Pint of Platinum last night and night before. Something of a spike for me these days. But a good long sleep both nights. We are now into the Home Health Aide part of life, and I have two “shifts” today, 9-12, and 2-7. If I were to do 25 hours per week with Anchor, plus the occasional nruns race, that would be perhaps $2500 for this month. Not great but managing. And write again: just a few hundred.

I don’t know the SS status; have they recomputed? Am I getting my $30k in back benefits? Monthly payment goes in tonight.

I keep listening to the Buckley book over and over (Sam Tanenhaus) and my mind goes back to Bill Rusher. Met him, sort of, at a reception by the Tory Party or POR in 1971 or early 1972. The question came up about the fake Pentagon Papers. Little Bill said, “Well if you know Bill Buckley, you know he wants to play advisor to Presidents and policymakers three days a week, and be Peck’s Bad Boy the rest of the time.” As the publisher of NR, Rusher found the “ex nihilo” forgery of DoD papers the previous summer to be an embarrassment. The problem was that they were too good, too credible, and although hundreds of people were informed it was all a prank to expose the gullibility (or something) of the New York Times in printing the Sheehan/Ellsberg “Pentagon Papers”, no one spilled the beans, and the little prank seemed in bad taste when WFB admitted it.

Tanenhaus “outs” Rusher as being gay someplace in the book. I remember when he retired from NR, it must have been in the late 80s, someone snidely wrote in the letters page of Instauration that it’s noteworthy that Rusher is retiring to San Francisco, as that’s where the swishes go.

I was thinking yesterday (and scribbling notes, while waiting for my 3 hours with Lourdes Vasquez in the old YWCA at 50th and 8th to end) of how WFB’s polemical insight seemed to drop off in the early 70s, and how this may have been due to boredom, increased drinking and other distractions, and mainly the Ritalin. By the mid-70s he was on Ritalin. “For low blood pressure,” Christopher told me. It’s essentially a form of speed and inclines one to go off on wild tangents when one writes, or to write the same tangled sentence over and over, stuffing it with additional ideas without making it more intelligible. “Do you think he’s become more parliamentarian?” Chris asked me once. He somehow thought I was a fan of his father and followed his career closely. I couldn’t really answer because I didn’t know what he meant. Parliamentarian to me meant following Robert’s Rules of Order.

What dos the online dictionary say? Nothing helpful, just what I thought. Following the rules, or else siding against the King in the 1640s.

Paid $255 to ConEd yesterday because they have sent me another termination notice. Back in March or April I agreed to another installment plan, $97 a month, for arrears, but although I’ve paid hundreds since, they say I broke the agreement.

Two weeks back I had that strange “Lousy T-Shirt” 5k in Prospect Park, working amenities under Tom Joyce. This coming Saturday, July 5, I’m riding the blue van from the warehouse and setting up clocks on Gov Is for the 10k Firecracker, then marshaling. I ran a 5k Firecracker there once, ten years ago. Did not do well. One of my very last races as a participant. The following year I quite seriously thought I was in fair shape and about to do the Mini 10k, but of course I didn’t. That was during the AA period, when Lorna Kelly died, I was on the wagon for a full 100 days, and for a while snorted crushed Ritalin off a mirror (because Daniel Antinora suggested it). The following weekend there’s a 5k in Flushing Meadows, the Queens Ice Cream Social.

We got an email from Jen telling us that after the Queens race there would be another “dusk” for the organization, to give all the full-timers and part-timers another break. I don’t recall anything like this last year, and we just had a long break a month or so ago. I suspect the org is overleveraged, spending at least as much in operations as it takes in. These little races with 1000 participants, every couple of weeks, can’t keep the lights on when you have two dozen full-time employees.

I’d half-hoped I could get a full-time job with nruns but now that looks unlikely. I’ll hold my breath with this awful Anchor HHA business until a real job comes along. I hope by summer’s end.

I was interested in Ed Dutton’s latest Substack and podcast last night, but now forget why.

Lourdes again at 9 (it is just after 8 now), then someone called Wade at 2.

That which was lost has been found. New mystery arose in the last few days. An electronic chirp would occasionally sound in the bedroom (which I seldom leave). The sort of chirp when a battery of a mobile phone is running down. The likeliest culprit was the cordless Panasonic on the windowsill. I replaced that with its twin, which no longer works adequately as the display is faded. They both seemed to function well otherwise, at least when charged. And they didn’t chirp.

I moved them out to the living room to eliminate the possibility. The chirping continued. It was coming from the vicinity of Moki’s credenza or tall oaken chest. I searched around. Some old piece of bicycle equipment? Is my FireTV in need of a battery? Anything?

The chirping continued, at :07 and :37 past the hour. It took me almost a day to work that out.

In the bottom drawer of the chest, the one I used for my underwear and hose for years, there was a Container Store plastic bin with old mobile phones and AC converters and Vodafone SIM card packages. Dead soldiers. I moved the bin to get it out of the way.

No chirping in the bedroom then. I checked that bin out in the living room. My Nokia candybar from c. 2007-2012 was lit up, telling me it had no SIM card. Well of course it didn’t. I had this old phone plugged in for months and months for some reason, then when I decided to move some shelving around last month, I unplugged it and put in the bin. (In the back of my mind I thought I might start using it again, as a sort of secret phone for special calls.) But it was still on now, and possibly the chirping culprit. Was it? I took it into the bedroom and looked at the clock and waited. At about 2:36 it chirped. Mystery solved. It should have been the most obvious answer. Why did it take me so long?

One discovery in that bottom drawer was a Buff from c. 2006 that I don’t think I ever wore. No branding beyond the Buff logo. I’d wondered what had become of this.

Just ate a bison burger on sourdough toast buttered with the butter I made the other day. Yesterday morning I went up to Whole Foods to pick up the ground bison and two pounds of coffee I’d ordered the night before. Yes, EBT purchases for pickup. Expensive coffee, bison and venison meat. The Death Wish coffee is seriously caffeinated, like coffee when you first start drinking it at 16. Mild euphoria, then racing thoughts. The Peet coffee is good too. These should last me a couple of weeks.

It is another cold day in June. I am wearing my thin black tights or leggings. It was raining today. I should be active today but am lazing away. That is the trouble with drinking a lot of coffee. Boosts me up then drops me. Wanted to do laundry and/or go to gym. Maybe in a couple of hours.

Missed mass yesterday…really just too fatigued. Napped and woke at a quarter to six in the evening. I’m getting to be like Moki. “Is it morning or evening?”

Reading Buckley book, and too much social media.

Cute AI illo I did last night with ChatGPT:

Tomorrow to Prospect Park, 2-10. Amenities with Tom Joyce. Still sort of pissed off about the whole thing.

At long last a bill arrives from the NYAC for $288, I presume for the lunches and drinks I had there, mainly last year. That is slightly steeper than I would have guessed, given that I have had only about five lunches there (with one or two double vodka martinis, however) in the past 15 months. Could be there are late charges. I shall phone and find out today.

At 11 am today I was scheduled for a phone call with someone called Harrison Tanico on a Zoom call, something about how to find a job. It all sounds fishy. I canceled.

And while looking for that I see a message from Jen, asking me if I can do Amenities Coordinator next Tuesday for that midweek 5k in PP. Okay, I say, I’m so flattered to be second choice for Amenities Coordinator. Purely a political decision on my part, saying yes. I was all set and happy to start jury duty that day, but I didn’t want to sulk just yet. Still…shit, man. I didn’t get any shift after applying for three in the last two postings (for Lousy T-Shirt race and Firecracker setup). But if I say yes to this, maybe I’ll be a Team Player and get some better oppies in the near future.
Tomorrow I go down to W 36th St to get fingerprinted. Some third-party government vendor for Anchor. I believe this is part of the holdup on that job.

Sling I have canceled, or paused again, after today. Another three months. Really a terrible deal. All I ever got from it was Fox News, and Lordy knows it’s not worth $50 for that. Tuned in OAN last night for the first time in weeks. Seeing what they’re saying about the LA riots. OAN is still running the same awful house-add filler with pictures of Mark Twain and Oliver Wendell Holmes and various niggers.

Idea for comic strip: A John Kent-style 2-panel deal called “Our President,” with a very bland and upbeat treatment of Trump.

Rounding up stuff on Orwell for my forthcoming compilation or two. “The Day They Shot Orwell” is real red meat. I should scribble a version on Substack first. I have about a dozen draft pieces there right now.

Was idly wondering last night when it was that I saw Suez, the movie. I was thinking of Suez because I discovered I had Churchill’s The River War on my Audiobooks, never listened to it. I would have guessed 2021, maybe, for watching the film with Tyrone Power and Annabella. No, it was almost exactly 5 years ago, June 2020. That little lull in lockdown when they were still banging the pans at 7 pm and my Census work had not yet begun. I found this while cleaning out some Gmail from the margotdarby acct.

I got to the last 20 minutes of the last Sopranos episode (its best in some ways) and decided to hold off. I think the worry was partly that I’d begin the cycle all over again, like I haven’t enough to do.

To Target yesterday for EBT food. Tuna, black beans, ground beef, frozen french fries. Heavy whipping cream ($3.99) to make butter. Just had a hamburger for breakfast, like Lou Costello.

Last night in a state of real bored idleness, I managed to locate the stories about Prof. La Blanche and the lost balloon that came down in Central Park back in 1894. Wayward aerialists and balloons were a mainstay of the daily press in the 1890s.

I’ve occasionally copied old diaries into private pages of this blog. One section was largely lifted from a section I typed in 20 years ago, on the Color Classic Mystic. Generally my handwritten diaries are numbered alphanumerically, but the ending portion of this section mystified me: I didn’t know where it came from when I copied it into this blog last year. Finally I found that it was in an unnumbered book, the spiral-bound A4 sketchbook I bought in Sydney in early 1999. A matter of some embarrassment to me. I decided to call this book 46A. I note on the bottom of the blog page that it follows, and is followed by:

the pink marbled Michael Roger Press book numbered 46. 

But where is that pink, marbled-cover book? I see it in my mind’s eye. Tan pigskin binding at the spine, Pink and marbled silkscreen-type cover, roughly quarto- or P4-letter-sized. I misplaced it in early 1999 (evidently), then found it late in the year, around the time I moved to Hoboken. In the mental crystal ball I see it at the bottom of a stack of books, its bottom (non-spine) edge turned outward. This was probably last misplaced last year (2024), as I haven’t come across it in the last move of a month ago, but clearly identified it when I copied and expanded the notes on the 1999 diaries. Might it be on the Moki desk? In the Moki area? Where the Color Classic still is? (I have been thinking of moving that to the armoire, the upper shelf, where I can hook it up to the ethernet for occasional light use and research.) *

I think I wrote that I found the Glorious Victory card prints in the black Jil Sander box. No. They, and the Palmerston CDV, are in the Powerhouse Museum shoebox, covered with Australian memorabilia from 1999. The Jil Sander box has greeting cards, mostly used, with correspondence.

The screensaver on FireTV (in which I enrolled last summer, after cutting the cord for the regular FiOS cable TV and cutting Verizon expense by 60%) has started to show a slideshow of some old images and newsclippings. Apparently I had chosen an option of “Daily Memories.” But where were these images coming from? At long last I found yesterday they’re in my Amazon Photos, uploaded there around 2010-2012, and plumb forgotten about since. Linked to my m*****@b****.net account, my master email address and still used for one acct on Amazon.

Some are real finds. Central Park Lagoon, St. Luke’s Hospital, other buildings, 1862 (full-size one from NYPL Digital Collection, above). Captioned photo of W 54th St in 1867 (Rockefeller house and St Luke’s), a panel from George Cruikshank’s The Bottle, some 1850s newsclippings about fugitive slaves in Canada, John Urquhart Andrews stuff.

A Napoleon Sarony comical litho from 1861 Valentine’s Manual:

I have a distinct memory of finding that image online and posting it various places, around June 2011. The townhouse on the left still stands. Sarony was later famous for his photographic portraits of Oscar Wilde, W. T. Sherman, Sarah Bernhardt. His litho draftsmanship was honed while working for Currier & Ives. He must have been their most talented artist, as his composition and detail are much better than most C&I that I’ve seen. In the above and some other lithos, I get the distinct impression he was already getting into photography and using photos as reference material. Some vistas, such as the view from lower Central Park in 1857 or the upper Park in 1865, would not have been reproducible in the technology of the time, but could be copied and improved upon in a lithograph illustration.

1865, Central Park from 110th Street end. From Major & Knapp, but no Sarony as he was away and about to set himself up as photographer. The old fortifications and gatehouse foundation, now covered with weeds and grass, are just left of center. The former Mount St. Vincent’s chapel is at the top of the hill, upper right.

I didn’t recall buying any Wolf Chili from Amazon, but apparently I did last week, as two cans arrived. Heated up one today, the no-beans variety. Looks like dog food, tastes okay. I put in a can of black beans to give it some more substance. A cube of beef bouillon and some Gebhardt’s chili powder.

Slowly finishing up the video lessons and quizzes for the Anchor business.

Called 48th St SSA about applying for SSI. The negress was discouraging. It’s Federal welfare, she tells me, and I’m not going to get any if I have over $1400 per month in SS benefits as it is. But I could make an appointment to apply anyway. I have decided not to. Futile. And it would be zeroed-out by the other money I’ll be getting, from Anchor, nruns, whatever.

Tomorrow to T&L court, 9:30 am. Not looking forward. Yet I am much better off now than I was six weeks ago. I got the SCRIE almost immediately, solved the ERAP problem (landlord dropped the ball, and that is apparently the reason why they wrote off the 2023 rent), have prospects of some bleak work starting. I also have my EBT card, which eases one burden though does not directly affect the rent owed. The SCRIE does affect that; I need to recalculate the amount of rent owed/paid since April 2024, using the $1877.xx rent-freeze rate. Make up a spreadsheet of that, an extra copy of the SCRIE approval, have that for Rebecca and the T&L court tomorrow morning.

Sent in those $1200 and $688 checks to Jeffries Morris a week and a half ago, they haven’t gone through yet. Par for the course.

Card for Jury Duty. I postponed it to June 17, and now that is coming up. Must postpone again, as that is the one and only nruns race this month. Need a good excuse. Or maybe bag nruns instead. Perhaps I’ll be working for Anchor then. The Anchor deal still strikes me as iffy. My plan was to be the carer for Grimm, but he hasn’t entirely sealed the deal yet with his DSS medical contacts. Just asked for a lot of hours of care (ie by me).

To Whole Foods yesterday afternoon. Honey, milk ($4.69 a gal, was $4.09 two weeks ago; has been $3.99 at Wegman’s and TJ’s), two Blake’s pot pies (a “last chance” deal marked down to $3.99), the $4.99 pink grapefruit juice. Very heavy Samsonite bag to carry home. Stopped at Chinawoman’s for a half-pint, as I had $5 in cash with me and dasn’t drink more vodka than that. Went through it in about a half-hour. Found myself fiendishly hungry for ice cream. Cheap cookie-dough ice cream at the drugstore, and nuts.

I got a call from front desk on the intercom phone an hour and a half ago. A workman in the building is installing sensors in the apartments. What sensors? I asked. For gas, I was told. He wanted to come up now. No, I said, I’m leaving now, will be back before three. I find this sort of call on the spur of the moment, very annoying. Is it really impossible to give us a day or two notice on these things? Now, Moki loved having handymen and mechanics and decorators and the super come in all the time. Me, I don’t like it at all. It’s always they’ll be here at 10, then when they don’t show I’m leaving at noon and THEN they show up. And then they have to go away and come back later. That colored kid who installed the caption-phone a couple of weeks ago: he was here precisely on time, was in and out within a half-hour. Really excellent service.

• My mental crystal ball was pretty accurate. It wasn’t on the bookshelves or in the Moki area, but a few feet from me in the bedroom, underneath a big sketch/notebook, bits of mail, a folder marked Weiss & Toynbee, and on top of old issues of the London Review of Books.

1. Not bothering me in the morning to go out and buy him some vodka when the Chinawoman opens.
2. He’s not compulsively inviting the handymen in on some minor errand every other day.
3. I can get his bathroom halfway clean.
4. I can bathe in the shower.
5. I don’t have to kludge together our dual set of earphones with splitter and adapter to listen to audio books at night.
6. His perverse and pesky habits online, which always meant he kept his iMac tilted at an odd angle so than no one could see what he was doing, not from the living room, not from the kitchen.

That is a very short list, about rather minor matters. I still love him very much. I am not mentioning the horrors of his last two months.

I keep remembering that blustery November day when he realized his driver’s license from Mass. had expired, and he had a short window of grace period to switch it to a NYS license. (Not that he’d ever use it.) Mid-November 2021. We thought of joining AAA up past Columbus Circle. That was not going to work. We found our best chance was to go up to the DMV on Fordham Road in the Bronx. We got there far too early before the appointment, had time to kill, and I said let’s explore Arthur Avenue, which we’d just passed. It was a cold day, and he got tired, couldn’t walk well (partly because he had overgrown toenails, as I found), sat down on a bench in a little park there. We found a restaurant that was open post-lunch. I had some wine and he had a beer. He was in good spirits. After a while we trudged back to the DMV. With minimal waiting and queueing he had his license within the next hour. He looked old, and with his shuffling walk, I thought he might be good for two years on the outside. Maybe only one. Well I called that right, but did sorely wish he’d lasted for five more. Or pulled himself back into shape and lasted ten more. Anyway, we walked back to the IRT subway on Fordham Road, rode downtown, almost certainly stopped at the Chinawoman’s for a liter of v.

I believe I have had a pint of v two nights running. Don’t feel too sick today. Not sick at all. What’s the deal there? Different diet. Tunafish and greens yesterday. I got around to making the crabcakes too, and while they were tasty and nutritious, they had no cohesion. The lumps were too big and the vegan mayo wasn’t enough of a binder. Put the remaining four of them, reassembled, into the oven today to cook another 10 minutes and brown. But they fell apart again. Next time, chop up the lumps. I may experiment with cheapo canned crab first.

Twice-cooked crabcakes

I made a discovery about the Chinawoman the other day. I was coming back from the NYPL, MM, with Céline books and odds and ends from the Bryant Park Whole Foods. And Francisco at the Chinawoman’s told me that she (Linda Kim) owns the building there. It’s a good-sized apartment building with lord knows how many units. So she doesn’t really have to make a living at wines and liquors. She can undercut her competitors slightly, who depend on the tourist trade and sometimes have longer hours.

A couple of weeks ago, just before getting my temporary Benefits card from East 16th Street, I had $808 in my EBT account. It started to mount up back in February or March but I was waiting for the card to arrive and couldn’t spend the “food stamps” money until it did. It never did. You have to go talk through Plexiglas in person. But since receiving it I’ve spent over $300, I believe. That includes $101 at Wegman’s yesterday, whither I journeyed in the subway and drizzle of late afternoon because it seems to be the only place you can buy lump crabmeat (apart from the canned type). I thought I was getting a pound for about $10 or less, but the scanner registered $33. Ho well, it’s only play money. I bought stuff I’d never pay real money for. $10 for gourmet vegan mayo (for the crabcakes), $13 for fried chicken and $7 for some beef chili in the “prepared foods” section. One avocado, one lemon, a bunch of scallions. About $5 for a half-pound of gabagool (hot capicola). Coffee, tunafish. I’ve never spent a three-figure sum on groceries before.

This morning I went to Whole Foods and bought two Blake’s chicken pot pies (their last), some Rice Select Arborio Rice, a half-gallon of milk (their cheap gallons were all gone, only the organic milk left, which costs seven or eight dollars), some chicken sausage for stir-fry, and lots more cheap yoghurt. The $4.99 Simply something grapefruit juice, which is a very nice deal when they have it.

So I have perhaps $480 on my EBT account now, and this will be topped up with another $202 in a few days (after the 1st of June) so I don’t have to count food pennies there just yet.

I sold some of my last crypto a few days ago, that was $260 into the USAA account when it cleared the other day. Then that awful Delta Dental billed me for its monthly $50. Must hit the dentist soon, for a cleaning at least.

No bidding on eBay these days. I’m thinking of selling some ephemera soon. Start with a Diego Rivera card print, some vintage art postcards. Clippings and vintage ephemera. Make some postcards with Moki’s color inkjet printer, using the postcard stock we still have, and my Eurostar and Penn Station collection.

I have had to keep a close watch on my last rent checks, however. I sent in a Citi check and a WF check last Friday, and they have not yet gone through. But last night I noticed that part of my account balance at WF was ng, probably because I padded it with a mobile check from USAA, which I made out with some very wet and penetrating purple ink from the Enobling Pen. So I guess it was being rejected as digitally illegible. That was back on Tuesday, I think, two days ago. Seeing as I have to face the landlord lawyers in T&L court next Wednesday, I can’t very well bounce checks at this point. So I went to the WF ATM at Broadway and 56th, took $300 out of the USAA and $200 out of the Global HSBC account, and deposited this cash into the WF checking. So now there is $1404 in there and the $1200 WF check should have no trouble going through. I have about $850 in the Citi account and a $688 check to clear. SS payment hitting the Citi account in four days. No money from Nruns till July. There is a chance I may start my preposterous job as Anchor Healthcare carer person in the coming week. Grimm tells me he’s trying to wangle 40 hours of help.

Thinking of going out for a pint, or a half-point, to go with the grapefruit juice. Perhaps I can scratch together a fake review of Celine’s Londres for C-C. My thought is that I’ll pick a dozen random pages through the book, loosely translate them, and tell the story that way, combining it with whatever aperçus I can get from the TLS and LRB. NYRB? Must look.

Sluggish and napping most of the day. On second mug of tea. I’m almost out of tea. Watching Sopranos again. Season 3. Ralphie just killed Tracee. Noah Tannenbaum just dumped Meadow.

Back in early 2017 I had Vistaprint make 50 copies of a 1950s Diego Rivera painting, Glorious Victory. Like a mural, though painted on a vast long canvas that is usually rolled up. Like a political cartoon, though too colorful and heavyhanded in the Rivera way to be haha-funny: about as subtle and ironical as Picasso’s Guernica. It’s a commentary on the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, which led to the tragic and humiliating exile of Jacobo Arbenz and his highly cultured family. They were not Communists, not quite, but wokey and Left-leaning and easily manipulated by the Reds, and there were indeed Reds in the Arbenz government. The Eisenhower government, with the Dulles brothers leading the way, organized a bloodless coup, which should have been a happy ending, but wasn’t. Guatemala was in thrall to a succession of unstable dictatorships forever after, pretty much.

Two or three years ago I was looking around for the remaining stack of prints. I’d kept most of them, I thought, and certainly didn’t recall throwing them away. Vaguely I thought they were in the black file cabinet, probably at the bottom of the top drawer. I cleaned out that cabinet a year ago and moved the contents elsewhere. Glorious Victory was nowhere to be found. Vaguely I recalled having taken out a print in 2018, with an eye to enclosing it with a letter to Brian P. Burns, who at that point was again speaking to Moki and had begun to pay our rent in quarterly checks. (I had paid the rent for most of the preceding year. Prior to that, Moki’s brother Johnny was paying, but Johnny died in March 2017.) We were being extra-friendly and obsequious to Britain. He sent us books by friends of his, Bill van den Heuvel and Barbara Amiel, copies of his overproduced volumes on his collection of Irish Art (world’s largest private collection; he sold half at Sotheby’s the year before he died), and a framed blow-up photograph of himself with Donald and Melania Trump at Mar-A -Lago around 2016 or 2017. We sent him the oil portrait of his father, which had been decorating our hallway since Michael took it out of storage, and fawning book reviews and letters from me.

In the end I didn’t send a copy of the Rivera painting. It made no sense in the context, and was an odd size. I enclosed my letter with a large, more conventionally shaped greeting card, probably one of those promotional ones fro Departures or Travel + Leisure that I’d rescued from the trash at American Express Publishing.

Reflecting on all that a few days ago, I thought maybe I’d put the stack of prints (about 10″ x 5″, on heavy card stock) in one of the shoeboxes where I saved interesting postcards and some greeting cards and small museum prints that I might use for correspondence. My eye went first to the sturdy black Jil Sander box on the living room floor. I hadn’t looked inside this for literally years, though I’d moved the box around. And there at the bottom, underneath my postcards of the Hayes Well Spring, pictures of Willie Rushton, and assorted greeting cards and 19th century stereoscope views, was the stack of Glorious Victory.

[ERRATUM: The prints and cards were not n the Jil Sander box but in the Powerhouse Museum box. 3 June 2025.]

Another find in the box was something that was mysteriously new to me. In a wax paper envelope there was a carte-de-visite of Lord Palmerston, circa 1862. I don’t recall acquiring this, but I probably bought it impulsively from eBay, about 2012.

I put a bid on two ArtPens on eBay, but lost the bid the other day (Sunday). Good for me. I could not afford the $30 or so, and they merely duplicate the two nib sizes I have.

One outstanding item remains missing: the toenail clippers I bought for Moki in 2022, and used once.

The past two weeks have been very cold in the morning, temperatures in the 40s and 50s with occasional winds. It feels more like March than May. Yesterday I went off to Brooklyn for my “training” at Anchor Health, and wore the quilted black Barbour. I expected a 45-minute journey, but ended up spending over two hours. Not only was it a holiday (Memorial Day), there were extraneous delays on the J and M lines that kept me waiting at the Essex-Delancey station for 45 minutes before giving up, going back uptown to 14th Street, and taking the L to Metropolitan-Lorimer. Then a 20-minute walk south and east to 46 Cook Street. I intended to get there at 9am, arrived after 10. Doing reconnaissance beforehand, I saw there was no straightforward way of getting there. I could take the BMT to Canal, then the J to the Lorimer stop, which was a few short blocks away. Or I could take the F to 14th St. and then the L, but suffer a long a long walk. In the end I did a third option, F to Essex-Delancey, which didn’t work at all.

In the end it didn’t matter, Most of the dozen other attendees were already in place, having filled out their forms on iPads propped up on rubberized easels around our trestle tables. Half were nogs or deminogs, the rest orientals or whites. Some real prole ladies from Staten Island, and a fat but pleasant-looking Russian lady. We gave our IDs and SS cards (or numbers), filled out applications on the iPads, then did a dozen multiple-choice modules with questions about how to deal with difficult patients, and what to do in an emergency (usually: call 911, a doctor, or the RN). Pizza at noon, and meetings with a nurse in a hijab in a tiny room around the corner. She took blood pressure (mine was 128 over 83, not as bad as I’d feared) and drew a vial of blood, asked a few questions. In the afternoon we went downstairs and were shown how to give a bedpan to a dummy, how to wash him, how to get him into a wheelchair.

Two nurses demonstrating this, sister, of an ancestry I could not fathom. Bird-like and diminutive, seemingly oriental but not identifiable. Possibly some of those Filipinas with a lot of Malay in them.

A lot bearded Hasidic Jews, it seems, around there. Do Hasids run the place? I doubt that. Will have to look into it.

Most of the student-carers will probably be assigned to strangers, probably working 35-40 hours a week. Or more. Somebody upstairs had been talking about overtime. A nig girl said you should never book more than 27 hours of overtime because you wouldn’t get any more money, thanks to taxes. That would be 67 hours in a week. I can’t imagine how one would do that, unless one were a young resident. I’m not expecting more than 25-30 hours per week, and that would be entirely with Grimm, who proposed this terrible job to me. I must contact him and let him know it’s gone smoothly so far. It will be a few days before I pass background (criminal) check and get set up on the system.

Scrubs? Yes, Anchor does provide scrubs, if yu want ’em. Those I think would be mostly useful if you’re accompanying someone to the ER or operating room. I foresee mainly taking walks and making him see doctors and dentists.

Some photos on my way back up Lorimer and Union Streets, in south Williamsburg:

May 24th, early morning, and the weather says it’s 49º out, with “feels like” of 43º. A month ago it was getting warm, too warm, and the heat was still on, and I longed for the A/C to start. Well the A/C started last week on the 15th and almost immediately the weather turned cool. Cool and rainy. It rained most of this week and last, with temps in the 50s and now the 40s.

I spent yesterday morning cleaning out my fountain-pen nibs, soaking them in isopropyl. One of my old ArtPens has no barrel. The black-and-red retro fountain pen writes reasonably well with ink cartridge, the Rotring blue-and-black pen not so well. Later yesterday I put a bid on two used ArtPens on eBay. One has an EF nib and one has an M. Just like the two i have now. I find there are no new ArtPens being made, or have been for years. But there are similarly shaped “SmartPens” in different colors, apparently manufactured in the Far East and shipped from Singapore.

I lie on bed and watch The Sopranos. Now at S2 E9. This is the part of the series where Richie Aprile appears, moves in with Janice, after smashing up Beansie Gaeta twice and putting him permanently in a wheelchair. Tony’s crew make Richie fork over the money to build a wheelchair ramp, but that’s taking some time and I don’t think we ever see it. Meadow is applying to college, Carmela gets her nextdoor neighbor Jeannie Cusamano to ask her identical-twin sister (same actress) to write a letter of recommendation to Georgetown. I’m pretty sure that most respectable attorney does not, in spite of Meadow’s shining record and Carm’s ricotta and pineapple pie. Christopher started this season having some Chinese kid take the Series 7 for him, so Chris could get a sinecure in a brokerage office, but now he’s abandoned that plot arc, and is blowing safes and planning other capers. Two of his dumb colleagues from the brokers’ imagine that Richie’s dislike of Christopher means Chris should get hit, so they shoot Chris and now Chris is in ICU. Later on we find Richie’s son Richie Jr is sort of a fag, a competitor in ballroom dancing. In one of these episodes, maybe the next one, we start with Richie Jr and some girl waltzing all over the new house Richie and Janice have taken on in anticipation of their wedding.

Curious thing about watching the series again is that each time it’s as though they’ve created lots more episodes and plot arcs since I last viddied. My first viewing of the series, during its first run, was admittedly spotty, so seeing it again I wasn’t surprised there were thing I missed. Now I’m watching episodes for the third or likely the fourth time, and there are brand new subplots and characters.

Audible booted up again after a long pause. I may have to stifle it again soon. But I was happy to get the Keith McNally book, narrated by Richard E. Grant. His acting career may have floated away, but he’s a damned good narrator. Likewise with Jane Curtain, who marvelously read that Lee Israel one I got from the library, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Skipping and sleeping through this one, I seem to have missed the business about him having the sexual relationship with Alan Bennett that began when Keith was in his teens.

Brian Patrick McGuinness and the other poor souls on FB keep parroting the story that there was a picture of Congo body bags in amongst the news printouts that President Trump was flashing at the press conference in the White House with President Cyril Bongobongo of South Africa. This one Congo ringer is supposed to cancel all the legitimate stories of militant black politicians urging the genocide of whites in South Africa.

Grimm has a new pinwheel notion of a wage job for me, and I have signed on so far. Seems there is a Medicaid program where I can be his “carer” for 20-40 hours a month. Monday, Memorial Day if you can believe that, I am to go out to darkest Brooklyn for a one-day training session.

Friday the 16th, just over a week ago, I made it down to that E 16th Street DSS office just off Union Square. After waiting around a bit in a molded plastic chair, with a lot of orientals and nogs and deminogs, I was called over to Window 17, where a nice elderly colored woman took my ID and gave me a temporary EBT card. It had $808 in food credits on it, and $21 in cash. The cash can be used for non-food necessities, I think. Or utilities. After this I intended to go to Wegman’s and try to use the card there. Instead I went to the Trader Joe’s on 14th St. Spent a whopping $18 on honey, maple syrup, chicken thighs, and frozen broccoli. Over the next few days I hit Target, Trader Joe’s on Bway and 72nd, and Whole Foods. I spent $180 total, including $16 for a rib steak, and maybe $30 on more honey. It’s been my intention to spend much of this free-food-money on red meat, canned goods, produce, and locally grown honey. I have three bottles of honey from NYS and PA in the cupboard now. Most of the honey you see on grocery shelves, especially the the honey in little honey-bear bottles, is a mélange of stuff from Brazil, Argentina, Canada, maybe America. Fuck that shit.

What none of these places seem to have is Familia Müsli. Does Fairway carry it? That’s another staple that should be stocked up on. Also Wolf’s Chili if we can find it anywhere. (ADDENDUM: You can order the Muesli from Amazon. But not EBT there.)

Yesterday I ate a thin Wagyu steak in the morning, from Wegman’s, and a thick rib steak at night, from Trader Joe’s. Didn’t eat much else yesterday, other than two very nice baked potatoes, one baked at 450º, the other mikeywaved.

Not drinking any real booze lately. Went through that liter of Vesica two weekends ago, and a pint of Platinum a few days later. In the past week, no alcohol at all except a Lagunitas 9% IPA last night and I think a Resin a week ago. The only Resin left at Morton Williams.

Send two checks to Jeffries Morris Inc. yesterday. They should get them for deposit by Tuesday. I have to monitor all my accounts to make sure they can go through. I sent a check for $1200 from the WF acct, and $688 from the Citi acct. This will cover the $1877+ owed for the rollback and freeze of rent by SCRIE, which went through four weeks ago. (During that glorious week when I saw T&L court on Monday, had the law intern Rebecca urge me to file for SCRIE and look into that ERAP application, and met KP at St Luke’s/Mt Sinai up near Columbia on a Tuesday night to exit him safely, then had that little Italian dinner near his flat by Tompkins Square. Then on Wednesday-Saturday worked the Expo for the half marathon, and set up and closed down the Festival in Prospect Park for Sunday. On account of which I netted over $700 in Gusto, with another $300 coming in yesterday. However, I have not worked for nruns in the past two weeks, back-to-back Gov Is races two weekends ago, and will not have anything from them for another month. In fact, I am not booked for any race at all in the future. Nruns is closed for a week and the next race is June 17, with two races in July. Slim pickings there and I will need this Grimm carer job very badly if it comes through.)

I also cashed out most of my remaining crypto yesterday, about $275 to be deposited at USAA when it clears. At present I have about $990 in WF and $1100 in Citi, so I’ll need to do careful transfers by cash and mobile this weekend. For ultra-emergencies, I still have about £800 at HSBC ($1000) to lean on. After that, zilch. Except SS on June 3rd. I can’t see spending that SS check on the rent; at best I’ll send them $1000 to keep them happy and hope the SS adjustment and DSS request comes though later in the month. I have T&L court on the morning of June 4th; I’ll wait for that.

I believe I’m squared away with DSS for emergency $6000 request for the rent. A long tearful screaming I’m-going-to-commit-suicide call to the do-nothing customer service office at SSA HQ on Tuesday told me my recompute was deadlined now for June 20.

After the Union Square outing to DSS and Trader Joe’s a week ago, I found the lease succession letter, the original, a copy of which I had used to get the SCRIE. The original seemed to have gone walkabout but it turned up in a pile of SS envelopes relating the $255 lump-sum payment last month. So I made yet another photocopy and filed the original away with the Jeffries Morris and Belkin correspondence from last year. Another thing I noticed in this pile as that the lump-sum notice said I had declined SSI. Now, I should really have applied for SSI. I could get as much as another $900+ per month. So I filed an app online, but am not sure that they got it.

Must do some CC writing for nickels and dimes. Do a review of Celine’s Londres. Skim through the French. The thing is vast and wobbly. I have it on Kindle.

A 1972 Joseph Losey film with Alain Delon. WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS?

And while it is still May, get out “The Day They Shot George Orwell.” Begin with the May 1960 stories about Ramon Mercader, alias something else. I came across these while thumbing through the H-T for comic strips. According to the 1960 stories, his name was Jacques Monard. Freed from Mexico City prison, now in Havana, about to sail to Europe with the help of the Czech embassy. (“Frank Jacson” as he presented himself to Trotsky, pretending to be a fan and a comrade, coming with letters of introduction from New York. The murder of Trotsky was amazingly intricate, superbly planned, brilliantly executed. It should be noted that there had been another attempt on Trotsky’s life during Jacson’s series of visits, and yet Jacson/Mercader still got in to see Trotsky because by this time Trotsky and his guards trusted him. When arrested, Jacson revealed his name to be Jacques Monard, from Belgium. Perfectly plausible, as Mercader was raised mostly in France and had connections there in and in Belgium through his Stalinist network.)

Mercader/Monard/Jacson, son of a wealthy Barcelona textile manufacturer and a spoiled pro-Bolshevik mother, found himself back in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, in which his mother was likewise a Red partisan. Mercader pulled the strings for the local NKVD network. One of his lieutenants was a British Jew named David “Crooks”, and Crooks was tasked with with keeping tabs on Eric Blair and his POUM friends and his wife. His gang rounded up Orwell’s friend with the wirerim glasses, what was his name? Bopp? Kopp? Rapp? One of those suggested as the model for O’Brien though of course he was not. He may have slept with Eileen or hit on her while Orwell was away or in hospital.

The other day I took myself down to Union Square again and walked down to Blick’s, which gobbled up the Utrecht art supplies shop in the area. Went mainly to buy some Sculpey. I find there are different levels. Premo, which is supposed to be artist-grade, is harder, costs a little more, bakes a little longer; and the Sculpey III. I bought one black and one white Premo. I wanted the Sculpey to finish the repair on the College Inn mug that fell and smashed into many pieces when I was doing the dishes 2-3 weeks ago. I did not gather up all the pieces, apparently. Many holes in this jigsaw puzzle. First used Gorilla Glue but that expanded into thick mortar when dry, and gave the mug a real jerry-built look. Sculpey liquid and now the Premo has filled in most of the gaps. And then we have the Tate Modern cup from the Picasso/Matisse exhibition in 2002. It lost its handle 20 years ago. Now it has another, a funny, Goudi-looking thing.

I should give them both a wipe. Neither of these will ever be used for coffee or tea, of course. These are pen-and-pencil-holder mugs forever. The 2005 Falmouth Road Race mug, black, worked as a caddy for nearly 20 years and now will be returned to its proper place in the cupboard.

Funny, there were originally two of those. Because Moki got one as well, because I signed him up for it back in 2005 when we were staying at Regina’s, ha ha ha. And then the following year I had another mug, similar, but white I think. They must have been smashed in time, like most of our terracotta mugs. My 2013 Falmouth mug is much nicer, but I am not proud of that race at all.

Before going down to Wegman’s the other day, I got around to returning the two last oustanding books to the library. These have been out since that period in March when I did 3 pieces for CC. One is The Ambassador (Susan Ronald twice tells the fake story about Hyde Park) and a bio of Lawrence Tierney I never opened.

Today I run, or at least walk, for a good 5 or six miles. In CP? Probably. In the 50s all day. Good running weather. And write. And maybe try to draw a little bit, to loosen up the hand for the comics. And perhaps even color the hair. Picked up some Light Brown shade of L’Oreal Excellence last night.

I have been sluggish all week. Meant to get to the Waverly Job Center (DSS office on East 16th) on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, but didn’t go. I want to drop off paper copies of the key documentation I uploaded a week ago and on Monday. Also get my benefits card. It appears I now have $808 in “food stamps” but can’t spend it because no card. And $21 in cash for…for utilities? Didn’t go today, Thursday, because wasted all day after double dose of DXM cough syrup last night. No alcohol withal though. A Resin two nights ago. A full liter of Vesica (!) on Saturday and Sunday, knocking me out after shifts on Governors Island.

Current plan is to get to TMPL at 6 when they open, good workout, shower, dry hair (may have to do that properly at home), then down to East 16th St. Larry Darby from FB is in town with daughter, thought we might meet up Friday or Saturday.

Saturday May 10th it was 5:15am at the warehouse. Leslie L, Senka, and Jess S were already there, looking for the medical iPhone. Couldn’t find it, it wasn’t there. We loaded ice and coolers and cream cheese into the UHaul. Leslie and I drove to the ferry. The tunnel was closed, so she followed the alternate GPS directions over the Brooklyn Bridge. Helped unload some bases and delineators. To the island, still riding the blue van. We set up clocks on H-frames at the mile markers and turnarounds for the 10k. Then, two hours for me marshaling at Division and King, familiar corner by Liggett Hall, at the 6 mile mark near the home stretch. Collect the clocks in the UHaul, transfer to the blue van, pick up delineators near the landing. I was going to ride back to the warehouse with Leslie, but Halloran needed a ride more because he’d parked his car in Brooklyn. So I said, You take it. I rode the ferry back, IRT 1 to Columbus Circle, stopped at Chinawoman’s thinking I might have $5 in my waistband, but I didn’t, so paid $20 for the liter. It was odd waking up around 8pm and realizing that it was back to work again soon and I couldn’t catch any more sleep in the meantime.

5k on Sunday, May 11th

Dressed at 4:30am and off to Columbus Circle with a mug of tea and a slug of vodka inside me. 18 minute wait for the 1, got to South Ferry just before 5:45. Long spell helping to set up corrals at Start/Finish. We got all the French barricades up in about fifteen minutes. I have not been used for my audio or timer-mat expertise lately. I stole off to my marshal position, on far-western side of the island, by 8:30.

CPTC girl who just had enormous sub-19 PR in the 5k, cool-down run after race.

Sometime after 11am, when the trucks were 3/4ths reloaded, most of us were released if we wanted to leave. Taco Vista was giving us free tacos, so I stopped in and had two. All the chafing dishes were empty, but they soon came out with two more. Very good tacos, I must say. I didn’t clock out on Deputy until about noon because it was supposed to be a 5:45 – 12:30 shift and I hate being short-changed on these things. Appreciation here is perilously close to the situation I felt myself in 10 years ago during the Volunteer days. (At the ferry terminal on South St, Erica R noticed my white nruns cap from that era, slightly different from the more recent ones you see around with Adidas branding. None of these white caps have been distributed for a while, and that may have been what caught her eye. I told this one was 2014-vintage. “Did you run, or what?” “Yes, I ran…and I also was a volunteer for a while.”)

Rode back on ferry with Yelena and Mark D and others who’d dined on the back picnic tables at Taco Vista. At Manhattan Y sort-of invited me to go on a long walk with her up to SoHo. Some cosmetic or moisturizer she used to get at Sephora but which Sephora no longer sells, but this place in SoHo does. She’s gained a lot of weight, trying to work it off with jogs and walks. At another time I should have said yes, but I was eager to get home to vodka and bed.

Mark (R) and others on the ferry, noonish on Sunday.

One productive effort this week: last night I decided to start creating a decent workspace for me and the drawing board. WHY did I put the Moki’s terrible Metro Shelving, the world’s worst clutter-catcher, in between a row of three red 2002 bookcases, and a fourth one in the northwest corner? I don’t know. But now I’ve changed that. Whole library wall on the north side, opposite similar thing on south side. Metro over in northwest corner, complete with Natalie Wood mounted on the old melamine desk top. How crowded and compressed things were after Moki filled the place up with extra file cabinets and the Metro and the storage bins.

Before this latest move on May 14.

Ought to bring up the trunk from subbasement. Moki’s clothes, my clothes, all out. I wonder if the drawing board would work better perched on that big anodized-metal trunk?

Anyway the place is still very messy and crowded. I’m not comfortable or secure over at Moki’s desk. To make it my own I’d have to move Moki’s old iMac. Move it where? Move it to the top of the Metro Shelving, and put the turntable on next shelf down, or even one below that. Keyboard on 2nd shelf perhaps. Leave old Pismo there.

A good place to work standing. Also a good place to have the HD monitor, either as monitor or as pseudo-TV, where you could watch Prime or Sling or OAN while working at a desk or drawing board.

Metroshelving moved.

4 red bookcases together.

I have not been able or have wanted to draw. Partly because I haven’t been forced too. I think I good running strip on the web could net me $1000 a month, which would make a big difference. The lizard one, Iggy, has been on my mind for a long time, but I did not have an attractive style in mind. I thought of Midcentury Modern, something like UPA. Going through old Herald-Tribunes I was reminded of Big George! by Virgil Partch. Hated the strip when I was little, but it would be perfect for Iggy. Much more animated and adaptable than a Harry Henigsen style. Virgil was a somewhat gormless-looking kid who started out as a Disney animator. He had what became a UPA sensibility. Drew odd-shaped panels, wasn’t limited to boxy oblongs, would put a character’s foot outside the frame. This sample, and above, is from July 1960. Iggy the character could look a little like George here, move a bit like him. I’d use some Arnold Roth influence as well. Always loved Roth’s stuff. (Poor Arnold’s Almanac was also in the H-T on Sunday.)

Final panels 3 July 1960.

Other possibilities: Mister Shadrach’s Memory Lane, with the Rocky Stoneaxe fantasist neighbor running a talkshow with forgotten comic-strip characters (Peanuts, the nonexistent title character from the Schulz strip; Pigpen, who disappeared because he was drawn similar to the later negro character, Franklin). And Focus on Fact, a strip based on one in Private Eye 50 years ago. This I could do mostly in AI, using the 19th century Punch cartoon-engraving style. Maybe three intricate panels, no balloons, just narrative captions.

I’m watching a lot of The Sopranos, nearly nonstop. I’ve gotten to be like Moki in so many ways. Going through the 21-episode final season (6) now. Haf the major characters get killed off. Tony may or may not get offed in the final blackout. Keith P thinks he does.