Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
May 1, 2017
It is a Sunday evening at the cottage. Jazz is playing, the lights splash the creek. I have made myself a martini. It was a typical Sunday, up early, read the NY Times and a few articles from the WSJ online before the shower and then off to church, where I did the readings and then coffee hour, errands before settling at the Dot for a long and lazy brunch, reading more off my phone and chatting with a few people, home to the cottage, put away laundry, got the trash together and sat down to write.
Very hygge.
Because I need the steady rhythm of familiar things in this Age of Trump.
His aides were caught off guard when he extended an invitation to President Duterte of the Philippines to come visit him during a Saturday call. If you haven’t been following it, President Duterte has been accused of extra-judicial killings in that country’s current “drug war.” Now those surprised aides are preparing for an avalanche of criticism as it’s hard to find a world leader disliked as much as Duterte by pretty much everyone.
Then, after unleashing a problem for everyone around him, Mr. Trump jetted off to Harrisburg, PA for a campaign style rally to “record breaking crowds,” where he railed to his supporters about the media which was, at the same time, roasting him in DC, even if he was not there. In two events, the official White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the Samantha Bee hosted “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” withered the sitting President, the first to have missed this event since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was recuperating from an assassin’s attack.
I wake up in the morning and find I am in a state of continuing bemusement in what is going on in Washington. It is reality television, which is what we should have expected when we elected a reality television star to the Presidency. With Reagan, we had an actor who knew how to deliver his lines. There aren’t really “lines” in reality television. There is direction but no script. We have a President who is making up his script as he goes along, knowing he knows better than everyone else. Even if he doesn’t.
The WSJ, a deeply conservative publication, to which I now subscribe, seems to be wanting to support him and just can’t find a way not to point out that it’s all a little…off.
And it is more than a little off.
Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff, said the White House was looking at ways of changing the libel laws to make it easier to for Trump to sue media organizations who criticize him. Imagine how the Democrats responded to that, not to mention many Republicans? Not pretty. Do we not remember the First Amendment? Or is Trump being inspired by Erdogan of Turkey who has been arresting thousands of people he suspects of being disloyal while cracking down on the press? Cracking down makes it sound nice. He is dismantling any vocal opposition to him.
One thing we should note is that the economy grew at the slowest rate in three years in the first quarter of Trump. Maybe it’s a holdover from Obama or maybe it’s the fear of Trump.
We are in a political Wild West except in this Wild West we have nuclear weapons.
It’s a dark time in American democracy and we need to remember, in this “of the moment” world in which we live, this has not been the only dark time in American democracy. We had the Civil War, dark time. We survived Andrew Jackson, a really, really not nice President [who, by the way, our current President seems to identify with].
We will, God willing, live through this.
In the meantime, I will play jazz. I will drink martinis. I will write and I will hope, because without hope we have nothing.
Tags:Andrew Jackson, Christ Church Episcopal, Civil War, Donald Trump, Duterte, Erdogan, Harrisburg, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Mother Eileen, Not The White House Correspondents Dinner, NY Times, Reince Priebus, Ronald Reagan, Samantha Bee, Trump, Washington, White House Correspondents Dinner, Will Ferrell, WSJ
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 21, 2017
Apple blossoms dressed the trees in the orchards as I drove along 9H earlier today, the first, best sign of spring I’ve seen though, once having noticed them, I was aware that small buds of green were appearing on other trees. The ones outside my windows don’t seem to be sporting them and I’m sure they will come eventually, which is how this spring has seemed – eventually we will get there – just not yet.
It has been a quiet sort of day. Earlier I spent some time at OMI, an art center near me that I have known about but had not visited and that was my loss. The two-hundred-acre campus is dotted with sculptures, the main building with art exhibits. Today quite beautiful children were painting, running around in young life’s exuberance, bringing smiles to all the adults. I offered up a thought for good lives for them; the future does feel cloudy right now.
It’s not just that this is a gray day. Generally, I am an upbeat sort of person [or at least I think of myself as that] and today I’ve not been. The state of the world has been weighing on me, both close to home and far from here.
Close to home, I am burdened because a friend sent me suicidal texts and I was incredibly concerned and finally asked the police to do a “welfare check.” They did. He then texted me he wanted nothing more to do with me. Truthfully, I did the right thing and, at this moment, it hasn’t turned out well. For me and, I expect, not for him as he is in deep trouble and won’t admit it.
Candles to be lit; prayers to be said and to continue, as best we can.
Paris is continuing as best it can after a policeman was shot yesterday and two badly wounded by a terrorist who was killed as he was fleeing. IS claims responsibility and France is having elections on Sunday. The far-right candidate, Marie Le Pen, is threatening to remove France from the EU so that it can control its own borders.
She has a chance of winning.
The far right is making its might felt all over the place.
And that is so worrying to me.
For a brief, shining moment in my life it seemed we might actually be headed toward a global society and it has not happened. It was around the time the Berlin Wall went down, a moment I will forever remember. Driving down Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, headed west, my bestest friend, Tory Abel, called me on my car phone and said: do you know what’s going on? As I was listening to classical music, I didn’t. The wall was falling.
There are all kinds of suppositions about why that magic moment did not result in a better world.
Right now, I am reading a book about “the weekend” in British homes in the 1930’s and one of the revelatory bits was about a British Lord who became a Muslim because he saw Islam as the bulwark against women getting the vote and having shorter skirts and working.
He would probably have a lot in common with IS.
Change is hard. And changing centuries of tradition is hard and people will fight it. IS is fighting it.
When all of this works itself out, I won’t be here. It will take more than a lifetime.
And that is history in the making. It takes lifetimes to work itself out.
If you are not aware of it, Chechnya is conducting a campaign against gays. It is putting us in camps, not unlike the Nazis; there are tales of torture and death. Can this be happening in the 21st Century? Apparently so. The reports are horrific.
The President of Chechnya has declared he will eliminate the gay community by the beginning of Ramadan on May 26th.
Putin has declared there is no evidence this is happening and that is Putin’s view of the world: no horrible thing is happening. There is no sarin gas is Syria, there is no campaign against gays in Chechnya, there is no fill in the blank.
Tags:Chechnya, Chechnya campaign against gays, Far right, Los Angeles, Marie Le Pen, Nazis, OMI, Paris, Putin, Syria, technology, Tory Abel
Posted in 2016 Election, Brexit, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, European Refugee Crisis, Gay, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Paris Attacks, Paris Killings, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 10, 2017
The train is rumbling north from Baltimore to New York City where I change trains to Hudson, arriving there around 3:30 this afternoon. It is a sunny day and the fleece pullover and winter jacket needed on the way down are unnecessary on the way home.
As I travel north, I have trimmed down the email inbox, sent some electronic Passover cards and started reading how to make large quantities of scrambled eggs as this coming Sunday is Easter Sunday and I am in charge of preparing the Easter Brunch that follows the 10:30 service.
It’s my hope that Mother Eileen’s clipboard filled with some people to help me. If not…
The weekend visit with Lionel and Pierre and Marcel, the poodle, was wonderful, overflowing with good food at various venues: Modern Cook Shop, Peter’s Inn, Red Star, Rusty Scupper, Nanimi, Petit Louis.
On “The Avenue” [36th Street] I shopped the antique stores and found some Christmas presents, tucked in my luggage; that it is expandable saved me from buying another piece. At BJ’s with Pierre, I stocked up on Excedrin, Prilosec and more.
Long train rides give one a time to think and I enjoy them for that, for being able to see the countryside glide by without the responsibility of driving.
Pierre sings in the choir at the Church of the Advent in Baltimore. While Lionel and I were preparing to go to hear him at church, the television flashed pictures and video of the Palm Sunday explosions in Egypt, targeting Coptic Christians, who represent about ten percent of that country’s population. Last word I heard, forty-seven have died and scores are injured. At Christ Church this week, I will light a candle for them.
In response to the bombings, responsibility for which was claimed by IS, Egypt has declared a three-month state of emergency.
Rex Tillerson, our low-profile Secretary of State, heads to Moscow for meetings, either strengthened or weakened [depending on your view] by the US bombing of the airfield in Syria where chemical attacks against a rebel city were initiated. Tillerson called the Russians incompetent for allowing Assad to keep chemical weapons.
Putin is thinking of revoking the award he gave to Tillerson.
This should be an interesting week for watching Syrian affairs. How are they all going to react? Niki Hailey is talking regime change; Tillerson is not. Trump is unpredictable and Putin a risk taker; Assad seemingly a wily survivor who managed to turn peaceful protests into a civil war no one seems capable of winning or willing to negotiate an end.
Syria is bringing five questions about the situation to the head, outlined in an article in Bloomberg, available here.
We have ships moving toward the Korean peninsula, possibly to be in place in case there is a decision to attack North Korea and its pudgy, vindictive, unpredictable little dictator, Kim Jong Un.
President Xi of China and Trump managed to get through their summit without damaging each other and we will await to see what China will do vis-à-vis North Korea.
In 2013, Democrats used the “nuclear option” and McConnell said they would live to regret it, which they did last week when Gorsuch was successfully nominated to the Supreme Court and sworn in this morning.
Marine Le Pen, the far-right French candidate for president, has declared that France was NOT responsible for the deportation of Jews during WWII, a statement that has created, as one might imagine, more than a soupcon of controversy.
New York is the first state offering free four-year public college to its students in families with incomes under $100,000, a move to help residents avoid crushing college loans and to help the state have a work force ready for the future.
May it work.
For all my friends celebrating Passover tonight, Chaq Kasher veSameach! [Happy Passover!]
Tags:Amtrak, Baltimore, BJ's, Bloomberg, Chaq Kasher veSameach, Christ Church of Hudson, Church of the Advent, Coptic Christians, Kim Jung-un, Lionel White, Mother Eileen, Nanimi, Niki Hailey, North Korea, nuclear option, Passover, Peter's Inn, Petit Louis, President Xi, Red Star, Rex Tillerson, Rusty Scupper, The Avenue
Posted in 2016 Election, Airstrikes, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, European Refugee Crisis, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Iran, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Trump, Uncategorized, World War II | 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 »
January 30, 2017
It is a little past seven at the cottage; the weekend is winding down, “Swing Jazz” is the Amazon music station playing. Marcel, Lionel and Pierre’s poodle, is situated comfortably on the couch, looking at the door to see when they will return, which will be in a few days. The flood lights illuminate the creek and I am at the freshly polished dining room table, writing.
It’s the end of a good weekend, mostly very “hygge.” [Pronounced hoo-ga, it’s Danish for living a cozy life.] And it’s been a cozy weekend. Young Nick has returned from his walkabout and came over Friday afternoon and helped me prepare for what turned out to be a most excellent dinner party.
Saturday was cleaning up and being domestic, a solo lunch at the Dot, dinner with Lionel and Pierre at their house, home to sleep.
But all the hygge in my life has been overshadowed and squeezed by the events in the world around me. President Trump has been issuing Executive Orders to his heart’s content. They feel a bit like Imperial Edicts. Do this. Ban that. It’s been stunning. And equally stunning is the response of the American public.
When he banned individuals from seven countries, all primarily Muslim, from entering the United States, hordes of lawyers went to airports and became filing appeals, sitting on the floor in the terminals, laptops plugged into whatever outlet could be found.
It made me proud.
At those same airports, crowds appeared. At JFK, several New York Congressmen were there, attempting to help. One quarantined gentleman was an Iraqi citizen who was on his way to the US because he had been an interpreter for our soldiers and his life was in danger. Thankfully, he was released.
People with green cards are in limbo, depending on the airport they flew into. Federal Judges are ordering limits on Trump’s ruling and some officials are ignoring them.
Excuse me, what? What?
Heads are spinning.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief political operative, has been given a seat on the National Security Council while the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs and the Director of National Intelligence have been demoted.
What? What?
In the morning now, I get up, make my coffee and call my Senators and my Representative in Congress and tomorrow I don’t know what issue to focus on. There are so many.
A relative sent me a clip of a State of the Union Address given by Bill Clinton, in which he talked about the dangers of illegal immigration. The headline before the clip was “The hypocrisy of liberals!”
Well, really, hypocrisy? Take a look at this article. Mike Pence opposed what Trump has done and now is praising it. Is that not hypocrisy? Political opportunism?
Immigration has been an issue ever since we stopped accepting just about everybody. Don’t know about you, but I’m here, an American citizen, because my great grandparents came over from Germany and settled in Minnesota. Back then, almost everyone was taken in. [Though my great grandparents arrived in First Class so they didn’t have to go through the indignities of Ellis Island.]
Then it changed and immigration has been an issue ever since. Okay, I get that. And what President Trump has done is unprecedented. His list of excluded countries does not include Saudi Arabia from which came many of the 9/11 hijackers. It does not exclude Pakistan, one of whose citizens was part of the Riverside massacre. It’s a bit bewildering. The banned countries have barely contributed to the numbers who have died from terrorist acts in the US.
And, amazingly, it appears the list was compiled during the Obama Administration but never activated. Boggles the mind.
Not even during Viet Nam was I this agitated. Agitated does not describe my mood when I am not working very hard at hygge.
In an article I scanned two days ago, it speculated that Trump may be to Millennials what Viet Nam was to my generation, a catalytic event.
You see, there is a movement to stop abortions. There is a generation of young women who have grown up believing they had the right of choice. Now some people want to take that it away from them. No, not happy. And abortions have been decreasing and in 2014 were the lowest since 1973.
There are young people who are in college whose friends are in limbo because they come from one of the banned countries and went home over winter break and may not be able to come back despite having valid visas.
And there are people like me, a Baby Boomer grown old, who is incensed in a way I have not been for god alone knows how many years. The protests will not stop. They will not go away. The country is fired up in a way that hasn’t been seen since Viet Nam.
Wow! The games have begun.
To be completely clear, I am one of the founders of Blue DOT [Democracy Opposing Trump] Hudson Indivisible. It is my time of being an activist. This Presidency must be opposed. It is divisive. It is immoral. It has in its first week demonstrated a willingness to flaunt conventional order.
Tomorrow I am calling the office of John McCain and Lindsey Graham who are opposing Trump to thank them for their efforts. We are all in for a rocky ride and maybe this was a good thing to happen.
The Left is galvanized the way the Right was when Obama was elected and already seems, and I hope it continues, to be more emphatic than the Tea Party movement.
The game is afoot…
Tags:Amanzon, Baby Boomers, Bill Clinton, Blue DOT Hudson, Hygee, immigration, Lionel White, Mike Pence, Muslim ban, Obama, Pierre Font, President Trump, Saudi Arabia, Steve Bannon, Tea Party, The game is afoot, Viet Nam, Young Nick
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Entertainment, Gay, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
December 6, 2016
It is a quiet Monday evening and I am sitting in a waiting area at Dulles Airport; in a couple of hours I will board a flight to Albany, retrieve my car and drive the hour it takes to get down to the cottage.
The flight from Charlottesville was very short, about twenty minutes. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander.
To anyone who reads me on a regular basis, it is apparent I did not support Donald Trump. It occurred to me that many think I am now a disappointed Democrat. Long ago, I became an Independent.
My upbringing was staunchly Republican. My first vote for a President was for a Republican. In the in-between, I have voted for worthy Republicans for various offices.
My parents were Republicans as was my Uncle Joe, who lived next door to us in the double bungalow we inhabited in south Minneapolis. He and my father and mother had lived in duplexes and then the double bungalow forever as my father and my uncle shared responsibility for their mother, who was gone before I had cognizance of the world.
On a brutally cold morning in a February, my father awoke, complained of the worst headache he’d ever had and was dead before the ambulance could arrive.
Uncle Joe did not attempt to take his place but allowed me space to be in his life. We took to watching television together on his huge color television set, sitting quietly, occasionally commenting on the acts on television variety shows. He delighted in the Osmond Family and the Jackson Five. He read paperback westerns and drove Lincoln Continentals. His well-tailored wardrobe filled the closets.
Not well educated, he rose to be the Senior Vice President and General Manager for seven states for American Bakeries Company [Taystee Bread], then the second largest commercial baking company in the world. He became a member of their Board of Directors.
At seventeen, it was determined by me and most everyone else, including family, counselors and my psychiatrist, that the healthiest thing I could do would be to leave home. Relations between my mother and I had become unbearable, probably for both of us.
Uncle Joe took me to dinner and offered to help me. I needed, in return, to maintain a B average in college and to have dinner with him at least once a month.
We grew closer. At one of those dinners, at a restaurant looking down over downtown Minneapolis, snow swirling in the winter night, I asked him what was the thing he was proudest of in his life. Uncharacteristically, he hesitated.
He told me that in 1932, he stood in his office building in what was then the tallest building in St. Paul and looked down at the bread lines weaving around the blocks. He made a promise then that none of the people who worked for him, who counted in the hundreds, if not the thousands, would ever stand in a bread line.
He kept that promise. He made sure that those who worked for him, even if they weren’t working full time, would have enough to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads.
I had not known; I was born long after the Great Depression, a child of the baby boom generation.
When I began to question the Viet Nam War, we had conversations. He told me he no longer knew the right or wrong of Viet Nam; I must make my own decision and whatever it was, he would support me.
While he had never married, he had a great friend, Rose. They breakfasted every Sunday morning after he’d been to church. When she died, I suggested perhaps he might want to have breakfast with me, which began a tradition that grew to include sometimes two dozen members of the family.
It was apparent to me that Nixon’s goose was cooked when the medal Uncle Joe had received from the Committee to Re-elect the President {C.R.E.E.P.] disappeared from his desk where it had sat proudly. If Nixon had lost Uncle Joe, he had lost it all.
He was and has remained my moral compass. He was a humble man, not without flaws or he wouldn’t have been human, but a careful, considered, considerate man.
The last time weekend I saw him, he angered me with a comment. Everyone told me to let it go but I marched over to his side of the house, started to speak and he held up his hand. He told me he was sorry; he had spoken unwisely and out of turn.
It became a two-hour conversation that, when he died two months later, allowed me to feel I had had closure with the man who I now recognize as my greatest moral compass.
He was not my father but he fathered me.
On the short flight from Charlottesville, in a semi-slumber, I realized much of my hostility to the nomination of Donald Trump was because I am convinced Uncle Joe would have found his campaign deplorable and would be wounded that a man who has spoken as Donald Trump has about minorities and women would be the President Elect of these United States from the party he held so dear.
But Trump is.
I accept that and it does not mean I will not be watchful and will not civilly disagree when I feel it is appropriate and necessary for the good of this country to civilly disagree.
It is my belief that is what Uncle Joe would expect of me.
Tags:American Bakeries, Baby Boomers, Charlottesville, Donald Trump, Dulles Aiport, Great Depression, IAD, Joseph M. Tombers, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Minneapolis, Republican, Taystee Bread, Uncle Joe, Viet Nam War
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Education, Elections, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
November 4, 2016
Kevin James Malone is not my nephew. He is the child of my oldest friend, Sarah McCormick Malone, whom I have known since we were three. There is a picture of the two of us on her parents’ couch in our rain gear on our first day of kindergarten. [We were adorable.] We were already fast friends then and have been ever since.
From the time he was born, I was around about as much as any of his maternal uncles as the Malones lived in New Mexico and Michael, Bill and John, her three brothers, lived in the Midwest and on the East Coast, where her parents had settled.
On one wonderful Mother’s Day weekend, Sarah and Kevin came to visit “Uncle Mat” when I lived in Santa Monica. We flew kites on the beach and road around in my convertible, watched movies late into the night, Kevin outlasting both his mother and me. Kevin was maybe three years old.
When the eldest McCormick daughter, Mary Clare, celebrated her 25th anniversary to her husband Jim Eros [I had brunch with them last weekend], her parents threw a dinner at their country club on Long Island.
It seems to me that I was still living in California but was in New York at that moment and John and Eileen, Sarah’s parents, told everyone there would be a surprise guest. [Me.]
Kevin was then about eight or nine then. At some point in the evening Kevin went to his grandmother and asked her why Uncle Mat had a different last name than her other brothers, leaving Eileen to awkwardly attempt to explain.
Forever captured in the photo album of my brain is Kevin Malone walking up to me at that dinner, dressed in a suit and tie, putting his hands on his hips and looking up at me and demanding to know: what do you mean you’re not one of my mother’s brothers?
It was a hiccup in our relationship we survived.
Years later, when he and his father and I were visiting him at work, we met his boss. Kevin introduced his father and then me and said, this is my Uncle Mat.
When he was married to Michelle, I gave a toast at the Rehearsal Dinner. We shopped for a shirt for him that day, together.
Kevin is not my nephew by blood but he is my nephew by choice. His and mine. I refer to him as my nephew when I talk about him to other people. There is no other way to describe my relationship with him or his to me.
When he emailed me yesterday, along with others in his family, to announce he had passed the Bar in the District of Columbia, I felt so proud and glad. Today I learned he has also passed the Bar in Massachusetts and I felt another swell of pride.
You see, I have no words to describe how wonderful a young man Kevin is. He is one of the most unique individuals I have ever encountered. Caring, thoughtful, whip smart without being arrogant about it, determined to be the best Kevin James Malone he can be.
I don’t remember how I met Sarah McCormick Malone but I did and our childhood friendship has endured and I am blessed to have been included in her family as a member of choice and they in mine, as family of choice.
Because of logistics we will not be able to do it this year but we have spent many a Christmas together over this last decade.
In the Strum und Drang of these last days before the election, I am comforted by the presence in this world of a man like my nephew Kevin, now a member of the Bar, a lawyer for real, who will do extraordinary things in his life.
Kevin, I am so proud of you. Congratulations.
Kevin and his mother the weekend of his wedding to Michelle Melton…
Tags:Eileen McCormick, Jim Eros, John McCormick, Kevin James Malone, Mary Clare Eros, Michelle Melton, New Mexico, Santa Monica, Sarah Malone
Posted in 2016 Election, Education, Elections, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
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 »
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 27, 2016
Twilight is beginning to settle on the Hudson Valley, outside a silvery light surrounds the trees outside my window. The trees remain mostly green, some falling, still green. Over the weekend I listened to a report on NPR informing us that the turning of the leaves has been delayed by two weeks due to the long, hot, dry summer. It’s fine with me; I am enjoying the illusion it is still more summery than it is.
Yesterday, I had a fire in my Franklin stove to take the edge off the chill in the cottage as I couldn’t bear the thought of turning on the heat.
Today has been a magical fall day, warm but not too warm, sunny and joyous.
It is Tuesday and therefore I taught my Public Communications class. One of the questions I asked was, of course, who watched the Debate yesterday as it is an example of public communication with the highest of all possible stakes. Of the twenty-one people in my class, five had watched the debate.
With the exception of one, they were millennials. All of them found both candidates unacceptable. And that surprised me. Both Clinton and Trump failed to resonate with these five. To them, Trump was a buffoon and Clinton was insincere. They did not indicate to me which way they will vote, if they vote at all.
Last semester my students were exhausted by the campaign and turned off by it by the length and acrimoniousness of it. And that was true today; my students, almost all of them of voting age, are bored to death with this election campaign, feeling no one is reaching out to them.
That is worrisome.
Personally, I really liked Hillary and thought she did a very decent job. Trump started strong and then seemed to slide into exhaustion, an individual worn down and beyond really, really caring.
He did not shoot himself in the foot in the way I hoped but something was definitely off in the last part of the debate. It seemed the helium had escaped from his balloon.
Howard Dean, once himself a potential Presidential candidate, tweeted about Trump’s sniffles during the debate, wondering if he might have used cocaine before going on. I don’t remember sniffles but it has been retweeted across the blogosphere. Trump said this morning there were no sniffles.
Chill Jazz plays in the background. The silver light seems suspended over the creek, caught in a magic moment that promises it will eternally be this way…
Of course it won’t be. Twilight will become dusk and dusk will become night.
Some weeks ago I wrote a letter that featured a photo of a little boy in Aleppo, in the back of an ambulance, traumatized, a face that haunts me tonight as the Syrian forces of Assad coupled with their Russian allies, are bombing the daylights out of Aleppo with bunker busting bombs.
All day, I have wondered if that little boy, who captured the world’s attention, is still alive? Has he survived this new level of brutality? The violence has become unimaginable and I feel broken for not knowing how to alleviate it.
This week I am dog sitting Marcel, the poodle of my friend Lionel, who owns the house across the street from me, my great friend I gained in the wondrous startup that was Sabela Media in the late 90’s.
He has been a magical friend to me and we have shared every Thanksgiving together since then, save two.
Marcel and I went on our afternoon walk together. He brings me to their house and cannot understand why he cannot go home.
He enjoys me and he wants to be at home. He is about to be sixteen and he soldiers on and I am impressed with his determination.
It is a time to be determined. There are those who feel the future of the American experiment is on the line. They may well be right.
What has happened in America in the last two and a half centuries has been amazing. We have been blessed to be part of one of the most glorious experiments democracy has ever had. We have been flawed and we have persevered.
Today I was reading all kinds of documents from Columbia Greene Community College about campus policy and I thought: we are just working to do it right.
That is the thread that has kept us going. We are just working to do it right. And I applaud American democracy, for it all its flaws, for trying to do it right.
Tags:Aleppo, American Experiment, Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Hudson, IS, Lionel White, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, Putin, Russia, Syria, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Politics, Russia, Social Commentary, Space Exploration, Syria, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 04 30 2017 Without hope, we have nothing…
May 1, 2017It is a Sunday evening at the cottage. Jazz is playing, the lights splash the creek. I have made myself a martini. It was a typical Sunday, up early, read the NY Times and a few articles from the WSJ online before the shower and then off to church, where I did the readings and then coffee hour, errands before settling at the Dot for a long and lazy brunch, reading more off my phone and chatting with a few people, home to the cottage, put away laundry, got the trash together and sat down to write.
Very hygge.
Because I need the steady rhythm of familiar things in this Age of Trump.
His aides were caught off guard when he extended an invitation to President Duterte of the Philippines to come visit him during a Saturday call. If you haven’t been following it, President Duterte has been accused of extra-judicial killings in that country’s current “drug war.” Now those surprised aides are preparing for an avalanche of criticism as it’s hard to find a world leader disliked as much as Duterte by pretty much everyone.
Then, after unleashing a problem for everyone around him, Mr. Trump jetted off to Harrisburg, PA for a campaign style rally to “record breaking crowds,” where he railed to his supporters about the media which was, at the same time, roasting him in DC, even if he was not there. In two events, the official White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the Samantha Bee hosted “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” withered the sitting President, the first to have missed this event since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was recuperating from an assassin’s attack.
I wake up in the morning and find I am in a state of continuing bemusement in what is going on in Washington. It is reality television, which is what we should have expected when we elected a reality television star to the Presidency. With Reagan, we had an actor who knew how to deliver his lines. There aren’t really “lines” in reality television. There is direction but no script. We have a President who is making up his script as he goes along, knowing he knows better than everyone else. Even if he doesn’t.
The WSJ, a deeply conservative publication, to which I now subscribe, seems to be wanting to support him and just can’t find a way not to point out that it’s all a little…off.
And it is more than a little off.
Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff, said the White House was looking at ways of changing the libel laws to make it easier to for Trump to sue media organizations who criticize him. Imagine how the Democrats responded to that, not to mention many Republicans? Not pretty. Do we not remember the First Amendment? Or is Trump being inspired by Erdogan of Turkey who has been arresting thousands of people he suspects of being disloyal while cracking down on the press? Cracking down makes it sound nice. He is dismantling any vocal opposition to him.
One thing we should note is that the economy grew at the slowest rate in three years in the first quarter of Trump. Maybe it’s a holdover from Obama or maybe it’s the fear of Trump.
We are in a political Wild West except in this Wild West we have nuclear weapons.
It’s a dark time in American democracy and we need to remember, in this “of the moment” world in which we live, this has not been the only dark time in American democracy. We had the Civil War, dark time. We survived Andrew Jackson, a really, really not nice President [who, by the way, our current President seems to identify with].
We will, God willing, live through this.
In the meantime, I will play jazz. I will drink martinis. I will write and I will hope, because without hope we have nothing.
Tags:Andrew Jackson, Christ Church Episcopal, Civil War, Donald Trump, Duterte, Erdogan, Harrisburg, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Mother Eileen, Not The White House Correspondents Dinner, NY Times, Reince Priebus, Ronald Reagan, Samantha Bee, Trump, Washington, White House Correspondents Dinner, Will Ferrell, WSJ
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »