From Davis to Boston

We spent the early afternoon in Davis/Vacaville, the later afternoon in Boston, and were back home in time for dinner.  Busy day!

 

It may look like my mother is laid out on "Ducky's" exam table, but actually, she is getting a bone density exam.  She didn't have a clue where she was or what she was doing, but this was a good day and she just went wherever I pushed her.

I noticed when I picked her up that there seem to be a lot of empty rooms in the memory room right now.  Even Tony's room no longer has a name on it, so it maybe that the budding romance is over.  But since she never realized there was a romance, I'm sure she doesn't know.

From Kaiser in Vacaville, we went to Kaiser in Davis, where we finally picked up her new glasses.  These are actually quite pretty and there is a hint of purple along the ear pieces.  We picked them up on the right day because she didn't know where her other glasses were, so I figure she now has a pair to wear and a pair to lose.

I wonder how long it's going to take before she loses both...  (It's inevitable)

Before we left Kaiser/Davis, I stopped at the lab and got the blood work that my doctor ordered for me a month or so finally done.  I keep finding excuses not to make the drive out there -- it's not that I hate blood tests.  Heck, I almost enjoy them but it's driving all. that. way (2 miles?) just to have blood drawn.

We were home for about an hour before it was time to turn our computers to the Berklee College of Music streaming web site so we could watch  this year's Curtain Up 18, theater music that the kids had written and orchestrated that were being performed for an audience. This year each piece of music had a videotaped introduction by the writer.

 

Then the piece was performed, everything from serious themed pieces

 

to fun, jazzy numbers

 

At first I was afraid we were going to miss it entirely because they had video problems for the first 15-20 minutes.  I gave up, but fortunately Walt did not and when it finally came on, he let me know so I could see the rest of the show.

At the end of the show, Jeri came on stage to thank everyone and give a plug for a fund drive to help fund the show next year.

 

And having played in orchestras for so many years herself, she is aware of the fact that musicians are often not given their due, so she made sure to post a list of the orchestra and to name every single one of them....not an easy feat since they seem to be from many different countries with difficult-to-pronounce names.

 

Good Jeri!

I sure love streaming video!  How else could we be a part of Jeri's life, 3000 miles away!

Streaming Video

I love streaming video.  You can be a proud parent and not embarrass your kid while doing it!

Jeri gives a yearly concert at Berklee.  It's apparently what you do at Berklee, if you want to.  This was a concert of original pieces, accompanied by piano. 

The concerts are streamed.  The last time she had something streamed, it was her class performing numbers from Chicago they had arranged in her class.  But it was a terrible disappointment because the reception was not good.  This time, however, it was perfect and we were able to watch the whole thing.

I don't know if you can read the top left corner, though.  It says "3 watching."  Two of them were Walt on his laptop and me on my desktop.  I don't know who the third person was, but it might have been Walt's sister, who also wanted to watch.  (oooo...it's now up to FIVE!)

After Jeri played her 3 pieces, accompanied by the pianist, they played a 3-movement piece that he wrote.

Then there was a piece a girl had written for trumpet and piano but decided it worked better for clarinet (I don't know how much it was revised for clarinet, but I sure couldn't imagine the trumpet playing it). 



Before the last number, Jeri explained how she happened to write it for her friend Sarah, who had had surgery and was bedridden and not supposed to move for several weeks.  She explained that she had asked Sarah to give her three words, the last of which was "gregarious" and how she had looked up the meaning for the word "gregarious" and how she came to write this piece, using all three words, ending with "gregarious."  It was a loving gift to Sarah.

All in all very nice concert lasting a little over an hour, and I didn't have to step over any parents to get good photos, thanks to streaming, "Print screen," and Photoshop!

[NOTE LATER--Found out my sister-in-law was watching on two different computers and her husband tuned in from work for a bit, so apparently all the watchers were in the Sykes family]

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I went to Atria earlier in the day.  She was in the community room at a sing-along  She now greets me as if I am along lost relative whom she has not seen years.  She usually gives a gasp and then says "When did YOU get here?  I didn't know you were coming."  I think in that moment she thinks I'm one of her sisters, but as we talk she finally seems to know I'm her daughter (though at one point she asked me "What am I?  Your sister? your brother? your mother?"
 
She complimented me on the shirt I was wearing, which has a design with zebras on it.  When I pointed that out she looked confused and when I said they were horses with stripes, she told me I was the smart one and she didn't know about things like that.

She went to the bathroom while I was there and got lost coming out of the room, taking the wrong door and ending up in the hallway, barefoot.  One of the aides brought her back, surprised to find me there. My mother had already forgotten that I was waiting for her.

But I stayed an hour and, all things considered, it was a decent visit  It's been a long time since she's had either an anxiety attack or has fainted and I'm very pleased about that.

Well, THAT was disappointing

The Berklee concert was visually stunning, but the stream kept stopping and starting and you could never get a sense of the actual numbers, which was too bad because it looked great.  I'm hoping it will be possible to see it later.  I can't remember if they replay the concerts.

However, I WAS able to get a print screen of Jeri's hand...I think that's a new baton.

The performers were obviously very talented and had worked hard.  I just hope I can see it...eventually.

This is how it looked much of the time.

I heard from Walt's sister, who also watched and said they had good picture and good stream.  Walt couldn't even get a picture on his computer (and my speakers don't work, so I have to listen with earphones and could not let him listen!)  When they introduced Jeri at the conclusion of her section, my screen was black.  Alice Nan said it was clear on her screen.

The best laid plans!

While waiting for the concert to start, I was putting together a package for a SwapBot swap.  It involved checking a few boxes I had not looked in since I got the office organized.  Also finding a 5x7 envelope to send things in.

This is what it led to:

The envelopes were in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet, a drawer which is essentially inaccessible because of a small acrylic bookcase sitting in front of it.  But I also have a drawer of files that I haven't looked at in years, so I decided to switch the drawers, which was a major project. 

I should have just tossed the files, but occasionally you find gems, so it takes actually looking through the files carefully.  I found, for example, the first letter I ever received from the woman who kind of runs the discussion group I'm in.  It was written in 2012 and it's surprising how little her messages have changed over the years.  Still it gave background I'd forgotten and it was fun to read it again.

I also found files for the newsletters I have written in my life.  It seems I have written a newsletter for every organization I ever joined and many of the offices in which I worked.  Newsletters I'd forgotten, like the family newsletter I put out each week so each person in the family knew what was going on and I didn't risk forgetting to tell someone or tell one person something more than once ("don't tell Paul Sykes things he already knows").  There was even a precursor of this newsletter called the Saturday Evening Post that I don't remember at all, but from the look of it was created on my old Apple IIc computer, the first computer I ever owned (which had no internal memory).

There were all the Piñata Papers, which I sent out monthly to everyone in the Piñata group.  I'd completely forgotten I used to write a newsletter for customers of The Typing Company when I worked there and one for the employees of Women's Health Associates, that some still remember fondly.  And there was the Fat Fax, a newsletter for a group of us who all wanted to lose weight but didn't want to go to meetings (I subtitled it "the newsletter for closet thin people").  I can't even remember now who was in that group, but I think there were 5 of us, some of whom are dead now. It was supposed to rally us all around as support for each other.  As I recall, it was short-lived and ineffectual.  

I don't have copies of the Cock and Bull, the newsletter I started with Gilbert for the Lamplighters, but I am proud of that newsletter because it continues today, some 30+ years later, though I have not been involved with it in decades.

I should throw all of that away, but maybe someday after I'm dead and gone, someone will find it interesting to know how much writing I did in my life.

Proud Mama Bragging

OK, all you theater folks, be glued to your computer screen at 5 p.m. PDT tomorrow (Monday) night (8 p.m. Boston time).  Go to this web site. and watch a live broadcast of Jeri's summer high school students doing selections from Chicago.  It is part of Berklee College of Music's annual "Five Week Vocal Night," which Jeri has been helping to organize and conduct for the past 10 or so ears.  The streaming video is generally excellent.  This year Jeri's group is performing first, so there is not even any guesswork about when to tune in.

To add a bit of suspense to the evening, see if Jeri is conducting with a short baton or a long baton.  She broke her baton two days ago and is trying to find a place in Boston where she can get another (everyone tells her where to order one on line!).  Jeri says "It's supposed to be a 24 minute show, and you should get a glimpse or two of me."

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My daughter is not only a musician, she is also a poet.  Two years ago, I gathered several of her famous "bikus" (haikus she writes in her head, to relieve the frustration, while biking round Boston and then posts on Facebook) and had them put into a book for her.

Today she outdid herself with a multi stanza baiku:

baiku, long form:
You gunned your motor,
Leaned on your horn, and sped past
Flipping me the bird

I yelled in panic.
I used some profanity.
I'm not proud of that.

 

I'm Polite Cyclist.
But the shock made me vulgar.
So what's your excuse?

The road's to be shared.
We all must work together.
Why so much anger?

We had a nice chat this afternoon.  She tries to call on Sundays, either me or Walt (she just beat Walt, who was about to call her.  Phil was barbequing heir dinner so she had some time to chat.  It sounded like except for the fresh tuna steak he was putting on a tuna shish-kebob, most of what he was cooking came from their garden.

In addition to filling me in on all the information about tomorrow's concert, she was telling me how much this concert means to the young musicians.  One went out and rented a tuba because he didn't have one and his part called for one.  Another guitarist learned how to play the banjo because he would need to do this in the show, and a brass player from Japan, who had no mutes for her instrument, contacted her mother in Japan and asked to have them sent to her.  Jeri was very proud of how seriously these kids are taking this concert and how they are going the extra mile to be sure it is perfect.

It reminds me of the awe Walt and I have always had for Acme Theater Company here in Davis.  The company is now in its 30-something year.  Jeri and Paul were founding members and performed for several years.

But the kids give up their summer every year to rehearse and perform the classics -- usually Shakespeare, but this year it was The Odyssey, a show the director assured me is very difficult, yet I felt it was one of their better productions and the youngest kid in the cast, a 14 year old who is new to the company this year, gave one of the best performances.

Theater/music kids are very special people.

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The show we went to see on Saturday night was definitely not in the "classics" category.

It's called The Robber Bridegroom and is considered a "bluegrass fantasy" based on a 1942 Eudora Welty book.  It's about a guy who is a good guy by day and a bad guy at night--Robin Hood in the reverse, since his misdeeds are solely to benefit himself.  The cast includes brothers, one of whom is a disembodied head pushed around the stage by his brother. I never did figure out why, or what their importance to the so-called "story" was.

It's such a strange show I was amazed to discover that when it opened off Broadway, the leads were played by Kevin Kline and Patti Lupone.  It must have been a better show than Walt and I felt this one was!  But it was fun, nonetheless, with all that bluegrass kickin' music.  And the talent was excellent, which was its saving grace.

Quite different from My Fair Lady, which we had seen the night before!

Caroline's sad day

Caroline reported that it had been a sad day for everyone at the vet hospital yesterday, as there were so many deaths.  A cat she had treated several times for congestive heart failure finally died.  A "lovely German shepherd" had cancer and died.  And she wasn't alone.  She said everyone was having animals with problems that ultimately killed them.

This is one of the problems with a vet hospital that is often the last resort for many folks with sick pets.

 

But at home there was Polly, who has finally accepted Caroline as an OK person.  She still barks some, but it's more the same bark she has for us:  "You're standing up so certainly you are going to feed me."  She will let Caroline take her into her lap, but she isn't comfortable there, but then if I lifted her up and put her in my lap, she wouldn't be happy either.  Still, her love can be bought.

My day was quiet. After the busy weekend, it was nice to have nothing to do.  I had a dentist appointment in the late morning.  It was a nothing appointment, just having a final crown put on, so it was more a chance to visit with Cindy.

I was going to go to Atria for lunch but it was too late when I left Cindy's, so I went shopping first, dropped food off at home, and then went to see my mother.  She was sitting in the lobby outside the restaurant again and we had a quiet visit.  Her "I don't understand you so I'll pick a topic" thing this time was my hair.  Whenever she didn't understand or follow what I was saying, she told me how pretty my hair was.  The things she is most likely to focus on are hair (loves mine, hates hers, loves anybody at Atria with white hair), her skin (hates the brown spots because they make her look old), and shoes (she tells me how pretty my Birkenstocks are every time I visit her.)  It's nice that she uses how "pretty" things and people are.  So much nicer than if she gripes about everything.

She didn't want to go to her apartment with me, so I went by myself to pick up her laundry.  I have given up trying to explain to her the difference between clothes hamper, garbage, and Poise package.  She has dirty laundry in each, and used pee pads in each.  I have to go through all three receptacles carefully to be sure to get all the laundry and throw away the things that need to be thrown away.

But coming home was fun. I just love streaming video!

Berklee College of Music presents a musical theater writing concert each year.  It's a program Jeri helped create several years ago, teaching students how to write for musical theater, and actors learning how to write and perform for musical theater.  She said it was a natural for the school, since the musicians especially, are likely to go on to playing for musical theater productions, since it is a common way for musicians to make music (Jeri has been doing it for years).

So each year they have a contest and choose the best dozen or so songs that have been written and then perform them with full orchestral accompaniment and choreography.  It's a lot of fun and the show is streamed live, so we get to sit here in California and watch the show in Boston.

The first couple of years that we watched, Jeri conducted the orchestra, but she did not this year; however, she did come on to introduce the band at the end, so we got a glimpse of her too.

These are the times when I love modern technology!