This photo was taken April 2002. One of the few photos of Chuck and Alan together.
Eight months later Chuck was dead.
but what wonderful memories and special thanks to Miss Alice for finding this old picture.

Next ?

So now I have a "new" computer and things are fine.
Sort of.
But for the keyboard giving me trouble .
Not that I can blame it. It suffers a lot of pounding by this less than excellent typist; in fact, I will go so far as to say this very bad typist.
I tried once to open my keyboard to clean it. Bad idea. I ended up buying a new one as I could not seem to fit all the little whatchamacallits back to where they came from.
So the lesson learned ?
Buy a new one.
Now.

On The Road

we had been on the road for while.
We--the First Chamber Dance Company--had been performing under less than ideal circumstances, doing community services in schools and auditoriums and the morale was low.
Chuck took the--for him--unprecedented step of giving the company a speech where he explained that these people, these local people and their organizations were the ones who helped pay the payroll for another week. So be nice to them. Please.
And left the "dressing room" which in reality was just another school room with small and uncomfortable table and chairs and not much else.
There was a deafening silence till we heard a timid tap on the door which when opened revealed a perfectly nice couple, peering into the room.
And Sara took a deep breath, batted her inch-long false eyelashes, looked into some secret place of hers and then, smiling brilliantly at the perfectly nice couple said:
Hello! I am Sara De Luis.....and with a sweeping gesture to the rest of the room said
and we are The First Camber Dance Company...
The perfectly nice couple looked stunned, but the male cleared his throat and said
Hello! We are the Finkels.
The Finkels from the flower shop ?
Chuck never gave that speech again

Time Out

it was a mini black out that caused my computer to finally give up the ghost.
I unplugged all the many, many cables and what-nots dangling from behind the computer and took it to the folks who know these things and who told me, some days later, that it would be costly to fix and even then I would most likely still have the same slow and pitiful performance.
However, they said, add to the price for the fix and we can furnish you with a reconstituted, more powerful computer.
Not much of a choice.
I agreed to the "new" computer.
All this took about a week, leaving me without access to the world and a lot of time on my hands, time I normally would have spent reading ghastly news or writing emails.
So I decided to start to scrape the old paint off the house in preparation for a paint job.
And I scraped and sweated and got dust in my eyes and aches in my back from standing on a ladder whilst stretching to reach nearly unreachable places.
Till the day I could pick up my "new" computer and plug all the cables back in and say a prayer and press the start button and.........it worked.
I am back.
I have read the news, I have read my emails, I have deleted a bunch of stuff and somehow the paint scraping has taken a decidedly low priority.
Very low.

The Vision

When Alice told me about Flemming waking up from anesthesia speaking Spanish, I was reminded of this from my past.
As a young person I had gotten a STD, most likely from an unsanetized toilet seat, so I found myself at the Public Health Clinic in Seattle for the cure.
And there I was, on a gurney with my bare bum in the air, pressing some cotton on the spot where the nurse had just jabbed me and then something started to change, and from what seemed like miles away I heard the nurse shriek
Doctor, Doctor we have a reaction
and my heart was pounding ready to explode and the buildings were closing in on me
And then my vision was filled with the face of The Bearded One
Don't be frightened, he boomed, your heart is not going to explode
and I told him I was frightened and that my heart was just about to jump out of my chest and...
Forsooth, The Bearded One said, this is but a reaction and you will be fine, but I wish you would stop speaking Gaelic...
Then and there I knew The Bearded One was not God, because He would have known that I was speaking Danish.
He was right though, little by little my heart stilled and the buildings de-loomed and pretty soon I could pull my pants up and get ready to leave the place.
In the hall outside one was obliged to sign out, and the weaselly little guy in charge of the book looked at me in rapture and lisped
You had reaction ! Some people say they see God. Did you see God ?
I didn't even answer. Sheesh.

Sunday afternoon. Mother's day. And my in-box is empty.
What does one do ?
One finds answers to all the silly and inconsequential questions that have piled up in the handy note book next to the computer.
Like who was Queen Margaret of Scotland, princess of Denmark ?
She was the daughter of Christian 1 of Denmark and married, at the age of thirteen James the 3rd of Scotland. See? Now we all know a bunch more about the now defunct royal family of Scotland.
And another burning question.
When exactly did Bombay cease to be Bombay and become Mumbai ?
And the answer is 1996.
Another useless bit of information.
So now I can go back and check my email and see if anybody has taken pity on me and mailed me something............anything........even spam.

Traffic.

I have mentioned the traffic--or the lack of traffic--many times, so I thought it might behoove me to know exactly how much traffic I have here on my street.
I flipped to a new page on my note pad, I put the date down and "cars Passing" and a space for the check marks.
Between eight in the morning and eight at night I counted four and a half. The half was a car that didn't quite make it all the way to my house before it turned around and fled back to whence it came.
Four and a half.
I have a right to make fun of the lack of traffic now.

Fried Squirrel

First the "BOOM", then no electricity and then the all too familiar routine checking the neighbors, changing the phone to call the electric company to report the outage and, too frequently, having to justify the call. In Spanish.
Add to that now calling the cell phone folks to alert them as well, and then wait.
And wait.
I decided to walk down the street to where I thought the "BOOM" had come from and found the fuse on the post disconnected and just hanging there.
And visible on top of the transformer was the tail of a squirrel.
The normally sure footed critter must have slipped and hit the fuse and disconnected it and lost its life in the process.
Later, much later at night when the crew came to fix the problem, I saw, in the glare of some powerful searchlight, the guy on the ladder grab the squirrel and throw it on the ground.
I went looking for it this morning, but some nocturnal scavenger must have gotten to it and had the good luck of getting not only squirrel, but fried squirrel.

It happened again.
I heard the familiar THUD and another bird has flown into a window.
My book on Mexican birds tells me this bird is a varied Bunting.
The color is plum with a blue crown and bright red nape.
It is exquisite.
And there it is, on a piece of matting on my terrace, breathing rapidly.
After many checks to see if it is still alive, finally the moment when it gets up, flies away, and lives one more day.

Food, gloriuos dog food.

Marilyn was a dancer, but she had hung up her toe-shoes and was helping me in the boutique on Broadway in New York.
Her husband, Ivan, was a from Hungary and was not only a great dancer but also a funny person.
He loved to tell the story of when very young he had just arrived to the USA and spoke little to no English ( he still had a very strong accent) and had no money.
He would go to the supermarket he said, and find cans with enticing pictures of stews and funny names like Alpo and Pooch.
They were cheap, they were filling and they were, he came to find out when he went shopping with someone who had better English, dog food.
It didn't seem to hurt him. He remained number one dancer for many years.