May 17, 2026

Dateline: New York, New York

Last full day in NYC on my Cooks tour of the four major cultural capitals of Western Civilization and another day stuffed with all the things the city has to offer. The weather has continued to hold and, has in fact, warmed up to the point of being nearly too hot for comfortable walking having topped out somewhere in the mid 80s. Fortunately, the humidity has not yet set in so it wasn’t too bad. Just as well as it was another 20,000+ step or eight mile day.

We actually began moving relatively early this morning (if you call 8 am early) as we had an appointment at 10:45. We headed across town to the Museum of Modern Art to meet Lois, long term friend from Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham circles. The initial plan was to attend church services at All Souls UU as we have done with her before but then the decision was made to worship at a somewhat different temple, MoMA and to spend the time in the company of the Braques and Chagalls and all that. I hadn’t been to MoMA since sometime in the early 90s and it was nice to revisit Vincent’s Starry Night, Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon (which did not go down on the Titanic no matter what James Cameron might have suggested), Matisse’s circle of dancing naked women and all the rest in the permanent collection. This was followed by an excellent brunch at The Harvard Club where we all over ate.

Making our way from MoMA to the Harvard Club was a bit fraught as 6th Avenue was shut down for the Asian American Heritage Parade. Floats full of women in native costumes, Chinese dragons, various drum corps. We had to thread our way through the staging areas. As Lois is now in her 90s, I was a bit worried about her balance and her stamina, especially after she was mowed down in the street by a passing car a few months ago, but she’s a true New Yorker and galumphed her way down ten blocks of sidewalk without the least bit of difficulty.

Following brunch and a farewell to Lois, we headed back to the theatre district for our last Broadway show of the weekend, the comedy Oh Mary, currently starring Maya Rudolph and Cheyenne Jackson. Martin Landry (whom I once directed in Kiss Me Kate) is in the company as an alternate but was not on for our performance which is too bad, as I would have liked to have seen him on stage again. The play is vulgar, juvenile, and outrageously funny. The whole thing depends on the performer in the central role of Mary Todd Lincoln (whom in this telling longs to return to the cabaret stage). Maya Rudolph did a phenomenal job of balancing all of the elements so that the character came across as a human, rather than just some sort of sick cartoon.

While watching the play, I had a major moment of deja vu. Many years ago, I had a patient who was brought to me by his family for complaints of cognitive decline. (He was in his 80s and therefore this was not completely unexpected). The family decided he needed to see me after they took him in to have his drivers license renewed and the California Department of Motor Vehicles decided he needed a road test. He was willing – and immediately drove the examiner into the dumpster which ended that test. When I saw him, he told me that he was fine except for the metal valve that had mysteriously been implanted in his nose and which he was afraid would close one day causing him to suffocate. No assurances from me or anyone else that no such valve existed would shake his delusion. He then proceeded to tell me that he had discovered a way to keep the valve open. He just needed to put a we washcloth on his head, and then rubber band a plastic bag over it. He then put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it, crammed a stocking cap over it and went to bed. Worked like a charm. The only follow up question I could think to ask him was ‘Does it have to be vanilla?’ which was also the punch line of one of the best jokes in Oh Mary. But I thought of it first, back when Cole Escola was in elementary school.

After the show, Patti and I took a long and leisurely stroll from Times Square over to Hells Kitchen, and then down to Hudson Yards, and down the Highline. We stopped in the meat packing district, killed a bottle of white wine between us at a sidewalk cafe, and then continued on to the West Village where I introduced Patti to Stonewall and we ensconced ourselves at Marie’s Crisis for piano bar sing along, shortly joined by my friends David Pohler and Calliope whom we had hung out with earlier in the week. Then it was across the street to Buvette for more drinks and a nosh where are bartender server was Alex Belli whom I had not seen for some years. Feeling no pain, we returned unscathed to our hotel to get some sleep before our separate journeys tomorrow. Patti Steelman returns to Birmingham while I and David head across the pond to London and to meet up with David’s other half Jonathan Uday Ramteke. There may or may not be an update tomorrow as I’m not doing much besides prepping for leaving the country and getting on a redeye to the UK.

In the midst of all this, I received a text from Bill McMullen who is vacationing in Egypt. He was wearing a T-shirt with my mantra ‘Get up, Get Dressed, Go Out, Do Good’ on it. It apparently caught the eye of some of the locals who wanted to know where they could get one. I have let him know if he wishes to have the T-shirt concession in the Arab World for my pithy sayings, he’s more than welcome. I never expected my philosophy to have international reach…