Outside the sun is shining down brilliantly; a bright white light is cast down on the mounds of snow outside my windows. It looks warm and inviting. It is not. The temperature is minus nine, wind chill factor, and will continue to go lower as the day progresses. It is the most brutally cold winter I remember since I have been here and I have commented to many a friend: it’s Minnesota cold.
At times, I have wanted to depart and head to the tropics until it breaks. I dress in layers and my feet are always cold, despite wool socks and boots. But that is the way of this winter. Cold and coldly beautiful, it seems to be one for the record books.
This morning, I rose and went down to Christ Church in Hudson with some friends and then moved on to the Red Dot for brunch. When I left the church, my car was momentarily obscured by the blowing snow. It is that kind of day. While I was out, the driveway was plowed and the walk shoveled, for which I am grateful. Tomorrow I will head down to New York City so I can be in place for an early meeting on Tuesday.
While I organize my week, Denmark is struggling to recover from a young man, freshly out of prison, who killed two and wounded five. It was a bit of a copycat event, modeled after the Charlie Hebdo incident in Paris. The supposed target in the first killing was a cartoonist, Lars Vik, who had satirized the Prophet Mohammed back in 2007 and has been under police protection ever since. The second victim was a young Jewish man who was acting as a volunteer security person at a Danish synagogue for a Bat Mitzvah.
In another act of brutality, the Libyan cohorts of ISIS have released a video purportedly showing the beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians. They were singled out for their religion.
It sometimes feels like we are returning to the Middle Ages, when all sorts of heinous acts were justified in the name of religion. Certainly, those who claim allegiance to ISIS seem to be parading medieval characteristics of brutal killing for the sake of religion, not unlike the Christian Crusaders who rampaged through land after land in the late 11th Century, slaughtering Jews after they had paid Bishops for their safety. Eastern Orthodox Christians were also not immune from the wrath of the Crusaders. It was not a pretty time for Christianity and it has only been in the last few centuries that we have begun behaving civilly with each other. Perhaps someday the various branches of Islam will learn to live with each other and with us in a civil manner. But it is certainly not today.
In Ukraine the truce called for last night has slowed but not quelled the violence. Around the city of Debaltseve, a vital rail hub, there is still the sound of shelling. Other areas are seeing relief.
In Nigeria, a sixteen-year-old suicide bomber blew herself up at a crowded bus station, killing mostly children who were selling goods at the station. No one has yet claimed responsibility but it has the earmarks of Boko Haram. How does one get a sixteen-year-old girl to blow herself up?
Moving away from the violence wracking our world, there are rumors that Apple is considering building an electric car. I find this interesting – and not entirely improbable.
While I think I have it difficult with my blistering cold, I am not as unlucky as Boston, which has been hit with more snow and with brutal cold.
As I write this, the sun is beginning to set. Tonight on NBC there will be a 40th Anniversary Celebration of Saturday Night Live. A group of us are gathering to watch the event. It will be quite an event, probably a little raw and ragged at the edges, as the weekly show often is, and also probably full of magic moments, as the show regularly is.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 02 15 16 It’s our nuts…
February 16, 2016Columbia 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.
Tags:Antonin Scalia, Ben Franklin, Claverack, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Mitch McConnel, Obama, Pandora, Saturday Night Live, Ted Cruz
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