Obama. Biden. Greene County. Indianapolis. Minneapolis. Baltimore. Syria. Russia. Putin. Assad. Refugees. Turkey. The Kurds. Al Qaeda. Saudi. Yemen.
I’m sitting here at my desk at the cottage, looking out at the drive, littered with leaves. The world around me has become a riot of color and I passed by crimson trees on my way west to an appointment on the far side of Greene County, flaming to the sky against a grey horizon.
Most of the day has been like that, grey and forlorn, right for this time of year, the time of year a year ago when I determined I would write more frequently even though I mailed the letters less. They are up on Facebook and LinkedIn and at my website, www.mathewtombers.com.
Monday evening, rather late, I returned from two weeks of traveling. Baltimore, New York, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and when I opened the door of the cottage I was flooded with relief at being home and in the safe sanctuary of the little world I have built here.
For two weeks I mostly avoided the news but it has been catching up with me in the last 48 hours, the strum und drang of the world wails on.
By the hundreds of thousands, humans are throwing themselves on the shores of Europe, fleeing ravaged homelands. Half the population of Syria is on the move, internally, externally with more and more attempting to reach Europe. The size of the movement of humans is almost incomprehensible to me.
And there is a toxic mix brewing in this horrible cauldron.
There is IS, Assad, Putin, Turkey, the US, the Kurds, the non-Al Qaeda anti-Assad forces, the Al Qaeda anti-Assad forces, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Saudis and Yemenis and all sorts of forces and individuals leading them all wanting to defeat someone but not necessarily the same person.
Turkey is complaining we have given arms to the Syrian Kurds. We’re complaining that Russia isn’t targeting IS but forces against Assad that aren’t IS. It is nearly impossible to keep the players straight. The Russians and the US have different outcomes in mind in Syria.
And all the while that the players play, the human condition continues to deteriorate and so millions begin the long journey from somewhere hellish to somewhere less hellish.
It is hard to imagine here in my cossetted corner of the world with the leaves turning and deer roaming the street, slowly sauntering as if there was not a concern in the world.
I feel concern for the world and am struggling with the best way to address it. What does one do in a world that is coming unhinged?
Not long ago I read a great book, “The End of Your Life Book Club.” A woman in her seventies has spent her life in public service and when diagnosed with cancer was running an agency dealing with refugees. She got the diagnosis after return from a camp in Afghanistan. She and her son read and compare books while she is treated with chemo.
It inspires me. As does my brother who is off to Honduras next week to train doctors on some equipment his little organization donated to a hospital there.
Smiling out at the woods, I am hoping the sum of small good gestures will one day overwhelm the acts of evil.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 10 18 2016 On the cusp…
October 18, 2016The day is diminishing; the sunset flickers through the turning leaves, a panorama of burnished gold in the west. Classical music plays in the background and a soft wind is blowing through this, the last great weather day we will probably have until spring unfolds over Claverack Creek. It was 86 degrees today with a cloudless sky and a fall wind in a warm day.
Once I recall a day like this when I was very young. It is the kind of day that holds intimations of immortality. Tonight’s sunset reminds me of the brilliant ones I witnessed on trips to Santorini, up at Franco’s Bar, poised over the caldera, thinking that in the sunset I understood the hold Greek myth has had over us for twenty-five centuries or more.
Once, at Franco’s, I wrote a poem on that and now have no idea where it is. But I remember the moment, sitting there, pen scratching in my notebook as the golden sun turned the waters in the caldera its ripe color.
We are in the cusp of fall and summer has reached out to hold us one day more in its warm embrace, harkening us to remember its feel so we will wait, patiently, for its return in another new year.
2017
Who would have thought? Certainly in my youth I never thought that year would see me inhabit it. Yet chances are I’ll be here when it comes marching in or crawling in or bursting upon us.
Soon there will be an election and someone new will move into the White House. If it is Hillary, she’ll have been there but in a very different role now than then. If it is Donald Trump, it will, perchance, signal a new and different age in our political history.
Time will tell. Tomorrow is the next debate and I will watch, though not waiting breathlessly for it. But I will watch. It is “must see” TV for me this season.
The tree tops are swaying in the wind; the burnished gold has become the color of smoky topaz. Twilight is descending.
Iraqi troops are marching toward Mosul, meeting, as expected, fierce resistance from IS. Some Iraqis, in a scene that reminded me of tales of our Civil War, went onto a mountain side to watch the battle unfold beneath them.
IS intends to hold Mosul at any cost and if it loses it, to make it a humanitarian disaster. The word that crosses my mind as I type is “barbarian.”
Iraqis remaining in the city have become bolder in their resistance of late to IS, supplying Iraq with vital information. IS is killing anyone found attempting to leave the city.
When I was with the Internet start-up, Sabela Media, Yahoo was the industry behemoth.
Its revenue declined again this quarter and Verizon is asking for a reduction in price to buy it because of the hacking scandal.
Because they were known as bullies in the early years, I have always found it hard to be empathic though it is sorry to see a once great company slowly self-immolate. And from people I know who are dealing with them currently, some within Yahoo just can’t accept what is happening now. Ostriches with their heads in the sand…
Dark has descended and I am sitting at the table on the deck, with candlelight for illumination, listening to the classical music but also listening to the sounds of woodland creatures making their noises.
It is very special tonight. The world is swinging in its orbit, momentous things are happening and as they are happening, there are the sounds of birds in the night, classical music and, because of them, a murmur of hope for the future.
Tags:Claverack, Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, Donald Trump, Franco's Bar, Google, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, IS, Islamic State, life, Mosul, Sabela Media, Santorini, The Donald, Yahoo
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