Archive for the ‘Elections’ Category
October 1, 2016
Something like sixteen or seventeen years ago, my friends, Medora Heilbron and Meryl Marshall-Daniels, began having weekly phone calls to shore each other up as we were all in transition points in our careers.
That wonderful custom has continued to this day. Almost every week, except when one of us is traveling, we have had calls, sharing the highs and lows, the concerns, the fears, the triumphs of our personal and professional lives.
Today, we had one of those calls. When it was my turn to comment on my state of affairs, I burst out with, “I am verklempt!”
Yesterday evening, an email that should have come in on a project I am up for did not come as promised and, for reasons that are hard to explain, released what Winston Churchill called, “the black dog.” Discouragement and depression. I woke at three in the morning and read for three hours before falling back into a fitful sleep.
It has been amazing to me the number of times in the last couple of years that I have awakened with a sense of happiness. Today, it was all I could do to speak my usual morning affirmations.
After our phone call, always good for the spirits, I made a decision to do NOTHING today but work on my physic wounds and get back my equilibrium. Three loads of laundry and tearing recipes out of the newest issue of “Food & Wine” was as ambitious as I got.
The day matched my mood; grey, hostile, chill and rainy. Marcel, the dog I am caring for, and I curled up on the couch. He napped, I read.
Now that the day has slipped into evening, I have to say “the black dog” and I seem to be getting distance from each other. Largely because of the wonderful support group that is our weekly call. Together we have laughed and cried.
It wasn’t until late in the afternoon when my spirits were beginning to lift that I even looked at the news of the day. The sound of uplifting jazz plays in the background. Happier than I have been all day, I am sipping a martini and typing. Getting back to the happy Mat.
What did make me happy today was that Alabama’s Chief Justice, Roy Moore, was suspended for the rest of his term over his urging state officials to refuse to grant marriage licenses to same sex couples. Interestingly, this is not the first time he has been kicked out of being Chief Justice. Last time was his refusal to take down a statue of the Ten Commandments.
And I was both sad and happy that Rosetta, the first spacecraft to orbit a comet, did a belly flop onto the comet’s surface and went silent, leaving behind reams of data for scientists to parse. He/it/she was a plucky fellow. What do you call a spacecraft anyway?
Elon Musk wants to send people to Mars. He is thinking of a million or so colonists over the next fifty to a hundred years. He has envisioned a rocket to take them there. And they should be prepared to die, he said. It made me think of the first colonists who came from Europe to the Americas. They had a hard time too.
The thought excites me. More than likely, I will be gone by the time there is a first rocket to go but if I were here, I would volunteer. Wow, what an adventure…
The New World captured the imagination of the Old World and millions upon millions poured into North and South America, looking for better lives, something different.
My father’s family came from Germany. My mother’s from Sweden. We are a nation of immigrants and we always seem to forget that. I am not sure how we manage to forget that but we do.
Growing up Catholic in Minnesota was nothing like growing up Catholic somewhere else as I have learned in conversations with friends over the years. My good friend Bill told me once that he wouldn’t have been allowed to know me where he grew up in rural Missouri.
So I look forward to a time when we go out and populate the planets and then the stars. I think it’s in our blood to do that.
Tags:Alabama, Elon Musk, General, Jazz, Marcel, Mars, Mars colonization, Media, Medora Heilbron, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, Rosetta, Roy Moore, technology, The Black Dog, Verklempt, Winston Churchill
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 30, 2016
As I have been sitting here, listening to “Smooth Jazz” twilight has become almost night. The last glimmerings of the silvery light are slipping away.
This week I have been dog sitting Marcel, Lionel and Pierre’s poodle, who will soon turn sixteen. Every night, he takes me for a walk. We leave my cottage and he marches me over to his house, across the street from mine and takes me for a tour of his yard. He goes to the front door and looks at me uncomprehendingly when I do not let him in.
He is reluctant to leave once he is on his home territory; actually, he fights me. He doesn’t want to come back to my house but eventually he realizes that he is not going home tonight and walks with me back to my place.
He is very smart, is little Mr. Marcel. And sweet. And I am enjoying his company right now though I realize my own time for pets is past. I still come and go too much to give any pet like Marcel a real home. And I am single. Were there a partner, it would be easier.
There are soft sounds from woodland creatures that filter into my time here at the laptop, soft sounds from the night outside.
It is, this moment, a soft and gentle world that seems unconnected with all that is happening beyond me. I feel, here, encapsulated, as if the outside world did not exist.
But it does.
The Syrians under Assad and their Russian allies have been brutally pulverizing Aleppo. It has only become worse since the last time I wrote. It is the kind of brutality we have not seen for a long time. And, as I said before, I wonder about the poor boy in the ambulance. Has he survived this assault? I wonder about that day and night. I am haunted by wanting to know.
Here, at home, there was a horrific crash of a New Jersey Transit Train at Hoboken. One person is dead. 100 are injured, some seriously. I texted my friend Mary Dickey to check on her. She had changed her plans today and did not take the train into New York City. Just as something had diverted her the morning of 9/11 or she would have been under the Towers when one of the planes hit.
Congress overturned Obama’s veto of a law that would allow 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. Personally, I think it was a political move that will have unintended consequence. The Saudis are rethinking their alliance with us and it opens the door for a lot of problems we don’t want to have. Like everyone in Iraq suing us for our “meddling.”
Not quite knowing how to parse this but right now there are reports that Trump may have violated the embargo that was in place during the 1990’s with Cuba. If true, it will wound him with Cuban Americans in Florida, which is essential in his path to the Presidency.
Trump has had both a good year and a bad year. He is the Republican nominee for President, a reality no one thought possible six months ago. His net worth, according to Forbes, has dropped by $800 million this last year but it still leaves him with 3.7 billion dollars, according to the magazine. Forbes is generally thought of as a conservative publication.
Samsung, the company of exploding Galaxy Note 7s, has a new problem. Its washing machines are also exploding. So glad I did not choose to get a Samsung gas stove when I bought new appliances for my kitchen.
It’s a brand in trouble. Big trouble.
We were facing a government shutdown tomorrow but it has been avoided. The government is funded until December 9th, after the elections. Zika funding was approved to the tune of $1.1 billion.
It is a quiet evening here. I have looked into the world and now I am going to take myself to bed, watch a little video and go to sleep, happy. The way I woke this morning.
Tags:Assad, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Cuba, Forbes, General, Google, Hoboken Crash, Lionel White, Marcel, New Jersey Transit Train, Obama, Pierre Font, Putin, Russia, Samsung explosions, Samsung washing machines, Saudi Arabia, Syria, technology, Trump, Zika
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 26, 2016
In my last letter I wrote: Two of the most deeply disliked individuals in America are running for President. There is no joy in Mudville.
It was the only reference in my letter that I could find in re-reading it twice to Hillary Clinton.
Some of my readers took umbrage with me as they were disappointed in my characterization of Hillary Clinton. To say the least, I was surprised.
It seemed to me a factual statement, not a judgement. Tonight, at a party, I mentioned this to Tiffany Martin Hamilton, the first Democratic woman to be Mayor of Hudson. She too was surprised it would bring umbrage.
I am voting for Hillary Clinton for President. She is the most qualified person to be President. By the time this over, I will probably have given Hillary Clinton’s campaign more money than I have for any other candidate in my life because the idea of a Trump Presidency scares the hell out of me.
That does not change the fact that one of the challenges of this campaign is that a significant number of Americans dislike her; it is one of the challenges for those of us who support her to help her overcome.
One of my smartest friends, sighed one day to me: there is no situation the Clintons can’t make worse. [He was and is a Clinton supporter.] And it has been demonstrated time and again. I confess that the handling of her pneumonia drove me to distraction.
The reality is that those of us who support her must help address the concerns over her apparent lack of transparency and encourage her campaign to do better. It is infuriating to me because she is so qualified and has managed to garner a visceral dislike that is beyond reason.
One of my closest friends, a very liberal Democrat, will not vote for her. He lives in New York and, if he lived in a swing state, would vote for her. But because he lives in New York, a state he doesn’t consider a swing state, he will vote Libertarian because he has a visceral dislike of Hillary Clinton.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the problems we must honestly face to help Hillary Clinton become the next President.
This race should not even be close. But it is because for two decades the Republican Party has demonized both Bill and Hillary Clinton and have waged an effective campaign to discredit them. And they have not always helped themselves.
It is so frustrating to me.
At the Hudson Bed Races on Saturday [more about that in my next column], three acquaintances of mine are making active plans to leave the country if Trump wins.
These are people who are taking concrete steps to leave, putting together an action plan and putting in place the steps in that action plan to make it happen.
It makes me crazy that anyone would be thinking this way over a Presidential election but we are. It feels like we have reached a desperate moment in America’s history.
A few minutes ago I watched a video of college students being asked fundamental questions of American history which most of them couldn’t. They could answer all the questions about popular culture. It is a sad fact that has been realized in a number of different studies of college students and by my own experience in teaching.
This may be the closest to a rant I will do.
Please understand I am frustrated and I am frightened. A Trump Presidency will be a catastrophe for this country. The Republican Party I grew up with and respected is unrecognizable and has lost all the respect I had for it once it made Trump its candidate.
We are at once of the most critical moments in our Democracy and there are those who say the future of our Democracy may be decided by this election.
Tags:Claverack, Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton's pneumonia, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Hudson Bed Races, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Republican Party, The Donald, Tiffany Martin Hamilton, Trump
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 1 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 »
September 14, 2016
It is a pleasant night in Claverack, after a pleasant day in general. The weather was gorgeous, hot for just a moment, but mostly it hovered in the 70’s. I spent the latter part of the afternoon on the deck, a good book in hand, while also doing a bit of work, making a few phone calls.
This evening I went to the little Mexican restaurant down the road, Coyote Flaco, with my friend Patrick O’Connor, who bumped into some people he had not seen for a long time. We shared a shrimp appetizer and chicken fajitas and left happy.
The lights are on the creek as it flows softly toward the south. The first serious leaves have begun to fall; my drive is strewn with them and it is fine. I do not need to cling to the summer that has passed. It has been lived fully and well. As I hope will be the fall that is unfolding.
As I do most days, I spoke with my brother and he asked me if I had a take on the day’s news regarding Hillary and I had to say no. I had looked in the morning but not since. In the morning, her campaign announced she thought her pneumonia “no big deal” and so held back saying anything about it.
I was infuriated with her. How many times has she felt something was “no big deal,” only to have it turn around and bite her in the ass? How many times does this woman need to have a lesson learned?
Aye, Chihuahua!
Trump is fending off assaults on his Foundation which may – or may not – have given money to various charities. Some who said they didn’t get gifts found that they did and some just didn’t get them.
And then there is the gift of $25,000 to Pam Bondi, Attorney General for Florida, which might have swayed her to not investigate Trump University. Six months after she dropped her investigation, he hosted a $3,000 a plate fundraiser for her at Mar-a-Lago, his great Florida estate, country club.
Aye, Chihuahua!
To my amazement, Barak Obama’s approval rating is the highest it has been for years. It has always been my thought he will be remembered by history with more kindness than by his contemporaries. In my lifetime, I have known no President who has elicited such visceral hatred from so many people. Maybe I missed something along the way but what this man has endured is remarkable. And I give him high marks for trying, very hard, to be the best President he can be.
Matt Bevin, Governor of Kentucky, used violent metaphors to describe a Clinton Presidency, evoking images of blood on the ground.
My fear is that we are returning to the politics of the 19th Century when Andrew Jackson created the “Trails of Tears” as scores of thousands of Native Americans died by his direction. We, as a nation, do not have a good track record of dealing with those who are not “us” as “us” is defined at any exact moment.
I was raised Catholic in Minnesota. My 8th grade teacher, Sister Anne, told us that we would be persecuted because we were Catholics. At that moment in my life, it seemed nonsensical. No one was persecuting me because I was Catholic. I mean, really…
When I was in college, helping my friend Bill paint his garage, he told me that when he was growing up in Arkansas he would not have been allowed to know me because I was Catholic. Looking at him with incredulity from my ladder next to his, I realized there were places in my life that I did not know where my Catholicism was a liability.
Now I understand more as I see Christians slaughtered on the beaches of Libya and Christians in Iraq slaughtered. We live in world of intolerance that I did not expect or accept as a child. When I was in 8th grade and heard Sister Anne, I thought the world had moved beyond that.
It has not. No, not in any way. Shame on us.
Tags:Andrew Jackson, Barak Obama, Bill Epperson, Claverack, Coyote Flaco, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, Pam Bondi, Patrick O'Connor, Red Dot, Syria, The Donald, Trail of Tears
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Gun Violence, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 9, 2016
Three days of grey clouds portended but did not produce rain. Tonight, after seeing Woody Allen’s “Café Society,” I left the theater to be greeted by a soft rain falling, driving home over glistening roads.
Mixed reports had me slightly ambivalent about seeing “Café Society.” Some said it was good. Some said it wasn’t. One wag commented, “It isn’t the worst Woody Allen film.” No, it definitely wasn’t. It wasn’t “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan” or “Bullets Over Broadway.” It was a slightly overlong, mostly charming view of a family in the late 1930’s in New York and Hollywood. As usual, there was a pantheon of stars giving good performances including Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carrell, Blake Lively [the first time I have liked her], Parker Posey, Corey Stoll and Kristen Stewart.
Mostly it looked beautiful and poignant and timeless and full of love gone round the wrong corner.
It was the second day of class and we’re all still alive and at least all my students seemed moderately engaged, except, perhaps, for the young woman who seemed to be fighting off falling asleep. When I did a survey, all but three of my students are working jobs as well as attending school. Some of them, many of them, have full time jobs as well as being full time students. No wonder they sometimes yawn.
Out there in the world, beyond my quiet Creekside world, the strident tone of politics continues.
Last night, Matt Lauer moderated interviews, not at the same time, of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, supposedly about their views on issues related to national security.
Lauer, who, once upon a time I liked, devoted a third of Clinton’s half-hour to her email server issues. Then, according to the news reports, didn’t handle the rest of the interview well.
It is the general consensus of the press that Lauer screwed up; was unprepared and unable to stand up to Donald Trump when he repeated he had been against the Iraq War when, in fact, he is on record of supporting it in 2002.
Alas, no TODAY for me going forward. Shame on NBC for blowing this opportunity. Shame on Matt Lauer for blowing his opportunity.
Depending on who you listen to, Trump is beating Clinton or Clinton is beating Trump. The polls are rocky right now. There are only 60 or 61 days left to the election. While I can’t conceive of it, there is a possibility Donald Trump will be President.
Libertarian Presidential nominee Gary Johnson, who has been getting close enough in the polls that he might be included in the debates, made a major gaffe the other day when he had no knowledge of Aleppo. “What is Aleppo?”
Aleppo is the epicenter of the catastrophe that is Syria, where it has been reported Assad’s forces used chlorine gas on citizens. There are frightful images of Syrian civilians needing oxygen. Chlorine gas was the scourge of the WWI and now it is back in Syria.
In news of the future, Google and Chipotle are experimenting at UVA with drone delivery of burritos. Buzzing in the sky will become normal…
In other news from the present, Apple’s stock was down 3% today after the announcement of the iPhone 7. The no jack situation has many people [and investors] spooked. Me too. My iPhone 5s will not connect, for whatever reason, wirelessly with my speakers. Everything else, easy peasy, but not from my phone. And, in the end, I might succumb to the iPhone 7 Plus but might end up choosing the iPhone 6 Plus because it has a jack. I have been waiting for the iPhone 7 and feel just a little cheated. Much thought ahead.
Fifteen years ago tomorrow, my now ex-partner and I made an offer on the cottage, from where I write this. Which means that two days later we will have the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11.
It is an anniversary that always brings me back to my experience of horror on a scale I had never known. It takes me to the corner of West Broadway and Spring Street, looking at the Towers burning and feeling stunned and knowing at that moment there was nowhere to turn. We had just turned a page in history.
Tags:9/11, Aleppo, Blake Lively, Cafe Society, Chlorine Gas, Claverack, Columbia Greene Community College, Corey Stoll, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, iPhone 7, iPhone7, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matt Lauer, New York, Parker Posey, Steve Carrell, The Donald, TODAY, Woody Allen
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Social Commentary, Syria, Television, Trump, Uncategorized, World War I commentary | Leave a Comment »
September 7, 2016
The day painted itself grey this morning, from the moment light crept into my bedroom, it was grey, the kind of day that promises rain and provides none, save a few drops when I was running an errand on Warren Street.
Fresh from what I thought was a successful first day in the classroom, I stopped at the Post Office and picked up my mail and sat on my deck, opening it, and just staring out at the day. The air was lightly water touched by not too much. But for the grey, it was a perfect sort of day.
At the college, I talked with one of my colleagues for whom there is terminal election fatigue. She knows for whom she is voting, nothing in the shouting is going to change her position and so she feels no need to participate more. It simply makes her crazy.
As it has for many people in this oddest of election seasons. A few months ago, a commentator I was listening to said something like: Who knows? It’s 2016.
And that remains true. It’s the wild and wooly 2016, an election season they will be talking about as long as politics is discussed, which is a very long time. We are still discussing the politics of the Athenian democracy 2500 years later. Countless tomes have been written about the Romans, their Republic and their Empire. A thousand years from now some crepe skinned academic will be dissecting one small sliver of this campaign in a form of media we probably can’t conceive of but it will be happening.
Me? I generally wake up happy and go to bed happy and know there is only so much I can do to shape events but what I can do, I do.
Tonight, I am writing earlier than I did last night and the verdant green in its grey frame fills my window.
Directly in front of me are two Adirondack chairs made for me by John McCormick, father of my oldest friend, Sarah. He had made some for his daughter, Mary Clare, for her home in West Virginia. When I bought the cottage, he asked me if he could make anything for it. Adirondack chairs I said and there they are, in front of me, a wonderful bonding to a man now gone and a testament to all he and his family mean to me.
In this calm and quiet, I feel celebratory to have made it alive through the first day of class. As I was preparing to head over to the college, I played music that pleased me, from the Great American Songbook. Tonight there is no music. The only sound is the ticking of an old clock that has been in my family for more than 125 years. I think of it as the heart of the house. But it drives some people crazy. It just makes me smile.
The EpiPen conversation goes on. Some say it actually costs only $30.00; some say it’s only about a dollar that goes into the actual medicine.
Isabelle Dinoire, the world’s first face transplant recipient has died, aged 49. She was transplanted when her face was mauled by a dog. RIP.
Obama cancelled a visit with the Philippines President after he called Obama “the son of a whore.” Later President Duarte regretted his comment.
There was an incident when Obama arrived in China. No one seemed to have agreed upon the protocol. Everyone looked bad.
Kim Jung Un, the little paunchy, pudgy dictator of North Korea, celebrated Labor Day by sending off ballistic missiles that landed within 300 kilometers of Japan. No one is happy except for the pudgy dictator who is now facing a new set of sanctions which he doesn’t care about. He will let millions die because of them as long as he keeps his power, his toys and the instability he creates.
One can only imagine what this man’s childhood was like…
Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift have broken up after three months. This is HUGE news. OMG!
Fox has settled with Gretchen Carlson in her lawsuit with them and Roger Ailes. Twenty million dollars. At the same time Greta Van Susteren has left the network under cloudy circumstances but then what is not cloudy in the world of Fox News these days?
And now it is dark. I will turn on my floodlights and enjoy the creek at night.
It is a good day. I survived the first day of a new class and felt good about it.
Today I woke up happy and I go to bed tonight happy. May all of you who read me do the same.
Tags:Claverack, Claverack Creek, Cole Porter, Columbia County, Columbia County New York, Columbia Greene Community College, Donald Trump, Duarte, Great American Songbook, Greta Van Susteren, Gretchen Carlson, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, John McCormick, Kim Jung-un, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, North Korea, Obama, Roger Ailes, Sarah Malone, Syria, Taylor Swift, The Donald, Tom Hiddleston
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 3, 2016
As I was sitting on the deck, there came a slight chill in the air, a harbinger of times to come. It is still a luxurious green outside the window but it was getting just a little chill and so I returned to the dining room table to write this.
It occurred to me that working on these letters has contributed to my happiness over the years, particularly since I began to have more time at the cottage, a chance to collect my thoughts and ruminate upon the world in which we live.
It has been a good day. Waking early, I journaled for a bit, read the daily summary of the news in the NY Times, drank coffee and then went down to the eye doctor. I have an aggressive cataract in my right eye that must be dealt with. Cold comfort that they tell me it is not age related. The surgery needs to be done. I am nervous and it is now scheduled for November 9th. It has been a hindrance of late so I am glad it will be handled.
From there I treated myself to lunch at Ca’Mea while reading “The Romanovs,” a NY Times best seller about the dynasty that ruled Russia for 300 plus years and came to a sad end in a room in the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg in 1918, the last Tsar and his family and their retainers shot to death.
While I knew something of the end of the Romanov Era as I had studied Tolstoy, Chekov and others of that “Silver Age” I have known very little of the earlier Romanovs. They had some particularly gruesome ways of killing their rivals.
Returning home, I napped a bit and then went out to the deck to do some prep work for my class. I am now very much looking forward to it.
Touching in on the news of the day, I can only find myself smiling over the absurdity of it all. One of Hillary Clinton’s laptops, chock-a-block with emails was lost in the US Mail. I roll my eyes.
In what should come as NO surprise, Hispanics really, really don’t like Donald Trump according to America’s Voice’s poll, a pro-immigration group that did a large poll among Hispanics. He is doing dramatically worse than Mitt Romney. Hispanic Republicans are deserting Trump, particularly after his immigration speech in Arizona.
Brazil has ousted its President. Dilma Rousseff is gone and “Brazil has turned a page,” according to its new President. For the Brazilian people, let us hope so.
Long ago, I was getting on a flight in Atlanta, going God knows where but Mother Theresa and some of her nuns were getting on the flight with me. I saw her walk by, followed by her coterie. It was before I went to India.
She is about to be a saint though when I was in India there were many who found her less than saintly. I have a friend in India, a Beverly Hills Jew who is now a sadhu, who worked with the Gandhi’s when they were in power. He railed against Mother Theresa, claiming she was the ultimate “fixer” in Calcutta, now Kolkata. He despised her and there are those in India who are devoting their lives to dispelling what they call the myth of Mother Theresa. I don’t know the truth.
It is dark now. The floodlights have been turned on so I can see the creek. I have lights on the front of the house, year round that I often light. My former neighbor, Karen Fonda, once called me to tell me how happy seeing the lights made her. When I turn them on, I think of her. She is now in assisted living, sinking into the hell that is Alzheimer’s.
Hurricane Hermine is moving out of Florida and into the Carolinas. Yesterday, I phoned my sister who lives in Florida to see how she was doing. Okay, a few power outages but generally well. While New York City was having rain today, my part of the Hudson Valley was sunny and cheerful.
Roger Ailes, recently ousted as Tsar of Fox News, is now advising Donald Trump. No one seems to be paying much attention to this. Ailes has been accused by many women of having made inappropriate sexual suggestions to them. He was finally toppled when Megyn Kelly, not well liked by Trump, but a Fox News star, met with the legal team investigating Ailes and corroborated the stories.
No one seems to care.
Well, I think it’s a wise move on Trump’s part as Ailes created the wild conservative movement we now have in America. But unwise in that Ailes is discredited by many at this moment. Interesting to see how this serpentine relationship works itself out.
Tags:Brazil, Calcutta, Claverack, Delhi, Dilma Rousseff, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hurricane Hermine, Kolkata, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Megyn Kelly, Mother Theresa, New York, Pope Francis, Roger Ailes, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Politics, Pope Francis, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
August 19, 2016
I am cozied in the cottage, the Smooth Jazz station playing on Amazon Prime Music, having returned only two hours ago from two days in the city.
Yesterday, I was in the city to have lunch with my friend David Arcara, a quarterly event for many years now; our conversations are wide ranging, deep, emotional and to the core of what is happening in our lives. Yesterday’s underscored my appreciation for them.
There were drinks last night with Nick Stuart of Odyssey and Greg Nelson, formerly of Odyssey, who has returned from some weeks in Peru and that, too, was good. It gave me a chance to catch up with Greg, whom I have not seen for some months and, of course, to spend some time with Nick, my great friend.
When I woke this morning, I made my morning coffee at the apartment on the Upper West Side, and while sipping it, pursued the news of the day. I read the NY Times and scrolled through the BBC News.
There I found a haunting image of a five-year-old Syrian boy in Aleppo, an image that has now gone viral. Frightened and alone, covered in blood and dust, he sat on an orange seat in the back of an ambulance. You may have seen the picture already. If not, here it is:
It shattered my morning. I sat staring at this image for many, many minutes and my heart screamed to the universe. It became hard to move on, to not want to go and do SOMETHING to stop the madness. It reminded me of pictures I had seen taken during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s; comparisons between that conflict and this will be made.
Later, I went to have lunch at the Ace Hotel with my friend David McKillop; we talked of new, upcoming adventures for him. We talked of the: what WERE they thinking? moment of Ryan Lochte and the other swimmers claiming to have been robbed when in reality they were a bit drunk and screwed up. What were they thinking?
And, unfortunately, this is what will follow them for the rest of their lives, this moment of dishonesty.
And then, there was the moment of what was President Obama thinking when he said that the $400,000,000 turned over to the Iranians wasn’t “ransom” but a previously scheduled release of funds. Today it was revealed that the US wouldn’t let the plane with the cash take off until prisoners were released. Dancing with the truth?
The Syrian boy’s picture has colored my whole day. I have thought about what can I do to stop this debacle the world has created, so complicated, so odorous, so lacking in humanity, so not a moment of “our better angels.”
When I wake up in the morning, I do my best to have a moment of gratitude. I am not living in Aleppo. Today that came home so much because of the photo of the five-year-old. It is a picture that has come to represent the Syrian crisis as much as the photo of the three-year-old dead child washed up on the coast of Greece did to galvanize the world about the refugee crisis, much of it a result of the Syrian war.
Closer to home, the Blue Cut Fire in California has consumed 31,000 acres and it still rages.
In Louisiana floods have consumed 40,000 homes and at least thirteen lives. A preacher man who “testified” that natural disasters were God’s way of punishing us for same sex marriage was forced to flee his home in a canoe.
I have been so lucky to have been born when and where I was. Our world is changing. It is becoming global and integrated and reactionary and frightened and fundamentalism is having a heyday. But we still care…
The answers aren’t in front of me right now. But seeing that little boy in Aleppo makes me realize I must do better. That we all have to do better.
Tags:9/11, Aleppo, Amtrak, Blue Cut Fire, Boy in Aleppo, Claverack, Greg Nelson, Hudson, Hudson River, IS, Louisiana Floods, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Nick Stuart, Obama, Odyssey, Putin, Ryan Lochte, Syria, Syrian Boy, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Daesh, Elections, Hillary Clinton, IS, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Syria, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
August 16, 2016
It has been a grey and gloomy sort of day here in Claverack; at one point the skies opened and torrents of rain slashed down. Mostly, I have curled into my cottage and put nose to grindstone on some volunteer work I am doing for the local community radio station, WGXC. It serves Columbia and Greene Counties and is, I have discovered, always unique, always surprising. It is the voice of this part of the Hudson Valley and I have gone in some months from not even knowing of it to realizing I can’t fathom not having its voice.
Over a hundred volunteers keep it afloat, programming by “civilians,” which cannot help being eclectic. From health and wellness to Broadway tunes to vinyl cuts with programmers from 13 years old to 83 years old, you have quite a mix.
So I am working to help them out and, like a good Catholic, realizing I wasn’t as good over the summer as I should have been, I am working extra hard now.
For fifteen years, I have always been a member of Amtrak Select Plus, which gives me access to their lounges. I am in serious jeopardy of losing it this year and am plotting how to make the points to keep it. And then I think, I am not traveling as much as I was. Should I even worry about this? I probably will find a way. The Acela Club in Penn Station is my “home away from home.”
So it is a Tuesday night. I have made myself a martini and Beatrice, my rapidly growing banana plant, and I are in the dining room, looking over the creek, a scene of grey mixed with incredible green. Classical music plays in the background, moving from the delightful to dirge like.
All this pitter patter about my life is a way of saying I have retreated from the news a bit. These are the dog days of August; the fall is coming upon us. It has been special here at the cottage this week and I have not wanted to disturb the week, the peace. I have gathered friends for get togethers. We have all avoided politics because we are worn out by the never ending campaign of 2016, which has been going on, it seems, since before I was born.
Rudy Giuliani, who was Mayor of New York, when 9/11 happened, said in a speech today that before Obama there were no attacks by terrorists on US soil. He has claimed it was a mistake; he MEANT to say NOT another until Obama. But it has come out badly for him. Excuse me, he lived through it, with me. I was there, listening to him tell us it was going to be devastating. How do you screw up so much, you, Mr. Giuliani, who lived through it with me?
For several minutes, I liked you. Now I don’t. Especially after today. The kind of speech making mistake today makes me wonder if you are holding the thread together, Rudy.
Trump is touting that if he loses the election, it will be because it is rigged. I fear that if he does lose, which I sincerely hope he does, there will be violence in the streets because that is what he is setting his followers up for. And they are not pleasant people, these Trump supporters. They seem nasty, angry [not without reason, which Hillary should speak to] and prone to violence.
I receive emails from my brother-in-law, who is definitely not a Democrat. They are a stultifying drone on how bad Obama is. He has not been all I hoped he’d be but no President ever is and I do believe a hundred years from now, history will be far kinder to him than my brother-in-law.
He was the first man elected President who was not “white.” And that has elicited furor from those who never thought that could happen. I hope he is a bridge to the future because soon, the US will no longer be “white.” It will be the mélange of immigrants of the 20th Century, the Hmong, the Vietnamese [who were vilified in places because they were so hard working], the Asians of all stripes who outstrip “Americans” who don’t want to work harder.
We are an immigrant nation. Hopefully, we always will be. I am a second generation American. I was lucky in my life, being born here, getting the education I did. I was lucky being born in America, the son of people who had been born here because their parents had come here.
Immigration is the story of the US.
Tags:Amtrak, Claverack, Columbia County, Donald Trump, Greene County, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Obama, Putin, Red Dot, Rudy Giuliani, The Donald, WGXC
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 09 30 2016 Reaching for the stars and more…
October 1, 2016Something like sixteen or seventeen years ago, my friends, Medora Heilbron and Meryl Marshall-Daniels, began having weekly phone calls to shore each other up as we were all in transition points in our careers.
That wonderful custom has continued to this day. Almost every week, except when one of us is traveling, we have had calls, sharing the highs and lows, the concerns, the fears, the triumphs of our personal and professional lives.
Today, we had one of those calls. When it was my turn to comment on my state of affairs, I burst out with, “I am verklempt!”
Yesterday evening, an email that should have come in on a project I am up for did not come as promised and, for reasons that are hard to explain, released what Winston Churchill called, “the black dog.” Discouragement and depression. I woke at three in the morning and read for three hours before falling back into a fitful sleep.
It has been amazing to me the number of times in the last couple of years that I have awakened with a sense of happiness. Today, it was all I could do to speak my usual morning affirmations.
After our phone call, always good for the spirits, I made a decision to do NOTHING today but work on my physic wounds and get back my equilibrium. Three loads of laundry and tearing recipes out of the newest issue of “Food & Wine” was as ambitious as I got.
The day matched my mood; grey, hostile, chill and rainy. Marcel, the dog I am caring for, and I curled up on the couch. He napped, I read.
Now that the day has slipped into evening, I have to say “the black dog” and I seem to be getting distance from each other. Largely because of the wonderful support group that is our weekly call. Together we have laughed and cried.
It wasn’t until late in the afternoon when my spirits were beginning to lift that I even looked at the news of the day. The sound of uplifting jazz plays in the background. Happier than I have been all day, I am sipping a martini and typing. Getting back to the happy Mat.
What did make me happy today was that Alabama’s Chief Justice, Roy Moore, was suspended for the rest of his term over his urging state officials to refuse to grant marriage licenses to same sex couples. Interestingly, this is not the first time he has been kicked out of being Chief Justice. Last time was his refusal to take down a statue of the Ten Commandments.
And I was both sad and happy that Rosetta, the first spacecraft to orbit a comet, did a belly flop onto the comet’s surface and went silent, leaving behind reams of data for scientists to parse. He/it/she was a plucky fellow. What do you call a spacecraft anyway?
Elon Musk wants to send people to Mars. He is thinking of a million or so colonists over the next fifty to a hundred years. He has envisioned a rocket to take them there. And they should be prepared to die, he said. It made me think of the first colonists who came from Europe to the Americas. They had a hard time too.
The thought excites me. More than likely, I will be gone by the time there is a first rocket to go but if I were here, I would volunteer. Wow, what an adventure…
The New World captured the imagination of the Old World and millions upon millions poured into North and South America, looking for better lives, something different.
My father’s family came from Germany. My mother’s from Sweden. We are a nation of immigrants and we always seem to forget that. I am not sure how we manage to forget that but we do.
Growing up Catholic in Minnesota was nothing like growing up Catholic somewhere else as I have learned in conversations with friends over the years. My good friend Bill told me once that he wouldn’t have been allowed to know me where he grew up in rural Missouri.
So I look forward to a time when we go out and populate the planets and then the stars. I think it’s in our blood to do that.
Tags:Alabama, Elon Musk, General, Jazz, Marcel, Mars, Mars colonization, Media, Medora Heilbron, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, Rosetta, Roy Moore, technology, The Black Dog, Verklempt, Winston Churchill
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »