Archive for the ‘Hudson New York’ Category
February 5, 2017
It is Saturday night at the cottage. “Swing Jazz” is playing on my Echo, the floodlights illuminate the creek and I am cozy in the cottage. A load of dishes is in the dishwasher and I have spent the day, partially working, running a few errands. Every week I try to buy some canned goods for the food pantry at the church and bring them in on Sunday. That was one of today’s errands.
When I finish this, I will rehearse the readings for tomorrow as I am lector at Christ Church tomorrow. It all feels very hygge. [Pronounced hoo-ga; the Danish word for living a cozy life.] It seems the best time of all to be hygge, what with everything that is happening around us in dizzying array.
Honestly, right now, I am not sure who’s on first. The refugee ban seems to have been lifted with the ban on immigrants from the seven predominantly Muslim countries. Or is it? I am doing my best to keep up and it’s hard. Really hard…
I think President Trump hung up on the Australian Prime Minister. Mine eyes dazzle.
And then President Trump told Putin that sanctions remain until he leaves Ukraine which is not what I think Putin was thinking would happen. Putin did a few “provocative” actions in Ukraine this past week [thing what you can do with artillery] that ended badly for him. The pro-Russian rebels were rebuffed by the Ukrainians. And The Donald rebuked him.
Or perhaps it was Steve Bannon, who appears to be becoming the Lord Chancellor to King Donald. Time Magazine has a frightening portrait of the man on its cover. It is feared this is the man who is pulling the strings. Look here.
Apparently, per reports, Kelly, the Secretary of Homeland Security, had to remind Steve Bannon, he only takes orders from the President when Bannon was bossing Kelly around.
Oh, just gosh…
Kellyanne Conway, the most skillful swinger of truths encountered this side of Paradise, is being skewered everywhere as she justified the travel ban by referring to the “Bowling Green Massacre.” Well, a couple of men were arrested in Bowling Green for attempting to aid and abet terrorists but there was no “Bowling Green Massacre.” She is saying she misspoke one word and is being eviscerated by “haters.”
Must say, mine eyes dazzle.
The king of Executive Orders, our Donald, is now issuing one that will roll back Dodd-Frank, the regulations that were to save us from another meltdown like 2008. Carpe diem!
While most of me is horrified by the political spectacle around me, there is another part that is amused. In a gallows humor sort of way, which is not a good way. Most of the American public is not amused. President Trump’s approval ratings aren’t good.
Well, who approves of chaos and confusion and flirting with unconstitutionality?
Ethicists are appalled at the flimsiness of Trump’s separation from his business interests.
And all of this is hurting his business interests and those of Ivanka. Nordstrom’s has dropped the Ivanka Trump line. In an earlier post, I mentioned I was at Lord & Taylor on 5th Avenue and there was no one in the Ivanka Trump section. Last time I was there, there was no Ivanka Trump section to be found. Poof! Gone.
And, frankly, I have grown a little fond of Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner. It is rumored they weighed in with The Donald and prevented him from signing an Executive Order that would have stripped the LGBTQ community of rights they had received under the Obama Administration.
On the other hand, it is, I’m sure, not making Steve Bannon happy. Nor is it making happy the evangelicals who supported Trump despite his raunchiness.
Me? A gay man. I’m pleased. Woo! Saved for another day.
Truly, I’m just a little bit scared. And a little bit amused. And a whole lot unhappy.
So, now it is time to return to hygge. I’ll make myself a martini and finish reading “The Romanovs,” a six hundred plus page book outlining the rise and fall of the world’s longest ruling dynasty. That’s a saga and it didn’t end well, as we all know.
May all this end well.
Tags:Australian Prime Minister, Bowling Street Massacre, Executive Orders, Hygge, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Jazz, Kelly, Kellyanne Conway, LGBTQ, Obama, President Trump, Putin, Steve Bannon, Time Magazine
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Gay, Gay Liberation, Great Recession, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
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 »
January 15, 2017
It is early evening in Claverack; the lights have been turned on over the creek and I have asked Alexa to play the “Pop Classical” station so music is filling the cottage. It is an idyllic night after a very nice day.
Waking before the alarm this morning, I cleared my email inboxes, showered and gathered things together for the food pantry at the church. Post church, I went to the Red Dot and then to Ca’Mea to meet Larry and Alicia and it was a pleasant country afternoon.
Against the backdrop of the pleasant country afternoon is a tension about the political scene.
One of my neighbors, who, when he met me was a bit uncomfortable with me and who has become a very good friend, asked me why the LGBTQ community was concerned about Trump. He voted for neither Hillary or The Donald, loathing them equally.
My response was that it wasn’t so much Trump’s views on gays but the views of the people who are around him. Mike Pence, Governor of Indiana until Friday, then Vice President of the United States, worked to enact strident laws that jeopardized the rights of gays in his state. Jeff Sessions, who is by all accounts is a gentleman of the first order in social situations, is homophobic, anti-immigration and anti some other important things.
My friend had no idea. And was concerned when he heard this.
Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a legendary figure in the Civil Rights movement, is not attending Trump’s inauguration because he does not feel Trump in a legitimate President. I find that unfortunate and counterproductive.
And I find unfortunate and counterproductive Donald Trump’s Twitter storm against Representative Lewis, demeaning his part in the Civil Rights movement. The man nearly lost his life on the bridge into Selma. To denigrate him as Trump has is unfortunate and not in keeping with someone who is about to enter the highest office in the land.
Stephen Colbert discussed “truthiness.” Donald Trump exercised a bit of it in his depiction of Representative Lewis’ district as crime ridden. In fact, he represents one of the most affluent areas of Atlanta.
There is a good part of me that is sitting back and watching what is happening unfold with a sense of wonder, a sense of OMG is this real? And it is…
Every time I turn around, I am astounded by our President Elect.
His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is going to be a Senior Advisor. Is there not something somewhere about nepotism? Ivanka may be the de facto First Lady as Melania seems to be content to remain in Trump Tower.
Who is this person?
Andy Borowitz, comedian and raconteur, described him as the “Kremlin Employee of the Month.”
The awful thing is that he MIGHT be.
The VERY unsubstantiated report about his actions with the Russians are, at one time, very amusing and incredibly disconcerting. It has spawned a cottage industry in defining “golden showers.”
Right now, I am sitting back and watching it unfold. Called me bemused, call me amused, call me frightened, call me whatever you like and I think we need to go back into the early 19th century to find anything similar.
Oh, wow!
And I will continue to watch with a carefully bemused eye that is also carefully turned on to what the new President might do as he needs, more than most Presidents, to be held accountable.
Please help with that. Please.
Tags:Alexa, Alicia Vergara, Andy Borowitz, Atlanta, Claverack, Donald Trump, Golden Showers, Hillary Clinton, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, John Lewis, Kremlin Employee of the Month, Larry Divney, LGBT, LGBTQ, Mike Pence, Selma, Stephen Colbert, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hudson New York, Income Inequality, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
January 11, 2017
It is latish, for me. The clock is moving toward 11 PM and, generally, by this time, I am in bed, reading, watching a video, falling asleep. But not tonight. I am just home from an evening with some friends. We watched a movie on DVD, while having dinner and then watched President Obama’s farewell speech.
There were six of us, I think. Some cried. As I watched, I hoped I was not watching the curtain fall on a period of our democracy. It’s my fear that I will not live long enough to see the other side of the journey we have chosen to take by electing Donald Trump our next President.
Obama extolled us to be activists and I am choosing to be. I am one of the organizers of a local group we are calling Blue DOT, Democracy Opposing Trump. How active we are will depend on his actions and the actions of the Republican Congress after they take office.
Obamacare is a flawed system and it is providing help to many who would not have it otherwise. I know a few, friends who in the years following the economic slump of 2008 and beyond who were hobbled by career misfortune and personal situations and they had no health insurance until Obamacare offered a window.
It’s flawed but it is something. We spend more on healthcare than anyone in the world and we rank something like 27 in the world for the success of our health care. In all the time the Republicans were attempting to repeal Obamacare there never was an alternative offered.
Driving home, the exegesis of Obama’s remarks was in full swing on NPR and I heard former Republican leader Eric Cantor say there was no point in offering an alternative to Obamacare though Mr. Cantor did attempt a modification of the ACA when he was in office and the Republicans shut him down for a minor change he wanted. They wanted nothing to do with ACA.
In the quiet of my home, the creek lit by my lights, thin sheets of ice on each its banks, I am afraid, fearing for the country I do love, for all its flaws.
If you get a chance, read Doug Blackmon’s “Slavery by Another Name.” It is painful reading and helps me understand what awful, evil things we have done to people of color in this country and while things are much better, they are not yet good and equal.
A quarter of the way through the book, I have paused because each page makes me feel pain and shame about things I never knew but should have known.
Doug won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for it. There was also an acclaimed PBS series based on the book.
We are moving into territory none of us could have imagined. There is an unverified report which was part of a briefing to both President Elect Trump and to President Obama, that the Russians have compromising information on Trump’s personal life and financial situation.
Tomorrow, Trump will hold a news conference. Unless he cancels it again. There will be a lot of questions, understandably. It is supposed to be about how he will separate himself from his business interests and it will be about his Russian connections.
Part of the unverified report states that there were ongoing conversations between the Trump campaign and Russia.
It is unverified and we need to know if it is true.
There is so much we need to know about Mr. Trump and his nominees for Cabinet positions. I don’t like Jeff Sessions and don’t want him as Attorney General but at least he is one of the few, if not the only Cabinet nominee, who filled out the required paperwork.
It’s my fear we are about to enter an age in which everyone in government feels they are above the law.
In his speech, Obama challenged us not to allow that to happen.
God help us everyone!
Tags:ACA, Blue Dot, Doug Blackmon, Eric Cantor, Jeff Sessions, Obama, Obamacare, Putin, Russia, Slavery by Another Name, Trump
Posted in 2016 Election, Elections, Entertainment, Great Recession, Hudson New York, Income Inequality, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
January 9, 2017
Outside the cottage, it is a cold winter night. It’s sixteen degrees and feels like three, per my Weather Channel App. Tonight, I will be leaving the kitchen cupboard doors open and the faucets dripping. So far, so good. No frozen pipes yet.
Soft jazz is playing on the Echo and its Alexa technology was the hit of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Auto manufacturers are integrating Alexa into their vehicles. It is, apparently, the “Killer App” of this year’s CES, which was, apparently, all about technology coming to automobiles.
Alan Murray, who is CEO of Fortune Magazine and Chief Content Officer for Time, Inc. writes a daily blog called the “CEO Daily.” I suggest you subscribe. He wrote this week, from CES, that all companies are becoming technology companies. It also appears, to me, that all companies are becoming media companies. It is a huge transformation that is going on.
Despite all the rhetoric about jobs being lost to China and Mexico [and some are], the biggest danger to jobs everywhere is the rise of Artificial Intelligence. A Japanese insurance company is laying off several dozen people because it has found software they feel will do a better job than the people, an offshoot of IBM’s super brain Watson.
Because of where the cottage is located, I have trouble with my mobile signal. I have a micro-cell. It has been giving me trouble tonight. When I phoned AT&T, I had an entire conversation with a gentleman who was not, in fact, anyone. He was an AI interface.
There is an Echo in my home and so I am experiencing the Alexa technology first hand. Amazing!
Great fun and a little disconcerting. And more and more jobs will be lost to AI in the years to come because we are looking at technology to replace us. There are a lot of Uber drivers out there but what happens to them when self-driving cars become common? What happens to all the long-haul truck drivers when there are self-driving trucks? What happens to all the crews of ships when we have self-piloting ships?
We are on the way to being replaced by technology. And we need to figure this out. Because it is happening.
Donald Trump is going to be sworn in as President of these United States. A lot of folks voted for him, I think, because he was addressing the issue of job degradation which has been going on but, I think, it was a backward-looking view because the real worry right now, globally, is not moving jobs off shore. That is so 2000. It is about the fact we are losing jobs to Artificial Intelligence. That is so 2017. And I don’t hear Trump addressing that.
Since I was a kid, I have loved science fiction and I am living in an age which would have been science fiction when I was a child. Excuse me, I just ask Alexa for a new jazz station and I get it. I ask her for the weather; I get it. It’s amazing and now we must deal with the job realities of what we’re doing because jobs will disappear as we create more and more devices to take care of us.
In airports, we have all seen the iPad devices that let us order what we want which is then delivered by a human. In about two years, there will be robots which will take care of that. What happens to those human servers?
Oh, and does anyone remember Hoot-Smalley? It was a bill passed in Congress to restrict trade after the stock market crashed. It created the Great Depression and I am fearing we will do something like this with the Trump Administration.
Look, I’m lucky. I am in the third act of my life; I have ridden the great American boom of the last half of the Twentieth Century to the max. Not rich, not poor, full of life experiences I never thought I would have. Every day I do my best to remember to be grateful.
And I hope I am not Louis XV, saying “after me, the deluge.”
Tags:After me the deluge, AI, Alexa, Artificial Intelligence, CES, Echo, Google, Great Depression, Home, Hoot Smalley, iPad, Louis XV, Media, Politics, Science Fiction, technology, theaters
Posted in 2016 Election, AT&T, Claverack, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Income Inequality, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
January 6, 2017
For several nights now, I have attempted to write a letter. A few sentences have dribbled out onto the digital page and then I abandon my effort, feeling unsatisfied, bereft of words. And hit delete.
When I spoke to my brother this morning, as we do most days, he, too, finds it difficult to think about, talk about or read about anything political. He, too, feels bereft of thought and words.
Here I am in my cottage, Christmas bunting still glistening in the lights of my trees, the playlist, “Classical for Deep Thought” playing on my Echo. And I am in deep thought.
A close relative of mine who voted for Trump has been forwarding me vicious articles on Hillary Clinton and the Obamas. Going online, I seek to find out if there is any truth to these awful stories. Most of it is balderdash concocted out of a single thread of reality. “Unproven” is what Snopes says.
There seems no point in letting my relative know that it mostly or all balderdash. They don’t want to know. This is their truth.
So, it is that for the last few nights, I have hidden out in the cottage where all things are good, listening to music, watching Netflix [just finished “Medici”]. I have been working on my consulting assignment for the Miller Center for the Presidency [oh, irony!] at the University of Virginia and diverting myself with helping some friends in California on the bible for a fictional series on which they are working. It allows me to live another life.
Glancing at the evening headlines, I winced. Republicans are working to defund Planned Parenthood. Trump rebuts our spy agencies and doesn’t quite accept that Russia hacked us. Certainly, not to help him.
And, oh my! Putin’s popularity among Republicans is rising! Why am I so not happy about that?
The Chinese are telling Trump to stop tweeting and that will probably only cause him to tweet more.
Trump has said that “torture works.” Now that he is President Elect, human rights groups around the world are fearful that his remarks will embolden leaders who find torture a very reasonable way of getting their way.
It is just a discouraging world.
Republicans have been determined to unravel Obamacare since it was initiated. They now will probably get their way. My concern is that I haven’t seen any credible alternatives from them and, whatever you think of the flawed system that is the Affordable Care Act [aka Obamacare], there are far fewer uninsured than there have been.
Which also doesn’t much change the reality that while we spend more per capita on health care we are in the middle of pack in terms of health care results.
Look, Donald Trump is the President Elect. I wish him well.
I am so concerned. This Presidency feels as if it is going to upend the order we have come to accept for at least the last eighty years. And that makes me concerned.
If it goes really bad, I hope my youthful activism will return and I will do my best to protest. And I didn’t think at my age I would be asked for my youthful activism to return but it just might have to!
We will all have to see. The roller coaster is leaving the station.
At least I have broken out of the paralysis of the last few days and written something.
We all care. God bless America. And God help us all.
Tags:Christmas, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, Donald Trump, General, Hillary Clinton, Media, Obamacare, Politics, Presidency, Putin, Repbulcans, Snopes, The Donald, The Obamas, Trump
Posted in 2016 Election, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
January 3, 2017
Not yet quite six o’clock in the evening, the sun is gone and floodlights are on the creek. Soft jazz is on the Echo and I am winding down from some writing I did today along with emails and a couple of loads of laundry. An ordinary day at the cottage, most of it cozied up with my laptop while watching Marcel, Lionel and Pierre’s sixteen-year old poodle sleep on the couch. I’m dog sitting again while they are off in Boston.
New Year’s was surprisingly good. My expectations were low and the reality great. There was a feast at my friend Matthew Morse’s house with thirteen people, followed by going down the road to friends of his who have restored as their home a 19th Century roadhouse. There is a balcony looking down into the tavern area and I was standing there looking down at a crowd that seemed like a hundred, sipping Moet Chandon as the New Year came in…
New Year’s Day was spent in recovery with a game of Clue over cocktails, followed by roast chicken. Not bad.
Every time I peek into the state of the world, I want to slam the door and run into my bedroom with a cold bottle of vodka and a straw.
It sometimes feels like I have stepped into a Jean Cocteau film.
Hours after I exchanged e-mails with a friend who lives in Istanbul, working for Sony Pictures, there was a nightclub slaughter. Responsibility for it has been claimed by IS.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber killer a couple of dozen people. This Sunday, I will light a candle for them at church, the people of Baghdad and Istanbul. Turkey has been assaulted this month by a whole series of attacks. Baghdad has never not been assaulted since we invaded.
Trump tweeted something New Year’s Eve that has lots of people outraged. It seems impossible for me to follow his tweets though I have been told the cable news channels have been spending hours attempting to decipher them.
His press secretary has pleaded with people to stop mocking him. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Alec Baldwin has stepped into a brand-new career on SNL and we are going to be living with it for Trump’s entire term in office. He is just too juicy a target for satirists. I wish I were a comedy writer.
Trump’s team is saying we should be focusing more on punishing Hillary Clinton than being concerned about Russian hacking. Did I say something about being in a Cocteau film? [And if you don’t know who Jean Cocteau is, Google him…]
US officials are saying Russia’s “fingerprints” are all over the hacking and Trump is saying he has inside information on the hacking which he will reveal tomorrow or Wednesday. Personally, I can’t wait. But then I am still waiting for him to tell us how he will separate himself from his businesses. That may be more difficult than handling the Russian hacking.
Then, of course, since I last wrote Carrie Fisher, “Princess Leia” from “Star Wars” died after a heart attack on a flight back from London, only to be followed across the River Styx by her mother, the legendary Debbie Reynolds, the following day.
Eras seem ending all around me and I am not happy…
Tags:Alec Baldwin, Baghdad, Carrie Fisher, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, Debbie Reynolds, Google, Istanbul, Jean Cocteau, Lionel White, Marcel, New Year's, Pierre Font, Princess Leia, Russia, Russian hacking, SNL, Sony Pictures, Star Wars, technology, Trump
Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
December 20, 2016
A few hours ago, I asked Alexa to play the Holiday Station from Amazon Prime and Christmas carols have been floating through the house since then. The lights are illuminating the creek and I have sat down, at last, to write a letter. The last one was nine days ago, which is unusual for me. Normally, I write every two or three days.
The frenzy of prepping for Christmas has given me ample excuses to not think about the world…
Two Christmas trees grace the cottage; one small real one, bedecked with as many ornaments as it bear and an artificial white tree, which has been my tradition for years now.
The first Christmas after my partner left, I went to the lot where we had purchased our trees and found myself paralyzed, not wanting to get out of the car and so I didn’t. Decorating our trees had always been a big thing and I couldn’t imagine how to get through that Christmas.
So I did the unthinkable; I went to Walmart and bought a pre-lit white Christmas tree which was the silliest thing I could think of doing and it made my Christmas. It was so silly, I laughed, which was what I needed to do that year. And a personal tradition was born…
A white Christmas tree adorned with all the ornaments that matter. There are a few from my mother, one White House ornament given to me by Buddy, who helped decorate the actual White House Christmas tree. He is gone, lost to AIDS before anything could be done and I have the ornament he gave me and it has a place of pride every year.
There are the wonderful crystal ornaments Lionel and Pierre have given me the last few years, two Christopher Radko ornaments from when I was on the Board of Governors for the TV Academy, ornaments I purchased the first year I was working at Discovery – that was an animal themed Christmas.
In the last twenty-four hours, I have made 16 quiches. It has been my tradition for the last some years to bake quiches for my friends and neighbors and there are still a few more to be made but I have made most of them and will spend some of tomorrow delivering them.
My kitchen is not quite a catastrophe…
All of this is part of my life and a welcome distraction.
Today, Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency was ratified by the Electoral College, a fact I am still having a hard time getting my head around, which is why I seem to especially devoted to the Food Section of the New York Times.
At least twelve are dead as a result of lorry crashing into a Christmas market in Berlin.
The Russian Ambassador to Turkey was shot dead today in Ankara.
Aleppo is a catastrophe we grieve but seem to have no way to respond to and I still wonder about the boy in the photograph from months ago. He will haunt me to the day I die. Is he safe?
It seems I may never rest until I know and I may never know but I keep seeing that photo…
And as Christmas approaches, I am so grateful to be here, in the cottage, decorated as best I could for this most wonderful holiday, listening to Christmas music…
The world is always in trouble and it will continue to be that way. And I will work to find ways to feel like I am helping the world not be in as much trouble as it is. Maybe I will succeed, a little bit…
Tags:AIDS, Christmas, Christopher Radko, Discovery, Donald Trump, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Politics, TV Academy, Walmart
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
December 11, 2016
Here I am at the cottage; the floodlights are lighting the creek and I have been putting together my Christmas presents so I can ship them out on Monday. My skills at wrapping are negligible and have been forever so the invention of gift bags has been a Godsend. Right now, I am at a dead stop as I have used up all the bags I purchased yesterday and still have presents to go. So, tomorrow morning I will be up and out early to get more.
It’s complicated this year as the people with whom I traditionally have shared Christmas are scattered and my living room is now littered with segregated piles. This gets shipped to New Mexico, this goes to Boston, this goes to New York, this goes to Minneapolis…
Monday morning, I need to show up when the UPS Store opens to get this all off and I will get it done.
And in the midst of all of that, I seem to have been abandoned by young Nick, who has been my partner in crime since he was fifteen. I am not sure what I have done but he has decided to jettison me from his life. Speculation is useless and I now need to accept he no longer finds me a person of consequence.
I am on my own. Today, I went out and started to make my Christmas come together. Not quite sure how it will all be but it will be.
Just as it will be that Donald Trump is going to be President of these United States.
When I am looking at the New York Times I find myself gravitating to the Food Section, obsessively saving recipes. My solace is in cooking these days, thinking of meals I will serve, planning table settings, decorating.
It is all diversion. We will see how all of this plays out. As I have said to many people: the next four years are going to be experiential. He will be a different kind of President.
We will see how that plays out.
And now it is Christmas and I am sitting listening to Christmas Carols and, I must admit, sipping what I think is a much-deserved martini.
As I sit here, I am looking around my little cottage and am so grateful I am here, able to look out at the creek, illuminated by floodlights, and to listen to Christmas Carols on my Echo, sit wrapped in the warmth of my home and know that I will be engaged over the next four years as part of the loyal opposition.
We’re in for a wild ride. The rollercoaster has left the station. Hang on and let’s see what happens…
Tags:Christmas, Claverack Cottage, Donald Trump, Loyal Oppositon, Martini, Nick Dier, UPS, `
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | 1 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 »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter from Claverack 02 04 2017 Mine eyes dazzle…
February 5, 2017It is Saturday night at the cottage. “Swing Jazz” is playing on my Echo, the floodlights illuminate the creek and I am cozy in the cottage. A load of dishes is in the dishwasher and I have spent the day, partially working, running a few errands. Every week I try to buy some canned goods for the food pantry at the church and bring them in on Sunday. That was one of today’s errands.
When I finish this, I will rehearse the readings for tomorrow as I am lector at Christ Church tomorrow. It all feels very hygge. [Pronounced hoo-ga; the Danish word for living a cozy life.] It seems the best time of all to be hygge, what with everything that is happening around us in dizzying array.
Honestly, right now, I am not sure who’s on first. The refugee ban seems to have been lifted with the ban on immigrants from the seven predominantly Muslim countries. Or is it? I am doing my best to keep up and it’s hard. Really hard…
I think President Trump hung up on the Australian Prime Minister. Mine eyes dazzle.
And then President Trump told Putin that sanctions remain until he leaves Ukraine which is not what I think Putin was thinking would happen. Putin did a few “provocative” actions in Ukraine this past week [thing what you can do with artillery] that ended badly for him. The pro-Russian rebels were rebuffed by the Ukrainians. And The Donald rebuked him.
Or perhaps it was Steve Bannon, who appears to be becoming the Lord Chancellor to King Donald. Time Magazine has a frightening portrait of the man on its cover. It is feared this is the man who is pulling the strings. Look here.
Apparently, per reports, Kelly, the Secretary of Homeland Security, had to remind Steve Bannon, he only takes orders from the President when Bannon was bossing Kelly around.
Oh, just gosh…
Kellyanne Conway, the most skillful swinger of truths encountered this side of Paradise, is being skewered everywhere as she justified the travel ban by referring to the “Bowling Green Massacre.” Well, a couple of men were arrested in Bowling Green for attempting to aid and abet terrorists but there was no “Bowling Green Massacre.” She is saying she misspoke one word and is being eviscerated by “haters.”
Must say, mine eyes dazzle.
The king of Executive Orders, our Donald, is now issuing one that will roll back Dodd-Frank, the regulations that were to save us from another meltdown like 2008. Carpe diem!
While most of me is horrified by the political spectacle around me, there is another part that is amused. In a gallows humor sort of way, which is not a good way. Most of the American public is not amused. President Trump’s approval ratings aren’t good.
Well, who approves of chaos and confusion and flirting with unconstitutionality?
Ethicists are appalled at the flimsiness of Trump’s separation from his business interests.
And all of this is hurting his business interests and those of Ivanka. Nordstrom’s has dropped the Ivanka Trump line. In an earlier post, I mentioned I was at Lord & Taylor on 5th Avenue and there was no one in the Ivanka Trump section. Last time I was there, there was no Ivanka Trump section to be found. Poof! Gone.
And, frankly, I have grown a little fond of Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner. It is rumored they weighed in with The Donald and prevented him from signing an Executive Order that would have stripped the LGBTQ community of rights they had received under the Obama Administration.
On the other hand, it is, I’m sure, not making Steve Bannon happy. Nor is it making happy the evangelicals who supported Trump despite his raunchiness.
Me? A gay man. I’m pleased. Woo! Saved for another day.
Truly, I’m just a little bit scared. And a little bit amused. And a whole lot unhappy.
So, now it is time to return to hygge. I’ll make myself a martini and finish reading “The Romanovs,” a six hundred plus page book outlining the rise and fall of the world’s longest ruling dynasty. That’s a saga and it didn’t end well, as we all know.
May all this end well.
Tags:Australian Prime Minister, Bowling Street Massacre, Executive Orders, Hygge, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Jazz, Kelly, Kellyanne Conway, LGBTQ, Obama, President Trump, Putin, Steve Bannon, Time Magazine
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Gay, Gay Liberation, Great Recession, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »