The sun is laughing down Main Street in Edgartown, with cars slowly moving down the street, toward the water but without the congestion that is coming toward the end of the month when “the season” really gets going. Across the street, Sundog, selling clothes, is as empty as we are.
A few people have wandered into the store and have wandered out, rarely with a book in hand. A lovely mother and daughter came in, the mother buying her daughter a copy of “A Man Named Ove,” by Fredrik Backman, a book she insisted her daughter read before they left the island next week.
It’s been interesting, watching people come and go, looking at books, some are wildly enthusiastic, some are just looking as they look languidly at titles, hoping something will spark their interest.
As I said to someone yesterday, I have a whole new respect for those who work in retail.
The morning was foggy, the afternoon sun blessed. Music from the 1960’s plays gently in the background, the soundtrack of my youth. It is easy here to put away the woes of the world and believe in the loveliness of life.
Unfortunately, the reality is quite different in the off island world.
Muhammed Ali is being mourned everywhere. A figure in my youth, I watched with fascination, not quite understanding his moves but also not being bothered by them. If he no longer wanted to Cassius Clay, then why not? There were days then I didn’t want to be Mathew Tombers.
Many of his moves outraged the world and shook people up. All for the ultimate good… Rest in peace, Muhammed Ali, rest in peace and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Bernie Sanders has announced he will contest the Democratic Convention, fighting down to the last moment.
In France, floods are beginning to recede but not until after claiming three more lives. My friends, Chuck and Lois, who have an apartment in Paris, are somewhere else with friends, waiting to get back to their place when the waters do recede. Guards are standing watch at Louvre and artwork has been moved to higher ground as a precaution. It has been nearly 34 years since this kind of flooding has been seen in the City of Lights.
It has been determined that Prince died from an accidental, self-administered dose of fentanyl, a pain killer 100 times more powerful than morphine and 50 times more powerful than heroin. One doctor described self-administration of fentanyl as playing with death; it is not to be used outside of hospitals.
The opiate crisis is enormous. Even here on bucolic Martha’s Vineyard, meetings are being held to combat the island’s heroin problem. Everywhere you turn right now, opiates are a critical problem. It may be that Prince’s death will be a catalyst for change.
It is the 27th Anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square and tens of thousands have gathered in Hong Kong to commemorate the event, shunning the official memorial because it has become too “Chinese” oriented.
In the Mediterranean, with the beginning of warm weather, more migrants/refugees are risking the sea to reach Europe and what they hope will be a better life. It is believed a thousand have drowned in the past week alone. It will only grow worse.
Many are fleeing IS, which now finds itself fighting on four fronts in Syria and Iraq. The unofficial capital of IS is Raqqa and Syrian forces, under the cover of Russian airstrikes and with help from Hezbollah have reached the border of Raqqa province.
Attempting to follow who is fighting whom in that part of the world is not easy. IS is struggling for control of a town called Marea, which is controlled by the anti-Assad Nursa Front, which is associated with Al Qaeda. There is also heavy fighting around Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city and commercial center.
The sun is beginning to set in Edgartown. The streets are still quiet. Anita, who works in the shop, has gone home as we are completely quiet. Last night, after everyone had left and I was closing down, I had the most remarkable moment of peace, surrounded by books with the walls resonating with the laughter and voices of the people who had passed through yesterday, just looking for a good read.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 06 06 2016 On feeling as if I lived in Cloudcuckooland…
June 7, 2016I am sitting in a bar where I stopped to wait to hear from brother and his wife, about their progress into Manhattan via Uber. It is slow going out there. I just arrived in Manhattan from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, having flown in on a private jet from Martha’s Vineyard.
It is not a normal occurrence in my life but I do have a friend who belongs to the private jet club and he was coming into New York and offered me a ride with him so that I could be in New York tonight when my brother arrived as opposed to tomorrow morning.
At Teterboro, there were, it seemed, hundreds upon hundreds of private jets lined up waiting for their owners to go somewhere. It was an amazing sight.
We then looked at a plane my friend is thinking of adding to his fleet, a plane capable of making it from New York to Beijing, non-stop. It is another world in which I occasionally waddle but do not live.
Long ago, when I was young, I was in a production of Aristophanes’ “The Birds.” Two con men find their way to Cloudcukooland, where birds talk and rule. It is a political satire first performed in the Fifth Century BCE.
And I thought about it tonight when I was looking at headlines about the current political scene. In one of my letters recently I said that I was appalled that Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. His position as such is causing me to come out of the closet as a liberal, which I am not exactly…
A reader of my “Letter From New York” wrote back with a five page email about why, in the end, he is voting for Trump. I haven’t answered yet. I can’t quite figure out what to say. His position is all based on the fact Trump is an “outsider” and it is time that an “outsider” was elected to shake up the system.
Well, I think it well might be time for an “outsider” to win the election but not this “outsider.” He’s a wacko, a bigot, a looney tunes billionaire who has hijacked the Republican Party and no one in the Republican Party is actually calling him to account for that.
The press is treating him like he is a serious person when in reality he is a serious charlatan. He is a billionaire and has declared bankruptcy more times than Carter has little liver pills, as my best friend from high school, Tom Fudali, used to say.
I am so outraged right now that this poseur, who is stirring up the worst elements of American culture, is riding them to a nomination for President. I am aghast.
Not that I am not aghast at the Democrats, too. Who, riven with discord, are tearing at each other every step of the way to the nomination. In the end, it will probably be Hillary Clinton, a flawed but qualified candidate, who will, until election day, have to deal with the bitter divide stirred by Bernie Sanders, some of whose supporters say they will vote for Trump if they can’t have Bernie.
What?
You would give the country to a flawed AND unqualified candidate out of spite?
No wonder I was thinking today that I am living in Cloudcuckooland.
Republicans, look at your candidate. You are about to officially nominate a racist bigot to head the ticket of the Republican Party, Lincoln’s party, the man who freed slaves.
He is criticizing an American born judge who is presiding over a case against him because he is of Hispanic heritage and encouraging his supporters to denounce the man.
The man, albeit a billionaire [we think], is pandering to the worst instincts in our culture and is absolutely not calling us to be better, to be greater, to actually deal with the very serious issues facing America today. He is calling us back to a past we had thought we had escaped…
But before I go today it is the anniversary of D-Day. Salutations to those men who served our country, waded into death and took back Europe from the Nazis. All honor to them. Thank you.
Tags:Aristophanes, Bernie Sanders, Cloudcuckooland, D-Day, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Nazis, Teterboro, The Birds, The Donald, Tom Fudali
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