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Harris signs in Trump country
Friday, September 27 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
At some time between ten and eleven in the morning, I loaded up the Chevy Bolt with the dogs, a bag of dog food, and leftover human food and started driving to the Adirondack cabin. Gretchen had a fundraiser she wanted to attend in Manhattan for Josh Riley, our would-be congressman, so she didn't come. I stopped at the Cairo Hannaford and bought just a few items: a four pack of sixteen ounce NEIPAs microbrew, a bag of onions, a block of tofu, and a bag of reduced-salt potato chips to eat on the road. One of the dogs was stinking up the car with farts, and I feared it might be Neville needing to poop. So I pulled into the park just north of Preston Hollow. It's one of those remote town parks like the West Hurley Park, with lots of open fields and a building to rent for parties. There was a sign saying that all dogs had to be leashed, but of course that's not a rule I obey. Charlotte chased after a few squirrels while snuffled around. I didn't see anybody poop, but they had their opportunity, and that was all I could do. As I was leaving the park, I noticed that there was a Harris-Walz 2024 sign on the shoulder in front of the park. That was one of six such signs I would see on my drive, which largely passes through dark-red Trump country. Evidently the massive congressional district of shape-shifting Trump sycophant Elise Stefanik starts in Schoharie County, because that was where her yard signs began. Based on the number of signs for her that didn't include one for Trump, she is at least twice as popular as he is.
It had been cloudy this morning in Hurley, but it was sunny for most of my drive to the cabin, where temperatures were in the mid-60s. It was cooler inside the cabin, so I flung open the doors to let that nice humid warm air in. After unloading the car, immediately began digging sand out from under the screened-in porch in anticipation of installing another sheet of two foot by eight foot one-inch styrofoam at footing level. Unlike the east-west orientation of the piece I installed last weekend, this one would be oriented north-south and lie along the outside of existing styrofoam on the cabin wall and footings. I also took several buckets of sand and dumped them on the sand causeways of the upper Mossy Rock Trail, as the sand I'd made them with last week had all become soft and mushy after recent rains. This made clear the reality that if I was going to make causeways with sand, I was going to have to pave them with stone or else anyone walking on them would sink into the sand. I'd brought some more bluestone with me, but I would need significantly more than what I had.
Charlotte was eager to go on a walk, so I took them directly to the causeway across the Woodworth Lake Outflow Creek and then continued northeastward until I was at the top of the Crank Cliffs, the ones with the pile of old bleach bottles at the bottom (as if a meth lab had once been there). The face of those cliffs, which I know to be on state land, must face northwestward, as the northeast corner of our parcel is up at the top of those cliffs. On the walk back to the cabin, I took a route somewhere between the East and West Bifurcation Creeks (that is, on the island formed by that bifurcation). I found an old creek bed with its own line of low cliffs running along the east side.
Back at the cabin, I ate a lump of cannabis and tried not to drink too much booze as I spent the next couple hours mindlessly consuming content on my laptop. I also asked ChatGPT at some point how the Russians assimilated East Prussia and its big city Königsberg. I wondered if the Germans there had to be given an education in Russian. ChatGPT replied that the Germans had mostly fled East Prussia before the Russians arrived, and the few left behind were forcibly expelled. I'd always assumed that when nations in Europe (and elsewhere) change their borders, there are people living there who then have to change their allegiance. That might happen in a few places, but when the war was as brutal as World War II and the Russians were flooding German territory with vengeance on their mind, it stands to reason that the populace would want to flee. So East Prussia became Russian by first being drained of its German population and then by being flooded with Russians.
Charlotte and Neville running around at the park in Preston Hollow.
Click to enlarge.
Low cliffs along a dry creek bed on Bifurcation Island.
Click to enlarge.
A large split rock on Bifurcation Island.
Click to enlarge.
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