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dinner in Willow
Saturday, August 2 2008
Gretchen and I drove all the way out to Willow today to have dinner with our friends Doug and Jenny, who run the Woodstock Farm An!mal Sanctuary. For those who don't remember, Gretchen once was on the board of Catskill An!mal Sanctuary, the other local farm animal sanctuary, until its president Kathy Sτevens — one of Gretchen's then best friends — accused her of stealing several things, including jewelry and essential oils(?!). Before that went down, Kathy had had a falling out with Jenny, which had driven a wedge between Gretchen and Jenny. Now, though, there's no reason not to be friends. Besides, most of the unsettling revelations Kathy had made about Jenny had probably been either untrue or exaggerated.
Before dinner, we got a tour of the new facilities, which includes a large climate-controlled building featuring the sorts of infrastructure necessary for basic veterinary work. We also spent some time in the goat barn, which houses something like twenty goats, as well as five or six rabbits. We had our dogs with us, and they were mostly interested in the latter. Sally (still smelling of skunk) was so worked up about them that she was actually moaning, an expression normally far beneath her dignity.
Woodstock Farm An!mal Sanctuary facilities have a far tidier, æsthetically-pleasing character to them than the analogous buildings at Catskill An!mal Sanctuary, which (despite heroic efforts) have always seemed dingy and improvised. Though one could argue that attention to æsthetics implies that less is going for the care of the animals, by the same token, it's easier to raise money for your sanctuary if your animals look happy and are surrounded by tasteful, well-maintained buildings.
Dinner was, of course, entirely vegan. It was built around a base of quinoa and there was some sort of smoked tempeh and carrot sauce.
Later we sat in the living room and thumbed through books with creepy art collections, starting with the works of Camille Rose Garcia. Jenny and I love creepy art, but Gretchen isn't into it at all. (Indeed, I have to hang all my creepy paintings either in the laboratory or the garage.)
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