My morning yesterday began with me flipping my laptop open and sitting down to write as a soft fog floated above the creek with sunlight glistening down through the leaves in the midst of changing color.
Just as I sat down to write, a mug of strong coffee at my side, the mother of a friend phoned and let me know her son was in the hospital and had been asking for me. So I came and sat in his dim room, spelling his mother while she went home to shower and change into fresh clothes.
At two I had a conference call and then I made dinner for Lionel and his family.
The day unrolled in an unexpected way but that is life, unexpected. It also made me think about how we have, in addition to our real families, families of choice.
My life, thankfully, is full of them. Blessedly. And for that I am grateful.
Since I have moved to Hudson, my friend’s family has been that way to me and I went to the hospital to perform the responsibilities of having made a choice. Choices do come with responsibilities.
Out in the wide world, the cold open for last week’s Saturday Night Live was a send-up of the Trump/Clinton debate with Alec Baldwin doing a magnificent satire of Donald Trump. It aired the night before the tax revelations. Pundits wondered which was worse for him, the tax revelations or Alec Baldwin. The video has gone viral. If you haven’t seen it, look for it at the end of the post.
Thursday night, Lionel and I went to Coyote Flaco for dinner. As usual, we sat at the bar. Seated to my left was Tim and, as happens sometimes, we got talking. After I had introduced myself, I introduced Lionel, joking he sounded funny because he was from Australia.
Tim, the man to my left, said, oh, I’ve never been there but am thinking of moving there if Hillary is elected. Lionel retorted he was thinking of returning if Trump was elected.
It didn’t get ugly. Tim said he couldn’t vote for her because she had done nothing but be in government service. Not exactly true but close enough.
Asking him if he knew who FDR was, he said no. So I said Franklin Delano Roosevelt and he said he didn’t know him because he was just little when he was in office. He asked me if I’d been alive when he was in office and I said he’d died before I was born.
The poor man didn’t really know. And, by the way, Tim is younger than I am.
After we left, I thought about it and realized most Presidents we have had have spent much of their lives in public service. Let’s see…
FDR did spend most of his life in public service, seeing us through the Great Depression and WWII. He was followed by Harry Truman who had worked in the private sector for a while but spent the majority of his career in public service, followed by Dwight Eisenhower who certainly spent his whole life in public service, followed by John Kennedy, who had done the same.
Lyndon B. Johnson owned some businesses but mostly was in public service his whole life, followed by Richard Nixon who, too, had spent most of his life in public service, followed by Gerald Ford, lots of public service there, followed by Jimmy Carter, who was a peanut farmer before his Presidency but he, too, gave a great deal of his life to public service. Then came Ronald Reagan, who had made his living as an actor before he went into public service.
He was followed by Bush 1, who had spent much of his life in public service, followed by Clinton, who had done the same. W had been in the private sector but then went on to be Governor and then President. Obama has spent much of his life in public service.
Being in public service has become pejorative in this election and I am not sure why.
Then, yesterday, all Billy Bob broke out over a 2005 video of Trump saying all kinds of things I can’t and won’t repeat. If you are interested, you can find them.
Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, was “sickened” by them and disinvited Trump to a Republican gathering in his home state of Wisconsin.
A few Republican politicians have withdrawn their endorsements and it is rumored some Republican leaders are quietly gathering to see what is to be done about Trump.
It’s a little late; the ballots have been printed.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 10 21 2017 Dinner parties and politics…
October 21, 2017Last 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
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