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a political event and a play
Thursday, October 10 2024
Gretchen called VanKleeck's Tire this morning to see if we could get the front wheels of our Bolt looked at, as the car had been handling badly since VanKleeck's performed a tire rotation on Monday. They said bring to the car in, but couldn't be sure when they'd be able to see it. So I drove over there in the mid-morning thinking maybe Gretchen could pick me up if it didn't seem they'd get to it. But they started working on it while Gretchen was still in the forest walking Charlotte, so I called off being picked up. Eventually the VanKleeck guys got back to me and said that one of the front wheels really did need to be straightened, and gave me a card for someone who does that (not VanKleeck). But the issue was also that the front tires had begun to separate internally and needed to be replaced. I know a lot of things that make me relatively immune to being scammed, but I don't know anything about how a tire's internal structure decomposes, so I had to rely on this guy, someone who could easily make shit up to improve his sales numbers. The thing about these tires, though, was that we'd bought them at VanKleeck's and they should've been under warranty. I mentioned this, and the dude was willing to give me a 25% discount. That seemed a little suspicious, and I communicated this to Gretchen. She called them up and asked about this and was told that the warranty doesn't work they way she thought it worked. Since we'd already put forty or fifty thousand miles on those tires, the warranty is pro-rated, and a 25% discount on replacements was actually generous. So we ended up getting two new tires at a cost of about $380.
Early this afternoon I drove out to the Wall Street rental to do a small landlording chore. The diverter on the bathtub was causing water that should've gone to the shower head to also come out of the spigot that fills the tub. It's not a problem I'd ever dealt with before, so I wasn't sure how to proceed. I brought along a channel-locking wrench and screwdrivers, figuring I might have to disassemble something mechanical. The diverter was a fancy-looking handle that one turned, and it easily came apart. I quickly found what appeared to be the problem: the remnants of a rubber washer that must've sealed the mechanism. I needed to replace it. But how? I didn't have any such washers with me, so off I went to Herzog's. While driving there, I saw my third-ever Tesla Cybertruck on Clinton Avenue.
Before going into Herzog's, I bought three 100-count boxes of store-brand black tea and a box of Kellogg's-brand corn flakes at the Ghettoford Hannaford, whose ongoing remodelling still has me confused. (They have a huge self-checkout section now, and they have a human employee stationed there to watch people closely to make sure they aren't stealing things, which is a huge concern at a place nicknamed "Ghettoford.") At Herzogs, there didn't seem to be any rubber washers I could buy that matched my needs. In similar such situations, I've bought huge rubber washer assortments (serveral of which I have in both Hurley and the Adirondacks), but I didn't want to drive home to get those. So instead I drove out towards Home Depot. But before I got there, I thought I'd stop at the brick and mortar Harbor Freight to see what they had, as I remembered buying such things from them in the past (even though they generally sell tools and not much in the way of actual supplies). It turned out that they had several different rubber ring assortments, costing about $3.50 each. I bought three of them.
Back at the Wall Street rental, I tried one of the rubber rings and it worked a few times and then was destroyed by the mechanism. I tried something else that fit a bit more tightly, and it didn't work quite right. But then I tried an O-ring, and that worked great. It's always an endorphin rush to solve a landlording problem, especially one I'd never solved before. There had also been reports about the powder room toilet, which the tenants for some reason claim not to use, being full of mold, which terrifies them (because for some reason our society has decided that mold is dangerous and Cybertrucks are not). But when I went in there to clean out all that scary mold, I didn't find any.
Early this evening, Gretchen and I went to what turned out to be a very brief invitation-only political event at Keegan Ales for US Representative Pat Ryan (whose district we are slightly outside of but whom Gretchen loves and has given a lot of money to) that would also feature progressive heroine (and fellow Representative) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As we arrived for the event, there was a heightened police presence and a handfull of protestors with bullhorns were out in front complaining about Pat Ryan's stance on Palestine, as if voting for his Republican opponent would lead to a better policy with respect to Palestinians. Such people might be well-intentioned, but the effect of their efforts is to weaken progressive candidates, which leads to greater success for candidates who don't even think Palestinians are fully human. As we walked up to the sign-in desk outside Keegan Ales, the protestors yelled through their bullhorn "don't go in there!" I turned around and yelled back, "Yeah, Molinaro is going to be so great for the Palestinians!" (That's actually the Republican opponent for Josh Riley, our Representative, but close enough.)
The actual event was back in the back part of the brewery, where the huge fermentation containers are lined up under high ceilings. There's not room for a huge crowd, but one was stuffed in there, eager to see AOC. Gretchen and I went to the bar and she ordered the couple things on the menu that seemed vegan and I ordered a "Super Kitty," a 12% alcohol IPA served in an eight ounce glass. I spilled some of it when I went to sit next to a cute fat white pit bull who apparently lives there (as do other rescue dogs) but who snarled at me for getting too close.
Once Gretchen had her food, we waded into the crowd and made it to a standing table about half-way to the front, chatting with various other people along the way. We've been living outside Kingston for 22 years now, and yet we knew absolutely nobody in this big crowd of somewhat like-minded people. (One of the brief conversations happened with a plump eighth-grade teacher after Gretchen caught herself for using the now-considered-obsence term "retarded." The teacher thought it was funny.)
Finally Pat Ryan was introduced and said a few things, including his support of the right of the protestors to their free speech. Then he introduced AOC, whom I could barely see from where I was standing over the heads of the people in front of me. Gretchen got up on a chair and had a good view, though a security guy with a coiled wire going to his ear who looked like a young Cenk Uygur (from Young Turks) told her to be careful up there. AOC said how New York was going to important in flipping the House of Representatives Democratic this November, and that the Hudson Valley specifically (where a number of swing districts like ours are) was going to be a huge battleground. After that, the rest of what AOC was drowned out by a pro-Palestinian heckler, whom the young Cenk-resembling security guy very slowly escorted out of the brewery. And then, just like that, the even was over. Gretchen wanted to chat with Pat Ryan, and she almost got close enough to him to do so, but then he had to go.
Out in front of the brewery, the pro-Palestinian protesters were singing a rap-adjacent tune whose words were mostly just "Free Palestine." We sang along in mock unity as we checked out a nearby store that sold coffee and a lot of vegan ready-to-eat products. I was hungry by this point, having last eaten a falafel wrap earlier this afternoon. So I got a box of noodles with spring peas and they were pretty good.
After that political event, we immediately drove to the next thing Gretchen had scheduled for both of us (partly in an effort to keep me from becoming the hermit I seemed otherwise destined to become): a play at Shadowlands Theatre in Ellenville. On the drive down, we listened to a debate between our terrible Republican representative Marc Molinaro and Josh Riley, the guy we hope defeats him. Gretchen has been skeptical of Riley as a candidate, but his performance in the debate was amazing. "He's much better than Tim Walz was," Gretchen declared.
As you know, I'm not the kind of person who would ever voluntarily attend a play. So the first thing I did in the theatre was to buy an $8 glass of wine from the bubbly woman running the refreshments desk. She gave me a nice big pour that lasted me most of the two and a half hour play.
The show we'd come to see was the Road to Jerusalem, a series of somewhat-disconnected acts set in ficticious Jerusalem, Arizona during the days of the Wild West. It was acted on a fairly spare set entirely by three older white gentlemen and a youngish white woman, and one of those men was our neighbor Ken, the guy who lives with his wife Laura off Lorenz Road.
After we'd taken our seat, Bill, the guy whose parents used to live in the green house up the hill from us, the one now owned by the actress A, randomly took the seat next to us. So then it told us about how, as an architect with an intimate knowledge of that green house, he's designing a complete remodel for A. He then went on to tell us a number of interesting stories about things that have always puzzled us, such as why the people in the fancy stone house at the corner of Dug Hill Road and Hurley Mountain Road never buy and remove the ugly trailer across the street. "They won't sell," Bill explained. He also told us what it was like growing up on Dug Hill Road in the 1950s and 1960s, back when there were a number of German boarding houses in the area, including the one whose ruins we're familiar with in the big abandoned quarry. (That quarry had been abandoned long before Bill was born, he said.)
As for the play, it was a good bit better than expected, at least the part before the intermission. One particular act in which a female character (I think she's supposed to be older than the actress playing her) proposes marriage to an older male character was really very good, and some of the other acts had great things about them. But the sixth act, one about a dream (bad subject matter!) was devastatingly boring, and it didn't help that someone nearby (not me or Gretchen) started releasing incredibly malodorous farts.
I should mention that in all the driving around we did today, we were struck by the sudden appearance of numerous yard signs supporting the Harris-Walz candidacy. In Old Hurley, there don't appear to be signs for Republican candidates at all. (Earlier in the summer, someone had a sign up for the candidacy of Robert Kennedy, Jr., but it's since disappeared and nothing has replaced it.) There are now also lots of Harris-Walz signs in Kingston. As one drives south to Ellenville, that part of New York is a bit more like the Adirondacks in terms of Trumpiness, so we saw a smattering of Republican signs along US 209. But not all that many. Back when I was last in the Adirondacks, it occurred to me that the yard sign budget for sprawling rural districts like Elise Stefanik's must be enormous. For someone like AOC, whose district doesn't even really include that many yards, that money can be dedicated to other things.
A barely-visible Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the heads of the crowd at Keegan Ales this evening.
Click to enlarge.
A Pro-Palestinian protestor being wrangled by a security guy who resembles Cenk Uygur.
Click to enlarge.
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