Archive for the ‘Social Commentary’ Category
May 14, 2016
It is Friday the 13th, a day feared by many as unlucky. It has neither been lucky or unlucky for me, so far…
The cottage is ripe with the good feelings from a lovely dinner party last night. There were six of us. We had appetizers, soup, salad, fish, lamb or pork or both, baby gold Yukon potatoes, sautéed carrots, green beans with butter and ice cream and berries for dessert. People arrived at seven and left after midnight. A good time was had by all.
I am now in my fourth load in the dishwasher. We had cocktails, champagne, white wine, red wine, cordials. It was a long, delightful evening of food and wonderful conversation. It was a moment of recognition of how lucky I am, to be in the cottage, to have friends, to be alive.
As I returned from the city on Tuesday, I got a text letting me know that Vinnie Kralyevich had died the night before. He was fifty-two, was on the treadmill, collapsed and could not be revived. He was someone I worked with a lot about nine years ago and I was staggered to learn he had passed. I am older and there was another moment that reminded me of my own mortality.
I am at an age when mortality is knocking at my door. The people who mentored me are growing older and are leaving the scene. I have younger friends who are cursed with terminal diseases and are leaving me.
For more than fifteen years my friends Medora Heilbron and Meryl Marshall-Daniels have had a weekly call to check in and support each other. It’s a phone support group. Medora ran development for USA Network when I was out pitching shows. Meryl got me involved with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. I was on the Board of Governors when she was the Chair of the Academy. Medora reached me on 9/11 just before I lost phone service to check on how I was.
It is a deep and rich sharing, once a week, except when one of us is out of the country.
Medora shared today that Bruce Lansbury, brother to Angela, a producer of great renown and who gave Medora her best break in the business, was suffering from Alzheimers. Angela and Medora live in the same Los Angeles neighborhood, run into each other in markets but Medora had never introduced herself to Angela but, for some reason, she did this week at the Whole Foods in Brentwood. She was devastated by the news that Bruce was alive but gone.
It is what all of us fear. I do.
While I write this, on a day which has been dark and drear, a soft fog is descending around me, enveloping the creek, the end of a rainy, dismal day. And the view in front of me is a bit magical. One could imagine woodland nymphs dancing in the distance.
However, there are no woodland nymphs dancing tonight in American politics.
Trump has a butler who is now retired but still gives tours at his estate in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, built for Marjorie Merriweather Post, a cereal heiress whose daughter, Dina Merrill, was an accomplished actress.
He called Obama a “muzzie” who should be hung. The Trump campaign is working to distance itself from those comments. A “muzzie” is a Muslim, by the way.
I had a long chat with my client, Howard Bloom, who has just finished a new book, “The Mohammed Code.” It is an exegesis of the roots of fundamentalism in Islam. We have battered back and forth about the book because it exposes the roots of ISIS and I am hoping will reflect the differentiation between fundamentalist Muslims and the majority of Muslims who have renounced the ugly parts of their religion.
This is the great conversation of today. We must come to peace with Islam and they must come to peace with us. Not easy but must be done…
Tags:Angela Lansbury, Bruce Lansbury, Donald Trump, Friday the 13th, Howard Bloom, Mar-a-lago, Medora Heilbron, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, Muhammed Code, The Donald, Trump, Vinnie Kralyecih, Whole Foods
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Daesh, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 9, 2016
For the first time in a week, the sun is out and the day feels spring like. Sunlight glitters off the Hudson River as the train I’m riding heads south to the city. I have a couple of meetings this afternoon and tomorrow and then will head back north after the last one is completed.
Today, I gave the final to my class. Once they’re graded and handed in, I am finished unless I am asked back in the fall.
It was genuinely hard for me to see my students go. I will honestly miss them, even the reluctant ones among them.
They are all interesting characters and I worry about them because most of them are graduating and their academic skills are less, for the most part, of what I would expect of students finishing their second year of college.
They range in age from twenty to forty. One is a mother who missed a couple of classes because she went to her own daughter’s graduation. Another is a vet, who is back after years of service, a man of thirty something who carries weight in his soul.
They follow Facebook and spurn Twitter. Instagram and Snapchat are their social media of choice.
No one remembers anything. They turn to their phones for the answers for anything and everything. As has been posited, if you can Google, why remember it?
Today was the first time they were not nose to nose with their phones. Their phones rarely leave their hands and if they have left it behind someplace, they are a shot out the door to retrieve it.
One of my tasks was to teach them to be better, smarter consumers of media. I challenged them to go a day without media. The one who came closest, went out to a farm and stayed there and even he couldn’t make it the full twenty-four hours.
The rest of them barely made it more than a few minutes. All have a better understanding of how pervasive contemporary media is.
Anxiety is apparent when they are separated from their phones, even for relatively short periods of time. When I threatened to remove a phone from one my students as she wouldn’t stop playing with it, I was greeted by genuine terror in her face.
Most of them suffer a higher degree of nomophobia [anxiety of being separated from your smartphone] than I had expected. The older they were, the less it was, the younger they were, the higher the degree. It was both fascinating and a little unsettling to observe.
Many of them write as if they were texting and some, to my great concern, have almost no skill in writing at all. I mean zip. And while they have more than moderate intelligence, they lack the skills to communicate their intelligence in writing. One of the smartest people in my class in native intelligence is incapable of getting his thoughts on paper. How can I not worry about him?
Most of them have an appalling lack of historical knowledge in general. They live in an ever constant present, skimming the waves of history, passing over it rather than through it. And what happened centuries ago is something which seems irrelevant to them. As I’ve mentioned, if they need to know about an event, they can Google it. [A disturbing tendency I have found in myself.]
Major device for connecting to the internet? The phone, of course. Most video viewing done? On the phone. Music consumption? On the phone. Everything is on the phone.
I am convinced they came away with a better understanding of how to approach and interpret media as they experience it and I am glad I have helped make them, please dear God, better consumers of media, less open to manipulation, more discerning, more interpretive because they really weren’t when they came into class.
I am afraid that is the case of many students today, at every level.
Tags:CGCC, Claverack, Columbia Greene Community College, Google, Hudson, Hudson River, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media and Society, New York, nomophobia
Posted in Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Education, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Literature, Magna Carta, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 7, 2016
The town of Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canada’s oil patch, is burning to the ground as I write. 88,000 people are being evacuated. One who has remained to assist in fueling emergency workers described the city, according to Vice, as a “f**king ghost town.” Reports are calling the situation barely managed chaos. Convoys are transporting people out of town and 8,000 have been airlifted out.
The Prime Minister of Turkey has resigned after a fight with President Erdogan. As I understand it, in Turkey it’s the PM who is supposed to have the power while the President does the meeting and the greeting. Erdogan doesn’t see it that way and has been keeping hold on the reins of power. This resignation makes it easier for Erdogan to consolidate power. Turkey is troubled, fighting a Kurdish insurgency, IS, wrestling with refugees and a population that is growing antagonistic to Erdogan.
I still would like to go back to the “Turquoise Coast” of that country, sun dappled and bucolic.
Not bucolic is the state of American politics. Trump continues to rise and has no opposition on his march to the nomination. Cruz and Kasich are gone. The Presidents Bush, number 41 and 43, have signaled they will not endorse him. Paul Ryan is “not ready” at this time to endorse Trump. The Trump campaign approached over a hundred Republican politicos to say something good about Trump. Only twenty responded; the others were “too busy.”
As I gave my last lecture, the students were commenting on how exhausted they were of the political season and the near certainty that Trump will be the Republican nominee has only heightened their distaste for politics; all suspect an ugly, brutal slugfest between the two candidates, neither of whom they admire, assuming Hillary is nominated, as it looks she will. The aspirational nature of politics has slipped away from us.
And before it is done, something like $4 billion will be spent on this election, twice what was spent in 2012.
President Obama implored reporters to focus on issues and not “the spectacle and circus” that has marked coverage so far of the 2016 Presidential race. After all, being President of the United States is “not a reality show.” Amen…
A Fort Valley State University student, in central Georgia, was stabbed to death as he came to aid three women who were being harassed and groped near the school cafeteria. Rest in peace, Donnell Phelps, all of nineteen.
Two are dead and two are wounded in shootings is suburban Maryland, three at Montgomery Mall, where I have shopped and one at a grocery store nine miles away. One man is believed responsible. If it is the man police suspect, he killed his wife last night when she was at school, picking up their children. He was under court order to stay away from her.
It is a grey afternoon as I write this, in a stretch of chill, grey days and news like the above deepens the pall of the day.
If you are feeling grey because “Downton Abbey” has slipped into the past, its creator, Julian Fellowes, took Trollope’s novel, “Doctor Thorne” and brought it to life. Amazon has purchased it and will stream it beginning May 20. Fill a hole in your viewing heart.
In my heart, I want a new iPhone and I am probably going to wait until the fall when Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, tells us that the iPhone 7 will give us features we can’t live without. What they are, I don’t know. I am writing this on a train going north and can’t stream on Amtrak’s wifi.
Speaking of Amtrak, I booked a trip from New York to Minneapolis on the train for July 20th to visit my brother and his family. I am taking a train to DC, the Capital Limited out of there to Chicago and the Empire Builder from Chicago to Minneapolis. I hope it will be good fun.
Fun seems to be what we need these days. Our politics are not fun. The constant barrage of shootings is not fun, not remotely. The economy, while growing, isn’t growing fast enough which is not fun.
What will be fun is that Lionel and Pierre are going to be at their home across the street from me this weekend and I will get to see them.
Tags:Amtrak, Anthony Trollope, Claverack, Cruz, Doctor Thorne, Donald Trump, Donnell Phellps, Downton Abbey, Erdogan, Fort McMurray, George HW Bush, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, iPhone7, Julian Fellowes, Kasisch, Lionel White, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, Pierre Font, Tim Cook, Turkey, Vice
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 4, 2016
Just now, a CNN update flashed across the screen of my laptop while I was finishing the final exam for my class. It projected that Trump will win Indiana and the first thing I thought was: I wonder how many Republicans are wishing they had hemlock tonight?
The impossible is happening. The Donald is on pace to win the Republican nomination, a thing thought unthinkable only six months ago. There seems no stopping him.
Cruz, I am sure is bereft, not that I feel much for him. Cruz or Trump? What a choice?
Speaking of bad choices, medical errors are now the #3 cause of death in the US. I was shocked but somehow not quite surprised. In my recent medical experience at Columbia Memorial Hospital, the gastroenterologist there diagnosed me with conditions I didn’t have. I learned that after seeing my usual gastroenterologist in New York City.
I just went to the great god Google and discovered the US is number 37 in terms of how good its health care is though I think we spend more than any other country in the world on health care. And now medical errors are our #3 cause of death? What gives here? Who is paying attention? Frankly, I am more scared than I was…
Today is World Press Freedom Day. Who knew? Though it has been on my mind today as I wrote the final exam for my “Media & Society” class. The importance of a free press to a democracy is incalculable. And so few countries really have a free press.
It is that magical time of night when the light has almost faded and there is still just enough light to see the budding trees outlined against the sky. There is such beauty in this place, softening the harshness of the world outside.
An American Seal today was killed in a skirmish with IS in Iraq. The wars go on and will continue to go on. IS is retreating but is not broken. The Iraqis do not have a really credible fighting force in the field as far as I can tell. The Kurds seem to be doing yeoman’s work while Turkey pushes them down.
Recently it was the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, which, according to the Turks never happened. Yet there is credible evidence it did. Why do we get caught up in keeping mythologies alive? Would it not be better to move beyond the past? It was a century ago, another time. Man up.
Putin, the problem…
When oil prices were high, he took the credit for the country’s uptick. Now that oil prices have collapsed he his not manning up to the fact it’s a problem. It’s the West’s fault. To keep attention off the failures of his regime, he has been pointing fingers at the West.
He is like the Tsars of old. And that is what Russia has been always used to.
Here in New York, Sheldon Silver, once one of the most powerful politicians in the state, just received a sentence of twelve years in prison for corruption. New York rivals Illinois in the corruptness of its politicians. Several more are up for sentencing in the weeks to come.
The Tony nominations are in and “Hamilton” has scored a record breaking sixteen. It is hard to see “Hamilton” as it is sold out for months to come and scalper’s tickets are almost $2,000 a ticket. You have to be in the 1% to make that happen. I certainly can’t.
And as I am finishing this, there is an alert from CNN that Ted Cruz is dropping his bid for the nomination after a stinging defeat in Indiana. Is this true? I am finding it hard to believe. We must wait for the morning to see what happens. Wait! The BBC has just announced Cruz is gone…
It is beginning to look like Trump versus Hillary and that will be a slugfest to watch, if not to enjoy.
Tags:American Seal, Armenian Genocide, Carly Fiorina, Claverack, CNN, Donald Trump, Google, Hamilton, Hillary Clinton, Isis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Putin, Sheldon Silver, Ted Cruz, Tonys, Tsar, World Press Freedom Day
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Homelessness, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 2, 2016
Five years ago Osama Bin Laden, a rich kid who definitely went bad, was killed in his hiding place in Pakistan, apparently with a stash of video porn. Born privileged, he rejected privilege and embraced fundamental Islam and wreaked havoc on the world, partly supported by his personal wealth as a scion of a family that had made a huge fortune in construction in the great oil years in Saudi Arabia. It was said he only wore a shirt once and then discarded it.
Fast forward and Al Qaeda is in decline while its successor, IS, is on the rise. Or is it? Its territory has shrunk this year and there is a full on assault about to happen on Mosul, one of the chief cities it has conquered.
However, they are not a country per se and attack places like Brussels and Paris as terrifying terrorists. The world is a crazy place, isn’t it? Full of anger, full of hate, full of vitriol and absolutism. I certainly hope we survive this as well as we survived the vitriol and absolutism of Nazism. That thought gives me hope.
On Tuesday, Indiana votes. It looks like it is going to be another Trump victory. Some polls have hime with a 15% lead. Others have him with a smaller lead but in all polls he has a lead. It may be a “make it or break it moment” for Ted Cruz.
And as so much of the 2016 campaign has been, this is a fraught moment. Cruz fights for his political life and Trump sails on, turning every disadvantage into an advantage. It has been mind boggling to watch and frightening to contemplate.
This is where we are in politics. And it is Ted Cruz who helped set the stage for the current scene.
Last night was the White House Correspondents Dinner and while I didn’t watch it in real time, the video clips have been good and demonstrated that Obama has a ready wit [I am sure helped by good writers]. People I know found it great fun and I will look at clips tonight, once I have finished this missive.
The days are growing longer. It is nearly eight and there is still light and I am looking at the creek in twilight but not darkness. I love this time of year as the world moves towards the longest day of the year.
It is a moment of happiness.
It has been a sweet day. There was a good dinner party last night. My guests were Larry and Alicia. A while ago had been his birthday and last night we celebrated it. Today Larry and Alicia invited me to join them at Ca’Mea for lunch after church, which I did and which was great fun.
I am sitting at my dining room table and am looking out over the creek and am so grateful for this place and this time.
May you be happy in your place and time.
Tags:Al Qaeda, Alicia Vergara, Carl Black, Claverack, Donald Trump, Hudson, Indiana Primary, Iran, Iraq, IS, Isis, Larry Divney, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, Red Dot, Ted Cruz, The Donald, White House Correspondents Dinner
Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Gay, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Life, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 28, 2016
Twilight has passed and I am curled up with the laptop and a martini, allowing the day to begin to slip away. It was not a bad day at all; quite the contrary. My rambunctious students were less so today after I told them that if they were rambunctious today, I was going to ask them to leave. They knew when they had arrived they had gone a little over the top on Monday and were quite subdued as they arrived, giving me looks to see how annoyed I might be with them.
It was actually a bit amusing.
After office hours, I went to the gym and then to an early dinner at Coyote Flaco, a small Mexican restaurant not far from the cottage. At home, there were lots of things to gather as I am going down to New York City tomorrow for an Odyssey meeting and a dinner at which Odyssey has purchased a table, all in support of a film they have made on “moral injury.”
It is beginning to shape up that I am going for at least a couple of weeks to help my friends who own the Edgartown Bookstore on Martha’s Vineyard. Might be two weeks or a month but will be good for me to do that and I think they need the help in the time before college students start showing up looking for summer jobs so it looks like just before Memorial Day to sometime in June, with a trip down to New York to see my brother and sister-in-law when they are there to celebrate their wedding anniversary in between, I will be on the Vineyard, the place my friend Jeffrey calls “the land of off.”
It was a good day yesterday for Donald Trump, who swept all five races and for Hillary, who triumphed in four of the five.
The Donald said that Hillary was playing “the woman card” and that if she weren’t a woman she wouldn’t be getting five percent of the vote. Like Hillary or not, she does have some pretty good credentials.
The Donald outlined his foreign policy directions today, carrying forward his America First! theme into foreign policy. He criticized Obama for not standing with our allies and then went on to diss them himself. Some thought it rambling and incoherent, others thought it a great step to the middle. What I heard of it sounded like a big muddle.
Ted Cruz has chosen Carly Fiorina as his running mate. Wait, don’t you have to be nominated before you announce your running mate? Or is that just old politics? Regardless, it is not a pretty thought from where I sit. Cruz is as concerning to me as Trump.
It was not a good day for Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, who was sentenced to fifteen months in prison for a bank crime, committed while he was paying off a young man he had sexually abused. Apparently there were five of them who Hastert abused, all distraught, now middle-aged men, with one of them dead. The man he was paying off has now sued for the remainder of the money.
The Saudis, in an overdue awakening, are working to get beyond oil and to diversify so that when, someday, the oil runs out — and it will — they won’t drift back into a medieval state. It will be a hard road to success. The Saudi kingdom is not as open or as business friendly as the United Arab Emirates, who saw the future long ago.
Elon Musk wants to land an unmanned craft on Mars as early as 2018 and I say: go for it!
Salah Abdeslam, the surviving member of the team that perpetrated the Paris attacks last year, is back in Paris. His lawyers have described him as a “little jerk” who is “falling apart” in jail and is ready to cooperate.
The evening is fading. My martini is gone and I am ready for sleep, grateful for the day and the day that is, I hope, coming. Life is an interesting mystery.
Tags:Claverack, Coyote Flaco, Elon Musk, Hudson, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Obama, Salah Abdeslam
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 25, 2016
I’m not sure where the term “dog tired” came from but that’s what I am today, “dog tired.” When I woke it was a grey, chill day, unremittingly grey. At class I was struggling to get my rambunctious students to pay attention while I was helping them fill in the background of what they needed to know about media history.
Most of them are graduating in three weeks and there are only four more classes for them and you can sense them stampeding toward the doors.
Leaving them, I went down to Relish, the little cafe by the train station and had an egg white omelet, reading a mystery by Louise Penny while eating. Coming home, I did a conference call and then prepped for some interviews I am doing for our community radio station tomorrow.
The American Dance Institute has purchased a rundown lumberyard in Catskill and is converting it to performance spaces and living quarters for artists while they’re in residence. It’s an exciting project…
I am talking to Chris Bolan, their Community Relations Manager, tomorrow about the project.
So right now, I am listening to jazz, sipping a much needed martini and working on figuring out kitchen organization. I have more stuff than space. What goes? What stays and where does what stays, go?
One of the reasons I felt tired or maybe a bit depressed was that as I was walking toward my class, the phone pinged and the BBC reported a leading gay activist in Bangladesh had been hacked to death, not too long after a liberal blogger had been similarly dispensed. I felt sad, angry, helpless, wanting to do something to change the tide of hate sweeping the world and not knowing at all what to do about it.
The afternoon brought news that a Canadian in the Philippines has been killed by an Islamist militant group. His name was John Ridsdel, described as brilliant and compassionate; he was a 68 year old tourist from Calgary, Canada. Beheaded, of course, in keeping with tradition.
On the American political scene, Cruz and Kasich made a pact to stop Trump by Kasich withdrawing from Indiana in favor of Cruz and Cruz withdrawing from Oregon in favor of Kasich. After great fanfare this morning, it seems to have fallen apart by the afternoon.
It was not a good day for the New England Patriot’s Tom Brady as the courts upheld his suspension from the first four games of the season. Deflategate has not gone away; its repercussions are still being felt and Brady’s legacy is at stake. He could still appeal but his chances aren’t good. The NFL may well have won.
Hard for me to figure this out as I am not a football fan; never a big fan, I was totally lost to the sport when the concussion revelations began to happen.
It is a mellow night at the cottage. It is 7:30 and the sun has not yet gone away. There are buds on the trees and the rhododendron are starting their bloom. The jazz has energized me and I am happy now. Somehow, in writing this, I have shed this day. And I am grateful.
Thank you.
Tags:ADI/Lumberyard, American Dance Institute, Chris Bolan, Cruz, Dog tired, Gay Activist hacked to death in Bangladesh, John Ridsdel, Kasich, Louise Penny, New England Patriots, Relish, Tom Brady
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Daesh, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Gun Violence, Hudson New York, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 23, 2016
On Thursday, I was sitting at Molly Wee, an Irish Pub a block from Penn Station, having lunch with Mark Sklawer, a filmmaker who is working on a film about the music period in the life of Howard Bloom, who is a client of mine. As we talked, my phone buzzed in my pocket and I took it out to see what was going on.
Both the AP and BBC were sending alerts that Prince had died. It was shocking as Prince wasn’t ill as far as I knew and still relatively young at 57, younger than me. We are both natives of Minneapolis though I had left about the time he was beginning his ascent.
What struck the three of us was that the news hit us as we were talking about Howard, who had been Prince’s PR guru at the time of “Purple Rain.” It was, in fact, Howard who persuaded Warner Bros. to release the film. After a screening, studio executives were terrified of what they had on their hands and some wanted to kill the film.
It was Howard that convinced them that the film was brilliant and would be a hit. And he was right.
The papers on Thursday were filled with paeans to the musical legend, as well they should have been. He helped turn many a corner and, through it all, remained close to Minneapolis, his place of origin. He died at his estate in Chanhassen, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis.
RIP.
It is spring like and the last two days have been singularly beautiful though rain fell Friday evening, the day the Hubble turned 26 years old, sending back glorious pictures of deep space.
Friday, in honor of Earth Day, was a day to go without a car in New York City. It did seem traffic was lighter. I used subways to get about.
The weekend will be full of chores, which I will have to accomplish on my own. “Young Nick,” the young man who helps out every weekend, left today for a week’s vacation. He’ll be back a week from Saturday. After all the years of Saturdays when he has helped me, Saturday doesn’t feel like Saturday without a bit of “Nick time.”
Last Wednesday, in my class, students were talking about cyber bullying and how it leads to suicide. Today, it has been reported that suicide has increased in this country by 24% since 1999. I am sure someone will do a correlation between the rise in suicides and the rise of Social Media.
Barak and Michelle Obama attended on Friday a dinner at Kensington Palace hosted by Princes William and Harry after he had lunched with the Queen, who is celebrating her 90th birthday. She has reigned longer than any other British monarch and is the oldest monarch in history. Good on her!
In popular news, “Live with Kelly and Michael” has been in turmoil. Kelly was informed this past week that Michael Strahan, her co-host, is leaving the show to become a full time co-host on “Good Morning, America.” Feeling blindsided and hurt, Kelly did not appear on Wednesday. She is supposed to be off for a few days to celebrate her 20th wedding anniversary to soap star Mark Consuelos.
However, she has now announced she will return on Tuesday as scheduled and it will be interesting to see how they interact.
Today is a brilliant day, sun out but with a chill wind. Following my Saturday round of the Farmer’s Market, I went to The Red Dot for brunch, where I worked on the final exam for my class, “Media & Society” after finishing my food.
It is a good day; off tonight to dinner with some people I haven’t yet met but with whom I am working on a project for the community radio station, WGXC.
While I write this, the world is still absorbing the death of Prince, that North Korea has apparently fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, that 8 relatives were killed execution style in Ohio, including a woman lying next to a four day old baby and markingß today, the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death at the age of 52.
He wrote 37 plays that will live on and on and on… He wrote about life and no one will tire of that…
Tags:Chanhassen, Claverack, Earth Day, Howard Bloom, Hubble, Hudson, Live with Michael & Kelly, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Minneapolis, North Korea, Obama, Prince, Princes William & Harry, Purple Rain, Queen Elizabeth II, Suicide, The Red Dot, William Shakespeare
Posted in Columbia County, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Music, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 17, 2016
When I was kid — and perhaps when we were all kids — there was one house we all gravitated towards, to hang out, to be around. When I was a kid, it was the McCormick house. They were a large family, six kids, in a big house and every year the back yard became a skating rink. In the freezing Minnesota nights the whole neighborhood of kids was there. During the summers we played kick ball in their enormous driveway.
Still close to the McCormick family, I had lunch with Mary Clare McCormick Eros yesterday at Cafe du Soleil on New York’s Upper West Side. Sarah, whom I have known since before Kindergarten and I were planning yesterday when to get together when she is in New York next month. Her son, Kevin, thinks of me as his “Uncle Mat,” even now when he is 31.
Today, I went to Rhinebeck to return to Robert and Tanya Murray innumerable egg cartons as they had donated dozens of eggs from their chickens to my Easter Brunch Church adventures. When I arrived, two of his children and one of their friends were preparing to do a car wash and I was their first car. Robert and I sat on the steps and watched them, sipping deep, rich coffee with steamed milk while they soaped up my car.
I suspect Robert and Tanya have the house in the neighborhood to which everyone gravitates. Sitting there, it reminded me of John and Eileen and the parade that made its way through their home on Aldrich Avenue in Minneapolis. Robert got up from the stoop and swooped in and helped them. It took me back to a much simpler, it seemed, time.
It is very doubtful that time was all that much simpler but it seemed that way to us as kids. I am sure when Tanya and Robert’s five are grown, they will look back on now and think it was a simpler time.
In a gesture of simplicity and love, Pope Francis, sure to be a saint, went to the isle of Lesbos, the epicenter of the refugee crisis and made a speech on the exact spot where orders for deportation back to Turkey were given two weeks ago. In a stunning surprise, a dozen Syrians returned with him to the Vatican to be resettled in Italy with the help of a Catholic charity. All had lost their homes to bombs and six of them were children. It was an act to “prick the conscience of the king.”
Tuesday is the New York Primary. Bernie and Hillary slugged it out, in an increasingly strident fashion in a CNN debate in Brooklyn earlier this week. Both hoarse, both looking exhausted, both fighting tooth and nail, they harried each other and some wonder, no matter who the nominee, if the Democratic Party is suffering wounds as deep as the Republicans have been absorbing with their phantasmagorical season?
It is pitch black outside except for the floodlights on the creek and the lights on my house. It is quiet, except for the thumping of the dryer with a load of clothes.
In the early evening, I went to an event, “Prose and Prosecco,” a fund raising event for the little Claverack Library which is working to raise the money to finish moving into its new building.
Local writers read from their works, two good, one questionable, at least from my perspective. I chatted with a few people but was not in my aggressive meet people mode and left a bit early to come home, do a few things and write my blog.
I relished watching Robert and his children and Maya, the friend, work through their carwash. It was an hour filled with the squeals of delighted children, embracing the joy of being children. The way we once were.
Tags:Bernie Sanders, Claverack, Claverack Library, Hillary Clinton, John and Eileen McCormick, Kevin Malone, Lesbos, Mary Clare Eros, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Pope Francis, Prose and Prosecco, Rhinebeck, Robert and Tanya Murray, Sarah Malone, Syrian refugees
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Pope Francis, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 14, 2016
The Catskills are covered with a soft haze as I move south on the train; the Hudson River glistens like rippled, burnished steel. I am headed to the city for a few social get togethers, more about pleasure than business. Tomorrow morning, I am going to the exhibit “Pergamon” at the Metropolitan Museum. It chronicles the art of the Hellenistic period, from the death of Alexander to the rise of the Roman Empire.
I have a late lunch with my childhood friend, Mary Clare, and then drinks with Nick Stuart, of whom I have seen too little in the last few weeks and then back to Hudson on tomorrow’s 5:47.
The sun glitters but it is not yet warm and yet so pleasant that it feels decadent. Speaking with friends this morning, we reminded each other that we were incredibly lucky: we are not Syrian refugees or fleeing Boko Haram or fearing suicide bombers in Baghdad.
Nor am I in southern Japan where an earthquake measuring 6.5 struck, toppled houses and buckled roads.
All those things happened today, the 14th of April, 2016 CE.
It is a good day for Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who will not be charged with battery over his altercation with a reporter recently.
It was a good and bad day for mothers whose daughters were kidnapped two years ago by Boko Haram. CNN aired a “proof of life” video that showed many of the lost girls alive and at the same time highlighted the failure of the Nigerian government to free them.
For 3 hours and 40 minutes Putin fielded questions on his annual call-in show. He described the Panama Papers as an “American provocation” and assured viewers that the economy will get better next year. He ordered an investigation into two women’s complaints they hadn’t been paid in months. It gave him a chance to seem grand and magnanimous while underscoring the illusion that Russia is a democracy.
As he chatted with his constituents, Putin’s jets flew low passes over a US warship, something that disturbed Secretary of State John Kerry.
We are putting combat troops into the Philippines as the South China Sea dispute ratchets up with the Chinese, who have now deployed combat jets in the area.
Isn’t there a better way?
Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Republican and a supporter of gay sex marriage, was booed off the state at an event in Boston when he didn’t say he would support a bill that would give transgender people the right to use the bathroom of their gender identity rather than that of their gender at birth. It’s not what he expected.
Trump and Cruz are accusing each other of strong arming delegates to the Republican Convention, which has been pointing out to the general population on both sides of the political spectrum what an arcane world convention politics is, with super delegates, strange rules, and all sorts of other traditions that can manipulate the popular vote.
That is what Kasich and Cruz are hoping for the Republican convention, a brokered one that will allow one of them to grab the nomination.
Hillary is counting on those same things in the Democratic Party to ensure that she gets the nomination on her side.
Brings up images of “smoke filled rooms” from past generations.
The Hudson River in the afternoon sun is impossibly beautiful and I am privileged to enjoy the view, comfortable that I am probably not going to have to flee in the night, that I will get an evening meal and that I will be safe as I sleep.
It is these simple things we need to keep remembering or, at least, I need to keep remembering.
Tags:Baghdad, Bernie Sanders, Boko Haram, Charlie Baker, Claverack, CNN, Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump, Earthquake in Japan, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Iraq, IS, John Kerry, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Panama Papers, Proof of Life, Putin, South China Sea
Posted in 2016 Election, Airstrikes, Claverack, Columbia County, Earthquakes, Elections, Entertainment, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 05 13 2016 Thoughts on mortality….
May 14, 2016It is Friday the 13th, a day feared by many as unlucky. It has neither been lucky or unlucky for me, so far…
The cottage is ripe with the good feelings from a lovely dinner party last night. There were six of us. We had appetizers, soup, salad, fish, lamb or pork or both, baby gold Yukon potatoes, sautéed carrots, green beans with butter and ice cream and berries for dessert. People arrived at seven and left after midnight. A good time was had by all.
I am now in my fourth load in the dishwasher. We had cocktails, champagne, white wine, red wine, cordials. It was a long, delightful evening of food and wonderful conversation. It was a moment of recognition of how lucky I am, to be in the cottage, to have friends, to be alive.
As I returned from the city on Tuesday, I got a text letting me know that Vinnie Kralyevich had died the night before. He was fifty-two, was on the treadmill, collapsed and could not be revived. He was someone I worked with a lot about nine years ago and I was staggered to learn he had passed. I am older and there was another moment that reminded me of my own mortality.
I am at an age when mortality is knocking at my door. The people who mentored me are growing older and are leaving the scene. I have younger friends who are cursed with terminal diseases and are leaving me.
For more than fifteen years my friends Medora Heilbron and Meryl Marshall-Daniels have had a weekly call to check in and support each other. It’s a phone support group. Medora ran development for USA Network when I was out pitching shows. Meryl got me involved with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. I was on the Board of Governors when she was the Chair of the Academy. Medora reached me on 9/11 just before I lost phone service to check on how I was.
It is a deep and rich sharing, once a week, except when one of us is out of the country.
Medora shared today that Bruce Lansbury, brother to Angela, a producer of great renown and who gave Medora her best break in the business, was suffering from Alzheimers. Angela and Medora live in the same Los Angeles neighborhood, run into each other in markets but Medora had never introduced herself to Angela but, for some reason, she did this week at the Whole Foods in Brentwood. She was devastated by the news that Bruce was alive but gone.
It is what all of us fear. I do.
While I write this, on a day which has been dark and drear, a soft fog is descending around me, enveloping the creek, the end of a rainy, dismal day. And the view in front of me is a bit magical. One could imagine woodland nymphs dancing in the distance.
However, there are no woodland nymphs dancing tonight in American politics.
Trump has a butler who is now retired but still gives tours at his estate in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, built for Marjorie Merriweather Post, a cereal heiress whose daughter, Dina Merrill, was an accomplished actress.
He called Obama a “muzzie” who should be hung. The Trump campaign is working to distance itself from those comments. A “muzzie” is a Muslim, by the way.
I had a long chat with my client, Howard Bloom, who has just finished a new book, “The Mohammed Code.” It is an exegesis of the roots of fundamentalism in Islam. We have battered back and forth about the book because it exposes the roots of ISIS and I am hoping will reflect the differentiation between fundamentalist Muslims and the majority of Muslims who have renounced the ugly parts of their religion.
This is the great conversation of today. We must come to peace with Islam and they must come to peace with us. Not easy but must be done…
Tags:Angela Lansbury, Bruce Lansbury, Donald Trump, Friday the 13th, Howard Bloom, Mar-a-lago, Medora Heilbron, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, Muhammed Code, The Donald, Trump, Vinnie Kralyecih, Whole Foods
Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Daesh, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Obama, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »