continuation---

as risible and 0ldfashioned in the coming changed reality as the former strictures that defined professionals. The rules about what constitutes a banned substance are arbitrary of necessity and can only lead to endless parsing. We all want to be the best we can be and most of us will take whatever is available to achieve that end. I would choose broccoli over jelly doughnuts and I take DHEA twice a day. The prosecutors who are driving these cases are like predators who feed off of those they destroy. A few OJ juries would right the balance.

What's on my mind---

The sanctimonious are at it again and this time Lance Armstrong is the target. I watched 60 minutes last night report on the latest and most serious attempt to destroy another prominent athlete for what they call 'doping' which is defined as the illegitimate use of some performance enhancing substance or drug as they prefer to say. The pejorative language is meant to persuade us that these are bad people who are not deserving of the prizes they have won, but it has not persuaded me. I remember so many of our great athletes of the past who were stripped of their laurels for having sometime in their past careers, received some truly insignificant present that sinned against the purity of the Amateur ideal. I believe that the current ' doping scandals' will someday seem

What's on my mind---

On the front of today's New York Times' Art Section there is a really exciting picture of a new residential tower in South Manhattan that is nearing completion. With 76 floors, it will be the tallest such tower in the city's history and I couldn't read about it without imagining what it would feel like to live there. It's a handsome building, designed by Frank Gehry, which the reviewer believes, is the finest building to go up in the city since Eero Saarinen's CBS building and Philip Johnson's AT&T (now Sony) buildings, 46 years ago. Its exterior which is clad in stainless steel bundles apartments so that every unit across each face has a corner and the whole building consists of 4 telescoping sections. The apartments, one of which is shown have banks of 8 foot windows which face in 2 directions and the Brooklyn Bridge looks like a tiny toy, far below. I can imagine myself (and Lorna) living there and gradually becoming indifferent to the scene as the novelty wears off and it becomes ours. As I write this, I can look to my left toward a vista that is adequate consolation for knowing that I will never be rich enough to inhabit Gehry's spires. From where I sit I can see the planes on the ground at Logan Airport. The City looks like a bar graph covering half of the horizon. To its left I can see unimpeded to the Blue Hills of Milton with their ski areas reflecting white. Nearby, the dwellings of Chelsea rise, like rows of seats at a stadium. I'm content.

What's on my mind---

Yesterday, I suffered the frustration of typing a really long blog about my recent trip to Costa Rica, only to find that most of it had disappeared into some unknown location in cyberspace. Best to deal with it in the same way I deal with other disappointments and move on. Lorna has been gone since early morning in an errand of mercy---taking a friend to the dentist and the weather is horrible---slushy snow added to the icy mess that is left from last week's storm. If I took my car out to go to the gym, I wouldn't have a place to park when I got back. With my mind empty today of ideas or ambition, I had best sign off and hope that something comes along to excite the fading embers of my mental inventory.------Warren

What's on my mind---

I've been back just a week from Costa Rica, a trip that was neatly bookended by two huge snowstorms. The first one stopped only hours before our takeoff and the second and larger came in the day after we got home. Most of that one is still in evidence this morning. We went with Joy who teaches Art at DeCordova and for whom I sometimes work who set up the trip with Janice, one of her former students who with her husband, a charming Frenchman, operate a foundation that allows small groups to experience life in a virgin rainforest. We were joined by Ruth, another former student who brought her son George along, an impressive young man of college age. Cotting, our erstwhile houseguest of last summer joined us from the Yucutan Peninsula where she lives. Our flight to San Jose took six hours interrupted by a three hour stop in Orlando. We then had to go to a small local airport and take a tiny propeller driven plane for a one hour flight to a remote and little known peninsula called Osa near the Panama border. It was late afternoon when we landed and we still had to cross a wide inlet of the Pacific by motorboat to reach the remote location of the camp. The crossing took nearly an hour during which we saw scores of dolphins leaping and cavorting around our boat. It was almost dark when we arrived and since there was no dock we had to disembark into knee deep water and wade ashore. The camp was set back a few hundred feet from the water's edge in a clearing made from the virgin foe

What's on my mind---

This morning's papers printed information just released by the census bureau bureau that updates our knowledge of the society that we live in. I was pleased to learn that it validated what I had always suspected, that Chelsea is the most ethnically diverse city in the commonwealth with 38% of its population foreign born. Overall, the state average, 14.1% compared favorably to the national average of 12.4%. Immigrants bring a hybrid vitality to our country and without them we rapidly become an inbred and sterile society. What most impressed me the first time I was ever in London was the tremendous energy of the city which seemed to reside principally in its ethnic enclaves. As the seat of what was once an empire on which the sun never set , it drew people from every part of the world and it was enriched by them. I wish that the current crop of xenophobes and ideologues that constitute today's republican party had the intelligence to understand this and I am especially disappointed that our Senator, Scott Brown has announced that he will vote against the Dream Act that will give children who were brought here as babies and lived their entire lives knowing no other country, some parity with their classmates. Brown's position is unconscionable and I would not be surprised to learn that he likes to kick puppies also. I will work to defeat him.