PopWars

My father loved this place, Johnson Pond, across from the entrance to public beach at Durand. It has its own ecosystem. His photo of a few dozen turtles perched on a floating log here was the panorama photo in the D&C. Joe Biden was his guy and he would be so happy.

I am happy to say goodbye to the days we’ve spent trying to figure why so many people like the orange one. The morning hours spent going to his Twitter page to hear it from the horse’s mouth. All those NYT opinion pieces that never quite summed up the rage. The attention we paid to his ghastly look. His family. The time we spent translating the huge banner the guy at the end of Hoffman has hanging off his deck – “Trump 2020 No More Bullshit.” The army of sycophants. The ugliness.

Goodbye.

I scheduled a dentist appointment for the first available slot. 8AM. But there were already three others in the small waiting room when I got there. I brought one of my N95s along, ones we bought at Home Depot before this whole thing started. I was trying to figure out why I was getting air in the sides when I realized I had it on upside down. They did a temperature check and gave my some mouth wash. The dentist had a portable Air Wash station next to the dental chair. I took off my mask and felt free.

Its almost like there is more at stake in this election than the selection of our next president.

The house on Peart Avenue that has the Raw Honey stand has always looked a little too funky to be buying produce from. Now they’ve put these signs in front of their stand just to scare away more customers. The first one is a little odd in that the team looks like they’ve put one over on us. And I have no idea what to make of the homemade one. “History will repeat itself in the time that it takes it’s people to forget what happened. Don’t forget what our Fore Fathers fought so hard for! Don’t forget the U. S. Constitution! Don’t forget we are the freest Country in the World Because of the U.S. Constition!!!”

“Only when it is dark enough can we see the stars.” – MLK

We had a zoom chat with my brother and sister-in-law over the weekend. It was going to be a dinner zoom but we eat early and they eat late so we watched them eat. We got into politics pretty quickly and all pretty much agree so the conversation moved along to the finer points.

I yammered on about the electoral college and how it minimizes the importance of voting for the type of government we want and need. NYT just identified 20 counties scattered in six swing states that could determine the presidency. That’s like Cambridge Analytica identifying the handful of “persuadables” and targeting them to sway the election. Everybody else might as well stay home.

There was some discussion of whether Obama had done all he could or whether what he did, or maybe by just being who he is, stirred up this racist backlash. I don’t blame Obama and maybe because of my new found focus on age, I suggested it wasn’t that long ago, double my lifetime plus thirty years that someone like me could own another person to do my chores. The arc is long unfortunately.

In 1968, the year my father took the photo above, the in-your-face racist, George Wallace running as a third party candidate, won the electoral college votes from five states and took almost 14% of the popular vote. While in Bloomington to watch the soccer match, my father and brother stopped up to my dorm room. I had a McCarthy poster on the wall and The Pill Is A No No poster of Pope Paul VI. My father got a big laugh out of the pope poster. He missed Trump’s reign but he always liked Biden and he would be so happy to see him win on Tuesday.

“Andy Warhol Portfolios: A Life in Pop” at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester features a broad range of the artist’s screen-printed imagery from 1964 to 1985. As I mentioned a few posts back, my brother, Mark, our friend Kim and Peggi and I pooled our money (Peggi and I took a loan out for $1800) and we bought 125/200 of the ten prints above. We bought them through the Ronald Feldman Gallery in 1980 before Warhol had made them. They became too expensive to insure so we sold them last year at Christies. They steal the show at the MAG.

Our good friend, Louise, has a piece in the premier edition of SUNY Oswego’s new literary art journal “Subnivian.” I have read “The German Crowd” a few times now and am struck by how it draws me in and sweeps me away, like a myth.

myth a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

It is so good to know there are still trails in Durand that we have not explored. We spotted one the other day and took it this morning. A rather steep path took us to a hilltop where we were imediatly challenged by a deer. I took it that way anyway. “What are you doing up here?”

I found a couple of those little pink flags, the ones mountain bikers use to mark a trail even though biking is not allowed on the trails. We stopped to admire a stand of white birch trees and found six or seven more deer sleeping in the brushwood. We had read that due to the lack of rain the deer won’t have enough to eat this winter. So protect your shrubs. The conditions are right for a good vintage of wine but the acorn count will be down.

Although we would much rather vote in person at the Sea Breeze fire department hall we opted for early contactless voting and dropped our ballets off at the town hall this morning. It’s an easy walk, just over two miles there, and it seemed to fly by this morning. We passed a couple on Titus, coming toward us, and both were wearing American flag masks. We took that to mean they had both just voted for Trump but we could be way off.

It was the first day of early voting and the line started at the corner of Titus and Kings Highway. It snaked down Titus around the library building and then came back to the an entrance off the parking lot. An easy hour wait for the privilege. We spotted someone carrying a big box and we made a beeline for him. We’re trusting he took them somewhere to be counted.

The Little Theatre is offering “White Riot,” for at home streaming. We watched it last night expecting it to be more about the Clash than it was. Racism was the focus and particularly the Rock Against Racism (RAR) guerrilla group. We really didn’t how vicious the National Front movement was or how much air they took up in England at the time. The Clash urgently addressed this of course and they helped crush the NF but it didn’t ring as loudly on this side of the pond.