Archive for the ‘Political’ Category
May 12, 2017
On Monday, I had a conversation with a friend; she stated she felt she was living with constant stress due to the political landscape in Washington. Then I had virtually the same conversation on Tuesday with another friend, followed by one on Wednesday and then again yesterday, which resulted in my friend bursting into tears.
Lest you think these are bitter liberals, two of the four are folks who consider themselves moderate Republicans.
And then there were two bright young men I met at the studio who are going to launch a conservative talk show on the station and they are full of fervor and believe that Donald Trump is the best thing that could have happened to America.
And these conversations put the spotlight on the vast political chasm that is dividing the country today.
For those of a certain mindset, liberals and moderate Republicans, the constant torment of political news is causing them to feel they are living under a dome of stress on top of the stress of ordinary life.
Many Democrats and Progressives live in outrage. My moderate Republican friends feel the party they knew has been snatched from them, finally, irrevocably.
Nearly everyone is taking, or talking about taking, a break from news, which I did, certainly, and chronicled in my last letter.
One thing I am doing is reveling as much as I can in the beauty around me and I am so fortunate to live in this beautiful spot. Just now, outside my window, a blue jay landed and we shared a look before he winged away.
If I were not in this place, called “your Walden Pond” by a friend, I might be going quite mad.
Parsing the day’s news is daunting.
Comey’s firing has the world all a frazzle. Keeping a promise to a very Republican friend, I do my best to look not just at the New York Times. So, after the sacking of the FBI Director, I checked on reactions from all sides of the spectrum. Some, both conservative and liberal, felt the guy had to go. Most had a sense of dis-ease at the timing, days after Comey had asked for more resources for the investigation into Russian collusion during the campaign with Trump’s campaign.
Some likened it to the “Saturday Night Massacre” during Nixon’s Watergate debacle though I don’t think we’ve quite hit that yet. And I have this gnawing sense we might get there.
Back in my Santa Monica days, my neighbor and friend, Susan Ottalini, was an editor for CBS News and had started her career as a journalist in small town California. She would ride on patrol with the police and sometimes they would pull someone over because it “JDLR,” just doesn’t look right.
Comey’s firing looks to me to be a “JDLR.”
Along with Trump’s tweets today, seeming to threaten Comey about not leaking to the press.
The day after Comey’s firing, President Trump met with Russia’s Foreign Minister, Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador. No U.S. photographers were allowed to capture Trump and Lavrov, only Lavrov’s personal photographer had access.
“JDLR” on a couple of counts.
The Alt Left and Alt Right are awash with conspiracy rumors.
And the hysteria requires me to concentrate on things like: how the sun falls between the trees when I am sitting at my desk in the afternoon, how the wind moves the branches of blooming trees, how my kitchen smells after I have made something really good…
My music choices are mostly upbeat swing jazz; it lifts my mood in the morning though earlier today I listened to folk from the 1960’s and it reminded me of those dark times, Viet Nam sliding into Nixon, Watergate, democracy lurching and then righting itself.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
Once, long ago, when I was living in Santa Monica, one of my neighbors was Susan Ottalini, an editor for CBS News, who started her career as a police reporter in a smallish California town. Sometimes she rode along with officers as they were patrolling
As I start this blog, it is the evening of May 10th, the evening after President Trump fired James Comey, Director of the FBI, who found out he was fired from newscasts. And the world is quite aflutter about it.
The White House seemed unprepared for the backlash which
Tags:"Just Doesn't Look Right", Alexander Pope, Alt Left, Alt right, Comey, Democrats, General, Hope springs eternal in the human breast, JDLR, Republicans, Santa Monica, Saturday Night Massacre, Susan Ottalini, Trump, Walden Pond
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Comey, Elections, Entertainment, Hudson New York, Hygge, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
May 7, 2017
“It was a dark and stormy night,” is the much-parodied opening line of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, “Paul Clifford.” But it was a dark and stormy night Friday night in Columbia County; wind whipped, too. Around 4 in the afternoon, the wind blew out the power as I was running errands to prep for a dinner party I was giving that evening.
Knowing that National Grid might not meet their expectation that power would return by 5:30, I made a quick detour and bought a dozen candles. It was a wise investment; power only returned at about four on Saturday. There were a half dozen of us, who dined, bathed by candlelight, looking our best. In her later years, Madame du Pompadour only allowed herself to be seen by candlelight. She was wise.
Martinis were ready in a pitcher and we toasted our decision not to cancel dinner. We managed to not discuss politics [an increasingly difficult thing to avoid]; we laughed and since there was no background music, it was the sound of our voices which danced through the night. It seemed as if we were in the first half of the 19th century or doing glamourous glamping in our own time.
We made the evening work. It was magic.
When I woke Saturday, a tree from the opposite bank had fallen into the creek and the morning air thrummed with the sounds of neighbors’ generators as there was no power. Out of habit, I asked Alexa for the weather and was met by stony silence. We were cut off. From each other.
Eventually, I did my morning errands. The Post Office lot was crowded with folks discussing what they had suffered during the night and driving into town, one home had lost five trees. Farther down, a great old pine had been uprooted, never to again be adorned by Christmas lights.
The Farmer’s Market was sparsely populated by vendors, most probably at home dealing with the storm’s effects. I realized there was little I could buy as it might all go bad before power returned. National Grid was estimating now that it would be about midnight on Saturday.
In an interesting way today, when I was at the Post Office, looking around at the klatches of men talking, and it was all men, I felt I was looking at a scene in “Midsomer Murders,” a British mystery series that started in 1997 and is still going. The village was gathering at the Post Office to talk about the storm.
It made me feel like I was a part of a community. A little like the community Jessica Fletcher had in “Murder, She Wrote.” Except we’re not in Maine and we don’t have as much death as Jessica encountered in her little town in Maine.
With my batteries now exhausted on all my toys, I ensconced myself at the far end of the bar at the Red Dot, close to an outlet, and charged my laptop and phone. And had superb Eggs Benedict on potato latkes with a side of American bacon. Totally, totally decadent. If in Hudson on a weekend day, indulge yourself. The Red Dot’s Mark makes the most succulent Eggs Benedict this side of paradise and, at this point in life, I have had a bunch. And when I am on the other side, I want to know I can order his up whenever I want. Please God.
Do you notice how I am avoiding anything substantive?
Sometimes you just have to do that. Give yourself a little breathing space in all the craziness.
Because it is crazy out there.
It is just unbelievable to me. Whenever I look at the news, I just go: WTF.
So, I have taken a moment to not worry. To celebrate my life and the joys I experience on a daily basis, knowing I must return to the dialogue soon.
Tags:Bulwer-Lytton, Claverack Creek, Claverack Post Office, Friends, General, Hygge, It was a dark and stormy night, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matt Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Party, Politics, Prayer, technology
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Hygge, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
May 4, 2017
Well, the time is nigh. Today Republicans voted, successfully, on “Repeal and Replace,” hoping to end the Affordable Care Act with their own American Health Care Act. “Obamacare,” long despised by Republicans, may be gone and they will have had their way and many of them will be holding their breath that it does not go badly wrong because if it does, the piper will need to be paid.
We will find out if, as President Trump says, pre-existing conditions will be covered or as Democrats are saying, they will not. If they are covered, it does seem coverage will be much more expensive.
Not a fan of Jimmy Kimmel, I was profoundly moved by his discussion of his newborn son’s heart surgery. If you haven’t seen it, you need to watch it. It is from the heart. [Yes, pun intended.] Please look here.
As I ponder this, I am, not surprisingly, listening to jazz, being all hygge at the cottage, sitting in my favorite corner on the couch, starting preparations for a Friday night dinner party. Have I mentioned I tend to look at the Food Section of the New York Times before I read the news? First thing, comfort and coffee, and then I hit the hard stuff.
Yesterday marked the month anniversary of my once a week radio program. My first guest was Jeff Cole, CEO of the Center for the Digital Future at the Annenberg School of Communications, part of USC. We talked futures. How we are changing and being changed by technology.
His great concern, and I share it, is how we will, as individuals and society, adapt to the coming advent of AI, artificial intelligence, which is already shaping our lives. Last night, as I was heading to bed, I paused and asked Alexa to set two alarms for me and they went off flawlessly, a soft chirping sound in the dark which could be eliminated by a command: Alexa! Snooze! And she snoozes.
I am experimenting with Siri, changing her responses from American English to British English. All fun and games until we get to the moment when the machines decide we are superfluous. Think the Terminator movies or the Hyperion novels which, to me, are more likely than the Terminator scenario. [In some respects, particularly Book One.]
Since I was very young, I’ve been a space enthusiast. Stephen Hawking, the phenomenon of a physicist, has warned us we have about a hundred years to get off the planet.
We could do it if we put all our energies to it but I don’t think jihadists are going to put down their guns to get us into space.
Outside, there are soft sounds and the trees are blooming. In the morning when I wake, I thank God that I get to look out at the creek and am here, in Claverack, a place that centers my soul as no other place ever has. When I look out, I am sometimes nostalgic for the time fifteen years ago when the geese formed a flotilla on my waters. They are mostly gone now.
It sometimes reminds me of an episode of “Star Trek: Next Generation” in which Jean Luc’s brain is infused with the memories of a dead civilization and one of the signs of their passing was the drying up of a creek. Occasionally, I stand on the deck and think: if the creek is gone, so are we.
However, today the creek still flows.
Generally, I am not fond of George Will, the conservative writer. Today, I read an article of his that encapsulates my ongoing sense of unreality. Read it here.
Encased in the safety of the cottage, I am doing my best to live in hope because we must live in hope. Hope is what has driven the race forward; it is what has brought millions of immigrants to our shore, who have shaped the country in which we live. My great-grandparents, on my father’s side, were among them as were my grandparents on my mother’s side. They came to the United States, buoyed by a sense of chance, of opportunity.
It’s hard for me to think that could change.
Tags:ACA, Affordable Care Act, Alexa, Annenberg School of Communications, Artificial Intelligence, Center for the Digital Future, Echo, General, Jeff Cole, Jimmy Kimmel, Obamacare, President Trump, Stephen Hawking, technology, Trump
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 1, 2017
It is a Sunday evening at the cottage. Jazz is playing, the lights splash the creek. I have made myself a martini. It was a typical Sunday, up early, read the NY Times and a few articles from the WSJ online before the shower and then off to church, where I did the readings and then coffee hour, errands before settling at the Dot for a long and lazy brunch, reading more off my phone and chatting with a few people, home to the cottage, put away laundry, got the trash together and sat down to write.
Very hygge.
Because I need the steady rhythm of familiar things in this Age of Trump.
His aides were caught off guard when he extended an invitation to President Duterte of the Philippines to come visit him during a Saturday call. If you haven’t been following it, President Duterte has been accused of extra-judicial killings in that country’s current “drug war.” Now those surprised aides are preparing for an avalanche of criticism as it’s hard to find a world leader disliked as much as Duterte by pretty much everyone.
Then, after unleashing a problem for everyone around him, Mr. Trump jetted off to Harrisburg, PA for a campaign style rally to “record breaking crowds,” where he railed to his supporters about the media which was, at the same time, roasting him in DC, even if he was not there. In two events, the official White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the Samantha Bee hosted “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” withered the sitting President, the first to have missed this event since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was recuperating from an assassin’s attack.
I wake up in the morning and find I am in a state of continuing bemusement in what is going on in Washington. It is reality television, which is what we should have expected when we elected a reality television star to the Presidency. With Reagan, we had an actor who knew how to deliver his lines. There aren’t really “lines” in reality television. There is direction but no script. We have a President who is making up his script as he goes along, knowing he knows better than everyone else. Even if he doesn’t.
The WSJ, a deeply conservative publication, to which I now subscribe, seems to be wanting to support him and just can’t find a way not to point out that it’s all a little…off.
And it is more than a little off.
Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff, said the White House was looking at ways of changing the libel laws to make it easier to for Trump to sue media organizations who criticize him. Imagine how the Democrats responded to that, not to mention many Republicans? Not pretty. Do we not remember the First Amendment? Or is Trump being inspired by Erdogan of Turkey who has been arresting thousands of people he suspects of being disloyal while cracking down on the press? Cracking down makes it sound nice. He is dismantling any vocal opposition to him.
One thing we should note is that the economy grew at the slowest rate in three years in the first quarter of Trump. Maybe it’s a holdover from Obama or maybe it’s the fear of Trump.
We are in a political Wild West except in this Wild West we have nuclear weapons.
It’s a dark time in American democracy and we need to remember, in this “of the moment” world in which we live, this has not been the only dark time in American democracy. We had the Civil War, dark time. We survived Andrew Jackson, a really, really not nice President [who, by the way, our current President seems to identify with].
We will, God willing, live through this.
In the meantime, I will play jazz. I will drink martinis. I will write and I will hope, because without hope we have nothing.
Tags:Andrew Jackson, Christ Church Episcopal, Civil War, Donald Trump, Duterte, Erdogan, Harrisburg, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Mother Eileen, Not The White House Correspondents Dinner, NY Times, Reince Priebus, Ronald Reagan, Samantha Bee, Trump, Washington, White House Correspondents Dinner, Will Ferrell, WSJ
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2017
It’s been a busy day. At 5:30 the alarms starting going off as today is Wednesday, the day I do my morning show on WGXC and I need the time to be good when I go on air. Once I was a morning person, when I lived in LA and worked for New York based companies and had to be up to catch New Yorkers.
Mornings were always best because after lunch, particularly in the early 1980’s, was not a good time. The three martini lunch was slowly fading but not yet gone. It was an early lesson in my career.
So, for most of the time I lived in LA, I was up about the time dawn was cracking so I could catch people before I lost them. It won me many friends and a few who wished I would sleep longer so that I wasn’t around to harass them.
The memories I have of that time are quite fond.
Knowing myself, I am up early on the day I do my show so that I am fully functioning by the time I reach the station around 8, letting myself in, sipping coffee and getting organized. I want to be at my best.
Today, I was pretty good, if I say so myself. The first interview was with Brenda Adams, Executive Director for Columbia County Habitat for Humanity and the President of their board, Peter Cervi. It went well. They are having an event which they were there to publicize and I also wanted people to know about all the other good things they are doing, including helping people remain in their homes as opposed to having to go to a nursing home.
That was followed by an interview with an environmental journalist, Susan Zakin, which was good and funny and fun. She is appalled by what Trump is doing.
Which brings us to our unpredictable President, Donald Trump. It is dizzying to me and disturbing to me as I can’t seem to find a coherence to what is going on though I am not sure why I am surprised by that. He hasn’t been, to me, coherent from the beginning.
And now he is President.
He, the President, announced today a reform to the tax code. Details to follow. No one I’ve read today seems to “grok” it.
He signed an Executive Order today that potentially takes away protection from something like 24 national monuments. Why?
Trump summoned the whole Senate to the White House to brief them on North Korea. No real reports on what was revealed though some Senators said they came out of the meeting “sobered.” Though it seems diplomacy is being chosen rather military action.
A long time ago, there was a remake of “On the Beach,” a story of nuclear destruction. In the remake, the President of the United States ordered a nuclear strike on China and it resulted in the end of human life on earth.
That haunts me right now.
North Korea is playing with fire and we’re playing with North Korean fire. It worries me how this will turn out.
Look, I am in the last act of my life and if the world blows up, I’ve had the best of it. And I think about the children who were playing at OMI, an art center, I visited last week. There was such delightful young life in that room.
I think that should be protected.
Look, ladies and gentleman, the Roman Empire went through a number of really bad Emperors so I am hoping we can get through a really bad President.
Less than a hundred days out, I think he is a bad President, dangerous, more so than “W” who I thought was a bad President and dangerous. He gave us the morass of the Middle East.
And now it is later at night, the lights are on the creek, Nina Simone is playing on Echo and I am moving toward bed in my freshly cleaned home.
The lights are on and I am looking at the creek, flowing on, hopefully forever.
Earlier, as I was settling in, I looked out my window and saw my hedgehog sniffling around the house, looking for food. And its presence gave me hope.
The world is changing and the hedgehogs remain, constant against change. A part of life…
Tags:Brenda Adams, Claverack, Claverack Creek, Columbia County Habitat for Humanity, Donald Trump, LA, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matt Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Nina Simone, North Korea, OMI, ON THE BEACH, Peter Cervi, Susan Zakin, Tax Reform, WGXC
Posted in 2016 Election, Airstrikes, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Music, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 21, 2017
Apple 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
Posted in 2016 Election, Brexit, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, European Refugee Crisis, Gay, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Paris Attacks, Paris Killings, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 10, 2017
The train is rumbling north from Baltimore to New York City where I change trains to Hudson, arriving there around 3:30 this afternoon. It is a sunny day and the fleece pullover and winter jacket needed on the way down are unnecessary on the way home.
As I travel north, I have trimmed down the email inbox, sent some electronic Passover cards and started reading how to make large quantities of scrambled eggs as this coming Sunday is Easter Sunday and I am in charge of preparing the Easter Brunch that follows the 10:30 service.
It’s my hope that Mother Eileen’s clipboard filled with some people to help me. If not…
The weekend visit with Lionel and Pierre and Marcel, the poodle, was wonderful, overflowing with good food at various venues: Modern Cook Shop, Peter’s Inn, Red Star, Rusty Scupper, Nanimi, Petit Louis.
On “The Avenue” [36th Street] I shopped the antique stores and found some Christmas presents, tucked in my luggage; that it is expandable saved me from buying another piece. At BJ’s with Pierre, I stocked up on Excedrin, Prilosec and more.
Long train rides give one a time to think and I enjoy them for that, for being able to see the countryside glide by without the responsibility of driving.
Pierre sings in the choir at the Church of the Advent in Baltimore. While Lionel and I were preparing to go to hear him at church, the television flashed pictures and video of the Palm Sunday explosions in Egypt, targeting Coptic Christians, who represent about ten percent of that country’s population. Last word I heard, forty-seven have died and scores are injured. At Christ Church this week, I will light a candle for them.
In response to the bombings, responsibility for which was claimed by IS, Egypt has declared a three-month state of emergency.
Rex Tillerson, our low-profile Secretary of State, heads to Moscow for meetings, either strengthened or weakened [depending on your view] by the US bombing of the airfield in Syria where chemical attacks against a rebel city were initiated. Tillerson called the Russians incompetent for allowing Assad to keep chemical weapons.
Putin is thinking of revoking the award he gave to Tillerson.
This should be an interesting week for watching Syrian affairs. How are they all going to react? Niki Hailey is talking regime change; Tillerson is not. Trump is unpredictable and Putin a risk taker; Assad seemingly a wily survivor who managed to turn peaceful protests into a civil war no one seems capable of winning or willing to negotiate an end.
Syria is bringing five questions about the situation to the head, outlined in an article in Bloomberg, available here.
We have ships moving toward the Korean peninsula, possibly to be in place in case there is a decision to attack North Korea and its pudgy, vindictive, unpredictable little dictator, Kim Jong Un.
President Xi of China and Trump managed to get through their summit without damaging each other and we will await to see what China will do vis-à-vis North Korea.
In 2013, Democrats used the “nuclear option” and McConnell said they would live to regret it, which they did last week when Gorsuch was successfully nominated to the Supreme Court and sworn in this morning.
Marine Le Pen, the far-right French candidate for president, has declared that France was NOT responsible for the deportation of Jews during WWII, a statement that has created, as one might imagine, more than a soupcon of controversy.
New York is the first state offering free four-year public college to its students in families with incomes under $100,000, a move to help residents avoid crushing college loans and to help the state have a work force ready for the future.
May it work.
For all my friends celebrating Passover tonight, Chaq Kasher veSameach! [Happy Passover!]
Tags:Amtrak, Baltimore, BJ's, Bloomberg, Chaq Kasher veSameach, Christ Church of Hudson, Church of the Advent, Coptic Christians, Kim Jung-un, Lionel White, Mother Eileen, Nanimi, Niki Hailey, North Korea, nuclear option, Passover, Peter's Inn, Petit Louis, President Xi, Red Star, Rex Tillerson, Rusty Scupper, The Avenue
Posted in 2016 Election, Airstrikes, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, European Refugee Crisis, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Iran, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Trump, Uncategorized, World War II | Leave a Comment »
April 6, 2017
It is dusty grey; mist and fog lay lightly on the Hudson River as I head south toward New York City and then on to Baltimore to visit Lionel and Pierre. It will be a long weekend; I return on Monday.
It had been my intent to drive but when I woke this morning to predictions of thunderstorms and tornadoes along my route, I opted for the train.
Last night, I sat down to begin a letter and could not find words. Ennui swept over me and I wandered off to bed, watched an episode of “Grace and Frankie” and fell asleep, waking early to prepare to leave.
Yesterday was my first day as host of the Wednesday version of WGXC’s “Morning Show,” from 9 AM to 11 AM. The night before, I had a night full of crazy dreams in which I got to the studio on Wednesday morning only to find they had changed all the controls and I had no idea on how to work them. In another dream, I decided to sleep at the station the night before to make sure that I didn’t miss the program but did anyway.
No psychiatrist is needed to interpret these dreams.
And the program went well; there was much praise from friends and colleagues and I relaxed, thinking I can manage this. It was fun and for my first guest, I had Alana Hauptman, who owns my beloved “Red Dot.”
Probably no one remembers Texas Guinan anymore; she ran the biggest, best, brassiest, funniest, speakeasy in New York during Prohibition. She was loved and admired and imitated. She was known for her big heart and saucy character. Alana is all of that and is the Texas Guinan of Hudson. The Red Dot has stood for nineteen years and been an anchor to the town and certainly my world.
There is a slew of people lined up to be guests on the show including the folks who run Bridge Street Theater in Catskill, world premiering a new play shortly and Jeff Cole, who is the CEO of the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication as well as Howard Bloom, who is a multi-published author and once press agent to every major rock group in the 1970’s and ‘80’s. And Fayal Greene, who has lived in Hudson for a long time, civically active, and is leaving at the end of the month for Maine, where she and her husband will live in a retirement community near their summer home and many relatives.
The farewell party will, of course, be at the Red Dot.
All of this is very hygge.
And I roll around in the hygge-ness of my life as outside my bubble I am often stupefied by my world.
Politics has never been this raucous in my lifetime and perhaps not this much since the founding of the Republic, which, I understand, was a very raucous time.
As I was getting ready to board the train, Representative Devin Nunes, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has now recused himself from the Russian investigation over ethics concerns.
In Syria, eighty plus people, including children, died in an apparent gas attack. Trump says the incident crossed “a lot of lines for him.” Tillerson has said that it was undoubtedly Assad’s regime. Assad is saying bombs ignited a store of gas weapons in the attacked town. Russia is demanding the US lay out its cards on how to solve the Syrian problem.
This all sounds like a lot like another replay of the last few years, with some new players and no new results. In the meantime, Syrians continue to suffer; something like five million of them are refugees, many living in squalor with their only drinking water coming from septic tanks causing typhoid and a further circling down into this hell that has been created.
A radio report from a Syrian refugee camp yesterday may have been the cause of last night’s ennui.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is meeting with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago today and tomorrow. It is a high stakes meeting reports say. Wide chasms exist in trade with Trump the candidate picking on China through most of the campaign and the Chinese, unlike some Americans, have long memories and play a long game.
If this turns out to be the pivot point for the United States, future historians might look at our tendency to be focused on short term goals as a factor in creating this pivot.
And in this miasma of non-hygge news, is a report that Jeff Bezos, second richest man on the planet, is selling a billion dollars of Amazon stock a year to finance Blue Origin, his space venture. That makes me smile. Money at work on building the future.
Tags:Alana Hauptman, Amazon, Amtrak, Assad, Blue Origin, Bridge Street Theater, Center for the Digital Future, Fayal Green, Grace and Frankie, Hudson, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Cole, Red Dot, Russia, Syria, Syrian gas attack, Texas Guinan, Trump, WGXC, Xi Jinping
Posted in 2016 Election, Airstrikes, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Daesh, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Homelessness, Hudson New York, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Russia, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 4, 2017
It is dusk on the day that seemed to say: Spring is here, for real. Walking around today as I did errands, I was jacketless and soon, I thought, I will be wearing shorts. All day today, I felt a letter happening in me.
It is an interesting time for me. My work for the Miller Center for the Presidency is on pause while they work out budgets for the coming year. It maybe I will be part of it and it may be that I will not. To be decided.
The guest bathroom is being repainted and today I went and picked up the new medicine chest and lighting at Lowe’s. The inside of the car was vacuumed and the winter’s gunk washed mostly away. It needs a good detailing which will happen soon now that I have found a place in Greenport.
This time of day is brilliant. Outside it is pearl grey, inside jazz plays and a martini is sipped. The creek floodlights are on and it is all good and hygge.
Just finished watching my friend Medora Heilbron’s vlog about matzo place cards for Passover! It was a treat, watch here.
All this is very comforting on a day when the Los Angeles Times published a scathing review of the first days of Trump’s presidency. You can read it here. It is the kind of editorial about a President that hasn’t been seen since the 1970’s. Yes, since Nixon.
At 4:31 AM our President tweeted about whether Hillary had apologized for having been giving questions prior to one of the town halls. Yes, that was wrong. It’s over, Mr. Trump. You are now the President. You won. Move on, please. Please.
Are you capable of moving on?
Not moving on will be the people killed in a Metro explosion in St. Petersburg, Russia. A bomb went off on a train, killing, at last count, eleven, and injuring dozens. St. Petersburg is on my bucket list. Over the years, I’ve read a lot about the city and feel a connection to it. I will hold a thought and prayer in my heart for them tonight.
And for all the people who are facing starvation in Yemen and South Sudan and…
For all of them, I lit candles this week at church. As well as young Nick, who continues struggling.
The web of Trump’s Russian connections keeps getting murkier with Erik Prince, a Trump supporter and founder of the infamous Blackwater Group, apparently having a meeting in January, days before the inauguration, with Russian contacts in the Seychelles. Now this was reported by the Washington Post, a liberal newspaper but a credible one.
Along with every thinking person, I am finding this fascinating. What is going on rivals, or equals, the Nixon years. And Nixon was six years into his presidency when Watergate bit him in the you know where.
We’re not much more than seventy days into this presidency and the storm is not going to abate.
John McCain, whom I did not vote for nor would have considered voting for considering his choice for Vice President, but for whom I have respect, has been saying things like this is the most concerned he’s ever been about the state of our democracy.
And I agree. With Nixon, one had a sense the system was working. Right now, I am not sure the system is working. And that scares the hell out of me.
Tags:Blackwater Group, Donald Trump, Erik Prince, Greenport, Hillary Clinton, Hygge, John McCain, Los Angeles Time editorial, Medora Heilbron, Miller Center, Nick Dier, Nixon, Seychelles, South Sudan, St. Petersburg, technology, theaters, Trump, Watergate, Yemen
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
March 30, 2017
There is sometimes nothing in the world quite like a vodka soaked olive and so when I made myself a martini tonight, I used olives instead of the traditional lemon twist.
To be truthful, I wasn’t sure I was going to put my fingers to the keyboard tonight. It’s been a cranky day; out early in a chill drizzle doing unpleasant errands, I got home around ten this morning and determined I was not leaving the comfort of the cottage. The fourth straight day of cold grey drizzle had me crying for mercy.
It’s been an emotional couple of days. First, most importantly, young Nick, who helps me is going through a rough patch again and that weighs heavily on me. Which is why I was up early today, to give him support in a rough moment.
As some of you know, I was one of the founders of Blue DOT Indivisible Hudson, a group intended to be politically active in this most distressing of political times. On Monday evening, using a word much used in Washington these days, I “recused” myself from anything more to do with Blue DOT and that was hard, even harder than I had expected it to be.
It was difficult to discover that there was no room for me there and seeing no way there would be, I bowed out. Of the original five, two of us are now gone, one wavering. To say I wish them well is an understatement. And I had to leave.
There are other things I can do, have been doing and will continue to do.
Thus, it has been an emotionally charged couple of days.
That all said, I am at the cottage, the day is closing, jazz is playing, it warm and hygge in the cottage. Saturday will see another dinner party here and I am snuggling into figuring it out.
There were two good calls for the Miller Center for the Presidency today, both exciting in their own way.
The creek is very high because of the rain and it flows swiftly toward the pond now, abandoning for a moment its usual gentle course.
And like the creek today, nothing is gentle.
The Senate Intel Committee is about to launch hearings and is promising to be more aggressive than the House Intel Committee, led by Devin Nunes, who has found himself with his underwear wrapped in knots.
He has muddied the waters with his meeting with some source on the White House grounds that informed him that Trump and his team may have been incidentally listened in on by government agencies. Which lead to Trump feeling “somewhat vindicated” about his, to date, unproven charge that Obama ordered “wiretapping” on Trump Tower.
Truthfully, I have trouble unwinding what the hell is going on. And I’m not the only one.
So, the ball has been moved to the Senate where both the Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee want to know what went on. Those Senators, Republican and Democratic, are talking about this as the biggest thing since Watergate.
And while all of this is going on, the world is facing the greatest humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II.
Millions are starving and we are not paying attention because, basically, we don’t know. The Trump Show is consuming the headlines. South Sudan is a catastrophe. Syria is a catastrophe. Yemen is more than a catastrophe.
Should I, a man who has no real obligations, go to one of those desperate places and offer help? I am thinking about it.
Tags:Blue DOT Indivisible Hudson, Devin Nunes, House Intel Committee, Hygge, Martini, Senate Intel Committee, South Sudan, Syria, Trump, Watergate, White House, Wiretapping Trump Tower, Yemen
Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 05 12 2017 A Series of JDLR’s…
May 12, 2017On Monday, I had a conversation with a friend; she stated she felt she was living with constant stress due to the political landscape in Washington. Then I had virtually the same conversation on Tuesday with another friend, followed by one on Wednesday and then again yesterday, which resulted in my friend bursting into tears.
Lest you think these are bitter liberals, two of the four are folks who consider themselves moderate Republicans.
And then there were two bright young men I met at the studio who are going to launch a conservative talk show on the station and they are full of fervor and believe that Donald Trump is the best thing that could have happened to America.
And these conversations put the spotlight on the vast political chasm that is dividing the country today.
For those of a certain mindset, liberals and moderate Republicans, the constant torment of political news is causing them to feel they are living under a dome of stress on top of the stress of ordinary life.
Many Democrats and Progressives live in outrage. My moderate Republican friends feel the party they knew has been snatched from them, finally, irrevocably.
Nearly everyone is taking, or talking about taking, a break from news, which I did, certainly, and chronicled in my last letter.
One thing I am doing is reveling as much as I can in the beauty around me and I am so fortunate to live in this beautiful spot. Just now, outside my window, a blue jay landed and we shared a look before he winged away.
If I were not in this place, called “your Walden Pond” by a friend, I might be going quite mad.
Parsing the day’s news is daunting.
Comey’s firing has the world all a frazzle. Keeping a promise to a very Republican friend, I do my best to look not just at the New York Times. So, after the sacking of the FBI Director, I checked on reactions from all sides of the spectrum. Some, both conservative and liberal, felt the guy had to go. Most had a sense of dis-ease at the timing, days after Comey had asked for more resources for the investigation into Russian collusion during the campaign with Trump’s campaign.
Some likened it to the “Saturday Night Massacre” during Nixon’s Watergate debacle though I don’t think we’ve quite hit that yet. And I have this gnawing sense we might get there.
Back in my Santa Monica days, my neighbor and friend, Susan Ottalini, was an editor for CBS News and had started her career as a journalist in small town California. She would ride on patrol with the police and sometimes they would pull someone over because it “JDLR,” just doesn’t look right.
Comey’s firing looks to me to be a “JDLR.”
Along with Trump’s tweets today, seeming to threaten Comey about not leaking to the press.
The day after Comey’s firing, President Trump met with Russia’s Foreign Minister, Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador. No U.S. photographers were allowed to capture Trump and Lavrov, only Lavrov’s personal photographer had access.
“JDLR” on a couple of counts.
The Alt Left and Alt Right are awash with conspiracy rumors.
And the hysteria requires me to concentrate on things like: how the sun falls between the trees when I am sitting at my desk in the afternoon, how the wind moves the branches of blooming trees, how my kitchen smells after I have made something really good…
My music choices are mostly upbeat swing jazz; it lifts my mood in the morning though earlier today I listened to folk from the 1960’s and it reminded me of those dark times, Viet Nam sliding into Nixon, Watergate, democracy lurching and then righting itself.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
Once, long ago, when I was living in Santa Monica, one of my neighbors was Susan Ottalini, an editor for CBS News, who started her career as a police reporter in a smallish California town. Sometimes she rode along with officers as they were patrolling
As I start this blog, it is the evening of May 10th, the evening after President Trump fired James Comey, Director of the FBI, who found out he was fired from newscasts. And the world is quite aflutter about it.
The White House seemed unprepared for the backlash which
Tags:"Just Doesn't Look Right", Alexander Pope, Alt Left, Alt right, Comey, Democrats, General, Hope springs eternal in the human breast, JDLR, Republicans, Santa Monica, Saturday Night Massacre, Susan Ottalini, Trump, Walden Pond
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Comey, Elections, Entertainment, Hudson New York, Hygge, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »