Pete left this afternoon for a union meeting in Anchorage. He’ll get home Saturday evening. He said that there will be several union representatives from differing unions at this meeting. This is hard for me to imagine. One union would be meeting material enough.

It’s a good thing, this union business – too bad that there has to be a fight for fair wages. Capitalism isn’t working. I suppose that it was inevitable, that with such a system, that a few (one percent I’m told) would have 97

percent of the wealth. It blows me away to think that Elon Musk (what a strange name) would have so many billions that he could fritter away 30 billion on a social media company called Twitter.

And here we are, as are many, getting by with very little money, comparatively. I hope that Pete doesn’t end up having his feet put in buckets filled with concrete, then after, end up being pushed off a bridge. What a terrible way to go. They think that Jimmy Hoffa, who was the president of the Teamster’s Union, was dropped into a bridge piling. This sort of behavior on the part of management is totally irresponsible.

I could not do what Pete’s doing. The legalities and technicalities are hard for me to comprehend. If my brain circuitry was examined in the course of one of these conversations, it would reveal that nothing is registering. All I can say is that this is just the way I am.

I am content to be here, at home, tomorrow taking a partial day off from the book project and after making a few phone calls, then tending to my animals. I fear that unless I do, there is going to be an uprising, led by Ranger the Goat. I am seen as management; and so, if I’m not careful, they (dogs, ponies, and horses) will race around the yard and refuse to be caught.

I am looking forward to spending time with them all. This is the one downfall of the BLBP. I keep thinking that it’s going to change, timewise, but this does not seem to be happening.

Today, early, I got a call from the Clerk at the Mat-Su Borough, who told me that I could go ahead and put a bookcase in the front lobby, near the election polling line. I immediately went to the Meeting House and grabbed the one spare bookcase and some books and headed over there. The election clerks were really excited about the books being accessible. I returned there after spending time at the Palmer Senior Center and doing a partial distribution, and both times I put more books on the shelves.

After, I cleaned books at the Meeting House and then boxed them up, putting the names of the villages they are going to on the outside of the boxes. A woman named Georgie came in and took 200 books, which she is going to put in holiday bags that are going to be passed out to children on Christmas day. Last year we took the holiday books to the Salvation Army, and they were sent to villages via the National Guard.

Lastly, I went to stock the bookcase at Carquest, an auto parts shop, and got a tour of underground Palmer. Yes, shlepping books is preferable to attending union meetings.

296. 10/28/22: Home Alone II, The Story Continues