This is from my trip to the William Inge Festival. It’s me with Elizabeth Wilson, the only surviving member of the original Broadway cast of Picnic from 1953. You might recognize her from her many roles in film (Dustin Hoffman’s mom in The Graduate and Roz in 9 to 5, and recently as Sarah Delano Roosevelt, the mother of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in Hyde Park on Hudson). She has become a great friend of the festival and a good friend to many of us who attend. She is a bright shining spirit.
Less than three days after losing one good blog here in Florida, we’re losing another: South Florida Daily Blog posted its farewell last night.
For five years Rick has been posting links to what he thinks are the best works on South Florida blogs and sharing them with his considerable readership, and doing his own writing as well. For reasons known only to him, he has shared a lot of the writing that I do here. There are a lot of really good blogs and sites here, so it has been a honor and a privilege to be chosen by him on such a consistent basis.
I also had several occasions to meet Rick. He’s a good man, dedicated to his work and his causes, and I’m sorry to see him go. He has his own reasons, and I will not argue with him for making his choice, but I will say that he is leaving the place better than he found it, a goal that he shares with me both on the blogosphere but on the hiking trails of Colorado, where I know he longs to be.
Thanks, Rick, for everything. Happy trails.
For Rick.
Bon voyage.
Benjamin J. Kirby at The Spencerian has decided to hang it up.
I am starting to understand, finally, what it means to get older. It means nothing is black and white. There are no absolutes, and there are such things as mixed emotions. Children teach this valuable lesson as well. I may be furious with Emeline for something, yell at her to go to time-out, but every time I see her, my heart overflows with love.
And so it is with genuinely mixed emotions that I write the blog post that has needed writing for some time.
I am sending The Spencerian on an extended hiatus. I am not sure when it will be back, if at all.
There are a lot of blogs and writers that come and go without much notice, which is the nature of anything, and then there are those who start out with great promise and then settle into a dull mediocrity that makes you wonder why they bother. And then there are writers who are always fresh, always saying something, asking, even smirking at themselves, and those are the ones you read day after day — and get really pissed at (in a good way) when they say something you wish you’d said.
The latter is the case with BJK and The Spencerian. I do not question his reasons for hitting the hold button, but I’m going to be a tad selfish and say that there will be a hollowness in the daily scan of Google Reader when the days go by and there’s nothing more there in that little space.
Best wishes, BJK. Take care of yourself, your family and your world. They — and we — will all be better for it, but we will also want to hear from you again.
February 1, 1989: Twenty-four years ago today, Sam was born somewhere in Oklahoma.
Technically the U.S. government went over the cliff at midnight, but at the last minute the White House and Republicans worked out a compromise deal on taxes and sequestration. The Senate whooped it through 89-8, and the House will vote on it later today, which means it could still blow up and we’ll be back where we started.
Hillary Clinton is still recovering in at hospital in New York from a blood clot near her brain. This development is not necessarily life-threatening, and doctors say she should make a full recovery. But it does make the right-wingers who said she was faking her illness to get out of testifying before Congress about the incident in Benghazi look like churlish asshats. But then again, they already were, so no news there. Two years from today I expect us to be chattering about her standing in the Iowa polls, a year out from the Iowa caucuses.
Marriage equality comes to Maryland today. It was one of three states that voted by public referendum to legalize the unions over the objections of such ironically-named hate groups like Focus on the Family, the National Organization for Marriage, and One Million Moms. They had claimed that judges and legislatures had no business overturning the will of the people and no state would allow same-sex marriage if the the people got to vote on it. Maryland and two other states, Maine and Washington, made that point moot, and now those groups are trying to figure out a way to overturn the elections. Best wishes to the happy couples.
The last two Cuban day workers at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base have retired, but there’s no legal way for the U.S. to pay their hard-earned Defense Department pension without violating the embargo. It’s long past time the embargo itself was retired, and without a pension.
Today marks Marty’s thirteenth birthday. She’s been my friend Brian’s faithful companion since she was a pup, and she’s still going strong. Best wishes.
And today marks a milestone for my 1988 Pontiac 6000 LE Safari station wagon, which I have also had since it was a pup. It is now officially 25 years old, thus making it an antique car.
That’s what it looked like when it was twenty years old. I’ll have more pictures of it later this week when it comes back from the body shop where it’s getting some nips and tucks done to make it ready for its first national AACA show in February.
Happy new year, everyone, and may this one be better than the last one.
Ten years ago today, I lost my little friend.
Ten years ago today, I lost my little friend.
While the local classical music public radio station is having their end-of-year begathon, I’m listening to Interlochen Public Radio out of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. I used to listen to it when I lived in Petoskey, and it’s nice to hear them again.
It’s also interesting to hear their weather reports. Thanks to the heat wave yesterday, it was hotter up there than it was here in Miami. They also had a rip-current warning for Lake Michigan; something I’m used to hearing down here when there’s a strong on-shore wind on Miami Beach.
If IPR can keep their stream working — it’s had drop-out issues in the past — I’ll keep listening. I still know some of the people there, they play a broader selection of music, and there will be a tad of schadenfreude on my part next January when the weather report warns of temperatures approaching -17 F.
While the local classical music public radio station is having their end-of-year begathon, I’m listening to Interlochen Public Radio out of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. I used to listen to it when I lived in Petoskey, and it’s nice to hear them again.
It’s also interesting to hear their weather reports. Thanks to the heat wave yesterday, it was hotter up there than it was here in Miami. They also had a rip-current warning for Lake Michigan; something I’m used to hearing down here when there’s a strong on-shore wind on Miami Beach.
If IPR can keep their stream working — it’s had drop-out issues in the past — I’ll keep listening. I still know some of the people there, they play a broader selection of music, and there will be a tad of schadenfreude on my part next January when the weather report warns of temperatures approaching -17 F.
February 1, 1989: Twenty-three years ago today, Sam was born somewhere in Oklahoma.
Thanks for being there last night, Val, and thanks for smiles and the songs.
Thanks to Facebook and the hard work of a couple of people — thanks, Neil and David — this weekend a bunch of my friends and classmates from my years at the Ring Theatre at the University of Miami are getting together here in Miami. The invitations went out to anyone who was there between 1970 and 1983 — I was there from 1971 to 1974 — and last night some of us gathered informally at Fox’s Lounge in South Miami. Back in the day it was a favorite place to eat and imbibe, and we had a great time last night.
Of course, forty years brings a lot of changes to people, so when we gather for the actual dinner tonight, my classmates will probably not recognize me. After all, I don’t still look like my freshman year ID:
This is more like it:
But no matter what we look like, it’s still going to be great to catch up with people who were a very important part of my life and made such a difference in my life.
For me and John…
I had lunch today with a friend that I first met on September 6, 1960. (There’s the connection to last night’s A Little Night Music post.) How do I know that date for certain? Because that was my first day of Grade 3 at my new school, and John was one of the first boys I met.
There was an instant connection; we both knew we would be friends, and so we were all the way through Grade 6, and then even after when he went on to middle school and I repeated. But when I came back from St. George’s in 1968, John had left the school, and we lost touch. But I never forgot his humor, his wit, and the sheer talent that I knew would carry him to great success in whatever career he chose. And succeed he has.
I next heard from him in 1979. He was in town on a visit from his home in New York City, and I visited him when I passed through the city that summer. And then, through the reach of the social network, we reconnected again last summer. This time I promise not to let go.
There are friends you make for life that you know will always have that connection. Today at the sidewalk cafe in Fort Lauderdale, thirty-two years disappeared without a trace, and that little boy with the crewcut and horn-rimmed glasses who quoted Rod Serling and did a dead-on Charles Laughton was with me again.
The soloist at 0:56 is Dr. Grant Manhart. I worked with him at camp in Colorado in the 1970′s, and he played a mean trumpet then, so imagine what he does now…
The trip home was uneventful — except for waiting an unprecedented 20 minutes for the ramp folks at O’Hare to unload the luggage that was supposed to be on the jetbridge when we got off the commuter flight from Chicago. The flight from Chicago to Miami was packed. Who goes to Miami in September?
Anyway, here’s one of the photos from the reunion.
The gang looks good.
There were twenty of us, including husbands and wives, from the Class of 1971 that gathered in what I still think of as the Lower School Gym, now an auditorium named after a former headmaster. For a class of 47 that has lost some to death, others to distance, it was a good turn-out. Some faces were easy to recognize thanks to Facebook and the fact that even after forty years, some faces never lose their unique qualities; a smile or a profile, and some voices have never changed beyond what I remember from the classroom.
After the reception and a tour of the school, since remodeled and grown in so many ways over the years, we all gathered for dinner in a restaurant in a private room, settled around a large table, and talking up a storm.
We all got to tell our stories, all of them laced with good humor and tales of accomplishment, but also leavened with experiences of life. What amazed me was the ease at which we were able to bring things long forgotten back to the fore; some good memories, some bad; some comic, some tragic. We have all faced the ravages of time, of disappointment, but also joy and blessings.
Tonight we will gather again for a formal dinner and dancing at a local country club. There will be pictures and more tales and more laughter and probably a few tears. The one thing we are sure of is that we will not let another ten or more years pass before doing this again. The friendships and bonds and rivalries we formed all those years ago and renewed now will not be so easily cut again.
