Mallory's Camera

Crumwold Hall on fire in Hyde Park.

Crumwold Hall was built by Archibald Rogers, a minor railroad tycoon, in 1886, making it one of the few local Gilded Age mansions without a Livingston family connection. It's named for Crum Elbow Creek, which flows into the Hudson hereabouts.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor considered moving there once. FDR's mansion is right next door; he played there as a boy, and the soldiers assigned to protect him on his trips home during WWII were garrisoned there.

New York was not interested in adding Crumwold Hall to the state's portfolio of historic landmarks, so once the original doyenne croaked, the mansion passed from hand to hand, eventually ending up in the possession of an obscure religious cult called the Millennial Kingdom Family Church.

Belinda's house is part of the subdevelopment that was built on the original 5,000-acre estate, so I've often viewed the mansion from afar.

Here's what the mansion looked like in its prime:



Practically nothing is known about the Millennial Kingdom Family Church. They have a Facebook Page, but it hasn't been updated since 2015. Belinda thinks there couldn't have been more than 12 people living in the 75-room house. Their water had recently been turned off since they stopped paying their bill a year ago, which made the firefighters' job all the more difficult.

Anyway, I am thinking: Perfect! Grazia will join the Millennial Kingdom Family Church! And Neal will rescue her after the building catches on fire!

###

Shortly, I must gird up and hike out to check in on the chickens. Their coop is about 500 feet from the house. Icky rigged up a network of extension cords to power their fountain, but that grid has failed, and the water in their fountain is frozen solid, so I have been trekking in every day with bowls of fresh water, hoping this will keep them from dying of thirst.

I tested the outlets with my phone charger: The extension cord relay is charging at its source in the basement, but not at its destination at the coop.

The culprit is likely a dead extension cord segment, currently buried under eight inches of snow.

Fond though I am of the chickens, the prospect of spending half an hour narrowing down the dead extension cord does not attract: It is 20° out there with a "real feel" of 8° 'cause there's wind raising mini-snow squalls.

Maybe when the temps rise back to seasonal (supposedly Tuesday).

###

Frigid temperatures also kept me from my New Year's Day plan: a vigorous tromp across the Walkway!

I have this superstition that the way you spend New Year's Day is a template for how you are going to spend the year, so naturally, I wanted to fill my New Year's Day with as many wholesome activities as possible!

But an hour and a half in the cold?? With Hideous White Stuff all around me?

No, thank you!

I did remain happy & occupied all day long, reading, delighting, communicating with friends. So, perhaps that will be the auger. Had a marathon phone conversation with my pal Tom in Michigan that was quite entertaining.

Didn't do a single scrap of useful work, though. And didn't exercise.

Those would be unfortunate augers.

Off to the gym as soon as I deal with the chickens.

It's raining & very warm for this time of year, in the mid-50°s.

Temps are supposed to drop precipitously by the end of the day, which, since I am utterly neurotic, is making me worry about the drive to Betsy's house tomorrow. She lives in deepest, darkest Westchester County near the Connecticut border: The roads will be rivers of ice, right? Who knows if I'll even make it to the end of my driveway?

Obsessing about slipping and sliding on ice-encrusted roads is a good diistraction from obsessing about how the kiskas & I will be forced to move into a refrigerator box beneath the bridge because the client whom I invoiced yesterday will never pay me.

###

Yesterday was productive. I wrote 1,000+ words on the Work in Progress.

I do wish Brian were still around to bounce tasteless, black humor dialogue about dying of COVID in a hospital off of. It's an essential component of Chapter 4, and it is very difficult to write convincing banter on your own.

In the evening, I watched a few episodes of Pluribus, about a person who is immune to the virus that suddenly converts practically everyone on Planet Earth to blissful one-mind-hood.

It's an interesting premise with one big flaw: I don't much like the protagonist who's supposed to embody rugged individualism. She's just not very sympatique. So, while typically I'd root against the hive mind, in this one, I'm Team Borg all the way.

Baaaaad time of year. At this point in my life, I'd rather be savoring the moments, sprinkling them with imagination, stretching them out. But instead, all I can do is hunker down, stare out a window at the pitiless winter landscape, reassure myself, This, too, shall pass.

I'll want those moments back when I'm dying, that's for sure.

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Meanwhile, it didn't snow all day yesterday, but it might as well have because the part of the day it didn't snow was spent reading the sky, testing the wind, waiting for it to snow.

I did a bit of Useful Work and a useless tax class on Zoom—hey! they're paying me. Played around some with the Work in Progress and unwittingly solved a transition problem before it could turn into awkward prose. Did not exercise, which is possibly why I could not break the gloomy mood.

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Finished I Have Some Questions for You. Boarding school books must be an actual literary genre! This one is not near the top of the list. The protagonist is a celebrity because she helms a successful podcast. And I'm thinking, Really??? I mean, there are celebrity podcasters, but mostly they were celebrities before they became podcasters; they are leveraging their celebrity to carry the podcast, right?

The protagonist has this gurgley, chick-lit voice, which is wrong, wrong, wrong for a murder mystery. The basic conceit of the book (actually kinda interesting) is that the real murderer, the figure emerging from the shadows, is the teacher who had an affair with the murder victim, the same sympathetic teacher who devoted energy to bringing the protagonist out of her adolescent shell. Except this proves to be a misfire! So, what we're left with at the end of the book is that the titular You behaved... inappropriately. And those kinds of transgressions are less moral absolutes than violations of au courant cultural imperatives.

###

Speaking of au courant cultural imperatives...

In the evening, I watched multiple episodes of the real estate bling show, Owning Manhattan.

And fell into despair!

How do people end up spending $250 million on an apartment?

The $300 heating oil bill for me this month is gonna be tough to pay!

What kind of an abysmal, absolute failure am I that I can't spend $250 million on an apartment? That I can't even spend 50¢ on an apartment?

Why does money have so many zeroes in it now?

Plus, the Upper West Side that I grew up in is practically unrecognizable now. What did they have to tear down to build the great glass tower at 200 Amsterdam? I was scouring my memory. What used to be there? And suddenly this visual sense memory just rushed in: Annie's old apartment on W. 68th and the little diner next door to it, I could see the breakfast plates now, practically smell them: the sunny-side up eggs floating in a little pool of grease, the crunchy hashbrowns, the thick white china plates...

What will happen to that $250 million apartment in 100 years? Will it still be the apex of luxury living? It can't possibly be, right? The cycle is the Ozymandias Factor, boom then bust, palaces dissolving into tenaments.

But I can't even wrap my head around what comes next.

Watch on YouTube

HIDEOUS WHITE STUFF FROM THE SKY!!!!!

Plus Icky is being an absolute dick, telling me I can't hire someone from Rover to look out for the cats while I'm gone over Thanksgiving because "I don't want strangers in the house."

I mean, like really, Icky?

What do you think they're going to steal?

Your "Burning Man" t-shirt? Your priceless collection of aging hipster metal ratchet jewelry? Your Viagra stash?

If I'm going away for five days or less, I will typically load the kiskas up with food, water, litter boxes, and toys, and just depart.

They are not the world's most interactive cats.

I mean, they interact with me, but it took them a long time to become interactive with me. They certainly won't yearn for the calming presence of other humans in my absence.

But I'm going away over Thanksgiving for a week, which is too long to leave them unchaperoned and their litter boxes uncleaned.

Anyway, I called Christine, the spawns' mother, & she said she would be very happy to do it.

"I'll pay you!" I said.

"No, no," she said.

If she won't take cash, I'll get her a gift card!

Win/win situation!!! 'Cause nothing pisses Icky off quite as much as anyone having positive interactions with his X.

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In other news, the gym yesterday was an absolute delight. I had to force myself not to go in today! At the age of 73, I am thinking one-day-on, the next day-off is the right schedule for the gym.

I may force myself to go tromping today.

May.

It is currently only a single degree over freezing here, so the idea of spending time outside is not very enticing.