Election Day

 

Long lines on the Upper West Side prevented me from voting early but I only had to wait half an hour at 6:50 a.m. on Election Day to cast my ballot for candidates on the Working Families and Democratic Party lines.  If I'd gone later in the day, it would have been even less crowded!  New York City's Board of Elections--who disenfranchised me in 2018 by claiming that I wasn't registered to vote--has some work to do.

Martin Eden (5*)

My knowledge of Jack London extended no further than The Call of the Wild so learning that another of his novels pretty much functions as the key to understanding Susan Sontag's ambition sent me to this autobiographical novel.  His life of an adventurer turned self-educated writer and philanthropist did not disappoint and will resonate with anyone who ever has received a publisher's rejection slip--or tasted fame.  But Martin has the last laugh if you ignore the book's ending which I'm certain is the reason it isn't more popular.  After all, there aren't many classic novels that masquerade as an intellectual bodice-ripper and London's purplish prose demands to be read aloud.  Now a major motion picture--in Italian, no less!

Susan Sontag: Her Life & Work (5*)

OK, I'll admit that until I read Benjamin Moser's superb if somewhat controversial biography I was more intrigued by Susan Sontag's skunk hair-do than impressed by her erudition.  Like many people, I knew she was the iconic figure of the 60s who defined camp but I didn't appreciate how fully she inhabited the zeitgeist of the last half of the 20th century.  For starters, she and Andy Warhol fought to a draw in a peculiar cultural battle of the bands--Depth vs. Surface--but Sontag's biographer tells the much better story, hands down.  

"If praise and prosperity brought out the worst in her, oppression and destitution brought out the best. If she could be haughty in New York she was kind in Sarajevo.  There she put her body on the line and bore witness and earned universal respect, but none of that answered the difficult question she posed: of what she, either as an individual or as a symbol could actually do to help."

Moser's seminal insights may be drawn from pop psychology--a life lived as both a child of an alcoholic and a closeted lesbian--but they also illuminate her personality in a way that Blake Gopnick fails to do in Warhol.  Paradoxically, perhaps because I knew so little about Sontag, I felt that I actually got to know her much better than Warhol even though the visual artist was completely open about his sexuality.

The two bios got me thinking:  somebody should write a play about the two of them.  Call it The Cipher and the Diva.  

"[The figure of the diva] dramatized the contrast between the person and the aestheticized person, between reality and dream: Sontag’s great theme. The diva is the dream of others. They fantasize about her, long to possess her, idealize her beauty, worship her genius, envy her wealth and fame. She is the product of a collective will – a product, like literary or political fictions, with a reality of its own."

Randy's Birthday Posse

Randy invited us to New London for "Halloween In Exurbia."  He's standing in front of his new house--almost completely furnished online--with Andrew on Saturday morning.

Don't we look a little Yankee Gothic in the back yard?  Did the neighbors--who include a Fire Batallion Commander--think we were priests?  Or attending a super spreader event?

We toured Seaside State Park, a former sanitarium for tubercular children in neighboring Waterford.  Cass Gilbert designed it in the Tudor Revival style.  He's more famous for the Woolworth Building and the US Supreme Court.

The Long Island Sound sparkled.  We could see for miles and miles.

I do loves me a weather vane.

Ophelia left behind a message inside a covered bridge.

Next stop:  Harkness Memorial State Park for a repeat visit.  

The cutting garden had been cut, but the park retained its essential charm.  Someone had left behind a stuffed animal in September, too.  Maybe it's a thing. 

Oh look!  A sprite.

We walked on the rocky beach among thousands of shells, about to be ground into sand.

After some hearty pea soup and garlic bread back at Randy's, we toured downtown New London.  The hipsters have colonized Bank Street with Hygienic Art.

Are You Experienced?

A monument near the train station commemorates the city's war dead.  It's been around for plenty of 'em.  Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale taught in New London before he became a spy for the Continental Army.  The Brits hung him at age 21.  And you thought Teach for America was demanding!

A lot of whales died in New London's heyday.

Time almost seems to have stopped inside the train station.

State Street is the main drag, with commerce old and new.

The First Church of Christ.

An historic movie theater with a wittily ambiguous marquee:  "Coming Soon:  Close Encounters of the November 3 Kind."

The pandemic has restricted business to white jacketed mannequins.

A solidly constructed library with incredible stone work.

A kitty (?) peered out from a memorial plaque across the street.

Looking back towards the harbor.

The Thames's mostly industrial riverfront hasn't been developed, perhaps because the train tracks hug it.

We meandered back to the parking lot where we left the cars.

Curtis, Randy's first four-footed visitor, was happy to see us.

I paged through Randy's collection of After Dark magazines.  Iggy Pop wasn't who I expected to find, that's for sure!

We celebrated Randy's birthday a night early with an appropriately decorated confection from You Take the Cake.

Randy enjoyed the sightseeing as much as we did on Sunday.  He hadn't been to Stonington since the last 70s, when he lived with his first boyfriend in New London.  Really, really great residential architecture--I'm pretty sure that "charming" is a zoning requirement.  Andrew thought Stepford Wives likely populated the neighborhood.

For whom do Stepford Wives cast their vote?

The Battle of Stonington took place in the War of 1812.

Randy posed with his birthday posse on the other side of that cannon, probably last fired more than two centuries ago.  Sounds like me.

I'd almost forgotten it had been Halloween the night before.  On a Blue Moon, no less

Another weather vane on a rather tall house.  Note the fancy recycling bags.

Door knockers are a thing, too.

The simplicity of this chapel is almost Puritan.

Another architecturally distinctive library!

And a lighthouse museum.

But the spear fisherman made my day.  Those are tautog he's hoisting.   They put up quite a struggle when you catch them with a pole.

Ugly, but tasty with dense, white meat.

Look closely at the left, in between the angle formed by the jetty and sand, and you'll see him in the water.  He and his buddy shot their spears in water around ten feet deep.