Columbia County Life

It's not hard to understand how golf gets...let's say...under your skin...into your psyche...here's why. Today I made my maiden voyage onto Meadowgreens golf course in Claverack with my favorite golf pro buddy, Lucas Cohen (Start to Finish Golf), and my favorite girl golfer and best bud, Laura Vonk. We schedule to go on a Monday so it's deserted. This is by design I believe to take the pressure off of a newbie like me. Since all this started, I've practiced at the driving range, but I have not really stepped onto the course. It's daunting. It's vast. Everything is green and looks really far away. I feel like Horton in Who-ville...me and 500 acres of grass and greens. It's ok because I have Lucas and Laura and hell, no one's watching. What I love about Lucas (including the fact that he's got the most perfect boyish smile, which he gleans as often as possible), is that he's a true professional and he brings his best each time you take a...

So this post is about the death of friends. I know, it's a horrible subject. The reality is this. Friends die. Pets die...we're in line for this same thing and time, time is swift. I want to honor the first friend that passed recently, Marybeth Gotchall. Marybeth and I met over 20 years ago. She was part of a pack of people I hung out with when I first moved to Old Chatham in 1990. We were younger, much younger. I was merely 29 years old. Though Marybeth was older by about 10 years. She was single.  I was newly divorced. We melded together with a bunch of boys who were also single. We had a blast together... this motley crew... this little rat pack. What was interesting about Marybeth was that unlike the rest of us, she had a young daughter, she had a cool cat named Bubba and her attitude toward life was very, let's say, Buddhist. It may have seemed that she just didn't give a crap about things, but that was just an illusion. She cared, but remained unattached. This...