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Letter From New York 11 20 15 Another day, another atrocity…

November 20, 2015

Claverack. “A Trick of the Light” Louise Penny. Three Pines. Linda Epperson. Mali. Radisson Blu in Mali. Agatha Christie.  “Murder at Hazelmoor” Paris.  Ca’Mea. Hudson, New York.

Today was a startlingly beautiful day; a perfect early fall day, the sun shining brightly with the temperature scraping near 60 degrees.  The best part is that it is now late November! 

I woke early and watched the sun glitter on the creek while sipping my morning coffee and reading the NY Times on my iPhone.

It has been a good day.  I finished reading “A Trick of the Light,” a Louise Penny murder mystery set in the fictional town of Three Pines in southern Quebec.  There are twelve or thirteen of them.  My friend, Linda Epperson, told me about them some years ago and I have been working my way through them.

When I was in, I think, 3rd grade and was home sick, restless of course, my mother tossed an Agatha Christie at me.  It was “Murder at Hazelmoor.”  It converted me to being a mystery fan and a bit of an Anglophile.  Thanks to my friend Dalton Delan, I am the proud owner of an original edition of the book.

Three Pines is a little village filled with eccentric characters and a disproportionate amount of murders per capita.  What it does remind me of, a bit, is my little town of Claverack without the disproportionate number of murders.

A few years ago the son of the man who owns the house two doors down from me did, apparently, an amazing number of drugs and shot his father and then killed himself.  I was out of town.  The father lived and is still in the house.

But that moment haunts our street, just as all the murders in Three Pines haunt that village.

I am writing on about mysteries because I don’t want to think of the mystery which is the world.

Today’s tragedy was in Mali.  Al Qaeda terrorists burst into the Radisson Blu hotel there and killed, at last count, at least 21, screaming “Allahu akbar” [God is Great, I think] while slitting one man’s throat and rampaging with automatic weapons.

It is over now.  They are counting the dead.  At least one American is gone.  Another day, another tragedy played out.  In Africa, where there have also been all the atrocities from Boko Haram.

Tuesday night, the night before my birthday, my friend Larry took me to dinner at one of our favorite spots, Ca’Mea, great northern Italian cooking.  We talked about Paris; he and his wife, Alicia, had been there not long ago.

He was torn, thinking on one hand he wants to know what is really happening in the world and, on the other hand, not wanting to be overwhelmed by it.

I totally understand.  Sometimes I just want to retreat to my two little acres of land and listen to jazz and watch movies and not think about what is happening out there in the world.

But I can’t.

I care too much.

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Posted in Boko Haram, Claverack, Columbia County, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Paris Attacks, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Letter From New York 11 18 15 Happy Birthday to me…

November 18, 2015

The day started grey; it looks like it will end grey but at lunchtime the world was flooded with sunlight and happiness, the way I was feeling.

Today is my birthday.  I’m a year older and, I think, a year wiser.  It has been an awfully contemplative year this past year.  When I was in high school, I had my “gang” and we’d laugh and say: live quick, die young and have a good looking corpse.

Unfortunately, some did just that but most of have lived on, exiting middle age for the last act, working to shape this phase of our lives with as much care as we worked to shape other periods in our lives, whether we succeeded or not, we attempted.

At 6:00 AM my friend, Nick Stuart, texted me with what he wanted to be my first “Happy Birthday” of the day.  It was.  I went right back to sleep.  Later, up and having my first coffee, another friend, Mary Dickey, called and we chatted, planning a time to see each other.

I’m here for the rest of the week, snuggling into my cottage.  Right now, I’m listening to jazz and looking across the table, out to the creek.  The trees have shed their leaves and the branches claw nakedly to the sky.

It is not the winter of my discontent.  If anything, I am more content than I have been in my life while watching life unfold in its mysterious ways.  Next January, I will be teaching a class, “Media and Society.”  I’m excited.

My friends Jeffrey and Joyce sent me a message today:  I hope today is a reminder of all good things that have and can happen.

And I am reminded of all the good things that have happened and may well still happen.

As I drove through the countryside, my friend Dairo phoned and we’re meeting for a martini in Hudson, a completely unexpected delight.  Alana Hauptmann, proprietress of The Red Dot, phoned me while I was eating at Relish to sing me “Happy Birthday” and to tell me to stop on by as she had a present for me.

My inbox overflows with messages of good wishes on this day.   Every other second it seems, a new Facebook birthday wish pops up.  This is one of the wonderful things about Facebook.  I’ve heard today by phone, text, email and Facebook from at least a 150 people wishing me well, not to mention the snail mail cards I have collected.

I have not paid much attention to the world beyond me today.  I know there have been developments in Paris and I have not followed them. 

It is my birthday and I am allowing myself to be joyful and whimsical and inattentive to the problem’s of the world.  Time enough tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to me!

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Letter From New York 11 14 15 The Real Great War to end all wars…

November 15, 2015

Paris. Hollande. IS. Daesh. Bruce Thiesen. Christopher Hitchens. Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. Afghanistan.  Alexander the Great. Russia. Viet Nam. Democratic Debate. Jihadi John. Marco Rubio.  Fox News. Libya. Pope Francis.  World War III. Genghis Khan. Fred and Ginger.  The Great Depression. The War to end all wars.

When I finished blogging yesterday, the body count in Paris was below thirty.  Today, when I woke and reached for my iPhone to check the news, 129 were dead, 350+ injured with 99 of them in critical condition.

Friends of mine, Chuck and Lois, have an apartment in Paris and spend a good part of every year there; thankfully they were not in Paris yesterday. 

All morning I felt grim, unbelieving and so very deeply saddened.

Last night’s event has touched the world in a way nothing has since 9/11.

Hollande has all but declared war on IS or Daesh, using the Arabic acronym for the organization.  Countries around the world have lit their most important buildings in the red, white and blue colors of the French flag.

There is the weight of tragedy in the air.  The events were on the mind of ever thinking person I know.

Bruce Thiesen, a fellow blogger, posted this quote from Christopher Hitchens:  This is an enemy for life as well as an enemy of life.

Truer words were never spoken.  It all harkens back to the horrors of World War II, of men like Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. 

The events of last night have infected my day as they have for everyone I know.  It came to me as I was shopping, for tomorrow is my day to do coffee hour after the 10:30 service, that Hollande is correct; we are at war.

I’ve felt that since 2003, when we invaded Iraq. We are at war. We have participated in wars without really involving the American public.  We fought but the public was to go on with their normal lives, shopping and eating at restaurants and not think about war.

I think that was a mistake.  In some way, shape or form, we should all be engaged if our men and women are fighting.

We should be actively supporting them in some way. 

It’s a favorite rant of mine.  I wanted to be asked to sacrifice if they were being asked to potentially make the ultimate sacrifice.

Now, we are years into this.  Afghanistan is our longest war ever, a place that has bedeviled military leaders since Alexander the Great, the place that was Russia’s Viet Nam, a place the British couldn’t hold at the height of their power.

Tomorrow there will be another Democratic Debate.  Really?  I’m exhausted already and can’t imagine all the campaigning yet to come.  But because of Paris, the debate will be focused more on terrorism and how the candidates would respond.

Jihadi John, the British terrorist who beheaded a number of men, is apparently dead in a drone attack.  On Friday, the head of IS in Libya is believed to have died in an air attack.

At the gym today, the TV at my treadmill was turned to Fox News and I actually didn’t change the channel.  I wanted to know what they were saying.  They brought on Marco Rubio who decried events and blamed them on Obama and said as President he would take the fight to them.

Yes, I do think that will happen.  Probably right now we’ll be led by France which, in righteous anger, will attack Daesh in every way it can.

More war.  Pope Francis suggested we are fighting World War III now, in bits and pieces.  He may be right.

Rubio said it was a “civilizational war” and he is not wrong. 

IS wants to destroy the West.  It hates our civilization with a passion and a fervor not seen, I suspect, since Genghis Khan who swept all before him before he and his Empire became dust in the wind.

It is dark.  Floodlights illuminate my beloved creek.  I am going to make myself a martini and watch a movie that, I hope, will transport me beyond the ugly realities of the day, the way Fred and Ginger lifted the hearts of Americans during the Great Depression.

We may well be now fighting the real Great War, the war to end all wars.

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Letter From New York 11 13 15 Poor Paris…

November 13, 2015

Paris.  City of Light.  Paris shootings. Stade de France. Arc de Triomphe. President Hollande. Bataclan Theater.

The sun is setting and the land is turning a dusky grey; white clouds reflect the fading light.  I am curled up in the cottage and have lit a fire; tonight will be the chillest night yet – down into the 30’s.  The trees have been stripped of their leaves and tomorrow should be the last clearing of the year.

In the late 1970’s I spent part of a summer in Paris, living in a little apartment in the 16th Arrondissement at 73 Rue Chardon La Gache.  It was a magical time in a magical city.  Anti-Americanism among the French was at its height but I experienced only one small incidence of that, in a McDonald’s near the Arc de Triomphe.

As I sit here writing, it is reported that 18 people have been killed in a series of shootings in the 10th.  More blood in Paris, the “City of Light.”  More have been injured.  I am trying to grasp this and find it difficult.  It is too early, say the reports, to determine that this is another terrorist attack.  President Hollande, who was in the area, has been evacuated as are several neighborhoods near the shootings.

In refreshing my browser, the death toll has risen to 28 and there are reports of explosions near Stade de France, which is where Hollande was, with the German Foreign Minister, watching a soccer game between the two countries.

Hostages have been taken in the Bataclan Theater where a heavy metal band from California was performing.

When I was in Paris, I walked miles a day, passing through, I’m sure, the streets that are now scenes of chaos.  One night a group of Americans, myself included, stood beneath the Eiffel Tower at two in the morning and sang “The Star Spangled Banner.”  A gendarme looked at us and shook his head: those crazy Americans and because it was so late the Metro was closed so we all walked to our homes across Paris, unafraid, feeling as safe and secure as we could have anywhere.

That is not the Paris of now.

I have been back a few times since then.  Paris has seemed to me like Colette when she was older rather than Colette the younger, which is what she seemed to me when I was there in my twenties, living out, briefly, my “Lost Generation” moment.

Now, tonight with jazz playing, I mourn for the “City of Light” through which darkness is passing.  It seems particularly cruel that Paris, noted for its gaiety and joy of life, has been singled out this year for so much sorrow.

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Letter From New York 11 10 15 He’s back…

November 10, 2015

Mary Dickey.  Failed Computer.  Apple Store.  Tek Serve. 240th anniversary of the Marines. Russian Doping.  George W Bush.  George H.W. Bush.  Dick Cheney.  Donald Rumsfeld. Syria. Assad. Aleppo.

It is late in the afternoon and I’m in the city, where it has been raining or drizzling all this grey day.

If you, like my friend Mary Dickey, have noticed I have not been posting, it is because on Friday of last week, I dumped a glass of water onto my laptop.  It didn’t recover.  I let it dry from Friday until Monday morning.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.

Yesterday was a very full day so I determined I would use today, which was relatively unscheduled, to deal with this.  Since it didn’t return to life this morning, I went to my breakfast with old friend David McKillop and went from him to the Apple Store in Grand Central Station, where a very nice young lady named Karen sold me a new MacAir. Then young Jason and I attempted to port over the data on my back-up drive.

In what was a nightmare moment, Jason and I realized, after much effort, that it, too, was dead and none of those king’s men could put that Humpty back together again.

They sent me from the Apple Store to Tek Serve where a very nice young ex-Marine helped me get the data off the failed drive and onto another drive, from which I could extract the data I needed.

That he was an ex-Marine was found out when I asked him how his day was.  He told me that he was an ex-Marine and that today is the 240th anniversary of the Marines and when he was off work, he and a few buddies were going to celebrate.

Leaving there, I sat down and extracted the data I needed from the restored back-up drive, sorted through all the 1300 emails that downloaded from the server and then determined I would write a letter, to let those who have been wondering about my absence, know my trials and travails.

Being without a laptop has not been totally a curse.  I have done a good amount of reading since Friday.  i think I have gone through at least two books.

But it does feel good to be re-connected with the outside world via laptop.

It has come to my attention from reading off my phone that the Russians have been accused of condoning and perhaps encouraging their athletes to dope.  Imagine my surprise when I read that!  Just as shocked as Claude Rains was in “Casablanca” that there was gambling in Rick’s Cafe.

There is a FOURTH GOP debate tonight and we’re still a year away from the election.  Jeb is in a tough place and needs to break through tonight, say the pundits, or he’ll be in much more trouble than he is.

“Pappy” Bush, George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States and father of George W. Bush, our 43rd President, has just published a book that is more than a bit cutting about Cheney and Rumsfeld. I’m not surprised but when asked about his father’s comments, “W” expressed surprise.

What did the Bushes talk about on Thanksgiving?  Certainly not about the country they were running.

The University of Missouri has lost it’s two top officials in a protest on the handling of race relations.

Today is also Diwali, the Festival of Lights in India.  Twenty years ago I was in New Delhi, celebrating the festival by riding an elephant down the streets and watching a barrage of fireworks from every side.  It was a surreal but exciting experience.  I went back to my hotel with a swirl of light rotating in my eyes.

During that time, Discovery Channel, for whom I was working, officially launched in India with a party at the American Embassy.  There were fireworks then, too.  An Embassy official, looking much like he could be a character in some Graham Greene novel, sidled up to me and confided there hadn’t been fireworks since Jackie. Kennedy.

The night I left India for the first time, the Minister for Human Resources, with whom I had visited, was arrested for appropriating 16 million dollars to his personal use.

There is still a refugee crisis and Germany is beginning to have its patience exhausted.  The fighting continues in Syria with the Assad government claiming to have lifted the two year long siege of Aleppo.

In other words, while I have been feeling almost lost without my MacAir anchor, the world has continued on.

But now I’m back!

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Letter From New York 11 04 2015 A beautiful day to ponder world complexities…

November 4, 2015

Hudson River. Howard Bloom Saves The Universe. Election Day. Tiffany Martin Hamilton. Hudson, New York. Christ Church. Kentucky Election. Houston. San Diego Shooter. LGBT. UC Merced. David Cameron. Sharm al Sheikh. Russian Plane Crashes. Justin Trudeau. Obamacare.

Once again, I am headed south on the train to the city, doing a round trip. I have a lunch in the city and then I am turning around and getting out of Dodge and won’t be back until Monday, when I come into town for a couple of days of meetings and Howard’s podcast taping. His podcast is “Howard Bloom Saves the Universe” and is available on iTunes and other podcasting sites. Check it out. He’s great!

The day is another beautiful one. Yesterday was a perfect fall day with the temperature reaching seventy degrees while cool enough at night to justify the use of the Franklin stove. Walking through the neighborhood, I savored the muted colors and the light on the pond into which my creek flows.

The river glistens a burnished copper from the colors of the season.

Yesterday was spent mostly glued to the computer screen, accomplishing digital tasks. My walk was a welcome interlude.

In a way the day felt like an interlude, despite being glued to the screen of my laptop. I didn’t notice much about the world and reveled mostly in the comfort of my cottage.

Yesterday was Election Day. In Hudson, our county’s “big city,” there was a hotly contested Mayoral race that appears the Democrat won. Absentee ballots are yet to be counted though those mostly tend toward Democrats. If it holds, Tiffany Martin Hamilton will be the first Democratic Mayor of Hudson in my memory.

She’s the daughter of the choir director at Christ Church, where I attend services.

Around the country, conservatives had a big night. They voted down an LGBT anti-discrimination effort in Houston and booted the Democrats out of the Kentucky Governor’s mansion.

Pundits this morning, as I was driving to the station, posited that Democrats were not well organized and Conservatives were. In all these places, voter turnout was low. I feel such frustration when people don’t vote.

As I continue, I am sitting in the Acela Lounge, watching CNN on the monitor. There is a live “incident” near the San Diego airport; a shooter is active and planes are being diverted. The shooter has a high-powered rifle and has come close to hitting police.

They are also talking about a nine year old African American boy in Chicago who has died in gun violence, shot multiple times. Mayor Rahm is saying there is a “special place” for the person who did this. I agree.

At UC Merced, there were five people stabbed before police killed the man wielding the knife.

David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has delayed flights to and from Sharm el Sheikh while a British team makes a determination about security at the airport there. Cameron and the Brits are concerned that a bomb may have brought down the Russian plane recently, losing all aboard, including 25 children. American Intelligence is suggesting the same.

An affiliate of IS claims responsibility.

A Russian built cargo plane went down yesterday in the Sudan. Children were some of the victims there too.

Justin Trudeau has been sworn in a Prime Minister of Canada and half his cabinet is female. It is, after all, 2015, he points out.

Now that we are two years into Obamacare, a map of the uninsured shows that most of them are in the South and Southwest. Surpised?

And the death rate for middle aged white men who have not received a high school degree has skyrocketed. One article suggests they are dying of despair.

All this violence and despair are hard to imagine as I head back north, the sun just beginning to set in the west, the sun a bright slash across the river. It is peaceful; I am in the café car, sipping a wine and writing, heading north to my cottage, after a good lunch with friends, all soft and right in my world while knowing it is not soft and right in so many other places.

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Letter From New York 11 02 15 Working on not to being a cranky old man…

November 2, 2015

Henry Hudson.  Hudson River. Russian Jet Crash. Halloween. The Red Dot. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  Amazon Prime. Benedict Cumberbatch.  Hamlet. Ophelia. European Refugee Crisis. Sumte, Germany. Nazi. Turkey. Erdogan.

I am gliding south on the 8:45 out of Hudson, down to the city for a few meetings this week and then will head back Wednesday evening. The Hudson River is still and mirrors the muted colors of fall. A barge makes its way north to Albany. In certain stretches, it is possible to imagine that this was the way the river looked when Henry Hudson first sailed north.

It is so placid a scene that it is almost possible to detach from the battering of the news.

It has been two days since I have written; Saturday afternoon I was having a late, for me, brunch at the Red Dot before heading home to service any Trick or Treaters. Several people were sitting not far from me, chatting rather loudly and raucously about their summer exploits of jet skis and pool parties, dancing and dating.

At the moment, I was reading the New York Times and was feeling very aware of the various crises that are engulfing the planet. A Russian jet had crashed in the Sinai earlier that day. More had drowned in the Aegean and Germany is preparing to settle nearly a million refugees within its borders.

The conversation happening not far from me grated on me. Unreasonably, I wanted to walk over and say to them something like: you fools! Don’t you know serious things are happening?

I didn’t.

They were having a harmless conversation. I have had harmless conversations about silly things, too. And I am also aware of what is happening in the world. It bothered me at the moment because on the Saturday of Halloween it seemed no one was paying attention except me. I was having a cranky old man moment.

Last year, there had been a few Trick or Treaters. This year, there were none. As I waited, I watched “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” from Amazon Prime. When I finished, I went off to bed to read a book, soon falling into the arms of Morpheus.

Early up on Sunday, I went off to Christ Church, slipping away after communion because I had a ticket for an HD version of Benedict Cumberbatch’s “Hamlet.” He and the production were superb. It is the first time I have witnessed a production that indicated that Ophelia was fragile even before the Prince of Denmark’s attentions.

At home, afterwards, I did some paperwork and read some more and am now heading down to the city.

The Russian airliner is much in the news; it apparently broke up in mid-air and it is being posited that some “external event” resulted in the loss.

In Germany, one small town of 102 individuals is being asked to take in 750 refugees. The Mayor of Sumte’s wife thought it was a joke when they were first notified. It has energized a youngish local Nazi who has a seat on the town’s council: it will be good for his brand of politics he thinks. This is a harbinger of the challenges facing Germany and those challenges also threaten Angela Merkel’s position as Chancellor.

Erdogan has won a big victory in Turkey, giving him the impetus to push forward once again with a plan for an executive presidency, not that it has been a de facto executive presidency since Erdogan took that office. He has been playing the role of both Prime Minister and President as he feels like it, a bit like the arrangement Putin had with Medvedev.

The day, which began gloriously, has turned grey as we have moved south. Mild temperatures are expected this week, a last gasp of Indian summer.

Loving to entertain, I am having two sets of people in for dinner this week.

We will talk, I’m sure, of silly things and serious matters and I will do my best to not be a cranky old man.

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Letter From New York 10 30 15 Thoughts riding north through the autumn colors…

October 30, 2015

Autumn. Hudson River Valley. Obama. Syria. John Kerry. Saudi Arabia. Douma. European Refugee Crisis. Halloween. Marco Rubio. GOP Debate. Donald Trump. Jeb Bush. Ben Carson. The Donald. One child policy. China. Alexander the Great. Gordian knot.

The autumn colors on the trees may have just past their peak but they are still wonderful as I ride north on Amtrak. The west bank of the Hudson is awash with shades of orange, red and some green. I am heading home for the weekend, having been in the city a bit longer this week than I had planned.

As I waited for the train to exit the tunnels so that I might have Internet again, my phone buzzed twice. First it was AP and then it was the BBC, letting me know that President Obama is sending fifty special operations troops to Syria to assist the rebels we support.

While he was announcing this, Secretary of State Kerry is in Vienna, dealing with the countries that have a stake in Syria, though Syria is not, apparently, there itself. The eyes of the world are on how Saudi Arabia and Iran will react to being the same room together. They are positioned so that they don’t have to look into each other’s eyes.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Syria, at least 40 have died in Douma, a town ten miles north of Damascus, with another hundred wounded. So far a quarter of a million people have died and ten million have fled their homes.

The resulting refugee crisis means that millions of Syrians are living in camps or attempting to go west, sometimes dying in the effort. 570,000 individuals have transited through Greece this year, making the crossing from Turkey in small boats or rubber dinghies. Yesterday 22 more died and 144 were rescued.

It is all far from here as I move north, along the Hudson River, absorbing fall colors and contemplating a quiet weekend at the cottage.

It is Halloween this weekend and I’m not sure I am going to do anything. Generally, I have gone down to the Red Dot for their annual party. Last year I dressed as a Roman Emperor. This year, I am not feeling quite so festive. I was thinking more of a martini and a movie at home.

Since last I wrote, there has been another Republican Debate. Not well wired in the city, where I was, I have had to get a feel from it from written articles. General consensus, Marco Rubio won and CNBC, the platform for the debate, lost. The debaters turned the table on the moderators, putting them in their place. Trump wasn’t as Trumpish and Jeb Bush was still Jeb Bush.

Trump is genuinely surprised to find himself trailing Ben Carson in Iowa. Perhaps the Donald will learn a bit of humility.

China has revoked the “one child” only policy though most are indicating they won’t have more than one child. It’s too expensive in time and money now. More and more couples are choosing to remain childless. China will begin to look like Japan, with an aging population. Hard to fathom…

As I finish writing my letters, I find myself pondering the state of the world, working to grasp it. I don’t always get it, usually not at all. The complexity of the politics in the Middle East are so knotted that it is probable that they may never get undone. It will take an Alexander the Great to undo this Gordian knot. He didn’t undo it; he cut through it with his sword.

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Letter From New York 10 28 15 Cheery in the middle of swampy mess…

October 28, 2015

South Sudan. Dinka. Nuer.Cannibalism. Zanzibar. Boko Haram. Obama. Cameroon.  IS.  Caucasus. Iran. Syria. Russia. US. Turkey. Putin.

Outside the day is grey, gloomy, down right dark and definitely chill. My own spirits are quite the opposite. Despite the exterior my interior is quite bright, for no particular reason but I am delighted and grateful for the quiet joy of this dark day. I’m at my friend Todd’s office, doing some work for him and some for myself.

I had a couple of personal errands to do this morning and then I arrived here, an island of warmth and cheer on a dark and rainy day.

Reading about the conflict in South Sudan trumped my cheeriness. There has been violence ranging there for months and the two sides have been brutal. There are tales of the Dinka killing Nuer ruthlessly; sometimes making them jump into bonfires and then forcing people to eat the burnt flesh. There have been rapes, pillaging, burning of churches, all the things that happen when men get fire in their killing bellies.

Further south elections in Zanzibar may explode into violence and across the continent Nigeria has freed approximately 300 women from the Boko Haram.

Obama has sent three hundred soldiers to Cameroon to train soldiers. Africa and the Middle East are riven with Islamic terrorists. Some, like Boko Haram, have sworn allegiance to IS. And everywhere I look it seems we have a muddied response to it.

Iran has now joined the Syrian conversation at the same table with the US, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, its longtime regional rival. Iranian troops are on the ground in Syria. The Russians are there. The Turks seem to be chasing the Kurds there more than IS. It is a political, ideological swamp and in that swamp millions are displaced and dying.

Putin, who is playing around in Syria, has his own IS problem. There is a ragtag group of rebels in Russia who have declared the Caucasus Emirate and sworn allegiance to IS. Muslim Russians are being recruited by IS, going to fight and are returning. Mostly they are locked up or under police surveillance but the social unrest and economic hardships in that part of Putin’s Empire is making it easier for IS to recruit.

It is a cycle that may be coming around to bite Putin in the back. It’s why he says he is in Syria. Now some of the 7,000 Russians and former citizens of the Soviet Union who are there are trying to slip back into Russia to wreck havoc in retaliation.

Thinking I would get some relief by seeing what was happening in the world of entertainment, I quickly backed off when I kept finding stories about the ubiquitous Kardashians.

Goodness, looking at the world’s stories has tempered the day’s good natured-ness. I will have to get it back.

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Letter From New York 10 26 15 From Hudson to the city, in color

October 26, 2015

Amtrak. James Linkin. Relish. Bacon is cancer causing. Earthquake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Taliban. Captagon. Saudi Royal arrested. Donald Trump. Matt Lauer. A small loan. Space junk. John Boehner. Budget Deal. Paul Ryan.

I’m heading back to the city, going south on the train. My friend, James Linkin, is sitting across from me, eating his lunch from Relish, the little café across from the Hudson Train Station, where I had breakfast. Today may be the last time I will have bacon; it is now categorized as cancerous as cigarettes, which I have long since quit. And so are hot dogs! Alas and alack…

The leaves are at their peak, fabulous in their colors. The train is temporarily stopped for unknown reasons, as happens now and again.

Last week, I had a week of doing some very stupid things. I left to go to the city and realized after I had shut the door, my keys were still on the table. I had the car fob so I went on my way. Getting off the train, I left one bag on it as it pulled out of Hudson when I was returning.

Gina, the conductor, realized it and called the Hudson Station, alerting them. She sent it back on the next south bound train and I picked it up after I finished my luncheon meeting in Hudson.

Nick brought me his keys so I could let myself in. It was that kind of week. Mistakes made better by helpful people.

Last night more than two hundred died in an earthquake that rocked Afghanistan and Pakistan. Measuring 7.5, it has destroyed hundreds of homes as winter sets in. In Afghanistan, rescue will be complicated by the escalating Taliban insurgency.

A so far unnamed Saudi Royal is being held in Beirut with four of his associates, charged with attempting to smuggle two tons of Captagon out of the country on a private jet. I have never heard of Captagon. It’s a stimulant. Two tons is a LOT of stimulation.

Back in Saudi Arabia, a bomb went of at a mosque, killing three, injuring more. No one has claimed responsibility. The Saudi Royal in Lebanon has an alibi.

Donald Trump told Matt Lauer that life has not been easy for him. His dad loaned him a small amount, a million dollars, when he was starting out and he had to repay it, with interest. I mean, he said, a million dollars isn’t so much when you consider what’s he built when challenged by Matt Lauer on a million being small.

It’s the perspective, you see.

WT1190F is the title given to a piece of space junk that is going to crash into the Indian Ocean in three weeks. Scientists are very excited because they don’t know what it is. It might even be a piece of the original Apollo missions to the moon. They just don’t know but they’re going to do their best to find out before it enters the atmosphere, where most of it will burn up and the rest will rust in the Indian Ocean.

Before departing Congress, John Boehner, still Speaker of the House, is attempting to close a budget deal with the White House. Parts of it, disturbingly, include cuts to Social Security and Medicare.  It does include increases for military and domestic spending. Boehner is attempting to get fractious Republicans to go along so that waters will be smoother when Paul Ryan, as it is assumed, becomes Speaker.

I am in New York now and the day is still beautiful. Hope yours is too…

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