Letter from the Vineyard

On the nights before the days I teach, not only do I set my iPhone alarm, I also set my clock radio.  I want to be sure I am up in plenty of time to get myself centered, caffeinated and to gather everything I need for class.

Since I taught today, the clock radio went off, loudly, and the very first thing I heard this morning was “Trump.”  Loudly, gratingly, irritatingly…  The moment I heard his name I knew he had won big last night and I shuddered, hit the snooze alarm and buried myself underneath my pillow.

Trump did win big last night.  On the way to class I purchased copies of the New York Times, The New York Post, The Albany Times Union and our local Register-Star.  I broke the class up into four groups, giving each group a copy of the four papers and asked them to judge them against the points that Rex Smith had made about the ethics of journalism.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the New York Times got the best reviews for objectivity, followed by the Albany Times – Union.  One of the students pointed out that in the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, that all the coverage of the Republicans was in color and had more pages than they gave for the Democrats, whose coverage was all in black and white.  Very interesting…

The poor Register Star didn’t really even register.  It had almost no coverage of Super Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton won but not as decisively as her supporters would have liked.  She battered Bernie but didn’t knock him out.  Yesterday did make his march to the nomination more difficult and possibly impossible.  Hillary won Massachusetts, which had been expected to go to Bernie.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican candidate, is expected to give a speech shortly about the 2016 race.  He has been very hard on Trump in his Twitter feed of late.  It will be interesting to hear what he has to say on Thursday.  I didn’t much like him as the Republican nominee as it seemed, to me, that he had no center which I had once thought he did.  Perhaps now that he is finished with running he will have returned to the center and will say things from his heart.

Ben Carson has signaled he may be ending his candidacy.  Ted Cruz is positioning himself as the only one who could possible beat Trump. Rubio won Minnesota, my home state, last night.  I think they thought of him as the least of all evils.

Aubrey McClendon, an energy entrepreneur in Oklahoma, died today in a fiery crash while he was speeding down a road.  Yesterday, he had been indicted.  Today he is dead.  It will take two weeks to figure out what really happened.  He was fifty-six.  He was accused of rigging bids.

Astronaut Scott Kelly returned to earth today after nearly a year in orbit.  He has an identical twin brother, also an astronaut, and NASA is attempting to find out just what a year in space does to a person.  They are thinking toward Mars.  Pretty amazing, don’t you think? 

The UN has imposed the severest sanctions on North Korea in twenty years as a result of its continuing to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems.  From what I have observed and certainly I am not a foreign policy expert, it’s the people of North Korea who will suffer and there is no way I can see they will push for a regime change.  The pudgy little dictator of North Korea will still find ways to get his delicacies while his people resume eating grass.

The Pentagon has begun using Special Forces to capture IS leaders.  They have had one success and aim for more.  But the Pentagon doesn’t want to get back into the prisoner business so after questioning, the IS individual will be turned over to the Iraqis. 

The evening is coming to a close.  The dryer has just buzzed, announcing that the last load of clothes has been finished.  The only sound I hear now is the ticking of an old clock that my parents had which one of their parents had.  I think of it as the heart of the house, ticking time away, each moment taking us further into the future, which none of us can know.

I have some friends who live down in the Caribbean. I am tempted to ask them what it would take for me to go there should Trump become President.