Dancing with Myself

I Got Nothing

I don't have a thing to say about anything.  If you do, go ahead.  I'm so spaced out tonight, that the best entertainment I could come up with was cruising eBay for winter hats.  I'm going to Alaska for the winter's solstice and I need a fur hat to keep my ears warm.  I've already won my first bid, but I've bid on 3.  Hey, they were cheap bids.  If I end up with 3 hats, I'll give the excess away for Christmas presents.  That means Dennis gets 2 presents instead of just one.  (If I could find a Rorer 714 in gold, I'd buy it in a New York fucking minute.  Man, I loved that pill.  Oops, once again, I digress.)

Having nothing better to do, I spent about three hours trying to write to a close friend with whom I've been estranged for over 18 months.  Couldn't do it.  I'm still angry.  I thought I was more perfect that that.  If I consciously decide to be no longer angry, that's all it takes.  Right?  Right?  I guess not.  I can't tell myself what to feel or not feel.  I'm so angry that I can't even tell her my feelings are hurt.  How unenlightened is that?  I'm not giving up on the idea, just yet, but I went as far as I could with it today.  I'll never stop trying.  Maybe eventually I'll be able to tell her what's hurting me.  I hope she's on the other side of the wall chipping away as best she can.  God willing, we'll meet in the middle.

Meanwhile, back to hats.  I love hats and almost never wear them now.  When I was growing up, I never was outside without a hat:  cowboy, baseball, kippa, beret, I even wore turbans once.  I still like the turban idea.  Did you know that you can lose up to 30 percent of your body's heat through your head?  So keep it covered!  That's one of my Alaska truisms  that I sometimes think I remember the truth without remembering the logic path to get there.  Bottom line, in cold weather, you should wear a hat.  Now me, I love a fashion opportunity.  I bid on about 3 "fun" furry little fellers today.  I know some people don't think highly of wearing fur, but I'm from the "why can't I wear it if they would have eaten me" school.  That goes for those pesky wabbits, too.  God knows how vicious those creatures really are.  (Leslie, I'm just kidding.  I only wear the fur of animals who have volunteered for the duty, or, as in the case of cayotes, were duly tried and found guilty prior to execution.)

Presently I'm reading The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff because Peter, whom I only know slightly, recommended it, and I wasn't reading anything else.  Then I started reading Massage by Larry Costa.  I'm into massage.  I'm one of those "touchy feely" kind of people, what can I say?  And I just found out that someone I know casually has written a critically acclaimed book, No Place, Lousiana by Martin Pousson.  Martin is a bartender at my neighborhood pub.  He was introduced to me as an "also from Louisiana" category.   I curtsied to him,  he curtsied to me.  He remembers my name and my drink.  He has a perfect body.  No, I mean exactly what I wrote:  a perfect body.  And it is very attractively tattooed.  He has those Clark Gable kind of ears that stand out from his head, and his face is so incredibly expressive that when he pays attention to you, it does appear that his ears point towards you when he speaks to you.  The first time I noticed it, I was left speechless at  how charming an effect it was.  My roommate, the bookstore manager, is picking up Martin's book for me on Wednesday.  Just for the record:  I insisted Huntly buy the book and pay retail so Martin would get full credit on all reports about his book's sales.  It may be a bad book, but until I know that for certain, I have to support Martin JUST because we are both bayou boys.

I still got nothing, but I'm thinking about you anywaysl

A Nice Holiday

Leif cooked a lovely traditional Thanksgiving feast with the assistance of his mother-out-of-law, Susan's mother, Mrs. H.  She was charming and chatty.  Mr. H. was mute by comparison, but he actually had plenty to say, and geneally with a great deal of humor.  His eyes seemed to laugh a lot.  He was also an 80-year-old hunk.  Let me tell you, he looked fine.

He's of Norwegian ancestry, 6'2", holds himself well, beautiful head of gray hair, steel blue eyes.  I want to give Leif his due for the hard work, but Mrs. H. completely stole the show with two of the most awesome pies I've tasted.  One was apple, the other pumpkin.

This woman knows her pies, and I'd stack her crusts up against any I've ever tasted.  (Would you believe these are the only two pictures I saved from the other night?  That's sad.  I really need to learn to play with my toys better.  I had a great picture of Leif and Susan and another of Susan's mom.  Damn.)

Friday night Huntly prepared a Spencer's Roast, which is a prime rib without the bone, Julia Child's potatoes au gratin, spinach oyster bisque, and asparagus.  Dinner was accompanied by a 1979 Vieux Chateau Certan-Pomerol. Huntly bought a case back in the days when he had lots of money.  He's got one bottle left.  I told  him to hold tight.  I turn 60 in another 2-1/2 years.  That was incredible wine.  It had a richness of sensation that was similar to sex. 

Besides Huntly and myself, Jim R. and Bob C. joined us.  Bob and Jim went to college together at SUNY Buffalo back in the late 70s or early 80s.  Jim's a planner for the County of Santa Clara and Bob is an architect.  Bob's also my symphony partner and my Berkeley Rep partner.  They are both unique, funny, witty, smart, clever and observant.  I've actually offered my hand in marriage to both of them, but they have both declined.  I left it as a standing offer.

After dinner we went to see Richard Bourne's The Nutcracker at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley.  Bourne's the one who choreographed the all-male version of Swan Lake.  The setting is an orphanage in 19th century London.  It was both dark and brilliant, filled with color and beautiful people moving with exquisite charm and magic.

Saturday was spent relaxing.  I read some, I slept some.  I wrote some.   On Sunday morning, I did take a walk, just to get out of the house.  It was a gorgeous morning, a little on the cool side perhaps.  I wore my Canada sweat shirt.  I get such positive reinforcement when I do.  Damn, I never realized how much Canadians really are liked in California.  (You know I always respond to people wanting me to sign petitions with "sorry, Canadian.")

Speaking of Canadians, I'll be speaking with my CHC* a little later this evening, planning date #2.  I think I'm going to ask him to go dancing next Sunday at the Sundance Saloon.  I'd never marry a man who couldn't or wouldn't dance. 

My mother passes through this evening, on her way home from Texas.  I pick her up at the Oakland airport about 8:30.  She's been traveling for a month, visiting her great-granddaughters, her cousins, her nephews, her son--my brother.   She spends about a month a year down there.  She can't stand the place, although she loves her great-grandchildren, and she enjoys the attention she gets from her cousins and nephews.  I'm making her a pot of beet borscht.  A little soup after her long day of travel will be good. 

Cheers.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm cybering this holiday.  Does that make me a full fledged geek?  It sure is easier to get from dinner to dinner.  I don't have to worry about the traffic, parking, the Bay Bridge, drinking and driving.  I've already enjoyed one dinner by benefit of a phone call from my mom.  She's been in Texas for the past month, visiting with kith and kin.  She had dinner with two of her favorite nephews and some of their family and friends.  Their dinner consisted of turkey and cornbread dressing, chicken and dumplings, a ham, sweet potato casserole.   She made special mention of something called an Italian Cream Pie.  Can't wait 'till she makes it for me.

The dinner I'm attending physically isn't until eight this evening.  I'm having my thanksgiving dinner with Leif and Susan, one of my favorite couples.  She has to work until seven, so Leif is cooking dinner.  Cocktails are at 7:30.  Dinner will probably be around nine.  I'm betting on a formal table, but I'm not sure.  I'm calling over this afternoon to volunteer my help.  He can probably use a helper, but he may already have a couple of volunteers.  It's a small kitchen and Leif is a scientist by profession.  He knows how to work his kitchen. 

Someone did a google search for "pumpkin cheesecakes in Houston" and my blog was listed, so they came by.  Like the old song goes, "if I'd have known they were coming, I'd have baked a cake" or at least give them a recipe for it.  I will anyway.  I'm actually kinda sorta famous for my pumpkin cheesecake.   Did you ever hear the song "She's the cheesecake queen from New Orleans"?  What'dya mean, you never heard of it?  Maybe that was in my mirrored universe.  Yeah, that's it.  That's from my other life, the one a long time ago and far, far away. 

Pumpkin Cheesecake
1-1/2 lbs creamcheese
3 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spices

Blend until smooth.  Pour into prepared spring-form pan and place in oven that's been pre-heated to 400 degrees.  Now turn the oven down to 350 degrees.  Come back in an hour.  It should be done.  Take it out of the oven and allow it to completely cool before serving.  Serve plain or with a dollop of whipped cream, "mit schlag" as we say around my house.  I used to make a cookie-dough crust, but lately I prefer crushed ginger snaps mixed with a bit of butter pressed into the bottom of the pan and dusted on the sides.  This is one delicious dessert.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.   I can't wait to see what Leif has planned.  I know I'm going to be treated to food that will be pleasing to both palate and eye.  He throws a "glog" party each year around the winter's solstice where he serves Swedish Christmas cookies he's been baking for weeks.  His mother is from Sweden.  I think those people have a real cookie-intense approach to Christmas, because Leif sure does turn out some fancy work.   Anyway, I credit his Swedish mother for this influence.

Hope you have the kind of day that will always give you a glow when its remembered.

Where are my manners?

Allow me to introduce you to one of my best friends and present roommate, Huntly Gordon.

We've been good friends since we first met 19 years ago.  He is my Auntie Mame.  He has never been anything but larger than life and too much for color television.  He has one of those deep and commanding voices, and he is loud.  He was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma and sounds like it.  He went to high school at Exeter. Instead of Ivy League, he went into journalism, first at Oklahoma and finishing up with his Masters from Missouri.  He spent much of his young professional years editing small town newspapers from Nebraska to Bellingham, Washington.

In the 60s, he went into politics, working first as chief of staff for the majority leader in the Washington state legislature.  That segued into a position running the Tacoma Housing Authority for several years in the 70s.  I may be off a decade or two, but when you've heard the tales as often as have I, it's easy to get the decades confused.  He came to San Francisco in the early 80s to run a cable television station for a group of investors.  When his partners forced him out, he retired and started playing.  Not that he wasn't playing before, which may or may not have contributed to their decision to force him out. 

When he retired from television, his next job was as Pope Dementia the Last of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

That's about when I encountered him back in the last century, about 1985. We hit it off big time.  Finally someone in my league.  Along with our close mutual friend, Jimmy Piles, we traveled, we ate at marvelous restaurants, we collected fine wines, gave great dinner parties.  We were roommates for three years, sharing a beautiful flat in the Castro that looked like something you'd see in Architectural Digest.  After three years of it though, we both needed a break.  Actually we knew we wanted to go our separate ways after two years, but we both wanted the apartment.  It was not always pretty.  He won.

We stayed friends, although for a few years we certainly weren't close.  The glue holding us together was Jimmy Piles.   Jimmy and Huntly were twins separated at birth.  They loved trains and took great expeditions on many of the world's great railroads.   The three of us celebrated every Thanksgiving and Christmas for ten years.  Huntly or I cooked, Jimmy uncorked.  If it wasn't the three of us, it was Huntly and Jimmy taking the train across Australia, or Houston and Jimmy touring B roads across Scotland tasting single-malt Scotches.  God we loved single malts.  Yum.  Shortly after Jimmy died in 1997, I developed an allergy to Scotch.  I digress.   Huntly and I stayed friends because we both loved Jimmy so much.  When Jimmy died and I went crazy, Huntly returned from Morocco to help me deal with it.   Jimmy died in April.  Howard died in August.  Kenny died in September.  I celebrated my 50th birthday in July.  1997 was one helluva, ass-kicking year.  I'm amazed that I survived it.

I did look good, though.

<>

Fast forward to the present.  I now live in Oakland where my "there" is a nice, 2 bedroom condo in a pleasant neighborhood.  I've been "There" for almost 5 years. This past summer I decided to rent out my extra bedroom.  For a couple of reasons, money for one, and living structure for another.  About that same time, Huntly's loft was put on the market, so he needed to move.  The rest is history.  I knew coming into this that he has certain charms and idiosyncracies that are less charming and even more idiosyncratic when you're living together again.  Actually I've enjoyed the past four months.  Because he's so bossy in the kitchen, I now have my own personal chef.  I can tell  him what I want for dinner, I just can't tell him how to cook it.  He put me on a diet the third or fourth week he was here, and now I'm 15 lbs lighter.  He watches television in his room when he's home in the evening and I read and write in mine.  We visit in the morning over a cup of coffee and brief the other on our schedules. 

Huntly's primary focus is Art and Film for Teenagers,   Originally started by Ronald Chase to provide a little art history for young artists in San Francisco because schools no longer teach art to high school students.  Ronald  and Huntly, both from Ponca City, Oklahoma, have been friends since their days at the University of Oklahoma back in the 50s.  They manage to make art accessible for young men and women in the San Francisco Bay region.  They show them movies on Friday evenings and teach them to critique a movie as well as enjoy it.  On Saturdays they tour art galleries and see a current movie and then discuss it.  On Sundays they teach cinematograhy to about 50 high school students who in turn make movies that are being critically acclaimed in film festivals all over the country.  They also manage to get a group into the symphony, the opera, the ballet.  Not bad for two old queens from Ponca City, Oklahoma.

Anyway, that's who Huntly is.  He's my roommate.

Dancing with Others, and not well

This morning my roommate passingly criticized me for putting his measuring cups in the dishwasher.  I totally lost it.  I didn't raise my voice, but I immediately went into that sharp and focused tone and said "fuck" deliberately about 3 or 4 times too many.  You could tell I was ready to get my knife out and cut someone.   I'm not sure why I got so mad.  Y'all help me work this out. 

He believes that by putting the measuring cup in the dishwasher, the numbers wear off and it becomes difficult to read.  For the record, that is totally bogus.  My two measuring cups show absolutely no wear after ten years of constant abuse in dishwashers.  And put this in the record, too.  This complaint comes from someone who indifferently put my sterling flatware in the dishwasher.  As a credit to my nobiity, I felt it undignified to lecture him on the proper use and care of silver, so I polished the shit and put it away. 

Huntly has a few idiosyncracies.  The measuring cup in the dishwasher is only one of many.  Me?  I don't care how many things are done.  My way, your way, his way, it doesn't matter.  However, Huntly has very specific ways of doing things.  If I have a choice of several ways of doing something, but one way makes you happy?  I'll do it your way when I think I'm getting attention for doing it that way.  If I'm not getting attention for doing it that particular way, then I'll do it anyway that I deem efficient.  What's wrong with that?   Huntly criticized me for putting a measuring cup through the dishwasher.  I came close to chewing him a new asshole.  I'm sure his pants were torn where I snarled and snapped.

Huntly, to his credit, has already put this incident aside.  To him, it was successfully resolved this morning when we had the exchange.  Me?  I festered all fucking day worrying about why did I have such an angry reaction to his stupidity?  Why couldn't I have responded with humor instead of indignation?

The third and final, For the Record.  He will never worry about me putting his fucking measuring cups in the dishwasher, ever again.  And even though I will be pissy every time I use a measuring cup for the rest of our time together, I will NOT use one his cups intentionally.  BUT, if and when I do, I'll put the fucker in the dishwasher like I do all the other dirty dishes.  It's just a fucking measuring cup.

I'm still being silly, aren't I?  So, see!  Y'all just thought I was perfect.  Tell you what, though.  Just as soon as I learn to deal with serious annoyance, I will be a fucking saint.  Right now I want credit just for not killing the bitch.

What's For Dinner?

Turkey Day is here again.  Besides turkey, what're you having?  I've accepted an invitation to have Thanksgiving Dinner with Leif and Susan in S.F.   Roommate Huntly accepted a dinner with some of his friends.  End of story, right?  Wrong.  Huntly feels we deserve to have left-over turkey at home, so he's decided to do a Thanksgiving dinner here on Friday.  That menu will be simple:  turkey, dressing, Brussel sprouts, and pumpkin cheesecake.  If it were being served on Thursday, we'd probably add a soup course, a fruit salad, and a green bean casserole just for luck.  Oh, and there'd be at least two and maybe three hors d'hoerves to "tide you over" till the turkey was ready. 

Growing up, Thanksgiving Dinner found the extended family at Grandma's house.  The kitchen was filled with stout women laughing, remembering holidays past, teaching the kids how to cook.  Mostly it was the girls who got stuck having to help, but I liked hanging with the women in the kitchen.  That's where all the bowls to lick were to be found.  The men were in the front room watching football games on tv, and the kids were either there or outside playing.  Liquor was absolutely forbidden in my grandmother's house, so the men had to go out to the cars for their snort. 

Dinner was never served much before about 3 or 4 o'clock.  We never sat around a well-dressed table with silver and china and crystal.  Our table would be completely covered with food.  There were so many of us that we ate whereever we could find a place to sit.  Kids usually out on the front porch.  Besides the turkey, there would likely be barbequed brisket, and fried chicken.  The dressing was cornbread.  There wasn't a recipe for making it, as much as there was a process.  Everyone was chopping, slilcing, mixing.  It was a collaborative effort, but it was my grandmother's right to mix the ingredients, usually with her hands.  I always think of it as Mama's dressing.  Being country people, the side dishes were likely to be from our own previous summer and fall garden.  There would be a huge bowl of crowder peas, snap beans cooked with new potatoes, sweet potato casserole, turnips cooked with their greens, mustard greens, and  of course, desserts.  Each woman contributed her best dessert.  My grandmother would make banana pudding, always in the same large yellow crock bowl.  My aunt Lela contributed lemon meringue and coconut pie, my cousin Sue brought the first tunnel of fudge cake I had ever tasted.  Mother often brought a German's chocolate cake.  There would also be pies made from sweet potatoes, pumpkin, mince meat, pecans, even buttermilk.  Bread was those awful store-bought yeast rolls, which are still the favorite of many even today.  All that good food and those lousy rolls, go figure.  The beverage of choice, of course, was sweetened ice tea. 

I still have a very large and extended family, only now they are seldom related to me by blood.  I have at least 6 other women whom I think of as my sisters.  I have a dozen close friends who have demonstrated to me over and over and over the true meaning of being brothers.  My cousins are made up of people whom I may see only occasionally, but each encounter is a delight.  When it comes to putting a group together for a Thanksgiving meal, there are truly rich pickings.  Over the years, I've developed quite a few of my own traditions.  I like to set a pretty table.   I like flowers on the table.  Unlike my grandmother, I drink, wine especially, and I like good wine drank from pretty glasses.  I also like to do toasts, speeches, poetry readings, spontaneous outbursts of singing.  Yeah, I like rowdy dinners, the kind that get loud because everyone's laughing.

I hope there's a lot of laughter at your family's gathering this Thursday.  There will be at mine.  Happy Thanksgiving.

The Opera or the Date?

What shall I talk about?  Wagner's The Flying Dutchman or The Canadian Husband candidate?  Oh fuck the opera.  I met the only respondee to my Canadian Husband wanted ad.  I wrote the ad sort of tongue in cheek on my flight back from Pittsburgh last Sunday and put it on Craigs List, SF, just to see what kind of response it might get.  I also read ads put by Americans on several Canadian Craigs List sites.  I thought they were all dreary.  I ain't runnin' from nothin' 'till I'm sure they're looking for me.  I did that once already.  My ad was more tongue in cheek.  Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a Canadian husband.  I've proposed to at least two already.  One runs a guest house in Puerto Vallarta and the other runs a big retail operation in southern Alberta.  For the record, I've also proposed to at least a dozen Americans, two or three Brits, one Frenchie, and I know a Russian I'd be willing to write hot Czechs for.

So this real normal and interesting sounding guy responds.  He's a dual citizen.  I assumed he was bi-national by way of split parents or something, or born in one country to citizens of the other, type of thing.  Turns out he's a local boy (Berkeley) who went to college in Canada (McGill then Concordia), took to the water and naturalized.  He came back for one of the primary reasons we all come and go:  family.   He read my ad because he was curious about the idea.  He answered it because he thought I sounded interesting enough to at least meet.

We met at a bistro next to my office, a very eurotrash kind of place called Soluna.  I sent  him a picture of me, the one on my blog, and he also visited here.  He walked in and I knew he was my date by the recognition in his eyes.  That's as close to magic as I dare go.  Just before he came in, a young man about 30 came in.  He was an attractive person, but oh-so-definitely-not-my-type, and I was relieved when he didn't recognize me.  For the first time I considered the possibility that I might have a blind date with someone who could possibly be cayote ugly.  But hey.  This is my story, so I quickly banished any possibility that the person I was supposed to be meeting was anything but handsome.

You should have seen my vain little soul react  when this incredibly handsome man walks in and recognizes me and comes over and starts talking to me.  Whoa!  What have I been doing right?  I'm on the right drug if this is the calibre of people I'm attracting.  We had a very friendly visit before going over to the Opera House.  This guy had a quiet calmness that I found compellingly attractive. 

The opera we saw (in Box seats, if you don't mind my bragging) was Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.  It is a fucking downer, but it was in German, sung well, and I was watching my Date in my peripheral vision as much as I was watching the stage.  I felt like a high school kid at the movie.  It took me an hour to put my arm on the back of his chair.  I was just being polite.  I thought I'd give him a few minutes to put HIS arm on the back of my chair.  When I realized that was that wasn't going to happen, I made my move.

This man is handsome and charming, and I would love to have  him as a friend, but I would prefer to have him as a boyfriend, if you catch my drift.  After about 40 minutes of just okay opera, I was thinking to myself, "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING, BRINGING HIM TO A FUCKING WAGNERIAN OPERA, YOU DOLT!"  You can see by my use of caps that I was screaming at myself.  Then the opera hit its speed.  Part III was beautiful--musically speaking.  Senta, the woman who is prepared to sacrifice herself by giving herself in love, faithfully and forever, to the Lost Dutchman, was sung by Nina Stemme.  Swedish woman.  Great voice.  The Dutchman was ably sung by Juha Uusitalo, originally from Finnland, but by the look of his resume, he's been around.  Okay, here's my opinion from watching it out of the corner of my eye.   Senta's boyfriend previous to the arrival of the Dutchman has been Erik, sung by British tenor Christopher Ventris.  By the last note, I had stopped watching my Date, and I was watching the drama unfold on the stage before me, being sung beautifully.  You would have thought I was at a rock concert, listening to me whoop and scream after the curtain fell.

Oh, and the box seats.   I refuse to sit anywhere else at the San Francisco Opera again.  Usual caveats here, you know, free is always a good seat, etc.  I don't know if my date was half as impressed by the seats as was I, but I sure has hell was.  (Sorry, Jaye, we  were pushing curtain as we got there, so no pictures.)  I think my Date enjoyed it.  He said he did, anyway.  Since he's not Southern, I assume he meant it.  I'll give  him a call in a day or so. 

So, there it is, boys and girls, another day's adventure.

Now it's time to say goodnight. 

I

Politics as Religion

One last lesson from the Christians – the ancient, original ones, that is. Theirs is the story of how a steadfast and heroic moral minority undermined the world's greatest empire and eventually came to power. Faced with relentless and spectacular forms of repression, they kept on meeting over their potluck dinners (the origins of later communion rituals), proselytizing and bearing witness wherever they could. For the next four years and well beyond, liberals and progressives will need to emulate these original Christians, who stood against imperial Rome with their bodies, their hearts and their souls.

That's from the article Act Like Christians by Barbara Ehrenreich.  She makes some very interesting points about the kind of power Evangelical churches have and how they got it and how they work it. Read the entire article.   I picked it up over at Alternet which picked it up from The Nation.  I would add one additional comment.  The Early Christians were not bitter nor angry.  Bitter and angry doesn't win converts.  Besides, the Right is better at being bitter and angry than the Left can ever be.  We need to be saving the world, not screaming that everyone's going the wrong way.  Where I'm from everyone knows you have to head off a stampede, you don't yell out "stupid cows" as they're heading for the cliff. 

Photos from West Virginia

I did manage to take half a dozen or so pictures.

Here's my two sisters and my mother.  Michelle is on the left, Dorothy in the middle, and Gwen on the right.   This is the monument dedicated to what now is considered to be the first battle of the American Revolution where Col. Andrew Lewis and about 1,000 colonists, mostly Virginians living on the edge of the wilderness, fought the Shawnees and allied tribes led by the great Shawnee chief, Cornstalk.  The battle is considered a victory by the Americans because Cornstalk misread the colonists troop movement as reinforcements and broke off the engagement, retreating across the Ohio.  My great-great-great-grandfather, William Droddy, is supposed to have operated a ferry across the Ohio River here around 1800.  (Thank you, professor Bridges.)

Mother Dorothy is in the center, flanked on the left by m. Hudson Holley and on the right by G.R. Luhring. 

Here's a photo of me, just in case you're curious as to what I look like this week.

Here's a picture of our spirit guide.  His name is Mothman. Apparently, he's quite a legend in Pt. Pleasant, WV.

Looking more closely at my mom,  you can see that she got an involuntary nose job while visiting in Charleston, WV.  She stepped on a piece of loose concrete on a sidewalk, fell and busted her nose.  We spent 6 hours in the emergency room Thursday night.  Fortunately for her, the surgeon on duty at the emergency room is one of West Virginia's leading cosmetic surgeons.   Show us your nose, mom.

We drove down from Pittsburgh on WV Route 7 which snakes along the Ohio River.  There were still plenty of fall colors, although the storm earlier in the week diminished the display somewhat.  West Virginians we met were charming and hospitable.  We didn't meet any hillbillies, to our disapointment.  Everyone we met looked just like us and talked just like us.  I guess you might say  we found some of our roots.

I want to thank the staff at the West Virginia State Archives there at the State Capital in Charleston.  They patiently showed us how to make the best use of our time there.  With their help, we were able to begin recreating the community in which William Droddy and his wife, Ruth Ellison, lived for almost 25 years in the late 1700s, and if you want to know something about someone back then, you check out his neighbors and friends.

Bye, bye, Mothman.

A Promising Week

My dsl is now working.  I've also come down from the wonderful high that was this past week-end.

The S.F. Choral Society's production of Mozart's Requiem was a very moving experience.  The performance was dedicated to the memory of Danny Pearl. Attending the performance were Danny's mother and father, sister, brother-in-law, and aunt.  Yuda Pearl, Danny's father, graciously thanked all of us there assembled.

Met a lovely reporter from Spain who was in town to interview Isabel Allende for a Spanish fashion magazine. What a charmer she was. I met her at Gil and Amy's party later Saturday evening. There are always interesting people at Gil and Amy's parties.  Gil is a software engineer and Amy is a teaching nurse who works for the University of California's Medical School in San Francisco.

Today a colleague at the court gave me her tickets to the Wednesday evening performance of The Flying Dutchman by the San Francisco Opera. What can I tell you about it? Not much. I saw it fifteen or twenty years or so ago and don't remember much about it, but I can assure you that it isn't one of those musical comedies where you come out tapping your foot and whistling a cheerful melody. However, the seats are primo. They're Box seats, oh my gawd. This is one of those situations where I show my trailer park roots.  I've never sat in one of the boxes.  Heck, I don't even get to do grand tier.  And she gave me two tickets!  I can take a date.  I've offered it to one person who has until tomorrow afternoon to respond.  Next in line is my symphony buddy, Bob.  If he turns me down, I may offer it on Craigs List, with me being the booby prize that goes with it.

At dinner tonight, Huntly and I agreed that we probably hadn't read a book simply for the pleasure of it in over six months.  Everything we've been reading as been politically edged.  I certainly include the several American history books I've read this year in that category.  Maybe I'll start reading mysteries again.  Anything but politics.  I am going to refocus my attention, by gosh and by golly.

Okay, maybe one snarky political comment.  Colin Powell so thoroughly slimed himself by his association with the Bush administration's dishonest use of questionable intelligence that it will be refreshing to see him gone off into oblivion while he waits for the stench to wear off.  As for Rice?  What difference does it make?  Powell trashed the office so badly that anyone is an improvement.  I just think Rice is a bit wierd.  One does remember that good sources said she slipped at a dinner party and referred to Bush as her husband.  What was that all about?  Like I said, wierd.   

Say goodnight, Gracie.