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TaxBwana is divided up into little teams of do-gooders. I’m not exactly sure why.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, our TaxBwana team sets up at the Poughkeepsie Plaza.
But on Tuesdays, we set up at Catholic Charities.
This is due to sentimentality on Bonnie’s part. Bonnie is my team’s client Greeter, and she happens to be married to Doug, my team’s leader. (Not their real names.) In the olden days, when they first started doing this, Bonnie and Doug TaxBwana-ed at Catholic Charities five days a week, so Bonnie retains an attachment to the place.
And it is quite true that there are clients who will use Catholic Charities who won’t use the Poughkeepsie Plaza.
This is because Catholic Charities is located right in the middle of Poughkeepsie’s War Zone.
I can’t explain how Poughkeepsie—which not too terribly long ago was a Real Human City filled with Real Human People—turned into a shithole.
It’s got some beautiful architecture. It’s right on the river.
There was no war.
There was no earthquake.
There were no fires or floods.
Poughkeepsie is relatively distant from Interstate 87, the great Crack Cocaine Super-Highway, which brought devastation to once-storied towns in the 1980s. Newburgh, you can blame entirely on crack cocaine.
And Poughkeepsie isn’t even particularly close to the Fishkill incarceration complex.
It is a Great Mystery.
Why Poughkeepsie is a shithole, I mean.
There are residences in this part of Poughkeepsie, and the people who live there tend to be people who bought the beautiful old houses back in the days when Poughkeepsie was a Real Human City and who, for one reason or another, never moved. They’re old. And mostly alone.
One such person was Mrs. Twombley (not her real name), who doesn’t actually need to file taxes since her only income is a very measly social check, but who does it anyway because filing taxes is what respectable people do, and the 78 years of her life had been devoted to struggling to be respectable.
She was small and feeble, reeking from tobacco, coughing and gasping for air—emphysema, thought the part of my brain that’s still an RN.
I felt really bad for her.
She lived alone, and if her life had been water, it would have been up to her chin.
There is no accompanying How I Solved Mrs. Twombley’s Problems and Left Her a Happier Human Being story to go along with this description. Because essentially, I could do nothing for Mrs. Twombley: There is nothing to be done.
In the evening, I watched the first installment of My Brilliant Friend, a show (and a book!) I have been staunchly avoiding, I couldn’t really tell you why.
Child’s eye view of grinding poverty and domestic strife in the Neapolitan slums, circa 1950-something.
It’s excellent but not exactly Good Times TV.
They say that children have the most difficult time differentiating fantasy from reality.
But for me, it has been quite the opposite.
The older I get, the more susceptible I am to being pulled under by my imagination so that while I was watching that intense little girl with the hollow eyes and claustrophobic life on my screen, I was that intense little girl with the hollow eyes and claustrophobic life.
Just as I had been Mrs. Twombley earlier that day.
Most unsettling.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, our TaxBwana team sets up at the Poughkeepsie Plaza.
But on Tuesdays, we set up at Catholic Charities.
This is due to sentimentality on Bonnie’s part. Bonnie is my team’s client Greeter, and she happens to be married to Doug, my team’s leader. (Not their real names.) In the olden days, when they first started doing this, Bonnie and Doug TaxBwana-ed at Catholic Charities five days a week, so Bonnie retains an attachment to the place.
And it is quite true that there are clients who will use Catholic Charities who won’t use the Poughkeepsie Plaza.
This is because Catholic Charities is located right in the middle of Poughkeepsie’s War Zone.
I can’t explain how Poughkeepsie—which not too terribly long ago was a Real Human City filled with Real Human People—turned into a shithole.
It’s got some beautiful architecture. It’s right on the river.
There was no war.
There was no earthquake.
There were no fires or floods.
Poughkeepsie is relatively distant from Interstate 87, the great Crack Cocaine Super-Highway, which brought devastation to once-storied towns in the 1980s. Newburgh, you can blame entirely on crack cocaine.
And Poughkeepsie isn’t even particularly close to the Fishkill incarceration complex.
It is a Great Mystery.
Why Poughkeepsie is a shithole, I mean.
There are residences in this part of Poughkeepsie, and the people who live there tend to be people who bought the beautiful old houses back in the days when Poughkeepsie was a Real Human City and who, for one reason or another, never moved. They’re old. And mostly alone.
One such person was Mrs. Twombley (not her real name), who doesn’t actually need to file taxes since her only income is a very measly social check, but who does it anyway because filing taxes is what respectable people do, and the 78 years of her life had been devoted to struggling to be respectable.
She was small and feeble, reeking from tobacco, coughing and gasping for air—emphysema, thought the part of my brain that’s still an RN.
I felt really bad for her.
She lived alone, and if her life had been water, it would have been up to her chin.
There is no accompanying How I Solved Mrs. Twombley’s Problems and Left Her a Happier Human Being story to go along with this description. Because essentially, I could do nothing for Mrs. Twombley: There is nothing to be done.
In the evening, I watched the first installment of My Brilliant Friend, a show (and a book!) I have been staunchly avoiding, I couldn’t really tell you why.
Child’s eye view of grinding poverty and domestic strife in the Neapolitan slums, circa 1950-something.
It’s excellent but not exactly Good Times TV.
They say that children have the most difficult time differentiating fantasy from reality.
But for me, it has been quite the opposite.
The older I get, the more susceptible I am to being pulled under by my imagination so that while I was watching that intense little girl with the hollow eyes and claustrophobic life on my screen, I was that intense little girl with the hollow eyes and claustrophobic life.
Just as I had been Mrs. Twombley earlier that day.
Most unsettling.
