Letter from the Vineyard
02 02 2020, a palindrome not to happen again until 03 03 3030,
a thousand years away
As I write this, the process to acquit Trump has mostly succeeded.
Cue: Gotterdammerung.
Our political lunacy and distress are impossible to escape, even though I make every effort to keep it as much at bay as I can. It infects and infests my Facebook feed; most people I know are ardently anti-Trump, so I see post after post ripping at him, which I am sure gives some people relief though they are mostly preaching to the choir.
Doing my best to slide by that constant stridency, I love to see photos of my favorite Amtrak conductor, Loretta, celebrating her life and the amazing island pictures of Michael Blanchard, capturing magical Vineyard moments [really, do look up his work here.]
I love to see photos of my friends’ children and grandchildren, those are the things I feel makes Facebook delightful but when I do use it, there is a part of me feeling just a little slimy, knowing Mark Zuckerberg is living out the adult version of himself from the film “The Social Network.” His company could become a force for global good; didn’t he herald that once upon a long time ago?
It serves a purpose and from these eyes which have seen the digital revolution, it has work to do to be its full potential and I wish it would get about it.
The founding mantra of Google was: Do no evil. They might like to think about that a bit more often.
Ah, it was nice to rant a little.
That is what most people I know on Facebook do, rant a little [or a lot] though I wish folks would rant less and do more. The ranting comes from not knowing what to do; ranting helps people feel they have done something, that they are not powerless.
A sense of powerlessness raised Trump up, a sense of powerlessness may take him down.
What concrete things we can do feels elusive and contributes to this malaise, an illness pulling us in over the last half century, a thing begun, not with Trump but long ago, perhaps with Vietnam.
Lamar Alexander explained his vote to not hear witnesses this way: he didn’t want to throw gasoline on the cultural wars. Ah, kicking the ball down the court, a thing we have become very good at doing…
How did it all get this way?
Solomon I am not, though I am not sure Solomon was as wise as we think he was, though certainly clever where the baby was concerned. He had moments of regal hubris; my friends who rant on Facebook are, not without reason, concerned the current ship of state is captained and crewed by men who know only hubris as their default position.
As a nation we are shaken by the death a week ago of Kobe Bryant, a very human man who shown like a star, fell from the sky, had feet of clay, acknowledged that, at least a bit, appeared working at making the world a little better, in his own basketball way.
Not a sports fan, I was still rattled by the flaming departure of someone who was so alive his smile could light up Staples Arena.
Coronavirus, not having anything to do with Corona Beer [seriously, some people believed that], is a fluttering angel of death over the world; we wait to know how bad it will be.
It has been a momentous week and in the velocity of life, it is comforting, at this minute, to be curled up in the winter quiet of the island, to be able to momentarily close my eyes and ears to the madness, simply listen, as I do now, to jazz [Billie Holiday], read good books [currently “The Ship of Dreams” about the sinking of Titanic and the end of the Edwardian era], eat good food, sip a nice wine now and again – and breathe, praying I will not actually have to hear Gotterdammerung.
Letter from the Vineyard 
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