It is a relentlessly beautiful day on Martha’s Vineyard.
Yesterday, I awoke and, in a habit I am attempting to break, reached for my phone and realized a new text message had come in while I was sleeping. It was from my friend Nick [though calling him “friend” underserves our relationship]. He is in the UK awaiting the birth of his first granddaughter. His text was the way I heard the news of Britain’s decision to exit the EU.
I literally shuddered.
The unthinkable has happened and, as predicted, world markets tumbled, crumbled, tanked, take any word with a downside meaning and apply it to the markets and that’s what happened on Friday though the US was down only about half of what other markets were.
The Republican presumptive nominee for President, The Donald, was in Scotland when the Brexit results were announced. He trumpeted it as a harbinger for his own campaign in the States. He was making these statements from his golf course in Aberdeen. Scotland did not vote to Brexit and is thinking of a new referendum on independence from England so it can get back in the EU.
As is Northern Ireland, which also voted to stay and is now thinking of slipping away from Britain and maybe reuniting with Ireland. Some in Northern Ireland are scrambling to see how to get Irish passports as Ireland is an EU country.
The British young are crying out to the older voters who went for Brexit: you stole our future.
David Cameron will step down by October as Prime Minister. Boris Johnson, who campaigned for Brexit, is being chatted up to be the new Prime Minister. Formerly Mayor of London, he is both flamboyant and eccentric, a bit like our Donald.
Jeremy Corbyn, who leads the opposition Labour Party, is facing a coup attempt based on what is perceived as his failure to do enough to stop Brexit.
Brexit is a crisis that will unfold in the weeks to come, will have ramifications of huge magnitude here in the states and which changes history.
The Donald gave a press conference while in Scotland. Read a transcript of it at this link:
It lends credibility to Arianna Huffington’s belief that The Donald is acting like a sleep deprived human being. He’s proud that he only sleeps four hours a night and at his press conference, he did sound like a person who lacked the ability to connect the dots in his remarks.
Interestingly, many Evangelical leaders who did not support Trump are now climbing aboard Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board. Of course, they are not endorsing him but only “advising” him, hedging their bets against whichever way the wind blows.
Back here, at least 26 are dead in West Virginia’s devastating floods. One of them was four year old Edward McMillon, swept away even as his grandfather chased him, almost caught him and lost him. The town searched and found him in a creek that is normally only a few inches deep but had gone to six feet in the storms.
A house in flames floated down a swollen creek in what has been the worst flooding in the state in a hundred years.
Two are dead and several wounded in a shooting at a hip hop dance studio in Fort Worth. It was an apparently a party the owner hadn’t authorized; the studio is a non-profit to help kids stay out of trouble.
In Kern County, CA 46 square miles are burning, only 5% contained and two are dead, 100 homes lost and another 1500 threatened.
So goes our world, this early afternoon on the 25th of June.
Right now I am looking out across the carefully curated flowers at my friends’ home and am about to go down to the bookstore to see if they need help. Both the cafe and the bookstore were jamming today.
Brexit and The Donald and politics and evangelicals all seem very faraway and I am going to allow myself to feel faraway from them today and savor the moment. I said to Jeffrey, “I woke up happy.” And that’s what I am going to choose today.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York, via the Vineyard 06 30 2016 Acts worthy of Shakespeare…
July 1, 2016It is a bucolic time of day on Martha’s Vineyard; the sun is beginning to set. A sailboat has gone by, heading to the north. Its sail is designed like a huge American flag while moving to the south is the Edgartown Water Taxi, ferrying people to their docks. The light is a marvelous gold and the water is steel blue. Jeffrey’s sailboat rides at anchor directly in front of me, looking stately. The scene is peaceful, other worldly, of another dimension than the rest of the world.
The rest of the world is not peaceful.
Britain is in spasms. Boris Johnson, former Mayor of London, a prime supporter of Brexit, poised and desiring to be the next Prime Minister, found himself outflanked by the man who was to have been his campaign manager, Michael Gove. Long saying he was not aspiring to higher office, he released a statement hours before Boris was to make his speech announcing that he was seeking to be Prime Minister saying that he could not support the former Mayor of London and that he was running for the position himself.
As Boris’ father said, “Et tu, Brute?” It was an act worthy of Shakespeare. Boris then announced he was not seeking to be PM.
A nasty race is ahead for the Tories with Boris gone and characters worthy of “House of Cards” rend against each other.
The Labour Party is also rent. Their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been given a “no confidence” vote by his party and it seems every politician in Britain is urging him to depart but he clings to his position with a kind of astounding ferocity surprising in so absolutely colorless a man.
Turkey says that the bombers in the terrible attack at Istanbul’s International Airport were all from the former USSR and were directed by IS out of Raqqa in Syria, their erstwhile capital. One of the victims was a father attempting to prevent his son from joining IS.
Tomorrow is July 1st. A hundred years ago marked the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in WWI. In the eighteen months it raged, there were a million casualties. Today Prince William, Prince Harry and Princess Kate were there to honor the dead, to let the world know they were not forgotten. In the first day of fighting, nearly 60,000 were wounded and a third of those died. During those awful eighteen months “the flower” of English youth died in one of the bloodiest, if not the bloodiest, battle in all of history.
The Taliban killed 33 Afghan police recruits today, a number that is dwarfed by that of the Battle of the Somme, but like the English, French, South Africans who died in France in 1916, those 33 had families, wives and children perhaps, lives that will never be found again.
Hopefully found again will be a commerative coin given by President Obama to the country’s oldest Park Ranger, 94 year old Betty Reid Soskin, who was attacked last night in her apartment by a young man who punched her and robbed her. She wants the world to understand she is not a victim but a survivor. 94!
I am winding down now as the harbor slips into a soft silver lavender light. Faraway, a dog barks, a soft breeze is blowing off the harbor. I am far away from all the madness. A week from tomorrow I leave to return to my cottage, itself a haven from the madness.
Tags:Betty Reid Soskin, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Claverack, IS, Isis, Jeremy Corbyn, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Michael Gove, Obama, Syria, Turkey bombings, USSR
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