December 1st, 2025
A Sea Change Coming?
November has come and gone.
My birthday, November 18th, was sun washed, wind less harsh, a perfect day to march into another new year in my life, spent acknowledging the myriad of birthday good wishes, a feast of goodwill kept me smiling the whole day long.
And now Thanksgiving 2025 is in our collective rear view mirror. May yours have been as grand as mine. I returned to Columbia County in New York for a gathering of the old Thanksgiving gang. Lionel outdid himself.
When I throw my feet to the ground in the morning, defying gravity one more time, there is always wonder, this old, Martha’s Vineyard, a bookstore. During the winter when the crowds are gone, I sometimes feel like that old man sitting on the porch of the general store, a century ago, next to the barrel of apples, people stopping to chat. But my apples are books and I am behind the counter.
My oldest friend, Sarah, fast friends by five when we marched off to kindergarten together, still intwined in each other’s lives, about to Christmas together, phones me regularly.
While neither of our lives are perfect, they are blessed, filled with good things, love, the safety of a home, food on the table, books to read, video to watch, health challenges met.
Neither of us watch the news anymore; it’s just too painful.
In the morning, I scan the papers, read “The Morning” from the NY Times, now helmed by Sam Sifton, his elegant turn of phrase applied to the news of the day. While missing his food columns, I appreciate his intelligence applied to global events.
What is inescapable is there is so much anguish in this world. Gaza, Sudan, Venezuela, perhaps soon to be invaded by us, the food crisis in this country, highlighted by the government shutdown, Ukraine, Jamaica, the U.S. health care crisis, ICE raids, the list goes on and on…
Where do I turn my attention?
On this island, fixed in the minds of many for wealth and privilege, one in four rely on SNAP to make ends meet. There is a homeless crisis here, a housing crisis. What’s a middle income family to do when the entry price for a home is a million dollars? Doctors cannot afford to live here.
During the government shutdown Trump went to the Supreme Court to prevent reserves from funding SNAP. At the same time, he gave a Gatsby themed party at Mar-a-Lago.
Rather like a fete at Versailles before the Bastille was stormed?
After my last letter, one of the responses I received told me to let it go: Trump won by a landslide.
No, I will not let it go. An electoral victory does not justify bad governance nor condone cruelty. Masked ICE officers? My mind boggles. Citizens and legal residents abused. Appalling.
Trump’s adventures against “cartels” make some Republicans uncomfortable about his path to justifying them, not to mention the military buildup in the region, the possibility he will order boots on the ground in Venezuela.
Secretary of War Hegseth allegedly told those conducting the first “cartel” raid to kill them all. There was a circling back; the survivors did not survive.
Jeffrey Epstein, he of heinous acts and suspicious death, obsesses us.
Trump could not rally his troops to stop the release of the files, so did a turnabout, encouraged the vote to release. He could have done it at any time.
With so many investigations in progress around Epstein, the heart of the papers will probably not see the light of day in our lifetime.
Trump could not force an end to the filibuster; even this Republican Senate was not that stupid.
While courts are fighting over the Texas redistricting, some states are not buckling to his redistricting demands.
The president’s chummy Oval Office meeting with New York’s Mayor Elect Mamdani has the MAGA world’s head spinning. Mine, too.
There is a peace proposal floating for Ukraine which seemed to read like Putin’s wish list, may have been identified as such by Secretary of State Rubio. Since then, the Administration’s media spin on Ukraine has been mind-boggling. Who’s on first? Europe scrambles to keep up.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has resigned [after a series of moves which made her seem, what? almost centrist? sane?]. The death threats may have been too much.
The death threats come quickly for anyone challenging the MAGA way.
Her resignation, via viral video, was an indictment of Trump.
Judge Currie ruled Lindsey Halligan unlawfully appointed to prosecute James Comey and Letitia James; therefore, her indictments are invalid. Judge Currie joins other federal judges who have questioned the Administration’s appointment of loyalists.
Is Trump’s apparent invulnerability cracking? I hope so.
Photo courtesy of Paul Doherty, Martha’s Vineyard
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack Friday, September 1, 2017 From the safety of the cottage, tears…
September 3, 2017Earlier today, I went to pick up the mail at the Post Office and as I was about to turn off the car, an interview started on NPR with Andrew White who, along with hundreds of other volunteer Texans, formed what is known as the “Texas Navy” and went out into the flooded streets of Houston. With a sixteen-foot boat and a twenty-horsepower motor and the help of friends, he rescued at least a hundred people, including a man with cerebral palsy and a man who was being treated for cancer and was having a bad reaction to his treatment and needed to get to his hospital. They got him within two blocks of where he needed to go; later the water in the neighborhood of the man with cerebral palsy rose another five feet after the rescue.
Sitting there, tears began flowing down my cheeks. Andrew White’s story was replicated by others all over Harris County which holds the city of Houston, citizen volunteers taking care of other citizens in need. It was the story of what is so often wonderful about this country.
Writing about it causing tears to build in my eyes and I am sniffling.
These are the stories, replicated in all kinds of tragedies around this country, that are the reasons we are great. Oh, we’re miserable S.O.B.’s sometimes but when it comes to disaster, we rise to the challenge in an incredible way and that makes me proud.
From Louisiana came the “Cajun Navy” that formed after Katrina, men and women who knew firsthand what was happening on the ground in Texas and they brought in their bayou boats and lent a hand, calling it “paying it forward.” Just as Texans had come to help them in Katrina.
Houston is home to thousands of refugees from Katrina, people who have found it hard to believe they are living through this twice in their lives.
J.J. Watt of the Houston Texans has raised over $12 million between practices for the coming season, coming off the field to work the phones.
Watt’s hometown is Pewaukee, WI and semis are traveling from there loaded with food and water and supplies. He started out with a goal of raising $200,000 and he just kept on going. Texas billionaire, Michael Dell, has pledged $36 million.
A group of “monster trucks,” organized by a group called Rednecks with Paychecks, is roaming the area, rescuing people and vehicles.
440,000 people have registered for aid from FEMA, as the Mayor of Houston is appealing for an “army” of FEMA officials to help with the claims.
The area that was water covered was larger than the state of Rhode Island. As the water recedes, it leaves behind contaminated water unfit for human consumption, filled with pathogens. Shelters, sometimes islands in a sea of water, are running low or out of food and water.
The damaged Arkema chemical plant can no longer cool the dangerous materials stored there and authorities have evacuated everyone within a mile and a half of the facility. There have been “pops” and plumes of smoke from the plant with no one knowing whether that’s all there is going to be or if it is just the beginning. “Brock” Long, head of FEMA, called the situation there incredibly dangerous.
Bowling alleys are filled with people; Walmart parking lots have been helipads.
And what is amazing and so wonderful and so DAMN great, is that so much of what is happening is unorganized. It is just people getting out to help other people. One man observed that no one was really organizing anything. People seemed to have an instinct for what needed to be done.
Like the “Texas Navy” and Andrew White, who it turns out is the son of a former Texas governor who passed away last month, and the people in the “Cajun Navy.”
People helping other people in a way that moves me to tears, far away, in the soft safety of my cottage.
Tags:Brock Long, Cajun Navy, Claverack Cottage, Claverack Creek, FEMA, Houston Texas, Hurricane Harvey, JJ Watt, Politics, Texas Navy
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