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Letter from the Vineyard, March 2026

March 24, 2026

A Letter from the Vineyard, written in segments, during March 2026

Alas, Babylon…

It’s a Saturday night, as I begin to write this.  It’s the night we “spring forward,” an exercise always leaves me feeling off, always makes me wonder why I am doing it? Why is the country doing it? British Columbia, apparently, has said: this is it, no more, after this.

It leaves me feeling tired for some reason, more tired than had I jumped time zones.

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We are a little more than a year into the presidency of Mr. Trump; I am exhausted. I woke on the last Saturday of February to find we’re bombing Iran. 

The articulated reasons are inchoate and constantly evolving.  The notion of boots on the ground is terrifying.  Have we learned nothing in my lifetime? Apparently not. But probably Bibi is happy. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is cheering us on!

Kristi Noem has been fired. Hooray! Markwayne Mullin as a substitute? Not encouraging. Will probably play the game smarter than Kristi [not hard to do] and a Trump loyalist. In the NY Times, the amazing Frank Bruni wrote about how we are being governed by incompetents.  If you have a subscription, here’s the article.

The chaos exhausts me.

Really exhausts me.  As it does like-minded customers in my store, fellow parishioners at St. Andrew’s, everyone I know who isn’t a die-hard supporter of Trump and his minions.

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Now it’s a Monday; I spent a pleasant day in the bookstore, researching upcoming books and making sure we had the ones I wanted on order – so many books released in a week! The sun was out; it felt springlike and downtown Edgartown was deserted.  I think everyone was in their yard cleaning up debris from the storm.

The storm, worst since ’78 said everyone.  1978 was brutal in Minnesota too, the year I fled to California, a decision made on a night when it was 73 degrees below zero wind chill factor. It led to this crazy, wonderful life I’m leading.

Reality is a hard pill to swallow.  Especially now, in this dystopian [to me] Trump era when I read accounts of people in this administration talk about what they’re doing.  My head explodes.

Pete Hegseth sounds like he is on SNL, except, god help us all, he isn’t.  He is really in charge of the Department of Defense. No, wait!  The Department of War, which is what he just started, at the bidding of our president, Trump. Undeclared by Congress, by the way.  Democratic and Republican presidents have for the last how many decades found ways to bypass Congress in military adventures?

Donald Trump, having kicked the hornet’s nest, has no idea what he has unleashed.  He is remaking the world; I wonder will we like the new model? 

The Iranian people who rioted against the theocracy just months ago are too busy dodging bombs to rise up again while at the same time they are likely turning against Trump – and all of us. 

My friends Misha and Quadri were stranded in Dubai, changing planes when this fresh hell manifested itself, spent harrowing days without any help from the US government. Back in the Obama years, a friend of mine worked at State, was in charge of making sure Americans were helped in situations like this.  No more, apparently.

On March 14th Trump said we might bomb Kharg Island again, “just for fun.”  WTF. An American president talking about bombing – just for fun? I am profoundly disturbed. Just for fun? From an American president?

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation [didn’t know about it either] has reported troops are being told by some commanders the Iran War is divinely ordained, the trigger for Armageddon as foretold in the Book of Revelation.

The Secretary for War also has also draped his Pentagon in Christian symbolism while declaring we would “give no quarter” which, to some legal heads, is a war crime.

My friend Carolyn pointed out this was fodder for satire in the ‘60’s. But now, 60 years later, satire it’s not.

Trump’s approval rating is falling around affordability issues, not his lack of moral fiber.  If I am reading the polls correctly, three quarters of the country disapproves of his actions against Iran. But we are more concerned about prices than the deaths happening because of this fiasco. 175 children because of outdated intelligence among them.

Mr. Trump called NATO members “cowards” for not sending help.  Well, Mr. Trump, you have eviscerated them during both your terms.  Any wonder they’re not joining? You didn’t even bother telling them before you started bombing.  You are successfully breaking down the hegemony which has sustained us through my lifetime.

Robert Mueller is dead, a stoic civil servant if ever there was one. Mueller had investigated Trump.  On hearing of his death, Mr. Trump said something like, good, I’m glad.  Not surprising from Trump but really? You’re the president.  A little decorum? Not going to happen.

Yesterday armed ICE agents arrived at some airports. What can go wrong?

I am hoping we make it out of this life without Trump starting a nuclear war. Seriously, it wakes me up sometimes.

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Letter from the Vineyard

February 16, 2026

February, 2026

I’m home from a day at the bookstore, now reopened after being closed for four and half weeks while a new floor was installed and we did inventory.

Generally, I spend a few days crafting my “letter.” Not this one.  It’s poured out of me; I want to get it out before I hack at it again.

My return from vacation while the floor was installed corresponded with the most snow the Vineyard has seen in a dozen years.

The day the store reopened, walking to my car, I didn’t notice a patch of ice, fell, made a small fracture of my ankle.  Now I am in a boot, which makes navigating difficult.  This winter is more trying than any other I’ve had on the Vineyard.  I am working very hard not to be cranky.  It’s not easy.

So much is not easy these days.

There is so much to be angry about, dismayed about, and I effing don’t want this man and his MAGA movement to dominate my head space completely. Trump and his minions do so many things so despicable it is hard not to have one’s jaw constantly dropping.

While all of this is going on, relentlessly, from our president and the cast of despicable people with whom he has surrounded himself, I must seek out things to give me solace because in solace there will be found strength to go on resisting because we are moving into a time when we have to actively resist.

There is joy in my days in the bookstore, in the comings and goings of people, of the joy of watching them pick out books for themselves, often not what I would guess. There are moments of conversation, about the weather [for the island, pretty awful right now], politics [most of our customers are aligned with me, but not all], our Banned Books section, which is forever changing as there are so many banned books.

Hope I feel when young people come into the store and buy thoughtful, serious books that will demand something from them.

Gratitude when I wake in the morning and look out my windows, surrounded by nature, glad I am still walking the earth with a moment to feel grateful.  And that’s been harder to do wearing a boot on my left leg, using an umbrella as a cane to help me navigate the sheet of ice my driveway has become.

I am grateful for all of you who take the time to read my letters.

Yes, I am enraged right now.  The administration is working to obtain subpoenas to look at social media accounts to see who opposes ICE.  Well, yes, I oppose ICE in this manifestation, thuggish as it is, masked as it is.  Even the Brown Shirts back in the day didn’t wear masks.

So, if the administration gets its way, I will, perhaps, be targeted for opposing the behavior of ICE.  And that astounds me. That in this country this would be happening.  Goes way beyond Richard Nixon’s Enemies List.  Brings it down to all of us, at every level.

This morning, I was at St. Andrew’s, confirmed as a member of the Vestry, the Episcopal Version of the Parish Council, my second tour of duty as a Vestry member. As I stood on the altar, I thought doing this was an act of hope.

St. Andrew’s is a little church and it’s the church which took in the Venezuelans dropped on Martha’s Vineyard by the Governor of the great state of Florida from the great state of Texas.

In the day to day, we work to do good things.  We collect food and clothes to pass on. We helped start the first shelter for homeless on the island, along with two other churches, now grown into its own building.

Mainstream Christianity has been in decline but, unless I am misremembering the reports from Pew, the decline has plateaued, perhaps because of Covid, perhaps because churches are, in their essence, community in a time and world craving community.

To stand for good is an act of hope – and defiance – in a time when hope and defiance are now needed as much as ever.

An immigrant in Minneapolis posted a video on Tik Tok in praise of old white women in Minneapolis, who helped him feel safe.  Watch it here. It’s wonderful and some of those old white women are people with whom I went to grade school.  Take inspiration from them.

As, God knows, we need inspiration.

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Letter from the Vineyard

December 31, 2025

Happy New Year

December, 2025

Letter from the Vineyard

December 31, 2025

December is slipping away, the year nearly done. Days will get longer now. The light will come, literally.

Christmas was to have been spent in New Mexico but the morning I was to leave, I got up; my back did not.  I spent days managing an episode of sciatica, a word I remember hearing in my childhood, something old people dealt with.  Well, I am old now; it’s something I’ve navigated a couple of times, first in the summer of 2018 when I woke up, got in the shower, experienced a kind of pain I’ve never know before. Pretty quiet until now, when it erupted and I cancelled Christmas for myself.

While I rested, the Kennedy Center was renamed the Trump – Kennedy Center, something I find offensive but not surprising. There will also be a Trump class of new warships for the Navy. The memes are amazing, several of gold plated warships caused me to guffaw, one named S.S. Bonespurs, which felt a shade dangerous with my back.

Mr. Trump also hosted the Kennedy Honors, which were the lowest rated in their history. Excuse my schadenfreude.

The Supreme Court showed a moment of spine and prevented deployment of troops in Chicago. The Supreme Court has been unprecedented in allowing presidential power to expand. FDR attempted something of the same but didn’t get as far as President Trump. Abraham Lincoln was a master.

Jeffrey Epstein does not go away.  Trump said he had never been on Epstein’s plane though flight records indicate he was, more than a half dozen times, a plane known to some as “The Lolita Express.” Five million more pages to come…

Marjorie Taylor Greene was screamed at by Trump about her activism to release the files.  Why, she asked.  It’s going to hurt my friends, said the president, allegedly.

On Christmas Day, the U.S., in coordination with Nigeria, did precision bombing against IS enclaves in northern provinces, suspected of attacking Christians. The Nigerian government disputes Christians were uniquely targeted, saying IS doesn’t discriminate, attacking both Muslims and Christians.

Israel ranks last among countries in the Anholt Nation Brands Index [who knew there was such a thing?] Surprised?

Gaza is a festering wound. One day, I happened upon pictures of children in the West Bank, looking like Holocaust survivors.

In response, I gave to World Central Kitchen, Jose Andres’ organization for Gaza relief.

Famine is hovering over Palestine, Haiti, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali and Yemen, at least. As the year ends, think of the starving and, if you can, help out.

One of the wars Trump “ended” was between Cambodia and Thailand except it didn’t stay ended.  There’ve been weeks of deadly clashes and bombings.  On Sunday, the 28th, another ceasefire was declared.

While it can seem the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding freely across the globe, there are signs of hope.  Nicholas Kristoff has an opinion piece in the December 28th edition of the New York Times in which he tries to cheer us up.  I recommend reading it here.

During the days of being home there was time to ponder.

Politically, I think of myself as a centrist, modestly progressive, concerned about civil rights, grateful to have grown up in the America I did, flawed as it was, it did seem we were mostly all working toward a common, greater good.

Sorry to say, not so sure right now.  However, as friends tip more to despair than hope, I find my hope rising again.

Trump is not invincible.  The rise of fascism is not inevitable.  It will take work and we’re capable of it.  We need to believe in ourselves. I continue to take hope and find hope in the good things I see happening. 

My best high school friend, Tom, works three days a week at a food bank, stretched to the max by need.  This island came together to help our food bank weather the suspension of SNAP.

People go to the streets, make silly, wonderful signs, letters are written, petitions are signed, blogs are written. Write a letter, sign a petition. Partake in a march.

Now in Summerfield, FL to spend New Year’s with my sister, a newer tradition of ours.  Off to see other friends in Florida and on the 10th, will set sail on a Virgin Voyages cruise, 7 days of drifting through the Caribbean, traveling with my longtime friend, Tory, who has also booked a cabin.

Let me leave you with my favorite picture of the year, Edgartown Books in her Christmas finery. I think it sings of hope.

Happy New Year! Let us go forth bravely in these troubled times.

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Letter from the Vineyard

October 30, 2025

October, 2025

Letter from the Vineyard, October 2025

On October 18th, across the country, millions moved onto the streets for a “No Kings” demonstration or, as some Republicans categorized it, a “Hate America,” rally.

Looking at all the reports, it seemed anything but a “Hate America” rally; rather an unabashed love fest for this country and what it stands for, for the things which have made us wonderfully unique.

No mistake, we are at a pivotal point. We have been before.  Pick up Jill Lepore’s “These Truths,” a history of the United States; there have been times we have been at the brink and have come back, better.

There is never a guarantee.  The Athenians lost democracy, the Romans their Republic. But nothing is inevitable and, for the first time since we entered this Project 2025 bad dream, I felt hope.

The protests were delightful, mocking; nothing a movement like Trump’s detests more than being mocked. 

Much of what outrages us is not just Trump; it is the people around Trump.  He’s not smart enough to be pulling all this off.

He is being used by men who understand he has captured the imagination of the disaffected in this country, men like Stephen Miller who is driving immigration policy, like Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, main architect of Project 2025, who, for whatever reasons, seems to have devoted his adult life to creating an executive that surpasses all other parts of the government.

It’s been played before in this country.  We may be besotted by the streaming series “The Gilded Age,” but then there were men trying to do what these men are attempting to do today, create an oligarchy.

They think, because they are rich, they are better, smarter.

I think these men have done amazing things. It does not give them the right to rule.

Musk is marching toward being the world’s first trillionaire, has just launched Grokipedia, an alternative to Wikipedia, which depends entirely upon Grok, Musk’s AI creation for its information. Grok seems to share the biases of Mr. Musk himself. What could go wrong?

The would be oligarchs love the administration of Donald Trump because it is making it easy for them to shape the world to their wants. Stephen Miller wants a white world. Russell Vought apparently wants an Il Duce; one he can control. He seems to be getting it.

We’re in a government shutdown. Kristi Noem, head of Homeland Security, created a video blaming the Democrats for the shutdown.  Well, there just went another norm. 

The stress is beginning to show.  Flights were halted into LAX because of a shortage of air traffic controllers.

And the norms broken keep getting bigger.

We woke up, discovered the East Wing of the White House was no more. How was this possible? How did a part of the White House get destroyed without some oversight, some deep dive into its historical importance, a look at alternatives?

It is true the White House complex needs a space to entertain; tenting is not an ideal solution but was it necessary to destroy one wing of the White House to provide it? 

The SNAP program is running out of money.  The Trump Administration won’t use billions in reserve to support it.

“The Great Big Beautiful Bill” is setting the groundwork for the United States to carry a debt ratio similar to Italy and Greece, countries whose financial crises almost brought down the European Union.  And who thought this was a good idea? Under a Republican president?  Under a Republican Congress? This is happening?

It is.

Speaker Johnson won’t seat a Democratic Congressperson from Arizona, nor will he call Congress back into session.  The administration apparently doesn’t want him to as it gives them some opportunities to consolidate power into the Executive Branch though it’s not Trump thinking this up.  Russell Vought, is that you, calling the shots?

Trump jokes about a third term. Steve Bannon says there is “a plan.” It’s not constitutionally possible but when has the impossible tempered this administration?

We have gone beyond norm breaking, entering uncharted territory.

So, let us go back to where I started:  the protests, the lovely, crazy, wonderful, “No Kings” protests. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan wrote in “Why Civil Resistance Works” that if 3.5% of a population of a country’s population takes to the streets, political change becomes likely; not guaranteed, but history suggests it will. 

It’s estimated there were 7 million in the streets, that’s 2%.  Next time I will shut the shop and take to the streets. Let’s get out there, change the world.

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Letter from the Vineyard 11.02.24

November 3, 2024

It has been an age since a “letter;” I stopped when it became apparent Trump would be the Republican nominee; to comment on the world meant mentioning him – I couldn’t, toxic to me.

And Biden was failing, faltering, laying open a path to put Trump in the White House. 

Then Biden withdrew, Harris pulled the Democratic Party together in a New York minute; as Sherlock would say, the game was afoot.

My family was Republican, I was Republican, left in the Reagan years, when the seeds of today’s Republican party were sown, the beginning of an unholy, to me, alliance between the GOP and the Christian Right, about votes for the GOP, about abortion for the Christian Right.

For decades it’s gone on, paying off for the Christian Right, thanks to the current Supreme Court.

Two years ago, I registered as a Republican, even if the Republican Party as I knew it no longer existed. Registered, I can fight for it, in small ways.

This is from The Atlantic magazine’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, only its fourth in a history predating Lincoln, who it also endorsed.

“If you’re a conservative who can’t abide Harris’s tax and immigration policies, but who is also offended by the rottenness of the Republican Party, only Trump’s final defeat will allow your party to return to health … We believe that American politics are healthiest when vibrant conservative and liberal parties fight it out on matters of policy.”

This is a fight for country and party.  Trump is not a Republican, having perverted the Republican Party to serve his narcistic needs.

His claim to fame is he is a successful businessman, telling folks he got a small loan from his dad to get started.  Not true.  His father bailed him out over and over.   Read “Lucky Loser,” they have the receipts. 

“The Apprentice” saved him; in need of cash flow, he got it from posing as a successful businessman, over $400 million in desperately needed dollars.  While the show was running he went through two bankruptcies, out of, what, six? Eight?

John Miller, head of marketing for NBC at the time, is on an apology tour for his role in convincing people Trump was a successful businessman.

Does no one see he is deteriorating in front of us, under the glare of klieg lights? Dancing when people have collapsed at one of his rallies, discussing Arnold Palmer’s genitals? Suggesting guns be aimed at Liz Cheney?

The media, which Trump hates, does not hold him accountable as they did Biden. 

What is any Christian thinking, voting for him, a man who has cheated almost everyone who has ever worked for him, refusing to pay what they are owed, who’s cheated on his wives, who’s been ordered to pay compensation to a woman he assaulted?  The judge called it rape.

Roy Cohn, who did Joe McCarthy’s dirty work, denied he was gay even as he died of AIDS, trained Trump to attack, attack, deny, deny.  Cohn was one of the most execrable characters of the 20th century.

Trump is being supported by lots of billionaires, including Elon Musk, who has got to be the most brilliant, looniest character ever. And who seems to have been chatting with Putin regularly.

Trump is offering to help shelter billionaire’s wealth.

We have the greatest income gap since the Gilded Age, when the country tottered between revolution and reform. Teddy Roosevelt’s reforms saved us from oligarchy.

Trump will advance oligarchy. 

The Romans built their empire on the backs of slaves.  The United States has a dirty secret, it’s built on the backs of immigrants.  Our immigration policy has been flawed since there was immigration policy. 

Trump rallied the troops to block immigration reform in Congress because he wanted to campaign on the issue, a plan crafted by Republicans. Biden had caved.

Unless you’re Native American, you’re an immigrant or descended from one. 

But German, Swedish, Italian, Polish immigrants were white.  Many new arrivals have different skin colors, not okay.  We have not resolved our racist past.

Trump promises mass deportations.

Be prepared to pay higher prices on everything.  Milk will skyrocket without immigrants to work the fields.  Farmers will lose their livelihood.

His tariffs?  Inflation will skyrocket because we’ve outsourced nearly everything.

Is he a fascist? Yes. Is he Hitler like? No, more like Mussolini. But behind him, are people not too morally far from Hitler’s men.  Project 2025.

Those folks are ideological descendants of people who have wanted America fascist for over a century, have worked at it, now within a vote of getting it. 

John Kelly, retired general, Trump’s longest serving Chief of Staff, denounced him as fascist.

Other Republicans repudiate Trump.  Pence has, Liz Cheney, her father, former VP Dick Cheney has, Shawn Reilly, Mayor of Waukesha, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stephanie Grisham, Jimmy McCain, son of John, seventeen members of the Ronald Reagan’s staff, saying Reagan would support Harris, former Senator Jeff Flake; they number in the hundreds.

Especially since his Madison Square Garden rally turned into a racist debacle.

Evil is afoot.  Stop it.  Kamala may not be your ideal candidate though she has hope, is competent, can complete a sentence. Or withhold your vote from Trump. Write yourself in.

Dorothy Thompson, a pioneering journalist, exiled from Germany by the Nazis, wrote:

“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument – the Incorporated National Will. … When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say “Heil” to him, nor will they call him “Führer” or “Duce.” But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of “O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!”*

I hear the bleating in the streets.

Time for it to stop.

*New York Herald column, February 12, 1937

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Letter From Claverack 09 25 2017 Fear, fear mongering, theater and more…

September 25, 2017

While it is now officially fall, the weather is summer-ish, scraping at ninety degrees today.  The train is rumbling into the city where I will be attending a talk today by my friend Jeff Cole of the Center for the Digital Future on “Driverless Cars and the Battle for the Living Room.”  I’m eager to see how those two very disparate topics get pulled together – or not.

Yesterday, I returned to the cottage from Provincetown where I had been visiting friends and attending the Tennessee Williams Festival, now in its twelfth year.  Mixing Shakespeare with Williams this year, I saw five plays, the most laudable being “Gnadiges Fraulein,” an absurdist Williams from the tail end of his career in which some see an allegory for that career.

The Festival was marred by weather from the last of Jose for the first three days; yesterday was magnificent.  Leaving after Shakespeare’s “Antony & Cleopatra,” I drove home, listening to the omnipresent exegesis of President Trump’s Friday comments on kneeling during the national anthem and Sunday’s reaction by athletes and owners of teams.

Trump had said that owners and coaches should get “the son of a bitch” players who kneeled during the national anthem off the field, suspending or firing them.

Owners and athletes defied the President.  Even Tom Brady locked arms with his teammates.  The Steelers stayed in the locker room until after the anthem had been played. All but two of the NFL’s owners and CEO’s issued statements calling for unity.

Some fans booed.  Most didn’t walk out.

Trump praised those who booed.

Such is life in today’s America.

And I’m on the side of the players and the owners in this kerfuffle.  The right to protest is as American as apple pie.

My weariness is growing daily with this President’s ability to be divisive.

Defying top aides, he has escalated the war of words with North Korea to the point that as I am writing this, the foreign minister for the pudgy, pugnacious little man who is the ruler of that country has said that Trump has declared war and they have the right to shoot down American planes.

This will not end well, I fear.

In Germany, Angela Merkel is on her way to a fourth term though diminished.  The far right AfD has won a troubling 13% of the vote and will have a place in the German parliament, a feat that no other far right German movement has managed in decades.

It is representative of the fear that threads its way through our societal fibers, in Germany and here at home, in France and the Netherlands.  The world is changing and change often results in fear and the world is changing so quickly right now.

Abe in Japan has called a snap election, riding high on North Korean nuclear fears.

The Senate is desperately working to pass another bill to repeal Obamacare but with McCain, Rand Paul and probably Collins and possibly Murkowski against it, tough sledding is a generous description of what is facing McConnell.

Trump is saying today that Congress doesn’t have “the guts” to repeal Obamacare and I’m hoping he’s right as this version seems to be the most mean-spirited of all the versions proposed so far.

I’m off soon to the presentation.  I’ll let you know how driverless cars and the battle for the living room fit together!

Have a good day!

 

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Letter From Claverack 09 05 2017 On my knees, praying…

September 6, 2017

Today, earlier, as I sat sipping morning coffee, two huge geese came crashing through a tree fallen across the creek, landing hard, splashing as they hit creek water.  It was startling.  Geese, once so abundant on my creek, have been rare these last few years.  Mature birds these, I wondered if they were from one of the many families of geese I have seen growing up while I have resided at the cottage, come home to roost for a moment.  Sailing majestically up and down for a time, they departed and I’ve not seen them again.

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Irma has become a Category 5 Hurricane and will reach Saba tonight, the Caribbean island I visited earlier this year.  Two friends from my Los Angeles days have retired there and will be facing her fury as I write this.  For a while, I got lost on Facebook to see if they had posted anything new but they hadn’t.  It’s now that time when you get on your knees and pray, which I will tonight and have not done since my very Catholic days and that was a long while ago.  And I am worried for them because Irma is as fiercer than Harvey.

Hopefully, I will know tomorrow more than I know tonight.  Tonight, they are battening down the hatches and waiting, hoping, maybe praying though I don’t think either of them are religious.  There have been posts from people I met there.  They will be in my prayers, too.

Tonight, across the country, “Dreamers” are praying because Jeff Sessions announced the end of Obama’s DACA order and Congress has six months to fix it or all those “dreamers” will begin to be deported.

Color me cynical.  How cruel can this Administration be?  Trump is playing to his base but not to the interests of the country.  Color me angry and not surprised.  So little surprises me anymore.  And there are all kinds of folks who think this is just wonderful.

And that scares me and makes me hopeful because all the rage in America is boiling to surface and maybe we will finally deal with it.  It would be good if we did because we are in a very delicate place.

Back in the day, long, long ago, I was in Canada to be in my roommate’s wedding to a Canadian woman and, as I was preparing to leave, a group of my Canadian friends did an “intervention.” They did not want me to leave. Viet Nam was in play.  They wanted me to stay, become a Canadian.

I didn’t.  Because I was an American.  It was a very profound moment in my life, making the decision to return.  Those were people I loved, who loved me and I might have been happy there – a completely different life but not unhappy.

But I am an American and so I returned, got lucky, didn’t go to Viet Nam, didn’t serve in the military and made my life here.

But here is not the here I know.  This here seems very strange to me, like the clock has been turned back and I don’t get it.  Something is afoot and we need to fix it, once and for all.  Maybe electing Trump will be the catalyst to fixing the festering wound that has damaged our national soul.

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Letter From Claverack 08 29 2017 Praying for Houston…

August 29, 2017

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There are days we take to catch up and today was one of them for me.  Once it had warmed enough [and yes, we are reaching that part of the year], I went out to the deck and set up shop, sipping my morning coffee while Amazon’s “Sarah Vaughn Station” played [and plays] in the background.

A backlog of work got done today; some of it in preparation for “Prison Alley Tales” which will broadcast live from the Red Dot Restaurant and Bar on Warren Street in Hudson at 7:00 PM tonight.  If you’re in the listening area, that’s 90.7 on your FM dial and, if you’re not, it’s available at www.wgxc.org/listen.

It’s the umbrella title for a collection of stories, recollections, monologues and performance pieces from the WGXC Diamond Street Radio Players, an ad hoc group of local artists and performers.  It appears to be shaping up as a fun night and I’m really glad; I like fun nights.

The day resulted in my recycling about three pounds of paper that had piled on my desk and now, at the end of the day, I am on deck, working on one of my “letters.”

It has been a day of calm and music and fun work.

Every hour or so, I checked on Houston and it’s not good.  At last count, 2,000 rescues had been performed and another 185 were waiting to be performed.  Ten are dead which seems a blessing after Katrina and its hundreds.

My friend, Janice McDonald, is in Houston, reporting on it.  Look her up on Facebook for her first-hand reports.

There is some irony here.  Texas is experiencing one of the most horrific of natural events and its Federal legislators voted against help to Hurricane Sandy victims.  Let us hope that legislators in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy aren’t as mean spirited when Texas asks for help, as it will.

It will be years before this is undone.

Mark me in the column of glad I have a hybrid car as Hurricane Harvey may cause gas prices to rise by a dollar or more as 15% of the refinery resources in the country are being pummeled by this storm.

Also, mark me glad I quit smoking.  The price of cigarettes in New York City are now at $13.00 a pack, highest in the nation.  I feel better and I’m not as cash strapped as I would be if I were smoking.  It’s now been at least 15 years and only once in a great while do I feel the pull to a smoke; usually in a bar, martini in hand while having some deeply intellectual conversation that probably won’t be remembered in the morning.

That was another day.  Not today.

Today the creek is astoundingly clear; water rippling in the soft wind that has arrived.

While I was sitting on the deck, in the quiet of my life, the pudgy little dictator in North Korea sent a missile flying over Japan which is just inflaming those regional tensions.

Oh, yikes.  He needs a lot of attention that boy.

As does our President.  And that is part of what makes me creepily uncomfortable with him – the amount of attention he needs.  And demands.  And gets.

The Washington Post is reporting that while seeking the presidency, Mr. Trump was also seeking a deal in Russia to build a Trump Tower there.  Felix Sater, a Trump associate, was running around bragging the deal would get The Donald elected.  This one hasn’t/can’t be completely parsed out yet but the Russia thing is not going away and I wonder what is happening in Robert Mueller’s office at this very minute.

As I go to bed tonight, I will pray for Houston and be grateful I have not had to experience anything like what they are going through.  My whole life, for the most part, has been lucky.  I’ve not had any Sandy’s or Harvey’s in my life.  Irene went through here a few years ago and spared me; around me there was catastrophe but in my sweet spot of the earth, not much.

Let’s think of Houston. Pray for them.

 

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Letter From Claverack 07 15 2017 On the Auto Train outside of Jacksonville, FL…

July 15, 2017

It is closing on 6:00 on the 15th of July, 2017 and I am riding north on the auto train from Sanford, Florida to Lorton, Virginia.  Pierre Font, married to my friend Lionel, and I are bringing his parents’ car from Miami to Columbia County, which is where they will be living while they sort out their lives.

There are no stops.  Well, except for the one where one of the engines lost power but they managed to fix it and we are going again.  It is a bit like being on a cruise, having a day at sea.

Forty years ago, in Tehran, Maryam Mirzakhani, was born.  She is the only woman to have won the Field Award in mathematics, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize.  And today, she passed away, a victim of breast cancer, a brilliant mind gone quiet.  She has been a Professor at Stanford University since 2008.  RIP.  It is hard to lose such a brilliant mind.  By the way, she was Muslim.

Yesterday, one of my relatives sent me an email warning me about a young Muslim politician in Michigan.  It was, to me, both xenophobic and un-American, and I angrily deleted it.  We were being warned he might one day become President of the United States.  Today, I wanted to retrieve it but couldn’t seem to find it.  My relative’s unhappiness with the man was simply based on the fact he was Muslim.

One of the finest people I have known in my life was Omar Ahmad, a Muslim, who when he died prematurely from a heart attack a few years ago, was Mayor of San Carlos, CA.

There was a moment when I wanted to respond.  I didn’t because it would have no effect on him as nothing I say would change his mind.  This is who he is, xenophobic and un-American and he has been that way since I have known him.

Yet, I feel guilty at not having responded.

Such is life in 21st Century America.

The election of Trump to the Presidency has given lots of people more freedom to express xenophobia and racism and all the ugly things we haven’t dealt with in America.  And all the things that more and more of the world is having to deal with as huge populations move around the globe.

France was welcoming to Josephine Baker in the 1920’s; it could afford to be.  It looked down on the United States and its racial policies.  But would a Josephine Baker from a Muslim country today still find the embrace she did?  I’m not sure.

It is one thing to be a rarity in the 1920’s and another to be part of an encroaching potential majority in the 2010’s.

I am saddened and worn by all these things and grateful I will be gone before all this plays out.

It is possible for me to look back and think, gratefully, on what a life I have had.  It is my hope that the people who are younger than me will also have a wonderful life and that a solution will be found to all of this because if we do not find a way to embrace each other, it is not going to be pretty.

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Letter From Claverack 07 07 2017 Musings on being home…

July 8, 2017

As I begin writing, it is twilight at the cottage.  The day began damp and grey, changing mid-day to blue and lovely.  Sitting on the deck, the torches burn to ward off mosquitoes and to give a sense of atmosphere.  It is lovely.

Of course, as soon as I typed those words, I felt the first of the raindrops and had to scutter back into the cottage.

Out there in the world, momentous things have been happening.  Trump and Putin met for the first time. Trump:  It’s an honor.  Putin: ?

It’s certain we will be hearing the parsing of the meeting for days to come.  They talked election tampering.  Putin: we didn’t.  Trump: okay. [At least according to some early reports.]  No agreement on Crimea.   Not expected.

We are to agree on a ceasefire in southwest Syria.  Good for everyone if it holds.

In Washington, Mitch McConnell faces the daunting task of passing the Republican version of healthcare legislation.  It seems to be the single most unpopular piece of legislation of the last thirty years.

Over the weekend, I listened to some interviews with people from around the country who were absolutely opposed to Obamacare and absolutely loved the ACA, not realizing they are one and the same.  It left me shaking my head in amazement and then, why should I be amazed?  We, on both sides of the fence, don’t always analyze and we just react, ideologically, and that seems to be on the increase.

In a bright moment in the world, Malala Yousafzai, a young woman targeted by terrorists, terribly wounded, and who miraculously clawed her way back, graduated from high school today.  She is also a Nobel Peace laureate. She celebrated graduation by tweeting her first tweet.

Amazing human being…

Closer to home, Etsy has cut its workforce by 15% and I wonder how that is going to affect the offices on Columbia Street in Hudson.  While that is happening, the stock has been upgraded to a buy by some brokers.

It’s interesting to me to walk down Warren Street and see all the businesses that are there that weren’t when I came and to see the ones that are still here, still pulling along.  One of my favorites is Carousel, next to the CVS on Warren.  One of my friends collects mid-century hammered aluminum pieces and I go in there and sometimes find things for her.

The Red Dot has been here since I arrived and I remember the transition of Brandow’s to Swoon Kitchen Bar.  Seems Ca’Mea has always been there since I arrived, though I am not sure about that.  That’s a little foggy.

It’s been interesting to watch all of this.  The cottage has been my home longer than any place I have lived, including the home I grew up in.  That’s sobering.  That’s rooting.  I like the sense of roots I have created here.

Yesterday, I had my car serviced at Kinderhook Toyota and ran into someone I knew.  At the Red Dot, I am always running into people I know.  Same for Ca’Mea.  It’s wonderful to go into places and be known or to know people there.

The places I’ve lived are many:  Minneapolis, Toronto, Carbondale, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Eugene, OR, New York City and now Claverack.  The places I have visited seem innumerable. They’re not but…

Of all those places, including my hometown of Minneapolis, the only place that has felt like home is here.

And I am enormously grateful for that.  It is sweet and satisfying and that is how, I think, it should be as I enter this third act of my life.

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