Mark Rutte

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

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

Muriel Murch

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