Sunday Morning, 2 August

1) Any Sunday on which I can complete and post a column by 11 AM is a good Sunday.

1a) Today is a good Sunday.

2) Yesterday afternoon a friend came out to JP and we tromped through the cemetery for about two hours, going where we would, not with any particular goal (beyond me wanting him to see the two Creepy Children’s Graves). He discovered a random staircase up a hillside which I had not noticed before. We took it, found a large grouping of Perkins tombstones, found another short staircase, and popped up near the monument to Col. Joseph Warren (which I had seen before), who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill and was an ancestor of the founder of the Gibson House, Charlie Junior. My friend, roaming more freely than I, discovered more Warrens behind the monument, including Charlie’s maternal grandparents, Dr. Something Something Warren and his wife Annie Crowninshield Warren. What a bonus!

2a) Headed downhill, we found this stone in someone’s family plot for Josie, Our Darling. Mother’s nickname in her family was Josie - and really, I think everyone called her Josie before she graduated from college. Certainly by the time my sister and I came along everyone called her JoAnn except her mother and brother. So this discovery was a poignant one for me.

3) In spite of that tromp through the cemetery, yesterday was Low Energy Day, and I fell into bed like a cracked hunk of concrete. Since 6:30 (!) I have been lounging on the Robert B. Dimmick Memorial Banquette West, reading and writing, but I am going to have to shift from first gear to high for the afternoon, whether I like it or not. The kitchen and pantry must be empty before end of day Monday - and that’s tomorrow!

3a) This Joyous Ritual has led to many discoveries (and the surprising-to-those-who-know-me question “Why on earth do I own all this stuff?”). The latest is a pair of glass coffee mugs from the 1993 wedding of a dear friend which a) I use very rarely and b) they’re no longer together, so I am casting them out. They have served their purpose.

Wednesday Evening, July 29 - Rediscovery

1) God bless whoever was programming the Eight O’Clock Movie on KHTV Houston Channel 39 back in the 1970s, because that’s how I ended up getting introduced to every Shirley Temple movie, Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, and so many other Golden Age Hollywood Movies - all interspersed with commercials and News Before the Hour.

1a) Some of those movies I saw on the TV in Granny and Grampa’s living room next door, especially after the two times that Daddy cut the cord to our TV because he thought we were watching too much!

2) “The things you remember, and the things you don’t.” Vague memories of one of these old black-and-white movies: a body discovered in a dressing room, with a message in lipstick across a mirror and women screaming; a singer walking into her old abandoned nightclub and, suddenly, applause, the lights come up, and everyone is there. And everyone is there. What could be better than that?! I always hoped I’d figure out what movie that was.

3) Tonight, at last, I rediscovered it: The Helen Morgan Story of 1957, with Ann Blyth, Paul Newman, Richard Carlson (so wonderful in These Glamour Girls), Leonid Kinskey, Juanita Moore, my beloved Corinna Mura from Casablanca (and her guitar!), and Iris Adrian from Lady in Burlesque as the secretary. I’d had a hunch for awhile that this might be it, watching the trailer on the Yewtybbe, and it turns out I was right. There was the suicide; it wasn’t in a dressing room, but a bathroom during a rent party (the actress is Virginia Vincent, also in the Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Shattered Dream*.”)

3a) And there, at the end, just as I’d hoped, is Ann Blyth (fresh out of detox) being brought back to her empty nightclub by Paul Newman (fresh out of prison). “Whatever made you think I’d want to come here again?” “I don’t know. Old time’s sake, maybe.” “It scares me. Maybe because I’ve never seen it so empty before.” And then the applause starts, in the dark, and the lights come up and you see the whole room filled with friends. And everybody is there. Isn’t that what we all want right now, for everybody to be there?

3b) “I don’t know how many lights it takes to spell out the name Helen Morgan. But the number must be very great, because even now that they have stopped shining for her, they still leave a bright glow over the Great White Way.”

3c) Insert Tears Here.

*What would I do without IMDB?!

Monday Afternoon, July 27

1) Just writing the words “Monday, July 27” this morning underlined how little time there is between now and the official start of kitchen demolition on August 12. So this morning I finally finished selecting appliances, but for the kitchen and for the field kitchen I’ll need to set up in the dining room for the duration. Besides my coffee maker and convection oven, I will now have a two-burner hot plate and a retro* mini-refrigerator in lipstick red. As soon as I saw it I said “Cheerful!” And I’ll need that to keep my spirits up . . . not to mention iced.

1a) Since I’m not a gourmet cook, I was looking at a less-expensive gas stove, which a friend discouraged. “Buy the best!” he said. Consumer Reports, to my surprise, actually rated my selection a wee bit higher in a couple categories than the stove made by the company making my fridge, so I’m sticking with my original choice.

2) Carting stacks of plates and other gear down to the cellar, I kept asking myself when it would be safe for me to give a party at home again. The last time I had people in my house was February! I am like my Granny Dimmick in that way; I like to have a lot of people around.

2a) Granny, of course (as I may have mentioned before), grew up in her mother’s New Orleans boarding house surrounded by her parents, six siblings (Bess, Fannie, Lal, Johnnie, Kate, and Uncle Jim [who really belongs near the top of the line, but he’s the only boy in a family of powerful women]); around 30 boarders (often Tulane Medical students), the cook, and a hall boy. So you could have almost 40 people sitting around in the parlor after dinner - and all this before even radio, much less the Yewtybbe.

2b) Aunt Kate remembered that everyone would keep their places as long as they possibly could, because as soon as someone made a move there’d be a chorus of “While you’re up, could you please get me . . .?”

3) SCIENCE! A very interesting article about using ultraviolet light in the battle against the coronavirus (without introducing it into the body). “One approach to battling such airborne-spread of coronavirus that’s capturing attention is a century-old technology, known as germicidal ultraviolet air disinfection, or GUV, that zaps harmful airborne germs.

*Translation: darling!

Sunday Afternoon, July 26 - Olivia de Haviland and Other Things

1) Olivia de Haviland died today at the astonishing age of 104. A rich, full life indeed! Memorial screenings of The Heiress, The Dark Mirror, Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte; and of course Gone With the Wind are all in order, as well as a glass of champagne. She did enjoy champagne! Her life proved that you could have a bitter feud with your only sibling and still be a lady.

1a) Some appropriate clips.

The Dark Mirror, in which Olivia plays good and evil twins accused of murder AND in love with the same man!

My Cousin Rachel! This is supposed to be one of her greatest films, and I’ve never seen it.

Her comprehensive interview with the Academy:

The trailer for The Heiress:

2) One year ago today I packed up my office at ye Instytytte and moved out for good. “And what a lot has happened since,” as they say in the novels.

3) One hundred days from today is Election Day. Be sure you plan to vote, and then actually vote!

Tuesday Morning, July 21

1) Up very early - before 5:30 AM - with the old psalm “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer.” I just had to look up where it came from; it’s Psalms 19:14. Somehow I always associate this with Mother, and right now, especially with her sense of calm.

1a) And the meditations of my heart. Which are troubled. And it is so important for me to be - how shall I say this? - more considered in how I communicate and respond, because Anger blunts my message and reduces my effectiveness.

2) Before the day got too hot, and because I needed to pick up a couple things at the local market, I left just before 8 AM to walk vigorously through the arboretum. My first time there in quite awhile, now that the cemetery has become my happy place. I paid attention to how many people I saw, and stopped counting after 45 (including six bicyclists). The real drawback to the arboretum is the number of people there at any given time, which really does mean wearing a mask at all times (and they have signs up to make sure you know). But the advantages are more of a workout because of the hills and the beautiful view of the city from atop Peters Hill.

Worth it. Every time. I love this city.

2a) The cemetery’s drawback is the vague undercurrent of surveillance with all the various employee vehicles driving about, as well as its flatter terrain compared to the arboretum. But there are far fewer people there - usually I count less than ten - heaps of historical and artistic interest, and the whole place is beautifully maintained.

3) I am truly entering on the Last Days in the Old Kitchen, as the renovation begins August 12 and both it and the pantry need to be completely empty. Aside from setting up a field kitchen in the dining room and hauling a lot of stuff down to the cellar, it also means tossing out things that won’t have a place in the new kitchen. At the moment it’s this collection of Veuve Clicquot bottles, all souvenirs of a good time. Three of them came from the Margo Channing Memorial in 2004 (one aspect of which was my housewarming), and one of those was brought by my realtor. I always liked how they looked over the sink, but . . . not in the new kitchen. So out they go!

Tuesday Afternoon, Bastille Day, 2020

1) I do love me some Bastille Day, but somehow I haven’t yet gotten to my two usual traditions: a memorial screening of Casablanca, and a rereading of Stefan Zweig’s account of Marie Antoinette’s trial and execution in Marie Antoinette: Portrait of an Average Woman.

1a) Instead, this evening I am going out for my first restaurant dinner with a friend since Leap Day. Quite by happy accident, we have a reservation at the French Bistro We Call Little Bobby’s in the Derrière du Sud, which I will get to on the Ligne d’Orange. Like several Boston restaurants, apparently they’ve expanded outdoor seating into on-street parking spaces.

2) Five errands: lunch pickup, post office, bank, jewelry repair, dry cleaner.

3) I’m always on the trailng edge of current trends, so you will not be at all surprised that my latest musical obsession, the song “Short Skirt, Long Jacket," by some musical group called Cake (and why not?), is at least four years old. How can you not love a song that includes the lyric “She’s touring the facility and picking up slack”? Enjoy this video tribute to Emma Peel.

Friday Afternoon, June 10 - Home Improvement

1) My official summer vacation arrived today: a new wicker sofa for the back porch, long the most neglected part of Maison Robaire. With a) retirement, b) the coronavirus curtailing almost all travel, and c) approaching next month the 17th anniversary of moving here, it made sense to upgrade the space. This is mighty comfy!

1a) I had always wanted the beautiful white wicker sofa and armchair from Mother and Daddy’s house, but this new one is long enough for me to stretch out full length - for a NAP!

2) Last weekend I finally ordered new cabinets and counters for my new kitchen, my dream vision of Howard Johnson’s at Versailles. And they will arrve in August, whether I have a contractor or not . . .

3) Floor samples arrived yesterday from ye Hyrvy Myrya, which look like they will do.

Thursday, Late Afternoon, July 2

1) This might have been my first weekday trip downtown since March 13 or so. I had to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy back at ye Instytytte, which meant two subway lines. No issues beyond noticing one nerdy dude without a mask in the subway car (not near me), and a dude in a white basketball shirt groovin’ on something on the Downtown Crossing platform and trying to direct traffic through slow-motion interpretative dance. But then, Downtown Crossing is not a neighborhood noted for excessive sanity . . .

1a) This was the first time I ever had to have my temperature taken before entering a building. 97.7 = good to go.

2) Walked from Kendall Square over the Longfellow Bridge, down Chahles Street, and through the Common to get to the supermarket. A good walk on a sunny day, and nice to see people out and about - though not everyone has the same ideas or patience with social distancing, which can be a bit frustrating.

3) BRATTLE BOOKS IS OPEN! My first visit to a bookstore in MONTHS. I picked up a book from the mid-1990s on all the art the Soviets looted after WWII, the so-called “trophy art,” and a 2002 or 2012 book on the history of caviar. The former will make great followup to other books I’ve read about art during the War (The Rape of Europa, The Amber Room, Lost Treasures of the Reich, and some other titles), as well as Stalin’s biography which I read last year, The Court of the Red Tsar, which is brutal and terrifying. The latter is just a whim, but I think National Caviar Day is coming up soon.

3a) Besides, long ago someone gave me an actual caviar dish, monogrammed with my initials (!), with a traditional horn spoon, and I might as well figure out what I ought to do with it.

3b) But then I always remember what Joan Crawford said in Grand Hotel: “Have caviar if y’like, but it tastes like herring to me!”

Thursday Midday, July 2

1) Four months and two days of quarantine. Some days I feel like this horrible dream will never end; we will never wake up again.

2) Massachusetts begins Phase 3 of reopening on Monday - hurrah! But I am still not inclined to rush about willy nilly. I’ve been so good about going out only twice a week, if that: Saturday mornings to the supermarket, and once during the week to Centre Street for errands. Now suddenly I’ll have to be out three days in a row: pharmacy this afternoon back at ye Instytytte, which I will try to combine with a supermarket trip, Centre Street errands Friday (read: liquor store), and now Saturday morning, Independence Day, off to ye Heaumeau Depeau to finalize my new kitchen cabinetry, counters, and appliances.

3) In ordinary times it would be SO AWESOME to have July 4 on a Saturday, but frankly, I will be Perfectly Happy staying at home drinking something appropriate and watching . . . oh, I don’t know, political thrillers like Advise and Consent, The Manchurian Candidate, and Seven Days in May.

Wednesday Evening, June 17 - Time Capsule

1) For about the last week I have finally been sorting through massive piles of unsorted, unfiled papers in the pantry. This has really involved a) shredding a shit ton of old utility bills and similar Documents With Numbers, and b) unjamming the shredder. This evening I got through a large gift box stuffed with papers and other ephemera that has been sitting, open, in the pantry since about 2017. Among all the Outdated Documents With Numbers I found:

• A 2015/2016 program for Spring Awakening at Boston Conservatory, the first student production I’d ever seen there.

• A thank-you letter from a friend sent following a post-concert dinner sometime. “Please forgive the block print. I wanted you to be able to read this.”

• A fragment of the spine of my sweet Gramma’s copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayaam, of which I was not a good steward. (I do still have the book.)

• A Post-It from the Final Roommate that he owed me rent for February, 2017.

• A silhouette of me that I think might have been cut in Branson on family vacation in 2006, but I honestly can’t remember. No, that can’t be it, ‘cause I have a bow tie on. It makes me look like a cross between Harry Potter and Younger Nephew Who Must Not Be Tagged.

• A thank-you letter from the Gibson House after my presentation at their afternoon tea in 2012. Must have been “Failures of Brahmin Entertaining.”

• The vote tally of the one class officer election I had to moderate/adjudicate in my entire alumni relations career.

2) These leavings, and some of the other contents, reminded me how extremely difficult 2016-2017 were for me, for so many different reasons. And that somehow I managed to survive it all.

3) Speaking of time capsules, tonight I tuned into John Richardson’s Virtual Piano Bar at 5 PM, which really hit home the duration of this quarantine. For me it’s now three and a half months! Grateful for my continued health - and yours! - but damn, I want to have a party.

Friday, June 12 - My Uncle's Photography

Today, June 12, 2020, would have been my Uncle Bill’s 90-somethingth birthday. He was a few years older than Mother, who would have been 90 this year, but I can’t remember exactly. He died in 2001.

Bill was a very private person, so he didn’t often talk about things that were important to him. But his creative passion was photography (as it was for his father, too, my grandfather). The most unique and interesting work he did involved near-microscopic flaws in slag glass or something else. This photograph here features a drop-shaped bubble in a piece of clear glass, backed by pieces of colored glass. Who else would think to do that? And this is just one example.

I scored a hit with him one Christmas* in my twenties when I gave him a faux-tortoiseshell box. He ended up creating some beautiful images like sand dunes or dictionaries by illuminating parts of that box.

He really didn’t care much about how his work was framed, sticking with cheap drugstore picture frames. Once Bill showed me a beautiful series he’d done of dogwood blossoms, and I suggested he frame them as a triptych in some light wood. He politely pretended to consider it, but I could tell he thought it would be a pointless expense.

All this was long before digital photography, when, film being film, you really had to sweat for good results and they weren’t always guaranteed. Bill also belonged to a couple photo societies, and would occasionally place in one of their contests by mail. (I remember we tossed out some second-place ribbons after Mother died.) Since Bill was definitely not a computer person, I have to wonder how he’d take to 21st-century photography and social media platforms like Flickr or SmugMug.

Taken in the back yard of my parents’ house, summer of 1999.

I’m glad I have the charcoal portrait of him, which was done at some Ozarks tourist trap one summer in the late 1950s. The little plaque underneath it, “W W THORSON PHOTOGRAPHER,” was given to him by a friend of his to acknowledge the creative part of himself, which not too many people knew about. It makes me happy that someone did that for him.

So, I’ll be lifiting a glass in his memory during the cocktail hour tonight. Happy birthday!

*After people die you find out how successful your Christmas gifts were. When Bill died in 2001 I found most of my Christmas gifts from the previous ten years stuck in a drawer at the back of the house. Oh well.

Summer, 2020: Summer of Revolution

I think most of you know that I read tarot cards, and I occasionally post one of my readings here. Over the weekend I did a general reading about the summer months, having reflected on how the national situation has changed so much in the last week. When I turned up the final card I jumped in my chair.

As a reminder, I read using the cross and staff layout: six cards forming a cross, reading from center and then clockwise from the bottom, and four cards forming a staff, reading from the bottom up. Text in quotes is from Eden Gray’s Mastering the Tarot.

1. Origin of the Question: the Star reversed. This is coming from a place of doubt, pessimism, and anxiety about the future. No kidding!

2. Opposing Influence: the World. This card, while sideways, is always read upright. The World is the best card in the deck. “Triumph in all undertakings." Strong positive energy is behind the events to come.

3. The Past: Two of Swords, reversed. A stalemate of sorts. “Release, movement in one’s affairs - but sometimes in the wrong direction, for the rocks are still there [emphasis mine].” This makes me think of the 2016 election.

4. Outgoing Influence: Nine of Cups. This is the wish card, very much about personal satisfaction. If that’s on the way out . . . “Material success, assured future. Physical well-being.” Well, then! To me this is about the end of being able to accept preconceived notions, of whatever sort. That means a major shift in consciousness is coming.

5. Possible Future: Five of Swords, reversed. “An empty victory. Unfairness and slyness in dealing with others.” Not everyone is invested in the same outcome, and there’s a risk of victory being thwarted by opposition. This is also a caution against giving in due to weariness or oppression. Stay the course!

6. Incoming Influence: Justice. An encouraging card in this position. “Justice will be done . . . the beginning of a new cycle in the Seeker’s life . . . “ It could also mean that we have to face some uncomfortable truths, but I want it to mean justice for George Floyd.

7. Fears: Nine of Wands. “Weakness of character . . . bending under adversity.” This is definitely about my own fear of not being able to do my part in the conflict to come.

8. Opinions of Others. King of Pentacles, reversed. All I’m going to say about this is that to me it represents an absence of positive leadership at the highest levels.

9. Hopes: Temperance: BALANCE. “Working in harmony with others . . . good management and good balance in one’s outlook on life.” Now who wouldn’t be hoping for that?!

10. Final Outcome: Death. Now of course I am obligated to say that this is not predicting the death of a person, ofyou or me or anyone, but is definitely looking at transformation, rebirth. “The new order cometh, and the old order passeth away,” wherever that comes from. Our country was born of revolution; will it now also be reborn of revolution?

Put it all together, major positive change is coming, but the process will be painful and full of difficulties. It will be a battle - let’s hope not actually - but that will be the only way to achieve the goal of real transformation.

Memorial Day, 2020

1) For the first time since 2004, I am not spending Memorial Day at the office, stuffing and quality-checking registration packets with everyone on the team, eating pizza, and preparing for Pops ticketing the next day. This was the change I needed.

1a) Even so, I’ll be a part of Reunions after all, as I’ve been invited to introduce a Very Important Speaker via videoconferencing over the course of the weekend.

2) Up early this morning, before 6 AM. Parlor coffee and devotional. Joel 3 - apocaplytic.

2a) As I do every Memorial Day and Veterans Day, I took down my grampa’s Robert W Service to reread his favorite poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” The other part of this tradition is forgetting that Service did not also write “In Flanders Field,” and then taking down Granny’s copy of “The Best Loved Poems of the American People.” But I remembered in time that John McCrae was the poet who wrote that memorable verse, and saved myself another trip to the bookcase.

3) Today has been productive, and I was even, with significant guidance from Craig, to get my printer working again. Let gladsome peals ring throughout the land!

Sunday, May 24

1) Sundays are good if I can get a column published by 11 AM. Today it took until 3:15 PM. So there you are.

2) In the garden, the violets have passed, but now the lily-of-the-valley have bloomed - mostly pink, from half a dozen that my friend Olive gave me over ten years ago, but a few white - and one bold orange poppy near the house.

2a) Around the hedge in front of the house I weeded out a large bouquet of Norway maple seedlings, the perpetual crop here, as well as several morning glory vines that were just getting started. Now don’t get me wrong; I love morning glories. But not when they want to eat an entire hedge, or wind themselves into the rain chains. So I felt virtuous for a bit.

3) I’ve been watching The Red Shoes through the cocktail hour and dinner (and dishwashing in between, as perpetual as Norway maple seedlings), and was just now struck by Lermontov’s last words to Vicky: “Sorrow will pass, believe me. Life is so unimportant.” Rather callous, but for me it provided scope and horizon to the anonymity of most of the people who have spent time on this Earth.

Thursday Morning, May 21 - Thoughts About my Hair

1) Such a reaction after posting this photo yesterday on ye Fycebykke! The last time I had my hair cut was sometime in mid- to late February. It is now the third week of May. I know a lot of people, men especially, have been frantic to get back to the barber shop or hair salon to resume traditional good grooming, but not me. I’m gonna keep going with this for awhile. I love it.

2) The last time my hair was longer than this was the winter of 1980-1981. I had gone through my first semester at IAA without ever figuring out how to find a barber, and then before Christmas break was cast in The Tempest. The director told all the men not to get their hair cut, so with a mane of three months already on me, I pressed on through the winter. (Mother was not happy.) A week before the opening, the director said to me, “And Robert, you have to tell us what you’re going to do with your hair.” Clearly she had forgotten her earlier instructions!

Christmas, 1980. And it would get longer . . .

3) Interestingly enough, this morning I got an email from my barber shop announcing their reopening next week with some elaborate and appropriate changes for the Time of the Coronavirus, including but definitely not limited to: installation of a new air-purifying system, mandatory mask use by everyone (which also means no beard trimming, hot lather shaving, or facials), and no waiting inside before you’re called to the chair. To make the last easier, they are also getting rid of all their magazines and complimentary beverages. It sounds reassuring, but truly, I am loving my Great Big Hair so much, I’m not sure when I’ll be back for a shearing.

4) But I think it will have to happen at some point. As I’ve mentioned before, one advantage of working most of my career with elderly men is that I’ve had lots of examples of what I don’t want to be like. There are ways and ways to grow your hair out past the age of 50, and I have no interest in resembling Rip Van Winkle, Karl Lagerfeld*, or ZZ Top. So I will have to be very attentive when it starts looking like what I don’t want to look like.

*I am just not that sleek and streamlined and perfect, and it would wear me out.

Saturday Morning, May 16

1) It is a beautiful morning after last night’s thunderstorm. The air is a comfortable temperature, and even my lily-of-the-valley are starting to bloom. It’s going to be a great day.

2) No shrimp at the supermarket, so I will deprived of the opportunity to serve Hubcap Shrimp with Roadkill Sauce to myself during tonight’s Dress Dinner Challenge. When my parents left on their honeymoon (65 years ago yesterday), my uncle (Daddy’s best man) had filled the hubcaps with bad shrimp for that extra-special aroma. So since tonight’s dinner is to celebrate their anniversary, I thought it would be fun.

2a) The other thing he did was leave a note on the dipstick for the gas station attendant that read: “The couple driving this car have just been married. Congratulate them, but do not tell them how you know.” Mother always remembered Daddy’s frantic effort at the first gas station they stopped at to get the note before the attendant saw it.

3) Special question for the oenophiles: someone told me that the only way to drink néctar impérial champagne was on the rocks with a slice of lemon. Is this for real?

Monday Midday, May 11 - Gardening

1) I always said if I didn’t have Reunions taking up all my time in May I’d spend more time in the garden. Well, the registration deadline for Reunions was traditionally this Wednesday, and I don’t have to care about it. In fact, this is the first May since 1996 that I am not stressed out about some sort of event. No Reunions, no opening night or end-of-season parties, no non-profit fund-raisers. I’m still adjusting to this New Normal.

2) So for the second time this month, I stepped into the garden this morning to weed and to plant a packet of lavender seeds. Mother is the only person I’ve ever met who enjoyed weeding, so it’s rather a fitting tribute to her to undertake this the day after Mother’s Day.

3) Once you accept that weeding is an infinite task - there will always be weeds, no matter how industrious a gardener might be - it becomes easier. And in this garden, there will certainly always be weeds, especially Norway maple seedlings. Today I concentrated on a sunny spot next to the house, by my HVAC unit and behind the star magnolia. Because there were so many Unwanted Plants just starting to come up, it made it much easier to identify and uproot them now than it would have been even next month. Then they would have looked too large to vanquish. There were a few things growing immediately next to the foundation, and I really had to maneuver with my trowel, but I defeated them! After finding a particularly soft spot of earth, though, I backed off from that area. I didn’t want to find out the hard way that something might be burrowing down there.

Could this be the mythical black tulip? Hah!

4) After all that I did take a quick survey of the whole garden and weed out more seedlings in the far corner. Some survivors of the pre-2003 landscape bring me joy: the bleeding hearts, the one purple-black tulip, dozens and dozens of little violets. There are dandelions, of which I am more tolerant than I used to be. The Bee-Keeping Neighbors, who moved a couple years ago, caused me to learn that dandelions are good bee habitat, and we must be kind to the bees at this point.

5) Soon my long-ago additions to the garden, the white peonies and pink lily-of-the-valley, will start to bloom. The latter, begun with the gift of half a dozen from my friend Olive back in 2005 or 2006, have spread to cover maybe ten square feet. I love them!

6) The test now is, will I return to the garden tomorrow, next week, or next month?

The tulips my new neighbor planted last fall still bloom beautifully.

Saturday Morning, May 9

1) Time departed home for supermarket: 7:08 AM. Time returned hom: 8:41 AM. Total time, including round-trip subway ride: 93 minutes.

1a) Swift timing today due to lack of a staffer monitoring the entrance so I could begin my shopping before 8 AM. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission! That said, one reason a designated hour for senior citizens is so wonderful is that few of them pay attention to the new arrows on the floor.

2) Dialogue witnessed on subway platform:

Maskless Woman: “May I use your phone to call my transportation?”

Maskless Man: “Whaddya talkin’ about? There’s a virus!”

3) It was snowing on my walk home from the subway, but it seems to have stopped now. In New England all weathers are possible at all time, but it’s just one more sign of the Apocalypse.

Friday Morning, May 8 - Patience

1) This morning’s devotional brought me to James 1, which is all about temptation. But the verses that really struck me were 19-20: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger; For the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God.” [emphasis Mother’s] This is about patience.

2) Shortly thereafter I opened The Secret Language of Flowers by Jean-Michel Othoniel, which came to eglantine. That five-petaled white flower symbolizes “Christ’s patience during his Passion.”

3) Mother herself often said “This is an opportunity to practice patience.” And these are all, this morning, important reminders to me not to respond hastily or in anger - especially as I haven’t read the news yet! :-)

Thursday Evening, May 7

1) May 7, as it happens, is both Tchaikovsky’s birthday and the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania. I’ll admit I tried to get through Terror at Sea from 2007, which I hadn’t seen, but I just couldn’t do it. I found greater, more exultant solace in Tchaikovsky’s waltzes from Eugene Onegin, and from the Act I of Swan Lake. The latter I had peculiarly identified as “mine” my freshman year of college. And then, as with all musical obsessions, it faded.

1a) The former I was familiar with from my father’s collection of LPs. And this week I have been thinking a lot about both my parents and what they made possible. Mother, of course, grew up with piano lessons and recordings of classical music. Daddy, on the other hand, didn’t discover classical until he was in the Army and saw Elizabeth Taylor in Rhapsody one night. Hearing all that music changed his life.

1b) One week from today is Mother and Daddy’s 65th wedding anniversary.

2) The crocuses and scilla and daffodils have faded from the garden. Now the tulips are triumphant; the two beds the new neighbor planted last fall are radiant reds, yellows, and oranges. Violets, dandelions, and some sort of purple ground cover have asserted themselves for the next wave. The redbud tree is blooming. And today I saw that the lilac will bloom shortly, and the wide leaves of the pink lily-of-the-valley are unfurling.

2a) Also weeds and seedlings (among which I include dandelions). The only person I’ve ever met in my long life who enjoyed weeding was Mother. She’d’ve had a field day here! I had better get busy.

3) I made an astonishing cookbook discovery that could change the face of Dress Dinner Challenge forever . . .