Extremely SOCIAL Day!

It's festival time across upstate New York!

Yesterday was Ellenville's turn with a Blueberry Festival.

The Shawangunk Dems manned a table, which was a bit odd because Ellenville is in the Wawarsing township not the Shawangunk township, and that means that no one in Ellenville can vote for any of the candidates the Shawangunk Dems are hyping.

But hey! It was a gorgeous day, & I had fun buttonholing all those rich Manhattanites with second homes upstate, explaining to them why they really should make their vacation home their primary residence: In upstate New York, a vote against Republicans means more than it does in the City.

Adrienne is running hard for that Ulster County legislative seat.

Will she win? The quaint & scenic hamlet of Wallkill is a Trump stronghold. "Democrat" is a dirty word here, & not for the reasons it's a dirty word among more sophisticated voters.

I see one avenue to a win: Turnout is traditionally low in local elections. Adrienne is very good at schmoozing. If the number of people she has successfully schmoozed is bigger than the number of people who don't turn out to vote...



Fifty years ago, Ellenville was a major outpost on the Borscht Belt. Fabled Catskills resort Grossingers was in Ellenville! When I first moved to the Hudson Valley and was better physically able to forage around through abandoned places, I did a lot of exploring in the backwoods surrounding the town. I once found an abandoned synagog!

Today, Ellenville is a depressed little community with a poverty rate more than twice that of the nation at large and an epic meth problem. Its factory economy gave a last gasp in the early aughts. A semi-famous knife company: Schrade Cultery! These days, Ellenville's major employer is the New York Department of Corrections (i.e. prisons).

Still, it has the most fabulous bakery outside of New York City. And a rather fabulous bookstore (mit coffee & winebar) that reminds me a bit of Berkeley's Cody's in the old days. And a shop that sells vinyl records!








So, a small renaissance is taking place in Ellenville. I doubt it will ever erupt into out-and-out gentrification. Ellenville is simply too difficult to get to.

While I was still in Ellenville, John L_______ called.

We had a deep conversation as we invariably do. This one went on for an hour and a half.

John L_______ really, really loves Ichabod. I think because Ichabod is doing what John initially wanted to do when John was planning his life and chose a legal career—fight for social justice.

But John ended up getting drafted. And he got sent to Vietnam.

I came out with all my fingers and toes, he told me drily.

And then he talked about Vietnam, which is not something he does very often.

I kinda want to write about what he told me about Vietnam. It's a highly imagistic horror story.

But I also want to respect his confidence. Objectifying his words even in this remote outpost of the cyberverse where maybe 4.3 readers ever find their way makes me question my own motives: Am I really preserving his memories for posterity, or am I sensationalizing them to draw attention to myself?

When I got back, I was numb, John said. All I really wanted was a safe boring life. And I got it! I moved back to Monterey, and I specialized in estate planning.

###

All wars are pointless, but the Vietnam War was particularly pointless.

At some point in our conversation, I trotted out my favorite quote:

The boys throw stones at the frogs for sport.
But the frogs die in earnest.

John has a first-rate memory! This makes talking with him a genuine pleasure because he will track throwaway things you say early in a conversation & expound upon and unravel them later in the conversation.

He was so impressed by the quote that he looked it up & later that evening, texted me:

Thanks for your initiative. Covered a lot of waterfront. Let’s do it again. “The boys throw rocks at frogs in jest; the frogs die in earnest.” - Bion of Borysthenes.

###

I got home from Elllenville in the early evening.

I had planned to spend the evening Remunerating, but then Booter called!

Booter was one of those people who fled from Facebook after Trump got elected; Facebook is my chief way of keeping in touch with people who don't live close to me.

Ten or so days ago, it dawned on me that Booter was now missing from my life, so I wrote her a note. Since Brian died, I have tried to be more proactive about reaching out.

Booter finally got the note—the postal system in the States is a fuckin' joke—& reached back.

We chatted merrily for an hour.

###

Off the phone with Booter, I gave a heavy sigh: Remuneration...

But then I got a text... from Adrienne.

Adrienne belongs to Vision of Wallkilll, so I'd told her about my resignation from VoW, framing it as a funny story because what-the-hell, it is a funny story.

Here's what Adrienne texted:

Patrizia, the whole story about your experience with VOW and your lack of bonding has me very disturbed.
I thought you and Ellen clicked. I don’t know if you heard that she broke her arm and had surgery yesterday. All summer, she had to take care of her mother because she was in from California and stays up at the family’s lake house. Her brothers aren’t helping while her mother has issues.
I can’t speak for Donna’s actions but am wondering if she has addressed other people like this. She has been away for almost a month visiting her daughters and has problematic ones with one of them while her other has recently divorced.
I noticed she has curt as of late. I am not justifying what she said but we all have our shtick.
For me, I have been at a turning point in my life trying to find myself. I have only one true friend up here even though I interact with many women. I never show my true personality
because I try to adapt.
I really think that moving up to Ithaca will have an emotional benefit for you.
I don’t know the relationship between you and your son but being close to a family is very reassuring in case of any emergency.
As always, I want to thank you for all of your efforts with the Dems.
My estranged relationship with Kelli is a perfect example of putting in a lot of emotional effort with a friendship and getting very little reward. She is an odd duck.

I texted back:

First, thank you for your emotional honesty. I appreciate emotional honesty. BIG fan! 😀

No, I did NOT know that Ellen broke her arm! Thank you for telling me! Ellen & I DID click initially, & then for some reason, we stopped clicking, & I don’t know what happened with that. Did I offend her in some way? Did I say something tactless? I may have! Tactlessness is one of my more annoying characteristics. Ellen, for all her exterior jolliness, has definite boundaries. My sense is that I may have trespassed on those in some way. I’m sorry about that. I continue to like & think highly of Ellen.

I know about Ellen’s issues with her mother. And the brothers who don’t help. Ellen is truly selfless in almost a 19th-century definition of the term. There’s a real purity about her. She gives & gives & gives—and she doesn’t like to take.

Viz VOW… You know, when Donna told me airily, “Oh, we don’t have a name tag for yew-w-w-w-w,” it was just clear that my efforts on their behalf—& I mean, I’ve put in a good 40 hours in the trenches manning bounce houses, petting zoos, etc, etc—were not valued in the slightest. I was miffed in the moment: Clearly, there was a pecking order, & I was on the bottom! But then I thought, “That’s Wallkill!” 😀 I mean, I get it: I'm just too marginal in too many ways for this place. No blame to Wallkill, and no blame to me. It’s a mismatch.

And I totally understand yr frustration with Kelli. Because sure, we volunteer because we want to make our communities a better place. But we also volunteer because we’re casting the net for people to play Scrabble with, to invite to our dinner parties, to have fabulous one-on-one talk fests. But maybe that’s something that only those of us with connections to the City want. Maybe people with deep roots here—and my sense is Kelli has deep roots here—are like the pioneer folk in a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, suspicious of everything but the unvarnished.

"For me, I have been at a turning point in my life trying to find myself. I have only one true friend up here even though I interact with many women. I never show my true personality"

I feel for you so much with that one, Adrienne. I really want you to win this election! You’ll be so good in the job! But yes, public office and one’s authentic self are often a mismatch, too, at least for people of our generation. Zohran & Joey Betras seem to have a better handle on it. 😀

Thanks for reaching out, Adrienne.

###


Then I stared at my phone for a good 10 minutes.

Finally, I sighed, picked the phone up, punched in Ellen's number. Fully expecting to be booted to voicemail.

Ellen picked up on the second ring.

Compound fracture of the radius and the ulna. Also tore a ligament. Unclear whether the torn ligament was the result of the tumble that broke her bones or being manhandled in a truly nightmarish ER visit.

Some pulse irregularities led to an EKG that revealed a Wenckebach block, making her a prime candidate for atrial fibrillation.

Surgery was on Thursday. Will need to be in a hard cast for a minimum of six weeks.

Mother arrived in June. (She resides most of the year in Lancaster, California.) 90-year old alcoholic, lives on vodka and TV dinners. Gets abusive after her third shot. Ellen forever a disappointment to her mother because Ellen was a tomboy who doesn't like to read books. Mother a girly girl who majored in English.

Once transported to the family's summer cottage in the Adirondacks—for which read "wooden lean-to without functional kitchen and no stores within 30 miles"—mother absolutely refused to leave, leading to 400-mile round-trips for Ellen, two or three times a week, because there was always stuff she had to bounce down to Wallkill to take care of.

Brothers not helping with care of alcoholic, abusive, ancient mother. One because he lives in California, and actually does take mother for extended three-week stays at Thanksgiving, Christmas, & Easter; the other because he has a summer house in Fire Island and cannot bear to miss a single second of exciting Fire Island festivities—

"You do know that's because he's living a secret gay double life, right?" I asked.

Which made her laugh.

"He's a douchebag," she said. "You know when this is all over & Mom is in heaven with Dad"—Ellen is a church-going Catholic—"and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I did right & honored my mother like the Bible says, I will take great pleasure in blocking his name on my phone and never saying one word to him again. What an asshole."

We gabbed for two hours.

I wanted there to be actual physical things I could do for Ellen, but Ellen is a really hard person to do things for. She strives to be completely self-reliant.

Maybe just letting her vent and making her laugh is doing something?

I dunno.

Anyway, she said, "Love you," when we finally signed off.

So, I guess we're still friends.