Mallory's Camera

It was a very grey day yesterday, so I was in a very grey mood.

Either I have become so susceptible to meteorologically induced mood changes that they've jumped the calendar, and depression is no longer just seasonal. Or my body is no longer capable of being a battery that stores up sunshine for cloudy days. Or the world right now is such an awful place that it is nearly impossible to revel in the joy of being alive. Take your pick!

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Near the beginning of yesterday's TaxBwana debriefing, the head honchos announced that we are no longer being funded for new Chromebooks.

Which means that we can no longer give out equipment to new volunteer TaxBwanas. Not that there are very many of those.

The ranks of existing TaxBwanas are constantly thinning as TaxBwanas move to independent living communities in South Carolina, or undergo joint replacements that leave them immobile, or throw up their hands & say, Fuck this shit. (For whatever reason, there are no youthful TaxBwanas.)

But I don't think attrition is gonna shut down the program.

No, I think Trump's goons are gonna shut off the funding faucet.

We tax preparers all work for free-eee-eeee, but those Chromebooks cost money, and our modems & printers cost money, & in some places where no community agency will donate space to set up shop, we rent space. And all this money comes from a grant from the IRS. My guess is that the grant will be one of the "unnecessary" expenses the goons decide to toss.

Which is a pity. One of the New Paltz team leaders did the math, and assuming the clients we tax-prepared for free-eee-eeee this season had gone to paid tax preparers, we saved our clients about $250,000.

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I carpooled with the extremely pleasant Steve W whose Parkinson's has gotten noticeably worse since January, the last time I carpooled with him.

For someone I barely know, I'm privy to a lot of details about Steve W's life. The professional trajectory that defied parental expectations. The problematic first marriage. The son who committed suicide. The son's children—Steve's grandchildren—now living abject, impoverished lives in the afore-mentioned South Carolina and other Red states.

"But that's awful!" I said when he finished describing one granddaughter's life. "Can't you bring her up here?"

"No," Steve said. "No. Even if I wanted to. She's got so many problems, and she's so..." He left the sentence unfinished. "My wife couldn't handle it. Jane's almost 80, you know."

Since I'm in the middle of that Larry McMurtry reading binge, Steve's family members reminded me a bit of the Greenway diaspora post-Aurora, which is a modern take on the old Tess of the D'Urbervilles scenario: a downward trajectory. Over the course of a century, very few families stay in the same economic/cultural stratum, but it's only in fiction or The Daily Mail that you get to view the contrails in living color.

Anyway, I was seized with an intense sadness for Steve W. Fundamentally, such a smart, decent guy. Drives people without cars to their medical appointments. Teaches drivers' safety for free-eee-eeee! TaxBwanas! Heavily involved in liberal politics (in the liberal enclave of Gardiner!)

And his personal life is just one long heartache.

This is ridiculous, I thought to myself as he dropped me off at my car. My eyes were actually filled with tears.

So I got in my car and I drove to the ganja store!

I had thought of putting myself on Saint John's Wort, but it turns out Saint John's Wort interferes with Synthroid metabolism.

But I gotta do something.

I'm sick of feeling other people's pain.

Ganja's great! I pop one gummy at night, and not only do I sleep like a hibernating bear, I wake up feeling jolly & utterly impervious!