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Letter from the Vineyard, March 2026

March 24, 2026

A Letter from the Vineyard, written in segments, during March 2026

Alas, Babylon…

It’s a Saturday night, as I begin to write this.  It’s the night we “spring forward,” an exercise always leaves me feeling off, always makes me wonder why I am doing it? Why is the country doing it? British Columbia, apparently, has said: this is it, no more, after this.

It leaves me feeling tired for some reason, more tired than had I jumped time zones.

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We are a little more than a year into the presidency of Mr. Trump; I am exhausted. I woke on the last Saturday of February to find we’re bombing Iran. 

The articulated reasons are inchoate and constantly evolving.  The notion of boots on the ground is terrifying.  Have we learned nothing in my lifetime? Apparently not. But probably Bibi is happy. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is cheering us on!

Kristi Noem has been fired. Hooray! Markwayne Mullin as a substitute? Not encouraging. Will probably play the game smarter than Kristi [not hard to do] and a Trump loyalist. In the NY Times, the amazing Frank Bruni wrote about how we are being governed by incompetents.  If you have a subscription, here’s the article.

The chaos exhausts me.

Really exhausts me.  As it does like-minded customers in my store, fellow parishioners at St. Andrew’s, everyone I know who isn’t a die-hard supporter of Trump and his minions.

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Now it’s a Monday; I spent a pleasant day in the bookstore, researching upcoming books and making sure we had the ones I wanted on order – so many books released in a week! The sun was out; it felt springlike and downtown Edgartown was deserted.  I think everyone was in their yard cleaning up debris from the storm.

The storm, worst since ’78 said everyone.  1978 was brutal in Minnesota too, the year I fled to California, a decision made on a night when it was 73 degrees below zero wind chill factor. It led to this crazy, wonderful life I’m leading.

Reality is a hard pill to swallow.  Especially now, in this dystopian [to me] Trump era when I read accounts of people in this administration talk about what they’re doing.  My head explodes.

Pete Hegseth sounds like he is on SNL, except, god help us all, he isn’t.  He is really in charge of the Department of Defense. No, wait!  The Department of War, which is what he just started, at the bidding of our president, Trump. Undeclared by Congress, by the way.  Democratic and Republican presidents have for the last how many decades found ways to bypass Congress in military adventures?

Donald Trump, having kicked the hornet’s nest, has no idea what he has unleashed.  He is remaking the world; I wonder will we like the new model? 

The Iranian people who rioted against the theocracy just months ago are too busy dodging bombs to rise up again while at the same time they are likely turning against Trump – and all of us. 

My friends Misha and Quadri were stranded in Dubai, changing planes when this fresh hell manifested itself, spent harrowing days without any help from the US government. Back in the Obama years, a friend of mine worked at State, was in charge of making sure Americans were helped in situations like this.  No more, apparently.

On March 14th Trump said we might bomb Kharg Island again, “just for fun.”  WTF. An American president talking about bombing – just for fun? I am profoundly disturbed. Just for fun? From an American president?

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation [didn’t know about it either] has reported troops are being told by some commanders the Iran War is divinely ordained, the trigger for Armageddon as foretold in the Book of Revelation.

The Secretary for War also has also draped his Pentagon in Christian symbolism while declaring we would “give no quarter” which, to some legal heads, is a war crime.

My friend Carolyn pointed out this was fodder for satire in the ‘60’s. But now, 60 years later, satire it’s not.

Trump’s approval rating is falling around affordability issues, not his lack of moral fiber.  If I am reading the polls correctly, three quarters of the country disapproves of his actions against Iran. But we are more concerned about prices than the deaths happening because of this fiasco. 175 children because of outdated intelligence among them.

Mr. Trump called NATO members “cowards” for not sending help.  Well, Mr. Trump, you have eviscerated them during both your terms.  Any wonder they’re not joining? You didn’t even bother telling them before you started bombing.  You are successfully breaking down the hegemony which has sustained us through my lifetime.

Robert Mueller is dead, a stoic civil servant if ever there was one. Mueller had investigated Trump.  On hearing of his death, Mr. Trump said something like, good, I’m glad.  Not surprising from Trump but really? You’re the president.  A little decorum? Not going to happen.

Yesterday armed ICE agents arrived at some airports. What can go wrong?

I am hoping we make it out of this life without Trump starting a nuclear war. Seriously, it wakes me up sometimes.

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Letter from the Vineyard

October 30, 2025

October, 2025

Letter from the Vineyard, October 2025

On October 18th, across the country, millions moved onto the streets for a “No Kings” demonstration or, as some Republicans categorized it, a “Hate America,” rally.

Looking at all the reports, it seemed anything but a “Hate America” rally; rather an unabashed love fest for this country and what it stands for, for the things which have made us wonderfully unique.

No mistake, we are at a pivotal point. We have been before.  Pick up Jill Lepore’s “These Truths,” a history of the United States; there have been times we have been at the brink and have come back, better.

There is never a guarantee.  The Athenians lost democracy, the Romans their Republic. But nothing is inevitable and, for the first time since we entered this Project 2025 bad dream, I felt hope.

The protests were delightful, mocking; nothing a movement like Trump’s detests more than being mocked. 

Much of what outrages us is not just Trump; it is the people around Trump.  He’s not smart enough to be pulling all this off.

He is being used by men who understand he has captured the imagination of the disaffected in this country, men like Stephen Miller who is driving immigration policy, like Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, main architect of Project 2025, who, for whatever reasons, seems to have devoted his adult life to creating an executive that surpasses all other parts of the government.

It’s been played before in this country.  We may be besotted by the streaming series “The Gilded Age,” but then there were men trying to do what these men are attempting to do today, create an oligarchy.

They think, because they are rich, they are better, smarter.

I think these men have done amazing things. It does not give them the right to rule.

Musk is marching toward being the world’s first trillionaire, has just launched Grokipedia, an alternative to Wikipedia, which depends entirely upon Grok, Musk’s AI creation for its information. Grok seems to share the biases of Mr. Musk himself. What could go wrong?

The would be oligarchs love the administration of Donald Trump because it is making it easy for them to shape the world to their wants. Stephen Miller wants a white world. Russell Vought apparently wants an Il Duce; one he can control. He seems to be getting it.

We’re in a government shutdown. Kristi Noem, head of Homeland Security, created a video blaming the Democrats for the shutdown.  Well, there just went another norm. 

The stress is beginning to show.  Flights were halted into LAX because of a shortage of air traffic controllers.

And the norms broken keep getting bigger.

We woke up, discovered the East Wing of the White House was no more. How was this possible? How did a part of the White House get destroyed without some oversight, some deep dive into its historical importance, a look at alternatives?

It is true the White House complex needs a space to entertain; tenting is not an ideal solution but was it necessary to destroy one wing of the White House to provide it? 

The SNAP program is running out of money.  The Trump Administration won’t use billions in reserve to support it.

“The Great Big Beautiful Bill” is setting the groundwork for the United States to carry a debt ratio similar to Italy and Greece, countries whose financial crises almost brought down the European Union.  And who thought this was a good idea? Under a Republican president?  Under a Republican Congress? This is happening?

It is.

Speaker Johnson won’t seat a Democratic Congressperson from Arizona, nor will he call Congress back into session.  The administration apparently doesn’t want him to as it gives them some opportunities to consolidate power into the Executive Branch though it’s not Trump thinking this up.  Russell Vought, is that you, calling the shots?

Trump jokes about a third term. Steve Bannon says there is “a plan.” It’s not constitutionally possible but when has the impossible tempered this administration?

We have gone beyond norm breaking, entering uncharted territory.

So, let us go back to where I started:  the protests, the lovely, crazy, wonderful, “No Kings” protests. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan wrote in “Why Civil Resistance Works” that if 3.5% of a population of a country’s population takes to the streets, political change becomes likely; not guaranteed, but history suggests it will. 

It’s estimated there were 7 million in the streets, that’s 2%.  Next time I will shut the shop and take to the streets. Let’s get out there, change the world.

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Letter from the Vineyard 11.02.24

November 3, 2024

It has been an age since a “letter;” I stopped when it became apparent Trump would be the Republican nominee; to comment on the world meant mentioning him – I couldn’t, toxic to me.

And Biden was failing, faltering, laying open a path to put Trump in the White House. 

Then Biden withdrew, Harris pulled the Democratic Party together in a New York minute; as Sherlock would say, the game was afoot.

My family was Republican, I was Republican, left in the Reagan years, when the seeds of today’s Republican party were sown, the beginning of an unholy, to me, alliance between the GOP and the Christian Right, about votes for the GOP, about abortion for the Christian Right.

For decades it’s gone on, paying off for the Christian Right, thanks to the current Supreme Court.

Two years ago, I registered as a Republican, even if the Republican Party as I knew it no longer existed. Registered, I can fight for it, in small ways.

This is from The Atlantic magazine’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, only its fourth in a history predating Lincoln, who it also endorsed.

“If you’re a conservative who can’t abide Harris’s tax and immigration policies, but who is also offended by the rottenness of the Republican Party, only Trump’s final defeat will allow your party to return to health … We believe that American politics are healthiest when vibrant conservative and liberal parties fight it out on matters of policy.”

This is a fight for country and party.  Trump is not a Republican, having perverted the Republican Party to serve his narcistic needs.

His claim to fame is he is a successful businessman, telling folks he got a small loan from his dad to get started.  Not true.  His father bailed him out over and over.   Read “Lucky Loser,” they have the receipts. 

“The Apprentice” saved him; in need of cash flow, he got it from posing as a successful businessman, over $400 million in desperately needed dollars.  While the show was running he went through two bankruptcies, out of, what, six? Eight?

John Miller, head of marketing for NBC at the time, is on an apology tour for his role in convincing people Trump was a successful businessman.

Does no one see he is deteriorating in front of us, under the glare of klieg lights? Dancing when people have collapsed at one of his rallies, discussing Arnold Palmer’s genitals? Suggesting guns be aimed at Liz Cheney?

The media, which Trump hates, does not hold him accountable as they did Biden. 

What is any Christian thinking, voting for him, a man who has cheated almost everyone who has ever worked for him, refusing to pay what they are owed, who’s cheated on his wives, who’s been ordered to pay compensation to a woman he assaulted?  The judge called it rape.

Roy Cohn, who did Joe McCarthy’s dirty work, denied he was gay even as he died of AIDS, trained Trump to attack, attack, deny, deny.  Cohn was one of the most execrable characters of the 20th century.

Trump is being supported by lots of billionaires, including Elon Musk, who has got to be the most brilliant, looniest character ever. And who seems to have been chatting with Putin regularly.

Trump is offering to help shelter billionaire’s wealth.

We have the greatest income gap since the Gilded Age, when the country tottered between revolution and reform. Teddy Roosevelt’s reforms saved us from oligarchy.

Trump will advance oligarchy. 

The Romans built their empire on the backs of slaves.  The United States has a dirty secret, it’s built on the backs of immigrants.  Our immigration policy has been flawed since there was immigration policy. 

Trump rallied the troops to block immigration reform in Congress because he wanted to campaign on the issue, a plan crafted by Republicans. Biden had caved.

Unless you’re Native American, you’re an immigrant or descended from one. 

But German, Swedish, Italian, Polish immigrants were white.  Many new arrivals have different skin colors, not okay.  We have not resolved our racist past.

Trump promises mass deportations.

Be prepared to pay higher prices on everything.  Milk will skyrocket without immigrants to work the fields.  Farmers will lose their livelihood.

His tariffs?  Inflation will skyrocket because we’ve outsourced nearly everything.

Is he a fascist? Yes. Is he Hitler like? No, more like Mussolini. But behind him, are people not too morally far from Hitler’s men.  Project 2025.

Those folks are ideological descendants of people who have wanted America fascist for over a century, have worked at it, now within a vote of getting it. 

John Kelly, retired general, Trump’s longest serving Chief of Staff, denounced him as fascist.

Other Republicans repudiate Trump.  Pence has, Liz Cheney, her father, former VP Dick Cheney has, Shawn Reilly, Mayor of Waukesha, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stephanie Grisham, Jimmy McCain, son of John, seventeen members of the Ronald Reagan’s staff, saying Reagan would support Harris, former Senator Jeff Flake; they number in the hundreds.

Especially since his Madison Square Garden rally turned into a racist debacle.

Evil is afoot.  Stop it.  Kamala may not be your ideal candidate though she has hope, is competent, can complete a sentence. Or withhold your vote from Trump. Write yourself in.

Dorothy Thompson, a pioneering journalist, exiled from Germany by the Nazis, wrote:

“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument – the Incorporated National Will. … When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say “Heil” to him, nor will they call him “Führer” or “Duce.” But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of “O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!”*

I hear the bleating in the streets.

Time for it to stop.

*New York Herald column, February 12, 1937

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Letter From Claverack 10 26 2017 Disgusted by them all…

October 26, 2017

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As I begin writing this letter, I am in New York City, at Birch, a coffee house just east of 5th Avenue on 27th, waiting for a friend and a colleague. There are some things he wants to chat over with me and then I will go to dinner with my great good friend, Nick Stuart and his friend, Jodd. Post dinner, I will head back to the cottage for a bunch of meetings and things to do tomorrow.
Walking from Penn Station to Birch, I realized how my relationship with New York City has changed over the last eighteen years. I’ve gone from “bright lights, big city” to being delighted not to be here that often; I have grown accustomed to the quiet of the country. Penn Station is an assault on the system after the tiny, bucolic station in Hudson and walking through the streets of the city, I feel more a sense of pressure, for want of another word, since I came here in 1999 to begin to live, then splitting my time between Los Angeles and New York.
For the last two and a half years, I have been mostly at the cottage and have slipped into the role and attitude of someone who lives in the country. On weekends, when the county fills with out of towners, I cringe when horns are blasted if someone doesn’t move quickly enough.
I relish waking in the morning to look out over the creek and to look out at my land and see no one.
One needs that kind of quiet and solitude these days to absorb the world news:

o A California judge won’t force Obamacare payments from the Federal government.
o Hillary and the Democrats paid for the dossier on Trump.
o The NAACP is warning people of color not to fly American Airlines.
o Whatever is going on with tax reform remains incomprehensible to me.
o The brother of the Las Vegas shooter was picked up on child porn charges.
o The president and a Gold Star widow can’t quit feuding.
o China’s Xi Jinping probably is with us indefinitely and we’ll see if that’s a good thing or a bad thing AND he’s now as important as Mao and Deng!!!!
o The ease of travel with a US passport has plummeted since Trump has become president.
o The US and North Korea are continuing saber rattling. North Korea is talking hydrogen bomb and the US military action.
o Amazon is going to start delivering packages into our homes. [Ah, not mine. Yet.]
o President George H.W. Bush has been accused by an actress of groping her in 2014. And has apologized.
o A Houston resident, originally from Mexico, died of flesh eating bacteria after working on homes damaged in Harvey. He was the third Houston case; the others were non-fatal.
o The Trump campaign, via a data analytics firm, contacted Wikileaks to access emails from Clinton’s server to make them into a searchable database for the campaign.

Is it any wonder that yesterday when I walked along the wooded lane that is Patroon Street, I thought about none of these things?
I thought of other things, the changing of the leaves, friends, personal things, upcoming trips, hopeful things.
My amazement at the world is unbridled. Today, I commented to a friend: I think we are living in the second Gilded Age and my comfort comes from remembering that did not last and was reined in, eventually.
Each day, I get up and read the papers and find my eyes go wide while I say: lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my…
The Toronto Star blazoned out that Trump broke his own record this week – of lies. They counted 57 whoppers.
Call me disgusted by them all.

 

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Letter From Claverack 10 21 2017 Dinner parties and politics…

October 21, 2017

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Last Saturday night was one of the most magical nights ever at the Cottage.  Six friends from the train community came over for dinner and it entirely worked.  The food was good, the menu seemed to please everyone, the wine pairings were appreciated, the dinner setting seemed to please, the conversation flowed.  People arrived around 7 PM and left around 1:15 AM and it felt as if no time had passed.

We worked our way from cheese and crackers, to radishes with butter and kosher salt to a potato and leek soup, followed by a salad with beets and candied pecans, salmon filets with a mustard mayonnaise sauce, finished by a chocolate ganache meringue cake.  We laughed and rejoiced in each other’s company.

Early on, it was determined we would avoid politics which is a choice that only limits and does not eliminate the conversation.  How could it be otherwise?  So much is going on that the tumult cannot be completely ignored but it can be limited.

One person reminded us that Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the war years, had a weekly cocktail party for Cabinet members and aides and the one thing they could NOT talk about was the war.  Anything but the war.  Their children, their gardens, their hobbies, fly-fishing but not the war.  The President said something like:  we need to have lives.

Saturday night, for the most part, we chose to have lives.  We talked of upcoming plans, recent vacations, upcoming things that would bring us joy.  But not politics. Much.  Just a little.

The week just past had been tumultuous.  Healthcare is in shambles and Trump’s order to stop paying subsidies will be challenged in courts by some states, including New York.  Some New York congressmen, Republicans, are suddenly calling for bi-partisan action to fix the ACA.

The president is not going to certify the Iran agreement and is throwing it to Congress to fix it while the Secretary of State seems to contradict the president on the Sunday morning talk shows.  Our allies in Europe are scratching their heads about us and how to absorb that a far-right party seems to be coming to power in Austria.

Reading the papers today, everyone seemed to have advice on how to mentally escape the chaos.  Watch and read Harry Potter again.  Rom-coms are just the thing.  Murder mysteries are quite a diversion.

And we do need diversion.  My mind hurts more than it doesn’t.  Every morning I get up, read the NY Times, the Washington Post and WSJ and find myself going what the…

Sometimes I avoid the headlines until later in the day, particularly if I have things to do.

If I don’t, I fear a kind of madness.

 

This epistle was started last Sunday evening.  Monday morning found me wretchedly ill; the vague sense I wasn’t well the week before suddenly became the reality.  Monday and Tuesday were devoted to sleep and recuperation, Wednesday my radio show.  It had been my intention to go to the city on Wednesday for dinner with a friend and I could not quite muster the energy, fearful of pushing too far, too fast.

And now I am home from a meeting, curled up in the cottage, finishing a letter started nearly a week ago.

The madness goes on and I do my best to maintain my balance.  My friend Lynn speaks frequently to me of her difficulty of maintaining balance these days; she feels assaulted on a daily basis.

Some Facebook friends post things that cause me to wonder why they are my Facebook friends as we are so politically divergent?  One California friend posted something and asked for comments.  All I could say was: ah, I don’t know what to say.

Harvey Weinstein, producer extraordinaire and, allegedly, serial sexual predator, has fallen from grace as woman after woman after woman has come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct.  He has been ejected from The Academy of Motion Pictures Sciences; the Producer’s Guild is working on doing the same.  The TV Academy is considering it.  Organizations are making moves to strip him of honors.

Is this a turning point for Hollywood?  Perhaps.  Certainly, it is putting out notice that the game is changing.

Mr. Trump is involved in another brou ha ha with Gold Star families.  John Kelly has Trump’s back, which I find interesting.

The common wisdom seems to be that our president can’t help himself from wounding himself and, from my vantage point, it seems plausible.

Without invoking his name, both George W. and Obama have delivered rebukes to the president.  Wowza!  W and Clinton have found themselves friendly.  Will the same happen with W and Obama?  Time will tell.

Time to say good-bye for this missive but not before circling back to last Saturday’s dinner which may well have been the best the cottage has ever seen.

Thank you, Robert and Tanya, James and Susan, Maria and Dairo.  You have made your mark on the history of a special place.

 

 

 

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Letter From Claverack 10 12 2017 Thoughts on what I would preach…

October 12, 2017

At sea

Monday, I sent out a blog inspired by Mother Eileen’s sermon at Christ Church on Sunday and forwarded her a copy as she is not on my list.  She wrote back the following day and jokingly suggested I might preach this Sunday, which led me to think about what I would preach.  What would I say if I had to, this Sunday, preach at a church?

I looked up the gospel for next Sunday and its essential line is:  many are called but few are chosen.

Certainly, that fits with last year’s election cycle which started with more candidates for the Republican nomination for president than I remember in my life.  Many were called and, in the end, the one that was chosen was Donald Trump and he went on to become President of these United States.

It will probably surprise many who know me but every week at church I light a candle for the man.  No, I don’t like him.  His policies seem mean spirited, quixotic at best.  His relationship with the truth, as I experience it, is equally quixotic.

And he is President of these United States, a man with great power, influence and the ability to shake the world on more levels than I believe he is aware of or understands.  But he is the president and I pray for him, hoping, on a very fundamental level he doesn’t do anything that will prevent me from being back at church next Sunday to pray for him.

He appealed to a disenfranchised part of America we, all of us, have not been listening to or acknowledging.  They gravitated to Donald Trump as people in the water after the loss of Titanic, desperate to be saved, crying for help.  Do I think he will save them?  No.

But I want us to hear their cries and find a way to address them and to help them.  They are Americans.  With very real issues.

Today I read there are the most job openings than there have been for a very long time.  Those jobs are harder to fill because we have a massive opioid crisis and many people cannot pass drug tests.  Companies are beginning, in desperation, to turn a blind eye, not asking for drug tests for dangerous jobs because they can’t find enough people to fill them.

Not so long ago, there were two Amtrak employees killed, men not much younger than me and their autopsies revealed they had non-prescribed opioids in their systems.  Our local paper, the Register Star, gave a face to the epidemic by highlighting on the front page a young woman, full of hope, who overdosed.

It is time we faced this epidemic, its causes and its ravages and did something and quit pretending everything is going along just fine.

President Trump, weren’t you going to make this a national emergency?  What happened?

Nothing much.  Why not?

Even the beauty of the cottage is not soothing my soul these days.  What am I to do?

Many are called but few are chosen.  What is it I am called to do in this tumultuous time?  Every day I ask myself that question.  What am I to do?  What am I called to do?

Whether you are a supporter of Donald Trump or not, what is that you can do, personally, to change the awful things that are happening in this country?

Many are called, few are chosen.  What will make me chosen?  What thing can I do to make this awful time better?  I want to.  I do and I am not sure what it is that I should do.  Pack a bag and fly to some war-torn part of the world and put up my hand and say: I’m here to help? What can I do?

A friend suggested I do that.  Maybe I will.

We all need to ask ourselves how we are going to respond to Jesus’ call?  I am not a raving evangelical.  Far from that.  I respect, at the deepest level of my soul, the kindness Jesus worked to insert into the human dialogue and which has resonated for both good and ill since then.

Since I was a boy, I have thought Jesus would be appalled at what has happened to what he started.  He preached love and love is not often what has happened.

Many are called but few will be chosen.  Be one of the few.  Practice what Jesus taught.

 

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Letter From Claverack 10 09 2017 My country ’tis of thee…

October 9, 2017

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There are times when even the quiet beauty of the cottage is not enough to soothe the soul; this has been one of those times.  Since the shootings in Las Vegas, I have found little solace in anything, except, perhaps, sleep.

Sunday, Mother Eileen captured the anguish, pain and despair I feel in her sermon.  After the Prayers of the People, the bell tolled once for each person killed in Las Vegas.  The service closed with “My Country Tis of Thee.”

My head bowed, I fought back tears.

There has been Las Vegas.  Jeff Sessions is claiming that bans on discrimination don’t cover transgender people.  The Trump Administration is rolling back rules that help women have birth control as part of their medical coverage.

The United States joined Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China and a few other repressive regimes in refusing to declare it immoral to execute people for being gay.

What?

As the bell was tolling [and it tolls for thee], I thought of a long ago, rainy, cold November afternoon and looked at my mother and said: what kind of country are we?  It was the afternoon of the day Kennedy had been killed and that moment is etched in my brain, looking out the front windows at a sad world and wondering just what kind of country would kill someone who seemed to be having so much fun and was doing good things?

There was nothing my mother could say.  To this day, I remember the look she gave me, wanting to have an answer and having none.  The silence still rings in my ears all these years later as does the memory of the slick, wet street, a yellow and red city bus moving slowly down the street.

Last night there was another torch lit march in Charlottesville, VA.  A return of Richard Spencer and his white supremacists.  Listen to their chants: “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo.” [Washington Post, October 7, 2017]

Russia is our friend?  The South will rise again?  Russia is not my friend and the South envisioned by these chaps is not a South in which I would be comfortable.  It’s one in which I think I might be afraid for my life.

Today is Columbus Day, the day everyone makes noise about old Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of America.  Personally, I suspect it was the Vikings a few centuries earlier but they don’t get credit [maybe I think that because my mother’s family were Swedish].  However, as we have discovered Christopher Columbus was brave and not a model of morality in the way he treated native Americans.  White people, in general, have not been very kind to native Americans.

Thirty years ago, my friend Ann Frisbee Naymie and I had a conversation about this and she just said to me:  bad karma for what we did.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who has announced he is not seeking reelection, electrified the world yesterday with a tweet saying the White House was an adult care center and someone had missed their shift.  Really?  A Republican lawmaker is talking about a Republican President in this way?  Wowza!  You go, Corker.  And I agree with you that Trump runs the White House like it’s an episode of the President and, like you, I think it is possible Donald Trump could stumble us into a nuclear war before he realized what he’d done.

Two hospitals have been evacuated in California and at least 50 structures destroyed in fires that are causing people to flee from Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties while in southern California fires are raging in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.

The Four Horseman are riding.

Thank you, Mother Eileen, for giving shape to the inchoate agony I was experiencing when I walked into church yesterday. Thank you for ringing the bell for the deaths in Las Vegas.  Thank you for asking the painful questions we all should be asking ourselves.  What kind of country are we?  What kind of country do we want to be?

 

 

 

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Letter From Claverack 10 03 2017 Not making sense of Las Vegas, or much else…

October 3, 2017

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It’s a day of exquisite autumnal beauty and I am squirreled up on the deck, dressed warmly as there is a chill in the air but I want to be here, surrounded by the peace of this setting, this day, because out in the world, it is a grim and gruesome place.

It has not been possible for me to process the Las Vegas shootings.  There are only two people I know who live there, my friends Chuck and Lois, and I found out they are only a couple of hours from me, visiting their daughter, safe.

But safe? We might need to find a new definition of safe.

Until about ten years ago, I made an annual or bi-annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for conventions.  While I don’t have a soft spot in my heart for the place, I have, because of business, visited regularly since 1980 and have a sense of familiarity.  The Mandalay is a hotel I’ve been in more times than I can count and I’ve walked that part of the Strip.  All before we began to need a new definition of safety, which is what the last sixteen years have been about, since hijackers used box cutters to attempt to bring down an empire.

It has seemed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are running rampant and there are some who are reading into these events a portending of the end times.

And it’s a little hard to blame them.

Just in the last weeks, we have had Harvey, Irma, Maria, two enormous earthquakes in Mexico, heart wrenching images of refugees from all over the world, from Myanmar to Syria, from Libya to the coasts of Italy and Greece.

And now, Las Vegas, an event I can’t process.  What made Stephen Paddock decide to gun down hundreds, killing 59 at last count?  What? What?

And the number of dead will likely mount as dozens of the injured are in critical condition.

The numbers could have been worse, if not for the many acts of individual bravery, like Jonathan Smith, who led at least thirty people to safety behind a row of cars before a bullet found his neck.  He will live.

There are tears in my eyes and there have been tears in my eyes too many times recently, crying for people who are suffering and for brave people who scorned danger to save others.

Maybe it’s a good thing it’s hard for me to process Las Vegas because it will live with me just as Sandy Hook lives with me, like 9/11 will never not be part of my life while I live.

It’s no wonder we are searching for distractions, which is what the twenty plus thousand people at the Las Vegas concert were doing.  Looking for fun, celebrating life, seeking joy and then were subjected to unbelievable violence.

Following is a great summation of what late night hosts said, men who are finding themselves in the uncomfortable place of feeling society is demanding they raise their voices.  Here.

Paul Ryan announced today that because of Las Vegas a vote will be delayed in Congress about making it easier to get silencers for guns.

Trump was in Puerto Rico today handing out supplies and, according to some reporters, making sure “the optics” were good.  Not particularly caring about optics, read what this DC chef is doing in Puerto Rico. Here.

Tonight, as I finish this letter, I find myself feeling very alone, not personally frightened but frightened, in a broader sense, in the sense I can’t make sense of Las Vegas or fill in the blank.

Come Sunday, I will light more than one candle for Las Vegas.  And before I sleep tonight, I will say prayers for the victims and will pray for Spain as Catalan announces it will be declaring independence within days and I will pray for the refugees streaming out of Myanmar and for people who are undoubtedly being tossed about the Mediterranean tonight as the summer season winds down, before heavy seas prevail.

There is no end of things for which to pray.

 

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Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Earthquakes, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gun Violence, Hollywood, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From Claverack 08 08 2017 Thoughts from a moving train…

August 9, 2017

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As I begin this, I am rolling through the lush green country of eastern Virginia; we will cross shortly into West Virginia and then begin moving leisurely north through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and then to Chicago for I am on Train #29, the Capitol Limited from Washington, DC to Chicago.

The sun is still high in the west, the side of the train on which I am riding, ensconced in a bedroom compartment, about the size of my bathroom at the cottage; very amenities complete.  Dinner is at 6:45 and I am eager to find out who my dining companions will be.  Everyone in the past has been a memorable character and I see no reason why this time should be different.

For reasons that have eluded me, yesterday and today, I have been on the cranky side.  Yesterday was full of errands to be done before I left and every one of them took more time than allotted.  Racing up to Albany, I made a doctor’s appointment exactly on time when I was sure I was going to be late.  There was a delicious moment when I felt I had caught up with my day.

Then I was told I had arrived forty-five minutes too early.  Stunned, I decided to go get a cup of coffee as I had yet to have any.  Returning, there were different receptionists who chided me for being late.  Disbelieving of me telling them I had been on time, I finally convinced them.  The first receptionist had apparently misread the calendar.  Discovering they were all upset because I was to have tests I had not been told I was going to have, I did something very uncharacteristic of me:  I was not a good boy.

Taking the forms, I put them down on the counter and said I was upset and would call them when I returned from my trip.

Today was much better and still, though, a little on the cranky side until I rode out to the train with a woman from Greenville, SC.  She wanted to see a picture of my creek and when I showed it to her, she said:  you’re blessed.

And I am.  How quickly we get caught up in the shoelaces of our lives and forget the bigger picture.  Taking a very deep breath, I have now settled into my compartment and am enjoying the view out my window: trees in the full flush of green, a river and a bridge crossing it with the sound of clacking train wheels.  It is a good moment.

Not so good is the news flash that North Korea, with its pudgy, petulant and unpredictable little dictator has probably miniaturized nuclear warheads to go on top of those ICBMS he has been testing.

Our president has warned him in no uncertain terms that if he uses them he will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

So, we have an unpredictable barely man dictator with nuclear weapons facing an unpredictable aging man boy petulant president who has the nuclear codes to the biggest arsenal on earth.  Could this end badly?

Unfortunately, yes.

If it does, I want to be home. At the cottage, with jazz playing and a good martini in front of me because I will absolutely need it.

There are two very huge egos at play here and no one knows how the China card will play.  Probably, hopefully, pray God it is, this will all be okay.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, even more than my parents did, I knew, as a child, we were in a dangerous place.  We are again and don’t have a John Kennedy and his team,  for all his crazy faults, to pull us out.

We have Donald Trump, with all his crazy faults and few strengths I can find, and a team that seems more like The Three Stooges.

 

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Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hollywood, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, North Korea, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Letter From Claverack 08 06 2017 Thoughts from Sunday…

August 8, 2017

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It is a quiet night; the creek is crystal clear and a squirrel has just paraded down the deck, padding along, obviously unafraid of me.

This morning I did coffee hour at church, bringing, as I frequently do, too much food though everyone was appreciative and there should be almost enough for coffee hour next week, when I am in Minneapolis.

Returning home, I put the extra food I had in the refrigerator and then returned to have a late lunch with my friends, Larry and Alicia.  Arriving early, I wrote a poem while waiting.

 

Sun and shadow dapple road,

curving toward town where

friends await.

 

A different life now,

slow, time for noticing

the dappled road;

 

for clasping close

all kind of friends.

To stretch my brain a bit, I am working to write a poem a day.  Most days I do, not always, but most days.

Looking up, there is a canopy of green above me and nature is humming around me.  It’s amazing that in the peace of my deck there is so much noise.  Insects and birds, soft sound of water, far off the sound of trucks now and again, traversing the highway almost half a mile away.

It’s been a day when I have not listened to news or read anything until just a bit ago.  There is, you know, only so much one can take.

It is interesting that Vice President Pence is going to great lengths to deny he is making “campaign style” visits to places.  Governor Kasich is, I think.  However, it is not possible to deny that even at this early stage Republicans are beginning to look to take the place of The Donald on the stage he now holds.

The Donald is in New Jersey at one of his golf clubs in a retreat from the White House will three million dollars plus in renovations are being made.  It was just last week that President Trump is reputed to have said the place was “a dump.”

Really, I hope not too much gold is being added.

Venezuela is tottering toward dictatorship and economic collapse which will not be good for gas prices, I keep reading.

Tuesday, I am heading to Minnesota where, to my dismay, a mosque was bombed in Bloomington, the suburb in which my brother lives.  That was not “Minnesota nice.”

The world is a very strange place.  I mean really, really, strange and, you know, this has gone on forever but it just seems like somehow we should have moved beyond  so many of these things and, hopefully, we will in generations to come.

It is there I must place hope.

In this time of my life, I am being as active as I can and, at the same time, treasuring more than I ever have the wonders of my life:  an interesting life now and in my past, a creek that flows quietly by a home I think I imagined once and made reality, good friends, good dinners, times of good conversation, some travel for good reasons, a sense I have been luckier than most in keeping alive friendships from my past and carrying than into my present.

There is a tree along the creek that is always the first harbinger of fall and it is beginning to tell me fall is coming.

I’m not ready for it.  Though I will accept it as one must.

 

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Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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