Archive for the ‘Putin’ Category
October 9, 2017
There are times when even the quiet beauty of the cottage is not enough to soothe the soul; this has been one of those times. Since the shootings in Las Vegas, I have found little solace in anything, except, perhaps, sleep.
Sunday, Mother Eileen captured the anguish, pain and despair I feel in her sermon. After the Prayers of the People, the bell tolled once for each person killed in Las Vegas. The service closed with “My Country Tis of Thee.”
My head bowed, I fought back tears.
There has been Las Vegas. Jeff Sessions is claiming that bans on discrimination don’t cover transgender people. The Trump Administration is rolling back rules that help women have birth control as part of their medical coverage.
The United States joined Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China and a few other repressive regimes in refusing to declare it immoral to execute people for being gay.
What?
As the bell was tolling [and it tolls for thee], I thought of a long ago, rainy, cold November afternoon and looked at my mother and said: what kind of country are we? It was the afternoon of the day Kennedy had been killed and that moment is etched in my brain, looking out the front windows at a sad world and wondering just what kind of country would kill someone who seemed to be having so much fun and was doing good things?
There was nothing my mother could say. To this day, I remember the look she gave me, wanting to have an answer and having none. The silence still rings in my ears all these years later as does the memory of the slick, wet street, a yellow and red city bus moving slowly down the street.
Last night there was another torch lit march in Charlottesville, VA. A return of Richard Spencer and his white supremacists. Listen to their chants: “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo.” [Washington Post, October 7, 2017]
Russia is our friend? The South will rise again? Russia is not my friend and the South envisioned by these chaps is not a South in which I would be comfortable. It’s one in which I think I might be afraid for my life.
Today is Columbus Day, the day everyone makes noise about old Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of America. Personally, I suspect it was the Vikings a few centuries earlier but they don’t get credit [maybe I think that because my mother’s family were Swedish]. However, as we have discovered Christopher Columbus was brave and not a model of morality in the way he treated native Americans. White people, in general, have not been very kind to native Americans.
Thirty years ago, my friend Ann Frisbee Naymie and I had a conversation about this and she just said to me: bad karma for what we did.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who has announced he is not seeking reelection, electrified the world yesterday with a tweet saying the White House was an adult care center and someone had missed their shift. Really? A Republican lawmaker is talking about a Republican President in this way? Wowza! You go, Corker. And I agree with you that Trump runs the White House like it’s an episode of the President and, like you, I think it is possible Donald Trump could stumble us into a nuclear war before he realized what he’d done.
Two hospitals have been evacuated in California and at least 50 structures destroyed in fires that are causing people to flee from Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties while in southern California fires are raging in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
The Four Horseman are riding.
Thank you, Mother Eileen, for giving shape to the inchoate agony I was experiencing when I walked into church yesterday. Thank you for ringing the bell for the deaths in Las Vegas. Thank you for asking the painful questions we all should be asking ourselves. What kind of country are we? What kind of country do we want to be?
Tags:Ann Frisbee Naymie, Bob Corker, California Fires, Charlottesville, Christ Church Hudson, Columbus Day, Donald Trump, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, Jeff Sessions, John F. Kennedy, Las Vegas Shootings, Mendocino, Mother Eileen, Napa, Richard Spencer, Russia, Sonoma, The South will rise again, White Supremacy
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
August 2, 2017
The last several days, my deck has been my living room, my office and my dining room. It’s here I have spent the daylight hours. As I type now, a storm threatens with distant thunderclaps.
The water in the creek is so clear I can see stones that line its bottom. The day is cooling as I sit here; having been warm and humid.
On August 8th, I am departing Hudson and journeying by train to Minneapolis for a reunion of old friends. Whenever I tell people I am making a trip by train they ask me if I am afraid to fly? No, says the man who, for a time in his life, flew at least a hundred thousand miles a year.
Trains are interesting because there is a sense of a journey when taking them. It’s not a magic carpet ride from place to place [though these days rarely is flying a magic carpet ride]. It is a journey, as you pass places and towns, sit for meals, read, look up and see surprising things and meet surprising people. You have an incredible sense of going from place to place and I love it.
It will give me a chance to think, contemplate, speculate, dream, postulate and hopefully not pontificate.
And then, when I am ready, I will fly home from Minneapolis. My trip is a bit open ended, a reflection of the joys of my life right now.
While the water in the creek is clear, so very little else is clear.We have lived through the extraordinary and extraordinarily short tenure of the foul-mouthed Anthony Scaramucci as White House Communications Director. In that brief time, he missed the birth of his son and was served with divorce papers by his wife.
He texted his congratulations to her on the birth of their son. Might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back…
Seth Rich was a young man working for the DNC. He was murdered. Fox News suggested he was murdered because he had leaked emails from the DNC. A lawsuit has been filed by a Fox contributor that claims Fox colluded with the White House on the story that Mr. Rich was the leaker when he was not.
How convoluted this all is.
Politics has always been a dirty business and it seems dirtier than ever right now. Or, at least in my memory.
As “any father would,” Donald Trump helped craft the statement Donald Trump, Jr. made about his meeting with some Russians, who promised him dirt on Hillary. That’s the story from the White House. Other, less kind versions, have him dictating the statement his son gave.
It’s another JDLR – just doesn’t look right.
After six months, I am worn out.
Really, I am. Every day when I wake up, I wonder what new roil I am going to encounter in the news. There is no shortage of them.
General John Kelly has been named Chief of Staff at the White House. Is there a more painful job in the world right now? I mean, really!? Kelly kicked Scaramucci’s butt out which shows he is exercising control and has demanded the President pay attention.
Good luck with that. Trump’s tweets early this morning goaded his new Chief of Staff about not promoting the stock market heights it has achieved may indicate his attention span lasted the night. It’s not your Chief of Staff’s job, Mr. Trump, to spend his second day in his job telling people how great the market under you is. That, arguably, is for your Communications Director.
Oh, yes, you don’t have one right now, do you, Mr. Trump?
And, as several friends remind me, we will survive Trump.
Thank goodness. At times, I think of the Roman Empire which survived a hundred bad Emperors, carried along by the bureaucracy that supported it. As we will be, by the bureaucracy we have built but we may have lost the dream, I’m afraid.
John F. Kennedy was one of our most flawed presidents and yet he inspired us.
And, while there have been monsters enough in human history, we now have ones with nuclear weapons, like the North Korean dictator who is testing ICMB’s, an acronym whose meaning had almost slipped from my mind since the Cold War.
Yikes!
Every Sunday since January 20th, I have lit a candle for us, the people of the United States, as well as all the other people out there who are living on this crazy planet. And for solutions to the craziness…
Tags:Chief of Staff Kelly, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Fox News, General Kelly, Hudson NY, ICBM, JDLR, John Kelly, Minneapolis, North Korea missiles, Roman Empire, Scaramucci, Seth Rich, technology
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
July 8, 2017
As I begin writing, it is twilight at the cottage. The day began damp and grey, changing mid-day to blue and lovely. Sitting on the deck, the torches burn to ward off mosquitoes and to give a sense of atmosphere. It is lovely.
Of course, as soon as I typed those words, I felt the first of the raindrops and had to scutter back into the cottage.
Out there in the world, momentous things have been happening. Trump and Putin met for the first time. Trump: It’s an honor. Putin: ?
It’s certain we will be hearing the parsing of the meeting for days to come. They talked election tampering. Putin: we didn’t. Trump: okay. [At least according to some early reports.] No agreement on Crimea. Not expected.
We are to agree on a ceasefire in southwest Syria. Good for everyone if it holds.
In Washington, Mitch McConnell faces the daunting task of passing the Republican version of healthcare legislation. It seems to be the single most unpopular piece of legislation of the last thirty years.
Over the weekend, I listened to some interviews with people from around the country who were absolutely opposed to Obamacare and absolutely loved the ACA, not realizing they are one and the same. It left me shaking my head in amazement and then, why should I be amazed? We, on both sides of the fence, don’t always analyze and we just react, ideologically, and that seems to be on the increase.
In a bright moment in the world, Malala Yousafzai, a young woman targeted by terrorists, terribly wounded, and who miraculously clawed her way back, graduated from high school today. She is also a Nobel Peace laureate. She celebrated graduation by tweeting her first tweet.
Amazing human being…
Closer to home, Etsy has cut its workforce by 15% and I wonder how that is going to affect the offices on Columbia Street in Hudson. While that is happening, the stock has been upgraded to a buy by some brokers.
It’s interesting to me to walk down Warren Street and see all the businesses that are there that weren’t when I came and to see the ones that are still here, still pulling along. One of my favorites is Carousel, next to the CVS on Warren. One of my friends collects mid-century hammered aluminum pieces and I go in there and sometimes find things for her.
The Red Dot has been here since I arrived and I remember the transition of Brandow’s to Swoon Kitchen Bar. Seems Ca’Mea has always been there since I arrived, though I am not sure about that. That’s a little foggy.
It’s been interesting to watch all of this. The cottage has been my home longer than any place I have lived, including the home I grew up in. That’s sobering. That’s rooting. I like the sense of roots I have created here.
Yesterday, I had my car serviced at Kinderhook Toyota and ran into someone I knew. At the Red Dot, I am always running into people I know. Same for Ca’Mea. It’s wonderful to go into places and be known or to know people there.
The places I’ve lived are many: Minneapolis, Toronto, Carbondale, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Eugene, OR, New York City and now Claverack. The places I have visited seem innumerable. They’re not but…
Of all those places, including my hometown of Minneapolis, the only place that has felt like home is here.
And I am enormously grateful for that. It is sweet and satisfying and that is how, I think, it should be as I enter this third act of my life.
Tags:ACA, Ca'Mea, Carbondale, Claverack, Claverack Creek, Eugene Or, Hudson NY, Kinderhook Toyota, Los Angeles, Malala Yousafzai, Minneapolis, New York City, Nobel Peace Laureate, Obamacare, Putin, Red Dot, San Francisco, Toronto, Trump, Warren Street
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Syria, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
July 1, 2017
At some point, I decided this was the year I was going to get over my fear of grilling. Last night, I grilled a steak using a Bobby Flay recipe. And asparagus on the grill: c’est magnifique! Put the spears in a plastic bag with olive oil, salt, pepper, a couple other spices and grilled them for three minutes on high. I’m hooked.
So today I went to the market and got boneless pork chops and was going to broil them about half an hour ago but thunder rattled the house and rain fell from the skies. My mouth turned down. However, the sun has returned and I am going to try it, pork chops on the grill.
It is Friday, June 30th, as I write, the beginning of the long 4th of July weekend. As I ran an errand near the train station, I saw visitors piling off the train, bags in hand, being greeted by friends, relatives, lovers and others. Zagat, today, sent an email which had an article about 8 reasons to take the drive to Hudson; all of them being restaurants.
You can read the article here.
As someone who is here most of the time now, I took a bit of umbrage with the list. It included Grazin’, a diner restaurant with local beef and I will need to give it another try because when I was there, it wasn’t good and the wine was south of awful.
It included Fish & Game, which is, I’ve heard, a good restaurant and I haven’t been there because it opened with an attitude. I’ve been around the carousel too many times to need attitude. [Hey, once I had “my table” at Ma Maison in Los Angeles, which was cool while it lasted.]
It included, deservedly, Swoon Kitchen Bar. I don’t go there often; my ex left me for one of the waiters there; that has weighed on me ever since but it is great.
It did not include, and I think it should have, my beloved Red Dot, which is one of the hubs of Hudson nor did it include Ca’Mea, which I think should have gotten a mention nor Vico, which has upped its game lately.
We are a food town.
And now, in a break in the rain, I did grill but not the pork chops I bought as most of the recipes for grilling told me I should brine the chops and that takes some time so I grilled some sausage and finished my asparagus. Oh, so good.
Beyond my little world, it has been a bit mad.
Our President has created a twitter storm over his tweets about Mika Brzezinski’s “bleeding face lift.”
Even Paul Ryan found it too much.
Several news sources, including conservative ones, thought maybe he should have been in a meeting rather than tweeting. But no, President Trump was tweeting and creating a painful moment for his party.
And, today, NASA had to issue a statement it was not operating a slave state on Mars; it was NOT sending children there to be body parts for future colonists, a claim made by a guest on “The Alex Jones Show,” which airs on 118 radio stations. Alex Jones is most famous for claiming that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged and was interviewed by Megyn Kelly on her new NBC show, which isn’t doing so well.
As I sit here in my very hygge cottage, I am astounded by what is going on out there. We have a President who seems devoted to Twitter attacks more than he is about governing and who, according to a variety of reports, starts his day at 6:30 AM speaking to lawyers about that pesky Russian matter.
And he is going to meet with Putin at the G 20 Conference and has been asking his advisors what he can offer Vladimir Putin. What?
There are times I feel I am living in an alternative universe. And I know I am not the only one.
So, doesn’t it make sense I want to conquer my fear of grilling? That’s concrete in a world that seems spinning out of control.
Tags:Alex Jones, Bleeding Face Lift, Bobby Flay, Ca'Mea, Donald Trump, Fish & Game, G 20, Grazin, Grilling, Hudson NY, Mars, Media, Megyn Kelly, Mike Brzezinki, NASA, Paul Ryan, Politics, Putin, Red Dot, Swood Kitchen Bar, technology, Twitter, Vico, Zagat
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 16, 2017
As I ride south on the train, white caps lap at the island which hold the ruins of Bannerman’s Castle, a building designed in the 19th Century to look like a medieval European fortress, purposed for holding ammunition and which began its slide to ruin when the ammunition blew the building up.
It’s one of the sites on the journey down into the city, where I am going today for a doctor’s appointment, a lunch and afternoon drinks with my friend, Ann Frisbee Naymie, in from Vancouver, British Columbia. Back in the day, we worked together at A&E in Los Angeles before life took her north of the border.
Across from me now is the citadel of West Point, the redoubt of American military might. The Catskills are covered in the verdant green of spring and the sun is attempting to break through the clouds which have hovered over us for several days now.
Riding in the café car on a train that has no café, people sit at the tables working; Stephen sleeps and there is a quiet. Most of us in here know each other: we are Empire Regulars, folks who ride this line enough that we are on the email list which informs us of all train developments. It’s been busy this past week as Amtrak is planning repair work on several tunnels in Penn, which may result in some trains going in and out of Grand Central. Whatever happens, it will be messy.
Messy, too, is the life politic. Some Republican Senators seem to be backing away from Mr. Trump, alarmed by his “inconsistencies,” a few shocked by his weekend threats to fired FBI Director Comey that he should hope there were no “tapes” of their conversations.
Republicans still support him though his overall ratings remain low, 39% in a WSJ/NBC poll, not low enough for mass defection but low enough for wariness.
A friend in California, a Trump supporter, is convinced Trump has a plan. This presidency seems improvisational and some improvisations go well and others…
If we didn’t know the definition of ransomware before the weekend, we are likely to know it now as hundreds of thousands of computers around the world have been infected with the “Wanna Cry” virus, locking them down until a ransom in bitcoin has been paid or a workaround is found. China is a mess today because of it; their use of pirated software making them especially vulnerable. Britain’s National Health took a blow as did the German national rail company.
That pudgy, pouty, unpredictable little man who is North Korea’s dictator, fired a rocket into the Sea of Japan, ending in the water not terribly far from Vladivostok. I doubt Tsar Vladimir is amused. But who knows? It may serve his purpose to look away.
And President Xi of China is finding that North Korea is more of a headache than he’d like these days, as he announces a new “Silk Road” to knit together some 60 countries with hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure investments.
We are gliding through the stretch of towns that line the Hudson, bedroom communities, passing by Metro North stations, all of it testifying to the hum and thrum of New York City, not far away now.
Tags:Claverack, Claverack Creek, Comey, Hudson River, North Korea, President Xi, Trump
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Comey, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Political, Political Commentary, Putin, 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 »
March 6, 2017
It is a very chill night, here at the cottage. Jazz is playing softly. It came to me tonight, that Alexa has been learning about my jazz likes and so when I say “Alexa, play jazz…” Well, it seems she’s learning my favorites. I am interfacing with artificial intelligence.
Tonight, I am spending it with me. And I feel like I’m good company tonight.
It is good to hygge at the cottage tonight.
The noise in my world is incredible right now. My closest friends on Facebook send numerous posts every day, every hour about our political situation. Dinner last night was non-stop. At today’s brunch at the Dot, his name wafted through the air. My client is the Miller Center for the Presidency.
Donald Trump owns the conversation, ladies and gentlemen, in my head anyway.
His ratings are through the roof!
And that’s what he likes.
For twenty minutes, I have been sitting here working to find an un-trite way of saying: I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime.
This is a global phenomenon, our President Trump. He’s a global big deal and I can’t believe what’s happening. Come on, whatever side of the aisle you’re on, this is not a normal presidency.
Just isn’t.
Every tweet generates frenzy.
And the Russians are coming…
Every time I turn around, there are the Russians. Did anyone in the Trump camp NOT talk to the Russians? Enquiring minds want to know.
Everyday there is a Trump story that carries the news beast through another day. On good account, I have it that people in the news business are run ragged these days.
Let’s face it: we have a ratings obsessed President.
And his ratings are HUGE. Which is what he likes.
It’s just not like anything I have ever, ever seen.
It’s not like anything any of us have seen. If anyone has, let me know, please.
The weekend has been consumed by parsing Mr. Trump’s tweeting that the Obama Administration ordered wiretapping of his phones during the last days before the elections.
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said she’s “seen no evidence” and that we need to deal with evidence, not statements. Bravo.
Senator Richard Burr, also a Republican, and Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said they would follow where the evidence leads in the Russian investigation. Kudos to you, too.
Senator Rubio posits the President may have information the rest of us don’t.
And, I think, if he does, he should reveal it.
Right now, as I’ve said, one of my clients is the Miller Center for the Presidency at the University of Virginia. Because of my work with them, I find myself thinking about the presidency and our president a lot. A lot.
At church today, I heard very little of Mother Eileen’s sermon because my mind was racing on what I should say in a report to them I need to submit this week.
While I am very hygge in my cottage, I am more than a little unnerved by what is going on in Washington. And that is seeping deeper into my life, the concern I have for the fabric of the country in which I grew up and in which I live.
Oh, yes, I know we will get through this. And I want to be sure we get through this in as healthy a way as possible.
I am one little man, sitting in a cottage on the Claverack Creek in upstate New York. And I, one little man, can do things to influence how all this plays out. God help me, I am politically active. I called my Congressman’s office from Saba to articulate my concerns.
It is time for participatory democracy, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. Which means dialogue.
And right now, we aren’t dialoguing.
We’re living in an either/or world and that’s not healthy.
We need to pay attention.
Really, we do.
Tags:Alexa, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, DC, democracy, Democrat, Donald Trump, Facebook, Hygge, Jazz, Marco Rubio, Miller Center, President Trump, Putin, Republican, Russia, The Russians, Tweets from Trump, Washington
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Entertainment, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
February 5, 2017
It is Saturday night at the cottage. “Swing Jazz” is playing on my Echo, the floodlights illuminate the creek and I am cozy in the cottage. A load of dishes is in the dishwasher and I have spent the day, partially working, running a few errands. Every week I try to buy some canned goods for the food pantry at the church and bring them in on Sunday. That was one of today’s errands.
When I finish this, I will rehearse the readings for tomorrow as I am lector at Christ Church tomorrow. It all feels very hygge. [Pronounced hoo-ga; the Danish word for living a cozy life.] It seems the best time of all to be hygge, what with everything that is happening around us in dizzying array.
Honestly, right now, I am not sure who’s on first. The refugee ban seems to have been lifted with the ban on immigrants from the seven predominantly Muslim countries. Or is it? I am doing my best to keep up and it’s hard. Really hard…
I think President Trump hung up on the Australian Prime Minister. Mine eyes dazzle.
And then President Trump told Putin that sanctions remain until he leaves Ukraine which is not what I think Putin was thinking would happen. Putin did a few “provocative” actions in Ukraine this past week [thing what you can do with artillery] that ended badly for him. The pro-Russian rebels were rebuffed by the Ukrainians. And The Donald rebuked him.
Or perhaps it was Steve Bannon, who appears to be becoming the Lord Chancellor to King Donald. Time Magazine has a frightening portrait of the man on its cover. It is feared this is the man who is pulling the strings. Look here.
Apparently, per reports, Kelly, the Secretary of Homeland Security, had to remind Steve Bannon, he only takes orders from the President when Bannon was bossing Kelly around.
Oh, just gosh…
Kellyanne Conway, the most skillful swinger of truths encountered this side of Paradise, is being skewered everywhere as she justified the travel ban by referring to the “Bowling Green Massacre.” Well, a couple of men were arrested in Bowling Green for attempting to aid and abet terrorists but there was no “Bowling Green Massacre.” She is saying she misspoke one word and is being eviscerated by “haters.”
Must say, mine eyes dazzle.
The king of Executive Orders, our Donald, is now issuing one that will roll back Dodd-Frank, the regulations that were to save us from another meltdown like 2008. Carpe diem!
While most of me is horrified by the political spectacle around me, there is another part that is amused. In a gallows humor sort of way, which is not a good way. Most of the American public is not amused. President Trump’s approval ratings aren’t good.
Well, who approves of chaos and confusion and flirting with unconstitutionality?
Ethicists are appalled at the flimsiness of Trump’s separation from his business interests.
And all of this is hurting his business interests and those of Ivanka. Nordstrom’s has dropped the Ivanka Trump line. In an earlier post, I mentioned I was at Lord & Taylor on 5th Avenue and there was no one in the Ivanka Trump section. Last time I was there, there was no Ivanka Trump section to be found. Poof! Gone.
And, frankly, I have grown a little fond of Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner. It is rumored they weighed in with The Donald and prevented him from signing an Executive Order that would have stripped the LGBTQ community of rights they had received under the Obama Administration.
On the other hand, it is, I’m sure, not making Steve Bannon happy. Nor is it making happy the evangelicals who supported Trump despite his raunchiness.
Me? A gay man. I’m pleased. Woo! Saved for another day.
Truly, I’m just a little bit scared. And a little bit amused. And a whole lot unhappy.
So, now it is time to return to hygge. I’ll make myself a martini and finish reading “The Romanovs,” a six hundred plus page book outlining the rise and fall of the world’s longest ruling dynasty. That’s a saga and it didn’t end well, as we all know.
May all this end well.
Tags:Australian Prime Minister, Bowling Street Massacre, Executive Orders, Hygge, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Jazz, Kelly, Kellyanne Conway, LGBTQ, Obama, President Trump, Putin, Steve Bannon, Time Magazine
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Gay, Gay Liberation, Great Recession, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
January 15, 2017
It is early evening in Claverack; the lights have been turned on over the creek and I have asked Alexa to play the “Pop Classical” station so music is filling the cottage. It is an idyllic night after a very nice day.
Waking before the alarm this morning, I cleared my email inboxes, showered and gathered things together for the food pantry at the church. Post church, I went to the Red Dot and then to Ca’Mea to meet Larry and Alicia and it was a pleasant country afternoon.
Against the backdrop of the pleasant country afternoon is a tension about the political scene.
One of my neighbors, who, when he met me was a bit uncomfortable with me and who has become a very good friend, asked me why the LGBTQ community was concerned about Trump. He voted for neither Hillary or The Donald, loathing them equally.
My response was that it wasn’t so much Trump’s views on gays but the views of the people who are around him. Mike Pence, Governor of Indiana until Friday, then Vice President of the United States, worked to enact strident laws that jeopardized the rights of gays in his state. Jeff Sessions, who is by all accounts is a gentleman of the first order in social situations, is homophobic, anti-immigration and anti some other important things.
My friend had no idea. And was concerned when he heard this.
Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a legendary figure in the Civil Rights movement, is not attending Trump’s inauguration because he does not feel Trump in a legitimate President. I find that unfortunate and counterproductive.
And I find unfortunate and counterproductive Donald Trump’s Twitter storm against Representative Lewis, demeaning his part in the Civil Rights movement. The man nearly lost his life on the bridge into Selma. To denigrate him as Trump has is unfortunate and not in keeping with someone who is about to enter the highest office in the land.
Stephen Colbert discussed “truthiness.” Donald Trump exercised a bit of it in his depiction of Representative Lewis’ district as crime ridden. In fact, he represents one of the most affluent areas of Atlanta.
There is a good part of me that is sitting back and watching what is happening unfold with a sense of wonder, a sense of OMG is this real? And it is…
Every time I turn around, I am astounded by our President Elect.
His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is going to be a Senior Advisor. Is there not something somewhere about nepotism? Ivanka may be the de facto First Lady as Melania seems to be content to remain in Trump Tower.
Who is this person?
Andy Borowitz, comedian and raconteur, described him as the “Kremlin Employee of the Month.”
The awful thing is that he MIGHT be.
The VERY unsubstantiated report about his actions with the Russians are, at one time, very amusing and incredibly disconcerting. It has spawned a cottage industry in defining “golden showers.”
Right now, I am sitting back and watching it unfold. Called me bemused, call me amused, call me frightened, call me whatever you like and I think we need to go back into the early 19th century to find anything similar.
Oh, wow!
And I will continue to watch with a carefully bemused eye that is also carefully turned on to what the new President might do as he needs, more than most Presidents, to be held accountable.
Please help with that. Please.
Tags:Alexa, Alicia Vergara, Andy Borowitz, Atlanta, Claverack, Donald Trump, Golden Showers, Hillary Clinton, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, John Lewis, Kremlin Employee of the Month, Larry Divney, LGBT, LGBTQ, Mike Pence, Selma, Stephen Colbert, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hudson New York, Income Inequality, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 10 09 2017 My country ’tis of thee…
October 9, 2017There are times when even the quiet beauty of the cottage is not enough to soothe the soul; this has been one of those times. Since the shootings in Las Vegas, I have found little solace in anything, except, perhaps, sleep.
Sunday, Mother Eileen captured the anguish, pain and despair I feel in her sermon. After the Prayers of the People, the bell tolled once for each person killed in Las Vegas. The service closed with “My Country Tis of Thee.”
My head bowed, I fought back tears.
There has been Las Vegas. Jeff Sessions is claiming that bans on discrimination don’t cover transgender people. The Trump Administration is rolling back rules that help women have birth control as part of their medical coverage.
The United States joined Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China and a few other repressive regimes in refusing to declare it immoral to execute people for being gay.
What?
As the bell was tolling [and it tolls for thee], I thought of a long ago, rainy, cold November afternoon and looked at my mother and said: what kind of country are we? It was the afternoon of the day Kennedy had been killed and that moment is etched in my brain, looking out the front windows at a sad world and wondering just what kind of country would kill someone who seemed to be having so much fun and was doing good things?
There was nothing my mother could say. To this day, I remember the look she gave me, wanting to have an answer and having none. The silence still rings in my ears all these years later as does the memory of the slick, wet street, a yellow and red city bus moving slowly down the street.
Last night there was another torch lit march in Charlottesville, VA. A return of Richard Spencer and his white supremacists. Listen to their chants: “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo.” [Washington Post, October 7, 2017]
Russia is our friend? The South will rise again? Russia is not my friend and the South envisioned by these chaps is not a South in which I would be comfortable. It’s one in which I think I might be afraid for my life.
Today is Columbus Day, the day everyone makes noise about old Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of America. Personally, I suspect it was the Vikings a few centuries earlier but they don’t get credit [maybe I think that because my mother’s family were Swedish]. However, as we have discovered Christopher Columbus was brave and not a model of morality in the way he treated native Americans. White people, in general, have not been very kind to native Americans.
Thirty years ago, my friend Ann Frisbee Naymie and I had a conversation about this and she just said to me: bad karma for what we did.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who has announced he is not seeking reelection, electrified the world yesterday with a tweet saying the White House was an adult care center and someone had missed their shift. Really? A Republican lawmaker is talking about a Republican President in this way? Wowza! You go, Corker. And I agree with you that Trump runs the White House like it’s an episode of the President and, like you, I think it is possible Donald Trump could stumble us into a nuclear war before he realized what he’d done.
Two hospitals have been evacuated in California and at least 50 structures destroyed in fires that are causing people to flee from Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties while in southern California fires are raging in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
The Four Horseman are riding.
Thank you, Mother Eileen, for giving shape to the inchoate agony I was experiencing when I walked into church yesterday. Thank you for ringing the bell for the deaths in Las Vegas. Thank you for asking the painful questions we all should be asking ourselves. What kind of country are we? What kind of country do we want to be?
Tags:Ann Frisbee Naymie, Bob Corker, California Fires, Charlottesville, Christ Church Hudson, Columbus Day, Donald Trump, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, Jeff Sessions, John F. Kennedy, Las Vegas Shootings, Mendocino, Mother Eileen, Napa, Richard Spencer, Russia, Sonoma, The South will rise again, White Supremacy
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »