The Weekender column will attempt to provide insight into the way second homeowners perceive and navigate the waters of the Upper Hudson. However, one thing seems to unite many of the citizens in both of my communities, in New York City and Chatham. It is not a particularly good or constructive one. We root against elected government officials we dislike. We seem to forget that if they fail, as we seem to hope and relish when it occurs, we suffer. The objects of our scorn and impure thoughts are usually but not exclusively members of the opposite political party. True independents seem less prone, but not completely immune, from this syndrome, which has become endemic in federal, state and local politics. […]

I have heard it said both ways; that “patience is a virtue” and “evil is patient.” The reader will decide which platitude fits the author of this column. I first started thinking about the column 23 years ago, within weeks of an Aug. 6, 1987 closing on a modest “spec” house on Longview Drive, straddling the Chatham/Austerlitz border off Red Rock Road. I had done some wise and neighborly things at the closing. First, by overpaying a local lawyer to do it, despite the fact that both Jan, my wife, and I are lawyers who had done several New York home “closings” for friends and family for free. The second was to bring my adorable 6-year-old daughter, Sarah, to the closing so that the sellers, a couple at each other’s throats, would behave during the formalities. […]