Tag Archives: Hudson Area Library

6/29/2019 – Bob’s, HAL Gala

Saturday

Bob’s for breakfast followed by food shopping. Drop off a big pile of UPS boxes to return last Fall’s book show entries.

Went to library at noon to help with set up for Gala Party. Moved chairs, furniture, cooking equipment, plates etc. Worked with new board member Bill Stenehjem. Nice guy. Went back at 4:30 with 240 lbs of ice. Less than the 400 lbs Betsy Gramkow suggested. But seemed that 1 1/2 lbs per attendee should work. Then worked with Gary Sheffer and Betsy to put furniture out in the rear garden for outdoor cocktails. No sooner everything set up then a big thunderstorm drowned that plan.

Party was fun. Ted and Anne came as our guests. I spent quite a bit of time schmoozing the crowd. Had interesting conversation outside around cigarrette smoking ith Shanekia MacIntosh and Zia Anger, young staff and volunteer for tech programs for kids. When we left at 9:30 or so there were still 40 or more people hanging out including some dancing. Call for the Cause raised $30k in about 15 minutes.

6/14/2019 – DOG, UTMH, RBC, Narcan at HAL, tennis, drinks at Ted and Anne’s house

Friday

Spent most of the day hanging end of newest DOG show. UTMH telecon with Troy Web, Matt Almeida, David Ackerman. Migrated website from diary.markorton.com to markorton.com. 

Emily Chameides sent me a text message at 4pm:

Just had to call 911. Found someone passed out in men’s room. Greenport Rescue and HPD responded and they revived him. Glad we caught it in time.

I was in the car going to play tennis. Saw the ambulance already at the library. I responded later. She replied:

Yes. Glad they came quickly and revived him. We have narcan but I called 911 first and they came so quickly. Glad I didn’t need to administer.

I stopped by her house on 5th on my way home from tennis. She was sitting on her stoop. We chatted about the incident for a few moments, the emotional burden of finding unresponsive bodies and then deciding what to do. She and Paul have Narcan training. But she pointed out that this guy was really big and it happens that they get aggressive when revived. But the Greenport Rescue came so quickly that she didn’t need to work that over too much.

Tennis was a first outing after the trip and illness, first time in just a day shy of four weeks. Trouble striking the ball squarely. Volleying OK. Ted was like the Energizer Bunny. I was fairly dead. Only played for an 45 minutes. 

Drinks with Ted and Anne. Ted had made a big plate of deviled eggs. Shared notes of our trips. They had taken ten students from Marist to Paris for ten days. As usual the conversation was loud, abrupt, back and forth.

Ended evening with another The Closer. 

6/10 – 6/12/2019 – airplane illness

Monday – Wednesday

Went to PT at 7:30 with Corey. Very good session. Came home. By 9 I was in bed chilled and feeling terrible. Temperature over 101. Head buzzing, weak muscles but no respiratory symptoms. Also constipation continued. Felt marginally better Tuesday morning. Slightly lower temperature. Spent most of day in bed. Very little appetite. Drank lots of water. Several people showed up at 1pm to hang art. Fortunately she is competent with tools. I had little to do. Karen was off at a doctor’s appointment 

Spoke with Miranda Barry via UberConference in late afternoon about Wednesday’s HAL Stakeholder event. Still no appetite and still constipated…..

Wednesday morning showed up and I felt considerably better. Weighed 220 lbs. Down from 227 just before we left for Europe on 5/20. Told Seth and David that I would come back to work on Thursday. More time in bed.

Went over to the library at 4pm for set up of event. Not a great turnout but important foundation people showed up and stayed largely til the end. Spoke at length with Richard Koskey about tennis in Hudson during the 1979s and ‘80s. He asked if I might play with him after he gets used to some new corrective contact lenses. Maybe August.

Went home and got in bed.

New at HAL

Summer reading program.

 

Costume from Mad Hatter Parade.

5/18/2019 – HAL BoT meeting, Caroline Wilder, tennis, art exhibit Ghent, dinner

Saturday

Edsel outside of Bob’s Diner

Edsel outside of Bob’s Diner

Breakfast at Bob’s Diner. Karen went off to Center for Photography in Woodstock to do portfolio reviews.

HAL Board of Trustee meeting. Only Gary Sheffer and Steve Dunn were missing. Talked about the upcoming Funders Party, the Gala, Long Range Planning, and Fundraising Committee. Pretty uneventful. 75 minutes.

Gallery sitting at DOG.

Caroline Wilder stopped by. We talked about how she can manage her small business in a manner congenial to her personality and business needs…..She wants to keep her dress business small and personal. Doesn’t need Quickbooks that she isn’t comfortable with anyways. I suggested a simple paper journal for the 200-300 transactions a year. When she pulled out a MacBook Air I remembered that she is a digital native, so extended my suggestion to Google Sheets or Apple Numbers. “Whatever technique is comfortable.” She can get her other financial information from her checking account, credit cards, Venmo and other digital finance tools. She left sayin g that she felt relieved about how to keep track of her finances and her business. I told her she had to come back in  couple of months to show me how she is doing.

Pauline Decarmo came over at 3pm to finish out the gallery duty. I played tennis with Ted from 3:30 to 5pm. Starting to feel as though we are getting back into the swing of outdoor summer tennis.

Dave Drake came by for dinner. He had been back and forth to Chicago during the week unloading Lauren Schaeffer’s shit. We drove out to the Art School of Columbia County in Hollowville section of Ghent. Nick Tipple and Erika Born had work on display. 

Janus, Roman God of Past & Future  by Nicolas Tipple

 

4/29 – 4/30/2019 – work, book club, MRI, dinner

Monday and Tuesday

Still underpowered from cold. Foggy and low energy. 

Met with Tony Kieraldo at Rev about UTMH matters. He told me about his music tour in Europe and Lebanon. We talked through a new social media campaign to develop leads for UTMH. Bright guy. Also met with David and Seth. The, late afternoon  Ole. Missed an appointment at PT with Corey Smith. This has not happened before. 

HAL NonFiction Book Club – picked up Erika Born out in Ghent because Nick was busy and couldn’t come. Good discussion of Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken. Emily, Karen,  Lisa Stewart, Erika Born, Nancy Kuster, Michael O’Hara, Ruth Tamaroff, Juan Flores(new) and Bob Braunlich from SunCommon in Rhinebeck. Michael gave a good description of how a carbon tax could be implemented.

Up promptly Tuesday morning. Enema in preparation for the prostate MRI up in Latham at ImageCare. Arrived at 10:30 back in car at 11:40. 30 minutes in the machine. Wait for the results.

Emily called from the library to discuss how to handle requests from Register Star for video from security camera on second floor that may have caught the altercation between Tom DePietro and John Friedman during a Common Council meeting last week. Camera belongs to Galvan but is recorded on our equipment. The police had come by earlier and taken a copy with Galvan’s permission. Emily will refer them to Galvan for permission to release.

Long nap in the afternoon. Dinner at Dave’s in Catskill. Karen made a salad and I made rice pudding.  Lamb, saag paneer, yellow sauce, cheese cake by Hazel.

8 pm looking west.

 

4/24 – 4/25/2019 – dragging, colonscopy prep

Wednesday – Thursday

Cold finally departing. Wednesday evening spent drinking almost a gallon of some sort of laxative. Spent several hours puttering around between trips to the bathroom.

Picked up UTMH paycheck, went to bank for deposit. Drove by high school. Book Festival is coming.

Received annoying note from Anne Terwilliger at the library requesting a meeting to talk about “problems”. I have to talk with Emily about this.

Karen was away at her Woodstock critique group.

Spoke with Emily Thursday morning at our regular weekly telecon. Agreed that I will reply to Anne with the proviso that Emily would be present at any meetings with staff.

Watched a lot of Youtube videos, tennis, politics, construction…..

3/28/2019 – work, DOG, tennis lesson, Maria Manhattan, work

Thursday

Carla Shapiro came to work with Karen on the installation of the season opening show. She is one of the curators. Brought me a present.

Worked on UTMH example pilot project financial analysis. Talked with David A. about Ball Consulting retainer.

Karen had an appliance repair guy come from Ackermans up the street. Leaky dishwasher. Cleaned. Told us that repairing the electric lighters on the cooktop would cost ~$188. We’ll go on using the gas lighters that cost $2.

Tennis lesson was focused topspin backhand. Need to simplify and slow down. 

Attended event at the library. Maria Manhattan’s The Box Lunch. Very amusing.  PerfectTen girls made update addition.

UTMH meeting w Seth, Brandon, and James to review backend admin features.  Useful meeting. Lasted until after 10pm. 

 

3/18/2019 – HAL, travel photos

Monday

Cold weather returns – 29 degrees at 7am.

Went to library at 10am to interview Tina Lesem for admin asst position. Very bright, verbal, experienced. Great candidate, Hope Emily hires her right away.

Spent most of day wrestling with travel photos. Re-organizing, downloading stuff from iCloud. The travel file is almost 100 GBs. Started to split it in half. 

Avoided talking with David Ackerman. Seth is away.

Found a pile of little travel notebooks. Earliest dates back to 1989 trip to Cascades. Read aloud over dinner the entries for our HK-Vietnam trip in 12/2008-1/2009. One note about how Vietnamese treat children was a reminder. “Everywhere people pick Jesse up almost without asking. He is paraded around and played with. Seems that there is communal ownership of babies.” This happened on the street in Hanoi and also in a restaraunt somewhere where the wait staff, not having much too do, came over and took Jesse away. We had lunch in leave and he was entertained.

3/15/2019 – AD, work, AD, library, dinner

Friday

Late, sluggish start. Emails to Nick Zirpolo and Torrey about adult learning 

Coffee with Julia Back at Cafe Le Perche. HAL board member. Ozzie. Runs marathons. Marketing events for an OpenSource software company. Very interested in anything to do with fundraising. Sharp. Lives at 421 Warren St. 

Spent bulk of day reading and writing about adult learners. Responded to Nick Zirpolo, Torrey and a Lithuanian academic. 

Nap. HAL Exec Commitee mtg at Miranda Barry’s house. Mostly budget talk. 

Walking home from Union St. mtg.

Karen is off to writing event in Rhinebeck. I had Red Chopstick food.