Letter from the Vineyard

Autumn. Hudson River Valley. Obama. Syria. John Kerry. Saudi Arabia. Douma. European Refugee Crisis. Halloween. Marco Rubio. GOP Debate. Donald Trump. Jeb Bush. Ben Carson. The Donald. One child policy. China. Alexander the Great. Gordian knot.

The autumn colors on the trees may have just past their peak but they are still wonderful as I ride north on Amtrak. The west bank of the Hudson is awash with shades of orange, red and some green. I am heading home for the weekend, having been in the city a bit longer this week than I had planned.

As I waited for the train to exit the tunnels so that I might have Internet again, my phone buzzed twice. First it was AP and then it was the BBC, letting me know that President Obama is sending fifty special operations troops to Syria to assist the rebels we support.

While he was announcing this, Secretary of State Kerry is in Vienna, dealing with the countries that have a stake in Syria, though Syria is not, apparently, there itself. The eyes of the world are on how Saudi Arabia and Iran will react to being the same room together. They are positioned so that they don’t have to look into each other’s eyes.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Syria, at least 40 have died in Douma, a town ten miles north of Damascus, with another hundred wounded. So far a quarter of a million people have died and ten million have fled their homes.

The resulting refugee crisis means that millions of Syrians are living in camps or attempting to go west, sometimes dying in the effort. 570,000 individuals have transited through Greece this year, making the crossing from Turkey in small boats or rubber dinghies. Yesterday 22 more died and 144 were rescued.

It is all far from here as I move north, along the Hudson River, absorbing fall colors and contemplating a quiet weekend at the cottage.

It is Halloween this weekend and I’m not sure I am going to do anything. Generally, I have gone down to the Red Dot for their annual party. Last year I dressed as a Roman Emperor. This year, I am not feeling quite so festive. I was thinking more of a martini and a movie at home.

Since last I wrote, there has been another Republican Debate. Not well wired in the city, where I was, I have had to get a feel from it from written articles. General consensus, Marco Rubio won and CNBC, the platform for the debate, lost. The debaters turned the table on the moderators, putting them in their place. Trump wasn’t as Trumpish and Jeb Bush was still Jeb Bush.

Trump is genuinely surprised to find himself trailing Ben Carson in Iowa. Perhaps the Donald will learn a bit of humility.

China has revoked the “one child” only policy though most are indicating they won’t have more than one child. It’s too expensive in time and money now. More and more couples are choosing to remain childless. China will begin to look like Japan, with an aging population. Hard to fathom…

As I finish writing my letters, I find myself pondering the state of the world, working to grasp it. I don’t always get it, usually not at all. The complexity of the politics in the Middle East are so knotted that it is probable that they may never get undone. It will take an Alexander the Great to undo this Gordian knot. He didn’t undo it; he cut through it with his sword.

Tags: Alexander the Great, Ben Carson, China, Donald Trump, European Refugee Crisis, GOP Debate, Gordian Knot, Halloween, Hudson River Valley, Jeb Bush, John Kerry, Marco Rubio, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Obama, One child policy, Saudi Arabia, Syria, The Donald

This entry was posted on October 30, 2015 at 9:48 pm and is filed under European Refugee Crisis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.