Letter from the Vineyard

Hudson River. Howard Bloom Saves The Universe. Election Day. Tiffany Martin Hamilton. Hudson, New York. Christ Church. Kentucky Election. Houston. San Diego Shooter. LGBT. UC Merced. David Cameron. Sharm al Sheikh. Russian Plane Crashes. Justin Trudeau. Obamacare.

Once again, I am headed south on the train to the city, doing a round trip. I have a lunch in the city and then I am turning around and getting out of Dodge and won’t be back until Monday, when I come into town for a couple of days of meetings and Howard’s podcast taping. His podcast is “Howard Bloom Saves the Universe” and is available on iTunes and other podcasting sites. Check it out. He’s great!

The day is another beautiful one. Yesterday was a perfect fall day with the temperature reaching seventy degrees while cool enough at night to justify the use of the Franklin stove. Walking through the neighborhood, I savored the muted colors and the light on the pond into which my creek flows.

The river glistens a burnished copper from the colors of the season.

Yesterday was spent mostly glued to the computer screen, accomplishing digital tasks. My walk was a welcome interlude.

In a way the day felt like an interlude, despite being glued to the screen of my laptop. I didn’t notice much about the world and reveled mostly in the comfort of my cottage.

Yesterday was Election Day. In Hudson, our county’s “big city,” there was a hotly contested Mayoral race that appears the Democrat won. Absentee ballots are yet to be counted though those mostly tend toward Democrats. If it holds, Tiffany Martin Hamilton will be the first Democratic Mayor of Hudson in my memory.

She’s the daughter of the choir director at Christ Church, where I attend services.

Around the country, conservatives had a big night. They voted down an LGBT anti-discrimination effort in Houston and booted the Democrats out of the Kentucky Governor’s mansion.

Pundits this morning, as I was driving to the station, posited that Democrats were not well organized and Conservatives were. In all these places, voter turnout was low. I feel such frustration when people don’t vote.

As I continue, I am sitting in the Acela Lounge, watching CNN on the monitor. There is a live “incident” near the San Diego airport; a shooter is active and planes are being diverted. The shooter has a high-powered rifle and has come close to hitting police.

They are also talking about a nine year old African American boy in Chicago who has died in gun violence, shot multiple times. Mayor Rahm is saying there is a “special place” for the person who did this. I agree.

At UC Merced, there were five people stabbed before police killed the man wielding the knife.

David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has delayed flights to and from Sharm el Sheikh while a British team makes a determination about security at the airport there. Cameron and the Brits are concerned that a bomb may have brought down the Russian plane recently, losing all aboard, including 25 children. American Intelligence is suggesting the same.

An affiliate of IS claims responsibility.

A Russian built cargo plane went down yesterday in the Sudan. Children were some of the victims there too.

Justin Trudeau has been sworn in a Prime Minister of Canada and half his cabinet is female. It is, after all, 2015, he points out.

Now that we are two years into Obamacare, a map of the uninsured shows that most of them are in the South and Southwest. Surpised?

And the death rate for middle aged white men who have not received a high school degree has skyrocketed. One article suggests they are dying of despair.

All this violence and despair are hard to imagine as I head back north, the sun just beginning to set in the west, the sun a bright slash across the river. It is peaceful; I am in the café car, sipping a wine and writing, heading north to my cottage, after a good lunch with friends, all soft and right in my world while knowing it is not soft and right in so many other places.