July 5, 2024

Final Research Day

That’s a wrap. Almost. I’ve just done my last sweaty walk into the HRC and have my last two boxes awaiting me. Yesterday was a day off for obvious reasons, though it seemed as if no one was in the mood, again, to celebrate Independence Day when our freedoms are being taken away from us by a rogue Supreme Court. We took it easy, really, doing nothing too special. Henry wanted a burger for lunch, so we went to Hat Creek Burger Company, and it was fine. Afterward, we got some ice cream, and a beer for me, just down the road. We spent the rest of the day at the VRBO rental chilling out. We heard some fireworks, but, we'll see above.

Norman Mailer in 1962.

Oh, and I want to mention the Upstream Podcast. I’ve been listening to music mostly on my walks, but I listened to an episode in which Cory Doctorow talked about his new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. It makes me wish I was teaching new media again. Most of the discussion was about the fallout and benefit to capitalists in the wake of the DMCA, and much of it I haven’t really considered or heard about. He ended optimistically, extolling the virtues of many of Biden’s appointees in battling against digital monopolies. It’s a good listen. Today, I started the episode on dialectical materialism with Josh Sykes from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Good stuff.

Box 672 has a folder of correspondence from a dude named John Milmore, who is apparently a mental patient. There’s nothing from Mailer to him, but a stack of odd letters to Mailer. I bet he got all sorts of stuff like this. There’s a folder of congratulations letters and notes for winning the Pulitzer for ES. Otherwise, nothing apposite to the short fiction. The same for Box 719 which contains correspondence around The Time of Our Time, and a few notes from Mike Lennon, which are fun. I bet Mike really misses Norman.

I requested three more boxes of photos. I don’t really have time, but I couldn’t resist. It does seem to take a while for them to retrieve them, however. There’s some great stuff in these boxes, but I only had time to snap a few, like the one included here. (I had to leave the mylar protection on, so that’s why it has weird reflections.)

Now, it’s off for family time on their last day here.