Friday Morning, December 13 - Important Readings

Some interesting things have popped out at me during my morning devotional this week:

1) I am so glad that I took Mother’s Interpreter’s Bible when we were cleaning out the house last March, because it includes her marginalia; it’s valuable to me to see what was meaningful, or prompted insight, to her. Right now I’m going through Luke. Beside Luke 8:47, “When the woman saw that she could not deceive him, she came trembling, and fell down and worshipped him; and she said i the presence of all the people for what purpose she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately,” Mother pencilled “She spoke the reason she needed Jesus.” I think it must have been the idea of a public declaration of one’s individual need for Christ that moved her to make that note.

1a) On a scrap of lined paper on the page before this she wrote in pencil “Luke 8:45-56 AFFECTION.”

2) Those were yesterday. Today, somewhat preoccupied with thoughts of world leaders, I came to Luke 9:25: “For how can a man be benefited, if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul, or even weakens it?” How indeed!

3) And immediately afterward, from my beloved Gracian’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, #106, something in the same vein: “Don’t flaunt your good fortune. It is more offensive to take excessive pride in your high office than in yourself. Don’t play the “great man” - it is odious - and don’t be proud of being envied. The more strenuously you seek esteem from others, the less of it you will have. It depends on respect. You can’t simply grab it, you have to deserve it and wait for it. Important occupations call for a certain gravity and decorum. Keep only what the occupation requires, what you need to fulfill your obligations. Don’t squeeze it dry; help it along . . . even a king ought to be venerated more because of his person than because of his pomp and circumstance.”

Thursday Morning, December 12 - Happiness

I feel ridiculously happy this morning. Why? WHY?!

1) My home sizzles with cleanness after a good vigorous cleaning yesterday. The sunshine coming through my parlor windows this morning emphasizes how cozy everything is, and also somehow that Christmas is coming.

2) At an arts-oriented meetup earlier this week I got to chat with a very nice Gentleman Younger Than I, and he sent me a Nice to Meet You email today.

3) I got a great reaction to yesterday’s column about unwanted casseroles, which I kind of wasn’t expecting.

4) Big surprise yesterday when I opened my back door to discover a cardboard box of a dozen pears - a Christmas gift from my old neighbors who moved out in June. Completely unexpected! Wasn’t that sweet of them?

5) I didn’t read the news yesterday at all. While I did take in some of the news this morning, somehow my good mood is impervious to it . . . today.

Monday Morning, December 9

1) Up at 4:15 - I just couldn’t sleep. Chicory coffee and devotional in the parlor, including but not limited to Luke 5, parts of Whitman’s Calamus Poems, Baltasar Gracian, and the work routine of Shostakovich. I love being up in wintertime pre-dawn dark . . . but I feel a nap coming on this afternoon.

2) Yesterday afternoon I was Christmas shopping in a bookstore where I saw a satire of our current political situation, The Captain and the Glory. And it just hit me like a rock that I have no laughter for the tragedy taking place in our country right now. Just none. And this morning, briefly scanning the news, I had no stomach for it. What’s happening here is a tragedy.

3) Big list of stuff to do after last week’s “mad, glittering week” of activities and engagements. This week will be much more domestic and pedestrian, and that’s OK.

Monday Evening, December 2

1) Today the bobeches arrived in the mail, so I could actually light the red tapers in Granny’s candelabra.

1a) I lit them during the cocktail hour, and it’s quite clear I’ll have to put something under them anyway to keep the wax from damaging the sideboard.

2) New artificial Christmas tree arrives later this week, so tonight I started rounding up ornaments from the different places they’ve been squirreled away. I have a feeling others will turn up!

2a) Some of these are childhood friends, others were acquired as an adult, either gifts or purchases. But since I’ve so rarely had a Christmas tree in my own home - why go to all that trouble when spending half of December with the family? - they haven’t gotten a lot of use.

3) I am embracing the novelty of keeping Christmas in my own little home this year. Next year, who knows? I might go plop myself down on the beach someplace. But for this first year, it feels right.

Saturday Evening, November 30 - Granny's Birthday

I suddenly remembered this afternoon, coming out of a monster NAP, that November 30 is my Granny Dimmick’s birthday. Of course she died in 1982 on the night before her 91st birthday, which would have made her almost 130 now. But she was an expansive person with a big smile who loved her family and having them around, and is not easily forgotten by those who loved her.

I wrote this about her two years ago, looking at the similarities between her and myself. Today, at this moment, I remember the good fortune my sister and I had growing up with grandparents right next door. I don’t know that we were popping in and out of the house all the time, but we were there quite a bit.

Occasionally one of us would get invited over for lunch - sometimes together, but I think more often it was separately. I remember these luncheons around the large glass-and-white-wrought-iron table in the glass-enclosed sun porch one step down from the rest of the house. My memory is that it was always sunny, that the room was dusty, and the black wrought-iron stand of African violets was dusty and rusty. And as happy as Granny and Grampa were to see me, I knew I’d have to be on my best behavior, sitting between them at each end of that large table.

Uncle Tom, Daddy, Aunt Eleanor, Uncle Clinton, and Granny, sometime in the 1940s.

Because you just did not get out of line with Granny. But she was always, always radiantly happy to see you. Coming home from Interlochen one spring break I wanted to go see her immediately after getting out of the car. Mother, a bit exasperated, made me go unpack first. “Mother, you know Granny is going to call,” I argued. And sure enough, not five minutes passed before the phone rang. “I told you!” I called as I ran next door, not unpacked yet. But that’s how she was - she wanted to see you right now. She pronounced “darling” without the R and the G - “Hello, dallin!” - almost rhyming it with “talent.”

She probably taught all the grandchildren how to play canasta, and she and my sister and I would play together. We played Hearts, too, and I remember how tickled she was when I nicknamed the Queen of Spades “Bloody Mary.” (How I came up with this I have NO recollection. Certainly by the time I was ten I was reading about Mary, Queen of Scots in the World Book encyclopedia, but she was never called “Bloody Mary.” And growing up in a household of teetotallers I sure didn’t see anyone drinking a bloody mary.) And if she didn’t have someone to play cards with, she’d just play solitaire at her card table in the living room.

As I remember her, she was always happiest at the big family gatherings: so many Thanksgivings and Easters at Aunt Betty and Uncle Hutch’s, and always Christmas Eve at her house, which could be >30 people if everyone showed up. Like me, I think she just loved the hustle and bustle, but I also think she liked being anchored in it in one place - at the center of it all. And it’s lovely to remember her that way today.

Saturday Morning, November 30

1) Awake early, candlelight parlor coffee and devotional. KJV Luke 1, C.S. Lewis daily (on the subject of pity), and the work habits of Igor Stravinsky from How Artists Work.

2) It is now officially the Christmas season! And because the Sunday forecast is a vigorous and snowy one, it means prioritizing assignments outside the house today and inside tomorrow.

2a) With it being the Christmas season now, that also makes it the official season for viewing the 1951 A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim, after which you’ll never need to watch any of the others.

2a.1) Happily this also includes Hermione Baddeley as Mrs. Cratchit! (Children of my generation will remember her as Bea Arthur’s housekeeper Mrs. Naugatuck on Maude.)

3) At times I have an appalling knack for saying the exact wrong thing. I wish I knew where this came from.

BONUS: TFW your phone makes a sound that you’ve never heard, when you didn’t do anything, and you think it’s the Russians hacking your phone.

Friday, November 29 - The Morning After

1) Thank you, I had a lovely Thanksgiving with my Mayflower cousins ye Hychttes, a dozen of ‘em. I am one of the two Traditional Orphans to appear; the other, ye Lyndya, was also present, as well as a collection of young Europeans brought by one of the grandchildren.

1a) i baked a three-day cake, as I most often do, but the star dessert was without question a chocolate pie from a bakery in Florence so magnificent it nearly melted on the tongue. Mmphgh!

2) Now comes the dawn, and even though I took care not to overindulge (read: I didn’t have seconds), I am moving heavily.

3) And with the dawn, the dawning horror that we are now quite irrevocably in the season and I am not ready! On the plus side, I still have all the Christmas cards I didn’t send in 2018, and they’ll do beautifully for 2019. And I am excited to decorate my own home (which I rarely do) since I will actually be in it for Christmas Itself for the first time. But my goodness, so much to clear away before that can happen!

3a) It also seems that invitations sent to me via ye Fycebykke just whiz past me unnoticed, so I’m having a couple Whoopsie-doo Moments with Kind Friends. Aigh!

Wednesday, November 27 - The Night Before Thanksgiving

1) Twenty years ago this month I started working at the Ballet Company. I was going to write a lengthier post about that anniversary, but I’m not. My four years at the Company are a jewel with darker facets as well as brilliant ones; for my story to make sense, both sides need to be seen, and I’m not ready. Let’s just say that I learned just how much i could stand, made many mistakes, witnessed some magnificent and moving performances, hosted some wonderful parties, and met some incredible people, several of whom I continue to cherish all these years later. Tough as it was some days, I’ve never regretted my time there, and I continue to rejoice in the Company’s success all these years later.

1a) “And to think what I’ve sacrificed for Howard Fowler!” “Such as what, Mrs. Fowler” “I GAVE HIM MY YOUTH!”

2) Luncheon at the Marliave today with two friends up from Our Nation’s Capital who I had not seen for many months. Sparkling rosé, scallops and pumpkin gnocchi for me, virtuous pre-Thanksgiving salads with chicken for them.

2a) Afterward, browsing through ye Mycye’s, I bought a plaid shirt for myself because it reminded me of Mother, and of a scarf she gave me one Christmas ages ago: white and black plaid, with a line of red. It was a beautiful scarf she’d bought at the church craft fair, and she loved it and loved giving it to me. So of course I felt terrible when I eventually lost it.

3) Leaving the Marliave, I started reflecting on the Day Before Thanksgiving and what that’s been like in my office life. The halls already thinned by colleagues taking vacation all week, the late morning email confirming suspicions that the office really would close at 3 PM, possibly a basket of goodies on Temptation Island, and sometimes the preference to stay later to finish up a project and just enjoy Rare Office Solitude before catching the bus home. I love the feeling of anticipation in the air - less pronounced than Christmas, but there - but this year I’m also thankful that I can enjoy that anticipation outside an office. This really has been a year of change, and it continues to be.

Friday, November 22 - Late-Night Thoughts

1) I’ve been away from most social media during the past week, except to post a column, and generally that’s been good.

2) Dining with a friend on Wednesday, the sudden horror of realizing that Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK! How did that happen?!

2a) Thank goodness all I have to do is bake a cake and show up.

3) The contractor’s estimate for the kitchen renovation has come in. My first thought was that we are not going to get started in January, as I’d hoped. Next I remembered Robert Lawson’s definition of “estimate” from his amusing glossary of country life in WWII Connecticut, Country Colic. It begins: “A form of light fiction, generally in four parts, each increasing by 50%.”

3a) I am going to have to rethink some features of Howard Johnson’s at Versailles . . .

4) Yoga last Sunday, and last night (Thursday). Movement in my right leg has become stiffer, which indicates a need for . . . more yoga!

5) After maybe or maybe not being almost followed home one night last week, I was surprised when waiting to cross my street at the stoplight this afternoon to find two young men of high school age stop about two feet behind me. Usually the kids talk to each other, but these two, obviously together, did not. I grew the distance between us to the curb. When the walk light came on I continued on my way, and they were perhaps 6-10 feet behind me. One went into the corner hangout, the other slooooooooowly continued in my direction. He didn’t pass my house until I’d moved the trashcans back to their proper places and gone inside. Through the parlor window I saw him continue slowly down the street.

5a) Doyle’s closing means there’s less public traffic here, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

6) This afternoon I finally started moving boxes from home out of the dining room, with only a bit of unpacking. But I found two bags of chicory coffee I’d bought last March - just as my supply in the freezer was running out!

Sunday, November 17 - In Review, Balancing Gratitude and Shadows

1) Quote of the Day One: First Timothy 2:1-2: “I beseech you, therefore, first of all to offer to God, petitions, prayers, supplications, and thanksgiving for all men, For kings and for all in authority; that we may life a quiet and peacable life, in purity and Godliness.” [emphasis Mother’s]

2) Quote of the Day Two: “Only by taking charge of your day-to-day can you truly make an impact in what matters most to you.” — Scott Belsky, in the foreword of Manage Your Day-to-Day

3) Now balance those with Gertrude in Hamlet - “O Hamlet, speak no more! Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, And there I see such black and grainèd spots As will not leave their tinct.” - and Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce: “Veda, I feel like I’m seeing you for the first time, and you’re cheap and horrible!” These are the kinds of dialogues I have with myself.

4) This morning I finally published a column that I’d been working on for awhile - it just didn’t come easily. But within ten minutes I’d gotten a complimentary response from a reader.

4a) That was followed a few hours later by a request to unsubscribe from my mailing list.

5) Grateful today for so many things: for publishing that column, for John Bel Edwards’ victory in the Home State, for actually having an avocado in the house when that’s what I wanted, for discovering quite by chance The Man in Grey with James Mason and Stewart Granger, which I’d read about in passing 30 years ago in Ronald Haver’s book about the 1954 A Star Is Born; for actually going to yoga, even if it kicked my ass.

6) But I fight back shadows, too, every day. I may need to embrace them to conquer them.

Thursday, November 14 - Jumpy

1) My day at home was punctuated with long stretches of the smoke detectors going off all over the building, complete with an audio voice crying “Evacuate! Evacuate!” All this because the new second-floor neighbors began their kitchen renovation today. A friend on FB suggested that they had neglected to cover the smoke detectors with shower caps - a brilliant idea I will certainly utilize when my kitchen reno begins this winter! At any rate, all that ear-splitting noise was enough to knot my back like an old pine tree.

1a) While dining a seul in Harvard Square, neighbors texted that apparently the alarms went off again, repeatedly, during the evening, but that they seem to be under control and to call if they went off again during the night. Somehow this doesn’t indicate a restful night of sleep to me . . .

2) Now the really lovely thing today was getting to attend a cocktail party held to honor a dear friend’s major employment anniversary. I was a wee bit anxious, as I expected to know only the honoree and perhaps one other person. Instead, it was about five or six acquaintances, which was enough for me to be comfortable. Luscious autumnal drinks, tasty bits, and the best kind of remarks: heartfelt and brief.

3) Walking past English High School on the way home (as usual) I was surprised to see a man (for a moment I thought he had a dog) come out of the shadows near the trees and benches, slowly walking in the other direction. But it was like he emerged from nowhere.

3a) This set me to thinking about February, 2012, when I was thrown to the ground from behind by two men and had my tote bag stolen; this happened on the same street, just a couple blocks away. Remembering that, I turned to look behind me on a dark stretch a couple houses down from my house . . . and there was a man following me about 20 feet away. Maybe it was the same man; I can’t be sure. But he saw me see him, and I certainly felt my blood pressure spike. When I turned back again, before going up my front stairs, he was gone.

3b) I’m grateful something prompted me to turn around.

Veteran's Day 2019 - Grampa

1) For my devotional this morning, as is my Veteran’s Day custom, I took out my Grampa Dimmick’s Complete Poems of Robert W. Service to read his favorite poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”

1a) Every year I also look through it for “In Flanders Field,” because every year I forget that Service didn’t write it, John McCrae did. Oops.

2) Laura found the doughboy photo of him above when we were going through Mother’s house last March. Neither of us had seen it before, and of course Grampa looked very different as a young man compared to the bald old Grampa we knew. This must have been how he looked when Granny first saw him in Opelousas, when she turned to her friend in the kitchen and said “That’s the man I’m going to marry.” (That story, and the Pole Vaulter from Manila story, may be found here.)

3) Grampa was a real all-American success story in the Horatio Alger tradition. He came from nothing, orphaned in early childhood, deceived the Army about his age so he could serve his country, didn’t make a success until he started the family business in his forties during the Great Depression. “Luck and Pluck,” indeed! He was a great American, and our family owes him a lot.

My History with the Rocky Horror Picture Show

This Hallowe’en I have been given a ticket to a 7 PM screening of 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Coolidge. It is reminding me of screenings from earlier times in my life.

Thanksgiving, 1981. School made the unwise decision to close the dormitories. I was not going to be able to fly home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas; thankfully a classmate persuaded her parents to welcome me and another classmate into their home in or near Detroit. (I think we must’ve taken the bus down; I honestly don’t remember now how we got there and back.)

It must’ve been the Saturday after Thanksgiving that we went to some cinema on the outskirts of Detroit to lose my virginity; I was going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time. One friend was already an Old Hand at All This, whereas I had no idea what I was getting myself into, really. I at least knew there was audience participation. She may have tried to explain the plot. We got there. I’d never been to a cinema where they confiscated switchblades at the door. There was another group of classmates from high school there, too, including the Only Boy in the World (at that time). They were sitting elsewhere.

The film began. Chaos. I could not hear what was going on on screen. I had no idea why people in maid’s costumes were running up and down the aisle. All I knew was that you were supposed to scream ASSHOLE after Brad’s name and SLUT after Janet’s name. Every time the white-haired man with the cravat came on screen a woman behind me screamed “WHERE’S YA NECK?! WHERE’S YA FUCKIN’ NECK?!” and all I wanted was to understand what he was saying!

Needless to say, they did not make a social success of me in Detroit. I haven’t returned since.

One year later, only marginally more sophisticated, I had arrived in the Big City, Boston, for college. One night I went the decaying Exeter Street Theatre* with a girl from high school and a friend of hers to the midnight screening of RHPS. This time I wore a black-and-gold paisley acetate smoking jacket had been a hand-me-down from someone to my dad (which was clearly not his style). We had seats on the aisle in the center of the house, and 20 minutes into the movie the girls went to the ladies room and never returned. I mean, they were gone over 30 minutes, and I was deeply uncomfortable just sitting there on the aisle next to two empty seats in the middle of all that crazy. So, in an age before cell phones, I assumed they’d abandoned me and I just left.

I will never forget waiting in line one time and the theatre manager was asking everyone if they wanted to be Frank in the floor show.

There were a few other screenings in those first two years of college, and the best thing to do was to walk back from the Exeter Street to the dorm on Commonwealth Avenue (a loong walk) via Greek restaurant in Kenmore Square that was open until 4AM to get avgolemono soup and a gyro or something. Every city needs some good unpretentious late-night restaurants.

After the Exeter Street closed the RHPS moved over to Harvard Square Cinema, and after that was acquired by a Great Big Cinema Chain they kept the midnight screening. I went a few times over the years - not very often, but it was always fun. I can’t remember the last time; it couldn’t be later than the mid-1990s.

The last time I saw RHPS in public was about ten years ago in P’town as part of its International Film Festival. They screened it in Town Hall, Glinda the Good Witch appeared to introduce it, and there was a floor show. I was with the Much Younger Boyfriend of a friend, and a couple other friends. The former was perhaps seeing it for the first time, and he had done a lot of research about the audience participation. He even brought a deck of cards to scatter for the “cards for pain” lyric in Frank’s last song.

After all these years, my favorite audience participation line remains one of the most obscure: “I’d like to see something in green, please!” And while I’m definitely going to what amounts to the Early Bird Special screening, at this stage in my life, that feels exactly right.

Does anybody here know how to Madison?

*I miss the Exeter Street Theatre! Based in an old church, the Spiritual Temple at the corner of Exeter and Newbury, it was just a rundown moviehouse of the most magical kind. In 1985 it was turned into a Conran’s, and then Waterstone’s, and now it’s offices.

Phantom of the Opera 1943

There are many filmed and staged versions of Gaston Leroux’s masterpiece of horror, the novel Phantom of the Opera. The original film version with Lon Chaney remains a classic of the silent era; I’ll never forget seeing it in college with a live pipe organ accompaniment. There was a TV version with Charles Dance as the Phantom. Without question, though, my favorite is the 1943 film with Claude Rains as the Phantom, Nelson Eddy, Suzanne Foster as Christine, Hume Cronyn as the second detective, and Gladys Blake, who also shows up in The Women and in These Glamour Girls as the cashier at the dance hall.

Why my favorite? Well, not because of Claude Rains (much as I love him), and not because of the traditional Hollywood liberties taken with the plot. Nelson Eddy is fantastic; the trailer says that it is his “most vigorous performance.” I adore Suzanne Foster, one of the birdlike sopranos of the period. Jane Farrar as the wicked soprano Biancarolli scintillates with evil. (“Why, I was drugged! And you ALL know by who. Anatole Garron DID IT . . . to make room for that . . . for that BAGGAGE!”) And it seems so incongruous to see Hume Cronyn cast in such a meaningless throwaway part when he went on to achieve such fame (and had already started to do so on the Broadway stage . . . ) The costumes are magnificent.

Mostly, it’s the music. This movie begins with the Paris Opera performing Martha, now little known but at one time such a standard part of the repertoire that it had to be performed annually. “Mag der himmel euch vergeben,” which I think is the finale of Act III, comes near the beginning of the film, and for awhile it was one of my musical obsessions. It’s sung in French here. I just love it.

But far and above that is the opera the filmmakers cobbled together from the music of Chopin, Amour et Gloire. Because of WWII, for some reason they couldn’t secure copyright from all the traditional operas they wanted, so they had to improvise. You definitely recognize all the tunes! (Go to 03:42 on this clip for the start.) During the opera, Biancarolli is directed to drink something from a goblet (the words “creme de menthe” are audible in her lyrics). The Phantom, knowing this, has already added poison to it. When Biancarolli leaves the stage, she is taken ill, collapses, and is taken to her dressing room. Christine, her understudy, has to be made ready to go in in her place - and fast! Nelson Eddy, on stage, and the conductor in the pit have no idea anything is wrong.

Suddenly, during the ball, Nelson Eddy receives a message from Napoleon that the troops are required in battle. He calls out to the assembly “Comrades! L’Empereur nous appelle!” The sound then comes of what is supposed to be Biancarolli’s character singing offstage. The voice, we know, is Christine’s. We see Nelson, and then the conductor, look up expectantly, and then . . . and then . . . and then Christine makes her entrance at the top of a grand staircase, singing her big aria. Nelson Eddy falls back, dazzled by the dream of performing at last with the lady he loves on the stage of the Paris Opera.

And that’s all well and good, but what is exciting about this is the music! When they were cobbling together this Chopin opera for the movie, the music they chose for this was his famous nocturne opus 9, No. 2 - which my gramma played, which Mother played, and which I was learning to play at the time I first saw this movie. The thrill remains with me every time I see this, even erty-farf years later. And it is thrilling! “MOM, C’MERE!”

Oddly enough I started thinking about this ‘cause I was watching Charlie Chan at the Opera with Boris Karloff (and William Demarest as the racist police sergeant) - go figure!

Saturday Night, October 26, 2019 - The Last Night at Doyle's

1) The unthinkable became inevitable when the closing of Doyle’s was announced in September. The inevitable became unavoidable yesterday, the planned-but-unannounced closing night. It was my desire to be the last customer out, and to get my favorite little booth in the center room. So I packed a bag and ankled over about 4 PM. in the words of the late Countess of Trentham, “I don’t want to miss anything.”

1a) Yes, I packed a bag! Laptop, journal, notebook, pen, Cecil Beaton’s The Glass of Fashion, a history of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (in case I finished the Beaton), Weeping Baby Pumpkin Head (because it’s October), and three clean white handkerchiefs, which I was sure I’d need. I expected to be bawling at the end of the night.

2) They had reserved my little booth for me. And I’d barely sat down and ordered a cup of coffee before Rick Berlin Himself, Jill, and a couple other staff ambushed me with a couple gifts: a limited-edition wooden Christmas ornament with the Doyle’s logo and the dates, and a framed photo of me with several of the staff, taken night before last and signed by almost everyone. I was truly not expecting that, and I was deeply moved.

2a) I knew I was settling in for the long haul, so I ordered a coffee when I arrived, my first manhattan of the night at 5, my customary order of wing dings with bleu cheese at 6, and then dinner about 7.

3) The place felt quite full when I arrived, and word was getting around that this was The End. Across the aisle from me was a family party with a little blonde girl about three years old and her attentive young uncle (I hope he was her uncle) with such an attractive voice I could’ve listened to him read the phone book for days.

4) Suddenly my phone went off. A text message from a friend from ye Instytytte with a photo of her and her boyfriend at Doyle’s. “Are you here now?!” I replied. I dashed to the back room - and nearly collided with her coming to find me! A joyous reunion - we hadn’t seen each other since I left the office in July. This was not the sort of meeting I expected on the last night at Doyle’s - but how wonderful it was!

4a) Later she found another former colleague and dragged him in from the front room, and we three stood about chatting - and were then approached by still another colleague from ye Instytytte. Again, how wonderful!

5) My second manhattan came around the time my dinner did. For my last dinner I ordered the steak tips (which I almost never did) with rice and broccoli. This may sound disloyal, but it’s not news: one didn’t go to Doyle’s for the food, which was solid but quite ordinary (although their pizza is fabulous). In fact, one dear friend just refused point blank to return for brunch ever again because of the coffee. And yet their buffalo chicken mac and cheese was the best comfort food ever. I never really had any complaints.

5a) The one possible advantage to Doyle’s closing is that I am very likely to lose some weight!

6) Just before dinner, I was surprised to recognize a pair of eyes looking at me from the booth on the other side of the partition: a friend I’d never seen here before with his husband. So we had some good chat.

7) More than a few times I’d just look up from my book and take in the vista of the center room (I always sit facing in, not toward the windows; I have no idea why). The painted tin ceiling, the double row of milk glass pendant lights - so representative of a particular period of American architecture and design, so basic and unpretentious, and . . . and soon this room will no longer be here. People forget that authenticity is simple, not precious.

8) I was having one of those moments after my dinner dishes had been cleared when the face of my best friend unexpectedly filled my view. “What are you doing here?!” Craig’s arrival shifted my focus from the occasion to conversation, and to Weeping Baby Pumpkin Head, which Craig enjoyed playing with. He stayed for a couple hours, leaving about 10:30.

9) Throughout the evening I was, and then wasn’t, counting the hours. By the time Craig left, only I and another party of two were seated in the center room, while the front room sounded quite rowdy and standees were getting pushed into the center room entrance. My attention was diverted by a group text with friends until about 11:30ish.

10) But all I’ve ever wanted is to sit in my booth and read my book. This night was no different, but at times I found myself getting impatient with Beaton’s longwinded fawning over Dior and Balenciaga. His comments on other personalities, trends, and situations were much more engaging. I’ve read so many books here, from every possibie category of my library.

Rick Berlin Himself!

11) After 11:30 various people would stop by to talk or say thanks or farewell, including Rick Berlin Himself, always a favorite. And from a couple of the young women on the staff I heard about how they’d have to call people out for trying to take pictures off the walls, especially during the last week. The perpetrators allegedly had family connections to the memorabilia they were trying to steal - but that doesn’t make it right, especially since these people hadn’t been back to Doyle’s in about 25 years!

With Andrea. Notice her beautiful white granite pendant! I am wearing the Doyle’s Christmas ornament I’d been given earlier in the evening.

11a) From the Small World Smaller Department: Andrea, another favorite, has as her roommate the gentleman who was my buyer’s agent when I bought my condo in 2003! We’d met at Doyle’s a couple times before, but he was there for the last night, too, and we three had a good conversation.

12) While Rick was at my table, we heard some sort of commotion in the front room. I heard later that it was the announcement of last call. The last last call.

13) Truly I wanted to be the last customer out the door, but people just would not leave. About 1:15 AM I decided it was time to pack up and go home. I took a last tour of the place, starting in the back room, where Mickey was totaling up the night’s receipts at the big round table. Then I went through to the front room, where there were maybe 30 people hanging around. None of them looked familiar, but then I wasn’t accustomed to being at Doyle’s after 10 PM on any given night. :-)

With Young Mr. Burke in the Governor’s Box by the front door.

14) And I said good night and thank you to Young Mr. Burke, who worked so valiantly to keep the place going. He looked like he was in a happy place, and I’m glad for him.

15) Because it was after closing time, the front door was already closed and locked. I had to exit from the street door in the center room, onto Washington Street. Turning left, an ambulance filled my view at the corner. No idea what was going on - in the background I could see some of the usual spillover crowd from the Midway, where a live performance was audible on the street - but it didn’t seem to involve anyone from Doyle’s.

16) So I didn’t need any of those clean white handkerchiefs after all. No tears, not really - just the occasional spasm.

17) And that’s how it ends. As Ruth Sebag-Montefiore said at the end of that wonderful BBC documentary Debutantes, “It was unique. It’ll never come again. So, it’s a lovely memory.” And the second Mrs. DeWinter: “We can never go back to Manderley. But sometimes, in my dreams, I do go back.” I never had just one go-to place until I moved down the street from Doyle’s in 2003, and I doubt that I will in the future. But there was never a better place in Boston to curl up with a drink and a good book.

The front door, now shut forever.

Saturday Afternoon, October 26

1) Last night, walking home from the subway after 11 PM, Before I’d even left Amory Street I could hear loud singing coming from a great distance away: “Country ROAAAAAADS, take me HOOOOOOOME . . . “ I said to me myself “Please . . . please let that be at the Midway and not at Doyle’s.” But no, it was coming from Doyle’s, so I felt I must drift in for an extremely, extremely rare nightcap.

1a) Several staff came up to talk to me as I sat at a table in the center room, watching the occasional conga line of costumed revelers pass by. (In the words of the late Anna Russell, “I’m not making this up, you know!”) One elderly lady on the staff sat with me awhile with her own drink so we could talk. And I got to see Young Mr. Burke briefly as I squeezed out when I finished my drink.

2) I’d been warned that if I wanted a T-shirt that I’d better get in line in the parking lot by 10:30 in the morning, and I did - and I was not the first person there. One wily old lady - with shoulder length hair that may have had a more than a touch of henna in it - tried to insinuate herself in the front of the line by asking the question “Does anybawdy heah remembah when it wz just one room? Theah oughta be three lines: one room, two rooms, three rooms!” And I thought to myself “I’ve been coming here twice a week for 16 years and I’ve never seen YOU here! Who the hell are you anyway?” I gather I am not the only one frustrated by these “last-timers” who have rushed back, smiling through tears to close the place down, making their first trip back in 20 years. But, as Ruth Draper taught us in “The Italian Lesson,” “And even if we think those things we don’t say them!”

3) To my horror, the time has now come to sweep The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up through my library. What you see represents perhaps only a half to two-thirds of my total library, mostly encompassing Old Hollywood, European history, British, French, and Russian nobility; reference, Civil War, disasters (Titanic, Lusitania, Hindenburg, Cocoanut Grove), cookbooks, art and art history, and homosexuals of the mid-century. Still to come: fiction, US Presidents and First Ladies, American history, mysteries, genealogy, travel, humor, random, and three shelves of books related to etiquette.

3a) I have always - always - placed a high value on having an extensive library. When I was in first grade I learned to read instantly. My parents had a lot of books, and made sure that my sister I did, too. Books are civilization, knowledge, intelligence, Truth. But more than a few times parking this half of the library on the floor I found myself looking askance. “When did I last reread that book? Did I even read that? Is this here only because it was Daddy’s?” The creative tension between my fierce defense of a large library vs. both the Konmari requirement to keep only things that create joyous feelings and not unreasonable space constraints already feels challenging. But this is where wisdom I received from my subconscious comes into play . . .

3b) . . . THE DREAM OF THE BLACK ZEN BUDDHIST BASKETBALL PLAYERS. My freshman year of college I dreamt of three black Zen Buddhist basketball players on a team with three white hippies. They were leaving the third quarter of a game, and one of the hippies was blessing out the head Zen Buddhist. And the head Zen Buddhist turned to him and said “Our attitudes can accept our changes, but our changes cannot accept our attitudes.” What a powerful message to receive from a dream! And that is exactly where I find myself with my beloved library today.

Thursday Afternoon, October 24

1) This afternoon I witnessed a near-collision between a bicyclist and a van. They were both traveling in the same direction; the cyclist, in the bike lane, was going straight ahead, while the van was turning right. The cyclist very nearly made contact with the van, and then almost fell flat to one side, before the van stopped. To me it seemd obvious that the van driver just hadn’t seen the cyclist. Rejoicing that no one was injured physically.

2) New neighbors closed today and, I gather, are moving in! They seem like a very nice young couple, with no children . . . so far . . .

3) This afternoon I rediscovered Star!, in which the legendary Julie Andrews appears as the legendary Gertrude Lawrence. For awhile in the 1990s I was obsessed with this movie, even though it - how shall I say this? - isn’t the finest moment for anyone in it. The real problem, of course, is that Julie Andrews is not at all like Gertrude Lawrence, a unique talent, “a bright particular star.” Agnes de Mille once said of Gertie “She can’t sing, she can’t dance, she can’t act, but who cares?”

3a) Still, it’s a musical romp of sorts for almost three hours, and we have the rare privilege of seeing Robert Reed in something that isn’t The Brady Bunch.

Wednesday Morning, October 23

The last few days have yielded some interesting connections and possibilities:

1) Monday afternoon I met with a couple friends affiliated with a local organization about a possible collaboration with Etiquetteer that yielded two good ideas. Later that evening I attended the monthly meetup of ye Ypus Yffayre, where I met a woman who invited me to a private dinner/performance of a small local dance company on Tuesday night. I did attend that function, and it yielded a possible connection for the two ideas I discussed with the first local organization. That sounds very convoluted.

1a) Long story short: it’s good to be out and about and talking to people.

2) Yesterday afternoon, the contractors came to talk about transforming my kitchen into Howard Johnson’s at Versailles. It was a very productive conversation! Ideas all over the place. Work should start in mid-January.

2a) These contractors were recommended by a friend. During our conversation they mentioned the name of a local realtor. At the dance dinner I went to last night a woman mentioned the name of the same realtor. I said “I just heard his name today! Contractors who were meeting with me . . . “ and wouldn’t you know it, the woman also knows the contractors very well! See 1a) above.

3) Lurking underneath all this is the elephant in the room, the closing of Doyle’s forever before the end of the month. I’m trying to be in denial, but before the end of the month I’ll walk by one day and there will be a big CLOSED sign on the door, and that will be that. I hate to think of it.

Sunday Morning, October 20

1) I must say, this Sunday is starting off well: column from an unsolicited reader question posted before 8 AM, cheese omelette with spinach, and the discovery of a new-to-me waltz, “Don’t Say Goodnight” sung by Dick Powell in 1934’s Wonder Bar.

2) Because yesterday . . . yesterday was the lowest-energy day I can even think of in the last 20 years. I slept for two hours in the morning - let that sink in for a moment - and in the afternoon, and was in bed with the lights out by 10 PM. Ridiculous.

3) Reading Robert Klara’s book about the White House rescue of the Truman administration simultaneously with Elsie de Wolfe’s The House in Good Taste. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, especially since B. Altman’s (who did the interior design for the WH) should’ve received the Veda Pierce Distinctly Middle Class Award for their work.

Friday Late Afternoon, October 18

1) Rarer than the unicorn, an unbroken night’s sleep. I followed that up with almost three exquisite hours of a NAP after a brisk, vigorous hike through the arboretum. That sound so . . . so retired . . . but it is really that I want so much to be done with this cold! Shniffle, shnuffle.

2) The sweet, savory goodness of my first bowl of tom kha gai in who knows how long. The new Thai place at the old Wonder Spice location is worth revisiting.

3) Yesterday I began the Very Important Cleanout of the pantry; next week contractors are coming to talk officially about transforming my old, decrepit kitchen into Howard Johnson’s at Versailles. I have been . . . almost afraid to go into the pantry because it is just so full. Turns out this is in part because I had carpeted it with tote bags and other luggage. Nineteen of them, in fact! I am tossing out ten immediately; sorry to say that many of them were from ye Instytytte. The remaining nine include a) three very nice canvas totes from ye Instytytte (one was a gift from the Commencement Office when I left), b) one from the neighborhood framer, c) a small tote from Sir John Soane’s Museum that might just as well be made of cheesecloth, but I love it, d) a shoulder bag from a conference at ye Instytytte in 2010 that was my everyday bag at work; the conference logo has completely flaked off it, e) my favorite piece of luggage ever, the blue fauxlligator valise my boss gave me when I left the weekly newspaper in 1989, and f) one or two black leather gym bags left behind by the Final Roommate (in lieu of three week’s rent).

I love this city.