Archive for the ‘Boko Haram’ Category

Letter From Claverack, New York 08 23 2016 Generous souls…

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:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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 »

Letter From New York 05 20 2016 Thoughts from yesterday and today…

May 20, 2016

It is a bit hazy as I rumble south, down the river, toward the city.  I am having dinner tonight with my good friends Annette and David Fox.  About once a quarter, we get together, order Indian from Indus Valley near their West End Avenue apartment and visit, over wine and an Indian dinner.

All day my mind has wandered back to the Egypt Air flight that crashed on its way from Paris to Cairo, in the Mediterranean off Crete.  My phone screen was clustered with updates when I awoke this morning. 

It is appearing that the plane’s crash is likely the result of terrorism though nothing can be known until the plane’s debris is studied.  Why did it make wild turns just before it disappeared?  What must have the passengers been experiencing?  I shudder to think.  It’s one thing to be there one moment and another not but what must have been in their minds as the plane made a 360 degree rotation?

Chaos erupted on the floor of the House today over a bill that would have denied contracts to Federal contractors if they discriminated against LGBT individuals.  It was lost by one vote and reporters heard jeers and shouts from the House floor.  Championed by Representative Sean Maloney, Democrat of New York in a district just south of me.  Moments before the vote, the measure had 217 votes and House Leader McCarthy twisted Republican arms to change their vote as the presiding officer kept the vote open longer than is normal.

Ah, politics…  All the remaining candidates, Trump, Sanders and Clinton hurled invectives and innuendoes today, as they do every day.

To put it kindly, Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump have been “at odds.”  They had a sit down at Trump Tower and then another on Megyn Kelly’s premiere of her new interview show as she pursues becoming the next Barbara Walters.  It was roundly panned and accusations flew that she played easy with her former adversary.

A week ago the legendary CBS reporter, Morley Safer, retired.  A long planned special tribute to him aired on “Sixty Minutes” this past Sunday.  Today, he died.  He covered the world, from war to art, with panache and precision, exuding a style that is hard to find, particularly now.

The wonderful Hubble Telescope, hovering in space for twenty-five years now, has sent home spectacular views of Mars which is swinging in and will be as close as it gets to earth on Sunday, May 22nd.  From these photos we have learned there were mega-tsunamis on Mars in the long ago.  With luck, it will continue working at least until 2020 or, perhaps, a little longer.

This week,  a Chibok girl, kidnapped two years ago by Boko Haram in Nigeria was freed.  Today, another girl has been rescued, two out of two hundred.  The first one has met with the Nigerian President but it may be hard for any rescued girls to be reintegrated.  The first girl has a Boko Haram “husband” apparently.

In Venezuela, Maduro is cracking down as his regime seems to be cracking up.  Tear gas was fired on a crowd of thousands who were demanding his recall.  Chants of “food, food, food” are being heard in the streets of many cities.  Hospitals are often without power or medicine.  Patients are reported to lie in pools of blood.

Even his fellow leftists are beginning to think him crazy.  One called Maduro “crazy like a goat.” But maybe that’s a compliment?

The train arrived in New York and then I was off to dinner and sleep.  Now it is a beautiful Friday morning in the city, sunlight streaming through the blinds and shortly I’m off to Baltimore to visit friends. 

Yesterday’s drumbeat continues today.  Debris has been found from the Egypt Air flight.  Accepting the inevitable, the Republicans are rallying behind Trump and it will make an interesting fall campaign as Trump and Clinton seemed to be disliked in comparable numbers, meaning no one likes either of them much.

Oklahoma has passed a bill making it a felony to perform an abortion thereby making it virtually impossible to get an abortion in the state.

Israel’s Defense Minister has resigned, accusing Netanyahu of “extremism.”  And if  he continues on the current path, Netanyahu’s government will become the most right wing in Israel’s history.

Now, as it is nearing noon, I need to prepare to leave, with another coffee in my future and some work for WGXC.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in 2016 Election, Boko Haram, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 04 12 2016 Too hard to think about children suicide bombers…

April 13, 2016

It has been a long day; I was up early because I am getting new appliances and the Columbia County Habitat for Humanity was coming early for my old stove.  They came and went and I waited for the new appliances to arrive. 

It all started with my dishwasher finally starting to give up the ghost which proceeded to all new appliances — a new stove, refrigerator, over the stove microwave and, of course, a new dishwasher.

When they arrived, the dishwasher, which started all of this, was the wrong one and so it had to go and the right one finally arrived.  In the meantime, I spent the day preparing for tomorrow’s lecture on magazines for “Media & Society,” the class I teach at Columbia Greene Community College.

Term papers were due last week and I graded them over the weekend, sending three back for revisions as I was working to help them achieve their goals for “good” grades.  One of the students got very upset with me for trying to help her get a better grade.  She had too many other things to do.

Such is the life of a teacher.  It was this way when I taught high school and it is now when I am teaching at a community college.

The good news story of the day is that a 72 year old woman, who was lost in the Arizona wilderness for nine days, was found alive after drinking pond water and eating plants.  She spelled help in twigs, stones and bones and was seen.  Suffering from exposure, she’s in the hospital in fair condition which is pretty good for an elderly lady who had been lost in the wilderness.

Paul Ryan has told the world to count him out.  He is not, repeat NOT, going to be the Republican candidate for President if it comes to a brokered convention. 

That is what Kasich is counting on; a brokered convention that will take him to heart as the only sane person in the party who could conceivably win. 

The Governor of North Carolina is back pedaling on the anti-gay law he signed into law as he is, rightfully so, rocked by the backlash he has received.  Hell hath no fury like corporate CEO’s who don’t agree with what you have done.

And that includes the very important banking community that has moved into North Carolina in recent years.  Deutsche Bank, who was going to build a presence there, has said:  no, not now, not because of this.

It was a year ago that Freddie Gray died in police custody in Baltimore and there is a feeling there that the mindset has changed.  I hope so.  It was one of those shocking moments in American life that leave you gasping.

What I have also learned in the last year is the passionate way people who live in that city have love for that city.  My friends, Lionel and Pierre, moved there the week before the riots and are now huge boosters of the city, passionately engaged there and loving it.

David Gest died in London today.  A successful producer, he married Liza Minnelli and that may be the thing for which he will be forever remembered.  It was a huge affair with Elizabeth Taylor as a Maid of Honor and Michael Jackson as Best Man and in a year they were divorced with all kinds of ugly rumors abounding.  He had been living in York in England for the last few years, far from the madding crowd, regretful for the cosmetic surgery he had, which did not turn out well.

Tonight, I am focussing on lighter things.  It’s the mood I’m in —  who wants to process that Boko Haram is manipulating children into being suicide bombers?

Yuri Milner, a Russian businessman, has joined forces with Stephen Hawking, wanting to send probes about the size of iPhones to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to us.  They need to raise ten billion dollars but it sounds interesting.

I have always been a great proponent of space exploration.  “Ah, but man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a heaven for?”  Robert Browning…

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in 2016 Election, Boko Haram, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Gay, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 03 05 2016 From Churchill to Yemen…

March 6, 2016

Winston Churchill used to say he was chased by the “black dog,” depression.  It chased him his whole life and he ran, mostly successfully, from it his whole life. Sometimes, when the “black dog” felt particularly close, Winston would sometimes go off to Morocco and paint, drink and think and probably write.  He wrote more than Dickens and Shakespeare combined.

He may well have been a manic-depressive.  During the war he was followed around by his personal physician, Lord Moran, who prescribed upper and downers to manage the moods of the great man.

He was black dogged by depression and I was thinking about that last night as I rode home on the train, black dogged myself.  I had gone down to the city yesterday, had a full day of appointments and when I stepped on the train last night I was exhausted and felt the old black dog nipping at my heels.

When I got home, I went to bed almost immediately and fell asleep early watching an episode of “Doc Martin,” about an English doctor only marginally more cranky than I was last night.

When the morning broke, I was my usual sunny self and, while sipping tea, worked on next week’s lectures.  The day was spent on that and the Saturday chores.  Young Nick was here and we did things that needed to be done, mounting a light fixture, cleaning, sorting, rearranging, bringing in wood and dealing with the trash.  The things we do on Saturday.

Going down to the Dot, I welcomed Alana back from three weeks in Costa Rica and then, after an omelet and a Bloody Mary, came home to write my letter, which often is one of the most pleasurable times in the day. 

Turning on the floodlights so the creek is illuminated, I sorted through the last couple of days.

The rise of Trump has been a constant cause for conversation though as I returned home, I discovered Ted Cruz had won the Kansas caucuses and he is at least as frightening to me as Trump.  Both of them seem to me to be wack-a-doodles from some other dimension.  This earns me no points with my conservative friends but it’s true; it’s how I feel.

Caitlin Jenner wants to be Ted Cruz’s “trans ambassador.”  I am not sure he’s interested in having one.

Popular comedian Louis CK has implored his fans not to vote for Trump, likening him to Hitler.  Trump, not necessarily looking to support Louis CK’s view of him, announced he would increase the use of torture if he were President.

“Downtown Abbey” ends tomorrow night.  I have already seen the last episode as I subscribed to the feed through iTunes.  Let’s tip a hat to Alistair Bruce, who was in charge of making sure it was historically accurate.  He did a magnificent job.

A fire is burning in the stove; I’ve rearranged some lights in the house.  I like the effect as I sit here at the dining room table, the creek lit in front of me, jazz playing and my thoughts running.

Four nuns and twelve others were killed in Yemen during an attack.  Gunmen entered the building, handcuffed the victims and then shot them.  It’s not yet clear who carried out the attack.  The Pope has decried it; the nuns were members of the order founded by Mother Theresa.

Boko Haram, the scourge of Nigeria, is suffering from a food crisis.  With all the people who have fled them, no is left to grow crops or herd animals and they are beginning to starve.  Hungry and desperate, they are ruthlessly raiding which, I suspect, will only increase the cycle they have created.

And in my cycle, I am going to sign off for tonight.  I need to be up in the morning, work on my lectures and then to church.  I signed up to do coffee hour on Easter Sunday, not quite realizing that it was a major, major thing and I am now expected to come up with something quite spectacular.  Cookbooks are out.  Recipes are being reconnoitered. 

I have a meeting about this tomorrow at 12:30.  I think I may have over stretched and I will rise to the challenge.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in 2016 Election, Boko Haram, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, depression, Elections, Entertainment, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Nazis, Political Commentary, Pope Francis, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 11 20 15 Another day, another atrocity…

November 20, 2015

Claverack. “A Trick of the Light” Louise Penny. Three Pines. Linda Epperson. Mali. Radisson Blu in Mali. Agatha Christie.  “Murder at Hazelmoor” Paris.  Ca’Mea. Hudson, New York.

Today was a startlingly beautiful day; a perfect early fall day, the sun shining brightly with the temperature scraping near 60 degrees.  The best part is that it is now late November! 

I woke early and watched the sun glitter on the creek while sipping my morning coffee and reading the NY Times on my iPhone.

It has been a good day.  I finished reading “A Trick of the Light,” a Louise Penny murder mystery set in the fictional town of Three Pines in southern Quebec.  There are twelve or thirteen of them.  My friend, Linda Epperson, told me about them some years ago and I have been working my way through them.

When I was in, I think, 3rd grade and was home sick, restless of course, my mother tossed an Agatha Christie at me.  It was “Murder at Hazelmoor.”  It converted me to being a mystery fan and a bit of an Anglophile.  Thanks to my friend Dalton Delan, I am the proud owner of an original edition of the book.

Three Pines is a little village filled with eccentric characters and a disproportionate amount of murders per capita.  What it does remind me of, a bit, is my little town of Claverack without the disproportionate number of murders.

A few years ago the son of the man who owns the house two doors down from me did, apparently, an amazing number of drugs and shot his father and then killed himself.  I was out of town.  The father lived and is still in the house.

But that moment haunts our street, just as all the murders in Three Pines haunt that village.

I am writing on about mysteries because I don’t want to think of the mystery which is the world.

Today’s tragedy was in Mali.  Al Qaeda terrorists burst into the Radisson Blu hotel there and killed, at last count, at least 21, screaming “Allahu akbar” [God is Great, I think] while slitting one man’s throat and rampaging with automatic weapons.

It is over now.  They are counting the dead.  At least one American is gone.  Another day, another tragedy played out.  In Africa, where there have also been all the atrocities from Boko Haram.

Tuesday night, the night before my birthday, my friend Larry took me to dinner at one of our favorite spots, Ca’Mea, great northern Italian cooking.  We talked about Paris; he and his wife, Alicia, had been there not long ago.

He was torn, thinking on one hand he wants to know what is really happening in the world and, on the other hand, not wanting to be overwhelmed by it.

I totally understand.  Sometimes I just want to retreat to my two little acres of land and listen to jazz and watch movies and not think about what is happening out there in the world.

But I can’t.

I care too much.

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Boko Haram, Claverack, Columbia County, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Paris Attacks, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Letter from Claverack 09 13 15 In a time of travail…

September 13, 2015

The sun is setting here in Claverack. It has been a grey day, mostly, with bits of rain here and there. It’s been warm but not hot. The high was at most mid-70’s today. Soon it will be cool and I’ll be lighting fires in the Franklin stove.

As has been the case of late, I had a hard time waking this morning and hit the snooze alarm an annoying number of times but, as it was my personal commitment to go to church today, I pulled myself eventually out of bed and prepped myself and got off to church.

For some reason, I found myself thinking about my Catholic childhood, all of us forced to attend Sunday Mass with our classes, filling the 9:00 service with all our bodies, a Mass generally avoided by any thinking adult. Who would want to go to church with hundreds of school children?

Sister Ann, my 8th grade teacher, announced one day that we would be persecuted because we were Catholics. I remember thinking how strange that sounded. Certainly I didn’t think of myself as being persecuted. I lived in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood and it didn’t seem to me that anyone was persecuting me for being Catholic.

I was born a couple of generations after that had happened.

It came to mind today because Mother Eileen, interim Pastor at Christ Church Episcopal, where I now attend service, talked today in her sermon about those who are suffering around the world because they are Christians.

And, while I am not in those countries, it is real that Christians in Iraq, Syria, and other places are being targeted. There is IS with its rigid and antediluvian interpretation of Islam and there is persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt. Muslim/Christian tensions inflame the African continent.

I thought we were beyond those times but we’re not, not at all.

As I drove to church, I was listening to a program on New England Public Radio that was devastatingly funny in its oral portraits of what Republican candidates are saying regarding constitutionality. It was almost hysterical, except these people are serious. The constitution should be enforced when combating Muslims but shouldn’t be enforced when Kim Davis refuses to uphold the law of the land. The hypocrisy was astounding.

Post church, I went for a drive while I listened to “Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me!,” my favorite NPR program and then I went to the Red Dot and perused a new cookbook I had purchased the other day, realizing that we are slipping into fall and it was time to think about Holiday meals.

While the day was supposed to be cursed with thunderstorms, there were none. A bit of light rain has fallen but nothing more.

It is seven in the evening. The light has almost completely left the sky. The light on the fountain has automatically turned on.

The house is quiet. My world is quiet though I know that far away from me the world is not quiet.

The Saudis are bombing Yemen, inflicting terrible pain upon the civilians. People in the lands controlled by IS are cowering in their homes. The markets of Baghdad are not safe.

All of this seems far away. Today, though, Al Qaeda called for individuals to launch attacks in America. Europe is in turmoil over the refugee situation. 14,000 refugees arrived in Germany today. Austria and Hungary have closed their borders.

They are being overwhelmed.

People are lamenting the refugee situation without looking at the wars that are causing the situation.

These are desperate times. I am not sure what to do except to donate to charities who are attempting to help the massive flow of people, desperate to escape their desperate lives, wanting to flee to someplace where they might not be randomly killed or starved for lack of resources.

I have no answers and am not sure I have the questions. I only know we are in a time of travail.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Boko Haram, Columbia County, European Refugee Crisis, Mat Tombers, Mathew, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary | 3 Comments »

Letter From New York July 02 15 Of debt crises and Presidential Candidates…

July 2, 2015

Well, the grey summer is still holding. Yet another warm but grey day here in New York. I’m getting ready to leave for Baltimore and it looks like it might be on the grey side there too. It wears on me a bit, day after day of grey. It could be winter out the window.

It’s another day without a solution in Greece, a country pretty much shut down until the referendum on Sunday. One reporter there described the situation as “weird.” Hotels are pretty full, the sun is shining there, restaurants are pretty full but the country is running out of money and might have to start issuing IOU’s as early as this month.

On Sunday, the Greeks are voting for a deal that doesn’t even exist anymore as it expired on Tuesday night. That is part of the weirdness. European leaders are saying vote “yes” while the Greek leaders saying: vote “no.” The Greek voters are not sure what they’re voting on. Their government is saying “no” as they think it will give them more leverage in the negotiations with their creditors and the creditors are saying that a “no” means: bye-bye!

Tsipras wants the biggest “no” vote he can get, thinking it will send tremors through Europe. It probably will send tremors but maybe not the kind he wants.

The Boko Haram have killed approximately a hundred people praying at mosques in Nigeria. They target mosques where clerics are too moderate, according to them.

The deadline has passed for the nuclear talks with Iran but everyone is still talking and shuttling between countries to see if a deal can be done. Obama is saying he’ll reject a bad deal and conservatives are saying, nah, he won’t.

Angela Merkel has summoned the U.S. Ambassador to her office to discuss the latest revelations that the NSA may not have just eavesdropped on her but also on over 60 German officials, including some of her ministers. I wouldn’t want to be the student in that principal’s office.

This is for everyone who fears Artificial Intelligence. A robot in a German auto factory picked up a 22 year old man and crushed him to death. The auto plant is thinking bad programming. You might note that Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking are all worried about the potential for AI to decide we are too imperfect to be continued.

Probably will not happen in my lifetime unless I stumble into some rogue robot like the poor young man in Germany.

While it seems there is Republican entrant to the Presidential basis on a daily basis, today another Democrat has thrown his hat into that ring. Jim Webb, former Senator from Virginia, has declared he is a candidate. A former Republican turned Democrat over his opposition to the Iraq war, he will do his best to make his voice heard, though he fears being drowned out by the avalanche of money. Yes, it is hard to be heard sometimes in the waterfall of dollar bills unleashed by Citizens United.

You’ve heard of “Shark Week” I’m sure. It was thought up by a group of young programming executives more than twenty years ago at Discovery Channel as counter programming to the political conventions. One of those young programming executives was Steve Cheskin, now head of programming for Reelz Channel. Reelz is going to air the Miss USA Pageant from which NBC and Univision have run since co-owner Donald Trump opened mouth, inserted foot about most Mexicans who come to the United States. Steve knows a programming opportunity when it’s around and this is one. Good work, Steve, on the programming front. Still, I kind of wish everyone had boycotted Trump.

Macy’s has sent him packing. One of the products that bear his name is underwear. Creepy.

Trump is suing Univision for a half a billion dollars and says he’s going to sue NBC too. It will be interesting to watch this play out, some good reality television, I’m guessing.

Uber, the car calling app, is fighting the City of New York, which wants to halt its expansion while a study is completed to see what effect it is having on congestion and pollution and on the fate of yellow taxis. Uber called for a big rally yesterday here in New York and offered free rides to those who wanted to go but not many showed up. They brought food that ended up being given away to hungry tourists, of which there are lots in the city right now.

PAnyway, I’m now on the train, getting ready to pull out for Baltimore. Until tomorrow…

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Boko Haram, Greek Debt Crisis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary | Leave a Comment »