It is fall like but not November fall like. In Minnesota my brother went to a football game wearing Bermuda shorts; it was 75 degrees there. In Claverack, it scraped 65 and I was warm in my pullover fleece.
When I left home this morning, I wandered the Farmer’s Market, picking up a few things I craved like the Sea Salt and Onion cashews from Tierra Farms and some of their Free Trade Honduran coffee. Meandering over to the Red Dot, I had the omelet of the day and then went wandering the streets of Hudson, marching up one side of Warren Street and returning on the other side, an adventure that took me three hours.
There are all kinds of changes on Warren Street and while I have been aware of them, I haven’t walked the street the way I used to when I first arrived here. Some antique stores are gone and seem to have been replaced by clothing stores. Several times I thought I could be in SoHo in Manhattan.
A fancy pizzeria has opened and Olde Hudson has expanded beyond belief. Dena, who owns it, is a friend so I had seen that.
Many of us have been joking lately about the number of expensive cars seen on the street. Not so long ago I spotted a Ferrari parked on Warren Street as I was on my way to meet Larry Divney for lunch. We both said it was the beginning of the end.
When I arrived here fifteen years ago there were no expensive cars on the street. My Acura was an anomaly for the time as was Larry’s Infiniti.
Hudson is becoming a destination. For better or worse. Better for my house value but perhaps worse for those who liked the edge Hudson had when I arrived, a little bit of rebelliousness that was a treasure.
The center of it was the Red Dot, owned by Alana Hauptman who is the Texas Guinan of our town. Don’t know Texas Guinan? She ran the hottest speakeasies in New York during Prohibition. After 16 years, the Dot is still here and still a center of life in Hudson. And Alana is our Texas Guinan.
And walking Warren Street today, I was astounded by the changes. To think that I would be thinking it was a bit like SoHo, which is where I was living when we bought the house, is something I would never have thought then. Sometime, long after I am gone, it will be a lot like Provincetown, I suspect. Or Edgartown on The Vineyard. It’s becoming that kind of place.
But will never be exactly that kind of place. That’s what makes Hudson so special.
There were Porsches everywhere on the street today. When I went back to the Dot after my tour of the street I ran into James Ivory, the director of films like “A Room with a View.” He’s become a bit of friend, has been at parties at my home and dinners too, and one Christmas I spent with him at his house. With Alana…
It has been an interesting escapade to have lived here through all this, to witness the transformation of a community from rough and tumble to almost respectable. It was and is an artist’s haven, a place where writers and painters and actors gather.
Across the river in Catskill, there is the Bridge Street Theater and I went last week to a performance of “Frankenstein.” It was brilliant. And I mean brilliant. Steven Patterson, who did every role, was as riveting as Paul Scofield [“A Man For All Seasons”] when I saw him in London on my first trip there. It was a forgettable script but his performance was transcendent. Steven Patterson’s performance was like that.
Transcendent.
John Sowle directed. Equal kudos to him.
Tonight, I am not talking about politics or world events. I can’t tonight. We are at the near end of the most awful political period I have ever experienced. No matter who wins, the contentiousness will not end.
Kevin James Malone is not my nephew. He is the child of my oldest friend, Sarah McCormick Malone, whom I have known since we were three. There is a picture of the two of us on her parents’ couch in our rain gear on our first day of kindergarten. [We were adorable.] We were already fast friends then and have been ever since.
From the time he was born, I was around about as much as any of his maternal uncles as the Malones lived in New Mexico and Michael, Bill and John, her three brothers, lived in the Midwest and on the East Coast, where her parents had settled.
On one wonderful Mother’s Day weekend, Sarah and Kevin came to visit “Uncle Mat” when I lived in Santa Monica. We flew kites on the beach and road around in my convertible, watched movies late into the night, Kevin outlasting both his mother and me. Kevin was maybe three years old.
When the eldest McCormick daughter, Mary Clare, celebrated her 25th anniversary to her husband Jim Eros [I had brunch with them last weekend], her parents threw a dinner at their country club on Long Island.
It seems to me that I was still living in California but was in New York at that moment and John and Eileen, Sarah’s parents, told everyone there would be a surprise guest. [Me.]
Kevin was then about eight or nine then. At some point in the evening Kevin went to his grandmother and asked her why Uncle Mat had a different last name than her other brothers, leaving Eileen to awkwardly attempt to explain.
Forever captured in the photo album of my brain is Kevin Malone walking up to me at that dinner, dressed in a suit and tie, putting his hands on his hips and looking up at me and demanding to know: what do you mean you’re not one of my mother’s brothers?
It was a hiccup in our relationship we survived.
Years later, when he and his father and I were visiting him at work, we met his boss. Kevin introduced his father and then me and said, this is my Uncle Mat.
When he was married to Michelle, I gave a toast at the Rehearsal Dinner. We shopped for a shirt for him that day, together.
Kevin is not my nephew by blood but he is my nephew by choice. His and mine. I refer to him as my nephew when I talk about him to other people. There is no other way to describe my relationship with him or his to me.
When he emailed me yesterday, along with others in his family, to announce he had passed the Bar in the District of Columbia, I felt so proud and glad. Today I learned he has also passed the Bar in Massachusetts and I felt another swell of pride.
You see, I have no words to describe how wonderful a young man Kevin is. He is one of the most unique individuals I have ever encountered. Caring, thoughtful, whip smart without being arrogant about it, determined to be the best Kevin James Malone he can be.
I don’t remember how I met Sarah McCormick Malone but I did and our childhood friendship has endured and I am blessed to have been included in her family as a member of choice and they in mine, as family of choice.
Because of logistics we will not be able to do it this year but we have spent many a Christmas together over this last decade.
In the Strum und Drang of these last days before the election, I am comforted by the presence in this world of a man like my nephew Kevin, now a member of the Bar, a lawyer for real, who will do extraordinary things in his life.
Kevin, I am so proud of you. Congratulations.
Kevin and his mother the weekend of his wedding to Michelle Melton…
As I headed north on the train, I watched mist close over the Hudson River as I drifted off to a nap after an extraordinary brunch with my friends, Mary Clare and Jim Eros, at Café Du Soleil on the Upper West Side. We laughed and giggled and ate and had a good time.
They were off to watch a flotilla of pumpkins in Central Park while I headed down to the station to head north.
It is dark now and the flood lights illuminate the creek. The ticking of my old clock is about the only sound I can hear and I am contented after a good conference in New York. Tomorrow is my meeting with my eye surgeon before the cataract operation a week from this coming Wednesday; I am weary of my blurry vision and am grateful I live in an age when repairs can be done to things like this.
A century ago, I would have been doomed to live with it if I had been so lucky to live this long. My friend, the philosopher Howard Bloom, always points out that we have doubled our life expectancy in the last hundred, hundred fifty years. A great accomplishment.
Things that would have killed us quickly have been either vanquished or we have ways of coping better than ever with what would have been life ending diseases not so very long ago.
Things like that give me some hope.
This week there were articles about robot warriors who could learn to kill using artificial intelligence, making judgments that only humans could before. While that brings to mind images from “The Terminator,” robots are being also developed to help those who are helpless and to save human lives in other ways. The Japanese are in the forefront of this because of their aging population.
Mary Clare and Jim split their time between Shepherdstown, WV and New York City. They describe themselves as the new “young old.” Both are retired and both are full of energy and life and a passion to explore the world and are an inspiration to me.
The three of us have all, to one degree or another, been tuning out the din of this the last weeks of this election cycle. It was left to me to explain the newest twist in the Clinton email drama. Both of them had missed it. All of us are confused by it and are wondering why the FBI ignored the guidance of the Justice Department to not say anything so as not to appear to be influencing the election.
But it is what it is and is another twist in this most remarkable Presidential election.
Last night a truckload of manure was dumped in the parking lot of the Democratic headquarters in Ohio. I find myself somewhere between outrage and hysterical laughter at the silliness of what is going on. Manure? In 2016?
As I cruised through the news today, I found an interview with Jerry Brotton, an English author, who has just published a book about Elizabeth I’s alliances with the Islamic world. Shunned by Catholic Europe, Elizabeth I built alliances with the Shah of Persia, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Morocco. Fascinating.
However, in this present time the US is telling the families of workers in the US Consulate in Istanbul to leave the country. This is combined with a warning to tourists to not travel there because of targeting by terror groups of Americans and other foreigners.
At the same time, the Turkish government has fired ten thousand civil servants and is crushing any media that disagrees with it.
I am saddened beyond words. Fifteen years ago I was in Turkey and fell in love with Istanbul and have wanted to return. Perhaps not or at least not now…
The old clock is ticking. I think of it as the heart of the house. I am content tonight and am living in the now. Mindfulness is what I think they call it.
The bright sun that launched the day has become hidden behind clouds as I progress south on the train into New York City. The fall colors still show themselves and we are definitely making a walk toward winter.
It snowed yesterday, three inches, quickly gone with the cold seeping deeply into my bones while I layered clothes for the weather.
Today and tomorrow, I am going to be attending “Produced By,” a conference held by the Producers Guild of America, of which I am a member. There are several sessions that should be helpful as I work on producing “First Guru,” a film about Vivekananda, who brought Yoga and Hinduism to the US in 1893. WTTW, the PBS station in Chicago, will be the presenting station. Near the Art Institute of Chicago, where Vivekananda gave his first speech, there is a Vivekananda Way.
There is much talk in the world today of “mindfulness,” pausing a moment to find yourself in the clutter of noise that surrounds us. As I was writing that sentence and attempting to be mindful of myself and the beauty around me, I received an email that put me out of mindfulness into gratitude.
Several weeks ago I was requested to submit a proposal to The University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Presidential Politics and Policies to do a consulting assignment for them and an email arrived while I was on the train that they had accepted my proposal and wanted to start moving.
Which generated a flurry of activity as I reached out to thank my references for graciously supporting me. Followed by other things and setting up a conference call with The Miller Center for Monday afternoon and before I knew it, the train was gliding into Penn Station.
After stopping at Tracks Restaurant in the belly of Penn Station for a bowl of their clam chowder, I am now at the apartment, finishing the letter before going off to the first session of the conference.
As I was driving to the station today, I noticed that there were many Trump/Pence signs and no Clinton/Kaine signs. Pondering that, I wonder if the liberals in Columbia and Greene Counties tend to be “closeted.” Political discord can run deep in the Hudson River Valley. I’ve been told the tale of a Greene County resident who years ago registered himself as a Republican because until he did his County services were, shall we say, spotty…
There is another FBI look into Clinton’s emails. The two big burly men seated next to me at Tracks as I chowdered were none too happy about that.
Anthony Weiner, who fell from Congress because of his sexting problems, apparently had some emails that somehow connected to the Clinton case on the computer the FBI seized after his most recent sexting troubles. His wife, a close confidante and aid to Hillary Clinton, left her husband after it was discovered he was sexting someone while their son slept next to him.
The “Produced By” Conference is being held at Time – Warner Center. Time Warner has just been purchased by AT&T.
The single most catastrophic merger in the history of corporations was the merger of AOL and Time Warner. Now, it is hoped that Time Warner and AT&T will do better. But as a friend of mine, Jeff Cole, Executive Director of USC’s Annenberg School of Communications Center for the Digital Future, has observed that it is a little hard to imagine a phone company meshing well with a Hollywood behemoth.
We will see, if the regulators allow it to happen.
And, in Jerusalem, researchers have opened, for the first time in centuries, what is believed to have been Jesus’ tomb. Since the days of Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, there has been a building there to make the spot. Constantine sent his mother, Helena, to Jerusalem to find it. [Maybe a good way to get a pesky mother off your hands for a few years?]
Marble has encased the slab where is body is said to have rested. Careful archeological work will be done over the next months and years.
As the train moves north, the Hudson River is steel grey while bordered by trees with leaves of rust, gold, crimson and green. The beautiful day on Tuesday is a but a memory; this Friday ride is on a day of grey and chill, with intermittent spits of rain.
My niece, Kristen, and I texted each other throughout the debate, commenting on both candidates. While we both support Hillary, we are not immune to her faults. It seemed such an effort for her to smile and when she did, it looked so forced as to be painful. But being on the stage with Trump must have been painful for her.
The candidates did not shake hands before or after. I don’t think I remember that happening before.
It was no effort for Trump to be dour and sour. It is his natural state it seems.
During the first part of the debate, he held it together better than he had and looked like he was on track to do what he was supposed to do – not lose his cool. But then he did; not as badly as before but enough that he was damaged and more Republicans are distancing themselves from him.
Somewhere after about twenty minutes, he began to lose the thread, veering off the script someone must have given him. Calling Hillary “a nasty woman” may hurt more than he ever meant as it might well be a catalyst to some women who had been leaning toward him to back away.
The thing he said that had most up in arms was his failure to agree to accept the result of the election. He’ll keep us “in suspense” on that one. Newspapers around the country led with his statement.
Trump clarified later. He will accept the results of the election — if he wins. It also seems he has backed away from that a bit more, saying he would, maybe.
Donald called Hillary “wrong” when she said he had supported the Iraq War before it began. Hillary told people to google “Donald Trump Iraq.” And many did. There is the evidence, in a tape on Howard Stern’s Radio Program, of Trump supporting the idea of the war before it had begun.
Hillary claimed her plans wouldn’t raise the deficit. That’s doubtful. Trump refuted claims his plans would raise the deficit by twenty trillion dollars, double what it is. He claimed that it wasn’t true because he would create so many jobs. Also doubtful.
Every year of a presidential election, there is the Al B. Smith Dinner to raise funds for the charitable foundation named after the man who was the first Catholic to run for President.
Hillary was on one side of Cardinal Dolan and Donald was on the other. The civility and joking that is the signature of this traditional dinner was soon lost to hostility. Trump was booed when he went over the line by saying something like: Hillary is here pretending she doesn’t hate Catholics, a reference to a WikiLeaks released email from her campaign expressing concern about conservative Catholics.
But they shook hands at the end, an event that was announced from the stage.
President Duterte of the Philippines is in China, where he has declared that his country will “separate” from the United States as we “have lost.” However, he didn’t give China the carrot they really wanted. He won’t walk away from the 1951 deal that gives the US bases in the Philippines.
Duterte is quite the character. He has been accused of mounting squads of killers when he was a Mayor. The Philippines Senate is looking into those charges and some senior officials have been saying: oh no! He didn’t mean separation.
He has compared his crusade against drug dealers and users to Hitler’s Holocaust.
The battle to retake Mosul carries on while at the same time, IS has launched an attack on oil rich Kirkuk with suicide bombers and gunmen targeting police. In Mosul, Iraqi fighters have made significant gains, probably better than expected. But Kirkuk pointed out the shift in IS tactics to “pop up” attacks rather than holding territory. And that even when vanquished from Mosul, they will not have been defeated.
In forty or so minutes, I will be back in Hudson. In my mailbox, it is my hope, is my Cozmo, my robotic toy, which I hope will divert me from the trials and travails of the “real” world.
Though my world has not been harsh to me today. Last night I watched my friend Todd Broder present to the NY Video Meet-up, had dinner with a friend and, today, breakfast with my friends Meryl and Ray before a pre-op physical [my eye] and now the grey ride home…
The day is diminishing; the sunset flickers through the turning leaves, a panorama of burnished gold in the west. Classical music plays in the background and a soft wind is blowing through this, the last great weather day we will probably have until spring unfolds over Claverack Creek. It was 86 degrees today with a cloudless sky and a fall wind in a warm day.
Once I recall a day like this when I was very young. It is the kind of day that holds intimations of immortality. Tonight’s sunset reminds me of the brilliant ones I witnessed on trips to Santorini, up at Franco’s Bar, poised over the caldera, thinking that in the sunset I understood the hold Greek myth has had over us for twenty-five centuries or more.
Once, at Franco’s, I wrote a poem on that and now have no idea where it is. But I remember the moment, sitting there, pen scratching in my notebook as the golden sun turned the waters in the caldera its ripe color.
We are in the cusp of fall and summer has reached out to hold us one day more in its warm embrace, harkening us to remember its feel so we will wait, patiently, for its return in another new year.
2017
Who would have thought? Certainly in my youth I never thought that year would see me inhabit it. Yet chances are I’ll be here when it comes marching in or crawling in or bursting upon us.
Soon there will be an election and someone new will move into the White House. If it is Hillary, she’ll have been there but in a very different role now than then. If it is Donald Trump, it will, perchance, signal a new and different age in our political history.
Time will tell. Tomorrow is the next debate and I will watch, though not waiting breathlessly for it. But I will watch. It is “must see” TV for me this season.
The tree tops are swaying in the wind; the burnished gold has become the color of smoky topaz. Twilight is descending.
Iraqi troops are marching toward Mosul, meeting, as expected, fierce resistance from IS. Some Iraqis, in a scene that reminded me of tales of our Civil War, went onto a mountain side to watch the battle unfold beneath them.
IS intends to hold Mosul at any cost and if it loses it, to make it a humanitarian disaster. The word that crosses my mind as I type is “barbarian.”
Iraqis remaining in the city have become bolder in their resistance of late to IS, supplying Iraq with vital information. IS is killing anyone found attempting to leave the city.
When I was with the Internet start-up, Sabela Media, Yahoo was the industry behemoth.
Its revenue declined again this quarter and Verizon is asking for a reduction in price to buy it because of the hacking scandal.
Because they were known as bullies in the early years, I have always found it hard to be empathic though it is sorry to see a once great company slowly self-immolate. And from people I know who are dealing with them currently, some within Yahoo just can’t accept what is happening now. Ostriches with their heads in the sand…
Dark has descended and I am sitting at the table on the deck, with candlelight for illumination, listening to the classical music but also listening to the sounds of woodland creatures making their noises.
It is very special tonight. The world is swinging in its orbit, momentous things are happening and as they are happening, there are the sounds of birds in the night, classical music and, because of them, a murmur of hope for the future.
Well, it’s Monday evening and nearly twenty-four hours has passed since the debate. It was as close to X rated as any debate in the history of the Presidential Elections, what with Hillary bringing up Trump’s vile language in his 2005 tape and Trump bringing up Bill Clinton’s well-documented infidelities.
Oh my! Personally, I thought Trump looked terrible. And that sniffling…
The NY Times [and my conservative readers will not like this] said that there was only one adult on the stage and it wasn’t Donald Trump. I agree.
Trump had a little get together before the debate with four women who accuse Bill Clinton of sexual assault. Look, Bill was a philanderer. We all know that now thanks to Monica Lewinsky. We know Hillary was brutal in her defense of her husband.
AND Hillary is running for President. Not Bill. Bill Clinton was JFK without a compliant press.
It was down and dirty, Trump dominating the stage, sniffling all the time, while Hillary [IMHO] was doing her best to both go there and not go there. Trump’s tape was the elephant in the room.
It’s getting near the end of the day, thank God. There’s not much more of this I can stand.
However, there was one bright spot in the debate. His name was Ken Bone and he asked a question, wearing a bright red sweater and looking like the guy next door that we really like.
He asked about what the candidates would do to both protect legacy power and create environmentally safe sources going forward. He was respectful, he was clear, he was concise and because he looked like the neighbor you wanted to live next door to you, the Internet went wild. He was everywhere.
And that red sweater he was wearing? There are now all kind of Internet leads that will help you buy that sweater.
He was sweet and real in a moment that felt neither real nor sweet in any other way.
Bravo, Mr. Bone.
But in the meantime, Paul Ryan has said he will no longer defend Trump and will concentrate on keeping the down ticket seats safe. It is one of the rare things Paul Ryan has done with which I agree.
It is pitch black outside and the control to turn on the floodlights is broken, soon to be repaired.
This is the night I turned on the heat, the temperature will fall near to freezing this evening. Soon, I may light a fire in the Franklin Stove and watch some video.
The new season of Poldark has started on PBS and I am catching up.
In the meantime, medics are asking to be let into Aleppo as there is no longer an infrastructure to help the wounded. When last I wrote, two of the four working hospitals had been destroyed. Who knows if the other two are still functioning.
The pound has fallen against the dollar due to Brexit. It was $1.57 to a pound. Now it is $1.23 to a pound. Mayhap I shall plan a trip to Britain.
Nigel Lafarge who helped organize the successful campaign for Brexit, praised Donald Trump for acting like a silverback gorilla in the debate last night.
Please! Really? Nigel, you lied through it all and once you’d won, you stepped down to avoid the consequences of your actions.
It is Columbus Day. In many places it is becoming Indigenous Peoples Day. We are beginning to make mea culpa over the damage we had done to the people who lived here when we arrived.
We destroyed them, all in the name of progress. It makes me wonder what the world would be like if we had incorporated their beliefs into the way we developed our New World?
My morning yesterday began with me flipping my laptop open and sitting down to write as a soft fog floated above the creek with sunlight glistening down through the leaves in the midst of changing color.
Just as I sat down to write, a mug of strong coffee at my side, the mother of a friend phoned and let me know her son was in the hospital and had been asking for me. So I came and sat in his dim room, spelling his mother while she went home to shower and change into fresh clothes.
At two I had a conference call and then I made dinner for Lionel and his family.
The day unrolled in an unexpected way but that is life, unexpected. It also made me think about how we have, in addition to our real families, families of choice.
My life, thankfully, is full of them. Blessedly. And for that I am grateful.
Since I have moved to Hudson, my friend’s family has been that way to me and I went to the hospital to perform the responsibilities of having made a choice. Choices do come with responsibilities.
Out in the wide world, the cold open for last week’s Saturday Night Live was a send-up of the Trump/Clinton debate with Alec Baldwin doing a magnificent satire of Donald Trump. It aired the night before the tax revelations. Pundits wondered which was worse for him, the tax revelations or Alec Baldwin. The video has gone viral. If you haven’t seen it, look for it at the end of the post.
Thursday night, Lionel and I went to Coyote Flaco for dinner. As usual, we sat at the bar. Seated to my left was Tim and, as happens sometimes, we got talking. After I had introduced myself, I introduced Lionel, joking he sounded funny because he was from Australia.
Tim, the man to my left, said, oh, I’ve never been there but am thinking of moving there if Hillary is elected. Lionel retorted he was thinking of returning if Trump was elected.
It didn’t get ugly. Tim said he couldn’t vote for her because she had done nothing but be in government service. Not exactly true but close enough.
Asking him if he knew who FDR was, he said no. So I said Franklin Delano Roosevelt and he said he didn’t know him because he was just little when he was in office. He asked me if I’d been alive when he was in office and I said he’d died before I was born.
The poor man didn’t really know. And, by the way, Tim is younger than I am.
After we left, I thought about it and realized most Presidents we have had have spent much of their lives in public service. Let’s see…
FDR did spend most of his life in public service, seeing us through the Great Depression and WWII. He was followed by Harry Truman who had worked in the private sector for a while but spent the majority of his career in public service, followed by Dwight Eisenhower who certainly spent his whole life in public service, followed by John Kennedy, who had done the same.
Lyndon B. Johnson owned some businesses but mostly was in public service his whole life, followed by Richard Nixon who, too, had spent most of his life in public service, followed by Gerald Ford, lots of public service there, followed by Jimmy Carter, who was a peanut farmer before his Presidency but he, too, gave a great deal of his life to public service. Then came Ronald Reagan, who had made his living as an actor before he went into public service.
He was followed by Bush 1, who had spent much of his life in public service, followed by Clinton, who had done the same. W had been in the private sector but then went on to be Governor and then President. Obama has spent much of his life in public service.
Being in public service has become pejorative in this election and I am not sure why.
Then, yesterday, all Billy Bob broke out over a 2005 video of Trump saying all kinds of things I can’t and won’t repeat. If you are interested, you can find them.
Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, was “sickened” by them and disinvited Trump to a Republican gathering in his home state of Wisconsin.
A few Republican politicians have withdrawn their endorsements and it is rumored some Republican leaders are quietly gathering to see what is to be done about Trump.
It’s a little late; the ballots have been printed.
As I have been sitting here, listening to “Smooth Jazz” twilight has become almost night. The last glimmerings of the silvery light are slipping away.
This week I have been dog sitting Marcel, Lionel and Pierre’s poodle, who will soon turn sixteen. Every night, he takes me for a walk. We leave my cottage and he marches me over to his house, across the street from mine and takes me for a tour of his yard. He goes to the front door and looks at me uncomprehendingly when I do not let him in.
He is reluctant to leave once he is on his home territory; actually, he fights me. He doesn’t want to come back to my house but eventually he realizes that he is not going home tonight and walks with me back to my place.
He is very smart, is little Mr. Marcel. And sweet. And I am enjoying his company right now though I realize my own time for pets is past. I still come and go too much to give any pet like Marcel a real home. And I am single. Were there a partner, it would be easier.
There are soft sounds from woodland creatures that filter into my time here at the laptop, soft sounds from the night outside.
It is, this moment, a soft and gentle world that seems unconnected with all that is happening beyond me. I feel, here, encapsulated, as if the outside world did not exist.
But it does.
The Syrians under Assad and their Russian allies have been brutally pulverizing Aleppo. It has only become worse since the last time I wrote. It is the kind of brutality we have not seen for a long time. And, as I said before, I wonder about the poor boy in the ambulance. Has he survived this assault? I wonder about that day and night. I am haunted by wanting to know.
Here, at home, there was a horrific crash of a New Jersey Transit Train at Hoboken. One person is dead. 100 are injured, some seriously. I texted my friend Mary Dickey to check on her. She had changed her plans today and did not take the train into New York City. Just as something had diverted her the morning of 9/11 or she would have been under the Towers when one of the planes hit.
Congress overturned Obama’s veto of a law that would allow 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. Personally, I think it was a political move that will have unintended consequence. The Saudis are rethinking their alliance with us and it opens the door for a lot of problems we don’t want to have. Like everyone in Iraq suing us for our “meddling.”
Not quite knowing how to parse this but right now there are reports that Trump may have violated the embargo that was in place during the 1990’s with Cuba. If true, it will wound him with Cuban Americans in Florida, which is essential in his path to the Presidency.
Trump has had both a good year and a bad year. He is the Republican nominee for President, a reality no one thought possible six months ago. His net worth, according to Forbes, has dropped by $800 million this last year but it still leaves him with 3.7 billion dollars, according to the magazine. Forbes is generally thought of as a conservative publication.
Samsung, the company of exploding Galaxy Note 7s, has a new problem. Its washing machines are also exploding. So glad I did not choose to get a Samsung gas stove when I bought new appliances for my kitchen.
It’s a brand in trouble. Big trouble.
We were facing a government shutdown tomorrow but it has been avoided. The government is funded until December 9th, after the elections. Zika funding was approved to the tune of $1.1 billion.
It is a quiet evening here. I have looked into the world and now I am going to take myself to bed, watch a little video and go to sleep, happy. The way I woke this morning.
Twilight is beginning to settle on the Hudson Valley, outside a silvery light surrounds the trees outside my window. The trees remain mostly green, some falling, still green. Over the weekend I listened to a report on NPR informing us that the turning of the leaves has been delayed by two weeks due to the long, hot, dry summer. It’s fine with me; I am enjoying the illusion it is still more summery than it is.
Yesterday, I had a fire in my Franklin stove to take the edge off the chill in the cottage as I couldn’t bear the thought of turning on the heat.
Today has been a magical fall day, warm but not too warm, sunny and joyous.
It is Tuesday and therefore I taught my Public Communications class. One of the questions I asked was, of course, who watched the Debate yesterday as it is an example of public communication with the highest of all possible stakes. Of the twenty-one people in my class, five had watched the debate.
With the exception of one, they were millennials. All of them found both candidates unacceptable. And that surprised me. Both Clinton and Trump failed to resonate with these five. To them, Trump was a buffoon and Clinton was insincere. They did not indicate to me which way they will vote, if they vote at all.
Last semester my students were exhausted by the campaign and turned off by it by the length and acrimoniousness of it. And that was true today; my students, almost all of them of voting age, are bored to death with this election campaign, feeling no one is reaching out to them.
That is worrisome.
Personally, I really liked Hillary and thought she did a very decent job. Trump started strong and then seemed to slide into exhaustion, an individual worn down and beyond really, really caring.
He did not shoot himself in the foot in the way I hoped but something was definitely off in the last part of the debate. It seemed the helium had escaped from his balloon.
Howard Dean, once himself a potential Presidential candidate, tweeted about Trump’s sniffles during the debate, wondering if he might have used cocaine before going on. I don’t remember sniffles but it has been retweeted across the blogosphere. Trump said this morning there were no sniffles.
Chill Jazz plays in the background. The silver light seems suspended over the creek, caught in a magic moment that promises it will eternally be this way…
Of course it won’t be. Twilight will become dusk and dusk will become night.
Some weeks ago I wrote a letter that featured a photo of a little boy in Aleppo, in the back of an ambulance, traumatized, a face that haunts me tonight as the Syrian forces of Assad coupled with their Russian allies, are bombing the daylights out of Aleppo with bunker busting bombs.
All day, I have wondered if that little boy, who captured the world’s attention, is still alive? Has he survived this new level of brutality? The violence has become unimaginable and I feel broken for not knowing how to alleviate it.
This week I am dog sitting Marcel, the poodle of my friend Lionel, who owns the house across the street from me, my great friend I gained in the wondrous startup that was Sabela Media in the late 90’s.
He has been a magical friend to me and we have shared every Thanksgiving together since then, save two.
Marcel and I went on our afternoon walk together. He brings me to their house and cannot understand why he cannot go home.
He enjoys me and he wants to be at home. He is about to be sixteen and he soldiers on and I am impressed with his determination.
It is a time to be determined. There are those who feel the future of the American experiment is on the line. They may well be right.
What has happened in America in the last two and a half centuries has been amazing. We have been blessed to be part of one of the most glorious experiments democracy has ever had. We have been flawed and we have persevered.
Today I was reading all kinds of documents from Columbia Greene Community College about campus policy and I thought: we are just working to do it right.
That is the thread that has kept us going. We are just working to do it right. And I applaud American democracy, for it all its flaws, for trying to do it right.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter from Claverack 11/05/2016 All about Hudson…
November 6, 2016It is fall like but not November fall like. In Minnesota my brother went to a football game wearing Bermuda shorts; it was 75 degrees there. In Claverack, it scraped 65 and I was warm in my pullover fleece.
When I left home this morning, I wandered the Farmer’s Market, picking up a few things I craved like the Sea Salt and Onion cashews from Tierra Farms and some of their Free Trade Honduran coffee. Meandering over to the Red Dot, I had the omelet of the day and then went wandering the streets of Hudson, marching up one side of Warren Street and returning on the other side, an adventure that took me three hours.
There are all kinds of changes on Warren Street and while I have been aware of them, I haven’t walked the street the way I used to when I first arrived here. Some antique stores are gone and seem to have been replaced by clothing stores. Several times I thought I could be in SoHo in Manhattan.
A fancy pizzeria has opened and Olde Hudson has expanded beyond belief. Dena, who owns it, is a friend so I had seen that.
Many of us have been joking lately about the number of expensive cars seen on the street. Not so long ago I spotted a Ferrari parked on Warren Street as I was on my way to meet Larry Divney for lunch. We both said it was the beginning of the end.
When I arrived here fifteen years ago there were no expensive cars on the street. My Acura was an anomaly for the time as was Larry’s Infiniti.
Hudson is becoming a destination. For better or worse. Better for my house value but perhaps worse for those who liked the edge Hudson had when I arrived, a little bit of rebelliousness that was a treasure.
The center of it was the Red Dot, owned by Alana Hauptman who is the Texas Guinan of our town. Don’t know Texas Guinan? She ran the hottest speakeasies in New York during Prohibition. After 16 years, the Dot is still here and still a center of life in Hudson. And Alana is our Texas Guinan.
And walking Warren Street today, I was astounded by the changes. To think that I would be thinking it was a bit like SoHo, which is where I was living when we bought the house, is something I would never have thought then. Sometime, long after I am gone, it will be a lot like Provincetown, I suspect. Or Edgartown on The Vineyard. It’s becoming that kind of place.
But will never be exactly that kind of place. That’s what makes Hudson so special.
There were Porsches everywhere on the street today. When I went back to the Dot after my tour of the street I ran into James Ivory, the director of films like “A Room with a View.” He’s become a bit of friend, has been at parties at my home and dinners too, and one Christmas I spent with him at his house. With Alana…
It has been an interesting escapade to have lived here through all this, to witness the transformation of a community from rough and tumble to almost respectable. It was and is an artist’s haven, a place where writers and painters and actors gather.
Across the river in Catskill, there is the Bridge Street Theater and I went last week to a performance of “Frankenstein.” It was brilliant. And I mean brilliant. Steven Patterson, who did every role, was as riveting as Paul Scofield [“A Man For All Seasons”] when I saw him in London on my first trip there. It was a forgettable script but his performance was transcendent. Steven Patterson’s performance was like that.
Transcendent.
John Sowle directed. Equal kudos to him.
Tonight, I am not talking about politics or world events. I can’t tonight. We are at the near end of the most awful political period I have ever experienced. No matter who wins, the contentiousness will not end.
The creek at night.
Tags:Alana Hauptman, Bridge Street Theater, Edgartown, Frankenstein, Hudson, Hudson Farmer's Market, John Sowle, Olde Hudson, Provincetown, Red Dot, Soho, Steven Patterson, Texas Guinan, Tierra Farms, Warren Street
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