The Empire State Building

At the risk of becoming a travelogue, I continue to post pictures of our New York Trip.

But first, I welcome comments that make sense and that support progress, but a couple of days ago I posted one against my better judgment regarding hate crimes. I responded, then another misinformed reader tried to post another negative comment, and I decided just to delete the original and my response and ignore the more recent one.

Before someone gets all up in arms, this is not an issue of free speech. It's an issue of not allowing my effort to educate (and entertain) to be diluted by those who want to do us harm.

That's ridiculous, some might say. How does expressing an opinion different from yours do you (or your cause) harm, you might ask.

This is Joe Holladay, a New York visitor who was beat up by a group of men on the Upper East Side on Saturday.

If I allow people to post comments that might influence someone to be against a hate crimes law, then in a tiny little way, I am contributing to this. In other words, by allowing the voices of hatred to be heard, progress is impeded, and those who act on their hatred feel empowered.

We already had a commenter who rejoiced when a local gay person was the victim of a crime, and that person no longer is allowed to comment here.

If you've been to New York you might have viewed the city from the 86 floor observation deck. Here is a guy on the outside of the deck, doing some work on the building's exterior. Yikes!


Also up there was Lucas Glover, winner of the soggy U. S. Open Golf Championship. He just happened to be touring the city, carrying his trophy around, I guess. I'm not a golf fan, and I had to "use the google" to find his name, but I knew enough to snap a picture.


But you also see views like this.


The little patch of green is Bryant Park, site of the Pride Rally that kicked off NY Pride week. To the immediate right of the park is the library that I wrote about yesterday. And the building with the gold toppers that "cuts" the park in half is the Bryant Park Hotel, which I only mention because it is a really neat looking building and we had coffee and a Belgian brownie at its base.

(This picture came from a hotel review)