Hudson River. Howard Bloom Saves The Universe. Election Day. Tiffany Martin Hamilton. Hudson, New York. Christ Church. Kentucky Election. Houston. San Diego Shooter. LGBT. UC Merced. David Cameron. Sharm al Sheikh. Russian Plane Crashes. Justin Trudeau. Obamacare.
Once again, I am headed south on the train to the city, doing a round trip. I have a lunch in the city and then I am turning around and getting out of Dodge and won’t be back until Monday, when I come into town for a couple of days of meetings and Howard’s podcast taping. His podcast is “Howard Bloom Saves the Universe” and is available on iTunes and other podcasting sites. Check it out. He’s great!
The day is another beautiful one. Yesterday was a perfect fall day with the temperature reaching seventy degrees while cool enough at night to justify the use of the Franklin stove. Walking through the neighborhood, I savored the muted colors and the light on the pond into which my creek flows.
The river glistens a burnished copper from the colors of the season.
Yesterday was spent mostly glued to the computer screen, accomplishing digital tasks. My walk was a welcome interlude.
In a way the day felt like an interlude, despite being glued to the screen of my laptop. I didn’t notice much about the world and reveled mostly in the comfort of my cottage.
Yesterday was Election Day. In Hudson, our county’s “big city,” there was a hotly contested Mayoral race that appears the Democrat won. Absentee ballots are yet to be counted though those mostly tend toward Democrats. If it holds, Tiffany Martin Hamilton will be the first Democratic Mayor of Hudson in my memory.
She’s the daughter of the choir director at Christ Church, where I attend services.
Around the country, conservatives had a big night. They voted down an LGBT anti-discrimination effort in Houston and booted the Democrats out of the Kentucky Governor’s mansion.
Pundits this morning, as I was driving to the station, posited that Democrats were not well organized and Conservatives were. In all these places, voter turnout was low. I feel such frustration when people don’t vote.
As I continue, I am sitting in the Acela Lounge, watching CNN on the monitor. There is a live “incident” near the San Diego airport; a shooter is active and planes are being diverted. The shooter has a high-powered rifle and has come close to hitting police.
They are also talking about a nine year old African American boy in Chicago who has died in gun violence, shot multiple times. Mayor Rahm is saying there is a “special place” for the person who did this. I agree.
At UC Merced, there were five people stabbed before police killed the man wielding the knife.
David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has delayed flights to and from Sharm el Sheikh while a British team makes a determination about security at the airport there. Cameron and the Brits are concerned that a bomb may have brought down the Russian plane recently, losing all aboard, including 25 children. American Intelligence is suggesting the same.
An affiliate of IS claims responsibility.
A Russian built cargo plane went down yesterday in the Sudan. Children were some of the victims there too.
Justin Trudeau has been sworn in a Prime Minister of Canada and half his cabinet is female. It is, after all, 2015, he points out.
Now that we are two years into Obamacare, a map of the uninsured shows that most of them are in the South and Southwest. Surpised?
And the death rate for middle aged white men who have not received a high school degree has skyrocketed. One article suggests they are dying of despair.
All this violence and despair are hard to imagine as I head back north, the sun just beginning to set in the west, the sun a bright slash across the river. It is peaceful; I am in the café car, sipping a wine and writing, heading north to my cottage, after a good lunch with friends, all soft and right in my world while knowing it is not soft and right in so many other places.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 11 10 15 He’s back…
November 10, 2015Mary Dickey. Failed Computer. Apple Store. Tek Serve. 240th anniversary of the Marines. Russian Doping. George W Bush. George H.W. Bush. Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld. Syria. Assad. Aleppo.
It is late in the afternoon and I’m in the city, where it has been raining or drizzling all this grey day.
If you, like my friend Mary Dickey, have noticed I have not been posting, it is because on Friday of last week, I dumped a glass of water onto my laptop. It didn’t recover. I let it dry from Friday until Monday morning. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Yesterday was a very full day so I determined I would use today, which was relatively unscheduled, to deal with this. Since it didn’t return to life this morning, I went to my breakfast with old friend David McKillop and went from him to the Apple Store in Grand Central Station, where a very nice young lady named Karen sold me a new MacAir. Then young Jason and I attempted to port over the data on my back-up drive.
In what was a nightmare moment, Jason and I realized, after much effort, that it, too, was dead and none of those king’s men could put that Humpty back together again.
They sent me from the Apple Store to Tek Serve where a very nice young ex-Marine helped me get the data off the failed drive and onto another drive, from which I could extract the data I needed.
That he was an ex-Marine was found out when I asked him how his day was. He told me that he was an ex-Marine and that today is the 240th anniversary of the Marines and when he was off work, he and a few buddies were going to celebrate.
Leaving there, I sat down and extracted the data I needed from the restored back-up drive, sorted through all the 1300 emails that downloaded from the server and then determined I would write a letter, to let those who have been wondering about my absence, know my trials and travails.
Being without a laptop has not been totally a curse. I have done a good amount of reading since Friday. i think I have gone through at least two books.
But it does feel good to be re-connected with the outside world via laptop.
It has come to my attention from reading off my phone that the Russians have been accused of condoning and perhaps encouraging their athletes to dope. Imagine my surprise when I read that! Just as shocked as Claude Rains was in “Casablanca” that there was gambling in Rick’s Cafe.
There is a FOURTH GOP debate tonight and we’re still a year away from the election. Jeb is in a tough place and needs to break through tonight, say the pundits, or he’ll be in much more trouble than he is.
“Pappy” Bush, George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States and father of George W. Bush, our 43rd President, has just published a book that is more than a bit cutting about Cheney and Rumsfeld. I’m not surprised but when asked about his father’s comments, “W” expressed surprise.
What did the Bushes talk about on Thanksgiving? Certainly not about the country they were running.
The University of Missouri has lost it’s two top officials in a protest on the handling of race relations.
Today is also Diwali, the Festival of Lights in India. Twenty years ago I was in New Delhi, celebrating the festival by riding an elephant down the streets and watching a barrage of fireworks from every side. It was a surreal but exciting experience. I went back to my hotel with a swirl of light rotating in my eyes.
During that time, Discovery Channel, for whom I was working, officially launched in India with a party at the American Embassy. There were fireworks then, too. An Embassy official, looking much like he could be a character in some Graham Greene novel, sidled up to me and confided there hadn’t been fireworks since Jackie. Kennedy.
The night I left India for the first time, the Minister for Human Resources, with whom I had visited, was arrested for appropriating 16 million dollars to his personal use.
There is still a refugee crisis and Germany is beginning to have its patience exhausted. The fighting continues in Syria with the Assad government claiming to have lifted the two year long siege of Aleppo.
In other words, while I have been feeling almost lost without my MacAir anchor, the world has continued on.
But now I’m back!
Tags: 240th Anniversary of the Marines, Aleppo, Apple Store, Assad, Dick Cheney. Syria, Donald Rumsfeld, Failed Computer, George H W Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Mary Dickey, Russian Doping, TekServe
Posted in 2016 Election, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary | Leave a Comment »