“Downtime” happens in role-playing games when a party finishes an adventure and needs to rest and stock up before heading out again. Sabbatical is like that too!
I am spending my fall term as a Visiting Scholar at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, in New York’s Hudson Valley. Intellectually, it’s been great. But so has my downtime!
Here’s a little of what I have been up to during my September Saturdays. My Instagram stories are also a good way to keep track of my downtime.
Bread and Puppet Theater
On September 7, I headed down to Bard’s Montgomery Place Campus to see a performance of “The Diagonal Life Circus” by the Vermont-based Bread and Puppet Theater. (Interestingly, I recently finished Adriana Cavarero’s book Inclinations, which like the Diagonal Life Circus, critiques verticality).
The Theater company, which makes use of hand and wand puppets, other props, gymnastics, and dance, performed a number of sketches that commented on contemporary political issues: climate change, wealth inequality, Indigenous land rights, reproductive justice, immigration, police violence, violence against trans people were among the topics. Some were funny, others a more serious tone.
Dungeons & Dragons
For September 14, I had signed up to volunteer at an animal sanctuary nearby, but due to high demand I was put on a wait list. It’s hard to be upset about that!
Instead, I headed to the local library to play a drop-in game of Dungeons & Dragons. I was the only adult besides the game master, and I got the sense he was happy to have me around. A few of the young people were seasoned players, and some younger kids were playing for the first time. It was delightful to see their excitement for the game and their new characters! Party cohesion . . . we’re working on that!
It was also neat to hear kids talking so easily and comfortably about their gender non-binary characters.
Tivoli Bays and Montgomery Place
Last Saturday, I hiked through the Tivoli Bays Wildlife Management Area through Bard’s main campus to the Montgomery Place campus, which is a historically protected estate that Bard purchased a few years ago.
I went on a fascinating tour of the mansion. How the property–the mansion and the grounds–changed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the various owners displays shifts in cultural attitudes around human relations with/in nature.
Montgomery Place is also special in that it was built by Janet Livingston Montgomery, a 58-year-old woman who purchased the working farm and built the original mansion. Throughout the house’s history, women were the drivers of its development and changes. After the tour I explored the various gardens on the property.
Then, the hike home! I made sure to take the Sawkill trail to see the waterfall!
I got a little lost in the Bays on the hike home. Or rather, I wasn’t sure exactly where I was at all times because I was taking different trails than I hiked in on. But I had my phone and I’m generally good with a sense of direction. Nevertheless, I let myself have a treat when I got back after being gone for close to seven hours!
Tivoli Street Painting Festival
Today I went to yoga with a colleague and then had a lovely brunch at Cinnamon in nearby Rhinebeck. We stopped by the Montgomery Place Orchards Farm Stand, where I supplemented the amazing local produce I’ve been getting mid-week at the Bard Farm Stand.
In town, Tivoli closed it’s main road to host a street painting festival. I walked around and also visited the Tivoli Artists Gallery. Here are a few of my favourite street paints.
