It’s Only Going to Get Worse

September 9, 2025 / aggiemurch

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

“The next time you do this lady, you’re going downtown.” He was big, beefy and, even from behind his counter desk, threatening, as he leaned forward into my space. Was it my space? The flight back to San Francisco had been full and fraught. Wearing my very nice Irish tweed suit (How I wish I could fit into it now) and my pearls, was usually enough to let me sail through customs and immigration when returning to the United States. Since 2000, I had been commuting back and forth to England taking care of my mother as best I could as Congestive Heart Failure quietly worked its way, taking its toll, through her body. She never complained about the distresses and frustrations and even fear it caused her through the three plus years of her illness. But this was 2003, two years after 9/11 and the ante had been upped. I was shaken as he slapped my green card and English passport down on the counter and passed them back to me. I hurried away from this glowering man in his booth before he had beckoned the next person standing in line forward for his scrutiny.

Soon after, I was safely back on the farm a close neighbor stopped by. I was still so shaken I told him, I was telling everyone, what had happened. And he replied,

“Bill’s sister works in Washington. Would you like me to ask him to ask her what is going on?”

“Yes please,” I replied. He left shortly and it was only two hours later that he phoned me back. The advice from Washington was:

“Have her do her paperwork now. It is only going to get worse”. I heeded her advice reluctantly and over the next two years finished the required paperwork and took my tests, before finally stepping into the Hall of Justice in San Fransisco to stand and swear. It was a sobering moment, not only for me and hundreds of others, but watching those young people in military uniforms finally reaping the rewards of their service.

NAS SIGONELLA (July 20, 2010) – Candidates for American citizenship representing eight countries, raise their right hand and recite the Oath of Allegiance during a citizenship ceremony held here July 20. Eleven candidates participated in the ceremony to become U.S. Citizens. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Erica R. Gardner/RELEASED).

Our daughter Beatrice took her work break to meet me and, over a sort of celebratory lunch, helped me fill in my voter registration papers. Now I could vote, and, as importantly, protest the death penalty outside of prisons without fear of deportation. I can count myself among the lucky ones, and privileged to be so. 22 years later ‘it’ has indeed proved to be so much worse than we could ever have imagined and those not so lucky, not so privileged, are living in fear while some are paying a terrible price with the regime in power as they make their bids for a better life and freedom for their families.

We have to dig deep into the news to follow the paths of the American government’s lawlessness, and when we do it is sickening beyond belief. We don’t really know where to turn. The world is boiling over with the gastric disturbances of climate change amid the constant eruptions of war and destruction.

A not so small incident happened this week as Ursula Von der Leyen’s plane to Bulgaria was left circling for an hour while the satellite navigation system system was jammed. “Nothing to do with us,’ said the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, “Your information is incorrect.” While Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, said they are working night and day to make sure this does’t happen again, I’m not putting money on their being successful.

And so the wars’ effects spread, across continents, each one oozing out to the other, Europe, The Middle East, and beyond. When the American President isn’t pouting that he has not been invited to China, he is busy plotting what he is going to do with Gaza when it finally becomes available. But what is it? Gaza, The West Bank, Palestine? Well that rather depends who you are talking with. President Macron calls it all Palestine, other European leaders are set to agree while BiBi Netanyahu calls it Gaza and The West Bank trying to keep Palestine even more separate.The American President calls it Beach Site property.

Israel continues to bomb Gaza, targeting hospitals and journalists.

The Committee to protect journalists says that to date at least 189 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza in the most deadly conflict for journalists ever recorded. As we watch the nightly news, the lead anchor for that evening repeats, “Israel does not allow foreign media to film in Gaza and so this footage comes from, dot, dot, dot. “ Whoever can record it” Bolex cameras have given way to smart phones and the footage is shared across the world aired by which ever country chooses to show it.

Dusk on the street – Auntie (The BBC) is tucked safely behind the church

On Tuesday we found ourselves at the entrance to the BBC headquarters in London. It has been twenty years since I first popped in to watch an interview. Yellow-jacketed security personnell man the paths winding between the barriers which go up and down and are moved around as rumours cross the courtyards to other waiting press and protesters who are always present. We have an appointment and are let in, then directed to more security. It’s a tight ship or a giant warhorse depending on your focus for the day. Eventually wearing our guest passes – clearly visible please – we pass through more guarded glass doors and look down on the huge buzzing news room below. Though brightly lit, it is somewhat spooky, the below aspect of it, as if a design relic of old wartime bunkers. Now instead of long tables with maps there are rows of computer hubs catching news from around the world, some of it coming from those phones that are held up in Gaza, in Kiev, in Afghanistan, but rarely the Sudan or even Haiti. No photographs are allowed here either and the security remains visible as we make our way through the warren of lifts and corridors and messy drink alcoves that look like they belong on a train until we reach a recording suite. There is enough gear to make a community-radio head swoon except that I understand that though they have the equipment, the personnel and money, community radio has a greater freedom.

Two guests, one host, one producer, one engeneer. Be still my lustful heart.

It’s a straight forward forty-five minutes of book talk for Walter, another guest and the host before heading to the bar for drinks. Fully back from the Covid year, the space is loud, raucous and liquid and the cider is not bad. The men and women crews gathered here are grateful to do the good work that they can.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stand together

I watch the evening news with a slightly different take, looking for what is chosen and what is not. Russia keeps on bombing Ukraine. There are no talks of peace in any of these war zones. A new world order gathers for a military parade in Beijing as Xi Jinping hosts China’s largest-ever military parade, with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, standing and almost smiling in a show of defiance to the West. The American President and other Western and European leaders were not in attendance.

Though notably absent from our newscasts for the last few days, the American president immediately posted a petulant response, an embarrassment to even some of his supporters. As speculation abounds a diagnosis of Chronic Venous Insufficiency has been given. Similar in presentation and outcome as varicose veins, he may find them as useful today as a little bone spur was 60 years ago.

This has been A. Letter From A. Broad. written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

As always supported by https://www.murchstudio.com

Half a Life-time Ago

May 10, 2025 / aggiemurch

Written and produced by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

Forty-one years – half our life-time – ago we packed up our bags and the family and said goodbye to our home, leaving for two years in England to begin making ‘Return to Oz’ for Disney studios. In our inexperience and naiveté we didn’t know what was ahead for us or the film, and it was an intense two years full of more adventures than we had bargained for. We returned bruised but not broken though the film had a harder time of it. Abandoned by the studio whose revolving doors had spun executives in and out approximately every six months ‘Return to Oz’ was not given a good send-off as it was threaded up in cinemas around the country. Many years later Sydney Pollack, a film director, producer and friend, when battling the same issues with ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ said that “you can take an audience to hell and back, but you have to let them know where they are going.” Disney was not prepared to do that with Oz and neither was Paramount with Ripley. Both films felt the force of those non-decisions. But eventually both found their audiences and have a strong following to this day,

Return to Oz Poster by Drew Struzan that was never used.

On Saturday morning we were driven across London – never a smart thing to do on a Saturday morning – to the British Film Institute – on the South Bank of the Thames River. The driver dropped us off – as they do – somewhere in the back of the vast South Bank complex – and it took us awhile to find our way to the BFI entrance. We were late. ‘Return to Oz’ had already started, Dorothy had just found the key to Oz, showed it to Aunt Em and was about to be taken off to Dr. Worley’s. My friend Tansy as Toto was putting in a star performance. We were ushered to our seats in the back and as we slowly got used to the dark we saw that this large theatre was almost completely full of families and fans glued to the screen. They were laughing at the jokes, and following along, even staying silent and alert when the film froze as the projectionist missed the final breath-holding reel changeover. As the lights came up the audience of some film makers, film buffs. and children settling in for the Q and A. A young girl who had participated in the fun children’s hour hosted before the film asked Walter “Is Oz real?” and he answered, “Well that is the question isn’t it?”

Thames in spring – photo by Beatrice Murch

Eventually we left the BFI, going out into the bright sunlight and joined the weekend folks along the South Bank of the river. The tide was in, the wind was up and the tourists were thick, walking and pausing to see the street artists with their puppets, music, youthful energy and hope. Strolling along we were bemused and touched that the work of 41 years ago still lives in the minds and hearts of these families. Crossing the Westminster Bridge I thought of the Nome King’s destruction by a plucky girl, her Army, the Gump, a squishy pumpkin, a chicken and an egg. For this afternoon moment we were relieved of thinking of the current Nome King who is destroying the Oz of Frank Baum’s world and dreams, the new age of invention as it was then in America and continued to be – until this time.

It’s pretty steady, each and every day a new decree is published from the Emperor who – although despite falling asleep while wearing a blue suit at the Popes Funeral – seems not to have any other clothes. He is moving on, already bored with the finer details of making a deal with Ukraine’s President Zelensky – gouging out huge mineral reserves in exchange for a paper-thin promise of more weapons, a cease-fire with Russia and some small print saying which countriy’s mayors, Russia or the Ukraine, gets to sit on which city council. President Zelensky has signed away half of his countries mineral wealth to this US President, betting that he won’t last his full term and hoping that eventually some calmer heads might prevail. For the moment the word from one of many Ukrainian women who have sheltered in Europe, finding work where they can is that ‘We are running out of men’.

It is as if the US president is no longer content with the swing of his golfing driver but has taken to fishing, wading in over his knees as he casts his rod and line out into the waters. He is moving on from the river bank of Gaza – leaving his pal Benjamin Netanyahu to finish mopping up the remains of that invasion. Hamas will burrow deeper into the sands of the desert that will indeed become deadly.

He is even more dangerous with a fishing rod, spinning it back and then out with too heavy a lure on the end. While we watch, Vice President Mike Pence received a Kennedy Medal of Honor and pause to take in the meaning of that award, for him and the country.

Last week Public Broadcasting was threatened and ‘Films not made in America’ are on this week’s hit list as he called them a “security threat”, saying that “Other nations have stolen our Movie industry” The thought that art forms of any kind are like cats not owned by anyone but casting their lot with whoever gives them the best deal has not crossed the minds of the minions in the White House. Or maybe it has? Is the film industry to be reeled in with all the creators of all art to be marinated with the a new sauce before being tossed into the scorching barbecue pit of Great America.

Spring has balked at heralding summer. The clouds are heavy with gun smoke as Israel attacks Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza all in one day. The blame lies elsewhere they say. And so far there are no children with a magical army of peace to stop this.

Here in Great Britain council seats were contested across the country splitting the United Kingdom into disarray. The Reform party led by Nigel Farage has taken a bold lead, sending the Conservatives tumbling to sit below the Lib Dems, whose leader, Ed Davey, MP for Kingston and Surbiton, is busy celebrating by playing village cricket and serving up just-out-of-the oven warm scones smothered in cream and strawberry jam at the tea break. Sir Keir Starmer looks rather shell-shocked and is almost pleading with the people to ‘give him more time.’ before he, too, dutifully served tea at the long table laid out along Downing Street for the 80th VE celebrations for the end of WW II.

Princes George and William listen to a Veteran at Tea time in Buckingham Palace

Monday was the beginning of England’s week long celebrations. The Royal family were dutifully out on display, paying tribute to the soldiers, sea and airmen who fought then, and those who continue to serve. As in other countries that celebrate this day, there are fewer and fewer active service personal alive to be wheeled out and thanked, while each country continues to prepare for war.

This has been a letter from A Broad written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

Supported by murch studio.com

Morning Moments

February 9, 2025 / aggiemurch

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side.

Across the high street from the general merchants, Wainwrights and Sons – when general merchants sold everything from coal, lumber and rabbit food – was a small glass-fronted, with green trim, coffee and pastry shop. It was run by Madame Max and painted above the door, in curly blue writing ‘Mrs Max’s Café’. She must have been a refugee from the war and somehow had landed in our small town in Fleet in Hampshire. I like to think there may have been a story from a returning army officer giving her a helping hand to start her life once more. There are stories we never know. Lady Pechell was a daily customer, riding her bicycle from the two miles from the rhododendron shrouded Denorban Avenue into the village. Lady Pechell was older than the young mothers making do with their ration books, trading eggs and butter from small holdings for gin from goodness knows where. On shopping days during the week they came to Mrs Max’s Café, to be together for an hour. To commiserate about all and everything, trying to put their lives together as the war continued, while Lady Pechall quietly fed me lumps of sugar. She pocketed more lumps of sugar for her ponies. Though sugar was also rationed and because she was a little eccentric and her husband had fought in two world wars, nobody minded. A mystery surrounded her, her husband Sir Paul, that maybe included Madame Max and her café.

I’m thinking of those times after reading Emma Beddington in the Guardian last week. Her article was about Starbucks, now getting people out of their U.S. coffee shops with a new “Coffeehouse Code of Conduct,” making people buy something or leave. Someone has been scratching their corporate head wondering how, in the words from ‘The Loved one’ “To get those stiffs off of my property.”

Robert Morley and Robert Morse in The Loved One 1965

This attitude has caused quite a stir-up in the brew that makes up coffee house culture in the U.S. and Europe. It’s a big thing in all cultures and wouldn’t you know it it is America that can’t quite handle the slow soothing pace of sipping. There are all sorts of reasons, the economy being the main thrust driving Starbucks which, really isn’t failing but has always seemed to be on overdrive. I’m remembering European workmen, standing at coffee bars in Rome and Paris, taking an expresso hit before their day started and women pausing for a refresher mid-morning to get them through the day. I’m thinking of Bianca, who I met 30 years ago in the Piazza San Lorenzo, our dogs yapping at each other leading to a conversation, a visit with homemade raspberry sorbet and a postcard from Puccini.

KHARKIV OBLAST, UKRAINE – NOVEMBER 20 2023.
(Photo by Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Soldiers stand about – taking their coffee before heading back out on patrol. How is it now for the Russian and Ukrainian solders in Northern Europe slogging on in February where the war between them has wearied both the soldiers, the politicans and those of us who are watching from thousands of miles away. They have no comfort, barely some companionship that may or may not be with them at the end of the day. February for foot soldiers in war is the month of mud, spring and relief seems far away. Russian troops are killing more Ukrainian war prisoners and The new US President is doing his ‘gimme gimme’ routine with Ukraine, asking for ‘Rare Earth’ in exchange for weapons. Rare Earth that would be better used for rebuilding a war torn country when all of that stops.

And as for the old fella’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico, well they may have slid backwards or even backfired. The Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she reached an agreement with the US president to pause tariffs for a month as Mexico sends 10,000 troops to the border to stop migrants crossing into the US and address drug smuggling. And after talks with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, there is a month’s pause going north as well. Both these agreements were apparently all in place before they were ‘renegotiated’. But it is too late for the Kentucky Bourbon now being pulled off of the Canadian Liquor store shelves. Meanwhile China responds in its own way.

In Europe Sir Keir Starmer has been to Brussels and managed to say pretty much nothing as he walked the gymnastic balance beam in front of the whole European school. He made it to the end – without falling off – but only just. A journalist from the BBC no less – called out that surely these were not ordinary times in the political arena. That the Orange one is rather upsetting the apple cart. Standing beside Sir Keir Starmer in a joint conference, Mark Rutte the former prime minister of the Netherlands and now the Secretary General of NATO said that “I am absolutely convinced that we can deal with these issues, and there are always issues between allies, … sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. But I’m absolutely convinced that will not get in the way of our collective determination to keep our deterrence strong.” They looked very alone standing in their joint conviction of collective peace in our time.

Sir Keir Starmmer and Mark Rutte standing together in Brussels

Tariffs tossed out across borders, gutting of American government bodies is keeping the president busy and he will get hand cramp if he is not careful signing away the country in a Coup. This weekend sees BB Netanyahu sitting in DC having photos taken, and a chat about Gaza – or what to do with the rubble that is left of the state. It is doubtful that they will talk about the people. But there will be a statement about something ‘definitely happening’. But as we doubt those ‘definitely happening’ statements we worry and need to share those thoughts; the effects of this new global bickering and power plays that is costing lives, along with worries about our communities as the trickle-down effect of this new reality takes hold, our friends getting older and our families.

It is seriously raining outside but our need for companionship in another place, neither work nor home, calls us out. And so we come together, meeting in town for an hour to sit at Toby’s with our cups of coffee. Chris Giacomini is moving the chairs back into the feed barn so that we are dry. He understands more than most that the need for companionship – sharing our worries and the world’s troubles with a friend are served best – in that other place – slowly sipping a cup of coffee.

This has been A Letter From A. Broad. Written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

As always supported by murchstudio.com

A Week Ago

November 16, 2024November 16, 2024 / aggiemurch

A week ago on Wednesday.

Written and produced by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

There was a stillness in the air – The cloud-shielded sky was hiding its sorrow that the world it was covering could well now begin to die. Conversations at the corner cafe were subdued and somber. Nobody was smiling, not even in greetings. Our American friend and neighbor and I sat together nursing our long overdue coffee moment. As we took time to catch up, he spoke of waiting for his Lithuanian passport. What in the world has changed that he is looking forward to a Lithuanian passport?

A lumbering beast has come into the room, lurching forward, knocking against the chessboard where a game is forever in progress. The King has been moved and there is a new guard surrounding him. As the board shudders to a halt, the pawns in the front row of defense are jostling about, each seeking a square of safety. But there is little to be found. Even those soldiers who surround the new King will be knocked off the board before this game is over.

Prime ministers and presidents across the world pick up their phones and press numbers stored on speed-dial. Who will they phone first, the incoming King or the outgoing President? They will make more than one call, many to be denied later in the press, for there are many corners of the board to be covered. For those – like the Taliban – who don’t have phone access, they can always post a tweet on the public notice board marked X. Photographic coverage of war leaders shows a smiling Netanyahu and a serious Zelensky. Putin can’t keep the sly smugness out of his eyes while communication with President Zelensky is paused as support is reconsidered. The UK’s chief of defense staff said approximately 1,500 Russian troops were being killed or injured every day, while the 10,000 soldiers sent from North Korea are already suffering casualties. Now the United Kingdom is looking at its options. Possibly how to honor its word with support while changing what that support could mean. A bribe perhaps? Money rather than weapons – but there is no time for funds to become weapons.

In Gaza there are collapsed corridors of rubble where streets and buildings once stood, leaving families to scrape with their bare hands to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones. While the ‘surrender or starve’ policy has been denied by Israel, earlier this week a military official told BBC reports it had “no intention” of allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in Northern Gaza. There will be no cease-fire in Gaza. Israel will continue with its annihilation of that country.

That was the week that was – or was not – depending on your frame of reference. The English news media continue writing and scurrying around words and projecting policies while the politicians, in England and all over Europe, are shifting their papers and policies as fast as they can. The moral high ground seems to be sinking.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday gnawing on my nails, shredding them to jagged uneven tops. Turning to the drinks cupboard, it was an easy finish of the almost empty sherry, whiskey, and gin bottles. There was not much in them to start with, but upending all three bottles of their dregs was telling. We look around and can only console ourselves with caring for each other.

Neal’s Yard Cheese shop in London by **Frank Fujimoto**

While politics plays out on the world stage, England continues to play out a mix of lorry-like thievery and home-grown purity. The world famous cheese market of Neal’s Yard Dairy was cleanly relieved of 22 tons of cheese in 950 wheels of cheddar valued at £300,000. While the police seriously consider deliveries to Russia or the Middle East, chef Jamie Oliver was more down to earth tweeting, “There has been a great cheese robbery. Some of the best cheddar cheese in the world has been stolen,” and added “If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it’s probably some wrong’uns.”

Ah yes, Some of those wrong’uns for sure. But then there are the 5 % good ‘uns such as Paul Horton, the owner of Apidae Honey in Lincolnshire. Paul sells ‘proper honey’. Not like 90% of the honey tested from retailers selling to supermarkets – all considered suspicious by the British branch of the Honey Authenticity Network.

King Charles III at the Remembrance day Service. The Princess Royal next to him.

This weekend is Remembrance Day Weekend. For the first time in a week the sun is shining. Whenever the date falls, the weekend Friday brings a ‘Festival of Remembrance’ at the Royal Albert Hall with the senior royals all in attendance. The service, filled with traditional music, ends with the first of the two minute silences as paper poppy petals fall on the audience of armed forces and civilians all standing to attention. On Saturday morning the Family comes out once more, leading the nation in remembering those who fought and died in the continued wars we fight. While we follow this remembrance here in England, it is played out in all corners of the British Isles and in Europe.

Sir Keir Starmer joined President Emanuel Macron for the Armistice Day Remembrance in Paris

For the first time since 1944, when Churchill was in Paris, Sir Keir Starmer joined the French President Emanuel Macron for the Armistice Day Remembrance in Paris. They stood together, Sir Keir with his red poppies, Emmanuel with his Blue cornflowers, both symbols of their country’s losses during the wars beyond the first. And in summer, in the cornfields of France and England, those two flowers, the red poppy and blue cornflower grow together, side by side amidst the wheat which is cut down in the harvest of bread and blood. The two minute silence was repeated in at 2 minutes to 11 on the 11th day of the 11th month.

This has been a Letter from A. Broad. Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch

And as always supported by murchstudio.com

March Winds

March 30, 2024 / aggiemurch

Written and recorded by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

The manicure lasted two weeks which is a long time, but maybe in Beverly Hills they do know what they are doing, as their clientele often need care on a weekly basis. It was fun while it lasted and – as I walked to the orchard – sweet to glance at my hands holding the pail of chicken feed and smile. Back in Northern California the March winds are now in earnest – rushing and claiming the April showers – to bring forth May flowers. We were taught this rhyme as children, as it was repeated to us with smiles when we were bundled up against the sharp north-easterner wind blowing – even though the sun shone – and we were sent outside to play. But the wind is sharp, the air cold, and only in the stillest of sheltered moments, can one feel the beginning of spring.

It is the woodland flowers that tell us spring has come. The irises on the Commonweal Mesa are glistening pale mauve and sharp purple. Bill’s black cattle are fat, their coats sleek and shiny with good health as they graze hock-deep and with heads buried into the grass as lush as I have ever seen it.

On this farm lambing has begun – often in the most difficult of nights, the early daffodils are fading, the chickens are laying more eggs than we can sell, and the swallows are back.

Maybe it is the birds that mark the seasons best. The swallows are now diving into the barn at the end of March. ‘Whew’ they seem to say, ‘Made it home safely’. But now there are two young barn kittens eagerly learning how to catch those on the fly. The bluebirds have returned too. She is resting in the climbing pink rose over the art shop as he has shown her a new housing option and she needs time to think about it, taking everything into consideration – as a woman does. The robins arrived with a loud fanfare and immediate squabbles, fights over sex and ownership of wives and real estate .

King heading in the orchard 2014 when we were both ‘in our prime’.

It is past time to prune the orchard. Of course I am late and I move slower now. But Rudy has sharpened my pruners and they are shiny from his care. He still has the loppers – as there was something not quite right with a bolt and he must be sure I can manage it, such is his watchfulness of us all. As I reach each tree I apologize for my neglect over these last years. But like a hen-raised brood of chicks, some have survived, even thrived while others have stood still, rooted but not growing, waiting for that extra serving of water through the summer months or the loosening of soil around their root ball, enough to let air in but not the gophers. It often seems a futile effort and yet I keep on working. I look at all that we do – trying to keep the land nurtured and yet productive, a give and take between the soil and us and sometimes I feel defeated as if all my work is but a stop-gap between them – the .01% moving in on us – and us moving on into wherever we can go.

The farm calls for focus and sends the world of wars further into the outskirts of my mind. Though the horrors that are occurring all the time – everywhere – still return to my consciousness when I try to rest from the chores that face me here. What is happening in Russia? Who is attacking whom and for why? This latest attack was claimed by an Islamic Terrorist organization maybe just to show that terrorism is another equal opportunity employer? But it matters, not just that – so far – 137 people were killed in the Crocus City Concert Hall attack – but – despite warnings from the US ‘services’ that this was going to happen – and like Netanyahu before him – Putin let it happen. For Israel’s Prime Minister the music festival attack last October was an opportunity to begin a war he wanted. For Putin it is the continuation of blindness that the Russian people matter and not understanding that somewhere in the months or years to come they will be able to say so. Or is Putin maybe looking to the blindness of other Western countries as they fail in taking a truthful way forward? Will Donald Trump find a way through his nine billion sale of something he probably doesn’t even own to stay out of jail and on the U.S. Presidential ballot? Will Julian Assange be shuttled from one secure house to another or is the possibility of honoring freedom of the press still alive? They – whoever they are – are playing a game that seemingly has no rules and we the people – of the West and of Russia, Ukraine, China ,and all continents – are tossed on the sea storms of their brewing.

This has been A Letter from A. Broad. Written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

And always overseen by – beatrice@blmurch

Rain Stops Play

May 21, 2021 / aggiemurch

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

The third week in May – and it is still raining steadily. Umbrella in hand, it was time to take the 274 bus into town. The bus was already half full, so I sat upstairs to look down over the London streets and see a group of young Asian men, carrying their hefty bags full of cricket gear on their way to the park. One is already dressed in his Cricket whites. Do they dream of one day playing in the holy of holies, Lord’s Cricket Grounds close by in St. John’s Wood? Founded in 1788 by Thomas Lord, the grounds were moved at least three times before settling into this corner of Marylebone. Noted historical progressions through the years included that in 1864 the purchase of a lawn mower removed the need to keep sheep. Those young men I saw from my bus would have been in the grounds where my father was a member for all of his adult life.

I arrived at the edge of the city to where, even with the soft rain falling, the pubs’ and restaurants’ outdoor tables are full. Most shops have been opened again on the Marylebone High Street, but with some noticeable gaps where high-end English brands used to sit proudly on their corner lots. They were always just out of my price range and I am not as sympathetic as I could be.

On Monday, more lockdown restrictions were eased but we are going slowly, being sensible, as the health Minister Matt Hancock urges us all to be. But maybe there will be some lightening of the infection load that will bring this, and other countries, safely out of hibernation.

Every country is looking at what their government could have done better, safer, faster to save more lives. Doors, gateways, air pathways and sea-channels have been opened and closed with speeds that relate to the economy as much as infection rates. All governments have behaved badly to various degrees. There have been profiteers and deals of equipment, and devious deals of no equipment. Last week the head of a pharmaceutical firm in India fled to London after failing to provide more affordable vaccines to his own country. The blame? Already shifted to Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister for not booking ahead and placing his order. The high numbers of infection rates and still low numbers of vaccines are struggling to meet on a world-wide level.

Over this year and half, the COVID-19 virus has been named and shamed as the Chinese, the Kent and now the Indian variant and – as it was named – so it fled to greener pastures. It must have been obvious to any epidemiologist that the Virus would change and mutate as the opportunity arose. That’s what viruses do. They are as opportunistic as all living beings. The Times newspaper estimated that at least 20,000 passengers from India were allowed to enter the UK because there was a trade deal in the works and a little hop to India would have got Boris out of his wallpaper dilemma . The Daily Mirror called Boris Johnson’s delay on closing travel from India another unforgivable ‘Own Goal’.

Another news item broke this week, one that many of us have been looking for. Andrew Marr, the BBC political broadcaster, whom we regularly watch with a Sunday Sofa breakfast, said he may leave the corporation so he can share his true views on politics. Speaking in Glasgow with the Scottish journalist Ruth Wishart, he said, ‘At some point, I want to get out and use my own voice again. How and when, I have no idea …. There are many privileges of working at the BBC, including the size of the audience and all of that, but the biggest single frustration by far is losing your own voice, not being able to speak in your own voice.’ Constraints such as this are a knife edge that all paid journalists must traverse, admitting the constraints is another.

For eight days and counting we have watched Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrages that have killed over 200 hundred people, the vast majority of them Palestinian women and children. Hospital buildings, schools and media centers have been bombed to rubble with Palestinians running, searching for their dead children. The heavy metal disparities are impossible to ignore. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave no justification for targeting the 12-story press building in Gaza, though later claimed that Hamas had an intelligence unit inside. No news organization using the building had seen evidence of Hamas presence. He went on, “Israel’s military operation against Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza will continue with full force. We are acting now, for as long as necessary, to restore calm… It will take time,” Mr Netanyahu warned. Time, to right which wrong?

1978 was the awards season for the film Julia, directed by Fred Zinneman and staring Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda and Jason Robards. Julia was up for eight nominations including for best editor and so we were there that night. Sitting aways away, (Walter’s chances of winning were not considered high) Vanessa looked very young, and alone as she scampered up onto the stage to be greeted by an even bouncier John Travolta. Graciously she accepted her Oscar and then spoke: quietly, politely but with great purpose, her memorable speech denounced what she saw as the Zionist disturbers of that time. That speech cost her a full blown career in Hollywood, thus allowing all of the richness of her work in the cinematic and theatre arts to flow through different channels. Listening again to that speech from 1978 while looking to the now scant news screens, tragically darkened by this new wave of Israeli and Palestinian bombing of the land that is Gaza and Holy – I wonder when will the world be able to bow our heads in prayer – together again.

This has been a Letter from A. Broad.
Written and read for you by Muriel Murch
First aired on Swimming Upstream – KWMR.org.
Web support by murchstudio.com