1) Earlier this week I opened Mother’s Bible for morning devotional (a habit I need to resume), which opened to Deuteronomy 21. Mother had bracketed verses 18-20 in pencil: “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastised him, will not hearken to them; Then his father and his mother shall lay hold on him, and bring him out to the elders of the city, at the gate of his place; And they shall say to the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he does not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.”
1a) Verse 21 begins “Then all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die.” Thank goodness Mother didn’t bracket that, too!
1b) This led me to unhappy and uncomfortable speculation about which of my many sins were disturbing her when she read those verses. We cannot correct the past, only the future.
2) Since Miss Kymm sent me a copy of Harold Kennedy’s No Pickle, No Performance last month, the late Kitty Carlisle Hart has floated just underneath the top of my mind. She figures prominently in the book as a longtime friend and co-performer with Harold, particularly in her late husband Moss’s play Light Up the Sky. My first encounter with Kitty was, naturally, her many appearances on To Tell the Truth, so it was wonderful to discover this montage of her haute couture entrances on the show. The theme song became my musical obsession for two days.
2a) Little boy + ladies in evening gowns = I think we know.
2b) Once I was within six feet of Kitty Carlisle, at the Park Plaza Hotel the year the Boston Theatre Awards doubled as Elliot Norton’s 90th birthday party. Arthur Friedman brought me (he was one of the judges), and I sat with him at the judges’ table with Joyce Kulhawik. Kitty spoke from the podium — obviously she'd known Elliot intimately for 300 years, and also that Moss had been dead about 250 years — and she said “You know, I never speak for Moss, but I know how much he loved you [Insert a great deal I don't remember here] . . . and the last line of his play, Light Up the Sky, is ‘But what did Elliot Norton say?!’ which couldn't be a greater tribute from Moss.”
3) Yesterday afternoon I finally started harvesting some holly from the bush behind the house. It’s important to inspect every bit of it before bringing it into the house so insects don’t come in with it. Almost immediately I plucked off a tiny slug! And I have seen spiders in the past.
3a) But about halfway through I started to feel quite woozy and lightheaded — yesterday morning I finally got my bivalent booster and my flu shot, little wotting that I’d feel an impact — so I spent the rest of the evening in bed. I may, or may not, complete the job today.