Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’

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Letter From New York 12 23 2015 Peering through the fog…

December 23, 2015

It is relatively early in the morning and I am on the train, heading to New York City, where I will board a train to DC where I will board a train to Martinsburg, WV where I will be picked up by my friends Sarah and Jim Malone for the Holidays in Shepherdstown.

As I move south, rushing now between Rhinecliff and Poughkeepsie, the fog is so dense, it is impossible to see the Hudson River to my right.  It provides an eerie atmosphere to the morning, so warm that a light jacket is all one needs.  It is supposed to be seventy in Claverack on Christmas Eve.

Yesterday, I celebrated Christmas twice.  Once with young Nick, his partner Beth, and their three year old daughter, Alicia.   It gave me great smiles and bright eyes to see a three year old devour Christmas.  Earlier I gave her a “communicator” that allows her to talk with Santa Claus each day from December 1 to Christmas.  Nick and Beth tell me she is having a blast.

Then I cooked “Christmas” dinner for Lionel, Pierre and myself, mushroom soup, salad, a roast pork loin, mashed sweet potatoes and asparagus with a butter garlic sauce.  We had no room for dessert.

All day yesterday, I pretty much ignored the world, living in the solitude of the cottage, listening to Christmas carols and prepping for dinner.  The exception was at the gym, on the treadmill where I listened to the sad story of the young woman accused in the car rampage in Las Vegas.  A troubled youth who turned her life around and then…Las Vegas.  People are attempting to understand.

Then there was a long exegesis of the Middle East with Wolf Blitzer, the CNN perennial, and a Congressman and retired General, that left me feeling depressed.

The Congressman predicted that we will be engaged there for decades and the retired General opined our efforts are inadequate.  The Congressman wants more bombing, forget the civilians.  They are the necessary sacrifices to move the needle.  It underscored for me that “W” let the genie out of the bottle and he’s never going back in.

The Afghans have the best army they have had in years but corruption in Kabul is keeping them from getting bullets.

The Iraqis are fighting to retake Ramadi and have sent more troops in to help in the effort to hand IS its biggest defeat in two years.

The Donald keeps marching forward in the polls, up to 39% at this point, twice Ted Cruz’s standing and, according to recent polls, the Republicans are beginning to accept that Trump will be their standard bearer.  What?  Is this really happening?  Can’t I change the channel?

I lightened my mood a bit by reading the wild adventures of Madame Claude, arguably the most famous brothel owner in Paris’ history.  Her clients included most of the great names of the ’60’s and ’70’s.  She died in France at the venerable age of 92. 

The fog is still thick as we begin the last leg into New York, having just pulled out of Croton Harmon.  There are forty minutes left before we hit the city.  At noon I will board an Acela for the next leg.

Behind me there is a woman who has been on the phone now, non-stop, for well over an hour.  Occasionally when she needs to do something, she puts her caller on speakerphone.  I didn’t realize anyone talks on the phone that way anymore just like I can’t believe the Republican Party is thinking Trump is the hope for 2016.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 12 21 2015 Car rampage and a Miss Universe Gaffe

December 21, 2015

It is Monday morning and Christmas is four days away.  It is noon and I am sitting at the dining room table looking out at a grey world.  Across the creek, barren trees are swaying in the gusting wind.

My friends, Lionel and Pierre, arrived at their home across the street late last night and we had breakfast together this morning, scrambled eggs, bacon and toast while carols played in the background.

While we breakfasted news came flashing across our devices that some dozens had been injured and one killed in Las Vegas when a woman plowed her car into a crowd on the sidewalk outside the Paris Hotel and Casino.  With a toddler at her side the woman repeatedly plowed into the crowd. 

The police said it appeared intentional but not an act of terrorism.  The three year old with her was not harmed and the woman was taken into custody after doing her damage and then leaving the scene, parking some blocks away.

The 1996 Oldsmobile had Oregon plates and the woman had reportedly recently moved to Nevada.

How?  Why?

Lindsey Graham has suspended his presidential campaign. Not so long ago he complained that he couldn’t believe that Trump had so outdistanced him in the polls.  Obama has stated that Trump is “exploiting” anger and fear among working class men to propel his candidacy.  Yes, I think that’s true.

Also true is that Blatter and Platini, the two most powerful men in world soccer, have been banned from the sport for eight years for ethics violations. 

Near Bagram, Afghanistan, six NATO soldiers including some Americans, have been killed by a Taliban suicide bomber who plowed his motorcycle into a NATO/Afghan foot patrol.

Donald Trump sold the Miss Universe Pageant.  It was held in Las Vegas last night not far from where the car rampage occurred.  In a ghastly gaffe, Steve Harvey, the host, announced Miss Columbia was the winner when it was actually Miss Philippines.  Miss Columbia was first runner-up. 

You can imagine what the Twitterverse was like!  Lots of jokes about where was Trump when you needed him?

In other entertainment news, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has broken all box office records for a weekend opening, topping “Jurassic World.”  538 million dollars worldwide.  The Force has opened our pocketbooks.

Space X, Elon Musk’s space company, is launching from Cape Canaveral a payload of 11 satellites for Orbcomm, a communications company.  All eyes will be on what happens after the launch, to see if the rocket can land safely on land.  It would be the first time a rocket carrying an orbital payload will have done that.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, successfully launched and landed a test rocket last month.

Space is becoming the last frontier for billionaires, out to make even greater fortunes by making space more accessible.

It reminds me a bit of the 19th century’s railroad millionaires, battling it out to conquer the continent with their rail lines.

Shortly, Lionel and I are going grocery shopping for dinner, having our friend Matthew Morse over.  I have a few more packages to bag and need to start packing for my Christmas trip.  It is a funny sort of day for a funny sort of beginning to winter.  It will be in the 50’s this week in the Hudson Valley.

It will be a white Christmas only in our minds.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 11 14 15 The Real Great War to end all wars…

November 15, 2015

Paris. Hollande. IS. Daesh. Bruce Thiesen. Christopher Hitchens. Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. Afghanistan.  Alexander the Great. Russia. Viet Nam. Democratic Debate. Jihadi John. Marco Rubio.  Fox News. Libya. Pope Francis.  World War III. Genghis Khan. Fred and Ginger.  The Great Depression. The War to end all wars.

When I finished blogging yesterday, the body count in Paris was below thirty.  Today, when I woke and reached for my iPhone to check the news, 129 were dead, 350+ injured with 99 of them in critical condition.

Friends of mine, Chuck and Lois, have an apartment in Paris and spend a good part of every year there; thankfully they were not in Paris yesterday. 

All morning I felt grim, unbelieving and so very deeply saddened.

Last night’s event has touched the world in a way nothing has since 9/11.

Hollande has all but declared war on IS or Daesh, using the Arabic acronym for the organization.  Countries around the world have lit their most important buildings in the red, white and blue colors of the French flag.

There is the weight of tragedy in the air.  The events were on the mind of ever thinking person I know.

Bruce Thiesen, a fellow blogger, posted this quote from Christopher Hitchens:  This is an enemy for life as well as an enemy of life.

Truer words were never spoken.  It all harkens back to the horrors of World War II, of men like Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. 

The events of last night have infected my day as they have for everyone I know.  It came to me as I was shopping, for tomorrow is my day to do coffee hour after the 10:30 service, that Hollande is correct; we are at war.

I’ve felt that since 2003, when we invaded Iraq. We are at war. We have participated in wars without really involving the American public.  We fought but the public was to go on with their normal lives, shopping and eating at restaurants and not think about war.

I think that was a mistake.  In some way, shape or form, we should all be engaged if our men and women are fighting.

We should be actively supporting them in some way. 

It’s a favorite rant of mine.  I wanted to be asked to sacrifice if they were being asked to potentially make the ultimate sacrifice.

Now, we are years into this.  Afghanistan is our longest war ever, a place that has bedeviled military leaders since Alexander the Great, the place that was Russia’s Viet Nam, a place the British couldn’t hold at the height of their power.

Tomorrow there will be another Democratic Debate.  Really?  I’m exhausted already and can’t imagine all the campaigning yet to come.  But because of Paris, the debate will be focused more on terrorism and how the candidates would respond.

Jihadi John, the British terrorist who beheaded a number of men, is apparently dead in a drone attack.  On Friday, the head of IS in Libya is believed to have died in an air attack.

At the gym today, the TV at my treadmill was turned to Fox News and I actually didn’t change the channel.  I wanted to know what they were saying.  They brought on Marco Rubio who decried events and blamed them on Obama and said as President he would take the fight to them.

Yes, I do think that will happen.  Probably right now we’ll be led by France which, in righteous anger, will attack Daesh in every way it can.

More war.  Pope Francis suggested we are fighting World War III now, in bits and pieces.  He may be right.

Rubio said it was a “civilizational war” and he is not wrong. 

IS wants to destroy the West.  It hates our civilization with a passion and a fervor not seen, I suspect, since Genghis Khan who swept all before him before he and his Empire became dust in the wind.

It is dark.  Floodlights illuminate my beloved creek.  I am going to make myself a martini and watch a movie that, I hope, will transport me beyond the ugly realities of the day, the way Fred and Ginger lifted the hearts of Americans during the Great Depression.

We may well be now fighting the real Great War, the war to end all wars.

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Letter From New York 10 15 15 From the Kardashians to real issues…

October 15, 2015

Columbia County. P.D. James. Obama. Afghanistan. Alexander the Great. Pluto. Tom Swift. Tom Swift and His Atomic Blaster. Hardy Boys. Lamar Odom. Khloe Kardashian. The Kardashians. Love Ranch. Star Trek. Hillary Clinton.   Democratic debate. UN Security Council.

The sun setting in the west is crowning the trees on the far bank of the creek with a golden glow; the mirror still creek is golden, too, with the same light. It was a brilliant fall day in Columbia County, the air crisp and bright with a sky of soft blue across which scudded a few billowy clouds.

While observing this sun kissed fall chill day, I struggled with faulty Internet access, a recalcitrant printer and a scrum of personal paperwork that worked my nerves. In frustration, I left and went for lunch at Relish, running into Jeremiah Rusconi, between house restoration errands as he labors on a huge project across the river, in Athens.

Returning home, my stomach went tetchy and I decided it best to stay close to home, spending the afternoon continuing with the paper scrum.

Now as the day ends, I began to feel reflective, attempting to light a fire [not going well] in the Franklin stove while listening to music from the 1940’s and early ‘50’s.

In the future, I see a continuation of my reading of a P.D. James mystery while eschewing food for the rest of the evening.

Evenings like these are pleasing to me, giving me time to think, sort the world, at least in my own mind, and to enjoy the particular solitary life I lead.

While I was driving into town for lunch, I heard the confirmation of what was expected this morning – Obama will keep troops in Afghanistan for at least another year. Alexander the Great, the British, the Russians, all came to a nasty place in Afghanistan and I hope we don’t either.

While things on this planet are fairly grim, scientists are excited by the unexpected variety Pluto has to offer. It has an atmosphere. It has mountains. It is not what we expected. Information from the planetary flyby continues to come in and each new drip of information is a bit stunning. That excites me.

I was always a science fiction fan. Instead of the Hardy Boys, I read Tom Swift. One of my favorites was “Tom Swift and His Atomic Blaster.” A devotee of “Star Trek,” I hope we will continue our exploration of space. It does feel like the next frontier.

Also, while I was driving there was a radio report on Lamar Odom’s condition. The basketball and reality television star, not quite divorced from Khloe Kardashian, apparently ingested alcohol, cocaine and herbal sexual stimulants during a stay at a legal brothel, Love Ranch, in Nevada. He paid $75,000 for his stay and may also pay with his life.

Khloe is with him. He has been intubated. Not a good sign…

I have never understood the titanic appeal of the Kardashians. Boggles my mind.

While I didn’t watch the Democratic Debate on CNN, Hillary apparently, according to the pundits, is the winner while Bernie Sanders scored some points.

The United Nations has five new members on the Security Council, its most important body. They include Japan, Uruguay, Ukraine, Egypt and Senegal. It will be very interesting to watch. Ukraine is not exactly friendly with Russia, a permanent member of the Council and Egypt, usually a U.S. ally, has been playing footsie with the Russians.

We all thought this was going to be simpler when the Iron Curtain fell. Wrong.

For me, the sun has set and the golden light on the trees outside my window is from the spotlights I have installed. The mournful sound of jazz comes out of Pandora and my fire has almost come to fruition.

Tomorrow, I will continue the scrum with paperwork. But that is tomorrow.

Enjoy tonight.

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Letter From Martha’s Vineyard 08 10 15 Absolute peace vs. absolute violence…

August 10, 2015

Edgartown harbor is awash with golden light; boats are moving in both directions in front of me, to and fro, mostly using power rather than sails as the wind is light this afternoon. It’s been a lazy day; without the wind there is no sailing. I spent the morning on the veranda, reading a book, checking a few emails and taking in the breathtaking view.

Later, Jeffrey and I went down to Behind The Bookstore and had lunch, at the same time a rep was in offering wines to the restaurant. I sipped a very good Muscadet and a lovely Mont Gravet. I had a lamb burger and fries, wandering after lunch into the bookstore to pick up a copy of “All The Light You Cannot See” which had been recommended to me by my friend Neva Rae Fox.

Following that, we returned to the veranda, Jeffrey to do a bit of work and for me to write.

Tomorrow I will leave and go back to the cottage, spend a day there and then head down to the city for a couple of days. It is peaceful here; it is peaceful there.

There is not much peace elsewhere.

The one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, MO was marred by gunshots at the police. Responding, the police shot a man, 18-year-old Tyrone Harris, injuring him critically. He is being treated and has been charged with four counts, including assault on a police officer. Police were pelted with objects; there was another drive-by shooting and St. Louis County has declared a State of Emergency.

In Dubai, an Asian man prevented lifeguards from saving his twenty-year-old daughter when she began to drown. He felt their touch would “defile” her and he would rather her be dead than defiled. He got his way. He was arrested.

Pakistan is wracked by a child abuse scandal in a town near the Indian border. It is alleged a gang of fifteen to twenty men would force children at gunpoint or under the influence of drugs to have sex. They would take videos of them and then blackmail them and/or their families to keep them from being released. If they couldn’t pay, the children were expected to supply another child for abuse. It is estimated in the last years 280 children may have been used by this ring.

It makes me shudder. Yesterday Behind The Bookstore was crawling with children of the age of the abused in Pakistan. All that innocence destroyed.

Bombs have gone off in Afghanistan. That nation’s President blames Pakistan. Two gun-wielding women targeted the US Consulate in Istanbul; one of them was wounded and captured. In various attacks in Turkey, nine have been killed.

Miguel Ángel Jiménez Blanco, a Mexican activist, was found slain in his taxi today. He played a prominent role in the search for the 43 students who have been missing as well as others who have disappeared. There are no suspects at this time.

Two men apparently killed a man and a woman in the cookware department of an Ikea in Sweden, about 100 kilometers from Stockholm.

That’s the sort of day it has been out there in the world. It keeps on with its violence while I sit on the veranda and absorb the peace of Martha’s Vineyard. A sailboat glides by, running on its engine, towing a dingy behind it. It is picture postcard perfect here in Edgartown.

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Letter From New York 07 29 15 Of missile launches, lion hunts and other things…

July 29, 2015

It is a sunny and blistering hot day in New York. I had a lunch today at Sarabeth’s in Lord & Taylor on 5th Avenue. It is not a terrible walk but by the time I arrived there, I was more than damp and glad I had topped off with a cold drink of water before I left. Coming back, I caught the bus right outside the store and rode it to Penn Station, walking from there to the office.

When I left the apartment this morning, I turned off the air conditioning but it may have been wiser to leave it on. Heat warnings are in effect for NYC until tomorrow at 8:00 PM. People are to restrain outside activities between 11 and 4 and cooling centers are open for those who might not have air conditioning.

As the day begins to fade, I am gathering my thoughts about the events of the world.

Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, has apparently been dead for the last two years, according to the Afghans. US Intelligence is examining the claim closely. Supposedly, he died in a Pakistani hospital of an undetermined illness. If he is dead, it may help the peace process. Or not. Some of his supporters have broken from the Taliban and proclaimed their allegiance to IS.

The murkiness continues.

Some parts of a plane washed up on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. They are being examined to see if they are pieces to the missing MH 370, the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared in March of 2014, leaving behind no trace. Despite huge search efforts, nothing has been found and the mystery has been unabated.

Another Malaysian Airliner was shot down over Ukraine. Effort has been being made to initiate a UN tribunal to look into the events surrounding the downing of the flight but they are being blocked by Russia.

Two young Florida boys went fishing. Their boat was found capsized 180 miles from where they started. The search continues, without a trace of them so far.

There is a religious festival that is held every five years in Nepal. Five hundred thousand [500,000] animals have their throats cut. It won’t be happening this year. Priests at the temple of Gidhimai have said that there will be an indefinite halt to the sacrifices to this Goddess of Power. Animal activists are pleased but don’t intend to lower their watch. I think it’s the use of the word “indefinite” that concerns them.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is an old saying that is not holding up between the Turks and the Kurds. Both are fighting IS but they haven’t quit fighting each other. Erdogan, President of Turkey, is concerned because the Kurdish party won 13% of the vote in the last election. Something it has never done. Erdogan is accusing some of the Kurdish members of Parliament of having ties to terrorism. The Erdogan accusations are getting a lot of play; Kurdish rebuttals are receiving little attention.

The Government of Kim Jong-un, everyone’s favorite pudgy little dictator, looks like it is getting ready for a new missile test, having just finished upgrading its rocket launch facility. It will raise tensions between North Korea and the rest of the world, again, and probably result in more sanctions. It will probably happen in October when there is a big political celebration.

Over the last couple of days, hundreds of migrants have stormed the Chunnel, between England and France, desperate to make it to the UK. Riot police have been called out. The Mediterranean problem is sweeping north.

A Minnesota dentist paid $50,000 for a big game hunt in Zimbabwe. He hired a couple of locals. They lured a lion out of a park and he was felled with a crossbow. It turns out the lion was a local tourist favorite, Cecil the Lion. The uproar is horrific. Walter Palmer, the dentist, is apologetic, saying he relied on the locals to ensure a legal hunt. But it looks like the website to his practice has been taken down and he has been thoroughly trashed on social media.

I was not aware that one could still legally hunt wild game in Africa. I thought the only shooting that could be done was with a camera. I was wrong.

It took the hunters forty hours to locate Cecil and to end his misery with a gunshot.

And in ending today’s blog, how better to end it than with an update on The Donald? He has gone on record saying he would welcome Sarah Palin in his administration.

Oh my.

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Letter From New York 04 07 15 From the heat of Delhi to the chill of the Northeast…

April 7, 2015

Outside the cottage, it’s grey and damp, all the colors very muted after the riot of hues, which was India. I can hardly keep my eyes open and am crying for a nap.

I made this an easy day, collecting two plus weeks of mail, sorting it, paying some bills, attempting not to do any serious mental work as my brain is more than a little cloudy.

It is both good and a bit odd being home; hard to grasp I have come and gone from India, that it was real and not a dream. I have thank you notes to write. My friend Sanjay was incredibly generous and that humbles me. Everywhere I went in India, people went out of their way to make me feel comfortable and respected.

I got out just before the burning heat of summer descends on the country; there were little tastes of it along the way and I’m glad to be missing it.

Tomorrow I must get down to work, having a few things due on Thursday when I will be going back to the city. I’ll be there Thursday and Friday and then again most of next week.

Next, I need to sort out the things which I brought back for people, little gifts from the markets and the things from my friend, Jag’s, Crazy Daisy store in Delhi.

To fight the chill, I have lit a fire in the Franklin stove and turned up the heat a bit. Jazz plays in the background.

Spring is not willing to grab the land and bless it with warmth. Old man winter is grumpily holding on, determined we not forget him too soon this year. And he has been successful.

While I have been acclimating to being home, Rand Paul has declared he is running for the Presidency, number two in the Republican game. He is likely to be followed by as many as twenty more. It’s a banner year for Republican contenders.

Speaking of things Washington, a power outage affected much of DC this afternoon, including the White House, which went on a back-up generator, and the State Department where a spokesperson used the light on her phone to continue handling questions.

The EU is a bit in the dark about why Prime Minister Tsipras of Greece is gallivanting off to Moscow to visit with Putin. It is making them nervous; Tsipras’ flirtations come as the tortuous negotiations over Greece’s debt continues. In another gambit, Greece has declared that Germany owes it about 280 billion Euros in war reparations. Germany asserts these claims have long been settled.

It’s the day many have been waiting for: HBO Now [as opposed to HBO Go] is available on iOS devices. It means you can now watch “Game of Thrones” without a cable subscription. It is going to be REALLY interesting to watch how this plays out. HBO and sports are two major reasons people keep their cable subscriptions. One reason down…

Now that Tikrit is back in the hands of the Iraqis, they have begun discovering a series of mass graves believed to hold the remains of 1700 Iraqi cadets who were captured by IS and murdered. While this gruesome task is going one, there is another task in front of the liberating Shia forces: to win the hearts and minds of the Sunnis who mostly inhabit the region.

For years, Tony Blair, the former Labour Prime Minister of Britain, has been keeping a very low profile. He has “issues” with Mr. Miliband, who is now leading the Labour Party. But he has recently declared his “full support” for Miliband, who loudly repudiated the policies of Blair to gain leadership of the party. Blair is warning about holding a referendum on Europe, which Tory Prime Minister Cameron is advocating.

Strife continues in Yemen; there are reports bombs hit a school, killing a number of students. Aden is being bombarded by air and from the sea. The country may descend into a worse humanitarian crisis than Syria and that probably would only play into the hand of Al-Qaeda. The Houthi rebels are being supported to some extent by Iran while the Saudis are full blown in their efforts to restore the previous government. It is a crisis threatening to spiral out of control.

Now I am going to do my best to catch a quick nap before going over to Coyote Flaco for some fajitas. I didn’t find those in India.

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Letter From New York November 24, 2014

November 24, 2014

The days are slipping away as we hurtle toward Thanksgiving and the Holidays. The leaves are virtually gone from the trees here in the Hudson Valley; ragged winds the last few nights have finished them off. One more time I will have to have the gutters emptied and then we should be good until spring.

Today, it is nearly seventy degrees and I am just freshly in from a walk around my circle, stopping to chat with a couple of neighbors – one, like me, out for a walk and the others battening down the hatches getting their antique car ready for winter. It is cocooned in tarps all winter and then comes out gleaming in the spring, fresh and ready for another summer.

They’re the ones who told me that there is talk of a nor’easter come Turkey Day. My pie man, David, alerted me this morning he wants to come on Wednesday to make his delivery as he is concerned about what it will be like on Thanksgiving itself. Sounds like a storm acomin’.

And it’s hard to think of a winter bluster bearing down on us when it is too warm to even wear a sweater on a walk around the circle today.

Last night I went to a charity event down in Rhinebeck at The Rhinecliff Hotel, a money raiser for a group of teens who go from the local high school down to Nicaragua to build classrooms in a village called La Cieba. They’ve been doing it for six or seven years. My friend Robert’s daughter is going on this year’s trip and so he invited me down.

I was touched by the camaraderie and bonhomie between the students, young and fresh and ready to do good things. Cue the applause for them. They had shiny, well scrubbed faces and oozed of optimism.

They made me smile. And I felt better for knowing they were around. I was impressed with how comfortable they seemed in their skins and personhoods. They laughed and touched while signaling their peacefulness with their presence in the world. They weren’t sullen. And they were going home from working the event to do their math for the next day.

It was heart warming.

What’s not so heart warming are all the other things going on in the world so far from the place inhabited by those optimistic teens of yesterday. There was a suicide bombing in Afghanistan; ISIS may behead another hostage. There is a staccato beat of bad news that has infiltrated the very soul of the world, which was why it was so refreshing to meet those young people last night – alive with their hopes and dreams and aspirations and seemingly feeling empowered to be able to create change.

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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 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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