So it appears that between Monday and Sunday (April 20-26) I will be working about 39 hours for anch and about 26 for nruns. Ghastly, and I must be parsimonious with my sleep schedule.

Some boo with Grimm & C on Monday, so I had no real sleep that night. Tuesday afternoon and night I got a few hours. In six hours I’ll be on my way home, then 10-2 with Joanne, followed by 3-8 at the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse. Getting there may be tricky. I’d need to take the E to Queens (where) then take the G to a stop a block or two away. Not much room to reconnoiter or change between 2pm and the subway. Always difficult to get away from Joanne. She wants me to expand our hours to 5 per day, and I did that for a month but didn’t get paid. Something about the “insurance.” Insurance here means Fidelis, a NYS outfit that administers the Medicaid payout. My knowledge of Medicaid is that it pays for Medicare Part B, but in the case of Joanne it is used for the Anchor caregiver(s) and various clinicians.

Today before I arrived Joanne had photo’d both sides of her WF debit card and sent those to ‘Pedro.’ Pedro Pascal or the facsimile. Later on in the day a text message from WF asked if the $2 debit card use on Facebook was hers. Well of course it wasn’t. Joanne gives out her debit card number on Telegram and either the false Pedro hijacks and tests it or someone else does. Someone’s been hacking her accounts all along.

Strange conversation with J on Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday. Me in my Catholic Apologetics guise, telling her that atheism was a pose, a crock of shit, all the Big Brains believed in God, and most were Catholic. I tried to debrief her on the extent of her religious education (claims to have been raised Catholic, with a nonsectarian Jewish father, but I see little evidence of theological knowledge). Quite impressive how people with little or no command of a subject believe that their lack of knowledge confirms their credibility. Is there any other field where this happens?

Showed her my Tarot de Marseilles, from Spain, which Kathy Webster brought me about 45, or maybe 47 years ago. Wanted to show how these seemed identical to the deck Alejandro Jorodowsky produced, passing off as his own design.

She’s 7 or 8 months behind in rent, got a Rent Demand the other day. About $6000. Really not bad. Called one of the building owners, Melanie, who is sort of a friend, and bothered her about what to do with the Rent Demand. I had suggested she pay one month now, and one month at end of next week. But that’s up to Eddie, Eddie Cohan, who works for the building management company, A J Clarke. Eddie’s at jury duty. We texted. We can’t pay online anymore, and we can’t just walk a check over. Have to mail it somewhere. Probably tomorrow. I don’t think Eddie’s happy about this. I see from the Rent Demand that they use the same lawyers as JMI, Belkin Burden Goldman. It all looks much the same as the papers we got in May 2022, and the ones I got in February of last year. Thank Heavens I pulled myself through that.

In the afternoon I was at Morton Williams getting some butter and chocolate because I wanted to make more shortbread cookies. And there was David Achelis, with a three-headed cane. Everybody’s old now. He tells me the block association is going strong, they’ll have another party at MoMA soon. I told him I’d gotten to know Joanne. He was cagey, described her as someone who’d only do something for you if she was getting out of it. A bit far gone, still working on her book after 35 years. I didn’t tell him the nature of my connection.

Over the weekend I managed to get spackle (also bought a new Dustbuster for $70 which I hated spending, at Home Depot), and moved the bookcases to the left, the west. Rubberwood table to the north wall of living room between bookcases and armoire. Only halfway through this project. Haven’t moved the table, and books are all over the place.

I made some cookies with chocolate chunks, and also baked a loaf of bread. Ate some cookies and got a bit of intestinal upset. The butter and sugar and chocolate of course. Packed up a pear and a snack bar and some tea bags in a big baggie…but forgot it somehow. Rather hungry just now. Making do drinking the Smirnoff on the cocktail table. I’ve worked my way halfway through that liter bottle in the past five or six weeks.

Life is a blur. I am putting in 25+ hours a week with Joanne P across the way but thus far only getting paid for 20. And some ridiculous wage like $19. I was approved by the care manager (Dana or Noni) for 25 hours a few weeks ago but the Anchor coordinator still hasn’t listed them. So I’m not getting paid. I clock in for maybe 5.25 hours and get paid for four.

I can do this because the weekly total gets padded out with another 300 or whatever from do-nothing shifts with Grimm and Rem. This shortchanging may be a good excuse for cutting ties with JP in the near future. She’s too difficult too often. Was ready to call it quits with JP a couple of weeks back, just too stressed out, but we’ve had moodswings all along, and I don’t want to leave her be until we at least get her to the DMV on Tuesday. Get that driver’s license renewed.

She also needs to pay some rent (4 or 5 months behind; this is where I got nabbed with a Rent Demand), and pay Gloria. We paid Gloria via Zelle but evidently it did not go through; it bounced, perhaps. Gloria shows up on Friday (3/20) at 9 and says she hasn’t been paid. That means Zelle for $150 did not to through on Wednesday. By 11am we were scurrying around, JP in a vicious temper, trying to pull out a long stray hair out of her chin, and I did so with her tweezers. But she took offense when I told her to stand over by the window. I pulled that hair, another hair. She told me i was dictatorial. Kept yelling at me when we had to pay the Spectrum bill which evidently they’d cut off because although she paid $330 a few day before she still owed $303. This issue arose because I couldn’t get on the internet to find if Gloria’s payment had gone through. Wifi dead. We paid through her new debit card after calling the Spectrum 800 number. Then she was mad because I was keeping Current Bills in a manila folder marked Current Bills and she didn’t know about it, supposedly, although we’d gone over it a few times. Finally we shuffled out and went to the Blueribbon Estate Sales jewelry buyers at the Courtyard by Marriott at 866 Third Ave. She got $360 for this and that and afterwards we deposited this into the WF bank next door. Taxi both ways and we paid with her cash.

I drank a double scotch, last of the 1.75 of Dewars, with her after clocking out at two. All better now. I went home and went to bed, maybe after getting a couple more handrolls from Maki. In the evening I rented The Man Who Would Be King from Amazon Prime. Watched it in bits and pieces through the weekend. Not that great a picture, though I suppose on release it impressed a lot of people. Greg Robison thought it was the best. And you don’t often get a John Huston picture with Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer. It’s an imaginative anecdote spun out into a big-screen spectacular, and there just isn’t enough substance to the story.

At 88 and disabled (cannot walk without cane and support person) and increasingly scatterbrained, JP is pretty close to the edge, drowning in the chaos of her own clutter and confusion and probably delusions. Her friends and former bankers all believe she has been taken in by a scam artist. I think that’s a reasonable assessment but am noncommittal. She does seem to have some sort of connection to the real-life fellow in question.

CHEZELLE

JP believes she is having an unconsummated affair with Pedro P____. I did not recognize the name at first, but he’s a famous film actor. The fascination with him has something to do with his Chilean origins. He and sisters grew up in SoCal, however. Somehow she got hooked up with him via Telegram messages a year or so ago. And has been sending him money.

Every week she believes he is coming into town, arriving Friday from Greece. This has been going on for months. Then he popped up in some social-media pictures at the Bowery Hotel, and then at the Superbowl, and now at the Oscars last weekend.

I figure she’s sent him about $100,000 so far. Not in any traceable way. She lets herself get conned into putting $10,000 or so into a shoebox and sending it via UPS to some address in Missouri or Ohio. At present she has $1000 left in her Edw Jones broker account (down from maybe $85000 a year ago) and about that in her new Wells Fargo checking. She also had Citibank and Chase accounts along the way but they’ve been closed out for fraud. She’s let her Pedro people, or her Alejandro J. people (AJ being famous avant-garde filmmaker and theatrical director, from Chile and now living in Paris) get her bank account ID and password on several occasions. Each time it got flagged for fraud. (This is not entirely her fault; banks have tightened up online accounts in recent years, and something as simple as a login from an unknown smartphone can be a flag.) Yet, she would close out one account at Citi, open another, get a new User ID and pw, and do the same damn thing.

alejandro on audible

I have several reasons for not agreeing with JP’s sister and friends and bankers that the Pedro person is not really a scammer, and that’s that she has actual ties to people in common with him. It’s that Chile fascination she’s had most of her life. (From Lafayette, Indiana, herself, b. 1938. Half J though of mid-1800s German J stock on the paternal side, old-stock American, a mix of Irish and English and Palatinate German on the maternal. Raised RC, but probably not very ardently so.)

There’s that other guy in Paris, whom she also sends money to, for no conceivable reason. The other guy, Alejandro, is likewise from Chile but of Ukrainian J stock, is nearing 100 and seems to have a particular loathing for the Pedro person. He’s jealous of him. So if her Pedro is a cipher, a scammer, there are other people she knows whom we know to be real, and believe Pedro is real.

Young Pedro

Once every week or so we wander over to the Chase on the corner to find what’s happened to the $5000 check that was supposed to be returned to her, but got hijacked internally. That was our major expedition the first day with her, end of January. Or we go to the Citibank on Broadway to sit around for an hour and then withdraw some large amount representing the last sale by the Jones broker. $15,000, $10,000, whatever. Last time it was $1595 from the residual checking account, mainly her last SSA payment. Now we have to transfer Direct Deposit to the WF account. Something that could be done online. But we’re going to have an in-person visit to E 102nd St (SSA office) because we haven’t, and the in-person thing she prefers.

She’s a political naif, knows only that Allende was some kind of martyr for killing himself on 9/11/73 when there was the coup in Chile, and that Donald Trump is the devil incarnate. Watches the dreaded MS-NOW (formerly MSNBC) most of the time. I have not told her of the Brian Burns connection to Trump. If I did it would be with much jocularity, describing Laura’s visit last August and her horrified face at seeing the Brian and Eileen picture with Donald in between.

I made artisan bread this weekend, two narrow loaves. Ate many tiny sandwiches last night and today with Boars Head honey-glazed turkey and domestic swiss. And washed a few dishes. I could actually finish cleaning most of the kitchen this evening.

I missed mass. Couldn’t get out of bed after watching end of the film. Drinking lots of coffee, that Nescafe Gold Intense…which is quite intense after two big mugs.

Big trip planned Saturday to New Haven, to Sterling, for the Tame translation of Brasillach book. Didn’t, didn’t get out of bed. Another little trip planned for today, Sunday: going out to Brooklyn to pick up a Henri Bendel grey fabric crossbody purse. Too much trouble to revise ticket for pickup. Seller is posting via USPS.

I now have the big teal Jetsetter backpack-convertible bag (handle needs repair), and probably the orange crossbody Moki bought me in 2016 (but which disappeared, probably to the big anodized aluminum trunk the subbasement…I hope!), and the Lululemon orange crossbody which I cleaned last week (an inky mess came right off with dishwashing soap) and the Lululemon olive green one I bought a week ago Friday when I knew I had to retire the orange one for at least a little while. That’s when I had two stiff drinks and calamari at Bad Roman, and conversation with the Ricky barkeep who knew Ray Dirks.

Tonight I will make a stab at the next Brasillach translation. You know I have not had anything in CC since August or Septemper? Did nothing with Fredericka Yockey.

“And that, Gnädige Frau, is why I no longer eat meat.”

I bought crazy adjustable-lens glasses online this afternoon, possibly no good. We’ll see.

Any good?

After hunting for fifteen minutes a day ago, before finally discovering my electric mittens on a wire shelf in the pantry, I had a brainstorm about the whereabouts of the Henri Bendel crossbody bag. Perhaps it’s in the steamer trunk down below? I don’t think Moki and I switched trunks after about 2020.

I was going to get an orange Carharrt fleece helmet-hat for the cold, but it won’t reach me until March 1, a week after the next Half in CP. Ordering orange beanie instead. Like my tan one.

Fish and chips at Judge Roy Bean this afternoon (2/9) after Joanne P. Expensive but good. Overpriced Delirium schooners. With tax and tip it all came to $54.

Mobile deposit of $960 to join the $960 in the WF account. I cannot have the Feb rent check bounce. I sent that in on Friday. Doubt it will clear before Wed or Thurs. Anchor deposit this coming Fri will be about $700-$750. Remarkable. Joanne is cranky but really not too bad. On the cusp of dementia. It looks like just ADHD to me, and she won’t take her vits and supps. Bought $100 of vits and supps and eyedrops via CVS OTC card tonight. I notice they no longer let you buy snackies or granola bars. Just Ensure type stuff.

Last Wed to Best Buy to shop for a new Lenovo Yoga which Alejandro will supposedly pay for. $1100. Thursday to DMV where she couldn’t pass vision test, so up to Citi at 56th/Bway because she’s going to take out $10,000 or $15,000 if she can and give it to Pedro. Pedro supposedly trapped in Athens with his managerial team. Credit cards don’t work. Then back to Citi on Fri, and again on Monday (day just passed). Tomorrow I think, back to Citi, maybe take out money we want, then open an acct for her at Wells Fargo. Citi is going to ban her if she has any more fraud alerts.

It just registered with me over the weekend that this Pedro person was Pablo Escobar in Narcos. Moki watched that series a half-dozen times. Mainly in those last happy years, 2020-2022.

CORRECTION: Pedro played Javier Peña the DEA agent.

Pedro in Narcos

Ordered E Valerate from InHouse on Sunday. Will take weeks to get here.

Grimm tells me he’s ordering iPhone 16’s for Christophe and me and his sister. Teal for me.

I convinced myself, vaguely, that the orange crossbody Bendel’s bag Moki bought me way back in 2016, and which I’ve been photographed with a few times, was thrown away by me sometime in 2017 or 2018.

6 November 2016 in subway, reversed (I think it was)

But I have no clear recollection of that. I certainly still have the Bendel dust bag that went with it. And I seldom toss handbags. I may have thrown out an orange Longchamps pliage bag way back when, but that’s about it. I have that 2004 brown leather tote from Anastasia’s in Hoboken, the blue pliage, almost certainly the brown Jil Sander (or was it a green leather Longchamps?). I have the 2016 Bendel sky-blue Jetsetter backpack (last used when M and I drove to Lebanon PA in early 2022 for the Colin memorial), and the orange leather microbag from Michael Kors, also 2016.

I’m thinking I should look through those clamshell suitcases where I store excess sacks and footwear.

Must start in on a load of laundry in a few minutes. Sunday night and I again missed Mass. I have not been outside in two days, since the snowstorm.

Saw Liz phoned me a couple days ago. Toni is incommunicado. I’m thinking about lending her the Moki phone, but that is fraught with problems.

Made chili yesterday, after buying eat and soaking beans the day before. Over three pounds of meat, chuck and pork. I rather like the result, following two Chasen’s Chili recipes. Been eating nothing but that and some Stollen for the past day. I bought the Stollen thinking I’d give it to Rem, but forgot it. Also brought her a Christmas dinner to share, but she wasn’t eating.

I am remembering that it was last week, or rather the week before Christmas (it is Sunday the 28th now) that I suddenly had the mad emergency to find a copy of the countersigned copy of the new lease so that I could qualify for SCRIE and send that to HRA. Well, Patricia Warren (and James Horahan, manager downstairs) really helped me out producing that. Emailing, faxing, messengering. I got it sent to the SCRIE people and HRA and the Mobilization for Justice folks (that would be one “Fanny Chan,” for the One-Shot Deal where I beg for emergency money, which I may not need at all if my SS comes through in a few days). It was a week or so later I learned the SS back benefits would (probably) be coming in.

I mention this episode now because it blew over so quickly, and got eclipsed in the tide of other events, such as that hilarious 24-hr shift I took with Rose Stalzer out in Glendale, off Woodhaven Ave in the most remote part of Queens. An adventure not to be repeated.

Though I still might hie myself out to Zum Stammtisch in the Ridgewood area. Even more impossible to get to than in Ana Schroeder days.

I had a nice two weekends of no nruns commitment, have the first in a week. At least I now have that knit Carhartt toque. Warm and snug. I’m going to have at least 2, maybe 3 or 4 hellish races between now and end of Feb. Warm mittens and maybe HomeDepot electric toe warmers are in order.

Last race I can’y really remember. Dec 13th. Two weeks ago yesterday. Start at the Big Apple Half in Central Park. Shift began at 3:30am. I think I was still packing up after 2pm. Edwin A and D Halloran?

On Friday the 2nd I should have about $275 from that and perhaps $850 from Anchor (Stalzer from Dec 19-20, Grimm, Toni, Rem). Wild estimate. And possibly $2000+ from SS benefit and the 41k lump sum. I have $1900 in WF right now which means I am richer than I’ve been in 10 years.

Chase is offering me a settlement for about $2600 (on a $11000 debt they think I owe, but half of that is their fraud). I will talk them down

Laundry now.

So it seems. It’s now Thursday evening, Christmas Day. Spent 9pm-9am at Rem’s. She didn’t want the Christmas dinner I brought. Complaining unintelligibly about “those people are they still around?” (thinks there are mobs of negroes filling up her living room). I sipped the remainder of her weak vodka and rum. New Jamaican negress, a hearty soul arrived at 9:09 am and I walked home. Cold and overcast but pleasant.

I have not slept, really, since around 6 or 7 or 8 yesterday morning. Christmas Eve, Wednesday. Bought a pt of v on 58th St.

But “Out of the Woods?” here means the message I found in duplicate from Jenn Rubin and Kirsten Gillibrand’s office. It appears that at long last my SS back benefits, at least some of them, are coming through.

$41,427.00. That takes care of present predicament and lots more. I told Laura, thinking she’d find it pleasant and worthy of being called my Christmas present to her. Did not give her the amount. I owe the landlord either about $10,000 or $13,000. I have 45 days as of the 19th of December to pay, supposedly, $13,400. I’ll get the landlord’s ledger and see what I really owe, I’m sure it’s a couple thousand less.

I also have been renewed for Medicaid, which means my Medicare (which I never use) wil continue without payment out of monthly SS. And monthly SS ought to go up to about $2000 p.m., perhaps even $2200. With my pittance jobs paying me anywhere from $1500 to $2000 p.m. I will be wealthy by hooligan standards. And I may get a semi-grown-up job. Yes, at Nruns. Jen sent a flyer around a week ago. They want Directors, Managers, etc. And a couple of steady jobs. Ones paying $60-$80k. Things I would never look at in tech, but this is not contractual tech paying $75 per hour and you’re gone in a month.

So i read that email, copied to me first by Jenn Rubin, two nights ago. Seems like a month. I’d just spent most of the day going over to the E 70th St block, driving-cold rain, a few doors west of Rem’s bldg at 225. Antoinette Peters was not there. I left, went home. This ‘Edy’ (male demi) phones me up, tells me to go to 1339 York Ave. Well I go off on the M31 bus, first time all the way over to York Ave. At least first time in 20-25 years. Turns out 1339 York is Mary Manning Walsh, once a superb facility, now not so nice I hear. After a couple of hours I am met by my patient and her friend, Liz. I’ve spent those hours in the library/lounge on the ground floor, reading Dean Acheson. We fetch, I fetch, a taxi and we go to 211 E 70th. My pt has not been there for three years. Turns out I get along with them like a house afire. I go out get ibuprofen for Toni, put away her groceries (ordered by guardian…Wonderbread, pork loins, steamer bag veggies, pasta, pasta sauce, ten ton bag of rice). I do her laundry, just a big bag from MMW, using the new washers and dryers down in the basement, set up with the same Hercules app we have here. I spend maybe $15. I think I’ll be back with Toni for a day or two per week. Toni has framed photos around, of her with husband #2, usually in Palm Springs. A lot of golfing. Pic with Dinah Shore. Autographed photo of Frank Sinatra and Barbara Marx. Liz is dear. Former model, English-Portuguese. She has a place in Sharon CT. Phoned me when I was having a wind-down v martini at the Beach Cafe. I told about having head from Guardian Mllton Dias. We initially connected over Margaux/Margot Hemingway, first hour or two at Toni’s place. I told about the Bill Cash, or William Cash, memorial in the Telegraph, mid-1996. Toni is one of those people who have fallen into the Guardian scam, where they get pronounced non compos mentis without their participation. Much less reason than Rem. I have discussed this with Liz, and how I will look into this with Liz Kruger.

Last week saw Act One with George Hamilton. Very strange. Attractive production. Written and directed by Dore Schary. A personal project. Complete flop. Focus on dialogue and GH imitating MH (haughty, diffident) at least the bits of MH I see on old TV clips; and meetng up with and gradually warming up to Jason Robards Jr’s George S. Kaufman.

It is very hard to think of George S. Kaufman now, and not see him portrayed by Jason Robards, Jr.

Not at all the Sturm und Drang I got from the book. That story from Moss was hellish. Anyway I ordered a bio of MH, Dazzler, and may get it out of the LPA before the hard copy comes.

Roundup for CC: Dean Acheson, MH?, Churchill Warlord. Also those damned Russia collusion books. Put the Michael Cohen book in the roundup.

The Lost Weekend at FF next week. Catch it. Maybe Sat.

John Clements was Rem’s friend and patron. She was his sometime assistant and often his beard. Together they would not attract notice, if drinking at the NYAC Tap Room or eating at the Four Seasons (or someplace of that level). John died in the St. Moritz, a block or so from here, at the end of 1974. Rem remembers it as 1973, but it was 1974. Rem remembers him as being born in Walnut, Kansas, and that may be, but he seems to be the same as a guy who was born in Kentucky; someone known well enough by a relative or nosy parker to figure in an existing family tree on Ancestry-dot-com.

In some records he is John Joseph Aloysius Clements, in others he is John Joseph Clements, and in one he seems to be listed as Joe AL Clements. He joined the Marines when he was underage about 1916, and saved 100 or 140 of his fellows by tossing back a grenade that came into the trench. This was at Chateau-Thierry or thereabouts. Would that be 1917 or 1918? I cannot find him listed among the Marines, though as a decorated leatherneck he certainly has citation and some rank. On passenger manifests (so far I see them only for LGA and a Canadian airport) he lists his nationality once as Irish, and another time as English.

He had a big spread down in Hunterdon County, NJ. In one of the rare news stories in which he appears, we have him hosting Senator and Mrs. Joseph R. McCarthy in 1954. The Senator has recently been censured, and is recovering from an arm injury. It is around this time that John leaves the American Mercury where he is an owner and (unpaid) editor, or so I read. This was occasioned by the magazine’s purchase by Russell Maguire, who evidently ran some anti-Jewish articles. I haven’t seen them, though in early 1955, I noticed, while browsing through some issues on Unz, there is an article by George Lincoln Rockwell.

John left the Mercury in 1954 or 1955, and so did a number of staffers and writers, according to a Wisconsin Jewish newspaper that keeps its ear to the ground, over the “anti-Semitic” slant of its new owner, Maguire. The Mercury had an interesting recent history. Before G. L. Rockwell wrote for it, Bill Buckley was a contributor. Rockwell and Buckley would team up again, very briefly, as National Review was launching. Before Maguire bought it, the Mercury was owned by John Clements (perhaps) and William Bradford Huie. Huie was a successful general-interest journalist (the LOOK cover story about the killing of Emmett Till) and novelist (The Americanization of Emily). He showed up on television as a panelist on the Longines Chronograph, a news-panel show similar to Meet the Press, and he may have been a panelist on MtP as well. Meet the Press, on radio and TV, was the creation of Lawrence E. Spivak, who had been the Mercury’s editor in the 1940s. In fact, on its initial launch, the radio version was called American Mercury’s Meet the Press.

John owned and ran a number of small-town papers in New Jersey, but his main job, his big career job for over 30 years, was head of Public Relations for the Hearst Corporation. Before that he worked on some Hearst papers, beginning with the New York Journal. (Later Journal-American.) This piqued my curiosity, as my father-in-law was outside counsel for a while, for Mr. Hearst himself, and then for Hearst Publications when it was being run by Richard Berlin. I found a book listed, called The Hearst Corporation, published 1960, authored by one John A. Clements.

You’d think John would be a big deal, mentioned everywhere. But instead he kept a low profile, and if my intuitions are right he mainly used the Hearst job as a cover while he did spook work. According to Rem he worked as an intelligence operative or asset for people in the Pentagon, possibly at the NSA and maybe the CIA as well. I forget what his code name was (per Rem) but her code name was Jack Daniels, as she drank a lot of that Kentucky bourbon. Doesn’t drink now, hasn’t touched alcohol in two years, but there’s a lot of JD and JD memorabilia around her apartment.

These are just running notes I’m collecting and recalling about Clements. Who was he really and what did he do? He was married three times, twice divorced, but Rem knows nothing about the first two. (Third marriage happened in the late 40s. A Pole or Austrian from a DP camp.)

Will pick up later.

Kristin wrote to tell me that J.D. King had died, with some colorful, deep coverage in The Comics Journal. Tomorrow night on Forsyth Street in the LES there’s a tribute to him. John Holmstrom will be there.

November 25. I woke up Saturday morning two years ago and Moki was dead. Or rather his expiring, comatose body was no longer shallowly breathing. Body was a little cool, but not stiff. I lost all the family I had. Didn’t know what to do. Went to Facebook, told Young Brian that Uncle Moki was gone. It was around 5 or 6 in the morning. Brian didn’t see the message for months. After all this, and I know I’ve said this before, I don’t really know what I did. I imagine I went out and bought a liter of vodka. Or just possibly I’d bought one the night before. And now drank quite a bit, leaving no diary or calendar notes for the next couple of days. Sunday morning I phoned 911, and the rest is history.

I meant to arrange a memorial Mass for Michael, on either his birthday (the 18th) or his death day. I didn’t. A nice intention, no compelling urge. What we call a velleity. A vocabulary word Moki put on one of his self-learning flash cards about 30 years ago. When we got back in touch, me in Seattle at end of 1997, he tried a few of his new words on me and was impressed I knew that one. I told him it’s very medieval. A Scholastic sort of word. A good intention, a nice thought, a plan without follow-through. I believe some of his flash cards are in a file drawer somewhere.

• No reason I can’t book a memorial Mass at St. Malachy’s in the next week.

• Note to self to phone A.T. Maybe on Thanksgiving.

I spent about an hour this afternoon, searching for my mint-in-box Nike XC Waffles which I never wore (too stiff and heavy) and decided early last year to put up on eBay. They are one of maybe 6 or 8 pairs that didn’t sell. Anyhow, I figured I would put some blanks in the pin holes (these are XC spikes) and just use them as sturdy, regular sneakers. Trail runners. Took me a while to find 8 blanks. Typically a bag of spike pins accompanying the shoes has only two blanks, or none. I’ve bought hundreds of pins and still have ’em but not too many loose pins. So I’ve accomplished that, and in a few minutes I’ll stroll outside. The temperature is now about 50º F, and I can hear the rain. (That is something Moki could never do, in all the time I knew him. I mean even in his 50s he couldn’t hear the rain outside. In his last years, when we were being slugabeds together and I’d put the tea kettle on for coffee, or tea, he’d start when I’d get up for the whistle. “It’s whistling? You can hear that?”)

Colored my hair yesterday. Excellence light ash brown, a color I’d never used, but it was on sale for $1.49 at the D-R on Eighth Avenue, so I bought it on Friday with some Celsius, for the caffeine. No milk in that D-R. Was feeling drained and sleepy then, too. What was I doing on Eighth? Going to Ninth. Ah to get yellow duct tape to fix my Columbia rain slicker. Didn’t fix it too well, I must say. Needed to use a lot more of that stuff. Bought the tape and some gunk-off elixir, because I still have half a mind to clean and fix the Sharp Twin Energy Vacuum. Melted rubber belt that smokes up when you turn it on, all from putting the wrong belt in a year ago. I did once change the belt properly, back in the Fall of 2021, during that little happy period we had after Brian P. Burns’s funeral. I can’t bear to throw the machine out. Moki bought it in the Spring of ’99, during his difficult period, and he neatly filed away the manual in a manila envelope in a file cabinet near his desk.

Later on Friday (Nov. 21) I also bought more Celsius and a pint of v. Drank that through the night, sleeping in bits and fits and starts, till I absolutely had to get out of bed by 1:30 am. And while still on Eighth Avenue with my tape and hair color, I went to Popeye’s for some fried chicken. I don’t do that much junk food, but I had this craving. Wasn’t terribly good. Drumstick, big thigh, okay breast. All a bit undercooked, to my way of thinking. No fried chicken is as good as the Colonel’s Extra Spicy was 45 years ago.

As I say, I colored my hair yesterday. In the morning. Combed it back, still wet, before the journey out to Brooklyn for Grimm. In the back mirror I could see a white streak as well as pink scalp. Wide-part problem. Have not been taking my Viviscal and Maxi-Hair. I suppose the hair is okay now. Last full color was Sept 25. I know I did a root touch-up in between. In the last days of Moki, when he’d slipped away for good, I colored my hair with a kind of auburn or reddish brown I’d never tried. That was November 22, 2023. I had just accepted that he was going to go. I was crying while I searched out various veterans-related sites on how to deal with a loved one’s death. And my motivation for coloring my hair was mainly that I would have to see people, strangers, very shortly, perhaps within a few days. And I couldn’t face that with messy, streaky, grey-white, uncared-for hair. It was right around that time that I started keeping this blog-diary seriously.

• Order estradiol from that Inhouse place.

Listless, low energy, unmotivated. Was going to go to gym, didn’t, maybe run in park, haven’t (getting onto a dark 5pm just now). My big expedition will be a trip to Whole Foods, I guess. [Later correction: It’s rainy, I’m tired. Go to Morton-Williams, get something involving turkey and cranberry sauce. A beer? I just poured myself my last Celsius.]

Not too hungry, but low on food. Drank a 10% tallboy IPA last night and took a Trazodone after two boo sessions with Grimm and C yesterday. Late morning, then early evening. In between I spent two hours on transit, and two hours at home, lying on bed or walking around talking to some new Jew lawyer (when I say Jew I don’t mean Michael Cohen, I mean somebody who sounds like a beardo from Crown Point) who’s now running the VCF thing at Marc J Bern, the law firm that really screwed up my case. Two years it dragged on, bad communication, missed communications, rejection by WTC Health because they claim I was seeing MSK in 2003-2007 because of a pre-9/11 condition. Well that’s debatable. I had two biopsy plugs in mid-2003 at MSK and my treatment was based on that, not something from 2000 or my jabbering about rashes I’d had for 25 years. And now I’m getting phone calls on 0209 from some nog at the WTC Health office, purportedly explaining why they rejected my claim. Well I don’t need to hear their sorry, garbled pretext again. I’m livid whenever I think of it. Having sunk enough cost in time and effort on it, shall I continue or cut bait? I should talk to Anthony.

At Grimm’s I talked up a … what is the metaphor? A blaze, a fire, a streak? Why Word is standard for commercial publishing (which I didn’t know till recently) and how I met the Autopen and why it was secret. I told some of the true parts of the Kingman Brewster story. All about the Steele Dossier, #PissGate, the Mueller Investigation and the SCO; and then Michael Cohen who was ostensibly investigated to see if he and Trump had “Russia collusion” involvement, but all that came up were shady installment payments made to the stripper Stormy Daniels, who, upon seeing the forged pussy-grab tape released by the Dems and WaPo in October 2016, decided it would be a good time to shake The Donald down for a bundle. Maybe they just met across a crowded room, in 2006 it supposedly was. Maybe not even that. So she did the dumb, timid thing, demanded $130,000. And that’s why we kept hearing about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels: the DoJ mockies couldn’t get Trump or family or associates on the ditsy Russia claims, so they took the consolation prize of beating confessions out of Cohen, a la Stalin Show Trials, till he confessed to whatever wormy stuff they wanted for testimony. And not too long afterwards he retracted most of that wormy stuff. Then the DoJ came down on him hard, put him in the hot box up in the special Jewish Penitentiary near Kiryas Joel in Rockland County. They could do that, you see, because most of those DoJ lawyers were Jews too.

Talking a blue streak.

Grimm and his fancyman have a huge tree, artificial, all set up and lit up, in their crowded little hut. Like so many other things, the tree was free, found abandoned on the sidewalk. He finds the strangest things. A huge shop-vac, file cabinets, a magnificent drafting table, other random bits of furniture. I thought the tree was up just a little bit early, then reflected that Thanksgiving is still a few days off.

And I’m weary not just because of the boo and Trazodone but because I had a bitch of an Nruns shift in PP, on little sleep, 3:30-3:00, with cold rain pelting down from about 4am till after 10. Foot pain, plantar fasciitis.

Slow-burning anger within me these past few weeks about the Nruns business. I’ve been nothing but an extra pair of hands for most of this calendar year. For a little while I was van driving, mat wiring, decoder connecting, clock setting-up. All gone. The time came to give out black puffer jackets to the serious people who’d been there a year or two and I didn’t get one. Charlie Scanlon got one, he just started a few months ago. (“Ah but he’s full time,” Michele said.) But that chocolate Mexican called Bryan got one as well. I think I’ve been aboard longer. Is Garcia the one who bad-mouthed me on the Timing jobs? I set up a few split and finish mats in November and December, and then nothing. So I usually sign up for Start or Finish on Deputy, because the only other things available are Fluid Stations and Amenities and T-shirts and Bibs and Bag Check, and those aren’t bread-and-butter, core production areas. And then I’m usually the last one, or one of the last ones, picked in the choose-up there. The most unpopular kid on the softball team. And so I bitch and moan inside and think about what I’m going to say to Jen, come the start-of-year letter: Wow, it’s just like being a Volunteer again…back when you were just a fungible pair of hands, but they’d tell you on the website Volunteer page  that if you volunteered there’d be a good chance you’d get some paying part-time work out of it! So all these volunteers, generally a very fine bunch (unlike their manager, the ineffable Tina) would stick around for a year or two, or three, and realize that never was going to happen. 

“Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky.”

A burst of cheer just now, however, via Michele Gr*t*n*. They are already planning the production of the ginormous Bklyn Experience Half at the end of next April. And there I am, booked already to drive the sweep truck in McCarran Park. Oboy. Surely I’ll be doing something else. A 13-hour shift, 4am to 1pm. That means 8 or 9 loose hours between arrival in the wee hours and getting ready to pack up. What will I do? Help pack up the start. That will be the end of a very busy week, as I’ll do all the Expo work I can get. That’s the only dependably pleasant work I’ve had with Nruns.

Such tiny little things can turn my mood around.

I’ve had a few shift requests from Anchor but rejected them all. Big demand, Thanksgiving week. All but Eddie Song, and I’ll probably be dinged on that again, as I was a few weeks ago. A lot of shifts from people I don’t know, and often in dodgy-looking places. A little too far uptown, or way down in the LES. Then there is that 100-year-old Caribbean, Margaret, in public housing in Astoria (v. nice apt though), kept by her very trim 70-ish deminog daughter Margot. Pleased to meet me, pleased to have me, a couple of Fridays back. Two shift requests from those, actually. They want someone to work 5 days a week. But at 5 hrs a day, 5 days a week, all my other shifts are nixed. I’d have to rearrange Grimm. Could still manage Rem however. But mainly, it’s an hour trip by subway and bus to the nw corner of Astoria, so the 25 hours work is really 35 hours. I was intrigued by a txt msg about an old lady in Howard Beach, one could get something like two full days (48 hrs) out of that. But what if the penny drops horribly in the first hour and you realize you can’t go home for another day, or two? And you’re in Howard Beach.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, I’m at Rem’s from 9pm on. I have been unable to stimulate myself to stay awake for all 12 hours. Spent a lot of time with Facebook nonsense on iPhone and iPad last Wed. Re-upped with newspapers.com again. A perennial disappointment. Must cancel shortly. I recovered and reread that terrible Sally Vincent piece in the Guardian magazine, Oct 16, 1993. The one where she mocks TS’s in the usual Brit way. This is special because one of her subjects is Letitia Winter, aka Fay Presto, the “close-up magician.” Not identified as such, however. Not a clue offered as to where Sally found her, but of course Fay is a second-tier celeb for her years of magic performance.

Must cancel that account again before they charge me $60. First, check and see if you can find anything else about P. C. Martin.

Book idea that goes around in my head, one that shouldn’t be too much trouble:

LESSER NOTABLES
of the Civil War Era

featuring

The Vanishing Captain, P. C. Martin
Richard Thomas and the Fascinating French Lady, Zarvona
(There seems to be a tie between the two.)
John Urquhart Andrews
(and some other crumbum stirring up trouble in the city, along with)
Richard Sears McCulloh
The lady who married Fernando Wood’s brother Ben, of the Daily News…a Miss Haversham who died in the 1930s
Mansfield Lovell, deputy streets commissioner of NYC and CSA major general
Prof. Thaddeus Lowe and his magnificent hot-air balloon rides in Central Park
“Colonel” Henry F. O’Brien fires his whiff of grapeshot and gets beaten to death.
Rose O’Neal Greenhow and Little Rose
John Banister Tabb
Simon Bolivar Buckner
Lewis C. Levin
Dr. McNulty of the CSS Shenandoah

Capt. P C Martin in Montreal, 1863

Well…at long last love! I check my WF app for the umpteenth time and find it’s down by about $900, which means that finally one of my two rent checks for November (mailed in 3 weeks ago) has gone through. Should check the Citi account too. Just a mo’… Ah, here: “Inclearing Check Pending” for $1000. So I have a grand total of $83 in the Citi, all told, but nearly $1500 still in the WF, and almost $400 still in the USAA. I could without fear send in a December rent check at the end of this week, just to spite ’em. I was seriously worried they’d lost the thing or the post office had, and henceforth I’d have to send it certified mail or drop it off at 29 Broadway.

Got fraudulated on the USAA debit card a few days ago, now it’s canceled and I’m getting another one. I fell for a scam supposedly from T-Mobile. I could use my 12,000 reward credits before they expire, and get noise-canceling wireless headphones or an Apple watch, or whatever. I chose the headphones, and then the scammer lifted my info and tried to use the number at 7-Eleven (!) and BestBuy ($411) and someplace else. Talked to USAA fraud alert on Friday when this first happened, and then again yesterday when the charges and text alerts and emails came in.

Mrs Martin, the former Mary Ann Timmins of New Oxford, Pennsylvania. In Montreal, 1863

I cannot get over the suspicion that I’ve been horribly maltreated by Nruns. I’ve been reviewing what I was doing for them a year ago. I learned a bit of timing, set up a split map for one of the Donuts races on Gov Is. (The 10k; we just had a repeat the other day.) Then Dec 7, driving the BNV at 2:30 am from warehouse to PP,  behind Katie with her UHaul truck gate flipping up after a couple of turns; setting up Finish mats with the negro Aaron, but we were taking too long (because the Finish placement kept changing) so Bryan the Mexican did those mats. I watched over the split mat up the hill toward Bartel-Pritchard, temps at 15ºF but felt more like -5ºF. Grace Kim supervising, bringing me herbal tea from Dunkin or Starbucks. A bit of hand-timing finishers in that race, just for practice. That was it. Finally, the following week I did the split mat in the Big Apple Half, 5k mark in by the woods near Lasker Pool.

After this, no more timing work for me. What happened? Something I’m going to complain to Jen about, and hopefully do it tactfully. “I’m just a pair of hands these days. It’s like being back in the Volunteer days…when the come-on to volunteers is that you might be offered paying part-time work…which kept a few of us around a bit longer than we might have stayed, but after a couple of years it became clear this was never going to happen. Ha ha ha. And whatever became of Tina, I wonder?”

The Donuts runs this past Sat and Sun. Some marshaling over by Andes Rd, east side of island. Next Saturday, a marathon and half-marathon, and a ‘marathon’ shift of over 12 hours, beginning at 3:30 am in Prospect Park.

Looking east, to Brooklyn

Have been submitting last documents to the HRA site for SNAP. Also I think I had to send something in for Medicaid, but I never received a form in the mail, so have now printed it out.

The government shutdown did not affect me much in the past few weeks. My SNAP came in a week late, by which time my account was down to $14. When replenished a few days ago, I bought ingredients for a Chris Kimball ’emergency chocolate cake’ which you make with cocoa powder, flour, confectioners’ sugar, and oil. And coffee. Not bad. Other than that I have nearly nothing edible left in the house.

Pro forma letter from SSA in the past day, local office. About Jenn Rubin representing me. That is a followup on our meeting a month ago, but because of the shutdown nothing was done. We get towards the end of the year, and with recalculation my SS monthly benefit should go up to about $2200, maybe more. But that doesn’t matter. I need the back benefits commencing with 2017 in order to pay back rent. At a minimum that is $2400 a year. Four years is about $10,000, eight years is $20,000, as of next month we are nine years in arrears. The maximum could be twice that.

Anchor and Nruns together get me between $1000 and $1500 per month right now, though I don’t feel it, and Nruns spaces out its payroll and races in such a way that the races you work on this weekend won’t hit your bank for another three weeks. This coming Friday I get paid for working the Expo at Javits two weeks ago, day before the NYC Marathon. That will be a bit over $100. I told myself a year ago that I’d be just making it if I could make another $1000-$1500, and that seems about right. Barely.

Some distribution of black puffer jackets for Nruns at the last races (Haunted Island). One for Bryan Garcia, one for Charlie Scanlon. Not for me. You have to work through a full winter. Well I’ve done a full winter and a half. Nothing for me. I am not too bitter. I got my orange or coral lululemon bag two weeks ago, last of its color in the shop (TWC), paid for mainly with my jury duty check ($72) so I’m okay. Still I think I’m getting stiffed.

Spent all afternoon with Grimm last Monday. We smoked boo with his n, and the n’s brother, who had a terrific pong. Not quite nauseating. Bringing G some printouts today.

Have not heard from Dottie. What about Thanksgiving? When is Thanksgiving? Oh, it’s the 27th, that’s next week. Tomorrow is Moki’s birthday. I should do a memorial Mass for him, perhaps at St Malachy’s. Too late to schedule it for tomorrow but perhaps for next week, anniversary of his death, the 24th or 25th. Feast Day of St. Moki.

A bit after midnight at Rem Schoen’s on East 70th Street, early Thursday morning. I was a bit pissed off to learn I was being dropped from Eddie Song next Sunday (‘they found someone else’—probably someone more confident with the Hoyer), but now sitting here at Rem’s, drinking a little v I snuck in, and trying to pay attention to her when she talks when she’s not always lucid and can’t make out my replies (doesn’t have hearing aid in), I realize I really hate this stuff. I was feeling rather triumphant the last couple of days, thinking I’d have maybe $900 hitting the WF acct on Friday, but really that’s nothing. Downloaded all my paystubs from Anchor this afternoon. Now that’s four months so far, and the net pay in that time is tiny. I mean, I didn’t think it would be much, but…oh wait, 4489 YTD? More than I’d expected. Meaning year-end earnings for Anchor alone will be nearly 8000. That plus nruns will be something like 14,000. Scary.

Rem coming in on her walker.

Shelves in R’s hallway by the door