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.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 11 08 2017 Thoughts while watching sun glint off the river…
November 8, 2017It is a grey and sullen day, seated in the United Red Carpet Club in Minneapolis’ airport, sipping a cappuccino, waiting to fly back home after a short visit to kith and kin. It has been primarily grey and sullen here since my arrival on Friday though there was warmth in the town with my visits with friends and relatives.
It is an interesting time in my life; I am thinking of becoming a vagabond for a while, checking off some things on my bucket list while seeking sun when it is grey in the Northeast and Midwest. A plan is beginning to emerge…
Out there in the world, the White House Reality Show continues to play to high ratings if not approval. At this moment, the President is in Asia on the longest Asian trip since George H.W. Bush, when he famously threw up on the Prime Minister of Japan.
Bush pere and fils have come out blasting at Trump in statements, previously made, now coming to light. “A blowhard” is one from pere.
A tragic shooting has occurred over the weekend in Texas, a man gunning down 46 people at a Baptist church in Sutherland, Texas. 26 are dead, eight from one family, and 20 injured. There is a numbness some are feeling because we have come to accept these tragedies as part of the background of our lives. They happen and it seems no one does anything.
Since last I wrote, a disaffected man from Uzbekistan, rolled a rental truck down a bike and walking path in New York, killing eight and wounding more.
After the Las Vegas shootings, it was “too soon” to politicize the conversation by talking about gun control but not too soon to politicize the terror attack. Certain statements tweeted by Mr. Trump may complicate the adjudication of the crime. But then our judicial system is a “joke” and a “laughing stock” per our president; a judicial system which is, in many ways, the envy of the world.
My desire to be a vagabond is, I’m sure, bound in with a desire to flee. And to be free to spend more time in Minneapolis with kith and kin, friends of decades and family of which I see too little. While here, helped my former sister-in-law with an issue and it felt good to be useful to her.
And now it is the next day and I am sliding down the west side of the Hudson River on Train 238, going down to the city only to return on the 5:47 so that I can be part of the November birthday train as my birthday is in November. I wasn’t sure I would do this but on a whim, I parked my car and am on my way.
The day has been fun. Tired last night, I went to the Red Dot for a “pop up” Indian restaurant and then went home, read a mystery and soon fell asleep, waking before all the alarms I had set.
During my Wednesday version of WGXC’s “Morning Show,” I played some jazz [check out The Hot Sardines!] and interviewed one of the performers of “The Mother of Us All,” a rarely performed opera by 20th Century female icon, Gertrude Stein, with libretto by Virgil Thompson. It’s the story of Susan B. Anthony, who campaigned for women’s right to vote, achieved only after death, a hundred years ago this month, in November 1917.
After the dreary days in Minneapolis, the sun burst through the windows of the chilly studio in Hudson this morning and I felt joyful.
At this moment, our president is in Beijing, where he is being feted with special panoply. It seems Mr. Trump has gone from deriding China to recognizing some benefit to a relationship with the country and its now very powerful President Xi, ensconced recently in the heavens with Mao and Deng.
It was election day yesterday. The off-year election didn’t bring many people out in some places though it did bring about a Democratic victory for governor in both Virginia and New Jersey.
In Virginia, the Republican candidate did his best to sound like Trump but was soundly defeated, raising the question among pundits if there can be Trumpism without Trump? I don’t know. I hope not.
Danica Roem, a transgender woman, made history by being elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, defeating a Republican who has held the seat since 1992 and who made her sexuality an issue in the campaign. She focused on the bad traffic problems.
Former President Obama showed up yesterday in Chicago for jury duty and was dismissed but not before creating a social media storm.
I bring this to a close as I continue down the Hudson, watching the occasional kayaker, with the sun glinting off the river, a slate of burnished steel reflecting light back to heaven.
Tags:Amtrak, China, Danica Roem, Deng, George H W Bush, kith and kin, Mao, Minneapolis, Obama, Sutherland Texas Shooting, Train 238, Trump in Asia, WGXC, Xi
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