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political event at UPAC
Saturday, October 20 2018
It being Saturday, the day began with coffee. Gretchen also was in the mood to make pancakes, and I was in a mood for eating them. Perhaps this had something to do with my plans to be a lumberjack all day. While Gretchen was off in Woodstock attending numerous readings at the bookstore that employs her (though not as an employee), I tackled several firewood tasks. One of these was to process the last of the slimy wet rough wood piled in front of the woodshed. I did this in several phases, ended with a big gnarly chunk of black cherry. This cherry had been hard to work with all along. For starters, it was suffused with decay, making pieces more likely to eject a small divot of wood (instead of split into two) when attacked with a wedge or a maul. Also, the grain was twisted, meaning any actual split had to follow that twist. Finally, it had a number of knots and branches that fought me. So for that final piece, I ended up cutting into several slices with the grain, the sort of cut I almost never do. (Most of what I know about cutting wood I learned from my father using hand-powered tools, where a saw was mostly just used to cut cross-grain. There was also a special type of blade for cutting parallel to the grain, but I never remember using it.)
Another firewood task I began working on was the processing of a large dead tree that had fallen this summer. I'd thought it was a chestnut oak based on the bark on its lower trunk, but the bark I was looking at today that had been higher up looked more like that of a sugar maple. (It was still probably a chestnut oak, one with odd bark.) It had fallen such that the highest parts of its trunk now stuck out over the escarpment above the basin where the Chamomile is met by the ravine separating our house from our downhill neighbors'. I could still reach these parts from below, but there was a real chance that any piece I bucked off with my saw would go bouncing irretrievably down into the ravine. So I did my best to stop cutting just short of where the piece would snap off on its own so that I could break it off myself and then carry it up to set on the terrace above the escarpment edge. I succeeded at this for all but one of the pieces. I lucked out when the one that got away stopped only fifty feet down the slope and I was able to recover it.
By the end of my firewood harvesting, I'd processed all the old firewood in front of the woodshed and filled the indoor firewood rack to the height of the tops of the 31 inch pipes that keep logs from falling off the ends.
This evening, Gretchen had me come with her to a political event at UPAC. It was a get-out-the-vote fundraiser produced by Hudson Valley Votes, a local Democratic organization. In addition to many local politicians (including all the local Democratic candidates for State Senate as well as Anthonio Delgado, running for the local US Congressional District against John "Asshole" Faso). The Emcee was a woman named Carmel whom Gretchen and I used to socialize with maybe 13 or 14 years ago. In addition to the politicians, there were a number of local musicians who happen to be celebrities, including Natalie Merchant, Dar Williams, Gail Ann Dorsey, and one of the guys from The National. There were also a number of lesser-known acts, such as a band comprised of kids of Paul Green's Rock Acadamy (Paul was there to occasionally "conduct"), a group of kids from the Energy Dance Company, and, up from New York City, the Resistance Revival Chorus (an amazing a'cappella group of women who, tonight, were dressed entirely in white). The biggest surprise was when the actor Paul Rudd got on stage with a thin young white woman named Michelle to introduce Antonio Delgado and it turned out Michelle was Maurice H!nchey's daughter. It brought back memories of removing spyware from her Limewire-infected computer back when Michelle was an eye-rolling teenager, but now she's all grown up! She'd gotten H!nchey's DNA (and, perhaps, a dynastic baton to pass to Delgado) while I'd gotten a bunch of Hinchey's socks (and at least one of his ties), the result of some clutterbusting Gretchen did for his wife during the years when they were divorced.
I have to say, the whole thing was pretty-ra-ra and energizing for the right sort of person, but it really wasn't my thing (even after chugging down a $7 glass of red wine). My biggest question of the night: what was up with that very slow, strangely re-arranged version of John Lennon's "Imagine." Geh!
Somewhat surprisingly, as we climbed into our Prius in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot, Gretchen asked if there was anything I wanted to do next. I was kind of hungry, so I suggested perhaps having pizza at Di Bella's, that place out on Lucas Avenue we'd gone to a couple months back. But on the way there, Gretchen suddenly had interest in The Anchor, a watering hole catering to young rockers. We opened the door and were nearly blown away by the live loud music blaring from the back. Initially it didn't seem like a good place for us, but the dining room was surprisingly quiet and they had good veggieburger options. We ended up getting veggie burgers with fired mushrooms and onions along with our drinks (I got the most expensive IPA on the beer list, and it didn't disappoint). It was immediately apparent that the band currently playing (The Geezüs Butlers) was very talented; they were doing an amazing version of Black Sabbath's "Fairies Wear Boots," and then did a competent version of Black Sabbath's "Mob Rules" from the Ronnie James Dio period. They struggled a bit Soundgarden's "Outshine," but that's ambitious song. As I explained to Gretchen the differences in singers from one Black Sabbath song to the next, she was surprised at my knowledge. "I know everything there is to know about white trash music," I boasted. Soon this was put to the test by our waitress, whom Gretchen had relayed my boast to. She asked if I knew which Black Sabbath song featured Ozzy Osbourne on harmonica. She'd stumped me. It was "the Wizard." Blargh!
By this point, it was a strange mix of people in the dining room. By now the hipsters had been replaced by the morbidly obese and The Geezüs Butlers had been replaced by a HeXe Krieg, a mid-tempo death metal band fronted by someone with either a super creepy facial tattoo or Sharpie-marker makeup. (Given how cute his girlfriend was, I'm thinking it was the latter.)
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