Be such assholes?
I don't think that I had been in Bronx housing court for almost two weeks, and so returning there this morning felt a little numbing. It is easy to forget that the world inside that building operates on its own rules, where it is OK for dim-witted and sleazy landlord attorneys to exploit every angle in manipulating low-income, uninformed, and often under-educated pro se tenants into signing crappy and abusive settlement stipulations that are eagerly rubber-stamped by corrupt or disinterested judges.
Maybe I'll share stories some other time, as the stories often horrify, but it is the day-to-day injustices that are doled out in the hallways and courtrooms there, and the utter lack of professionalism regularly displayed by the majority of the landlord's bar, that continues to make my blood boil after more than seven years of legal practice there. Grrrrr. I do, however, love to fuck them up. Rarrh.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Girlz got werdz
Eliza turned 20 months old today to little fanfare. She went to the playground with her babysitter, Aartie; helped Cathleen make a tamale pie for dinner; and splashed water on me as I bathed her before bedtime. All the while, no doubt, she was talking up a storm. The standard language development of a 20-month-old child is 15-20 words. While it is not uncommon for a child to possess a vocabulary larger than 20 words at this age, that's the baseline you should be expecting if your child is developing along a standard trajectory. At dinner the other night, Cathleen and I figured that Eliza probably has a working vocabulary exceeding 100 words. If we sat down and listed the words that she completely commands, I suspect she's closer to 150 or more. On top of that, she speaks in two and three-word sentences (again, not uncommon, though the regularity with which she does impresses me), and she asks questions appropriately -- not just "what Max doing?" or "where Mommy going?" but she's even asked "why" in its proper context, a pretty heady concept for her age, methinks. Always question authority, little girl, always.
On the one hand, it makes a certain sense that a lawyer and a writer -- and a couple of Chatty Kathys, at that -- would produce kids that were language-accelerated (Max, too, for the record, was an early and advanced talker), but I can't deny the role that chance plays in it all, and I am awed by the smallest of achievements, linguistically or not, that she displays on a daily basis.
On the one hand, it makes a certain sense that a lawyer and a writer -- and a couple of Chatty Kathys, at that -- would produce kids that were language-accelerated (Max, too, for the record, was an early and advanced talker), but I can't deny the role that chance plays in it all, and I am awed by the smallest of achievements, linguistically or not, that she displays on a daily basis.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Soccer got no succor
I'm beginning to come to terms with the fact that I just may have started this blog thing solely for the cheap thrill I get out of creating painfully bad entry titles.
Wow was today not so autumnal. High in the mid-80s on October 6th? WTF?
We made our second attempt to inculcate Max into the world of organized sports by bringing him to his second Super Soccer Stars practice (class?) this morning in Prospect Park. Well, I guess it wasn't his second -- he had gone to 3 or 4 over the summer, but this was his second of the so-called autumn season where the group size is much larger. Super Soccer Stars, for the uninitiated, is soccer initiation for the pre-school set. Every Saturday morning, for 45 minutes, three or four fairly-talented soccer dudes run the kids through goofy drills as a means of teaching them basic soccer skills and concepts. The class begins and ends with a singing of the Super Soccer Stars song, sung to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it." ("we never touch the ball with our hands.."). Max had seemed not too into it when Cathleen had brought him over the summer, except for once when it was just he and his friend Henry there. We figured he'd be into it this fall, maybe, because Henry and another friend were going at the same time. Three weekends ago was the first class. There were over a dozen kids, and Max was visibly overwhelmed from the get go. He insisted on having either me or Cathleen stay with him (not at the field, which all parents have to do, but physically within the class), and he pretty much refused to participate in any of the drills/games. We stuck it out for the entire class, with Max basically watching the other kids kicking the ball around, and then after much debate decided to give it a second try. Today was that second try and produced the same result, and I threw in the towel ten minutes into the class. It is not on my agenda to make my son miserable if it can be avoided. Max takes a while to adjust to new groups of kids (a concern he clearly articulated to me this morning as we were getting ready to go), and I think that in the back of his head he was probably thinking, "what is up with a game that deprives me of use of my frisbee-catching hands?" He had much more fun sitting in my lap, observing an ant that was crawling all over his hand and arm. When the class was over, he still wanted to go and get some stickers that the coaches hand out at the end. No play, all reward. That's my boy.
We returned to Prospect Park in the afternoon for a get-together with our neighbors Jessica and kids Sophia and Jack and had a significantly-improved experience. Sophia is a few months younger than Max, and they simply love each other. They played nonstop for a couple of hours, allowing me to beg off on a tough run around the Park loop in the sweltering heat (after I had biked Max to and from the Park this morning, and then had run Eliza up to the Park in the jogging stroller for the afternoon get-together).
Wow was today not so autumnal. High in the mid-80s on October 6th? WTF?
We made our second attempt to inculcate Max into the world of organized sports by bringing him to his second Super Soccer Stars practice (class?) this morning in Prospect Park. Well, I guess it wasn't his second -- he had gone to 3 or 4 over the summer, but this was his second of the so-called autumn season where the group size is much larger. Super Soccer Stars, for the uninitiated, is soccer initiation for the pre-school set. Every Saturday morning, for 45 minutes, three or four fairly-talented soccer dudes run the kids through goofy drills as a means of teaching them basic soccer skills and concepts. The class begins and ends with a singing of the Super Soccer Stars song, sung to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it." ("we never touch the ball with our hands.."). Max had seemed not too into it when Cathleen had brought him over the summer, except for once when it was just he and his friend Henry there. We figured he'd be into it this fall, maybe, because Henry and another friend were going at the same time. Three weekends ago was the first class. There were over a dozen kids, and Max was visibly overwhelmed from the get go. He insisted on having either me or Cathleen stay with him (not at the field, which all parents have to do, but physically within the class), and he pretty much refused to participate in any of the drills/games. We stuck it out for the entire class, with Max basically watching the other kids kicking the ball around, and then after much debate decided to give it a second try. Today was that second try and produced the same result, and I threw in the towel ten minutes into the class. It is not on my agenda to make my son miserable if it can be avoided. Max takes a while to adjust to new groups of kids (a concern he clearly articulated to me this morning as we were getting ready to go), and I think that in the back of his head he was probably thinking, "what is up with a game that deprives me of use of my frisbee-catching hands?" He had much more fun sitting in my lap, observing an ant that was crawling all over his hand and arm. When the class was over, he still wanted to go and get some stickers that the coaches hand out at the end. No play, all reward. That's my boy.
We returned to Prospect Park in the afternoon for a get-together with our neighbors Jessica and kids Sophia and Jack and had a significantly-improved experience. Sophia is a few months younger than Max, and they simply love each other. They played nonstop for a couple of hours, allowing me to beg off on a tough run around the Park loop in the sweltering heat (after I had biked Max to and from the Park this morning, and then had run Eliza up to the Park in the jogging stroller for the afternoon get-together).
Tricked Out
I added a "visitor counter" to the blog page today. It counts each visit to the blog. I'm not sure why I added it, except that I envision grand parties when I hit some significant numbers, like "10" and "11."
Mom, you need to visit the blog repeatedly, every day, so that I feel good about myself.
Mom, you need to visit the blog repeatedly, every day, so that I feel good about myself.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Let's Go
I hate to write about this so close to the conclusion of the 2007 Mets debacle, but tonight as Cathleen and I sat in the livingroom, preparing to watch an episode of The Wire (Season One), Eliza was yapping away in her crib in joyful defiance of her absolute fatigue. Cathleen turned to me and asked if I understood what Eliza was saying. I listened carefully, and I heard my 20-month-old daughter chanting "Let's Go Mets" from her crib.
Max, bless his innocent soul, has taught Eliza how to cheer "Let's Go Mets." They also like to cheer "Let's Go Cyclones" together (which I've heard them do). I feel like a totally shallow cad, but I cannot quite explain the depth of the warmth that I feel when I think about Max teaching Eliza this cheer.
The circle is complete. The curse, bestowed upon me by my father, has now successfully enveloped both my children, and with much less effort than I thought would be required.
Max, bless his innocent soul, has taught Eliza how to cheer "Let's Go Mets." They also like to cheer "Let's Go Cyclones" together (which I've heard them do). I feel like a totally shallow cad, but I cannot quite explain the depth of the warmth that I feel when I think about Max teaching Eliza this cheer.
The circle is complete. The curse, bestowed upon me by my father, has now successfully enveloped both my children, and with much less effort than I thought would be required.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Sunday Bloody Sunday
OK, I know, two U2 references in a row. I'll stop that for a while.
Well, it has taken me a good 48 hours to be able to write about this past Sunday. The Mets completed their late-season collapse with a lifeless loss to the Marlins which, coupled with the Phillies' win over the Nationals, jettisoned the Mets out of the playoffs on the final day of the season. The game was almost unbearable to watch. Even when Tom Glavine vomited up seven runs in the first inning, I still thought they had a chance, and I spent the next few innings living and dieing with every pitch. My heart was pounding, I was eating compulsively. It sucked. Eliza awakened from her nap somewhere around the fifth inning and, for some reason, she was cranky, crying and inconsolable. I was standing there like, "little girl, I have no emotional resources left to make you feel better." But I did anyway. She's really cute. I watched all the way through the penultimate out, and then turned off the TV because I couldn't bear to watch the conclusion. I can stare at a gruesome car wreck for only so long.
Unlike some folks who were described in newspaper articles, I did not cry and I don't feel like this was the greatest disappointment of my life. But, for some reason, it stings. Why would I do this to myself? Why would I come back for more? Because although this sucks, I also know how good the good times feel, and like an addict seeking that amazing original high, I'll be there next spring hoping that 2008 is the magical season.
Of course, I thought that watching the Jets game would make me feel better. I had taped it and watched it that evening (that seems to be the way I watch football these days), and suffered through their loss to a formerly-winless Bills team that was starting a rookie QB. Uggh.
Thank goodness the news about the Thomas/MSG sexual harassment suit verdict didn't come out until two days later, or I might have packed the bags and moved to, uh, some other place. Man, if they don't fire Thomas it is going to be really hard to root for the Knicks this year. Not that they've made that a particularly easy thing to do within the past decade anyway.
The coup de grace for Sunday? At around dinner time I took the dogs out to the backyard to do their business (which, if you know anything about economics, isn't actually "business"), and I discovered a dead rat lying on the ground. The rat was around 10-12 inches long --- easily half the size of Oscar, if not bigger, and was somewhat reminiscent of a Warg from the Lord of the Rings series. I screamed. Well, it wasn't so much a scream as an, "Ahhhh!!! Ohhhh. Oh fuck. Ahhh, Eewwww. Ahhhh!!" That big-ass dead rat scared me more as dead than it might have if it were alive. I'm not 100% convinced of that, but I can't imagine being much more scared of it than I was. I took the dogs inside before they discovered the mammoth, fetid carcass, and went upstairs. I returned downstairs after the kids were in bed. I donned gloves and grabbed a shovel and two plastic bags. I doubled-up the bags and set them out in a bucket shape. I then approached the mighty beast and, summoning every ounce of courage I had, scooped it up and dumped it in the bags. It left behind a zillion little maggoty-creatures on the ground.
Are you puking yet? I was damn near close. I let out a few more loud and colorful protestations while pacing around in a circle, and then went back inside to get a bigger bag. I deposited the smaller bag of decaying monster rat into the larger bag and tied it up, hosed off the ground and the shovel, and brought the festering sack up and out to the garbage cans in front of our building. Not sure I breathed the entire time. Mercifully, the Department of Sanitation came and picked up our garbage this morning, because I was scared to go near my own trash cans.
Mets. Jets. Maggotty gigantic rat. It is so not easy being me.
Well, it has taken me a good 48 hours to be able to write about this past Sunday. The Mets completed their late-season collapse with a lifeless loss to the Marlins which, coupled with the Phillies' win over the Nationals, jettisoned the Mets out of the playoffs on the final day of the season. The game was almost unbearable to watch. Even when Tom Glavine vomited up seven runs in the first inning, I still thought they had a chance, and I spent the next few innings living and dieing with every pitch. My heart was pounding, I was eating compulsively. It sucked. Eliza awakened from her nap somewhere around the fifth inning and, for some reason, she was cranky, crying and inconsolable. I was standing there like, "little girl, I have no emotional resources left to make you feel better." But I did anyway. She's really cute. I watched all the way through the penultimate out, and then turned off the TV because I couldn't bear to watch the conclusion. I can stare at a gruesome car wreck for only so long.
Unlike some folks who were described in newspaper articles, I did not cry and I don't feel like this was the greatest disappointment of my life. But, for some reason, it stings. Why would I do this to myself? Why would I come back for more? Because although this sucks, I also know how good the good times feel, and like an addict seeking that amazing original high, I'll be there next spring hoping that 2008 is the magical season.
Of course, I thought that watching the Jets game would make me feel better. I had taped it and watched it that evening (that seems to be the way I watch football these days), and suffered through their loss to a formerly-winless Bills team that was starting a rookie QB. Uggh.
Thank goodness the news about the Thomas/MSG sexual harassment suit verdict didn't come out until two days later, or I might have packed the bags and moved to, uh, some other place. Man, if they don't fire Thomas it is going to be really hard to root for the Knicks this year. Not that they've made that a particularly easy thing to do within the past decade anyway.
The coup de grace for Sunday? At around dinner time I took the dogs out to the backyard to do their business (which, if you know anything about economics, isn't actually "business"), and I discovered a dead rat lying on the ground. The rat was around 10-12 inches long --- easily half the size of Oscar, if not bigger, and was somewhat reminiscent of a Warg from the Lord of the Rings series. I screamed. Well, it wasn't so much a scream as an, "Ahhhh!!! Ohhhh. Oh fuck. Ahhh, Eewwww. Ahhhh!!" That big-ass dead rat scared me more as dead than it might have if it were alive. I'm not 100% convinced of that, but I can't imagine being much more scared of it than I was. I took the dogs inside before they discovered the mammoth, fetid carcass, and went upstairs. I returned downstairs after the kids were in bed. I donned gloves and grabbed a shovel and two plastic bags. I doubled-up the bags and set them out in a bucket shape. I then approached the mighty beast and, summoning every ounce of courage I had, scooped it up and dumped it in the bags. It left behind a zillion little maggoty-creatures on the ground.
Are you puking yet? I was damn near close. I let out a few more loud and colorful protestations while pacing around in a circle, and then went back inside to get a bigger bag. I deposited the smaller bag of decaying monster rat into the larger bag and tied it up, hosed off the ground and the shovel, and brought the festering sack up and out to the garbage cans in front of our building. Not sure I breathed the entire time. Mercifully, the Department of Sanitation came and picked up our garbage this morning, because I was scared to go near my own trash cans.
Mets. Jets. Maggotty gigantic rat. It is so not easy being me.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Sing with me, this is 40
If your close friends are getting old, does that mean you're getting old?
Mark Bertin turned 40 today (9/30), and he marked this transition to manhood by hosting a gathering of his closest friends at his parents' weekend home in Medusa, NY, up in the Catskills. It was a terrific time.
I started the weekend on Thursday night. First, Cathleen and I attended "curriculum night" at The Brooklyn New School, where we sat on tiny little (ridiculously uncomfortable) chairs and listened to Max's pre-K teacher discuss what the class structure, philosophy, goals were. The experience confirmed for me many of the reasons why we stayed in New York / moved to Brooklyn -- his class is stinking with diversity and he will be learning in a progressive environment. That, and Cathleen discovered on Friday, one of his classmates (his favorite classmate, it would seem), is the daughter of an accomplished novelist, Myla Goldberg. Cathleen read her novel "The Bee Season," and I really like to listen to "Song for Myla Goldberg" by The Decemberists. After the one-hour meeting at school, we headed home, put the kids to bed, I quickly packed a bag and than hustled to Grand Central where I caught the 8:52 train to Katonah, armed with a pulled pork sandwich and a bottle of Boylan's Birch Beer.
Mark picked me up at the train station at 10 pm, and we then stayed up until 12:30, sipping a few glasses of the Clynelish single malt I had brought him for his birthday ("notes of buttescotch," the guy at Smith & Vine had told me), and we just shot the shit about everything and nothing (the scotch facilitating the discussion of both). We used to have time to do a lot more of that, especially when we would just hang out at ultimate tournaments (or practices, or summer league games), or on runs together or dinner parties or whatever when we lived three blocks apart, but now life changes have changed all that. It was nice to just be hanging out again. And a little drunk.
Zach got us up the next morning at around 6:30, and by 9:00 or so we were on the road to Medusa. We arrived at the house about two hours later, with Zach asleep in his carseat. Elizabeth agreed to stay alone with him while Mark and I went for a run. By the time we had changed our clothes, inserted contact lenses and stretched, Zach woke up from a disappointingly short nap, but Mark and I took off anyway. It was, after all, his birthday weekend...
Medusa sits just north of the Catksill mountain range, about 45 minutes southwest of Albany. It is, by most yardsticks, the middle of nowhere. Mark's parents bought 180 acres of that nowhere about four or five years ago, and constructed a modest but comfortable house on the hillside top of a meadow in the middle of the property. They have spent the past few years carving hiking trails around the property (the northern side of which abuts a state park), and Mark and I set off on one of those hiking trails, then crossed over into the state park before reconnecting with paved roads. It is the Catskills, and the run was uphill and downhill the entire way. The final half mile of the run (which in toto was probably in the neighborhood of about four miles) featured a killer uphill climb that led to an amazing view of meadows, mountains and valleys. Breathtaking by all possible understandings of the term.
After the run we lounged around in the house and then the four of us (Mark, Elizabeth, Zach and I) set out for a short hike in the woods. We spotted many red efts (yes, spotted is a pun!), and Zach and I had a nice time bonding over the water spigot from his Camelbak. Upon our return to the house, we ventured into the garden and ate sugar snap peas right off the vine, picked a small bucket's worth of sweet cherry tomatoes, and pulled a dozen squat carrots out of the ground. Country livin'.
Elizabeth and I then invented a new game called "Squid," where we sat on a couch on a screened-in porch, facing a stone fireplace; you had to pick a stone on the fireplace and then, while seated with your back against the back of the couch, throw a whiffle ball off that stone and catch it. If you made a successful throw and catch off of the pre-called stone, your opponent would have to replicate the effort, failure to doing which would earn him or her a letter spelling out the game's name. First to SQUID loses. It is with pride that I report that I took home the championship trophy. Making "squ" you jokes midway through the game was a highlight.
By mid-to-late afternoon, Mark's college friends Don and Stefan arrived from, respectively, Richmond, VA and somewhere in the East Bay (CA). Mark's parents also arrived from a week in the Adirondacks -- as babysitters for the weekend, they left for home with Zach in tow at his bedtime. That is when the drinking began in relative earnest. Opening beers were followed by the four or five bottles of wine that Mark had been stowing away for a decade or so for the right occasion; they were steadily consumed through the late afternoon, dinner of fish burritos, and late-night lounging until another college friend, Dave, arrived from Fort Collins, CO at a little after midnight. I finally went to bed at a little after 1 a.m.
I awakened at around 8:30, determined that sounds of life existed somewhere else in the house, and was out on the back deck with a cup of coffee by 8:50. Mark, Elizabeth, Dave and I (eventually joined by Don and Stefan) sat on Adirondack-style rocking chairs for about four straight hours. The view, looking south, is magnificient: a meadow surrounded by trees beginning to succumb to the beckoning autumn, and giving way in the distance to the Catskill mountains (approximately 15-20 miles away); looking southeast you could see clearly for probably 100 miles. Over this entire expanse, signs of industrialized living were few and far between. Hawks intermittently flew by. The sun was shining bright, the air was crisp but warm. There was no reason to move anywhere else.
A bit past noon, Dan Katzive arrived from Manhattan, and then Cathleen and the dogs arrived from Brooklyn (Max and Eliza under the care of Sophie and Joseph for the day/eve). We booted up and took a one-hour hike around the property, wending our way on trails through the forests, across old stone walls and small, dried-up river beds, and through the meadow which was blazing with the colors of small wildflowers.
Back at the house, we had a small horseshoes tournament (Cathleen and I were smoked by Elizabeth and Dave), tossed the disc for a bit, and relaxed some more. Mark's friend Elio arrived (from California), rounding out the well-traveled group of revelers. Eventually we motivated towards dinner (veggie lasagna that our hosts had prepared beforehand) with particular joy in the air at the news that the Mets had re-tied the Phillies for first place that day. While waiting for the endlessly-poaching pears to poach for dessert, I delivered a rap "toast" I had written on the train-ride up, the highlights of which included my concluding a verse about Mark's move to Katonah with a line about that town's having "houses so pretty they give me a bonah," and then using 31 different words to rhyme with Zach in another verse. Cathleen and I packed into our car by 10 pm and hit the road for home, arriving in Brooklyn at about 12:45.
It was a pretty darn good weekend as weekends go and I am certain that it transpired exactly as Mark had desired. If you can truly judge a man by the company he keeps, Mark Bertin at 40 is doing alright for himself.
Mark Bertin turned 40 today (9/30), and he marked this transition to manhood by hosting a gathering of his closest friends at his parents' weekend home in Medusa, NY, up in the Catskills. It was a terrific time.
I started the weekend on Thursday night. First, Cathleen and I attended "curriculum night" at The Brooklyn New School, where we sat on tiny little (ridiculously uncomfortable) chairs and listened to Max's pre-K teacher discuss what the class structure, philosophy, goals were. The experience confirmed for me many of the reasons why we stayed in New York / moved to Brooklyn -- his class is stinking with diversity and he will be learning in a progressive environment. That, and Cathleen discovered on Friday, one of his classmates (his favorite classmate, it would seem), is the daughter of an accomplished novelist, Myla Goldberg. Cathleen read her novel "The Bee Season," and I really like to listen to "Song for Myla Goldberg" by The Decemberists. After the one-hour meeting at school, we headed home, put the kids to bed, I quickly packed a bag and than hustled to Grand Central where I caught the 8:52 train to Katonah, armed with a pulled pork sandwich and a bottle of Boylan's Birch Beer.
Mark picked me up at the train station at 10 pm, and we then stayed up until 12:30, sipping a few glasses of the Clynelish single malt I had brought him for his birthday ("notes of buttescotch," the guy at Smith & Vine had told me), and we just shot the shit about everything and nothing (the scotch facilitating the discussion of both). We used to have time to do a lot more of that, especially when we would just hang out at ultimate tournaments (or practices, or summer league games), or on runs together or dinner parties or whatever when we lived three blocks apart, but now life changes have changed all that. It was nice to just be hanging out again. And a little drunk.
Zach got us up the next morning at around 6:30, and by 9:00 or so we were on the road to Medusa. We arrived at the house about two hours later, with Zach asleep in his carseat. Elizabeth agreed to stay alone with him while Mark and I went for a run. By the time we had changed our clothes, inserted contact lenses and stretched, Zach woke up from a disappointingly short nap, but Mark and I took off anyway. It was, after all, his birthday weekend...
Medusa sits just north of the Catksill mountain range, about 45 minutes southwest of Albany. It is, by most yardsticks, the middle of nowhere. Mark's parents bought 180 acres of that nowhere about four or five years ago, and constructed a modest but comfortable house on the hillside top of a meadow in the middle of the property. They have spent the past few years carving hiking trails around the property (the northern side of which abuts a state park), and Mark and I set off on one of those hiking trails, then crossed over into the state park before reconnecting with paved roads. It is the Catskills, and the run was uphill and downhill the entire way. The final half mile of the run (which in toto was probably in the neighborhood of about four miles) featured a killer uphill climb that led to an amazing view of meadows, mountains and valleys. Breathtaking by all possible understandings of the term.
After the run we lounged around in the house and then the four of us (Mark, Elizabeth, Zach and I) set out for a short hike in the woods. We spotted many red efts (yes, spotted is a pun!), and Zach and I had a nice time bonding over the water spigot from his Camelbak. Upon our return to the house, we ventured into the garden and ate sugar snap peas right off the vine, picked a small bucket's worth of sweet cherry tomatoes, and pulled a dozen squat carrots out of the ground. Country livin'.
Elizabeth and I then invented a new game called "Squid," where we sat on a couch on a screened-in porch, facing a stone fireplace; you had to pick a stone on the fireplace and then, while seated with your back against the back of the couch, throw a whiffle ball off that stone and catch it. If you made a successful throw and catch off of the pre-called stone, your opponent would have to replicate the effort, failure to doing which would earn him or her a letter spelling out the game's name. First to SQUID loses. It is with pride that I report that I took home the championship trophy. Making "squ" you jokes midway through the game was a highlight.
By mid-to-late afternoon, Mark's college friends Don and Stefan arrived from, respectively, Richmond, VA and somewhere in the East Bay (CA). Mark's parents also arrived from a week in the Adirondacks -- as babysitters for the weekend, they left for home with Zach in tow at his bedtime. That is when the drinking began in relative earnest. Opening beers were followed by the four or five bottles of wine that Mark had been stowing away for a decade or so for the right occasion; they were steadily consumed through the late afternoon, dinner of fish burritos, and late-night lounging until another college friend, Dave, arrived from Fort Collins, CO at a little after midnight. I finally went to bed at a little after 1 a.m.
I awakened at around 8:30, determined that sounds of life existed somewhere else in the house, and was out on the back deck with a cup of coffee by 8:50. Mark, Elizabeth, Dave and I (eventually joined by Don and Stefan) sat on Adirondack-style rocking chairs for about four straight hours. The view, looking south, is magnificient: a meadow surrounded by trees beginning to succumb to the beckoning autumn, and giving way in the distance to the Catskill mountains (approximately 15-20 miles away); looking southeast you could see clearly for probably 100 miles. Over this entire expanse, signs of industrialized living were few and far between. Hawks intermittently flew by. The sun was shining bright, the air was crisp but warm. There was no reason to move anywhere else.
A bit past noon, Dan Katzive arrived from Manhattan, and then Cathleen and the dogs arrived from Brooklyn (Max and Eliza under the care of Sophie and Joseph for the day/eve). We booted up and took a one-hour hike around the property, wending our way on trails through the forests, across old stone walls and small, dried-up river beds, and through the meadow which was blazing with the colors of small wildflowers.
Back at the house, we had a small horseshoes tournament (Cathleen and I were smoked by Elizabeth and Dave), tossed the disc for a bit, and relaxed some more. Mark's friend Elio arrived (from California), rounding out the well-traveled group of revelers. Eventually we motivated towards dinner (veggie lasagna that our hosts had prepared beforehand) with particular joy in the air at the news that the Mets had re-tied the Phillies for first place that day. While waiting for the endlessly-poaching pears to poach for dessert, I delivered a rap "toast" I had written on the train-ride up, the highlights of which included my concluding a verse about Mark's move to Katonah with a line about that town's having "houses so pretty they give me a bonah," and then using 31 different words to rhyme with Zach in another verse. Cathleen and I packed into our car by 10 pm and hit the road for home, arriving in Brooklyn at about 12:45.
It was a pretty darn good weekend as weekends go and I am certain that it transpired exactly as Mark had desired. If you can truly judge a man by the company he keeps, Mark Bertin at 40 is doing alright for himself.
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