Friday five: this old thing?

via various people, details of phrasing via kazzanos

1) What is the oldest thing you own?

Probably something from cattitude's family, like the ceremonial sword, if we don't count a potsherd someone gave me.

1a) I was interpreting this as "artifact." If I interpret it to include things of any sort, there's a polished gray stone containing a fossil, on the shelf above me. And some undated and probably undateable small gemstones in jewelry: amethysts, and little cut diamonds in some earrings from my grandmother that I haven't been wearing, other bits but not worth waking cattitude to look at the rest of my jewelry.

2) What is the oldest home you've lived in?

Probably Vanderbilt Hall, on Yale's Old Campus, which was built in 1893. The house I grew up in, and the one I live in now, were built in the 1920s, and I think our apartment building in New York is about as old. (It's what NYC real estate calls a "pre-war" building, referring to World War II, meaning high ceilings, thick walls, and out-of-date wiring.)

[Not included in this, but the newest building I've lived in was our apartment building in Bellevue, which was built around 2010.]

3) What is the oldest book you've read?

The oldest content? I'm not sure, are the Iliad and Odyssey older than the Bible? (The oldest book I've read in the original language is Plato's Apology, though I did manage part of the Iliad in Greek.)

Oldest physical book? Probably one of the Anti-Masonic almanacs kept at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library, which were from the late 1820s. Those are the oldest books I've needed or wanted to consult that hadn't been reprinted in the 20th or 21st century.

4) What is the oldest electronic device that you still use?

Nothing very old, since I gave up on the old Palm Pilots. I haven't used my digital camera in years, since my last couple of phones had significantly better cameras. I recently plugged in an iPod mini (and saw that the "current" playlist was dated 2011), but that was to check that it still worked before giving it to carbonel.

5) What is the oldest work of art/architecture that you've seen?

Oh, this is fun. I keep typing things and then thinking "but wait..." The oldest art I can remember seeing is the Varna Gold Treasure. Before that I thought of
Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park, which dates to the Egyptian 18th Dynasty, and then Stonehenge and Avebury. For architecture specifically, maybe the walls of the City of York, which are intact enough that I walked along part of the circuit.

The oldest human artifacts I've seen in person were probably at either the French National Museum of Archeology in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which I visited in 1999, or something at the American Museum of Natural History.

five, no, six things make a post

I have pre-ordered tomato and cucumber plants for next spring, from GrowJoy, the company I got my cucumbers from this year. I will be getting Paul Robeson and Yellow Brandywine tomatoes, plus one cherry tomato plant and some cucumber plants that they recommend for container gardening. I jumped on this as soon as they opened for pre-orders, not just because I had trouble finding plants last spring, but because Paul Robeson and Yellow Brandywine are heirloom varieties that I learned about in Washington, which I haven't seen in Boston-area farmers markets.

I have been vaccinated against the flu. I made an appointment after breakfast, for 1:30 this afternoon, and everything went smoothly. They had appointments available throughout the day; I got to CVS a little early, checked in, and at 1:30 a man called my name, told me that the injection site might be a little sore for a day or two, and vaccinated me. I'd filled out the relevant forms online, when I made the appointment, so he didn't have to ask much besides confirming that he had the right person.

We now have a topographic map of the immediate area on our study wall. I ordered it from the US Geological Survey a few weeks ago, it arrived last week, and this afternoon cattitude got out the blue-tack and a level and put it up.

After some annoying back-and-forth, I have confirmed with the Registry of Motor Vehicles that if I renew my "REALID" state ID card between now and the end of the state of emergency, it will cost $25 instead of $50. I don't know if they'll make me go to an RMV office at some point in the future when that's safe again. (The flyer they sent me was unclear, and the website didn't help, so I sent an email rather than spending $25 now and possibly being charged another $50 later. And then I sent another email, quoting chunks of their flyer to be very clear about what I wanted to know, because the first reply hadn't answered my question.) I will fill out the forms, and give them the $25, tomorrow.

After looking at the latest color-coded state COVID map, with the red blotch at the north end of Middlesex County, I made another donation to Bread and Roses Lawrence. I first donated to them a couple of years ago, after the gas explosion up there, and yes, that's partly because of the name.

I did a bit more text-banking today, mostly following up on conversations started by other people hours or days earlier. It's more congenial work: still at least 85% variations on "STOP" and "take me off your list," but also the chance to answer a few more interesting questions, like the dates for Ohio early voting and (on Slack) what "I'm PEV all the way" meant: that's the Arizona Permanent Early Voting List, which I knew about from phone-banking in August urging people to get on that list. Now they're sending out texts asking people whether they are planning to vote by mail, in person early, or in person on Election Day.