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unnecessary eye protection
Saturday, September 12 2009
Today Gretchen wanted to check out Kingston's farmer's market, which is only six miles away in Uptown and which we'd never been to once in our nearly seven years in Hurley. So there we were on Wall Street, which had been closed to vehicular traffic so farmers' stand could be moved in. It was your usual farmer's market scene, with the kind of people who put "Eat Locally" and "God Bless the Whole World" bumperstickers on their usually-hybrid cars. It reminded me of the last farmers' market I'd been to, the one in Portland, Oregon, but the crowd here was older and decidedly less photogenic. That guy with the horribly deformed head was there too, going about his business and drawing little attention because people in Kingston are familiar with him.
We had lunch at Gabriel's, and I made the mistake I've often made there, ordering a bean dish. In the past these were "burritos" that tasted like joint compound. Today I ordered a vegan version of the "Latino Combo." I love bean-based foods and usually can't go wrong by ordering them, but I'm always disappointed by bean dishes at Gabriel's. The problem with his bean dishes is that they lack flavor. On the Latino Combo, for example, the bean component is simply a dumped-out can of Goya black beans (though heated). As for the the rice, it's prepared without salt and has a flavor reminiscent of drywall. Gretchen went and got me salt, pepper, and hot sauce, and after using all of those and doing a lot of mixing the food started having the sort of superficial flavor one can achieve with food that hasn't actually been cooked in a flavorful context. But getting it to that point felt like work, the kind one is expecting to outsource when one is eating out.
Next on the agenda was a tour of the Senate House, a museum recently open to the public in Uptown. It's a 17th Century stone building dating to the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary period. In a different building is an actual museum with paintings and artifacts from the 17th through 19th centuries, and we walked around in this for awhile as we waited for a tour of the Senate House (which can only be viewed on tours). Some horrible insect had bitten me behind the ear and I kept scratching the bite the whole time. There was a room full of mediocre paintings by some dude and then a room lined with old homesteader equipment including a beautiful loom made from rough-hewn timbers.
And then we were on our tour. The guy with the horrible head deformity just happened to be in our tour group and it would have been easy to examine his deformity, but on this occasion I chose not to look at all. I did look at his hands (the other part that was exposed) and saw that there was a thimble-sized tumour on one of his hands. Someone not in our tour group who knew him hollered out to him, "Hey Kevin!" and he responded. His voice was a little unusual, but it was surprisingly normal given the face that was doing the talking. In all other respects he seemed completely normal. We were moving as a group through cramped 17th Century hallways, and he was being unusually courteous and deferential.
As for the tour itself, it was fairly weak and there wasn't much to learn. It was, however, interesting to learn that the Dutch who settled the area were a tolerant people who care little for the British, and this led them to be unusually supportive of the American Revolution. It was also interesting to learn that the Esopus Valley had been planted in corn for hundreds of years before the white man even arrived. But our guide didn't talk clearly or coherently, and mostly all her prattling managed to do for me was make me think about all the other ways I could be spending my time.
Back at the house, I was chipping away at the bedrock at the bottom of the greenhouse well when a piece of rock flew up and hit the left side of my right eyeball. It bounced off and was gone, leaving a tender spot that stung for awhile and then gradually ebbed to a dull unpleasantness. After a night of sleep it felt normal again, but then, once I'd awoken and begun blinking my eyelid over the tender spot, the pain returned. Still, the upshot of this experience is as follows: the eye is tough, probably as tough as human skin in other parts of the body's exterior. It takes a lot to injure an eye, and (though they reduce the risk of harm and discomfort) eye protection is far less essential than you've been led to believe. Your mother probably didn't need to worry so much back when you used to have your lawn dart and BB gun battles.
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