Posts Tagged ‘Hudson’
August 5, 2016
It is a little after 8 pm and the sun is setting in the Hudson Valley. I have been a “prisoner” of my cottage for the last few hours as I have had my deck re-stained and I was not to go out and touch it until about now.
The trees over the creek are verdant green and the water in the creek is crystal clear. It has been a good day, in all sorts of ways. I woke up happy and I enjoy that kind of moment.
A couple of nights ago I was in distress, my lungs were congested and I was having a bit of trouble breathing. Stumbling through the medicine chest, I found and took a Mucinex and woke up the next morning with the congestion at bay, breathing again.
There is nothing like being able to breathe.
And it is hard to breathe in this current political season.
I have never in my adult life lived through such as season as this.
Anyone who reads me must understand how deeply disturbed I am that Trump is the Republican nominee for President. And the more he prances across the stage, the more concerned I am.
The New York Times did a video piece about the hatred they had witnessed while following Trump’s campaign. It was disturbing. You can view it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/us/politics/donald-trump-supporters.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
I am at my dining room table and the sun has set and night has fallen. I am wrapped in the coziness of the cottage and am so grateful I am here.
Were I someplace else the craziness of our time might well make me mad but I can retreat for moments into the woods and believe, for a second, no harm could possibly come.
Like most of you I cannot believe the season in which we find ourselves.
This is not what I expected out of the 2016 political season. A friend of mine and I waged a friendly bet some months ago. He believed the Republican candidate would be Rubio; I went with Bush.
Both wrong. It’s Trump, who has solidified the anger of disenfranchised white Americans, who have reason to be angry. The world is passing them by…
But really? All this hate? It is a return to the realities of 19th and early 20th Century America where hatred moved from Germans, Italians, Poles, Irish, Jews…
A friend of mine who is Jewish remembers his grandmother in the early 20th Century hiding from mobs running through Lower Manhattan, screaming “Kill the Jews!”
We are on the verge of some of us screaming, “Kill the Muslims!”
Have we learned so little?
Tags:Claverack, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Muslims, Putin, Russia, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Income Inequality, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
July 22, 2016
It is early on a Friday evening in Bloomington, MN. The heat index is somewhere around 103 degrees. There is an excessive heat warning tonight and I am inside my brother’s lovely home, looking out at beautiful flowers and great green trees.
After my last posting, one of my readers, Bruce Thiesen, suggested I get to Minnesota and “reset.” And I think I have.
As I am sitting here I am watching the news regarding the terrible events that have happened in Munich. A few days ago it would have driven me to despair. Today, I grieve and yet I do not despair.
I feel refreshed and, suddenly, strangely, hopeful.
Last night, The Donald, painted a picture of a dark America, an America, quite frankly, that is far darker than I see, even in my darkest moments. We have a disturbingly large number of incidents of police acting irresponsibly and we have had a tragic reaction against police in Dallas and Baton Rouge.
And the reality is that crime is down in this country. We are safer than we have been in a long time, despite the terrible moments we have seen lately. And I, and you, need to remember that.
We have issues that need to be addressed. The aggrieved who are flocking to Trump have legitimate complaints. This complicated world has created issues we are just beginning to address. And I hope that we do address them.
But at this moment I reject the dark world that Trump espoused last night. As troubled as we are, it is better than he presents it.
What troubles me is that he presents himself as the strongman savior which is new to American politics but not new to the historical reality of politics. Let us remember Mussolini and Hitler.
This is a new moment in American politics. And it is concerning to me. And yet I am not as disturbed as I was a few days ago.
The German shooter may or may not have been Islamic or may or may not have been Rightist. We are all waiting to find out exactly what happened there.
Whatever happened, I will say a prayer for all of them, the wounded and the dead. I bow my head. But I will not bow my head and submit to the terror that is being sold to us.
And as horrible as it has been it has not been as horrible as it has been. We are a less violent country than we were despite the high profile incidents we have which are deplorable.
Sitting in my brother’s kitchen, I am, suddenly, thankfully, hopeful. Thank you, Bruce, for asking me to “reset.” I needed to…
Tags:Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Munich Shootings, Putin, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Entertainment, European Refugee Crisis, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Obama, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
July 15, 2016
It is a warm, humid day as I trundle north on the train, back to Hudson. The Hudson River is dotted with boats and the spray of jet skis. A soft haze lays across the river, so it seems that what I see is in soft focus.
It’s not a bad day for soft focus.
I went into the city yesterday afternoon to have drinks with my friends Nick and David at Le Monde, a French Bistro near Columbia and then drifted from there to Cafe du Soleil, where I joined a party for Bastille Day put together by friends David and Bill. We were festive and the mood was buoyant and I was home and asleep by the time news was coming out of France that a young Tunisian Frenchman had driven a lorry into a crowd celebrating Frances’ National Holiday, plowing on for 1.2 miles before he was killed and after he had killed at least 84 and wounded 202 others.
As I look out of the window of the train, sold out, standing room only, I see the verdant green hills which line the western bank of the river, the beginnings of the Catskills, bucolic, peaceful, welcoming.
The dead in Nice, a pleasant city in the south of France, to the east of Cannes, on the Rivera, home of the airport that serves that golden stretch of land, setting for glittery events and the place of lovely villas climbing the hills to look down on the Mediterranean, include ten children. Fifty others from last night hang between life and death, as medical professionals do their best.
One woman talked for a long time to her dead child. The living and unwounded began to swarm toward the beaches, away from the lorry, in case it was loaded with explosives.
On Wednesday, July 13, in Syria, 58 people died, mostly civilians of war related wounds. Since the beginning of 2016 about 8,000 have died, since the beginning of the war over 440,000. 11.5% of Syria’s population has been killed or wounded.
On the same day in Iraq, 22 died by gunfire, bombs, rockets.
Looking out at the beautiful Hudson River, the Catskills on the other side, with gracious, magical homes occasionally dotting the landscape, it is easy to focus on the green moment and not the black news but today I cannot slip away, into the beauty.
It is all so senseless and all leaders seem to talk about the senselessness of it and do they find the senselessness of it enough of a unifying theme that they commit to actions that will stop it?
One of the books I am reading is “The Good Years” by Walter Lord, describing the years between 1900 and 1914, when World War I began. I am near the end of it, the war is beginning. Devastation was released upon the European continent over the tragic death of an Archduke and his wife, which gave “permission” for the Austro Hungarian Empire and the German Empire to act to achieve political goals they had long wanted and ended up destroying themselves.
Men in power are always playing “the great game,” and as the game is played, the innocent die.
The train is arriving in Hudson and I am winding down. I will say my prayers tonight for all the people who died today because they are pawns in “the great game” and see if I can find a way to work effectively for change.
In the time since I’ve arrived home, run some errands and prepare to go into town for a comedy show, the Turkish military, apparently fed up with Erdogan, is attempting a coup. Bridges across the Bosporus are closed, military aircraft are flying low over Istanbul and Ankara and gunshots have been reported.
“The Great Game” goes on.
Tags:Amtrak, Bastille Day, Bastille Day Killings in Nice, Cafe du Soleil, Claverack, Donald Trump, Hudson, Hudson River, Iraq, Istanbul, Le Monde, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Nice, Nice France, Syria, The Donald, The Great Game, Turkey, Turkish Coup
Posted in 2016 Election, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Russia, Social Commentary, Syria, Trump, Uncategorized, World War I commentary | Leave a Comment »
July 11, 2016
I have moved from seaside to creekside. In front of me tonight is not Edgartown harbor but Claverack Creek, having returned home from Edgartown on Friday, just as Lionel and Pierre arrived to help me celebrate my return.
It has been nearly a week, perhaps more, since I have written. The events out in the world beyond my safety zone of Edgartown and Claverack, have left me…
You know, I am out of words for the events we’ve had. I don’t know what to say, not at all, not at all.
A black man dead in Baton Rouge, a black man dead in Falcon Heights, MN and five dead police officers in Dallas. As I sat down to write, my phone chirped to let me know that two bailiffs in Berrien County, Michigan were dead, along with the gunman. A deputy sheriff was in stable condition.
Eight Somali are dead from a suicide bomber.
My head and heart reel.
We all must realize we live in a time of madness or we live in ignorance of the world. But then, perhaps, it has always been a time of madness.
The pudgy little dictator who rules North Korea who has devised some interesting ways of ridding himself of people he doesn’t like, is having a temper tantrum because the US is putting in a missile shield in South Korea.
Now he is threatening that if it happens, he will reduce South Korea to a nuclear wasteland. If he does that, I doubt the radiation will stop at the border and he will find his “kingdom” littered with corpses, too.
Kim Jong Un is a bully with nuclear weapons and not much common sense. This isn’t good. And he has closed the only communication channel he has had ßwith the US.
David Cameron is resigning on Wednesday and Theresa May will become the next Prime Minister of Great Britain as they and the rest of us cope with Brexit. The opposition Labour Party is in chaos too and another woman may take over leadership of it. Jeremy Corbyn is seen as having done too little to help the UK stay in the EU and Angela Eagle is seen as being the person who will succeed him, once he realizes he is a morte canard, which he hasn’t yet.
The evening sun is glittering on the creek and I find myself looking at it, the way I looked at Edgartown harbor, as a reminder that despite what we do, the world has its places of beauty that help us compensate for the madness around us.
The US is boosting troops in Iraq as the march goes on to retake Mosul from IS. In South Sudan we are evacuating our people because war has renewed there.
The Japanese have been through their own moratorium and the result is there may be changes to their constitution which will allow Japan to build up its military. They are afraid of Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea, an area in which the Chinese feel like they are victims and not aggressors.
While all of this strum und drang is playing out on the world stage, out in outer space, a probe has arrived at Juno, a moon of Jupiter, one second late after a five year journey. And that blows my mind. It will explore Juno and Jupiter and may help us understand the beginnings of our solar system.
This wonder is happening while murder walks the land. How bizarre…
And I am thinking of going online and pre-ordering a Cozmo, a little robot that promises to be to robotics as the Commodore 64 was to computing — a break through. Cozmo promises to be a great robotic companion and you can program it from an app.
Yes, need to have one. I don’t have a pet anymore and am not thinking of getting one and Cozmo may just be the answer to a companion in my house on the creek where I sit and enjoy while the world seems too mad for words.
Tags:Angela Eagle, Baton Rouge, Berrien County, Claverack, Cozmo, David Cameron, Falcom Heights, Hudson, IS, Jeremy Corbyn, Juno Probe, Kim Jong - Un, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, North Korea, Obama, THAAD, Theresa May
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
June 18, 2016
It has been five days since I’ve written a “Letter.” I’ve done some other writing but nothing that faced the world in which we live. The death of Jo Cox, a Member of Britain’s Parliament, murdered in her district affected me deeply, a tearing of the barely forming Orlando scar off my physic skin.
Her name was vaguely familiar. The man who has been arrested for her murder apparently shouted “Britain first!” repeatedly as he shot and stabbed her. She was campaigning against “Brexit,” the vote for which will happen next week.
When arraigned, John Mair, the alleged killer, gave his name as “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain.”
A man described as gentle by his neighbors, he suffered mental health issues, assuaging them with volunteer work. He also was in some way affiliated with a neo-Nazi group out of America.
Jo Cox’s death affected me because…
Because it was one more example of the politics of hate in which we are all mired, because it happened in Britain where political verbal vitriol has been honed to a fine edge but where rarely are political differences manifested in physical actions. Perhaps over football but not politics.
And that is probably an Anglophile’s rose colored glasses view of British politics but it does seem rarer there that they have such events as Orlando, much rarer.
In the days following Orlando, a California pastor preached that all LGBTQ folks should meet the same end as the Orlando victims. We should all be killed off. It is not the first time in my life I have heard people call for the slaughter of the LGBTQ community but it seemed more painful this time. We have come so far from when I was a boy.
On Thursday, in a conversation with my friends, Medora and Meryl, I told them that it was on how far we have come that I had to choose to focus or my sadness would be unbearable. It had seemed an impossibility that in my lifetime gay individuals could exercise the right to wed. And now we can.
I did not think in my lifetime I could speak openly of my feelings to friends who were not of my own community.
Yet these things have happened. In my little world of Columbia County, New York I have seen the changes over the fifteen years I have been there, the opening of the community and the general acceptance by “locals” to outsiders and to outsiders were “different.”
We think the world is changing and changing for the better and then there is an Orlando, ripping at the sense of safety creeping into the world. And then come the stories of people who remain fearful, even in New York, because a show of same sex affection could mean violence.
Only since Orlando have I come to know that the LGBTQ community is, far and away, the group that is most likely to experience hate crimes.
There seems to be some movement about more control over assault rifles. One small step, one hopes. I had thought there would have been movement on that after the slaughter of the innocents in Newtown. There wasn’t but now there might be.
Young Christina Grimmie, a “The Voice” alum who was shot to death last Friday by a deranged fan who then killed himself, was buried yesterday. She, too, was killed in Orlando.
Disney there has been putting out signs to warn tourists about crocodiles and snakes after a two year old was hauled off and killed by a crocodile last week, an adorable young boy.
In Nigeria, eighteen have been killed by Boko Haram.
Belgians have arrested twelve in “terror raids” and Iraqi forces say they have retaken most of Fallujah.
Where have all the flowers gone?
To graveyards, every one…
I am sad but am choosing, must choose, not to feel hopeless and powerless. It is beautiful outside, another in a day of beautiful days on Martha’s Vineyard. The world is better than it has been, in many ways. And I must remind myself of that.
Tags:Boko Haram, Brexit, Claverack, Columbia County, Donald Trump, Fallujah, Hudson, IS, Isis, Jo Cox, John Mair, LGBT, LGBTQ, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Nigeria, Obama, Orlando, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Columbia County, Daesh, Elections, Entertainment, Gay, Gay Liberation, Gun Violence, Hudson New York, IS, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Nigeria, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
June 14, 2016
Yesterday, as I suspect most people did, I woke to the horror of the Orlando massacre. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I kept wondering if I was actually reading what I was reading.
Of course I was.
Not long ago I emailed a friend, now living in Florida, that I felt furious and, at the same time, numbed. I am angry and do not know a single thing I can do that will actually help affect any kind of real change. A New Yorker, both my Senators support more stringent laws regarding guns. It will do no good to write them. Obama sits on my side of the issue.
And any letter I write to a Republican, I fear, will lend no weight. I have tried. Somehow I end up on their mailing lists, thanking me for being a supporter. When Bush was President, I wrote a letter demanding he not invade Iraq. For years, I received Christmas cards and photos of W. and Laura, thanking me for my loyalty to them.
Same with my local Congressman…
They are not listening.
It is twilight here on Martha’s Vineyard. A few boats skiff across the harbor. From where I sit, I can see the Edgartown lighthouse. I am sipping a glass of wine, lost in the quiet and the beauty, furious and numb.
As I was not needed at Edgartown Books, I headed out in my car today, turning left at the end of the driveway and letting fate take me where it will. For awhile, as I drove, I listened to NPR programs doing an exegesis of yesterday’s tragedy, the worst mass shooting in the country.
As he holed up with terrified people, Omar Mateen, the shooter, called 911 to let them know he was doing this because he was pledging allegiance to IS, calling the Boston bombers from its Marathon his “brothers.”
As I listened, the portrait of Omar Mateen was beginning to reveal itself to those who were attempting to figure out what had happened. He was American born, apparently radicalized via the Internet, probably bi-polar, an abusive husband, worked for a security firm, had been interviewed at least twice by the FBI because of statements he made or actions performed.
He bought his guns legally. He bought his guns legally, after all that. He killed 49 people and died himself. 53 others are wounded.
He was offended by seeing two men kiss. But his parents didn’t think he was unhinged.
Trump tweeted in peacock pride about being right about Muslims except Omar Mateen was born in America of Afghan parents. He was a US citizen by birth, no act would keep him out. He didn’t come here perverted. He was born here and was perverted by God knows exactly what…
He attacked a gay nightclub, Pulse. It is Gay Pride Month. It is also Immigration Month. It was Latin night at Pulse. Kill two birds with one stone? Hate amplified?
As I drove the island today, I felt lonely, in the way I felt lonely when I was young and watched as Viet Nam unfolded before me and about which I felt powerless until I played hooky from school and joined a march against the war.
We have no marches these days. We don’t gather together to scream against the violence. Perhaps that is why I felt lonely today; I have comrades but we do not come together, we do not march together, we do not sing songs of protest together against the outrageousness of the time in which we live.
Sitting here, watching the pink tinged sky while a small boat motors across the harbor, I am still numb and I am still furious. What do I do with this?
And in the back of my head, all day has been the thought: where have all the flowers gone?
Tags:Boston Marathon Bombing, Donald Trump, Edgartown, Gay, Gay Pride, Hudson, Immigration Month, Iraq, IS, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Obama, Omar Mateen, Pulse, The Donald, Where have all the flowers gone?
Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Daesh, depression, Gay, Gay Liberation, IS, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Obama, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
May 27, 2016
It is blissfully quiet this moment, except for the drone of the Harbor Patrol boat in Edgartown Harbor. I am sitting, at this minute, on the veranda of my friends’ home overlooking that harbor.
Yesterday, I arrived on Martha’s Vineyard. I am here for awhile, that while yet undetermined. My friends, Jeffrey and Joyce, own the Edgartown Bookstore. About six weeks ago, reading “All The Light We Cannot See,” a book I purchased last year at their bookstore, it occurred to me they might need some help at the beginning of the season. So I volunteered. And here I am.
Yesterday, I left the cottage and had a giddy thought. If I should decide not to teach in the fall, after the Vineyard, there is no place I have to be for the rest of my life. It was both liberating and frightening. I felt like my head was filled with helium. I have acknowledged, at last, I am adrift in the world and that the boundaries I am now setting are the ones of my own choosing and no one else’s.
I took a picture of the rhododendron as I left the house.
I
As I also took a picture of the creek before I left.
As I was sitting in my car on the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, Jeffrey texted me: don’t eat! They also own “Behind the Bookstore,” a restaurant that has a great reputation on the island. We were treated to a tasting course of everything on the dinner menu and dinner service begins tonight. It was all extraordinary, with the exception of the sweet pea gnocchi, which is still a work in progress.
The young chef is fresh out of Chez Panisse in Berkley, Alice Waters’ signature restaurant.
Tonight, after my first day in the bookstore, where I did my best to earn my keep, I am sipping a martini and looking at Edgartown harbor and thinking how fortunate I am to have this experience.
I am enjoying the moment.
Unbelievably but not perhaps unpredictably, Donald Trump has cinched the number of delegates he needs to be nominated. I am appalled and don’t want to think about it. So I am enjoying my view.
Let’s admit it. I am scared to death if he wins the election. Scarred to death. He has no credible credentials to be President of the United States. And I must decide if I will engage in this fall’s election to defeat him or stay on the sidelines and pray to all the gods in all the universes. I suspect I will do my best to defeat him.
But Hillary! As we were driving to “Behind The Bookstore” last night, Jeffrey said, and rightly, that there was no problem that the Clintons couldn’t make worse.
And it is so effing true. They stumble into things and don’t claim responsibility and just manage to make things worse and worse and worse. And the polls are showing that Hillary could lose to The Donald.
Oh my! Lions and tigers and bears… Oh my!
I am going to focus on the moment right now. I have to. I am sitting on a veranda on Martha’s Vineyard, looking out on Edgartown Harbor, calm and peaceful. The storm may be about to erupt on our heads but not tonight. I will savor tonight because not to do so would be foolish.
Tags:9/11, All the Light We Cannot See, Behind the Bookstore, Bernie Sanders, Claverack, Donald Trump, Edgartown, Edgartown Bookstore, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Martha's Vineyard, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Sanders, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 20, 2016
It is a bit hazy as I rumble south, down the river, toward the city. I am having dinner tonight with my good friends Annette and David Fox. About once a quarter, we get together, order Indian from Indus Valley near their West End Avenue apartment and visit, over wine and an Indian dinner.
All day my mind has wandered back to the Egypt Air flight that crashed on its way from Paris to Cairo, in the Mediterranean off Crete. My phone screen was clustered with updates when I awoke this morning.
It is appearing that the plane’s crash is likely the result of terrorism though nothing can be known until the plane’s debris is studied. Why did it make wild turns just before it disappeared? What must have the passengers been experiencing? I shudder to think. It’s one thing to be there one moment and another not but what must have been in their minds as the plane made a 360 degree rotation?
Chaos erupted on the floor of the House today over a bill that would have denied contracts to Federal contractors if they discriminated against LGBT individuals. It was lost by one vote and reporters heard jeers and shouts from the House floor. Championed by Representative Sean Maloney, Democrat of New York in a district just south of me. Moments before the vote, the measure had 217 votes and House Leader McCarthy twisted Republican arms to change their vote as the presiding officer kept the vote open longer than is normal.
Ah, politics… All the remaining candidates, Trump, Sanders and Clinton hurled invectives and innuendoes today, as they do every day.
To put it kindly, Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump have been “at odds.” They had a sit down at Trump Tower and then another on Megyn Kelly’s premiere of her new interview show as she pursues becoming the next Barbara Walters. It was roundly panned and accusations flew that she played easy with her former adversary.
A week ago the legendary CBS reporter, Morley Safer, retired. A long planned special tribute to him aired on “Sixty Minutes” this past Sunday. Today, he died. He covered the world, from war to art, with panache and precision, exuding a style that is hard to find, particularly now.
The wonderful Hubble Telescope, hovering in space for twenty-five years now, has sent home spectacular views of Mars which is swinging in and will be as close as it gets to earth on Sunday, May 22nd. From these photos we have learned there were mega-tsunamis on Mars in the long ago. With luck, it will continue working at least until 2020 or, perhaps, a little longer.
This week, a Chibok girl, kidnapped two years ago by Boko Haram in Nigeria was freed. Today, another girl has been rescued, two out of two hundred. The first one has met with the Nigerian President but it may be hard for any rescued girls to be reintegrated. The first girl has a Boko Haram “husband” apparently.
In Venezuela, Maduro is cracking down as his regime seems to be cracking up. Tear gas was fired on a crowd of thousands who were demanding his recall. Chants of “food, food, food” are being heard in the streets of many cities. Hospitals are often without power or medicine. Patients are reported to lie in pools of blood.
Even his fellow leftists are beginning to think him crazy. One called Maduro “crazy like a goat.” But maybe that’s a compliment?
The train arrived in New York and then I was off to dinner and sleep. Now it is a beautiful Friday morning in the city, sunlight streaming through the blinds and shortly I’m off to Baltimore to visit friends.
Yesterday’s drumbeat continues today. Debris has been found from the Egypt Air flight. Accepting the inevitable, the Republicans are rallying behind Trump and it will make an interesting fall campaign as Trump and Clinton seemed to be disliked in comparable numbers, meaning no one likes either of them much.
Oklahoma has passed a bill making it a felony to perform an abortion thereby making it virtually impossible to get an abortion in the state.
Israel’s Defense Minister has resigned, accusing Netanyahu of “extremism.” And if he continues on the current path, Netanyahu’s government will become the most right wing in Israel’s history.
Now, as it is nearing noon, I need to prepare to leave, with another coffee in my future and some work for WGXC.
Tags:Annette and David Fox, Bernie Sanders, Boko Haram, Claverack, Donald Trump, Egypt Air Crash, Hillary Clinton, Hubble Telescope, Hudson, Maduro, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Megyn Kelly, Morley Safer, Netanyahu, Oklahoma Felony for abortion, Sean Maloney, The Donald, Venezuela
Posted in 2016 Election, Boko Haram, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 16, 2016
This is one of the most enjoyable moments I have in a week, sitting at the dining room table, jazz playing in the background, the sun setting, looking across the deck to the wild woods across the creek, pulling together my thoughts as the sun slowly sets.
This morning I re-read my last online post [www.mathewtombers.com]. In the last part I wrote about Islam and the West having to come to terms with each other and as I read it I thought: whoa, Islam must come to peace with itself. IS is mostly killing other Muslims. Those numbers dwarf the numbers they have killed in Paris and Brussels and New York and London. They die by the hundreds and thousands in Iraq and Syria alone. Not to mention Yemen, which seems to be to Sunni and Shia what Spain was to Fascists and Republicans in the 1930’s.
We note with great care and deep exegesis the murders in the West and the daily drumbeat of death in Baghdad, Aleppo and Yemen is a footnote. Muslims are mostly slaughtering other Muslims.
Not unlike the way Christians slaughtered other Christians in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries. We had the Thirty Year War, which started as a religious war and became so much more. The Muslims seem to be having their Thirty Year War and it is much scarier because technology is so much more advanced.
And while they fight amongst themselves, some of them rage against the West, those who are Fundamentalist Muslims. They see us as abominations.
One late night here at the cottage I wondered if I was living a bit like a Roman in the 2nd or 3rd Century CE, knowing the darkness was coming and unable to prevent it so enjoying the present as much as possible.
That’s a bit melodramatic I suppose. Events are still playing out. Outcomes can be changed.
The forces at work in our lives are terrifying. We have a saber rattling Putin, who denies everything negative, and a major religion that is going through an existential crisis, manyßåå of them thinking nothing of killing as a policy.
In college, I took an Honors course on Medieval Islamic Civilization and they were civilized. Something has gone very wrong there and, hopefully, for all of us, they will sort it out.
In the meantime, the rest of the world keeps moving.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
Not being mentally healthy is a debilitating stigma many carry. As someone who has been in therapy since he was sixteen, I empathize. It is not, in many places, åstill, now, acceptable to talk about.
And it saved my life. And in the years between then and now, many members of my family have taken me aside to thank me for having broken the dam. I was the first and I was pretty loud about it too. Everyone knew. Everyone rolled their eyes at me, then they began quietly to look for their own therapists.
We are still dealing with racial issues and we are still dealing with mental stigmas. So good there is a Mental Health Awareness Month. We need all the mental health we can get.
Our politics continue to look like a sideshow. Friends who live in Japan, Australia, Europe ask me what is going on? I don’t know. Does anyone? There has been nothing like this in my lifetime and it is a bit scary.
I have been reading articles about the raucous Nevada Democratic Convention and I haven’t parsed the events quite but there was a showdown between the Bernie supporters and the Hillary supporters. Hillary won but her supporters are worried about a similar scene playing out at the national convention.
It has grown dark now. The sun has set. While it is mid-May, the temperature is going down to 34 tonight so we are not actually in real Spring yet. I had to turn up the heat tonight. I might yet light a fire.
The jazz lures me to a quiet place of introspection.
Tags:Bernie Sanders, Claverack, Donald Trump, Fundamentalist Muslims, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, IS, Isis, Jazz, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Mental Health Awareness Month, New York, Obama, Putin, Red Dot, Russia, Syria, The Donald, Thirty Years War
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May 9, 2016
For the first time in a week, the sun is out and the day feels spring like. Sunlight glitters off the Hudson River as the train I’m riding heads south to the city. I have a couple of meetings this afternoon and tomorrow and then will head back north after the last one is completed.
Today, I gave the final to my class. Once they’re graded and handed in, I am finished unless I am asked back in the fall.
It was genuinely hard for me to see my students go. I will honestly miss them, even the reluctant ones among them.
They are all interesting characters and I worry about them because most of them are graduating and their academic skills are less, for the most part, of what I would expect of students finishing their second year of college.
They range in age from twenty to forty. One is a mother who missed a couple of classes because she went to her own daughter’s graduation. Another is a vet, who is back after years of service, a man of thirty something who carries weight in his soul.
They follow Facebook and spurn Twitter. Instagram and Snapchat are their social media of choice.
No one remembers anything. They turn to their phones for the answers for anything and everything. As has been posited, if you can Google, why remember it?
Today was the first time they were not nose to nose with their phones. Their phones rarely leave their hands and if they have left it behind someplace, they are a shot out the door to retrieve it.
One of my tasks was to teach them to be better, smarter consumers of media. I challenged them to go a day without media. The one who came closest, went out to a farm and stayed there and even he couldn’t make it the full twenty-four hours.
The rest of them barely made it more than a few minutes. All have a better understanding of how pervasive contemporary media is.
Anxiety is apparent when they are separated from their phones, even for relatively short periods of time. When I threatened to remove a phone from one my students as she wouldn’t stop playing with it, I was greeted by genuine terror in her face.
Most of them suffer a higher degree of nomophobia [anxiety of being separated from your smartphone] than I had expected. The older they were, the less it was, the younger they were, the higher the degree. It was both fascinating and a little unsettling to observe.
Many of them write as if they were texting and some, to my great concern, have almost no skill in writing at all. I mean zip. And while they have more than moderate intelligence, they lack the skills to communicate their intelligence in writing. One of the smartest people in my class in native intelligence is incapable of getting his thoughts on paper. How can I not worry about him?
Most of them have an appalling lack of historical knowledge in general. They live in an ever constant present, skimming the waves of history, passing over it rather than through it. And what happened centuries ago is something which seems irrelevant to them. As I’ve mentioned, if they need to know about an event, they can Google it. [A disturbing tendency I have found in myself.]
Major device for connecting to the internet? The phone, of course. Most video viewing done? On the phone. Music consumption? On the phone. Everything is on the phone.
I am convinced they came away with a better understanding of how to approach and interpret media as they experience it and I am glad I have helped make them, please dear God, better consumers of media, less open to manipulation, more discerning, more interpretive because they really weren’t when they came into class.
I am afraid that is the case of many students today, at every level.
Tags:CGCC, Claverack, Columbia Greene Community College, Google, Hudson, Hudson River, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media and Society, New York, nomophobia
Posted in Claverack, Columbia County, Columbia Greene Community College, Education, Greene County New York, Hudson New York, Literature, Magna Carta, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack, NY August 4th, 2016 Have we learned so little?
August 5, 2016It is a little after 8 pm and the sun is setting in the Hudson Valley. I have been a “prisoner” of my cottage for the last few hours as I have had my deck re-stained and I was not to go out and touch it until about now.
The trees over the creek are verdant green and the water in the creek is crystal clear. It has been a good day, in all sorts of ways. I woke up happy and I enjoy that kind of moment.
A couple of nights ago I was in distress, my lungs were congested and I was having a bit of trouble breathing. Stumbling through the medicine chest, I found and took a Mucinex and woke up the next morning with the congestion at bay, breathing again.
There is nothing like being able to breathe.
And it is hard to breathe in this current political season.
I have never in my adult life lived through such as season as this.
Anyone who reads me must understand how deeply disturbed I am that Trump is the Republican nominee for President. And the more he prances across the stage, the more concerned I am.
The New York Times did a video piece about the hatred they had witnessed while following Trump’s campaign. It was disturbing. You can view it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/us/politics/donald-trump-supporters.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
I am at my dining room table and the sun has set and night has fallen. I am wrapped in the coziness of the cottage and am so grateful I am here.
Were I someplace else the craziness of our time might well make me mad but I can retreat for moments into the woods and believe, for a second, no harm could possibly come.
Like most of you I cannot believe the season in which we find ourselves.
This is not what I expected out of the 2016 political season. A friend of mine and I waged a friendly bet some months ago. He believed the Republican candidate would be Rubio; I went with Bush.
Both wrong. It’s Trump, who has solidified the anger of disenfranchised white Americans, who have reason to be angry. The world is passing them by…
But really? All this hate? It is a return to the realities of 19th and early 20th Century America where hatred moved from Germans, Italians, Poles, Irish, Jews…
A friend of mine who is Jewish remembers his grandmother in the early 20th Century hiding from mobs running through Lower Manhattan, screaming “Kill the Jews!”
We are on the verge of some of us screaming, “Kill the Muslims!”
Have we learned so little?
Tags:Claverack, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Muslims, Putin, Russia, The Donald
Posted in 2016 Election, Civil Rights, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Elections, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Income Inequality, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »