Late rising time. Went to Farmers Market with Ellen Feldman. Played tennis with Ted. Wrist still troubling. Need to figure out how to address this. Ellen says ice right after exercise.
DOG closing reception from 5 to 7pm. Lots of people including some regulars. Sold one Lickona piece. Ted and Anne came by. Went next door to BCB Art to see sculpture by a colleague.
Breakfast at Bob’s followed by shopping. UTMH – write new collateral about billing process, Troy Web telecon. Talk with Matt Almeida. Tooth cleaning. Looks like another tooth in upper left is infected and should be extracted.
Send this note and pictures to Ted and Chad Silver in ref a conversation we had after doubles night on Tuesday.
Subject: Warhol and the Last Supper
Chad and Ted,Here are some pictures of this work now at The School in Kinderhook. Chad, you are right about the materials.This might be my favorite Last Supper. But I also really like the Tintoretto version. Looks like a bunch of inebriates hanging out.
HAL Fundraising Committee meeting at Miranda Barry’s house. New member, Charlie Whittingham, experience fundraiser. He dove right in. Theresa Parsons, Gary Sheffer and David Murphy also participated. Charlie will bring some fresh eyes to our issues.
Ellen Feldman arrived for a weekend visit. Ted and Anne came over for our biweekly drink. Lots of talk about Paris since Ellen has just returned from her three month stay there.
Most of day working on UTMH matters. Several hours translating more material into Russian for the RPM app. Short conversation with Michael Queralt about his proposal, not sent in advance strangely, for re-writing the code for the whole RPM system. $90k-$100k.
More work on sorting through old web materials to consolidate here.
The Hostess cupcakes, our traditional birthday cake, seems to be shrinking with each passing year. Maybe the next birthday will require 4.
Skipped morning UTMH meetings. Drove to The School in Kinderhook for a private viewing of the galleries. There was a documentary of 1 hr 20 minutes on Basquiat’s life. We watched 30-40 minutes.
Lunch at Cascades.
Doubles tennis at Total Tennis. Played quite well. But, more important, for the first time in weeks felt physically energetic and buoyant.
Up at 6 in a rush. Karen discovered that the upstairs toilet had overflowed all night long flooding the bathroom and now leaking down, fortunately, onto the side yard sidewalk. What a mess. I had clogged up the toilet the evening before. The toilet has been running for years. Now stuffed up, it overflowed and continued so for hours. Took five minutes or more with a mop to get all the water up. Amazingly none of it had escaped into the rest of the house.
Karen went to her exercise class. Put laundry in machine. Looked at the leak in the roof that had caused the plaster in the cabinet over the washing machine to fall down. Got step ladder and opened hatch to attic. It was immediately obvious that the leak came from failed flashing around the cast iron vent pipe. Have to find name of roofing company.
After breakfast I put off doing much of anything for UTMH and HAL that I was supposed to be working on. Brief conversation with Seth and a few notes was the entirety of that work. Sent note via Slack that I would not attend tomorrow’s team meeting. Only dealt with nonfiction book group matters. Recent newsletter outreach by Tina Lesem and Brenda had produced three new people wanting to participate in the discussion of White Trash.
Just before noon Mike Herman called and appeared almost immediately to look at the front fence. He will start work in a few weeks. His daughter, who looks like a teenager but is in her early 20’s, was with him. Karen came too. We settled on things including repairs to the brick in Bruce and Sam’s house. She came out and agreed to an off-the-cuff $300-$400 bill for the masonry repairs. Mike will delete the priming and painting cost from his estimate.
Went to bank to deposit my UTMH pay check.Had lunch at Chinese restaurant by the park. Spent time in the factory working on the consolidation project for this website. Karen and I talked about her birthday tomorrow. Settled on going to The School in Kinderhook followed by lunch at Cascades.
For some reason I decided to tear up the rear deck to repair the rotten flooring. What a mess I discovered. 
The supporting joists, particularly the one close to the sun room are severely rotted. Karen came a looked, too. I sent a note to Mike Herman asking for him to return to examine the mess and make a proposal. As I noted to him, “This is beyond the scope and scale of this weekend warrior.” I covered the chasm up with a sheet of plywood.
Made coleslaw and heated leftover curried lamb with vegetables for dinner. We ate in the sun room. Need to do this regularly instead of in front of boob tube.
Read more of Grossman’s Stalingrad – up to page 106.
Listened to more of the Bag Man podcast about Spiro Agnew. Lots of things we have not known about before. Shopping at Walmart because Karen needed to pick up some pills. DOG gallery sitting. Mowed back yard with push mower for first time this summer. Perhaps I should look for an electric mower?
Drinks with David Drake at Swoon.
Received the following via WhatsApp from Jonathan on Thursday. He is in Vietnam.
I asked today where it is was taken. He replied “Nghia An, central VN. Starting point for Ho Chi Minh Trail.” Then he added the following story:
Well, we’re at this goat restaurant in Nghệ An, we’d been there a while, maybe halfway through the meal when an at first faint and then progressively louder cry of a young goat was heard until it was dragged right past our table by it’s two front legs…. the goat knew what was up, we were within ten feet of the set up… it was really overwhelming… I cleared the fuck out of the restaurant for the last part… then they got to work on it, with the carcass but not the workers just slightly out of view …
He sent along these videos:
Breakfast at Bob’s. Went to post office to mail back 20 or so books from the 2018 Photobook show. Farmer’s market. DOG. Nap. Spoke with Harvey. He claims to be slightly better but still flat on his back in bed.
Went to Bard in the evening for a dance recital. First piece was written 20 years ago. Didn’t really care for the music and the vocals. No real vocabulary for the dance. Second piece, an original score for Mercy written and performed by Meshell Ndegeocello,was much more interesting musically.
Had a leisurely morning with coffee and breakfast on the porch at Bantam. Harvey stayed in bed. I chatted with Harvey for a while. Spoke of people who visit and yet never talk about anyone but themselves. Arrived back in Hudson after noon. Both colds still cooking. Sent text to Ted announcing no tennis until next Tuesday – time to rest the wrist. Took a nap.
Went to Bard for a dance recital. First piece was written 20 years ago. Didn’t really care for the music and the vocals. No real vocabulary for the dance. Second piece, an original score for Mercy written and performed by Meshell Ndegeocello,was much more interesting musically.
Both of us have colds. Nasty little coughs. Left for Bantam at about 11am.
Arrived to find Harvey on his back in bed in great pain from his back and nerve problems. He roused himself after a while and slowly staggered to the porch and a new reclining chair. We chatted away the afternoon. Big topic was Lena’s mental health problems, most accute in the last few days. She was in mental ward at local hospital for a few days, now enrolled in a six week outpatient program.
Harvey was in continuous pain with no body position proving real relief. Took Vicodin and muscle relaxants.
Carrot Mushroom Loaf in the oven
We had brought a mushroom carrot loaf so we had that with some other veggies for dinner. I didn’t stay up for the fireworks. Got in bed and coughed for a while. Karen and Betsy went down to the dock to watch.
Mostly worked on furthering the consolidation of old materials into this website. Lots more to go. Contacted Harvey about going to Bantam Thursday and Friday. OK.
Any scratches??
Went with Karen to Home Depot in Catskill to buy some shades for the back room. Ended up spending $800 for two bottom up-top-down room darkening shades from Levelor.
Brief meeting with Seth and a call to SOMML. They are already on vacation.
Checked out the correct grip size for tennis. Reduced my wrap by one layer.
Played tennis with Ted for 90 minutes at 4pm. 92 degrees, intense sun. Sluggish, perhaps yesterday’s 3+ hours of tennis has its residual effects. Still managed to keep ahead of Ted, though I called off the set early. New wristband is a help. But this wrist problem may become disabling and require a rest period. Really tired at end of session.
Karen made her signature dish of chicken chunks with chopped cabbage coleslaw. Watched several The Closer.