Contemplate Floating

As you may have noted, I have gotten sidetracked off my usual posting, primarily because of doing a lot of remodeling around the house, but also because I just got tired of scanning old photos and laying out the posts. I am motivated to write today not so much by travel, but by current events and a CD set I've been listening to in my Jeep. (Come to think of it, I guess that is travel.)

Let me first say that I feel saddened by the loss of three icons: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson.

I watched "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" for many years. I distinctly remember when I was in college returning from my night custodian job to watch Johnny, Ed and Doc Severenson while eating Ritz crackers with leftover baked beans or peanut butter before going to bed.

Farrah, of course, was a pinup girl around the same time, even for those of us who rarely watched "Charlie's Angels."

From those early songs like "ABC" to his domination of music in the '80s, Michael Jackson never ceased to amaze me as a performer. As to whether he was a Christlike victim of scammers or a pedofile, I personally have not decided, but he was an amazing performer.

They'll all be missed.
 

On a separate topic, for Father's Day I ordered "Excuses Begone" from Nightingale/Conant for Julie to give me. I've listened to their records, tapes and CDs since my late, great father turned me on to them. He even represented Earl Nightingale Motivational Records for a while part-time in the 1960s.

By the way, Amy gave me a can of refried beans and a card about my love of music that tied in, and Jay gave me some delicious wine, cheese and beef stick, but I digress.

This new set by Wayne Dyer is just what I hoped it would be: a throwback to his very practical older stuff from the 1980s with influences from his newer stuff, which tends to be more spiritual. It makes me feel good to listen to these CDs. Anyway, something I heard him say yesterday really hit me, and it occurs to me that by focusing on all the trillions of deficit government spending, craziness on Wall Street, and Axis of Evil saber rattling, we lose our sense of control over what happens immediately around us, which is really the only reality there is. All anyone has is the present moment, and as we know, most of what our lives are has far more to do with how we think about and respond to what happens than the events themselves.

It's always amazing to me that when aboard a giant airplane it not only gets off the ground but flies, or that on a floating resort like we will be on in a little more than a week, a hundred thousand tons floats like a Dixie cup. (There's the tie to travel!) That's why instinctively I can accept that despite all the illogical stuff happening politically right now, we don't HAVE TO sink. We do, however, become what we think about, and our reality eventually reflects our innermost thoughts. Banish fear, and accept the good that God wants for us right now, in the present moment, which is the only time we ever live in. We are spiritual beings enjoying (or not enjoying) a human experience, rather than the other way around.

Dyer quoted Thomas Troward, who said, “The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.”

"The Wright brothers didn’t contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn’t contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn’t contemplate the darkness of things. In order to float an idea into your reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the inconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don’t have."

~ Wayne Dyer, 21st Century Spiritual Teacher from The Power of Intention

Washington Heights and Hudson Heights

Gina's new office will be at Columbia University's Medical Center in Washington Heights.

After walking around the area to get a feel for it, we enjoyed a terrific lunch at Dallas Barbecue, which offers very affordable Texas-style dining experience in the Big Apple.

I forgot to take some pictures of the Texas-themed interior that seems somehow out of place in New York. The lunch special is a bowl of home-style chicken and vegetable soup, a half chicken, corn bread and a side dish. I splurged for an extra dollar to get the barbecue glaze.

Laszlo said they have another near his school in Chelsea, and he and the other teachers often go on Fridays. I highly recommend this little restaurant chain.

We meandered up to Hudson Heights, a surprisingly quiet and beautiful residential area located only a short walk from the Medical Center.

Like throughout much of New York City, there are lots of little parks in Hudson Heights, including Bennett Park, where Laszlo pointed to an otherwise non-remarkable outcropping of stone that is the highest natural point in Manhattan.

Seinfeld and Gina's Domain

Gina's current office doesn't rival that of Donald Trump when it comes to size and luxury, but she focuses so intently on the task at hand that she easily can be in an airport, office or a coffee shop and still get her work done.
She loves enjoying the stroll to work across Broadway and past the most beautiful parts of Columbia's Morningside Campus. Gina has the added convenience of being a short walk away from city streets lined with stores and restaurants. One of the most easily recognizable is Tom's Restaurant, although most of us know it as Monk's Diner from “Seinfeld.”

We took some photos, but we decided to have lunch near Columbia University Medical Center in Washington Heights, so we caught the train.
Before leaving the main campus, however, let me at least touch on more of Columbia's history.

As previously mentioned, the college has figured prominently in our history from the time of our country's origin. Columbia re-located to its current Morningside Heights site in 1897, where its uptown New York location attracted many of the greatest minds to study and do research, a tradition continued to this day.


Some theoretical research in physics headed by Columbia faculty including Enrico Fermi lead to the atomic bombs which ended World War II. The Manhattan Project was so-named for Columbia's location.


In the 1960s, protests for civil rights and against the Vietnam War became prominent at Columbia, exploding in 1968 with a shutdown of the campus by 1000 protesters. As a result, the government pulled some classified research from the campus, seen as a seat of unrest, and the general tenor of the campus moved politically left.


After the temporary disruption, morale and funding for research returned, albeit with different emphasis, to this university located in the heart of one of the world's greatest cities. The Pulitzer's School of Journalism at Columbia remains extremely influential on the way news is reported, and the medical and health research, of which Gina is a proud participant, is among the best in the world.

Columbia University

Without question, Columbia University is one of the most prestigious,revered and influential institutes of higher learning in the world, so obviously it is with great pride that I say my oldest daughter Gina has been doing research there as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and will soon be working directly for the university itself.

Gina lives a half block away from the main campus, so we re-created her easy morning commute. By doing so, we also walked in the footsteps of one of my favorite actors, Bill Murray. No, he wasn't a student there, but his character Dr. Peter Venkman did research at Columbia, just like Dr. Gina. Well.... not “just like.” Gina's research doesn't involve playing mind games with her subjects in order to get dates rather than data, and she walks or takes the subway rather than riding around in a converted ambulance.

In any case, I did recognize the Morningside Heights campus where she has worked for for the past three years. Located in the middle of the city, the hallowed halls of academia contrast with the surrounding area.

It looks appropriately aged and distinguished to be the oldest college in New York and fifth oldest college in the United States, so I was surprised when Gina's husband Laszlo said that the campus had been moved there a little more than a hundred years ago.

The original name of Columbia was King's College, so-named because it was created by royal charter from King George II of England in 1754, with the first “campus” being a schoolhouse next to Trinity Church in Manhattan attended by eight students. By 1767, it had become the first American medical school to grant the M.D. Degree, setting the stage for a long history of leading the way in health education and research.

In 1776, the colonies had a bit of a disagreement with the King of England, and the school closed for a few years. However, the college had fulfilled its initial promise to "enlarge the Mind, improve the Understanding, polish the whole Man, and qualify them to support the brightest Characters in all the elevated stations in life." Among the students and trustees of King's College were the first Chief Justice (John Jay), the first Secretary of the Treasury (Alexander Hamilton), author of the final draft of the U.S. Constitution (GouverneurMorris), and one of five men assigned to write the Declaration of Independence (Robert Livingston). That's probably not exactly what King George had in mind.

In 1784, the college re-opened as Columbia University, a name affirming the institution's independence from England just as her country had.

Riverside Park in New York

Despite living in greater Los Angeles, I am not a fan of big cities, so I've procratstinated visiting New York for the three years that my oldest daughter, Gina, has worked there.

I needed to take my youngest daughter back to Connecticut for freshman orientation and registration, so it made sense to fly roundtrip to New York and see where Gina lives and works.

Actually, we flew into Newark, where we rented a car from Budget and headed for the University of Connecticut. Despite being early evening, the traffic was light leaving the airport and most of the way through New Jersey. Then, following my Google map, we reached the outskirts of New York City, and the traffic became horrendous. It wasn't long before I regretted my cheapness in renting a Hyundai rather than taking the train to Hartford.


Google Maps estimated the driving time to be just under three hours, but with a quick stop for sandwiches at Duchess Burgers, we pulled into the parking lot at Nathan Hale Inn on the UConn campus four and a half hours after landing. Needless to say, I don't recommend the drive.


I enjoyed my time in the countryside, and on Friday afternoon we left for New York at 4 PM. Again, we stopped at Duchess Burgers, where the Angus Burger turned out to be quite good. We also took a quick spin around New Haven to see Yale, which after spending time at beautiful UConn did not impress me at all, and somewhere around 10 PM, I found what even George Costanza would have to admit to be the perfect parking space directly across the street from Gina's apartment building.


Gina buzzed us in, and we rode the little elevator up to the eighth floor. The little apartment Gina shares with her husband, Laszlo, is compact but comfortable, and she has lots of little homey touches, including a stack of the copper canister set that I saw every day at my mother's house growing up.


Gina and I woke up before Amy and Laszlo, had some coffee and headed out to Riverside Park, just a half block away from their apartment. It's a lot different than the hustle and bustle of New York I have seen on past visits. Lots of Manhattanites walk their dogs, and others like us just stroll along through the long, lovely park. We visited Grant's Tomb, and if you don't know, you can e-mail me to ask who is buried there.


We continued on all the way to about 125th Street, and then headed back to get everyone else up to explore more of Gina's New York.