Whither now?
It’s winding down, “The Season” of 2026. People have left the Vineyard as school is starting in many places, a thought sacrilegious to me. School is supposed to start the day AFTER Labor Day, not a day before. It seems obscene to my old fashioned sensibilities. Children should savor the last days of August with relish rather than attendance.
The streets still swell but less than a couple of weeks ago. The store is busy but not quite as busy.
The summer weather has been sublime, like the “old days” say some who have summered on the Vineyard for years.
Last weekend was dark, gloomy, rainy. Edgartown Books was bursting with people looking for activity books for children, something to read for themselves. A madcap, joyous weekend, people swarming, yelling to each other across the room, chaos, a kind of chaos causing me to smile from my place behind register #2, where I spend much of the summer, being the book monger of Edgartown, as my godson has named me.
It’s been busy, challenging, exhausting, rewarding. And I’m still standing.
Surprising myself, I’ve found a can ingest bits of news from radio. I can listen but not yet watch news.
We all rage about Trump though Trump is the front man for a group of really bad characters. Stephen Miller, an exorable chap, has claimed might makes right. That is not what America should be about according to everything I was taught. Though that has been what America has been about for quite a while. Pete Hegseth [and his wife] are gutting the Pentagon of decency. Robert Kennedy, Jr., who probably lied to Congress, probably leading us into a vaccination debacle.
In the 21st century, we have, continuously, waged war, some call this period, the “Forever Wars.” We’ve gained nothing, spent trillions of dollars without anything to show for it.
The bond markets are rattled as our national deficit has gone over 40 trillion dollars. Much has been those wars. Iran is another instance.
Tax breaks to corporations and individuals have reduced the flow of cash into the treasury.
We are confronted with wealthy tech moguls who find democracy inconvenient to their goals. Hello, Peter Thiel!
Trump’s lusty vision of America has released from the bottle the pent up frustrations of some Americans who felt deprived, left behind, ignored in their needs. They were. Shame on Democrats for not listening.
Farmers felt Trump listened. They’re paying the price now.
We’re in a trade war with Canada. Canada! Good for them for standing up to our bullies. Canada has been loyal to us through most of our troubles and our sad wars. Lake America? It’s Lake Ontario to me.
Trump is a capricious president with little understanding of the world. He thinks the lessons learned in real estate in New York, from the tutelage of Roy Cohn, are the rules of the world. They’re not. [If you don’t know about Cohn, read about him. It explains a lot of Trump’s behavior. “Scoundrel,” a biography of him is out soon.] They’re the rules of a demi-monde, New York.
ICE just approved a contract for electric gloves to give shocks. Really, this is who we have become? ICE is arresting people who are legally in the United States so they can make their “quotas.” Has ICE become the Black Shirts of our country?
Trump shuns South Korea because he is annoyed they didn’t support his Iranian war. Instead, he embraces North Korea.
I am appalled, angry and so, so sad.
There has always been a segment of society who has wanted fascism, since the beginning of the Republic. I’m not sure all signers of the Declaration of Independence were happy about it.
I did a signing this week for a book, “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times.” It’s a book about what you can do when you’re asking yourself what can you do. I’m going to read it. Perhaps you should, too. The author, Skye Perryman, was inspiring in her interview with Jonathan Capehart, from PBS and MSNOW.
Corporations who leeched themselves to Trump are now courting Democrats. Polls are trending for Democrats. Ron Lauder has not given any money to Republicans.
Trump and his minions want to interfere with vote by mail [though Trump votes by mail]; a way of disrupting the mid-terms.
Our president thinks an Executive Order the equivalent of an Imperial Degree. Trump, his administration, are pushing against the limits of the Constitution, supported by a Congressional majority.
Disruption is the game of this administration, the taking down of our norms. Time for us to call them all to account.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 10 26 2017 Disgusted by them all…
October 26, 2017As 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.
Tags:Birch Coffee, Claverack, Donald Trump, George H W Bush, Gilded Age, Gold Star Widow, NAACP, Obamacare, Penn Station
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