Archive for the ‘depression’ Category
October 12, 2017
Monday, I sent out a blog inspired by Mother Eileen’s sermon at Christ Church on Sunday and forwarded her a copy as she is not on my list. She wrote back the following day and jokingly suggested I might preach this Sunday, which led me to think about what I would preach. What would I say if I had to, this Sunday, preach at a church?
I looked up the gospel for next Sunday and its essential line is: many are called but few are chosen.
Certainly, that fits with last year’s election cycle which started with more candidates for the Republican nomination for president than I remember in my life. Many were called and, in the end, the one that was chosen was Donald Trump and he went on to become President of these United States.
It will probably surprise many who know me but every week at church I light a candle for the man. No, I don’t like him. His policies seem mean spirited, quixotic at best. His relationship with the truth, as I experience it, is equally quixotic.
And he is President of these United States, a man with great power, influence and the ability to shake the world on more levels than I believe he is aware of or understands. But he is the president and I pray for him, hoping, on a very fundamental level he doesn’t do anything that will prevent me from being back at church next Sunday to pray for him.
He appealed to a disenfranchised part of America we, all of us, have not been listening to or acknowledging. They gravitated to Donald Trump as people in the water after the loss of Titanic, desperate to be saved, crying for help. Do I think he will save them? No.
But I want us to hear their cries and find a way to address them and to help them. They are Americans. With very real issues.
Today I read there are the most job openings than there have been for a very long time. Those jobs are harder to fill because we have a massive opioid crisis and many people cannot pass drug tests. Companies are beginning, in desperation, to turn a blind eye, not asking for drug tests for dangerous jobs because they can’t find enough people to fill them.
Not so long ago, there were two Amtrak employees killed, men not much younger than me and their autopsies revealed they had non-prescribed opioids in their systems. Our local paper, the Register Star, gave a face to the epidemic by highlighting on the front page a young woman, full of hope, who overdosed.
It is time we faced this epidemic, its causes and its ravages and did something and quit pretending everything is going along just fine.
President Trump, weren’t you going to make this a national emergency? What happened?
Nothing much. Why not?
Even the beauty of the cottage is not soothing my soul these days. What am I to do?
Many are called but few are chosen. What is it I am called to do in this tumultuous time? Every day I ask myself that question. What am I to do? What am I called to do?
Whether you are a supporter of Donald Trump or not, what is that you can do, personally, to change the awful things that are happening in this country?
Many are called, few are chosen. What will make me chosen? What thing can I do to make this awful time better? I want to. I do and I am not sure what it is that I should do. Pack a bag and fly to some war-torn part of the world and put up my hand and say: I’m here to help? What can I do?
A friend suggested I do that. Maybe I will.
We all need to ask ourselves how we are going to respond to Jesus’ call? I am not a raving evangelical. Far from that. I respect, at the deepest level of my soul, the kindness Jesus worked to insert into the human dialogue and which has resonated for both good and ill since then.
Since I was a boy, I have thought Jesus would be appalled at what has happened to what he started. He preached love and love is not often what has happened.
Many are called but few will be chosen. Be one of the few. Practice what Jesus taught.
Tags:Amtrak, Christ Church, Donald Trump, Many are called but few are chosen, Mother Eileen, opioid crisis, Titanic
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gun Violence, Hollywood, Homelessness, Hygge, Income Inequality, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 9, 2017
There are times when even the quiet beauty of the cottage is not enough to soothe the soul; this has been one of those times. Since the shootings in Las Vegas, I have found little solace in anything, except, perhaps, sleep.
Sunday, Mother Eileen captured the anguish, pain and despair I feel in her sermon. After the Prayers of the People, the bell tolled once for each person killed in Las Vegas. The service closed with “My Country Tis of Thee.”
My head bowed, I fought back tears.
There has been Las Vegas. Jeff Sessions is claiming that bans on discrimination don’t cover transgender people. The Trump Administration is rolling back rules that help women have birth control as part of their medical coverage.
The United States joined Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China and a few other repressive regimes in refusing to declare it immoral to execute people for being gay.
What?
As the bell was tolling [and it tolls for thee], I thought of a long ago, rainy, cold November afternoon and looked at my mother and said: what kind of country are we? It was the afternoon of the day Kennedy had been killed and that moment is etched in my brain, looking out the front windows at a sad world and wondering just what kind of country would kill someone who seemed to be having so much fun and was doing good things?
There was nothing my mother could say. To this day, I remember the look she gave me, wanting to have an answer and having none. The silence still rings in my ears all these years later as does the memory of the slick, wet street, a yellow and red city bus moving slowly down the street.
Last night there was another torch lit march in Charlottesville, VA. A return of Richard Spencer and his white supremacists. Listen to their chants: “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo.” [Washington Post, October 7, 2017]
Russia is our friend? The South will rise again? Russia is not my friend and the South envisioned by these chaps is not a South in which I would be comfortable. It’s one in which I think I might be afraid for my life.
Today is Columbus Day, the day everyone makes noise about old Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of America. Personally, I suspect it was the Vikings a few centuries earlier but they don’t get credit [maybe I think that because my mother’s family were Swedish]. However, as we have discovered Christopher Columbus was brave and not a model of morality in the way he treated native Americans. White people, in general, have not been very kind to native Americans.
Thirty years ago, my friend Ann Frisbee Naymie and I had a conversation about this and she just said to me: bad karma for what we did.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who has announced he is not seeking reelection, electrified the world yesterday with a tweet saying the White House was an adult care center and someone had missed their shift. Really? A Republican lawmaker is talking about a Republican President in this way? Wowza! You go, Corker. And I agree with you that Trump runs the White House like it’s an episode of the President and, like you, I think it is possible Donald Trump could stumble us into a nuclear war before he realized what he’d done.
Two hospitals have been evacuated in California and at least 50 structures destroyed in fires that are causing people to flee from Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties while in southern California fires are raging in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
The Four Horseman are riding.
Thank you, Mother Eileen, for giving shape to the inchoate agony I was experiencing when I walked into church yesterday. Thank you for ringing the bell for the deaths in Las Vegas. Thank you for asking the painful questions we all should be asking ourselves. What kind of country are we? What kind of country do we want to be?
Tags:Ann Frisbee Naymie, Bob Corker, California Fires, Charlottesville, Christ Church Hudson, Columbus Day, Donald Trump, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, Jeff Sessions, John F. Kennedy, Las Vegas Shootings, Mendocino, Mother Eileen, Napa, Richard Spencer, Russia, Sonoma, The South will rise again, White Supremacy
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, 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 »
July 15, 2017
It is closing on 6:00 on the 15th of July, 2017 and I am riding north on the auto train from Sanford, Florida to Lorton, Virginia. Pierre Font, married to my friend Lionel, and I are bringing his parents’ car from Miami to Columbia County, which is where they will be living while they sort out their lives.
There are no stops. Well, except for the one where one of the engines lost power but they managed to fix it and we are going again. It is a bit like being on a cruise, having a day at sea.
Forty years ago, in Tehran, Maryam Mirzakhani, was born. She is the only woman to have won the Field Award in mathematics, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize. And today, she passed away, a victim of breast cancer, a brilliant mind gone quiet. She has been a Professor at Stanford University since 2008. RIP. It is hard to lose such a brilliant mind. By the way, she was Muslim.
Yesterday, one of my relatives sent me an email warning me about a young Muslim politician in Michigan. It was, to me, both xenophobic and un-American, and I angrily deleted it. We were being warned he might one day become President of the United States. Today, I wanted to retrieve it but couldn’t seem to find it. My relative’s unhappiness with the man was simply based on the fact he was Muslim.
One of the finest people I have known in my life was Omar Ahmad, a Muslim, who when he died prematurely from a heart attack a few years ago, was Mayor of San Carlos, CA.
There was a moment when I wanted to respond. I didn’t because it would have no effect on him as nothing I say would change his mind. This is who he is, xenophobic and un-American and he has been that way since I have known him.
Yet, I feel guilty at not having responded.
Such is life in 21st Century America.
The election of Trump to the Presidency has given lots of people more freedom to express xenophobia and racism and all the ugly things we haven’t dealt with in America. And all the things that more and more of the world is having to deal with as huge populations move around the globe.
France was welcoming to Josephine Baker in the 1920’s; it could afford to be. It looked down on the United States and its racial policies. But would a Josephine Baker from a Muslim country today still find the embrace she did? I’m not sure.
It is one thing to be a rarity in the 1920’s and another to be part of an encroaching potential majority in the 2010’s.
I am saddened and worn by all these things and grateful I will be gone before all this plays out.
It is possible for me to look back and think, gratefully, on what a life I have had. It is my hope that the people who are younger than me will also have a wonderful life and that a solution will be found to all of this because if we do not find a way to embrace each other, it is not going to be pretty.
Tags:Auto Train, Field Award, France, Josephine Baker, life, Lorton VA, Maryam Mirzakhani, Omar Ahmad, Pierre Font, Sanford FL, Stanford University, Tehran, Trump
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, depression, Elections, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hygge, Iran, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
June 19, 2017
It is the evening of June 19th; Father’s Day is beginning to fade as is Pride Weekend in Hudson.
An on again, off again rain falls and an hour or two ago the sky was nighttime dark. Cosseted in the cottage, a martini by my side, I watch the raindrops splatter on the Claverack Creek.
It’s interesting. I was very sensitive over the weekend, a little raw. When I woke Saturday, I was in an unexpectedly foul mood and at the end of the day I took myself home and had a talk with myself.
I felt raw because it was Pride weekend and I woke acutely aware that I am not part of a unit and that I haven’t been very good at dating. The last one felt like I had entered a reality version of Sartre’s “No Exit.”
I am alone and normally it doesn’t bother me and over the weekend it did. Hudson is a town of couples and I am not coupled, which puts me at a bit of a disadvantage. You’re the odd one at the dinner party.
And, then, Sunday, it was Father’s Day. Always a hard day for me. I did not have a great relationship with my father. He was good to me the first few years and then, he wasn’t. The last seven years of his life he had almost nothing to say to me. The night before he died, I was being a squirrely twelve-year-old and he angrily sent me to my room.
It was the last exchange I had with him. The next morning, he had a stroke and died. So, I have spent my life trying to read the runes of the little time I had with him.
Okay, so it’s problematic. Parental relationships are problematic. Maybe mine a little more than others and mine probably a lot less than others, too.
It’s just it pops up on Father’s Day.
And I know so many good fathers; I sent text messages to them today. My godson, Paul, among them. He has two children, a girl, Sophia, and a boy, Noah. I don’t know them well and know enough to know they are interesting children and that’s because they have wonderfully invested parents.
And then there is Tom Fudali, who is Paul’s father, who made me Paul’s godfather and I am eternally grateful for that because Paul is not my son and he is my godson and our relationship is something I had hoped for and didn’t think would happen and has.
And there is my friend, Robert Murray, father of five, who exchanged texts with me while watching his son, Colin, play soccer in New Windsor. Robert reminds me of my oldest friend, Sarah’s, father, John McCormick, who had six children and made their home the place to be. On bitter Minnesota winter nights, the neighborhood would gather and skate on the rink in John’s backyard. They are some of my most magical childhood memories.
And then there is Kevin Malone, Sarah’s son, who has always thought of me as his uncle even though I am not actually his uncle but we have an avuncular relationship that is so effing wonderful! He is not a father and he is wonderful and is a jewel in my life.
So, I was being self-indulgently depressed, and I need to focus in on all the wonderful things which go on in my life and all the wonderful people who are in it.
In the craziness that has been in my mind this weekend, I am so glad I wrote this as it reminds me of all the things for which I need to remind myself that I need to have an “attitude of gratitude.”
In Memoriam:
I read today that Stephen Furst had died. He gained fame in “Animal House” as Flounder, went on to “St. Elsewhere” and “Babylon Five” and directed movies and television shows. For a time, in the 1990’s, we were friendly. He was a gracious, gentle soul, doing his very best in life. RIP. I remember you fondly.
Otto Warmbier, the young student returned from North Korea in a coma, has passed away. It is heartbreaking. At least he was at home, with family.
Tags:Attitude of Gratitude, Claverack Creek, Colin Murray, Father's Day, General, John McCormick, Kevin Malone, No Exit, Otto Warmbier, Paul Geffre, Robert Murray, Sarah Malone, Sartre, Stephen Furst, Tom Fudali
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, depression, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hudson New York, Hudson Pride, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
March 3, 2017
It has been about ten days since I’ve written; I just went back and looked. Last time, I was on Saba, writing when I wasn’t able to sleep. Tonight, I am back at my dining room table, floodlights on, looking out over the creek, having just returned from Coyote Flaco with Pierre, sharing chicken fajitas.
When I reached the cottage this afternoon, I felt I’d been away for a week, at least. Monday morning, I went down to DC for some meetings for the Miller Center on the Presidency and then to New York last night to have a wonderful dinner with my friends, David and Annette Fox. It’s a quarterly event; we gather at their marvelous UWS apartment, order Indian and catch up on our lives.
It is very hygge. As was the dinner party I gave last Friday night for Fayal Greene, her husband, David, Ginna and Don Moore, Lionel and Pierre. Leek soup, sautéed scallops in a brown butter sauce, and carrots in a lemony oil garlic sauce, with a baked polenta to die for, followed by a flourless chocolate cake provided by Ginna and Don, via David the baker.
It was an extraordinary evening.
And I, at least, need evenings like this to keep me sane in these extraordinary times.
On Tuesday evening, in Washington, after an early dinner with my friends Matthew and Anne, which followed drinks with my ex-partner and his now fiancé, I watched the address to Congress by our President, Donald Trump.
To the great relief of almost the entire world, he did not go off the rails and sounded presidential. It was, Tuesday night, all about the delivery. Wednesday morning people started to parse what he said. Even the conservative writers that I read, and I do read some, found a lot of flaws with the speech.
Short on specifics.
Fact checkers found a lot of fault, pointing out Trump claimed as victories some things which had been in play for a year at some corporations. Ford isn’t keeping production in the US because of Trump; they are pulling back on their Mexican plans because those plants would have built small cars and people aren’t buying them. They’re buying gas guzzlers because gas is cheapish again.
When talking with David and Annette, I said that if Trump had not held it together last night, his presidency would have begun to unravel. He would actually be President but, in reality, his claim to power would have begun collapsing. Lots of people on his side of the aisle are slightly unhinged by his behavior. McCain and Graham are frankly, I think, apoplectic.
And he held it together and while he should have been able to take a victory lap, Wednesday morning brought the revelation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had said in confirmation meetings he had not met with any Russians in the run-up to the election, actually had two meetings with the Russian Ambassador, one in his office on Capitol Hill.
Republicans are excusing while Democrats and some Republicans are accusing.
This is a wild ride and I’ve never seen anything like it.
Sessions has since recused himself from all investigations regarding anything Russian but there are those on both sides of the aisle who smell blood in the water.
While we were having political meltdowns, Amazon’s vaulted cloud computing world went offline yesterday for 4 hours and 17 minutes because of a typo in a command. OOPS.
It’s a little scary. 150,000 websites were affected. Amazon is the king of cloud storage and that’s a big oops for the King. I would not have wanted to be the head of that division yesterday.
And, before Tuesday’s Trump speech, we had the foll der wall of the biggest Oscar mistake in history. First “La La Land” was announced as Best Picture but it really was “Moonlight.” Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were humiliated and PwC, the accountants, were more than humiliated. They handed out a wrong envelope.
OOPS.
When it happened, I was safely in the arms of Morpheus, having strange dreams of Mike Bloomberg dating the pastor of my church, Mother Eileen.
Snap Inc. had a very successful opening on the market today; it was the biggest initial offering since Facebook and they have a rocky road to travel and they are a force to be reckoned with and it will be wonderful to see how it plays out. The next Facebook? Or the next troubled tech company, which is where Twitter is today.
It’s time for me to say goodnight.
By hygge. Regardless of your political persuasion, it will help us all get through.
Tags:Apple, celebrities, Christian, computers, Current Events, General, Google, GOP, Home, Hubble Telescope, Iraq, Islam, Istanbul, life, Mars, Media, NASA, Netflix, newspapers, Politics, reconciliation, Soho, Star Wars, technology, Terrorism, Texas, Wireless, Yahoo
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Daesh, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, European Refugee Crisis, Gay, Gay Liberation, Great Recession, Greek Debt Crisis, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Homelessness, Howard Bloom, Hudson New York, Income Inequality, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Space Exploration, St. Paul's Cathedral, Syria, Taliban, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
November 2, 2016
After an unusually long day for me, I have returned to the cottage, turned on the floodlights over the creek, made myself a martini and am listening to the YoYo Ma station on Amazon Prime.
The bank I have used for a decade or more, First Niagara, was purchased by Key Bank. My business account has been basically unavailable now for three weeks. An earnest and very good young man by the name of Jeff Hannett has been working diligently to help me access it. We’re about 80% there. If it weren’t for Jeff, I would have transferred to another bank. I intend to let the CEO of Key Bank know that. A half dozen friends of mine have pulled their business from Key and gone to other banks.
That was my first stop this morning. Then others and now I am home, looking over the floodlit creek and listening to soft and gentle music, sipping my vodka martini and finding the peace in a long day.
A week from today is the election. I can’t wait for it to be over except that it won’t be over. The rancor raised over the last eighteen months probably will continue until the end of my life. Polarization has become the norm. And worn as I am now, I will be more worn as the years go on.
Some Republicans are pronouncing they will work to see that Hillary Clinton is impeached in her first three months as President, if she is elected.
Some Trump supporters seem to be talking about violence in the streets if the election goes to her.
Earlier today while waiting for Jeff at the bank, I started reading an article that said our beloved “Founding Fathers” were even more rancorous than this election, even less civil, even more brutal. That gives me faith we will get through this. Please, let us get through this. Please.
Bethany Thompson, an eleven-year-old who was left with a crooked smile after fighting for her life against brain cancer, killed herself today because of bullying. She went home, found a gun and shot herself in the head.
My heart is broken and my soul is so angry… So ANGRY.
Speaking of angry, Assad, President of Syria, said today that his country was better off since the civil war that has wracked his country, sent half of them away as refugees and killed a half a million of them.
He has just put his face next to the word delusional in the dictionary.
The pictures I have seen today from Aleppo will haunt me today until the day I die. Another little boy on a stretcher, being treated, in pain and bewildered. And I still wonder: where is that bewildered little boy in the back of an ambulance that captured our attention a couple of months ago? I wonder if he lives? I wonder if he will ever be whole again, if he does live?
Also, in that part of the world, Iraqi forces are said to be on the doorstep of Mosul. Families attempting to flee that are captured find the men separated from their families and are probably being sent off to an inevitable death.
My heart, tonight, is with them also.
In the world of corporate deal making, it is being talked about on “the Street” that Goldman Sachs is encouraging Apple to make a bid to capture Time-Warner from the clutches of AT&T. Interesting.
Apple certainly could afford it. AT&T seems such an odd match for Time-Warner.
Hulu will be launching an OTT service with multiple channels next year. Its viability moved forward today with deals with Disney/ABC.
How can I be talking about the OTT opportunities in the same letter in which I am talking about the slaughter in Aleppo?
I care about both but at the end of the day, what is happening in Aleppo is far more important than what is happening in OTT.
Tags:Aleppo, Amazon Prime, Apple, Assad, AT&T, Bethany Thompson, Claverack, Claverack Creek, Disney/ABC, First Niagara Bank, Founding Fathers, Goldman Sachs, Hulu, Jeff Hannett, Key Bank, OTT, Syria
Posted in 2016 Election, AT&T, Claverack, Columbia County, depression, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Music, Obama, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 15, 2016
It is stunning today as I am riding south to the city. It is a perfect September day, low humidity, temperature in the 70’s, sunny with glints of silver reflecting off the water of the Hudson while low puffy clouds rest behind the Catskills.
Tonight I am on my way to the city [New York] to have dinner with my friend Ann Frisbee Namye, with whom I worked thirty years ago at A&E and who I have not seen for twenty years. She connected with me through LinkedIn and we set a dinner date while on a business trip to New York. I’m excited.
To be truthful, I haven’t let much noise in over the week. The days have been too special for that. I woke up happy this morning and didn’t disturb that happiness with a burst of news. Besides, I had a lot of organizing to do as I was teaching this morning and had lots of handouts for my students.
So I checked into the news once I boarded the train. Panic at the poll numbers is upon us. Trump is closing on Hillary and fright walks the land and one Democratic friend of mine may actually have another panic attack over this.
It is my choice not to panic and to read the article that tells me that the polls are meaningless at this moment.
Though the thought of Trump as President is scary. His Presidency would be one long fright night, I fear.
He released a letter from his doctor of thirty years after a physical on Friday, stating he was in good health. He was the same doctor who earlier wrote a letter in five minutes stating how healthy Trump was.
When I was in college, many friends made extra money by driving cabs. Now they’d be driving for Uber. And those opportunities may go away if Google and Uber and Lyft and the car companies get their way.
Uber has launched a pilot program in Pittsburgh with driverless cars. They have a back-up human for now but eventually the back-ups will go and then some day there will be no taxi or Uber or Lyft drivers for that matter. Gone the way of the Dodo…
In yet another gun tragedy, police in Columbus, Ohio shot to death a 13-year-old black robbery suspect. He apparently pulled from his belt a BB gun that looks almost exactly like standard issue weaponry for the Columbus police. What adult would allow a child to have such a weapon, such a thing?
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said, “A 13-year-old is dead in the city of Columbus because of our obsession with guns.”
And in a stunning additional gun tragedy, a 77-year-old resident of a Senior Home shot two other residents and a staff member, fled the scene on a bicycle and then killed himself as officers approached. Apparently, he was upset about poker games.
Jackson Grubb, a nine-year-old from West Virginia, took his life on Saturday because he was being bullied. I feel like crying.
Today in class the subject of the exploding Samsung Note 7 came up and one of my students almost exploded out of her seat. It was the first she had heard of it. Another Note 7 blew up as owners are not listening to the recall requests.
If you have a Note 7, go to the phone store and get it replaced. Please. I saw what one did to a jeep the other day online and it was horrific. This was not a small explosion. It looked like the vehicle had been car bombed.
Filipino President Duterte, who apparently called President Obama a “son of a whore” is now being accused of ordering extrajudicial killings while he was Mayor of Davao City. The Senate of that country is investigating.
And now I am caught up with the dreck that is happening out there beyond my world and have inoculated you with it – not in the sense of giving you a vaccine but in planting thoughts.
Today in class I was talking about persuasive speaking and one of the points I made was that a persuasive speaker inoculated their audience by planting ideas that would lead to change.
Perhaps some of these facts will inoculate you to work for change. Fewer guns, a way to end bullying, more sensible politics…
And I woke up happy and I plan to go to bed happy.
Tags:Andrew Ginther, Ann Frisbee Nayme, Columbus Shooting, Donald Trump, Driverless cars, Duterte, Google, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Hudson River, Jackson Grubb, Lyft, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, Pitssburgh, Samsung Note 7, Senior Home Shooting, The Donald, Uber
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, depression, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Gun Violence, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
June 14, 2016
Yesterday, as I suspect most people did, I woke to the horror of the Orlando massacre. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I kept wondering if I was actually reading what I was reading.
Of course I was.
Not long ago I emailed a friend, now living in Florida, that I felt furious and, at the same time, numbed. I am angry and do not know a single thing I can do that will actually help affect any kind of real change. A New Yorker, both my Senators support more stringent laws regarding guns. It will do no good to write them. Obama sits on my side of the issue.
And any letter I write to a Republican, I fear, will lend no weight. I have tried. Somehow I end up on their mailing lists, thanking me for being a supporter. When Bush was President, I wrote a letter demanding he not invade Iraq. For years, I received Christmas cards and photos of W. and Laura, thanking me for my loyalty to them.
Same with my local Congressman…
They are not listening.
It is twilight here on Martha’s Vineyard. A few boats skiff across the harbor. From where I sit, I can see the Edgartown lighthouse. I am sipping a glass of wine, lost in the quiet and the beauty, furious and numb.
As I was not needed at Edgartown Books, I headed out in my car today, turning left at the end of the driveway and letting fate take me where it will. For awhile, as I drove, I listened to NPR programs doing an exegesis of yesterday’s tragedy, the worst mass shooting in the country.
As he holed up with terrified people, Omar Mateen, the shooter, called 911 to let them know he was doing this because he was pledging allegiance to IS, calling the Boston bombers from its Marathon his “brothers.”
As I listened, the portrait of Omar Mateen was beginning to reveal itself to those who were attempting to figure out what had happened. He was American born, apparently radicalized via the Internet, probably bi-polar, an abusive husband, worked for a security firm, had been interviewed at least twice by the FBI because of statements he made or actions performed.
He bought his guns legally. He bought his guns legally, after all that. He killed 49 people and died himself. 53 others are wounded.
He was offended by seeing two men kiss. But his parents didn’t think he was unhinged.
Trump tweeted in peacock pride about being right about Muslims except Omar Mateen was born in America of Afghan parents. He was a US citizen by birth, no act would keep him out. He didn’t come here perverted. He was born here and was perverted by God knows exactly what…
He attacked a gay nightclub, Pulse. It is Gay Pride Month. It is also Immigration Month. It was Latin night at Pulse. Kill two birds with one stone? Hate amplified?
As I drove the island today, I felt lonely, in the way I felt lonely when I was young and watched as Viet Nam unfolded before me and about which I felt powerless until I played hooky from school and joined a march against the war.
We have no marches these days. We don’t gather together to scream against the violence. Perhaps that is why I felt lonely today; I have comrades but we do not come together, we do not march together, we do not sing songs of protest together against the outrageousness of the time in which we live.
Sitting here, watching the pink tinged sky while a small boat motors across the harbor, I am still numb and I am still furious. What do I do with this?
And in the back of my head, all day has been the thought: where have all the flowers gone?
Tags:Boston Marathon Bombing, Donald Trump, Edgartown, Gay, Gay Pride, Hudson, Immigration Month, Iraq, IS, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Obama, Omar Mateen, Pulse, The Donald, Where have all the flowers gone?
Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Daesh, depression, Gay, Gay Liberation, IS, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
April 8, 2016
It’s quiet in the cottage; I haven’t decided on what music I might want to hear. For right now, the silence is good.
The snow is almost gone, what was left was melted by yesterday’s sun and today’s rain. When I woke this morning, I was in an awfully good mood for no good reason. Later in the day, with torrential rain falling, I was not in so good a mood. I followed the day into darkness and had to work to be out of it.
Last night I went to The Dot for an original one act play by a local writer. Actually, it is a three act play being played out over three weeks. So last night was really Act One. I’ll be back for Act II next week. And Act III the week after that…
It is a night when it is good to be cozied in the cottage. It is chilling outside though the day was warm, if wet.
While running my errands today, I heard Hillary Clinton talking and she sounded hoarse and exhausted. I felt sorry for her. Bernie Sanders is sounding chipper and he should be — he has won all of the last six contests. Now the focus is on New York State where Hillary and Bernie seem running neck and neck.
It may be a pivot point in the Democratic run for the Presidential nomination. We’ll see.
Ted Cruz is not doing so well here; it appears all New Yorkers, upstate and down, are having more than a little trouble forgiving him his “New York values” statement about Trump. From what I have been reading, his New York stumping is not doing well.
67% of Americans don’t like Donald Trump but that might now be enough to stop him from getting the nomination. Cruz desperately wants Kasich to drop out, something he seems to have no intention of doing. In a brokered convention, he might have a shot.
It is the wildest year in politics I have seen in my lifetime and I am watching it all play out. As a registered independent, I cannot vote in the Primary. I will follow the results avidly.
In the meantime, IS, driven out of Palmyra where they made ruins of the ruins, have kidnapped something like 300 in a suburb of Damascus, factory workers who have now entered a nightmare.
We have the Panama Papers. David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, has benefitted from an offshore company set up by him late father but it all seems inconsequential.
Many of Putin’s friends have been named. Putin says this is all a Western conspiracy to weaken Russia. He has not been named and he points that out. What the West is trying for is “guilt by association.” I wonder what future weeks will bring?
It is getting later and there is still no music in the cottage. I am ending for today.
Today reminded me of the wild ride of emotions we all live through on a given day.
Good night.
Tags:Claverack, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, IS, Isis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, Putin, Red Dot
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, depression, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 10 12 2017 Thoughts on what I would preach…
October 12, 2017Monday, I sent out a blog inspired by Mother Eileen’s sermon at Christ Church on Sunday and forwarded her a copy as she is not on my list. She wrote back the following day and jokingly suggested I might preach this Sunday, which led me to think about what I would preach. What would I say if I had to, this Sunday, preach at a church?
I looked up the gospel for next Sunday and its essential line is: many are called but few are chosen.
Certainly, that fits with last year’s election cycle which started with more candidates for the Republican nomination for president than I remember in my life. Many were called and, in the end, the one that was chosen was Donald Trump and he went on to become President of these United States.
It will probably surprise many who know me but every week at church I light a candle for the man. No, I don’t like him. His policies seem mean spirited, quixotic at best. His relationship with the truth, as I experience it, is equally quixotic.
And he is President of these United States, a man with great power, influence and the ability to shake the world on more levels than I believe he is aware of or understands. But he is the president and I pray for him, hoping, on a very fundamental level he doesn’t do anything that will prevent me from being back at church next Sunday to pray for him.
He appealed to a disenfranchised part of America we, all of us, have not been listening to or acknowledging. They gravitated to Donald Trump as people in the water after the loss of Titanic, desperate to be saved, crying for help. Do I think he will save them? No.
But I want us to hear their cries and find a way to address them and to help them. They are Americans. With very real issues.
Today I read there are the most job openings than there have been for a very long time. Those jobs are harder to fill because we have a massive opioid crisis and many people cannot pass drug tests. Companies are beginning, in desperation, to turn a blind eye, not asking for drug tests for dangerous jobs because they can’t find enough people to fill them.
Not so long ago, there were two Amtrak employees killed, men not much younger than me and their autopsies revealed they had non-prescribed opioids in their systems. Our local paper, the Register Star, gave a face to the epidemic by highlighting on the front page a young woman, full of hope, who overdosed.
It is time we faced this epidemic, its causes and its ravages and did something and quit pretending everything is going along just fine.
President Trump, weren’t you going to make this a national emergency? What happened?
Nothing much. Why not?
Even the beauty of the cottage is not soothing my soul these days. What am I to do?
Many are called but few are chosen. What is it I am called to do in this tumultuous time? Every day I ask myself that question. What am I to do? What am I called to do?
Whether you are a supporter of Donald Trump or not, what is that you can do, personally, to change the awful things that are happening in this country?
Many are called, few are chosen. What will make me chosen? What thing can I do to make this awful time better? I want to. I do and I am not sure what it is that I should do. Pack a bag and fly to some war-torn part of the world and put up my hand and say: I’m here to help? What can I do?
A friend suggested I do that. Maybe I will.
We all need to ask ourselves how we are going to respond to Jesus’ call? I am not a raving evangelical. Far from that. I respect, at the deepest level of my soul, the kindness Jesus worked to insert into the human dialogue and which has resonated for both good and ill since then.
Since I was a boy, I have thought Jesus would be appalled at what has happened to what he started. He preached love and love is not often what has happened.
Many are called but few will be chosen. Be one of the few. Practice what Jesus taught.
Tags:Amtrak, Christ Church, Donald Trump, Many are called but few are chosen, Mother Eileen, opioid crisis, Titanic
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gun Violence, Hollywood, Homelessness, Hygge, Income Inequality, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »