Brian Gallagher. Joe Boardman. Amtrak. Hudson River. West Point. X-tra Mart murder. IS. COP21. Climate Change Conference. Producer’s Guild of America.“Tut” SpikeTV. Christ Church. Hope.
It’s a grey day, chill and gloomy. The train is crawling south toward the city. In front of me is Brian Gallagher, who is the sidekick of Joe Boardman, President of Amtrak, who is sitting across from him. Brian is by way of being a friend and I went up to say hello to Brian when I saw him, realized that Boardman was across from him and said hello to him too. He seems a very shy man, something Brian is not. Perhaps that’s why they seem to make a good team.
The Hudson River is smooth as a mirror, reflecting the muted colors on the banks above it.
With me I am carrying twenty pounds of textbooks from which I must choose the one I will use in the class I will be teaching at our local community college near the cottage. It’s challenging and I have to make the plunge by Friday.
That said, I’m excited about teaching the class.
Waking up around seven, I almost immediately plunged into emails and got lost in them. Before I drove to the train station, I organized all the Christmas presents I’ve purchased during the year in piles for the person for which they are intended. With Christmas carols playing, I found myself in a festive mood.
Which is the mood in which I intend to stay.
It was, as you know, a harsh weekend out there. Our local tragedy was that a woman, working at the X-tra Mart not far from my local grocery store, allegedly went into the restroom, gave birth to a baby boy, strangled him and disposed of his body in a trash bin outside the store and then returned to work.
She is currently in the hospital receiving a mental evaluation.
As is the man who shot dead three in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
We’re all a little crazy. I think it is part of the human condition but these folks are really crazy, in tragic ways.
Crazy zealous are the members of IS, who, I think, honestly believe they are doing what God wants of them. How you believe in such a crazy God is another question, but they do.
On a brighter note, COP21, the Climate Change Conference, has begun meetings in Paris. Out of this might come good news, of nations agreeing to work together to cool the planet, which was warmer last year than any other year in recorded history.
That’s important to remember that we’re talking about “recorded history.” The planet has gone through much colder and warmer times.
As I am a member of the Producer’s Guild of America, I get screening copies of movies and television shows to watch for judging purposes. One of them I got was “Tut,” the massive SpikeTV mini-series. As I was watching, it occurred to me that it is amazing how humans seemed to make a leap toward civilization about 10,000 years ago and haven’t looked back.
The time we have wandered the planet as beings you and I would recognize, has been an incredibly short amount of time.
As I am choosing to be joyous, nature has chosen to support me with a burst of sunshine. We have just sped past West Point and the sun is glittering off the river water.
Every Sunday that I go to Christ Church, I light a candle for myself, for a friend who is struggling with brain cancer and one for all the things I should be lighting a candle for, like world peace and the eradication of poverty.
I’m older now than I have ever been and will only continue down that path and as age piles upon me [with attendant wisdom, one hopes] I will continue to seek to be grateful for all the wonders of the world, those which I have experienced and the ones which lie ahead of me.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 12 03 15 Avoiding past mistakes….
December 3, 2015Claverack Cottage. San Bernardino shootings. Domestic terrorism. Nick Stuart. Newtown. Milwaukee. Milwaukee 53208. Stephen Ambrose. IS. Radical Islam. World War II.
It is six o’clock. The world beyond the cottage is dark after a day of grey and drizzle. I went out only to do a few errands and spent most of the day at home, working on paperwork, prepping some things for my class in January, following up on some things. It felt positive, moving through the endless amount of “paperwork” a life in the 21st century demands, even when most of it is digital.
The world has ticked on since I last wrote two days ago. There was another shooting, in San Bernardino. I thought about writing something on the train coming up from the city but I felt a bit punched in the gut by it all.
They are now working to determine if this was an act of domestic terrorism. It might well have been.
My friend, Nick Stuart, and I met for a martini last night before my train. He arrived ebullient. Just before he came to meet me, it was announced “Newtown,” a film he is Executive Producer of ,was accepted into Sundance. Today he found out he is about to be a grandfather; his oldest daughter Rihannon is going to be having a baby in June. We’ll celebrate more on Tuesday and Wednesday, both days I will be seeing him.
Some had told him that “Newtown” was an old subject and its time had past but given what has been happening it is more relevant than ever. Today I read that there is a mass shooting of some kind on an average of once a day.
So “good on you” Nick, as my Aussie friends would say for having preserved with this project.
Another one, on mass incarceration, which is nearing completion has been requested by the White House for a screening. Who knew that Milwaukee had the highest number of prisoners per capita than any other city in America? It is titled “Milwaukee 53208.”
The room is filled with the sounds of the ticking of a small grandfather’s clock. It has been part of the background sound of my life since I was born. It was on a shelf in the hall just beneath the stairs that went up to my bedroom. Lately, I have been calling it the “heart of the house.”
It makes me feel like I am living in a soft womb of a house, comforted by the sound of a heartbeat. It is part of what makes the cottage special.
I’m also doing laundry, a grounding task if ever there was one.
I’m reading Stephen Ambrose’s history of World War II. It’s a bit drier than I expected but gives a look into the horrors of that war. As awful as it was, it reminded me that America and Canada were probably the only combatant countries that were not ravaged on the home front by the war.
It also has taught me how much the world and our country were changed by that conflict.
I am wondering how our world will be changed by the current conflict in which we find ourselves?
Perhaps I am being a historical romantic but it feels as if we are living through another tipping point in history as we struggle with IS and radical Islam.
If the couple in San Bernardino were, indeed, domestic terrorists we face ongoing “Paris style” attacks and it will be a struggle to avoid mistakes of the past such as the encampment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Tags:Claverack Cottage, Domestic terrorism, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Milwaukee, Milwaukee 53208, Newtown, Nick Stuart, Radical Islam, San Bernardino Shootings, Stephen Ambrose, World War II
Posted in Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Mideast, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Uncategorized, World War II | Leave a Comment »