This has been bothering me since I woke yesterday morning. I’d had a very fine, gratifyingly deep, sleep. So deep that a discomfiting dream I had toward the end stayed with me as I awoke and I still thought it was something real. I had been assigned a big stack of race bibs, but they needed to be sold. I was expected to go door-to-door and sell these things. Any moment now my masters were going to ask me if I’d sold them all, and I believe I hadn’t sold any.
My real bib experience had occurred the previous week, at the half-marathon expo. At the start of bib pickup on Thursday, and at its conclusion on Saturday, I was one of many scanning and assigning bibs and t-shirts to the hordes. About 4000 bibs went out in four hours (that’s maybe 2500-3000 people, as there were some multiples) when we opened. For the close we probably did twice that and ran out of men’s t-shirts. It was surprisingly pleasant work, and far shorter than the gig on Sunday when I worked the festival in a 12-hour shift.
So, well rested, I let other things clutter my mind on my first cup of tea. Where, I found myself wondering, was The Secret Diaries of Harold Ickes? I consulted that some months ago to see how he got on with Joe Kennedy in London. This would have been in 1939, I think. Ickes had just married the niece of the ambassador to Ireland, Mr. Cudahy, and was being squired around to the Duke and Duchess of Kent’s. Harold asks Joe what he should call the Duke and Duchess. Joe says, “Well I call them George and Marina, but you can start with—” I forget how that goes. Anyway, a most friendly encounter, not what you’d expect of Ickes. Anyway, the book was not where I remembered it (with biographies) or where it should be (with the Roosevelt and Kennedy books on the westernmost bookcase). What I did find was Ickes’s Autobiography of a Curmudgeon, but there was no confusing the two books, as the latter is a white paperbound book, while the other is dark brown or maybe black, and clothbound. The mystery continued and I am still looking for it. In going over each shelf with a figurate fine-tooth comb, I also noticed that one of the Angus Wilson Penguins was missing. I had The Wrong Set on its proper shelf, but A Bit Off the Map was not beside it. Where was it? Now I had something else to search for. It turned up, with some other books by McCarthy and Waugh and Barnes, in the jumbled fiction shelf below the shelves for rivers and dams, and biographies. A lot of Dreiser and Woolf and Wharton on that shelf, Moki’s books. Something by William Dean Howells. So I dumped the misfiled books, mainly paperbacks, on the storage trunk I use as a coffee table, and continued to look for Harold. I looked for him again today. No luck.
One good bit of news in the past few days: I was approved for SCRIE. This happened almost immediately, a couple of days after I applied online. It means my rent is not only frozen, it is moved back to the previous lease, 2021-2023, thus is $1877 per month. I was encouraged to do this quickly by Rebecca, the young Jewish lawyer at the courthouse. Represents some pro bono outfit called Mobilization for Justice. A couple weeks before that, I was notified, belatedly, that I’d been approved for food stamps, or SNAP. That’s quite a novelty for me. I bristled at the notion when Moki would bring it up. I get $202 per month on my benefits card, and presumably I have a total of $808 as I have not yet used any of it, as I have not received my card. Do I get to spend it all, or is it just $202 per month, only for that month? That is how it works with this “flex card” that Aetna gave me. I get $165 per month in benefits, mainly drugstore things and “healthy foods” from CVS. And the $165 has to be spent each month, no rollover. As soon as this kicked in on May 1st, I spent 2/3rds of it ordering brain pills and vitamins and cough syrup, to be posted to me via UPS. One can also buy the stuff in person at a CVS, but then you have to show the benefits card and a bar code to the cashier. I’m also given another $150, total, for ordering things like aluminum canes and Zimmer frames. No need for that just yet. My Aetna plan changed recently, from a PPO that I liked, to a HMO that supposedly offered better coverage and this flex card. It changed because those Medicare telemarketers called me up and encouraged me to do so. So I had Medicaid commencing March 1, the Aetna Medicare PPO starting on April 1, and then that being superceded by the HMO on May 1. I’ve never used any of these welfare or Medicare benefits, and have no idea how they work. Last year I found a big white envelope with an application for what was essentially Medicaid, this sent to me in late 2021, probably from some online inquiry I’d made and then forgot about. So I could have taken care of much of this over three years ago. And then in my Healthcare file folder I found a UnitedHealthcare “community health” card that I never used. I thought it was some old prescription card, long since expired, but no, it was apparently a similar deal. Once when I went to a downtown office for unemployment in 2014 (at this point I was qualifying for only about $100 a week, not the $405 I’d had in my previous unemployment stints), the negress told me she was promoting a city- or state-funded health plan, and encouraged me to apply. And this was it. I never used it.
Tomorrow I will talk to the HRA people, if I can get through, and ask about the benefits card. I need to refile an emergency cash request because I am being sued for possible eviction, and that means a telephone call almost immediately. I shall also demand an in-person meeting, as when I made similar requests from HRA they turned me down, claiming I did not make the required interview (and I had).
The tall negro who delivered the Rent Demand back in early February showed up again on April 7, with the complaint. This is not so shattering to me as it would be if I hadn’t gone through it back in 2022-2023, in Moki days. A bit over a week later, the 15th, I went down to 111 Centre St and filed my Answer. I said that I actually had paid such-and-such, and the landlords were aware of the problem, that I am currently owed $25,000 or so by Social Security, which they were supposed to recompute, but haven’t yet. The following Monday I showed up for the preliminary T&L hearing on the 8th floor. I was given a court date of June 4th, and sent to talk to one of the volunteer lawyers. That was Rebecca. Another thing that came up with Rebecca, besides her urging me to apply for SCRIE, was the matter of the ERAP. This was seemingly approved for the tenant end a couple of years ago, but it now says that neither tenant nor landlord information had been verified. Now, when I first filed it in late 2022 the tenant verification choice said Yes. We were merely waiting for the landlord.
That was two Mondays ago (Sunday today). The following day, I got a text from Keith P. He said he was up at St Luke’s Hospital and they wouldn’t release him without an accompanying friend or relative. So I took the subway up to Columbia, walked over the Amsterdam and 114th St, figured out which of the Mt Sinai buildings was formerly St Luke’s, and called him down to reception. He was immensely fat, wearing sort of clown trousers held up by braces. He had a stroke back in 2021 while visiting Sylvia in Chicopee, he told me in a taxi downtown.Two weeks in hospital up there, now he was having some veinous or arterial procedure done at this hospital. He is again working for Captain Queeg, but only one day a week. Does not need the money, but the Captain needs him. We arrived at his apartment near Tompkins Square. First floor, near the entrance, most convenient. Hamilton Park was all stairs, lots of them. Place is a mess, with a big pothole of broken tile and grout right in front of the kitchen sink. He was looking around for his regular glasses, couldn’t find them, settled for his readers. He was trying to read a grocery receipt. I’d asked him what he paid for Kerrygold butter, having remarked that it is only $4.99 in the drugstore but a lot more elsewhere. The grocery receipt did not list butter, alas. We went out to a maze-like warren around the corner that was a sort of boutique gourmet Italian restaurant. I was astonished at the price of the simple entrees, $22 up to like $37. And the menu wasn’t printed, it was on a digital tablet, an iPad sort of thing with imperfect navigation. He had a really nice salad and I had green rigatoni with broccoli (I guess that was in the pasta) with a sauce that had bits of sausage and maybe pesto. It was okay, really quite impressive, but I didn’t need to eat pasta just then. I had a glass of wine, just that. Keith says he now drinks rum, and quite a lot of it. Here he drank water.
Next day, and for four days after that, to Brooklyn. Odd shifts, 4 or 5 hours at the Expo and then that enormous day of the half-marathon, helping to set up the festival, then banging the gong, or encouraging others to while they took videos or photos of each other. Or asked me to. Mainly I was giving directions to people. Telling them where the bag pickup was, and how the Family Reunion area was right ahead of them, right there!
A few days later, this past Wednesday, another 5 hours in Brooklyn, helping to take down all the NO PARKING posters they’d put up along the race route. Immensely pleasant stroll of about 5 miles, starting at Columbus Park and Cadman Plaza, then under the two bridge ramps, through Dumbo and past the Navy Yard (which goes on forever) and then finally the immensity of Williamsburg. The Domino factory development is very impressive. There’s even a sort of beachfront, I think, with a view of the Wmsbrg Bridge on the left.
Domino Square.
My coworker Debra and I had tacos at this Birra Taco place I told her about. It’s on Bedford, near the L train station and a couple blocks from McCarren Park (start of the race). I found myself spending over $17 for two steak-and-shrimp tacos and a Mexican Coke. Debra had almost the same. She was curious about the place when I mentioned it, then when we got there (used Google Maps or something; it was right where I remembered it, however) she recalled having been there once before while working an event in Williamsburg. That’s what she does, she works events at Javits Center and other places. Says there are specialized temp agencies that book you. And if they like you they keep you working. I am going to look into this.
After all those hours I am due for my biggest Gusto payment yet. Last check was under $300 net, for one day on Gov Is (Sunday 5k) and one day in PP (5k and 10M). Now I’ve got about 40 hours coming to me, which net should be between $800 and $900. Most of that goes to the rent. Having an off weekend just now. Next week it’s two days on Gov Is, back to that. I may get a day or two of warehouse hours this week: have applied for them in the past, but never got picked.
Mural in progress, Kent Ave., Williamsburg.
The week before seeing Keith and working the Expo, I’d gone to 111 Centre for the the Answer filing on Tuesday, 4/15; then on Wednesday 4/16 to Dottie’s at one, where I brought some carrot-ginger dressing and some fried potatoes. Dished this all up in the morning. Dottie had been working two weeks on some beef bourgignon (sp?). In a typical Dottie move, she didn’t eat much (my dressing on a little arugula she grew on her roof) and mainly watched me eat off an overloaded platter. I ended up bringing a generous helping of everything home. I was telling Dottie how much I enjoyed seeing the film, and then listening to the audiobook, of Can You Ever Forgive Me? That is a marvelous and hilarious memoir by Lee Israel, biographer and forger. Jane Curtin, who appears in the film as her agent, reads the audiobook. I also boasted to Dottie about how I used to have no health insurance at all, now have it up the ninyang. Medicare A & B, Aetna PPO, drug coverage, and yet even more dental coverage (haven’t seen dentist in months). Dottie tried to call me up later, concerned about how rundown and tired I said I was, and told me I should see a doctor and use up some of that fine new health insurance.
So that was 4/16. 4/17 I would have been back at 111 Centre for jury duty, but I’d postponed that. Downtown anyway, to 29 Broadway, Jeffries Morris, to drop off the Answer I’d filed at court on Tuesday. Good Friday 4/18 came and I made meatless rigatoni bolognese. It was good but just a little insipid. The complicated sauce was made with lentils. Not enough flavor. But I ate it all, over the next three or four days.
I’d told myself every day to go to confession because I’d been missing mass so frequently. No mass, no communion. No communion for years in fact. On a warm Sunday evening, Easter the 20th, I went to St. Joseph’s in the Village, where they supposedly had Sunday evening confessions before mass. But the lay brother there, guy with the beard, saw me sitting in a chair in the vestibule, waiting for the confessional light to go on, and told me there would be no confessions. But tomorrow at 10am there would be! That was no good for me at all, as next day, Monday the 21st, I was due at T&L court early afternoon.
Somewhere in here, April 8th I believe, Grimm was supposed to come by early afternoon. I had made guac the night before because he asked, and I’d stocked up on the makings of hamburgers with sauteed onions. But he overslept, somehow blamed it on Verizon which they’d just hooked up with. Send me messages. Has tried to reschedule since but I was very busy. Proposed last Saturday via FB message, but I said I’m going to bed early for that 12-hr shift in Brooklyn tomorrow. He cautiously messaged me again recently, asking me if I’d recovered from it, but I haven’t answered him back.
Paul and Anthony are coming here in a month and I have resolved not to be as bloated and aged as I was last time. (The most terrifically awful pictures of me I’ve ever seen.)
A negro came by to install a Clear Caption box on Tuesday (4/29). I cleared the foyer table, thinking that would be a nice place for it. But that wouldn’t work, for some reason. What was it? He needed a nearby phone jack, that’s what it was. So to the glass shelving by the living room windows. Sort of awkward over there.
I need to clear off the rubberwood table and position it better, with the drafting board on top. Move the glass shelving into the corner, sort of awkward, and put the table a couple of feet from the window. Natural light.
Mainly I’ve been lying on bed all the time. Looking at Facebook, reading newspapers. And watching the Sopranos again. I scarcely paid attention to it that last go-round a few weeks ago. Difficult to watch with all the commercial interruptions. I could pay extra and get rid of them…maybe do that just for one month…but I need to cut down on all these subscription expenses.
Drinking a little more than usual these days. Two beers two nights ago (a Kirin and a Becks, from the Japanese grocery nearby, Dainobu), then a full pint of Platinum vodka last night, mixed with pineapple juice. And now, Sunday afternoon, I want another nip. But I don’t want to go to the Chinawoman, and Shirley is closed. Really should go to the gym. And of course mass in the evening.
Hot and sticky these last few days and the A/C isn’t on yet. Early May.
POSTSCRIPT
Did I dream the whole thing? Is there really no book of Harold Ickes diaries in the house? I looked again. I even looked at the copy of the book (the 1936-39 years) at the Internet Archive, and while the meeting with Joe Kennedy in London is mentioned, the exchange about “George and Marina” isn’t there. So where did I read that? I thought perhaps it was in the Amanda Smith book of JPK diaries and letters. But it’s not there either. I look in the Susan Ronald book, and while Ickes is in there a little bit, the party for George and Marina isn’t.
I’m going to guess that the Ickes book will turn up in the living room, in some odd place, buried under trash or magazines. And it will be a condensed revision of the the Ickes diary series, and somewhere in there we will find George and Marina.
Rain broke an hour or two ago. I got caught up in making a FB post and it was too late to make it to St. P’s unless I got there at the end. Good, something else to confess.
I do believe I’m going out to the Chinawoman’s for a half pint.
