Posts Tagged ‘Donald Trump’

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Letter from the Vineyard

September 23, 2026

September, 2026

Letter from the Vineyard, September 2026

So much lost…

During a long, lovely lunch with Cynthia Hubbard, who’d been interim pastor at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, which I attend, we shared much, including our mutual disbelief 9/11 was a quarter of a century ago.  More than a generation has grown up since then, not alive at that moment, simply history to them.

I was living in New York, two blocks above the evacuation zone, on Spring Street in Soho. History was happening; I was witnessing it.  The history didn’t just happen that one day.  That day, the days that followed, then the weeks, months, years, now decades. 9/11 was a boulder hurled into the ocean of life.

I was a witness, will die a witness.

There are mental snapshots I have of what happened that day, the ones following. I will die with those pictures seared into my brain, of the best and worst of humanity.

The world gathered around us, embraced us, cherished us, grieved with us, shocked at what had happened.

We have squandered all that love thrown at us, down the drain in Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, African adventures, and now Iran.  We have squandered trillions of dollars.  We have squandered our country out of wealth and world position.  In twenty-five years, we have evolved to this: the MAGA era, defined by idiocy, cruelty, greed, attacking those who stood with us, fought with us in our foolish wars, have helped us, again and again and again.

Relationships are never perfect. Alliances are never perfect.  Our current government has chosen not to make relationships and alliances better but to break with those with whom it disagrees.  We chose in the post WWII years to help a world renew itself, a good thing and in doing so created an American era.  We chose to pay because we could. Because it was good for us.

Right now a kind of rage burns in me, a rage coming from having been there, seen the damage done by planes flying into those buildings, from having lived through those days and, now grown old, witnessed our wasting of good will, of endless war producing no good, of somehow allowing ourselves to sink into the slop of this current time, one more time engaging in an unnecessary war, which now seems to be spiraling, perhaps out of control.

So much has been unnecessary these last 25 years.

We have acted like an empire while hiding behind democratic ideals. We have done good; we have done evil. After the Spanish American War, we took the Philippines. When they wanted independence, we squashed it with despicable violence. [Thank you, Paul Dolman]

As a country we have never faced up to the responsibility of allowing slavery to exist in what became the United States, a tension which tears us asunder as some still treat people of color badly [hey, Secretary Hegseth!].

We are currently flirting with Fascism in a way we haven’t since the 1930’s.  I am working to get copies of “The Nerd Reich,” about Silicon Valley billionaires who think democracy inconvenient to their goals, so popular it is on backorder everywhere.

Racism is inherent in this administration, causing me to think of the cry for Aryan children in 1930’s Germany.

Trump has promised $5000 to every American if Republicans are reelected this fall.  I don’t think even in ancient Rome vote buying was this blatant.  Who is paying for this largesse for reelecting Republicans? J.D. Vance is pleading, begging for Americans to give them more time to rectify the problems. Rectify problems they have created, not Biden [as they constantly chant].

The people who elected Trump are now being hurt by him. Farmers, ranchers, long haul truckers, the working class who thought he heard them. The things he’s doing aren’t helping them but hurting them, hurting me, hurting you.

A judge has ruled Trump, and his administration, must give notice before they do anything structurally to the Kennedy Center. Mr. Trump is having a temper tantrum because his name is not on the building. It’s not pretty; people are catching on. 

The Kennedy Center is a treasure, created with priceless gifts from other countries, to honor a man, however flawed, who captured our imagination, lifted us to strive for something better.

Mr. Trump does not seem to want us to strive for something better. He does not call us to be something more. He calls us to be something less. We have elected him twice; it says much about our country.

Photo courtesy of Paul Doherty

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Letter from the Vineyard for August, 2026

September 2, 2026

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.

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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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