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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Letter From New York August 16, 2014

August 16, 2014

Sitting snuggled in the cottage, the weather reports inform us that we are about fifteen degrees cooler than normal this year, a situation not many are regretting.  It feels a bit like early fall, a feeling coming a bit too early for me.  I stopped today to buy some wine for the cottage and all of us at the wine store agreed it was too early to be thinking of fall.  I will be thinking summer until it is officially fall – only then will I surrender this glorious summer to the past.

This weekend I am babysitting Marcel, a fourteen year old miniature poodle, who has claimed the settee in the entry way as “Marcel Land” and from their reigns over my household while his real humans, Lionel and Pierre, are away in Atlantic City for a work related weekend of frivolity.  In their absence, I am watching over this very fussy animal, who refuses dog food and waits to be delighted by a variety of human foods.  Last night I won him over with honey ham, sprinkled with cheese.  I tried that again this morning; he was having none of it.  So I went to the local deli and got him chicken, which has pleased him today.

At fourteen, he feels he has earned the right to be picky and all of us around him attempt to indulge that pickiness.  He is, after all, fourteen which translates to something like 98 in dog years.  He’s pretty spry for 98.  We went for a half hour walk this morning, exploring my yard then walking across the street to his yard, where we spent some time.  Today he did not go to the front door and look at it longingly, as if to say:  why am I not going in to my own house?  He came quietly back with me today, tacitly acknowledging that my home was his home for right now.

Not really a dog person, I did understand this morning walking Marcel why a morning dog walk can be good for a human too.  It gave me some minutes to clear my head and to focus on something other than my own concerns.  I was attentive to Marcel, to another living being, while I gathered my morning wits about me, sipping my first cup of coffee as we walked our immediate neighborhood.

Work life is quieting down, time is being given me for reflection, a slowing down of everything, so that I can gather myself together to face the next flurry of activity which will eventually come.  This time is, I suspect, a bit like taking a long dog walk.

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Letter From New York August 15, 2014

August 15, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

It is the middle of August; you can almost touch the end of summer, a summer that has been delightful, warm but not hot, humidity low, an unusual Eastern summer. Because of a break in my schedule, I have retreated to the cottage for a few days. Waking this morning, the day had broken grey again, cool, almost chill, a day requiring a sweatshirt with the temptation of starting a fire in the wood stove to charm away the cool.

It is almost too chill for the shorts I’m wearing. And, after a little soul searching,I did decide to light a fire to charm away the cool.

This afternoon’s chore is to sort through a bunch of old papers, letters that I think date back to my college days that have somehow managed to follow me through all these years in an old wicker basket taken from the basement of my mother’s house in south Minneapolis.

It feels like a good time to cast off those memories. I have been getting my house in order; no one lives forever and I would like to not leave behind a mess. Not that I have any plans in going anywhere for awhile but we are all mortal and I’ve been feeling the winds of mortality at my back.

My good friend Tim Sparke, younger than me, is waging war with the cancers in his body, defying medical odds and doctor’s prognostications, continuing to live after a being given a six month horizon some two years ago. I received an email from him this weekend that chronicled his battles, the victories and defeats, the advances and the retreats of the long campaign since last we had communicated six months ago.

These are days of reflection, underscored and punctuated by the reality of Tim’s illness, a personal touching of mortality on my life while the whole world, it seems, ponders the seeming incomprehensibilty of Robin Williams’ death, a passing which has cast an unexpectedly large shadow over our lives.

It seemed he had always been there in the background of our lives, a manic, whirling dervish of a thousand characters that punctuated our lives. From Mork & Mindy to The Birdcage to Good Will Hunting to A Night at the Museum, he was part of the fabric of our cultural life. And he will be missed.

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Letter From New York August 12, 2014

August 12, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

 

It is a grey afternoon in New York City as it was a grey morning up at the cottage.  It is a grey world in which we live today.  The front page of the NY Times is full of grey news from the Great Grey Lady.

Robin Williams, that whirling dervish of comedy, is dead at 63, having hung himself, apparently in his home in northern California, a loss that seems to lessen all of us with his passing.  A world mourns the departure of a comedy genius – and a dramatic one, too.  After all, he had an Academy Award for his acting.

Out in Iraq, American airstrikes are beating back ISIS for the moment.  Sitting in the Acela Club this morning at Penn Station I saw on CNN helicopters swooping in on Mount Sinjar, dropping off supplies and picking up refugees in scenes that for an instant seemed reminiscent of the American departure from Viet Nam almost forty years ago.

A young man of color was fatally shot by a police officer in St. Louis and the night erupted into violence in protest.  He was unarmed.

A friend of mine wrote to me over the weekend; he is in the end stage of his life according to his doctors.  He has lived there for eighteen months longer than his first prognosis.  He has defied the odds and they are warning him his days of odds defying is probably over.  He hopes to see me before his passing.  I hope to make it to see him.  He overwhelms me with the courage he has demonstrated and the grit with which he has survived.

I am not sure I would have similar strength.  He is going to Lourdes in search of a miracle.  I would that I could go with him.  I probably am in need of a miracle too.  Aren’t we all?

It’s a grey day with grey news, the kind of day when a riff of life by Robin Williams would be appreciated.

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Letter From New York August 11, 2014

August 11, 2014

Letter From New York
August 10, 2014
Or, as it seems to me…

Sunday mornings usually have a bit of a ritual. I wake up, start the coffee I’ve prepared the night before and while sipping that first, oh so important, cup peruse the New York Times on either my iPhone or my iPad. If I am ambitious, which is not as often as I think it should be, I go down to Christ Church for services.

At some point on Sunday, I go through the “Weddings/Celebrations” section of the Times. It gives me great pleasure to see same sex wedding announcements. I didn’t think that would ever happen in my lifetime. So I honor those folks by reading their stories. Many of them cause me to smile.

I think I enjoy it because it gives me a sense of hope for the world; that we’re actually moving on from old prejudices. It is heartening in a frequently disheartening world, a gentling of the world, reflected in one major thing having changed in the universe.

My good friends, David and Annette, came up this weekend and stayed with me. We celebrated years of friendship over an excellent dinner of farm fresh foods – salad fixings direct from the garden, recently butchered organic meat, summer squash, potatoes pulled from the earth only the day before. They brought an excellent Pinot Noir and we ate at the dining room table after David had grilled the steaks on the barbeque. Spectacular.

We had great conversation. The world is fodder for it and it is impossible to run away from the trouble that is assaulting the world. Ebola is now an International Health Crisis. Ann Coulter has raged against the doctor who contracted the disease while serving as a Christian missionary in Africa. He should have stayed home according to her.

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now controlling a great swath of the both Syria and Iraq, seems determined to drag the region they control back to feudal times. Christians have been driven from their homes, as have Yazidis, who practice a faith that seems to combine Christianity, Islam and Zoroasterism. They, along with Christians and Shiites are “infidels” who deserve to die according to ISIS. Some Yazidis have been reported buried alive and some women taken as slaves while other have fled to the desert hot Mount Sinjar, where there has been some relief provided by the US dropping humanitarian supplies while fighter planes and drones attack the advancing ISIS troops, who are proving hard to beat back.

There is not a huge amount I can do about the Christians and Shia and Yazidis, except to donate to relief services – though I haven’t seen many appeals.

We are a world in need. I agonize over the daily pleas I get from any number of worthy causes, sometimes slipping toward a kind of despair because the needs are far greater than my wallet. We have a border crisis that revolves around children, illegal immigrants, yes, but children too. Many of them are fleeing San Pedro Sula in Honduras, now the murder capital of the world, a city I visited as a teen when my brother was running a clinic for children in nearby El Progresso, itself then described as the “armpit of Central America.” Things have gone from bad to worse there – as they seem to be in so many places, going from bad to worse.

It is unbelievable to me in some ways that I can have a wonderful and civilized dinner with two wonderful and civilized friends while some thousands of miles away ISIS is burying alive people because they believe differently. It reminds me of the way Catholics and Protestants treated each other several centuries ago during the Thirty Years War.

We live, so many of us, blessed lives here in the West while in other parts of the world madmen seem to roam freely, seeking to enforce a way of life that appears insane to us in the West. I wouldn’t call the leadership of ISIS enlightened.

But then we are the Infidel.

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Letter From New York August 6, 2014

August 6, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

I am going to do a little experiment – writing a little for the blog in the morning, different from the ones I compose and mail off, a morning rumination on the state of the world.

Last night the cottage was pummeled by a summer storm and I was awakened at various moments by thumps in the night, small branches falling from the trees onto the deck and the roof. It was magnificent and powerful, lightening slashing the sky. Perhaps not conducive to great rest but a lesson in the prowess of nature.

An American General has been killed in Afghanistan, a victim of “Green on Blue” violence, an Afghan soldier who turned on his American allies, proving no one is safe in Afghanistan, no matter how well guarded. One commentator this morning called the violence “bi-polar” for lack of a better term.

Violence seems everywhere. As I write the radio reports on the violence that is endemic at Riker’s Island prison in New York. The New York Times reported this morning that Hamas is going to split itself into two, one part political, the other part military. That way the military can wage war while the political side can negotiate peace.

That seems bi-polar to me.

I am headed into the city today to meet with Howard Bloom, the prolific writer of philosophical treatises about the human condition who is planning a series or independent film about his Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, Including the Human Soul.

Jon Alpert, the Academy Award nominated documentarian, introduced me to him some five years or so ago. I spent five hours with him that night, realizing I was in the presence of one of the smartest people I have ever known, a contemporary James Burke, who is, by the way, a fan of Howard’s.

I am hoping that something comes of the project. For one thing, I am casting about for the next thing I am going to do and there isn’t much on the horizon though I suspect the universe will one day unfold and reveal what it has in store for me.

That seems to be the way life has worked for me before.

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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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Letter From New York July 27, 2014

July 27, 2014

Letter From New York

Or, as it seems to me…

It is a mercilessly grey day in Claverack. A medium hard rain falls outside the cottage and far away thunder rattles the skies. It is a drear day; so dark it is actually hard to see to the end of my property.

It is the flip side of yesterday, so lusciously beautiful that it caused a heart to ache – perfect skies, perfect temperature, a day lazed away in idle pursuits, antique shopping on Hudson’s Warren Street, a leisurely stroll through the little Farmer’s Market, then reading on the deck while the creek languidly slipped by on its way to the pond. It was a splendid afternoon. The wind caused the tall branches to brush against one another, their rustling the music of the afternoon. The reflections of light on the creek with the stirring of the water by the breeze resulted in thoughts of pointillism.

This austere day is made for contemplation. It cries for thought as I stare out the window by my desk, on the rain-drenched drive of the cottage, casting my mind out into the world.

It is hardly prettier out there this week; the Ukrainian crisis still unfolds. Body parts still apparently lie in the debris field of MH17, most certainly brought down by a missile. Putin seems to be doubling down on supporting the pro-Russian rebels. Two doctors leading the fight against Ebola have contracted the disease. I cannot tell from this morning’s headlines if there is or is not a temporary ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. The ill-fated Costa Concordia reached its final resting spot. The United States has evacuated the embassy in Libya because of escalating violence. The Taliban reclaim tracts of Afghanistan. The Boko Haram have kidnapped the wife of the Vice Prime Minister of Cameroon. Forest fires plague the drought stricken state of California with no rain in the forecast. An Air Algerie flight fell from the sky over Mali.

The litany of the world’s trials and travails could go on and on. They are enough to cause us to climb into our bunkers and hunker down for the duration. And that may be a bit of what I do when I retreat to the cottage and indulge in the beauty that surrounds me. If I focus too much on the world an existential ennui falls upon me and I feel I cannot breathe.

For all the dark things happening in the world, there was still laughter on the street yesterday. Hot dogs were purchased from Rick’s stand at 6th and Warren. Ice cream cones were being consumed from Lick, farther down Warren. Little children careened down the street, chased after by parents. Newborns rode in carriages. People find jobs and sit down for meals. The world keeps going on and, in that, I find solace.

It is like this moment, when suddenly the rain stopped and the sun burst through the clouds to dapple the land with its light. The earth abides, hope survives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Letter From New York July 20, 2014

July 20, 2014

Letter From New York

July 20, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

 

A gentle rain fell last night in the Hudson Valley, ushering in a gently beautiful day. Not too warm, not too cold, a Goldilocks sort of day, sun glimmering off the creek as well as the small puddles left behind by the night’s rain. The deck is freshly stained, gleaming in the day’s light.

It is another bucolic day in Claverack.

It is not bucolic in much of the rest of the world. The past week has been haunted by the loss of MH17 over eastern Ukraine, a civilian passenger jet shot down by a surface to air missile, apparently by pro-Russian separatists who apparently bragged about having brought down the plane and then removed their social media boasts once they started to realize they may have hit a civilian plane.

According to reports I have read, Euro Control approved the flight plan for the plane; it is one of the generally used flight ways from Europe to the Far East. American airlines have been warned away from that route; I am sure none will be flying it now. Too late.

Nearly three hundred are dead, including eighty children, a leading AIDS researcher, an Australian novelist, a Dutch Senator, a cross section of humanity caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, their bodies scattered across nine square miles of contested land, some strangely intact, some ripped apart, all dead and gone in an instant, hopefully.

We are all appalled. The Russian propaganda machine has come up with all kinds of conspiracy stories, some that are completely bizarre but all of them pointing to others to blame. One pro-Russian separatist told a British journalist that this was all the fault of the Queen.

So it goes in the increasingly strange world in which Russia lives.

These seem almost apocalyptic times, with the chaos that is Iraq, that cradle of civilization, a Caliphate declared over parts of Syria and Iraq by ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Kurds move toward autonomy. Iraq as we knew it seems destined for disintegration. War rages in Gaza. Rockets fall in Israel. And innocents die in all these places.

It seems hard to realize that innocents are dying in all these places when a soft wind is blowing through the Hudson Valley and lovely meals are being consumed in open air cafes with good food, good company and good conversation, often avoiding the painful topics of what is happening in the world because there seems to be so little we, as individuals, can do to alter the events. They seem out of our control. We can decry what is happening but what can we do to change what is happening?

Sitting here in the quiet of the cottage, I don’t honestly know. I can write my Congressmen and Senators on domestic issues about which I have an opinion but would Putin heed a letter from Claverack when he seems to pay little attention to the President of the United States?

But the downing of a civilian airliner seems to be coalescing European opinion into a united front of condemnation, something that they have not done. European interests are closely intertwined with Russia, provider of natural gas to much of the continent. It seems to be taking a tragedy for them to take a stand.

The digital front page of the New York Times this morning is splattered with news of the downed aircraft. The world is reeling from its loss. We depend upon our air lanes to move us to and from – they should be safe from what is happening on the ground but they no longer are. We are confronted by what modern weapons can do in overeager hands. This is no suicide bombing with an improvised device.

As we sit in our bucolic places on a warm summer’s day, the world grows more dangerous.

 

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Letter From New York

March 4, 2014

Letter From New York

March  3, 2014

Or as it seems from Italy….

At 220 km/h the Italian countryside slides by as the Italo, Italy’s high-speed train races from Roma to Firenze.  It has been raining on and off all day; off now, as I am cozied up in the Club Car, leaning against the window, staring out onto the Italian countryside, a mix of lush greens and soft browns, a land prepping for spring.  Farms slide by, clouds scud across the sky, threatening more rain, I ride the train backwards as we slide through tunnel after tunnel.

For the last five days I have been in Roma at SIGNIS, the global organization of Catholic Communicators.  I did a speech for them two and a half years ago in Costa Rica and they apparently liked what I did as they asked me back to be on two panels for them this year.

As many know, I grew up in the Catholic tradition and feel that I will never quite quit being Catholic.  It stays with me, a reality from which I can neither escape or fully embrace. 

At SIGNIS there were 300 plus delegates from 80 plus countries, a United Nations of Catholics.  As the days went on, I became aware of the vast gulf between some of them, particularly between conservative and liberal Catholics, with the liberals primarily but not exclusively from Northern Hemisphere countries.

Some American Catholics described their discomfort with African Catholics who tend to be conservative and narrow according to their counterparts, dogmatic and rigid against the backdrop of a changing Catholicism in the north where some embrace Catholicism but turn their back on rigid rules.  I suspect North American Catholics have no trouble with birth control and lean to acceptance of gay marriage, certainly gay relationships.  They seem to follow the social leanings of mainstream liberal Protestantism.  NOT ALL but a goodly number.  It was even surprising to me to hear their voices at such a Catholic conference.

All speak of a “Francis” moment, that this new Pope who has sat upon the Papal Throne for only a year has generated interest in Catholicism and an openness to it that has been missing for at least a generation or two.  Not doctrinally liberal, Francis is spiritually sensitive and projects an adherence to the teachings of Jesus perceived missing in the last Pontificates.  “Who am I to judge?” he has said while also acknowledging at moments, he does not know.  Appealingly human, he has captured the imagination of many and because of that there is a “Francis” moment – a chance for the Church to reclaim the drifting masses and to hold a moral high ground felt missing for a time.  Any man labeled a Communist by Rush Limbaugh deserves some solid attention

Now two days later, I am on the return journey from Firenze, back to Roma, to spend a night before flying home to New York, hoping to be able to get there, as the weather is not promising.  Taking a walking tour yesterday, three of us were treated to an insider’s look at Firenze by the charming Chiara.   The tour ended in the Gallery at the Academia that holds Michelangelo’s David, a sight that literally takes the breath away.

For an hour, I stayed with him, Michelangelo’s vision of the young David, naked, armed only with a slingshot and a stone, ready to take on mighty Goliath.  It is a work of staggering beauty and worth the trip to Florence.

Waking this morning to church bells pealing, I thought this was a good end to the trip, a visit with David.  Once we were all a bit like him, ready to take on Goliath, in the heady days before Kingship and Bathsheba, before the weight of power and the lure of his lusts pulled him from the purity with which he faced the Philistine giant.  For centuries it stood in the town square and now sits protected in the Academia, hopefully for as much of eternity as can be managed.

While back in Rome, it will be interesting to witness how long the “Francis” moment will last, how long it can be managed, this chance for Catholicism to reclaim hearts and minds within and without the Church.

 

 

 

 

 

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