Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Trumptanic

My god, is it Xmas already?  For pundits and comedians, the Trump campaign has been the gift that keeps on giving.  As someone on Fark put it, “I’m not sure I can handle this much schadenfreude so early in the day”.

And it’s Bill Clinton’s 70th birthday — coincidence?

Fark, as usual, scores with the best headline, "Paul Manafort has resigned from the Trump campaign in order to spend more time at his summer home in Kiev”.

If half the stories about his Russian connections are true, he may soon be flat-sharing with Snowden.  Perhaps, as one Farker suggested, they could do a sitcom.

Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall the Clinton campaign bringing up Manafort’s dodgy past working for the corruption-laden pro-Russia party of Ukraine’s former president Victor Yanukovych.  Even Trump's illegal solicitation of foreign campaign contributions was dismissed as incompetence.  But you can imagine what a meal the Trump campaign would have made of any whiff of wrongdoing by a Clinton staffer.

Is Hillary even campaigning at this point or just sitting back and waiting for Trump to open his mouth again?  I’d say you could set your watch by his gaffes, but there may be more than one an hour.  His outreach to black voters could not have gone worse if David Duke had been manning the teleprompter.

Being a Trump advisor must be the easiest job in the world.  Since he listens to no-one and does exactly as he pleases, you just collect your cheque for doing sweet fuck all.  I’m currently job hunting.  If I had no morals or scruples whatsoever, I’d get in on a piece of that.

We've moved beyond dumpster fire to Port-a-Potty inferno.

As amusing as this is on some levels, it is also disheartening and alarming that there are people stupid and ignorant enough to vote for Trump.  No matter how thoroughly his campaign self-conflagrates between now and November, there will still be voters who will tick his name on the ballot.  If this Daily Show segment was not staged, I give up all hope for the future.  Some columnists, like Nicholas Kristof here, think that Trump is making Americans meaner.  Of course, he is merely serving as a catalyst to encourage latent attitudes to bubble to the surface.  The meanness, and the sexism, racism, and xenophobia, were always present in Americans but most major party candidates in the last 50 years had been careful to keep their calls to those voters at the proverbial dog whistle level.  The Republican party feigned chagrin when Trump made those appeals openly.  And everyone else delighted in their discomfiture (there’s a surfeit of schadenfreude going around this election season).  This is the party the Rethugs were creating by serving the policy interests of the rich by getting the poor to vote against their own interests with coded appeals to the basest social conservative attitudes.  

They had a great bait and switch game going:  Obscure the fact that your policies are making life harder for the majority of your voters by feeding into the rawest human instincts to blame the Other.  Scapegoating to deflect attention from their own policies has been their MO for decades.  And a black Muslim community organiser from Kenya as president just made it that much easier, not to mention a female candidate as their opponent.  Blame immigrants, blame blacks, blame women, and don’t look too closely at what we’re actually not doing to help you.  Then Trump comes along and misses the dog whistle part, embarrassing the GOP.  Except…it works:  The base the party has cultivated gives Trump the nomination.  Some prominent GOPers were gobsmacked.  Apparently, they’ve never heard the old expression “you reap what you sow”.

On the academic side, some political scientists, such as Larry Sabato, view Trump as an anomaly: "I'm old enough to have closely followed the 1964 and 1972 presidential campaigns, so I've seen the parties commit suicide before….the grass roots of the party can occasionally rebel and conquer the establishment, as Goldwater, McGovern, and most of all, Trump prove."  But other scholars, like rising star Matthew MacWilliams, warn that Trump is an omen of authoritarians to come: "Trump's authoritarian, ascriptive message is not an anomaly in American history. Its success in 2016, however, is and represents a potentially concerning development for Madisonian democracy (and civil society). Trump's core support is firmly rooted in authoritarianism that, once awakened and stoked, is a force with which to be reckoned. Democracy is about compromise. Authoritarianism is about us-versus-them."  The rest of that debate is here.

Trump himself even seemed a little surprised he got that far.  He didn’t give a flying fuck about the GOP platform (although he did tone down the clownish orange hair to a less risible trust-me-I'm-a-grandfather grey – someone overruled him there) but it somehow sank in that, as a Republican candidate, he had to parrot some basic Republican policy positions.  Except he doesn’t share these views or grasp the nuances of how the GOP uses them to appeal to social conservatives, so his parroting was more like a parody. When he pretended to be opposed to abortion (he is most assuredly in favour of it, especially for unattractive women and minorities), he made the logical leap to prosecuting women for having illegal abortions.  Except the GOP doesn't go there - the standard rhetoric is to punish providers but treat women as victims.  Oops, Trump didn’t get that nuance, and none of his advisors (he hires the “best people” doncha know) filled him in.  Then he paid perfunctory lip service to the current GOP campaign to defund Planned Parenthood because they provide abortions, but he made the mistake of saying they do good work for a lot of women, not realising he was supposed to vilify the entire organisation as a satanic tool of the anti-Christ.  Whoops again.  And so it goes.  His remarks on abortion and Planned Parenthood make a superficial kind of sense - if abortion were illegal, then why wouldn’t women who sought abortions be punished for violating the law, and if the objection to Planned Parenthood is that it provides abortions, why not distinguish that from its other healthcare services.  But the abortion issue is used by the GOP in a purely emotional way; there is no real desire on the part of the party to outlaw abortion or even reduce its occurrence.  It’s purely a vehicle for securing votes, not making policy; it isn't supposed to make sense.

So, we have the overt appeals to the basest tendencies of the base, and the bungled parroting of GOP policy stances.  That’s two ways Trump has embarrassed the party for which he is technically now the party leader.  But we’ve saved the best for last: He pretends to take the side of the working classes, promising to promulgate (not that he knows that word) policies that would help them.  He doesn’t vow to end Social Security and repeal Obamacare; he says he is going to protect SS and replace Obamacare with "something great, something terrific”.  Now, to be fair, previous GOP candidates learned to tone down their rhetoric on gutting entitlements, especially Medicare and Social Security.  They could safely campaign on cutting off those deadbeats on welfare and foodstamps, but too many GOP voters were at or near 65 and glib calls to privatise Social Security or cut Medicare benefits proved to be political suicide.  Instead they kept up the rallying cry of tax cuts and more tax cuts but promised to preserve the entitlements that hardworking seniors had paid into.  How?  Well, they were always a bit circumspect about that part, maybe by cutting veterans’ benefits and education funds, eliminating the EPA, and that always convenient line to find money by cutting waste and fraud.  But Trump took it a step further by promising to help the working class economically.  The GOP had always persuaded the poor to vote against their economic interests using appeals to the socially conservative tendencies created by their ignorant myopia and religiosity.  The party never had to explicitly promise them anything economically; they didn’t have to be that disingenuous.  Just mention abortion or "states' rights" and they had the votes.

None of Trump’s promises are reality-based, such as ending free trade and bringing back blue collar manufacturing jobs, and of course he has no affinity with nor concern for the working class whatsoever, but combine these simplistic promises with his openly sexist, racist and xenophobic rhetoric, and the base goes wild.  He is telling them exactly what they want to hear.  Some pundits warn against being so scathingly condescending toward Trump’s supporters, to which I reply, why not?  They don't have a collective IQ of room temperature, and contempt is not tantamount to complacency.  The GOP, like a lawyer selecting a jury, has always favoured the uneducated and ignorant because they are easier to manipulate.  If you own an oil company, you want a populace who is taught creationism in the schools.  Much easier to convince such people that climate change is a liberal hoax than people who have had any science education.

Trump’s success has waned after the primaries in part due to his lack of understanding of electoral politics.  A certain percentage of the electorate, let’s call it 45% on each side, although that is just a simplification for explanatory purposes, will always vote R or D.  A tiny fraction of those one-party voters will bother to vote in the primaries, likely those who are most rabidly partisan.  In the primaries, candidates are trying to distinguish themselves from other members of their own party with whom they presumably share broad agreement on policy.  Usually, but not always (see: 2016 Republican primary) after the vitriolic dust settles, the parties pick the most moderate, presidential-looking and well-funded candidate.  The far-right and far-left fringe candidates on either side get weeded out as unviable and unpalatable to the majority (bye, bye Bernie).  The nominees then pivot to the general, where they are both going for the exact same voters: The 10% in the middle who are undecided.  The entire general election is about these undecided voters.  Now, it is more complicated than that when you factor in motivation — there are both undecided and firmly partisan voters who may not bother to go to the polls, and candidates need to inspire them, especially in swing states.  But the point is that in the general election campaign, both candidates need to fall all over themselves to seem as moderate and inoffensive to every constituency as possible.  They don’t have to worry about alienating their base — the dedicated D and R voters realise that campaign rhetoric is 50% bullshit and 50% horse shit, and they trust their party’s candidate to roughly toe the party line once elected (which does not translate to following the party platform, which is generally ignored by everyone and probably never even read by most candidates, let alone voters).  So far, there has been no sign that Trump is moderating his campaign rhetoric for the general or that he is even aware that this is a thing that candidates do and why.  Granted, if you're still an undecided voter in this election, you are too stupid to be allowed to vote.

Candidates also don’t waste money and time campaigning in all 50 states.  They skip states whose electoral votes have usually gone to the other party and appear likely to do so again.  According to Politico, 33 states have voted for the same party in the last five presidential elections.  The candidates know to focus on the larger swing states, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.  If the Electoral College were eliminated and the presidential election decided by the popular vote, it would dramatically change campaigning, likewise if more states gave out their electoral votes proportionally.  As it stands, candidates can target their ads and their appearances to only the swing states with the most electoral votes at stake.  Well, apparently Trump missed that memo, too.  He has been campaigning in blue states, including NY, CT, ME, and OR.  His staff says he is planning to go to Ohio at some point, but it doesn't seem to be a priority.

As Trump’s campaign continues to self-destruct, it's tempting to get complacent.  Don't.  No-one thought he'd win the primary either.  And there's another old saying: 

If you're sick of hearing about the election, (and, at this point, I think most of us cheered when comedian Lewis Black, on one of the final Nightly Show episodes, ordered: "If you wanna do it this long, then it has to stop Memorial Day weekend until Labor Day.  JUST SHUT UP!  It's the fucking summer, okay?") and you read just one story about the Olympics, make it the one about Steele Johnson.

Mountains, Moose, and Maple Syrup or "Drive North forever and don't lose heart!"

Vermont is the most beautiful place on earth, full stop.  Ok, so there is also this fairytale mountain castle:

& this fairytale mossy stream:

& this fairytale beach:

I would love to visit all of these places, especially here:

& here:

But not if it meant never seeing Vermont again.

If Vermont is the most beautiful place on earth, the most beautiful place in Vermont is the Northeast Kingdom (NEK).  My love affair with the NEK began in college when a book on display in the town's bookshop caught my eye.  (Clearly I didn't graduate from college recently.  An independent local bookshop: that dates me.)  I was drawn to the arrestingly gorgeous cover photo of an autumn morning glowing with the bright colours of fall foliage, mist shrouding a quaint farm in a valley, which encompassed everything I loved about Vermont in one image.  The book was called The View from the Kingdom.

I bought it and discovered that the northeast corner of the state of Vermont, comprising three counties, 2,000 sq. miles, and about 64,000 people, was christened the Northeast Kingdom by the state's governor in 1949.  White settlers came to the NEK relatively late—it lies outside the Green Mountain range, with a rocky landscape shaped by glaciers and a short growing season due to its northern latitude.  The people who live there are hardy, and, to a person, each owns a four-wheel drive pick-up truck, a huge stack of firewood, & little else.  A truck is the only way to get around in the winter, other than a sleigh, snowmobile, or skis, and a serious supply of firewood is the only way to survive it.  People are poor up there; farming and tourism sustain the local economy, such as it is.  Much like the Stockholm archipelago, the NEK is replete with glacial lakes.  The View from the Kingdom is divided into four sections, one for each season.  Three of them—Summer, Fall, Winter—are achingly beautiful.  The fourth, well, the less said about mud season, the better.

Lest you think I am exaggerating about how spectacular the NEK is, Wikipedia, hardly a bastion of effusive hyperbole, has this to say: "In 2006, the National Geographic Society named the Northeast Kingdom as the most desirable place to visit in the country and the ninth most desirable place to visit in the world."

The U.S. has a lot going for it scenically.  If the NGS says the NEK is the most desirable place to visit, that's saying something.

In the late 80s, a couple bought 20 acres in Irasburg and built a medieval-style castle on it.  It has its own airstrip in a cleared field where you'd expect to find cattle—the husband was a pilot.  So, ah, a somewhat unusual mix of old and new.  In 2008, they decided it was time to take their aging bones to warmer climes.  They hung a For Sale sign from the ramparts and moved to the Southwest.  I can't articulate how much I wanted this castle.  Any place I buy must have flat land for horses and virtually no piece of property is flat in the NEK.  The land used for the airstrip would have been perfect. (And I could remake Ladyhawke in my backyard.)  City Boy was a medieval historian and we'd often fantasized about building a castle when we struck it rich.  But the NEK is a far too isolated for year-round living—you have to go 100 miles to find an opera and twice that to find a Starbucks.  Of course, it was a pipe dream anyway—I could no more afford a castle than kiss a toad and expect him to turn into a prince.

I've never had the money to go on a proper holiday, but I needed an excuse to finally visit the NEK.  I found it in a race called the Kingdom Run.  It's a multi-distance race, with a choice of 5K, 10K, or half-marathon, following an out-and-back course along a dirt road.  It's all uphill both ways—your grandfather's stories were true.  The race starts and finishes on the quaint Irasburg common, opposite the wee town library with its armchairs and fireplace that would be so inviting on a dark winter day.  All proceeds from entry fees go to the NEK spay/neuter program.  Lest you forget the good cause the race is supporting, the mile marker signs have paw prints painted on.  The route passes the castle, a local curiosity and landmark, and the race t-shirts feature a line drawing of it.

The first year I ran it, I brought City Boy and my dog.  I could only find one dog-friendly place to stay, a motel that seemed to cater to fishermen, with a depressing film noir vibe.  (I'm not a motel kind of girl.)  But the young couple who had just purchased it planned to fix it up, and it did have a little stream in which the dog could cool his paws.  We asked about dog-friendly dinner options (i.e., places with outdoor seating) and were directed to a pizza joint in the middle of nowhere.  Following the directions along tiny, winding dirt roads, I could not believe there was going to be a restaurant at the end.  But not only was it there, it was packed.  You have to bear in mind that everywhere is the middle of nowhere in the NEK, and you never know what you might find (including bears).

Second time I brought a friend and we stayed at a Swedish B&B up in Newport.  This little overnight jaunt ended up becoming quite the adventure.  On the way up, just as we passed White River Jct., the clutch on my car gave out.  It was the original clutch and the car had about 174K miles on it.  It had been slipping on occasion and I knew I was going to have to replace it eventually but I didn't know it would suddenly decide to give up the ghost 100 miles from home.  I turned around and tried to coax it back down I-91 but it would not stay in any gear so we had to pull over and ring AAA.  They only tow within 100 miles and we just squeaked in at about 99.8.  We had to endure the drive back in the cab of the tow truck with the ancient toothless driver who, although perfectly nice, talked only about fishing.  My Volvo repair guy took pity on me and gave us a loaner car, and we started out all over again, after buying some overpriced hot bar food from Whole Paycheque as we realised everything would be closed by the time we got to Newport.  The B&B was quaint and its owner friendly, quite expensive but the Swedish aesthetic made it a must-try for me.  Alas, as we chatted with the owner after our very late arrival, and got the grand tour, her little dog discovered my overpriced hot bar dinner and ate it.  Ah, well, it was that kind of day.  The next morning I had to leave for the race so my friend generously offered to eat my share of the Swedish breakfast.  What are friends for, right?  I know I can always rely on her that way.

"All visitors are expected to return to their
country of origin following performances."

After the race, we decided to visit Derby Line, a town that straddles the border, with the Canadian half called Stanstead.  I wanted to see the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, built right on the border, and the B&B owner had recommended a bakery to try on the Canadian side.  In the Haskell, the audience sits in the U.S. and the stage is in Canada.  In the library portion, the circulation desk is in the U.S. but the books are in Canada.  There is a line painted on the floor to show the international border.  During the Vietnam War, draft dodgers met with their families here.  As long as they did not put a toe over the line, they were safe from arrest.

Yes, that is a horse hitched at a petrol station
convenience store in Derby Line.

Prima facie, the town looked normal, but there was something eerie about it.  Pre-9/11, border security was virtually non-existent.  Except for major thoroughfares with border patrol for cars, no markings existed along the streets to indicate the border, and pedestrians and cars were free to cross unmolested.  The line goes through the middle of residential streets, across parks and backyards, through houses and factories.  Oh, also restaurants—I'll leave you to guess what happened during Prohibition.  Post 9/11, everything abruptly changed.  New border patrol guards were sent to the town as the old ones refused to enforce the new rules on their families, friends and neighbours.  There are still no visible markings to show when you cross the border but, if you do, whether inadvertently or on purpose, border security appears out of nowhere, in vehicles, with foghorns or via helicopter.  There are cameras everywhere: that eerie feeling turned out to be an (accurate) sense of being watched.  Whilst looking for a parking space to walk to the bakery, we accidentally crossed the border four times.  Yes, four.  And, after having our car searched at length and being treated like potential terrorists (two girls in sundresses, really TSA?), we were really trying not to cross it.  We heard a story about a man who lives on the U.S. side across the street from his married daughter on the Canadian side.  He used to walk directly across the road to have dinner at her house.  But when he tried to do that post-9/11, cameras brought security down on him.  He refused to stop until he was repeatedly arrested and fined for violating new rules that require going through an official border crossing with a passport.  I shit you not:  You cannot walk across the street anymore, even though there is no visible barrier or security personnel.  It is surreal.

One final odd anecdote from that bizarre trip was that the woman behind the counter in the bakery (Yes, we eventually parked on the U.S. side and walked there, showing our passports for the 5^th time as we crossed on foot at an official border crossing.  We noticed that most of the businesses along each side of the border had closed since 9/11 – it was depressing.) claimed not to speak English.  My French was adequate to the task but I find it impossible to believe someone living there, although technically in Francophone Quebec but within a mile of the U.S. border, had never learned a word of English.

My recent trip was solo.  The clutch was fine this time—this one had better last another 174K miles—but the A/C does not work, something that never bothered me until I tried to take a road trip in 90F+ weather.  I can't abide having the windows open at highway speeds, so, by the time I arrived, I could literally wring my clothes out.  Also, my CD player hasn't worked since last fall.  I tried to tune in radio stations along the way but didn't have much luck.  I heard a bizarre story on Vermont's NPR station about a high school basketball game in the South in the early 90s in which a team of two players (the others having been sent off for fouls, which are the equivalent of a red card) somehow beat a team of five players.  Not sure why this was news 25 years later but they made it into a weirdly gripping tale for a captive audience.

I love driving I-91 in Vermont because there is almost no traffic.  And the further north you go, the more it thins out.  Virtually all the plates are from out of state as tourists ascend in all seasons (except spring; no-one goes to Vermont in mud season, with good reason).  And everyone drives at least 80mph so you can make decent time.  This is partly because the drivers are from states like CT, NY, and NJ, where that's the norm, but mainly because everyone knows Vermont's state trooper has better things to do.  Vermont also has the best rest stops, built to look like barns, clean and full of tourist maps and local artefacts.

I always smile at the "MOOSE STAY ALERT" signs.  It's so considerate of Vermont to remind the moose to stay alert when crossing the Interstate.

I stopped in White River Jct. for dinner, because I know where to find a bathroom there and it's roughly the halfway point.  It's a quiet historic railroad town.  At the Co-op I bought organic vegan linguini with organic kale pesto and maple sap to wash it down.  It doesn't get much more Vermont than that.  If only I'd had some nutritional yeast to sprinkle on top in lieu of parmesan.

My destination was about a half hour outside of a town that I figured must have an ice cream stand.  Didn't take me long to find it (I have a reliable homing instinct for ice cream) and I chose a combo of raspberry and dark chocolate gelato.  The teen girl behind the counter gushed about how good that sounded.  What, like I'd choose a bad ice cream combo?

The final part of the journey was along dirt roads.  There is no cell service in most of the NEK so your GPS won't help you -- you have to write down your directions the old-fashioned way.  Even if you note the miles between each turn, you will start to wonder if you took a wrong one somewhere, and if you are ever going to reach your destination.  Reeve Lindbergh (yes, daughter of Charles and Anne), the writer of The View from the Kingdom, famously tells guests trying to negotiate the dirt roads to reach her farmhouse, "Drive North forever and don't lose heart!"

Moose are a popular decorating theme in the NEK.

Moore moose.

Did I mention the moose decorating theme?

It was difficult to find a place to stay this time.  I had planned the trip before I left my job and could now no longer afford to go.  Not that I was going to let that stop me.  Because of the early morning race, I couldn't take advantage of the breakfast included in the price of a B&B but I didn't want to stay in a skeevy motel alone.  Every place I rang was either fully booked, too expensive, and/or had a check-out time that precluded going back to shower after the race, which was non-negotiable.  Luckily, the place I found turned out to be perfect.  It was a log cabin-style house with four guest rooms on the ground floor, family living upstairs.  The couple that run it had been coming up at weekends for over a decade and finally decided, screw it, we can work remotely, we're staying for good.  It was a bit of an adjustment for their two sons, but they are more relaxed and happy now, despite the inns and outs of running a guest house.

Think I brought enough yarn?

The only drawback was the lack of WiFi, but I was able to get enough cell reception to make calls and check my email on my phone and I took advantage of being untethered from my computer to finish a book and start knitting for my sister's baby (niece Ada Sofia was born last week – I'm a little behind schedule).

They say that athletes should be abstinent the night before a competition or risk their night time performance compromising their performance the next day.  But the only way I was going to place in my age group was if I were the only one running in my age group, which, in this particular race, was a real possibility.  But as I am single, it was a moot issue.

The drive to Irasburg took me the length of Lake Willoughby, one of the most spectacular of the region's glacial relics.  I spotted parking and beaches at both the northern and southern tips and was determined to go jump in the lake, literally, after the race.  But it was only in the 60s and the drizzle picked up into a steady rain as the race began.  I counted around 20 participants, all of whom left me far behind before we'd even crossed the common.  I was only about 4 miles in before the rest of the field passed me on their way back from the turnaround point.  We were running on the left side of the dirt road, against "traffic" (I use that term loosely as I saw far more horses, cows, and alpaca than cars), but at about mile 5, a race official in a pick-up truck pulled up alongside me to warn me to cross over to the right for awhile as there was a bees' nest ahead on the left and 5 or 6 runners had been stung.  That heads'-up was quite literally the only advantage to being last.

I didn't take this photo (remember it was pissing down rain)
but this is Lake Willoughby on a nicer day.

The course is peaceful and only the chronic pain in my back, the chilly rain, and the humiliation of being dead last kept me from enjoying it more.  I tried to adjust my posture to ease my back but nothing helps.  I have tried to accept that I am never going to get to the bottom of what's causing it and to just carry on despite it and not let it circumscribe my life so much.  It has cut into my marathon training far too much already and I simply need to suck it up and learn to ignore it.  So, I gritted my teeth and did just that.

When I got to the turnaround point, a race official in a pick-up truck collected the signs and cones, and the volunteers, who had been waiting just for me, finally got to get out of the rain.  As I made my way back along the course past each water stop and intersection, the truck followed and picked up the race paraphernalia behind me.  I apologised to the volunteers at each station, using my "I'm not built for speed" line.  But the pick-up truck crawling alongside me was spoiling the tranquillity of the route and I finally asked him not to follow me.

When the rest of the runners passed me on their way back, each shouted the usual encouraging drivel, "You're a champion!", "Lookin' good!", "Keep going, you can do it!", etc.  In NYC, I used to give everyone the finger and curse them out volubly when they did this, but I don't want to risk being asked not to return to my favourite race, so I forced myself to ignore them.  As I approached the finish line, I was dreading having to run the gauntlet of the remaining crowd's clapping and condescending encouragement.  As if it isn't humiliating enough to finish last, the artificially cheery, patronising "Look at you!  You did it!  You're a winner!" makes one feel like a retard completing an event in the Special Olympics.  But I had no choice if I wanted to finish.  The finish line was being taken down as I crossed it but cross it I did, and I managed to keep my temper and confine myself to snapping, "There's no glory in last place."  One reason I love this race is because there are so few people, and they are so nice, but I will never be able to tolerate that condescending nonsense.

I ran hard for the entire race.  I never slowed down and never walked.  I don't approve of people walking in races—if you have to walk, you have no business entering.  I was never tempted to walk; I can pretty much run forever.  The problem is I can't do it fast.  My time was 3:01, with an average pace of 13:46.  For comparison, the winner finished in 1:18.  The winner of the last NY Marathon finished in 2:05.  Yes, he ran twice as far in nearly an hour less.  I was 6^th out of 6 in my age group, with the next-to-last finisher 13 minutes ahead of me.  There was one runner in the race older than me, a 68-year-old man who finished in 2 hours.

I used to fret over how slow I am.  When I started running in 2001, I test-ran a mile full-out at my absolute limit, in 8:30.  My race pace at that time was around 10:15.  Since I started running again this spring, I have rarely managed a pace faster than 14:00.  They say to predict your marathon time, double your half-marathon time and add 15 minutes.  For the NY Marathon, it's now add 30 minutes because they are letting over 40,000 runners in.  This means that the first two miles are so tightly packed that you can only shuffle, sardine-like, shoulder-to-shoulder in the crowd.  I hate that, but unless you are an elite runner let out at the front, you're stuck.  It really drags down times; you simply can't make up for such a slow start.  But that calculation would put me at 6:30 and that is simply unacceptable.  I finished my first NY Marathon in 5 hours.  Granted, I was 14 years younger and 40 lbs thinner, but my goal is to beat that time this November.  Somehow, despite my fucking back, in the next 2 ½ months I have to get a heckuva lot faster.

But back to the NEK.  I was, alas, soaked to the skin and shivering after running 3 hours in the rain and rather than stop for a dip in Lake Willoughby, I put the heat on in the car and headed back to the guest house for a long, hot shower.  Someday, though, I must swim there.  I love to swim and have wanted desperately to swim every summer, but there is no place to do so where I live.

I was supposed to drive home at that point but I was so enchanted by the tranquillity and beauty of the landscape that I decided to stay another night.  I am supposed to be applying for jobs and taking care of myriad "to do's" but I have felt too burned out, especially since I have had to deal with an unexpected family crisis that occurred, with impeccable timing, the day before my farewell party at work.  It's an intractable and frustrating situation, easily solvable with money I don't have, that has piled stress on top of burn out.  I couldn't afford to stay but I just could not bring myself to leave.  I need a proper vacation, by which I mean significant time away from all problems and stress.  But that's not gonna happen.

Yes, those are onion rings on my
sandwich, with fries on the
 side. Because diner.

I went to a cute old-fashioned diner in town for a late lunch, and then more ice cream.  The following morning, the guest house owners suggested another breath-taking lake to check out before I headed home.  It had finally stopped raining but mist still hung over it.  There were only 4 cabins at one end; the rest was forest preserve.  A trail beckoned but I would never hike alone due to fear of rapists/murderers/bears.  Still, I couldn't resist the lure of that wide old logging road and walked as far as I dared.  I tried to take photos but could not capture the look and feel of either the trail or the lake with my phone.  I am not exaggerating when I say that lakeside was the most peaceful place I have ever been.  It was all I could do to force myself to leave.  And I live in a beautiful rural area, a tourist destination in itself.  I don't take that for granted.  But the NEK speaks to me in a way that nowhere else does.

If I can finagle it financially, I'm going back in the fall foliage season, alone or, preferably, with someone to hike with so I can follow the siren call of those trails without fear.

The View from the Kingdom has travelled the world with me and still resides in a place of honour on my coffee table.   Someday, I will own property in the NEK, even if it is a log cabin and not a castle.

Fun New Game

On Monday I played a game called “Let’s try giving our 3-year-old stud colt his first bath”.  I’d hosed him down before, but always outside, where he could see his friends, move around, and graze. A proper bath with soap and scrubbing in the wash stall was a new experience.  I had only 3 simple objectives:

1) Survival
2) Stay drier than the horse
3) Nice-to-have-but-not-critical objective: Horse winds up cleaner than he started

How did we do?

1) Everyone survived.  Some of us have bruises.
2) Uh, this one wasn’t that important anyway.
3) Amazingly, I think this one might have been achieved.

Silas loves water so much he must be part sea-horse so I wasn’t worried about that aspect, more about taking him away from his herd, into the other barn with horses he’d never met, and being required to stand still and behave in cross-ties in the dim, echoey wash stall.  He has the attention span of a gnat with ADD and he makes it very clear when he is bored and done being good - and 1,000 lbs of bored stallion can be, um, interesting in an enclosed space.

Trainer recruited a barn slave to observe the proceedings and be available to run get her if necessary.  The initial wetting down and soaping up went well.  He even stood still to let me scrub his mane and feathers.  I kinda let the tail slide as I didn’t want to press my luck.  I also didn’t try sheath cleaning — I don’t have a death wish.  Though I make a point to touch his sheath each time I groom him.  That is not nearly as kinky as it sounds.  He has to get used to people touching him there, and, so far, he doesn’t seem to object.  I recruited the barn slave to help with the soaping and scrubbing so she’d feel useful and not just slouch there in moody teenage fashion.  Her name was Pinkie, which makes her sound like a character out of "Grease”.  One immutable fact about barns:  There is no shortage of horse crazy girls hanging around eager to help groom or braid or cool out your horse for you after a ride.  I should know - I was one of them.

Trouble started with rinsing.  Despite his love of water, he was getting antsy in the wash stall, and he broke out of one of the cross-ties (they have an emergency release, so he didn’t break it).  I patiently tied him back in and finished rinsing.  He stood admirably still for the strigil — it was a new sensation and he loved it with his usual feline shameless hedonism.  Final task was rubbing conditioner in his mane and attempting to comb out the tangles.  More antsiness ensued and then someone brought a strange horse into the barn and that was it.  He busted out of both cross-ties and barrelled past me to greet the new arrival.  On the way there, a mare stuck her head over her stall in mild curiosity (more, “Hmm, who are you?” than “Hello, sailor!”) and, with his ADD-like distractibility, he stopped abruptly to sniff noses with her. That gave me a chance to clip his lead rope on and get him outside.

I was upset that he was so naughty at the end but trainer was not — she thought his excitement was just typical young horse behaviour (not stallion-like, no aggression at all) and that he’d done well for a first bath.  He does need to grasp the concept of standing still without complaint for as long as mom wants him to do so.

When I was hand-grazing him as he dried off, he took a piss, and did not stop grazing.  Yup, even as that pee hit the ground with force and splashed him on the chin, he didn't raise his head and stop eating even for a second.  Boys!

Clean horsie.  This lasted 5 seconds.

So, am I officially an adult now?

I just bought a mattress, for the first time in my life.  (Alas, I didn’t see this article on the best mattresses for sex until the next day.  Luckily, it’s so crappy & poorly written that it wouldn’t have made a difference.)

What prompted me to make such an expensive, adult-like purchase?  It's kind of a long story, but, like many such tales, it comes down to pain.

In high school, I bought myself a futon.  It was so much cooler than a conventional mattress & box spring, not to mention cheaper.

& I did the same thing in college, selling that futon to some gullible incoming student when I graduated.

When I moved to Scotland in 1997, I wasn’t living in a dorm or a furnished flat for the first time in my life & I needed some semblance of a bed.  I did, literally, sleep on the floor until I got some temp work & could scrape together the money for a futon.  It was made from organic cotton only, no foam or wool or other fillers.  Calling it “firm” would be generous; I’m not sure it was a huge improvement over the floor.  I shipped it overseas when I moved back to NYC, where it took up most of the floor space in my studio apartment.

I rather liked it on the floor but, when I moved up to MA, I decided it was time to treat myself to a frame, which I have rather charmingly strung with fairy lights.

By 2012, the cotton futon had gotten so compressed that it felt like I was sleeping on concrete.  City Boy bitched about it, too, & I gradually developed chronic lower back pain.  I was unemployed but at one point I was in such agony that I splurged on a cheap new futon, as documented at the time in this blog post.  It had springs in it to make it softer than a regular futon, almost a hybrid form of bedding.  City Boy, of course, refused to contribute to the cost but he did do one useful thing: he procured a feather mattress topper from a friend who was giving it away.

I put the futon & mattress topper on top of the old futon, princess & the pea style.  

It wasn't really a pea; the princess had tucked her
dildo under the mattress & forgotten about it.

For awhile, my back was better.  & when it wasn’t, it gave me an excuse to see my smoking hot chiropractor.

But over the last year, as my life has otherwise gotten better in every respect, my back has gotten worse.  Even sexy chiro can’t help at this point.  The springy futon feels comfy; I have no proof beyond circumstantial evidence that it's the source of the problem.  But I’ve begun to worry there might be permanent damage being done, not to mention how the lack of sleep ages me prematurely & drains my energy.  It affects my ability to focus on work or pleasure, makes me irritable, intrudes upon exercise, & generally circumscribes my life.  This is not the best time for me to be using up the last little bit of credit on the one credit card that isn’t at its limit, but if a new mattress fixes the problem, it will be worth the risk.

Part of fairy tale often left out: Goldilocks stopping to stir her
honey pot when she tried each bed.

I tried a bunch of mattresses, Goldilocks style, &, to be honest, it is difficult to tell in the showroom which will be comfiest in the long run.  I chose a mid-priced option — neither the cheapest nor the most expensive.  I couldn’t splash out on a luxury model, nor do I think all the bells & whistles are necessary, but the money would be wasted if I got a cheap-o model that wasn’t supportive or didn’t last very long.

Trying out the mattresses in the showroom, I was surrounded by couples, many of whom had just bought houses.  Some were buying mattresses for guest rooms, which struck me as a real luxury.  It seemed like such an adult thing to do, like buying property or insurance.  It made me wonder if we ever completely stop feeling like we are play-acting at being adults.  Everyone I’ve asked said that feeling never completely goes away.

Had to pay for delivery as I don’t know anyone with a truck, but they hauled away both old futons, which is convenient, as the alternative would have been to drag them into the garage for raccoons to nest in.  The cat, who hides under the bed when strangers come into the house, was deeply traumatized that it failed to be the safe hiding place she was used to.

The new mattress is so much higher than the futons that it almost completely covers the headboard.  I hope I can still hold onto it. 

History, Motherfuckers

On Tuesday, 26 July 2016, a major political party nominated a candidate for the office of president of the United States who does not have a penis.

No, not Catelyn Jenner.  She didn't cut it off; she wasn't born with one.  The nominee, Hillary Rodham (maybe should be Rodless?) Clinton is biologically, chromosomally female.  She birthed a baby, which dispels any doubt. Someday, MtoF transsexuals will undoubtedly have that ability, but the technology isn't there yet, despite the weird shit you read on the Internet.

Oh, wait, that makes it worse?  You're afraid of anyone with PMS having access to the nuclear codes?  She's a post-menopausal grandmother now, so I think you can rest easy on that score.

So, this is a historic moment.  There was also a historic moment 8 years ago when the same party nominated the first black presidential candidate.  (He won, BTW.)  Note that I said "the same party".  The other party just nominated a megalomaniac narcissist & a troglodyte fundie who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old.  That party nominated a woman for VP in 2008 you say?  Well, the Democrats did that back in 1984.  &--bonus—she wasn't dumber than a lump of moose poop.

Let's not do the Time Warp again, GOP, you unconventional conventionists

Speaking of dates, the 19^th Amendment establishing the right of all American women to vote was ratified on August 18, 1920.  Now, Barbie tells us that "math is hard" for girls, but even I can figure out that was nearly a 100 fucking years ago.

We have waited too fucking long for this.  Oh, do I cuss too much for a lady?  Too damn bad.

This is important.  This is history in the making. Whatever your policy views or your party affiliation, you need to appreciate this & remember how hard your mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, & great-great grandmothers fought for this day.

Jeannette Rankin, first lady in the House,
known for her interesting taste in hats. Not really.

When my grandmother was born, women could not vote for president, let alone be considered as viable candidates for that office.  The first woman was elected to the House in 1916, but we had to wait until 1932 for the first female Senator, and 1933 for the first female presidential cabinet appointee (Secretary of Labour).

When my mother was growing up, women were still required to quit many jobs when they married or had children, and they couldn't get a loan or credit without a man's signature.  It's not so very long ago that women took their husbands' name when they married because they went from being their father's legal property to their husband's property.  I remember, as a small child, being confused when I saw a clipping of a letter my grandmother had written to the local paper.  It was signed "Mrs." followed by my grandfather's full name.  Puzzled, I asked her why she hadn't signed her name, & she seemed equally puzzled by the question.  Her identity in the world was as a married woman; she was nobody on her own, without a husband's name behind her thoughts, her words.  Remember when Bill was first running for president and Hillary Rodham had to start using "Clinton" to placate the conservatives?  I wonder how my grandmother would react to the potential First Gentleman's speech, hearing him sing his wife's praises as the most qualified candidate to lead the richest, most powerful nation on earth.  Not because she is "Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton" but because of her own education, hard work, and accomplishments.  I like to think my grandma would be thrilled--and equally happy to have a granddaughter who will never, under any circumstances, take a man's name.

We still have a long way to go for women to achieve full social, legal, and economic equality, but this nomination is a major step in the right direction.