Normally of late I have a starting sentence with which I commence these ramblings. It sits in my mind as I walk to this library or another one. Nothing doing today. Just going to wing it.

I remembered what I wanted to circle back on, that notion of memory being indexed and searchable, and what it means for the future of reputation and legacy. Now I can’t remember what I wanted to add to that concept… But I am planning a trip to the chapel to record that story and others. Not sure exactly when but weekends are best, or at least they used to be, since there was no noisy landscaping work going on outside. But I think they are done with all that tearing up of the pavement for now, at least in the vicinity of the chapel. Now the only potential hazard to impede access to the chapel would be the geese. Those are scary creatures.

Watched about 20 minutes of the DJT press conference. He sounded tired and boring, reminding me of a comment a friend made a year or so ago: if Trump becomes president it would be one of those administrations where nothing much happens. I believed that then and believe it now. It’s going to be a Jesse Ventura term, where he was ushered in to office like a rock star but settled down in to a passable but unremarkable 4 years. Trump seems not to have done much yet. ICE gets this creepy kind of coverage now but is it not true that Obama deported Mexicans at triple the rate Trump has so far?

His petty complaints about fake news show a troublingly thin skin, but I have to say I respect how he does not seem to have changed who he is — not yet at least — to fit the role of the office. Complaining about the mess he “inherited” is not very classy, but one should not expect dignity from this individual. Classless as well is bragging about electoral college votes and comparing yourself to Ronald Fucking Reagan, and doing so with what seems to be inaccurate information.

On the other hand I noticed a couple of weeks ago Hillary Clinton and her former campaign members lobbing petty bullshit onto their Twitter feeds. That’s not too classy, either.

I swear any time I see “Twitter” and “President” in the same headline I feel like the apocalypse has truly arrived. How can a President of the United States give a shit about updating his Twitter followers?

On the other hand I think I am on his side about the Russia nonsense. Protocol was not followed by Flynn, and I guess his resignation was inevitable. But what do people really think was going on with these phone calls? Espionage? Coordinating a communist takeover of the U.S.? Did Putin enlist millions of operatives to vote for Trump, or somehow rig millions of voting machines? Yeah, right.

I read the NY Times story he blasted during the press conference. While reading it I thought, I can see this is a sidebar story but to commit all this resource to making this a scandal is ludicrous. I think he had a point with complaining about that story, not to give him too much credit for it, since he should have bigger things to worry about.

As so often happens the cub reporters have this irritating habit appending “-gate” to the scandal. That happened with the Chris Christy “Bridgegate” and I think I remember something like “Iran-Contragate” among other gratuitous invocations of the only scandal to bring down a president. As also often happens they echo as if it is saccharine one of the most traumatic questions ever asked in the houses of congress: What did the president know, and when did he know it? That question is brandished about like a punch line now but it was the farthest thing from funny as its intentions were turned against it.

Asked by republican senator Howard Baker (for years I thought it was Tip O’Neill) the question was actually meant to be rhetorical. Baker asked it almost as a joke, assuming that the president knew nothing about this botched burglary at the Watergate hotel. But the question became infamous when Nixon’s knowledge and outright complicity in paying off the Watergate burglars was revealed.

My grandmother described Watergate as one of the most traumatic experiences of her life. The gradual dissolving of trust in politicians, the president no less, changed everything about her outlook on America. It was an interesting observation for me, for whom trust in government has never been assumed. I don’t think government is the enemy. I think the processes and procedures of the union do more to contain turmoil and despotry than the intentions of its soldiers.

For my mother that flashpoint of government’s image shattering was not just the assassination of John F. Kennedy but the ascent to the presidency of someone she regarded as a lowlife pig. She got angry at me when I expressed interest in LBJ, and read one of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s books about him. I used to like reading about presidents because I believe power brings out the real character of a person, and it makes their flaws and strengths impossible to hide. For this reason I attempted to read the Toland biography of Hitler, but I never got far. Just a disgusting, filthy window to look in on, as I recall.

Funny thing about this first month in office. Headlines say Trump has Washington “reeling” and on the defense. I think Trump’s voters see that headline and say “Yes!” even as little else makes sense about things. I briefly heard an NPR piece yesterday about the Flynn mess. The reporter alluded to the promise to “drain the swamp” and asked if this kind of scenario is what Trump’s voters had in mind. Probably so, I think, given that a lot of those folks probably do not read more than the headlines.

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Last night I watched a little more of An Unmarried Woman, which is said to be a pathbreaking movie for its portrayal of women and their locker room talk, among other things. I liked it for its views of the Upper East Side, where I used to live, and its subsequent glimpses of Long Island City when there was basically nothing to see there except Big Allis.

The avalanche of buildings going up around Queens Plaza feels apocalyptic. I overheard an older guy a few months ago saying that he had not been down to Queens Plaza in years. He barely recognized it any more, and had no idea about the orgiastic development going on there. It should not but it often amazes me how people do not know what is happening more than a couple of blocks away from their home. I knew someone who lived on 37th Avenue and 32nd Street. She said she had no idea where Northern Boulevard was. You can see it from there.

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Listening now to Cecile Licad playing Louis Moreau Gottschalk. I discovered yesterday that Gottschalk had a sister. I never knew that, though I was no scholar of the guy. She was a composer as well, but the one piece of hers I found is not enough to guess if her work is of much interest. It would probably be better known by now if it had merit. Obscurities are hard to keep down anymore. I was interested to see that a CD of Vaughn-Williams’ piano music was released, apparently most of it recorded for the first time. I never thought of him as a piano composer, save for the piano concerto.

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Well, this is a whole lot of text that does not say much.

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Going to explore the collaborative suite thing from localhost, not on the live server. Idea is to set up an e-mail exchange between two people in which tchotchkes and trinkets are left around town, hidden in places like the DETEX Watchclock Station or some of the AsLIC scuppers. Or in library books, or stuck to the bottom of chairs. I reached down to pull a chair forward the other day and felt a wad of gum under there. Yay.

I knew a bartender once who asked me for suggestions on how to implement his idea of saying something profound in a manner such that absolutely nobody would see or hear it. I don’t know if he fully understood his own idea but it was interesting to consider where you could, for example, spraypaint something profound in a place where it would never be seen and where its author could never be determined. I guess he wanted the words to be discovered eventually but not for centuries. No Internet connection was allowed. This had to be real. He went on to work for the Secret Service, or some quasi-undercover government agency he was not allowed to identify. He followed his father’s path in this regard. Maybe he uses his position to infiltrate his profundities into the most hallowed corridors of obscurity.

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Today’s page 181 is mercifully brief, containing only one chapter-ending paragraph. In this paragraph we learn that Judy loved gossip as much as the next bird, but when it involved children she was not such a fan. Yeah. That’s something. The book is Elements of Style, by Wendy Wasserstein. I did, in fact, pick that book thinking it was the manual on how to write term papers and dissertations. I corrected that though when seeing the book’s pink cover and non-businesslike artwork.

Aha, the book has the street address of this library on its back cover. 40-20 Broadway. This raises the eternal mystery of why there is no 40th Street in Astoria but buildings between Steinway and 41st nevertheless are numbered as if there was a 40th Street. Great mysteries of our generation. And what of 54th Avenue in West Maspeth? Why are there two of them?