Handel and Haydn and Barefeet

In mid-March (it was still cold) we went to a Handel and Haydn concert at Boston's Symphony Hall, a beautiful iconic (I never use that word lightly) venue where the ghosts of past great conductors linger in the grace notes.
 A couple sat next to me, and the man took off his shoes!  Not only  that, but he was barefoot, i.e. no socks on a wintry night.  I stared at those big white feet, and he made some joke about being from Alabama and I mentioned some sporting event and then he said, 'no, just joking, really from Maine.'  He didn't look or sound like Maine, and I saw he wore an expensive watch, an expensive overcoat and ye gods!  His face had a tropic tan but those big white feet hadn't seen a sandal or a flip-flop for months.  Who they hell was this guy?  He made another remark about Mencken or someone to indicate some education, and I was even more mystified.  His wife/girlfriend looked like a  40+ Bostonian, which is to say, normal.

  At intermission, the shoes went on and they left and when they returned, the shoes came off.  Well,  sometimes wearing shoes without socks is not comfy, and may even be painful where they rub and abrade.

My friend who was at the concert with us and is from Murray Hill in NYC and knows about such things, said sockless men were all the rage.  In winter, yet.  Who knew?    Sockless in summer, sure, but March?

Today in the New York Times, I noticed an ad for some pricey men's oxfords, and guess what?  Look ma, no socks!

Fashion forward is a hard slog in Boston.  Significant Other would never dream of going sockless to Symphony Hall.  Now, it seems, men have become as willing as women to sacrifice comfort for style.  High heels next? We'll have to wait and see.

Parenthetical Style Blog   

Read this and follow advice and no one will ever know you're from Boston!  


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A Dave Brubeck Memory

I tried to find our old Dave Brubeck LPs  when I  heard the news of his death, but the records have not been properly arranged since we moved in nine years ago.  We saw Brubeck with his sons a couple times here in Boston playing with Handel & Haydn which was a hoot.  Don't know if I saved any programs.

I heard Brubeck as a young woman in Houston, Texas.  My best friend Mary Kay was friends with a philsophy professor, very platonic; they were just good buddies.  She  conned him into taking both of us to the Dave Brubeck concert.  Of course I was thrilled, because as a starving student, I didn't get to a lot of concerts.

The evening dawned, and Dr. K. picked us up at the dorm and drove a ways from the campus to a little suburban ranch house, where we brought on board a young math professor who was going along.  Girls in the back seat, men in the front, or at least that seems the most logical seating if memory serves.

I remember seeing two or three tiny tots, some in diapers, toddling around the professor's yard, and a tired-looking wife schlumping around in shorts and a tee shirt.  Eeek!  Here we were all dressed up in our dresses to see Dave Brubeck and she was left alone with the kids.  If she gave us a dirty look, I can't remember, but I do recall that the whole situation seemed a bit bizarre.

We got to the concert and had good balcony seats.  Brubeck was fantastic.  I sure had never heard any live music like that!  The math professor got into the music so deeply that I don't know if he even knew where he was.  He looked like he was in another world.  I don't think he said a word to anyone all evening. 

We dropped the prof back at his house and Dr. K. took us back to the dorm.  Music to dream about. 

It was not until I was a young wife with two little kids that I started to feel sorry, big time, for the math professor's wife.  She was more long suffering than I ever was.

My "math professor's wife" occasion happened in New York at my husband's bosses house.  For dinner.  Kids along, and another employee with spouse (friends of ours) and three kids along.  I didn't get out a lot in those days,   and this was a big evening for me.  You know, driinks, adult conversation, a nice meal with the boss and his wife and some friends.  My kids were well-behaved, by the way.  Indoor voices, all dressed up.  Cute little blonds.  I ate three meals with them every day.  

When it came time to sit down for dinner a horrible thing occurred.  I was seated with all five kids and the boss's wife at a separate table.  Not even a man at the table.  Just women and children.  I recall  that I expressed an objection.  Can't I sit with the grownups?  Well, you would have thought I suggested smothering the kids and burying them in the basement.  Just about everyone present except maybe the boss told me to put up and shut up.  Outrage.  My objection was met with outrage, a wave of disgust and anger. 

So I sucked it up and ate with five little boys and the bosses wife who was used to making conversation with practically everyone, even a mother who didn't want to sit with her own children at dinner.  I was never really a good sport. Like my mom that way.

Some old wounds never heal.  I hope the math professor's wife has forgotten about the night her husband took off with a philosophy professor and two coeds to hear Dave Brubeck, leaving her with the toddlers. Everyone's kids grow up, and life plays out in expected and unexpected ways.  We remember and we forget.

And Dave Brubeck died one day short of his 92nd birthday.  I'm going to sort through those LPs one of these days, and I'll dig through the box of souvenirs to look for the Handel & Haydn program.  It was an honor to hear him play several times, both then and now.


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From Beantown to the Big Apple

We drove to NYC to celebrate Significant Others Significant Birthday.
It was fashion week, which is barely a blip on a retiree's radar.  New York Fashion Week I did notice the ugly-on-an-ape high heels and anklets photos in the Times. Unattractive, grumpy-looking women who look like they could use a cheeseburger-and-fries stalking about in clothes that befitted their in-your-face unattractiveness.  The fact that these clothes are so far out there that only the 1% can afford them, and the 1 % of the 1 % would want to wear them, makes you wonder how these designers stay in business.  Well, what they actually sell is not what you see in fashion week, or at least what the Times deems fit to print. 

We had a lovely Valentine meal at Pascalou,  an upper East Side place that serves delicious food and doesn't break the bank.  Service and meal were good, esp. considering that Valentine's Day can produce crowds, inattentive service (due to crowds) and less than stellar food.  Not the case at Pascalou.  I absolutely adored my sole. Pascalou

Before we left, I baked a "Marmorkuchen," or marble cake, S.O.'s favorite.  We bought a cake carrier (an adventure in itself) to schlep it with us.

Our host cooked a fab birthday dinner, which was somewhat clouded by the fact that the car, which had to be moved because of parking rules, would not start.  A call to AAA would solve everything, we thought.  Just need a jump.  Nope.  What we needed was a battery, alternator, labor and a bill in the low four figures.  Ouch!

Then we got a late start for home, landing us in rush hour, rain, darkness, and traffic hell.  Our host drove back to Boston, too, because she had to go to a memorial service.  I cooked a quickie dinner at 9:30 at night--Italian sausage with a cobbled together vodka sauce.  Pasta with Sausage in Vodka Cream Sauce Very delicious if I say so myself.  Wonderful Blackberry Clafoutis last night.  So simple and delicious. 

In New York, we visited the Met and saw the American (both continents) Indian exhibit and also the European sculpture gallery.  Lovely. European Sculpture Gallery at the Met

In Boston we heard Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra play Eroica and also a great rendition of  the Egmont Overture.  That Beethoven sure could compose beautiful music.

Last night I cooked a decent meal and inadvertently invented a recipe.  This post is getting mucho longo, so I'll discuss the recipe anon.  And explain my serendipitous error.

Must catch up on missed TV programs and the Sunday papers.  Also laundry.  Writing.  House.  Bills.  Stuff.  Life is strange.

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Post-Christmas Blahs

Decorations are all down and mostly put away with one last inspection of my great-grandma's old Victorian ornaments, my granddaughter's great-great-great grandma, a tiny little Mennonite lady who bore nine children, the last one younger than her oldest grandchild, my mother.  But that's another story. 

 We used a holiday table cloth from Marshall Field in Chicago that I bought when the kids were little.  Many ornaments from when they were little, including some decorated jars that are candle holders.  For once, there is real continuity with the past, in Kansas and Illinois stretching to New England. We also had a new Christmas tablecloth purchased last year at the Crate an Barrel post-holiday sale.  

Although I had much trepidation, having a half-grown kitten with one of the guests was a lot of fun, The older cats, even set-in-her-ways Thisbe  acted energized.  Thisbe even played with my bathrobe  belt.   We got out the little grey toy mice and the young cat enjoyed hours of play, and of course when the real mice came out of the basement ceiling the cats had a cooperative enterprise going with Thisbe finding them and the other two catching them.   The two house cats taught the kitten to use the sharpening post, a major coup.     

So why do I say blahs?  Everyone is gone, the holidays are over, the house is drab after being festooned for the holidays.  Rhododendrons are shriveled.  It's way too quiet.  Even the cats have noticed.  Two loads of towel, two loads of sheets, x more loads of laundry.  Larder is bare.  Christmas bills to pay.  Really blah.  Have to start writing.  Not blah, but  intimidating.

The past week I read Jane Smiley's One Thousand Acres, a novel I cannot recommend highly enough, but  it made my latest efforts seem paltry and I resolved to dig way deeper into my characters psyches.   The home office looks like hell, needs a few days, days not hours of cleaning, then the file drawers cleaned out.  Double blah.

We have an upcoming Handel & Haydn concert to look forward to, and I have a groupon thingy for a great meal at a cheap price.  Well, we hope it will be great.  Lunch with a friend next week.  None of these events are blah, just the dirt and the mess and the need to do some serious cleaning.  In Smiley's book, the women were always cleaning and it reminded me of my mom and my grandma, wonderful housekeepers, and even my friends and I am totally appalled at how the place looks.  By the time one cleans up the mess, it will be hard to find energy to clean.  I will feel virtuous, albeit exhausted.  Ugggh.

Dogwood gets a cat tower. 

Blah.  Blah.  Blah.    Tonight we have a new Chinese recipe to try.  Beef and snow peas.   Lots of spices and basmati rice.   I'll make a salad of lettuce and fresh orange slices.   Will that cure the blahs?  We'll see.                                                                                                                                     

Why I Am No Longer Fashionable

I was always a skinny-Minnie until I stopped smoking, and then I packed on the pounds, so badly that I went from a six to a ten without ever stopping at an eight. Yikes! This happened after I moved to Boston where fashion is a dirty word. Oh, I know. The local newspapers like to tell us we really are stylish, honest, truly, but anyone who drives I-95 South to the Big Apple understands that The Big Apple is the Big Apple, and that Beantown, is, well, Beantown.

In my skinny days, I was terribly fashionable. Jax, Saks, Anne Klein, Jaeger. You name it. My god, I had a Gucci tennis outfit, purchased in Florence. So gaining weight put a huge crimp in my fashionableness, and in addition, I became older, and when I looked at the ads, they sure as hell didn’t show me. They showed anorexic twenty year olds. The clothes didn’t look like anything I could wear to the office or to dinner or to my writing group or even to the theater. In Boston that is.

So I became unfashionable, and from time to time I still stick my nose into Vogue or The New York Times Style section, but those clothes don’t belong in Boston. Cambridge is the worst dressed town in the world. We are talking serious tacky. You can wear the most god-awful getups in Cambridge and no one will look askance. No one will even look.

Boston proper is nearly as bad. A couple years ago I decided to buy a brown or camel jacket. We make an appearance at symphony hall a few times a year, and I noticed many nice wool blazers there in the winter months. So I hie myself to Nordstrom’s and wander around the department where women’s jackets can be found. Cripes, there wasn’t a wool blazer in sight except as part of a suit. Then it dawned on me. The matrons of Boston wore their eight-ten year old wool blazers to the symphony just like I did. I bought a cool non-tailored jacket and have received beaucoup compliments. And I’m the most stylish person at the Handel & Haydn performance. But that’s not saying much.

I never really worked anywhere in the Boston area where women were fashionably dressed. We already mentioned Cambridge. Writers are notoriously poor dressers. In Boston, anyway. When we go out to dinner in the suburbs, everyone wears jeans and sweaters. No fashion there. So I don’t even SEE any fashion to emulate. It’s sad. And then I go to New York and Zowie! Where did all these skinny, cool-looking women come from?

Sometimes coming back from the symphony we are on the same subway cars as the young girls coming into town to go to dance clubs or whatever. Slinky tops and jeans. I could do that, but sometimes you don’t wanna dress down two generations. It’s just not the same.

When we were in Paris two years ago, I did all right, but the Parisian women were stylishly dressed, all in black--the shoes, the coats, the dresses. Très faconnable! Where do women even buy that stuff? Nonetheless, I looked suave having lunch at the museum. See photo.

Now I’m resigned to looking only slightly better than someone going out to wash the car. But I never wear sneakers on Newbury Street. Some standards have to be upheld.

Out and About In the World

Nothing beats going into the world, and how many of us really do? I have friends and fellow writers who had no clue what a so-called "wife beater" undershirt was. I have friends who don't know anyone who is black or gay or poor.

So Friday night we take the MBTA into town for a concert. Left with plenty of time to spare which was quickly eaten up by a wreck on I-95, where someone had been rear-ended. A long wait for the subway. Lots of people going to the Celtics game. We are quite obviously the only couple headed for Symphony Hall.

At Park Street a young Chinese man asks which train goes to Symphony Hall. We must look like we know, which, of course, we do. Train takes forever, too. Hustle up three flights of stairs from the MBTA station, and are shown to our seats with about one minute to spare. Glad I work out.

Nice all Mozart-Beethoven concert. The orchestra really has to break a sweat on the Prometheus Overture and the 8th Symphony. Mozart more sprightly. Good crowd. Nowadays, one worries about the arts.

During intermission I eavesdrop shamelessly on the tales of the woman behind me who also went to New Hampshire (and Ohio) to ring doorbells for Obama. There was an army of unlikely types to went forth and canvassed.

We have dessert at Brasserie Jo, still crowded at 10:00 p.m. Economy has not totally tanked, and lots of young people are in the restaurant. S.O. orders the bread pudding and I take a slice of lemon tart with fresh berries. Delicous. Berries salve conscience.

Back on the T. We wait forever at Park Street. The game is over and the Celtics won. Crowd in a good mood. A group of young ladies (teenagers) en route back to Quincy. They remind us of some of the girls in Quinceneara, the movie we watched last night. A group of eight, all very different, and they are having fun.

Friday we watched Rabbit Proof Fence. Both good movies. No explosions. We do not always have to go out into the World to go into the world.

Yesterday I went to a meeting, and I'll preserve the anonymity, because there was a panel about self-publishing and unfortunately, I knew more than most of the panellists. Two of them had spent a combined amount of $50,000 to self-publish, which is beyond most writer's budgets. This was all non-fiction, and some of the advice was so bad. They did not even mention Print On Demand.

Some comments:
"I didn't hire an editor because I didn't want anyone changing my words." "Just get it out there, and you can fix it in the next edition." "I only found out what a literary agent is this morning."

Oh my god. The panels at Crimebake, which eschews the mere mention of self-publishing as being beyond the pale, are more entertaining and certainly better-informed about whatever the topic may be.

Came home to the rest of the Garbure, wherein the cabbage had disappeared, but the potatoes seemed to come to the fore. Tonight I'm roasting a chicken and we have fresh cranberries and acorn squash. Baked apples for dessert. See photos. These are dynamite apples, and a) don't break the bank and b) may even be good for you. What ho!

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Garbure

I'm making a French peasant soup, Garbure, that sounds like a cross between garbage and ordure. We've had it before and found it quite tasty. Of course, Dr. Atkins would NOT approve, since the soup contains beans and potatoes and bread. Did I say peasant? Hearty fare. I used a slice of ham instead of ham hocks which the store doesn't carry anymore. A head of cabbage is another ingredient. Even more common.


We're doing the yin/yang thing with some delicous stuffed apples from Gourmet. Actually, the garbure is also from Gourmet, a magazine not adverse to the random food of the people recipe.

In my latest work in process, In Flight, I have three characters (man, woman, child), eating a casual meal on a patio, with a contrast between the two bad guys who are having lunch at Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach. The baddest one has a terrible hangover and just about loses it when a waiter splashes soup on his expensive pink shirt.

Significant Other found a CNN video with the Columbian (I guess) marines taking over a drug submarine being loaded with cocaine. Very cool, and I got a close up of the sub, which plays a small but important part in the new book and an even bigger part in the short story of my CIA robot fish. The short story and the book are cross-polinating each other right now. Of course I had "seen" the bad one in my mind's eye, but imagine my surprise when his photo turned up in the newspapers the last few days, the spitting image of Obama's chief of staff, who is supposed to be rather pugnacious and very smart--very rich, too. Writing bad guys, antagonists, whatever you call them is fun, as well as challenging, but I like my anti-heros be believable and my bad guy is good to his old mum. When I had his "voice" all wrong, I wrote him in the first person and that worked wonderfully well. He swears too much, but whatchagonna do?

Off to Handel & Haydn tonight at Symphony Hall. No rain in the forecast. Haven't had any culture for ages. La-di-dah.

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Fireworks and Water

We trekked into Boston via public transporation tonight for the Handel and Haydn concert at Symphony Hall. Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks and Water Music, also Bach's Orrchestra Suite No 3 and some Purcell.

Missed the train by milliseconds and had to wait 12 minutes for the next one in the 20 degree cold. Man reading Car and Driver across from me. Notice bare skin peeking out from gap in his cotton dress shirt. No undershirt, no sweater, just a storm coat, weird hat and gloves. He chewed his fingernails while he read.

On the green line, S.O. sits next to crazy woman: a) she has no teeth, b) she has a perfect witch profile, c) she talks to herself and everyone and d) she gets up twice and does a little dance. S.O. ignores, but the man sitting on the other side smiles gently which seems to make her happy.

Concert wonderful. Too many old folks, though. Classical music will die if we don't get young people to these concerts. Woman in vicinity has drenched herself with perfume. Doesn't smell bad, just too strong.

Harry Christophers conducts in a very vigorous manner, and sometimes weird and spastic and again dancing, almost, and I'm afraid he'll fall off his podium, but he doesn't. Orchestra stands for the entire concert except for cellists, etc.

Afterward, back onto the T except there are 300 people waiting after the performance and the train doesn't come for 15 minutes and when it does, it's almost full, so there's one of those tight situations when you become intimate with perfect strangers. At least nobody weird.

We catch the Red Line after a short wait. Middle aged couple in love across from us. Isn't love strange? Isn't it wonderful? And mysterious, too. No wonder so many books, movies, songs, and such are all about love. It hold on to the mystery.

Back home, and all is well. House still reeks of last nights Pan Seared Scallops in Ginger Broth. I can still smell the curry, the scallops and the ginger. Not unpleasant, but man does the odor hang around. Burned candles all afternoon which did nothing. Too freaking cold to open the windows.

Thisbe went out on the porch for 45 seconds today, and again for about 30 seconds. Saw a turtle dove and ran back inside. I don't know about her. What kind of a cat is afraid of birds? Remember, Friday is cat blog day.

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