Posts Tagged ‘Donald Trump’
October 26, 2017
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.
Tags:Birch Coffee, Claverack, Donald Trump, George H W Bush, Gilded Age, Gold Star Widow, NAACP, Obamacare, Penn Station
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 21, 2017
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.
Tags:Dairo Chamarro, Donald Trump, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George W. Bush, Gold Star Families, Harvey Weinstein, James Linkin, John Kelly, Obama, Robert Murray, Susan Anderson, Tanya Stepan
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hygge, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized, World War II | Leave a Comment »
October 12, 2017
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.
Tags:Amtrak, Christ Church, Donald Trump, Many are called but few are chosen, Mother Eileen, opioid crisis, Titanic
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gun Violence, Hollywood, Homelessness, Hygge, Income Inequality, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 9, 2017
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?
Tags:Ann Frisbee Naymie, Bob Corker, California Fires, Charlottesville, Christ Church Hudson, Columbus Day, Donald Trump, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, Jeff Sessions, John F. Kennedy, Las Vegas Shootings, Mendocino, Mother Eileen, Napa, Richard Spencer, Russia, Sonoma, The South will rise again, White Supremacy
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, depression, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay Liberation, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
October 3, 2017
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.
Tags:Catalan Independence, Donald Trump, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Las Vegas Shootings, Maria, Myanmar, Refugees, Spain, Stephen Paddock
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 »
August 9, 2017
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.
Tags:Amtrak, Capitol Limited, Claverack, Claverack Creek, Cuban Missile Crisis, Donald Trump, John Kennedy, Kim Jung-un, life, Media, Politics, The Three Stooges
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 »
August 8, 2017
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.
Tags:Alicia Vergara, Bloomington MN, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, Donald Trump, Friends, Kasich, Larry Divney, Media, Mike Pence, poetry, Politics, The Donald, Venezuela
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 »
August 2, 2017
The last several days, my deck has been my living room, my office and my dining room. It’s here I have spent the daylight hours. As I type now, a storm threatens with distant thunderclaps.
The water in the creek is so clear I can see stones that line its bottom. The day is cooling as I sit here; having been warm and humid.
On August 8th, I am departing Hudson and journeying by train to Minneapolis for a reunion of old friends. Whenever I tell people I am making a trip by train they ask me if I am afraid to fly? No, says the man who, for a time in his life, flew at least a hundred thousand miles a year.
Trains are interesting because there is a sense of a journey when taking them. It’s not a magic carpet ride from place to place [though these days rarely is flying a magic carpet ride]. It is a journey, as you pass places and towns, sit for meals, read, look up and see surprising things and meet surprising people. You have an incredible sense of going from place to place and I love it.
It will give me a chance to think, contemplate, speculate, dream, postulate and hopefully not pontificate.
And then, when I am ready, I will fly home from Minneapolis. My trip is a bit open ended, a reflection of the joys of my life right now.
While the water in the creek is clear, so very little else is clear.We have lived through the extraordinary and extraordinarily short tenure of the foul-mouthed Anthony Scaramucci as White House Communications Director. In that brief time, he missed the birth of his son and was served with divorce papers by his wife.
He texted his congratulations to her on the birth of their son. Might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back…
Seth Rich was a young man working for the DNC. He was murdered. Fox News suggested he was murdered because he had leaked emails from the DNC. A lawsuit has been filed by a Fox contributor that claims Fox colluded with the White House on the story that Mr. Rich was the leaker when he was not.
How convoluted this all is.
Politics has always been a dirty business and it seems dirtier than ever right now. Or, at least in my memory.
As “any father would,” Donald Trump helped craft the statement Donald Trump, Jr. made about his meeting with some Russians, who promised him dirt on Hillary. That’s the story from the White House. Other, less kind versions, have him dictating the statement his son gave.
It’s another JDLR – just doesn’t look right.
After six months, I am worn out.
Really, I am. Every day when I wake up, I wonder what new roil I am going to encounter in the news. There is no shortage of them.
General John Kelly has been named Chief of Staff at the White House. Is there a more painful job in the world right now? I mean, really!? Kelly kicked Scaramucci’s butt out which shows he is exercising control and has demanded the President pay attention.
Good luck with that. Trump’s tweets early this morning goaded his new Chief of Staff about not promoting the stock market heights it has achieved may indicate his attention span lasted the night. It’s not your Chief of Staff’s job, Mr. Trump, to spend his second day in his job telling people how great the market under you is. That, arguably, is for your Communications Director.
Oh, yes, you don’t have one right now, do you, Mr. Trump?
And, as several friends remind me, we will survive Trump.
Thank goodness. At times, I think of the Roman Empire which survived a hundred bad Emperors, carried along by the bureaucracy that supported it. As we will be, by the bureaucracy we have built but we may have lost the dream, I’m afraid.
John F. Kennedy was one of our most flawed presidents and yet he inspired us.
And, while there have been monsters enough in human history, we now have ones with nuclear weapons, like the North Korean dictator who is testing ICMB’s, an acronym whose meaning had almost slipped from my mind since the Cold War.
Yikes!
Every Sunday since January 20th, I have lit a candle for us, the people of the United States, as well as all the other people out there who are living on this crazy planet. And for solutions to the craziness…
Tags:Chief of Staff Kelly, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Fox News, General Kelly, Hudson NY, ICBM, JDLR, John Kelly, Minneapolis, North Korea missiles, Roman Empire, Scaramucci, Seth Rich, technology
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
July 28, 2017
A gray, foggy morning yielded to a fairly sunny, rather cool afternoon; whenever the sun slipped behind a cloud I was tempted to come into the house from my perch on the deck while the cleaning crew spiffed the house.
Now, with cottage clean, I am sitting at the dining room table, sliders open to the deck. Birds are singing and music from the 1940’s is playing on my Echo.
Returning from the Vineyard Tuesday, I made myself a martini, wrote a poem, and found myself purchasing Christmas presents from a site that emails regularly, from which I buy irregularly and, yesterday, had some things I wanted. Saying there were only four available, I pounced. I think they were being clever as the number available never went below four.
Insane for Christmas shopping in July? No. It saves so much stress come November. In January, I saw something I thought would be perfect for my friends, Nick and Lisa, and thought: if not now, when? And, you know, I have been back to that store several times and not seen the item again.
All this, the creek and future Christmas shopping, visiting my friends on Martha’s Vineyard, is very hygge. And I need all the hygge I can get.
Monday or Tuesday I received a scree from a relative who supports Trump that was filled with things that made me flinch, a repudiation of most of the things I think are advancements. Should we go back to the days of a segregated America?
And while I look out at my sun kissed creek, I read that Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles, has published a 252-page pamphlet on how to deal with a North Korean nuclear attack. That was something I needed to read a couple of times. Hawaii is also preparing for such an event and I am holding my head to keep it from exploding.
Somewhere along the line in my now longish life, I read that one of the contributing factors in the fall of Rome was lead poisoning. Romans lined their wine amphorae with lead which leached into the wine they drank and we all know lead poisoning isn’t good.
Sperm count has dropped by 50% in the western world in the last forty years. Gives me pause to wonder what historians will say about the cause. Pesticide poisoning? Another reason?
President Trump addressed the Boy Scout Jamboree this week. What you thought of his speech probably depends on which side of the political spectrum you are on.
Speaking of our President, his relentless attacks on Attorney General Sessions seem to have many Republicans up in arms, particularly in the Senate where Sessions was a member for a lot of years and it’s a tight club.
Republican Senator John McCain, with whom I have often not agreed [particularly in his choice of Sarah Palin as his VP choice], made a speech for bipartisanship after returning from surgery for a brain tumor. If you want to both hear and read what he said, click here. It reminded me of the times I have liked him.
Our president is not going to allow transgender individuals to serve in the Armed Forces. It’s not necessary for me to elucidate the storm that has created, not the least of which happened in the Pentagon, caught off guard by a Twitter announcement of a policy change.
The president made mention of medical costs for transgendered individuals which turns out to be less than what the Army spends on Viagra each year.
The cynic in me feels it was announced to please his base and divert attention from all the White House chaos.
Hello, Anthony Scaramucci!
The world in which I live seems so mad on so many levels that I am grateful I have the ability to sit here and look out at my canopy of green, look down into my creek and see the bottom of it through the clear, clear water, that I can listen to music and celebrate it, that I have had the chance to stare out at Edgartown harbor thanks to the kindness of my friends who invite me to visit them, that, even though I think the world right now more mad than it has been since my adolescence, I have places and moments of refuge.
Tags:Anthony Scaramucci, Brad Pitt, Christmas in July, Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, Donald Trump, Echo, Edgartown, Fall of Rome, General, Jeff Sessions, John McCain, Martha's Vineyard, North Korea bombing, Obamacare, Sperm Count, technology, Transgender military ban, Trumpcare, Ventura County
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
July 20, 2017
Edgartown harbor shimmers below me; boats bob at anchor on a quiet, very warm afternoon on Martha’s Vineyard – the warmest day I have experienced in the half dozen or so summers I have visited the island. Seated in the shade, with a soft wind blowing off the water, it is tolerable though earlier today most people seemed intent on finding air conditioning, crowding cool restaurants and shops.
Last year I was here to help with my friends’ bookstore, Edgartown Books. This year, I am here for just a week, to relax, read, relax some more, eat, perhaps sail a bit with my friends, eat, relax, sip a martini, read, a wonderful and undemanding rhythm; my friend Jeffrey calls it “the land of off.”
Reading was too wearying for me and I went to my room and promptly napped, waking just in time for a conference call.
Sadie, one of the two Bernese mountain dogs who live here, is recovering from back surgery, making slow and steady improvement from a bad fall some months ago. Every day, she has water therapy in the pool.
Far above me, a bi-plane circles, taking sightseers on an aerial tour of the island. It is soft, bucolic and very, very far from the madding crowd.
Which is why it is very nice, in these strange times, to be in “the land of off.” The amount of news consumed is less. Last year, the kitchen television played CNN. This year, old movies run constantly. In the background of my morning coffee, “The Great Race” played, starring Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis.
Finishing a trifle of a murder mystery by a woman who seems to knock off a book a month, I felt content with little demanded of me.
An exegesis of political affairs is a shade depressing, to make mild of a situation now more astounding by the day.
Donald Trump, Jr. is being described as a “good boy,” a “nice young man” though he is scraping forty and has five children. It is a time honored American defense used by the Kennedys when Teddy drove off a bridge not far from where I sit and a young woman died, Mary Jo Kopechne, lest we forget her name. It is a time-honored defense for American men though not for women. Ponder that.
Railing to the New York Times, Donald Trump, has declared he would never have offered Jeff Sessions the job of Attorney General if he had known he would recuse himself from the Russian investigation. Sessions has said, post Trump’s remarks, he’ll stay as long as “it’s appropriate.” Geez, I don’t know if I would stay when I knew I wasn’t wanted, especially so publicly unwanted.
Today, at noon, Trump celebrated the six-month mark in office. You make your own decision on how well he has done. We are one eighth of the way through his Presidency.
In Palos Verde, CA, forty-one-year old Chester Bennington, lead singer of the group Linkin Park, was found dead, an apparent suicide, succumbing to the demons he was open about but could not, it seems, master. Rest in peace.
Twenty-two years ago, I was in Australia when OJ Simpson was acquitted of murdering his wife Nicole and her friend, Ron Goldman. Today he was granted parole from a prison sentence resulting from an armed robbery. He should be released in October.
Seeking comfort, I watch the newest season of “Midsomer Mysteries” and anticipate the return of “The Last Tycoon,” starring Matt Bomer and Kelsey Grammer, about a movie studio in the 1930’s, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last, unfinished novel.
It seems no wonder to me, we are immersing ourselves in some of the best television in history; we need escape, diversion and pleasure from a world that is more than untidy.
So, I sit, on my friends’ deck, watching boats bob at anchor or scud across the bay, with birds chirping while Sadie is ministered to, the future feels far, far away and the present oh so pleasant.
Tags:Chester Bennington, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Edgartown, Edgartown Books, Jeff Sessions, Kelsey Grammer, Linkin Park, Mary Jo Kopechne, Matt Bomer, Natalie Wood, Nicole Brown, OJ Simpson, Ron Goldman, Russians, Teddy Kennedy, the land of off, The Last Tycoon, Tony Curtis
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Hollywood, Hygge, Literature, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Russia, Social Commnentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
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
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »