Busman's Holiday

I am a theater critic on a short vacation, so naturally I saw two shows today.  Well, technically, one was just a rehearsal (or, as Phil put it, a "stumble through") and the other was a high school concert, but nonetheless, they were both shows.

After Walt and Jeri took Lester for a long walk, Jeri went off to work and dropped Walt and me at the Boston Center for the Arts, where Phil was working.

 Phil works with a program under Partners for Youth with Disabilities.  This particular program is Access to Theatre, which gives young people with disabilities the opportunity to be in an original production featuring drama, improvisation, movement...and more.  We met some amazing people, including Donna, who runs the program.

Steven has cerebral palsy and is a wonderful musician, who plays music with his toes on his iPad. (He is also an activist for rights for the disabled)

These two did a dance to "Proud Mary" (Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river).

Even Phil got into the act playing a tree in two different skits (one of which I dubbed "Midsummer night's tree").

But the performer who impressed me the most was Linda, who has been part of this program for several years and each year does an original dance.

She closed her eyes and she danced.  She didn't care that her belly was hanging out or that she didn't necessarily get the steps right, she was loving every minute of her dance and she was transformed.  It was a beautiful thing to see.  Apparently one year she did a Harry Potter themed dance.  It was stormy out that night and at the end of her dance, she raised her wand up high just at the moment when a huge crack of lightning lit up the glass ceiling.  Apparently it was quite an effect, though she modestly told me it was just a coincidence.

After we left the BCA, we came home, briefly, and then got back on the bus to head downtown to meet Jeri.  The second show was the culmination of a five week program Berklee College of Music runs in the summer for high school kids from all over the world. Jeri trains the orchestra that accompanies the Musical Theater Showcase.  Her 16 piece orchestra included kids from 5 countries, as well as kids from all across the United States, from California to Maine and one from Alaska.

We went out to dinner with her after the final rehearsal and then Walt and I waited at the entrance to the theater.

No cameras allowed inside, so there are no pictures of the performance, but Jeri's group was awesome and they accompanied musical numbers from Side Show, Assassins, Jekyll & Hyde and Wicked.  Great fun to watch and listen to.

The show had started with a Middle Eastern Fusion Ensemble and a huge Chorus.  It ended with the "Five Week Singers' Showcase," the five featured singers chosen from 150 who auditioned.  The first four were very good (well...I wasn't pleased with one of them) but then Quinton Monteiro came on to sing an arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" that literally brought down the house.  If this were a venue for making stars, one was made tonight.  Absolutely incredible performance, and though this bore no resemblance to the Judy Garland original, his smile and huge eyes at the end as the audience leaped to their feet cheering, was every bit as memorable.

We are now packing up and getting ready to get to the airport in the morning to catch our flight home.  I hate travel days, but at the end of it, there is home and the dogs, and no more trips in the foreseeable future!

I'm going to have to check the TV and see if anything of import happened in the past few days. 

Mad Dogs and Bostonians

With apologies to Noel Coward for co-opting his song title.  We, along with mad dogs and Englishmen were out not only in the mid-day sun, but the late-morning sun, the early afternoon sun, and the late evening sun.

It sounded like such a logical, fun thing to do when I first suggested flying to Boston to see Paragon Park.  We would see the show and then, if Jeri could get tickets, we would go to a Red Sox game.  Walt loves going to Fenway Park and I'd never been there.

I didn't stop to think:  baseball.  open park.  Boston.  August.

But Jeri got tickets and off we went this morning, after a delicious healthy breakfast, during which Jeri read us the comics, which she does for Phil all the time.

The trip to the stadium starts with a 3-4 block walk from here to the bus.  It was warm and muggy, but surprisingly not bad.  We got on the air conditioned bus, which was the best part.

As you can see, Walt is wearing his red Berklee College of Music baseball hat.  I am carrying my rolled up floppy hat from China.  I've always wanted a baseball hat, but have not been able to find one to fit my big head.

We got off the bus and started walking to the stadium, which Jeri said was about a 10 block walk, but that we had an hour to get there, so could take it slow (she remembers shepherding me around France and Italy!). 

We stopped mid-way for an iced coffee and while we were sitting at a table sipping, I noticed her baseball cap, which didn't have that plastic hole-and-tip thingy that most baseball caps have, it had something that looked like Velcro.  I took it from her, adjusted it to make it larger and...by golly...it fit me!

Jeri was thrilled, gave me the hat, and said she had another one in her office, just a block away.  She went and got her hat and told me I could keep the one I had taken off her head (it also has a bit of history to it.  There is a tiny splotch of purple paint on the brim, which is from her stint working on a Habitat for Humanity house in New Orleans).  

I am thrilled with my new hat.

We continued on toward the stadium, passing the "fen" in "Fen-way" park.  I always thought it was for some guy named Mr. Fenway, but no...it's the fen that runs right past the park.  (fen:  low land that is covered wholly or partly with water unless artificially drained and that usually has peaty alkaline soil and characteristic flora)

Shortly after, we came to the park itself.

We had box seats, a ways down from first base and out in the open.  The announcer said that the official temperature at the park today was 86 degrees. We had no shade.  

I wondered how it was going to go, but really, it wasn't as bad as I expected thanks to this...

Big heavy black clouds rolled across the sky all afternoon, bringing a cool breeze and the threat of rain (but never more than a couple of drops).  After they passed through it was hot again, but not unbearable. 

I couldn't see a lot of the game because we were so far away and there were so many people in front of me, but as the day progressed more people left and I got the see the last part of the game, which was the best part anyway.  In the end...

Beat Minnesota 6-4.  That's a good day.

We came home to wait for Jeri, who had left early to go to rehearsal for a Berklee concert tomorrow (we are going), and then out to Doyle's pub for dinner.  Now we are all exhausted and it's time to sleep!

All in all, a really good, fun day.

 Dinner at Doyle's

Paragon Park

So here it is: the big day.  The reason we have flown across the country.  

It was really a pretty quiet day.  Jeri went off to yoga and Phil to work.  Walt tried to take Lester for a walk, but she planted her legs and refused to go.  She seemed to spend her day moving from lying in front of one fan to another.

Sounded like a logical thing to me and I ended up taking not one, but two naps myself, the last of which was while Walt and Jeri took Lester to the Farmers Market and for a walk around Jamaica Pond.  Walt came home drenched with sweat.

Around 5, we drove to Norwell, where the musical Jeri has orchestrated was playing.  First we met our friends Dave and Diane for dinner.  Diane is the older sister of one of Ned's best friends, Greg.

When we first entered the restaurant (Not Your Average Joe's in Norwell), there was a huge poster for Paragon Park just inside the front door, which was kind of cool.  We found out later that if you were going to the show, you got a 15% discount on your dinner, which was even cooler.

We started with drinks and most of us ordered beer.  I had a beer called "Dead Man," because I'd never tasted a dead man before (kinda tasty, actually).

Dave ordered blueberry beer, which came blueberries floating on top of it.  Actually, the beer was like one of those Galileo thermometers, because the berries would slowly sink to the bottom of the glass and then bounce back up to the top again.  Not sure the chemical action involved here.

Service was slow, but got right zippy when we let the waitress know we were going to the show.  The waitress recommended the show highly, told us it was sold out, and said that people had been searching on Craig's list for tickets. While I would not embarrass Jeri by telling the waitress who she was, Diane did, but though she was impressed, it didn't get us a larger discount!

The theater was only 1 minute away and when we arrived, the lobby was full and there was a merry go round horse which was being raffled off to raise money for the theater group.

I walked into the theater and just swelled with pride when I saw the theater, the full seats, and the 20 piece orchestra.  This was before a note of music had been played.

In this day of so much synthesized music in major productions, it was a real treat to hear a live orchestra.  Jeri said she didn't want to play any of the songs for us before hand because she wanted us to hear it live.  I can't explain how proud of her I was tonight.  Reviewers almost never notice the person who does the orchestrations--I know I certainly do not.  But one reviewer had singled her out for her "splendid" orchestrations.  A well deserved notice, I think!  (But then I'm allowed to be prejudiced.)

The show has a huge cast (about 40), lush costumes, amazing sets, hummable tunes, aerial acrobatics, and a merry-go-round that is assembled (several times) on stage, and works every time.

The show takes place over several decades in the history of a very popular amusement park near Boston and Jeri's orchestrations reflected the sound of those decades beautifully.  

We met the composer and lyricist Adam Brooks and Zoe Bradford, who wrote the book along with Michael Hammond (whom I didn't meet) and Zoe could not stop raving about how brilliant a musician Jeri is.  Naturally that warmed the cockles of this mother's heart.

When it was over, we tried to go back to Joe's for dessert so we could continue talking about the show, but it was after 11 p.m. and it was closed, so we said our good byes to Diane and Dave and we went our separate ways.

This was really a special day and how glad I am that we came here to see the show!

 

Jeri with Adam Brooks (music and lyrics) and Zoe Bradford (Book)

Back in the Air

Just because we haven't been in an airplane for...oh...days...Walt and I decided to fly to Boston.

Actually, that's not true.  It was a planned trip.  Jeri has done the orchestration for a new musical called Paragon Park, and since this is not an accomplishment we can hang on the refrigerator door, we figured we'd best come to Boston and see it for ourselves.  We were lucky to get tickets.  They sold out before the show opened.

So once again we loaded our suitcases with a lot of the same stuff we had just taken out of them two days ago, got the house ready for the dog sitter, packed up the car, and headed to the airport.

We got to the airport and made it through security, which is about when I discovered that I had spilled breakfast or something on my shirt and it looked like I had pulled it out of the bottom of the laundry bag and let the dogs walk over it before I put it on.  I was mortified.  So I ducked into the ladies room and changed it for my ever-present Jello shirt, so I could at least look respectable in the airport.

We had time for lunch, so picked up a cheeseburger at Burgers and Brew.  Mine came with onion rings.

Our Southwest flight flew first to Phoenix where stepping off the air conditioned plane and into the walkway to the airport was like stepping into a sauna.  My friend Jeri (Jeri's godmother) lives in a mobile home park based outside of Phoenix.  I don't know how she does it.  It was all I could do to trudge to the air conditioned airport.  I think they said that the temperature was 110.

We got to our gate for the connecting flight to Boston, which had been delayed an hour, and found the last two seats available in the waiting area.  Suddenly I swear 100 more people crowded into the gate area.  I don't know where they came from, but pretty soon Southwest announced the people from our plane should move across the hall to another gate.

Both of the flights were full and the second, longer flight came with no food service, so Walt picked up a couple of sandwiches and a fruit salad for us to take on the plane.

The second plane was really cool because all the over head compartments had been decorated by kids.

 

I never did get the story why, but I thought it was fun.

At some point they brought around snacks, a big box filled with crackers, cookies, peanuts, and pretzels.  It was dinnertime and I guess that this was supposed to hold us until midnight when we arrived in Boston.  Fortunately we had our sandwiches.  The kids in front of us had pizza.

The flight seemed so long.  My legs got very restless and I had to squeeze down the aisles to the bathroom area, where I chatted with a nice flight attendant for awhile (I wish I had remembered to ask her about the overhead compartments).  But I listened to about 3 hours of my Diana Gabaldon book.  This is an 8 file book and I am working through file 5, so this helped a lot!

We arrived at Logan at midnight and as we were leaving the gate area (the only people left in this section of the airport), I had to stop and take a picture of Walt in the rocking chairs that are set up to watch the planes arrive and depart.

 

Something I might expect to find in So. Carolina or Georgia, but not Boston.  I liked it!

Jeri picked us up and brought us home.  It was midnight here, so only 9 p.m. California time, but we were all exhausted and went to bed immediately.  I managed to sleep through to 6:45 Boston time and am how writing this with two lovely fans blowing on me and the faithful dog, Lester (who used to be Tot when I was bottlefeeding her) lying in the hall, looking at me, her tail wagging steadily.

 

I am on Jeri & Phil's wifi network just fine and I'm all set up to design this page, but Firefox has gone nutso on me and I am going to have to reboot the computer to see if I can fix it.  With this laptop, I'm never sure how that is going to work....

Tonight we see Paragon Park.  I am very eager to do so!

Shrinkage

Tonight was the 25th annual G.R.U.B., the "Gala Reinterment of Uncle Buddy."  Will came up with the name back in 1988 when we started having these annual dinners to commemorate the life and death of Gilbert Russak.  He had been known as Uncle Buddy to his family, so Will thought he could incorporate that into a title for our annual dinners.

At its height, there were probably some 20-25 people who attended, but over the years, people have dropped out...or died....  Jean. the wonderful Lamplighters contralto, died suddenly but her husband John still came.  Adrian, one of the first Lamplighters tenors died, but his wife Connie kept coming, and when we made our annual toast ("Oh.  It's you.") we now included memories of Jean and Adrian as well.

Will was always in charge.  He picked a restaurant and assembled the troops.  He sometimes drove me crazy, always forgetting whom to invite, wanting to ask people that really weren't a part of the group.  Always the big presence at the head of the table.

When Will died earlier this year, I wondered whether we would continue.  It had been 25 years since Gilbert died and our ranks were shrinking and did we want to continue.

  

Everyone agreed that yes, this was a very special event for all of us and we wanted to continue.

Jill, who lives in San Francisco, agreed to choose the restaurant.   I would send out the reminders. 

Gilbert died July 14, 1986 and our dinners have usually been within a few days of that date, but we were in Europe at the time, so we postponed it to today.  

Jill chose the Presidio Social Club, located in an old enlisted men's barracks in the Presidio complex, which had moderate prices and available parking.   Everything we needed.

Walt and I drove down through Marin County, having left the 100 degree heat of Davis and absolultely thrilled to see the fog bank hanging over the Marin hills.

It was actually downright cold!  I loved it.

Our group was small this year.  Jean's husband John couldn't come because he was having surgery today.  Roger canceled at the last minute, as did Shelley.  Connie said she was coming, but didn't.  There were only seven of us, but we had a round table, so for the first time we could all talk with everyone, instead of being unable to reach the person at the other end of a long rectangular table.

I asked the waiter to take our picture.  In all the years we've been doing this, we have never gotten a group picture and I figured the sooner the better!

The G.R.U.B. Group:  Walt, me, Henry, Jill, Willa, Diana, Marie

I love all these people.  Henry, Will and Gilbert had been a three-some going on adventures regularly, a tradition Henry and Will continued after Gilbert's death.  Henry, who was part of the Lamplighters tech crew and gala-writing committees, and his wife Willa, a Lamplighters contralto for years, now costumer for Pocket Opera, were very close to Will at the end.   Jill, our British import a bazillion years ago worked as a dresser for the Lamplighters for decades. She's a wonderful artist and does beautiful water colors.  During her working years she spent a lot of time in San Francisco sewers. Diana is the contractor for the Lamplighters orchestra, and for awhile taught clarinet lessons to Jeri. (She was impressed to learn we are flying to Boston to see Paragon Park, the first musical Jeri has orchestrated).  Finally there is dear, fey Marie.  She was a character actress with the Lamplighters in its early days and shared a house with Gilbert for awhile.  We never knew her husband, but laughed when she always called him "Underfoot."  He's been gone now for a long time, too.  The G.R.U.B. dinner is the only time I ever see Marie.  (That, and funerals, of course)

So another G.R.U.B. is in the can and I think we've decided that round tables are the way to go from here on out.  It's obvious that our group is not going to grow, but continue to shrink...hopefully not again any time soon!

(Attention Viking people--please note the water bottle on the table, which was replaced when necessary.  Now, is that so difficult?)

Is there a Doctor in the House?

If there is a doctor in the house, the chance is that I have seen her today.  My word have I been doctored up  I've been poked, proded, drained, pushed, pulled, and everything but shot--and that's only because I think they forgot to do it.

And it all started with a simple annual exam.

Before I went to the exam, I wanted to be sure I had (finally) done the labs they have been asking me to do for months.  Off to the medical offices at 7:15 to give blood and urine. Home at 8:30 (lots of people waiting for tests, so it took forever to be called), got a quick breakfast and went back to the office for my exam.

The doctor was late, so it was nearly 10:30 before I saw her.   While I was waiting, I was noticing that this was the first time in years when I could actually tie the lovely gown.  In the past their large size was too small for me.  But I've lost 40 lbs this year on my butter and ice cream diet, and my blood pressure showed numbers I don't remember seeing ... 111 over something in the 70s.  I usually run 130/90+.

The doctor and I talked mostly about my knees and feet and she did some planing (shaving) of the wart-like things on my toes that made it difficult to walk in Europe (along with everything else that made it difficult).

She sent me off to x-ray for the knees and to check the big lump on my leg.

That happened at the lab which is also where you get mammograms and I'm almost due for a mammogram so I decided to have done at the same time.  One stop shopping. I waited forEVer, including about 30 minutes in the little cubicle waiting my turn at the squish-a-boob machine. Thank goodness I had my Kindle. Then I got dressed and waited another 15 minutes for the x-ray tech to go to the bathroom and take my x-rays.

She did most of the x-rays with me standing up, but then did some with me sitting.  She tried to get me to hold an x-ray plate, and contort my body into something resembling a sitting up fetus minus the amnionic fluid.  Totally impossible.  My body just is not that flexible any more!  She had to get someone to come in and help, a woman who complained she had to risk exposure to the x-rays because I couldn't hold the plate myself.  (She said it jokingly, though.  I think.)

The doctor had made an appointment for me to see a physical therapist.  In Sacramento.  At 2 p.m.  It was 12:45 when I left the x-ray department.  I did not have enough gas to get to Sacramento, my cell phone needed to be charged and the charger was at home, and I didn't want to drive an hour without my iTouch, so made a flying stop home, picked up the iTouch and the charger, got gas and headed to Sacramento.

I was wondering if I were going to get lunch at all, but arrived with about 15 minutes to spare, so went to the nearest fast food place, Del Taco and ordered the first thing I saw.  Turned out it was tacos with...french fries???   Weird combo.  I also ordered a "medium diet coke," and didn't realize it was the size of a small bucket.  Good lord--what is the LARGE size?

I tried to finish lunch in the hospital parking lot, but had to leave the coke in the car, in the hot sun (it was about 100 degrees)...and as it turned out, I was in the office for such a short period of time, the coke was still cold and still had ice in it when I got back.

The physical therapist was the same one who treated me after the bike accident in 2003, which started this whole knee business in the first place.  She greeted me with a grimace and said she had just looked at my x-rays and my knees "didn't look good at all."  Turns out I have degenerative joint disease (fancy word for arthritis) and almost no cartilage, which is why it has been hurting so much, since the knee cap is rubbing directly on the bone.

I am also considered a high risk patient for knee replacement, so the plan is to work on doing stretching exercises to strengthen thigh and calf muscles and perhaps start a water aerobics program. And everybody thinks my cane is a great idea.   Go me!  I guess.

I still have to go to the podiatrist to check on the foot problems, but that won't be for 2 weeks yet...and I have to go to Vallejo, halfway to my mother's, for that appointment.

But I feel like I've had my tires rotated, my oil changed, and I'm good to go for another year.

The Milk of Human Kindness

I'm starting to upload photos to Flickr.  It's going to take a long time, because (a) there are tons of photos to sort through, and (b) the upload is very slow.  With luck, I can get a set done every other day and maybe have them all up within the next two weeks.  But for now there are only the photos from the 3 days in Prague.

Today my faith in humanity was, for a moment, restored.  I have my own bank account out of which I pay for the Compassion kids' stuff and for what Walt and I in several years of "discussions" over purchases, came to lump together as "miscellaneous sundries at Long's," those "gotta have it" impulse purchases I would grab when picking up some household stuff at the local Long's (which no longer exists anyway).  Since I started keeping my own checking account, money "discussions" have, for the most part, disappeared.  Impulse purchases, charitable donations, stamps and Kindle boooks come out of my own account.

And it is pretty much a wash each month.  My only "big" income is my Social Security check and then the payment for whatever reviews I do...which can be as much as $100 a month or as little as $20.  I do have a little (very little) savings account cushion and try not to tap into that.

Well, as I looked over what was going to be due on my charge account and what I expected to be in my checking account after the Social Security check was deposited (especially since there would be NO income from reviews, since I would be out of the country), I saw that I was going to be about $75 short of being able to pay the whole bill.  Now that little savings account cushion would roll over the money, but I'm trying to keep that at a certain level.  I could, of course, pay only part of the bill, but then I would incur an interest charge for not paying the bill in full, which I always do.

But--aHA!  I had an idea!  My bank has a rewards program which I rarely even think about, but when I checked how much was in that account, it would slightly more than cover my shortage.  I went to Europe with a clear conscience.

When I got home and went to pay the bill, I dutifully rolled over my rewards points to my account but then--oh horror!-- I realized that all it did was to subtract it from the total of my bill, which included charges that had been made since the original bill was calculated.  What to do?  What to do?  I would have to go ahead and pay the whole bill anyway and let the bank subtract from my savings account, but I just hated to do that.

But then I decided to call Customer Service.  I spoke with a lovely Indian man who made the right sympathetic sounds, but agreed that there wasn't anything else I could do.  But then he put me on hold and said he wanted to see if he had any options.  He came back and related that he could tell I had been a customer for a very long time (I don't remember for how long, but I think I got the account in the early 1990s) and that I had been a very loyal customer, never missing a payment and never having anything like this happen before.  So, dear man, he suppressed the interest charges for this month.  I could go ahead and pay what I could afford and it would trigger no interest.

Now, no fool I, I did get his name in case I get dinged, but I am feeling the milk of human kindness transfused through my veins at the moment and glad that I have not changed banks since I first got this account! Makes me want to run out and do something good for someone else, to pay it forward.

---

Last night we had one of those special theatrical moments that I will remember for a long time.  I was reviewing The Music Man, one of my favorite musicals, at Music Circus in Sacramento.  Since we have been out of the country, I hadn't seen any of the promos on TV for the show and so was surprised to discover that Shirley Jones -- Mrs. Partridge herself -- who originated the role of Marian Paroo on Broadway and who played the role in the classic movie, was playing Marian's mother, Mrs. Paroo.  Her real life son, Patrick Cassidy, was doing the role of Harold Hill.

At the end of this wonderful production, when all the bows had been taken, Ms. Jones took the microphone and shared memories of making the movie with actor Robert Preston.  She then sang a brief duet with her son, to tumultous applause.   It was a real "wow" moment and brought down the house. Perks like this don't come along often for a theater critic, but when they do...it's magic.

 

Patrick Cassidy and Shirley Jones