Mt Equinox And A Bit Of The Revolutionary War

Sonnet, Katie, Eitan and I go for a "gentle walk" and end up climbing 3,800 ft Equinox Mountain instead. Equinox the highest peak of the Taconic Range. Starting from Manchester, it is straight up followed by straight down , leaving us perspired, exhausted and achy - the downward trek taxes muscles I knew not of. The peak marked by an ancient hotel which, Larry tells me, closed 15 years ago. On a winter's day it might be the Overlook Hotel. Me, I follow up with a three-hour nap (not 30 anymore dude) and go to bed at 9PM which vexes Sonnet at 4AM as I wake her to discuss house-design. Instead of fighting me, we go for a sunrise walk.

A signage at the trail head in Manchester:

"The Revolutionary War. Ethan Allen crossed Lake Champlain to capture Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775 for "America's First Victory." Allen's expedition passed through here on May 5, 1775. Nathan Beman from Manchester guided the expedition into the fort: John Roberts of Manchester was the head of the expedition's largest immediate family. In 1777, after evacuating Ft. Ti and Mount Independence, Gen. Arthur St Claire traveled to the Saratoga area via Manchester. The first meeting of the council of Safety (Vermont's initial government) were at the original Marsh Tavern (on site of the south wing of the Equinox). In Manchester, Gen. John Stark declined orders from Gen. Benjamin Lincoln and opted to go to Bennington. Stark's NH troops and Seth Warner's "Green Mountain Boys" camped in Manchester prior to the battle of Bennington victory on August 16, 1777.

--Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, 2011

Chillax

Madeleine requests a few photos for her "summer journal", as required for school. This replaces the usual cajoling or bribing now the norm when my camera trained on the Shakespeares.

VT

The Orenstein family circus arrives in NY where we meet Gracie and Moe at Herz and load up an SUV that stretches across the inter-state. Yep, holiday in America. We spend our first night in Bronxville (joined by Auntie Katie) and a day in New York , where Sonnet takes Madeleine to Alexander McQueen at the Met - Sonnet tells me that it is the most popular exhibition in the museum's history. I see a few friends, and now Vermont with Marcia and Larry and Susan and Joey and Julia. The last time our together ensemble was Diane's wedding two years ago.

Madeleine: "Dad can I sit in the back seat?"

Gracie: "I want to sit in the back with Madeleine."

Eitan: "Can I sit in the back seat, too?"

Sonnet: "I think you have to climb over the middle seat, Grace."

Eitan: "Why does Madeleine get the back seat with Gracie?"

Sonnet: "Maybe we can turn one of the seats back so Gracie can get in. .."

Madeleine: "I asked first, Eitan, and besides there is only room for me and Gracie."

Sonnet: "I am sure there is plenty of room."

Grace: "Can you move the seat back so I can get in?"

Me: "Get. In. The. Car."

Grace: "Jesus."

Electrics

Enrico, pictured, lives the Dolce Vita in Southwest London. He is father of KPR's Jean Luca, a serious threat from anywhere on the pitch with style and flair one expects from an Italian striker. Enrico rips up the house to rewire the everything.

tesco

We say "Farewell, Aneta!" who returns to Czech then Europe and eventually University. She contemplates a summer job and what the future may hold but who knows? The joy of 21. Her childhood friend, Camilla, will join us in August. Aneta and Madeleine have a last go at Ludo, a board-game that has occupied them at the kitchen table. Eitan refuses a hug but he will miss her, too.

Eric Reunion

Eric : from Chicago : college friend : recognised interior designer : working on 1 Hyde Park : lives in Milano : Italian citizenship soon : following ambitions : a brave heart

Rusty Gets A Bone

And it's just as well as Aneta and I drop him at the kennel for a month.

All Nighter

Sonnet writes a chapter for a book on ball gowns which will also be a major exposition at the V&A. Her deadline is, well, now since we leave tomorrow for America. Just like freshman year, I tease her. Note the bare walls in our dining room which will, inshallah, be a library upon our return. The builders, electricians, painters, carpenters and workers descend upon our house as we leave. We take advantage of the away.

Gayle Hunnicutt

Sonnet meets Gayle Hunnicutt, an American actress whose design donation will be used in the V&A's ballgowns show.

Sooo . .. Hunnicutt born in Fort Worth, Texas, attended UCLA which we don't hold against her. She was married from 1968 to 1975 to the actor David Hemmings and later, the journalist Sir Simon Jenkins (they divorced in '08).

During her brief Hollywood career, Hunnicutt was typecast as a brunette sexpot. She co-starred with James Garner in the 1969 film Marlowe, the character she played being a glamorous Hollywood actress. After she moved to England with Hemmings in 1970, however, the finer range of her acting emerged. A notable role was that of Charlotte Stant, in the critically acclaimed Jack Pulman television adaptation (1972) of Henry James's The Golden Bowl. She went on to play Lionel's wife in The Legend of Hell House in 1973, and Tsarina Alexandra in Fall of Eagles in 1974. In 1984, she appeared as Irene Adler opposite Jeremy Brett in the very first episode ("A Scandal in Bohemia") of the series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Hunnicutt returned to America to play the role of Vanessa Beaumont in Dallas from 1989 to 1991.

Photo from Hunnicutt to Sonnet, presumably in item to be exhibited.

Kojo

Kojo, a friend from graduate school, founded Ghana's largest home mortgage services company accounting for >60% of all new mortgage applications in his country. Kojo tells me that Ghana needs 1 M houses for the growing middle class - the population there 24 M and GDP, in PPP, is about $72 B. There is some considerable opportunity; Arnaud , who we are with this morning, investigates.

"This is the most humble day of my life."

--Rupert Murdoch before British Parliament

Birthday, 1985

My mother's birthday letter, 18 years old :

"Dear Jeff -

We've said goodbye before, not too long ago, it seems, when you were off to Switzerland. And on your 18th birthday, I'm thinking of the goodbye ahead of us, in August when you take off for Brown.

You've learned a lot about the world and about the people in it - and about who you are and how you fit in. And now you're on your own. Seems unreal, doesn't it?

I haven't any words of wisdom. You've lived your life with gusto and humor and purpose. You've taken yourself seriously, and in the process have taught me. I'm proud to have participated in your growing-up. It has been a wonderful, unbeatable experience in all its parts , for which I feel especially blessed.

Happy 18th!

Love,

Mom

"

Photo source? 1985, 1530 Euclid Ave.

Rabbit Ears

Eitan plays his last game with the KPR Blues, winning the "plate", or runner's up, trophy at the Abby Rangers tournament in Surrey. From September, Eitan joins Elm Grove in the Premiere Elite league. I try to take it all in stride, not being too much a part of his (or Madeleine's) decision making though Sonnet much better, here, than I. The big question soon : swimming or football? But that is for another day. After the pitch, Eitan to Luke's b'day paintball party followed by a highly-unusual sleep-over on a Sunday night.

A re-cap of the news for posterity : Rebekah Brooks , former Chief Exec of News International, arrested. Met Chief Sir Paul Stephenson resigns siting the NoW scandal. USA loses to Japan on PKs in the women's World Cup final. Daren Clarke wins the British Open - the third Northern Irishman to win a major in the last six tournaments. Tour de France begins.

Madeleine: "Sometimes you freak me out, Dad."

That Girl

Me and Grace, September 17, 1967.

Sonnet And Her Brood

Eitan: "Do you like paint ball?"

Me: "Not really. You know how you feel when you watch war movies and you think : 'I would never get shot?' Well, I got shot in like two minutes the one time I've played."

Eitan: "Did it hurt?"

Me: "Maybe my pride."

Eitan: "I sort of like it if it hurts. It makes it more real."

Madeleine: "Oh, really, Eitan."

Eitan: "Yeah, so?"

Madeleine: "Would you like it if someone stabbed you? And you were like, 'oh, that feels reeaallly good.'"

Me: "She's got a point, you know."

Eitan: "I'm just saying, that's all."

Eitan, in the back of the car, holding a new football: "This ball feels so lovely."

Me, driving: "Hurry up, Grandma."

Madeleine: "Shush, Dad! She can hear you!"

Me: "No she can't."

Madeleine: "She can read your lips: Hur-ree up Gr-ran-dma."

Cloudy Richmond

Eitan and Sonnet do an aquathalon (500 m swim and 2 km run) and Eitan set to win his age-group until he takes a wrong turn. He is crushed afterwards. Meanwhile Madeleine and I go for a walk in Richmond Park. Now it rains and everybody in the kitchen and I build the Mercury Redstone Ant-scale model rocket and Madeleine does her homework:

Madeleine: "How many five centimeter lengths can I make from a 40 centimeter rope?"

Me: "How many times does five go into 40?"

Madeleine: "Why couldn't they just say that?"

Madeleine: "Is 87 cm tall or not?"

Me: "It is all relative."

Madeleine: "What does that mean?"

Me: "If it was an 87 cm lizard, that would be pretty tall. Or long anyway. If it was an 87 cm house, that would be pretty small."

Madeleine: "Can you please stop the logic, Dad?"

Madeleine: "Here's a quiz, Mom. What is 200 divided by 25?"

Sonnet: "Madeleine do your homework please."

Rutshire Chronicles

Jilly Cooper, in her soooo '80s classic "Riders," introduced us to Jake Lovell (Aspirational gypsy. Rides horses), Helen Macauley (Hot American, lousy in bed. Rides horses), Rupert Campbell-Black (Brutish aristocrat. Hairy chested. Rides), Billy Lloyd-Foxe (Jake's rival at horse jumping), Fenella Maxwell (Rich, hot, rides) and Tory Maxwell (Debutant wife. Doesn't ride). They all have sex and fight and ride horses and wife swap and horse-swap and talk about horses and talk about riding horses and go to the Olympics to ride horses and , and, and . . You may not be one of the 20 M readers of the book but most likely you have seen the jacket cover, pictured. My first time at the Oakland Airport on my way to freshman year when being an adult could not come fast enough. Cooper, for her part, awarded an OBE for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2004.

The serious side of the '80s was, of course, the tragedy of AIDS. Mine the first generation to believe that sex could mean a horrible, ghastly and lonely death.

"Wondering if she had a ginger bush, he felt the stirrings of lust. He'd tank her up at lunchtime and take her back to his mother's house."

--Rupert Campbell-Black in Jilly Cooper's "Riders," 1985

W'Loo @ 3PM

I perch myself at the station's southside upstairs and take a few photos with my bb. The Evening Standard, pictured, went freesheets in October '09 after 180-years of paid circulation. Blame the Internets. Daily readership surged from about 260 K in '06 to >600 K last year.

Outdoor Greens

I am at the RIBA which btw introduced to me years ago by stylish and gentlemanly friend Maurizio. The cafe restaurant best enjoyed in summer when an outdoor sculpture garden available to Kensington's ladies that lunch and museum types (you choose my slot). A news team films "hidden green spaces" in central London, pictured.

To Have Not

Madeleine's heart set on a mobile "for emergencies". Let it be known our policy age-11 , which the kids put in the "gyp pile" alongside the Nintendo DX, wii, Xbox and various other medias we do not have yet apparently enjoyed by every household in the universe.

A predictable crisis : when 12 million Americans owe more than their homes worth the country running on empty. Who can dispute this observation when the US govt borrows $4.5 B a day to just keep going. And this : the Fed buys 70% of all new Treasury paper, making the government the largest client of its own debt. This possible by increasing the money-supply and the balance sheet of the Fed itself, a practice that will eventually blow up.

"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

--J. Wellington Wimpy

Driver's Ed + Social Living

Eric attends driver's education and reports: "I had to go in order for Ben to get his junior license. ... another dad looked at me when we were leaving and said, "well that's two hours of my life I'm never getting back."

We Berkeley High sophomores (that would be '83) split a semester into Driver's Ed and Social Living, taught by the wonderful Nancy Rubin; Nancy at BHS from 1977 to 1996 and was one of the cool adults who wore stylish middle-age clothes and had frizzy hair and expensive beed necklaces. Sometimes sleek sandals if warm. Her class discussed things like masturbation (boys agreed: girls have better options), contraception (no 16 year-old likes a rubber) and abortion (most to all kids support choice - Berkeley, dude) and other stuff too awkward or difficult to bring home. Nancy became a minor celebrity, on Oprah, and known across the country. A highlight of her class : a letter we addressed to ourselves, post-marked and stamped, for future delivery. Mine arrived at my parents' house in 2003 or 20 years later. It still scares the shit out of me - I have yet to open the damn thing. Maybe I will give to Eitan or Madeleine on their 16th birthday? Maybe I will dispose of it privately. Photo from Eric.