|
|
|
third No Kings march
Saturday, March 28 2026
Early this afternoon, I made another foray to the west end of the Chamomile Wall to continue adding stones there. Most of the stones have been coming from the bottom of the steep slope to its southwest, but most of the loose stones there have already been gathered, so today I went higher up the slope, where there were many loose rocks, some huge flat pieces of the kind that would be ideal for making a roof across the void between the wall's two subwalls. There are also a number of large bulky rocks that are good for quickly building up sections of very stable wall. I started one of these rolling down the slope, which saved me a lot of work, since it was too heavy to carry. I then tipped it end over end until I could place it at the west end of the southernmost of the two subwalls. It added almost three feet of length all by itself.
Today was the day of the third-ever No Kings rally, happening in cities and towns all over America (and also in Europe). There was even one in Hurley (which we'd driven down to see late this morning and then decided not to join because it was just some grey-haired lefties holding signs on the overpass over Route 209). Instead the plan was to attend the No Kings event in Kingston. Shortly before we left for that, I made a sign on a piece of cardboard from a Chewy box (how we get our dog and cat food). It wasn't amazing, but it addressed a core issue related to being an American in these time: "Kings are AntiAmerican." Because what Trump is doing in all domains is completely outside of what presidents in this country are (and traditionally have been) expected to do. To see Trump's cabinet give him a tongue bathing even more disgusting that demanded by Kim Jong Un would've made our nation's founders decide to remain a colony of Great Britain. Black on cardboard (I was using big Sharpie) is very legible, but I made it even more so by adding white highlights with acrylic paint giving them a 3D effect.
We encountered heavy traffic and a parked (but empty) State Police car on Schwenk Drive as we approached Hannaford, but we there was still parking available in the lot east of Hannaford. That was where we left our Chevy Bolt, and we walked from there to Academy Green Park, a triangular public space that functions as the village green. That was where the No Kings march was supposed to start. The park was full of people carrying signs, and there were several tents where various political organizations aligned with No Kings were taking donations and contact information and selling things like bumper stickers and yard signs. Gretchen knew some of these people, and one of them was our neighbor Andrea (who lives across the street from our neighbor A, more on her in a bit). There was a stage with a band playing something funky, and everybody was in a good mood. The Michelle H!nchey, our State Senator (that is, she works in Albany, not Washington) took to the stage to fire everybody up about all the horrors of the Trump regime. (I remember when Michelle was a teenager and I removed spyware from her Windows XP computer.) With that, the march began, heading south down Clinton.
As that was happening, Gretchen was communicating with our neighbor A, whom we finally found north of the stage where H!nchey had been. She was with her boyfriend Jamie and her daughter, and they all had crude signs. Amusingly, Jamie's just read "NO," and it got him telling us about some protests he'd been part of in the United Kingdom. "They're more violent than the ones here," he explained to A's daughter. At that one, a building had caught on fire and one of his mates was charged with attempted murder after flinging a fire extinguisher off a building that landed near a member of the constabulary.
By then we were part of the march, which meandered surprisingly quietly on a pre-determined route through post-gentrification Kingston. Most of its beautiful old homes from its golden age have been restored, and gay pride rainbows are a frequent sight. Periodically we'd pass stationary clusters of No Kings participants, most of whom would be singing a song. As we passed one of the churches, the signers must've been professional, as their voices sounded heavenly. In one church yard there was a gathering of what looked like performers dressed in full-body puppets.
The weather was windy and cold for this time of year. There was even a brief shower of snow flurries.
As we passed Rough Draft, the bookstore-cum-café, A's daughter wanted cider (the non-alcoholic kind), so we joined the end of a very long (but fast-moving) line and ended up getting donuts and the like. I even got a little eight ounce glass of some sort of strong DIPA; it was amazing and exactly how I want such beers to taste. I drank it all before we made it to the door, where Gretchen and I went our separate way from A and the others.
Gretchen and walked back to Academy Green Park to buy a yard sign, and on the way there stopped to watch a band at a separate stage doing a serviceable rendition of Alice in Chains' "Man in the Box" (the band featured a trombone and saxophone to play some of the parts). Then we ran into Chris and Kirsti, the photogenic vegan Buddhist couple, and of course mostly all Kirsti talked about was the many medical problems of one of her dying cats. After that conversation had gone on a bit too long, we passed a man whom we couldn't recognize because he had a cutout of Donald Trump's face taped to his glasses, making him look like our president after years of a kale-only diet. He called out Gretchen's name, and she said, "I can't tell who you are!" So he took off his glasses, and under them was the face of one our old friends from early in our time in the Hudson Valley, John, the New Zealander guy who lives on Eagle's Nest Road with his Polish wife Yva. We'd been friends with them for a few years before Gretchen decided they were annoying and gradually squeezed them out of our life. I hadn't seen John in at least fifteen years. He's maybe 20 years older than me and his wife is thirteen years older than him. But he talked about her like she is still alive. He said she's very freaked out by the fascist trajectory of this country under Trump, having thought she'd escaped it permanently when she left Poland many years ago.
Me with my sign. Click to enlarge.
Academy Green Park just before the march. Click to enlarge.
The march starts moving. Click to enlarge.
Later in the No Kings march. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?260328 feedback
previous | next |
