The ukulele is a much-maligned musical instrument, but one that I’ve come to adore.
I blame Tiny Tim for creating the long-lasting impression that the ukulele isn’t a “real” musical instrument. Of course, as a ukulele player, I disagree very strongly.
I think you would too if you’d been at the West Whately Chapel a few weeks ago for one of its Watermelon Wednesday performances that featured ukulele great, James Hill, and his cellist wife, Anne Janelle. Watermelon Wednesdays is a series of live musical performances, each packed with great talent and held in the small chapel throughout the summer months.
It is amazing to see and hear what can be done with that small instrument when placed in the hands of a monumentally talented musician. Add a fabulous cellist who often plays that cello like an upright bass, and you get a rich, sometimes foot-stomping, bluesy, complex sound that is irresistible. And then add to that their beautiful harmonies and you have two hours of musical bliss.
Tiny Tim would be so surprised.
It was a joyous few hours and what made it even better was the nearly total lack of cell service — no internet, no email, no phone calls, nothing! It didn’t take me long to realize what a blessing it was. I so needed a break from the relentless barrage of chaotic and frightening news generated by our current president and his administration.
So many crises, so many lies, so much chaos, so much destruction. He’s been in office for just 18 months. One can only imagine the horrors yet to come.
The president has recently been on a European tour that concluded in Helsinki, Finland, with a much-hyped summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The entire week was a show, an embarrassing one where he attacked our allies at the NATO summit and accused them of being our foes.
While watching the Helsinki press conference after the two men met in private, I was sickened to see the president debase himself and his country by siding with Putin over his own intelligence services regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Donald Trump, when responding to a reporter’s question about who he believed, actually said, “… my people came to me, Dan Coates came to me and some others. They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be …”
Dan Coates, by the way, is the president’s own hand-picked director of national intelligence and just the Friday before the summit warned that “the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.” He said that the “warning lights are blinking red” and I, like so many others, worry for the integrity of the upcoming midterm elections.
The president went on to say that Putin was “extremely strong and powerful in his denial.” What a surprise: Vlad said no, it wasn’t him. Therefore, we should believe him. Hmm, seems like this might be a good way to save a great deal of time and money on courts, judges and lawyers. From now on we just ask the accused if he’s guilty. Simple. If he says no, then that’s that, trial over and witnesses, evidence be damned!
The president, of course, managed to squeeze in a long-ago debunked rant against Hillary Clinton as part of his answer: “Where are those servers? They are missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails, 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn’t be gone so easily.”
I think that last sentence deserves our attention. It’s been hard to miss the president’s admiration for autocrats like Putin and he’s right, those emails wouldn’t be gone, not if Putin could use them, incriminating or not, to shut down the campaign of a political opponent. There isn’t much left of a free press or political opposition in Russia and it’s clear that Trump would love some of that good stuff right here in the USA.
The story doesn’t end there, of course, because the day after his fawning performance with Putin, the president announced that he came home to find that people had misunderstood what he had said. It was due to double negatives and a missing “not.” Your guess is as good as mine.
Following this “clarification,” Trump said he accepts “our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place.” That’s great, but doesn’t that make everything he said the day before in Helsinki a lie? Just wondering.
But don’t get too excited because he made sure to qualify that admission with this: “Could be other people also; there’s a lot of people out there.” This is just so Trumpian, say one thing, then take it back in the next sentence.
In the days since then, in interviews and tweets, the president has lied about what he did say or didn’t say, no matter that it had all been recorded and made available for all to see and hear. And then he finally got around to blaming the “fake news” for distorting his statements. Soon enough, we heard the most dangerous statement of all, that the free press is the real enemy of the American people, not his best friend forever, Vlad.
It’s never ending, because a day after the fake news tweets, it became clear that those in the administration whose job it is to know such things, have no idea what the president and Putin agreed to in their private meeting. How can our government have devolved into such chaos?
It’s all so shocking and egregious that I find myself wondering: Is this it? Is this the moment when his supporters will wake from their slumber and see this man for what he is? Oh, how I wish.
While I wait for that to happen, I’ll be doing what I can to get out the vote, to drive the Republicans out of Congress this November. This is a crisis of immense proportion and our only hope is to take back the House and, hopefully, the Senate from those Republicans who show no sign of doing their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution and to protect America from this profoundly dangerous threat.
And, to keep myself sane, I’ll be strumming my ukulele. So, grab a uke and meet me at Forbes Library at 10 a.m. on Saturdays. You’ll be glad.
Karen Gardner, of Haydenville, a retired computer programmer, is a bird watcher, nature photographer and ukulele player. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.