I am on the train, plowing south, toward the city. Outside there is an ice storm, making streets treacherous. Deciding caution was the better part of valor, I called a taxi to take me to the station. The Prius isn’t great when the roads are icy. Once I slid through the intersection at the end of the road, straight to the other side. I was lucky.
A kind man picked me up. Turns out he had been coached in football by my late neighbor, Hank Fonda. We talked about him for a while; the goodness I knew in him was underscored by what my driver told me: Hank had kept him out of a lot of trouble when he was young.
Tonight, there is an event in celebration of Downton Abbey at the Hudson Theater in New York; if it weren’t for the fact I had snagged a ticket, I wouldn’t be going into the city but would be cozying up to the Franklin Stove, listening to Christmas Carols and doing Christmas cards.
That’s a lot of what’s on my agenda for the next few days. I am mostly prepped for Christmas with only a few things left to order, mostly food baskets for those far and away.
It feels like a particularly well-organized Christmas this year, perhaps because I have more time on my hands than usual. I woke this morning feeling quite the country gentleman. Not sure why. Perhaps it was because the day could start lazily with good strong coffee and a perusal of the Times.
Once the things that needed doing were done, I showered, shaved and prepped for going down to town. To my great surprise, all the trains have been running on time. Often ice is worse than snow for them.
This brand of weather is likely to continue for the next few days with a break finally coming at the weekend. I’ll be doing a lot of homebound things I suspect tomorrow when I get back to Claverack, all the way through to the weekend. It’s not very safe on the roads and I think I’ll be living on what’s in the cupboards as opposed to making trips to the Price Chopper, which is about to get a new name, more upscale, better to position themselves against the behemoth down the road, Walmart.
Tonight at the Downton Abbey event will be Hugh Bonneville [Lord Grantham], the actresses who play Lady Edith and Mrs. Patmore as well as Robert Collier-Young, who plays the scheming Thomas. There will be highlights from Season Five, which is to premiere next month.
It is amazing the cult like following that has surrounded the show. I know folks who have Downton Abbey parties, expecting guests to show up as one of the characters. Each premiere episode results in many a bottle of champagne being uncorked. We seem to be fascinated by the doings of the very, very upper crust Crawleys and the adventures of the dozens of minions who care for them downstairs.
Julian Fellowes, the writer of Downton Abbey, every episode, is to be commended on the richness of his writing and his careful depiction of class differentiators in that time.
When Downton Abbey began it was 1912, the new season brings us up to 1924. It will be interesting to see how the Crawleys and their staff deal with the 1920’s and the social changes that are beginning to shift the landscape beneath them.
Perhaps that’s why the program resonates, we, too, feel the landscape changing under our feet. If you are not a digital native, the world in which we live seems confusing, with old ways rapidly evolving into the new and unfamiliar.
Perhaps nowhere has this been more evident than in the world of media, a world in which I have been a denizen for many a year. Just this morning I read a report in which network television viewing has declined 11% year over year and even more among Millennials. It is a shattering decline for the status quo.
At the same time, SVOD viewing is rising [Subscription Video On Demand (think Netflix and Hulu)] rapidly.
Television content providers, ad agencies, cable distribution companies, networks, everyone is scrambling to adjust and to survive in a future they can barely see.
Not unlike the Crawleys.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York Dec 10, 2014 Beacon on the hill?
December 10, 2014Writing this, I am headed back north after having spent the evening in the city, going to the Downton Abbey event and then having a late night dinner with my friend Robert. While I was riding down into the city yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California was unveiling the Senate Report on the CIA’s use of torture in the years following 9/11. By the time I arrived at the Acela Club at Penn Station to wait until it was time to go to the event, the airwaves were alight with the reactions to the Executive Summary of the Report, which runs in itself 525 pages. The actual Report, which remains top secret, is over 6,000 pages. Even Tolstoy would be amazed.
There are varied reactions to the Report, mostly down party lines. Republican Senator John McCain came out with a thoughtful, I thought, statement on the facts as outlined by the Senate Committee. As I read his statement, he said he understands the reasons that caused the use of these methods and that the folks both approving and performing the acts outlined in the Report thought they were doing what was necessary, he disputes the methods and that “we are always Americans, and different, and stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.”
The “acts” outlined in the Report were harsh and brutal and, according to the Report, both unnecessary and not fruitful. They included waterboarding; sleep deprivation, and something called “rectal rehydration,” which sounds pretty disgusting.
While waiting for the Downton event, I went online from my phone and absorbed what I could about the news breaking around the Report. As I was going to sleep, I thought about it and when I woke this morning and was having my morning coffee, I felt sobered.
It is one thing to suspect something has happened and it is another to be forced to confront the reality of it. As far as I can tell, no one is denying that things happened. What is being debated is the efficacy of the acts. The Senate Committee Report says they weren’t effective and the CIA is saying, yes, they were.
It is a debate that is raging and one that we should have. There are those who think the Report should never have been made public and there are those who are hailing its release as a sign that though we make mistakes [and even the CIA says “mistakes” were made], we can, as a country, admit those mistakes and work to ensure they never happen again.
It is sobering to me perhaps because I was born in that time after WWII when we presented to the world and to ourselves, a vision of ourselves, of this country, as the beacon of liberty and that we did things differently than other countries.
As an adult, now, I am not sure that was true. I have, after all, lived through Viet Nam, Bhopal, Afghanistan, Iraq and other sundry events that have left me wondering about the role of the United States in international events. But I always believed – and, in fact – still do, that we, for all our many mistakes, do our best to do the right thing.
But it is still sobering, this Senate Committee Report. If true, it means we have made some serious mistakes. Good that we are admitting them and working to see them righted.
I agree with Senator McCain’s assessment. I can understand how these decisions were made but am disturbed that they were. It is my hope – and prayer – that we do our best to prevent more “mistakes” and that we continue striving to be the beacon on the hill of freedom.
Tags:CIA, Claverack, Downton Abbey, Feinstein, John McCain, Mathew Tombers, Senate Report
Posted in Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary | Leave a Comment »