Outside, it is grey, drear, damp and dank. Twilight is beginning to gather around the cottage; I have made myself a martini and am looking out at the still bare trees, thinking that tonight, I am screaming for real spring, real green, and real warmth.
Tonight, I did something that is going to make one of my friends very angry with me and it was something I had to do. He sent me some suicidal texts and I couldn’t ignore them. Since he had stopped communicating, I called the police and asked for a welfare check. It will not endear me to him and I would not have slept tonight if I had not.
So bloody strange is life. It would be great to say this was a night full of hygge. It’s not; it will be a night of doing hygge sorts of things to get back to a hygge state.
Jazz is playing.
This morning I did my radio program and it went tolerably well, now three weeks in, I am beginning to get the hang of it.
Tomorrow, I am going into the city only to turn around and come back because tomorrow we are having a birthday party on the train for four of our Regulars, one of whom is making a birthday with a zero.
It will be fun; I will be playing bartender and am concocting a drink to celebrate the coming of summer – a “summertini.”
And, truthfully, I am looking forward to something fun after this afternoon.
Not probably having fun is Bill O’Reilly, who got booted this afternoon from Fox News, where he has been the cock of the walk for ever so long. Truthfully, I was a little surprised it happened. The allegations of sexual harassment had reached a fever pitch and name advertisers were leaving in the dozens but his ratings remained high.
It seemed to me they would send him off for a while, like Brian Williams, to do penance and then bring him back after a cooling off period. But no. Walking papers.
My suspicion: James and Lachlan Murdoch apparently had had enough, convincing their father time was nigh after $13,000,000 in settlements by Fox News over 15 years for allegations of sexual misconduct by O’Reilly, with more coming in on a regular basis, including one by an African-American staffer that he referred to her as “hot chocolate.”
Don’t cry for his next meal. He will, I’m sure, walk away with millions.
Fox News will suffer. He was their highest rated star, making millions and millions for them.
Chief beneficiary: the bow tied Tucker Carlson who will be getting his slot. Wouldn’t want that pressure.
Jon Ossoff, a young, charismatic candidate in a special election in Georgia, failed to get the more than fifty percent he needed to win outright so there will be a run-off election in June but he came damn close. It will be a fight to the finish. The seat has been safely Republican for years and now an energized number of Democratic Georgians have put it in play.
Aaron Hernandez, once a rising star with the New England Patriots, was found dead in his cell in the prison where he was serving a life sentence for murder and everyone is asking how such a promising life went so far askew?
Venezuela is about, it seems, to explode. Hundreds of thousands have been marching in the streets against Maduro, who succeeded Chavez when he died. The country is in economic tatters and Maduro doesn’t seem to be able to fix it so he is blaming everyone and is threatening to bolster the militia he controls from tens of thousands to a half million.
This is an elected official on his way to dictatorship. Which is what we must be aware of these days. Look at Erdogan in Turkey; elected and moving toward dictatorial powers. Same in a dozen countries in Africa.
And I am looking at the pearl grey twilight of Claverack and am about to go on to some amusement as I need amusement while I wait to hear if my friend is okay.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 04 21 2017 The past fights the future…
April 21, 2017Apple blossoms dressed the trees in the orchards as I drove along 9H earlier today, the first, best sign of spring I’ve seen though, once having noticed them, I was aware that small buds of green were appearing on other trees. The ones outside my windows don’t seem to be sporting them and I’m sure they will come eventually, which is how this spring has seemed – eventually we will get there – just not yet.
It has been a quiet sort of day. Earlier I spent some time at OMI, an art center near me that I have known about but had not visited and that was my loss. The two-hundred-acre campus is dotted with sculptures, the main building with art exhibits. Today quite beautiful children were painting, running around in young life’s exuberance, bringing smiles to all the adults. I offered up a thought for good lives for them; the future does feel cloudy right now.
It’s not just that this is a gray day. Generally, I am an upbeat sort of person [or at least I think of myself as that] and today I’ve not been. The state of the world has been weighing on me, both close to home and far from here.
Close to home, I am burdened because a friend sent me suicidal texts and I was incredibly concerned and finally asked the police to do a “welfare check.” They did. He then texted me he wanted nothing more to do with me. Truthfully, I did the right thing and, at this moment, it hasn’t turned out well. For me and, I expect, not for him as he is in deep trouble and won’t admit it.
Candles to be lit; prayers to be said and to continue, as best we can.
Paris is continuing as best it can after a policeman was shot yesterday and two badly wounded by a terrorist who was killed as he was fleeing. IS claims responsibility and France is having elections on Sunday. The far-right candidate, Marie Le Pen, is threatening to remove France from the EU so that it can control its own borders.
She has a chance of winning.
The far right is making its might felt all over the place.
And that is so worrying to me.
For a brief, shining moment in my life it seemed we might actually be headed toward a global society and it has not happened. It was around the time the Berlin Wall went down, a moment I will forever remember. Driving down Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, headed west, my bestest friend, Tory Abel, called me on my car phone and said: do you know what’s going on? As I was listening to classical music, I didn’t. The wall was falling.
There are all kinds of suppositions about why that magic moment did not result in a better world.
Right now, I am reading a book about “the weekend” in British homes in the 1930’s and one of the revelatory bits was about a British Lord who became a Muslim because he saw Islam as the bulwark against women getting the vote and having shorter skirts and working.
He would probably have a lot in common with IS.
Change is hard. And changing centuries of tradition is hard and people will fight it. IS is fighting it.
When all of this works itself out, I won’t be here. It will take more than a lifetime.
And that is history in the making. It takes lifetimes to work itself out.
If you are not aware of it, Chechnya is conducting a campaign against gays. It is putting us in camps, not unlike the Nazis; there are tales of torture and death. Can this be happening in the 21st Century? Apparently so. The reports are horrific.
The President of Chechnya has declared he will eliminate the gay community by the beginning of Ramadan on May 26th.
Putin has declared there is no evidence this is happening and that is Putin’s view of the world: no horrible thing is happening. There is no sarin gas is Syria, there is no campaign against gays in Chechnya, there is no fill in the blank.
Tags:Chechnya, Chechnya campaign against gays, Far right, Los Angeles, Marie Le Pen, Nazis, OMI, Paris, Putin, Syria, technology, Tory Abel
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