As I ride south on the train, white caps lap at the island which hold the ruins of Bannerman’s Castle, a building designed in the 19th Century to look like a medieval European fortress, purposed for holding ammunition and which began its slide to ruin when the ammunition blew the building up.
It’s one of the sites on the journey down into the city, where I am going today for a doctor’s appointment, a lunch and afternoon drinks with my friend, Ann Frisbee Naymie, in from Vancouver, British Columbia. Back in the day, we worked together at A&E in Los Angeles before life took her north of the border.
Across from me now is the citadel of West Point, the redoubt of American military might. The Catskills are covered in the verdant green of spring and the sun is attempting to break through the clouds which have hovered over us for several days now.
Riding in the café car on a train that has no café, people sit at the tables working; Stephen sleeps and there is a quiet. Most of us in here know each other: we are Empire Regulars, folks who ride this line enough that we are on the email list which informs us of all train developments. It’s been busy this past week as Amtrak is planning repair work on several tunnels in Penn, which may result in some trains going in and out of Grand Central. Whatever happens, it will be messy.
Messy, too, is the life politic. Some Republican Senators seem to be backing away from Mr. Trump, alarmed by his “inconsistencies,” a few shocked by his weekend threats to fired FBI Director Comey that he should hope there were no “tapes” of their conversations.
Republicans still support him though his overall ratings remain low, 39% in a WSJ/NBC poll, not low enough for mass defection but low enough for wariness.
A friend in California, a Trump supporter, is convinced Trump has a plan. This presidency seems improvisational and some improvisations go well and others…
If we didn’t know the definition of ransomware before the weekend, we are likely to know it now as hundreds of thousands of computers around the world have been infected with the “Wanna Cry” virus, locking them down until a ransom in bitcoin has been paid or a workaround is found. China is a mess today because of it; their use of pirated software making them especially vulnerable. Britain’s National Health took a blow as did the German national rail company.
That pudgy, pouty, unpredictable little man who is North Korea’s dictator, fired a rocket into the Sea of Japan, ending in the water not terribly far from Vladivostok. I doubt Tsar Vladimir is amused. But who knows? It may serve his purpose to look away.
And President Xi of China is finding that North Korea is more of a headache than he’d like these days, as he announces a new “Silk Road” to knit together some 60 countries with hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure investments.
We are gliding through the stretch of towns that line the Hudson, bedroom communities, passing by Metro North stations, all of it testifying to the hum and thrum of New York City, not far away now.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 05 24 2017 Where is Robin Hood when you need him?
May 25, 2017This morning one of my guests on the radio show was Tadd Mann, who is an astrologer and, in these parts, is THE astrologer.
He has been a guest at the cottage several times, including the last beautiful night of last year; the next day the damp and dark fell upon us but that night was a moment out of eternity.
He told me that among his skills are those of feng shui, the Chinese art of placement, and that he had just returned from advising some people on the best places to build on their new property.
His belief is that the cottage is so coddled in peace because of its feng shui; whether consciously or not the house was built in the perfect spot on the land, the creek flows correctly, all is good by the rules of the art.
Every time I walk in the door, I feel the pressure in my body fall. And I need the cottage’s coddling sorely these days.
It feels like I am living in the time of King Richard, off to the Crusades, and Prince John is the keeper of the kingdom. Prince John, with the Sheriff of Nottingham, is raping the land [and the maidens] while the King is away.
Trump is Prince John and someone is the Sheriff [there are many candidates for that role in this administration].
It feels we are living through an interregnum. The real king will return someday.
And I am feeling much of this because Trump’s budget has been revealed and it seemed to be a steal from the poor and give to the rich kind of budget. It is an outrageous plan for America and avoids so much we need to be worried about and hurts, deeply, many of the people who voted for him.
It is outrageous.
The policies being put forward by this administration are mind boggling. Seriously mind boggling.
Everything needs to be fixed and it doesn’t need to be destroyed. The ACA was flawed. So, fix it. Medicare was flawed and people worked to fix it. There isn’t anything that can’t be improved and throwing something away isn’t always the best way of fixing.
The CBO analysis of the Republican AHCA has come out, revealed to be more harmful than the first version.
May the Senate stand strong. On Health Care. On this cockamamie budget.
If you have been reading me, you know I take breaks from all of this because I can’t take it. Last week one day, I went through the wormhole and surfaced hours later, dazed, and feeling like I needed a good, long, hot shower with copious amounts of soap.
The New York Post, the mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch, is reporting that our Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, did not reveal meetings with Russians in forms he filled out. Nor did Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, reveal meetings with Russians he had had when he applied for security clearance.
Sessions says he didn’t think he needed to because he met them as part of his Senatorial responsibilities. Gosh.
The liberal press will be all over this. What I find interesting is that the Post is all over this. The New York Post. The effing NY Post, the most conservative paper in New York, generally the excuser of all Republican foibles. Is this the work of James and Lachlan, not fans of Trump? Or is it that Rupert smells blood in the water and wants to be on the right side of the story?
All of this, and I mean all of this, is so extraordinary it boggles the mind. Apparently my word for the day.
Which is why I am so glad I can return to my cottage, feng shui perfect, listen to jazz, have a martini or two, and center myself in the earth and realize that there are some things I can do and many things I cannot.
It is my obligation to be aware and to comment.
And it is my obligation to myself to center myself in the universe to survive all this, all of which feels like some dystopian novel I am living through and it is not a novel: it is reality.
So, go be good to yourselves and don’t forget we need to get beyond the interregnum. The King will return.
Tags:AHCA, Astrology, CBO, Donald Trump, Feng Shui, James Murdoch, King Richard, Lachlan Murdoch, NY Post, Prince John, Rupert Murdoch, Sheriff of Nottingham, Tadd Mann, Trump's Budget, Winston Churchill
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