Friday, June 12 - My Uncle's Photography

Today, June 12, 2020, would have been my Uncle Bill’s 90-somethingth birthday. He was a few years older than Mother, who would have been 90 this year, but I can’t remember exactly. He died in 2001.

Bill was a very private person, so he didn’t often talk about things that were important to him. But his creative passion was photography (as it was for his father, too, my grandfather). The most unique and interesting work he did involved near-microscopic flaws in slag glass or something else. This photograph here features a drop-shaped bubble in a piece of clear glass, backed by pieces of colored glass. Who else would think to do that? And this is just one example.

I scored a hit with him one Christmas* in my twenties when I gave him a faux-tortoiseshell box. He ended up creating some beautiful images like sand dunes or dictionaries by illuminating parts of that box.

He really didn’t care much about how his work was framed, sticking with cheap drugstore picture frames. Once Bill showed me a beautiful series he’d done of dogwood blossoms, and I suggested he frame them as a triptych in some light wood. He politely pretended to consider it, but I could tell he thought it would be a pointless expense.

All this was long before digital photography, when, film being film, you really had to sweat for good results and they weren’t always guaranteed. Bill also belonged to a couple photo societies, and would occasionally place in one of their contests by mail. (I remember we tossed out some second-place ribbons after Mother died.) Since Bill was definitely not a computer person, I have to wonder how he’d take to 21st-century photography and social media platforms like Flickr or SmugMug.

Taken in the back yard of my parents’ house, summer of 1999.

I’m glad I have the charcoal portrait of him, which was done at some Ozarks tourist trap one summer in the late 1950s. The little plaque underneath it, “W W THORSON PHOTOGRAPHER,” was given to him by a friend of his to acknowledge the creative part of himself, which not too many people knew about. It makes me happy that someone did that for him.

So, I’ll be lifiting a glass in his memory during the cocktail hour tonight. Happy birthday!

*After people die you find out how successful your Christmas gifts were. When Bill died in 2001 I found most of my Christmas gifts from the previous ten years stuck in a drawer at the back of the house. Oh well.

Summer, 2020: Summer of Revolution

I think most of you know that I read tarot cards, and I occasionally post one of my readings here. Over the weekend I did a general reading about the summer months, having reflected on how the national situation has changed so much in the last week. When I turned up the final card I jumped in my chair.

As a reminder, I read using the cross and staff layout: six cards forming a cross, reading from center and then clockwise from the bottom, and four cards forming a staff, reading from the bottom up. Text in quotes is from Eden Gray’s Mastering the Tarot.

1. Origin of the Question: the Star reversed. This is coming from a place of doubt, pessimism, and anxiety about the future. No kidding!

2. Opposing Influence: the World. This card, while sideways, is always read upright. The World is the best card in the deck. “Triumph in all undertakings." Strong positive energy is behind the events to come.

3. The Past: Two of Swords, reversed. A stalemate of sorts. “Release, movement in one’s affairs - but sometimes in the wrong direction, for the rocks are still there [emphasis mine].” This makes me think of the 2016 election.

4. Outgoing Influence: Nine of Cups. This is the wish card, very much about personal satisfaction. If that’s on the way out . . . “Material success, assured future. Physical well-being.” Well, then! To me this is about the end of being able to accept preconceived notions, of whatever sort. That means a major shift in consciousness is coming.

5. Possible Future: Five of Swords, reversed. “An empty victory. Unfairness and slyness in dealing with others.” Not everyone is invested in the same outcome, and there’s a risk of victory being thwarted by opposition. This is also a caution against giving in due to weariness or oppression. Stay the course!

6. Incoming Influence: Justice. An encouraging card in this position. “Justice will be done . . . the beginning of a new cycle in the Seeker’s life . . . “ It could also mean that we have to face some uncomfortable truths, but I want it to mean justice for George Floyd.

7. Fears: Nine of Wands. “Weakness of character . . . bending under adversity.” This is definitely about my own fear of not being able to do my part in the conflict to come.

8. Opinions of Others. King of Pentacles, reversed. All I’m going to say about this is that to me it represents an absence of positive leadership at the highest levels.

9. Hopes: Temperance: BALANCE. “Working in harmony with others . . . good management and good balance in one’s outlook on life.” Now who wouldn’t be hoping for that?!

10. Final Outcome: Death. Now of course I am obligated to say that this is not predicting the death of a person, ofyou or me or anyone, but is definitely looking at transformation, rebirth. “The new order cometh, and the old order passeth away,” wherever that comes from. Our country was born of revolution; will it now also be reborn of revolution?

Put it all together, major positive change is coming, but the process will be painful and full of difficulties. It will be a battle - let’s hope not actually - but that will be the only way to achieve the goal of real transformation.

Memorial Day, 2020

1) For the first time since 2004, I am not spending Memorial Day at the office, stuffing and quality-checking registration packets with everyone on the team, eating pizza, and preparing for Pops ticketing the next day. This was the change I needed.

1a) Even so, I’ll be a part of Reunions after all, as I’ve been invited to introduce a Very Important Speaker via videoconferencing over the course of the weekend.

2) Up early this morning, before 6 AM. Parlor coffee and devotional. Joel 3 - apocaplytic.

2a) As I do every Memorial Day and Veterans Day, I took down my grampa’s Robert W Service to reread his favorite poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” The other part of this tradition is forgetting that Service did not also write “In Flanders Field,” and then taking down Granny’s copy of “The Best Loved Poems of the American People.” But I remembered in time that John McCrae was the poet who wrote that memorable verse, and saved myself another trip to the bookcase.

3) Today has been productive, and I was even, with significant guidance from Craig, to get my printer working again. Let gladsome peals ring throughout the land!

Sunday, May 24

1) Sundays are good if I can get a column published by 11 AM. Today it took until 3:15 PM. So there you are.

2) In the garden, the violets have passed, but now the lily-of-the-valley have bloomed - mostly pink, from half a dozen that my friend Olive gave me over ten years ago, but a few white - and one bold orange poppy near the house.

2a) Around the hedge in front of the house I weeded out a large bouquet of Norway maple seedlings, the perpetual crop here, as well as several morning glory vines that were just getting started. Now don’t get me wrong; I love morning glories. But not when they want to eat an entire hedge, or wind themselves into the rain chains. So I felt virtuous for a bit.

3) I’ve been watching The Red Shoes through the cocktail hour and dinner (and dishwashing in between, as perpetual as Norway maple seedlings), and was just now struck by Lermontov’s last words to Vicky: “Sorrow will pass, believe me. Life is so unimportant.” Rather callous, but for me it provided scope and horizon to the anonymity of most of the people who have spent time on this Earth.

Thursday Morning, May 21 - Thoughts About my Hair

1) Such a reaction after posting this photo yesterday on ye Fycebykke! The last time I had my hair cut was sometime in mid- to late February. It is now the third week of May. I know a lot of people, men especially, have been frantic to get back to the barber shop or hair salon to resume traditional good grooming, but not me. I’m gonna keep going with this for awhile. I love it.

2) The last time my hair was longer than this was the winter of 1980-1981. I had gone through my first semester at IAA without ever figuring out how to find a barber, and then before Christmas break was cast in The Tempest. The director told all the men not to get their hair cut, so with a mane of three months already on me, I pressed on through the winter. (Mother was not happy.) A week before the opening, the director said to me, “And Robert, you have to tell us what you’re going to do with your hair.” Clearly she had forgotten her earlier instructions!

Christmas, 1980. And it would get longer . . .

3) Interestingly enough, this morning I got an email from my barber shop announcing their reopening next week with some elaborate and appropriate changes for the Time of the Coronavirus, including but definitely not limited to: installation of a new air-purifying system, mandatory mask use by everyone (which also means no beard trimming, hot lather shaving, or facials), and no waiting inside before you’re called to the chair. To make the last easier, they are also getting rid of all their magazines and complimentary beverages. It sounds reassuring, but truly, I am loving my Great Big Hair so much, I’m not sure when I’ll be back for a shearing.

4) But I think it will have to happen at some point. As I’ve mentioned before, one advantage of working most of my career with elderly men is that I’ve had lots of examples of what I don’t want to be like. There are ways and ways to grow your hair out past the age of 50, and I have no interest in resembling Rip Van Winkle, Karl Lagerfeld*, or ZZ Top. So I will have to be very attentive when it starts looking like what I don’t want to look like.

*I am just not that sleek and streamlined and perfect, and it would wear me out.

Saturday Morning, May 16

1) It is a beautiful morning after last night’s thunderstorm. The air is a comfortable temperature, and even my lily-of-the-valley are starting to bloom. It’s going to be a great day.

2) No shrimp at the supermarket, so I will deprived of the opportunity to serve Hubcap Shrimp with Roadkill Sauce to myself during tonight’s Dress Dinner Challenge. When my parents left on their honeymoon (65 years ago yesterday), my uncle (Daddy’s best man) had filled the hubcaps with bad shrimp for that extra-special aroma. So since tonight’s dinner is to celebrate their anniversary, I thought it would be fun.

2a) The other thing he did was leave a note on the dipstick for the gas station attendant that read: “The couple driving this car have just been married. Congratulate them, but do not tell them how you know.” Mother always remembered Daddy’s frantic effort at the first gas station they stopped at to get the note before the attendant saw it.

3) Special question for the oenophiles: someone told me that the only way to drink néctar impérial champagne was on the rocks with a slice of lemon. Is this for real?

Monday Midday, May 11 - Gardening

1) I always said if I didn’t have Reunions taking up all my time in May I’d spend more time in the garden. Well, the registration deadline for Reunions was traditionally this Wednesday, and I don’t have to care about it. In fact, this is the first May since 1996 that I am not stressed out about some sort of event. No Reunions, no opening night or end-of-season parties, no non-profit fund-raisers. I’m still adjusting to this New Normal.

2) So for the second time this month, I stepped into the garden this morning to weed and to plant a packet of lavender seeds. Mother is the only person I’ve ever met who enjoyed weeding, so it’s rather a fitting tribute to her to undertake this the day after Mother’s Day.

3) Once you accept that weeding is an infinite task - there will always be weeds, no matter how industrious a gardener might be - it becomes easier. And in this garden, there will certainly always be weeds, especially Norway maple seedlings. Today I concentrated on a sunny spot next to the house, by my HVAC unit and behind the star magnolia. Because there were so many Unwanted Plants just starting to come up, it made it much easier to identify and uproot them now than it would have been even next month. Then they would have looked too large to vanquish. There were a few things growing immediately next to the foundation, and I really had to maneuver with my trowel, but I defeated them! After finding a particularly soft spot of earth, though, I backed off from that area. I didn’t want to find out the hard way that something might be burrowing down there.

Could this be the mythical black tulip? Hah!

4) After all that I did take a quick survey of the whole garden and weed out more seedlings in the far corner. Some survivors of the pre-2003 landscape bring me joy: the bleeding hearts, the one purple-black tulip, dozens and dozens of little violets. There are dandelions, of which I am more tolerant than I used to be. The Bee-Keeping Neighbors, who moved a couple years ago, caused me to learn that dandelions are good bee habitat, and we must be kind to the bees at this point.

5) Soon my long-ago additions to the garden, the white peonies and pink lily-of-the-valley, will start to bloom. The latter, begun with the gift of half a dozen from my friend Olive back in 2005 or 2006, have spread to cover maybe ten square feet. I love them!

6) The test now is, will I return to the garden tomorrow, next week, or next month?

The tulips my new neighbor planted last fall still bloom beautifully.

Saturday Morning, May 9

1) Time departed home for supermarket: 7:08 AM. Time returned hom: 8:41 AM. Total time, including round-trip subway ride: 93 minutes.

1a) Swift timing today due to lack of a staffer monitoring the entrance so I could begin my shopping before 8 AM. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission! That said, one reason a designated hour for senior citizens is so wonderful is that few of them pay attention to the new arrows on the floor.

2) Dialogue witnessed on subway platform:

Maskless Woman: “May I use your phone to call my transportation?”

Maskless Man: “Whaddya talkin’ about? There’s a virus!”

3) It was snowing on my walk home from the subway, but it seems to have stopped now. In New England all weathers are possible at all time, but it’s just one more sign of the Apocalypse.

Friday Morning, May 8 - Patience

1) This morning’s devotional brought me to James 1, which is all about temptation. But the verses that really struck me were 19-20: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger; For the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God.” [emphasis Mother’s] This is about patience.

2) Shortly thereafter I opened The Secret Language of Flowers by Jean-Michel Othoniel, which came to eglantine. That five-petaled white flower symbolizes “Christ’s patience during his Passion.”

3) Mother herself often said “This is an opportunity to practice patience.” And these are all, this morning, important reminders to me not to respond hastily or in anger - especially as I haven’t read the news yet! :-)

Thursday Evening, May 7

1) May 7, as it happens, is both Tchaikovsky’s birthday and the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania. I’ll admit I tried to get through Terror at Sea from 2007, which I hadn’t seen, but I just couldn’t do it. I found greater, more exultant solace in Tchaikovsky’s waltzes from Eugene Onegin, and from the Act I of Swan Lake. The latter I had peculiarly identified as “mine” my freshman year of college. And then, as with all musical obsessions, it faded.

1a) The former I was familiar with from my father’s collection of LPs. And this week I have been thinking a lot about both my parents and what they made possible. Mother, of course, grew up with piano lessons and recordings of classical music. Daddy, on the other hand, didn’t discover classical until he was in the Army and saw Elizabeth Taylor in Rhapsody one night. Hearing all that music changed his life.

1b) One week from today is Mother and Daddy’s 65th wedding anniversary.

2) The crocuses and scilla and daffodils have faded from the garden. Now the tulips are triumphant; the two beds the new neighbor planted last fall are radiant reds, yellows, and oranges. Violets, dandelions, and some sort of purple ground cover have asserted themselves for the next wave. The redbud tree is blooming. And today I saw that the lilac will bloom shortly, and the wide leaves of the pink lily-of-the-valley are unfurling.

2a) Also weeds and seedlings (among which I include dandelions). The only person I’ve ever met in my long life who enjoyed weeding was Mother. She’d’ve had a field day here! I had better get busy.

3) I made an astonishing cookbook discovery that could change the face of Dress Dinner Challenge forever . . .

May 4, 2000 - Boston Ballet's Cleopatra

A coffee mug can be more than a Caffeine Delivery System. It can also be a time machine. Look at the date on that: May 4, 2000. Twenty years ago tonight Boston Ballet opened the final production of its 1999-2000 season with Ben Stevenson’s Cleopatra. A production remembered as a greater spectacle than it was a ballet, it remains special to me because it came at the end of my first season doing special events for the Company, at a time when I still had much to learn about the ballet world.

It had been a good season, starting with Wheeldon’s new production of The Firebird. I had just accepted the position and attended the Firebird opening night to see how things were done. Cleopatra, though, was the first opportunity I remember (after all these years) of getting to indulge in that favorite occupation of all balletomanes: comparing performances. And the four Cleopatras all gave different, compelling interpretations. Adriana, on opening night, had such warmth and passion - but the gesture I remember most is the proud tilt of her profile as she left her gigantic portable throne on her arrival in Rome and stalked offstage.

Larissa, next, brought ice to the desert. Never has a dancer communicated such scorn with only a wrist and the tip of her nose. I can see her atop that throne in that pale blue dress yet.

Jennifer, third in the run, did something none of the other dancers did. At the end of the first act, moving toward the bed, Cleopatra turns back toward Caesar to underline her invitation to join her. Jennifer kittenishly lowered her shoulder strap, a gesture that emphasized that Cleopatra was really nothing more than a young teenager at the time.

Finally, Kyra, who had such wonderful athleticism and honesty. Yes, Cleo was a scheming queen, but her despair at the end when her lover died . . . unforgettable. And somehow I remember her more than the others at the very beginning of the ballet when, allegedly nude behind a diaphonous veil, she descended with gestures and two handmaids into her bath.

But how I remember Kyra most was taking her final bows at the closing matinée, which was also her retirement from the stage. This was the first dancer retirement I got to be a part of (the retirement of Tony Collins after Nutcracker a few months before was unique), and I was getting to see all the essential elements: the fans rushing to the front of the house to throw flowers on the stage, the dancer taking the stage to roars of ovations, and the procession of friends, colleagues, current and former stage partners, union representatives, teachers - all appearing on stage one after the other to present flowers.

I was backstage to assist with the flowers, as I recall, and saw Kyra take the stage for her final bow. She had changed into Cleopatra’s red costume, but I hadn’t expected her to remove her wig. The line of her rippling blonde hair against that red dress surprised me, but wow - visually it was effective!

Suddenly the pass door blew open and a tornado was upon me: a Very Important Person and her young daughter, dazzled by the moment and intent on participating in the presentation. I have no memory of how the stage manager handled it, but the scorn in that young girl’s voice as she said “We have to do it.” Mercy! If I had talked to an adult like that in front of my mother . . . well, I know what would have happened!

Afterward, the party in the lower lobby, which was also the end of season party for the entire Company. All I remember now is a crowded blur (while I kept an all-seeing eye on the caterer and the bar), and many reminiscences and presentations to Kyra covering much amusing Company history.

It’s funny how a couple of coffee mugs can bring back all that - but then that’s probably why I kept them in the first place.

Sunday Morning, May 3

1) Back porch coffee on our first day in the 60s. I have such a long list of things to do today I may just ignore ALL of it and stretch this moment until 5 PM.

2) Quote of the Day: “When we take up the ‘new’ it is only because we have had a secret need of it and have unconsciously prepared for its coming.” — Cecil Beaton in his book The Glass of Fashion, writing about Irene Castle

2a) And that’s all very well if it’s a hairstyle or a hemline, but something very different if it involves weapons.

3) Just now I heard all this pronounced rustling in some leaves behind me, in a corner of the fence. I turned and looked, thinking to see a squirrel or, worse, a skunk or an opossum or something. Turns out it was a glossy black bird, perhaps a shrike.

3a) With all the talk of “murder hornets” and cicada plagues in the news, thank goodness it wasn’t a raven!

Monday Midday, April 27

1) As soon as I walked out of my room this morning I knew that today would be completely domestic. Cleaning, sorting, organizing, laundering, etc. This is motivated not just by the large pile of clothing on the small chair in my parlor that I use as a coatrack, or the dirty laundry randomly scattered throughout the house, but also the acquisition of a countertop convection oven (!) that will involve more than rearranging a countertop. All this is good.

1a) I never get new kitchen stuff - shucks, 95% of my pots, pans, and other things came from my grandmother’s house - but with the pandemic lockdown I bought a new skillet at the hardware store, and now this convection oven. And that’s nice, but oh! I miss restaurants!

2) Over the weekend a friend who reads Etiquetteer responded to the latest column and also said how much he enjoyed reading this blog (which I always think of as This Is Robert Talking and everyone else thinks of as The Dark Side of Etiquetteer . . . but both are valid ‘cause they’re both right there at the top). “I love the glimpses into your life!” he said. And it got me thinking about how this got started during a very dark period of my life. My father had died a few months before. It was the early days of the Trump administration. I was in the process of getting rid of a roommate and my home felt like a war zone. My work was not fulfilling. And I was deeply unhappy with ye Fycebykke. This blog started as an outlet for everything I wanted to post there, and gradually became something a little different, as blogs will.

2a) Fast forward three years, and a pandemic is changing everything in ways we can’t even predict. And for longer than the pandemic, I just haven’t felt the need to express myself here as much. And that’s OK, too.

3) Aside from cooking, the pandemic has forced me to get more comfortable with technology. Etiquetteer’s response has been to create the Saturday Night Dress Dinner Challenge, and for that to fly I knew I’d have to get on ye Instygrymme. And there’s a learning curve, but overall it’s been OK. Now, after a very fun but technically frustrating call on ye Zymme with high school friends and alumni, I am having to learn more about that technology, which their FAQ does not make intuitive. But I persevere!

Wednesday Morning, April 22 - Randomness of the Week So Far

1) Monday afternoon I took a 45-minute walk through Franklin Park, where two things happened. Walking near the golf course, the air was suddenly full of a dull roar: one or more lions at the nearby zoo. I thought “Well, I guess I’ll turn around now.” Returning uphill the way I came, a mother and her two boys were coming down. None of us had masks on, but I was super-conscious of social distancing. Courteous greetings as we passed, but that wasn’t enough for the youngest boy. “We heard the lions roar! And all the squirrels, they ran away!” I couldn’t help but see the excitement in his eyes. At a time when we’re having so very few in-person interactions, it was just beautiful to see that.

The Metaphor Tree in Franklin Park.

1a) The second thing was the discovery of a couple downed trees of very large size. Undoubtedly blown down during the Big Wind last week, workmen had already begun to take them apart. A beautiful felled pine of grand proportion turned out to have a hollow trunk. And I thought sadly, “Hmm, a metaphor for the nation.”

A view of the Metaphor Tree featuring the hollow trunk.

2) Yesterday my sister called to ask me to look around for some particular family documents, and soon we were talking about our favorite children’s books. I think I probably got the ball rolling remembering Miss Twiggley’s Tree, about an introvert who lived in a tree with a bear (!) who ends up saving everyone in town during a flood when they have nowhere to go but her tree. And then Laura remembered Andrew Henry’s Meadow, which had been a favorite of mine I’d nearly forgotten. And Mother’s favorite, Mexicali Soup. It was just one of the happiest conversations! Surely we all have childhood books we return to.

2a) Mother and Daddy always made sure we had age-appropriate things to read. Aside from books, there were subscriptions to Wee Wisdom, Ranger Rick, and Highlights for Children.

Striking a pose with my morning coffee. These are my “formal” hemp yoga pants, gray faintly striped with black in poor imitation of a gentleman’s striped trousers for morning dress. The mug is from the Ballet’s production of Cleopatra, 20 years ago next month, part of Boston’s “Egypt in Boston” season.

3) Today is starting off with uneasiness, restlessness, and fatigue - not a great combination. I thought I'd been awake since 3:05 AM, but Snorelab recorded at least 45 minutes of snoring between 4-5:30 AM. So I've slept more than I thought I did.

3a) I have jumped like a magpie from one thing to another: morning pages, coffee, devotional, social media, email, back to devotional, online research of a scriptural passage, coffee, email, social media . . . I can't seem to light anywhere! And it is 36 degrees outside, at the end of the April. I swear February was warmer . . .

Monday Midday, April 13

1) Keeping to a schedule is very helpful for me during this coronacrisis - not that I always do - but it helps with a sense of order at the end of the day. So far, today has been pretty good.

2) An elegant little luncheon of tuna salad with dill on a bed of greens. Presentation is everything.

2a) The secret ingredient is white pepper.

3) Lots of creative ideas spinning around today, due in part of keeping scheduled, but also to the anticipated Big Weather that is supposed to be coming sometime today. Everything feels unsettled.

4) Last night I did a tarot reading about the nation and the coronavirus, which I may post about in more detail later. So many interesting symmetries, transformation from one thing to another through the prism of sorrow and, potentially, ruin.

Wednesday Afternoon, April 8

1) Yesterday morning, in what may have been my longest sustained burst of yard work at Maison Robaire, I raked and bagged six bags of leaves out of the garden. I wanted to get that out of the way before this morning’s rain. Imagine my surprise that it’s so beautiful this afternoon!

1a) Shortly before this photo was taken I realized my eyeglasses were missing. Yes, I raked them into a bag of leaves. At least I only had to empty two of them to find the glasses. Moral: nothing goes in the pocket of a hoodie except hands.

2) Today I attempted kedgeree for the first time, remembering both Nicola Paget saying “Kedgeree - deevy!” on Upstairs, Downstairs, and the Duchess of Devonshire’s debutante dance, when her mother put it on the menu instead of the more usual chicken a la king. “Mother had the talent of making the commonplace original.” Something we might all cultivate.

2a) I ended up using cumin as a substitute for curry powder and brown rice because I had it in the house, not quite remembering that it demands double the cooking time of white or basmati rice. But the result was palatable, which is good, as I’ll be eating it for the rest of the week.

3) In an Oscar Wilde mood, have been watching the 1947 An Ideal Husband with my beloved Diana Wynyard, Paulette Goddard, Glynnis Johns (very early in her career), Constance Collier (very late in hers), handsome Michael Wilding, C. Aubrey Smith, and with costumes by Cecil Beaton. Absolutely worth your time, especially in the current political moment.

Tuesday Morning, April 7

1) Coffee and devotional in the study, after about a week’s intermission. John 13:1: “Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus knew the hour had come to depart from this world to his Father. He loved his own who were in this world, and he loved them to the end.” [emphasis mine]

2) Up early, but I feel like I’m fading fast. Not good, especially when I need to work out a productive schedule. If it starts with a NAP, what does that say?

3) The weather is supposed to be beautiful today, especially in the morning, so it would behoove me to spend those hours outside the garden . . . which means a trip to the hardware store for leaf bags.

Sunday Midday, April 5

1) The Internet tells me that today is Bette Davis’s birthday. So of course the only thing to do is settle down and watch Jezebel. Not just because she won her second Oscar for her performance, or because it was likely my first cinematic obsession, but because the plot hinges on a yellow fever epidemic. So appropriate for these times!

1a) That waltz at the Olympus Ball! Both the waltzes! Truly Max Steiner was one of the greatest Hollywood composers.

2) Of course the rest of the cast was just as remarkable: Fay Bainter as her aunt, Donald Crisp as the doctor, Margaret Lindsay as her Yankee rival, and the ubiquitous Spring Byington. A dear friend is very fond of Richard Cromwell, who plays Henry Fonda’s brother; it’s this performance that gave me the line “Fine as frog’s hair!” In recent months I’ve become much more admiring of Theresa Harris, who plays Bette’s maid Zette. Theresa’s performance opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face is nothing short of fantastic.

3) Later on I might screen The Letter and of course All About Eve.

Thursday Morning, April 2

1) The star magnolia in front of the house is slowly beginning to bloom. This will usher in the three weeks of the year my house is at its most beautiful. That thing has grown as high as the windowsills on the third floor.

2) How did our mothers plan three meals a day? I was saying to a friend last night how much I miss restaurants, where you can sit down, choose something, and whoosh, they bring it right out to you. But then, dining out has been one of my favorite things to do since childhood.

2a) And did I mention that my oven isn’t working? On the other hand, that has been the impetus for me to experiment beyond flinging a chicken breast into the oven! I think I’m going to turn my hand to kedgeree this weekend, which I have never attempted.

3) I’ve made a mostly successful effort to avoid the news this week, weakening only during the cocktail hour yesterday. I remain deeply anxious about the global and national situations; it’s tough not to feel powerless.

Wednesday Morning, March 25 - Dorian Grayish Thoughts

“I always said I’d leave off when the time came.” - Greta Garbo as Grusinskaya the ballerina in Grand Hotel

1) I think I’ve handled aging with perhaps a whisper more equanamity than most. It’s inevitable, right? The only other option is Death! A small group of us will hand around Joe Gillis’s line from Sunset Boulevard of possible headlines about Norma Desmond: “Aging actress, yesterday’s glamor queen.” Always with humor. So far! ;-)

1a) But this morning . . . oh this morning, the first sight of my face in the bathroom mirror. “Those cruel lines!” as Cedric said to Lady Montdore in Nancy Mitford’s novel Love in a Cold Climate. Not all of them; some are like dents and bumps you find in an old, loved piece of silver, “character marks.” What I was seeing for the first time, it seemed, was two pairs of lines from the inside corners of my eyes down to the top of each nostril. Where on earth did they come from?! They’re like the double lines on the highway. IN THE CENTER OF MY FACE!

1b) Writing this later in the day, they appear to have smoothed out a bit, but still. I’ve always scoffed at the idea of ahem elective surgery, but something must be done.

2) Later in the morning, suddenly the fatal guidance of Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray flashed through my mind: “To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.” How many of us might be thinking of solutions like this during the Time of Coronavirus when we are forbidden in-person contact?

3) One of my aunts was a very devout Christian, and I remember years ago telling her I had read The Picture of Dorian Gray. She almost visibly stiffened in front of me and told me she thought it was the most evil book in the world when she read it. I’ve never forgotten her reaction.