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.
