Happy Birthday Barbara Hershey!

“I am afraid of being lazy and complacent. I am afraid of taking myself too seriously.”

Beaches


Picture Legend

1. Ms Barbara Hersey
2. At Hollywood High School 1964
3. 1968
4. Sarah Bernhardt
5. On “Gidget,” in 1965
6. “The Monroes: 1966
7. “The Invaders,” 1968
8. First movie, 1968 “With Six You Get Eggroll” with Doris Day
9. 1969‘s “Heaven with a Gun”
10. With David Carradine
11. Barbara and David’s 1972 Playboy spread
12. One of my favorite pictures of Barbara
13. “Last Summer” 1969
14. “The Pursuit of Happiness”
15. “Boxcar Bertha”
16. “Love Comes Quietly” 1973
17. With Robert Shaw in “Diamonds”
18. Haley Mills
19. With Carlton Heston in 1976‘s “The Last Hard Men”
20. With Peter O’Toole in 1980‘s “The Stuntman”
21. 1982‘s “The Entity”
22. With Sam Shepard in “The Right Stuff”
23. Legs
24. Opening shot of “Hannah and Her Sisters”
25. With Gene Hackman in “Hoosiers”
26. With John Mahoney and Richard Dreyfuss in 1987‘s “Tin Men”
27. With Jill Clayburgh in “Shy People”
28. Martha Plimpton in “Shy People”
29. Martha Plimpton today (or a couple of days ago actually)
30. In 1989‘s “A World Apart”
31. With Jesus, uh, er, William Defoe in “The Last Temptation of Christ”
32. With Bette Midler in “Beaches”
33. In “A Killing in a Small Town”
34. With Ed Harris in “Paris Trout”
35. With Michael Douglas in “Falling Down”
36. With Eric Idle in “Splitting Heirs”
37. In “Return to Lonesome Dove”
38. With Tom Berenger and some Dogmen in 1995‘s “Last of the Dogmen”
39. In “Portrait of a Lady”
40. In “Breakfast of Champions”
41. Barbara and Naveen Andrews
42. Barbara, Hector Elizondo, Mark Harmon, and Adam Arkin  of “Chicago Hope”
43. With some other actors on “The Mountain”
44. “Black Swan”
45. Smiley face
46. “Insidious”
47. The Queen of Hearts in “Once Upon a Time”
48. In “Damien” 2016
49. Voted “Hottest Over 60“ by everybody
50. Ms Hershey



   This morning it is my great pleasure and honor to give a great big Joyce’s Take Happy Birthday Shout Out to one of my very favorite actresses, Barbara Hershey!
   Like about half of the entire population of the planet Earth, Barbara Lynn was born at a very early age, as a tiny, wrinkly female infant, with no hair, at 10:01am - PST, about 7.2 miles (via the mighty 101 freeway) from where I’m writing this near downtown Los Angeles, in Hollywood, California, where they make all of the movies.
   The year was 1948, seven years before I got here.
   During this period in her life her last name was Herzstein, and not Hershey at all. Oh no, that would come a little later.
   Her dad, Arnold Nathan had that last name as well, and her mother, Melrose, used to be a Moore, but became a Herzstein when she married Arnold.
   Arnold was a horse racing columnist. His parents had come to the United States from Hungry and Russia. He was Jewish I am told.
   Many are.
   He was born in Manhattan, New York. Melrose came from Arkansas, just like my mom. She was a Presbyterian of Irish descent... like me, although I’m not a Presbyterian.
   I don’t know what I am really. I feel so lost.
   Barbara has two older siblings. No one knows if they were her brothers or sisters. Hell, maybe she had one of each!
   Only Barbara knows and she’s not talking.
   As she got older her family nicknamed her "Sarah Bernhardt," because she wanted to become an actress.     
   Sarah Bernhardt was a famous French stage actress.
   She attended Hollywood High School, which is perfectly reasonable. She was a good student... a member of the drill team and pom-pom squad.
   In 1965, when she was 17, either her high school drama teacher helped her find an agent, or she was discovered by a talent agent. No one knows which one.
   In any case she got an agent and landed a role on the Sally Field television show “Gidget.”
   “Gidget (a portmanteau of "girl" and "midget")” was about a surfing, boy-crazy teenager called "Gidget" and her widowed father Russ Lawrence, a UCLA professor.
   The very first episode in which Barbara appeared in was called “Chivalry Isn't Dead,” in which the Gidg decides that her boyfriend, Mark, needs to learn a little chivalry. She and her girlfriends all gather at her house for a pajama party to teach all their boyfriends a lesson (I’m not exactly sure how a pajama party translates into a lessen, but let’s move on).
   Well I certainly don’t blame them. There certainly isn’t enough chivalry in this Trump infested, soulless world.
   This episode aired on the very first day of December in 1965, and thus the world was first introduced to Barbara. Here’s a clip.
   By this time she had adapted the stage name Hershey.
   She appeared on three episodes of “Gidget,” which only lasted one season itself. She also appeared on two episodes of “The Farmers Daughter,” with Inga Stevens and William Windom, and 26 episodes of “The Monroes,” as young Kathy Monroe, a western about five orphans trying to survive as a family on the frontier in the area around what is now Grand Teton National Park near Jackson, Wyoming.
   Fortunately cannibalism never became a plot device.
   This was Barbara’s third acting job and it was the that of the female lead. Pretty damn good! It lasted only one season though, from September 7th of 1966 until March 15th, 1967, due to stiff competition from the likes of “Lost in Space, “ The Virginian (who’s star, James Drury, at one time owed my dad money from buying too much booze from my dad’s liquor store),” and the freaking  “Beverly Hillbillies.” Here’s a clip.
   According to The New York Times All Movie Guide, Barbara graduated from Hollywood High School in 1966, but David Carradine, in his autobiography, wrote that she dropped out of high school after she began acting.
   She kept working in television, on shows like “Daniel Boone,” with Fess Parker, “Run for Your Life,” with Ben Gazzara (who came into my dad’s store once), and a favorite of mine, “The Invaders,” with Roy Thinnes. Here’s the full episode of “The Invaders,” entitled “The Miracle,” with Ed Asner and Barbara.
   The first film she was in was 1968‘s romantic comedy “With Six You Get Eggroll,” with one of the most popular actresses ever, Doris Day, and with one of my favorite character actors, Brian Keith. The comedian George Carlin (one of my favorite human beings) made his film debut as well. Here’s a clip.
   In 1968 Barbara worked with Glenn Ford and Morticia Addams, uh, er, Carolyn Jones, in the western about a gun toting preacher in “Heaven with a Gun,” which was released in 1969.
   Here’s the trailer.
   Barbara would work with an actor named David Carradine in this movie. They began a domestic relationship that would last until 1975, having one son, who they named Free.
  Barbara was getting the reputation as being kind of a hippie girl... someone who would likely name her son Free (Free wasn’t putting up with this crap though, and would change his name to Tom when he was nine years old).
   Barbara and David would work together quite often. She would make guest appearances on Carradine’s television show “Kung Fu,” for example. They posed together in a nude Playboy spread, recreating some sex scenes from “Boxcar Bertha.”
   Unfortunately the relationship proved toxic to Barbara. She said that this period of her life hurt her career; "Producers wouldn't see me because I had a reputation for using drugs and being undependable. I never used drugs at all and I have always been serious about my acting career."
   Their  relationship fell apart around the time of Carradine's 1974 burglary arrest (high on peyote he had been walking around nude in his Laurel Canyon neighborhood at night when he broke into a house busting a window and cutting his arm. He bled all over the homeowner's piano. At some time during this episode he accosted two young women, allegedly assaulting one while asking, or demanding of her, if she was a witch (she was).  The police literally followed a trail of blood to his home. The burglary charges were dropped, as nothing was found to be missing, while Carradine pleaded "no contest" to the mischief charge and was given probation), when he began an affair with another actress who had appeared on “Kung Fu,” Season Hubley (who would later marry Kurt Russell). 
   1969 also saw Barbara in the X rated drama “Last Summer,” wherein she played Sandy, whose character persuades two young men to rape another girl, Rhoda, played by Catherine Burns (who would receive an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work in this movie) Here’s the trailer.
   A seagull died during the production of this film.
    "In one scene," Hershey explained, "I had to throw the bird in the air to make her fly. We had to reshoot the scene over and over again. I could tell the bird was tired. Finally, when the scene was finished, the director, Frank Perry, told me the bird had broken her neck on the last throw." Hershey felt responsible for the bird's death and changed her stage name to "Seagull" as a tribute to the creature. "I felt her spirit enter me," she later explained. "It was the only moral thing to do."
   So her name was Barbara Seagull for a while, due to advanced hippiness. However a lot of people didn’t care for that name change at all. When she was offered a part opposite Timothy Bottoms in “The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder,” in 1974, she was required to forfeit half her salary, $25,000, to be billed under the name "Seagull" because the producers didn’t like it, and were greedy bastards anyway.
   Barbara played a hippie surrogate mom in 1970‘s “The Baby Maker (sounds like a good name for an alcoholic drink).”
   While criticizing the directing and writing of James Bridges, critic Shirley Rigby said of the "bizarre" film, "Only the performances in the film save it from being a total travesty." Rigby went on to say, "Barbara Hershey is a great little actress, much, much more than just another pretty face."
   I agree.
   She worked with Michael Sarrazin in 1971‘s “The Pursuit of Happiness.” Here’s the trailer.
   In 1972 Barbara worked with Carradine again in Martin Scorsese’s second feature film, his first Hollywood produced film (good old Roger Corman, who is responsible for so many of the problems our nation now faces, produced the film), “Boxcar Bertha,” the fictionally true story of a girl and her boxcar.
   Shot in six weeks on a budget of $600,000, “Boxcar Bertha,” was a period crime drama, along the lines of Corman’s “Bloody Mama,” and Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde.”
   Working on the film, Barbara said “"was the most fun I ever had on a movie." Here's a clip.
  While filming she introduced Martin to Nikos Kazantzakis’s historical novel “The Last Temptation of Christ.” 16 years later, in 1988, they would both make a film version of the novel, he directed and she played Mary Magdalene. That film got an Academy Award nomination for the director and a Golden Globe nomination for Barbara.
   In 1974 she won a Gold Medal at the Atlanta Film Festival for her role in the Dutch-produced film “Love Comes Quietly."
   She worked with Robert Shaw, Richard Roundtree, and Shelly Winters (who happened to play the lead in Corman’s “Bloody Mama”) in 1975‘s “Diamonds,” a heist film made in Israel.
   1976 found her in “A Dirty Knight's Work,” with John Mills (father of my very first love, Haley) and my favorite character actor, Donald Pleasance.
   That year Barbara was cast in “The Last Hard Men (which suggests there are no more hard men around. Sorry ladies)," with Charlton Heston and James Coburn. Here’s a clip.   
   Barbara hoped the film would revive her career after the damage she felt it had suffered while she was with Carradine, believing that the hippie label she had been given was not a good thing, at least for her career. I know it never worked for me. She went back to her old name abandoning aquatic birds. Yet for the next four years, until 1980, all she was offered was work on crappy television movies, like “Flood,” with Robert Culp, a crappy 1976 disaster TV movie, and  “Sunshine Christmas,” a crappy 1977 Christmas romance TV movie, and “The Glitter Palace,” with Chad Everett, a crappy crime, drama, romance, lesbian 1977 TV movie.
   Not that work in television is bad, or inferior to feature films. It’s not.
   It’s just crappy, that’s all.
   Then in 1979 writer / director Richard Rush hired Barbara to star alongside veteran actor Peter O’Toole and Steve Railsback in “The Stuntman,” a very weird action/comedy/drama, concerning a man on the run from the law who takes shelter within movie production crew that’s on location. O’Toole plays the film’s director. Here’s a clip.
    “The Stuntman” premiered on June 27th, 1980.
   It was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Peter O'Toole. He lost to Robert De Niro in ”Raging Bull”), Best Director (Richard Rush. He lost to Robert Redford who directed ”Ordinary People”), and  Lawrence B. Marcus and Rush for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Alvin Sargent won for “Ordinary People”).
   Here's an interview with Barbara talking about the film.
   1982 saw Barbara in one of my favorite horror movies, “The Entity.” It’s one of my favorites not because she gets naked. By God, I’ve seen Barbara naked plenty of times before. It’s getting to the point that I wish she’d put some clothes on.
   “The Entity,” is a fictionalized account of what supposedly happened in real life to one Doris Bither, who claimed to have been attacked and raped by an invisible entity.
   Martin Scorsese considers “The Entity” one of the scariest horror films of all time. Here's the trailer.     
   Barbara appeared in the epic historical drama, “The Right Stuff,” playing the wife of test pilot Chuck Yeager, who was the very first person to break the sound barrier. In an airplane. A jet airplane.
   The next year, 1984, Barbara starred with Robert Redford in the baseball drama, “The Natural.” Here’s the whole damn movie, if you care to watch it.
   She would appear in a couple of television projects  before she packed up all of her stuff, and moved with Tom from California to Manhattan where she got a nice apartment. Three days later she met Woody Allen, as one is likely to do if one visits New York. Woody offered her the role of  Lee in “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Here’s a clip.
   “Hannah and Her Sisters” was for a long time Woody’s biggest box office hit, until May of 2011, when “Midnight in Paris” was released.
   It won three academy awards.  Best Original Screenplay (Woody) and for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress (Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest).
   Barbara was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, for her work in “Hannah and Her Sisters. (she lost to Judi Dench in “A Room with a View“)”
   Along with her new Manhattan apartment, Barbara bought a home in rural Connecticut. I don’t know why.
   That very same year... the very same, she joined Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper in the cast of the basketball drama “Hoosiers.” Here’s a clip wherein Hackman starts smooching on her.   
   Barbara worked with Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito the next year in Barry Levinson’s “Tin Men.”
   “Shy People,” told the story of two branches of a family that reunite with unfortunate results, the setting being the  bayous of South Louisiana. Barbara won a Best Actress Award at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of Ruth Sullivan, the matriarch of the Louisiana branch of the family.
   I watched the film again a few days ago and the actress who played Jill Clayburgh’s daughter looked very familiar to me, but I didn’t follow up on my inquisitive nature until I researched for this post. I discovered she was, and is the wonderful actress Martha Plimpton, who I knew as Virginia Chance on the sitcom “Rasing Hope.” She’s been in a lot of great films it seems, and is very lovely in a very distinctive way.
   But enough about her!
   Get back on track Joyce!
   Barbara was considered for the role of a dangerous obsessive woman in 1987‘s “Fatal Attraction,” but lost out to Glenn Close.
   This happens all of the time in the film/television industry, but what makes Barbara’s loss noteworthy was the incredible success the film had, finishing as the second highest-grossing film of 1987 in the United States and the highest-grossing film of the year worldwide, receiving  six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (which it lost to The Last Emperor), Best Actress for Close, and Best Supporting Actress for Anne Archer, though both lost to Cher and Olympia Dukakis, respectively, for “Moonstruck.”
   Many can make the argument that the success of the movie was due in a large part to the peculiarities of Glenn Close’s performance. Would the film have been as successful if Barbara had gotten the role instead?
   Yes, it would have.
   Probably more successful.
   I know these things.
   Although she did not win the “Fatal Attraction” part she was still on a roll (and making history), winning another Cannes Best Actress Award the very next year (1988) for her portrayal of anti-apartheid activist Diana Roth in “A World Apart.” Here’s the trailer.
   She is the only actress ever to win back to back awards for acting at Cannes
   I think that’s pretty cool... don’t you?
   1988 was a good year for Barbara professionally. She appeared in three films that were released that year. “A World Apart.” She  was also in Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” playing Mary Magdalene. Some could say that she was responsible for this film being made having given Martin the book back when they made “Boxcar Bertha.” As a matter of fact I will say that. Barbara is totally responsible for “The Last Temptation of Christ” being made!
   There I said it.
   Here’s a long clip concerning a central plot point of the film.
   By the way... Barbara is the only actress (female) to be cast twice in a major role in a movie by Martin Scorsese.The Last Temptation, and “Boxcar Bertha.”
   More history
   Of course actors like Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio have appeared in multiple Scorsese films.
   Multiple.
   Also in 1988 we saw her in “Beaches,” with Bette Midler.
   Wikipedia tells us ”Beaches,” is “The story of two friends from different backgrounds, whose friendship spans more than 30 years through childhood, love, and tragedy: Cecilia Carol "C.C." Bloom (Bette Midler), a New York actress and singer, and Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey), a San Francisco heiress and lawyer.”
   I believe saw this movie once before, probably with some girl. I did not watch it again to prepare for this post as I did not think my masculinity would be able to survive a second viewing.
   I took a chance finding this clip!
   “A Killing in a Small Town” is a 1990 CBS television movie starring Barbara and Brian Dennehy.
   What is important about this movie is that it is the vehicle that allowed Barbara to win a 1990 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries or a Movie.”
   Way to go Barbara! We’re all so proud.
   Here's a clip.
   She worked with Dennis Hopper again (quite frankly he was hard to get rid of) and Ed Harris in 1991‘s television movie “Paris Trout,” a story of race and murder.
   Barbara got married to artist Stephen Douglas in August of 1992. The couple separated and divorced one year after the wedding.
   Sometimes things just don’t work out.
   In "Falling Down," Michael Douglas plays a disgruntled divorcé and unemployed former defense engineer on a destructive trek across Los Angeles to get to Barbara’s house, or rather Barbara’s character’s house in  who is Michael’s ex-wife. Their daughter is having a birthday party. Robert Duvall plays a policeman who is after Michael.    Barbara talks about “Falling Down” here.
   She works with Eric Idle , John Cleese, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Rick Moranis in the 1992 comedy, “Splitting Heirs.” Here’s the very best of Duchess Lucinda.
   Anjelica Huston morphed into Barbara in order for her to “Return to Lonesome Dove,” a 1993 four part television miniseries. Anjelica and Barbara played the same character, Clara Allen, a ranch owner in Nebraska. She worked with republican asshat Jon Voight.
   Am I being too harsh on Jon... too mean spirited and vindictive?
   Yes, and delightedly so!
   Here’s a clip.
   1995 found Barbara alone in the mountains of northwest Montana with Tom Berenger of all people, in “Last of the Dogmen,” the story of the search for a lost tribe of Indians that time had forgot. Here’s a clip.
   My first wife’s parents had a set of books (remember when people used to read books) that collectively were entitled “50 Greatest Books of Western Civilization.” In that set you could find the “Iliad,” and the “Odyssey.” The “Aeneid,” “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the “Divine Comedy,” “Paradise Lost,” “Don Quixote,” Michel Eyquem de Montaigne’s “Essays.” “The Brothers Karamazov,” “Moby Dick,” and “The Portrait of a Lady,” by Henry James.
   I read all of those and more. This was back in the 70‘s, but I remember Portrait. It was long.
   New Zealand screenwriter, producer and director Jane Campion decided she wanted to make a movie of this book, and in January of 1997 it was released.
   It stars Barbara, Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Martin Donovan, Shelley Duvall, Shelley Winters, Viggo Mortensen, Christian Bale, and John Gielgud. What a cast! Here's a clip.
   I saw the film just the other day, and in my mind it was one big, long movie about getting married, or arranging marriages, or seducing others into a marriage. No monsters or explosions at all!
   But the acting was top notch, and earned Barbara an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress (everybody nominated that year for Best Supporting Actress, except Juliette Binoche, lost to Juliette Binoche for her work in “The English Patient.”).
   Barbara really wanted the part of Madame Serena Merle, auditioned for it, made the movie (here’s a clip), found out OJ was judged not guilty, then went on the Charlie Rose Show and talked about it here.
   Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions,” was not in the “50 Greatest Books of Western Civilization,” series, but he is one of my favorite authors, and “Breakfast of Champions,” one of my favorite books.
   And a movie was made of it. Barbara was in it. So was Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Glenne Headly, Buck Henry, Will Patton, Owen Wilson, Alison Eastwood, Shawnee Smith, and Michael Clarke Duncan. Hell, even Kurt made a cameo appearance as a  commercial director.
   Here’s a clip.
   In 1999 Barbara starred in an independent film called “Drowning on Dry Land.” During production she met co-star Naveen Andrews, with whom she began a romantic relationship that lasted until 2010.
   She appeared in 22 episodes of the television show “Chicago Hope,” in 1999 and 2000, and 13 episodes of “The Mountain,” in 2004.
   Barbara played ballerina Natalie Portman’s mom in 2010‘s “Black Swan.” Wyona Ryder and Mila Kunis also star. Here’s Barbara talking about the film and her role. 
   “Black Swan,” made a lot of money... a whole lot. It cost 13 million to make, and grossed $329.4 million worldwide. It was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture (losing out to “The King's Speech”), Best Director for Darren Aronofsky (losing to Tom Hooper, who directed “The King’s Speech”), and Natalie won for Best Actress.
   2010 also saw Barbara in “Insidious,” with Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson. The true story of a boy entering the astral plane and being held captive by a nasty old demon.
   Here she is talking about the film.
   2013 saw her in “Insidious 2,” because, well, they just had to do it again.
   Now this is a little complicated, at least for me. From 2012 to 2013, Barbara had a recurring role in the first two seasons of the television drama “Once Upon a Time,” as Cora, the Queen of Hearts and mother of the Evil Queen.
   Then in 2014, she reprised the role in one episode of the show's spin-off “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.” She reprised the role once more in 2015 when she returned to the show for an episode of its fourth season, and in 2016, she appeared again for two episodes of the show's fifth season, and it’s 100th episode. Here she is talking to Travis Smiley about her work.
   Last year Barbara portrayed Ann Rutledge, the world's most powerful woman on “Damien.” It’s her job to make sure Damien fulfills his destiny as the Antichrist, which is no easy task, believe me.
   “I look back on my life like everybody does but not just career. I mean I look back on my life as a whole, so I don't think that I dwell there or anything and in terms of work I hope that there is a lot in front of me.”
   So do I.
   Let’s see, what else.
   She appears to shunned the stage completely. She is the only actress that I know of who does not work in theater, and I don’t blame her. Harrison Ford doesn’t. Tom Cruise doesn’t. Screw that working everyday and twice on Sundays. That’s too much like real work.
   And you to like memorize your lines! Not only that you have to memorize the actors lines as well so you know when to say your lines.
   It gives me a headache just to think about it.
   I applaud the direction she has taken.
   Her five favorite films of all time are “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), “Bicycle Thieves” (1948), “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964), “Raging Bull” (1980) and “The Ballad of Narayama” (1983).
   “I am not afraid of aging, but more afraid of people's reactions to my aging.”
   I won’t be afraid of aging to then. She gives me strength.
   Her name in Elvish could be Raerauntha Ularona. I’m not saying it is absolutely. The Elvish name generator has been acting up, but it might be. Let’s say it is.
   And that’s about it... for now.
   I have to tell you, it has been a complete pleasure to go through the years with Barbara, as she is one person I really admire. She has done with her life exactly what she has wanted to do as far as her career goes at least. She says she just takes the best part offered to her at the time, and she can’t really plan on how things are going to go. Well who can? But she has worked in her chosen craft pretty consistently throughout her entire life, since she was 17. And like our British friend Diana Rigg, she doesn’t want to stop.
   And she seems like a very nice person as well.
   And she’s very pretty... for a girl.
   And all of us here at Joyce’s take wish her and her’s all of the best and continued good fortune, and most of all a very happy birthday.
   Gosh, I miss her already.
   “Everything will be better in the morning. It always is.”

Renovation 2

Picture Legend

1. Renovation
2.  Rockhaven Sanitarium for the Copiously Insane
3. The Las Americas
4. Break time for Renovation workers
5. 15lb dumbbell
6. Dirt Devil
7. Office chair
8. Optimus heater
9. Cassandra R.I.P.
10. Lauren R.I.P.
11. Alison R.I.P.

   I checked out of Rockhaven on September 30th, a Friday, and returned to my lonely room at the Las Americas.  

   On October 3rd, a Monday, with all my possessions already packed up, I took apart my computer and hauled it down to Hardy’s room where it would rest up for the day while my room was being painted.

   At 8:00am Tommy and two SRHT maintenance workers came to my room, Tommy telling them they had to move everything out and into room 332, just down the hall from my room. The workers didn’t seem all that thrilled about doing it, which was sad.

   I left the building and caught a bus downtown. I bought a half gallon of milk from Rite-Aid, and a breakfast buritto from the Breakfast  Buritto Store, then went on up to my sister’s room on the 6th floor of the hotel she lives in. The security person at the front door now knows me, and let me right in.

   My sister had been back to Bullhead City recently, and had brought back her computer and microwave oven. The oven was now operational.

   We watched MSNBC mostly. My sister was on her phone quite a bit, trying to get through to some health provider, and was thusly preoccupied for most of the morning.

   At 12:00n I left the building and caught the Red Line to Union Station, then walked across Alameda to the VA Clinic, and the 1:00 Depression Group with Dr Kimberly.

   Afterwards I walked to the Las Americas. My friend Cliff was sitting out front, which is unusual. He told me that the painting of my room had been canceled 10 minutes after I had left.

   “You’re fucking kidding, right?!”

   He wasn’t.

   Tommy should have my number so I don’t know why he hadn’t called me. Near 4 o’clock he strolled into the building.

   “What’s up Tommy?”

   “What’s up with what?”

   “With the painting!”

   “I don’t know man. All I know is that they called and told me they weren’t going to touch it today.”

   “Well, I’m getting my per diem right? Where’s Lauren?”

   “I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to her about that.”

   “Well it’s almost four now...”

   “Oh, she won’t be coming today. I can guarantee you that.”

   So this sums up the situation. I did everything I was supposed to do. I am an innocent little lamb, but I am not silent. I missed a day of work. I had to pay to have my computer hooked back up, which my friend Mike did that afternoon. SRHT, via Lauren didn’t bother to explain the situation to me, or apologize, plus they screwed me out of the $35 per diem.

   So I can’t trust them anymore, and will no longer be as cooperative as I once was.

   Why should I?

   And that’s how it stands. Nothing at all has been done this entire month in my room. I’m still have eight big holes in my walls, no window blinds or towel rack (I ask you, how can I torture my towels without a rack? It’s like impossible, right? I suppose I could strappado the hell out of them, but there’s so much effort involved) I have finally unpacked some of my boxes. I play cards with the cockroaches time permitting.

   At a residence meeting yesterday Lauren showed up and spoke of fumigation.

   We shall see.

10-24-16

   Tommy came to my room at about 3:00pm and gave me the following letter:

To: All residents at the Las Americas

From: Skid Row Southeast 1 Staff

Date Oct 24, 2016

Re: Construction Schedule Update Community Meeting

Dear Resident,

In order to decrease the impact of in-unit construction on each resident we will be temporarily relocating residents within the building for 1-2 weeks. We will have a mandatory community meeting on Tuesday October 25th, 2016, at 2:30pm to discuss the upcoming schedule, the temporary relocation plan, and answer any additional questions or concerns you may have about the work. Pizza will be served after the meeting.

Sincerely,

Skid Row Southeast 1 Staff

   Pizza!

   The meeting was rather contentious. A few of the residents, some quite vocal, didn’t want to be moved at all (you would think that grown adults (especially one very loud female) would learn throughout their lives that yelling, shouting, and using extremely offensive language in a liberal fashion is not a good way to make a point, or to have your point taken seriously. Most folks don’t wish to engage in conversation with a woman who is screaming at you, using the words “fuck,” and “motherfucker,” vigorously. This particular woman would probably benefit form a Anger Management Class. 

   There were a few residents that stated they would not move, at least four as a matter of fact. They refused to sign a “Notice to Temporarily Vacate,” that stipulated quite clearly that “If you do not vacate the premises by that date [for me that date was 11-22-16, and my expected return to my unit 12-16-16], the Developer [SRHT] will be forced to initiate legal proceedings to recover possession of the premises, along with rents and damages.”

   Still these residents persisted, vowing to seek their own legal counsel.

   Well, good for them.

   Lauren and her minion, Alison, sure earned their pay fielding all sorts of questions, and a great deal of venting. Lauren had to shout once, as did her boss Richard, as the dissenters just wouldn’t shut up.

   I had typed out a list of my own grievances, of which I had many, that I had planed to present to the “Skid Row Southeast 1 Staff,” but as it turned out, I became reluctant to add to the general chaos that manifested itself throughout the meeting, and I was beginning to feel sorry for Lauren and Alison.

   And my concerns were addressed. It was made known to me that those residents who already had Internet and cable T.V. in their rooms would have it in the temporary quarters as well, which would be an empty room on a different floor. Room 116 on the first floor was indicated for me, right next to Tommy’s office.

   I do have a concern that that room is too small to properly house all of my belongings, while at the same time allowing me to inhabit.

   We shall see.

   On November 1st I emptied all of my drawers, putting the contents into various plastic bags. I emptied my dresser, laying the clothes onto my bed and covered them with plastic bags. Big bags.

   This was the preparation I had been told to make prior to some good people from a company called Isotech coming to my room in order to fumigate for pests, most notably cockroaches. I was to leave my room for two hours after they finished.

   A little after 8:00am they arrived, and I returned to my sister’s for a little while.

   I came back at eleven, and put all of my stuff away.

   The cockroaches returned, laughing at the fumigation effort. 

   

To Skid Row Southeast 1 Staff

This is in regards to the notice I received at 3:30p on Nov 14, 2016, informing me that this Isotech company is coming again on Nov 15 between 9am and 12n to treat our units a second time (a treatment that has actually increased the number of pests in the building), and that we are to make the same invasive preparations, and vacate our units. This information was given with less than 24 hours notice and is completely unacceptable. I pay rent to use and live in my unit, and not to vacate it at your whim. I work in my unit (not a business). When I'm am asked in such a cavalier manner to take the time and effort to prepare, and then be required to leave for at least two hours, this is an undue burden placed on me and all of the residents. Especially considering the treatment is ineffective. You are wasting funds on this. The only reason there so many pests in the upper floors of the building is due to the current construction being done which has driven them up from the basement. Before construction began there were very few problems. If you wish to remove the building of pests then the entire building must be tented and fogged. Unless you are willing to do this, I see no point in compiling. I will make no preparations (preparations, by the way, that were not provided on the notice. I suppose we are just to remember what to do), but will leave my unit for the time specified since I have little choice in the matter. If you persist in this fashion I will have little choice but to document these actions (which I've already been doing in an ongoing manner, and which you can read yourself here: joycestake.blogspot.com/   search for "Renovation"), and report them to the Housing Authority, which does enforce the 24 hour notice rule. I regret to take this action, and have been a model resident for almost 13 years now, but you leave me little choice. Sincerely, Richard Joyce Unit 329

   The bug people coming was nothing compared to November 28th.

   As indicated above this was supposed to have happened on the 22nd, but I got a letter on my door announcing the postponement sometime before the 22nd, the 18th most likely.

   Okay, I was to have all of my stuff packed up, again, by the morning of the 28th, a Monday. I didn’t do any of that as I had been sick the entire weekend. Indeed, when Cassandra knocked on my door at about 7:30 on the morning of the 28th, I looked haggard, tired, and a tad deranged.

    “I don’t feel good at all Cassandra. Is there any way we can do this tomorrow instead?” I asked her.

   “I don’t think so,” she replied. “But you can talk to Alison. She’ll be here in a moment... oh here she is...”

   Indeed, Alison came up the hall and I asked her the same question.

   “No. We’re going to have to do it today. The movers are here. But I tell you what. If you’re not feeling well, you can go sit down out back and the movers will pack everything up and take care of everything. Okay?”

   “Ah, okay.”

   I closed the door and finished dressing.

   I was stressed out. You see I’m borderline agoraphobic, and having my room interfered with, in any way, made me nauseous. I’m sure that is why I had been sick, sick in anticipation of my world about to be screwed with.

   I called my sister, explained the situation, and asked her if I could come over. She said I could.

   I left immediately, wearing the same dirty clothes I had been wearing for the last three of four days. I caught a bus downtown, getting off at 5th and Broadway.

   I walked the couple of blocks it takes to get to the residential hotel my sister has lived in for the last year. I took the elevator to her floor and knocked on her door.

   She was watching the movie “Christine,” Stephen King’s story about a demonized car.

   I didn’t have to stay there. My stuff had been moved downstairs to Room 116 by now. But if I did go back then I’d have to deal with configuring all the boxes, and... stuff that I had, and set up my computer and TV, and I didn’t feel up to doing any of that at that particular point in time.

   So I stayed with Cheryl, sipping coffee, smoking cigarettes (I had started smoking again), and watching TV. I asked her if I could spend the night.

   “What are you doing? Growing a beard?”

   “No. I jus haven’t shaved for a while.”

   That was true. I hadn’t shaved for awhile.

   “Don’t you want to take a shower? You look sweaty.”

   “No. I’ll take one in the morning.”

   “Are you sure?”

   “Yes. Why? Do I smell?

   “Yeah.”

   “Sorry.”

   She ordered take out that evening, pizza I think, but I couldn’t eat any thing. I couldn’t eat anything until the next day. I couldn’t sleep either, staying up all night with the television on. The next morning I showered. Later, when she was doing her laundry, she proclaimed, “It’s not you that smells, it’s your clothes.”

   “Sorry.”

   I asked her if I could stay one more night. She didn’t like it, but she let me. She forced me to watch shows like “The Big Bang Theory,” and “All in the Family,” over and over again, as a form of retaliation. I remember watching “World War Z,” and “Jack Reacher,” as well.

   My appetite improved and I started to eat, which made me feel much better. By the morning of the 30th I was feeling semi-normal.

   I showered, made sure the coffee pot was ready to go whenever Cheryl got up. Sat down and watched “The Aviator.”

   At around 9am we both left her apartment. She bought me a breakfast buritto at the Buritto Store across the street. She bought herself some cigarettes and a BLT.

   Then I left. I went to the Faris store on the corner of Broadway and 5th and bought some new pants. I caught a bus back to my place filled with anxiety about what I would find in my new room.

   Hardy was sitting out in front. That’s all he does now ever since they took the T.V. away.

   Poor Hardy.

   Tommy came out.

   “Joyce! Where have you been?!”

   “At my sister’s.”

   “When I get back I got a hundred dollars for you.”

   “You do? Why?”

   "They decided to give everyone who moved some money for the inconvenience, but I gotta go to the office right now, so come and see me in a little while.”

   “Ah, alright.”

   Well, that was welcome news.

   I opened the door to 116.

   Boxes everywhere. The movers had left the refrigerator unplugged, so that was the first thing I did, cutting off the plastic wrap the movers had used to secure the door.

   I frantically began looking through the boxes for my computer and found one that had the components in it.

   I looked at all of the boxes around me and felt overwhelmed. Where to start? What do I need to unpack?

   I checked the wall heater, it was off. It looked broken. It wouldn’t turn on, and it was cold at night.

   It was cold then.

   Then I noticed something.

   I went next door to Tommy’s office. He was in there with his assistant Kevin. Cassandra was in there too.

   “Tommy,” I said. “My office chair is missing.”

   “It is?”

   “Yeah. You have any idea where it could be?”

   “No.”

   “Alison assured me that if I left everything would be moved...”

   “What kind of chair is it?” Kevin asked.

   “It’s like the one you’re sitting on, but black.”

   There was nothing they could do. Tommy said he would check all of the rooms the next time the exterminators came to do the hotel.

   Yeah, right.

   Okay, that was one $150 chair gone.

   But much worse, the black satchel that had been under my bed, and that contained the hand written manuscript of Skid Row Diary was missing.

   Fuck!

   How could the movers mess that up. The value of the manuscript, well there was none, or rather it was invaluable, and it cannot be replaced.

   Half of the book had been published on Joyce’s Take already, but now I didn’t have the second half. Not unless it was in one of the boxes and I hadn’t seen it yet.

   I’d find that out soon enough, so I put that out of my mind, and called AT&T to make sure my service had been transfered to the new room.

   AT&T asked me for my telephone number, which I couldn’t remember, so I called my sister to find out what my own phone number was.

   The good people of AT&T that I talked to on the phone, who were actually in the Philippines, tried to sell me a different form of service, which I told them I didn’t want. They’re always trying to sell something because customer service representatives get more money if they make a sale. 

   I finally got them to send a technician, but they wouldn’t be able to get here until Thursday morning.

   Shit!

   I called my friend Mike, and asked him to come over and help me. Fortunately he was sober, and said he’d be right over.

   I sat back for a moment and ate half of my buritto, then smoked a cigarette.

   The janitor, Jose, who hardly speaks any English stopped in the hallway outside of my open door and looked in.

   “Not good,” he said.

   I just looked at him.

   “No. Not good.”

   “Tommy. My heater needs to turned on,” I told him in his office.

   “I’ll put in a work order.”

   “You put in a work order for my other room three weeks ago and they haven’t come,” I reminded him.

   “Your kidding,” Kevin said.

   “No.”

   “All I can do is put in a work order,” Tommy said.

   Cassandra sat there, lost in the world that was her smart phone.

   After talking to some of the other residents, I found out that none of the heaters were working in the whole building, and it was freaking cold at night!

   Freaking cold! That’s a technical term.

   My neighbor Arnold, a 76 year old white gentleman with a conservative bent, told me that on Monday an AT&T tech had come and switched over the service to the new room and that all I had to do was connect my modem to the wall jack.

   Well that was good news. I wouldn’t have to wait until Thursday to get back on the Internet, or watch TV for that matter.

   Mike got there. I gave him the half of the breakfast buritto I hadn’t eaten because apparently he was low on food at home.

   Then we started to move things around.

   Mike is good at configuring things. We arranged the boxes on top of each other. The bed was put against one wall, my desk along another one near the wall jack.

   I emptied the box with the components and Mike began to put everything together.

   I have Mike do this because what takes him 20 minutes to do would take me about three hours.

   My sister for some reason doesn’t like it that I use Mike in this fashion because I pay him to do this.

   “I’ll go down there myself and put it together. I’t’s not rocket science!”

   I don’t know why it bothers her. It’s not her money. It’s really none of her business.

   She’s not the most pleasant person in the world.

   “I’m crabby,” she told me herself yesterday.

   I’m certainly not going to argue with her about that.

   “I don’t see the modem Mike.”

   That scared me. If the movers had lost my modem I would be screwed.

   I frantically looked through some of the boxes... and found it.

   Pretty soon Mike had everything set up on my desk.

   “Okay. Everything’s set up except for the telephone cord

   “Telephone cord?”

   “Yeah, telephone cord.”

   “Fuck!”

   We checked the boxes again. No cord.

   “Fuck!”

   “Maybe it’s still in your room,” Mike said.

   “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything up there...”

   “Well...”

   “I’ll go check.”

   I went up to the third floor, to my room. Two guys were working in there.

   “Is there a telephone cord in here?”

   “Right there.” One of the men pointed to a green cord lying on the floor near the telephone jack.

   “Oh wow, thanks.”

   I took it downstairs and gave it to Mike who installed it.

   And the modem initialized. Good deal!

   I got the Internet and T.V., but no sound on the television. We couldn’t figure it out. But I let it go for the moment. I at least had the computer working so I could watch movies, and work, and wouldn’t have to sit around in my room with my thumb up my butt doing nothing until the tech came here on Thursday.

   As a matter of fact I didn’t need the tech to come at all really. I’d have to call AT&T and cancel.

   I was able to give Mike $20 right off with some of the money Tommy had given me. He went home.

   Living right next to Tommy insured a steady stream of people passed my door to get to his office.

   I kept my door open a crack, as is my custom, and played with my computer. As the day wore on it turned into evening, then night. And it got cold.

   I watched the movie “Arrival,” the story of space aliens who can travel interstellar distances, but can’t figure out our language.

   Based on a true story I’m told.

   I doubled up on blankets and went to sleep, or tried to sleep, at about ten, leaving the movie on (it was recycling over and over again, and would do so until the end of time unless acted upon). The silent T.V. was on as well. It and the computer provided some light in the small room.

   At approximately 2am I dreamt that my left leg and foot were cramping up on me. This dream continued until I woke and discovered my left leg and foot were cramping up on me. I got out of bed and walked it off, which took almost 5 minutes, which was weird, as leg cramps don’t usually last that long.

   I noticed the T.V. was off, and that I had a red light on my modem. One red and one green, which meant I was not connected to the Internet.

   I fooled around with the computer, checked all of the connections, nothing worked.

   I couldn’t figure out why I would be disconnected now having been connected just a little while ago.

   Jesus.

   The tech would be here the next day. He could fix it.

   Until then all I would have to help pass the time were movies that were already on my computer. I had quite a few, which would keep me from joining Hardy out front watching the cars go by.

   I took a shower up on the second floor as there were no showers on the first (the next day, Thursday morning,  I would go to this shower and find an “Out of Order” sign on the door, so I went to the third floor shower. The thing is we then had one shower for the entire building (about 30 residents). The construction people were still working on the two shower restrooms on the north part of the building. They had been working on those rooms for like the last eight months).

   Later in the day I would buy a floor heater online (paying for it through PayPal, who had been dumb, ah, er nice enough to give me some credit). I would also buy a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner, a 15lb dumbell, and another office chair ($130).

   There was only one good thing about living on the first floor, and that was the microwave in the kitchen was close by. Usually I have to travel down two flights of stairs to get to it, and then climb two flights of stairs to get back to my room.

   But I was used to that, having done it for almost thirteen years.

   I would continue to freeze my cute, little, fluffy white ass off at night.

   And I would continue to watch “Arrival” over and over, getting really into it and it’s haunting beauty.

   Thursday morning came. Construction people came to put blinds on the windows, and a new faucet in the sink. New faucets had been installed about two months ago, faucets that turned off automatically, and which were really unpopular. The new new faucets would stay on until turned off. There was one slight problem. They were high, about 7 1/2 inches off of the sink, so high the new medicine cabinets could not be opened after the faucets were installed. So the cabinets had to be lifted up a tad. Apparently I was the first to receive one of these faucets as the construction people first discovered the faucet/med cabinet relationship in my room.

   The AT&T tech arrived. I told him that when I had first set up the computer I had connected to the Internet, and that it had gone down during the night. He said he needed to find the cable box, and I had Kevin open the Electrical Room for him.

   He had trouble finding the connection. The wiring seems to be a bit antiquated.

   “If you can get these construction people to install new wiring that would be great for the whole building,” he told me and Levin.

   I said, “Yeah, well, having watched these guys I wouldn’t say they were exactly bursting with ambition.”

   The tech guy eventually got the Internet up and running, and the T.V. back on. I asked him about the sound on the television, and he said he didn’t know why it was down, that it might be the T.V. itself.

   Later I would fiddle with the speaker connections and the sound came back.

   I am a mechanical genius.

   And there it was. The days rolled on as days tend to do.

   The first package that arrived was the 15lb dumbell.

   Tommy was out front when the UPS driver arrived, and he took the package from him. I walked up to the corner and saw Tommy near his car which he parks across the street in a nearly empty parking lot.

   “Richard,” he called. “Come here.”

   I walked over to him and he handed me the cardboard box.

   “You owe me big time,” Tommy said. “This thing’s heavy.”

   “Yeah, about fifteen pounds or so.”

   I didn’t open the box but placed it in my temporary room to let the movers move it to my other room on the 16th.

   Next came the chair, then the Dirt Devil. Both of which I left in the shipping boxes.

   Finally the heater came, and I opened that box! Thereafter my nights were nice and toasty.

   Technically residents are not allowed to have any devices that produce heat in their rooms.

   Screw that! Everyone was complaining about how cold it was at night, and if SRHT maintenence wasn’t going to turn on the heaters, well I for one was going to be proactive in conserving my precious body heat.

   The days wore on. I was given notice that my move back to my permanent room would be postponed, from the 16th to the 20th, a Tuesday.

   When the 20th finally arrived I had Mike come over early, at 7:30am, and we disconnected the computer and T.V., put them in a box, and moved them upstairs ourselves.

   At 8:00 the movers showed up. I had Mike stay upstairs to show them where the bed, and dresser, etc., all went, and to try to make sure that everything showed up.

   I stayed downstairs to make sure they got everything this time.

   The movers knowing they were being watched were less likely to mess things up.

   During this process I overheard the lead renovation person complain to Tommy that he was missing several thousand dollars of building materials, a lot of it made of copper, which of course has value as a recyclable.

   Tommy checked his tapes from the security cameras and saw one of our residents taking these things from the back yard area. Apparently Tommy confronted this person at his room, and discovered this material in it.

   Tommy came back down and asked the lead renovation person if he wanted to get the police involved.

   “Absolutely.”

   As they were moving my stuff out my ex-case manager, Henry, said this to me, “Now all we need is the key.”

   “Ah... I think I lost it,” I told him.

   That was true. I had it yesterday. It was on my key ring along with my keys to my old room, and the front door. But when I checked this morning in preparation to turn it in, it wasn’t there anymore.

   I have no idea what happened to it, though I have a sneaky suspicion that it evaporated.

   When the last of my stuff was taken upstairs I joined Mike there. He hooked everything up, and the modem, of course, did not initiate. That meant that my Internet service had not been switched back, which Lauren and Alison were supposed to have taken care of.

   I tracked down Alison and asked her about it.

   “Oh, they’ll be here. I made an appointment.”

   Cool.

   When Mike finished he left. I walked downstairs with him. Outside, Tommy, Hardy, my neighbor Arnold, and a couple of other guys were standing around. So were a couple of police officers, who were busy processing Larry, the guy who had stolen all of the copper. Larry was handcuffed and about to be taken away.

   What a dumb ass. It must be said though that his actions were perfectly in line with his personality.

   I returned to my room. It had been painted at least. A metallic grayish blue. This meant there would be no need to move my stuff out again.

   That was good. There were still a couple of holes in my walls. An air conditioner / heater had been installed on the western wall near the ceiling and my window, although it was not operable yet. A little fixture that looked like a metal upside down hook was affixed to the wall near the medicine cabinet, which I supposed was my new towel rack. I had the new faucet and blinds of course. All I had to do was unpack.

   But no!

   I had been given notice that very soon my dresser and desk would be replaced with a new dresser and desk. If I filled my old ones up with stuff, I’d just have to empty them later.

   So in the boxes my stuff remained.

   There were boxes on my bed that I didn’t feel like moving, so for the next couple of nights I slept on a yoga mat on the floor.

   First, they switched out the bed I had slept on for over 12 years.

   One morning the bed people came and took away my twin bed. So for about twenty minutes I was without a bed. I was essentially bedless.

   When they came back they brought a full size bed frame. they brought a full size mattress as well, and while they were trying to get the bed frame on the floor, the mattress was standing upright in my doorway.

   They were having a problem getting the frame on the floor though due to all of the boxes which were taking up space. They said they were not allowed to move the boxes themselves, so they left the frame leaning against the wall and took off.

   Lauren came in and said I had to move some of the boxes out of the way.

   Well I always do what Lauren says, she has that kind of power over me. I moved the boxes enough so that the bed people could finish their work.

   Except they never came back.

   At 3:30pm I got tired of waiting for them and went downstairs to see what I could see.

   I couldn’t find the bed people at all. I went to Tommy’s office and asked when the bed people would finish in my room.

   “They haven’t put your bed in yet?!”

   “No.”

   “Why didn’t you say something,” Tommy asked me.

   “Why exactly am I supposed to say something? These guys are the professionals and are supposed to do their jobs right?”

   “Well they’re gone.”

   “The bed people are gone?”

   “Yeah.”

   Lauren’s boss, Richard was in the office, and he took over, and he and Kevin came up to my room and laid down the frame and put the mattress on top of it.   

   Then they left.

   I looked at my bed. It sure was big, big for my room at least. Bigger than I needed.

   The next day I got linen (a fitted sheet (which took me about a half hour to get on), a sheet... a regular sheet), a blanket, pillow, and pillow case. I now had three pillows.

   They also switched out my desk, and dresser. The movers arrived at 8:00 and moved out my empty dresser.

   I had hoped to leave my computer intact, but wound up having to take it apart due to all of the wires being treaded in holes in the back of my old desk. After they took the desk I tried to hook it back up, to no avail. Nothing worked, and I didn’t know why.

   I called Mike and asked him to come right over.

   “Let me have a cup of coffee first,” he said.

   “Sure.”

   I kept fiddling with the computer finally get it turned on, and so was able to watch movies.

   I called Mike back, and told him since I at least had movies, he could come a little later if he wanted. He told me he’s be over around 10:00.

   Mike arrived, but the new desk had not.

   We sat on my floor and watched Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom.”

   A worker brought in what looked like a 20 x 35 inch piece of mahogany pressboard, and leaned it against the wall. Then he took off.

   He came back a little later and attached that pressboard directly onto my wall. That was my new desk. No drawers mind you, just a 35 inch wide piece of pressboard sticking 20 inches out from my wall 27 and a half inches off of the floor.

   It was pretty solidly attached, but still, no drawers.

   Shortly thereafter workers brought in a 16 x 20 x 20 3/4 inch night stand, which matched the desk, and had two small drawers. We put this under the desk.

   Then Mike got to work, setting up my computer on the desk, and the T.V. on the third tier of a four tier shelving unit that was right next to the desk. 

   We got everything up and running, and I was happy.

   A boy and his computer.

   Alison came in and gave us each a caramel lollypop.

   That was nice of her.

   Mike left. Four days later I unpacked my boxes, and my little, lonely room looked somewhat normal again.

   Except for the holes in the walls.

   The construction people have left me alone pretty much since then.

   They came in once and attached a hose from the air conditioner to the sink.

   But that was pretty much it.

   They were still out there though. I could hear them. Hammering. Sawing. Making a general nuisance of themselves.

   New people were entering the building, taking residence in the empty rooms. They got microwave ovens within a week of their arrival because they are on a different program than the residents who have been living here awhile.

   That just seemed wrong. I’ve been here thirteen years, and someone who hasn’t even been here two weeks gets a microwave before I do! WTF!

   Since these people have arrived the toilets have been clogging up.

   Jesus.

   All of us are supposed to get new refrigerators. I was told that Henry was going asking people if they would mind a refrigerator that was a little smaller. I panicked. I thought they might try and give us those itty bitty refrigerators like the ones we had when I first moved in.

   I wrote an Email to Henry asking him about this. I also asked him about our air.

   The construction workers wore face masks at times, and I was wondering if the residents were breathing hazardous materials.

   No one has answered me on that, but Henry assured me the new refrigerators were only a little smaller than the ones we currently have.

   Good.

   The work on the building continues.

   Just yesterday I was bringing a nice tasty turkey burger up the first floor stairs. A worker on some kind of scaffold was cutting holes in the bottom of the second floor stairway, blocking my way. I eased past him, but slipped on the top step and crashed down onto the floor.

   “Are you Okay?” the worker asked.

   “Yeah.” I got up and moved on, having saved my burger.

   We had a resident meeting yesterday as well. My new case manager (yes, Cassandra is no longer with us), LaShunda, a beautiful and young black lady, was there. Tommy, Henry. Their boss Richard. Two other guys came a little late, Ben and John.

   Apparently Ben had been Lauren’s and Alison’s boss. He explained the Lauren and Alison were... no longer with the company, and that he would be filling in for a while.

   Huumm. Very suspicious.

   I know how SRHT treats their employees if they have been deemed unworthy, or have failed in a particular task, especially in this age of Trump.

   It’s not pretty. Usually they are never heard from, or seen again.

   Ben told us that he hoped all of the work in hotel should be done by May, at the latest.

   We shall see.

   We then got half of a ham sandwich, tortilla chips, and a donut, and sent on our way.  

   I’m proud to say that I gave my donut to Hardy as I am on a new diet that frowns on donuts.

   Five more months to go  before this nightmare is finally over.

   Or will it be?

   No one knows for sure. But I will be around to report.

   You can be sure about that.

   This post is dedicated to the memory of Cassandra P. 1990 to 2017, Lauren M. 1988 to 2017, and Alison B. 1991 to 2017.

  Thank you for all that you did.

   You will not be forgotten.


Renovation 3

Alternative Facts

“A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective [not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts] reality [the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional [existing only in theory or as a suggestion or idea] idea of them].” Merriam-Webster Dictionary

 A alternative fact is simply bullshit (either Bos taurus excrement or a statement that is untrue). -Richard Joyce’s Book of Salient Colloquialisms

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer

Chuck Todd: You did not answer the question of why the President asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium, for the first time, and utter a falsehood. Why did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the entire White House press office on Day One.
Kellyanne Conway: No, it doesn’t. Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and they’re giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.

“You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common... they don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views.” Dr Who. Episode entitled “The Face of Evil Part 4,” which aired January 22, 1977 .

“War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Strength.” George Orwell, “1984“

 I feel like I’ve lived on a steady diet of PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater,” for the last eight years and now I’m going to be forced to watch “Romper Room" for at least the next four.” -Richard Joyce

“They were a rebuke of bigotry and a call for equality and inclusion.They demonstrated the awesome power of individual outrage joined to collective action. And it was a message to America that the majority did not support this president or his plans and will not simply tuck tail and cower in the face of the threat. This was an uprising; this was a fighting back. This was a resistance.” Columnist Charles Blow, writing on Saturday’s nationwide Woman’s March.



   Last November 14th, shortly after Donald Trump won the presidency in a “Change Election,” I attended my weekly Depression Walk In Group at the Veteran’s Administration Clinic on Temple Street and Alameda, in the Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles. I go to the 1 o’clock meeting most Monday’s in order to get my fair dose of depression, as I’ve written about a few times in the past... like here, here, and here.
   The meeting is, and has been facilitated for years by the lovely Dr Kimberly Newsom,  Ph.D., a handsome young black woman and a psychologist who I’ve known for many years. At that time she had a lovely blonde intern working with her named Laura, who would, after finishing with Dr. Newsom, be entering the Armed Services, the navy I believe, my alma mater.
   This being the first meeting held after the election, the eight other veterans there, Dr. Newsom, Laura, and I spent the hour talking about it, and it’s many consequences. Since I spend a great deal of my time keeping up with national politics, in a large part due to this blog, the meeting acted as a cathartic, it helped me to feel a little better about the election’s outcome. 
   Some of the members of the group were silent throughout. Two gentlemen were Hillary voters, and one Trump supporter.
   It was asked how this could have happened, that a man like Donald Trump could become president of the United States. I suggested that the election was billed as a “Change Election,” and a large percentage of the population was unsatisfied with their position within the economy, and fed up with the status quo. Trump represented change. That, and his bombastic personality, and tendency to tell his supporters anything and everything they wanted to hear, represented by his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again (implying that President Obama, and by association, Hillary Clinton, had somehow destroyed the country, or made it un-great somehow, even though the exact opposite was true in the real world. (Here’s a comparison look at the kind of country Obama inherited vs what Trump is getting... thanks to Obama)), and his penchant to lie in any way to further his position, made him appealing to a certain portion of the population. That portion admired  him because he “tells it like it is,” and he “speaks what’s on his mind,” which in my opinion is the third and second to last reasons to vote for anybody.
   The last reason to vote for someone... “He’s a guy I’d like to have a beer with.” 
   I also pointed out that wanting “change” is fine, however, there’s two kinds of change, there’s good change and there’s bad change, and Trump supporters didn’t seem to realize this, or care about it, or think about it much actually, or think at all.
   These people wanted Trump to win so badly, or hated Hillary so much, that they didn’t consider the consequences of Trump actually winning, and might not until he and his administration cronies began messing with their Social Security, medical care, and veteran’s benefits. Diminishing these entities would be change alright, just not the kind they were probably  hoping for. 
   Dr. Newsom agreed with me, and this point came up again several times throughout the  hour long meeting.
   The lone Trump supporter tried to alleviate our fears about a Trump presidency by maintaining that when Trump enters office, he personally will not be affected by Trump. His life will remain the same. There will be little difference in his day to day activities.
   “You can’t possibly know that,” I told him.
   For instance, Sunday Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway (First picture above) confirmed that Trump was planning to replace the Affordable Care Act (for no particular reason other than it was initiated by President Obama) by converting Medicaid (the premiere health insurance program for low-income Americans) into a block grant program. This would take Medicaid’s administration out of the hands of the federal government and put states in charge, with potentially disastrous consequences.
   The Trump people haven’t yet provided details on this significant change, but when the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzed a 2014 block grant plan crafted by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) (then the chair of the House Budget Committee), it forecast a 26 percent cut to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by 2024.
   From the CBPP report:
   “The Urban Institute similarly estimated that the 2012 block grant proposal would lead states to drop between 14.3 million and 20.5 million people from Medicaid by the tenth year. (That would be in addition to the 13 million people who would lose their new coverage or no longer gain coverage in the future due to repeal of the Medicaid expansion, with the number rising as high as 17 million if all states take up the expansion.)”
   That’s change for you, change that would affect my Trump supporting veteran friend if he happened to use Medicaid and lived in a red state.
   By the way, Trump promised not to cut Medicaid during the campaign. I suppose he forgot that promise. He is getting on in years.
   Before the meeting ended I also brought up the point that throughout history regimes, indeed entire civilizations, came and went. Here’s a clip from the movie “Catch 22,” featuring Art Garfunkel, which illustrates my point.  
   The Romans thrived for a little over 500 years then went away. The Greeks and Persians the same. Republicans come and go in the White House, as well as Democrats. We survived Bush in order to be saved by Obama.
   But the pressing danger at this particular time in history, two dangers really, is we now have nuclear weapons that are capable of destroying all life on the Earth (with the exception of cockroaches), and climate change, perhaps humanities greatest challenge, which Trump has vowed to ignore, and by ignoring climate change, making the problem more difficult, perhaps impossible to solve.
   Dr. Newsom eloquently voiced her concerns about living in a country which now had been given license to freely discriminate against minorities due to Trump’s victory, and commit hateful crimes against them (if caught by authorities of course, they would be arrested and prosecuted, hopefully, but she was talking about the prevailing atmosphere throughout the land, an atmosphere brought about in part by Trump’s  hate filled race baiting tactics during the campaign).
   The meeting ended at 1 o’clock, and we all went are separate ways, felling a little better I presume, for having discussed this matter at quite some length. 
   Last Friday was Donald Trump’s inauguration. His inauguration speech, which at 16 minutes long, was the shortest ever presented to the American people... and to the world, painted a picture of the country which was rather bleak, and which exists only in Trump’s fuzzy little mind.
   Here’s the speech.
   Here’s a review of said speech by television host Stephen Colbert.
   A plausible argument can be made that Donald Trump is actually a fascist, using time honored fascist techniques to advance his agenda, such as painting that picture of the country that exists only in his mind, simultaneously suggesting that only he, Trump, can repair the nation, and lead it out of the Obama darkness, to make it great again. Only Donald. All us citizens have to do is lay down and let him do whatever he wants, without any opposition.
   Apparently that is not going to happen, but more on that latter.
   One small matter marred what should have been Trump’s final and greatest triumph. A trivial matter really, but trivial matters seem to irritate our new president to no end.
   The second picture above shows a slight difference in the amount of inauguration attendees between Barrack Obama’s 2009 inauguration (on the left) and Trump’s (on the right).
   Trump said, as he looked out amongst the vast crowd, that he saw over a million attendees, and was bewildered to find out the next day that the hateful, dishonest, and crooked media, was claiming that far fewer people showed up than all of those that exist in Trump’s fuzzy mind. This of course bruised Trump’s fragile ego, wherein he just had to complain about it. 
   Which he did so the next day at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley VA, wherein he stated he was in some sort of “running war” with the media, who of course are “The most dishonest people in the world” (this is called “projection,” where one projects their own traits onto others), that the media has portrayed he was a harsh critic of the intelligence community, which of course was completely false, according to Trump (“Trump has repeatedly vilified the CIA and the entire intelligence community for what he claimed were politically charged conclusions about Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election in order to help Trump. At a Jan. 11 news conference, Trump even accused intelligence officials of being behind a ‘Nazi-like smear campaign’against him. And in his tweets he put quotation marks around the word ‘intelligence’in referring to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.” -Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton), and that the media had manipulated crowd attendee numbers to look as if hardly anyone showed up for his inauguration. Trump claims there were “a million, maybe a million and a half” there. Independent experts state that the number was closer to 250,000 (Trump has a history of inflating numbers concerning himself, such as the amount of his wealth, which he claims to be over 10 billion dollars. Others familiar with Trump, like the good folks at Forbes Magazine, suggest the true number is between 2 and 3 billion). Trump claims that the crowd he witnessed extended all the way back to the Washington Monument. “So we caught them, we caught them in a real beauty [of a lie presumably].” Here's the speech.
   Clearly this is a case of Chico Marx’s axiom “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
   He then boasts about being on the cover of Time magazine more than anyone else.
   There’s clearly something horribly wrong with this man.
  Oh yeah... apparently Trump brought his own paid for audience to the event in order to insure a positive reception.
   Trump later directed his Press Secretary Sean Spicer (third picture above), in his very first meeting with the media, to make the remarkable statement that can be found above. Here’s a clip of that brief encounter.
   He attempted to suggest that ground coverings and something called magnometers were being used for the first time which may have influenced the size of the crowd, both statements being false. Ground coverings had been used before, and no magnometers were used (Daily Show correspondent Desi Lydic offered the possible explanation that most of Trump’s crowd were simply wearing poler bear skins, for the sparse photographic evidence).
   Spicer then called the media shameful for their attempts to minimize the enthusiasm of the event, before he left without taking any questions.
   There is no question that Spicer was directed to blatantly lie to the press on his first encounter with them, lies that were easily able to identify and verify. Lies that the Trump administration clearly wants the public and press to accept simply because they say so.
   Trump attempted to claim that the sparse photograph was taken before the inauguration, in other words before everyone he claims were there showed up. The photo editor of Reuters, Jim Bourg, who’s photographer took the picture, shot that down right smartly, explaining the photo was taken at 12:01.18 exactly, right after Trump was sworn in.
   Oh and another thing. A time lapse video of the mall, shot from the Washington Monument by PBS Newshour, shows that the area was not filled to capacity at any stage during the day.
   So Trump was defending a lie with another lie.
   Unlike Trump’s whopper that he had seen a non-existent video of “thousands and thousands” of Arab-Americans cheering in New Jersey as the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, which in comparison was difficult to pin him down on, the inauguration evidence is out there for anybody who enjoys the gift of sight.
   Here’s another one (they just keep on coming, don’t they). Yesterday Trump told congressional leaders that he lost the popular vote to Hillary because millions of "illegals" cast ballots, according to an aide granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting. Trump told them that 3 million to 5 million "illegals" voted, the aide said.
   He provided no evidence whatsoever to back this claim up. None! Again, I guess he believes we are supposed to accept anything he says, just because he says so.
   There is no evidence that widespread voter fraud took place during the election.
   Another lie.
   It’s getting difficult to keep up with the presidential lies of Donald Trump, and he’s only been in office three days.
   So this is a clear indication of what’s to come for the next four years... or for however long the Republicans in Congress want to put up with his nonsense before impeaching him (in which case Vice President Mike Pence would take over, who isn’t any better than Trump really. When George Stephanopoulos asked Pence if he thought it was okay for his boss to consistently lie to the American public, he said “I think the American people find it refreshing to hear from someone who speaks what is on his mind.” Refreshing? To be lied to? Really Pence?
   An administration based on lies and redirection. As soon as Trump took the oath of office, the White House began erasing web pages on climate change, LGBTQ rights, labor, and civil rights, as if these issues didn’t exist.
   They don’t exist in Trump’s alternative universe. They do in the real world that clear thinking people, sane people live in.    
   Kellyanne Conway unwittingly created a new fun term in describing Trump’s, and Trump’s cronies, including herself, lies, as “Alternative Facts.”
   Here’s Todd’s and Conway’s testy exchange.
   Dan Rather on Hardball with Chris Matthews Monday, stated (and I paraphrase) “There is no such thing as an ‘alternative fact.’ That two and two equals four is a fact. That water runs downhill is a fact. That a bear shits in the woods is a fact. Facts are what our democracy runs on! Alternative facts are lies.”
   Rather wrote this on his Facebook page: “The press has never seen anything like this before. The public has never seen anything like this before. And the political leaders of both parties have never seen anything like this before.
   What can we do? We can all step up and say simply and without equivocation. ‘A lie, is a lie, is a lie!’ And if someone won't say it, those of us who know that there is such a thing as the truth must do whatever is in our power to diminish the liar's malignant reach into our society.”
   The use of these terms like alternative facts, the disappearance of information that could be vital to mankind’s survival, charging demonstrators, and other various “offenders,” with hate-crimes, which are punishable by ten years to life in prison, these are steps taking us closer and closer to George Orwell’s vision of his masterpiece, “1984.”      
   “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” George Orwell
   Orwell it can safely be said, was a bit of a pessimist.
   We’ve discussed authoritarian attempts to alter reality before, here. 
   Obviously, considering the frequency and ease at which Trump and his surrogates attempt to change the real world for that which would benefit Trump, or assuage his massive ego, the media and the rest of us must be very vigilant and call him out each and every single time he lies. Everytime!
   Tump’s weekend didn’t get any better when on Saturday 2.9 to 3.2 American women took a walk.
   The “Women's March” was a worldwide protest to protect women's rights and other causes including immigration reform, health care reform, protection of the natural environment, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, freedom of religion, and workers' rights.
   The rallies, directed at Trump, included 408 in the U.S., and 168 in 81 other countries. March officials later reported 673 marches worldwide, with 20 in Mexico and 29 in Canada.
     The protests were the largest political demonstrations in the United States since the Vietnam War.
   An estimated 60,000 people marched in Atlanta. 250,000 in Chicago. There are estimates of 250,000 people in Boston, and 200,000 in Denver. In New York, the estimate ranges from 200,000-500,000. City officials estimate that 500,000 people participated in the main march in Washington, DC. In Los Angeles, the estimate is anywhere from 200,000-750,000.
   My lovely sister Cheryl could look out of her apartment’s window, which is six stories up in downtown Los Angeles and see something similar to the last (8th) picture above. (The 5th picture is Washington D.C., the 6th Boston, the 7th, in front of City Hall, Los Angeles. The 4th picture is that of the lovely Desi Lydic)
   “It is possible that Trump has reactivated something President Obama couldn’t maintain, and Hillary Clinton couldn’t fully tap into: A unified, mission-driven left that puts bodies into the streets. The women’s marches sent a clear signal: Your comfort will not be built on our constriction. We are America. We are loud, ‘nasty’ and fed up. We are motivated dissidents and we are legion.” -Charles Blow
   Trump’s reaction?
   “Why didn’t these people vote?”
   And he still claims that the ladies love him.
   And finally, I’ve found someone who shares my fears about Trump. 
   Before we elected Trump, Samantha Bee interviewed Russian author and dissident Masha Gessen about a potential Trump presidency. She interviewed Gessen again for last Wednesday's “Full Frontal,” and her thoughts on a Trump America were not reassuring.
   Based on her experience with Vladimir Putin she states, "Oh, my biggest worry is a nuclear holocaust. If miraculously we avoid that, then, you know, he's certain to do irreparable damage to the environment that will make survival of the human species impossible."
   When Bee asked for her advice on what U.S. citizens can do, Gessen said calmly, "The thing, I think, to do — and this is my recipe, is to actually continue panicking.”
   Well perhaps we can do a little more than that.