Posts Tagged ‘Pandora’

Letter From New York 02 15 16 It’s our nuts…

February 16, 2016

Columbia County  Ben Franklin  Pandora  Antonin Scalia  Obama  Mitch McConnell  Oil Prices  Saturday Night Live  Cruz  Rubio  Trump

Outside, a light snow is falling and I am sequestered in the cottage, where I have been all day.  It’s very chill though tomorrow we are supposed to hit the low fifties.  We are all rolling our eyes about this winter which seems unlike any winter I have experienced since I’ve been up in Columbia County.  For the most part, it’s been like a long, chill fall and not like winter.

There is a fire in the Franklin Stove though I have the door closed.  I am not after aesthetics tonight, I am after heat.  There has been a chill to the cottage all day and I am seeking to counter it with the stove, which could almost heat the house when I keep it stocked with logs and the door closed.  Good old Ben Franklin; a fount of inventions…

Jazz is playing on Pandora.  I am getting better so I am no longer feeling the need for silence.  It is the first day I haven’t spoken to my sister since this began.  I’m healing but am still so tired; I sleep a deep sleep every night and usually for nine to eleven hours.  Ah, “sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care…”  My sleeve has been raveled and needs knitting up…

Several friends have called today to check on the state of my health and after I have assured them I am on the mend, our talk seems to go to politics and all express a dismay at the political world we are living in.  Scalia is dead and McConnell has sworn to delay an appointment until we have a new President.  And, frankly, I rolled my eyes at that.  Somehow, it seems the Republicans think of Obama as an eight year constitutional crisis and I don’t understand that. 

I haven’t always agreed with him and I don’t think he is a constitutional crisis personified.   I have never understood what seems a pathological hatred for the man by Republicans.

After a discussion of Scalia, we immediately go to Trump who has caused the campaign for the Republican nomination to resemble a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch. 

And yet it’s all very real.  And the vitriol between the Republicans is so unseemly.  I am appalled.  But they are taking it very seriously.  And that’s more than a little frightening…  Cruz, Rubio, Trump are espousing the politics of fear and hatred from what I see.  Where is hope?  Belief in the future? 

The rest of the world is ticking on.  The Australians have uncovered a ring of drug smugglers using bras to carry meth.  The WHO is working to figure out Zika. Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli Prime Minister, is off to prison while proclaiming his innocence.  Gas is under $2.00 a gallon in most places. 

The world is nuts.  When hasn’t it been?  It is just this is our nuts and we have to deal with it.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Claverack, Columbia County, gas prices, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Putin, Russia, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Letter From New York 12 19 15 On the countdown to Christmas…

December 20, 2015

Christmas Cards. Pandora. Christ Church. Hudson. Red Dot. Nick Dier. Christmas Quiche.  Democratic Debate.  Syrian Refugees.

It is Saturday night and I am at home.  Christmas carols are playing on Pandora and I am at the end of day in which I have been amazingly, perhaps disgustingly productive.

It is the pressure of the season.  Waking early, I did some weeding of my email inbox while sipping morning coffee.  I went to the gym then headed down to Christ Church to help serve coffee for the indoor Winter Market but there were enough people so I wasn’t needed.

Going to the Red Dot I had brunch, a wickedly delicious Eggs Benedict on potato latkes with a side of crisp American bacon.  I felt like a depraved man but it was so good.

Coming home, I went over to Lionel and Pierre’s because Nick was there.  I wanted to bawl him out.  He had surgery two days ago and was working, which he shouldn’t have been doing.  I was relieved to find his father with him, helping him.

Going home, I organized the making of quiches.  It’s my tradition to give neighbors and close friends a “Christmas Quiche.”  Today was the day to make them.   After leaving Lionel’s, Nick arrived and helped within the limits of a young man in a sling.

We made fourteen quiches.  I have wrapped my Christmas presents.  I have done my Christmas cards.

Though has anyone noticed how few Christmas cards we actually get these days?  I send back to everyone I get one from and this year that has been only seven cards.  Last year it was thirty some.  Paper cards are going out of fashion.

I remember the days of my youth in which my mother would spend what seemed like weeks getting out Christmas cards.  She had a basket in which she kept every Christmas card that came in and held it until the following year when she answered them all.

Must have been hundreds every year.

I bagged my presents this year.  Admit it, we all use bags now rather than the elaborate wrapping sessions of our youth.  I remember them well.  Intricate hours spent wrapping packages.  After enough of us had left home, my mother had a room devoted to wrapping.

Now I bag!  Don’t we all?

While I am writing this the Democrats are having a debate and I’m not watching.

I haven’t watched the Republican debates either.  They have been train wrecks from what I can assess.

And the Democratic ones have been on Saturday nights which, as I recall from my media days, may be the lowest ones for households using television.   Why are they doing them on Saturday nights?

I simply can’t believe all this is happening a year out from the election.  Have we turned politics into a reality TV show?

I am sitting in my lovely little cottage, listening to jazz Christmas music and am wondering about the world in which I am living.

And I am recognizing how lucky I am not to be a Syrian refugee or a refugee from anywhere.  There are sixty-million of them right now.  I think it is about to be worse than the refugee problem at the end of WWII.  And that is tragic.

I am wrapped in the coziness of my cottage.  It is where I want to be tonight, separated from the trials of the world though I will probably always be cognizant of them, wondering what I can do.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, European Refugee Crisis, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 08 01 15 Thoughts from the west bank of the Claverack Creek…

August 2, 2015

Behind me, soft jazz plays on Pandora. In front of me the creek is reflecting the green that overhangs it. The sun is setting and I am at the table on the deck writing on my laptop. It seems the perfect way to end a day.

It was not an eventful day. I woke early. As I went to turn on the coffee pot, the deck glistened with a recent rain. I went out there to sit.

In the early morning, I sat reading the NY Times and taking in the fresh air, listening to the songs of the birds in the trees. It seems right that I am bookending the day with more time on the deck. Every moment here is precious. In a time I can see coming, the trees will turn the brilliant colors of fall and then the winter will come. I enjoy the seasons and am grateful that my little piece of heaven includes four of them.

It is a soft and silky evening. Alana, proprietress of the Red Dot, and Patrick, her partner, were here for part of the afternoon and recently left. As I was leaving after lunch at the Dot, she asked me to stay and I did. She wanted to come and sit on the deck, watch the creek and experience a moment of peace. It has been a tough week for her.

They came. We had wine and cheese and then they left and I am here in the silver light of the end of day, listening again to the songs of the birds and thinking about the world.

An eighteen-month-old Palestinian baby was laid to rest today, immolated by Israeli extremists apparently. The rest of his family is being treated for burns. It is unsure that his mother will survive. Following a Jewish Orthodox man attacking the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem, knifing nine people, including a fifteen year old who is fighting for her life, this is a week when Israel is asking itself serious questions.

The serious questions they ask themselves are the same serious questions we all need to be asking ourselves. In America, we have become inured to the violence and that is tragic. For a few moments, after an event such as the killing of nine in Charleston, we ask questions but then go on, forgetting what has occurred until the next atrocity and when that happens, we quickly forget. It seems, sometimes, we learn nothing. The Confederate Flag has gone down in South Carolina and that is good but shouldn’t it have come down long ago?

While it is warm in upstate New York, it is blisteringly hot in Iran and Iraq. Iran posted a heat index of 165 degrees Fahrenheit today and in Iraq a four-day mandatory holiday has been declared to help people cope, especially since the delivery of electricity is not very reliable. I can’t comprehend a heat index of 165 Fahrenheit. Sorry, not processing. I think I would incinerate.

The Donald is still leading the Republicans in the polls and I am still confused how that can be but it is.

There has been no agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership after meetings in Hawaii. Everyone seems to thing it will still happen but that it didn’t happen was unexpected. And a bit of an embarrassment for Obama… However, there were 650 people meeting! It’s hard for me to get three people to agree on where to eat!

Facebook is prepping a drone to bring Internet access to people who don’t have it. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is expecting a baby. Gosh, the world keeps going on. I’m more excited by the Internet access than the baby but that’s probably because I don’t know Mark personally.

An Ebola vaccine looks more than promising and, hopefully, it will help contain and eliminate that scourge from the world.

The light around me is very silver. The day is ending. I am in twilight and the world around me is growing quiet. The birds are not as outspoken. Far away is the sound of something motorized, a sound I don’t recognize, something new. The jazz continues playing and soon I will go into the house and watch a movie.

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Letter From New York 07 27 15 From the side of creek…

July 27, 2015

As I begin to write this, I am seated on the deck. I realized I had the choice of writing at my desk or being here on the deck so I moved my laptop out here.

It is an elegant day in Claverack. The sun is glinting through the trees and the birds are singing all around me. Jazz is playing on Pandora. The creek is mirror like today, reflecting the green trees hanging over the water. It is warm and a shade humid but not uncomfortable.

I lazed around the house this morning reading and visiting with a friend who was up for a day and a half. Around two, I finally did the errands I had meant to do much earlier in the day and then it seemed too late to head into the city so I returned to the cottage to do a little work and write.

The New York Times’ T Magazine is up, shooting over at Jim Ivory’s house [Merchant Ivory Films], just down the road from me. I ran into Jeremiah today, a friend who is helping with the shoot while having lunch at Relish, across from the Train Station.

It is a day, here, of pastoral beauty.

The world is not quite like that. The Shanghai Exchange fell 8.5%, a move that rattled world markets. The Chinese government is intervening though it didn’t move quickly enough to stop today’s slide. There are market jitters everywhere because of China and the ongoing Greek situation, one that doesn’t seem resolved yet though not in the news as much.

Boston has terminated its bid for the Olympics in 2024. Resistance to the bid was rising among the denizens of the city. Everyone capitulated and that might not have been a bad thing.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock the last couple of days [and I have almost been] you will have known Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, died after months in a medically induced coma. She was found in a bathtub [as was her late mother] and never recovered. Tragedy follows tragedy and it is so sad. Did she have a chance? Probably but probably not many supported her in having that chance. The American entertainment industry has created a small industry of tragic stories, going back as far the dawn of the movies.

Huckabee, one the many Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination, said a deal with Iran would march Israelis to the ovens. Ouch. Lots of people are working to distance themselves from that comment. Though some are not.

In one of the most interesting stories I heard on NPR today as I was driving is that “Jihadi John,” a Kuwaiti born British citizen who fell in with IS, is now on the run from IS. He was responsible for some of the worst of the beheadings. Now that he has been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, he apparently feels his value to IS has diminished and he is fleeing for his life. Prime Minister David Cameron so wants to bring him to justice…

The humidity has slipped away and it is remarkably pleasant sitting on my deck. A while ago mosquitoes began to plague me. I went to my iPhone and went to my apps and set off the mosquito repellant app and they actually have disappeared, hounded away by a noise I can’t hear but which makes them really unhappy. Have not seen a mosquito since I activated it.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the 11th President of India, and the foremost promoter of both its nuclear and space programs, died today. He is a personal friend of my friend, Howard Bloom, writer and theorist. Howard has been in my life since 2008 or so, maybe earlier. A producer friend introduced me to him. He has had a remarkable life. He was a public relations maven and handled Michael Jackson, Queen, Mellenkamp, you name it, back in the 70’s and 80’s, Bloom was the man for the big groups and individuals.

He’s amazing. So apparently was Kalam, who died while giving a speech. Not a bad way to go.

The sun is beginning to set. It is a perfect night in Claverack. Soft, cool breezes are beginning to blow across my land. The creek no longer is so brilliantly reflecting the trees; the sun has fallen too low for that.

The world is not content. I am.

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