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voting early, 2024
Sunday, November 3 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
Fern has had her pickup truck parked in the "extra" spot in our driveway, the place where Powerful used to park the Prius we sold him at a discount. But the pile of unprocessed salvaged wood nearby had intruded somewhat into that space, as had an old pallet (one the roofing for Gretchen's screened-in porch had come on back in 2018). That pallet has partly rotted away, and I was able to hurl its remains up higher into the grass. But something needed to be done about the talus slope of little wood pieces flowing into the parking space. So while Fern was driving around today, I pro cessed those pieces into a respectable pile of wood, some of which we later burned. That wood is one or two years old, and yet some of it was still somehow heavy with moisture even after all that time. Maybe, I thought, the weird unknown tree species I'd cut up are just a heavy kind of wood. That proved to be part of the explanation, but as I burned it, I saw evidence of a fair amount of water escaping.
When Fern returned, she was able to park her truck more tightly into the space, making our driveway a bit less treacherous when coming and going. Meanwhile, Gretchen had responded to an emergency need for a grants coordinator for NYAF (the New York Abortion Fund) and volunteered to staff the outside-New-York line until Thursday. She cranked through a huge backlog of desperate women this afternoon.
Once Gretchen had that under control, she could take Fern to the bus station so she could return for the next several weeks to her home in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Gretchen asked if I wanted to come along with them, because she'd found a place where we could vote early: a beautiful old crenelated brick building operated by Kingston Parks & Recreation on Broadway in Midtown, Kingston. So, after dropping off Fern, we drove across town and parked next to that glorious old structure. Some woman was out on the sidewalk nearby holding up a sign urging people to vote yes on Amendment One, which would codify anti-discrimination against people for all the usual reasons, including sexual orientation and even gender identity. The political right, or course, has been losing their minds about this, saying that it means the end of women's sports and men hanging out in ladies' bathrooms, the same ladies dying in some states because of their absolutist abortion policy. Gretchen and I had trouble finding an entrance into the building and walked all the way around it before finding an entrance we'd somehow missed. As we did this, we ran into a couple who were also looking for the entrance. One of them asked, "Gretchen?" That's what happens when you hang out with someone who is Hudson-Valley-famous.
The inside of the building looked like a high-end high school gymnasium, complete with basketball goals. To protocol was as follows: we walked up to a poll worker and gave our name. The worker would then look us up and, if there was a match anywhere in Ulster County (it had to be fairly local, since I was the only "Karl Mueller" in their database), they would print out an appropriate ballot with all the appropriate candidates for me to vote on. I'd then use a pen to fill in the appropriate rectangles and the feed the ballot into an electronic reader. I votes staight Working Families party line for all the democrats and voted "yes" on all three amendments (though I didn't really understand #2 and #3). And that was that, our participation in the question of whether or not America remains a constitutional republic was done. Gretchen said she actually felt an emotional twinge as she voted, but I felt nothing at all.
Back home in Hurley, I took Charlotte for a nice walk up the Chamomile Headwaters Trail and over to the Stick Trail, same as always. Later, after dinner, I took a nice hot bath.
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