Church organist fired for being gay!
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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
September Songs
I wrote this 7 years ago....
September Songs
September 29, 2001. Today was a brilliant early Autumn day, as bright and crisp as I could ever desire. I drove down to Penn Yan, a town on the west side of Seneca Lake, whose downtown was an unchanged image of the 1890s. I walked around, visited the two used book stores, and drove back north along the lake. I stopped at a "fruit outlet", the clever name for an orchard’s store, and bought sweet golden apples. Then I returned to the motel where I am staying during this brief production of The Magic Flute at the Smith Opera House in Geneva, NY. There was nothing to remind me that this September is different, nothing but the new unease of my heart and of course the wall-to-wall TV coverage which leaps at me as soon as I turn the set on.
The last evening of carefree America was September 10th. I had a rehearsal with The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble that afternoon and then rushed (with two colleagues from the Western Wind gig, Kristina and Eric) to Sutton Place Synagogue for a rehearsal with my High Holy Day choir. The bus across 86th Street and the #6 train down Lexington Avenue got me there with time for a bite to eat. Rehearsal was stressful, because the music is so intricately dependant upon the musical mood of the Cantor, and my job is to steer the choir after him, no matter what beats he skips or adds. I love conducting, but sometimes the fact that my position is that of follower, not leader, gets to me a bit. And that evening the Cantor decided to cut a piece of music I like and replace with a different version of the same prayer, with music I care for a great deal less. I conceded the point, but it didn’t help my mood. I went home annoyed, and slept. Bad rehearsals there have a way of being followed by pleasurable ones, so Wednesday evening was bound to make up for things.
On Tuesday morning the 11th, Cynthia (my wife) decided to try out the new local gym. So when I had gotten both kids to school I had the house to myself, a rare treat. I went into the kitchen to make a leisurely breakfast, tapped the radio’s on button, and hoped to hear the end of Morning Edition while I cooked. But WNYC was only static. I was confused, but found music on WQXR and set about grating a potato. For all I know they had a news break while I made an omelet, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the radio. I took my breakfast and the New York Times to the dining room and settled down for a while. After the meal, the paper, and the tea, I went upstairs and logged on to AOL. And there I saw what was going on. Just as when Princess Diana died, I saw it on the web and then went right to the TV. No NBC, no PBS, no CBS -- it wasn’t just WNYC radio that=2 0was reduced to static that morning. I found the BBC on Long Island Public TV and sat on the sofa watching Rome burn for 20 minutes or so. Steve Vasta called. He had heard something was going on, but having no TV needed information. I sat for a while watching, sharing with him over the phone. When Cindy came home she was she was crying and shaking. And as she joined me on the couch, we both saw the buildings come down, one at a time. My response was cold, shocked; hers was warm and hysterical. I did not believe that the whole tower was falling, I was sure that the upper floors had crumbled leaving 60 floors upright below. I just couldn’t accept a total structural catastrophe. By the time the second tower fell, I knew what was going to happen as it started to go.
I had several events scheduled for the day: teaching at Brooklyn Queens Conservatory in Flushing from 2:00 to 4:30, a Magic Flute rehearsal at 5:30 on the Upper West Side, and the first meeting for the Fall of my little chamber choir, Jubal’s Lyre. I called Brooklyn Queens, knowing that the bridges were all closed, and before I could tell Gloria that I couldn’t get there, she said not to worry, nobody is expected to teach today. By contrast, the Magic Flute people told me that the show must go on! It was going to have to go on without me, since there was no way for me to enter Manhattan, either by car or by train. I figured that nobody would show up for Jubal's Lyre, and didn’t worry about it.
The hardest thing about the day was the terror that other things could be happening anywhere. There were reports of planes unaccounted for, car bombs, who knows what else. Cindy and I discussed getting the kids home from school, but after calling both places decided that the children were fine where they were, and indeed that they should enjoy a few more hours of insulation from all the horror. So we sat on the sofa until almost 3:00 and then went to get Maddie at Pennington. [Did we then get Arlene followed by Julian?] We turned the TV off and told Arlene that the children were to see videos only, and went off by ourselves for a bit. We eventually settled into a news-gathering routine of checking things on the web or turning on the TV news after the kids were asleep.
We decided that we needed to eat out, where there were other people. So we picked up my Mother in front of her apartment building and went to the Athena in Fleetwood. We had to balance our need to talk about the disaster with Mother and our need to shield our children from too much knowledge. Maddie was starting to realize that something big had happened. But Julian was blissfully ignorant. Much of our talk centered on the fear of losing our civil liberties as part of a terror response. We could not even contemplate the possibility of another attack. Afte r we got home I called each of my choir singers to make sure they were OK. Jessica Marsten saw the whole disaster from the Queensborough Bridge, and was extremely upset, though alright. Phone calls and e-mails: "just checking to see if you’re alright" became a full time occupation. My group of Yale Whiffenpoofs all checked in on the New York and Washington residents, and it turned out that Jeff Knishkowy and his wife Patti had become the parents of Aaron Max that day.
How different Wednesday was. Cindy was supposed to go to Staten Island to teach a computer course at the SoftWise Office. But there didn’t seem to be a way to get there. She managed to arrange to teach by phone hookup. Rehearsal by phone was not an option, so I decided to face the city. MetroNorth had announced the return of (limited) train service, so I allowed a lot of extra time and set out for Manhattan. The train wasn’t as late as it might have been. I got off at 125th Street and went to the downtown subway, which was also not so bad. Then I caught the 86th Street crosstown bus, which detoured up Madison and across Central Park at 96th, since the 86th Street Transverse was closed, who knew why. I had time for lunch, and was lucky to have cash, since I discovered that nobody could take credit cards and all the ATMs were down. I ate at Ollie’s and still had time before my voice lesson. I walked to Starbucks, thinking to buy20a cup of tea, but all the Starbucks were closed. I wound up at a local coffee shop on Amsterdam Avenue, where I drank my tea while staring at a TV. They were raiding the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. I went to my lesson, where Conrad and I discussed the mess briefly and then set out to block it out with singing. We pretty much succeeded. Next was Western Wind rehearsal. Everybody was subdued, and many people were late, due to various transportation problems. First we cut one number from our program -- we were rehearsing for a concert of Jewish High Holy Day music to be narrated by Leonard Nimoy on the following Sunday. Nimoy was already in town, so there was no danger of his not making it. But we felt the Shehecheyanu prayer, a thanksgiving for making it to "this day", would be disrespectful to those who had not made it, and the jolly music setting was in unspeakably poor taste. Then we worked. Three hours later we adjourned, and I set out for Sutton Place again, with Kristina and Eric. This trip was rather different. The bus went across the park at 86th, which was now open, who knew why, and we transferred to the subway at Lexington Avenue. But the train we got on promptly went out of service, and we waited a long time for another. I took the express to 59th and walked the rest of the way. I called ahead and asked that the other choir members be warned that I would be late. No one could concentrate. We started 25 minutes late, worked for an hour and ten minutes,=2 0and then I sent everybody home. I walked to Grand Central, not even worried about whether the train would be on time, got on a train and went home.
Thursday was another day of coping with getting around Manhattan. Everything was easier, but nothing could be done without forethought. I saw my therapist, who wanted to know if I had cried yet (no), my voice teacher, and went to Western Wind rehearsal. Then I went downtown to Union Square and saw the holistic health counselor I have started working with. She reassured me that all her clients had reverted to comfort eating! I walked past Union Square and went to the Virgin Megastore and shopped for opera DVDs -- I bought the Berlin Huguenots production with Richard Leech. And then headed for Grand Central and home.
Friday was the dress rehearsal for the Western Wind concert. One of our Cantorial soloists had canceled, fearing that he would be able to fly in for a Sunday concert and then get back to Chicago in time for the start of Rosh Hashana on Monday evening. So we reassigned two of his numbers and cut the other two. Leonard Nimoy attended the rehearsal. He was quiet and professional, working through his narration and getting his cues. We were all even more careful than usual not to make any Star Trek jokes. Since the program included three items from the Yizkor (Memorial) Service, we decided to expand one to more fully cover the immense tragedy. The El mole prayer is often expanded to include a section about the victims of the Holocaust, so Rabbi Skolnik, who wrote the narration for our program, added a section in Hebrew about those who died in fire for our country. Our job: to sing it without losing it!
I went home and my student Jeanne came by. She didn’t want a lesson, just a cup of tea and some company. She had been a public figure in her own right earlier in the week. She was the spokesperson for the teachers’ union at three local Catholic schools where a strike was called, unfortunately on the morning of Tuesday the 11th. As soon as the disaster began, the teachers called off the strike, figuring that the students needed them. And Jeanne got quoted in the local paper. We made tea, as we always do anyway, and talked. She has a friend who is in such denial that cannot discuss the events of the week at all. Jeanne stayed to dinner and then joined us as we lit candles, along with our neighbors, at 7:00 p.m. Then I left for my regular Friday night gig at Temple Israel New Rochelle.
We had music to rehearse, but mostly we wanted to talk before the service. When the topic of how our leaders responded came up, I confessed how impressed I was with Giuliani and how disgusted but not surprised I was with the vanishing President. The sub alto got furious with me20and went off in a huff. Chris Mooney, the baritone, remarked, what is HER problem? The service went well and the Rabbi was comforting.
Saturday the 15th I was scheduled to sing a ballad concert at the Merry All Center for the Arts in New Milford, CT. I called ahead to see if they still wanted me to show up. They did, but were concerned, as I was, that the program might seem inappropriate. So I suggested that I could put together something topical, and maybe add a sing along at the end. In the morning I assembled a crazy program: an adventure in rage, grief, consolation and hope modeled loosely on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s "On Death and Dying." Then I went into the city to rehearse for the Magic Flute, picked up Steve Vasta (my accompanist) on my way back north, and stopped to fetch the babysitter, since Cindy was coming with us. Cindy had been longing for a cathartic musical experience, and was hoping that my recital might help her deal with her feelings.
We drove to Connecticut and stopped for dinner at a Boston Market on Route 7. Then we found our way through the trees and winding lanes to Merry All. It is a quaint little building in a quaint locale, but it is not winterized, and reeks of damp and mildew. A decent sized audience showed up and I started to sing. I launched into Sound an Alarm, from Judas Maccabeus, and then told the audience that they=2 0were right to notice that I wasn’t singing A Wand’ring Minstrel I, which was listed in the program, and explained what I was doing. Some of them had come for escapism, and were skeptical, but soon everybody was with me, as I sang and explained each number. The only problem was the mildew -- and probably mold -- which poisoned me more with each intake of breath. My high range dried out and departed, leaving me to survive on cleverness and some rearranging of the program as went along. I sang Avenging and Bright, a bloodthirsty Irish song of vengeance, and Ah, la paterna mano (rage over the slaughter of loved ones) and In Flanders Fields. I switched moods and did some ballads of love and loss (I hear you calling me) and of acceptance (Grieg’s The Last Spring) before leading into inspirational songs. As I started The Holy City I realized I no longer had a non-cracking high A flat, but I saw that many of my listeners knew the song, so I motioned them to sing along -- and each time we got to a high note they sang it for me! I led a sing along of Battle Hymn of the Republic and America the Beautiful, and stopped, relieved, while I could still speak!
I woke up on Sunday with no voice at all, but had to get one somehow, since the big Western Wind concert was at 3:00 p.m. I drank plenty of hot fluids and took lots of vitamin C, and went to the Unitarian Church in Hastings with my family. The pla ce was packed, and the mood was a mix of sombre and bewildered. At the place in the service where candles are lit for memory or hope, a girl got up and said simply, "Tuesday was my birthday..." We all sighed for her. Her parents got her a cake by Saturday. The minister preached tolerance, saying that we should no more blame all Eastern-looking people than we should blame people with blue eyes. Maddie reared back in her seat and covered her (blue) eyes in horror that anyone could think of blaming her for anything, and I explained to her that that was exactly the point.
We went home, left the kids with a baby sitter, and drove into the city. Cindy got roped into helping set up the reception while I did some frantic last-minute rehearsing with the group and our guest conductor, Mati Lazar. I had not had time to eat, so Cindy sent me a care package backstage: vegetable fried rice and hot & sour soup, just what I love when my sinuses are giving me trouble. The concert went well. We had a large audience. The intensity of the music, the words, and the situation locked us all together. When Nimoy got to the place where he read the text of El mole, with its added section, he developed a lump in his throat. Slowly he lost it and so did the audience. Todd Frizzell stood by me onstage with tears running down the edge of his eye glasses. We sang. And we sighed. And we went on. The reception was modest -- Bill Zukof had decided to take the money we would have spent on fancy food and drink and donate it to the Red Cross instead. A bunch of us went out to an Italian restaurant on West 72nd Street for dinner. Kristina and Gayla argued the opposite sides of patriotism and imperialism. When we got home we discovered that my Mother had freaked out and called many times wondering where we were: she was afraid because we were in the city.
September Songs
September 29, 2001. Today was a brilliant early Autumn day, as bright and crisp as I could ever desire. I drove down to Penn Yan, a town on the west side of Seneca Lake, whose downtown was an unchanged image of the 1890s. I walked around, visited the two used book stores, and drove back north along the lake. I stopped at a "fruit outlet", the clever name for an orchard’s store, and bought sweet golden apples. Then I returned to the motel where I am staying during this brief production of The Magic Flute at the Smith Opera House in Geneva, NY. There was nothing to remind me that this September is different, nothing but the new unease of my heart and of course the wall-to-wall TV coverage which leaps at me as soon as I turn the set on.
The last evening of carefree America was September 10th. I had a rehearsal with The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble that afternoon and then rushed (with two colleagues from the Western Wind gig, Kristina and Eric) to Sutton Place Synagogue for a rehearsal with my High Holy Day choir. The bus across 86th Street and the #6 train down Lexington Avenue got me there with time for a bite to eat. Rehearsal was stressful, because the music is so intricately dependant upon the musical mood of the Cantor, and my job is to steer the choir after him, no matter what beats he skips or adds. I love conducting, but sometimes the fact that my position is that of follower, not leader, gets to me a bit. And that evening the Cantor decided to cut a piece of music I like and replace with a different version of the same prayer, with music I care for a great deal less. I conceded the point, but it didn’t help my mood. I went home annoyed, and slept. Bad rehearsals there have a way of being followed by pleasurable ones, so Wednesday evening was bound to make up for things.
On Tuesday morning the 11th, Cynthia (my wife) decided to try out the new local gym. So when I had gotten both kids to school I had the house to myself, a rare treat. I went into the kitchen to make a leisurely breakfast, tapped the radio’s on button, and hoped to hear the end of Morning Edition while I cooked. But WNYC was only static. I was confused, but found music on WQXR and set about grating a potato. For all I know they had a news break while I made an omelet, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the radio. I took my breakfast and the New York Times to the dining room and settled down for a while. After the meal, the paper, and the tea, I went upstairs and logged on to AOL. And there I saw what was going on. Just as when Princess Diana died, I saw it on the web and then went right to the TV. No NBC, no PBS, no CBS -- it wasn’t just WNYC radio that=2 0was reduced to static that morning. I found the BBC on Long Island Public TV and sat on the sofa watching Rome burn for 20 minutes or so. Steve Vasta called. He had heard something was going on, but having no TV needed information. I sat for a while watching, sharing with him over the phone. When Cindy came home she was she was crying and shaking. And as she joined me on the couch, we both saw the buildings come down, one at a time. My response was cold, shocked; hers was warm and hysterical. I did not believe that the whole tower was falling, I was sure that the upper floors had crumbled leaving 60 floors upright below. I just couldn’t accept a total structural catastrophe. By the time the second tower fell, I knew what was going to happen as it started to go.
I had several events scheduled for the day: teaching at Brooklyn Queens Conservatory in Flushing from 2:00 to 4:30, a Magic Flute rehearsal at 5:30 on the Upper West Side, and the first meeting for the Fall of my little chamber choir, Jubal’s Lyre. I called Brooklyn Queens, knowing that the bridges were all closed, and before I could tell Gloria that I couldn’t get there, she said not to worry, nobody is expected to teach today. By contrast, the Magic Flute people told me that the show must go on! It was going to have to go on without me, since there was no way for me to enter Manhattan, either by car or by train. I figured that nobody would show up for Jubal's Lyre, and didn’t worry about it.
The hardest thing about the day was the terror that other things could be happening anywhere. There were reports of planes unaccounted for, car bombs, who knows what else. Cindy and I discussed getting the kids home from school, but after calling both places decided that the children were fine where they were, and indeed that they should enjoy a few more hours of insulation from all the horror. So we sat on the sofa until almost 3:00 and then went to get Maddie at Pennington. [Did we then get Arlene followed by Julian?] We turned the TV off and told Arlene that the children were to see videos only, and went off by ourselves for a bit. We eventually settled into a news-gathering routine of checking things on the web or turning on the TV news after the kids were asleep.
We decided that we needed to eat out, where there were other people. So we picked up my Mother in front of her apartment building and went to the Athena in Fleetwood. We had to balance our need to talk about the disaster with Mother and our need to shield our children from too much knowledge. Maddie was starting to realize that something big had happened. But Julian was blissfully ignorant. Much of our talk centered on the fear of losing our civil liberties as part of a terror response. We could not even contemplate the possibility of another attack. Afte r we got home I called each of my choir singers to make sure they were OK. Jessica Marsten saw the whole disaster from the Queensborough Bridge, and was extremely upset, though alright. Phone calls and e-mails: "just checking to see if you’re alright" became a full time occupation. My group of Yale Whiffenpoofs all checked in on the New York and Washington residents, and it turned out that Jeff Knishkowy and his wife Patti had become the parents of Aaron Max that day.
How different Wednesday was. Cindy was supposed to go to Staten Island to teach a computer course at the SoftWise Office. But there didn’t seem to be a way to get there. She managed to arrange to teach by phone hookup. Rehearsal by phone was not an option, so I decided to face the city. MetroNorth had announced the return of (limited) train service, so I allowed a lot of extra time and set out for Manhattan. The train wasn’t as late as it might have been. I got off at 125th Street and went to the downtown subway, which was also not so bad. Then I caught the 86th Street crosstown bus, which detoured up Madison and across Central Park at 96th, since the 86th Street Transverse was closed, who knew why. I had time for lunch, and was lucky to have cash, since I discovered that nobody could take credit cards and all the ATMs were down. I ate at Ollie’s and still had time before my voice lesson. I walked to Starbucks, thinking to buy20a cup of tea, but all the Starbucks were closed. I wound up at a local coffee shop on Amsterdam Avenue, where I drank my tea while staring at a TV. They were raiding the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. I went to my lesson, where Conrad and I discussed the mess briefly and then set out to block it out with singing. We pretty much succeeded. Next was Western Wind rehearsal. Everybody was subdued, and many people were late, due to various transportation problems. First we cut one number from our program -- we were rehearsing for a concert of Jewish High Holy Day music to be narrated by Leonard Nimoy on the following Sunday. Nimoy was already in town, so there was no danger of his not making it. But we felt the Shehecheyanu prayer, a thanksgiving for making it to "this day", would be disrespectful to those who had not made it, and the jolly music setting was in unspeakably poor taste. Then we worked. Three hours later we adjourned, and I set out for Sutton Place again, with Kristina and Eric. This trip was rather different. The bus went across the park at 86th, which was now open, who knew why, and we transferred to the subway at Lexington Avenue. But the train we got on promptly went out of service, and we waited a long time for another. I took the express to 59th and walked the rest of the way. I called ahead and asked that the other choir members be warned that I would be late. No one could concentrate. We started 25 minutes late, worked for an hour and ten minutes,=2 0and then I sent everybody home. I walked to Grand Central, not even worried about whether the train would be on time, got on a train and went home.
Thursday was another day of coping with getting around Manhattan. Everything was easier, but nothing could be done without forethought. I saw my therapist, who wanted to know if I had cried yet (no), my voice teacher, and went to Western Wind rehearsal. Then I went downtown to Union Square and saw the holistic health counselor I have started working with. She reassured me that all her clients had reverted to comfort eating! I walked past Union Square and went to the Virgin Megastore and shopped for opera DVDs -- I bought the Berlin Huguenots production with Richard Leech. And then headed for Grand Central and home.
Friday was the dress rehearsal for the Western Wind concert. One of our Cantorial soloists had canceled, fearing that he would be able to fly in for a Sunday concert and then get back to Chicago in time for the start of Rosh Hashana on Monday evening. So we reassigned two of his numbers and cut the other two. Leonard Nimoy attended the rehearsal. He was quiet and professional, working through his narration and getting his cues. We were all even more careful than usual not to make any Star Trek jokes. Since the program included three items from the Yizkor (Memorial) Service, we decided to expand one to more fully cover the immense tragedy. The El mole prayer is often expanded to include a section about the victims of the Holocaust, so Rabbi Skolnik, who wrote the narration for our program, added a section in Hebrew about those who died in fire for our country. Our job: to sing it without losing it!
I went home and my student Jeanne came by. She didn’t want a lesson, just a cup of tea and some company. She had been a public figure in her own right earlier in the week. She was the spokesperson for the teachers’ union at three local Catholic schools where a strike was called, unfortunately on the morning of Tuesday the 11th. As soon as the disaster began, the teachers called off the strike, figuring that the students needed them. And Jeanne got quoted in the local paper. We made tea, as we always do anyway, and talked. She has a friend who is in such denial that cannot discuss the events of the week at all. Jeanne stayed to dinner and then joined us as we lit candles, along with our neighbors, at 7:00 p.m. Then I left for my regular Friday night gig at Temple Israel New Rochelle.
We had music to rehearse, but mostly we wanted to talk before the service. When the topic of how our leaders responded came up, I confessed how impressed I was with Giuliani and how disgusted but not surprised I was with the vanishing President. The sub alto got furious with me20and went off in a huff. Chris Mooney, the baritone, remarked, what is HER problem? The service went well and the Rabbi was comforting.
Saturday the 15th I was scheduled to sing a ballad concert at the Merry All Center for the Arts in New Milford, CT. I called ahead to see if they still wanted me to show up. They did, but were concerned, as I was, that the program might seem inappropriate. So I suggested that I could put together something topical, and maybe add a sing along at the end. In the morning I assembled a crazy program: an adventure in rage, grief, consolation and hope modeled loosely on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s "On Death and Dying." Then I went into the city to rehearse for the Magic Flute, picked up Steve Vasta (my accompanist) on my way back north, and stopped to fetch the babysitter, since Cindy was coming with us. Cindy had been longing for a cathartic musical experience, and was hoping that my recital might help her deal with her feelings.
We drove to Connecticut and stopped for dinner at a Boston Market on Route 7. Then we found our way through the trees and winding lanes to Merry All. It is a quaint little building in a quaint locale, but it is not winterized, and reeks of damp and mildew. A decent sized audience showed up and I started to sing. I launched into Sound an Alarm, from Judas Maccabeus, and then told the audience that they=2 0were right to notice that I wasn’t singing A Wand’ring Minstrel I, which was listed in the program, and explained what I was doing. Some of them had come for escapism, and were skeptical, but soon everybody was with me, as I sang and explained each number. The only problem was the mildew -- and probably mold -- which poisoned me more with each intake of breath. My high range dried out and departed, leaving me to survive on cleverness and some rearranging of the program as went along. I sang Avenging and Bright, a bloodthirsty Irish song of vengeance, and Ah, la paterna mano (rage over the slaughter of loved ones) and In Flanders Fields. I switched moods and did some ballads of love and loss (I hear you calling me) and of acceptance (Grieg’s The Last Spring) before leading into inspirational songs. As I started The Holy City I realized I no longer had a non-cracking high A flat, but I saw that many of my listeners knew the song, so I motioned them to sing along -- and each time we got to a high note they sang it for me! I led a sing along of Battle Hymn of the Republic and America the Beautiful, and stopped, relieved, while I could still speak!
I woke up on Sunday with no voice at all, but had to get one somehow, since the big Western Wind concert was at 3:00 p.m. I drank plenty of hot fluids and took lots of vitamin C, and went to the Unitarian Church in Hastings with my family. The pla ce was packed, and the mood was a mix of sombre and bewildered. At the place in the service where candles are lit for memory or hope, a girl got up and said simply, "Tuesday was my birthday..." We all sighed for her. Her parents got her a cake by Saturday. The minister preached tolerance, saying that we should no more blame all Eastern-looking people than we should blame people with blue eyes. Maddie reared back in her seat and covered her (blue) eyes in horror that anyone could think of blaming her for anything, and I explained to her that that was exactly the point.
We went home, left the kids with a baby sitter, and drove into the city. Cindy got roped into helping set up the reception while I did some frantic last-minute rehearsing with the group and our guest conductor, Mati Lazar. I had not had time to eat, so Cindy sent me a care package backstage: vegetable fried rice and hot & sour soup, just what I love when my sinuses are giving me trouble. The concert went well. We had a large audience. The intensity of the music, the words, and the situation locked us all together. When Nimoy got to the place where he read the text of El mole, with its added section, he developed a lump in his throat. Slowly he lost it and so did the audience. Todd Frizzell stood by me onstage with tears running down the edge of his eye glasses. We sang. And we sighed. And we went on. The reception was modest -- Bill Zukof had decided to take the money we would have spent on fancy food and drink and donate it to the Red Cross instead. A bunch of us went out to an Italian restaurant on West 72nd Street for dinner. Kristina and Gayla argued the opposite sides of patriotism and imperialism. When we got home we discovered that my Mother had freaked out and called many times wondering where we were: she was afraid because we were in the city.
Monday, September 8, 2008
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
The phone rang yesterday morning. The name on caller ID was that of an old friend of my Mother's. And my heart sank as I picked up and heard him say he had just found out that Mother had died -- well over a year ago! How had I missed him, in all the morass of Mother's address books? She had so many friends. I felt guilty and apologized profusely. He was not upset in the least and accepted that people get left out unintentionally. Are there more out there?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Such a Deal!
Sign in the Window of a bookstore in Shelburne Falls, MA.
Of course, I charged in and asked, "How much for the cat?"
They told me I couldn't afford it. And as it turns out they have already sold the store -- and the cat is really included.
And here is Boswell!
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