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.

Thursday, March 1

1) Friends don't let friends forward memes with typos. #seesomethingsaysomething

2) Watching Rebecca, the line "Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy" always makes me wonder what kind of instrument the fancy is . . .

2a) . . . and is it played by tickling it?

3) Eye exam this afternoon for the first time since 2014. The eye doctor and I . . . well, we're just not on the same wavelength, and that's not because I was both hangry and a shade annoyed at being kept waiting after having been asked to come 15 minutes early.

3a) Good news: I'm not going blind.

Wednesday, February 28

1) Emceed a conference today, bossing people back into their seats ("Attention, ladies and gentlemen - no really, we are starting the program now!") and listening to some great presentations from faculty and campus planners.

2) After the closing reception, walked over the bridge and all the way to Mass. Ave. Station with a colleague, my coat slung over my arm. It is freakishly warm right now, but I gather that bad weather is coming.

3) Because of the conference, I was offline from ~7 AM - ~6 PM. Fantastic.

Tuesday Night, February 27

1) This was the sort of day where your deodorant wears off before 9:30 AM, and you know that it has.

2) My dark gray mood lifted when I got to the office and found a card addressed to me on my desk. Inside, a thank-you note from a colleague for whom I'd done a favor with a small gift. That thoughtfulness lifted my clouds.

3) But it was a day of intensity: software testing, a lot of requests from volunteers, conversations on the Big Issues, realization of long-past deadlines, and final preparation for the etiquette dinner. And a headache.

4) And the dinner went well. I was very impressed that none of the 50 students put their smartphones on the dinner table, and I got some very good questions from them. The caterers provided us with a menu with some challenges, too: Statler chicken breast, tagliatelle pasta, and spicy soup with overly large pieces of lettuce in it. I'll be eager to hear about the evaluations.

Tuesday Morning, February 27

1) Feeling a bit overwhelmed this morning, and anxious about maintaining my energy levels throughout the day. Aside from the long list of needful things to do crowding on me, tonight I'm hosting an etiquette dinner for 50 students, and I need to be sure I'm completely prepared.

2) From today's devotional: "I am only trying to call attention to the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity #guiltyascharged

3) Not even five minutes on ye Fycebykke this morning left me feeling depleted and dispirited.

Weekend in Vermont, February 24-25

1) Left town after work with my friends for the drive northwest to southern Vermont. We stopped in Leominster for a Mexican-inflected dinner (Inflexican?) that I found both tasty and amusing. The amusing part was the "Big Mac" guacamole special, based on "two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, but no sesame seed bun."

2) My friends T and D moved into a new-to-them home in a different town, still outside Brattleboro. Walking into the house late Friday night was like walking back into the good parts of the early 1970s: rough chocolate-brown woodwork inside and out, cathedral ceilings with exposed beams, and triangular windows at the apex - just like the den Mother and Daddy added to the back of the house in 1973, but without all the harvest gold and avocado green.

2a) This house begs for a macramé owl wall hanging with orange beads for eyes and beak, but I think they'd never speak to me again if I gave them one. :-)

3) Saturday and Sunday mornings were spent on coffee, writing (for me), yoga, soaking in the hot tub, and delicious breakfasts. After such a long time away, all that yoga kicked my @$$. Will I answer this wakeup call, or hit the snooze alarm again?

3a) Sunday breakfast was enlivened by a squirrel (see above) practically making love to a block of seed-studded suet discovered at the base of a tree.

4) Saturday evening it was off to Rowe an hour or so away for a potluck at the home of a mutual friend. A house bursting at the seams with good conversation and a superabundance of pasta. More than once I retreated to one of the upstairs bedrooms for a little breathing room.

5) This afternoon we saw the documentary Tab Hunter Confidential on ye Nytflyxe, which interested me very much since I'd read the book when it came out a few years ago. Almost fell on the floor when I saw that one of the talking heads was Rona Barrett! As the extra said of Norma Desmond, "I thought she was dead!"

6) On the last leg of our drive home tonight, surprised and pleased to hear a radio ad for the event I'm speaking at for WGBH on the 10th.

Friday Midday, February 23

1) I just want you to know that I am actively resisting posting a link on ye Fycebykke to every news story I read today. You're welcome. :-)

2) It ain't spring yet, but "Spring Waters" is the best soundtrack for today. I forget how I happened to discover this song a year or two ago, but I find it ravishing with its sound-images of water rushing through slabs of ice in a riverbed, of Hope for the future:

2a) Mme. Gheorghiu's gown looks remarkably like Luise Rainer's negligee in The Great Ziegfeld.

3) No longer working in the hotbox since they replaced the office thermostat, but yesterday it was the icebox instead; inside it hovered between 66 and 67 degrees all day! They have now removed the new thermostat completely and will come back to install correctly. Working in comfort today.

Friday Morning, February 23

1) This morning I went from the astonishing surprise of Psalm 133, "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" to President Trump's proposal to arm teachers but not conduct active shooter drills. #whiplash

1a) I admire the young people who have been so tragically impacted by the Parkland School shooting for not retreating from what happened but for advocating so forcefully for meaningful change. I doubt I'd've had the strength or the brains to lead that way at that age.

1b) And while we're on the subject, a lady always knows when the leave a party and, like Pat Robertson, Wayne LaPierre is no lady.

2) The sun is shining now, but the weekend is full of wintry mix.

3) I really should be returning to The Courtier, but I have a couple big Etiquetteer projects to work on.

Washington's Birthday Midday, 2018

1) Black, gray, and a splash of pink.

2) Yesterday I had a voicemail message from a woman who called me "Mr. Dimmick" and identified herself as "the widow of [Name of Man I Knew for 25 Years]." Since I've known this man and his wife 25 years or more, I thought it was odd she'd address me so formally. When I called her back I said "[Name of Wife], it's so nice to hear from you!" Imagine my surprise when she replied "I'm so glad you called. I'm not [Name of Wife], but his first wife" . . . of whom I knew nothing!

3) Just to be clear, I took notice of Billy Graham's death, I'm not mourning him. There's a difference.

Practice

1) Each of my grandmothers knew only one joke. The joke my maternal grandmother knew was about the honeymoon couple in New York, lost on the Lower East Side trying to get to a concert. They saw a little old man sitting on his stoop and asked "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" His answer (you saw this coming, I think): "Prektis, prektis, prektis." And Gramma would say it just like that, too.

2) From The High and the Mighty:

Gate Agent: “She may be put together with paste and flour, but that woman has something. What would you think it is?”
Alsop: “Practice. Plenty of practice!"

3) This year at Doyle's (and probably elsewhere) Saturday, February 17 was dubbed "Saint Practice Day," a training opportunity for Saint Patrick's Day. I think it's brilliant marketing.

Wednesday Night, February 21

1) For the first time in a long time, I had a good, high-energy day at the office. Do not ask me to explain why - I couldn't. Productivity, not too much drama, timely answers from people when I needed them, and the possibility of a very interesting project. I needed this.

2) No podcasts tonight, but back to The Bad and the Beautiful. Lana Turner freaks out behind the wheel!

3) This morning when I saw that Rev. Billy Graham died I called Mother, remembering ther period of my childhood when she and Daddy were paying attention to Rex Humbard and Oral Roberts on television Sunday mornings. This evening, reading the Fycebykke posts from friends about Graham's homophobia. Two sides to every coin.

3a) For awhile Daddy actually wanted me to go to Oral Roberts University, but when I heard they had height and weight requirements for their students, I thought that was just waaaaay too regimented for me, not to mention unfair to those they'd deny for reasons of the body.