Monday
UTMH work. Tennis with Ted at 4. Very rusty.
UTMH work. Tennis with Ted at 4. Very rusty.
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.
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.
Sun early morning and mostly bright during the day – temperatures in low 60s. Almost spring like.
UTMH – meet with Michael Cole and Melissa Scherrif at Columbia County Mental Health to discuss the app project. Seth too. Then, in the afternoon Seth and I met with SOMML – contract finally signed. Also complained to each other about David’s behavior. Seth as frustrated as me. Talk again with Tony Kiieraldo about tomorrow’s telecon with David about the social media campaign.
Also did more work on the Tinkering with Capitalism essay.
Went over to Susan Rubin’s house at Crosswinds to assemble and put up a spice rack. Easy task. She shoed me around her two-bedroom townhouse. Really very well laid out, comfortable, with an amazing array of closets and fittings. She is very obviously very involved with yarn type projects. One large closet entirely devoted to yarn storage. She sent this picture.![]()
Finally got call back with results from colonoscopy. Everything normal. Turns out cut off age is 75. So another procedure in 2024. Also received call back from Dr. Subudhi about prostate MRI. Something there; need to do biopsy to establish whether it is cancer and what type. Need to research this a bit. Won’t do it until after return from Europe. He is a dreadful communicator.
Played doubles at CGCC. Lots of fun. Joe’s grand son Dalton played. Very agile and quick with pretty terrific strokes. Kevin, Joe, Ted, Dalton, Paul, Ray, Tony and me. 4 sets. Played until dark. Down pour as we were leaving.
Lots of UTMH work throughout the day.
Met with David Murphy at Verdigris . Caught up on his personal goings on. He bought a house on the top of the hill up Rossman. Next to cemetery. Union St. house is for sale. Also talked about the fundraising committee. He agreed to participate. Always good to talk with him.
Played tennis doubles at CGCC. Played poorly with little rhythm. Bad serve. Last set played into the darkness was very good. Played with Paul Ambrose against Ted and Bob Gegen.
Breakfast at Tanzys. Talked with Tom and Tisha Mulligan about travel. Barcelona. Rome. Sicily. Most of the Hudson police force was there too. As always the food was great.
Farmers Market is back outdoors. Cold, windy.
Then to Goodwill to find a new lightweight jacket. Came home with jacket and new sweatpants and a large cast iron sauce pan. This to replace one of the nonslip pans
Picked up four frozen chickens at Letterbox Farm.
Karen went to balance class at the library. Three people came in the gallery.
Tennis at CGCC with Ted. Cold and slow. Played for a little over an hour.
Ted and Anne came for drinks. The usual fun. Lots of talk about Rome.
Stoned. Listened to the Last Walz. Then Bosch.
Overall a sluggish day. Sore throat, low energy. Worked on various new entries for projects in the diary. Old writing that seems germane even after ten or more years. Me and Religion and Are We Over Taxed..??..
A little gallery sitting….saw David Murphy on the street. He is back from Ft. Lauderdale.
Photos from Jonathan and Nan


By chance I had seen photos from these fields on Facebook in the last couple of days. I pointed out in a comment that there are over a billion bulbs planted by hand. When Karen and I went on a tour of this area in early March 2017 we saw men dangling prone in a box hauled across the field by a tractor planting the bulbs by hand. The tractor driver was standing in the field nearby having a smoke. The tractor is guided automatically over the field by GPS or laser location.
Tennis with Ted at 4pm. Dead on my feet. Stopped by 5pm due to rain.
Dinner with David Drake at Barnwood.
Met with Emily Chameides at the library. We’re going to make this a regular deal. Complete review of all the issues. Emily is on top in a firmer way than just a few years ago.
Tried out making a travel book for the 2011 road trip. First on Lightroom. Too much work. Then tried Blurb’s app. Too much work. Told Karen that I wouldn’t be making a book.
Great tennis lesson. Volleying. Slice serve from new stance. Cross court drill. Move towards ball. Don’t wait for the ball.
Watched a few minutes of Russian Doll. Remembered that Harvey and Betsy said it picked up. So watched two episodes. Jury is out. Then something else. Then a couple Veeps.

Black bean gorp. Leftover chicken.

Train at One Hudson City Ctr.
Worked on pictures from last weekend and the Evicted exhibit in particular at the National Building Museum.
Wrote post about that for AD.
UTMH – talked with Sam about customer service role He is in. Met with Seth UTM:RPM bug list. Wexelman.
Anita Harris. More about her brother Alan and the Albany house.
Doubles tennis at Total Tennis. Good play.
Finished up an Addendum to the Assessment challenge document. Asking for $325k assessment instead of the proposed $$400k. Argued that comparable are not comparable. They merely have the dame tax property classification which is not something that the market cares about. Download the assessment challenge here and the addendum hereaddendum here. Sent it off by email only to discover through my request that they confirm receipt of the documents that I had failed to attaché them in the first place.
Long, boring, at time contentious, telecon with Troy Web. They don’t seem to have a very robust project management system. Then walked up to Seth’s office. Somml announced that the official start date for the AMC project is 3/29/2019. Spoke with Ryder Cooley about writing the white paper.

Image used in real estate assessment challenge.
Tennis at night was very good. Played first set with Steve, Frank and Justin. Fell behind 1-4, ended at 4-6. Lots of good rallies and running about. Last set played with Joe Capobianco against Ted and Joe Dellamorte. Old vs young. Held them to 4-6. Tripped on my own feet and fell on right knee. No real damage. Not a single double fault. Very high percentage of first serves.
Stuck with no plastic wrapped foods.