Show Me a Hero and Other Media Notes

They never called me back for my star turn as an extra on Show Me a Hero, and now the six-part HBO movie will begin Sunday night without me (http://nyti.ms/1Pa4ITu).

You may recall I attended an open casting call for extras at Manhattanville College last summer. About two months later I was contacted to show up in Yonkers for what normally is a 10-12 hour shoot for the princely sum of $100. That would be for the whole day, not an hourly rate.

Trouble was the day conflicted with the first day of Succoth. I opted for cries of hosanna instead calls for “action,” confident the producers would reconnect with me for another day as they indicated they would if I could not make the first day’s production. They never called.

So as I sit at home tonight and watch the depiction of the tumultuous time in Yonkers when the city underwent court ordered housing desegregation I will wonder in which scenes would I have been cast, and would I possibly have garnered a speaking part, even if it were only to shout verbal abuse at the mayor who reversed his election campaign position attacking the court ordered mandate only to later push for integration.

Ah well, a lost opportunity.

Woodstock Nation: Here’s another lost opportunity, this time Gilda’s, not mine. This weekend marks the 46th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival in Bethel, NY. 

Gilda had tickets to attend but chose to spend the weekend in Brooklyn with her boyfriend, another one of my ultimately less-than-worthy predecessors. She gave her tickets to friends, but they, too, did not make it to Yasgur’s Farm as Route 17 did not live up to its nickname as the Quickway to the Catskills, but rather became an impassable parking lot.

By the time the film Woodstock came out in 1970 Gilda and I were dating. When she saw conditions at the festival, the mud from torrential storms and the mass of people, Gilda had no regrets she passed on the opportunity to be part of counter-culture history. 

By the way, if you haven’t seen Taking Woodstock, a memoir-based 2009 film by Ang Lee on how the festival came to Yasgur’s Farm, it’s worth viewing.

The Man Behind Sears: For many years I thought of Sears, Roebuck & Co. as the prototypical WASP, or at the very least Christian, company. Nary an executive had even the slightest Jewish-sounding name.

The truth, however, was much different during the early years of the enterprise, as I learned when editor of Chain Store Age. The company became successful after Julius Rosenwald joined as part-owner. Rosenwald’s success allowed him to set up a philanthropic fund in 1917 for “the well-being of mankind.” Chief among the beneficiaries of his charity were Afro-American communities. A new documentary, Rosenwald, provides a picture of his commitment to the less fortunate but equally deserving (http://nyti.ms/1IPG3jh).

A Father's Day Tribute to My Mom

Having just read Timothy Egan’s tribute to his father in The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/SRE4HZ), I considered writing one for my dad. But it occurred to me that when I write about my parents it is mostly about my patrimony. So, with the comment my mother used to make, that without her Kopel Forseter would not have been a father, here's a posting about my maternal heritage.

The second of four sisters and an older brother, Sylvia Gerson came to New York from Lodg, Poland, in 1921 when she was four. Her father, Louis, was a jeweler, successful enough to move his family to an apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx that cost her a boyfriend. With an air of upward social mobility she enjoyed conveying, my mother would relate that the boyfriend stopped calling on her because, he explained to her years later, she had attained an address status beyond his station.

A mutual friend set up my parents. Perhaps the story's apocryphal, but the way she told it, my father fell off a ladder in his store when he first saw her. It wasn't from her good looks. Rather, it was her wild and frizzy hair. They agreed, nevertheless, to go out that Friday night to a performance of Die Fledermaus, a comic opera. When Kopel came to her family apartment he didn't recognize her. She was all dolled up and beautiful. They were married six weeks later, Labor Day weekend 1942.

If six weeks seems like a whirlwind courtship, consider this. For several weeks they were apart because Sylvia went on vacation. During one of their times together my mother garnered one of her favorite stories.

Kopel took her back to an apartment he shared. Speaking Yiddish, his roommate asked if they would like to be alone, to which my father replied, also in Yiddish, “No, this one I am going to marry.” Unbeknownst to my father, Sylvia was fluent in Yiddish.

Their union was also a work partnership. As a full charge bookkeeper Sylvia ran the one-person office while Kopel ran the factory where they produced half-slips and panties sold mostly to chain stores across the country. For a little more than four years Sylvia stayed home to raise their three children. I propelled her back to work with my poor eating and an exasperating habit of flinging peas off of my high chair tray. Funny. Today peas are among my favorite vegetable.

Sylvia taught my brother and me to play ball. She made sure we went to Broadway shows and the opera. She took us to the Catskills. She enrolled us in private Hebrew schools and eight week sleepaway Jewish summer camps. She made our house the center of activity. Friday night poker games with my brother’s friends. Passover seders with as many as 40 participants. Overnight guests that prompted her to call our home Malon Forseter, malon being the Hebrew word for hotel. Her dinette table was never too full. Unexpected guests were met with the standard retort, “I'll just add another cup of water to the soup.”

Though I wrote earlier that my poor eating sent her back to work, truth is Sylvia was a woman ahead of her time. Not just a homemaker and club woman—head of the PTA and active in temple and social groups—she also was an accomplished businesswoman not content or fulfilled in a stay-at-home mother role. Because of their business my parents could not always vacation together. My mother was confident and independent enough to travel to Israel and Europe by herself in the mid 1950s when she was just 40.

These are memories from my youth. As she aged my mother's joie de vivre deteriorated. She chain smoked. She was diabetic. She suffered bouts of congestive heart failure. A little dementia. She had one leg amputated below the knee because of her diabetes. A few years later on the eve of an amputation of her second leg she died of cardiac arrest.

My brother sister and I don't dwell on the last decade or so of her life when she no longer was the vibrant source of our family life. It is enough to know that together with our father she molded us into the people we are today. And we are happy with the results.

Curse of the Lottery Lifted, Cultural Literacy, Kutsher's Revisited

I checked my lottery tickets Tuesday. Won $2 on Mega Ball which I promptly parlayed into a Power Ball ticket for Wednesday night. Hey, you never know, and the next Power Ball prize is a cool $152 million. 

Even better, new research has lifted the veil of doom and gloom previously thought to have engulfed jackpot winners.  According to an article in Tuesday’s NY Times, the “curse” of the lottery has been debunked. Winners no more are assumed to end up “divorced, depressed destitute or dead,” in the short term, at least (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/science/how-to-win-the-lottery-happily.html?ref=science&_r=0).

Several studies found the stress levels of winners declined over two years while positive feelings increased. 

All I can say is, come on 4, 5, 35, 43, 49 and PB 35!

Uh, Oh, I’ve been exposed. Outed. No, not in a sexual orientation way, but rather in the context of cultural literacy. 

“Faking cultural literacy” was an article in the Sunday Review section of The Times. The subhead suggested “social media lets us pretend to know something about everything,” to which I’d say that my more than casual knowledge of grammar tells me that “social media” is a plural (media is the plural form of medium), so the correct verb would be “let” not “lets.” Tsk, Tsk, NY Times copy editor (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/faking-cultural-literacy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss).

But seriously, I’m a typical reporter at heart, a jack of all trades, master of none. Which means I’m glib and opinionated. But am I knowledgeable? Am I intelligent, or merely informed (note I wrote informed, not well-informed)?

My aversion to traditional-learning began during my teenage years. I hardly ever read an assigned book in high school. Like the author of the essay, I found Cliff Notes or the Hollywood version of the classics more than adequate to slide through classes. My feel for American history derived more from movies such as Drums Along the Mohawk, Allegheny Uprising and The Last of the Mohicans than any textbook. Still, I scored a 98% on the American History Regents, highest in my grade (I maintain I should have earned a 100% but the teacher took off two points because he did not know one of the facts I included in my essay. He dismissed the proof I showed him, saying I should be content with a 98.)

Seven years later, as a novice newspaper reporter, I found being the silent observer an inscrutable way of not revealing my intelligence level. Any subject I was not familiar with I would casually inquire of another journalist. I recall at my first Board of Selectmen’s meeting in Seymour, Conn., being stumped when the discussion turned to “mill rates.” Journalism school had never touched on mill rates, which turned out to be the basis of all local taxation in the Nutmeg State, as a kindly, grandmotherly reporter from The Ansonia Sentinel enlightened me. We might have been competitors but we were part of the same “family” of scribes.

 I can’t say I am more culturally attuned these days. Whenever I watch shows like Entertainment Tonight or Fashion Police I am in the dark about most of the celebs profiled. Good thing my iPhone is at hand to google whatever or whoever confounds me so I can pretend to know what I’m talking about. 

Borscht-Belted, Again: Wednesday morning I heard a WCBS Sports Radio commentary by Boomer Esiason about the pending demolition of Kutsher’s, the Catskills resort. Kutsher’s attracted professional ball players to hobnob with its mostly Jewish clientele. Wilt Chamberlain worked there as a bellboy before becoming a professional basketball player.

I never stayed at Kutsher’s but I did accompany my parents to many of the other Catskills hotels. Gilda, on the other hand, never experienced the Catskills. She was intent on doing so when our children were young and not home. For an encore report on our visit to Kutsher’s, read on:

In 1988, when our son, Dan, was 9, he went to sleepaway camp for the first time for eight weeks. With the assistance of a neighbor who agreed to watch the then 6-1/2 year old Ellie, Gilda planned a romantic weekend getaway for us. Having never experienced a Catskills resort when growing up, Gilda craved the experience. She had seen an article in The Times describing a renovation of Kutsher’s in Monticello. She made a reservation and sent a $50 deposit.

Now, I had accompanied my parents to many Catskills hotels when growing up. They were generally pleasant, but by 1988 I had been exposed to, shall we say, a more refined world. I traveled across the country for my job, staying in many first class hotels and resorts. Gilda had often shared the resort trips with me as they centered around conferences where the presence of a spouse was a definite advantage in meeting and mingling with sources. Despite Kutsher’s renovations as described in The Times, I was less than enthusiastic about trekking off to the Catskills. Having just mastered riding a bicycle at age 39 (a subject of a future blog), I was happy to learn Kutsher’s had it own bike trail around its lake and provided bikes free of charge.

The fateful weekend in early July came. I admit I did not muster much enthusiasm. Gilda was rightfully upset with my attitude. As we pulled onto the hotel driveway, the same canopy depicted in the picture in last Friday’s paper appeared. It was not the equal to the Del Coronado outside San Diego. Or the Boca Raton Country Club. Or the Arizona Biltmore, the Scottsdale Princess or the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, all hotels Gilda and I, often with our children, had enjoyed. I sensed her trepidation as we entered the small registration desk just inside the front door.

She wanted to see the room before we officially checked in. The registration clerk asked why. Just to be sure. We didn’t want a room with double beds. Reluctantly she agreed to show us the room. As we walked across the lobby, I detected a strange odor. It reminded me of a used kitty litter box. I suggested perhaps the carpet was mildewed and was immediately rebuffed. It was new flooring, I was told. New or old, I said, the carpet smelled.

I glanced out the picture window and saw the “lake” with the bike path surrounding it. It appeared to be about a half acre in size. Yes, bikes were available, but they couldn’t be ridden anywhere off the paved path around the lake. So much for any biking expedition.

We arrived at our room and stepped into the 1950s. It had separate beds; the carpeting was a long shag of deep orange. We demanded a different room. Reluctantly Kutsher’s agreed. We asked to see it. Again the clerk was less than enthusiastic. The second room had a single bed and decent carpeting. But its only window was higher than six feet from the ground. Standing on the bed I could see out the window. If I craned my neck I could see part of the pool. But most visible was the building next door. Had I wanted to see a building when I looked out the window, I told the clerk, I would have stayed in Brooklyn.

Gilda was now convinced Kutsher’s was not going to be part of our weekend escape. We were prepared to forfeit the $50 deposit, but amazingly Kutsher’s refunded it. We weren’t ready to return home, so we decided to check out the Concord in Kiamesha Lake. Before registering, however, we opted to scope out the hotel. It seemed acceptable until we came upon a yoga class in progress. How can I say this delicately? The yoga instructor could be a contestant on the show,The Biggest Loser. No way, Gilda said, was she staying in a hotel that disrespected its clientele with such an instructor.

Disappointed, we headed homeward till I remembered about the Inn at Lake Waramaug in Litchfield County, Conn. It’s a beautiful setting, with individual cottages. No TVs. No phones. Just the opportunity to commune with nature. That is, unless it’s pouring rain, which started to fall right after we arrived and kept coming down well into Saturday morning, by which time we decided that White Plains wasn’t too bad a place to spend a romantic weekend by ourselves, with Ellie down the street playing with Issa and her mother, Angeles.

February 16 Is a Day I Will Always Remember

Eighteen years ago today it snowed. Ten  inches. I had reservations on a flight to Orlando to attend my magazine’s largest annual conference, SPECS. I never made it down to Florida. Yes, the airline canceled my flight. But even if it had taken off I would have remained on the ground. Two hours before my scheduled departure time I received a call informing me my mother had died.

Eighteen years. In Hebrew, letters are assigned a numerical equivalent. Eighteen is a combination of a chet for eight and a yud for ten. As a word the letters spell out the word chai. It means alive, living.

Though she probably would not classify herself as one, my mom was an early liberated woman. She worked from the time she graduated from high school in 1936. She was, in the vernacular of the time, a full-charge bookkeeper. She could easily have been a CPA. As a young woman she was sassy and strong-willed. She also was quite handsome. That is, when she took the time to tame her frizzy hair. After marrying my father in 1942 she became more than just a partner in his home. She became his business partner as well. She took care of the office while he ran the factory where they produced half-slips and panties and, in the latter years, t-shirts.

In her eulogy back in 1996 my sister noted how our mother was not a 1950s stay-at-home type like those of our friends. Mom used to say my feeble eating habits as a toddler drove her back to work, but the reality is, she could not be content sitting at home, though she still remained active in the PTA and sisterhood of her synagogue and our elementary school. She was a good cook of Jewish cuisine (Dan particularly loved her chicken soup with noodles) and a gracious host for Rosh Hashanah and Passover meals that could number as many as 40 guests. She left Thanksgiving chores to one of her sisters, like her, liberated working women.

She wasn't afraid to travel by herself. In the summer of 1957 she journeyed to Israel, Italy and France by herself as our parents could not close the factory to vacation together for extended periods of time. As I looked at film of her trip I was amazed to realize she was just 40 that summer.

She instilled culture into her children. Every year she would take us to an opera at the Met. She'd also take us to a Broadway show. We would accompany our parents on weekends in the Catskills or Lakewood. She taught my brother and me to play ball. She took us to baseball games.

I've painted a positive picture of our mother. In her final years, however, she suffered from an addiction to cigarettes and the congestive heart failures they caused. Cigarettes robbed her of strength and cognitive functions. A diabetic, she endured a below the knee amputation and was in the hospital awaiting a second amputation when she succumbed to heart failure 18 years ago today.

It’s hard to recall her early vibrancy, so pronounced was the change in her twilight years. But those are the times I want to remember and if I concentrate real hard I manage to hurdle the chasm of a life too soon confined to sitting by the living room window of our Brooklyn home, the smoke of an ever present cigarette wafting above her head.

Repurposing Stories on Passover and Kutsher's

I don’t know if NBC News and ABC News do this, but CBS News is a practitioner of “repurposed copy”. In other words, stories done for the daily evening news often find their way onto CBS Sunday Morning or some other news broadcast. It’s all part of the new dynamic of trying to fill airtime devoted to news, which seems to be expanding, with staffs that seems to be constantly contracting. Nothing wrong with that, especially since we repurposed all the time on Chain Store Age, using material from our Web site in the monthly magazine. More to the immediate point, I’m about to repurpose two posts from my first year of blogging, posts chosen because of their link to current events. The first commemorates preparations for Passover which begins tonight. The second also comes from that first year and is reprinted because of the death of Helen Kutsher, matriach of the Catskills resort Kutsher’s Country Club.

Gilda and I figured out this morning it is 25 years since she began cooking and hosting the annual Passover seder for some two dozen family and friends. Back on April 2, 2010, I paid tribute to my mother’s yeoman prior work for this most Jewish of all holidays:

Passover Wonders

How did she do it?

How did my mother, who worked full-time with my father in his business, manage to cook and store food for 20 to 30 people for our annual Passover seders when all she had was an old oven and stovetop and a small International Harvester refrigerator-freezer?

It’s always baffled my brother, sister and me, especially when I see the preparations Gilda makes each year for our seder of equivalent size, the food she cooks in advance and stores in our two fridges with their freezers and our stand-alone freezer.

Our mother no doubt bartered space in neighbors’ kitchens in exchange for portions of gefilte fish and matzah ball soup. I’d be in charge of delivering the goods each year, not one of my favorite chores as I was rather possessive of her handiwork. Her gefilte fish was an exquisite blend of pike, carp and whitefish she personally bought from the fish monger’s truck at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Avenue W, a block and a half from our home in Brooklyn. Simply put, her gefilte fish was to die for.

My sister Lee loved her matzah balls (I was more partial to the kreplach she made for Rosh Hashanah). Each matzah ball was exceptionally soft and fluffy. So it was more than surprising when one year everyone almost broke their teeth, literally almost broke their teeth, on her matzah balls. Without telling anyone, she had hidden a blanched almond inside each sphere. Her unsuspecting family and guests assumed their knedlach would easily melt inside their mouths. The crunch and resistance we all felt made everyone uneasy. Too embarrassed to say anything, we wondered if she had somehow mixed chicken bones into the matzah ball batter. When she finally noticed everyone avoiding finishing their knedlach, she volunteered that she had hidden a “surprise” inside each matzah ball. Enlightened and relieved, we gobbled up the rest, and thereafter joked about it at all subsequent seders.

Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, we lived in an attached two-story row house. Before I turned 13, we’d hold the seder in the basement. Tables would be arranged in a U-shape. Our immediate family, aunts, uncles and first cousins totaled 18. On top of that came mostly people related to our father by kinship or friendship, swelling our numbers to 25 or more, as many as 40 one year. Uncle Willy, who ran a dry goods store on First Avenue in the East Village in Manhattan, always brought us new clothing for the holiday.

In the 1960s, after the seder moved upstairs, my brother Bernie and I were tasked with rearranging furniture to accommodate a long table run down the center of the living room. We moved the couch and chairs into the dinette. Our father presided at one end. Willy sat a few seats down. Our mother sat at the far end, gossiping with her three sisters. In between, the nine cousins, two more uncles and assorted guests, most of whom could not read Hebrew, and even if they could they would find it hard to follow the melody Dad and Uncle Willy brought with them from Galicia. But that didn’t stop our father from plowing ahead in Hebrew, expecting participation from his Hebrew school-trained children and at least silent devotion from everyone else. He didn’t skip a word in the haggadah. It was an excruciatingly long service, broken up by the not-so-occasional remonstrance from Dad to be quiet. When the noise overwhelmed him, he’d threaten not to continue, which made us all the more fidgety and anxious to get to the midpoint of the haggadah so we could eat.

Food. It always came back to the food. No matter how long the service, no matter how many at the table, the seder hinged on the quality and quantity of the food. Mom piled on the food. Each year she’d make a crown roast, until she traded that signature dish in for rack of lamb. Same meat, different presentation. Almost 25 years ago, it became too much of a burden for her to prepare the seder. We knew it was time to transfer the torch, er, spatula, to the next generation, to Gilda, when there wasn’t enough meat to adequately serve everyone. Because there were no leftovers, Mom thought she had ordered “just enough.” It was one of the first signs she was failing to appreciate reality.

Over the years, the cast-in-stone liturgy of our haggadah has changed as we graduated from the Maxwell House version Dad used to a text assembled by Bernie, then me and now our daughter Ellie. The themes of liberation, equality, emancipation, egalitarianism remain constant, updated to reflect current humanitarian concerns. Constant, too, has been the function of the meal, a celebration of plenty, a symbol our generation are not slaves in Egypt, or shtetl dwellers in eastern Europe, or refugees squeezed into Lower East Side tenements.

I witness how exhausted Gilda is after preparing the seder meal, how taxing it is for her to do this while working full-time, how physical it is even with all the modern day cooking conveniences. And I wonder how our mother was able to do it all. It was, no doubt, another miracle of Biblical proportions.

********************************

Helen Kutsher was proud of her resort, not the least for being the last of the “grande dame” hotels that transformed the Catskill Mountains surrounding Monticello, NY, into a Borscht Belt of oversized, cholesterol-filled meals and nightclub acts featuring mostly Jewish singers and comedians including Alan King, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. The heyday of Kutsher’s, Grossinger’s, The Concord, Brown’s et al was the 1950s and 1960s. All but Kutsher’s have closed. As a youngster, I tagged along with my parents to many of these hotels. Gilda never experienced the Catskills. Here’s what happened 25 years ago when she suggested we spend a romantic weekend at Kutsher’s:

Borscht-Belted

In 1988, when our son, Dan, was 9, he went to sleepaway camp for the first time for eight weeks. With the assistance of a neighbor who agreed to watch the then 6-1/2 year old Ellie, Gilda planned a romantic weekend getaway for us. Having never experienced a Catskills resort when growing up, Gilda craved the experience. She had seen an article in The NY Times describing a renovation of Kutsher’s in Monticello. She made a reservation and sent a $50 deposit.

Now, I had accompanied my parents to many Catskills hotels when growing up. They were generally pleasant, but by 1988 I had been exposed to, shall we say, a more refined world. I traveled across the country for my job, staying in many first class hotels and resorts. Gilda had often shared the resort trips with me as they centered around conferences where the presence of a spouse was a definite advantage in meeting and mingling with sources. Despite Kutsher’s renovations as described in The Times, I was less than enthusiastic about trekking off to the Catskills. Having just mastered riding a bicycle at age 39 (a subject of a future blog), I was happy to learn Kutsher’s had it own bike trail around its lake and provided bikes free of charge.

The fateful weekend in early July came. I admit I did not muster much enthusiasm. Gilda was rightfully upset with my attitude. As we pulled onto the hotel driveway, the same canopy depicted in the picture in last Friday’s paper appeared. It was not the equal to the Del Coronado outside San Diego. Or the Boca Raton Country Club. Or the Arizona Biltmore, the Scottsdale Princess or the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, all hotels Gilda and I, often with our children, had enjoyed. I sensed her trepidation as we entered the small registration desk just inside the front door.

She wanted to see the room before we officially checked in. The registration clerk asked why. Just to be sure. We didn’t want a room with double beds. Reluctantly she agreed to show us the room. As we walked across the lobby, I detected a strange odor. It reminded me of a used kitty litter box. I suggested perhaps the carpet was mildewed and was immediately rebuffed. It was new flooring, I was told. New or old, I said, the carpet smelled.

I glanced out the picture window and saw the “lake” with the bike path surrounding it. It appeared to be about a half acre in size. Yes, bikes were available, but they couldn’t be ridden anywhere off the paved path around the lake. So much for any biking expedition.

We arrived at our room and stepped into the 1950s. It had separate beds; the carpeting was a long shag of deep orange. We demanded a different room. Reluctantly Kutsher’s agreed. We asked to see it. Again the clerk was less than enthusiastic. The second room had a single bed and decent carpeting. But its only window was higher than six feet from the ground. Standing on the bed I could see out the window. If I craned my neck I could see part of the pool. But most visible was the building next door. Had I wanted to see a building when I looked out the window, I told the clerk, I would have stayed in Brooklyn.

Gilda was now convinced Kutsher’s was not going to be part of our weekend escape. We were prepared to forfeit the $50 deposit, but amazingly Kutsher’s refunded it. We weren’t ready to return home, so we decided to check out the Concord in Kiamesha Lake. Before registering, however, we opted to scope out the hotel. It seemed acceptable until we came upon a yoga class in progress. How can I say this delicately? The yoga instructor could be a contestant on the show,The Biggest Loser. No way, Gilda said, was she staying in a hotel that disrespected its clientele with such an instructor.

Disappointed, we headed homeward till I remembered about the Inn at Lake Waramaug in Litchfield County, Conn. It’s a beautiful setting, with individual cottages. No TVs. No phones. Just the opportunity to commune with nature. That is, unless it’s pouring rain, which started to fall right after we arrived and kept coming down well into Saturday morning, by which time we decided that White Plains wasn’t too bad a place to spend a romantic weekend by ourselves, with Ellie down the street playing with Issa and her mother, Angeles.

Borscht-Belted

Sometimes, a picture can sucker you into reading an article you otherwise would have passed. Case in point: Last Friday’s Weekend Arts section of the NY Times showed a young couple standing in front of Kutsher’s, artwork for an article on a rock concert the two were staging at the legendary Catskills resort (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/arts/music/03parties.html?scp=1&sq=kutsher%27s%20sisario%20september%203&st=cse).

Ordinarily, I avoid reading about rock concerts. But the picture drew me in. Like me, the young man in the photo is lean and bearded. He is 38, a year younger than I was when I was first sucker-punched by a Times photo of Kutsher’s. Let me explain:

In 1988, when our son, Dan, was 9, he went to sleepaway camp for the first time for eight weeks. With the assistance of a neighbor who agreed to watch the then 6-1/2 year old Ellie, Gilda planned a romantic weekend getaway for us. Having never experienced a Catskills resort when growing up, Gilda craved the experience. She had seen an article in The Times describing a renovation of Kutsher’s in Monticello. She made a reservation and sent a $50 deposit.

Now, I had accompanied my parents to many Catskills hotels when growing up. They were generally pleasant, but by 1988 I had been exposed to, shall we say, a more refined world. I traveled across the country for my job, staying in many first class hotels and resorts. Gilda had often shared the resort trips with me as they centered around conferences where the presence of a spouse was a definite advantage in meeting and mingling with sources. Despite Kutsher’s renovations as described in The Times, I was less than enthusiastic about trekking off to the Catskills. Having just mastered riding a bicycle at age 39 (a subject of a future blog), I was happy to learn Kutsher’s had it own bike trail around its lake and provided bikes free of charge.

The fateful weekend in early July came. I admit I did not muster much enthusiasm. Gilda was rightfully upset with my attitude. As we pulled onto the hotel driveway, the same canopy depicted in the picture in last Friday’s paper appeared. It was not the equal to the Del Coronado outside San Diego. Or the Boca Raton Country Club. Or the Arizona Biltmore, the Scottsdale Princess or the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, all hotels Gilda and I, often with our children, had enjoyed. I sensed her trepidation as we entered the small registration desk just inside the front door.

She wanted to see the room before we officially checked in. The registration clerk asked why. Just to be sure. We didn’t want a room with double beds. Reluctantly she agreed to show us the room. As we walked across the lobby, I detected a strange odor. It reminded me of a used kitty litter box. I suggested perhaps the carpet was mildewed and was immediately rebuffed. It was new flooring, I was told. New or old, I said, the carpet smelled.

I glanced out the picture window and saw the “lake” with the bike path surrounding it. It appeared to be about a half acre in size. Yes, bikes were available, but they couldn’t be ridden anywhere off the paved path around the lake. So much for any biking expedition.

We arrived at our room and stepped into the 1950s. It had separate beds; the carpeting was a long shag of deep orange. We demanded a different room. Reluctantly Kutsher’s agreed. We asked to see it. Again the clerk was less than enthusiastic. The second room had a single bed and decent carpeting. But its only window was higher than six feet from the ground. Standing on the bed I could see out the window. If I craned my neck I could see part of the pool. But most visible was the building next door. Had I wanted to see a building when I looked out the window, I told the clerk, I would have stayed in Brooklyn.

Gilda was now convinced Kutsher’s was not going to be part of our weekend escape. We were prepared to forfeit the $50 deposit, but amazingly Kutsher’s refunded it. We weren’t ready to return home, so we decided to check out the Concord in Kiamesha Lake. Before registering, however, we opted to scope out the hotel. It seemed acceptable until we came upon a yoga class in progress. How can I say this delicately? The yoga instructor could be a contestant on the show, The Biggest Loser. No way, Gilda said, was she staying in a hotel that disrespected its clientele with such an instructor.

Disappointed, we headed homeward till I remembered about the Inn at Lake Waramaug in Litchfield County, Conn. It’s a beautiful setting, with individual cottages. No TVs. No phones. Just the opportunity to commune with nature. That is, unless it’s pouring rain, which started to fall right after we arrived and kept coming down well into Saturday morning, by which time we decided that White Plains wasn’t too bad a place to spend a romantic weekend by ourselves, with Ellie down the street playing with Issa and her mother, Angeles.