Category: Dispatches

The Impeachment of Hillary Clinton

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 3 Comments

151022-hillary-clinton-benghazi-testimony-1025a_aebe8965efa10c2351275e6021f30512.nbcnews-fp-1200-800

Perhaps the most shocking thing, out of all the shocks that have battered us since the inauguration of President Trump, is the complete lack of responsible reaction from Congressional Republicans. Beyond a few bleats of “troubling” and “concerning” there is only evasion, excuses, or silence from those charged by the Constitution with checking and balancing the Executive Branch. Many commentators have drawn comparisons to Watergate when Republican leaders acted as patriotic statesmen, putting country before party. Today’s Republicans make us wonder, how would they have reacted if Hillary Clinton had been elected and behaved in precisely the same way as President Trump?

To find the answer I enter the British Police Box in my basement armed with a “subtle Continue reading “The Impeachment of Hillary Clinton” →

The Night I Met Mick Jagger

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 1 Comment
come-outside-with-mike-sarne
LP cover. “Birds” was the contemporary slang for girls. 

Bubbling with the exited anticipation of teenagers, my friend and I rode the number 66 red double-decker bus into Romford. It was February 25th 1964 and we were headed to the Odeon Theatre to try to catch a glimpse of our latest crush. No, not Mick Jagger or any of the Rolling Stones, but Mike Sarne. Who, you may ask? Continue reading “The Night I Met Mick Jagger” →

Gambling on Trump

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 2 Comments

IMG_3345

The boardwalk was deserted on this bright spring day, a solitary security guard with nothing to do staring out to sea. Behind her an enormous empty building loomed. We were in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where my husband was attending a Credit Union Association conference. Quite why credit unions, known for encouraging saving and financial responsibility, should choose to meet in a casino resort is a bit of a puzzle. But when I learned where we would be going I had one goal in mind, not playing the odds, but making a pilgrimage of sorts to the Continue reading “Gambling on Trump” →

The Sexy Seniors of Anacortes

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 1 Comment
aerial_viw
Anacortes, Washington

Anacortes is a lovely little town on the shores of Puget Sound in Washington State. It looks like the kind of place where, depending on your viewpoint, either nothing ever happens or dark secrets lurk beneath the placid façade. My sister has lived in Anacortes for many years, recently retiring from the Public Library, a perfect perch to hear the old-fashioned kind of tweets of town gossip. She seems to know everyone in town and they know her, at Continue reading “The Sexy Seniors of Anacortes” →

Trump Hall

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 1 Comment

henry-trump

Literary and historical analogies to the new administration in Washington have been flying as fast and indiscriminately as the hastily scribbled Executive Orders fly from the Oval Office desk. 1984, Brave New World, The Plot Against America, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany (you know, the ones who perpetrated a Holocaust against everybody), a banana republic, a tin-pot dictatorship, the Fall of Rome. Pick your favorite dystopia. All have had their moment as the metaphor du jour. But since the shocking events of this past week and the rise of Stephen Bannon as the power behind the Throne I can’t help thinking of the Tudors. Henry VIII and his henchman Thomas Cromwell, the protagonists of Hilary Mantel’s brilliant novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Continue reading “Trump Hall” →

Coping

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 2 Comments

91mzq7vqwml

My Happy New Year greetings have been somewhat muted this year. It’s hard to envisage future happiness when the entire fabric of the space/time continuum is about to unravel. And that’s just the winter weather forecast. What is happening in the nation’s capital today is on quite another level of awfulness. Like a driver passing a traffic accident I don’t know whether to stare at the carnage or avert my eyes.

So I do what I always seem to do in moments of crisis. Retreat into history. I find Continue reading “Coping” →

What is Boxing Day?

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 1 Comment

boxing_day

As an immigrant to the U.S. from England, one of the most perplexing questions I’ve had to answer is “What is Boxing Day?” Growing up in England I never questioned why the day after Christmas, December 26th, is another holiday. It just is, in the way we take for granted the traditions we grow up with. I had some vague notion that it had to do with putting the empty boxes from Christmas gifts away in the attic, though we never actually did this ourselves. Probably because we didn’t have an attic. I also associated it with Continue reading “What is Boxing Day?” →

How St. Nicholas Became Santa

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 1 Comment
img_1321b
Russian Orthodox Icon

When I was a small child growing up in England we didn’t have Santa Claus and we didn’t hang up stockings or set out cookies on Christmas Eve. Instead, following the tradition of my mother’s Flemish homeland, my sister and I put a pair of wooden clogs by the fireside with carrots in them for St. Nicholas’s donkey. In later years as my mother absorbed English culture we abandoned St. Nicholas in favor of the very English Father Christmas. Our celebrations were complete with Continue reading “How St. Nicholas Became Santa” →

Alternate History

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ Leave a comment

51p3vkiw6vl-_sx323_bo1204203200_

Can history make a mistake? Can it veer off track from what was meant to be? That is what it felt like late on the night of November 8th 2016. The inevitable future foretold by prognosticators of every persuasion, the inexorable progress towards a society of more fairness and inclusion, the final shattering of that glass ceiling empowering women everywhere. But it was not the crack of broken glass we heard. It was the sound of history cracking apart, suddenly lurching off those gleaming rails and plunging into an unknown darkness. Continue reading “Alternate History” →