|
|
|
postcard party
Thursday, May 24 2018
Today the plan was to have a little postcard writing event to benefit a local Democratic politician named Pat Strong who is hoping to finally end the reign of terror that is George A. Amedore, who serves in a State Senate district specifically designed for him (and his brand of Upstate Republicanism). To prepare for this, Gretchen handled all of the household cleanup jihad except for the yard, though she'd wanted to get instructions for using the lawnmower so she could do that too. But I ended up doing it sometime before my workday. Also, at various points throughout the day, I managed to make further progress on the screened-in porch project. I cut away a rectangle of clapboards on the side of the house for where I wanted to install the 12 foot two-by-six onto which I would be attaching the collar ties. Later in the day, I also installed that actual two-by six itself. By then Gretchen had moved on to making snack foods of the sort one serves when people are coming over: various dips and those rubbery curried chickpeas she's been making lately.
Meanwhile Gretchen had taken Neville to the Hurley vet to have a lump removed from his left arm. Though that lump had been about the size of a baby carrot, we'd assumed it was benign (it had been biopsied once), but now the vet wasn't so sure. The contents of the lump had been "gelatinous" and worrying, so they'd been sent off for more lab work. Gretchen picked up Neville from the vet around 6:00pm, just before people began arriving for the Pat Strong thing.
The first to arrive this evening was this woman Jessica, who works in alternative energy. Evidently this was how she had come to know Pat. She was also the one who had convinced Gretchen to do the event tonight. Other than Jessica and the eventual presence of Pat herself, it was all our usual friends: Susan & David, Jeff & Alana, Ray & Nancy, and Kate (now no longer with Joe). The others in our social network all begged out of the event with excuse of being sick, though I never really believe people when they say that. (If they told their employers they were sick this often, none of them would have jobs.)
Eventually, after it reached a critical mass, I joined the hubbub downstairs. The idea, as explained by Jessica, was for each of us to take a list from local voter rolls of people who are either Democrats or undecided and write personal notes on postcards encouraging them to vote with the hope of increasing Democratic turnout. I started out with bland political talk and soon moved on to writing in huge letters simply asking that the recipient vote for Pat Strong. In addition to the dips and spreads and chips and crackers and rubbery chickpeas, by now there was also wine and beer, so it soon felt pretty festive.
Periodically I'd rejoin the happy hour in the remote workplace to give updates or listen in to whatever the current topic of banter was about. It seemed like so much time was passing down in the postcard party, but every time I'd return to the laboratory, I'd see the happy hour was still decidedly underway. It really made clear how long it tends to run for. As indication of how important it is for all of us, Cameron was an active participant for several house even though this week he'd arranged to be on vacation.
At one point I jokingly donned some novelty eyeglasses (from China, of course) that include a videocamera embedded in them and went down to the postcard party while it was shooting video. Then after recording several minutes of whatever, I returned to the laboratory and showed the video to the people in happy hour. Unfortunately, though, the angle of the camera was such that it seemed to be looking down at the postcards on the table and not horizontally at faces. It was also recording audio, but none of that was especially interesting. At least not this time. Nobody in the postcard party had noticed that my glasses were slightly different, though when Cameron saw them, he said they were just different enough to cause an "uncanny valley" effect. An unexpected problem with the glasses comes from the fact that the glass in them is flat and does not do what my normal eyeglasses do. Not so long ago, this would have been fine, but tonight I realized that I really can't read things at a normal distance without some sort of reading light, at least not in the murky light of our dining room. By the way, Cameron asked why I even had eyeglasses containing a hidden camera, and my reply was that "I will buy anything containing an embedded camera."
I should mention that Celeste the Cat was acting unusually friendly during our postcard writing. She was up there on the dining room table, walking from one of us to the next and rubbing her head enthusiastically against us as we tried to write (which isn't as easy as it used to be, given how little practice we get in this paperless age). Normally Celeste is kind of distant and withdrawn, but tonight it was as if she was trying to fool all our guests into thinking she, not Clarence, was our friendliest, most social cat.
Postcard party tonight. From left, clockwise around the table: Jeff Economy (of Jeff and Alana), David (of Susan and David), Pat Strong, Nancy (of Ray and Nancy), Alana, Gretchen, me, Lee (of Juliana and Lee), and Jessica.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?180524 feedback
previous | next |
