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pieces of dead theropods
Saturday, May 13 2017
Sandor (of Eva and Sandor) had a boring chore for me today that I'd agreed to. For some reason he trusts me to transport lumber on the roof of my Subaru, though I think he also has a vehicle with a roof rack. I don't ask questions about such things; I just try to be a good friend. So a little before noon, I drove out to Zena Road in the Subaru, stopping at the Zena Road Stewarts for coffee and then killing time by making a run to the Tibetan Center thrift store. But I only had a few coins' worth of cash, and I didn't want to be making one my usual $3 purchases with a credit card. So I didn't buy that five volt wall wart or that microUSB cable. I probably have enough of those at this point anyway.
After picking up Sandor at his house on Chestnut Hill Road, I drove us out to Home Depot mostly via Sawkill Road. I told Sandor recent tales from my workplace, the rental units, and the Pittsburgh trip, and he told me about a recent team-building meeting his company had had in Dayton, Ohio. "It's a bit of a food desert," he said, referring to the availability of vegan options in restaurants.
Sandor is a bit of a slow mover in Home Depot, but eventually he'd made his decisions and had begun loading his cart. He wanted to buy a bunch of untreated lumber to build raised beds for gardening. He knew the wood would rot away in a couple years, but he didn't want treated wood next to his veggies. I suggested maybe using cedar posts for the corners, but then it turned out that Home Depot doesn't have cedar posts. So I suggested he coat the bottom ends of the posts with tar to at least slow the progress of fungal attack. He ended up buying 12 rough eight-foot one-by-twelves, eight eight-foot four by fours, some poplar to be used for making cabinet doors, and a gallon of roofing tar. It was a big lumber load for the roof, but I strapped it down with the Thule straps designed for securing kayaks. I wanted to use a ratcheting strap as well, but it got stuck in a mode where it wouldn't release, so I had to abandon it. The delivery back to Eva & Sandor's place went off without a hitch. And now Sandor insists on taking me out for a beer. But that will have to wait for another day.
Gretchen was working at the bookstore again today, though her shift ended earlier than usual, and at 3:00pm she'd scheduled me for a social call. J, one of her former prisoner-students, was part of some Bard Prison Initiative panel at Bard College, and Gretchen wanted to see what she could of that and then take J and a prisoner-rights activist named S out for drinks afterwards. So I drove us over to Bard, I illegally parked outside the building where the panel was happening, and then I grabbed a cup off coffee from the coffee urn in the hallway. The panel was just ending as we arrived, and all these fresh-faced college students were filing out of the auditorium. America's future, or a part of it at least. Gretchen introduced me to S, who is actually a former prisoner herself and was in violation of her parole just being here. But she's a badass; she'd brought her ten-year-old son and his son's best friend, both of whom were obsessed with playing a game on their smartphones for the whole time we saw them this afternoon and evening. Also in the panel crowd was Jed, the BPI guy I used to work with back when I did computer work for them, and that woman Megan who'd kicked us out of the Eastern graduation in January of 2013 (though she went past us, seemingly without noticing). Gretchen got a chance to greet some people she hadn't seen in years, and it was nice for her to see that they hadn't been turned against her by the messy ending of her relationship with BPI. Once J had joined our group, we convoyed into Rhinebeck (my least-favorite village) and went into the casual half of Terrapin. (Gretchen had done some research and decided Terrapin was the most vegan-friendly of all the bad WASPy restaurant options Rhinebeck has to offer.) S made the kids put down their phones long enough to place our orders, which were initially just drinks (I ordered the Ithaca Flower Power IPA). Later though, the kids ordered chicken wings, which is not exactly the kind of thing Gretchen wants to watch anyone eat. But the cause of prisoner rights is a different one than the cause of animal rights, so the expectations were different. That said, wings are a disgusting beyond the fact that they are pieces of dead theropods. The red sauce they were covered with got on everything: the kids' faces, S's face, and their clothes. It also got on the french fries when the arrived, and I made a point of only eating from the part of the fries that the wing-eaters had not.
In addition to their smartphones, which commanded the vast majority of their attention, the two kids also had "fidget toys," little devices the size of a yo-yo (but flatter) that could be spun on ball-bearing-connected axle to act like a little exposed gyroscope that could be balanced on things, occasionally to be braked by bored little fingers. I'd only recently become aware of fidget toys (within, say, the past three or four months), having seen them advertised at Gizmodo.com. I'd assumed they were a new element of geek/nerd culture, but I've learned subsequently that they're all the rage among tweens and teens. I suspect that they fill in for things that a smartphone cannot provide: substantialness, tactility, and capable of being used without being watched.
The conversation was mostly about issues of clemency and strategies an inmate would use to secure parole. None of this was interesting to me at all, and I had virtually nothing to contribute except to occasionally say that Andrew Cuomo is a horrible person. (He's a Democratic governor in a liberal state, but because his plans are to one day run for President, he always looks for opportunities to show he's no bleeding heart liberal.)
After I'd had a second beer, I felt a little more comfortable and engaged, particularly when there were real tales being told about being transported between prisons, rotting in bordeom in the Special Housing Unit, and the trouble S got in when Ms. Magazine published an article she'd written behind bars. Still, I really would've much preferred to have stayed home and let Gretchen give me the highlights later. J had a train to catch at 8:00pm, so as that time approached, our multi-hour socializing came to a merciful end. By the way, Gretchen is convinced that S and J have a thing for each other, though nothing has actually happened yet.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
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