Out on the Street

I did get my laundry done.

Also, I made it to the food bank. I found the with the Methodists you have to call ahead. This I had not done, so I started out to the Deacon's Pantry on east Charles Street. I went about six blocks to the west when I realized I was going west. This was a first. I do not recall ever confusing one of the compass points before. I headed east. They gave me a sack of fruit cocktail, Vienna sausages, marshmallow ducks, a box of macaroni and cheese, a tube of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and a couple of other items. Now, I understand why Connie would hit different food pantries.

Speaking of Connie, CC has been silent. I suspect she is blocking my calls as I block hers.

In the end, MW saved my backside.

I did make a trip to McClure's. I got a bottle of RC and of Frank's Hot Sauce and came back to fix dinner. Except I forgot the milk I needed for the mac and cheese. I had this low-grade headache and fixed two butter and bread sandwiches and warmed up a can of baked beans. No real help. I laid down, that did not get rid of the headache. When I found out what MW had done, I got a meal of real food. I feel better, just need to get some sleep tonight. At least, I hope all that helps with this fuzzy, scatter-shot brain I have tonight.

In prison, I read a story by Deborah Levy. I do not recall its title. However, I had hopes of catching up with her. So far, all I have done is read about her. She has been coming on while I was in prison. She still interests me. I think The Guardian's How Deborah Levy can change your life may explain why I think she would be worth pursing (if I now had the time!).

It’s a characteristic way for Levy to build character. But while the books are rooted in the physical, they also make room for the uncanny and the unexplained, for the sudden intrusion into a person’s consciousness of unwelcome memories or dark imaginings. “It would be very sad to have all the possibilities of the novel, this hot-air balloon, but to say, ‘I only write social realism and the hot-air balloon must never leave the ground,’” she told me. “That’s not how people’s minds work: people have very strange dreams, and thoughts, and daydreams, and associations.” She is, she said, very careful not to let her hot-air balloon float away into the clouds of fantasmagoria. It is all in the balance and control.

What also earths Levy’s work is her wit. “She is so amused, diverted and delighted by life,” said the actor Tilda Swinton, who is a fan. Her jokes, often wryly commenting on her own failings, make for a kind of intimacy, even complicity – “the kind of complicity that many of us can only relate to the dry land of childhood companionship”, said Swinton. Levy’s women, especially the “I” of the living autobiographies, fail as well as succeed; they have good days and bad. They are neither “feisty” and “gutsy” – those tiresome cliches – nor are they self-saboteurs, who put themselves down to ingratiate themselves with the reader. They are both real and offer an example of how to live well. When Levy was finding a way to write her living autobiographies, she searched for a voice that “was immensely powerful, immensely vulnerable; immensely eloquent and totally inarticulate. Because that’s all of us.”

I got two posts done this evening, and I think I will go back to them. The browser has a bunch of tabs open - had them open most of the evening, there was this problem of concentrating. Then I started playing The Who off of YouTube. That has helped dispel the fuzziness.

Donald J. Trump was indicted without plunging the country into chaos. I tried listening to him, he preempted Superman & Lois. The man sounded delusional, spewing crazy stuff about Presidents taking boxes of papers home, of Biden sending papers to Chinatown, of Biden raking in millions, of being raided by armed FBI agents. I know about nuts; I see one when I look in the mirror. Biden may be old, but he has a firm grip on reality.

Scariest thing about Trump is he has me agreeing with Mona Charen. She published Who’s Really Undermining the Rule of Law? which includes the following:

Another risk is that by going first with a case about hush money (if that is indeed what is charged), Bragg will have limbered up the GOP’s partisanship muscles. “Where is the indictment of Bill Clinton for similar conduct?” they will demand. Admittedly, this Republican party is extremely far gone in the bad faith department. But if the first indictment had come from Fani Willis regarding solicitation of election fraud, or from Jack Smith concerning conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress, or obstruction of justice, the whataboutism would be a bit more difficult to muster. They could not ask “Where is the indictment of Biden for soliciting election fraud?” But now, those additional indictments, if and when they arrive, will be slotted more easily into the “They’re Just Out to Get Trump” folder that Republicans have conjured.

None of that casts any cloud on the lawfulness of what Bragg has done. Trump’s lawyer/fixer went to prison for this crime. There is no question that a crime was committed. Bragg has followed the rules. Trump will get his day in court. He will have every opportunity to argue his innocence to a jury of his peers.

By contrast, Republican officials and officeholders who are rallying around Trump are implicitly and sometimes explicitly endorsing his attacks on the justice system. Keep in mind that Trump has denounced the African American district attorney as a “Soros-funded animal.” He has called the prosecution a “witch hunt.” And he has encouraged his supporters to violently protest his indictment. That is what Republicans are sanctioning. GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel declared that the indictment “endangers us all.” Tucker Carlson offered that it was “probably not the best time to give up your AR-15s.” Nikki Haley sniped that it was about “revenge rather than justice.” Mike Pence denounced the indictment as “outrageous.” Ron DeSantis vowed to defy his constitutional duty and refuse to extradite the accused. Kevin McCarthy accused Bragg of “irreparably damaging our country in an attempt to interfere in our presidential election” and of “weaponizing our sacred system of justice” which, he continued, “the American people will not tolerate.” In the wake of Trump’s calls for people to “PROTEST! PROTEST! PROTEST!” to say nothing of January 6th, it strains credulity to believe that McCarthy himself is not flirting with incitement.

I will close out thinking of Trump and one of his predecessors. I had a great-aunt who told me at a very young age of D.C. Stephenson. She spoke of him as one might speak of a cesspool. Today, this came through from CrimeReads: When the Klan Ruled Indiana – And Had Plans to Spread Its Empire of Hate Across America. She voted straight ticket Republican, was adamantly pro-choice, and thought Richard M. Nixon was a crook. I have few doubts of her reaction to Trump.

And there I leave you tonight.

 sch 10:50 pm