HGI Board Meeting

[ndrosen]

I'm currently on an Amtrak train, heading back to D.C. after coming to New York City this morning. Around noon, I arrived at Penn Station and walked a few blocks (in heavy rain, sad to say) to an Indian grocery store where I bought mango pickles, tamarind extract, and a few other items I can't readily find near my home, and then a few more blocks to a restaurant, Pongal, where I waited for Lindy Davies to arrive. He showed up after a few minutes, and we talked; I was soon feasting on upma and mung beans cooked with tomatoes, onions, and spices, with a glass of mango juice to drink. We were joined a bit later by another Georgist, George Collins.

Then the three of us shared a cab uptown, and dropped in on an elderly woman friend of Lindy's, who had graciously made her apartment available for a meeting of the Henry George Institute Board of Trustees. Several other trustees joined us in the apartment, and others did so via the Intertubes. We dealt with the prospective budget and other business. Also, we heard some personal news: longtime Georgist activist Lu Cipollone turned one hundred on January 28. She isn't as strong as she used to be, but she's still with us.

Then we went to a nearby tavern called Parnell's for supper. I wasn't really hungry, so I just had a salad. The waitress confirmed that the place is named for the nineteenth century advocate of Irish Home Rule, Charles Stewart Parnell, and they had copies of nineteenth century political cartoons and such on the wall. (Sad to say, Parnell opposed land value taxation, for which some Irish leaders like Michael Davitt were enthusiastic, and then his affair with a married woman, Catherine O'Shea, handed ammunition to his enemies, splitting the Irish Nationalists.

So anyway, one of my Georgist friends drove me to Penn Station, and here I am, more that halfway home.