Friday Evening, January 25

1) Pleased with the news of the arrest and indictment of ye Rygyr Stynne. Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. America will survive this presidency.

1a) We should all launch into a chorus of “America, I Love You,” from Tin Pan Alley . . . which I only know about because a clip of this is also in Myra Breckinridge:

2) This morning I was part of a workshop on dementia which involved taping the knuckles of my index fingers, putting on two pairs of gloves, a pair of vision-impairing glasses, and inserting a bag of popcorn into one shoe. An illuminating experience!

3) Rye and cheddar.

Thursday Morning, January 24

1) Yesterday evening I was just overwhelmed by all the anger and outrage on my Fycebykke feed. So I’m taking a break from ye Fycebykke.

2) As Julianne Moore said in Boogie Nights, “Too many things, too many things, too many things, too many things.”

3) This morning’s devotional included (but was not limited to) the chapter of Mark that told the story of the loaves and the fishes and the story of Salomé and the head of John the Baptist, Henry Beston’s passage on garden sage, the work habits of Simone de Beauvoir, and a stanza (or is it canto?) of Whitman’s Calamus Poems.

Wednesday Morning, January 23

1) Coffee and devotional in bed. This season always brings out my devotion to flannel sheets.

2) Such an interesting piece in the Times this morning on ghosting. Quotable Quote: “Sometimes the best course is to let someone go, even if you were once close. Growing apart can be a friendship’s natural evolution . . . “

2a) This comes back to my allegory of one’s life as a tapestry (which I may or may not have mentioned here before). The weft (the horizontal threads) are one’s days, and the woof (the vertical threads) are the people in one’s life. Very few threads run the entire length, and some might be so short as to be marked by only a knot or a bow.

3) This is an unoriginal observation, but it’s true: January is just whooshing by. It’s practically Valentine’s Day already!

Tuesday, January 22 - Commuting and Kaye

1) This morning’s commute, while nothing, nothing, like my three-hour journey home during the Great Winter of 2015, did take two hours, 15 minutes of which was spent walking timorously over the ice from my home to the station. At one moment of temporary despair, a Lady Older Than I appeared headed in the same direction - and we became each other’s moral support. I could just hear Julie Andrews saying “When God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.

1a) The other big moment was sitting for about 20 minutes or so in the cruelly windswept lower busway of Ruggles Station with a colleague who was drinking an iced coffee.

2) This evening I was surprised to learn of the death of comedienne Kaye Ballard, giving me another opportunity to quote the elderly extra in Sunset Boulevard: “Why, I thought she was dead!” Remembered most for two years with Eve Arden on television in a show I’ve never seen, The Mothers-in-Law, a couple years ago I discovered her as one of the evil stepsisters to the Cinderella of Julie Andrews. (This clip is ONLY scenes with Kaye Ballard.)

2a) Why yes, that is Alice Ghostley.

2b) The obituary did not include her uproarious appearance in that outlandish comedy of 1976, The Ritz, OR her little-known photo as one of the nurses on page 8 of First Lady: My Thirty Days Upstairs at the White House, by Martha Dinwiddie Butterfield, as told to Patrick Dennis and with 172 Photographs by Cris Alexander.

3) The only other thing worth noting is that, in an actual FB update, I misspelled vocabulary with an A. And I now have a definition for it: Vacabulary: noun; va-ˈka-byə-ˌler-ē; plural: vacabularez. Definition: a collection of words destined to be misspelled by hurried and/or careless typists.

Winter Reading 2019

At the moment I have quite a stack of new (or new to me) books to get me through the winter. Vertical books have already been finished; the others are arranged only by size.

• The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse, by Pru Marie Eatwell. Purchased at Strand Books when I was in NYC earlier this month and embarked on with enthusiasm before I even left the city. This is what happens when whackadoo ladies claim that their eccentric brother-in-law is also an eccentric duke. So many tangles it’s like a dish of delicious pasta with an unexpected mushroom or olive to surprise you.

• The Collector, by Nataya Semenova with André DeLocque. Purchased at Brattle Books and tells the story of Sergei Shchukin, his astonishing collection of modern art (and its fate in Soviet Russia), and interesting family.

• Letitia Baldrige’s New Manners for New Times. Purchased at Strand Books when I was in NYC earlier this month. The only Baldrige book I’ve ever read is A Lady, First, so I am eager to delve into one of her etiquette books.

• All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson, by Mark Griffin. A Christmas gift from my friend D. I’ve already started it. Rock is not someone I know much about beyond McMillan and Wife and Pillow Talk (in that order), so this is already wonderful new information.

• Secret Societies and Crazy Cults, by Jonathan Moore. Purchased at the Coop last fall, barely begun.

• How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England, by Ruth Goodman. Purchased at the Coop last fall. I think I got through the first two chapters in November, but they were delicious.

• Fraud of the Century, by Roy Morris, Jr. All about the presidential election of 1876, the first in which the Electoral College vote did not reflect the popular vote.

• A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire, by Ann Butler Greenfield. This sort of history I find truly engaging, and I expect this will take an honored place in my library with Color, Jewels, and Mauve.

• White Trash: The 400-Year History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg. Purchased . . . oh, months ago! . . . and temporarily abandoned in favor of other books. But its importance was apparent from the first pages.

• How Not to Be a Dick: An Everyday Etiquette Guide, by Meghan Doherty. A Christmas gift from Oldest Nephew Who Must Not Be Tagged. I know I am going to like this one!

• The Art of the Compliment, by Christie Matheson. Important because so few people even bother with compliments any more. If it can’t sting, why say it?

• Star-Spangled Manners, by Judith Martin. Purchased at Strand Books when I was in NYC earlier this month.

• Full Service, by Scotty Bowers. A Christmas gift from my friend H, this actually replaces the copy I lost when I was mugged in 2012. “Cheerfully unsubstantiated” sex gossip from golden age Hollywood, I found it a delicious romp at the time, except for the icky stories about Charles Laughton.

• Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger. I forget where I bought this now, but it looks mighty interesting.

Monday, January 21 - MLK Day

1) Humidifier.

2) This morning’s devotional included #286 from Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom: “Don’t go completely into debt with anyone and everyone . . . Freedom is more precious than the gift that makes us lose it . . . Above all, when yo are given an obligation, don’t take it as a favor. Most of the time it is the cleverness of others that has placed you in that position.”

3) With less than two hours to go, it’s an open question whether I’ll get something significant accomplished by 11 AM, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up!

Sunday Midday, January 20

1) Awake at 5 AM. Parlor coffee and devotional. Mark 3:24; “And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.” Also Mark 3: 5: “And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts . . . “

2) Team 75 got the shoveling done by 9:15! I served up some good chicory coffee afterward.

3) Published my column on the Gillette ad and those mean boys from Kentucky before 11 AM, so it’s a good day. I could not find a place for this important dialogue from Myra Breckinridge:

Myra: How should a man act?

Rusty: He should ball chicks!

You have to see the movie to understand how badly that worked out for him.

Saturday Midday, JANUARY 19 - The Coming Apocalypse

1) I have to say, I am compelled to view this ingenious mosaic of the Apocalypse created from vintage postcards by David Opdyke. You should, too. I learned about it yesterday in this NYT article, which is definitely worth reading. In the future we will be visited by plagues of butterflies, mosquitoes, frogs, tornados, and graffiti. The only escape is a risky one on the defunct technology of dirigibles - no pets allowed!

1a) Walking to the train a less apocalyptic message found me on the dove tree, which is still up on Green Street.

2) On the subway platform while headed into town for groceries I saw a dozen or more People Older Than I heading in for the Women’s March, including a couple women here and there wearing their pink pussy hats from 2017. One man held a sign with two pictures of the Earth and the caption “I’m With Her.”

3) Beautiful weather so far today. The changing forecast of What’s To Come indicates the weather - whatever it turns out to be - will start around the cocktail hour. The whole thing will probably turn out to be ye nythingebyrgyr - which is fine, but I rather miss the days when New Englanders took this sort of weather in stride.

3a) That said, I supposed I heeded the French Toast Alert, ‘cause I have bread, milk, and eggs in the house.

Friday Evening, February 18

1) Carol Channing and Tiny Tim sing “Wanting You” at the wedding of Gladys and Tyrone on Laugh-in.

1a) Sweet mercy goodness, I remember the wedding, but not the singing!

2) Now on ye Whytsypp!

3) Having just finished The Collector, about the great Russian collector of modern art Sergei Shchukin, I’m now moving on to Simon Sebag-Montefiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.

Friday Morning, February 18

1) Coffee in bed. I used to do this quite a lot, but much more rarely now. But I slept poorly, and this bed is so comfortable . . . where would this civilization be without flannel sheets?

2) Yesterday evening, waiting for dinner guests, I took this personality quiz from ye FyveThyrtyEight. The results really surprised me - and probably shouldn’t have. Can an old dog learn new tricks?

3) In this morning’s Times, a fascinating piece about alternative museum tours in museums in England from non-traditional points of view held my attention. Non-traditional as in from the point of view of cultural appropriation/looting or non-heterosexual history, etc. As one who loves museums, I love seeing how this is engaging museum goers.

BONUS) Long weekend coming, a long weekend of weather! Shoveling will certainly be a part of it, but so will yoga, half a coconut cake, and a lot of writing.

Thursday Midday, January 17

1) “That number’s too slow. Cut out the Maloney Sisters!”

2) When you wake up gently, warm and comfortable, reach for the clock to see how much longer it is until the alarm goes off, and it’s one minute.

3) Mother’s birthday is Sunday. Flowers have been ordered.

Wednesday Morning, January 16

1) For the first time in . . . in . . . in forever, I was happy and ready to get out of bed when the alarm went off. Not bounding with energy and bouncing off the walls, just gently smiling and without a feeling of heaviness, and with vague memories of a happy dream.

2) Coffee and devotional in the gray room yielded tough love from an old article from ye Fyste Cympany: “You need to keep your calendar empty if you’re going to get anything significant done, like [write a book.]” I’m hardly swanning around with the bon ton, but the past few days my thoughts have been preoccupied with filling the calendar, not with creative progress.

3) It’s official. Yesterday’s column on the President serving fast food got more views than any column in 2018.

Tuesday, January 15 - So Much, So Much

1) This morning - so long ago! - there really were a noticeable number of comments on ye Fycebykke looking for Etiquetteer to comment on President Trump serving fast food in the White House. So, I wrote it, and I can’t believe i was only 15 minutes late to work when I didn’t get into the shower until 8 AM.

1a) The result: a lot of interest in the column, a sharp spike in page views - the most since June 24, even more than Etiquetteer’s 2018 royal wedding coverage - a reduction by two of the number of Fycebykke likes on Etiquetteer’s page (but now it’s back up again), and a suggestion that the piece was “too self-referential.” And that may be. Also an anonymous Angry reaction. Mercy goodness people, declare yourselves!

1b) But the most important comment someone made was that it’s all a manufactured smoke screen, and keep paying attention to the Mueller investigation and Russia.

2) Interesting meetings today, one with a new (to me) volunteer who had great ideas, another with someone from another department who is just as much a character as I am. #youllneverwalkalone

3) The office is teeming with treats. Wasn’t all that supposed to be taken care of last month? Now we’re supposed to put the celery in celebration.

3a) That said, I have an entire coconut cake in my refrigerator.

4) Reclining in splendor in the gray room during the cocktail hour, suddenly a great banging on the front door. Almost the entire family from the third floor, including Little Miss, the Young Master, and New Baby, with a New Year’s gift for me: a fancy gold box of chocolates! Wasn’t that nice?

What I Remember About Carol Channing

Carol Channing is dead. I confess my first reaction was that of the extra in Sunset Boulevard: “Why, I thought she was dead!” I never met her, obviously. But this is what I remember about her:

• Some high school kid on Room 222 imitating her and other popular celebrites of the early 1970s, like Rich Little.

• In college, reading the book by the ad director of the “What becomes a legend most?” campaign for ye Blyckglyma mink, which included her. She only wore white, and he had to stop her forcibly from saying on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson that she received a white mink from ye Blyckglyma . . . which, of course, only comes in black.

• Someone I used to know in the 1990s constantly saying “Raspberries!”

• My shock at learning she was the original Lorelei Lee.

• The glee she expressed in an interview (I can no longer remember when or where I saw it) about the failure of the film version of Hello Dolly! since she wasn’t starring in it.

• Seeing Forbidden Broadway in the Terrace Room of the Park Plaza Hotel (why a room called the Terrace Room would be in the basement is a subject for another time) with Arthur Friedman and their “Call on Carol/Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend!” number. “Some people sing, some people dance, some people act. I do Hello Dolly!”

I rather wish we could all remember her in her heyday as Lorelei Lee . . . but how can you remember something that happened before you were born?

Rest in peace, dahling.

Books to Move Forward

I've enjoyed the short stories of O. Henry since I first read "The Gift of the Magi" in junior high school. When I'm back at my mother's house, I frequently take one of her two orange-and-blue bound O. Henry collected works into the bathroom with me.

When my great-aunt's household was being disbanded after she decided to move to a small apartment, I was given one of these O. Henry books (I can't remember which one). In the late 1980s, when I was living in Allston, I found the rest for $10 the set at a junk shop. I've loved them, but really . . . I was keeping them for the matching bindings in the Gloria Upson "Books are awfully decorative, don't you think?" Manner.

And since I hadn't actually opened one of these to read in over 20 years, I finally decided that it was time to move them forward into the universe - which really means the trash, since no one is reading O. Henry any more. I kept two (not pictured), The Trimmed Lamp and The Four Million, because my favorite stories are there. But these are now out of my house.

Back in 1989 - the year I quit my job and temped at an insurance company, the year I came out, the year of deep depression - I saw in the display window for Goodspeed's Rare Books a copy of Anna Leonowens' famous book An English Governess at the Siamese Court. It was $50, and I saved and saved and saved, and I bought it. It's been one of the chiefest gems of my library these 30 years.

I grew up on the original Broadway cast recording of The King and I with Yul Brynner and the divine Gertrude Lawrence, and at some point in high school or early college I got and read the book The King and I by Margaret Landon, based heavily on this book and Leonowens' other book The Romance of the Harem. I remember Landon said in her preface that her book was "75% fact and 25% fiction based on fact."

At that time in my life I was gripped by the story of Mrs. Leonowens coming to Siam from India with her little boy and a couple faithful Indian servants to serve as the first-ever European governess for the royal household. But I have had many interests come and go in the intervening years, most prominently the Ballets Russes, but also the Romanovs, the Titanic (which will always remain with me), French history (Claude Manceron's five-volume history came out in paperback in the early 1990s), and others.

I realized that it's time for someone else to enjoy this book. What a nice surprise to realize that it's a first edition!

Many years ago someone gave me this companion paperback to go with it. I have to confess I’ve never read it.

Wednesday, January 9

1) When you get to a low place, often the best thing to do is just to acknowledge that you’re in a low place.

1a) Yes, I’m in a low place.

2) On the political front, I can only say that a) responsible Republican politicians need to repudiate the President and get our government back up and running because b) Vladimir Putin is the only person to benefit from the President shutting our government and c) Althea Garrison is a Trump supporter? I knew she was a tenacious local gadfly, but really . . .

3) My trip to New York, just four days total, seemed to go on forever, but when I woke up this morning it was Monday and now it’s Wednesday night. #unoriginalobservation

January 3-6 - New York, New York

I write this on my last afternoon in New York from the first class lounge (such as it is) in Penn Station, ready to return home after lots of stimulation. Contemplating what I might do between breakfast and train time, my brain basically dribbled out my ears. I couldn’t think of a thing. It’s time to go home.

But there were a lot of firsts on this trip:

First visit to the J.P. Morgan Library.

First visit to the High Line.

First visit to the Whitney Museum.

First visit to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

First visit to the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.

First dinner party on the Upper West Side.

First time I thought I’d lost my wallet while traveling in a New York taxi (or was it?)

And I got to enjoy some return visits: to the Met (of course) . . .

. . . the Modulightor Building, HQ of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; and the Strand Bookstore (of course!).

Best of all I got to see Drew from Interlochen (at the Met) . . .

Julien, a Flickr friend for at least ten years (at the Modulightor Building) . . .

. . . Anthony from Interlochen (over lunch at Obicá) . . .

. . . and Jonathan from the Gibson House, at a very elegant dinner party at his home.

Two factors sparked together to make me take this trip: a good room rate from ye Myrriotte and the Warhol retrospective at the Whitney. I’m hardly a Warhol disciple, but this felt like the right thing to see . . . AND IT IS.

Wish I’d been able to do everything (I missed out on the Neue Galerie, El Museo del Barrio, and a couple other things), but all in all, it’s been a good trip.

Monday Morning, December 31 - Preparing for New Year's Eve

1) Candlelight coffee and devotional (First Timothy 1, C.S. Lewis, and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up).

1a) The writer whose habits I read about in How Artists Work (always my last devotional reading) was someone who could only write when he was angry. This had a bad effect on his health. (I can’t remember who it was, I just know I couldn’t work like that.)

2) Domesticity! Scrubbing all the porcelain in the bathroom and polishing large bits of silver to prepare for Tea and Tarot. The latter made me reflect on how I neglect the “good stuff” from my grandmother. What I really need is a bolt of Pacific cloth to make bags for all these bits of plate that don’t get used.

3) All year I say I want to do an Etiquetteer “Year in Review” column on good and bad manners of the Old Year, and every year it comes down to December 31 and I haven’t started it. So for a few hours I’ll be compiling that.

4) My God, I’m leaving for NYC later this week and I’ve hardly scheduled anything!

5) New Year’s Eve is my favorite night of the entire year, and this year is no exception.

New Year’s Eve, 1999.

Last Weekend of 2018

The luxury of two unscheduled days!

1) I don’t know why I kid myself that I’ll find presents for other people at ye Bryttle Books. But off I went, allegedly in search of Christmas gifts for other people, and of course I came away with zero books for them and four books for me:

1a) Stalin and his people, the discovery of cochineal, the presidential election of 1876, and the story of an art collection “dispersed” by World War II.

2) I curled up with Stalin at the bar of the Marliave for a late lunch that was not their macaroni and cheese - I had an actual salad! - and two spritzes. I’d enjoyed the author’s book about the Romanov dynasty so much I knew I’d enjoy this one.

3) The Thin Man is the perfect story for this time of year, whether it’s the Dashiell Hammett novel or the wonderful William Powell and Myrna Loy movie. The story takes place in New York around Christmas, 1932.

4) Galatians 6 turned out to be part of this morning’s devotional; this is the chapter that includes “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” I had to get out my big ol’ Revised Standard Version to help interpret the text; usually I’m reading the KJV.

4a) I must have four Bibles in this house, and I barely use one: the RSV I was given when I was confirmed (hardback, with my name on the cover in a corner in gold), another RSV, and my Gramma’s KJV from when she was second reader at the Christian Science Church well before I was born. The small KJV I use for daily was given to my uncle by the Christian Scientists when he was drafted in WWII.

5) I felt like I was on a roll this morning getting out today’s Etiquetteer video and handling laundry and other domesticity.

6) What a surprise, too, to learn via ye Twyttyr that today is the 20th anniversary of the release of James Cameron’s Titanic! Great opportunity for me to repost all the etiquette errors in the movie that I found, which generated some good engagement.

7) Tonight a three-ring circus in the kitchen. If I wasn’t baking a three-day cake (to be served in only two days) I was cooking dinner or washing dishes.

8) “Fast away the old year passes” indeed! Hard to believe tomorrow is my favorite night of the whole year already, but here it comes!

Christmas Vacation 2018, Days Six and Seven - Christmas and Day of the False Departure

1) Mother and I ended up not having a Christmas dinner at all as planned, but after our very nice surprise visit with the neighbors, we each had a big ol’ NAP, and barely even exchanged a gift each before the arrival of the Tylers. The gift from me that Mother opened was a new-edition Scrabble dictionary; the gift from her I opened was a small brass easel on which to stand small pictures or plates for display.

1a) We usually exchange one gift apiece on Christmas morning, but somehow we didn’t do that this year.

2) I was just about to get into the tub for a Big Soak when I got a call from Laura that they were half an hour away. So I changed course for the shower and could emerge freshly clean and pressed almost as soon as they arrived via motorcycle and van.

3) Youger Nephew Who Must Not Be Tagged and his wife had not joined earlier Christmas Day festivities due to work commitments, but they were able to join us eventually so that we could commence exchanging gifts. Among other things I got a small thick blank book embossed with a Buddha and with a complicated brass lock, a small black Japanese “happy cat” figurine,” a T-shirt with the entire text of Alice in Wonderland printed on it around a design of the White Rabbit, a copy of How Not to Be a Dick: An Everyday Etiquette Guide, a very very dark plaid shirt, and a thick cream-colored scarf that had belonged to my grandmother (and which is perfect to wear with both my gray overcoat and my black cape.)

4) We moved on to Christmas supper of ham chowder prepared by Niece Who Must Not Be Tagged. I now sit in my daddy’s place at the head of the table; this year the children were in the four seats closest to me, and they really speak their own language. It’s like my own language of lines from Movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood, only their cultural references come from places I don’t even know. Later they showed me a compilation of Vines on the Yewtybbe, so now at least I know where “An avocado!” comes from.

5) The household wound down early, but I stayed up until after 10 PM, only to pass a fitful night - not unusual on the night before flying.

6) Up at 7 AM, and Laura and I took off for the mall after a catch-as-catch-can breakfast so I could snatch up a particular gift for someone at ye Dyllyarde’s. My brother-in-law took off even before we left on his motorcycle to beat the rain.

7) Now I am just not one of those people who beat down the doors to go to after-Christmas sales, but there was something I particularly had my eye on, and Laura was game, God bless her. My goodness, the excitement of the two dozen or so ladies assembled at the entrance when the doors opened! And to my dismay, they were all headed to the department where I, too, was headed. But there was no cutthroat atmosphere, all quite friendly. I found what I was looking for - and then my head went completely blank.

8) Laura and I retreated for coffee at ye Styrbyckke’s and got to catch up on family and other stuff. We made a tour of the mall looking for shoes for Mother and getting a few ideas.

9) En route home, as we circumnavigated the rotary from Prien Lake onto Holly Hill, I unintentionally started a debate on some of the Big Social Issues by mentioned that they should put a statue on the hillock at the center of the rotary.

10) And indeed, the mood had become very end-of-holiday as I turned my focus onto packing all my gifts and clothes, stripping the bed and getting a load of wash in, and all those other necessary tasks.

11) Niece and Mother prepared lunch - mostly the menu Mother and I were going to enjoy for our Christmas dinner - for which Oldest Nephew Who Must Not Be Tagged joined us. My niece did a great job!

12) All the women in the house went off to buy shoes, leaving me on my own to finish packing, bathe, and sort through the conservative junk mail. I think I put over two dozen envelopes in the mail.

13) The weather had turned to rain - I never like flying in bad weather - and when we got to the airport, I didn’t let the family come in to see me get checked in or wait around. Mother really likes to do this, so she was disappointed. The airline staff were very friendly as usual, and even showed me how to download the airline’s app onto my phone. “You’ll probably get updates before we will,” they said . . . which was prescient, since about 20 minutes later I got an update on the app that my flight was cancelled! I made a beeline to the counter, where they rebooked me on the first flight out Thursday.

14) About 20 minutes later the family retrieved me, and off we went to Y*** S***, the Chinese restaurant closest to Mother’s house, where she and Daddy used to go.

15) Back at home, Laura trounced both Mother and me at Scrabble. Indeed, I turned out to be the beetlebomb. Whom the gods destroy, they first give all the letters for a perfect Q word without the Q.

16) Dead beat, I headed off to bed at the ridiculous hour of 8:15 PM, only to wake up at midnight - and to learn that my rebooked flight has also been cancelled, and I have now been ticketed (but without a seat) on the midday flight. I love traveling safely, and I am grateful for all the air traffic controllers and ground crews and pilots and co-pilots and airline staff who keep us all safe when we fly. But it’s also time to get home to Boston, and I am hoping the weather, and the confusion, will clear sufficiently for that to happen both safely and NOW.