Monday Morning, March 19

1) Last night's dinner went OK. Really interesting questions. Sometimes I can't stop myself from being more of a comedian than I need to be. #flaws

2) Today's Shakespearean insult seems tailormade for a Certain World Leader: "None but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy." [emphasis mine] - Much Ado About Nothing

3) Another sun-bright, bitter cold day featuring (among other things) the plume of steam atop the BU Law School across the river, a bacon breakfast burrito, and the constant battle with the office thermostat.

Sunday Morning, March 18

1) Today would be Gramma's 116th birthday.

2) I ended up going to bed quite late last night, and woke up at 6:38 AM to start the day. Lots to do, but right now I want to dribble off this sofa like a slug and somehow return to sleep.

2a) I'm going into the office later. Not only to make up some time from last Tuesday's snow day, but - and this is exciting! - tonight I am hosting a second etiquette dinner for MIT students! The senior class found out how well received the first one was and one of their class officers arranged another.

3) "I expect we'll find this is full of quotations."

Saint Patrick's Night, 2018

1) The fresh, spicy smell of carnations.

2) Afternoon Surprise I: the doorbell went off like an explosion while I was trying to take a nap. The result was no longer wanting to take a nap because my new eyeglasses had arrived. Two pairs: one identical to my current glasses, another (see above) with transparent frames, a totally impulsive purchase when I saw them in the store.

2a) Sunglasses arrive next week!

3) Afternoon Surprise II: My third-floor neighbors and I have a sharing economy: I let them park in my parking space, and they feed me occasionally. When Monsieur texted me "Chicken dinner?" I wasn't expecting him to come downstairs with Little Miss bearing an entire roast chicken! (And also yams, potatoes, cauliflower, and another vegetable dish.) I'll be eating off all that until Tuesday. Happily. Om nom nom.

3a) Little Miss was not wearing green, and I smilingly told her that if we were in Louisiana, I'd have to pinch her. And then I thought to give her one of my green carnations. What a smile from her!

3b) And she was very excited to come downstairs again with her father to bring me three of their homemade macaroons with chocolate chips.

Saint Patrick's Day Morning, 2018

1) Today is my unscheduled day this weekend, allowing freedom to create and keep house without the distraction of having to think about when to be where for what with whom. Aside from not being scheduled, I also have to accomplish something important by 11 AM to feel like the day has been productive. Usually I measure this by getting a column written. Alas, the most important thing I've been able to do today is get Etiquetteer's green carnation photo done and posted. Let's see what the rest of the day holds!

2) Insert whargarbl about backlash against the Parkland students here. I'm totally for the Parkland students, and I'm against the politicians who are calling them names, and I'm against the people suggesting that if they'd only been nicer to the shooter this wouldn't have happened.

3) I really don't want to let myself get distracted by the world today, but with a) a friend's report of the Russians hacking his Instygrym, b) the report of the Denver Post suffering even more staffing cuts by the hedge fund that owns it (and other failing newspapers around the US) making me fear for the future of journalism, c) M*Cabe's firing, d) and the British expulsion of Russian diplomats . . . WTF is our civilization coming to?!

3a) Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Where's my green beer?

Friday Morning, March 16

1) Yesterday might best be described as "So many carbohydrates, so little time." Om nom nom.

2) I will certainly need to get my Oscar Wilde Memorial Green Carnation today for Saint Patrick's Day tomorrow.

2a) When that LGBT group was rejected earlier this month by the Staten Island group planning their Saint Patrick's Day Parade, they should've rebranded as an Oscar Wilde Appreciation Society. After all, the parade organizer was quoted saying "Our parade is for Irish heritage and culture. It is not a political or sexual identification parade." And Wilde is undeniably one of the great Irish writers!

3) This morning's reading from Gracian's The Art of Worldly Wisdom included "No one looks directly at the sun, but everyone does when it is eclipsed. The vulgar will fasten upon your one failing rather than on your many successes." And how true that is!

Thursday Morning, Ides of March, 2018

1) Oldest Nephew Who Must Not Be Tagged gave me last Christmas a daily calendar of Shakespearean insults. It's been a big hit with me; I keep it at the office. The insults for Presidents Day and International Women's Day pulled no punches! (But I didn't save them, so don't ask what they were.) So I expected something good for the Ides of March, and instead got this from The Two Gentlemen of Verona: "How now, you whoreson peasant! Where you have been these two days loitering?" Which is rather off topic when considering regicide.

2) A nap + (1.5 manhattans + 1 plate of the spaghettini alfredo special + 2 chapters of The Colony: Portrait of a Restaurant) + Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" on repeat + online solitaire = last night

3) This winter we seem to be accumulating snow the way I tan in the summer: burn and fade, burn and fade, resulting in freckles and sunspots.

Tuesday Night, March 13 - SNOW DAY

1) Baking - in this case, baking bacon cheddar biscuits from a mix. Om nom nom.

2) Looking back on the day . . . what on earth did I do? Not as much writing as I'd hoped, but more housekeeping.

3) About 4 PM I headed out to do my share of the shoveling. It took me a bit over half an hour to do our entire length of the sidewalk and the front steps. I hope I put more of my legs into it than last week; I'm eager not to repeat the awful shoulder pains I put myself through last week.

4) And to start that prevention, as soon as I came in from shoveling I eased myself into a hot whirlpool tub with a glass of red wine and Kathleen Tessaro's Elegance to skim a few pages.

4a) What would Macbeth have been like if the cauldron of the Weird Sisters was really a hot tub and the Sisters Themselves were just Californians from the art community trying to sell Renoir etchings?

5) Yesterday I picked up a brisket at the food co-op, because a snow day at home is perfect for a New England boiled dinner. Too bad my horseradish expired last April, but it was still very good.

6) While the brisket was boiling I washed dishes and watched Kinsey on the DVD I got at the thrift store a few weeks ago when I was shopping for goblets. I hadn't yet seen the film. In some ways I found it quite sad. The cast just astonished me: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard (oomph!), Chris O'Donnell, John Lithgow, Timothy Hutton (unrecognizable!), Tim Curry (!), John Epperson (the man who is Lypsinka!), and the guy who played the associate producer in Postcards from the Edge.

6a) I recalled when the film was released that a great deal of attention was paid to the Unnamed Female Film Legend who was interviewed by Kinsey at the end of the film. I didn't recognize her, and was floored when her name came at the end of the credits.

6b) I got a sense from the film of the candid honesty Kinsey's subjects gave him for his work, and how still today, sex is such an uncomfortable topic for so many.

7) I love to be in my home, and just before dinner, with the lamps burning softly in the parlor and the dining room . . . #gratitude.

Tuesday Morning, March 13 - SNOW DAY!

1) Ye Instytytte proactively announced yesterday that it would be closed today due to the latest nor'easter. Grateful for a day in my home. Just after 9 AM, the frosting is visibly thicker on the trees I see from my parlor window.

2) I wasn't going to read the news today, but sweet mercy goodness, one look at the Times and the sh*tsh*w that is our kakistocracy -- today it's a car crash I don't want to see, but from which I can't look away.

3) One year ago today we had a blizzard and a snow day - and it was the office's first-in-a-long-time 24-hour giving challenge. This year at least the giving challenge is tomorrow!

Monday Morning, March 12

1) Mercy goodness, it looks like we have another nor'easter coming Tuesday night, and people are just losing their minds. PEOPLE! We got through the winter of 2015, and we will get through this! Calm yourselves down and go stock up on French toast ingredients. Don't forget the cinnamon and vanilla.

1a) Interestingly, Tuesday afternoon I'm supposed to have a meeting with my oldest reunion committee at the office. I rather think we should reschedule.

2) This morning's devotional included a reading from How to Manage Your Day-to-Day about managing one's use of social media; the phrase "logging on with intention" somehow was the most important thing. And later I fully recognized that the only reason I logged onto ye Fycebykke was to post an opinion piece from the Times that I found meaningful.

3) I stand at the threshold of a new week not yet clear where it will take me. What's most present is the completion of projects over the last three days, not anticipation of work yet to be done - or indeed, of opportunities not yet clear or contemplated. Well, except snow shoveling. Let's see where it goes!

Sunday Night, March 11 - the Weekend Ends

Aside from the adventure of speaking at the WGBH Masquerade, it was an active weekend:

1) Saturday I was very surprised to run into a colleague twice: first on the platform at Green Station, and later outside Doyle's (!) at midday.

2) With my new presciption in my hands, it was off to Wahby Pahkah for new glasses at last. Madly, impetuously, I ended up getting three pairs, including sunglasses. Rejoicing that they still had my current frames.

3) Friends were quite right; I have very much enjoyed the podcast You Must Remember This. And I would love for Carina Longworth to do an episode on all the films made in 1939 by the cast of Gone With the Wind. Among others there's Stagecoach, The Rains Came, These Glamour Girls, Each Dawn I Die, The Women, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and dozens and dozens more.

4) It's so valuable for me to have an unscheduled day in which to accomplish things.

Well, How Did It Go? My Night at WGBH

1) I was delighted - and very surprised - to get an invitation from WGBH three weeks ago to give one of the "pop-up" talks at last night's Masquerade fund-raiser. So that's been one of the Big Deal Issues since then, researching and preparing the talk. My original Evolution of the Dinner Party covered the life of the Gibson family in the Gibson House, 1860-1954, but for this I'd have to use the years of Victoria's reign, 1837-1901, to keep with their theme. So all my material on smoking, Prohibition, and Dorothy Draper would have to get tossed.

1a) I picked up some fascinating tidbits along the way, though, which made this particular project a lot of fun.

2) Figuring out how to get to the remote fastnesses of the studios, deep in Brighton, was a wee bit frustrating. The T's trip planner first suggested going all the way out to Sullivan Square (almost the opposite end of the Ligne d'Orange!) and taking a bus to within a block of the studio - possibly the longest hairpin trip ever. Eventually I changed from the Ligne d'Orange to the Ligne Vert at Copley Square and caught the 57 bus at Kenmore to Union Square, Brighton, and then walked about 15 minutes. Much more reasonable.

2a) Besides, Sullivan Station is nothing more than a concrete dystopia fitted under a superhighway.

2b) Actually, if you set Waiting for Godot there, it'd be perfect. I wouldn't go see it, but it'd be perfect.

3) The studios are quite posh, and I was escorted to a large conference room being used as a green room for all the talent. Mostly that was a 22-piece brass band, some dancers in Victorian garb, and three speakers including me. Sandwiches and bottled water provided, so I could review my script while fighting off any possible anxiety with food.

4) Since it was billed as a masquerade, I brought my red half-mask from Venice. While I was fitting it on in the mens room, who should appear but my Lake Charles friend Paul Hart Miller, fitting on his mask! PHM volunteers frequently for the station, and I was very glad to see a familiar face.

Me and Paul Hart Miller, who knows everyone.

5) Truly I expected to see no one I knew, but by the end of the night I'd run into the retired colleague of a friend of mine who remembered meeting me and reads the column, Miss Kitty who tends the bar for me at Repeal Day every December, and later in the night a friend of a friend who's engaged in community theatre costuming.

6) The event was laid out over three spaces: a large entrance hall fitted up with a light buffet and a bar, a larger room just off it with the 22-piece brass band, a bar, and a photo backdrop, and a smaller room where the talks would be given with a bar, light buffet, and some high top tables with high chairs. Plenty of room to move around made it a comfortable night.

7) ONE glass of red wine to start the night. To quote Auntie Mame, "I don't want to get overstimulated for Floyd." "Boyd." "Yes, Boyd and Emily."

8) The two speakers who spoke before me were a big hit, and seem to have brought friends or at least had a following from previous events; I couldn't quite tell. But they brought it talking about Victorian fashion. Fascinating. And tough acts to follow.

9) All of us were introduced by one of the station's Radio Personalities, and he said very nice things about me before I took the podium. Once there, I just did my thing, occasionally interjecting info not in the script, not always remembering to advance my slides, and realizing about halfway through that I'd never let my left hand leave its home base on the edge of the podium.

10) I managed to get a few good laughs, and once it was all over and I could celebrate with another glass of red wine, I ended up in a very convivial conversation with about six or eight people, most of whom belonged to the same family and some of whom play in the orchestra pits of the B'way shows that tour to Boston.

11) I must say, a LOT of people treated this as a true dress-up night, and I'm in awe of the ladies present who came in hoop skirts or gowns with bustles. (I overheard one of them say "As long as there's a handicapped stall, I'm OK.") All Victorian periods were represented (except the 1890s - I didn't see any leg o' muitton sleeves), and one couple even came in Victorian bathing costumes! I was glad I'd at least brought my mask, and really, I should've worn my black tie.

12) PHM very kindly lifted me home, as well as another event volunteer who lived in Somerville. Driving through bits of Brighton, I was struck by how placeless it seemed. At night, all these strip malls and what-have-you could have been anywhere in the nation. It reminded me of that Jim Jarmusch film Stranger Than Paradise.

13) Finally back home, I could collapse (my feet were killing me) and rejoice. The night really was a success.

Friday Night, March 9

1) Feelin' good having completed three important projects today: tomorrow night's presentation (whew!), the first draft of a project for work, and submission of an award nomination (also for work).

2) There is nothing like finding out 15 minutes into your lunch at your desk that you have a lunch appointment across campus in 15 minutes. But I made it!

3) Feeling really depleted, and eager for a solid night's sleep before a creative weekend.

Friday, March 9 - One Year Later

1) One year ago today I started this personal blog, This Is Robert Talking (and later This Is Robert Talking - the Dark Side of Etiquetteer), as a reaction to my increasing frustration with ye Fycebykke. It's interesting to see how my three-part status updates have become less brief (and less witty) and become more "This is what my day was like." Overall, though, it's been a good change for me . . . even though I can't bring myself to leave ye Fycebykke altogether, as a friend just did. If only there was another social media platform where we could all go and be happy together without having our content curated and managed and organized for us (and inflitrated by ads) . . . once I'd hoped that would be Ello, but that just turned into another way to see pretty pictures, and after they were overrun with Russian sexbots last year I left.

1a) All that said, right now I'm engaged in two different threads on ye Fycebykke that remind me how valuable it is to see thoughtful and respectful debate among people from opposite sides of the issue at hand. I am truly grateful to learn more from the people I know.

2) A late night at the office saw me home at 10:30ish and falling into bed like a stone about 11. Four hours later I woke from heavy sleep feeling as though my jaw was clamped shut and my shoulders and upper back carved from granite. I finally had to get out of bed, take two ibuprofen, and stand under a shower head set to Obliterate for 20 minutes to relax. Back in bed, I was thinking, "What on earth could have made this happen?" And then I remembered shoveling half of our long sidewalk yesterday morning . . .

3) Cathleen Calvert: "And then . . .  and then he refused to marry her!"

Scarlett: [whispers in her ear.]

Cathleen: [looks knowingly] "No, but she was ruined just the same."

Three Important Points

1) San Francisco has no Shubert Theatre.

2) I saw you and heard you through the dressing room door.

3) I had lunch with Karen not three hours ago.

Wednesday Midday, March 7 - New England Weather Edition

1) As I said to someone somewhere in the office today, "We live in New England, and we need to handle the weather like New Englanders." All this kerfuffle about what appears to be a routine winter storm. It's winter in New England, and this is what happens, people.

2) I'm the first to admit I'm a sucker for a waltz (even though I can't dance), so it's unsurprising that my latest musical obsession is the finale and end credits of Oscar Strauss's Ein Walzertraum. (Skip ahead to 02:45.) Really, I don't see why we shouldn't ride out this winter storm in the Oval Room at the Costly Plaza with plenty of champagne, smoked salmon sandwiches, raspberry tarts, and madeleines with a café concert orchestra winding out waltz after waltz. 

3) A Nauset clam shack is about to be claimed by the Atlantic, just as Henry Beston's Outermost House was during the Blizzard of 1978, and all I can think of is that Bible verse that includes "Build not your house upon the sand."

Tuesday Evening, March 6

Next mood swing in ____ hours:

1) After the kind of day when everyone wants to talk to you in the middle of three urgent tasks, the giddy excitement of having to DROP EVERYTHING to share with volunteers that reunion registration was open for them. Every year this is fun, but this year - I don't know why - I felt a little carried away getting the word out fast, and watching eagerly to see who was getting in first.

2) Reading the news tonight after dinner, I want to be optimistic about the future. I want to be, but I'm not.

3) Back to the Eighties with Anita Baker's Same Ole Love.

Sunday Night, March 4

1) Mercy goodness, I know the Oscars are on tonight, and I just can't bring myself.

2) My second floor neighbors, who are moving at the end of the month, held their farewell open house this afternoon and were kind enough to include me in the invitation. Since this was a writing day, and since I knew I wouldn't know many people, I expected to stay about half an hour and then creep back downstairs to Get On With the Day. Imagine my surprise when I learned I'd been there three hours! Good conversation with a whole collection of parents I didn't know, and the new neighbors who will be moving in just before Easter, and of course the children everywhere: getting costumes out of a dress-up box, drinking juice boxes, marching in circles singing "Yellow Submarine." My mother loves little children, and she would have loved to see this collection.

2a) One couple I met for the first time have been living across the street for the last seven years in the home of an Old Friend of Mine. They had heard about the legendary jungle mural he'd painted in the bathroom (long since removed by the intervening owner), and they confirmed for me that his beautiful Venetian sconces are still there. After this nice conversation, how ironic to learn that they are moving away themselves later this spring!

3) So I didn't come close to completing everything on my list this weekend - I really do need an unscheduled day if I'm planning to write, but I couldn't miss this open house - but I still managed to get some good work done before 11 AM, and I still published a columni this evening. I feel good about that.

Saturday Afternoon, March 3

1) Prowling through the bowels of the Athenaeum to research my talk at next weekend's WGBH event, I can tell I'm going to have to come back and explore the rolling shelves on cookbooks and food.

2) Earlier this week I thought it was just spam when I got an email from the "editor" of a website advertising bachelor party travel services in an East European capital, asking to partner with my website. But it was downright creepy to get her follow-up "Just wanted to make sure you saw this" email this afternoon. Looking over the site (via ye Gyggle, not with the links sent in the email), I had to reply that I didn't think it was "on brand" to partner with a site that promoted bachelor party pranks like the "sexy maid wake up" and such like.

3) The last photo here is my umbrella last night after Augusta Wynd mangled it. With imagination, it looks like the wimple of the Mother Superior in the Madeline books.

Saturday Morning, March 3

1) My thanks to all who expressed concern for my safety and welfare during yesterday's nor'easter. The worst I had to contend with was damp knees, soggy socks, the tenacious clangour of a neighbor's wind chimes, and the destruction of my umbrella at the top of the subway stairs by that rude drag queen Augusta Wynd. Out early this morning for a haircut, evidence of the Big Blow was mostly confined to a dead lawn umbrella from who knows where and the usual litter of small tree limbs.

2) I love the cloud-breaking revelation when connecting two roles with one character actor. This morning it was the realization that the old man on Clark Gable's rubber plantation in Red Dust ("If it was the summer of eighteen hundred and ninety-four, I'd play games with you, sister. But life is simpler now.") was also the angry old businessman negotiating with Wallace Beery in Grand Hotel. A couple weeks ago it was realizing that Gertrude the Viennese vendeuse in Vivien Leigh's dress shop in Dark Journey was also the grown-up daughter of the servants, now a successful cabaret star, in Noel Coward's Cavalcade.

2a) I recognize that I am the only person I know who cares about such things.

3) My hair now looks fabulous, and just in time for MFA Late Nites tonight!

Friday Midday, March 2

1) I said to a colleague this morning "It's storming outside and storming inside, but we have the power to tame the whirlwind!" Now, at only noon, I half-humorously respond to myself, "Uncle!"

1a) Yesterday I promised a volunteer that today her projects would my first priority. Well, man plans and God laughs. This morning's pace has been allegro con molto furioso bello mio anda getta you offa my lawn whargarbl.

1b) Everything is both important and urgent. Including having my lunch.

2) I found this piece about animosity politics interesting. It's a sad day when more people vote in order to vote against something or someone rather than to vote for something or someone. On the other hand, and I've said this before, I consider our current President a unique threat unlike any previous American leader. That would, therefore, have a unique impact on the 2016 election.

2a) That said, there are similarities to Huey Long, and I'll bet nobody took my advice to read Huey Long's Louisiana Hayride.

3) There's a guy I follow on Flickr who's a real gym rat, and will sometimes post photos of candy with the caption "Don't do it!" Sorry buddy, but chocolate may be the only thing to get me through today.