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.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 11 08 2017 Thoughts while watching sun glint off the river…
November 8, 2017It is a grey and sullen day, seated in the United Red Carpet Club in Minneapolis’ airport, sipping a cappuccino, waiting to fly back home after a short visit to kith and kin. It has been primarily grey and sullen here since my arrival on Friday though there was warmth in the town with my visits with friends and relatives.
It is an interesting time in my life; I am thinking of becoming a vagabond for a while, checking off some things on my bucket list while seeking sun when it is grey in the Northeast and Midwest. A plan is beginning to emerge…
Out there in the world, the White House Reality Show continues to play to high ratings if not approval. At this moment, the President is in Asia on the longest Asian trip since George H.W. Bush, when he famously threw up on the Prime Minister of Japan.
Bush pere and fils have come out blasting at Trump in statements, previously made, now coming to light. “A blowhard” is one from pere.
A tragic shooting has occurred over the weekend in Texas, a man gunning down 46 people at a Baptist church in Sutherland, Texas. 26 are dead, eight from one family, and 20 injured. There is a numbness some are feeling because we have come to accept these tragedies as part of the background of our lives. They happen and it seems no one does anything.
Since last I wrote, a disaffected man from Uzbekistan, rolled a rental truck down a bike and walking path in New York, killing eight and wounding more.
After the Las Vegas shootings, it was “too soon” to politicize the conversation by talking about gun control but not too soon to politicize the terror attack. Certain statements tweeted by Mr. Trump may complicate the adjudication of the crime. But then our judicial system is a “joke” and a “laughing stock” per our president; a judicial system which is, in many ways, the envy of the world.
My desire to be a vagabond is, I’m sure, bound in with a desire to flee. And to be free to spend more time in Minneapolis with kith and kin, friends of decades and family of which I see too little. While here, helped my former sister-in-law with an issue and it felt good to be useful to her.
And now it is the next day and I am sliding down the west side of the Hudson River on Train 238, going down to the city only to return on the 5:47 so that I can be part of the November birthday train as my birthday is in November. I wasn’t sure I would do this but on a whim, I parked my car and am on my way.
The day has been fun. Tired last night, I went to the Red Dot for a “pop up” Indian restaurant and then went home, read a mystery and soon fell asleep, waking before all the alarms I had set.
During my Wednesday version of WGXC’s “Morning Show,” I played some jazz [check out The Hot Sardines!] and interviewed one of the performers of “The Mother of Us All,” a rarely performed opera by 20th Century female icon, Gertrude Stein, with libretto by Virgil Thompson. It’s the story of Susan B. Anthony, who campaigned for women’s right to vote, achieved only after death, a hundred years ago this month, in November 1917.
After the dreary days in Minneapolis, the sun burst through the windows of the chilly studio in Hudson this morning and I felt joyful.
At this moment, our president is in Beijing, where he is being feted with special panoply. It seems Mr. Trump has gone from deriding China to recognizing some benefit to a relationship with the country and its now very powerful President Xi, ensconced recently in the heavens with Mao and Deng.
It was election day yesterday. The off-year election didn’t bring many people out in some places though it did bring about a Democratic victory for governor in both Virginia and New Jersey.
In Virginia, the Republican candidate did his best to sound like Trump but was soundly defeated, raising the question among pundits if there can be Trumpism without Trump? I don’t know. I hope not.
Danica Roem, a transgender woman, made history by being elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, defeating a Republican who has held the seat since 1992 and who made her sexuality an issue in the campaign. She focused on the bad traffic problems.
Former President Obama showed up yesterday in Chicago for jury duty and was dismissed but not before creating a social media storm.
I bring this to a close as I continue down the Hudson, watching the occasional kayaker, with the sun glinting off the river, a slate of burnished steel reflecting light back to heaven.
Tags:Amtrak, China, Danica Roem, Deng, George H W Bush, kith and kin, Mao, Minneapolis, Obama, Sutherland Texas Shooting, Train 238, Trump in Asia, WGXC, Xi
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