Archive for the ‘9/11’ Category
September 15, 2017
It’s early on Friday morning and I am cruising down to the city today to have lunch with James Green, my former CEO from Sabela Media. It’s sale to 24/7 is what resulted in my moving to New York and ultimately in my being on this train, on my way to see him.
When I woke this morning, the cottage was being pelted by heavy rain and by the time I reached the train station the sun had broken through and there is the promise of a lovely day in front of me.
I will probably not linger in the city as I will be back again next Monday and Wednesday and today have a lot of cleaning up to do.
Cleaning up is what my friends on Saba are doing, my sister and brother-in-law in Florida, people in Georgia and South Caroline and the Keys and Cuba; everywhere touched by the wrath of Irma, following hard on the heels of Harvey, thinking of that just after texting my friend in Houston who missed Harvey and has now returned.
Figuring out what to do about the pudgy, pugnacious, paranoid, peculiar, peevish, perturbed, peculiar, pesky, piggish, perverse, pompous, potbellied, preposterous little dictator Kim Jong-Un in North Korea is becoming ever more problematic. While I slept, he shot another missile across Japan, after the U.N. passed more sanctions against him.
Distressing, horrible and disturbing is that another bomb went off in the London subway, eighteen have been injured. Thankfully none of them seriously. Something went wrong and it apparently didn’t fully detonate. Thank God.
Our Tweeter in Chief, lectured the Brits and used the incident to appeal for a broader travel ban and tighter internet controls. I didn’t see any condolences; might have missed them. I hope they were sent.
They weren’t sent after the earthquake in Mexico that killed a hundred; that has resulted in increasing the stress in our already stressed relations with that country. It’s a pretty deep and treacherous arroyo.
Out is space, the Cassini spacecraft has burned up in the rings of Saturn after discovering six new moons and many other discoveries, including subsurface oceans on Enceladus. Mysteries to be solved, discovered by a mission that some scientists have worked on for nearly three decades. At the end, they hugged, applauded and cried.
Earlier today I posted this quote on Facebook:
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
― Edgar D. Mitchell about looking at the earth from the moon…
And that’s what I want to say to Kim Jong-Un and the rest of the politicians. Look at that you sons of bitches! Look at that!
Tags:Cassini, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Edgar Mithchell, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, James Green, Kim Jong - Un, London Tube bombing, Mexican Earthquake, Saba, Sabela Media
Posted in 9/11, Civil Rights, Claverack, Earthquakes, Entertainment, Hollywood, Hygge, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commnentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 12, 2017
Living disjointedly in time, apparently, I woke up thinking yesterday was September 10th and, as I read the morning paper, realized I was out of step with time. Yesterday was the sixteenth anniversary of 9/11 and I had a deep heaviness fall on me as I listened to a young woman on NPR who had been born after that day and for whom it is an event heard about in history classes, not something she can return to in her mind as so many of us can, particularly if you were in New York City, Washington, or Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
It’s not often I go there in my mind and today, for the first time, I haven’t felt an emotional ouch of the kind I have every other year. Much of that is that I am monitoring Irma as friends and family are enduring her as she moves up the peninsula. My sister and brother-in-law are without power but seem okay while I have friends not yet heard from in Jacksonville which is suffering “historic” flooding.
Yesterday was not dissimilar to that day sixteen years ago; bright sun, hardly a cloud in the sky, warm, waking on a day that seemed God had made to put smiles on our faces.
So, it is I ended my day with a moment of silence, thinking on the thousands that died that day and all the many, many thousands more that have died since in the ripple of effects of 9/11.
For perhaps the eighth or ninth time, I re-read the last few pages of “Call Me by Your Name,” a novel by Andre Aciman, a brilliant and, for me, painful read. It is the story of seventeen-year-old Elio, son of a professor, living on the Italian Riviera who has an affair with Oliver, a twenty-five-year-old graduate assistant to his father.
Andre Aciman’s writing is so exquisite it is hard for anyone who works with words to read because that kind of beauty is so hard to achieve and I know I will never achieve that kind of beauty in my own work.
It was also hard for me to read because during my 17th year I had my own Oliver, though we never consummated our affair. On a sunny, spectacular Minnesota fall day I walked into my first Spanish class of my freshman year and there was Marvin, my T.A., a man slightly taller than I, exotically handsome. He looked Latin, as if he walked out of Andean village.
He was from Queens, who had been in the Peace Corps in Chile. As I came into the room, he greeted me with “Hola, rubio!” “Blonde one” and that is what he called me during the year. And I am not sure how it was I became friends with Marvin but I did as well as his two closest friends, Maryam and Caroline.
We had dinner together at the old Nankin restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, a palace of Chinese deco and good food. Marvin and I talked through the night on many nights, wrapping each other in words when we probably wanted to wrap our arms around each other. Maryam lived in Mexico when she was not in school and was addicted to Coca-Cola and we made a hysterical search for a real coke one winter night, tearing around in my Acapulco Blue Mustang. Place after place served Pepsi and that was no alternative for a Maryam in need of a fix.
Early on, Caroline and I sat drinking coffee in Coffman Union and she suddenly looked at me and said: why am I telling all of this to a seventeen-year old? But we told most things to each other and I loved them all and Marvin most of all.
Not seducing me was his way of loving me. And I remember the last summer, drinking Cuba Libres and hearing how he was not coming back to work on his Doctorate but leaving for New York to become a rent boy, which shocked the other three of us.
He left one day, leaving me with a sadness that still can be called up in my heart. Caroline went on to more grad school; Maryam back to Mexico and that magical year slipped into the wake of my days, coming back to bittersweet life as I read the story of Elio and Oliver, remembering a time when I had an Oliver.
Tags:9/11 Anniversary, Andre Aciman, Call me by your name, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, General, Media, Political, Politics
Posted in 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Daesh, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hudson Pride, Iran, IS, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Social Commnentary, Taliban, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 2, 2016
It is twilight outside the windows; classical music plays, a gentle piano sonata. In the trail of grey days that we have left in our time wake, the leaves have begun to change outside. Most are still green but yellow branches now sway with the green in the twilight wind.
It is a quiet, magical moment here in the cottage. Marcel lays sleeping on the couch, tired after taking me on a tour of his domain across the street. I am a bit tired too, for no great reason. Waking at a reasonable hour, I did some early morning work, showered and went off to church.
Going home, I briefly walked Marcel and went off to the gym and from there to the Red Dot for my normal Sunday brunch, visiting with all the folks I know who also frequent there.
While sitting at the Dot, I read the NY Times on the phone and perused my emails.
The world was rocked today that Trump in 1995 claimed a loss of nearly a billion dollars. It shielded him from many taxes for the next eighteen years. It was legal and staggering at the same time. A billion dollars in losses in one year? In 1995?
Badly managed businesses provided that loss, especially the catastrophe of his Atlantic City Casinos. And it seems to me that those catastrophes kept happening over the decades.
The returns were mailed to the NY Times anonymously with a return address of Trump Tower. His campaign called the NY Times an arm of the Clinton campaign.
In another report today, a commentator reminded us that several weeks after the death of Princess Diana, Trump was on Howard Stern’s program declaring he thought he could have “nailed” the Princess. He was apparently between wives and sent Princess Diana mountains of flowers. A few years ago, a woman who had been close to Diana said that she felt creeped out by them and a bit like she was being stalked by the American billionaire.
Barely cold in her grave, he was boasting he could have “nailed” her. How gallant!
How disgusting.
A person very close to me sent me an email, asking me to disseminate it widely. It was in support of Trump. Having known this woman for eons, I wondered how she possible could be thinking I would do anything to support Trump? Perhaps she was just tweaking me, even though she knows I know she will vote for Trump.
Columbia has been at war for over fifty years with the rebellious FARC. A peace deal was negotiated and put to a national referendum. It appears to have been voted down, leaving all of us to wonder if Columbia is to face another fifty years of internal war?
My sister lives in central Florida and has been wondering if Matthew [spelled with two t’s} was going to land upon them but it appears it will weaken once it has scoured Haiti, a country that can’t seem to get a break.
Another young black man was shot in Los Angeles and activists are calling for transparency.
There is no transparency or mercy, it seems, in Aleppo. The Syrian government of Assad, supported by Russia, are pummeling Aleppo into submission, apparently deliberately targeting the resources they have to handle the bombings: hospitals. The healing capacity of the city has been halved.
And where is the boy? Where is the boy?
We, the US, have been warned by Russia to not target the Damascus government.
We are living on this island Earth, not really paying attention to the tectonic shifts in the eco-system while we kill each other all over the place.
It is now totally dark outside but it is not totally dark in my soul. When I witness what is happening in the world, I also remember that for every dire act there is an act of kindness, of balance, of work to make this place, this planet, a better place.
It is why I still go to church.
Tags:Aleppo, Assad, church, Columbia, FARC, Hillary Clinton, Howard Stern, Islam, Lionel White, Los Angeles shooting, Marcel, Media, New York Times, Politics, Princess Diana, Red Dot, technology, this island earth, Trump, Trump tax claim
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Daesh, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Homelessness, Hudson New York, Income Inequality, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Syria, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
October 1, 2016
Something like sixteen or seventeen years ago, my friends, Medora Heilbron and Meryl Marshall-Daniels, began having weekly phone calls to shore each other up as we were all in transition points in our careers.
That wonderful custom has continued to this day. Almost every week, except when one of us is traveling, we have had calls, sharing the highs and lows, the concerns, the fears, the triumphs of our personal and professional lives.
Today, we had one of those calls. When it was my turn to comment on my state of affairs, I burst out with, “I am verklempt!”
Yesterday evening, an email that should have come in on a project I am up for did not come as promised and, for reasons that are hard to explain, released what Winston Churchill called, “the black dog.” Discouragement and depression. I woke at three in the morning and read for three hours before falling back into a fitful sleep.
It has been amazing to me the number of times in the last couple of years that I have awakened with a sense of happiness. Today, it was all I could do to speak my usual morning affirmations.
After our phone call, always good for the spirits, I made a decision to do NOTHING today but work on my physic wounds and get back my equilibrium. Three loads of laundry and tearing recipes out of the newest issue of “Food & Wine” was as ambitious as I got.
The day matched my mood; grey, hostile, chill and rainy. Marcel, the dog I am caring for, and I curled up on the couch. He napped, I read.
Now that the day has slipped into evening, I have to say “the black dog” and I seem to be getting distance from each other. Largely because of the wonderful support group that is our weekly call. Together we have laughed and cried.
It wasn’t until late in the afternoon when my spirits were beginning to lift that I even looked at the news of the day. The sound of uplifting jazz plays in the background. Happier than I have been all day, I am sipping a martini and typing. Getting back to the happy Mat.
What did make me happy today was that Alabama’s Chief Justice, Roy Moore, was suspended for the rest of his term over his urging state officials to refuse to grant marriage licenses to same sex couples. Interestingly, this is not the first time he has been kicked out of being Chief Justice. Last time was his refusal to take down a statue of the Ten Commandments.
And I was both sad and happy that Rosetta, the first spacecraft to orbit a comet, did a belly flop onto the comet’s surface and went silent, leaving behind reams of data for scientists to parse. He/it/she was a plucky fellow. What do you call a spacecraft anyway?
Elon Musk wants to send people to Mars. He is thinking of a million or so colonists over the next fifty to a hundred years. He has envisioned a rocket to take them there. And they should be prepared to die, he said. It made me think of the first colonists who came from Europe to the Americas. They had a hard time too.
The thought excites me. More than likely, I will be gone by the time there is a first rocket to go but if I were here, I would volunteer. Wow, what an adventure…
The New World captured the imagination of the Old World and millions upon millions poured into North and South America, looking for better lives, something different.
My father’s family came from Germany. My mother’s from Sweden. We are a nation of immigrants and we always seem to forget that. I am not sure how we manage to forget that but we do.
Growing up Catholic in Minnesota was nothing like growing up Catholic somewhere else as I have learned in conversations with friends over the years. My good friend Bill told me once that he wouldn’t have been allowed to know me where he grew up in rural Missouri.
So I look forward to a time when we go out and populate the planets and then the stars. I think it’s in our blood to do that.
Tags:Alabama, Elon Musk, General, Jazz, Marcel, Mars, Mars colonization, Media, Medora Heilbron, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, Rosetta, Roy Moore, technology, The Black Dog, Verklempt, Winston Churchill
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 30, 2016
As I have been sitting here, listening to “Smooth Jazz” twilight has become almost night. The last glimmerings of the silvery light are slipping away.
This week I have been dog sitting Marcel, Lionel and Pierre’s poodle, who will soon turn sixteen. Every night, he takes me for a walk. We leave my cottage and he marches me over to his house, across the street from mine and takes me for a tour of his yard. He goes to the front door and looks at me uncomprehendingly when I do not let him in.
He is reluctant to leave once he is on his home territory; actually, he fights me. He doesn’t want to come back to my house but eventually he realizes that he is not going home tonight and walks with me back to my place.
He is very smart, is little Mr. Marcel. And sweet. And I am enjoying his company right now though I realize my own time for pets is past. I still come and go too much to give any pet like Marcel a real home. And I am single. Were there a partner, it would be easier.
There are soft sounds from woodland creatures that filter into my time here at the laptop, soft sounds from the night outside.
It is, this moment, a soft and gentle world that seems unconnected with all that is happening beyond me. I feel, here, encapsulated, as if the outside world did not exist.
But it does.
The Syrians under Assad and their Russian allies have been brutally pulverizing Aleppo. It has only become worse since the last time I wrote. It is the kind of brutality we have not seen for a long time. And, as I said before, I wonder about the poor boy in the ambulance. Has he survived this assault? I wonder about that day and night. I am haunted by wanting to know.
Here, at home, there was a horrific crash of a New Jersey Transit Train at Hoboken. One person is dead. 100 are injured, some seriously. I texted my friend Mary Dickey to check on her. She had changed her plans today and did not take the train into New York City. Just as something had diverted her the morning of 9/11 or she would have been under the Towers when one of the planes hit.
Congress overturned Obama’s veto of a law that would allow 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. Personally, I think it was a political move that will have unintended consequence. The Saudis are rethinking their alliance with us and it opens the door for a lot of problems we don’t want to have. Like everyone in Iraq suing us for our “meddling.”
Not quite knowing how to parse this but right now there are reports that Trump may have violated the embargo that was in place during the 1990’s with Cuba. If true, it will wound him with Cuban Americans in Florida, which is essential in his path to the Presidency.
Trump has had both a good year and a bad year. He is the Republican nominee for President, a reality no one thought possible six months ago. His net worth, according to Forbes, has dropped by $800 million this last year but it still leaves him with 3.7 billion dollars, according to the magazine. Forbes is generally thought of as a conservative publication.
Samsung, the company of exploding Galaxy Note 7s, has a new problem. Its washing machines are also exploding. So glad I did not choose to get a Samsung gas stove when I bought new appliances for my kitchen.
It’s a brand in trouble. Big trouble.
We were facing a government shutdown tomorrow but it has been avoided. The government is funded until December 9th, after the elections. Zika funding was approved to the tune of $1.1 billion.
It is a quiet evening here. I have looked into the world and now I am going to take myself to bed, watch a little video and go to sleep, happy. The way I woke this morning.
Tags:Assad, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Cuba, Forbes, General, Google, Hoboken Crash, Lionel White, Marcel, New Jersey Transit Train, Obama, Pierre Font, Putin, Russia, Samsung explosions, Samsung washing machines, Saudi Arabia, Syria, technology, Trump, Zika
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 9, 2016
Three days of grey clouds portended but did not produce rain. Tonight, after seeing Woody Allen’s “Café Society,” I left the theater to be greeted by a soft rain falling, driving home over glistening roads.
Mixed reports had me slightly ambivalent about seeing “Café Society.” Some said it was good. Some said it wasn’t. One wag commented, “It isn’t the worst Woody Allen film.” No, it definitely wasn’t. It wasn’t “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan” or “Bullets Over Broadway.” It was a slightly overlong, mostly charming view of a family in the late 1930’s in New York and Hollywood. As usual, there was a pantheon of stars giving good performances including Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carrell, Blake Lively [the first time I have liked her], Parker Posey, Corey Stoll and Kristen Stewart.
Mostly it looked beautiful and poignant and timeless and full of love gone round the wrong corner.
It was the second day of class and we’re all still alive and at least all my students seemed moderately engaged, except, perhaps, for the young woman who seemed to be fighting off falling asleep. When I did a survey, all but three of my students are working jobs as well as attending school. Some of them, many of them, have full time jobs as well as being full time students. No wonder they sometimes yawn.
Out there in the world, beyond my quiet Creekside world, the strident tone of politics continues.
Last night, Matt Lauer moderated interviews, not at the same time, of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, supposedly about their views on issues related to national security.
Lauer, who, once upon a time I liked, devoted a third of Clinton’s half-hour to her email server issues. Then, according to the news reports, didn’t handle the rest of the interview well.
It is the general consensus of the press that Lauer screwed up; was unprepared and unable to stand up to Donald Trump when he repeated he had been against the Iraq War when, in fact, he is on record of supporting it in 2002.
Alas, no TODAY for me going forward. Shame on NBC for blowing this opportunity. Shame on Matt Lauer for blowing his opportunity.
Depending on who you listen to, Trump is beating Clinton or Clinton is beating Trump. The polls are rocky right now. There are only 60 or 61 days left to the election. While I can’t conceive of it, there is a possibility Donald Trump will be President.
Libertarian Presidential nominee Gary Johnson, who has been getting close enough in the polls that he might be included in the debates, made a major gaffe the other day when he had no knowledge of Aleppo. “What is Aleppo?”
Aleppo is the epicenter of the catastrophe that is Syria, where it has been reported Assad’s forces used chlorine gas on citizens. There are frightful images of Syrian civilians needing oxygen. Chlorine gas was the scourge of the WWI and now it is back in Syria.
In news of the future, Google and Chipotle are experimenting at UVA with drone delivery of burritos. Buzzing in the sky will become normal…
In other news from the present, Apple’s stock was down 3% today after the announcement of the iPhone 7. The no jack situation has many people [and investors] spooked. Me too. My iPhone 5s will not connect, for whatever reason, wirelessly with my speakers. Everything else, easy peasy, but not from my phone. And, in the end, I might succumb to the iPhone 7 Plus but might end up choosing the iPhone 6 Plus because it has a jack. I have been waiting for the iPhone 7 and feel just a little cheated. Much thought ahead.
Fifteen years ago tomorrow, my now ex-partner and I made an offer on the cottage, from where I write this. Which means that two days later we will have the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11.
It is an anniversary that always brings me back to my experience of horror on a scale I had never known. It takes me to the corner of West Broadway and Spring Street, looking at the Towers burning and feeling stunned and knowing at that moment there was nowhere to turn. We had just turned a page in history.
Tags:9/11, Aleppo, Blake Lively, Cafe Society, Chlorine Gas, Claverack, Columbia Greene Community College, Corey Stoll, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, iPhone 7, iPhone7, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matt Lauer, New York, Parker Posey, Steve Carrell, The Donald, TODAY, Woody Allen
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Social Commentary, Syria, Television, Trump, Uncategorized, World War I commentary | Leave a Comment »
August 24, 2016
It is later in the evening than I normally write; I did a roundtrip to the city today. There were a couple of meetings and then I turned around and returned to the cottage. It is dark. I have turned on the floodlights so I can see the creek glitter with their light. The trees are silhouetted by the light, green and verdant. Nights like this are ones I love, with the floodlights giving an eerie beauty to what I see in the day.
Earlier today I had a long and good conversation with Sarah, who is my oldest friend. We have known each other since we were three and except for one brief period have been a close part of each other’s lives. She is one of the most loving and caring women I have known in my life and has always been that way.
In 7th grade, when Sister Jeron knocked me on the back of the head with a Gregorian Hymnal, humiliating me in front of our class, Sarah turned up that evening with one of her brothers and we went sledding down the hill by our house. She knew I was hurting and came to help take the hurt away. I remember that night as if it were yesterday.
Since I last wrote not much has changed in the world. Aleppo is still a horror show. Omran, the child in the photo, still haunts my dreams.
There are bombings hither and thither. A Turkish wedding was destroyed by a suicide bomber who may have been no more than fourteen. It was not the only bombing but it seems the most tragic with a child being used as a weapon.
Trump is attempting to moderate his tone and I hope it is too late. Hillary is caught in the crossfire of the Foundation and her emails, which probably will never go away. Even if she wins the Presidency, the Republicans will be chasing those emails and Benghazi into the next century.
The state of our politics this year is deplorable. While discouraged, I remain hopeful that some good will come from all of this. It must.
Out there in the wide world, North Korea has fired a missile from a submarine toward Japan. Provocative as ever, the chubby little dictator is testing the limits of what he can get away with.
Remember the Boko Haram? One of their leaders may have been badly wounded in a Nigerian airstrike. I hope so.
The Iraqis are intent on reclaiming Mosul. More than a million people will be displaced if they do it, according to estimates. More refugees in this horrific war that never ends…
The Brits voted for Brexit and Brexiting are a large number of corporations who are moving their money out of Britain. Not good for Britain who is going to have to do a lot of juggling with this Brexit thing…
It is late. I am distracted.
Long ago and far away, I was friends with the Elsen family. Don Elsen, patriarch of the clan, passed away today. He was 90, lived a good long life. I saw him a year ago. Unable to walk, he managed the world with a motorized wheel chair, mentally sharp as ever.
They were descendants of Germans and when I was with them, they could be screaming at each other and then burst into laughter and hug and hold each other. It was amazing. They were all full of love and Don was one of the most generous souls I have known in this life.
God rest. Keep safe. Be reunited in heaven with your beloved wife, Betty. Your son, Jeffrey, and your brothers who went before you.
May I have such a homecoming someday.
Tags:Aleppo, Benghazi, Boko Haram, Brexit, Claverack, Don Elsen, Donald Trump, Elsen, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Iragis, Iraq, IS, Isis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Mosul, Nigeria, Obama, Omran, Politics, Russia, Sarah Malone, Sister Jeron, Syria, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Afghanistan, Boko Haram, Claverack, Columbia County, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Homelessness, Hudson New York, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Syria, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Taliban, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
August 21, 2016
It is not all that late on a Saturday evening, about 6:45 EDT as I start putting my fingers to the keyboard. When I woke this morning, the sight outside my windows was a patchwork of hues of green, mixed with sunlight, all of it changing with the soft wind blowing this morning. When I touched base with myself as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes I was happy. As I am most days…
The creek is low; we’ve not had enough rain but it still flows. The trees are exquisite in their leafy greenness but just across the creek the tree that has always been the first harbinger of fall has begun its turn.
In a very few weeks that tree will be joined by the others and we will be in the riot of Hudson Valley colors that come with September and October.
The world has not blown itself off its axis today, for which I am grateful.
A devotee of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” I heard the current head of FEMA talk about how they prepare for asteroid strikes and other disasters we don’t generally think of…
And it also made me smile, as it often does, which is why I do my best not to miss it on Saturday mornings. It takes the realities of the news and makes light of them, which we often need to do.
Today, the NY Times had a long article about the complicated finances of Donald Trump and another about the complicated relationship that Hillary Clinton has with the Clinton Foundation. And if there have ever been two more complicated candidates for President, I would like to know. Can’t think of any… Though I am sure there may have been. It just maybe my knowledge of history is not as sharp as it should be.
Anti-Trump activists put up eight statues of Trump, naked. It was called: The Emperor Has No Balls. Which the statue didn’t and had a very small penis as well. The one in Central Park was taken down almost immediately with a very tongue in cheek statement from the Parks Department.
The last time I wrote, I included a picture of a five-year-old child, Omran Daqneesh, who has become the symbol of what has been happening in Aleppo. His brother died today. And I need to keep thinking of what I can do to help.
In the soft and safe place of my cottage, I am hurting at the hurt in the world. I am sure half the civilized world that saw the picture of Omran wanted to rescue him from the world in which he lived. I did.
And we can’t. Though I have to think about the work I can do to help the world in which Omran lives.
Tags:Aleppo, Claverack, Donald Trump, FEMA, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Hudson Valley, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, Omran Daqneesh, The Donald, The Emperor has no balls, Wait, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Columbia County, European Refugee Crisis, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, IS, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Syria, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
August 16, 2016
It has been a grey and gloomy sort of day here in Claverack; at one point the skies opened and torrents of rain slashed down. Mostly, I have curled into my cottage and put nose to grindstone on some volunteer work I am doing for the local community radio station, WGXC. It serves Columbia and Greene Counties and is, I have discovered, always unique, always surprising. It is the voice of this part of the Hudson Valley and I have gone in some months from not even knowing of it to realizing I can’t fathom not having its voice.
Over a hundred volunteers keep it afloat, programming by “civilians,” which cannot help being eclectic. From health and wellness to Broadway tunes to vinyl cuts with programmers from 13 years old to 83 years old, you have quite a mix.
So I am working to help them out and, like a good Catholic, realizing I wasn’t as good over the summer as I should have been, I am working extra hard now.
For fifteen years, I have always been a member of Amtrak Select Plus, which gives me access to their lounges. I am in serious jeopardy of losing it this year and am plotting how to make the points to keep it. And then I think, I am not traveling as much as I was. Should I even worry about this? I probably will find a way. The Acela Club in Penn Station is my “home away from home.”
So it is a Tuesday night. I have made myself a martini and Beatrice, my rapidly growing banana plant, and I are in the dining room, looking over the creek, a scene of grey mixed with incredible green. Classical music plays in the background, moving from the delightful to dirge like.
All this pitter patter about my life is a way of saying I have retreated from the news a bit. These are the dog days of August; the fall is coming upon us. It has been special here at the cottage this week and I have not wanted to disturb the week, the peace. I have gathered friends for get togethers. We have all avoided politics because we are worn out by the never ending campaign of 2016, which has been going on, it seems, since before I was born.
Rudy Giuliani, who was Mayor of New York, when 9/11 happened, said in a speech today that before Obama there were no attacks by terrorists on US soil. He has claimed it was a mistake; he MEANT to say NOT another until Obama. But it has come out badly for him. Excuse me, he lived through it, with me. I was there, listening to him tell us it was going to be devastating. How do you screw up so much, you, Mr. Giuliani, who lived through it with me?
For several minutes, I liked you. Now I don’t. Especially after today. The kind of speech making mistake today makes me wonder if you are holding the thread together, Rudy.
Trump is touting that if he loses the election, it will be because it is rigged. I fear that if he does lose, which I sincerely hope he does, there will be violence in the streets because that is what he is setting his followers up for. And they are not pleasant people, these Trump supporters. They seem nasty, angry [not without reason, which Hillary should speak to] and prone to violence.
I receive emails from my brother-in-law, who is definitely not a Democrat. They are a stultifying drone on how bad Obama is. He has not been all I hoped he’d be but no President ever is and I do believe a hundred years from now, history will be far kinder to him than my brother-in-law.
He was the first man elected President who was not “white.” And that has elicited furor from those who never thought that could happen. I hope he is a bridge to the future because soon, the US will no longer be “white.” It will be the mélange of immigrants of the 20th Century, the Hmong, the Vietnamese [who were vilified in places because they were so hard working], the Asians of all stripes who outstrip “Americans” who don’t want to work harder.
We are an immigrant nation. Hopefully, we always will be. I am a second generation American. I was lucky in my life, being born here, getting the education I did. I was lucky being born in America, the son of people who had been born here because their parents had come here.
Immigration is the story of the US.
Tags:Amtrak, Claverack, Columbia County, Donald Trump, Greene County, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Obama, Putin, Red Dot, Rudy Giuliani, The Donald, WGXC
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
August 12, 2016
The air is hot and heavy, damp and uncomfortable. I watch my creek from the comfort of the cottage; it is southern in its weather oppression and is the definition for languid summer days, of which I have had my share this week. Outside it is now grey and thunder rolls in the distance.
Finishing “The Hotel on Place Vendome,” I am now deeply into a history of the 304 year long reign of the Romanovs, from Michael to Nicholas II, who died with his family in front of a firing squad in 1918 in the Ipatiev House in Yektaringburg. The founder of his dynasty was called to the throne from the Ipatiev Monastery.
I napped this afternoon and have now a slew of errands to do come morning. My printer has died, a new one is needed. Groceries must be shopped for as friends come for dinner tomorrow night, the invitation offered in an effort to bring me out of the summer stupor.
Walking on Cape Cod last weekend, I did not wear the right shoes and have fierce blisters on my heels I am working to heal. Tuesday morning, I could barely walk and have been wearing flip flops all week.
Flip flops, books, a couple of good martinis, not a bad way to spend a summer week.
Trump claimed Obama and Hillary Clinton founded ISIS, now he says it was sarcasm but the reality is that Mr. Trump is on the verge of becoming a parody of himself. It makes me feel hopeful but it is 2016 and anything can yet happen.
The US claims the Head of IS in Afghanistan has been killed and the amount of territory controlled by them in Syria and Iraq is diminishing. Syria is still a hell hole and when I was complaining to myself about my blisters, I stopped myself: I could be in Syria. You have only very first world problems, Mathew.
Digital Media is being subsumed by old media. Companies like Disney and Turner and Hearst are putting hundreds of millions, even billions, into new media companies. As one declines and the other ascends, the ascendants will be owned by the decliners. Old media is putting its fortunes to work. Good moves.
Netflix, definitely a new media company, aired a documentary, “Making a Murderer.” One of the results was that today one of the accused has been ordered freed from prison, largely due to the incompetent actions of his defense attorney. Brendan Dasey has been ordered released in ninety days.
Media attention does bring action.
In a new and heartbreaking report, the CDC has released data about LGB students, indicating they are more likely to be bullied and more likely to consider and attempt suicide than their straight peers.
It is 2016 and still this happens. I was so lucky when I was their age. I wasn’t bullied in high school and I still marvel at that. I considered suicide but that had much more to do with my complicated family life than my sexuality.
A good article about the situation can be found here:
http://www.bustle.com/articles/178365-gay-high-schoolers-experience-rape-bullying-suicide-at-much-higher-rates-heartbreaking-cdc-report-finds
As I sit here, looking out at my creek, I celebrate how lucky I was, particularly in high school but also in college. This is a global problem, not just an American problem.
How lucky was I? I have gotten through life mostly not harassed by my sexuality. Only two times do I remember anything. Once early on in Minneapolis, a casual and not harsh moment, and once here in Hudson, when two teenagers called my ex-partner and I “fags.” Now, same sex couples walk down the street in Hudson and no one bothers them. Twice in a lifetime… How lucky am I?
It’s time to wind down and I want to introduce you to Beatrice, my banana plant. Beatrice came into my life when I briefly dated Raj, a psychotherapist of Indian extraction by way of Trinidad, who insisted I buy a banana plant. I did and now Beatrice has become huge and may one day well take over my home.
Meet Beatrice:
Tags:Cape Cod, CDC, Claverack, Digital media, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hotel on Place Vendome, Hudson, Ipatiev, IS, Isis, LGBT, Making a Murderer, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Netflix, New York, Obama, Romanovs, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Syria, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 09 15 2017 Thoughts from a train…
September 15, 2017It’s early on Friday morning and I am cruising down to the city today to have lunch with James Green, my former CEO from Sabela Media. It’s sale to 24/7 is what resulted in my moving to New York and ultimately in my being on this train, on my way to see him.
When I woke this morning, the cottage was being pelted by heavy rain and by the time I reached the train station the sun had broken through and there is the promise of a lovely day in front of me.
I will probably not linger in the city as I will be back again next Monday and Wednesday and today have a lot of cleaning up to do.
Cleaning up is what my friends on Saba are doing, my sister and brother-in-law in Florida, people in Georgia and South Caroline and the Keys and Cuba; everywhere touched by the wrath of Irma, following hard on the heels of Harvey, thinking of that just after texting my friend in Houston who missed Harvey and has now returned.
Figuring out what to do about the pudgy, pugnacious, paranoid, peculiar, peevish, perturbed, peculiar, pesky, piggish, perverse, pompous, potbellied, preposterous little dictator Kim Jong-Un in North Korea is becoming ever more problematic. While I slept, he shot another missile across Japan, after the U.N. passed more sanctions against him.
Distressing, horrible and disturbing is that another bomb went off in the London subway, eighteen have been injured. Thankfully none of them seriously. Something went wrong and it apparently didn’t fully detonate. Thank God.
Our Tweeter in Chief, lectured the Brits and used the incident to appeal for a broader travel ban and tighter internet controls. I didn’t see any condolences; might have missed them. I hope they were sent.
They weren’t sent after the earthquake in Mexico that killed a hundred; that has resulted in increasing the stress in our already stressed relations with that country. It’s a pretty deep and treacherous arroyo.
Out is space, the Cassini spacecraft has burned up in the rings of Saturn after discovering six new moons and many other discoveries, including subsurface oceans on Enceladus. Mysteries to be solved, discovered by a mission that some scientists have worked on for nearly three decades. At the end, they hugged, applauded and cried.
Earlier today I posted this quote on Facebook:
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
― Edgar D. Mitchell about looking at the earth from the moon…
And that’s what I want to say to Kim Jong-Un and the rest of the politicians. Look at that you sons of bitches! Look at that!
Tags:Cassini, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Edgar Mithchell, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, James Green, Kim Jong - Un, London Tube bombing, Mexican Earthquake, Saba, Sabela Media
Posted in 9/11, Civil Rights, Claverack, Earthquakes, Entertainment, Hollywood, Hygge, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commnentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »