Letter from the Vineyard

Or, as it seems to me…

It’s over.  The Election that is, slipping behind us in the wake of history, already becoming lost as we move forward into the future.  Republicans are wondering what hit them, exactly, as this was supposed to be theirs for the taking – certainly I thought I would wake in the morning of January 7^th to a President Elect Romney, a thought that frightened me I will confess.

But that didn’t happen.  Romney lost and appears lost.  Republicans have returned with control of the House but not the Senate with the White House still home to the reviled Obamas.  Never quite got the vitriol they inspired from the right.  Starting in 2008 the Republican’s entire agenda was to make him a one term President.  Having failed to do that where do they go?

Not more than a few days ago my brother was in a conversation with some folks about the Election.  He opened to the fact he voted Obama’s way and was met with disbelief by one who said:  you know he’s a Muslim.

How do you respond to that?  How do you deal with that level of ignorance, denial and just plain stupidity?  And, at the end, should it matter in a pluralistic America?  Because that’s what we’ve become – a pluralistic society that is growing only more pluralistic with every election.  That is what hit the Republicans this time in the solar plexus because this could have been their election if they had met more in the center.  Obama won but he also just didn’t lose.  He was on the razor’s edge the entire election, right up to the end and pulled through a narrow popular win while winning big in the Electoral College.

Now understand I gave more to Obama to win than I have ever given any President at any time.  I didn’t want Romney to win.  I’ve made it clear in these letters I didn’t want Romney to win because I didn’t feel the man could be trusted.  And I wanted to like Romney.

Oh, how I yearn for those good cloth coat Republicans of my childhood, when my parents were Republicans and it felt like it was a party that made sense.  Now it doesn’t make sense to me and, frankly, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to a lot of Republicans either.

They own the South and much of the center, the broad plains states but owning the South and the not well-populated plains states won’t carry you to the White House.  There has to be some sense of the center and that’s not something the Republican Party can quite seem to master right now.  And I mourn their inability to do so.

To my great surprise, Republicans have become the party of the crazies, the out of touch folks, the ignorant, the naysayers of our times.  I don’t remember Republicans like this in my childhood.  Where’s Everett Dirksen when you need him?  Six feet under where much of the Republican Party lies buried right now.

And I am praying for a resurrection, not of the Republicans of 2012 but of the Republicans of old, the ones who genuinely cared for the Republic and played for the middle.

November 3rd, 2012

First of all, I’m safe. Thank you to all the people who have reached out to me. On the Friday before Sandy I retreated to the cottage. The eastern edge of the storm kept moving west; there was rain and wind but I was shielded from the brunt of the storm.

Wednesday, trains still not running, I carpooled down into the city with some friends. It’s here reality struck. The news upstate tended to the local side highlighting the relief the region had done as well as it had – no repeat of Hurricane Irene. But in the city wide swaths were affected. The lower third of Manhattan was without power and subways, elderly and disabled isolated in their apartments while teams went through and checked each apartment, finding them to offer assistance and evacuation.

Staten Island, the “forgotten” borough, suffered extraordinary damage and clamored for help when all the attention seemed to be going to New Jersey and Queens, where the Breezy Point section suffered over a hundred homes burned to the ground while others were washed away. One of the security guards in our building has taken in his neighbors; a boat went through their living room.

Vast sections of New Jersey are without power; friends and colleagues have had to leave home to find warmth and comfort with friends and relatives. Gas rationing was implemented in New Jersey today. There isn’t enough fuel to go around. Cars are being pushed into stations and gas tanks siphoned down to power generators.

The images of Staten Island and the Jersey Shore evoke memories of Katrina. They are devastating. Seeing the ruins of Breezy Point it would be good to note that at the height of the storm, men and women of NYFD rushed in to save what they could. Today I heard a paean on the radio for the brave men and women of the NYPD and the NYFD and their counterparts in New Jersey. Amen. They regularly risk their lives and did so during this storm.

The remarkable spirit of New Yorkers is also much in evidence. For the most part even those who had lost the most maintained their composure and spirit. Neighbor helped neighbor. Our IT leader had her apartment under water and blessed her neighbors for all they were doing. Scenes like that were repeated in New York and New Jersey. In crime-ridden Newark, there were no crimes of “opportunity.”

A woman on Staten Island had her two children, two and four, washed away from her; later found dead in a field. Streets in Staten Island and in Breezy Point evoked pictures of London during the Blitz. Thankfully the death count is below a hundred and not in the hundreds.

My friend Robert Murray, a structural engineer, marveled at how well the older buildings held up. Built to withstand wind bursts of 85 miles per hour they held up to wind bursts in the 90’s. One friend lives on the top floor of a Harlem building and felt it rock and sway as if in an earthquake.

There are two New Yorks, the New York that was affected and the New York that isn’t. On the Upper West Side of Manhattan it is hard to believe that not far away is devastation. Everywhere there are signs asking for help. Riverside Church is a gathering place for supplies to be distributed to Staten Island. Diapers are in demand.

This has been a great crisis. It brings back memories of 9/11. It is being handled with that great generosity of spirit one finds in New Yorkers when push comes to shove. It gives credence to why some call this the greatest city in the world. It makes one realize the vulnerability we have to nature. Climatologists say this is only the beginning, that we need to expect and plan for more storms like this. We’ve had two “hundred year events” in the last two years.

Good to the people of New York for their courage and spirit. Good that we have seen everyday heroes rush in where angels fear to tread. Good that we have survived one more bash to the head. And good if we learn lessons from this.

Letter From New York

September 23, 2012

It’s a Sunday night and as I write this, the 64^th Annual Emmy Awards are on and I’m watching them out of the corner of my eye.  The organization behind the Awards, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is an organization about which I cared a lot, for many years.  Still do but now I live in New York and it’s pretty hard to be engaged with a Los Angeles based organization when you live in New York.

I moved here to New York just as I was finishing my fifth year as a Governor of the Academy.  Four of them were as Governor for Television Executives and the fifth was as Founding Governor for the Interactive Peer Group, the first new Peer Group approved by the Academy in fifteen years.

A group of us had worked for six years to establish the Peer Group, working to see that as new technology emerged the “tent” that was the Academy would not be closed to those who were working in that arena as the Academy had shut out the nascent cable industry a decade before.  Most of us working for this change were from the cable business – people who saw that the business was going to change as the technology evolved.

The same group that worked to create the Peer Group had also helped to stage the Superhighway Summit, a conference that was probably the single most successful event staged by the Academy outside its regular events such as the Emmys or the Hall of Fame.  Every mogul in Hollywood attended.  Some, like Rupert Murdoch, still run their empires, others have faded but they were all there.

So was then Vice President Gore, who was the main draw for all the glitterati.  Somewhere there is a picture of us shaking hands.  Later on, I was part of the team that produced the Emmys on the web for the first time.  That was a hoot and I don’t know where all the team has gone though Omar Ahmad, who helped pull it all together has passed on, gone much too soon.  He ended up as Mayor of San Carlos, CA.

Then I moved to New York and it was hard to be involved.  But I still care and watch the events as best I can through the eyes of my friends who are.  Tip of the hat to Sheila Manning and the wonderful Nancy Wiard, who keep me informed as they remain my closest ties, two bulwarks of the Academy who have been actively engaged for years.

Watching the Emmys, I am rejoicing in my history with the organization and saddened that I can’t be as engaged as I once was.  And as I watch the Awards I am aware that the industry is changing rapidly.  Once a pariah, cable is now an established part of the television industry.  Winning a lot of awards…

Riding down on the train from upstate tonight I was riding with Patrick, who was on his way to shoot an episode of 666 Park Avenue, a new show on ABC [unfortunately the buzz is not good but who knows?] and then will be on his way to Baltimore to shoot two weeks on House of Cards, a series being produced for Netflix where all episodes will be released at the same time allowing for an orgy of viewing if it is as compelling as some rumors have it.

“Television” is changing.  First it was cable that threatened traditional “television” and now it is emerging technologies.  House of Cards is a “television” series being produced for an alternative distribution outlet, Netflix, which has as many subs as Comcast, the largest cable system.  It is also resurrecting the brilliant Arrested Development.  Amazon has a streaming service but has not delved into original programming nor has Vudu, the streaming service owned by WalMart but how long will that last?

What is “television” in this new age of OTT [Over The Top] solutions like ROKU and Apple TV?  Of streaming services like Netflix and Vudu and Amazon?   It’s a whole new world out there and I’m playing in it and that’s fun.

Or, as it seems to me…

It has been several weeks since I’ve written a letter; it’s not that thoughts haven’t crossed my mind to write about – there have been lots of those.   There is the ever-evolving political scene that leaves me fascinated as if watching a slow motion train wreck.

On the lines of politics there was a stirring sermon at Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan, at a service I attended largely because my friend Lionel was assisting.  [I am part of that ever growing part of the population that defines itself as spiritual but not religious BUT like many of those wish I could find myself in a community of believers with whom I felt comfortable; where I do NOT feel comfortable is within my native Roman Catholic tradition, finding the religion of my birth and upbringing ever more repulsive in its intransigence and lack of charity (my feelings)].

The assistant pastor at Trinity that day made a stirring call for all to be involved and it moved me and reminded me I must be involved, particularly this year.  While I am pleased with neither candidate I am more committed to the Democratic Party and that for which it stands.  I am a Republican who yearns for that party to return to the ideals of yesteryear rather than a party that seems to be looking to the Roman Catholics for inspiration on how to behave.

All these things have caused me to think about writing but none of them stirred me to actually write.  I have been diverted by the amount of tweeting I have been doing, enough to raise my Klout score to 42, respectable if not amazing.  I have also started work on a short story so that might have also diverted me.  There is also I a monthly column I do for one of Odyssey’s members [oh yes, a Catholic organization] on new media directions called @tombers.

But there has been more than diversion going on.  I have felt a quiet settle on me these last few weeks as spring has slipped toward summer.  Today is Memorial Day and I have been mentally paying my respects to the soldiers of former wars but with most of my thoughts on those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, who have been returning to a dismal job market with the shadows of traumas I can only imagine following them as they work to reintegrate back into civilian life.  I am still embarrassed that no President has asked us as a population in general to sacrifice alongside these men and women – that’s an idea we seem to have given up post World War II.  Guns and butter I think it’s called.  Better that we had a bit of rationing and sacrifice to remind us of the bigger sacrifices being made by others.

As I roll on Amtrak down the Hudson River, the waterway is wide and calm and dotted with pleasure boats out for adventure on a beautiful late spring day on the weekend that is the unofficial beginning of the summer season.  Hudson was filled to the gills this week with returning weekenders; houseguests and a herd of folks come to escape the city without the expense or pretension of the Hamptons.  I loved to see the town hum.

But here I am, writing, happy to be doing so but still unsure what the silence has been that has settled around my soul.  Intimations of mortality?  Certainly I have seen mortality a bit in the sudden death of a friend and illness of another, enough for me to think about the fact that if I ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me.  As it does for all of us.

I’ll keep writing, when the words come.  I may start another blog based on my media musings.  That column is called @tombers so perhaps that is what I will call the blog.  But right now, this minute, I am on vacation, doing what I want to do rather than what I SHOULD do, a luxury I intend to do my best to pursue the next week as I work my way from Seattle back across the country.