Posts Tagged ‘Turkey’
October 31, 2016
As I headed north on the train, I watched mist close over the Hudson River as I drifted off to a nap after an extraordinary brunch with my friends, Mary Clare and Jim Eros, at Café Du Soleil on the Upper West Side. We laughed and giggled and ate and had a good time.
They were off to watch a flotilla of pumpkins in Central Park while I headed down to the station to head north.
It is dark now and the flood lights illuminate the creek. The ticking of my old clock is about the only sound I can hear and I am contented after a good conference in New York. Tomorrow is my meeting with my eye surgeon before the cataract operation a week from this coming Wednesday; I am weary of my blurry vision and am grateful I live in an age when repairs can be done to things like this.
A century ago, I would have been doomed to live with it if I had been so lucky to live this long. My friend, the philosopher Howard Bloom, always points out that we have doubled our life expectancy in the last hundred, hundred fifty years. A great accomplishment.
Things that would have killed us quickly have been either vanquished or we have ways of coping better than ever with what would have been life ending diseases not so very long ago.
Things like that give me some hope.
This week there were articles about robot warriors who could learn to kill using artificial intelligence, making judgments that only humans could before. While that brings to mind images from “The Terminator,” robots are being also developed to help those who are helpless and to save human lives in other ways. The Japanese are in the forefront of this because of their aging population.
Mary Clare and Jim split their time between Shepherdstown, WV and New York City. They describe themselves as the new “young old.” Both are retired and both are full of energy and life and a passion to explore the world and are an inspiration to me.
The three of us have all, to one degree or another, been tuning out the din of this the last weeks of this election cycle. It was left to me to explain the newest twist in the Clinton email drama. Both of them had missed it. All of us are confused by it and are wondering why the FBI ignored the guidance of the Justice Department to not say anything so as not to appear to be influencing the election.
But it is what it is and is another twist in this most remarkable Presidential election.
Last night a truckload of manure was dumped in the parking lot of the Democratic headquarters in Ohio. I find myself somewhere between outrage and hysterical laughter at the silliness of what is going on. Manure? In 2016?
As I cruised through the news today, I found an interview with Jerry Brotton, an English author, who has just published a book about Elizabeth I’s alliances with the Islamic world. Shunned by Catholic Europe, Elizabeth I built alliances with the Shah of Persia, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Morocco. Fascinating.
However, in this present time the US is telling the families of workers in the US Consulate in Istanbul to leave the country. This is combined with a warning to tourists to not travel there because of targeting by terror groups of Americans and other foreigners.
At the same time, the Turkish government has fired ten thousand civil servants and is crushing any media that disagrees with it.
I am saddened beyond words. Fifteen years ago I was in Turkey and fell in love with Istanbul and have wanted to return. Perhaps not or at least not now…
The old clock is ticking. I think of it as the heart of the house. I am content tonight and am living in the now. Mindfulness is what I think they call it.
Tags:Cafe du Soleil, Cataracts, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth I & Islam, Erdogan, Howard Bloom, Istanbul, Jim Eros, Manure in Ohio, Mary Clare Eros, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Robots, The Terminator, Turkey
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Earthquakes, European Refugee Crisis, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Howard Bloom, Hudson New York, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Syria, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
July 15, 2016
It is a warm, humid day as I trundle north on the train, back to Hudson. The Hudson River is dotted with boats and the spray of jet skis. A soft haze lays across the river, so it seems that what I see is in soft focus.
It’s not a bad day for soft focus.
I went into the city yesterday afternoon to have drinks with my friends Nick and David at Le Monde, a French Bistro near Columbia and then drifted from there to Cafe du Soleil, where I joined a party for Bastille Day put together by friends David and Bill. We were festive and the mood was buoyant and I was home and asleep by the time news was coming out of France that a young Tunisian Frenchman had driven a lorry into a crowd celebrating Frances’ National Holiday, plowing on for 1.2 miles before he was killed and after he had killed at least 84 and wounded 202 others.
As I look out of the window of the train, sold out, standing room only, I see the verdant green hills which line the western bank of the river, the beginnings of the Catskills, bucolic, peaceful, welcoming.
The dead in Nice, a pleasant city in the south of France, to the east of Cannes, on the Rivera, home of the airport that serves that golden stretch of land, setting for glittery events and the place of lovely villas climbing the hills to look down on the Mediterranean, include ten children. Fifty others from last night hang between life and death, as medical professionals do their best.
One woman talked for a long time to her dead child. The living and unwounded began to swarm toward the beaches, away from the lorry, in case it was loaded with explosives.
On Wednesday, July 13, in Syria, 58 people died, mostly civilians of war related wounds. Since the beginning of 2016 about 8,000 have died, since the beginning of the war over 440,000. 11.5% of Syria’s population has been killed or wounded.
On the same day in Iraq, 22 died by gunfire, bombs, rockets.
Looking out at the beautiful Hudson River, the Catskills on the other side, with gracious, magical homes occasionally dotting the landscape, it is easy to focus on the green moment and not the black news but today I cannot slip away, into the beauty.
It is all so senseless and all leaders seem to talk about the senselessness of it and do they find the senselessness of it enough of a unifying theme that they commit to actions that will stop it?
One of the books I am reading is “The Good Years” by Walter Lord, describing the years between 1900 and 1914, when World War I began. I am near the end of it, the war is beginning. Devastation was released upon the European continent over the tragic death of an Archduke and his wife, which gave “permission” for the Austro Hungarian Empire and the German Empire to act to achieve political goals they had long wanted and ended up destroying themselves.
Men in power are always playing “the great game,” and as the game is played, the innocent die.
The train is arriving in Hudson and I am winding down. I will say my prayers tonight for all the people who died today because they are pawns in “the great game” and see if I can find a way to work effectively for change.
In the time since I’ve arrived home, run some errands and prepare to go into town for a comedy show, the Turkish military, apparently fed up with Erdogan, is attempting a coup. Bridges across the Bosporus are closed, military aircraft are flying low over Istanbul and Ankara and gunshots have been reported.
“The Great Game” goes on.
Tags:Amtrak, Bastille Day, Bastille Day Killings in Nice, Cafe du Soleil, Claverack, Donald Trump, Hudson, Hudson River, Iraq, Istanbul, Le Monde, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Nice, Nice France, Syria, The Donald, The Great Game, Turkey, Turkish Coup
Posted in 2016 Election, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Russia, Social Commentary, Syria, Trump, Uncategorized, World War I commentary | Leave a Comment »
May 7, 2016
The town of Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canada’s oil patch, is burning to the ground as I write. 88,000 people are being evacuated. One who has remained to assist in fueling emergency workers described the city, according to Vice, as a “f**king ghost town.” Reports are calling the situation barely managed chaos. Convoys are transporting people out of town and 8,000 have been airlifted out.
The Prime Minister of Turkey has resigned after a fight with President Erdogan. As I understand it, in Turkey it’s the PM who is supposed to have the power while the President does the meeting and the greeting. Erdogan doesn’t see it that way and has been keeping hold on the reins of power. This resignation makes it easier for Erdogan to consolidate power. Turkey is troubled, fighting a Kurdish insurgency, IS, wrestling with refugees and a population that is growing antagonistic to Erdogan.
I still would like to go back to the “Turquoise Coast” of that country, sun dappled and bucolic.
Not bucolic is the state of American politics. Trump continues to rise and has no opposition on his march to the nomination. Cruz and Kasich are gone. The Presidents Bush, number 41 and 43, have signaled they will not endorse him. Paul Ryan is “not ready” at this time to endorse Trump. The Trump campaign approached over a hundred Republican politicos to say something good about Trump. Only twenty responded; the others were “too busy.”
As I gave my last lecture, the students were commenting on how exhausted they were of the political season and the near certainty that Trump will be the Republican nominee has only heightened their distaste for politics; all suspect an ugly, brutal slugfest between the two candidates, neither of whom they admire, assuming Hillary is nominated, as it looks she will. The aspirational nature of politics has slipped away from us.
And before it is done, something like $4 billion will be spent on this election, twice what was spent in 2012.
President Obama implored reporters to focus on issues and not “the spectacle and circus” that has marked coverage so far of the 2016 Presidential race. After all, being President of the United States is “not a reality show.” Amen…
A Fort Valley State University student, in central Georgia, was stabbed to death as he came to aid three women who were being harassed and groped near the school cafeteria. Rest in peace, Donnell Phelps, all of nineteen.
Two are dead and two are wounded in shootings is suburban Maryland, three at Montgomery Mall, where I have shopped and one at a grocery store nine miles away. One man is believed responsible. If it is the man police suspect, he killed his wife last night when she was at school, picking up their children. He was under court order to stay away from her.
It is a grey afternoon as I write this, in a stretch of chill, grey days and news like the above deepens the pall of the day.
If you are feeling grey because “Downton Abbey” has slipped into the past, its creator, Julian Fellowes, took Trollope’s novel, “Doctor Thorne” and brought it to life. Amazon has purchased it and will stream it beginning May 20. Fill a hole in your viewing heart.
In my heart, I want a new iPhone and I am probably going to wait until the fall when Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, tells us that the iPhone 7 will give us features we can’t live without. What they are, I don’t know. I am writing this on a train going north and can’t stream on Amtrak’s wifi.
Speaking of Amtrak, I booked a trip from New York to Minneapolis on the train for July 20th to visit my brother and his family. I am taking a train to DC, the Capital Limited out of there to Chicago and the Empire Builder from Chicago to Minneapolis. I hope it will be good fun.
Fun seems to be what we need these days. Our politics are not fun. The constant barrage of shootings is not fun, not remotely. The economy, while growing, isn’t growing fast enough which is not fun.
What will be fun is that Lionel and Pierre are going to be at their home across the street from me this weekend and I will get to see them.
Tags:Amtrak, Anthony Trollope, Claverack, Cruz, Doctor Thorne, Donald Trump, Donnell Phellps, Downton Abbey, Erdogan, Fort McMurray, George HW Bush, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Hudson, iPhone7, Julian Fellowes, Kasisch, Lionel White, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Obama, Pierre Font, Tim Cook, Turkey, Vice
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hillary Clinton, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
January 1, 2016
Happy New Year! It is another grey day in Shepherdstown, WV, which has had nothing but a string of grey days since I arrived here almost two weeks ago. The day, while grey exteriorly is sunny inside, surrounded by old friends. My nephew, Kevin, is prepping to make bacon to go with waffles. His wife, Michelle, is reading the news on her phone and I am beginning my letter while waiting for a call.
My friends, Medora Heilbron and Meryl Marshall-Daniels, and I have convened most Thursdays or Fridays for almost fifteen years to share our week’s experiences, our highs and lows and to love and support each other. It is a gift the universe has given us and we have helped each other through a whole variety of things and have celebrated our successes and supported each other in our bumps in the road.
When one of us is traveling and the call doesn’t happen, it doesn’t feel like the week is quite right. It’s good to be starting 2016 with a call.
I can’t quite believe it is 2016. I never thought I would live this long but here I am, slowing moving into old age and having a better time of it than I thought I would.
My stomach bug has lifted and I woke this morning in fine fettle, eager to burst into the new year. I texted friends to wish them Happy New Years and then came down and made coffee and read another 25 pages of my textbook.
The world, of course, is not coursing as quietly or as joyfully as my life in Shepherdstown.
A suicide bomber struck a restaurant in Kabul last night. Five were wounded in the French restaurant, one of the few still catering to foreigners.
During New Year’s Eve celebrations in Dubai, a luxury hotel and apartment building caught fire and competed for attention with the fireworks at midnight. Officials are investigating the cause of the fire. 12 were injured but there appear to have been no fatalities.
Wayne Rogers, “Trapper John” from the TV series “MASH” passed away last night, surrounded by family. A much beloved star, he was also a shrewd investor and successfully managed money for a variety of clients while also acting.
Less than an hour ago, it was announced that Natalie Cole, one of the great voices of the 20th century and the daughter of the legendary Nat King Cole, passed away. She was 65.
In a Tel Aviv pub, two were killed and four seriously injured by a gunman. Investigators are working to determine if it was a crime or terrorism. Isn’t terrorism a crime? Yes, I think so.
In Turkey, President Erdogan, who was Prime Minister for ten years, is seeking to change Turkey’s constitution to make the President, not the Prime Minister, the senior position. An example he quoted: Hitler’s Germany. He did not elaborate. No wonder the world thinks he may not be committed to democracy.
What I am committed to today is to enjoy feeling well, my spirits boosted by the sun breaking through the clouds and the camaraderie of friends and family.
Tags:2016, Dubai, Ergogan, Hitler, Kabul, Kevin Malone, Mash, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Medora Heilbron, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, Michelle Melton, Natalie Cole, Shepherdstown WV, Tel Aviv Pub, Trapper John, Turkey, Wayne Rogers
Posted in 2016 Election, Afghanistan, Elections, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Nazis, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
November 2, 2015
Henry Hudson. Hudson River. Russian Jet Crash. Halloween. The Red Dot. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Amazon Prime. Benedict Cumberbatch. Hamlet. Ophelia. European Refugee Crisis. Sumte, Germany. Nazi. Turkey. Erdogan.
I am gliding south on the 8:45 out of Hudson, down to the city for a few meetings this week and then will head back Wednesday evening. The Hudson River is still and mirrors the muted colors of fall. A barge makes its way north to Albany. In certain stretches, it is possible to imagine that this was the way the river looked when Henry Hudson first sailed north.
It is so placid a scene that it is almost possible to detach from the battering of the news.
It has been two days since I have written; Saturday afternoon I was having a late, for me, brunch at the Red Dot before heading home to service any Trick or Treaters. Several people were sitting not far from me, chatting rather loudly and raucously about their summer exploits of jet skis and pool parties, dancing and dating.
At the moment, I was reading the New York Times and was feeling very aware of the various crises that are engulfing the planet. A Russian jet had crashed in the Sinai earlier that day. More had drowned in the Aegean and Germany is preparing to settle nearly a million refugees within its borders.
The conversation happening not far from me grated on me. Unreasonably, I wanted to walk over and say to them something like: you fools! Don’t you know serious things are happening?
I didn’t.
They were having a harmless conversation. I have had harmless conversations about silly things, too. And I am also aware of what is happening in the world. It bothered me at the moment because on the Saturday of Halloween it seemed no one was paying attention except me. I was having a cranky old man moment.
Last year, there had been a few Trick or Treaters. This year, there were none. As I waited, I watched “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” from Amazon Prime. When I finished, I went off to bed to read a book, soon falling into the arms of Morpheus.
Early up on Sunday, I went off to Christ Church, slipping away after communion because I had a ticket for an HD version of Benedict Cumberbatch’s “Hamlet.” He and the production were superb. It is the first time I have witnessed a production that indicated that Ophelia was fragile even before the Prince of Denmark’s attentions.
At home, afterwards, I did some paperwork and read some more and am now heading down to the city.
The Russian airliner is much in the news; it apparently broke up in mid-air and it is being posited that some “external event” resulted in the loss.
In Germany, one small town of 102 individuals is being asked to take in 750 refugees. The Mayor of Sumte’s wife thought it was a joke when they were first notified. It has energized a youngish local Nazi who has a seat on the town’s council: it will be good for his brand of politics he thinks. This is a harbinger of the challenges facing Germany and those challenges also threaten Angela Merkel’s position as Chancellor.
Erdogan has won a big victory in Turkey, giving him the impetus to push forward once again with a plan for an executive presidency, not that it has been a de facto executive presidency since Erdogan took that office. He has been playing the role of both Prime Minister and President as he feels like it, a bit like the arrangement Putin had with Medvedev.
The day, which began gloriously, has turned grey as we have moved south. Mild temperatures are expected this week, a last gasp of Indian summer.
Loving to entertain, I am having two sets of people in for dinner this week.
We will talk, I’m sure, of silly things and serious matters and I will do my best to not be a cranky old man.
Tags:Amazon Prime, Benedict Cumberbatch, Erdogan, European Refugee Crisis, Germany, Halloween, Hamlet, Henry Hudson, Hudson River, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Nazi, Ophelia, Russian jet crash, Sinai, Sumte, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Red Dot, Turkey
Posted in European Refugee Crisis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Politics, Social Commentary | Leave a Comment »
October 28, 2015
South Sudan. Dinka. Nuer.Cannibalism. Zanzibar. Boko Haram. Obama. Cameroon. IS. Caucasus. Iran. Syria. Russia. US. Turkey. Putin.
Outside the day is grey, gloomy, down right dark and definitely chill. My own spirits are quite the opposite. Despite the exterior my interior is quite bright, for no particular reason but I am delighted and grateful for the quiet joy of this dark day. I’m at my friend Todd’s office, doing some work for him and some for myself.
I had a couple of personal errands to do this morning and then I arrived here, an island of warmth and cheer on a dark and rainy day.
Reading about the conflict in South Sudan trumped my cheeriness. There has been violence ranging there for months and the two sides have been brutal. There are tales of the Dinka killing Nuer ruthlessly; sometimes making them jump into bonfires and then forcing people to eat the burnt flesh. There have been rapes, pillaging, burning of churches, all the things that happen when men get fire in their killing bellies.
Further south elections in Zanzibar may explode into violence and across the continent Nigeria has freed approximately 300 women from the Boko Haram.
Obama has sent three hundred soldiers to Cameroon to train soldiers. Africa and the Middle East are riven with Islamic terrorists. Some, like Boko Haram, have sworn allegiance to IS. And everywhere I look it seems we have a muddied response to it.
Iran has now joined the Syrian conversation at the same table with the US, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, its longtime regional rival. Iranian troops are on the ground in Syria. The Russians are there. The Turks seem to be chasing the Kurds there more than IS. It is a political, ideological swamp and in that swamp millions are displaced and dying.
Putin, who is playing around in Syria, has his own IS problem. There is a ragtag group of rebels in Russia who have declared the Caucasus Emirate and sworn allegiance to IS. Muslim Russians are being recruited by IS, going to fight and are returning. Mostly they are locked up or under police surveillance but the social unrest and economic hardships in that part of Putin’s Empire is making it easier for IS to recruit.
It is a cycle that may be coming around to bite Putin in the back. It’s why he says he is in Syria. Now some of the 7,000 Russians and former citizens of the Soviet Union who are there are trying to slip back into Russia to wreck havoc in retaliation.
Thinking I would get some relief by seeing what was happening in the world of entertainment, I quickly backed off when I kept finding stories about the ubiquitous Kardashians.
Goodness, looking at the world’s stories has tempered the day’s good natured-ness. I will have to get it back.
Tags:Boko Haram, Cameroon, Cannibalism, Caucasus, Dinka, Iran, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Nuer, Obama, Putin, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkey, US, Zanzibar
Posted in Mat Tombers, Mathew, Mathew Tombers, Politics, Social Comentary | Leave a Comment »
October 16, 2015
Lamar Odom. Khloe Kardashian. Israel. Palestine. Israeli knifings. Turkey. European Union. Refugees. Erdogan.
It is unbelievable to me that we have rounded into the second half of October in the year 2015. Stunning, the way time has been slipping through my fingers.
The last three days have been a battle with paperwork and machines. I had some complicated documents to complete and must have printed page two of the forms four times before I filled them, hopefully, correctly. They got sent off today by UPS and will arrive on Tuesday.
My Internet connection fluttered, my printer won’t print wirelessly and I have done everything in my power to get it back online, to no avail. Time to call in the experts.
Because of all of this, I am behind on a report for a client. ARGH! But all will be well, I’m sure.
All may be well for Lamar Odom, who apparently regained consciousness and is breathing on his own after losing consciousness while on a spree that reportedly included alcohol, cocaine and herbal sex stimulants. He was at a legal brothel in Nevada.
Soon to be ex-wife, Khloe Kardashian, is at his side. Do I see a reconciliation coming for the cameras? Pardon me if I am cynical.
All is not well in Israel, where Palestinians are killing Jews in knifings while the Israelis are killing Palestinians who attack them. Hamas has praised the men killed by Israel as martyrs. And that sad beat goes on; defying efforts to have any kind of peace break out.
It came to me that this violence has been a constant backdrop of my entire life.
Turkey and the EU are bickering over an aid deal to help Turkey with the refugee crisis, a deal that the Turks have called “insincere.” In the mix are suggestions from the EU that they will start accession talks with Turkey again about admission to the EU. Turkey’s Erdogan is skeptical.
In the meantime, it’s estimated 5,000 refugees slip out of Turkey and into Europe every day, not counting all the others that are striving for Europe from all across the eastern and southern Mediterranean.
Like last night, I set up a fire in the wood stove. I just got up and checked it and realized that absorbing the day’s news had made me feel physically tired. It causes me to sit down sometimes and put my head in my hands. It is no surprise that for a day or two, I might ignore the world outside my little glen.
We are all like that, I’m sure.
In the meantime, I must get ready. In twenty minutes, I am headed to the Dot to meet a friend for dinner.
Tags:Erodogan, EU, European Refugee Crisis, Israel, Israeli knifings, Khloe Kardashian, Lamar Odom, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Palestine, Turkey
Posted in European Refugee Crisis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary | Leave a Comment »
October 14, 2015
Obama. Biden. Greene County. Indianapolis. Minneapolis. Baltimore. Syria. Russia. Putin. Assad. Refugees. Turkey. The Kurds. Al Qaeda. Saudi. Yemen.
I’m sitting here at my desk at the cottage, looking out at the drive, littered with leaves. The world around me has become a riot of color and I passed by crimson trees on my way west to an appointment on the far side of Greene County, flaming to the sky against a grey horizon.
Most of the day has been like that, grey and forlorn, right for this time of year, the time of year a year ago when I determined I would write more frequently even though I mailed the letters less. They are up on Facebook and LinkedIn and at my website, www.mathewtombers.com.
Monday evening, rather late, I returned from two weeks of traveling. Baltimore, New York, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and when I opened the door of the cottage I was flooded with relief at being home and in the safe sanctuary of the little world I have built here.
For two weeks I mostly avoided the news but it has been catching up with me in the last 48 hours, the strum und drang of the world wails on.
By the hundreds of thousands, humans are throwing themselves on the shores of Europe, fleeing ravaged homelands. Half the population of Syria is on the move, internally, externally with more and more attempting to reach Europe. The size of the movement of humans is almost incomprehensible to me.
And there is a toxic mix brewing in this horrible cauldron.
There is IS, Assad, Putin, Turkey, the US, the Kurds, the non-Al Qaeda anti-Assad forces, the Al Qaeda anti-Assad forces, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Saudis and Yemenis and all sorts of forces and individuals leading them all wanting to defeat someone but not necessarily the same person.
Turkey is complaining we have given arms to the Syrian Kurds. We’re complaining that Russia isn’t targeting IS but forces against Assad that aren’t IS. It is nearly impossible to keep the players straight. The Russians and the US have different outcomes in mind in Syria.
And all the while that the players play, the human condition continues to deteriorate and so millions begin the long journey from somewhere hellish to somewhere less hellish.
It is hard to imagine here in my cossetted corner of the world with the leaves turning and deer roaming the street, slowly sauntering as if there was not a concern in the world.
I feel concern for the world and am struggling with the best way to address it. What does one do in a world that is coming unhinged?
Not long ago I read a great book, “The End of Your Life Book Club.” A woman in her seventies has spent her life in public service and when diagnosed with cancer was running an agency dealing with refugees. She got the diagnosis after return from a camp in Afghanistan. She and her son read and compare books while she is treated with chemo.
It inspires me. As does my brother who is off to Honduras next week to train doctors on some equipment his little organization donated to a hospital there.
Smiling out at the woods, I am hoping the sum of small good gestures will one day overwhelm the acts of evil.
Tags:Al Qaeda, Assad, Baltimore, Greene County, Indianapolis, IS, Islamic State, Kurds, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Minneapolis, Obama, Putin, Refugees, Russia, Syria, Turkey
Posted in European Refugee Crisis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis | Leave a Comment »
September 22, 2015
As I am sitting in the Acela Club at Penn Station, I am watching CNN, which is covering the arrival of the Pope. He landed at Joint Base Andrews and at this moment is arriving at the Diplomatic Mission of the Vatican in Washington, DC, on Massachusetts Avenue.
When Francis touched down, President and Michelle Obama and Vice President Biden were present to greet him, an unprecedented honor. He is waving to the crowd as he slips into the residence for a night of rest.
Tonight is Yom Kippur, the holiest of nights to Jews, and Pope Francis does not want to detract from that. Tens of thousands have been mobilized to keep him safe. The Secret Service sent a man to Rome to watch how Francis interacts with crowds so they might anticipate what they needed to do.
While waiting for Francis to address a Joint Session of Congress [a first], we are, once again, facing a shutdown of the government. The Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood and the Democrats are opposed to that. Somehow I fail to see why the Republicans are SO against Planned Parenthood.
My Republican respect keeps descending.
While all eyes are watching Francis and his movements, EU leaders have been meeting, working to decide how to handle the thousands of refugees and migrants. I found the information a little confused and oriented to dealing with the future rather than the present.
While the EU is determining what to do with the refugees there, Turkey and the US are working to figure out what Putin is up to in Syria. He intends to start bombing ASAP. They’re not sure who it is he will be bombing. Will it be IS as he says OR will it be the anti-Assad Syrian rebels who are also fighting IS? Turkey and the US fear it will be the latter as Putin and Assad have been playing footsie for decades.
I’m now on the train, heading north, on my right the Hudson River glides by with the setting sun glinting off its surface. It’s been mostly a grey day in New York but now the sun is bursting out from behind the clouds as it descends in the west.
All the way out west, in Burbank, CA, a 24 year-old man was taken into custody after he punched a 78 year-old in the face over Nutella Waffle Samples at a Costco. It seems like something that should be in “The Onion” and not real news. But it is real. The young man could face up to 11 years in prison.
There is a soft, golden glow in the west as we move north. The landscape is inescapably beautiful. I am closing down now for the night, wanting to enjoy the beauty around me before the sunset and we are gathered in the dark.
I am coming to the end of reading Steven Saylor’s Roman novels – at least all the ones he’s written so far. Another one is coming out in October. But they remind me that world has always been full of travail and that gives me hope that we will survive this time and find our own next future.
Tags:Assad, Biden, EU, European Refugee Crisis, GOP, IS, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Michelle Obama, Obama, Planned Parenthood, Pope Francis, Putin, Steven Saylor, Syria, Turkey, Vatican, Yom Kippur
Posted in European Refugee Crisis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary | Leave a Comment »
September 18, 2015
It is a stunningly beautiful day here in Claverack. The creek is a mirror of the trees above it, the sun is beginning to descend in the west, the temperature is perfect and I am savoring every moment I get to be out on the deck.
Those days are numbered. I needed to wait awhile this morning to come out here, as it was just a bit too cool when I woke up.
There hasn’t been a letter for a couple of days. I’ve been busy. Yesterday I drove down to Norwalk in Connecticut for lunch with a good, old friend, Bob Altman, who is the king of recipe videos. He’s done thousands of them.
We toured his studio and then went down to the beach for lunch. I had no idea Norwalk was on the water until yesterday.
It was a five-hour journey both ways but very much worth it. On the drive, I listened almost exclusively to NPR, catching up on what they were saying about the world.
There were interviews with Syrian refugees, men and women who had lives there but have found their towns destroyed. Fearing for their lives and the lives of their children, they left Syria. Many went to Turkey but there is no path there for them to legitimacy so they continued on, trusting in many cases to rubber boats to take them to Kos or Lesbos.
Hundreds if not thousands have died in the pursuit of their dream to make it to a safe place. Overwhelmed, Europe is reacting, attempting to staunch the flow coming toward them. It is a human crisis of unfathomable dimensions.
And I sit here in this blissful spot, bothered by nothing except an occasional mosquito. I cannot comprehend the misery of the millions on the move. I accept it in the abstract but I have no visceral connection with it.
My brother probably does. He has been going to Honduras for years to deal with the lack of medical care for those who live in the back of beyond, people who have no more and sometimes less than these refugees.
Sitting on this deck, overlooking the creek, I realize what luck I have had to have been born me, in the time and place that I was. I have been spared many of the world’s travails by having been born in mid-century America.
The future has always been uncertain. I am old enough to remember “duck and cover.” As if that would have saved any of us from a nuclear blast…
But here I am in the third act of my life, seated on a deck overlooking a placid creek with the luxury of looking at the world and being able to ruminate about its meaning. I am SO lucky.
In the next months, I will probably spend more of my time in Columbia County. Last night I went to Christ Church’s “Vision Meeting” and was glad to have been present. It helped me feel connected to this place.
I may be doing some work with the local not for profit radio station, helping them with their marketing and fundraising. I am settling in to being a citizen of Columbia County as opposed to being a “weekender.”
It feels good.
The god Fortuna smiled on me when it/she brought me to this place, allowing me to settle into a home that I think had been part of my dreams since I was a child. It has been great fun to have lived in New York but I think that time is passing.
Once, when I first moved to DC I though how fortunate it was I was there. I had been allowed to know several great American cities. I have lived in Los Angeles, part time in San Francisco, Washington and now New York. How lucky is that?
I’ve never lived in Chicago and I’ve never really liked Chicago so I don’t think that’s a big miss.
I’ve seen a great deal of the world, much more than I might ever have if I had remained a high school English teacher in Minneapolis and have been a witness to two generations of technological changes and been, somehow, a part of both.
F
Tags:Bob Altman, Chicago, Christ Church, Claverack, Claverack Creek, Columbia County, Duck and Cover, Fortuna, Handmade TV, Honduras, Kos, Lesbos, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Minneapolis, New York, Norwalk, NPR, Syrian refugees, Turkey
Posted in Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis | Leave a Comment »
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 10 30 2016 The old clock is ticking…
October 31, 2016As I headed north on the train, I watched mist close over the Hudson River as I drifted off to a nap after an extraordinary brunch with my friends, Mary Clare and Jim Eros, at Café Du Soleil on the Upper West Side. We laughed and giggled and ate and had a good time.
They were off to watch a flotilla of pumpkins in Central Park while I headed down to the station to head north.
It is dark now and the flood lights illuminate the creek. The ticking of my old clock is about the only sound I can hear and I am contented after a good conference in New York. Tomorrow is my meeting with my eye surgeon before the cataract operation a week from this coming Wednesday; I am weary of my blurry vision and am grateful I live in an age when repairs can be done to things like this.
A century ago, I would have been doomed to live with it if I had been so lucky to live this long. My friend, the philosopher Howard Bloom, always points out that we have doubled our life expectancy in the last hundred, hundred fifty years. A great accomplishment.
Things that would have killed us quickly have been either vanquished or we have ways of coping better than ever with what would have been life ending diseases not so very long ago.
Things like that give me some hope.
This week there were articles about robot warriors who could learn to kill using artificial intelligence, making judgments that only humans could before. While that brings to mind images from “The Terminator,” robots are being also developed to help those who are helpless and to save human lives in other ways. The Japanese are in the forefront of this because of their aging population.
Mary Clare and Jim split their time between Shepherdstown, WV and New York City. They describe themselves as the new “young old.” Both are retired and both are full of energy and life and a passion to explore the world and are an inspiration to me.
The three of us have all, to one degree or another, been tuning out the din of this the last weeks of this election cycle. It was left to me to explain the newest twist in the Clinton email drama. Both of them had missed it. All of us are confused by it and are wondering why the FBI ignored the guidance of the Justice Department to not say anything so as not to appear to be influencing the election.
But it is what it is and is another twist in this most remarkable Presidential election.
Last night a truckload of manure was dumped in the parking lot of the Democratic headquarters in Ohio. I find myself somewhere between outrage and hysterical laughter at the silliness of what is going on. Manure? In 2016?
As I cruised through the news today, I found an interview with Jerry Brotton, an English author, who has just published a book about Elizabeth I’s alliances with the Islamic world. Shunned by Catholic Europe, Elizabeth I built alliances with the Shah of Persia, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Morocco. Fascinating.
However, in this present time the US is telling the families of workers in the US Consulate in Istanbul to leave the country. This is combined with a warning to tourists to not travel there because of targeting by terror groups of Americans and other foreigners.
At the same time, the Turkish government has fired ten thousand civil servants and is crushing any media that disagrees with it.
I am saddened beyond words. Fifteen years ago I was in Turkey and fell in love with Istanbul and have wanted to return. Perhaps not or at least not now…
The old clock is ticking. I think of it as the heart of the house. I am content tonight and am living in the now. Mindfulness is what I think they call it.
Tags:Cafe du Soleil, Cataracts, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth I & Islam, Erdogan, Howard Bloom, Istanbul, Jim Eros, Manure in Ohio, Mary Clare Eros, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Robots, The Terminator, Turkey
Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Earthquakes, European Refugee Crisis, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Howard Bloom, Hudson New York, IS, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Syria, Television, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »