New Year 2016. National Cemetery at Antietam. War Between The States. Racism. States’ Rights. Martinsburg, WV Obama Crossing the Rubicon Racism Homophobia Xenophobia Koch Brothers Rockefeller Carnegie
It is nearing noon on Sunday, the 3rd of January. I have discovered I’m having no difficulty thinking of this as 2016. Usually, I have trouble turning the date, thinking of it still as last year. Not this year…
I seem ready for 2016 and what it will bring.
It feels like a fresh, blank piece of paper, ready to have events written upon it. For me. Events have already been happening out in the world and the story of the year has begun to be written.
It still feels fresh to me. Unsullied…
To make sure I was on time for my train, I drove a rental car into the city. It gave me time to think.
Driving past the National Cemetery at Antietam, I thought about the Civil War. Not so long ago I read an article that southern states are re-writing the history of the war so that it was not about slavery but about states’ rights. I thought the victors got to write the history of a war but apparently not in this case; some revisionists are successfully revising.
Unlike some friends, I find no endless fascination with the War Between The States.
Driving past Antietam this morning, I felt a wave of sadness not so much because of the war but because of the harsh legacy slavery has left us, a legacy from which we are still recovering.
Returning from picking up the rental in Martinsburg, WV I listened to an interview with a youngish African-American who was involved in Obama’s election campaigns but now is in local politics in Atlanta, I believe. He spoke of the bitterness he felt at the treatment of Obama while he has sat in the White House.
Unfortunately, I think some of the political obstructionism from Republicans and Democrats that we have seen in the last seven years has been because Obama is black. It is never said but it lingers in the air around him.
He crossed a line that has never been crossed. Electing a man of African-American heritage crossed the Rubicon and the world will never be the same. And some resent one more step into a future that will prevent the past from ever being reclaimed.
For a country so young, we obsess about our past, ever yearning for “good old days” that were never quite as good as they are remembered.
Growing up in mid-century America, I can look back and see endless examples of racism, covered in polite mid-western turns of phrase. There was homophobia and xenophobia mixed with middle-class snobbery.
One of my sociology books in middle school proclaimed that being American citizens allowed us to stride the world with the same ease and pride that Roman citizens could within their empire.
I’m not sure the Roman Empire was exactly something that young Americans should have been taught to admire. While remarkable, it was a cruel world that had little regard for human rights.
Minnesota was not as bad as some places I visited. The first time I visited Oklahoma my hair was shorn for a role in a play at the University of Minnesota. The second time I returned, it had grown longish. The same checkout women at the grocery store who had been so nice to me when I had been shorn, shunned me when my hair was longish, not long, only longish.
In Arkansas, a friend fretted for me because I was “a long haired blonde white boy from the North” and they didn’t much like them kind there.
The world is no doubt a better place. Obama was elected. We are scrutinizing actions of police toward people of color. Questions are being asked and young people are sloughing off their parents’ bonds, as every generation does.
We are in, as we have so very often been, at a critical juncture, a country feeling around for its future, as we always have done. It has been attributed to Churchill that he said: you can count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.
It always seems like we are trying everything else. But history has taught us that somehow we manage to do better each generation than the last. While we have the Koch brothers today to vilify, in the past we have had Rockefeller and Carnegie.
Against all the odds, I am entering this year optimistically, eager to find out what the future has to hold, for me, for the world, the country and for you.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 01 05 16 Musings as heading and reaching home….
January 6, 2016There is a pinkish tint to the sky as I head north on the train, heading home after thirteen days of being away. The sun is beginning to set and the Hudson River flows south on my left. We have just passed Bannerman’s Castle, a munitions depot that blew up long ago on a small island in the river. Its wracked remains still stands and, sometimes, in the summers it is used to create a light show.
Bruce Thiesen, who reads my letters from time to time, commented that 2016 might test my optimism and it already has.
Yesterday, the market had a nose bleed after the Chinese market plummeted. On its way to closing, it is up modestly today but hardly enough to get anyone breaking out champagne glasses.
Donald Trump has found himself used in a recruiting tape for terrorists. He shrugs his shoulders about it, indicating there is nothing he can do about it. While he is doing nothing about it, the British Parliament is getting ready to debate whether or not they will ban The Donald from Britain.
That would be interesting. I don’t think that’s ever happened before.
The Sunni Saudi Arabian kingdom executed a leading Shia cleric and government critic. The Shia of Iran rioted and burned the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran, further inflaming the Mideast.
The Iranians have announced this will not cover the crime committed by Saudi Arabia but today one of Iran’s generals condemned the attack on the Embassy.
Meanwhile, the Iranians are showing off another underground missile, likely to give conniptions to the US and some others who hoped the nuclear treaty would lessen Iranian obsessions with things military.
The US has remained silent about the executions as it needs Saudi Arabia in its fight against IS, which is mostly Sunni as are the Saudi Arabians. The Iraqi and Syrian Shia get huge abuse from IS as do any others who don’t believe as the Shia do, including Christians and others.
In Washington, President Obama has issued Executive Orders regarding gun sales while surrounded by victims of shootings, including some of the parents of children killed in Newtown.
The proposals are modest but Rand Paul has already denounced them and the NRA has called them theatrics to deflect from his failed presidency.
Anti gun advocates are gathering some big donors like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and are working state by state to tighten gun laws.
One result of his actions will be that the gun issue is now politicized and will be sure to be a topic of debate in the 2016 elections.
Not too surprising if disheartening is that gun sales have soared since news of Obama’s actions leaked out. It is a good time to own Smith & Wesson stock I guess.
The journal Science is calling for more human computational effort in solving the world’s problems. It took only ten days for humans using a computational game to solve a protein problem associated with HIV. Let’s do more of that, say scientists. So do I.
I am now back in the cozy clutches of the cottage. Returning home, I discovered my kitchen pipes have frozen and I am working to thaw them out. Nothing, thank God, burst.
It was also forgotten by me that I left behind the detritus of my last night here. I emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it but can’t run it until the pipes thaw.
Before I left, I checked the 14 day forecast and it was all in the 40’s. That changed as it hit 4 degrees last night, the point at which the kitchen pipes freeze.
Having missed the season premiere of the last season of “Downton Abbey” I am off to catch up. It’s good to be home, more than I can tell you. Here, I feel cosseted by the comforts of my cottage and the joy it brings me.
The world outside is dangerous and it is tempting to retreat here and ignore it, I can’t.
The world exists and I must live in it. As must we all…
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