(no subject)

Tree that came down in the backyard is actually a box elder, not a maple.

I’m not sure why I’m so fascinated by the local fox grapes, but I am.

Various hybrid cultivars including the Concord were bred from them, but they taste very different from European grapes, incredibly tart with a peculiar musky flavor. They are Vitis labrusca rather than Vitis vinifera.

I’ve made friends with one of my neighbors, a really interesting guy who used to be a highly paid engineer at NYSEG before he was surgically removed from the economy. No LUV connection there, he’s got some kind of physical condition – psoriasis? lupus? -- that makes him physically unattractive and not in a Cyrano de Bergerac way, but I do like the guy a lot. We’ve been walking our dogs together, and chattering endlessly about the economy, about the fact that the real enemy is national-global institutionalism no matter if it pretends to favor labor or capital. I want to live in a small self-governing enclave, and bear the burden of my own prosperity or lack thereof.

Also Max and Susan are pulling all my stuff out of storage today. Max is going to keep some of it. Susan is going to stash the rest in the basement of one of the buildings she owns. This will lighten the financial burden considerably but I gotta say, I’m a bit humiliated by the whole procedure: I didn’t pack with the idea that some day third parties would be going through my stuff so it’s a little like showing up in the ER wearing underwear with skid marks.