Welcome to another late afternoon edition of Wise Madness. At least this time I have an excuse, I was a dirty-stay-out-late, as my parents would say, partying to all hours of the night. I was at the Hudson West Folk Festival volunteer party.
A brief excursion into my head, it is now an hour after I started writing. I went on the Internet to make sure I had the Hudson West URL right and that led me down the rabbit hole. I wrote three emails, Went to the bathroom, scooped the cat litter, and I’m about to get up again as I think I never poured my second cup of coffee. BRB. This is bad, I had my second cup. Does the fact that I didn’t know that mean I need a third cup? Perhaps I’m zombie made animate by the power of coffee. It would explain a lot, especially my craving for brains.
The part was at Gidge (both g’s are soft) and Loyse’s (low-ease is close) house in Jersey City. I just discovered that their neighborhood is the historic Paulus Hook, Revolutionary War New Jersey. Katherine told me that, indexers learn many wonderful things.
During the day it’s pretty easy to get there, I have several choices and got there 20 minutes later than I wanted to because people at that PATH train just stood on the escalator with the train in the station and by the time I hit the platform the doors were closing. Not that I’m bitter. The world is lucky I express my rage by casting shade in my blog, not violence. Perhaps I should say that I’m lucky, I wouldn’t do well in prison, since Johnny Cash died not many good concerts.
I think that Katherine and I were the only ones to make the trip across the Hudson to the party. It was an interesting mix of people, an inordinate number of which had spent significant time in Africa. I’ve only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights. The food was largely vegan but there was grilled meat. As a meatan I was happy. Of course the sweets were designed to kill me, peanut butter coated apples, I’m allergic to the apples not the peanuts, and chocolate with almonds; I’m allergic to the almonds not the chocolate. I blame Marion Halliday, she started the folk tradition of trying to induce anaphylactic shock in me.
I have a confession to make. I am exaggerating for humor. I am not afraid of anaphylactic shock, my only reaction would be an itchy tongue and lips, and perhaps some swelling in my throat. I’m not someone that needs to carry an EpiPen.
I had a lovely evening talking to fun people. I wasn’t the first to arrive, a rarity, but Katherine and I were among the last to leave. We had to race to get out of there by 1:35, to catch the PATH back to New York. I thought we missed it but the information on the screens was wrong. The train was 15 minutes late. When we got to the World Trade Center we found something interesting going on. Police in combat gear and bloody bodies on the floor. Most of the bloody bodies were sitting up and talking. Was it the Zombie Apocalypse? I suspect it was but the sign said that it was a drill. I was thinking for a hostage situation but as almost all the civilians were covered in blood it must have been training for the aftermath of a terrorist attack. There were medical personnel and equipment all over the place. We took pictures. I didn’t hear it but Katherine heard one of the cops ask if we should be forced to leave for taking pictures. They didn’t. There were no signs saying, “no pictures.” But my taking the picture led to me discovering a disaster. I had noticed that starting at John Platt’s On Your Radar on Tuesday my pictures were coming out cloudy. It was like looking through my cataracts. I tried cleaning the lens to know avail. When I couldn’t get anything decent last night I looked at the lens. The lens cover was broken. I was taking a picture half through broken glass. I’m going to have to get up early tomorrow and take my phone to be fixed. There are a number of phone stores in the neighborhood. I have to find one that does repairs and can get it done in one day. I hope it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
I better get going, I have to pick up a prescription and the pharmacy closes early on weekends. I have more to say but on the bright side it gives me more to write about tomorrow.
Wise Madness 