Mallory's Camera

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, feminist icon and possibly, no probably, more of a trailblazer than the very first female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, whom practically no one remembers.

But I find myself absolutely incandescent with rage this morning that Ginsburg didn’t resign in 2014 when Obama asked her to. She was 82 at the time.

What?

Did she think she was going to live forever?

Or did she honestly believe Democrats had an unshakeable grip on the executive branch?

Really shortsighted bullshit.

This shakes up the Presidential election in ways I really don’t want it to be shaken up because Ted Cruz is rumored to be the top pick on the Republicans’ list of potential replacements. One anticipates that Republicans will push aside all those petty squabbles over who’s to blame for all those dead coronavirus victims to unite behind gun rights and overturning Roe v. Wade.

Democrats are never at their best during contentious confirmation hearings, which are a complete waste of time anyway ‘cause elected representatives seldom if ever break ranks with their party’s line.

I, for one, found the Brett Kavanaugh hearings an outrage. Even if the guy did put the make on the hapless psychology professor when both were 17—so fucking what? In my generation, everyone was a dick at 17.

(Presumably, virtuous Millennials have since reversed that trend, but you know what? I kinda doubt it.)

So, within the next 50 days, we are bound to be treated to the spectacle of Democrats at their most shrill, canting, and self-righteous, and that is gonna turn off voters whose distaste for Biden and Pelosi is only marginally less than their distaste for Trump.

I wish I could score some Quaaludes! I’d like to go to sleep on the night of November 2 and wake up two weeks later when the dust has settled.

###

In other news, the weird spectral smoke strata has finally burned off, and we are back to having beautiful, bright blue skies.

I didn’t expect to be working for the National Counting Project again, but they kept texting me, and I was going over to the other side of the river anyway for brunch with BB, so I said, Sure.

They assigned me a bunch of houses along Route 209.

Now, Route 209 is a major thoroughfare where cars whiz along at 55 miles per hour, so looking for mailbox numbers and careening off into spottily sighted driveways was not a lot of fun.

However, brunch with BB was fun!

Behold our adorable Bento Boxes from trendy restaurant!



The purple stuff is black beans with spiced beets. Tastier than it sounds, though I must say, a little goes a long way. And will continue to go a long way from my refrigerator over the next few days.

BB and I talked of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and the Nature of True Luv. So a fabulous time was had by all.

There are two 26 Egbert Streets (address changed to confuse the innocent) in Kingston.

Two!

So, I spent an hour of what, all in all, was a frustrating day yesterday trying to figure out which one the National Counting Project wanted me to count.

There were also numerous addresses that turned out to be abandoned junkyards, deserted marinas, ruined shacks up unapproachably steep dirt roads, etc. etc. about which the enumerators who’d come before me had cheerfully written in their notes, Nobody home! Left Notice of Visit!

Snort.

I’ll bet.

The National Counting Project is just the most inefficient gub’mint operation ev-ah!

But like I say, it gives me an excuse to do what I like to do anyway—which is basically to knock around weird little places that are so mired in a sense of the past that walking around in them is like wading through muck. A landscape detective!

And I get paid for it.

###

I started the morning back in Rosendale, knocking on doors up and down the lengths of the scrappy little roads that sprout off Creek Locks Road. None of these roads have signage, so it’s a matter of driving the same stretch of Creek Locks three or four times until you sight the turn-off that’s not the driveway to some white supremacist’s home.

On Constable Lane (I kid you not), I met a drop-dead gorgeous blonde in full police uniform and her dead-eyed male consort.

“Hi, my name is Patrizia! I work with the National Counting Project! Is this 6666666 Constable Lane?” I chirped in my best ingratiating puppy-dog voice.

“Who wants to know?” said the man. But it was more of a statement than a question.

Wait! I thought. She’s police. Shouldn’t she know what the National Counting Project is?

But maybe she wasn’t really police! Maybe this was some kind of cosplay the couple did to spice up their sex life! Maybe inside this rather forbidding looking house—constructed entirely of logs, by the way—they had a dungeon where he’d strip her except for that hat with the visor, string her up on pulleys, and fuck her from behind.

In fact, the dungeon was probably filled with sex slaves, hapless National Counting Project enumerators all, that the couple had plucked from the road during survey attempts.

Or maybe what the blonde was wearing wasn’t a police uniform but the uniform of the local militia!

Whatev-ah, girlfriend! I braced myself and quickly rifled through my mental gallery of Explanations to Give Whenever a Respondent Casts Aspersions on the Sanctity of the National Counting Project.

“It’s in the Constitution!” I said. “Article 1, Section 2!” I wished I had prepared a little statement about how the work the National Counting Project does is vitally important to the support of the Second Amendment.

Eventually, I did manage to wheedle them into giving me occupancy information. Nothing else, though.

“We don’t give out personal information to the government,” sneered the blonde.

###

Throughout the day, I was on the lookout for glimpses of the old D&H Canal bed and its locks. May have sighted them several times while I was driving. But there was no place to pull over and snap pix.

I did take pix where there was room to pull over:



This is Roundout Creek near what was once the village of Rosendale (which voted itself out of existence some 50 years ago.) To my eyes, the waterway looks too straight not to have been engineered.



This pic was taken from one of the mobile home parks. Again, the waterway looks too straight and unobstructed to be a natural creek. But, of course, what do I know?

###

I saw lots of old pre-colonial houses, too. Some of them had historical markers:




But most of them were just Places Where People Live:



By the way, the whitewash is probably truer to the way these places actually looked during the time of Dutch and early English colonial rule than the plain stone of the Hurley houses.

###

I worked my way down Creek Locks Road and its subsidiaries, gloomy under dense clouds, and found myself on Rte 213, which styles itself “Abeel Road” as it passes into Kingston. This was the cause of some hilarity as the National Counting Project addresses all say “Rte 213” while my GPS concierge kept insisting “Abeel Road.”

I think “Abeel Road” may be some kind of holdover from the mid-19th century when this part of the Kingston marina was still an independent village called Roundout. Johannes Abeel was apparently some early 17th century mayor of Albany who was deposed by (of course!) a member of the eeee-vil Livingston dynasty.

I had a much better time counting in the Kingston inner city than I did in the hostile White-People-Lands surrounding it, I must say. Respondents were more respectful and much, much friendlier.

I have no control over where they send me, of course.

But I definitely do not want to go back to Ulster County’s white supremacist strongholds. It was a challenge to remain polite.

So that may be it for me and the National Counting Project.

I’ll see how I feel in a couple of days.

The DMV refused to register the new car because my middle name was on my driver’s license but not on my insurance card.

This is just crazy.

I have a highly unusual name, with or without the middle name. There is only one of me living in the entire U.S. of A!!!!

I wanted to cry or go on a DMV-shooting spree, but you know: What good would that do?

In the time of covid, we must all get used to living in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

So, I called my insurance people, requisitioned a new insurance card, and took the registration back to the mysterious Drop Box. It will take another three weeks for them to find something wrong with this application, I’m sure.

###

I did a lot of errands yesterday, in fact, but of course, there are always more errands to do. Errands metastasize.

In the late afternoon, I had to scurry down to the mall, always a disheartening proposition even in times when mankind is not facing a devastating plague.

I’d say roughly 40% of the storefronts are empty plus at least one of the anchor tenants is going out of business:



Too bad I don’t want any ugly polyester clothing, designed by Kim Kardashian and made in a Vietnamese sweatshop, right?

I’d come to the mall to buy new shoes. I actually wore my sneakers out, pounding the pavements on behalf of the National Counting Project, and there is this one mall shoe store that must send me five emails a day, promising fabulous discounts and an endlessly enticing array of shoes that will turn my feet into objects of adoration for every podophile in a five-mile radius.

I have very big feet. Size 11—the same size as Jackie Kennedy! They were smaller once, but they went up a full size with each pregnancy I brought to term.

Anyway, the shoe store was a complete disaster with absolutely nothing in stock, and I was forced to visit three separate stores before I could find a pair of shoes that did not make my feet look like something clowns use to extort laughs from Mennonites and that actually fit.

I also ducked into Best Buy and bought a (cheap) 24-inch monitor.

My heart was pounding.

You are spending money on yourself without any practical reason for doing so!, scolded the savage little voice that lives inside my head.

Yes, it’s true. I bought the monitor for my own entertainment. So, I could play video games.

Baaaaaaaaaad dog!

###

It’s supposed to rain all day today, so I could play video games all day long, I suppose. Except there are some items on the Never-Depleting List of Errands that can be accomplished rain or shine plus my living space looks like the entire cast of Hoarders has been crashing here, and my writing clients are getting pushy.

Also, I got a text from someone called Jessica.

I’m your new National Counting Project CFS! it said. Let’s touch base tomorrow!

I am not signed up to work tomorrow, I thought. In fact, I may never sign up to work again.

But why be difficult?

What-evah. Sure. Let’s be BFF!

It’s sad to think they’ve gotten rid of Huck, whom I had come to like. He actually turns out to live only a mile away from me in the Historic District, and I would see him out walking his dog, a skinny little man in bright purple sneakers who looked like Andy Warhol in a covid mask, only with better skin and his own hair.

I don’t like him enough to give a shit about the story behind his separation from the National Counting Project, however.

People were just fuckin’ nuts yesterday. Driving crazily, and more irate and abusive than usual.

I’d finally coaxed this one guy into talking to me—an old style fringe hippie who discovered the Joy of the Second Amendment relatively late in life.

A woman he described as “the mother of my child” was part of his household.

I always find that an interesting description.

In the copious writings on Ben’s computer that I rifled through after his death, I found sentimental essays about practically everyone he’d ever known. Not just friends and family. Random people he sat next to at bus stops! But the few times he ever referred to me, he described me sans name as “the mother of my son.”

This confirmed my impression that Ben heartily disliked me by the time he died.

Anyhoo, Second Amendment Hippie was okay with giving me his demographic details and his son’s demographic details, but didn’t want to say anything about “the mother of his child.” This was just fine with me: The Constitution mandates a count but doesn’t say anything about the collection or aggregation of personal information.

Towards the end of the interview, the mother of his child wandered out. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“The National Counting Project is the basis for the federal government’s matching grants to the states!” I explained brightly. “It’s used to determine everything from road repairs to food stamps and Medicaid.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said with deep contempt. “I was talking to him. You’re very rude, aren’t you? You should learn to keep your trap shut.”

I snapped.

Gave her my best Sicilian malocchio. Smiled. “I get it,” I said. “Look at your life! You feel so powerless. The only thing that makes you feel powerful is dishing out shit to people you think have no recourse except to take it. Have a great day!”

Their mouths fell open.

And then I sprinted to my car and got the hell out of there before they could see the name on my name badge or the license plates on my car!

My hands were shaking.

Adrenalin rush!

I’d never make a successful assassin.

I was right around the corner from the Union Cemetery, so I ducked in there and sat staring at the graves for 10 minutes or so while I gained my composure.

People are such assholes.

And yet, they all die and the same sky arches over them, blue, magnificent, half-obscured by fairy-castle clouds.

Yesterday’s Big Laugh, courtesy of the National Counting Project: Are you interested in enumerating in southern states for the rest of the month?

What, I ask you, could be more fun than getting doors slammed in your face throughout Alabama and Mississippi where the morning humidity index hovers near 83%?

Let’s see…

Getting splinters forced into your fingernail beds?

Listening to Justin Bieber?

Having sex with Donald Trump?

I didn’t bother responding to the text.

###

Yesterday’s adventures took me to places I’d never been before—like the strange hill settlements along Hollow Road where, apparently, they worship horses:





Then it was off to Staatsburg. Parts of Staatsburg I’d never seen before! Parts of Staatsburg that apparently are inhabited by two tribes: people who’ve lived there all their lives and rich New York City-ites, squatting in their second homes ‘cause covid. The former live in mobile homes; the latter in much-renovated 19th century fairy palaces.

The tribes fly the flags of their distant gods, Trump and Biden, and do not like each other much at all.

###

If only the National Counting Project would keep sending me to places I’ve never seen before, I’d do it forever.

Alas! They keep sending me back to the—ugh—Section 8 housing tracts, which fill me with existential despair.

Confidential to the National Counting Project! These mooks are never gonna grant me that 10-minute interview that will complete their National Counting Project surveys! No matter how much I entreat, cajole or try to explain that their food stamps and Medicaid—yes, yes, a presumption on my part! But a presumption with fair betting odds—depends upon it.

The assholes are the ones you remember.

I wonder why that is?

For example, yesterday.

I tromped about, mostly encountering doorbells that echoed into empty hallways or folks who begrudgingly gave me 10 minutes of their time.

But one woman kept offering me coffee and pastries. One man wanted to give me five pounds of tomatoes from his garden. Another woman invited me to join her birthday celebration: “When you get to be my age, it’s just another day. But I’m grilling burgers.”

Those aren’t the people I remember, though.

No, I remember the house where the woman stared coldly at me and said, “A man came here and did this already.”

“Really?” I said. “Huh. I wonder why you’re on my list. In the last few days?”

“A couple of months ago.”

I knew she was lying because the National Counting Project was not doing door-to-door a couple of months ago. But I wasn’t about to call her on it. That’s not in the job description.

“Huh. Well, I can leave you this Notice of Visit with your code, and maybe you can look it up, see where the irregularity is—“

“Fine.”

The National Counting Project identifies every address with a complicated alphanumeric designator. It takes a couple of minutes to page through the various scripted screens to arrive at that designator. It takes another couple of minutes to write the required note: Respondent says she was already enumerated “a couple of months ago"—

The inside door opened and another woman came out, older and harder looking than the first.

“Why are you still standing here? We told you: We don’t want the bullshit you’re selling. Get out of here. Go Trump!”

Go Trump?

Huh! Did she really think the National Counting Project was something invented by Obama-worshipping leftists?

Her venom was stunning.

I wished I were on better terms with God, so I could hit God up for a favor: Could you smite this bitch with a painful form of rectal cancer, pretty please?

But I got out.

###

This was actually my second incredibly unpleasant encounter of the day. The first had occurred back at those awful, squalid white cottages where the NCP had dispatched me for follow-up.

Sidebar: I did find out what the cottages were from a pleasant resident. Apparently, they were built to house FDR’s Secret Service retinue back in World War II. And have not been renovated since.

The residents recognized me.

“Look! We have our own personal National Counting Project taker,” drawled a man I had talked to the day before. (When I got to the part of the NCP script that asks about race, he said, “Put down ‘Teutonic.’”)

“Hi!” I said, compressing as much canned delight as I could into that monosyllable. “Hi! I’m looking for [unit number goes here.] I can’t seem to find it…”

“Oh, he ain’t here—“

“He’s probably out looking for crack,” said the Teutonic man.

“Nah. He got arrested yesterday—“

The unit next door to Crack Boy was also on my list.

My knock was answered by a woman who had all the signs of tardive dyskinesia. Amazingly, she agreed to do the survey but got more and more agitated as the interview progressed. When we got to the question that reads, Are you White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian etcetera, etcetera, she snarled, “Kind of fuckin’ question is that? I’m white, and I’m proud.” She began to chant: “White lives matter! White lives matter!”

“Well, that’s it!” I said. “The survey is complete! Thank you for your time and courtesy!”

“Wait a minute! How I know you ain’t a scammer? How I know you ain’t scamming me? Give me a receipt!”

“I don’t have any receipts—“

“I want a receipt!” she screamed. And proceeded to advance into my personal no-fly zone with her hands poised in an attempt to throttle me.

I skipped toward my car while she lurched toward me, staggering like Frankenstein’s monster with her hands in the air, bellowing, “I want a receipt! I want a receipt!”

I didn’t perceive myself as being in any actual danger.

It was just so fuckin’ sad.

###

In the evening, someone on the DW flist decided to berate me for my moral repugnance in refusing to be polarized over Jacob Blake.

This is someone who apparently has never had to file a restraining order.

Well, I have had to file a restraining order.

And I’ll be goddamned if some asshole is going to lecture me about moral equivalence and restraining orders.

The reason you file a restraining order is because you’re deeply, deeply afraid that someone is going to do you grievous physical harm.

“Grievous physical harm” includes rape and, yes, murder.

And if that someone decides to ignore the restraining order, and something happens to that someone while he’s ignoring that restraining order—well. The use of excessive force is always wrong, but the situation is—shall we say—nuanced.

###

Anyway, I ended up doing a purge of the flists in the parallel LJ/DW universes. (I always think of the parallel LJ/DW universes as the online diary equivalent of the Marvel/DC comics universes!)

Thing is I read a lot of journals written by people whose political opinions I do not agree with.

There is a vetting process: I like journals that are well written, and there must be a mutual accordance of good faith.

If someone writes something that I strongly disagree with, and I care about that person—because, if you read someone’s inner thoughts over a number of years, how can you not end up caring about them?—I will try to engage them. Otherwise? No. It’s interesting to me to have multiple windows onto the world, and I always remember that in 25 or 50 or 100 years time, all the issues that seem so polarizing now will be as dust.

Bullies can just go fuck themselves. Both the Trump-loving and progressive flavors.

Yesterday, the National Counting Project put me on Section 8 Housing detail.

I fuckin’ hate Section 8 Housing detail.

By this point, we’ve papered practically all the Section 8 Housing complexes up and down East Market so that when you knock on occupants’ doors, they start screaming at you: You were here yesterday! And the day before! Fuck you! You’re a pain in the ass.

And we’ll be back tomorrow, I think grimly. (Although hopefully not me personally.) And we’ll keep on coming back for another month because sadly, that’s the law. And all you have to do to stop us from coming back is to talk to us for five minutes.

A sizeable percentage of the tenants in these places must be on food stamps and Medicaid. And the National Counting Project is the way the federal government figures out how much to allocate in matching grants to help subsidize these assistance programs.

I would just love to deliver a little civics lesson to each and every one of these yahoos but that’s wayyyy above my pay grade plus I don’t think they’d understand it.

The Section 8 people have a very childlike idea of money: I think they think the government just prints money, and when the government runs out, they just print more. (Of course, these days, they’re not entirely wrong.)

They hate the government.

Of course, the National Counting Project also determines Congressional representation, but I’m fairly certain no one in these Section 8 Housing blocks votes although I did espy a couple of Trump stickers on cars:


The great delusion of the Democrats seems to be that if you focus voter turnout activities on populations like these, you will increase the likelihood that Democrats will be elected.

I wonder if that’s true?

My own feeling, of course, is that America’s two political parties are practically interchangeable in terms of moral corruption, ineptitude and general creepiness, but LBJ is the one who pushed through all that social legislation in the early 60s, so “The War on Poverty” is forever associated with the Democrats.

Arguably, Democrats do more for the poor than Republicans do.

If people bother to vote at all, though—and that’s a big “if”—a sizeable portion of them will not vote according to their own economic best interests.

Here’s the deal:

Uneducated people like bullies. And poor people are the ones most likely to be uneducated.

Particularly, they like bullies who are going after individuals that the uneducated people would like to be going after themselves—which is to say, people with education.

Uneducated people identify with these bullies.

There’s an even division between Black and white in these Section 8 Housing complexes. Maybe the Trump stickers were all on cars owned by whites. Again, I don’t know. I wasn’t doing political canvasing.

What I do know is that there was no sign of Black Lives Matter. Knots of Black young men gathered on cracked cement porches, puffing on cigarettes, gesticulating madly at one another, eyeing me warily—but I didn’t get close enough to eavesdrop on their conversations.

Only one person said anything even remotely political to me. He was a burly Black guy who opened his door after my second round of vigorous rapping and glared at me.

“You tell me why I should do this,” he sneered.

I decided to look upon this as an invitation to recite the many virtues of the National Counting Project!

“Yeah?” he said. “Yeah? But, see, here’s the deal—I don’t vote.”

And he slammed the door in my face.

Leaving me to wonder whether he didn’t vote by choice, or he didn’t vote because he’s an X-felon.

New York actually does let former felons vote. I wondered if I should knock again on his door to inform him of this.

But decided against it.

How long ago is “long ago?” Fifty years, 70 years, 100 years? A thousand years?

Of course, “long ago” is relative. In the cosmic sense, a billion years is hardly a bat of the eyelashes, and the sun is practically a newborn.

In the geological sense, “long ago” refers to fossils. There aren’t very many of those here in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley because of all that drifting, mashing, uplifting and submersion: The Ramapo Mountains were once as high as Mount Everest, but 200 million years has a leveling effect.

In this part of the world, too, “long ago” is complicated by the fact that the humans who lived here the longest had no illusions about the permanence of any structures they might build.

I’ve settled on 100 years for my definition of “long ago” as I tromp around on the National Counting Project’s errands.

In the middle of a Section 8 housing complex—erected most likely some time in the mid 60s—I came across this old farmstead, camouflaged by hideous green siding; a newish, utilitarian roof and a cellblock listing, but still recognizable, thanks to its irregularly shaped windows:



The super lives there. He has a lot to answer for on account of huge portions of the Section 8 housing complex are being used as a dump, which I suspect is strictly illegal not to mention a genuine public health hazard since the Section 8 housing complex is crawling with kids:



In a trailer park off Violet Avenue (so named because long ago, greenhouses lining this obscure little road supplied all of America’s vast and insatiable lust for African violets), I discovered an old barn:



I have to be surreptitious when I take photographs. The National Counting Project would not approve of my prowling!

###

Yesterday was very hot, and people were not particularly polite.

In the afternoon, I had three addresses that turned out to be trailheads on the Winnakee Nature Preserve. I had to hike in. Mailboxes were standing right there in the middle of nowhere. Very bizarre!

There was one house maybe 50 yards outside the nature preserve that was truly the most awful place I have ever seen. I think maybe Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason are all roommates there. The house was up this long and crumbling flight of cement steps that were covered in at least a year’s worth of dead and decaying leaves and branches, and the front door was positively festooned in black mold.

Nobody could possibly live here, I thought, but gave the door a sharp rap because I am such a conscientious National Counting Project contractor.

I was busily filling out my Notice of Visit—for a good time, call the National Counting Project!—when I heard a loud creak, and the door slowly began to drift open.

It was a man! With long, stringy grey hair that went down past his shoulders and completely naked except for a pair of very garish pink panties.

But that wasn’t the weirdest thing.

No, the weirdest thing was that with the door open, I could hear the radio, and it was tuned to a station that was playing 80s hits:

Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
Wake me up before you go-go

“Umm—you don’t have time to complete a National Counting Project survey, right?” I asked. “Here! Take this!”

And fled.

###

When I checked a map later, I found that the Winnakee Nature Preserve is actually on the other side of the dense woods that encircle the house I presently live in. You’d have to drive five miles to get there, but if you cut through the woods, you’d only walk two miles.

I generally like hiking, but these particular woods have never held the slightest enchantment for me. They are dark. And spooky. And trail-less.

Apparently, they were once owned by a Colonel Archibald Rogers. A close friend of Sara Delano Roosevelt!

It was from Rogers that FDR learned about forestry and other manly pursuits, says the only history of the place I have been able to unearth.

Ho-kay!

Dreamed I was part of this huge group of travelers. Were we fleeing from something? Migrating toward something? Or possibly in some sort of court progression? I knew everyone.

RTT was there—not the RTT of now, but the enchanting child with supernaturally long eyelashes he once was, dashing about, weaving in and out of the group’s slowly moving forward motion like some sort of contrapuntal melody. It was annoying!

In exasperation, I kept trying to rein him in. Finally got fed up. Too hell with you! I thought. (Baaaaaad mother.) He saw the change of mood and immediately tried to woo me back, hanging the coat he was wearing up on a peg instead of dropping it on the floor. See? I’m a good boy.

It was a fur coat of some sort. Mink. Ben had given it to him, and I thought, That’s an entirely inappropriate thing for a 6-year-old boy to be wearing.

We were arranging some sort of huge ceremonial meal, and I was busy doing prep work, greeting everyone, making sure everyone had enough to eat.

I saw a woman I knew slightly. (I knew her husband better.) She was an artist; I’d seen her work, and it was good.

By reputation, she was a very dynamic, self-assured person, so I was shocked when I said, “Hello, Mary,” and she burst into tears.

“My name is Mikayela Lisa,” she sobbed.

“Oh! I got your name wrong! I’m so sorry,” I said.

And she sobbed even louder. Because I hadn’t remembered her name!

What an incredibly stupid thing to cry over, I thought—but began to try to pacify her anyway. We’ve been marching so long, I’m so tired, I’m forgetting everything! And, I’m a really awful person with names, but I’d never forget your work, it’s so wonderful.

Finally, I said, I understand why you’re crying. I have an unusual first name, too, and everybody mispronounces it constantly, even though it’s not really that hard to pronounce—

And she said in a strangled voice, “Yes.”

The fact that I had finally gotten her to stop sobbing and say something shocked me.

And, of course, I had to pretend to be sympathetic and everything. But really I was thinking, The world has some major, major problems right now, your survival is at stake—and this is what you choose to cry about? Goddam, you are a fucking idiot.

###

The coat RTT was wearing in the dream was this one:



(He’s the one in the middle with the cap, pointing.)

From a stage production of Peter Pan his elementary school did. He was one of the Lost Boys.

###

I woke up in the middle of the night.

(I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night for the past 10 days or so. It is very annoying.)

And I did that thing you are never supposed to do: I turned on my computer.

The former Future Mother of My Unborn Grandchildren lost her childhood home in Boulder Creek. Burned to the ground.

Susie posted her emergency evacuation list:



Susie’s husband, Jon, spent the day helping friends in Davenport evacuate. He shot these two videos:





You figure the fire will stop when it hits the Pacific Ocean but maybe, the winds just shift south, and it hits Santa Cruz.

They’ve already evacuated the UC Santa Cruz campus.

Annie and Stew live three miles away from the UC Santa Cruz campus.

I love California beyond words, and most especially, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast, but I don’t think I could ever live there again.

The reality—that these firestorms are now a yearly phenomenon—is too brutal.

###

I spent yesterday chasing down National Counting Project renegades up and down Haviland Road.

I think Haviland was once its own town. A farming community. I haven’t been able to discover any history.

I know that in 1999, a family who lived on the outer edge of the web of suburban developments that now occupy the site of those vanished cornfields and apple orchards decided to dredge the pond sitting on the back of their property. They hired a backhoe. And dug up an enormous bone—which turned out to be a mastodon humerus.

The rest of the mastodon’s skeleton was dug up, too, and is now on display at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca where I visited it a couple of years ago:



No mastodons in evidence yesterday. But an awful lot of abandoned houses. And I kept thinking I was hearing roosters crowing. Although, how could I have been?

I tromped.

I wear a mask around my neck when I tromp, and if I see anyone at 20 paces who is coming toward me and wearing a mask, I pull mine up. Not because I believe in the effectiveness of masks because I don’t. But because I want to signal: I am a good person! Not like those people who ride motorcycles to South Dakota, listen to heavy metal, and sport offensive tattoos.

I think I should get mucho points for my civic-minded behavior.

Instead, I tromped up to this one woman yesterday who scolded, “You are wearing the wrong type of mask.”

WHAT?

“Your mask loops behind your ears. It should fasten around the back of your head.”

Listen, you fucking mask-Nazi, you’re lucky I don’t rip off this mask and spit on you, I thought.

But did not say.

Instead I smiled vaguely—which, of course, she could not see because… mask!—and went on tromping.

And tried to rationalize her behavior.

Everybody is going nuts, I told myself. Everybody wants to act out. You want to act out by going all Sicilian and Scorpio moon; she wants to act out by being a big Bossy Pants. But really it is the same impulse.

This hardly assuaged me at all, though.


I gardened! I made the acquaintance of this merry fellow! (That sinister, blurry presence on the far left is an evil cabbage worm that in the space of less than 24 hours turned one of my collards into a lace doily.)

We’re in high tomato harvest mode now:



Then I got in my car and took off to Pawling where the National Counting Project has set up its regional office.

My drive took me through Union Vale and Freedom Plains, once Quaker settlements, big names on the underground railway, now just dreary little hamlets—a single auto repair garage with peeling paint; a cluster of mobile homes peeking out from behind an Ailanthus grove. En route, I rehearsed insults: Should I tell them to shove their fucking smartphone up their ass, or should I tell them to sit on it and twirl?

The receptionist wouldn’t let me resign, though. “You need to see IT,” she said.

I need to punch you in the face, I thought, but I realized I was dangerously close to going postal, and that is a step off the flat edge of the earth one never wants to take no matter what siren song that combination Scorpio moon and Sicilian DNA is singing.

The IT guy said, “Oh. You need a new phone?”

And gave me one.

So, I guess I am still one of the feet on the ground in that glorious patriotic endeavor, the National Counting Project.

I do feel better having gotten that resolved. Plus I’ll get paid for that round trip to Pawling. And there’s approximately 60 hours of—ha, ha, ha—training modules I get paid for before I ever have to leave the Patrizia-torium.

###

What else?

I’ve been listening to an audio version of The Go-Between while I’ve been tromping. It’s a book I deeply love it, but I’ve read it so many times, I didn't want to read it again.

Listening to audiobooks is often an excellent complement to reading a book just because voice actors often emphasize different things than your eyes do when you’re reading, and this gives the book whole new strata of meanings.

The Go-Between is read in a plummy high-U accent, which for the first 10 minutes or so put me off, but then I fell in love with it because at its heart, after all, the novel is an almost Proustian meditation upon memory propounded by a man in his early 60s. It follows the stream of consciousness of the 12-year-old boy the narrator once was so closely that it’s easy to be misled into thinking that it’s the 12-year-old boy’s words that you’re reading. But it isn’t!

Anyway, a truly terrific book and an excellent audio adaptation.

The universe can’t be all horrible if it produced a novel as wonderful as The Go-Between, can it?

But I’m still crying. Maybe that’s my New Normal.