Category Archives: Hudson Area Library

12/7/2020 – Monday – Life’s Little Instruction Book, library…..

Karen brought out a pile of books from her collection upstairs. This to select ones for each of the kids and grandchildren for Christmas. Amongst them was this little book:

The author is H. Jackson Brown, Jr. Once I opened it I quickly formulated my Christmas present to the same crowd. 

I spent several hours combing through the little book for ones that I liked, writing little explications or critiques. Now I am working though the ones that I think are silly or wrong. Finally I will add some wisdom from Mr. Wonderful. I want to print it as a little booklet.  Karen has suggested Mr. Wonderful yawning for the cover.

Library Board Development Committee meeting

Very productive meeting to get this important process rejuvenated. Miranda Barry, Carol Pledger, Caitie Hilverman, and AnnaMaria Assevero.

Orton Sibling Zoom

Everyone in attendance. OK. Wondering about sending email suggesting a shift to every other week?

12/3/2020 – Thursday – work – tennis lesson – cooking – library

UTMH work – not much – boring meeting with Seth, Ryder, and Erin….. about how to document new features…..

Paddle-ball court at Total Tennis

Tennis lesson featured a lot of new drills. Instead of usual warm up did volleys and touch and volley. Lots of footwork practices. Health monitor on phone said I took over 5,000 steps in an hour. Roughly 2.5 miles of running. Tired.

Cooked first bean dish in a long while. Vaguely followed a black beans and rice recipe from Moosewood.

Emily Chameides sent me a query about things wrong with the mobile version of the library website.

4/30/2020 – 7/1/2020

I have not felt motivated to write much during this period. The pandemic and its associated tribulations interfere.

We’ve been quite busy with socializing mainly virtually but with warm weather outdoors chiefly people’s backyards. We’ve moved our drinks with Ted and Anne to our backyards on a weekly schedule. Dave Drake has come by for food a number of times. He is working his way through a myriad of curry dishes. Zoom meetings weekly with Esther Hanig, Ellen Feldman, Dave Drake, the Orton siblings, the Leiden crew. 

With less regularity Andrea and company have Zoomed and appeared here physically. Though we have seen Noah and Nyla twice now in the backyard once including Noah’s girlfriend Kiara Guyton. Andrea actually talked with us for almost two hours in a singe stretch. Probably my longest conversation with her in decades. Nyla wrote a great high school essay, “Aunt Jemima Ain’t Chure Mammy”

4/28/2020 – Tuesday – walk – neuroscience course – Dave Drake drinks

Breakfast w bran muffin, banana, and apple. Andrea called and spoke with Karen for a long time. Included me to look at pictures of a house in Sagaponick NY that Andrea has successfully bid $1.5 million. Fully furnished vintage 2002. 2 areas of land. Pool. Good rental property.

Standard walk. But 3.4 mph pace. Definitely the fastest yet.

Listening to lecture 10 in the neuroscience course – vision and visual perception. Also watched the new podcast from the HAL History Room. Gary Sheffer and Kelly Drahushuk on the cemetery. Worked on catching up on my diary on markorton.com.

Drinks with Dave Drake at 6:30pm…..

More Persons of Interest.

4/21/2020 Tuesday – HAL

Went for walk first thing after breakfast. I pooped out at 7th St. Karen walked all the way around.

Participated in Hudson Arts Task Force meeting. Run by Seth Rogovoy. over 30 people attended. Well organized and well run. Met some new people in the arts community. From my email to others:

Thanks to Julia for alerting us to this. I attended the Arts Task Force mtg. Tuesday 3pm.  About 35 people. Seth Rogovoy chaired the meeting.

I  attended with two hats – the Davis Orton Gallery and HAL. I specifically mentioned the library’s connections to the arts community and our early planning for an art auction with shared proceeds. Most of the meeting was taken up with setting up sub-committees to investigate various approaches to supporting the arts.

Here are some new (to me) contacts:

• Feliz Soyak    HudsonArts.org      hudsonartscommunity@gmail.com
• Marc Scrivo    FinchHudson.com    StudioScrivo.com
• Adam H. Weinert   adamweinert.com   promoting the Hudson Arts Coalition, dancer, faculty at Vassar, co-founder Hudson Dance Collective
• Marlene Martin, Exec. Director,   Council for Resources to Enrich the Arts, Technology & education (former Greene County Council on the Arts – supports arts in Coliumbia, Greene & Schoharie counties) – GreeneArts.org    executivedirector@greenearts.org      CREATE has fubnded projects with HAL in the past.

• Jonah Bokaer  – Jonah Bokaer Foundation, Jonah Bokaer Choeography, The Hudson Eye https://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/space-428-choreographer-jonah-bokaers-church-of-dance-in-hudson/Content?oid=10283694     His foundation is active locally. He explicitly asked people to reach out to him about funding.
• Aaron Levi Garvey – staff curator Jonah Bokaer Foundation and The Hudson Eye
• Jane Ehrlich – organizer last fall’s Open Studios Hudson    openstudiohudson.com   She is moving to an online format. I know her personally.

Drinks and chat with Dave Drake in the evening.

4/18/20 – Saturday – library, exercise……

Up early. Listened to Only a Game podcast.

HAL Board of Trustees mtg – active, happy meeting. Received $58,500 PPP money from SBA. Good for 2 1/2 months salaries etc. Lots of talk about new fundraising strategies. Emily made extensive report on our online library programming.

Went to Letterbox Farm to pickup order of eggs and greens.

Karen participated in Balance for Seniors from the library. I did my exercises for the first time in weeks.

Ordered grab bars and other bathroom stuff from Amazon. This will allow us to make the first floor bathroom safe for us to shower in. Short term fix without all of the work planned for a walk in shower.

Karen made meatloaf and sautéed spinach. We drove a portion over to Dave Drake. Had lengthy drinks with Ted and Anne.

Watched the first 30 minutes of China Moon (1995). Gave up at that point. Back to Person of Interest

4/17/20 – Friday – various and list of Zoom meetings

Sent notices out to HAL board. Spent most of morning doing digital housekeeping.

Also time spent learning new things about Notability. Interesting feature of recording a lecture or meeting while making notes. The notes are synced to a time stamp during the recording. So, you can tap on a note and it moves the playback to that point.

Bought lunch at Cascades.

Talked with Kim Bach outside her store Verdigris. She complained about lack of workers to help with her online business. Her part time employees are financially better off on unemployment than coming back to work for her part-time. Continue reading →