A few people I meet when I'm out campaigning:

1) This (white) (bro-ish) (late 30-something or early 40-something) guy in (neon green) construction gear who's walking by and who I approach with my usual greeting and hold out my campaign literature to, but he holds out his hand to me like "talk to the hand" and is like "No thanks, I don't need any propaganda today."

2) This one (white) (purple-dyed hair) (early 20-something) who's out walking a (small) dog and who I immediately speak to after that, and it turns out she just moved here from the rural Northeast to join friends and to try living in a city for a while and she's not registered to vote, and I thank her for her kindness and mention that guy's response, and when I say, "You have to wonder what people who say things like that are like in everyday life," she's like, "Do you really want to find out?".

3) This one (older) (white) woman who answers her door and we get to chatting about an American flag decoration in her window, and then she points out how there's like a foot of spots on the window all across the front window, and she says it's the cat who goes there, since he has allergies and sneezes, and I immediately see that the spots only go as far up as cat height.

She also points out how the cat destroyed each end of the blinds, so it could make its way out onto the window sill and sit and watch the world go by.

A disturbing dream of boating and drowning.

The other week I dreamnt -

I'm in a smaller enclosed motor boat with my father and another passenger, and my dad is driving the boat.

Waves kick up and begin washing over the windows more and more, and next thing you know they're over the windows and almost like four-fifths up the boat where there's just like half a foot of light over there, and my dad says everything is all right, and the boat keeps moving ahead, but I'm afraid we'll sink, and I start thinking about how I'd have to kick out the windows and swim out to avoid being trapped inside and drowning, once we go down.

And, a little bit of water comes through a window, which I latch closed at some point.

But, the dream continues and we reach shore, and we're outside my one childhood home where we lived the longest, the one on a small lake.

We were boating on our small lake the entire time, and I always had been aware of it.

We docked by the resort a few doors down from us, rather than by our house, and then walked over to our house.

. . .

Anecdote of this one resthome resident who uses a wheelchair and likes to sun herself out in front of the building.

Like a month ago, this one resthome resident who uses a wheelchair and likes to sun herself out in front of the building told me this one anecdote about this one time when she was sitting out in front of the building sunning herself, and she was enjoying some coffee that she was sipping now and then out of this paper cup.

When she got done with the coffee, she didn't know what to do with the cup since there wasn't a trash can nearby and she didn't feel like holding onto it while she was sitting there, so she set it down on the sidewalk.

And, next thing you know, a passerby comes up and throws some change in it.

An endearing feature of one resthome resident.

There's this one very elderly resthome resident, whose husband and daughter both predeceased her, and now she lives there alone and she has pretty bad memory problems where she forgets when and if she did things, but she's often in quite a good mood where she says everything is "marvelous" and she speaks in simple Spanish with you and she drops in Italian phrases, too, like "mille grazi" (sp?) and "arrivaderci" (sp.?).

The other week, too, I noticed that to hold down her hair, she wears paperclips, the big kind, one on each side, for a big swath of hair.

Since then, I've noticed that whenever she needs to hold back her hair, she uses paperclips.

It's so wonderful, and so endearing, and so totally her.

I'm afraid to mention it to her, since she might change it.

What style!

This one resthome resident's lifelong fear.

This one resthome resident is getting to be almost a hundred, and the other afternoon we were chit-chatting and he mentioned that he was afraid of cats and dogs.

"Why?", I was like.

He then said that back when he was a kid, he heard his brother screaming loudly from down the block, and he ran over and there was a cat hanging off his finger, biting it.

So, since it wouldn't let go, they picked up a brick and started hitting it on its head until they killed it.

Then, some city workers came and took the cat away and tested it, and it had rabies, and his brother had to go and get rabies shots, where they put a big needle into his stomach.

He never mentioned why he doesn't like dogs, though.

Hearing another language on the subway.

The other week I was riding the subway, and there were two (older) (Asian) people sprawled out each on one side of the car in the forward facing seats there, and they were wearing knit caps and clothing that was a bit dirty, and they both were talking very very loudly.

(I think they were Vietnamese.)

Anyhow, when the one guy on the right finished a couple very loud, very slow sentences, he was talking very very loudly on an otherwise quiet car, and somehow the last word he uttered was something like -

COCK!

- and the word just hung out there for everyone to hear, as he stopped talking.

An occasional wish of mine.

Social media keeps me informed, especially Twitter, but it also takes up an inordinate amount of time.

I need to be more conscious of my use of it, and limit it to a bit each day, and put my darn phone down when I find myself picking it up and checking for updated accounts and stuff.

So much of Twitter is froth that will fall away, and takes me away from activities where I can work on projects that will have lasting effect.