Archive for the ‘World War I commentary’ Category

Letter From Claverack 09 08 2016 A Creekside view…

September 9, 2016

Three days of grey clouds portended but did not produce rain.  Tonight, after seeing Woody Allen’s “Café Society,” I left the theater to be greeted by a soft rain falling, driving home over glistening roads.

Mixed reports had me slightly ambivalent about seeing “Café Society.”  Some said it was good.  Some said it wasn’t.  One wag commented, “It isn’t the worst Woody Allen film.”  No, it definitely wasn’t.  It wasn’t “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan” or “Bullets Over Broadway.” It was a slightly overlong, mostly charming view of a family in the late 1930’s in New York and Hollywood.  As usual, there was a pantheon of stars giving good performances including Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carrell, Blake Lively [the first time I have liked her], Parker Posey, Corey Stoll and Kristen Stewart.

Mostly it looked beautiful and poignant and timeless and full of love gone round the wrong corner.

It was the second day of class and we’re all still alive and at least all my students seemed moderately engaged, except, perhaps, for the young woman who seemed to be fighting off falling asleep.  When I did a survey, all but three of my students are working jobs as well as attending school.  Some of them, many of them, have full time jobs as well as being full time students.  No wonder they sometimes yawn.

Out there in the world, beyond my quiet Creekside world, the strident tone of politics continues.

Last night, Matt Lauer moderated interviews, not at the same time, of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, supposedly about their views on issues related to national security.

Lauer, who, once upon a time I liked, devoted a third of Clinton’s half-hour to her email server issues.  Then, according to the news reports, didn’t handle the rest of the interview well.

It is the general consensus of the press that Lauer screwed up; was unprepared and unable to stand up to Donald Trump when he repeated he had been against the Iraq War when, in fact, he is on record of supporting it in 2002.

Alas, no TODAY for me going forward.  Shame on NBC for blowing this opportunity.  Shame on Matt Lauer for blowing his opportunity.

Depending on who you listen to, Trump is beating Clinton or Clinton is beating Trump.  The polls are rocky right now. There are only 60 or 61 days left to the election.  While I can’t conceive of it, there is a possibility Donald Trump will be President.

Libertarian Presidential nominee Gary Johnson, who has been getting close enough in the polls that he might be included in the debates, made a major gaffe the other day when he had no knowledge of Aleppo.  “What is Aleppo?”

Aleppo is the epicenter of the catastrophe that is Syria, where it has been reported Assad’s forces used chlorine gas on citizens.  There are frightful images of Syrian civilians needing oxygen.  Chlorine gas was the scourge of the WWI and now it is back in Syria.

In news of the future, Google and Chipotle are experimenting at UVA with drone delivery of burritos.  Buzzing in the sky will become normal…

In other news from the present, Apple’s stock was down 3% today after the announcement of the iPhone 7.  The no jack situation has many people [and investors] spooked.  Me too.  My iPhone 5s will not connect, for whatever reason, wirelessly with my speakers.  Everything else, easy peasy, but not from my phone.  And, in the end, I might succumb to the iPhone 7 Plus but might end up choosing the iPhone 6 Plus because it has a jack.  I have been waiting for the iPhone 7 and feel just a little cheated. Much thought ahead.

Fifteen years ago tomorrow, my now ex-partner and I made an offer on the cottage, from where I write this.  Which means that two days later we will have the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11.

It is an anniversary that always brings me back to my experience of horror on a scale I had never known.  It takes me to the corner of West Broadway and Spring Street, looking at the Towers burning and feeling stunned and knowing at that moment there was nowhere to turn.  We had just turned a page in history.

 

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Posted in 2016 Election, 9/11, Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Social Commentary, Syria, Television, Trump, Uncategorized, World War I commentary | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 07 15 2016 As the Great Game goes on…

July 15, 2016

It is a warm, humid day as I trundle north on the train, back to Hudson.  The Hudson River is dotted with boats and the spray of jet skis.  A soft haze lays across the river, so it seems that what I see is in soft focus.

It’s not a bad day for soft focus.

I went into the city yesterday afternoon to have drinks with my friends Nick and David at Le Monde, a French Bistro near Columbia and then drifted from there to Cafe du Soleil, where I joined a party for Bastille Day put together by friends David and Bill.  We were festive and the mood was buoyant and I was home and asleep by the time news was coming out of France that a young Tunisian Frenchman had driven a lorry into a crowd celebrating Frances’ National Holiday, plowing on for 1.2 miles before he was killed and after he had killed at least 84 and wounded 202 others.

As I look out of the window of the train, sold out, standing room only, I see the verdant green hills which line the western bank of the river, the beginnings of the Catskills, bucolic, peaceful, welcoming.

The dead in Nice, a pleasant city in the south of France, to the east of Cannes, on the Rivera, home of the airport that serves that golden stretch of land, setting for glittery events and the place of lovely villas climbing the hills to look down on the Mediterranean, include ten children.  Fifty others from last night hang between life and death, as medical professionals do their best.

One woman talked for a long time to her dead child.  The living and unwounded began to swarm toward the beaches, away from the lorry, in case it was loaded with explosives.

On Wednesday, July 13, in Syria, 58 people died, mostly civilians of war related wounds.   Since the beginning of 2016 about 8,000 have died, since the beginning of the war over 440,000.  11.5% of Syria’s population has been killed or wounded.

On the same day in Iraq, 22 died by gunfire, bombs, rockets.

Looking out at the beautiful Hudson River, the Catskills on the other side, with gracious, magical homes occasionally dotting the landscape, it is easy to focus on the green moment and not the black news but today I cannot slip away, into the beauty.

It is all so senseless and all leaders seem to talk about the senselessness of it and do they find the senselessness of it enough of a unifying theme that they commit to actions that will stop it? 

One of the books I am reading is “The Good Years” by Walter Lord, describing the years between 1900 and 1914, when World War I began.  I am near the end of it, the war is beginning.  Devastation was released upon the European continent over the tragic death of an Archduke and his wife, which gave “permission” for the Austro Hungarian Empire and the German Empire to act to achieve political goals they had long wanted and ended up destroying themselves.

Men in power are always playing “the great game,” and as the game is played, the innocent die. 

The train is arriving in Hudson and I am winding down.  I will say my prayers tonight for all the people who died today because they are pawns in “the great game” and see if I can find a way to work effectively for change.

In the time since I’ve arrived home, run some errands and prepare to go into town for a comedy show,  the Turkish military, apparently fed up with Erdogan, is attempting a coup. Bridges across the Bosporus are closed, military aircraft are flying low over Istanbul and Ankara and gunshots have been reported.

“The Great Game” goes on.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Russia, Social Commentary, Syria, Trump, Uncategorized, World War I commentary | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York, via the Vineyard 06 30 2016 Acts worthy of Shakespeare…

July 1, 2016

It is a bucolic time of day on Martha’s Vineyard; the sun is beginning to set.  A sailboat has gone by, heading to the north.  Its sail is designed like a huge American flag while moving to the south is the Edgartown Water Taxi, ferrying people to their docks.  The light is a marvelous gold and the water is steel blue.  Jeffrey’s sailboat rides at anchor directly in front of me, looking stately.  The scene is peaceful, other worldly, of another dimension than the rest of the world.

The rest of the world is not peaceful.

Britain is in spasms.  Boris Johnson, former Mayor of London, a prime supporter of Brexit, poised and desiring to be the next Prime Minister, found himself outflanked by the man who was to have been his campaign manager, Michael Gove.  Long saying he was not aspiring to higher office, he released a statement hours before Boris was to make his speech announcing that he was seeking to be Prime Minister saying that he could not support the former Mayor of London and that he was running for the position himself.

As Boris’ father said, “Et tu, Brute?”  It was an act worthy of Shakespeare.  Boris then announced he was not seeking to be PM. 

A nasty race is ahead for the Tories with Boris gone and characters worthy of “House of Cards” rend against each other.

The Labour Party is also rent.  Their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been given a “no confidence” vote by his party and it seems every politician in Britain is urging him to depart but he clings to his position with a kind of astounding ferocity surprising in so absolutely colorless a man.

Turkey says that the bombers in the terrible attack at Istanbul’s International Airport were all from the former USSR and were directed by IS out of Raqqa in Syria, their erstwhile capital.  One of the victims was a father attempting to prevent his son from joining IS.

Tomorrow is July 1st.  A hundred years ago marked the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in WWI.  In the eighteen months it raged, there were a million casualties. Today Prince William, Prince Harry and Princess Kate were there to honor the dead, to let the world know they were not forgotten.  In the first day of fighting, nearly 60,000 were wounded and a third of those died.  During those awful eighteen months “the flower” of English youth died in one of the bloodiest, if not the bloodiest, battle in all of history.

The Taliban killed 33 Afghan police recruits today, a number that is dwarfed by that of the Battle of the Somme, but like the English, French, South Africans who died in France in 1916, those 33 had families, wives and children perhaps, lives that will never be found again.

Hopefully found again will be a commerative coin given by President Obama to the country’s oldest Park Ranger, 94 year old Betty Reid Soskin, who was attacked last night in her apartment by a young man who punched her and robbed her.  She wants the world to understand she is not a victim but a survivor.  94!

I am winding down now as the harbor slips into a soft silver lavender light.  Faraway, a dog barks, a soft breeze is blowing off the harbor.  I am far away from all the madness.  A week from tomorrow I leave to return to my cottage, itself a haven from the madness.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Brexit, Claverack, Daesh, Elections, IS, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Mideast, Obama, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Syria, Taliban, Uncategorized, World War I commentary | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 03 09 2016 Sequestered with my thoughts in the cottage…

March 10, 2016

The day we all lived through here in Columbia County was physically the most exquisite day of the year and it may hold that crown all year; it’s hard to imagine a day that will be more splendid than this one.  The sky was blue, the air was warm — after I finished teaching it was scratching at hot.

My students had presentations to make today and they pleaded with me to let them do it outside and I was game but one of my students was allergic to the sun [as was I as a child] and had been outside for her last class and was feeling the effects.  So I let them go ten minutes early and stayed after talking with several students about the graded presentation they were going to be making after spring break.

It was a sweet day.  As I drove around the county on errands, bits and pieces of the news filtered in over the radio. 

Bernie had won Michigan, either stunning the Clinton camp or, according to some reports, they were just shrugging it off.  He is capturing something she isn’t.  In Michigan, it was largely, I understood, about his trade positions.

Tonight they are facing off against each other in Miami.  I may look at some of it but then again may not.  We still have months of this in front of us.

Trump continues his romp, causing, I’m sure, many Republicans to pull their hair and mimic Munch’s “The Scream.”  Carly Fiorna has come out for Ted Cruz.

It’s a quiet night, sequestered in the cottage, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald are singing their classics, a martini is nearby and the lights are illuminating the creek.  For this minute, the world is my oyster and I’m savoring it.

As we probably all know, “Downton Abbey” has finished its six year run, all the plots and subplots neatly tied up by Lord Fellowes, the creator who rose to the aristocracy himself during the program’s run.  Not just knighted but made a Baron.  Good job! There is now talk of a “Downton Abbey” movie.  I am sure it will come together.  Both sides of the Atlantic are mad for the Crawley family and their servants.

Either critically wounded or dead is a man known as Omar the Chechen, a lead military figure for IS.  Interestingly, when he was fighting the Russians in his homeland he received training from American Special Forces and was a star pupil.  Later he became the “Minister of War” for IS and was largely responsible for the push that took them within a hundred miles of Baghdad.

A captured IS official seems to be spilling the beans about IS’s efforts in chemical warfare.  They seem to be centered on the use of mustard gas, used by the Germans in World War I to devastating effect.

A former American soldier has been convicted of attempting to join IS and faces 35 years in prison.   He had left a note for his wife telling her he wanted to die a martyr.

Mourners are paying respects to Nancy Reagan, who lies in review at the Reagan Library where she will be buried next to her Ronnie.

And I love — sort of  — the story of a Floridian mother who had bragged about her four year old son getting really “racked up” to go practice shooting with her.  Hours later, he shot her in the back.  They were out for a drive when it happened. WHAT?!

Kathyrn Popper died today at 100.  She was the last surviving cast member of “Citizen Kane,” the movie named by the AFI in 1997 as the greatest film ever made.  She was also Orson Welles’ longtime assistant.

Kim Kardashian has been posting nude selfies.  Outrage has broken out in some circles.  In other circles, people are posting their own naked selfies in support of her, including Sharon Osbourne, reality star, talk show host and wife of Ozzy Osbourne.  I am NOT going to search it out.  No.  No, thank you…

Lastly, Sir George Martin passed away today at the age of 90.  Longtime producer of the Beatles, he helped shape their sound and redefined the role of music producer. 

The evening is rich.  There is no sound quite like Louis Armstrong married with Ella Fitzgerald. The cottage is more than cozy.  Friends are arriving from Nashville for the weekend and it will be good to share with them my home.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, European Refugee Crisis, Hudson New York, Income Inequality, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Uncategorized, World War I commentary | 2 Comments »

Letter From New York August 5, 2014

August 5, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

The sun is playing hide and seek, darting in and out from behind clouds, a day that is both dark and bright, mood changing by the minute. The creek flows by, clear and steady; in a southeasterly direction, which I was informed yesterday, was very good feng shui. I’m pleased to hear that; we all need as much good feng shui as we can manage to find.

I didn’t realize it until I was scanning the headlines from the New York Times on my iPhone while having my first cup of coffee but yesterday was the 100th anniversary of World War I, the war that was to end all wars. Which, of course, it didn’t. It was merely a prelude to that greater catastrophe, World War II.

A century ago and we are still reaping the effects of that whirlwind.

The Russian Tsar was toppled in 1917 and, with his family, assassinated in 1918. Out of the ashes of the Russian Empire grew a very brief democratic government that gave way to the Soviet Empire. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, rolled into exile in the Netherlands on a private train where he remained for the rest of his life. The last Austrian-Hungarian Emperor abdicated. The last Ottoman Sultan got the boot in 1922.

Borders were remade.

The Ottoman Sultan decided to side with Germany and Austria-Hungary, which was not a wise decision. When the war ended, his Empire was carved away. The British chopped up the Ottoman Empire for their own purposes. The British did a lot of that, doing things for their own purposes. The sun had not yet set on the British Empire. It took World War II to finish that off.

Iraq was not Iraq before the end of World War I; it was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Jordan was born out of the great carve up of the old Ottoman Empire as was Syria.

Germany lost territory and a swath of Poland cut the country into East and West. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire was no longer an empire. Austria and Hungary became separate countries. A new country called Yugoslavia was created, as was Czechoslovakia.

The new Soviet Empire was diminished from what the old Russian Empire had been; new countries arose out of the demise of the old Tsarist domain. The Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were no longer subservient to Russia. Finland was no longer a Russian Grand Duchy, declaring its independence.

After the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, America began to lean toward the Allies, entering the war in 1917. Its role in helping win the war established America as a global power and manufacturing powerhouse. It was the beginning of the American century.

Many of the best and the brightest of a generation of Europeans died during that war. The ones who survived wrote some of the greatest war stories ever told. Hemingway gave us A FAREWELL TO ARMS and Erich Maria Remarque gave us ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. F. Scott Fitzgerald became the chronicler of “The Lost Generation.” The war years were followed by the Roaring 20’s, a grand party partly fueled by a need to find distance from the horrors that had been.

World War I gave us modern warfare: tanks, gas, war planes. It wasn’t the War to End All Wars but it set the tone for all wars to follow. It gave new meaning to the horror of war. The great players in the Second World War all were present during the First War. Hitler was formed in the trenches of World War I. Churchill’s role in the catastrophe of Gallipoli marred his reputation, only fully redeemed by World War II. Stalin was formed in the crucible of the war and the subsequent Russian Revolution. Roosevelt had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy and itched to have a military command, a hope blunted by Armistice.

It was a century ago. But it seems so much of now started there, a remaking of the world order that we are still sorting out.

 

 

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