Letter From New York September 16, 2014

September 16, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

As I begin to write this, it is a quiet night. I am sitting in the kitchen of my friends Dawn and Gail’s home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. They are out with friends and I am sitting putting together my thoughts about the past week.

It was another anniversary of 9/11, the 13th. There was for me a certain symmetry to this one. On September 10th, 2001 I spent the evening with Jon Alpert, the visionary filmmaker, at a screening of a film he had done about the election in New York that was about to happen, Mark Green versus the billionaire Mike Bloomberg.

An early review of the film said that it would topple Bloomberg’s chances of winning the election. Mike Bloomberg came across as arrogant, privileged, ill-mannered, capricious and not a good candidate for Mayor. But then 9/11 happened and the world changed and a billionaire businessman seemed the best person to take over a city that was reeling from a great catastrophe. And, it turned out, he wasn’t a bad mayor. He may have been capricious, ill-mannered, arrogant and privileged but he brought the city back from the brink and carried it through the dark days of 2001 and 2002 when the city was so wounded it didn’t understand how it would survive its pain.

So on September 10th, 2014, on the eve of the 13th anniversary of 9/11 I found myself back in the company of Jon Alpert. He and I had dinner with our mutual friend Diana Sperazza, currently an Executive Producer for Investigation Discovery. Before that, she had been at Discovery Times Network and had been the EP on a project we had done ten years ago, OFF TO WAR.

We laughed and reminisced and talked about 9/11, 2001. Diana had been living in Washington. I had been in New York. Jon had been in New York, too. Filmmaker that he is, he grabbed a camera and headed towards the catastrophe and caught poignant images of that day. He had marched from his organization’s headquarters in the oldest firehouse in New York, mere blocks from Ground Zero and managed to get past the barricades. His footage ended up in an HBO special.

The weather has been eerily like that surrounding 9/11. Beautiful, sun kissed days. All summer I have thought about how like that time this summer has been and have had an uneasy feeling. 9/11 in New York was the most beautiful day and we have had the most beautiful summer. Some part of me has lived in fear that some terrible event would befall us this beautiful summer.

We made it through. There was no repeat of 9/11. No mass terrorist event.

But we now live in a world that is the child of that day. Since then, we have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and made a bloody mess of them. ISIS has just killed yet another Western hostage. The Caliphate rises; Arab states want to stop them but are tepid in their support of our desire to stop them. Various terrorist groups now seem to be starting to cooperate, lending their “expertise” to each other. Beheadings are becoming a trend. Egyptian terrorists have started using the gruesome practice in hopes of getting as much attention as ISIS or ISIL or IS, whatever they are being called.

The world feels like a more dangerous place these days. Our outrage against beheadings doesn’t stop them. Sanctions haven’t tempered Mr. Putin’s expansionist tendencies. And our response to Ebola has been slow and strangely muted.

A strange exhaustion has fallen upon us. Everyone seems tired on all sides of the political equation. Boehner seems reading a script as opposed to acting from conviction. One pundit described Obama as a bird in gilded cage, waiting to be let out. Like many Presidents, the office is aging him rapidly.

So we go on, living our lives as best we can while the world seems whirling out of control. Here at home our infrastructure is decaying as we fight wars to keep the barbarians from the gates.

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Letter From New York September 7, 2014

September 8, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

Far away, there is the sound of a chain saw cutting wood. Its buzz is the only artificial noise in my world. There is a soft breeze rustling the leaves in the woods, blowing lightly through the opened windows. When I awoke this morning, I went outside to test the mettle of the day and it was perfect – there was a light feel of fall in the air, a feel that has lingered through the day. It has been exquisite, a sweet Sunday in the country.

Down in the city, Joan Rivers was set to rest. Back in the day, I met her once, after a performance at the old Carlos and Charlie’s on Sunset Blvd. She wanted to personally thank me for a favor I had done her when I ran the West Coast office for A&E – I got her copies of a program that she wanted to watch. She was diminutive and gracious and shy and very different from the raucous person on stage. May she rest in peace.

It is yet another day when I am struck by the beauty of my life in the country, its peacefulness as contrast to the troubled world outside my little circle. The staccato of violence goes on in the Mid-East. There are terrible floods in Kashmir and storms are supposed to be moving from the American mid-west towards my lovely little circle. So I am celebrating the day I have.

Friday and Saturday, I attended the wedding of Todd Broder to Dana Pauley. I’ve known Todd for a dozen years or so, since he was almost fresh out of college and was represented by Jim Arnoff, another friend. He has grown in the years and is now a sought after producer/director. Along the way I introduced him to my godson, Paul, and the two became fast friends.

So attending Todd’s wedding was made even more celebratory in that I got a chance to spend time with he and his wife, Robyn. Standing in a courtyard, late the night of the wedding, I looked at him and realized I had a special history with him, for which I am very grateful. We had a circuitous route to becoming close but we have and I am so proud of him. He had Robyn have two beautiful children and a relationship I admire. I am so very grateful he has allowed me to have a place in his life.

Todd’s wedding was very special. He produced it well. A friend of theirs was ordained for the day to marry them, a shaman of the Internet. He was funny and wise, reverent and irreverent. He will not be quickly forgotten. He and his mother “tore up the rug” dancing.

The other great thing was that it was a concrete counterpoint to all the things in the world that are so dark and which cause us to despair. In the midst of all of this, we continue to marry and celebrate. We have deep relationships with other people that are anchors in our lives. Our friendships abide.

All these things stand as lights in the world, against the darkness that seems encroaching. Celebration helps push away despair.

So I will now go celebrate this day by taking a walk through the circle, holding to me the joys of a perfect day which follows two lovely days of being in the presence of friends and loved ones.

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Letter From New York September 3, 2014

September 3, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

The sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds; it is warm but not hot, only slightly humid. Sighing, I am noticing that more leaves outside my window where I write are turning yellow while the soft breeze blows through the branches.

Outside my living room and dining room windows, a tree is being taken down; struck last year by lightening; it has given up the fight. Dying, it needs to be removed lest it fall upon the cottage. I am sorry to see it go; it was a good, strong tree that provided shade to the deck. It was sturdy; it had its place in my life and then, literally, lightening struck and it now is going. It will change my view of the creek; its departure will change my life a little.

But that is what they say life is about: changes. So I have to embrace the change. I am doing a lot of that lately, with having moved on from Odyssey. Appointments in the city moved from this week to next and I find myself with a week at the cottage, an unexpected delight – and a challenge. Now that I do not need to go into town everyday, I am discovering how to discipline myself so I don’t go completely to seed here at the cottage.

The day begins, as it always does, with a perusal of the news from the NY Times, assimilating what has happened overnight. Today there may or may not be a ceasefire in the Ukraine but the possibility of one is a hopeful sign.  

The world is continuing to grapple with the death of American Steven Sotloff, gruesomely beheaded by ISIS [or IS or ISIL, depending on which source you’re reading or who is being quoted].

And, in another sign of change, the New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade, will now allow gay groups to march in it. Come next March 17th you can be out and proud and Irish all in the same parade.

Not all change is bad; much of it, in fact, is good if we allow room for it in our lives. That old adage: nothing stays the same is true. Recently, I cleaned out a box of old pictures and nothing reminds you of the time going by then photos of yourself from a different time and life.

I consigned them to the dustbin of history and sent them to be recycled. I am more concerned about now than then. I have carved out a good life for myself here at the cottage and down in the city. I am embracing it. I smile to myself at times; it is a time to cherish, watching the light splatter on my drive, the little fountain in the center of the circular drive gurgling. I have good friends, good neighbors, and good things happening – all the while the world is changing about me.

Carpe diem, said the Romans. Seize the day! And so I am seizing the day and moving on with it, nurtured by the sight of leaves turning in one more cycle of life.

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Letter From New York September 02, 2014

September 2, 2014

Or, as it seems to me… 

I learned a hard lesson yesterday; I wrote a blog directly on WordPress and then there was a glitch and all my eloquent words disappeared into digital dust. So I have learned to draft in Word and copy and paste into WordPress. A small lesson.

I was writing about how beautiful it was but how the leaves had begun to change – fall is no longer far away. You can reach out and touch it.

My mind was focused on the dichotomy between the sylvan beauties of the cottage here in Claverack and the harsh realities when you get away from this little spot. Not so far away Hudson is transforming itself into a quaint town, full of gentrified housing and charming shops and galleries. In twenty-five years, I suspect the town will be rather like Provincetown without the Atlantic.

But that doesn’t change the fact there is poverty in Hudson now and that some of it seems intractable. It’s not the kind of poverty you witness in India but it is hardscrabble for America.

Go a little further afield and you find that Ferguson, MO is still restless and wounded after the shooting of the unarmed Michael Brown. A call for a traffic stoppage mostly didn’t materialize yesterday, at the request of Michael’s father. The death of young Michael Brown has caused America to pause and think about the state of race relations. Have we really come all that far?

African-Americans make up the majority of inmates in prisons. They have higher incidences of poverty. They are more likely to get harassed by the police.

I was at a conference in Washington, DC not so long ago, hosted by Sojourners, a progressive Christian organization. In one of the sessions, the founder of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, asked the audience to look into their hearts to see what private prejudices they maintained. And looking into my heart, I was not innocent. Underneath the surface, it took an extra beat to push back the societal prejudices, not to mention some familial prejudices, that I was raised with – while I might not act upon those thoughts, I still had those thoughts, enough that I sometimes consciously had to batten them down.

I don’t like that.

But it is real. And I suspect is realer than we would really like to admit.

It is nearing the end of the day and reports are filtering out that ISIS, the tightly organized group that is carving out a rogue state, an Islamic Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, has beheaded another American, Steven Sotloff, a freelance journalist captured in Syria. Another atrocity in a region filled with atrocities, lands now overflowing with refugees and where suicide bombings seem like a daily event. A world away from the quiet of Patroon Street in Claverack, NY but still in and of my world.

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Letter From New York August 31, 2014

August 31, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

Yesterday was the postcard version of a Hudson River Valley day: the sky was a soft blue, the temperature and humidity was moderate. It was a perfect day for the things I did: Saturday chores, going to the Farmer’s Market and collecting fresh fruit and vegetables [ah, the cantaloupe and donut peaches were succulent], followed by a trip to Olde Hudson for cheeses and pate – all in preparation for two friends coming over for a dinner of nibbles and bits over Prosecco and white wine. I took a long walk around my circle, stopping to chat with one of my neighbors. It was a perfect country Saturday.

I slept in lazily today, hitting the snooze alarm more than once, stretching slowly into awake land, followed by a pot of French Press coffee and some time on the deck overlooking the creek, catching up on the world via the New York Times and BBC News, both of whose apps I have on my iPhone. Soft yellow sunlight danced across the deck while the creek flowed lazily down to the pond. 

But then the skies grew darker and the sunlight danced offstage, the blue sky was replaced by nickel grey; checking the forecast I see that thunderstorms are predicted for the afternoon.

It felt the sky grow darker as I read the news stories, each one a bit darker than the last. Yesterday evening, my friends and I didn’t confront the happenings in the world until long into the evening. The news of the day came up and we skittered away from it immediately, only returning to contemporary events when we were deep in the evening, comforted by a glass of Prosecco or two.

Out in the Mideast, ISIS is seemingly being more than somewhat successful in creating its Caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq, cleverly using all kinds of media to further their cause and to recruit supporters from the West to come and devote their lives to Jihad. In the Middle East their message is harsh and brutal: see what we are doing, watch this beheading, see us massacre Syrian or Iraqis, watch us kill the apostate Shia.

In the West, their message is more tempered: come and be with us, you can give up your job and fat life in the West for Jihad because you know your heart is empty and depressed. Jihad is the cure for depression, according to Mohammed.

And to give oneself up to a cause bigger than you can give anyone a thrill of exhilaration, a sense of deadly purpose to the confusion of life and this is what ISIS is playing upon to disaffected Muslims in the West. Come join us; your wives and children will be safe and cared for while you fulfill the Prophet’s higher purpose for you. 

And it is working some; at least two Americans have died fighting for the cause in Syria, one who lived in my home state of Minnesota at least for awhile. It’s hard for me to imagine a Minnesotan fighting jihad in Syria but it has happened. Rather than stressing how good a Western passport is for importing terror to the West, new recruits are being encouraged to burn their passports as a sign they have turned their back on the decadent West and embraced the jihadi cause. We will secure the Caliphate first and then turn our attention to the Satan in the West.

All of this is frightening. Airstrikes have beaten back ISIS in several quarters but the war goes on, as it will go on, as impassioned young men and women, fighting for something they feel is greater than themselves, more important than themselves, seek to upturn the borders made a century ago by the western Allies after the Ottoman Empire fell.

It is amazing and distressing and almost incomprehensible to me that so many are so seduced by such a brutal interpretation of Mohammed. It is as Christians only were responding to the harsh and cruel in the Bible and leaving out the rest – or at least it seems to me. The Islam I studied in college was not so cruel, so harsh, so brutal. It embodied empathy and poetry and human virtues in ways Christianity was not doing in the medieval west.

But here we are. Bloodlust reigns as it often has in human history, always leaving behind a trail of tears.

 

 

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Letter From New York August 25, 2014

August 25, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

The day dawned grey and uninspiring. In a bit of time, the sun burning through the clouds transformed the day. The circular drive in front of the cottage is splattered with patches of sunlight and shadow as the light filters through the trees. My neighbor is peacefully mowing his grass and I am just back from a stroll around the circle that is Patroon Street. It is a quiet, lazy day in the Hudson Valley.

The news is, of course, not so peaceful. Saturday night was shattered in Napa, CA by an earthquake, magnitude 6.0, bringing down walls while human injury was, thankfully, low. There will be a lot of picking up and rebuilding going on. Markets found their goods tossed about, chimneys fell and water and gas mains broke; an early morning reminder that Mother Nature is capricious.

In Africa, dozens of aid workers slough on, undeterred by the continuing and mounting toll of Ebola dead. They need to be there so they are, acting with a quiet courage that is astounding and inspiring. They keep going, despite the risk, demonstrating a courage I wonder if I would have if I were in their place.

In Egypt, there are efforts being made to bring Israel and Hamas back to the table to get a ceasefire accomplished. While that is going on, rockets continue to be fired into Israel and Israel continues targeting suspected Hamas installations in Gaza. An eleven story apartment building in Gaza was destroyed, the largest building to be targeted so far. The conflict becomes more and more entrenched, both sides with legitimate grievances and a seeming inability to resolve them through negotiations. Hatred and fear run deep.

In Iraq, two suspected Shia militants marched into a Sunni mosque and killed dozens of worshipers, an act that seems to have stalled the installation of a coalition government in Baghdad, something seen as necessary for that fractured nation to pull together a cohesive front to battle ISIS, now controlling a large portion of old Iraq. They’re mostly Sunnis and they consider the Shia heretics.   Christians and other religious minorities must either convert or flee or die. 

Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, published an op-ed piece a few days ago in the New York Times, wondering who was going to stand up for Christians in the world? In various parts of the world, including the Mid-East, Christians are being persecuted and being forced to become refugees to survive and there has been little acknowledgement in the world or by world leaders that this is becoming a major problem. The world is showing “relative indifference” to the deaths occurring among Christians in the Middle East and Africa, he posits.

And he does have a point. Much more attention was paid to the Yazidis than was paid to the poor Christians fleeing ISIS. The plight of Christians in Pakistan is ignored for the most part as it is in other parts of the world.

Yes, Christians did their damage as they proselytized the world the last two centuries but that’s not an excuse to turn our backs on anyone being denied religious freedom much less the freedom to live because of religious belief. We need to recognize all those being persecuted for their religion, including Christians, who seem to be getting short shrift in large portions of the globe right now.

 

 

 

 

 

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Letter From New York August 25, 2014

August 25, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

The day dawned grey and uninspiring. In a bit of time, the sun burning through the clouds transformed the day. The circular drive in front of the cottage is splattered with patches of sunlight and shadow as the light filters through the trees. My neighbor is peacefully mowing his grass and I am just back from a stroll around the circle that is Patroon Street. It is a quiet, lazy day in the Hudson Valley.

The news is, of course, not so peaceful. Saturday night was shattered in Napa, CA by an earthquake, magnitude 6.0, bringing down walls while human injury was, thankfully, low. There will be a lot of picking up and rebuilding going on. Markets found their goods tossed about, chimneys fell and water and gas mains broke; an early morning reminder that Mother Nature is capricious.

In Africa, dozens of aid workers slough on, undeterred by the continuing and mounting toll of Ebola dead. They need to be there so they are, acting with a quiet courage that is astounding and inspiring. They keep going, despite the risk, demonstrating a courage I wonder if I would have if I were in their place.

In Egypt, there are efforts being made to bring Israel and Hamas back to the table to get a ceasefire accomplished. While that is going on, rockets continue to be fired into Israel and Israel continues targeting suspected Hamas installations in Gaza. An eleven story apartment building in Gaza was destroyed, the largest building to be targeted so far. The conflict becomes more and more entrenched, both sides with legitimate grievances and a seeming inability to resolve them through negotiations. Hatred and fear run deep.

In Iraq, two suspected Shia militants marched into a Sunni mosque and killed dozens of worshipers, an act that seems to have stalled the installation of a coalition government in Baghdad, something seen as necessary for that fractured nation to pull together a cohesive front to battle ISIS, now controlling a large portion of old Iraq. They’re mostly Sunnis and they consider the Shia heretics.   Christians and other religious minorities must either convert or flee or die. 

Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, published an op-ed piece a few days ago in the New York Times, wondering who was going to stand up for Christians in the world? In various parts of the world, including the Mid-East, Christians are being persecuted and being forced to become refugees to survive and there has been little acknowledgement in the world or by world leaders that this is becoming a major problem. The world is showing “relative indifference” to the deaths occurring among Christians in the Middle East and Africa, he posits.

And he does have a point. Much more attention was paid to the Yazidis than was paid to the poor Christians fleeing ISIS. The plight of Christians in Pakistan is ignored for the most part as it is in other parts of the world.

Yes, Christians did their damage as they proselytized the world the last two centuries but that’s not an excuse to turn our backs on anyone being denied religious freedom much less the freedom to live because of religious belief. We need to recognize all those being persecuted for their religion, including Christians, who seem to be getting short shrift in large portions of the globe right now.

 

 

 

 

 

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Letter From New York August 21, 2014

August 21, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

It’s quiet all around me. I am at Odyssey where I have been doing a long term consulting assignment and that’s coming to an end. Everyone has left and thinking the place empty, they even turned out the lights. I didn’t protest; I think I wanted the quiet and the privacy. I’ve been packing up and will drive my personal things back to the cottage tomorrow afternoon.

While I am excited about the future, new beginnings, new adventures, new directions, there IS something sad about an ending. Nick Stuart, the CEO of Odyssey, has become a more than dear friend and we have traveled the US together. He has been my train companion. Three times we have crossed the US by train, developing a rhythm and a sense of adventure for each trip.

It will be sad not to see him as frequently. We’ll still be friends but the lack of proximity will make it more work and less spontaneous. We’ve been known to sneak out on afternoon to see a film, most recently the wonderful GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.

It also is sad because I had a friendship crash and burn here. That saddens me but I’m a tougher old bird than I sometimes credit myself for. Once I realized, knew, understood I was dealing with someone toxic, I became almost relieved – I quit thinking I was imagining it and accepted it for real. It is sad when people turn out to be not who they present themselves to be. It’s a really bad kind of betrayal. But we humans are capable of that dark bit too.

I settled in here, made the office they let me use a bit of home, hung some favorite artwork and brought in some lamps to make it homier. I will miss that sense of workplace familiarity and will have to recreate it somewhere new when I land on my next direction.

Usually in my life one thing has pretty seamlessly moved on to another thing. I have some things in play but nothing has definitely lined up. And I’m not, strangely enough, anxious about it. I’m actually looking forward to some time to sort things out and to sit more on the deck of the cottage, watching summer shift to fall and to practice working with words a bit more.

If you’re reading this blog, you know I have been doing it more and the doing more of it is so that I learn the discipline of working with words on a regular basis. There are some things on the tip of my fingers that seem to want to come out, things I want to say, thoughts I want to give form to.

It’s the end of an era, said Nick, about my departing. Odyssey is moving in a different direction and there isn’t a place for a digital person in the future they are imagining.

It’s an end of an era for me, too. While a consultant, this was a consistent gig, a place regularly come to and regularly contributed to and now it’s winding down and I’m waiting for the next adventure to wind up. The thought brings a smile to my face.

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Letter From New York August 19, 2014

August 19, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

The sun continues to play hide and seek and it is still unseasonably cool in the Northeast; which makes for beautiful weather. I have called these days “Goldilocks” days, not too warm, not too cool, just right.  And today is one of those “Goldilocks” days.  Clear, sharp shadows splatter the gravel circle in front of the cottage.  It is only in the low 60’s with promises of greater warmth for the day.

I am sipping that incredibly important first coffee of the day after having just perused the headlines of the New York Times on my iPhone.  This is the last of the five consecutive days I have spent at the cottage, lost in the thrall of these “Goldilocks” days, able to feel detached from the world while surrounded by green comfort of the countryside.  While I have been here, events move on and I have viewed them dispassionately for the most part.

Yet, even cosseted in the country, I am not able to ignore events here and abroad.  They feel further away but that is emotional distance not real distance – real distance has been compressed to jet flight hours.  Yesterday a woman on her way to treatment for cancer fell sick in Dubai from what might have been Ebola.  The total death toll from that disease is now above 1200 and mounting with the day.  Those who have sickened but lived to tell the tale are treated with suspicion and fear when they return to their villages.

The fragile Gaza ceasefire seems to have been broken by rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns.  While the tension continues there, anti-semitism is rising in parts of Europe.  In France, Jews are leaving for other countries, many for Israel. In Germany, similar things are happening.  Since the war, a place where Jews have lived, for the most part in peace, there is a sense of shadows falling upon a population that once felt safe.  Hungary has been turning anti-semitic for some time now.  Generally tolerant Italy has seen businesses and synagogues defaced.  There are anti-semitic gatherings in the Netherlands.  Britain is on its way to recording its worst year of anti-semitic incidents in years.  Jews were blamed in Spain for the defeat of Soccer teams. A Belgian doctor refused to treat a Jew for a broken rib.  

Ancient hatreds rise to the surface, it seems, when events scratch away choreographed civility.  And it is shame that civility is choreographed.  Why can’t it be a part of the civil fabric?  Because we have not learned that the “outsider” is not the cause of our troubles?

In Ferguson, MO the National Guard was called out to maintain order.  31 were arrested; unrest continues, fueled by an apparently small number of agitators and outside disruptors.  The wounds of racism have not healed in Ferguson; apparently they were only papered over.  Michael Brown’s death ripped that away and fury erupted.  And it is likely that racism’s wounds still remain to be healed in much of this country.  We’ve come a long way but not as far as we could or should.  If we had, Ferguson might not have happened.

 

 

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Letter From New York August 17, 2014

August 17, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

The sun has been an inconsistent friend these last few days; mostly the days are grey with brief moments of satisfying sun pouring through the trees around the cottage.  

The cottage encourages contemplation.  While I have been here, I have not paid as much attention as I normally do to the world around me.  It has seemed distant, faraway, events of the week feel as if they are taking place on a distant planet. All here is calm, placid, the beat of ordinary life going on peacefully, tranquilly.  An evening passed with neighbors and while we acknowledged the world outside, most of our conversation was about our little world:  the circle where the cottage resides, the little town of Claverack and the big city of Hudson.  We talked of golfing days and high school reunions, of neighbors and local politics.  It was intensely rich.

But not so far away, things are happening, things that are deeply disturbing.  A handbook will be written on what not to do after a police shooting, based on what has happened in Ferguson, MO.  A tragic event spiraled into a chaotic melange of toxic negativity.  Photos showed what has happened with the militarization of police in America.  Awash after 9/11 with funds from the Department of Homeland Security, police departments across the country armed themselves to the teeth but for the most part the country didn’t see it – until Ferguson.  Police officers looking like combat troops stormed through the streets of the town, fueling the flames of rage by their presence.  A mishandled tragedy produced more violence and piled wrong upon wrong.

Protests became riots, protestors devolved into looters.  Patrolling police became riot squads.  Some calm returned when the Ferguson police were replaced by State Troopers.  Last night though, despite a curfew, seven were arrested and one shot, critically.  It will now take a long time for this to heal with hopes that all learn from this series of tragedies.

Tragedies.  Our world is full of tragedies.  In Africa the Boko Haram have now abducted about a hundred men and boys, demonstrating their abilities to cross great swaths of Nigeria with impunity, unhindered by the military.  In neighboring Liberia, the Ebola dead are being abandoned where they lie.  Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are vastly under resourced to cope with the ravages of the disease and it looks to be months before the outbreak is contained.  

Spin the globe and arrive in the cradle of civilization.  American airstrikes have broken the siege of Mount Sinjar, letting the religious minorities there to flee into Kurdish territory or to parts of Iraq not gobbled up by ISIS.  The Kurds will likely get Western Arms to fight ISIS, who have been successfully using the materiel left behind by fleeing Iraqi soldiers.  

Arms and death seem to be how resolutions are being reached.  A fragile cease fire exists this moment between Hamas and Israel, with peace talks ongoing in Cairo.  One set of proposals has already been shot down by Hamas.

It seems difficult to find hope and happiness in all this malaise.

But yesterday, as I was driving, I heard a TED Talk on NPR.  The speaker was saying we humans are hard wired for happiness, that we find ways, despite all, to find happiness in our lives. 

If only we were hard wired for peace.

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