Tonight’s an off night before the performances of ‘Opera Unveiled’ this weekend. In the opera world, because of the vocal demands on the soloists, there’s always a day off before a performance so Opera Birmingham usually has tech/dress Sunday to Wednesday, is off Thursday, and then performs Friday evening and Sunday matinee. The chorus doesn’t have a lot to do this concert (but it is nice to be back on stage singing with old friends again – the usual gang hasn’t been on stage together since Tosca in 2019 due to the Pandemic and the need to restrict the size of shows for health and budgetary reasons). Only one of our selections is difficult, the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore (it’s the big chorus the Marx Brothers destroy in A Night at the Opera if you want context). Verdi pitched the whole thing too high for the basses and there are some very weird counts on a couple of the entrances. There’s only twenty of us singing with the entire Alabama Symphony Orchestra so it also has to be a real sing out Louise moment. The other two numbers we are singing are the Habanera from Carmen (and barking out Prend garde a toi over and over isn’t especially taxing) and the Brindisi Libiamo from La Traviata which is an old chestnut and at least in a key that basses can sing relatively easily. If you’re not doing anything tomorrow evening or Sunday afternoon, come on over to DJD Theater at ASFA – tickets available at the door. The soloists are spectacular.

Rehearsals are beginning for my next theater project, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, this weekend. I’ll have much more to say on that later as it starts to take shape. I saw the Broadway production back in the day. I don’t think the stage show is the greatest thing ever written, but it’s fun and has a stellar cast, some of whom I haven’t worked with in years and am looking forward to getting reacquainted with and some of whom I’ve been in shows with off and on for decades. Virginia Samford Theatre has upped its game this past season and I’m happy to be a small part of that.

I’ve been reading through various health news stories over the last few days and a couple of them have caught my eye. The first came out Monday when the Biden administration finalized new rules for nursing homes regarding minimum staffing. Skilled nursing facilities are supposed to offer 24/7 safety and monitoring for people unable to care for themselves due to various medical conditions and disabilities. Since the Reagan years, they’ve operated under a Reagan era nebulous rule that states that they need to have ‘sufficient staffing’ to offer care without really defining what that means. As of Monday, we now know that this is defined as a minimum of 3.48 hours of direct care per resident from nursing staff (lower than the 4.15 hours suggested by a Medicare report of a few years back).

The trouble is that more than 80% of the nursing homes in the country won’t be able to meet this metric and a lot are way behind it. (I think the average these days is something like 2.1-2.4 hours of direct care per resident). The rules are giving the industry years to catch up (and hire the hundred thousand or so new employees that would be needed to meet these numbers) but the industry lobbying groups are already on the warpath about unfunded mandates and are beginning the assault on congress and public opinion to get these changed.

The pandemic has changed everything about the long term industry. The workforce which provided a steady stream of employees was decimated by a combination of retirements, people moving up into better paying vacated positions, women leaving the workforce for family needs such as child and elder care, and some employees figured out new ways of economic existence that didn’t require back breaking work at just above minimum wage. With the collapse of the workforce, the owners of skilled nursing facilities have been forced to raise wages to attract and retain anyone and salaries are up about 30% since 2020. This is putting a dint in profits (the majority of homes being owned by for profit chains that are often under the control of hedge funds and the like) and requiring even more employees to provide minimal levels of care is going to greatly exacerbate the red ink on the quarterly balance sheets.

Where this is all going to end up, I do not know. But it’s happening at a time when the lead edge of the Baby Boom will hit the age of eighty in eighteen months or so. The chance of needing long term care starts to rise exponentially at that point in the life cycle and many Boomers, especially the women, have fairly weak social safety nets which would allow them to remain at home. The combination of widowhood and divorce means that about half of women over 75 live alone and they have far fewer children to take them in or support them than previous generations. And their children are far more likely to reside at a distance. It’s all headed for a perfect storm (which is one of the myriad reasons I plan on retiring in a couple years. It’s not going to be pretty).

The other story I’m following is that of the H5N1 avian flu. It’s not yet of significant concern but, if it were ever to leap into humans, it could cause major havoc as it has a very high mortality rate. There has only been one human case in Texas in the current outbreak which has spread from birds to dairy cattle in that state but in the 865 cases reported world wide over the last twenty years, the mortality rate was 53%. There doesn’t appear to be much danger of human to human transmission currently and bird to human or cow to human requires significant contact so unless you’re involved in commercial farming, I wouldn’t worry. But there’s always that slim chance. Like when a flu virus jumped into a pig farm in the midwest in March 1918, spreading to military barracks and promptly being shipped off to World War I causing what became known as the Spanish flu. (It was called the Spanish flu because Spain, not being involved in World War I, was reporting accurate casualty totals – most of the rest of the developed world was hiding the true caseloads for purposes of morale and war planning so it looked like Spain was an outlier and the source to the general populace when it had nothing to do with it).

What worries me is the politicization of public health and the gutting of statues by red states in the wake of the pandemic. Should it make the leap to human / human transmission in Texas, I don’t believe for a minute that a political system controlled by the likes of Greg Abbot and Ken Paxton will deal forthrightly with the problem and will almost certainly not allow public health officials to do what would need to be done to stop the spread. And a H5N1 pandemic could possibly bring down our civilization given that it’s about 1000x deadlier than the usual influenza A and B that circulate. But I’m not going to invite trouble. I’m going to think happy thoughts. Or at the very least find something mindless to watch on TV before bed.

It’s a negative energy weekend. It’s now 2:30 on Saturday afternoon and I still haven’t been able to make myself do the things I was going to make myself do this weekend. The must accomplish list is done including studying up on audition sides, a church stewardship committee meeting, and the inexorable tide of back progress notes. But the non-urgent pile of getting some work done on the new book, writing a movie review, and breaking the back on a new legal case remain relatively untouched while I lie here watching old episodes of Bones and staring out the window at the overcast. I’m not sure if the lack of energy is physiologic aging, psychologic coping or just plane laziness. Probably a combination of all three.

I have been in a bit of a melancholic state since returning from New York this past week. Every time I go up there, there’s this piece of me which wonders ‘what if’. I had a couple of opportunities in life to relocate to the tri-state area but I never took advantage of them for one reason or another and it’s too late now. I suppose with retirement I could find a tiny little studio pied a terre somewhere and come and go as I please but I know how I would want to live in that city and I doubt my retirement income would support that. Perhaps its best that it remains something I dunk myself in every year or two to refresh.

My upcoming audition is for ‘Sunday in the Park with George’. I don’t expect to get it. After some score study, it’s pretty clear from the tessitura that Steve did not have bass-baritones in mind when he set the keys. Still, it’s good practice to get out there and put myself up against the better people in town. Sometimes I get cast, sometimes I don’t. I’m competitive but when it comes to musicals, I remain on the B list. I just don’t have the training at a young age that so many others have had. My current voice teacher has done wonders and my technique and abilities are coming back post pandemic lay off but at nearly 62, I’m not going to be winning any vocal competitions. I’m relatively happy with my aging character man niche. I get lots of opportunities and usually have something lined up to work on. I counted it up. Since reinvigorating my theater career as a performer twenty years ago, the count is 11 plays, 29 musicals and operettas, 13 cabaret/revue shows, and 14 operas. I’ve lost track of the number of choral concerts.

I wonder sometimes how much longer I’ll be able to perform on stage. Memorizing lines is harder. My sight isn’t what it once was making wandering around backstage in the dark somewhat hazardous. I can’t move as quickly, get up and down from the floor like I once did, and my balance is leaving me. These are all normal aging things which tell me I’m unlikely to spend another twenty years on stage. I’ll have to retire, other than select projects, at some point. There’s still a lot of shows and roles on the bucket list and some of them may come my way, some won’t. Fortunately, the casting pool in Birmingham for my age and type is relatively small so I have a shot at a lot of things. I’m always up against the same guys. At least we’re all friends and I admire their abilities immensely so I never feel slighted when one of them gets the nod over me. The fact that I get the callback and get in the room to compete with them is enough.

I have to start working on a geriatrics educational program put out by a company that helps people pass board exams. I’ve worked on this before. It generally requires me to go over updated materials on various elder care topics and then video record lectures. The company likes me because I can do a forty five minute lecture in a single take, remain entertaining, digress on a few tangents which demonstrate the practicalities of the material under discussion but bring it back where it needs to be. Comes from many decades of public speaking. The public speaking and lectures on aging I did in my thirties were my training ground for performance. I figured out very early on that if you were going to be speaking about aging, dementia, death and dying, and other such uplifting topics, you’d lose the room in five minutes if you didn’t develop techniques for holding peoples’ attention including humor and a certain charismatic delivery. It was Tommy, after attending a couple of my speaking gigs in 2003, who told me I needed to get myself on stage. I owe that piece of my life. Which is the piece that has kept me sane through all of the disasters of the last decade, to him.

It’s the sixth anniversary of his death this next weekend. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, but I, like everyone else, has this distorted perception of linear time due to the effects of the pandemic. It was six years. I’ll be spending the day performing with his beloved Opera Birmingham in their gala concert ‘Opera Unveiled’ at the Day theater at ASFA. That seems somewhat appropriate. I spent a lot of time backstage at the Day with him as he did the wigs for Red Mountain’s summer shows including Les Miz, Mary Poppins (back again this summer), The Little Mermaid, Newsies, and so many others. I can’t walk into that space without seeing him in his blacks and his apron and his mouth full of wig pins getting everyone ready. He actually stage managed the very first performance in that theater when it opened. It was a concert by Angela Brown – ‘A Sistah’s Guide to the Opera’. A picture from a celebratory dinner after the dress is the cover photo on his Facebook page and there are the two of us, Angela, and others caught in a moment of happiness and triumph. I’ve never had the heart to take his Facebook page down. It’ll probably be there forever. And that’s OK with me.

Dateline Manhattan –

Sorry there was no update yesterday. I came back in after a double show day and just didn’t feel like writing anything so this will cover yesterday and today. Both days were pretty much about attending theater as that was the point of the weekend getaway. I’ve had other New York trips with other goals but this one was mostly about butt in seat at Broadway theater taking in some of the newer shows. After a couple of trips in the last few months, I’m starting to get caught up but there are a few of the long runs that I’m still missing like Moulin Rouge! and Six.

Saturday morning, I headed off on my own for a few hours. First stop was brunch with David Pohler catching up on life and things theatrical in the city. He then headed off to his tech rehearsal and I headed out. The weather was vile so a walk in the park was off the table so I turned my ramble into a walk through Macy’s Herald Square. I hadn’t been in for a few years. It hasn’t changed all that much other than, like in every other department store that remains open, it has become harder and harder to actually find a sales associate when you’ve made your selection. I bought myself a sage green linen blazer that was marked down about 70%, I don’t change size that much so I have a wardrobe that stretches back over decades, despite a lot of culling over the years. I therefore don’t have to buy a whole lot of new clothes these days. There’s enough in there for me to put on a new outfit everyday for at least six months (although I would run out of underwear).

I then met Patti at the Schoenfeld theater where we saw the matinee of the new musical version of The Notebook. I’ve never read the book (or anything else of Nicholas Sparks;’ – not interested) and have never seen the film. I did have a basic idea of the plot however as it’s one of those ubiquitous pieces of pop culture referenced by those of a certain age. The show has an excellent cast, is well designed and directed, relishes in its sentiments, and is undone by a ho-hum score. There’s not a song in it that sticks more than three minutes after it’s finished. I can see several of the leads garnering Tony nominations (especially Maryann Plunkett and Dorian Harewood) and it taking home direction and design nominations as well. And there’s a lovely use of water effects and an Act II rainstorm on stage that elevates the material.

Of course, the show with its themes of aging and love and loss, speaks to me given both my professional life and also my personal one. I know what it means to lose a partner in life – and I could very much read my parents story into the modern day sequences. I will admit I cried several times. It’s one of those shows that requires tissues. I just wish it had had a better score. If it had a Richard Rodgers or a Frederick Loewe writing the score, it would likely have left me a weepy mess as I usually am at the end of Carousel. Whoever put it together doesn’t follow theatrical superstition. It has a cast of thirteen.

Between shows, Patti and I got together with Ginny Stahlman Crooks and Stephen Crooks Felis for Mexican food and beer. More conversations regarding theater, reminiscences of Birmingham days, and thoughts about future travel plans together as part of the infamous Alabama Seven. (There is talk of Paris as a group in a year or so). Then, they headed off to Kimberly Akimbo while Patti and I headed to the revival of The Who’s Tommy at The Nederlander theater. I had seen the 1990s production that Des McAnuff directed back in the day. I remember sitting next to Steve as the lights went down and the electric guitars started up at top volume and his turning to me with a big grin saying ;’Oh this is going to be different’. We both loved it. This new production, with McAnuff again in the director’s chair, takes a somewhat different approach to the material than the last, especially in terms of the visual design with has a very stark black and white feel, only using color for certain elements or to enhance mood. It’s different but it works. The young man in the title role is a sensation, abetted by a large cast constantly in motion in an incredibly cinematic staging that must have taken weeks of rehearsal to perfect between performers and moving set pieces and lighting effects and onstage camera work.

This morning, we had a leisurely breakfast before heading uptown to church at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church on the Upper East Side. Old UU friend Lois Gaeta, having relocated to NYC, is now attending regularly so Patti and I joined her for service and then for lunch after together with a couple of her church friends, Miles Chapin and Julie Brannan. I have known who Miles is for many decades as he played a small, but crucial role in the film version of Hair back in the late 70s and that film was definitely one of the cultural touchstones of my late teens. How interesting to have a meal with him nearly half a century later. (Theater folk will likely know of his brother Ted, as well.)

Our matinee was the new musical version of Like Water for Elephants starring Grant Gustin of “The Flash’ fame. I liked the show but can’t say I truly loved anything about it. There’s nothing seriously wrong with it, it just doesn’t grab you in any particular way. The circus staging with a half dozen acrobats mixed into the ensemble is great but the physical production is otherwise a bit on the cheap and I was quite disappointed in the animal puppetry. I guess I have been spoiled by the likes of War Horse and Life of Pi. Performances are good, but nothing is a standout, not even Gregg Edelman as the older version of the protagonist. Again, as in The Notebook, we’re doing a memory play although the storytelling is a bit less clear with this one with our older narrator bopping from present to past through some very uneasy transitions.

And that completes the theater portion of the long weekend. We fly home tomorrow, however, as the flight isn’t until after two, we’re going to go to the Museum of Broadway in the morning before packing and heading to Laguardia. I may or may not bop back in with an update tomorrow. And so, with the sun disappearing behind the buildings of Hudson Yards, we bit farewell to New York. Tune in next month when our destination is Seattle.

Dateline – Manhattan

It was a sleep in kind of morning as there was no where to be at any particular hour. So coffee in bed (it’s nice to travel with someone who will do that for you) together with today’s Wordle and catching up on various emails and other on line things before dragging ourselves out into a blustery Manhattan morning. Cloudy with wind and rain squalls racing up the avenues. We hiked over to Herald Square and past Macy’s in search of bagels and breakfast sandwiches and then decided to spend the afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as it really wasn’t the weather for anything outdoorsy. So off to Times Square (relatively uncrowded at noon in rotten weather) and to catch the subway to the Upper East Side.

I’ve been to the Met a few times over the last decade or so but Patti hadn’t been in many many years so I let her pick and choose. Some time in the Egyptian wing, some time in the American wing, but mainly with the 19th century European paintings as she wanted to see the Impressionist galleries. All of the usual suspects were there and I kept thinking of the famous Dr. Who episode where Vincent Van Gogh learns what he has meant to posterity. That’s why I wrote the books. I don’t expect them to be terribly successful in my lifetime but I do hope that a future generation can use them as a window into this really peculiar historical moment we all lived through.

Back down to Grand Central for cocktails and an early dinner with David Pohler and Vickie Rozell (who happened to be in town this week). David and Vickie met this past summer when we all went to ABBA Voyage together in London and it was time to introduce Patti to new interlocking circles of theater friends. I’m busy calling her to the dark side and making her into a true theater person. She recently worked backstage on a show in Birmingham (her first) and really enjoyed it so I think I have her nearly hooked.

Tonight’s show was the revival of Merrily We Roll Along with Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe. I had seen it back in January when I was last here but Patti wanted to see Daniel Radcliffe on stage and it was very definitely a show I didn’t mind seeing again. I wrote relatively extensively about it when I first saw it (you can go to the blog and look it up if you feel the need). The show holds up, continues to have a very special place in my heart given my love for Sondheim and how I belong to the generation for whom the show was originally written forty plus years ago. I cried during ‘Old Friends’ as it takes me immediately back to the early 80s when Vickie and I and Craig Mollerstuen were our own Frank/Mary/Charlie trio. We’ve managed to hang together without rupturing the friendship over the decades. I don’t see it ever breaking. I also cried during ‘Our Time’. I defy anyone who has ever been a young person full of dreams of possibility making it through that scene dry eyed.

And so, to bed… as Pepys would say.

Dateline – Manhattan

And so the long weekend of fun, frivolity, and theater commences. I had planned on sleeping in this morning as my flight wasn’t until 11:30 but work had other ideas and my phone blew up with texts regarding a sick patient starting around 6:45 am. You can let your immediate colleagues know when you’re off on vacation but there’s no real good way to inform the entire health system and it’s usually easier to deal with issues yourself rather than try to pass them off to covering people who have no idea as to what the nuances of the situation may be. I did manage to calm it all down before, 8:00, took some time to snooze and luxuriate and have a large breakfast and then headed off to the airport in an Uber to meet up with Patti Steelman, my partner in crime for the weekend.

Off we jetted to Laguardia without incident, landing amidst intermittent showers and ribbons of fog. The new terminal at LGA is complete and very nice. Much better than the dodging of construction zones that’s been going on out there over the last decade or so. Bags grabbed and into a cab to Manhattan to the Ritz Carlton at 28th and Broadway, much nicer than I can usually afford courtesy of Patti’s bonus points. We are ensconced on the 29th floor in a very nice room with a view of the Empire State building, that is if you stand in the window and crane your neck to the left.

We opted for dinner in one of the hotel restaurants, Bazaar (chef Jose Andres who did not appear to be actually on the premises, just lending his name) which was a Japanese/Spanish fusion tapas place. The food was interesting and very good. I had scallops and chicken croquettes. Patti, being vegan, did not but has an excellent mushroom ramen and a cucumber salad. Then off to the subway and uptown to Lincoln Center for Turandot at the Met with Christine Goerke, Roberto Alagna, and Angel Blue. Patti has never really been to the opera before so I figured the Met with a full Zeffrelli extravaganza would be a reasonable introduction.

Turandot holds a special place in my heart as it was the first opera in which I appeared on stage. I’ve probably told this story before so, if you know it, you can stop reading here, but it bears repeating. It was fifteen years ago, January of 2009. Tommy had joined the Opera Birmingham chorus several years previously. I had been appearing in musicals in character roles for roughly five years and begun to become known as an actor who could sing a bit. I left all of the serious music – opera chorus, symphony chorus – to Tommy. he was well trained and had years of experience. I did not. He had begun rehearsing Turandot with the opera chorus in the fall of 2008 for its January performance. I wished him well. I wasn’t involved in anything particular at that point and was probably playing catch up with work (and putting my packet together for promotion from associate to full professor).

We got through our usual marathon of holiday activities that year and Tommy was very excited about the arrival of the principal cast (Lori Phillips, Roy C. Smith, Veronica Chapman-Smith, Corey McKern, Corey Trahan, Tracy Wise and maestro Joey Mechavich). They came into town the first week of January for the final three weeks of rehearsal/production. However, there had been some sort of miscommunication. There was supposed to be a chorus of forty plus but only a chorus of twenty had been prepared. Major musical disaster and the opera began to call everyone in town with music/theater stage experience. ‘Hi… what are you doing the next three weeks? Can you learn Italian? Ever wanted to sing in an opera?’ I got one of those calls. When Tommy got home that evening, I told him about this very odd call I had gotten inviting me to join the opera chorus and that they must be mistaken because I couldn’t possibly sing opera. He told me nonsense and that I should definitely do it. So, the next day, I turned up at rehearsal, was handed the chorus score to Turandot and plunged in.

I was totally lost the first week. Fortunately, my old friend Randy Mayo was playing the mandarin and singing the chorus bass line so I did what I have done many times over the last couple of decades – Listened to what he was doing and tried to do the same thing. Things got better but the pick up nature of the chorus (and the orchestra – a whole other story) led to some rather frayed nerves on stage and in the pit. More than a few doors were slammed backstage at the Alabama Theater. There was no time to really do proper staging rehearsals for the chorus as every spare minute had to be spent drilling music (I never did learn most of Act III other than the right vowel sounds). So the show basically became large groups of gray clad Chinese peasants rushing on and off left and right on cue, like a large gray curtain that would envelop the stage for the choral moments.

The show went up, was a good deal better than anyone expected and I was hooked. Fifteen years later I remain in the Opera Birmingham chorus (next appearance at the end of the month in Opera Unveiled – a concert of opera’s greatest hits). I’ve been a Chinese peasant, a Scottish noble, a dissolute Italian Renaissance courtier, a priest, a drunk, an Egyptian soldier, and a gypsy, singing in multiple languages. Opera. There’s nothing like it.

And we’re back around to birthday week. Today would have been Tommy Thompson‘s 59th birthday and Saturday would have been, god forbid, Steve Spivey’s 76th birthday. The fact that they were three days apart on the zodiac has always left me a little bemused. I’m a Taurus as bull headed as they come and they were both Aires. No wonder there was always much butting of heads in the household over this or that. It kept me on my toes and life interesting. Now there’s no one to butt heads with except the cats and while they can get argumentative, especially if kitty treats are not forthcoming when they expect them, they don’t really rev my emotional self up in quite the same way.

I suppose its fitting that I’m going to spend dead husband birthday weekend in New York sitting in Broadway theaters. Those early 20th century temples to Thespis are among my happiest places. And I spent many happy evenings and matinees with both Tommy and Steve attending shows over the years. Steve loved going to the theater. He would completely lose himself in the show. As he had no background in theatrical production, he never critiqued, he just let the material take him for the ride wherever he was going. He was equally fascinated by Shakespeare, Noel Coward,, Les Miz or something that was just not very good, like Steel Pier. (We went to the very first preview of that one and both turned to each other in the middle of the first act going ‘who the hell is that’ after the unknown Kristen Chenoweth walked off with the show opposite Jim Newman). He found every joke funny and laughed heartily. He was mesmerized by various coups de theatre. He usually came out of the theater and walked with me down 7th avenue stating it was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

Tommy, on the other hand, had been around theater and music since childhood and knew entirely too much. He only felt something succeeded if it completely transported him away from his reality and very few shows managed that for him. The two I recall off hand being the original productions of Rent and Light in the Piazza. He fell in love with both of them, the former as he felt that it captured his life from his formative twenties and the latter because it appealed to his sophisticated musical tastes. I’m a sucker for big old fashioned musical comedy. He was not but would indulge me. If there wasn’t a death or two and at least a bittersweet ending, he just wasn’t all that interested. When it came to local theater, he had a maxim. He wanted to see everyone he knew on stage and yet see no one he knew on stage. There were performers here in town who could do that for him but not many and I wasn’t among them. He would usually tell me, after seeing me in something that he wasn’t involved with, that I was ‘adequate’ and that I would ‘keep getting better with more experience’. Some of the best performances I’ve given have been after his death so I hope he’s peered down and at least paid attention.

I’m vaguely caught up in the work department. At least I don’t feel like I’m snowed under and have a plan in place to balance everything from now through the summer. I met with my accountant this afternoon and submitted the taxes and got good news regarding refunds so I can now start thinking about what I am going to do for my big 2024 trip this fall. I’ll call up my travel agent, give him a budget and we’ll start shaking the trees to see what falls out. The next few years are going to be limited to one big trip a year due to work constraints but I’m starting to think that I’m going to take a little money from my retirement accounts and plan some sort of big blow out trip for the year I hang up my shingle. And then two to three trips a year after. I’m still taking applications for travel companion.

The one thing I’m very behind on is the new book. I’ve got lots of ideas buzzing around in my head but haven’t been able to capture much yet on paper (or in electrons as I tend to write on my trusty laptop – an item that I think I should replace as it’s now six years old). I figure when it’s ready, I’ll start to vomit it forth and it will come relatively quickly. That seems to be the way I work. Nothing,…nothing…nothing… then thousands of words pouring out in a matter of days. But I shall not be writing such things on my long NYC weekend. I shall be enjoying good theater, good food, and most of all good company. Expect travel updates to begin shortly.

Four more sleeps (and three more work days) before my mini-vacation to NYC with my friend Patti Steelman. The tickets are all purchased for an opera, two new musicals, and two revivals (one of which I have seen before). It should be a good time, even if the forecast is for rain this next weekend. Rain doesn’t bother me. I’m a Seattlleite who has walked, hiked, played soccer, and shot off Fourth of July fireworks in the rain during my Wonder Years. Just wear a rain jacket and go on about life as usual. I will report on the city and the theatrical offerings in my usual fashion so be prepared for some more frequent posting.

This last week was psychologically a bit hard. One of the more difficult aspects of my job is the need for me to walk through very difficult decisions and journeys with my patients. Something eventually goes seriously wrong with everyone and I sometimes find myself having to help someone I’ve known for decades as a patient or sometimes as a friend, through devastating health news or a sudden decline due to a fall and an injury or a rapidly accelerating dementia. I’ve been able to do this over the years because I’ve lived a life with its tragic moments and had to learn caregiving from a practical rather than a theoretical perspective during those two years that Steve was so sick. My choice of specialty allowed me to place a certain distance between myself and my patients. They were of a different generation. They were parental or grandparental figures, not peers. This was reinforced as so many of my friends and acquaintances brough me their parents or other special senior adults over time.

Now, nearly forty years after I first entered the rarified world of American medicine, I have aged. More and more of my patients are within a few years of my own age, some are younger. It’s harder for me to insert that distancing and instead I have to take a brutal look in the mirror and recognize that I too cannot do all of the things I once did due to the relentless body and brain changes that age brings to us all. This is why I’m seriously contemplating retirement and have set a date. My physical and mental health need some decompression and there is none forthcoming in the trenches of outpatient medicine. The demands go up, the respect goes down. As I rapidly head towards my later sixties and seventies, it’s time for younger people to step up and take care of Generation Jones. I just have no earthly idea of who those people are going to be or where they’re going to come from. Geriatrics as a career choice remains in free fall.

One of my oldest Birmingham friends died unexpectedly this past week. Barry Austin was someone that Steve and I got to know in our first year here. Our routine, before Steve’s health declined. was for us to go to the downtown YMCA after I finished work and before dinner a couple of times a week. Barry was on that same schedule and we would often chat. He never made a big deal out of his legendary local theater career and I wasn’t involved in the performing arts scene of Birmingham at all other than as an occasional patron. Steve’s illness, death and the aftermath took up most of 2000-2003. Barry and I saw each other socially a few times during that period but I don’t have much recollection of it due to my high stress levels and mistaken feeling that I would soon be departing Birmingham and head back to the west coast. Tommy and I got together in 2003 and started to throw ourselves into theater the next year and I got to know Barry again after having not seen much of him for a while. He was always, gentle, kind, humorous, and dedicated to giving the best performance he could craft. We started to move routinely in the same social circles and much to my surprise I started to share the stage with him over the last decade or so. We were both cast in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang this summer and I was looking forward to being able to spend some more time with him. Not to be.

I wonder sometimes if I’ll drop dead for one reason or another in the next few years. I hope not. My to do list is way too long and my family won’t be able to make heads or tails of my affairs. The will is done but i want to take a few months at retirement to really put everything in order and make it as easy as possible for my siblings and nieces who will probably be saddled with much of the legwork. I have some ideas about how to use my estate to benefit the local music-theater community but I have to get into retirement living and get a sense of money flow before executing any of them. Here’s hoping I hold together for another three years. There’s no guarantees. And my division has a long history of having faculty retire and then developing health related disasters within the next year and I would rather not join that club.

Next week should be easier and, if nothing else, I’ll get the taxes on Wednesday and have some clue as to what sort of vacation I can afford to take this fall. I’ll sick my travel agent on it once I know if it’s a refund or a payment year. It can go either way. I’m in one of those weird places where a few hundred dollars more of income knocks me up a tax bracket and all of a sudden I owe thousands more. I have no particular aversion to paying taxes (its part of the social contract and I believe in pooled resources doing things beyond what we can accomplish as individuals) but there are times that they can be murderous on the cash flow.

The gods of the theatre are capricious gods. I suppose that goes along with the evanescent nature of the art form they sponsor – one that requires a small army of artists of varying skill sets to show up and work together in intricate patterns that put a football play book to shame . When things go well, it’s magic. When they don’t… well magic is probably not the right word. This is all a very long preamble to state that for various reasons, Encore Theatre is postponing the dates of ‘Love Scenes’ for which I have been diligently rehearsing and the new schedule precludes my continued participation as it conflicts with other projects for which I am already contracted. Oh well…

This does mean that this next week has suddenly opened up. I’m celebrating by taking a nap this afternoon. Something I don’t often get to do but which I am reaching an age where it’s reasserting it’s importance in life. The last few years, my afternoon post prandial dip has become somewhat more pronounced and About 3-4 pm I am very much out of steam. On my house call days, this coincides with the trip back to Birmingham from the hinterlands so I can snooze in the passenger seat of the car. On other days, I will often fall asleep for a few minutes at my desk while typing progress notes. When retirement comes in a few years, I will probably set up life to make mid-late afternoon home time so I can settle into that particular circadian rhythm.

The suddenly free evenings and weekend should eliminate my excuse of not having progressed further on the new book and I will hopefully knock out some significant paragraphs of structure and not so epic prose which my publisher has been patiently awaiting. I think I’ll also go to the movies at least once to see Dune II. I liked the first half and I have heard that this next piece is even better. I may or may not allow Mrs. Norman Maine to accompany me. She’s gotten better at seeing a few things and writing them up which has made the folks at Movie Rewind happy. But she doesn’t always have things to say about every film that crosses my path. It will also allow me to keep a couple of social engagements I was bowing out of due to rehearsal commitments.

I haven’t poked around in the Covid data for a while so I spent half an hour looking through my usual sources to see what all is going on. It’s no longer on the front pages but everyone knows someone who’s had a recent case so it’s still very much out there doing it’s viral replication thing. The numbers all look pretty good. There have been significant declines week to week through March in terms of test positivity, hospitalizations and deaths. It’s still hospitalizing about 10,000 people a week in the country and has settled in around 1.5% of total deaths. This puts it somewhere between 8th and 10th leading cause of death in the US (way down from the 3rd leading cause it held in the three pandemic years of 2020, 2021 and 2022). Will it stay there? Who knows. It could mutate again. Or we could get a brand new highly infectious viral agent that seeds in the population again (and the chances of this keep going up as we add more and more people and they keep spreading into new territory, previously uninhabited, coming into contact with new animal populations.) And if we get a new one, we’ll be in a far worse position thanks to the politicization of public health which will hamstring the response.

The weather has been lovely the last few days and I would like to be enjoying my terrace, but the project of redoing my tiling (which is pretty much a continuation of the pool deck) has slowed to a crawl so all of my patio furniture remains stacked in the parking garage and it’s sort of a mess out there. I was quoted 9-10 weeks for the repairs to be done. As it took the HOA nearly two years to actually get to the project after announcing it, I assume I shall have a terrace again sometime around 2026. I suppose I can just drag a dining room chair out there and have a class of pinot grigio and toast the sunset later today if I feel up to it.

And happy Easter to those who celebrate. And happy trans day of visibility to those who celebrate that. And for those who are upset that the two coincide this year. 3/31 has been the trans day of visibility for years. If you don’t like Easter falling on it, stop relying on a lunar calendar calculation for its date which makes it bop all over late March and early April. Easter next falls on March 31st in 2086 so we have about six decades of respite from this particular overblown fake crisis de jour. I spent my Easter morning at church singing in the choir. I then had to switch over to my religious education duties. The RE committee sponsored an egg hunt for the kids (and there were a lot of them – we’re in a major growth spurt with young families). My job was to oversee the candy table and make sure there were no fist fights or inappropriate greed. I dressed as Willy Wonka for the occasion. I don’t see why he can’t be an Easter figure.

It’s spring break week. I don’t get spring break. I haven’t gotten it in decades as medicine operates on a fifty two week a year calendar and not an academic calendar of quarters or semesters with breaks in between. People don’t stop getting sick or needing care just because the kids are out of school. I usually end up working a lot of the traditional holiday times as I don’t have children and therefore can take my vacations on a more flexible schedule and I cover on those traditional off times as a gift to my colleagues who do have families to whom they need to attend and school schedules around which they must organize their lives. As a lot of people are out this week, I’ve had a bunch of extra clinical work. I’m also on a tight rehearsal schedule for the next project and need most of my weekend free. The end result of this was my spending the last eight hours or so banging my way through back progress notes and messages so I won’t have any hanging over my head this weekend.

The new show, Love Scenes, is six two person scenes each taking place in a different apartment of the same building. I had my first rehearsal with my scene partner and director last night. I’ve known my costar for a few years but we’ve never gotten to work together before outside of improv class so it’s going to be fun exploring together. Our scene is a story of an incredibly dysfunctional relationship full of mental health challenges. I get my guy. He’s very like some of the men, abandoned by life and holed up in cheap apartments or decrepit houses – full of self neglect and self pity. My only worry is the quick production schedule. A grand total of one week of rehearsal before a weekend of performances. Going to be spending a lot of tomorrow working on lines. Most of them are short but I have to make sure my ‘No’ and my ‘Sorry’ and my ‘OK’ are in the right place and I don’t lead my scene partner astray.

I have a long NYC weekend a few days after Love Scenes closes. Most of the theater activities are chosen but I have one slot left. I have several ideas for it but haven’t made a final decision as of yet. I’m going to search out some more input from my usual sources this weekend and then grab that last ticket. I come home from that and go immediately into rehearsal for Opera Unveiled and immediately from that into rehearsal for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and immediately from that into rehearsal for The Merry Wives of Windsor so my next few months are spoken for and I should be able to keep myself out of too much trouble. Rehearsals and people depending on me keep me off the streets or out of my bedroom with a pillow over my head trying to shut out the world.

The big news of the week locally is the closing of Birmingham Southern College. BSC has been in existence for over 160 years and has been one of the anchors of local higher education for quite some time. A small liberal arts school, initially growing out of the Southern Methodist tradition, it has nurtured and educated many of the local civic leaders through its small class size, rigorous instruction, and commitment to developing critical thinking and intellect. Many of my friends have taught there, attended there, had family members attend there, had their pastors attend there, and it has been one of the major feeders of performers and technicians into the local theater scene. A previous president and board made major financial missteps fifteen years ago and the dominos of cascading money problems continued to fall and could not be corrected without state aid which was not forthcoming. It’s sad and the state continues to show it’s complete ignorance of what really makes an economy and a society tick.

To understand Alabama politics, one must understand that it is governed by the state constitution of 1901, a repellent document passed in a fraudulent election which was created specifically to ensure that all socioeconomic power remained with a very small class of white landowners. (When South Africa was looking for a model for its apartheid constitution, guess where they turned. The Nazis also used it parts of it to construct the Nuremburg Laws). The constitution consolidates pretty much all power in the state legislature, limiting the ability of counties and cities to home rule. It has been amended nearly seven hundred times and it still pretty much guarantees that rural landowning interests will dictate what goes. This means that there is always money to lure a new industrial plant to a rural county at the costs of hundreds of millions in tax incentives and give aways but no money for projects that might benefit urban populations. As the red vs blue divide as worsened over the quarter century that I’ve been here, the Republican super majority in the state house has made darn sure that any programs that might provide benefit to marginalized community or that might lead to additional political power for urban or minority populations go absolutely nowhere. It’s a shame. The state is beautiful. There are lots of lovely and industrious people here. And the metro areas lag way behind Nashville or Charlotte or Atlanta or Jacksonville or any other major Southern city due to these attitudes.

But life is change, and Darwinian theory tells us that the organism that cannot adapt to a changing environment is destined for extinction. The economic conditions surrounding BSC changed too fast due to both national and local politics for it to be able to survive. It won’t be the last prestigious small liberal arts college to shut up shop this century. The American attitude toward education is changing. The pandemic has completely redone the way we see and interact with education. Absence rates spiked with the shut down but have not particularly declined with full reopening. Nether students nor families seem to feel that schooling is necessary. Fewer students in the public schools mean fewer young adults prepared for higher education, not to mention the skyrocketing costs of tuition as public support of education has been slowly but steadily withdrawn over the last half century. Anti-immigrant sentiment and fewer visas will lead to the best and brightest from elsewhere no longer choosing an American education. The trends aren’t good. I was raised in a family where education was one of the highest ideals. The house was full of books. We all read and discussed ideas and learned and grew together. I’m hoping that that sort of upbringing isn’t becoming a rarity but I’m afraid that it is.

My next theatrical endeavor is a play entitled ‘Love Scenes’ which is being rehearsed in a week and then performed for a four day run. It’s a half dozen two person scenes about love and relationships with a surrounding frame based on Shakespeare’s sonnets. Because no one has more than about fifteen minutes of stage time and it’s two person dialogue, it should be easy to learn and come together relatively quickly. I’ve started on lines this weekend and, as most of mine are one or two words long, it’s just a matter with responding with the right word to keep things on track. I’ll have more to say about this project as it develops. The weekend after this, I’m off to NYC for a long theater weekend with a friend, and then come back to do a concert of opera’s greatest hits entitled ‘Opera Unveiled’ where the Opera Birmingham chorus is singing Libiamo from La Traviata, the Habanera from Carmen, and the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore. I’ve sung all of them before so it shouldn’t be too difficult. And then it’s into rehearsal for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang so my next few months are pretty much laid out.

I’ve been trying to decide what I’m going to do for my big trip this year. I’m waiting to hear what the damage is going to be at tax time before making any final decisions. I got socked last year as I went up a tax bracket and, if that happens again, it’s going to have to be a cheaper trip and not a private car on the Orient Express. I’ll get hold of my travel agent once I have an approximate budget and we’ll start working it out. It’s going to be sometime between mid September and Halloween if there’s anyone out there who has plans and needs a fairly innocuous travel companion.

As part of my life planning, I made a decision regarding retirement. I am going to retire from the routine practice of clinical medicine summer of 2027. That gives everyone three years to figure out what to do around here if I’m not part of the day to day operations of either the clinic or the house call services. I’m tired and what has happened in the US health system over the last decade has not been good for either my physical or my mental health so I need to have an end game in sight. I’ll be happy to stick around in an emeritus faculty role, helping out with projects, doing some committee work, and providing sage advice to the younger folk but I’ll be able to pick and choose my own schedule and if I want to disappear for a few months here and there, I’ll be able to do it.

So now that everyone’s caught up with my basic life patterns, what shall we talk about? There’s not a whole lot new in Covidland. It’s still out there. It’s still killing people. It’s not going away. The best things we have to fight it these days are common sense and an annual fall booster (with an additional one in the spring for those with serious health conditions or significant frailty). More and more is being published regarding the significant issues with long Covid. Somewhere around 17% of US adults have had long Covid symptoms at some point in the last four years. About 6-7% of US adults have current long Covid symptoms and about 0.5% of US workers have had to leave the workforce due to long Covid symptoms (3/4 of these due to cognitive changes). As the chances of long Covid go up with each subsequent infection,, doing whatever you feel is necessary to keep from acquiring additional infections is generally a wise choice. And I am still waiting for some hidden time bomb to go off in the brains or hearts or lungs or kidneys of previously healthy adults in the next decade or so.

There’s another health issue that’s busy tearing apart local politics here in Alabama and that’s the aftermath of the Alabama supreme court declaring that the clumps of cells used in IVF are people under the law. This decision came about following the Alabama legislature putting forth a state constitutional amendment back in 2018 explicitly defining embryos and fetuses as ‘people’ and the supremes simply took a very expansive reading of the text of that amendment. The state legislature rapidly drafted a law this past month exempting IVF procedures from this so that these programs (popular with both conservative and liberal families trying to work around fertility issues) could continue. Now the state Republicans are busy cannibalizing themselves with the more conservative railing that this work around is damaging to the pro-life movement and should not have been passed and the more moderate trying to keep their appeal with middle of the road voters while fending off attacks from the right. Allowing religious zealotry to write laws covering subjects as complicated as medical procedures was always a bad idea and the whole mess is likely to get a lot worse with time.

And then we have the other bill recently signed banning DEI programs from state funded college campuses and preventing ‘divisive concepts’ from being taught and, for good measure, a ban on people using bathrooms that do not align with the sex on their birth certificate. The majority of the bathrooms in my work areas are unisex and everyone uses them and no one has had an issue. The majority of us were raised in households with unisex bathrooms without ill effect. I just wonder about the people who go peeping and then seek to file a complaint. Actually, I would like to organize a cadre of butch FTM transexuals and have them caravan to Montgomery to go use the ladies lounge while Kay Ivey is in there and see how fast she realizes that law is a huge mistake.

I am on my department’s DEI committee and have been for years. I’ve been committed to the concepts because of things that have happened to me over the years because policies and rules were not fairly applied. I will continue to do that kind of work and, if I get in trouble for it, I’ll just retire a little early and tell my patients (especially the ones with political clout and there are quite a number of them) exactly why and let them take it from there.