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Letter From New York 12 15 14 Terrorists or madmen…

December 15, 2014

Last night, my friends Lionel and Pierre came over for dinner – asparagus soup, mashed sweet potatoes, baked squash and a sirloin fresh from the farmer’s market. We were just into the soup course when his phone made a noise; a news alert was coming in.

The alert was that hostages had been taken in Sydney, a drama that would be played out into the morning today. Lionel is from Sydney originally and he excused himself to phone his family to make sure none were involved. All were accounted for and far from the scene.

I arrived in New York this morning and went into the Acela Club at Penn Station as I had a bit of time before I was to meet my friend Mary Dickey for lunch. My arrival at the Acela Club coincided with the moment that the Sydney police stormed the café and I watched events unfold, live and in real time.

It seemed a bit surreal, to be seated in the Acela Club, sipping a coffee, while half a world away this drama was being acted out, in a city I once knew fairly well and which I loved.

Little was known at the time and much is yet to be revealed, even though the crisis is over. There are two dead plus the gunman, an individual who identified himself as a Muslim cleric. He had some of the hostages hold up what appeared to be a black and white Islamic flag in the windows of the Lindt Chocolate Café, an unlikely seeming place for a hostage crisis.

Turns out he was quite the fellow, this Man Haron Monis. He had served community service time for pleading guilty to sending threatening letters to the families of dead Australian soldiers, calling the deceased “child killers.” He called himself a spiritual healer and had allegedly sexually abused some of those he was supposed to be healing and it seems that he was being linked to the murder of an ex-wife. He apparently had no religious training.

A website by Monis or his supporters claim that all the allegations were trumped up.

Some believe he was committing suicide by police, a thing not unheard of. He certainly seemed to have gotten the attention he wanted. From what I can gather, it’s believed in Sydney that he wasn’t really a terrorist but a deranged man.

Whatever the truth, two innocent people are dead.

In a gesture that was affecting, citizens of Sydney began a twitter campaign to combat a potential Muslim backlash. #illridewithyou was the campaign’s hashtag, offering to ride with Muslims needing to get around Sydney on public transportation. It has since gone viral. It seems very Australian.

My eyes watered up when I read the story.

Australia is an “open and generous” country said Prime Minister Tony Abbott and that is how it has struck me and it has struck me as a place removed from the violence of our terror stained world. But it is not. No place is safe from terrorists or madmen, whatever Man Haron Monis turns out to be.

In Pennsylvania, as I write this, a manhunt is ongoing for an individual who apparently killed six members of his family in a domestic dispute. That was happening as I was sitting in the café above the Fairview Market on Broadway, having a delightful lunch, chatting with Mary about the fallout from the Sony hacking scandal.

It is on days like this that I treasure the peace of the countryside and am grateful for the respite it provides from the terrors of the world in which we live, counterbalanced by the incredible human generosity of those who took the #Illridewithyou viral.

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Letter From New York 12 14 14 A grey and gloomy day on the road to Christmas

December 14, 2014

The light is beginning to fade here in the Hudson Valley; it has been a painfully grey day. Not once has been there a burst of sunlight to shatter the exterior bleakness. Christmas carols are playing and they sound dirge-like against this shadowy day. It has been a day to cuddle inside and to read, reflect and do interior things.

I am having friends for dinner so started the day making fresh asparagus soup and prepping things for dinner. When I finish writing this, I will move on to the kitchen and start the meal.

Today, I also started doing Christmas cards, a few, adding personal notes to folks I have not seen for a long time and for who Christmas is seemingly our sole touch point.

A Climate Treaty has been signed in Lima though it seems that while all agree few are enthused. Scientists, I read, feel it falls far short of the actions needed to curtail climate change while some nations feel it costs them too much.

Cheney, to no one’s great surprise, is highly critical of the Senate “Torture” Report. Jeb Bush is giving some indications he is considering a 2016 run for the Presidency. Certainly Rick Perry is prepping for the race. He’s getting some coaching and has declared that the run for the Presidency is NOT an IQ test.

The good news/bad news story of oil continues. It slipped beneath $60.00 a barrel, which caused prices up here to drop to under $3.00 a gallon but which also shaved 350 points off the Dow on Friday, making for a scary Wall Street ride.

Some folks are saying it could go down to $40.00 a barrel, which would be very bad for the shale oil industry in North Dakota. It only makes money at about $60.00 a barrel. There are those who speculate that the Saudis are letting the price of a barrel of oil fall so as to get rid of the pesky shale oil producers here in America. After years of declining crude production in the US, the shale oil boom has made us something like the third largest oil producer in the world.

It’s certainly causing some hurt for Mr. Putin; Russia depends on its oil sales. The ruble has been crashing. Must seem like a grey day to him as well. Put Venezuela in that camp as well, hurting badly with the fall in prices. Same with Nigeria. Same with a few other countries, too.

Regardless of what is happening in the oil realm, all over the world we are moving toward Christmas.

It seems some Americans are eschewing an expensive Christmas and moving back toward simpler times with less extravagant celebrations of the Holiday. It will be interesting to see how this holiday shopping season works out in the end. Up? Down? We’ll know the figures right after Christmas.

On this grey day, Newtown is marking the second anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings with a private ceremony and quiet reflection. It is a town where the wounds have yet to heal and may never heal.

In another gruesome story, hundreds attended the funeral of Jessica Chambers, a Mississippi teenager who was doused with an accelerant and burned alive on the side of a road.

The mind boggles at the act while the heart revolts at the cruelty.

A reward fund has risen to $11,000 for information leading to her killer.

It is stories like that which darken my day and make me feel as grey and gloomy as the weather.

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Letter From New York 12/13/14 Not for another 89 years…

December 13, 2014

It is 12/13/14 if you do dates the American way. That won’t happen again until 01/02/03 in the next century, 89 years from now. I can’t even imagine what the world will be like 89 years from now. Certainly I won’t be here to see it but children born today will probably be around. Life expectancy is on the rise in most countries and in the 22nd Century, 90 may be the new sixty. Who knows?

I went to a screening of the first episode of Downton Abbey last week in New York. It was set in 1924. The Earl and Countess of Grantham are celebrating their 34th wedding anniversary. One of the characters remarked that if she got married right then, she would be celebrating her 34th wedding anniversary in 1958.

It was a jarring thought because the world of 1958 was radically different from the world of 1924. In between there had been the Great Depression and World War II, forever changing the world. The atom bomb had been dropped; half of Europe was shut up behind the Iron Curtain. Germany had been pared down and cut apart into East and West. The Soviets had pierced space with Sputnik. We were off on the race to the moon.

What a difference a few decades can make.

Lunching today at the Red Dot in Hudson, I was asked by someone if I knew where the Mimosa had come from? So I did what we all do today when faced with a question for which we don’t have an immediate answer – I googled it. The Mimosa apparently was the invention of the bartender Frank Meier at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in 1925. Thank you, Google. Thank you, Wikipedia.

As I was finishing my omelet, I decided that I would serve asparagus soup tomorrow for dinner. Not knowing what was needed, I googled asparagus soup, found a recipe that I liked and then made a list of ingredients on the notes section of my iPhone and went off to the Price Chopper for the ingredients.

Amazing. Having been the first boy on my block to have a car phone and one of the first to have a cell phone and one of the first to upgrade to a smart phone, I am dazzled by how far we have come since that big black box was installed in the trunk of my car.

I don’t take it completely for granted but I am sure anyone under twenty can’t imagine a world before these devices. If they really thought about it, I am sure I would seem quaint, an antique from another world. Could someone actually have lived at a time when you couldn’t put the world in your pocket?

There’s far more computing power in my little iPhone than there was on the first space shuttle. It’s boggling for me to think about.

And that’s only in thirty years, it having been early 1984 when I got both my first Mac and my car phone. It’ll be interesting to see what the next thirty years will bring, not to mention the next 89 when, if we’re still using the American style of dating, it will be 01/02/03.

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Letter From New York 12 12 14 Not all storms come from nature…

December 12, 2014

In the background I am listening to Christmas Carols playing softly on Pandora. I have three Christmas stations bookmarked there and I rotate between them and before the Holidays are over, will probably add one or two more to keep me company as we count down to Christmas.

The tree is up, the crèche is set and almost all the Christmas presents are taken care of…

This afternoon I will go out and purchase the last couple of things I intend to give and probably will go on to do Christmas cards tomorrow and wrap the few presents that remain to be done.

I am in pretty good shape this year.

Outside it is a winter wonderland. White, crisp and clean. A family of deer just ran by my window. All is tranquil.

It isn’t tranquil in Los Angeles. They had heavy rains there last night and northern California was pummeled. 200,000 people are without power and there are fears of mudslides due to all the land that was burned clear during the summer fires sliding away.

On the front page of the L.A. Times, there are stories about the storm but there are also headlines about the hacked emails of Amy Pascal of Sony Entertainment and Scott Rudin, the producer. There is open speculation that she may not be able to keep her job post the “racially insensitive” emails about President Obama the flowed between her and Rudin.

Both have come out and apologized but apologies may not be enough. Shonda Rimes, she of the golden fingers who created Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy and owns Thursday nights on ABC, tweeted something almost unquotable about the situation. It was something like: you can put a cherry on a pile of s*it but it don’t make it a sundae.

Wow.

Lots of unpleasant things were said about talent, including Angelina Jolie. And Kevin Hart. And Mark Ruffalo. And and and…

Apparently a lot of executives are spending time on the phone with agents and managers apologizing while also letting them know there might be more to come.

Ouch.

I think the group claiming responsibility for this hacking mess is something called Guardians of the Peace. They object to a comedy coming out on Christmas Day called The Interview, which is about an attempt to assassinate the leader of North Korea. Just how assassination attempts become a comedy I’m not sure but it stars James Franco and Seth Rogen so I am sure there is some bumbling involved.

North Korea denies responsibility for the hack while at the same time praising whoever did it. Good on you, they say.

So it is storming in California and not all the storms are of the natural kind.

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Letter From New York 12 11 2014 Feeling a bit like a country gentleman…

December 11, 2014

It is a winter wonderland outside the cottage today; three or four inches of snow fell overnight and once again transformed the landscape into a perfect winter scene. I am finding delight in the beauty.

Feeling quite like the country gentleman this morning, I lingered over coffee and the NY Times. The steady din of noise since the release of the Senate Report on torture has diminished a bit.

Obama is in an uncomfortable position; some Democrats are accusing him of a cover-up of a program he ended. Abroad, some international bodies and certain countries are howling for prosecution. At home, we seem to be saying let bygones be bygones with a Get Out Of Jail card being handed to those involved.

Jihadists are swearing revenge for our “torture” which seems to me to be a case of the kettle calling the pot black.

Down in Washington there is brinksmanship over passing a $1.1 trillion budget. Democrats are howling because of some late night insertions of rules that would relieve Wall Street of some regulation. Petitions are being circulated. Denouncements are being made.

A deal will probably happen.

Out in California, the north part of the state is preparing for potential flooding from heavy storms that are potentially going to break the worst drought in the state’s history. I think I read that this drought was the worst in 1200 years!

Falling oil prices are a blessing and a curse. There was an almost three hundred point dive on Wall Street yesterday as a result. The common motorist is a bit relieved to find gas for under $3.00 a gallon in most places – but not here in my little town. Still up around $3.25 in Claverack.

It is also, despite the constant rattle of depressing news, the Holiday season and I spent a frustrating half hour on the 800flowers.com website attempting [and finally succeeding] in ordering a gourmet basket. Either the site was slow or my connection was lousy but it was a painful enterprise. But still, it was one of the last things to do on my Christmas list.

We’re down to fourteen days until Christmas and I feel remarkably ready; usually at this time of year I’m feeling a bit of panic! I guess that is the upside of being a country gentleman for a period.

Sometimes I love this inactivity and other times I chafe and feel jealous of my friends who are off doing things with great purpose. I am lounging my way toward Christmas and now am about to leave to have a Holiday lunch with a friend.

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Letter From New York Dec 10, 2014 Beacon on the hill?

December 10, 2014

Writing this, I am headed back north after having spent the evening in the city, going to the Downton Abbey event and then having a late night dinner with my friend Robert. While I was riding down into the city yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California was unveiling the Senate Report on the CIA’s use of torture in the years following 9/11. By the time I arrived at the Acela Club at Penn Station to wait until it was time to go to the event, the airwaves were alight with the reactions to the Executive Summary of the Report, which runs in itself 525 pages. The actual Report, which remains top secret, is over 6,000 pages. Even Tolstoy would be amazed.

There are varied reactions to the Report, mostly down party lines. Republican Senator John McCain came out with a thoughtful, I thought, statement on the facts as outlined by the Senate Committee. As I read his statement, he said he understands the reasons that caused the use of these methods and that the folks both approving and performing the acts outlined in the Report thought they were doing what was necessary, he disputes the methods and that “we are always Americans, and different, and stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.”

The “acts” outlined in the Report were harsh and brutal and, according to the Report, both unnecessary and not fruitful. They included waterboarding; sleep deprivation, and something called “rectal rehydration,” which sounds pretty disgusting.

While waiting for the Downton event, I went online from my phone and absorbed what I could about the news breaking around the Report. As I was going to sleep, I thought about it and when I woke this morning and was having my morning coffee, I felt sobered.

It is one thing to suspect something has happened and it is another to be forced to confront the reality of it. As far as I can tell, no one is denying that things happened. What is being debated is the efficacy of the acts. The Senate Committee Report says they weren’t effective and the CIA is saying, yes, they were.

It is a debate that is raging and one that we should have. There are those who think the Report should never have been made public and there are those who are hailing its release as a sign that though we make mistakes [and even the CIA says “mistakes” were made], we can, as a country, admit those mistakes and work to ensure they never happen again.

It is sobering to me perhaps because I was born in that time after WWII when we presented to the world and to ourselves, a vision of ourselves, of this country, as the beacon of liberty and that we did things differently than other countries.

As an adult, now, I am not sure that was true. I have, after all, lived through Viet Nam, Bhopal, Afghanistan, Iraq and other sundry events that have left me wondering about the role of the United States in international events. But I always believed – and, in fact – still do, that we, for all our many mistakes, do our best to do the right thing.

But it is still sobering, this Senate Committee Report. If true, it means we have made some serious mistakes. Good that we are admitting them and working to see them righted.

I agree with Senator McCain’s assessment. I can understand how these decisions were made but am disturbed that they were. It is my hope – and prayer – that we do our best to prevent more “mistakes” and that we continue striving to be the beacon on the hill of freedom.

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Letter From New York December 8, 2014 The reality of change

December 8, 2014

It is 5:00 PM and it is dark here in Claverack. I have turned on the spotlights that let me see the creek from the dining and living rooms. All day today I have sat at the dining room table, doing my work for the day, watching squirrels romp on the deck while the creek went swiftly by, running fast.

I did a round of outside errands today, going to the Post Office to collect my mail. There is no postal delivery on my street so we all have Post Office Boxes up at the Claverack Post Office, a small outpost of the USPS we all hope will stay open. Any time there are talks of more budget cuts for the Postal Service we fear we will lose ours. It would be a little like seeing the heart cut out of the town; most days collecting the mail you run into someone you know, have a chance to visit with them and then go your way. They even collect your parcels for you and hold them if you want.

The team that runs the office has been here since I have been here; they know me and greet me warmly when I collect the overflow from my box. It is one of the wonders of life in the town of Claverack.

We worry. The town is changing a bit. There are rumors that a plot of empty land will be sold for a development of new houses. The Claverack Market, adjacent to the Post Office, shuttered its doors for good a month ago – they just couldn’t compete with the Hannaford that opened down the road from them.

Change is inevitable. The changing though is not always easy in its happening. We get disconcerted when the anchors in our lives slip away from us in the slipstream of time.

A friend of mine is sitting with her mother as her life closes; it will be difficult as they are very close and I am sure my friend will discover a well of loneliness when her mother passes.

Any unwelcome change can open the door to that well of loneliness. The passing of a parent, a friend, a partner, the loss of a job, moving when you might not really want to move, all these things cause loneliness to rear its head and remind of us of our humanity.

In this time of transition for me, I have faced not so much loneliness but aloneness, the sense of being one person facing out to the universe, working to build a new chapter in my life. But there are moments when that aloneness, not a terrible thing, does become loneliness and I yearn for some other point in life.

It passes. But in its presence, it reminds me of my humanity, my singularity, my existential presence.

Overall, this has been a wonderful fall, a fall that lingered with us longer than it could, blessing us with good weather. Shortly, it will officially be winter.

As I write this, it is chill but not so chill I couldn’t enjoy a walk earlier in the afternoon. Tomorrow it is supposed to be blustery, with freezing rain. Sounds not too pleasant but by the weekend, milder weather will have won out.

Celtic Christmas Carols play on Pandora; I will light a fire when finished with this and begin to prep for dinner with friends joining me at the cottage. I spent the day sending electronic Christmas cards.

All things considered, I have many reasons to be grateful so as I finished my walk this afternoon and came up my drive, I spoke to the universe and articulated my gratitude.

Change is flowing through my life and I am hopeful I will have the courage to shape that change.

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Letter From New York December 07, 2014 The Day after Winter Walk

December 8, 2014

Today is the day after Winter Walk, which was perhaps the most lightly attended Winter Walk of any year that I have been attending. The chill rain drove many inside, skipping the street for the warmth of restaurants and bars where merriment was to be found. Not to mention that it was dry.

The human crèche that is an annual event was scrubbed this year due to the rain. But it was interesting in the blocks I walked before the chill set in to see all the new shops that had opened on Warren Street, some for the first day.

One of those was Talbot and Arding, a high-end purveyor of foods next to the Red Dot. Yesterday was their first day open and the shop was shiny and glistened and was filled with good foods. It will be interesting to see how they do. I’ll go back for a closer look when the crowds thin down.

The hit of the evening was the Saxophone playing Santa, who jammed with any other musicians on the street, performing interesting versions of Christmas Carols – think jazz meets African meets traditional.

I sailed on home after a couple of hours and had dinner with friends, rising, refreshed to a chill but sunny day.

My friend Lionel was singing from Handel’s Messiah today at Christ Church Episcopal so I went to church this morning to give him moral support. He was great; no support really needed.

It brought back childhood memories of going to Visitation Church in South Minneapolis; all the students had to go to the 9:00 AM Mass and I remember long winter months when we would be crowded in with our coats and mufflers. Someone was always sure to faint.

A part of me loved the ritual of the Catholic Mass, set in its ways down through the centuries, modified by Vatican II. One of the things I like about going to Episcopal services is that they resonate with the rituals remembered from childhood. I enjoyed today the Kyrie and the readings, the Gospel and the sermon. I warmed to the fact the priest was a woman, Mother Eileen, and that a gay man was being called to be a sub-deacon.

So far from the Catholic Church I knew and while Roman Catholicism is having its “Francis Moment” there is still much healing to be done within the religion. While it is moderately more progressive than it was a few years ago, it’s still far way from where I would want it to be and so I stay away for the most part.

Yet if someone to ask me my religion, I would probably say Catholic. I think once a Catholic always a Catholic. You might worship in another denomination’s house but your heart stays with the Church – or at least mine does.

But until Catholicism accepts and loves and tolerates more than it does today, I will remain Catholic in my heart but not in my practice.

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Letter From New York December 3, 2014

December 3, 2014

A light fog skims the surface of the Hudson River as I head south to the city to have lunch with an old friend and to attend a Holiday Party at other friends. Not a bad agenda for a day.

The fog obscures the far bank of the river; barely visible from where I sit, haunting in its shrouded beauty, all greys and blacks.

The view from the train window is much like life – a bit shrouded, not quite able to see from one side to the other. Things are visible but not clear; we see where we want to go but not really. Things close to us are visible; those far away – not so much.

I am smiling. That’s the way I see my life right now. I think I see the far side of the river but it’s not very clear on the other side, yet.

I am also smiling because I am sitting across from a friend of mine who is so engrossed in her conversation that she has not noticed me. That’s a bit like life too, so engrossed in what is right in front of us that we don’t see what’s around us.

As is my routine, I woke up and got a cup of coffee and then checked to see what emails had come in and then checked the headlines from the NY Times, scanning them on my iPhone.

Ashton Carter looks like he will be nominated as Secretary of Defense. It is a little amusing because the Twitterverse has apparently confused him with Ashton Kutcher. I don’t think Mr. Kutcher would be called upon to even act the part of the Secretary of Defense – at least not for a while, except perhaps in a comedy.

Also down in Washington, the political scene looks like it is much like today’s fog bound scene. We seem to be moving back to governance by crisis, everyone knowing they want to get to the other side but not quite seeing the other side and certainly not sure that they agree on what’s on the other side.

The CEO of AT&T who is also Chair of the Business Roundtable has declared that the emerging scene is Washington is putting businesses on hold. They can’t see what’s on the other side of the river and so they aren’t going anywhere until they know.

Another article reported that millions of workers are kept in the fog by unreliable incomes, part of the phenomenon that has grown in the recession with part time work and contract labor. Apparently, income volatility has grown markedly since the 1970’s. A bit like living in the fog, not quite sure you can see how the bills are going to get paid. Full time work has shrunk since the Great Recession began and even though we are officially out of the Great Recession, it certainly doesn’t feel like it to many folks.

Perhaps that’s why Black Friday’s retail sales swooned and Cyber Monday’s were flat with last year. Too many are living in the fog of uncertainty.

Though one bright spot on Black Friday was auto sales: deals and low interest rates brought out buyers, some of whom had been delaying major purchases until things were clearer. For those who bought cars on Black Friday, there apparently wasn’t too much fog or they thought they could see the other side. They had confidence.

Ah, the fog is lifting. I can now see the other side of the river and the color scheme is more than black and grey.

My friend has still not noticed I am sitting opposite her; I continue smiling.

May fog lift for all who might be living in it; may the path to the other side be clear.

Posted in AT&T, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Great Recession, Income Inequality, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary, Stephenson | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York October 2, 2014

October 2, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

As I write this, a doe and her fawn are scouring my drive for acorns – at least that’s what I am guessing they’re looking for, noses to the ground. And if that’s is what they’re looking for, I have a surfeit. I can hear them bombing the roof night and day right now.

It’s a great, pastoral fall scene. Yesterday was the beginning of deer hunting season – or so an eager fellow passenger told me on the 2:20 up from New York. He was waiting for it to get a bit cooler before he went off hunting. It didn’t feel quite right to be deer hunting when the weather was about 70.

So about this time of year I notice the number of deer crossing my land gets to be a bit higher. Somehow they know I don’t let folks hunt here.

The land is filling with leaves as they slowly, majestically drop and my little bit of woodlands is looking very fall like. Pumpkins now sit on my door stoop, a visual nod to the season.

While I am not technically in New England, I’ve always believed New England went as far as the east bank of the Hudson River. From there on, it’s the west. So I’ve always considered Columbia County where I live spiritually part of New England even if it’s not really.

Here in Columbia County, Halloween is a BIG deal. There are almost as many Halloween decorations as there are Christmas ones. So it was no surprise to me, when I went to Lowe’s today, to discover the store full of artificial pumpkins inside, real pumpkins outside, full size hanging skeletons, a twelve foot inflatable goblin and any number of things that glowed in the dark.

What I was dismayed about was that not only was Halloween being pimped but so was Christmas! The artificial Christmas trees are out. The light-up decorations are lit up and on display. I could even have a golden, blinking Eiffel Tower to grace my lawn.

My jaw literally dropped when I saw this Holiday display. It appeared they were just getting into it into place – I suspect they started yesterday, the first of October! A whole quarter of Holiday Hysteria awaits. There will be, I am sure, Christmas Carols piped into stores before we have cleared away the pumpkins!

It is unseemly. This is the season for ghosts and goblins, pumpkins and skeletons! NOT the season yet for HO HO HO. Halloween, yes! But Christmas in October? Bah! Humbug!

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