Wednesday Morning, 30 December -- 50+50=100

Fifty years ago today was the 50th wedding anniversary of my paternal grandparents, Ira and Mary Ella. Which means that 100 years ago today was their wedding, which took place in the parlor of Granny’s parents’ boardinghouse on Canal Boulevard in New Orleans. Granny wore a green traveling suit with a fur scarf, and Grampa was so poor he had to wear his doughboy uniform because he couldn’t afford a suit. (I should have thought about looking for the information sooner, but Heaven knows where it is in this house full of papers.)

Grampa in France.

He did provide an inexpensive gold ring, though, engraved inside “LOVE IS REFLECTED IN LOVE. To M.E.” Granny was not really much of a jewelry person, and she eventually gave this little ring to my father to use for himself when he married Mother. But Daddy was not much of a jewelry person either. He thought he had lost it. After Mother died, I remember turning his jewelry box upside down and giving it a vigorous shake. Among the basketball charms, never-worn cufflinks, and tie bars, Granny’s little ring revealed itself. I treasure it now.

The Evans sisters: Mary Ella (my granny), Fannie, Sister, Kate, Lal, and Johnnie. I believe they are outside the boardinghouse.

Aunt Betty once told me how they met. Granny was visiting friends in Opelousas, Grampa’s hometown. Grampa had a friend at the house where she was staying. While working in the kitchen, the girls saw Grampa coming up the walk. Granny took one look, turned to her friend, and said “That’s the man I’m going to marry.” And she did!

Granny and Grampa were both popular and loving people (but they could be stern with grandchildren), and they were “fruitful and multiplied:” five children and eighteen grandchildren. So somehow someone came up with the idea of a banquet for their 50th anniversary. (When you have just turned seven years old, these things just happen.) People came from near and far, and there was a play about their lives in which all the grandchildren had to appear as themselves. (I think Mother might have written it, but I don’t remember.) I remember us rehearsing at our house, and the crowd of people in our living room.

The banquet itself was held in one of the function rooms at the Chateau Charles on Highway 90, and it was at this event that I fell in love with an E-shaped banquet table. I don’t remember much about the evening (I talked to one cousin recently who doesn’t remember it at all), but I remember the bright lights, the smiling, everyone dressed in their best, and the occasion of getting to sit with all the grownups at that enormous, beautiful table.

Of course there were photos taken of family groups, and you already know how much I treasure the portrait above of all of us together. It makes me think of the hubbub of every Christmas Eve of my childhood, when everyone would be there, and everyone moving and talking at once. Granny, raised in a boardinghouse with six siblings, was always happiest with a crowd around, and I know Christmas Eve must have been the happiest night of the year for her. I’m the same way: I want everyone to be there.

And this is our little family that night. Daddy looks like he’s ready to go home to bed! And doesn’t Mother look beautiful? I remember that rust-colored suit; she would wear it to church on Sundays.

Today is not only a wedding anniversary. Four years ago this evening my father died, after a long decline. He had told me months before how much he wanted to see his parents. Today it is better for me to “ponder these things in my heart” rather than on the page. Tonight I’ll raise a glass in his memory, and to my family established throughout the nation, but who I hold close.

Tuesday Evening, 22 December

1) “To the gypsy that I was,” “And it all comes down to you.”

1a) “In the middle of my room I did not hear from you.”

1b) Oh dear.

2) I’m at the point in my life where I just love watching 42nd Street and identifying all the chorus girls who also appeared in Barbara Stanwyck’s Baby Face, and that one guy who was one of the principals in Reefer Madness.

3) Dentist tomorrow. Today I saw one of the unrecognized costs of the coronavirus; a couple of my lower teeth appear to be cracked.

Sunday Afternoon, 20 December

1) Sometimes we are given the gift of being able to see something again as if for the first time. And yesterday morning about 8:30 AM, walking home from the subway with three heavy bags of groceries, for the first time I saw snow glitter. Insert Every Cliché About What Glittering Snow Looks Like Here; I’m not going to try. I have no idea why my brain should have unfolded enough to allow that, but I’m so grateful I got to see that for the first time again.

2) I spend less and less time on ye Fycebykke. In fact, I’ve even come to dread it.

3) The hair is just getting longer and longer.

“Yes, yes . . . this! it’s wonderful!”

4) Two kitchen catastrophes, one of my own making: a) the garbage disposal broke after a metal measuring spoon made it in there (I feel like a fool, but the nice man from McMahon’s is coming tomorrow); and b) when my very first load of wash in the new washing machine got to the spin cycle it started thumping so much it nearly crashed through the wall.

4a) Other people manage adulting so well, and here I am in my mid-fifties, wandering about like a baby duck . . .

Thursday Morning, 17 December

1) Our first real snowstorm of the season dropped last night, creating the usual Winter Wonderland outside.

1a) Absolutely not setting foot into it! I’ll wait until it stops falling to start shoveling.

2) Mother once said that somebody once said that the definition of Eternity is one ham and two people. This year, for my second Noël seul, I ordered a ham (because all the turkey breasts were already gone). My sister’s family had already sent me a nice box of a dozen pears, so you can imagine my surprise at finding a second box of pears on the doorstep last night. Last night I surfed around for some pear/ham recipes, and found a relatively easy one for pear-glazed ham, and other hamless pear recipes that involve poaching, and an upside-down cake.

2a) So Daddy will be eating a lot of pears this Christmas, and sharing with the neighbors!

3) Next week in Christmas, and I still haven’t mailed one card. That needs to be corrected starting . . . now.

Wednesday Evening, 16 December

It’s been awhile. Let’s have some catch-up:

1) A week ago I got contacted by Mass. Contact Tracing that along around November 29 I had been exposed to someone who either had COVID or had tested positive for it. So last Thursday I headed back to ye Instytytte to a COVID test. Most interesting to see how the new skyscrapers are progressing in Kendall Square! This part of Cambridge is no longer Cambridge; it’s New York. Decidedly New York.

Old and New Kendall Square, now in Manhattan!

1a) Monday I got the news that my test result was negative, so of course I immediately ordered a heaping dose of Prognosis Negative.

1b) I shouldn’t even make that suggestion, since I’ve only seen Dark Victory once.

2) Today begins the last two weeks of his horrible, horrible year. With Repeal Day and my two Victorian Holiday Customs programs concluded (all successful, mercifully), I suddenly realized that I can use these two weeks completely for planning, organizing, purging, and preparing for the New Year. And that feels good.

2a) So I’m looking forward to the snowstorm coming, because that will contribute to this sort of energy!

3) In this morning’s bitter cold I walked briskly through the cemetery for an hour, for the first time in about a week. I was sure the cold would keep people away, but a knot of cars near the entrance indicated an interment taking place today. And wouldn’t you know it, a procession of more cars started through the gates almost as soon as I arrived. So I avoided the newer, sunnier section of the cemetery, but still observed seven other strollers.

3a) The place looks a bit bleak right now, and I expect a snowfall will improve it. But will I want to be walking through it then?

3b) The two Creepy Graves of Children have been specially sheltered from the incoming weather, which is a bit of a relief. Those graves are so beautiful (if creepy), but they would be deeply sad if they were damaged.

Tuesday Morning, 8 December

1) I had never heard of Hyllsyng or its celebrity pastor on the East Coast Cyrl Lyntz, but I was somehow absorbed by this article about the pastor’s dismissal last week after discovery of adultery and quite a few other lapses. This worship community definitely seems more style-over-substance entertainment rather than church — but then, I haven’t been an active churchgoer in 20 years, so who am I to judge?

1a) This story very much brought up for me Matthew 6:6, “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” But on the flip side, also my father, dressing in his best every Sunday morning for Sunday School and church, and a conversation we once had about the value of public worship as part of a congregation. That meant so much to him, being part of a community of faith.

2) By the time I went to bed last night I was very surprised to discover that I’d polished off an entire bottle of merlot, but it was all in the cause of good conversation. As you know, cocktail hour is an important part of the daily schedule at Maison Robaire. Yesterday’s had to be a “working” cocktail hour, wrapping up a few packages for mailing in the dining room and other administrivia instead of just lounging the parlor and reading. But then before you know it the clock said 8:30 or so, and I had been in two extended but beautiful conversations — first with a couple dear friends passing through Boston, and then with one of my oldest friends from Lago di Carlo who I hadn’t actually spoken to in at least ten years, and possibly longer.

2a) The result this morning: happy memories tinged by, unusually, upper back pain, probably from the way I was sitting during Call #2.

3) A friend has twice posted images from Thomas Cole’s famous series of painting The Course of Empire, notably Destruction and Desolation. I share his concerns, but want so very much to be hopeful now.

Thanksgiving Eve, November 25

1) Right now I am using this cocktail hour to neutralize some frustrations with rye and The Wizard of Oz.

1a) I had to buy the latter again because my DVD is stuck in the external DVD player which does not recognize that there is a DVD in there! The internet, as usual, is entirely unhelpful in suggesting solutions.

1b) I feel like Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black: “Now I’m gonna have to buy the White Album again!”

2) But it was lovely today to receive a package, get some nice feedback on today’s random column, and read an actual handwritten Lovely Note someone sent me in the mail.

3) For Thanksgiving I am fixing myself a nice turkey luncheon; thank goodness I started thawing out that bowling ball of a turkey breast on Monday! And in the afternoon at least two friends will be here for dessert al fresco. I hope the anticipated rains will have ceased by then.

Saturday Night, November 21 - Recipes

1) In the larder I had two chicken breasts that I had to cook today, plus new potatoes I’d gotten for a failed attempt to cook vichyssoise on National Vichyssoise Day (no leeks in the neighborhood), and of course garlic. An internet search for those ingredients yielded this recipe on ye Fydde Nytwyrke for Garlic Chicken and Potatoes, and it may become a new go-to recipe.

1a) I had in the house almost everything else almost exactly: olive oil, cumin seeds (I had powdered cumin), salt and pepper, light brown sugar, lemon, red pepper flakes (I used cayenne pepper), and chopped fresh cilantro (I used powdered cilantro). The results were actually quite tasty!

2) A friend sent along this recipe for a bourbon cocktail that also uses ingredients I already have in the house — Lillet Blanc and Aperol — so I’ll have to give that a go tomorrow night.

3) Lastly, a very saucy discussion took place on ye Fycebykke about a particularly campy favorite, candlelight salad. I may have to have a fight with Etiquetteer about whether or not we do an instructional video.

Early Thursday Morning, 19 November

1) My rule is, if I’m awake after 5:00 AM, I start the day. Often I break this rule, now that I don’t have to leave the house by 8 to make the office by 9, but not today.

2) Mother’s Bible opened to Galatians 3, which begins with a question that many Americans would have trouble answering: “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you from your faith after Jesus Christ, crucified, has been pictured before your eyes?”

2a) And in Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, #165: “Wage a clean war. the wise person can be driven to war, but not to a dishonorable one. Act like the person you are, not the way they make you act. To behave magnanimously towards your rivals is praiseworthy. You should fight not only to win power but also to show that you are a superior fighter. To conquer without nobility is not victory but surrender. [emphasis mine] . . . don’t take advantage of the trust that was once placed in you. Everything that smacks of treachery is poison to your reputation. Noble people shouldn’t have even an atom of baseness. Nobility scorns villainy. You should be able to boast that if gallantry, generosity, and faith were lost in the world, they could be found agian in your own breast.”

3) Variations on routine become gemstones of excitement, and this morning I have a 9 AM call with a friend and former colleague, and that is most pleasant to consider!

Wednesday Night, 18 November

1) Such chaotic dreams in the night: going through what was basically a crowded labyrinth of white office furniture and finding my mother in the way (!), and then later, running up an escalator after discovering my luggage had been stolen, hearing my name being called out over a public address system, yelling that I was on my way, and then hearing such a long, complicated question for me that I realized I had no idea where in the building that voice over the public address system was coming from . . . and where was my luggage?!

1a) Wouldn’t you rather wake up than deal with all that? I think you would!

2) Now here is a piece of music for a victorious winter holiday season: Rachmaninoff’s Prelude Opus 23, No. 2.

3) This evening I listened in on a Massachusetts Historical Society presentation via Zoom on Penelope Winslow, Plymouth Colony First Lady: Reimagining a Life, because the author, Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, is also the House Administrator at the Gibson House and I wanted to show my support. Well . . . a very interesting program on a seemingly daunting project: determining someone’s life story based not on written or recorded words, but through what is called “material culture:” surviving property, belongings, and archeological discoveries. I feel like I learned a lot.

3a) And as if that wasn’t enough, the program was introduced by the Society’s president, Catherine Allgor. “Catherine Allgor?” I asked myself. “That couldn’t possibly be the author of Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government that I just quoted in a recent column, could it?” Well, yes! Yes, it could be the same Catherine Allgor who wrote Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government! Such an excellent book, and I should reread the whole thing again, but she goes into so much of Dolley Madison’s brilliant strategy to forge a robust society in the new Washington City, and also why there are public galleries in Congress, among other things. So, from an a academic research standpoint, it’s been a VERY exciting Wednesday night.

Tuesday Late Afternoon, 17 November

I am about to become that Boring Old Man at the Cocktail Party*:

1) Second Cousin Alice emailed a link to a video of a book talk about Lisa Wingate’s The Book of Lost Friends, which is just coming out. She sent it in part because one of the women in the video, not the author, just happened to be the wife of a man whose grandmother was her third grade Sunday School teacher back at First Methodist in Lago di Carlo, Mrs. Plauche (pronounced PLOH-shay). And wouldn’t you know it, Mrs. Plauche had also been MY third-grade Sunday School teacher back at First Methodist! Several years later, of course; I was as properly dressed four-year-old in the congregation when Alice was married.

2) Alice’s grandmother Lal and my grandmother Mary Ella were sisters, and they and their sister Kate were very good friends of Mrs. Plauche. They probably all played canasta together.

2a) Somewhere I have Mrs. Plauche’s copy of Lily Daché’s memoir Talking Through My Hats, which in retrospect seems like a very frivolous thing for her to have. But then we still haven’t figured out why or how my Gramma Thorson ended up owning a copy of The Myra Breckinridge Cookbook, so there you are.

3) The Book of Lost Friends sounds both heartbreaking and fascinating, which means it is probably not a book for me to pick up in 2020.

*Certain friends of mine are going to sprain their eyes rolling them over that assertion!

Friday Morning, 13 November -- Friday the 13th in 2020

1) Technically my stacking bracket, so long awaited, is arriving before 1 PM from ye Byste Byyye, but I’ll believe it after it’s in the kitchen and I’ve tipped the delivery driver. Then I can schedule the return of the contractor to install the washer/dryer and the carbon filter for the recirculating range hood . . . and my kitchen renovation will be complete! Finalmente!

1a) Well . . . except for a few things that I’m responsible for, like actually, finishing filling the cabinets and drawers, hanging the Fiestaware plates, and other “deft and tasteful suggestions.”

2) On the cooking front, earlier this week I made my first attempt at eggs cocotte, or shirred eggs, which ended up a bit of a mixed bag. It was the first time I’d ever used the tiny orange ramekin I bought in Paris for cooking and not just to be pretty and orange! Long story short, next time I won’t add raw veggies straight from the fridge. But there will be a next time.

3) The kitchen’s nearly nearly finished, a Biden presidency is assured in January, but I am still feeling unsettled. Is it the continuing coronavirus crisis, or something else?

Tuesday Morning, 10 November

1) My practice of morning devotional fell away in August when the kitchen renovation began. Aside from the workmen arriving every day at 7, the entire house was in chaos*. Yesterday Mother came into my mind a lot; morning devotional was very much her daily routine. And since I was unable to get back to sleep after 4:20 AM, this was the right day to resume my own devotional.

1a) I must say, I slept very heavily for at least four hours. How beautiful!

2) I practice bibliomancy; there’s a lesson you may not know you need when you open up a book. Today Mother’s Bible came open at Corinthians II, chapter 1. And Mother had bracketed this verse with the date 3/23/75: “Who comforts us in all our roubles, so that we also may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, by the very comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

2a) But the verse that spoke to me was 1:12: “For our joy is this, the testimony of our conscience, in sincerity and in purity with the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in this world, and not through the wisdom of the flesh; and above all, we have so dealt with you.”

3) And then Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom #159, which begins “Know how to suffer fools.” Gurrrrllll, have we had to suffer a fool these last four years, and those who revere him! But it’s a complicated aphorism, including “The wise are the least tolerant, for learning has diminished their patience,” and “. . . the person who does not know how to put up with others should retire into himself, if indeed he can suffer even himself.”

*It still is.

Monday Night, 9 November -- Indian Summer

1) The weather has been phenomenal the last few days, exceptionally warm for early November, though the leaves remain gold, russet, and/or fallen. You will not be surprised to learn that I have tried even harder to walk daily in the cemetery. Saturday I wandered through with a friend and her husband, neither of whom I’d seen since before quarantine in March; it was really nice to exchange knowledge (they had been before several times) and point out landmarks of interest with people of similar tastes.

Really, it’s a bit too early for Christmas decorations still.

2) Yesterday and today I took my usual brisk walk, just over an hour, allowing myself to go where I would as long as I avoided contact with other strollers. Today that goal led me off the paved paths more than usual, and even brought me to the lakeshore. I was surprised to find this sculpture of a farmboy.

2a) Wandering off the pavement also led me to find this tiny, poignant grave of an infant not yet a year old.

3) The real sound of autumn isn’t rustling leaves underfoot, it’s the honk of a flock of Canada geese.

4) All this in a T-shirt! In November! True Indian summer.

Wednesday Morning, November 4

1) I finally turned out the lights at 1:30 AM, but I started the day earlier than I wanted to, about 7ish. Physically my back hurts and my stomach is churning. There’s not enough antacid in the world.

1a) But I did this to myself! I knew we wouldn’t get a final result to the election last night, but I stayed up anyway. It’s my own fault I feel like this now.

2) And now we wait — on Pennsylvania, just like in Gone With the Wind, but also a handful of other states, including Georgia.

Just the first 30 seconds.

3) Another line from GWTW stands out this morning: India Wilkes, directing her icy contempt at Scarlett with “You’ve done everything you can to lower the prestige of decent people.” Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Monday Morning, November 2 - Shopping List

1) On the day before Election Day, just returned from my weekly errands at the neighborhood town center with these in my canvas shopping bags:

• Toilet paper

• Coffee filters

• Wipes

• Hydrogen peroxide

• Antacid tablets (it never hurts to have extra supplies on hand)

• Burrito for today’s lunch

• Five avocados for five dollars - what a bargain! (Especially when one considers that everything else at this fahncy general store is brushed with gold dust and dew from angels’ wings…)

• Jack cheese

• Water crackers

• Economy-sized bourbon

• Red vermouth

2) The weather is beautiful: sunny, brisk, and a bit chilly. I was glad to be out.

3) The pre-Hallowe’en snowfall broke off a couple limbs of the star magnolia in front of the house. I was able to cart them off, but I can only wonder how many downed tree limbs we’ll have here at Maison Robaire this winter.

Friday Night, October 30 -- Actresses of Old Hollywood

1) I’m in a Joan Crawford group on ye Fycebykke, and in discussing A Woman’s Face of 1941, a major JC fan said that Joan was one of the first actresses to sacrifice her glamor for the sake of a part. Let’s just say that, at this point, I know better than to mention Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage in 1934, seven years before. No matter how true it is, these JC queens just will not hear it if it’s Bette Davis. #artisticdifferences

2) Because of “Now, after 17 years” I put on The Maltese Falcon this evening. Truly it is Mary Astor’s more vivid and enduring performance.

3) All I want on November 4 is to wake up and be reassured that Miss Elly was always played by Barbara Bel Geddes and that whole business with Donna Reed was just a dream.

Friday Evening, October 30 -- Kitchen Renovation: The Urn

“Now, after 17 years . . . “ — Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon*

1) Finally today, after all this time, I dug out The Urn from everything in the cellar, washed it in my new deep kitchen sink, and installed it in the Cozy Nook. It’s an important element in my Howard Johnson’s at Versailles kitchen.

2) It’s really all a big joke funny only to myself. About 30 years ago Daddy served a term on the local hospital board of directors. The directors would get terribly pretentious gifts every Christmas. The first was this three-part German porcelain urn. It’s the kind of thing that neither Daddy nor Mother would ever have chosen themselves. Of course this made me laugh like a drain, and I begged to have it to put on top of the toilet in my apartment. (I was still in my 20s then . . . ) Had Mother been able to raise one eyebrow, she would have done so, but she acquiesed and mailed it to me. And for four years on Beacon Street it was proudly displayed on top of the john, and then for nine years afterward on the bathroom counter on Columbus Avenue.

Not at all overdone.

3) When I moved to to Maison Robaire in 2003, I knew in advance that there wouldn’t be a place for The Urn. So I stashed it in the cellar, and “Now, after 17 years . . . “ to quote Sidney Greenstreet, its time has come.

3a) Because so many of you would expect this gesture, I expect The Urn will be used for my ashes at the funeral.

*Yes, there is a movie quote for everything. Everything!

Sunday Evening, October 25 -- World Opera Day

My graduate school roommate Tom tipped me off that today was World Opera Day; you’d think Etiquetteer would already have known! To celebrate the day, let me share some favorite selections, some of which I haven’t taken the trouble to seek out for a very long time.

All good operas begin with an overture (I can just hear the late Mame Dennis now, “I can’t wait to hear that overture!” — but of course she was thinking of Chu Chin Chow, which is not my fault), so I have to begin this escapade with the overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg (which i discovered by chance in college). This is wonderful music if you have to practice going up and down stairs without looking down.

Even more important is Smetana’s overture to the Czech national opera The Bartered Bride. To me this is what sailing must sound like. Two stories:

• World War II cryptoanalyst George Kreamer (also the organist at my parents’ wedding) told me the story at least once (and likely twice) about being part of the Allied liberation of Prague. The Nazis had forbidden performances of Bride, and as soon as they where gone chalk notices appeared on sidewalks throughout the city: “Bartered Bride tomorrow noon.” George managed to get there. “How was the performance?” I asked him. “It didn’t matter,” he told me. “Everyone was crying too much.”

• When I went to Paris in 2008 for my erty-farf birthday, I was fortunate enough to see a matinée of Bride at the Opéra Garnier. And I’ll admit to having shed a few tears during the overture.

The very first opera I saw live was La Boheme*, when I was nine years old. Some small touring company was doing it on the Community Concerts circuit at the Civic Center, which must have been barely a year old. We got to sit in the front row (Mother was a long-serving vice president of membership), and I can still see the scaffolding-style sets with slide projector images of Paris on screens, the soloists hanging paper lanterns in the Café Momus to misspell NOEL as LEON, and especially the appearance of Musetta, in emerald green velvet carrying a peacock feather fan. So I must begin with Mirella Freni singing Musetta’s Waltz.

Mother used to play Chopin’s nocturne opus 9 no. 2 - you know, the famous one that everyone used to play - and Gramma had played it, and at some point when I was still taking lessons I could stumble through it, too. (And I still love it.) So you can imagine the wildness of my teenage enthusiasm when the 1943 Phantom of the Opera** came on TV and . . . and there was an opera using that nocturne! It comes at a pivotal point in the story, when Mlle. Biancarolli has been poisoned and Christine has to go on as her understudy. The nocturne had been turned into a duet between Susanne Foster (one of the bird-like sopranos so fashionable then) and Nelson Eddy as Himself. I wish I could show you the clip from the film, but all the Yewtybbe can offer me this evening is the audio.

The 1943 Phantom begins with the Paris Opéra performing Martha, and for awhile I was obsessed with what I discovered many years later is “Mag der himmel euch vergeben,” one of the most famous parts of the opera (which no one performs any more). Who cares what it means, just pass the Kleenex!

In college I discovered the famous sextette from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which I will always regard as one of the greatest achievements of the 19th century, right up there with anesthesia, indoor plumbing, and the color mauve. I have written about this before; no need to repeat. This evening I give you the famous 1955 Callas performance conducted by Karajan (my God, listen to that applause before the sing it a second time!), and … AND … Enrico Caruso Himself in the famous “Seven Dollar Sextet” recording:

HONK!

Speaking of Caruso, dahlings, that inevitably leads up to “that famous Irish tenor, Mari O’Lanza” as Caruso in 1951’s The Great Caruso. Of course the best line in the whole film is from the indignant Viennese soprano — “Tenor isn’t a voice. It’s a DISEASE!” — but the best moment is when Caruso has to do Lucia while his wife (Ann Blyth) is giving birth to their first child. You have to watch to find out what happens. It always made my daddy laugh, which is a happy memory to have.

I’ve gotten to see some amazing live performances in the last 40 years, including (but not limited to):

• 2000-1: Aida, Salomé, The Magic Flute, all Boston Lyric Opera, part of the Egypt in Boston season.

• October, 2008: Rigoletto, Opéra Bastille, Paris. Here, an impossibly young Pavarotti sings “La donna é mobile.”

• Hallowe’en, 2013: Madama Butterfly, La Fenice, Venice - and on closing night! I’ve always loved Licia Albanese and James Melton singing the duet at the end of Act I. My God, the urgency!

• Autumn, 2019: Pagiiacci, Boston Lyric Opera, an astonishing production

At different times different arias and selections have been musical obsessions, including (but far from limited to):

• Leontyne Price singing La Mamma Morta at her 1965 Carnegie Hall recital. Somehow it sounds more immediate without an orchestra, only a piano.

• In the 1990s I was given a CD of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf songs, including Einer Wird Kommen (“One will come”) from The Tsarevitch by Léhar. I can’t find the English translation now, but I know it includes the lyric “Will I tremble at his kisses?”)

• “Libiamo,” the fabulous drinking waltz from La Traviata.

• January, 1996, I was vacationing with friends on Kauai, and snapped up the four-CD set of Callas tracks, La Divina. And I was instantly obsessed with “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from Samson et Dalila. My poor friends had to listen to that with me over and over.

I love me some Richard Tauber, and seeing and hearing him since Schumann’s Devotion in Heart’s Desire is a real treat:

But his “My Heart and I” from his own opera In Old Chelsea. I mean, it’s in English, but who cares what it means, just pass the Kleenex! It’s not at ALL overdone!

My ambition now is to hear Der Rosenkavalier in Vienna. I had daydreamed this winter about going over — there were performances in April on the schedule — but the coronavirus pandemic put an end to that.

Just for Tom, Fritz Wunderlich’s rendition of the tenor aria, what my friend Michael calls “my favorite interrupted aria,” because the Baron abruptly silences the tenor while he is singing to the Marschallin.

And to conclude (because sweet mercy goodness, this could obviously go on ALL NIGHT), the final trio and duet. Love triumphant and acknowledgment of having reached a certain age. Who cares what it means, just pass the Kleenex!

I don’t mind telling you, I’m a vibrating mess. But then Anna Russell would be likely to say that’s because I have resonance where my brains ought to be.

Hallowe’en: at La Fenice, Venice, for the closing night of Madama Butterfly.

*I believe most Americans know at most two operas, and they are very likely to be La Boheme and Aida, though I gather that Madama Butterfly runs a close second.

**Other versions of Phantom are better than this one - one might argue that all of them are - but with all its faults, you’ll pry this one from my cold dead fingers.

Thursday Night, October 15

1) Such beautiful weather today, and even so, I had to force myself out of the house after a mostly productive morning writing, followed by a slump. And it was a beautiful afternoon in the cemetery. The wind in the trees, the leaves changing for the autumn, fewer than 12 other strollers, beauty, peace and quiet.

You can see the wound in the tree trunk where the limb came out, and the limb (in shadow) on the ground.

1a) A couple cemetery workers started working on that enormous maple limb that came down in the last week. Tomorrow (or whenever I go next) I’ll have to see if they retained, took, or otherwise sorted out the fragments of that marble tombstone that the tree limb broke. I’m not looking to scavenge a piece, but I hope they repair it.

2) The election is coming and the stakes are high, and yet part of me feels like I’m living in limbo. Even making plans for December feels unreal. We don’t know what’s going to happen.

3) Tonight I spent two hours (!) Facetiming with a friend too little seen - as who is not these days? - and it was the best thing. I miss having a true social life!

I saw quite a few pumpkins on graves, but none with cartoon faces . . . except this one.