radiant with prayer.  This radiance was not easily/blatantly perceived by the onlooker.  Not like movie special effects. 
In prayer, he would look (to me) 20 years younger.  His face was, albeit discreetly, the most “light-defined” object in the room during this occurrence.  No laser shows.  No pretty gradients.  The larger impact of observing this was the peculiar stillness of the experience.  Sort of a timeless visitation.
It is difficult to decide how to tell Archbishop Theodore’s story.  There is an amazing historical side of his story.  There is an equally amazing collection of reports of his miraculous works.  Then there are my first-hand experiences with the man.  Lets start with his history and see how the legend and my anecdotes fit in, as it goes.
A CHILD IN THE TSAR’S COURT
Theodore was born sometime around the turn of the 20th century (1904, we think).  We know that he was about 12 or 13 at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. 
Theodore was the son of a German general in the Russian White Army and a member of the Tsar’s court.  Young Theodore was playmates with the Tsar’s children.
The only thing Archbishop Theodore reported to me personally about life in the Tsar’s court was about the famous historical figure Rasputin.  What was said to me was that “he was a man of great holiness and great evil at the same time”. 
It is easy to imagine young Theodore, being the same age as the young hemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei, to have run into Rasputin when his playmate was sick or recovering from Rasputin’s “treatment” of the young Prince.
MILITARY CADET
The story then jumps to young Theodore’s education as a cadet in a military academy in Irkutsk, Russia, just North of Mongolia.  In Imperial Russia, nothing could be more natural for the son of one of the Tsar’s most trusted generals. 
Here, Theodore tells a story of how he was mocking a (very rare) substitute teacher during class, about a lesson being taught, which involved a “book falling out of the sky”.  This substitute teacher became cross with young Theodore and informed the boy that he wouldn’t laugh so much once he became a monk.  Archbishop Theodore mentioned that this substitute teacher was never seen at the school, or the sparsely populated town, before or after this day.
ESCAPING THE BOLSHEVIKS
During the young cadet’s time in military academy, the Russian Revolution broke out.  Theodore was a member of the Tsar’s court.  He was definitely on the Bolshevik’s list, and he knew it.  He walked across half the Asian continent, on the run.  Hoping to reach some other country where a White Russian refugee might be safe.  He had to go West towards Europe or (closer) Scandinavia.
He told me the story of how his brother and a few friends went running to a band of Bolsheviks, hoping to join, only to get gunned down, with no interrogation, right before young Theodore’s eyes.
Eventually he reached Finland.  There, he became a novice – then monk - at Valaam Monastery. 
THE HERMIT PROPHESISES TO THE NOVICE
Life at Valaam was his favorite subject.  This is one story he told me about Valaam, paraphrased.

“At Valaam, when I became a novice, I took my rasa (long black robe) out into the woods.  I was so happy to finally be a monk.  No more cities, no more distractions.”
“I laid my rasa down on a large rock and began kissing it, thanking God for leading me here.”
“Then I suddenly heard laughing.  I turned around and saw a man dressed in rags with long hair and a beard.  He spent a few minutes laughing at me and went away.  Later I leaned from the other monks that this man was a revered hermit in the area.  They were excited to have heard of him.”
“The next winter, this hermit was brought into the dispensary where I worked as a novice.  The hermit was nearly frozen to death.  Eventually responding to treatment, the hermit became conscious and was greeted by a steady stream of visiting monks who were very excited to have such a holy man among them.”
“In the midst of all this celebration, the hermit grabbed my arm and whispered ‘Come see me tonight, at midnight’”.
“When I returned that evening, I was told all the events of my future life.  He described to me the place where I would die.  It is this place.”

When Archbishop Theodore arrived at the monastery in New Jersey, he got out of the car, on arrival to our monastery, he looked around and said:
“Yes, this is the place where I was told I would die”.
We think that Theodore spent about decade at Valaam monastery in Finland.  The abbot at Valaam had  noticed that there was something different about this boy.  It was this early in Theodore’s life that reports of his becoming radiant with “uncreated light” during prayer originated.  This boy was different.
Eventually, Finland entered into a pact with the Communists, where the Finns would be left alone (militarily) by the Soviets, as long as they did not harbor, or sympathize with refugees from the revolution.  It was best for the survival of the monastery that Theodore leave.  He was still on the Soviet’s list as part of the Tsar’s court.
The abbot at Valaam sent Theodore to the cave-dwelling monks in Estonia, which was not yet part of the Soviet Union.  To me, he only mentioned that he was there.  The abbot says he was there for about a decade.
THE MIRACLE IN PARIS
Next stop, Paris; where most of the Russian Orthodox church was in exile, reeling from the apocalypse of the bloody slaughter of the Church, Her clergy, and laity, during the revolution of 1917.  He became a priest in Paris in the late 30’s. 
While there, God performed an astonishing miracle through him, with witnesses.  His fame grew way too fast for a humble monk to bear.  He felt he was in spiritual danger of the temptation of “prelest”, when one thinks they have something special from God. 
Striving to maintain his identity as a worthless monk, he was terrified.
“I WANT TO DIE FOR THE FAITH”
He wrote a letter to his elder in the Estonia caves.  Theodore asked his elder for a blessing to go back to Russia and die for the Faith.  The response went something like this:
“Permission denied.  The Communists will torture the Faith out of you, make you deny Christ and then kill you.  I think you should go in the other direction”.
Because the Russian Church had been nearly wiped out.  They were elevating Bishops with a fair amount of regularity in Paris.  When the Paris Bishops had heard about the miracle, performed by God through Theodore, they quickly made him a Bishop and sent him to America.  I do not know the specifics of how he was able to accomplish the crossing and immigration to the U.S.  Theodore told me, personally that Joseph Kennedy arranged his immigration. 
EMMIGRATES TO THE USA
He wound up at the Russian cathedral on 2nd St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Many times he claimed to me that this church was controlled by the KGB.  He told me that one of his superiors, at that time, turned out to be the Soviet Foreign Minister during the 80’s.  The name he used matched the former holder of that office, at the time of the telling.  Anyway, I digress.
According to Theodore, this person on 2nd St. sent him to Canada, knowing full-well that Theodore didn’t have the papers to get back into the U.S – and that he wouldn’t know the difference.  The story continues with anecdotes about the months that he spent hopping the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence Seaway (U.S. Border) to sneak back into the country.
Once back in the U.S and with a new inspiration to stay away from 2nd St., he stayed in the Ohio/Michigan/Illinois area.  He was a Bishop and had a responsibility to shepherd and establish churches.  My information on this period of his life is sketchy. 
THE HOLY FOOL
Prior to my meeting him, Archbishop Theodore was described to me as, what is known as, a “Fool For Christ”.  The Russian expression translates to “Holy Fool”.  There is a long tradition of this kind of ascetic in the Orthodox Faith. 
It is a concept where one can crucify one’s self to the world, by looking like a fool to the world, thusly obeying Jesus’ command that we should take up our cross daily.  In this period of his life, the stories of such foolishness begin to rise.
He told me that he ran a candy store in Detroit.  No one else who knew him ever heard of it.  That’s all he said to me.  No further details. 
I recently found on the internet an uncomplimentary essay about Theodore when he was in Ohio during the late 40’s.  The writer was completely exasperated with Vladyka Theodore for continually abusing and eventually destroying a clothes washing machine.  I knew Archbishop Theodore.  I can tell you that he would make it a point to challenge your desire for clean clothes.
HERMIT IN ALASKA
The next chapter in Bishop Theodore’s life was as a hermit in Alaska.  He went to St. Herman’s Monastery.  It was there that he is said to have prayed a short repetitive prayer, without ceasing for about 20 years.  The legend says that he slept in an open coffin to remind him, every moment, of his future (rare, but not unheard of in the 19th and early 20th century – Sarah Bernhardt did this also). 
It is said that he prayed for seven years without sleeping, then for seven years of standing, then for seven years without eating.  He covered the walls of his cell/hut on the Alaskan island with carved inscriptions of his short, repetitive prayer.
One story he told me was about when he arrived at the Alaskan monastery.  The abbot arranged for the monks to build a hut for Theodore on one of the deserted islands within the monastery. 
When Theodore came to the finished cell, he became very agitated and begged/demanded that the hut be moved some distance further from the shore of the island, pointing out the place where he would prefer.  It is said that some years later, a tsunami hit the islands and just came short of his cell in its “new” location.
It is also said that Jesus and Mary visited him separately, and daily during this period.  It is also said that, after 20 years of unceasing prayer, The Blessed Mother communicated to him that God was pleased with his unceasing prayer and that he should go to Juarez to serve His Poor.
THE WEDDING CHAPEL IN LAS VEGAS
I only assume that the following story, which took place in Las Vegas, fits in this point of his story.  That is, on his way to Juarez.  It’s the only way I can account for the location and characters of the story. 
According to what was told to me by Theodore and others, Archbishop Theodore was in Las Vegas with some Aleut natives where he opened a chapel.  This chapel, somehow, became popular as a wedding chapel.  As it was told to me:

“Some criminals came and insisted on buying the chapel.” 
“Suddenly, I had a hotel room full of money.  I gave all the money to the Aleuts.” 
“They all bought useless things like automobiles, and the like.”
“It didn’t take long for them to destroy the autos and all the things that they went crazy purchasing.”
“It was a good lesson for them.”

Myself, I have few anecdotes, details or history of his time in Juarez.  Like most of the story, my knowledge is second-hand, from a small group of monks who visited him to pray with him at that time.  The anecdotes I’ve heard the most about this period include stories of clairvoyance, healing, bi-location and other miraculous events.  All the while, debasing his personal image to the world as a Holy Fool, while serving the poor and teaching the clergy.  He was very serious about “helping poor children” as he always put it to me.
From here, one day, he was simply put in a car and kidnapped by an ambitious abbot of a monastery in a Northwestern state in America.  He spent a little over a year there, corresponding occasionally with the other clergy whom he loved. 
But he was not happy there.  There were rumors of emotional abuse.  Rumors of using Theodore as an “attraction”.  Our abbot eventually gave a blessing for his staff to drive up to MA and liberate him.  Again, when he arrived, he recognized the place as described by the hermit in Finland.
HIS FINAL MONASTERY
The first weekend, after Theodore’s arrival to the New Jersey monastery, I came to the Abbey to meet him.  When I got out of the car, I looked up to the window of the guest room to see him.  The windows were wide open.  He was sitting there, looking down on me, expressionless. 
He was on the second floor, with the windows open.  My sight of him was crystal clear.  He looked just like Santa Claus, but there wasn’t even a hint of “ho-ho-ho” in his countenance.  He just stared at me.  No emotion or personal recognition.
He referred to a friend and myself as “the boys”.  “The boys” that were part of the Valaam hermit’s description of Theodore’s final days.
Some time later, I was commenting on my first view of him, at dinner with the community, along with a couple of visiting monks.  I was not very tuned in to Orthodox Catholicism at the time, so my ignorant comments went something like this:

“Yup, I saw him sitting at the window in the guest room.  He was wearing one of those “funny hats” that you guys wear; with a silver cross on the front of the hat.”

The abbot answered:
“You mean a Kamilavka.  Well, the silver cross means he is an Archbishop”
The visiting monks paused.  Evidently, there had been some discussion as to his actual rank, being such a gadfly of a cleric.
“Yeah, all that!” I replied.
The Abbot replied:
“Bishop Theodore doesn’t own a Kamilavka”

After some argument from me, the abbot challenged me to go into his cell and find it.  I knew that room.  It had been my room several times in the past. 
The man owned nothing.  A couple of books in Russian and a handful of letters from his Deacon in Alaska.  No funny hat.

Just being around him was a transforming experience.  Throughout all my manias, and no matter what was going on, the best thing you could do for those seven years was to just sit with him in silence. 
One would sit down on the window bench, right in front of his easy chair, close to him and fully in his view. If he was used to you, he wouldn’t seem to notice you, or pay much attention.  You might pray with him, you might just look at your feet for an hour.  Either way, it was a curative wealth of stillness. 
Occasionally, during these silent sit-downs, he might begin softly speaking a story about himself, a comment on whatever you were silently thinking about, or a straight-out spiritual teaching.  He would often ask me to pray for his sister.
When he would speak, it would be in an understandable mix of English, Spanish and Russian (in that order of preference).  His tone of voice was usually gentle.  He would call one “darling” every once-in-awhile.  Remembering the sound of my name in his angry voice chills me to this day. 
He prayed.  All the time.  I remember he was genuinely confused, when I offered him an old television.  “Why?”, he said.  He had little use for conversation about the banal, which was basically, anything besides prayer, or the struggle to holiness.
He taught.  He was an elder and he treated the Abbot (my elder) harshly, at times.  Then like a grandfather, he would turn to me, or my friend, and say something like “I’m hard with him because he is so young”.   Like a grandfather, he was always gentle with my friend and I, “the boys”. 
Sometimes without even realizing, he demonstrated his clairvoyant abilities to us, at regular intervals.  For the most part, he would merely comment supportively on whatever you were thinking about.  He knew when I was being bad, in secret.  He would become angry with me and not even be able to understand what he was describing.  But I knew what he was talking about.  It was my secret.
This kind of elder was, at one time, relatively common.  But that was centuries ago.  Even I remember a time, not too long ago, where one could know of less than a dozen of these kind of people in the world.  I’m willing to bet there are either little or none of these God-Bearing elders left these days. 
I sometimes wonder what we should expect from the future.

Another point in the story that is not (in my opinion) emphasised enough:  The article mentions that these ships are to be home-ported at these bases in Pusan (South Korea), Deigo Garcia (Indian Ocean) and Scubic Bay (Philippines).  That indicates an extended presence.  It is conceivable that many entire families are being moved to those location.  This is no small news item.  Read from the link below and notice the part, where the think tank lady calls the Pacific Theater "the military focus of the 21st century".  In all the years since Korea and Viet Nam, you'd think we could find something else to export.

On the other hand (and to be fair), this same article says that the US is responding to requests from Australia, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Viet Nam to respond to increasingly aggressive behavior by the Chinese navy in the area.  Well, that sounds good too.  I think.

U.S. Missiles Deployed Near China Send a Message


In January of 2010, the Chinese displayed to the world her ability to take a traveling missile out with another (both Chinese missiles).  Don't forget that they took out one of their own satellites, in the same kind of display earlier.  The more recent demonstration is said to be because they were pissed that we sold a Tomahawk based missile defense system to Taiwan.  That story (again from Time) is here:

China's Missile Test: A Symbolic Warning to U.S.

• Every ship within 50 miles of the spill will instantly sink.  Not become swamped - just drop like stones.  If the water, surrounding any ships in the area, becomes saturated with this much gaseous material, boyancy won't mean a thing.  There will be virtually nothing to resist the ships drop to the bottom.  Do you remember early reports about declining help from other country's ships?
• Either because of an explosion, or simply a sudden cave-in, filling the void left by the methane would cause a 200-300 foot high sunami traveling at about 500 miles per hour.  About that 200 foot sunami; the highest elevation in Florida is about 150 ft. above sea level.  Scientist estimate that the shock wave from an explosion of this magnitude would flatten everything before the tidal wave.  At least you won't know what hit you.
• Some sources say this explosion, if it happens, would be on the same scale as Mt. St. Helen's.  We can only assume that an awful lot of poisonous gas is going to be in the air in the Gulf region.    If the methane were dry, which it is not, it would just go up in the air and cause 20 times the global warming damage as the same amount of Carbon Dioxide.  However, wet methane will remain on the ground and in the rain.

About a month ago, the New York Post held an online competition for firehouse dogs to be included in an upcoming calendar. 

One of the nice things about living in a major city is when the tabloids occasionally feature favorable stories about our public servants.  As a citizen, I find it has an, albeit small, comforting effect.

Although this reporting is far from timely, I thought I would pass along the action as reported in the NY Post. 

The first link is an announcement of the contest.  Nearly 27,000 votes were cast online for reader's favorites.  Yes, that's right; in fact, the actual number of votes was 26,861. 
Vote for city's best firehouse dogs - NYPOST.com

IN SEARCH OF THE HIGS BOSON OBJECT
Somewhere, down the line, physicists decided that the collision of super-accelerated particles (smaller than atoms) would result in the demonstration of conditions, as they were just seconds after the Big Bang.

They hope they will find evidence of the elusive Higgs Boson in a mini Big Bang and begin measuring and categorizing it.  Then they hope to connect this object with causality of why matter takes on actual form, or mass (with image, weight, gravity, etc.). 

IN SEARCH OF DARK MATTER
Scientists also think that there is not enough matter in the observable universe.  So they are looking for something they call "dark matter".  Some also think that measurements of this collision and big bang condition generated, might lead further in the direction of dark matter studies.  There's more about dark matter here.

If you are a multi-universe, multi-dimensional kind of person; this is definitely the thing to keep an eye on.  I hope these guys know what they are doing.  I wonder what the unexpected would yeild on this one! 

So they started working on developing a "collider technology" as long ago as 1954.  Those years of work have finally come to fruition in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) built and administered by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).  Looking over a time line of this technology's development, one can see that it was a long succession of developments. 

THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

In this scene, we go down, under the ground and into this 17 mile long facility that is under two countries.  All the machinery for cooling this ring to incredibly low temperatures is humming all around (imagine the electric bill).  Then, with who knows how much machinery, a stream of billions and billions of protons (where do they get them from) is shot into this tube at a hair under the speed of light.  Then another stream in the opposite direction.  Do things sound like they are jumping yet?

OK, so we have billions and billions and billions and billions of protons travelling at just sub-light speed, in two directions.  And they are trying to make these particles crash into each other to create mini Big Bangs at temperatures exceeding our Sun by 100,000 times, while looking for anti matter, dark matter, parallel universes and (my words) the nature of the fabric of existence, itself. 

They have accomplished 10 million of these explosions in a week's time.  But these guys are hoping to generate 600 million proton collisions per second.  Can you imagine how much unadulterated energy will be unleashed?  It sounds like a Superman adventure, with the international scientists and huge amounts of power.  I just hope the bad guys don't escape from the Phantom Zone. 

I was living at the Upper West Side YMCA for something like $30. a day.  I payed for it by playing my silver alto sax in Times Square for loose change.  It worked.  My policy was "If its above freezing, get out there".  I used to set up on the West side of the square between 46th & 47th St, or wherever there was a construction wall, full of posters.  I tried to stay on the West side of the square in order to get the warm sun in the early/midday.

Well, there I am, not really playing anything; just scatting around, as usual.  Its post-rush hour and there aren't too many people on the square, but I'm hungry. 


He was the only person on the sidewalk, when he came into view.  My back was against a plywood, poster covered wall, facing the street.  When you see someone with star power out of the corner of your eye, you tend to do in involuntary double-take.  So I have the sax in the corner of my pie hole, while I'm working the keys.  I'm checking this guy out and its Tom Waits!


The dude just walks by.  I expected that.  He looked like he was just awake.  He had a tall, skinny and lanky frame.  He was several days in need of a shave, and young!  I was surprised by that.  Seeing him on Martin Mull's short-lived Fernwood Tonight late night talk show spoof, and listening to his gin soaked vocals, somehow gave the impression of an older dude.  


I was just psyched to see him.  I didn't know, or care, how I was sounding.  It wasn't too unusual to see "famous people" when you spend a lot of time on the street.  But, I wish I could have talked to him.  Let him know how cool I think he is.  So, as he passes out of sight, I just go back to doing my thing.

He came back from where he disappeared, a few minutes later.  He was looking over the front page of the newspaper he just bought.  He walked over to my case and threw in a buck.  I stopped playing.

"Thanks, man, hey, I know who you are!  Tom Waits.  I really dig your stuff."
"Not too bad, kid.  Keep it up" said Waits.

After about 10 seconds of pleasantries, he says "Well, I'm gonna go and get some breakfast.  See ya later, kid."  And started to walk downtown.
"Yeah, me too" I replied.  "As soon as I get another dollar, or so."

He stopped in the middle of his step, turned half his body back towards me, with a look of genuine surprise on his face.

"You ain't had no breakfast, kid?  C'mon, I'll buy you breakfast."