David Siskind | Sunday, 17 August 2025
Jackie and I just attended the wedding of my last boss to her lifelong friend and great love of her life. The ceremony was at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz NY. It’s a beautiful facility, founded in 1869, and like many such hotels built as railroads expanded in the 19th century, fell upon hard times, but has since been resurrected as a landmark hotel and resort. They married under a beautiful arch and gateway in a short, lovely ceremony officiated by another friend. It was wonderful and fresh.
Ann hired me in 2009, her first employee there, to manage a small portfolio of seven weather stations collecting data for a program to collect data for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in support of the anticipated development of concentrated solar power (think mirrors, heat exchange fluids and steam generation). The utility industry instead embraced photovoltaics. Ann nimbly shifted her focus and built Groundwork Renewables, producing the best data in the field, tuning the moderately accurate satellite data with data collected on the ground. There are now more than 100 people working under the best, kindest leader imaginable. I’m thankful daily that I met and worked for Ann for 14 years. In that time Solar power has become the cheapest, fastest, and cleanest source of power and was well positioned to expand rapidly to feed the needs of burgeoning AI development in the US.
Instead President Trump has decided to try this with fossil fuels, just cuz. It won’t work. He not only pulled tax incentives (not unique across the energy sector) by executive action but shepherded through the Big Beautiful Bill that was explicitly and inexplicably hostile to renewables, cutting off his nose to spite his face. His AI efforts will fail as a result, while the rest of the developed world will move ahead. These folks are very stupid. The American Empire is crumbling, the administration is panicking, accelerated fascism is its response. Buckle up.
We drove down to New Paltz from Luzerne, a small town in the Adirondacks, where we had stayed with a college friend of Jackie’s in their little “compound.” It’s part of a small community around 4th Lake, part of a chain of relatively shallow lakes (41 feet deep in the center river channel) with extensive shoals, weed beds and fields of lily pads. I packed my Hot Tortuga 6 weight and my SA Bonefish taper to cast poppers close to the shore. It’s my second year visiting. I borrowed the rowboat of a friendly neighbor and caught three “nice-enough” bass on Thursday. There are supposedly northern pike in there too so I fashioned an articulated streamer from a clouser and a rabbit leach to see if I could attract one. But Friday the sun showed up too bright too early and the fish weren’t bitey. Figuring out where to find them under these conditions is a project for another day. The Hot Tortuga cast like a dream. I love it.
David Siskind