Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category
November 8, 2017
It is a grey and sullen day, seated in the United Red Carpet Club in Minneapolis’ airport, sipping a cappuccino, waiting to fly back home after a short visit to kith and kin. It has been primarily grey and sullen here since my arrival on Friday though there was warmth in the town with my visits with friends and relatives.
It is an interesting time in my life; I am thinking of becoming a vagabond for a while, checking off some things on my bucket list while seeking sun when it is grey in the Northeast and Midwest. A plan is beginning to emerge…
Out there in the world, the White House Reality Show continues to play to high ratings if not approval. At this moment, the President is in Asia on the longest Asian trip since George H.W. Bush, when he famously threw up on the Prime Minister of Japan.
Bush pere and fils have come out blasting at Trump in statements, previously made, now coming to light. “A blowhard” is one from pere.
A tragic shooting has occurred over the weekend in Texas, a man gunning down 46 people at a Baptist church in Sutherland, Texas. 26 are dead, eight from one family, and 20 injured. There is a numbness some are feeling because we have come to accept these tragedies as part of the background of our lives. They happen and it seems no one does anything.
Since last I wrote, a disaffected man from Uzbekistan, rolled a rental truck down a bike and walking path in New York, killing eight and wounding more.
After the Las Vegas shootings, it was “too soon” to politicize the conversation by talking about gun control but not too soon to politicize the terror attack. Certain statements tweeted by Mr. Trump may complicate the adjudication of the crime. But then our judicial system is a “joke” and a “laughing stock” per our president; a judicial system which is, in many ways, the envy of the world.
My desire to be a vagabond is, I’m sure, bound in with a desire to flee. And to be free to spend more time in Minneapolis with kith and kin, friends of decades and family of which I see too little. While here, helped my former sister-in-law with an issue and it felt good to be useful to her.
And now it is the next day and I am sliding down the west side of the Hudson River on Train 238, going down to the city only to return on the 5:47 so that I can be part of the November birthday train as my birthday is in November. I wasn’t sure I would do this but on a whim, I parked my car and am on my way.
The day has been fun. Tired last night, I went to the Red Dot for a “pop up” Indian restaurant and then went home, read a mystery and soon fell asleep, waking before all the alarms I had set.
During my Wednesday version of WGXC’s “Morning Show,” I played some jazz [check out The Hot Sardines!] and interviewed one of the performers of “The Mother of Us All,” a rarely performed opera by 20th Century female icon, Gertrude Stein, with libretto by Virgil Thompson. It’s the story of Susan B. Anthony, who campaigned for women’s right to vote, achieved only after death, a hundred years ago this month, in November 1917.
After the dreary days in Minneapolis, the sun burst through the windows of the chilly studio in Hudson this morning and I felt joyful.
At this moment, our president is in Beijing, where he is being feted with special panoply. It seems Mr. Trump has gone from deriding China to recognizing some benefit to a relationship with the country and its now very powerful President Xi, ensconced recently in the heavens with Mao and Deng.
It was election day yesterday. The off-year election didn’t bring many people out in some places though it did bring about a Democratic victory for governor in both Virginia and New Jersey.
In Virginia, the Republican candidate did his best to sound like Trump but was soundly defeated, raising the question among pundits if there can be Trumpism without Trump? I don’t know. I hope not.
Danica Roem, a transgender woman, made history by being elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, defeating a Republican who has held the seat since 1992 and who made her sexuality an issue in the campaign. She focused on the bad traffic problems.
Former President Obama showed up yesterday in Chicago for jury duty and was dismissed but not before creating a social media storm.
I bring this to a close as I continue down the Hudson, watching the occasional kayaker, with the sun glinting off the river, a slate of burnished steel reflecting light back to heaven.
Tags:Amtrak, China, Danica Roem, Deng, George H W Bush, kith and kin, Mao, Minneapolis, Obama, Sutherland Texas Shooting, Train 238, Trump in Asia, WGXC, Xi
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Hollywood, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 26, 2017
As I begin writing this letter, I am in New York City, at Birch, a coffee house just east of 5th Avenue on 27th, waiting for a friend and a colleague. There are some things he wants to chat over with me and then I will go to dinner with my great good friend, Nick Stuart and his friend, Jodd. Post dinner, I will head back to the cottage for a bunch of meetings and things to do tomorrow.
Walking from Penn Station to Birch, I realized how my relationship with New York City has changed over the last eighteen years. I’ve gone from “bright lights, big city” to being delighted not to be here that often; I have grown accustomed to the quiet of the country. Penn Station is an assault on the system after the tiny, bucolic station in Hudson and walking through the streets of the city, I feel more a sense of pressure, for want of another word, since I came here in 1999 to begin to live, then splitting my time between Los Angeles and New York.
For the last two and a half years, I have been mostly at the cottage and have slipped into the role and attitude of someone who lives in the country. On weekends, when the county fills with out of towners, I cringe when horns are blasted if someone doesn’t move quickly enough.
I relish waking in the morning to look out over the creek and to look out at my land and see no one.
One needs that kind of quiet and solitude these days to absorb the world news:
o A California judge won’t force Obamacare payments from the Federal government.
o Hillary and the Democrats paid for the dossier on Trump.
o The NAACP is warning people of color not to fly American Airlines.
o Whatever is going on with tax reform remains incomprehensible to me.
o The brother of the Las Vegas shooter was picked up on child porn charges.
o The president and a Gold Star widow can’t quit feuding.
o China’s Xi Jinping probably is with us indefinitely and we’ll see if that’s a good thing or a bad thing AND he’s now as important as Mao and Deng!!!!
o The ease of travel with a US passport has plummeted since Trump has become president.
o The US and North Korea are continuing saber rattling. North Korea is talking hydrogen bomb and the US military action.
o Amazon is going to start delivering packages into our homes. [Ah, not mine. Yet.]
o President George H.W. Bush has been accused by an actress of groping her in 2014. And has apologized.
o A Houston resident, originally from Mexico, died of flesh eating bacteria after working on homes damaged in Harvey. He was the third Houston case; the others were non-fatal.
o The Trump campaign, via a data analytics firm, contacted Wikileaks to access emails from Clinton’s server to make them into a searchable database for the campaign.
Is it any wonder that yesterday when I walked along the wooded lane that is Patroon Street, I thought about none of these things?
I thought of other things, the changing of the leaves, friends, personal things, upcoming trips, hopeful things.
My amazement at the world is unbridled. Today, I commented to a friend: I think we are living in the second Gilded Age and my comfort comes from remembering that did not last and was reined in, eventually.
Each day, I get up and read the papers and find my eyes go wide while I say: lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my…
The Toronto Star blazoned out that Trump broke his own record this week – of lies. They counted 57 whoppers.
Call me disgusted by them all.
Tags:Birch Coffee, Claverack, Donald Trump, George H W Bush, Gilded Age, Gold Star Widow, NAACP, Obamacare, Penn Station
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 9, 2017
There are times when even the quiet beauty of the cottage is not enough to soothe the soul; this has been one of those times. Since the shootings in Las Vegas, I have found little solace in anything, except, perhaps, sleep.
Sunday, Mother Eileen captured the anguish, pain and despair I feel in her sermon. After the Prayers of the People, the bell tolled once for each person killed in Las Vegas. The service closed with “My Country Tis of Thee.”
My head bowed, I fought back tears.
There has been Las Vegas. Jeff Sessions is claiming that bans on discrimination don’t cover transgender people. The Trump Administration is rolling back rules that help women have birth control as part of their medical coverage.
The United States joined Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China and a few other repressive regimes in refusing to declare it immoral to execute people for being gay.
What?
As the bell was tolling [and it tolls for thee], I thought of a long ago, rainy, cold November afternoon and looked at my mother and said: what kind of country are we? It was the afternoon of the day Kennedy had been killed and that moment is etched in my brain, looking out the front windows at a sad world and wondering just what kind of country would kill someone who seemed to be having so much fun and was doing good things?
There was nothing my mother could say. To this day, I remember the look she gave me, wanting to have an answer and having none. The silence still rings in my ears all these years later as does the memory of the slick, wet street, a yellow and red city bus moving slowly down the street.
Last night there was another torch lit march in Charlottesville, VA. A return of Richard Spencer and his white supremacists. Listen to their chants: “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo.” [Washington Post, October 7, 2017]
Russia is our friend? The South will rise again? Russia is not my friend and the South envisioned by these chaps is not a South in which I would be comfortable. It’s one in which I think I might be afraid for my life.
Today is Columbus Day, the day everyone makes noise about old Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of America. Personally, I suspect it was the Vikings a few centuries earlier but they don’t get credit [maybe I think that because my mother’s family were Swedish]. However, as we have discovered Christopher Columbus was brave and not a model of morality in the way he treated native Americans. White people, in general, have not been very kind to native Americans.
Thirty years ago, my friend Ann Frisbee Naymie and I had a conversation about this and she just said to me: bad karma for what we did.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who has announced he is not seeking reelection, electrified the world yesterday with a tweet saying the White House was an adult care center and someone had missed their shift. Really? A Republican lawmaker is talking about a Republican President in this way? Wowza! You go, Corker. And I agree with you that Trump runs the White House like it’s an episode of the President and, like you, I think it is possible Donald Trump could stumble us into a nuclear war before he realized what he’d done.
Two hospitals have been evacuated in California and at least 50 structures destroyed in fires that are causing people to flee from Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties while in southern California fires are raging in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
The Four Horseman are riding.
Thank you, Mother Eileen, for giving shape to the inchoate agony I was experiencing when I walked into church yesterday. Thank you for ringing the bell for the deaths in Las Vegas. Thank you for asking the painful questions we all should be asking ourselves. What kind of country are we? What kind of country do we want to be?
Tags:Ann Frisbee Naymie, Bob Corker, California Fires, Charlottesville, Christ Church Hudson, Columbus Day, Donald Trump, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, Jeff Sessions, John F. Kennedy, Las Vegas Shootings, Mendocino, Mother Eileen, Napa, Richard Spencer, Russia, Sonoma, The South will rise again, White Supremacy
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 18, 2017
Last night, there were insects buzzing around me as I typed out on the deck, following a warm summer like day, wearing shorts all day, even to church. How scandalized the good Sisters would have been at my temerity to do so sacrilegious a thing as to wear shorts to church on a warm day. But I did.
I knew Leonard would and so I wouldn’t be alone. In fact, there were about six of us out of about fifty attendees who were wearing shorts. It occurred to me that God was happy we were there and not concerned about what we were wearing.
Sunday’s sermon from Mother Eileen was about forgiveness and I thought about someone to whom I felt I owed an apology; I had said harsh things to her about her sister and had felt crummy about it since so I sent myself an email to myself to remind to seek her out.
She was seated at a table at the Red Dot when I walked in, we spoke and she hadn’t remembered the incident. It was a good moment.
Post lunch, I crossed the Hudson and went to the little gem that is the Bridge Street Theater to see the current play, “How to Pray.” As always, John Sowle’s sets were inventive and fun. The cast was superb.
Three actors play myriad roles.
Steven Patterson played what seemed a dozen roles, including an aged transgender chanteuse who finally gets her moment as well as a dog and a cat. His dog was spectacular; I got it and rolled in laughter. He is a wonderful actor, having now seen him do several things, including a one-man performance of a play on Frankenstein.
Morgan Cooper must have mastered a half dozen, claiming each one with authority. His three-year old was especially endearing.
Susan Slotoroff is the only actor who plays only one part. She, too, held the stage and held my interest as she made a journey which an unexpected ending.
The playwright, Michelle Carter, has won several awards, rightfully so, for the work.
If you are in the area, you have one more weekend to catch it, next weekend, the 21st through 24th. Advance tickets available at http://howtopray.brownpapertickets.com or by calling 800-838-3006.
Today, I am going into New York, which is going to be a zoo because the U.N. is gathering global leaders. Trump will be there and most of the global leaders are – and I don’t care if you are pro-Trump or not – trying to figure out what to make of President Donald Trump.
Aren’t we all?
Truly.
And if you are not aware of it, something strange is going on at the American Embassy in Cuba. 21 Embassy staff are having health issues that stem from who knows what but staffers are suffering hearing and cognitive issues from some unexplained and undetermined attack. Raul Castro has offered to allow FBI agents to come to Cuba to investigate and the entire diplomatic community in Cuba is concerned because no one knows what’s going on.
A case for the X-Files.
The trees are beginning their turn as I ride the train into New York City. A heavy fog played over the creek when I woke.
The rhythm of life continues.
Tags:American Embassy in Cuba, Bridgestreet Theater, Claverack, Claverack Creek, How to Pray, John Sowle, Michelle Carter, Morgan Cooper, Mother Eileen, Red Dot, Steven Patterson, Susan Sltoroff
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Income Inequality, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
September 6, 2017
Today, earlier, as I sat sipping morning coffee, two huge geese came crashing through a tree fallen across the creek, landing hard, splashing as they hit creek water. It was startling. Geese, once so abundant on my creek, have been rare these last few years. Mature birds these, I wondered if they were from one of the many families of geese I have seen growing up while I have resided at the cottage, come home to roost for a moment. Sailing majestically up and down for a time, they departed and I’ve not seen them again.
Irma has become a Category 5 Hurricane and will reach Saba tonight, the Caribbean island I visited earlier this year. Two friends from my Los Angeles days have retired there and will be facing her fury as I write this. For a while, I got lost on Facebook to see if they had posted anything new but they hadn’t. It’s now that time when you get on your knees and pray, which I will tonight and have not done since my very Catholic days and that was a long while ago. And I am worried for them because Irma is as fiercer than Harvey.
Hopefully, I will know tomorrow more than I know tonight. Tonight, they are battening down the hatches and waiting, hoping, maybe praying though I don’t think either of them are religious. There have been posts from people I met there. They will be in my prayers, too.
Tonight, across the country, “Dreamers” are praying because Jeff Sessions announced the end of Obama’s DACA order and Congress has six months to fix it or all those “dreamers” will begin to be deported.
Color me cynical. How cruel can this Administration be? Trump is playing to his base but not to the interests of the country. Color me angry and not surprised. So little surprises me anymore. And there are all kinds of folks who think this is just wonderful.
And that scares me and makes me hopeful because all the rage in America is boiling to surface and maybe we will finally deal with it. It would be good if we did because we are in a very delicate place.
Back in the day, long, long ago, I was in Canada to be in my roommate’s wedding to a Canadian woman and, as I was preparing to leave, a group of my Canadian friends did an “intervention.” They did not want me to leave. Viet Nam was in play. They wanted me to stay, become a Canadian.
I didn’t. Because I was an American. It was a very profound moment in my life, making the decision to return. Those were people I loved, who loved me and I might have been happy there – a completely different life but not unhappy.
But I am an American and so I returned, got lucky, didn’t go to Viet Nam, didn’t serve in the military and made my life here.
But here is not the here I know. This here seems very strange to me, like the clock has been turned back and I don’t get it. Something is afoot and we need to fix it, once and for all. Maybe electing Trump will be the catalyst to fixing the festering wound that has damaged our national soul.
Tags:DACA, Dreamers, Hurricane Irma, Jeff Sessions, Saba, Trump
Posted in 2016 Election, Columbia County, Earthquakes, Hollywood, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Music, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
September 4, 2017
It is an excruciatingly beautiful day at the cottage, the sun is warm, a wind blows to temper it, the only sound is soft jazz in the other room. I have just finished a late lunch of eggs, sunny side up, steak and toast, eaten on the deck. The first leaves have begun to fall, scattered on the table top, reminding me of the fleetingness of time.
Soon we will be in another season, fall, which I love and loathe, as I always seem so alive in the fall and, at the same time, so painfully aware life is short and death is long. It’s been that way ever since I was a kid, walking down the leaf strewn streets of south Minneapolis, knowing winter was coming and being entranced by the magic in the air.
It is Labor Day, 2017.
“According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the holiday is ‘a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.’ Labor Day is a ‘yearly national tribute’ to the “contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and wellbeing of our country. Newsweek, 9/04/2017
And it is a holiday with a bloody history. “Labor” wasn’t always celebrated. Suggested reading: Walter Lord’s “The Good Years.”
The summer is unofficially ending when this day becomes part of history. When I was a kid, it meant school was starting the next day so this was a day I always endured fearfully. Today, I am not fearful about returning to school. There are other things…
Kim Jong-Un has me a little fearful as does having Trump be the president who is facing him. There was some analysis this morning that the timing of Kim’s tests of bombs and missiles has more to do with tweaking President Xi of China than with President Trump. The latest bomb test came just as Xi was greeting officials from the BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China. Took the wind out of Xi’s sails in terms of making news. Kim does these things lately just as Xi is set to make some news. Hey, I’m HERE, President Xi! Got it? I’m here and I’ve got some pretty big toys!
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has said North Korea “is begging for war.” President Trump is saying, “All options are on the table.” This might not end well.
Down in the Caribbean sits the Dutch island of Saba, part of the Leeward Islands, which I visited in February. Friends have retired there and are sitting directly in the path of Hurricane Irma, now a category 4 storm. An email today said they will be in the eye of the hurricane tomorrow and were busily preparing, friends helping friends prepare for what could be a very nasty ride. If you pray, think of them.
Michael Eros, son of my longtime friends, Mary Clare and Jim Eros, is returning to Houston today after the Burning Man Festival. He left Houston before Harvey hit and he will now find out what it has done to his city. He and friends built a giant figure which they burned, leaving behind the metal shell.
Harvey will likely be the most expensive storm in history; it is believed 180 billion dollars of damage has been done. Ted Cruz is having a hard time now explaining why he voted against Sandy help now that he is asking for Harvey help. The phrase, “people who live in glass houses,” comes to mind.
There are joyful things happening in the world. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their third child. Peggy Whitson has returned from the International Space Station, having notched more time in space than any other American. There will be another Indiana Jones film, without Shia LeBeouf’s character. A young girl in Harvey’s floodwaters got herself and her family rescued by asking Siri to call the Coast Guard, which rescued her as she was slipping into a sickle cell anemia crisis.
Bad things will happen. Good things will happen. All we need to do, to keep moving forward, is not to blow ourselves up. I’ll pray for that.
Tags:Angelina Jolie, Begging for war, Burning Man, China, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Indiana Jones, Kim Jong - Un, Labor Day, Leeward Islands, Michael Eros, Nikki Haley, Peggy Whitson, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, Saba, Shia LeBeouf, Siri, Xi
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, North Korea, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
September 3, 2017
Earlier today, I went to pick up the mail at the Post Office and as I was about to turn off the car, an interview started on NPR with Andrew White who, along with hundreds of other volunteer Texans, formed what is known as the “Texas Navy” and went out into the flooded streets of Houston. With a sixteen-foot boat and a twenty-horsepower motor and the help of friends, he rescued at least a hundred people, including a man with cerebral palsy and a man who was being treated for cancer and was having a bad reaction to his treatment and needed to get to his hospital. They got him within two blocks of where he needed to go; later the water in the neighborhood of the man with cerebral palsy rose another five feet after the rescue.
Sitting there, tears began flowing down my cheeks. Andrew White’s story was replicated by others all over Harris County which holds the city of Houston, citizen volunteers taking care of other citizens in need. It was the story of what is so often wonderful about this country.
Writing about it causing tears to build in my eyes and I am sniffling.
These are the stories, replicated in all kinds of tragedies around this country, that are the reasons we are great. Oh, we’re miserable S.O.B.’s sometimes but when it comes to disaster, we rise to the challenge in an incredible way and that makes me proud.
From Louisiana came the “Cajun Navy” that formed after Katrina, men and women who knew firsthand what was happening on the ground in Texas and they brought in their bayou boats and lent a hand, calling it “paying it forward.” Just as Texans had come to help them in Katrina.
Houston is home to thousands of refugees from Katrina, people who have found it hard to believe they are living through this twice in their lives.
J.J. Watt of the Houston Texans has raised over $12 million between practices for the coming season, coming off the field to work the phones.
Watt’s hometown is Pewaukee, WI and semis are traveling from there loaded with food and water and supplies. He started out with a goal of raising $200,000 and he just kept on going. Texas billionaire, Michael Dell, has pledged $36 million.
A group of “monster trucks,” organized by a group called Rednecks with Paychecks, is roaming the area, rescuing people and vehicles.
440,000 people have registered for aid from FEMA, as the Mayor of Houston is appealing for an “army” of FEMA officials to help with the claims.
The area that was water covered was larger than the state of Rhode Island. As the water recedes, it leaves behind contaminated water unfit for human consumption, filled with pathogens. Shelters, sometimes islands in a sea of water, are running low or out of food and water.
The damaged Arkema chemical plant can no longer cool the dangerous materials stored there and authorities have evacuated everyone within a mile and a half of the facility. There have been “pops” and plumes of smoke from the plant with no one knowing whether that’s all there is going to be or if it is just the beginning. “Brock” Long, head of FEMA, called the situation there incredibly dangerous.
Bowling alleys are filled with people; Walmart parking lots have been helipads.
And what is amazing and so wonderful and so DAMN great, is that so much of what is happening is unorganized. It is just people getting out to help other people. One man observed that no one was really organizing anything. People seemed to have an instinct for what needed to be done.
Like the “Texas Navy” and Andrew White, who it turns out is the son of a former Texas governor who passed away last month, and the people in the “Cajun Navy.”
People helping other people in a way that moves me to tears, far away, in the soft safety of my cottage.
Tags:Brock Long, Cajun Navy, Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, FEMA, Houston Texas, Hurricane Harvey, JJ Watt, Politics, Texas Navy
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Flood Insurance, Greene County New York, Homelessness, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
August 29, 2017
There are days we take to catch up and today was one of them for me. Once it had warmed enough [and yes, we are reaching that part of the year], I went out to the deck and set up shop, sipping my morning coffee while Amazon’s “Sarah Vaughn Station” played [and plays] in the background.
A backlog of work got done today; some of it in preparation for “Prison Alley Tales” which will broadcast live from the Red Dot Restaurant and Bar on Warren Street in Hudson at 7:00 PM tonight. If you’re in the listening area, that’s 90.7 on your FM dial and, if you’re not, it’s available at www.wgxc.org/listen.
It’s the umbrella title for a collection of stories, recollections, monologues and performance pieces from the WGXC Diamond Street Radio Players, an ad hoc group of local artists and performers. It appears to be shaping up as a fun night and I’m really glad; I like fun nights.
The day resulted in my recycling about three pounds of paper that had piled on my desk and now, at the end of the day, I am on deck, working on one of my “letters.”
It has been a day of calm and music and fun work.
Every hour or so, I checked on Houston and it’s not good. At last count, 2,000 rescues had been performed and another 185 were waiting to be performed. Ten are dead which seems a blessing after Katrina and its hundreds.
My friend, Janice McDonald, is in Houston, reporting on it. Look her up on Facebook for her first-hand reports.
There is some irony here. Texas is experiencing one of the most horrific of natural events and its Federal legislators voted against help to Hurricane Sandy victims. Let us hope that legislators in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy aren’t as mean spirited when Texas asks for help, as it will.
It will be years before this is undone.
Mark me in the column of glad I have a hybrid car as Hurricane Harvey may cause gas prices to rise by a dollar or more as 15% of the refinery resources in the country are being pummeled by this storm.
Also, mark me glad I quit smoking. The price of cigarettes in New York City are now at $13.00 a pack, highest in the nation. I feel better and I’m not as cash strapped as I would be if I were smoking. It’s now been at least 15 years and only once in a great while do I feel the pull to a smoke; usually in a bar, martini in hand while having some deeply intellectual conversation that probably won’t be remembered in the morning.
That was another day. Not today.
Today the creek is astoundingly clear; water rippling in the soft wind that has arrived.
While I was sitting on the deck, in the quiet of my life, the pudgy little dictator in North Korea sent a missile flying over Japan which is just inflaming those regional tensions.
Oh, yikes. He needs a lot of attention that boy.
As does our President. And that is part of what makes me creepily uncomfortable with him – the amount of attention he needs. And demands. And gets.
The Washington Post is reporting that while seeking the presidency, Mr. Trump was also seeking a deal in Russia to build a Trump Tower there. Felix Sater, a Trump associate, was running around bragging the deal would get The Donald elected. This one hasn’t/can’t be completely parsed out yet but the Russia thing is not going away and I wonder what is happening in Robert Mueller’s office at this very minute.
As I go to bed tonight, I will pray for Houston and be grateful I have not had to experience anything like what they are going through. My whole life, for the most part, has been lucky. I’ve not had any Sandy’s or Harvey’s in my life. Irene went through here a few years ago and spared me; around me there was catastrophe but in my sweet spot of the earth, not much.
Let’s think of Houston. Pray for them.
Tags:Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, Felix Sater, Houston, Janice McDonald, Kim Jong - Un, Prison Alley Tales, Robert Mueller, Trump, WGXC
Posted in Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, gas prices, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
August 15, 2017
Staring out my brother’s kitchen, the day is beautiful after a series of grey and gloomy ones. After prevaricating for days, I have finally determined I will return home on Friday and am now looking forward to returning to the comforts of the cottage. My kitchen is freshly painted and I will do a re-org of it upon my return.
This afternoon, I am going over to St. Paul to visit my cousin’s ex-wife at the home where she works with her mother, caring for developmentally challenged adults.
And then, this evening, I will be dining with Christine Olson, a friend from college days. She dated one of my roommates; we have stayed close. He and I have not.
Being in Minneapolis is always a time of sorting memories. Yesterday, I had breakfast with my ex-sister-in-law, which is hard for me to say as she is still, in my mind, my sister-in-law, even if she and my brother are no longer married. We, as we always do, laughed and giggled and had fun.
Last night, I dined with my nieces, Kristin and Theresa, Theresa’s son Emile, his girlfriend, Irene, and we, too, laughed and giggled and reminisced about some good things and some hard things.
And so there is a sorting of thoughts. The rocking horse was my brother’s and I inherited it and rode it in our “rumpus room” in the basement long after he had last touched it. Now it sits in his bedroom, a reminder of the past.
My best friend from high school came up from Chicago to see me this weekend and as we sat on Friday afternoon, working at this kitchen table, I looked up at him and laughed. We both settle back in to being with each other in minutes and it is a comfort from knowing him a lifetime.
It was important for me that he knew how much I loved him and how important it has been that he has been in my life. I hope I succeeded. We have reached the part of our lives where we definitely can’t see around the corners.
As usual, jazz plays as I write. I care for jazz the way Sidney does in “Grantchester.” It has become a thread in my life.
And it captures the melancholy that comes from sorting thoughts, working to put the pieces of the puzzle together, a never-ending process in life.
At dinner last night, we talked of my mother and one of my nieces shook her head. Her grandmother was a complicated individual who sometimes delighted us and often vexed us. Always kind to strangers, that kindness did not always extend to her kin. As she aged and as dementia set in, her granddaughters occasionally saw her rage and it shook them.
As the rage of the White Supremacist movement shook me this weekend when one of them, barely an adult, drove his car into a group of counter protesters and killed a woman and injured nineteen in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Our president’s tepid “many sides” response to the incident has resulted in a series of resignations from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council.
The first to leave was Ken Frazier, CEO of pharmaceutical company, Merck. Trump viciously attacked him for doing so. Critics of Trump have pointed out that Frazier is black.
The others who have left are white and, so far, have not been targeted by the kind of ire that hit Frazier. They have also not mentioned Charlottesville.
FORTUNE, a magazine I do not think of as a bastion of liberal thought, has praised Frazier’s resignation as an act of courage.
The others have only been called “grand-standers” by Trump. The latest to go is Scott Paul, head of the American Manufacturing Alliance. And Mr. Trump knows “plenty” who will replace these “grand-standers.”
As I begin to wind down my time in Minneapolis, I continue sorting my thoughts, fitting the past into my present. As I must sort and parse the actions of a president whose reactions and words defy my understanding of his position and the kind of deportment it requires.
Here is a link to what Jimmy Fallon had to say and it was well said.
Tags:American Manufacturing Council, Charlottesville, Christine Olson, Devonna Tombers, Grandstanders, Jimmy Fallon, Ken Frazier, life, Media, Minneapolis, Minnesota, St. Paul, Tom Fudali
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
August 11, 2017
As is not unusual, jazz is playing in the background as I am sitting at the kitchen table of my brother and sister-in-law’s home in Bloomington, MN. Last night, after my arrival, a magnificent thunderstorm slashed across the sky and I sat for a while, watching out the window. In a strange way, it felt warm and comfortable, evoking some good childhood memory.
Sleeping in later than usual, I found myself feeling plastered to the mattress from a heavy sleep that had wrapped itself around me. Morpheus kept blowing tenderly on my face.
The weather today promised more thunderstorms though none arrived, though the sky is mostly leaden and threatening. Soon a friend from high school will pick me up and we’ll go off to see other friends.
When and how I return to the cottage is undecided. I arrived by train and maybe I will train back, maybe fly or drive or…
For reasons I don’t understand but which I accept, I am wanting not to feel boxed in by a defined schedule even though I am scheduling lots of time with family and friends.
Ah, I looked up and a soft rain has started. Best I take my umbrella this evening.
This morning, I deleted every email that contained news. I didn’t want to know until after a couple of cups of coffee because our world does seem more and more unsettled. A few minutes ago, I opened Google News and the top story was “Meet Kim Jung Un, A Moody Man with a Nuclear Arsenal” from the New York Times.
Well, as I pondered whether I was going to click on the link, I thought of our president, who I think of a as a moody man and he has a bigger nuclear arsenal than Kim Jung Un and I just don’t know what to think any more about much of anything.
As I am away from my home as I write this, I jokingly [but not totally] said to a colleague, I want to be back home before the apocalypse.
The president has raised the verbal ante and has declared we are “locked and loaded,” which, according to reports from retired generals, we are not anywhere near.
China has declared it will remain neutral if North Korea strikes first and not if we do. Russia is saying we are both being belligerent and they’re right. We are. Well, President Trump is being belligerent; everyone else is trying to keep things calm. I feel sorry for John Kelly, now Chief of Staff. What a job he has! And not one I would want.
The president is taking on Mitch McConnell, which pundits are saying is not a wise move.
And do we expect wisdom from this president?
Not now, not ever, I am sad to say.
Tags:Bloomington MN, General, Jazz, John Kelly, Kim Jung-un, life, Locked and loaded, Mitch McConnell, Morpheus, North Korea
Posted in Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, North Korea, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 11 08 2017 Thoughts while watching sun glint off the river…
November 8, 2017It is a grey and sullen day, seated in the United Red Carpet Club in Minneapolis’ airport, sipping a cappuccino, waiting to fly back home after a short visit to kith and kin. It has been primarily grey and sullen here since my arrival on Friday though there was warmth in the town with my visits with friends and relatives.
It is an interesting time in my life; I am thinking of becoming a vagabond for a while, checking off some things on my bucket list while seeking sun when it is grey in the Northeast and Midwest. A plan is beginning to emerge…
Out there in the world, the White House Reality Show continues to play to high ratings if not approval. At this moment, the President is in Asia on the longest Asian trip since George H.W. Bush, when he famously threw up on the Prime Minister of Japan.
Bush pere and fils have come out blasting at Trump in statements, previously made, now coming to light. “A blowhard” is one from pere.
A tragic shooting has occurred over the weekend in Texas, a man gunning down 46 people at a Baptist church in Sutherland, Texas. 26 are dead, eight from one family, and 20 injured. There is a numbness some are feeling because we have come to accept these tragedies as part of the background of our lives. They happen and it seems no one does anything.
Since last I wrote, a disaffected man from Uzbekistan, rolled a rental truck down a bike and walking path in New York, killing eight and wounding more.
After the Las Vegas shootings, it was “too soon” to politicize the conversation by talking about gun control but not too soon to politicize the terror attack. Certain statements tweeted by Mr. Trump may complicate the adjudication of the crime. But then our judicial system is a “joke” and a “laughing stock” per our president; a judicial system which is, in many ways, the envy of the world.
My desire to be a vagabond is, I’m sure, bound in with a desire to flee. And to be free to spend more time in Minneapolis with kith and kin, friends of decades and family of which I see too little. While here, helped my former sister-in-law with an issue and it felt good to be useful to her.
And now it is the next day and I am sliding down the west side of the Hudson River on Train 238, going down to the city only to return on the 5:47 so that I can be part of the November birthday train as my birthday is in November. I wasn’t sure I would do this but on a whim, I parked my car and am on my way.
The day has been fun. Tired last night, I went to the Red Dot for a “pop up” Indian restaurant and then went home, read a mystery and soon fell asleep, waking before all the alarms I had set.
During my Wednesday version of WGXC’s “Morning Show,” I played some jazz [check out The Hot Sardines!] and interviewed one of the performers of “The Mother of Us All,” a rarely performed opera by 20th Century female icon, Gertrude Stein, with libretto by Virgil Thompson. It’s the story of Susan B. Anthony, who campaigned for women’s right to vote, achieved only after death, a hundred years ago this month, in November 1917.
After the dreary days in Minneapolis, the sun burst through the windows of the chilly studio in Hudson this morning and I felt joyful.
At this moment, our president is in Beijing, where he is being feted with special panoply. It seems Mr. Trump has gone from deriding China to recognizing some benefit to a relationship with the country and its now very powerful President Xi, ensconced recently in the heavens with Mao and Deng.
It was election day yesterday. The off-year election didn’t bring many people out in some places though it did bring about a Democratic victory for governor in both Virginia and New Jersey.
In Virginia, the Republican candidate did his best to sound like Trump but was soundly defeated, raising the question among pundits if there can be Trumpism without Trump? I don’t know. I hope not.
Danica Roem, a transgender woman, made history by being elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, defeating a Republican who has held the seat since 1992 and who made her sexuality an issue in the campaign. She focused on the bad traffic problems.
Former President Obama showed up yesterday in Chicago for jury duty and was dismissed but not before creating a social media storm.
I bring this to a close as I continue down the Hudson, watching the occasional kayaker, with the sun glinting off the river, a slate of burnished steel reflecting light back to heaven.
Tags:Amtrak, China, Danica Roem, Deng, George H W Bush, kith and kin, Mao, Minneapolis, Obama, Sutherland Texas Shooting, Train 238, Trump in Asia, WGXC, Xi
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Hollywood, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »