I feel asleep early last night and woke early this morning, the sun bursting through the windows of the cottage. Getting my coffee, I went outside for a moment but it felt too chill to sit and sip on the deck so I retreated to my bedroom, went over the morning headlines, read the NY Times’ Briefing for today, and then went online to find a recipe for dinner tonight. Friends are coming over and I am grilling, a thing I always do with trepidation.
We will see how it goes, another adventure in the world of cooking.
There was another mass shooting last night, at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. Three are dead, including the shooter and nine are wounded, one critically. The film that was playing was “Trainwreck.” The suspected shooter, John R. Houser, was a “drifter” from Alabama.
Hours before the shooting, President Obama, in an interview with the BBC said that his inability to get gun laws passed was his greatest frustration.
It was a wide-ranging interview in which Obama also expressed his belief that the UK should stay in the EU that resulted in grousing from Britain’s anti-Euro factions.
He is off to Kenya shortly and said he will speak out “bluntly” on human rights while there.
Scrolling through the news as I write this, I’m glad I’m not flying out of LaGuardia today. A power outage of as yet unknown origin is causing three-hour delays.
Amazon has done something it rarely does: it turned a profit in the second quarter, astounding all and boosting tech stocks ahead of the market’s open. The uptick in its share price now makes Amazon more valuable than Walmart.
Turkey has authorized the U.S. to use its airbases in its fight against IS while at the same time it has begun its own aerial operations against them in various parts of Syria. Earlier this week there was a suicide bombing that killed 32 that has been blamed on IS, motivating Turkey to become more proactive in the fight against IS, something the U.S. has sought for a long time.
Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server continues to haunt her; two inspectors general have requested a criminal investigation. No comment from the Clinton camp and no decision on action from the Justice Department.
I haven’t seen “Jurassic World” yet and may not but it is the third highest grossing film in history and a sequel is planned for 2018. I am a fan of Chris Pratt and suspect he is getting a sizable pay bump for the sequel. I am looking forward, eagerly, for the sequel to “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Speaking of the pre-historic world, it astounded scientists when they discovered that an ancestor of the snake had four legs, used for grasping. The unusually complete skeleton was found in Brazil and is over a hundred million years old. Personally, I don’t like snakes at all.
Russia has sentenced the leader of a neo-Nazi group to life in prison; he was convicted of ordering the killing of five, including a human rights lawyer. Ilya Goryachev had been hiding in Serbia but was extradited.
Interestingly, on the political scene today, Pew has issued a report saying that Republicans have a dimmer view of themselves than six months ago. Their self-respect has dropped by 18 percentage points since January. 68% of Republicans approve of their party today.
Democrats think as highly of themselves now as they did in January; 86% of them think well of their party.
While many I know look at The Donald with astonishment, from both sides of the political spectrum, he is touching a vein of something in the American psyche. A friend called it “rage.” Whatever it is, it bears looking into because it is powerful, strong and a force in this election.
It has climbed fifteen degrees since I woke up this morning. I have some errands to run and then am off to a lunch with a literary agent that I met two weeks ago in Rhinebeck at the “T Space.” We’re meeting at Earth Foods in Hudson at one. In between there are things to do, places to go, adventures to be had.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 01 12 2016 No mean spirits allowed…
January 12, 2016It’s late afternoon, Tuesday the 16th, and I am in the Acela Lounge waiting for my train north. I could grab an earlier one but it is probable if I wait for the 5:47, I will see one or two friends I haven’t seen for a while.
Before opening the laptop and letting my fingers tap the keyboard, I was reading about the death of David Bowie at 69. He did not much share the news of his health and the announcement of his death did not reveal the kind of cancer which felled him nor the place where he died.
I was told not long ago that he had a place up in the Hudson Valley. The now ex-wife of my friend Paul Krich, Lorraine, was a good friend of Iman, now Bowie’s widow and she was visiting them one night when I was there for dinner. She was quiet and shy and was with their daughter. She and her daughter retired early, smilingly and charmingly.
Bowie has been prolific in the last months of his life, co-writing a play titled “Lazarus” along with a music video of the same name. Now he is dead, they can be seen as his communicating to the world his time was short.
Time is short for all of us. It’s a blip of time we inhabit this planet, no matter how old we get.
Making the most of his blip of time, media mogul Rupert Murdoch has announced his engagement to the ex-wife of Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, the former supermodel. This is her second marriage, his fourth. She is 59; he is 84. Between them they have ten children.
In Istanbul, not far from the Hagia Sofia, a sixth century Orthodox church now a museum, a young Syrian blew himself up, killing at least ten, mostly Germans, and wounding more. The Turks believe it is IS and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has decried the event.
Putin has hinted today that if Assad ever feels the need to leave Damascus, he might well find welcome in Moscow. If he made that choice, it would lessen the complications for a Syrian peace.
Humanitarian workers who have reached the town of Madaya have found “barely moving skeletons.” It is the worst they have seen in the five year Syrian wars and the image causes me to think of the photos taken of Jews as the camps were liberated from the Germans.
The political circus continues. ANOTHER Republican debate is upon us with Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina now relegated to the “undercard” debate. Rand Paul says no way and he is off to do more campaigning in person than appearing in the second tier debate. Paul could be smart or desperate. Remains to be seen…
Bernie Sanders has a lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and has just moved slightly ahead of her in Iowa. Chelsea has been sent out to campaign.
Though it will probably offend my conservative friends, the NY Times today did a scathing piece on Ted Cruz accusing him of exploiting evangelicals and actually espousing actions that are cruel, painful, and harmful — ones that certainly aren’t very Christian.
As Solicitor General of Texas, he went to the Supreme Court to keep a man in jail who had stolen a calculator from Walmart. Because of a judicial mistake, the man got sixteen years instead of two. When the mistake was discovered, Cruz went into overdrive to keep him in jail the full sixteen. Eventually the poor man was freed after six. All over a calculator? Cruz seems petty and mean and mean spirited all the way round.
Not feeling specially mean spirited and with suspicions friends would be on the train, I went down to Penn Spirits and purchased a bottle of a nice Sauvignon Blanc and a small bottle of sake. And I got several cups.
Now the train is moving. My friends are here. Soon we will open the bottle and enjoy good spirited company. Here’s NOT to you, Mr. Cruz!
Tags:Angela Merkel, Assad, Bernie Sanders, Carly Fiorina, David Bowie, Hagia Sofia, Hillary Clinton, Hudson Valley, Jerry Hall, Lazurus, Lorraine Krich, Madaya Syria, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Music Video Lazarus, NY Times, Paul Krich, Penn Spirits, Penn Station, Putin, Rand Paul, Rupert Murdoch, Syrian War, Ted Cruz
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