Dear Chuck

I has been a while since I wrote you, but lately I have been thinking so much about you that I felt now was the time for another missive.
This deals with opera and, frankly, there is no-one I can talk to about these things.
The people we knew here in PV would probably not even know how to spell it, and Flemming and Alexis are not great fans of the genre, so that leaves you...and me.
Do you remember when once we saw a production on the telly of Cenerentola, and we both fell in love with the tenor who sang like a bird and was, joy of joys, slender. Well, it seems he has finally made his Met debut and sang The Daughter of the Regiment. I caught a video on YouTube of him singing the nine high C's, effortlessly. AND running about in front of his fellow soldiers. Absolutely smashing. You would have died. Wrong term; you would have loved it to pieces.
I looked him up. He is Juan Diego Florez, from Peru.
And he did an encore of the nine C's, which had not been done since Pavarotti was in his hay day, which is quite some time ago.
The other operatic happening was more of an accident. I was channel surfing ( I know, I know; you always hated that ) and found that Bravo Channel was showing I Puritani.
I jumped for joy as I remembered all the times you and I had listened to the whole thing, one fantastic aria following a duet and leading into a quartet. all of it wonderful, all of it musically sublime.
Not so with this production. A Met production as it turned out. Staid and mothbally. And boring.
The soprano, some Russian dame, Anna Netrebko, very well put together and very pretty in a common sort of way was dull. I swear she must have demanded that her tempi be brought down and, instead of being emotional and wonderful, they became .......BORING.
I read , later, after a search on the web for this miserable production, a glowing review in the NYTimes of her and an explanation for the production. It was indeed hauled out of the moth balls, shaken up a tiny little bit, and presented to the world. Time to put it back in some new moth balls, says I.
I don't think I have suddenly developed a tin ear; she was bad. Just as bad as Jessye Norman was good when we first heard her, or Beverly when she made us cry singing about her little table in Manon Lescaut.
You will just have to trust me, but then this was an area where we rarely disagreed, where we seemed to follow the same line, musical or otherwise.
But I do miss our times discussing the finer points, and I do so miss you.
Well, time to start din-dins and then a night of mindless entertaining ( and drinking ) .
My love to you
Alan.

Arts vs Sports

The email I received showed a gargantuan cargo ship, capable of transporting untold millions of tons of goods from places like China to the USA.
And this monster ship was built in Denmark.
Some still smoldering sense of national pride made me respond to this mail, pointing out that, unlike the Mexican billionaire who is making his fortune on monopoly of telecommunication and who most definitely does not believe in philanthropy, the owner of the company that built this enormous freighter, presented the people of Denmark with a new, state of the arts, opera house.
And then I thought
do people like the one who sent me the email really care ?
Would they not have been more impressed if the gift had been a brand, spanking new sports stadium; a place where one can go and be surrounded by equally testosterone driven fellow fans, eating bad hot-dogs and pop corn and watch grown men so padded and helmeted that they look more like robots on steroids, bang into one another.
People for whom opera, if they ever think about it, would be like a contest between the fat tenor and , most often I am afraid, the equally fat soprano, on who can hold the note the longest in some dreary, plot less production, not to be compared with a good, rousing Broadway musical with lots of hummable tunes and endless lines of good looking gals and guys. ( and a fat one thrown in for comic relief )
So NO;
I don't think I impressed them an awful lot.

Sisterly love

Can I make you a sandwich, my sister asked.
I would have been about twelve and always hungry, my sister going on fourteen and mostly annoyed with me and not prone to attacks of sisterly love, but, hunger overcame suspicion and I ate the sandwich while my sister stood by and watched.
Why? I asked when I had finished the sandwich, why did you make me a sandwich ?
Well, she said with disarming honesty; I feel that I am getting fat and I thought if you were fat too, then nobody would notice.
No sisterly love here, just pure vanity.
But then she was going on fourteen, never an easy time.
And the sandwich was good.

Beware

Beware of females who refer to the male genitalia as ...wieners.
Last night I watched a chat show hostess/comedienne state her views on this in reference to some nude scenes ( male, frontal ) in a new film.
I do not, she declared, like to look at wieners. And, she continued, if men think speedos are sexy, forget it.
Basically what she was promoting, although she might argue this, is a burka for men.
Men, according to her should be dressed, and if they might feel like a bit of freedom on the beach, they might be allowed to show up in those frightful, over sized surfer shorts that seem to be so popular at the moment and absolutely sure to not make females like her , think naughty thoughts.
Is this what happens when women achieve equality ?
They are not a bit better than chauvinist men, only with a lot more make-up and a lot less to wear on the beach.
Equality indeed.

The Chairs

For months and months I had been hounding poor Antonio about the chairs that his cousin had stashed in Antonio's already full apartment.
I coveted the chairs, well at least two of them and I saw them fit perfectly at the ends of my new dining room table, the host and hostess chairs if you will.
The cousin apparently got them when the hotel he works for remodeled and which must have chosen a different kind of chairs for the new decor, but to me they were perfect with rush seats and arm rests, nice and solid and painted black.
Alas, nothing happened until yesterday when all the stars must have aligned and Antonio called me to inform me that not only had he ( finally ) talked with his cousin, but the cousin was agreeable to let me have two chairs and, what's more, for free.
So off I went this morning to Antonio's apartment which is located on a narrow, steep one-way street with a minimum of parking, but again the stars aligned and I parked right in front and schlepped the chairs to the car and thanked A. profusely and rushed home to arrange my new treasures.
And this is where the alignment of the stars stopped; the chairs don't fit under the table. The arms are too high.
So all my dreams and scheming and hounding of poor Antonio came to naught. Sure I have the chairs, and sure they are wonderful, but they don't fit under the table.
They are now neatly arranged on either side of sideboard and can, if the occasion arises, be used as host and hostess chairs, but their spot is not, as I had envisioned, at the table but guarding ceramic pots and porcelain chicken.

Equality

Now I don't know if I threw a hissy-fit or if my mother was the enlightened person who would not let her daughters have new dolls without letting her only ( at that point ) son have one too.
Whatever the reason, when my sisters were proudly presenting their new dolls, I too had one;
a boy doll named Jens Peter Ole, who had a sweater and shorts and a woolly cap.
This was a few, scant years after the long occupation of Denmark by the Nazis, so things were hard to come by and I am sure that the clothes the dolls wore were recycled from old knit-wear, painstakingly unraveled and washed and re-knitted again.
But there we were, sun in our eyes and brand, spanking new dolls.
I asked my oldest sister a few weeks before she so suddenly died, if she remembered the name of her doll in that picture
Bodil, she said without hesitation.
That was her name. Bodil.
I wonder if my other sister remembers the name of her doll too.
They were so important to us and so fragile, being made from left-overs and poor quality materials and surely did not survive a long time;
but their memories and names did.

A Scent

I had not been back in Denmark for many years when I was urged to come back before my father lost the battle with the cancer.
I asked my mother if there was anything she would like from USA and, yes, she said.
The scent that Chuck's mother wears. They had met when my parents came to visit years before.
She always smelled so nice, said my mother.
That was simple; Dorothy used Estee Lauder so I got myself to the appropriate counter in the department store and asked the icily beautiful and superbly groomed sales lady for Estee Lauder.
Which one, she asked. We have many different ones.
UH, said I, it is, uh, for my mother and,uh....
a barely visible frown passed over the face of the beautiful sales lady who said
Maybe you should ask your mother.
I conceded that that would be difficult, but could she, maybe, recommend something, please.
By now the frown was visible and she looked first at me and then through me as she rearranged the bottles on the counter.
Sweating slightly I had an idea;
why not, said I, give me the original. That must be it. The original.
And rapidly and efficiently bottles were wrapped and money taken and this dullard sent on his way.
Next time I was back in the old country was for the funeral of my mother, and I was touched when some of the grand daughters begged for the bottles of scents of their grandmother's because, as they said, granny always smelled so nice.
And I recalled the incident with the ice queen in the department store and thought
It was worth it.
Well, well worth it.

The War Of The Clotheslines

This is so silly, I have a hard time believing it is true.
It seems that there are communities in Canada and USA where it is against the law to use outdoor clotheslines to dry your laundry.
A developer of one of the communities explains that it would destroy the aesthetics of the area were people allowed to string lines in their back yards and, as a 28 year old female of the neighborhood said, who wants to look at your neighbor's laundry.
Well, excuse me Mr. Developer and Ms. Silly-28-year-old neighbor, but this is now, with real problems with regards to energy, and dryers, however convenient, use an enormous amount of energy.
So why not use the free and energy friendly clothesline ?
Are there things to be ashamed of ?
Will it, as one female suggested, turn other females into " laundry maids ", as if doing laundry inside, shifting the load from the washer to the dryer is OK, but if one were to transfer the laundry load to the outside and hang it on lines, then suddenly the female is like an indentured
servant.
Why?
Anyway, where I grew up, there was a communal drying area where all the housewives could hang their laundry to dry after the wash and where, to be honest, the other housewives would give the laundry a look-over and decide what kind of a house keeper this woman was.
My mother was upset about an otherwise good neighbor, whose laundry was looking a bit dingy, according to my mother.
Would that be what the "28 year old neighbor" might fear? A judgment on her laundry skills.?
I say, lets string lines all over the place and show the world that we have nothing to fear but slovenliness and bad detergents.
And lack of bleach.

Dear Chuck

For the last five years there have been so many times I have said to myself
I have to tell Chuck this
well, now I decided it was time to share these things with you.
It became clear when by accident I saw a movie on TV based on a favorite book of ours; Regeneration by Pat Barker.
Remember how after we read the first book of hers you went ahead and ordered more of her books on some web site. I kept them, with some of your favorite DVDs and other books, in the cabinet next to your bed.
Just recently I reread them, so it was a big surprise to find this movie which, as I remember, was done in 1997. Funny we never heard of it.
It was rather good considering the complexity of the book and they either found the original hospital, or else there are other Gothic monstrosities dotting the landscape of Scotland.
You would have liked it, I am sure.
Well, thats all for now.
Alan.

Inframundo

I am reading a book by a third generation Mexican, who is tracing the path of his family leaving Mexico before the revolution and settling in San Antonio, Texas .
He talks a lot about the ideas and beliefs of the old ones, and one struck me as very relevant;
El Inframundo
which is a place where, amongst other things, all that has been forgotten still lives.
I like that, no, I need that.
I look at my past and see a great swath of blank spaces; but if there is an Inframundo, then surely there is a space marked
Things That Alan Forgot
And there will be all the wonderful, clever, mind boggling ideas I have had but now forgotten.
There will be all the kind and loving things I hope I told the people I love but have now forgotten
and there will be, unfortunately, all the idiotic, stupid things I said and did and have deliberately forgotten.
All in one place.
Neat and tidy labeled Things That Alan Forgot.
I like that, because now I can go on forgetting things with the knowledge that it will all be there, in El Inframundo, waiting for me.

The Bicycle

It was blue, the bicycle.
It was my first bicycle, and now I had my freedom.
Aside from not having to walk to school anymore, I could go anywhere I wanted to, anytime I wanted to. Freedom. Magic only surpassed by the learning to read, seeing how little letters would come together and make words that then would make sentences. I loved that so much, and now I had a new love, my bicycle.
That was the one I used when my sister Yvonne and I, she on her own bicycle, decided to go visit our paternal grandparents on their little farm where, in fact, both of us had been born. A long ride, but we were young.
And this was the one I used the night when I "ran away from home" after a bitter fight with my sisters, and without light on the bike and without anything but my shorts and t-shirt, I drove to my maternal grandparents, some thirty-odd kilometers away. It was a matter of pride; I had said I would leave and my sisters had said good riddance and that left me no choice but to go. It was a long, long lonely ride.
And I don't even know what happened to the bike in the end. Did it end up in the basement in a corner or maybe, which I hope, when I outgrew it, it was then given to some younger member of the family.
But it was my first bicycle and I loved it
and it was blue.

Coffee, Glorious Coffee

in my early days in Seattle, when Starbuck's was a quaint hole in the wall place in the Pike Street Market with one more outlet at the University Village, I thought myself something of a connoisseur of coffee. I even had the , then, obliging girls at Starbuck's blend my special coffee
( 1/2 java, 1/4 Ethiopian and 1/4 Italian )
on request. Beans. To be ground just before making of coffee in, what in those days was a rarity, the French Press.
Oh, I was so full of it
so much so that when some friends and I went to a most wonderful pastry place, the name was something "Swiss Pastry"I seem to remember, and I glibly asked the rosy-cheeked and very young waitress, if they had "Latte'', when she asked for our preferences in coffee she said
No Sir,
But we have MJB.
and smiled angelically, feeling that she offered the best to be had in coffee.
So long ago, so many cups of coffee ago.
I thought of all this as I looked at the big bag of Starbuck's coffee that James and Kathy had given me and that I will appreciate as much as I did then, only in smaller doses, because otherwise I stay awake all night.
But the smell,
the taste.
Yeah.

The Best Wringer

She is the best, my mother said as we were having a cup of coffee together, now so many years ago.
She knows how to wring the mop, my mother said about the home help.
I never knew my mother rated the home help, in fact I didn't know she had any help at all, but getting old in the old country gives you a certain amount of advantages.
And now my mother had home help, a young woman provided by the state, who came a couple of times a week to dust and mop and, I am sure, spend a little time exchanging gossip, although you would never get my mother to admit that.
I thought of this today as I was slinging my mop haphazardly around the house to, supposedly, clean the floors. And using the kind of bucket where one does not have to wring at all, just press and twist.
My mother would have disapproved.
A good mop-wringer wrings the mop manually, like most maids in this country, but since I had the experience of a scorpion, who had hidden in the mop, bite me, I have been a little leery of the wringing business, besides, who is here to check the mop anyway ?
So I sling my mop, think of my mother, and use the squeeze apparatus.
Sorry Mom.

Flying Fingers And No Shame

A little nerd with flying fingers and and some business to promote, has found his way to my blog and is making "comments ", only these comments lead to a link to some security, virus fighting site.
If you have opened one of his 'comments", I apologize. I wish he would go away, but the blog is public and I am not smart enough to screen and/or delete him.
The best advise I can give is
Ignore him.
Let us all ignore him and hope he will take his business to some other blog; not a very Christian thought to be sure, but then I am not a very good Christian.
So, Mr. Nerd......Go away. Now......please.

Stupid Things

We all say stupid things but
one expects better from one who at one point was a close adviser to Nixon and who now, for reasons I cannot fathom, is thought of as an "Elder Statesman ."
I speak of Henry Kissinger who I never liked, who came to this country when he was twelve and still sounds like a Marlene Dietrich imitator.
According to the Herald Tribune he at one point said
Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe.
DUH.
I am sure he meant this in a humorous way ( although I don't think humor is one of his stronger suits, if one at all )
but it speaks to the pervasive idea that Europe is one area, a sort of United States of Europe.
Nothing is further from reality. Traveling in Europe, even the densest tourist will discover that these are sovereign countries with their very own government, royal families, language, history. culture and all of this so wonderfully different from whatever neighboring state that country might have.
Not even the Big Bad Bear, Russia, could quite erase these traits in their satellite occupied countries
The saying of Mr Kissinger is really as insulting as if one were to ask
Who do I call if I want to speak to the United States.
The Head Honcho Himself, the Prez, naturally.
And if you want to speak with Europe, choose your target. They all have their own head honchos, or in some cases, honchettes.
Silly old bugger. And his family right off the boat themselves.
Elder Statesman indeed.
Yikes.

A lack Of Equilibrium

I am going about doing my usual chores when, wham, suddenly it hits me :
Benjamin is in the hospital fighting for his life.
And I loose my equilibrium.
The ordinary, yawn inducing day suddenly turns a grim shade of gray.
There, in a hospital bed is a young man who only wanted to serve out his contract, forget about the atrocities he had seen in Iraq, and start a better and peaceful life.
There he is, the victim of the folly of a reformed alcoholic with a tenuous grip on the English language and an all too accommodating Danish prime minister.
And he is, unfortunately, part of an ever growing family of destroyed lives.
When these fine folks leave their offices, they can look back on so much misery, so many dead and so many maimed, that a reasonable person might ask
how do they sleep at night?
Bush says he sleeps quite well, thank you.
That is the saddest statement.
At this moment MY young life, my nephew, is not sleeping well at all.
But Bush and his cohorts sleep quite well, thank you.

The Senseless, Stupid Wars

So now he is a statistic.
Not the worst one, to be sure, only the little mentioned part, the tens and tens of thousands of veterans who now have to live the rest of their lives missing legs and arms and in many cases, part of their minds.
And for what?
Ah, say the people in power, they who sit home and send the young ones out to be killed, so that we are safe from terror.
But are we ?
It seems to me that there still are attacks in different parts of the world, or does that not matter as Mrs. Cheney suggested on the Jon Stewart show, as long as there are no threats to the US.
Now the wars that I have hated from the beginning in an abstract way have become very personal.
Now I begin to understand what so many thousands if not millions are feeling with their young members of the family either dead or maimed.
And no end in sight.
And no WMD ever, and no Bin Laden and no jubilant crowds cheering the soldiers as the destroy their country.
No flowers and hearts, only more misery for them and for us.
What a waste to boost the big egos of little men with too much power.
And Benjamin is just one of so many victims, on both sides, of these stupid, senseless wars.
Stop it and stop it now.