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milepost on the highway to a Russia-style failed state
Saturday, November 19 2016
Gretchen said the coffee this morning was the strongest I'd ever made, and this forced her to dilute it with hot water. Gretchen claims that doing this detracts from the flavor, but I don't see quite how, since immediately adding hot water should be functionally the same as brewing it in more hot water to begin with, unless the initial high concentration does something to block further dissolving of other components essential for flavor.
[REDACTED]
Gretchen hadn't given the dogs a very good walk this morning so she suggested we take them for a walk in the fields of the Esopus Valley. Today was the first day of hunting season, and it was beautiful day, so it was best to stay out of the forest. But the Esopus fields were big and empty. We parked in the field near that shelter containing a camper and random farm equipment (41.924658N, 74.081289W) and then walked in a big rectangular loop, first southwestward along the Esopus and then northeastward in the farm road in the middle of the field. For several seasons now, these fields have been planted with various cover crops. Right now, the bulk of the field is in red clover, though there is a part planted with some species of grass mixed in with a yellow-flowered mustard and a legume (alfalfa?) that I couldn't identify.
Along the southernmost end of the loop, it's possible to see buildings in our neighborhood up on the mountain to the west, though the lighting was such that we could barely make out our house even using a pair of binoculars that I'd brought. It was so sunny and warm out there in the field that Gretchen had removed her shirt, though once we'd returned to the shady microclimate near our house, it felt like November again.
Gretchen invited four of our friends (Susan & David and Carrie & Michæl) for a small dinner party. She'd prepared at least three courses using recipes from the V Street Cookbook (V Street in Philadelphia being our current favorite restaurant in the world). Carrie and Michæl had also made a kale soup, though it needed a lot of a salt, which I was too polite to ask for, and it rather tasted like a slurry one might feed factory-farmed rabbits.
Initially all our conversation was about the latest outrages coming from the Trump transition. We all agreed that so far things were actually proving to be even more horrible than we'd feared. Donald Trump's authoritarian freak-out about a respectful statement to Mike Pence during a performance of Hamilton was a big item in the news, though others on the left were warning that our response to things was allowing Trump to avoid scrutiny in other areas (his settlement of the Trump University lawsuit and the emerging clusterfuck of his many conflicts-of-interest, which are rapidly putting him on a path to becoming the world's biggest kleptocrat). An article I'd read earlier (about the corrosive danger of the sort of authoritarianism Donald Trump's administration might bring) was fresh in my mind, so it was good to talk to the others about what exactly we plan to do at each milepost on the highway to a Russia-style failed state (at best) or Nazi Germany (at worst). The conversation might not have been too different from the kind that might've been had at an introductory meeting of French partisans during the Nazi occupation. It says something that talk of owning guns is no longer a ridiculous one in our circle of friends. When there are roving bands of vigilante brownshirts stirred to insanity by early-morning tweetstorms and the police see no reason to control them, who knows what measures will be required? It already feels like the apocalypse (or "Trumpocalypse") has begun.
During and after dinner, conversation moved on to discussions of nearly everyone's current work. I never got around to talking about mine, but there's nothing much to say there. Gretchen, meanwhile, seemed about to quit her badly-underpaid job of presenting animal agriculture facts to high school kids, Michæl was bemoaning his terrible pay teaching at the local community college, and Carrie was starting to enjoy her work as a therapist.
Gretchen with the dogs on the cornfield early this afternoon. It's hot and Gretchen has taken off her shirt. Our house lies near the bottom of that gap in the mountain in the background. Click to enlarge.
Neville in the cornfield. Click to enlarge.
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