Mallory's Camera

If only I had some kind of Bluetooth app for my brain when I'm in the shower or driving along a deserted back-country road, it wouldn't take me six weeks to write a single chapter of the Work in Progress!

I was in such deep reverie when I took off from the gym yesterday that I missed the turn and found myself in an unfamiliar place I'd never seen before. GPS didn't work here; we were too far from the towers.

Of course, I could have turned around, retraced my steps, found the right road.

But that would have added another 15 minutes to the trip, and darkness was rapidly falling. How hard can it be? I wondered. Up is the Shawangunk mountains; down is the Wallkill River Valley.

And in another 10 minutes found my way back to familiar territory.

But oh, what a wild 10 minutes! The back country around here is very wild indeed. So many abandoned homesteads.

###

I did not do useful work at all yesterday. Instead, I finished reading The Great Believers for plot. I will now reread it for subtext & structure.

It's a very, very good novel. Alternating chapters; one set starts in 1985, the other in 2015. The chapter sets could almost stand alone as separate novels except the 2015 chapters assume a certain familiarity with & affection for the characters in the 1985 chapters.

The novel is about the AIDS crisis, a historical moment that few remember anymore.

I remember it quite vividly: The AIDS crisis played a major role in my decision to get out of nursing.

Before the AIDS crisis, you could draw blood without wearing gloves; afterwards, you had to sheath up in heavy latex, and I had a helluva time feeling veins. (I always poked on feel, not touch.) Also, I'm pretty clumsy. The third time I poked myself with a needle that had been used to deliver an injection to a patient, HIV status unknown, and was forced to go on protocol (HIV tests at regular intervals plus the option to take prophylactic AIDS drugs), I thought, No, no, no, girl! Do something else for money.

###

Gay was sassy & fun for 15 years after Stonewall.

Then came AIDS.

Was AIDS the first time that Big Pharma realized they had a captive audience, could monetize despair and fear, and jack up the price of life-saving drugs???? I honestly don't know.

Anyway, post-AIDS, gay—repurposed as LGBTQ—seems like just another lifestyle marketing category to me. Which is very politically incorrect of me, no doubt, and another one of the reasons why my kids might describe my political sensibilities as slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun. This is ironic since as a B, I am a member of the tribe.

Joey's BBQ was a modest success. Maybe 60 people at any one time—which probably means the total headcount was a hundred or so because cars were always coming & going.

Summer in October. Such a gorgeous day! (Thank you unseasonably high pressure front.) And Joey really went all out on the food! He roasted a pig!



And there was locally grown corn-on-the-cob, and locally grown squash, and locally grown potatoes, and locally grown apples. I provided dessert—zucchini bread (locally grown zucchini, natch), and several people sought me out in the crowd to tell me it was the best zucchini bread they'd ever tasted, which was flattery because while I'm a reasonably good cook, I suck at baking.

Someone donated a bounce house for the kiddies.

And there were horseshoes and a soccer game and several of Joey's impossibly beautiful friends made the trek up from Williamsburgh to play music:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1088122093401875

For several weeks, the Shawangunk Dem email list had been abuzz with How political should this event be?

Like the Shawangunk Dems had any say in the matter!

It was Joey's event, and he has quite rightly assessed he will not win if he stresses any connection to the Democratic Party. "Democrat" is a dirty word in these parts, right next to "Libtard asswipe" in the Town of Shawanagunk semi-official lexicon.

Among the Shawangunk Dems, I have something of a reputation as a MAGA-whisperer—I guess because I'm not as polarized as 90% of the U.S. right now. So I made it a point to wander through the crowd and zero in on prospective MAGAs with sprightly conversation in the hope of helping secure their votes.

Once you're elected, you can do what you want.

But you have to be elected.

And, of course, that means people have to vote.

Will they? Hard to say. Most people, even those living in rural areas like this one, think local elections are relatively unimportant. The biggest determinant in local elections is most often the weather on Election Day.

###

Else? I have a staggering amount of work to do. Just staggering.

So, I guess I better get to it

Really, all I want to do is lie out in the sun & read Cormoran Strike novels. The weather is supposed to hold at this summer-like temp for one more day before it plummets.