When I was kid — and perhaps when we were all kids — there was one house we all gravitated towards, to hang out, to be around. When I was a kid, it was the McCormick house. They were a large family, six kids, in a big house and every year the back yard became a skating rink. In the freezing Minnesota nights the whole neighborhood of kids was there. During the summers we played kick ball in their enormous driveway.
Still close to the McCormick family, I had lunch with Mary Clare McCormick Eros yesterday at Cafe du Soleil on New York’s Upper West Side. Sarah, whom I have known since before Kindergarten and I were planning yesterday when to get together when she is in New York next month. Her son, Kevin, thinks of me as his “Uncle Mat,” even now when he is 31.
Today, I went to Rhinebeck to return to Robert and Tanya Murray innumerable egg cartons as they had donated dozens of eggs from their chickens to my Easter Brunch Church adventures. When I arrived, two of his children and one of their friends were preparing to do a car wash and I was their first car. Robert and I sat on the steps and watched them, sipping deep, rich coffee with steamed milk while they soaped up my car.
I suspect Robert and Tanya have the house in the neighborhood to which everyone gravitates. Sitting there, it reminded me of John and Eileen and the parade that made its way through their home on Aldrich Avenue in Minneapolis. Robert got up from the stoop and swooped in and helped them. It took me back to a much simpler, it seemed, time.
It is very doubtful that time was all that much simpler but it seemed that way to us as kids. I am sure when Tanya and Robert’s five are grown, they will look back on now and think it was a simpler time.
In a gesture of simplicity and love, Pope Francis, sure to be a saint, went to the isle of Lesbos, the epicenter of the refugee crisis and made a speech on the exact spot where orders for deportation back to Turkey were given two weeks ago. In a stunning surprise, a dozen Syrians returned with him to the Vatican to be resettled in Italy with the help of a Catholic charity. All had lost their homes to bombs and six of them were children. It was an act to “prick the conscience of the king.”
Tuesday is the New York Primary. Bernie and Hillary slugged it out, in an increasingly strident fashion in a CNN debate in Brooklyn earlier this week. Both hoarse, both looking exhausted, both fighting tooth and nail, they harried each other and some wonder, no matter who the nominee, if the Democratic Party is suffering wounds as deep as the Republicans have been absorbing with their phantasmagorical season?
It is pitch black outside except for the floodlights on the creek and the lights on my house. It is quiet, except for the thumping of the dryer with a load of clothes.
In the early evening, I went to an event, “Prose and Prosecco,” a fund raising event for the little Claverack Library which is working to raise the money to finish moving into its new building.
Local writers read from their works, two good, one questionable, at least from my perspective. I chatted with a few people but was not in my aggressive meet people mode and left a bit early to come home, do a few things and write my blog.
I relished watching Robert and his children and Maya, the friend, work through their carwash. It was an hour filled with the squeals of delighted children, embracing the joy of being children. The way we once were.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 08 15 2017 Sorting through history…
August 15, 2017Staring out my brother’s kitchen, the day is beautiful after a series of grey and gloomy ones. After prevaricating for days, I have finally determined I will return home on Friday and am now looking forward to returning to the comforts of the cottage. My kitchen is freshly painted and I will do a re-org of it upon my return.
This afternoon, I am going over to St. Paul to visit my cousin’s ex-wife at the home where she works with her mother, caring for developmentally challenged adults.
And then, this evening, I will be dining with Christine Olson, a friend from college days. She dated one of my roommates; we have stayed close. He and I have not.
Being in Minneapolis is always a time of sorting memories. Yesterday, I had breakfast with my ex-sister-in-law, which is hard for me to say as she is still, in my mind, my sister-in-law, even if she and my brother are no longer married. We, as we always do, laughed and giggled and had fun.
Last night, I dined with my nieces, Kristin and Theresa, Theresa’s son Emile, his girlfriend, Irene, and we, too, laughed and giggled and reminisced about some good things and some hard things.
And so there is a sorting of thoughts. The rocking horse was my brother’s and I inherited it and rode it in our “rumpus room” in the basement long after he had last touched it. Now it sits in his bedroom, a reminder of the past.
My best friend from high school came up from Chicago to see me this weekend and as we sat on Friday afternoon, working at this kitchen table, I looked up at him and laughed. We both settle back in to being with each other in minutes and it is a comfort from knowing him a lifetime.
It was important for me that he knew how much I loved him and how important it has been that he has been in my life. I hope I succeeded. We have reached the part of our lives where we definitely can’t see around the corners.
As usual, jazz plays as I write. I care for jazz the way Sidney does in “Grantchester.” It has become a thread in my life.
And it captures the melancholy that comes from sorting thoughts, working to put the pieces of the puzzle together, a never-ending process in life.
At dinner last night, we talked of my mother and one of my nieces shook her head. Her grandmother was a complicated individual who sometimes delighted us and often vexed us. Always kind to strangers, that kindness did not always extend to her kin. As she aged and as dementia set in, her granddaughters occasionally saw her rage and it shook them.
As the rage of the White Supremacist movement shook me this weekend when one of them, barely an adult, drove his car into a group of counter protesters and killed a woman and injured nineteen in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Our president’s tepid “many sides” response to the incident has resulted in a series of resignations from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council.
The first to leave was Ken Frazier, CEO of pharmaceutical company, Merck. Trump viciously attacked him for doing so. Critics of Trump have pointed out that Frazier is black.
The others who have left are white and, so far, have not been targeted by the kind of ire that hit Frazier. They have also not mentioned Charlottesville.
FORTUNE, a magazine I do not think of as a bastion of liberal thought, has praised Frazier’s resignation as an act of courage.
The others have only been called “grand-standers” by Trump. The latest to go is Scott Paul, head of the American Manufacturing Alliance. And Mr. Trump knows “plenty” who will replace these “grand-standers.”
As I begin to wind down my time in Minneapolis, I continue sorting my thoughts, fitting the past into my present. As I must sort and parse the actions of a president whose reactions and words defy my understanding of his position and the kind of deportment it requires.
Here is a link to what Jimmy Fallon had to say and it was well said.
Tags:American Manufacturing Council, Charlottesville, Christine Olson, Devonna Tombers, Grandstanders, Jimmy Fallon, Ken Frazier, life, Media, Minneapolis, Minnesota, St. Paul, Tom Fudali
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