Not even ten days into the new year and already it feels like the wheels are coming off of the bus. There was a brief reprieve today with the measured and elegiac state funeral for former president Jimmy Carter. President Biden granted all federal employees the day off today in remembrance of Mr. Carter and, as Thursday is one of my VA days, I got an unexpected day away from work. I spent it relaxing with some friends, a thing I don’t get to do all that often these days. Tomorrow, however, we will return to the president elect being sentenced for felonious conduct, the city of Los Angeles going up in smoke, Republican congress critters falling all over themselves as they try to prefile bills making the plans laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 a political reality, a terrible winter cold and flu season with the hints of a new pandemic on the horizon, and the promise of up to six inches of snow overnight in the greater Birmingham area. (I will still be expected to slide down the hill and into work – no patients will show up…)

The golden hills of California have burned regularly with wildfire for millennia. The entire ecosystem evolved around the rejuvenative properties of fire clearing away underbrush. Various conifer trees require the high heat of fire to burst open their cones so the new seeds can scatter. The hills will survive, with or without the sound of music or fire sirens. Up through the early 20th century, societies understood the power of nature and adapted dwelling and planning around the way in which the local eco system worked. (The 18th and 19th century neighborhoods in NOLA, for instance, were the ones that did not flood during Katrina). In the 20th century, with the rise of real estate as a major economic commodity, rather than just the creation of human habitation, all of that went out the window as developers threw up houses and other buildings anywhere and everywhere a buck could be made. Now, a century later, the bill is coming due with coastal erosion, sea level rise, stronger hurricanes, excessive rain events, and stronger winds that can whip up firestorms and mother nature, stressed by climate change, doesn’t really care where you built your house. She’s gonna do what she’s gonna do.

This is the third catastrophic California wildfire which has marched through an urban area and destroyed the lives of multiple friends and acquaintances. The other two were the Oakland Hills fire of 1991 and the Santa Rosa fire of 2017. I was a Californian for fourteen years so I have a lot of ties to the state. My life was in Northern California so I have no special love for Los Angeles (Steve did – he grew up in the San Fernando Valley) but I cannot help but grieve for the thousands upon thousands of little deaths of culture, of community, and familiarity that any disaster of this magnitude brings. The best book I read this past year was Stephen Markley’s The Deluge, a sprawling novel of near future United States history as the current economic, climatic, and political forces continue to play out unabated. One of the major set pieces of the novel is a massive wildfire, nicknamed ‘El Diablo’ that nearly destroys Los Angeles. The conditions that produce and progress of the fire in the book is being eerily replayed on the nightly news. Markley’s largely pessimistic novel is a painful read but as time moves on, it looks like he read the tea leaves correctly. I was so impressed with The Deluge that I read Markley’s earlier novel, Ohio, a few months ago. This one is an examination of the millennials of small town America as they enter middle age and the dreadful things that happen to them as America has not lived up to her promises for the younger generations. The audio book is very good.

The next few days should be rather interesting for political junkies. President elect Trump receives his sentence tomorrow for being found guilty of felony crimes involving the falsification of business records. Most people convicted of 34 felonies would be looking at some serious jail time but most aren’t as well connected or ten days away from walking again into the White House. I suspect Judge Merchan will end the whole affair with an admission of guilt and then a general discharge so that the whole thing can be swept under the rug. It won’t be long before the propagandists begin completely rewriting the story making Trump a hero-martyr. The way in which the propaganda machine is busy trying to turn January 6, 2021 into something other than what it was is truly a marvel to behold. I saw some piece where the pundit was describing it as a bunch of patriotic American grandmothers giving themselves a self guided tour of the Capitol. DO NOT let them gull you into disbelieving what you actually experienced. Following this, the Jack Smith report on the federal cases involving election interference and mishandling of classified documents are expected to be released as early as this coming Sunday. There are reporters all over the country salivating at what little nuggets of information might be contained therein. I’m sure we’ll hear all about it.

On a lighter note, I have a new theatrical project next week. It’s a readers theatre piece for Cahaba Theatre Group entitled Finding the Absent Crescent by Gina Pauratore. This means that we don’t have to learn our lines, but we still have to give a performance, even with the books in front of us. It has one glorious performance at 2:30 PM Sunday the 19th at the Clubhouse on Highland (a venue near and dear to my heart – we did a number of the later Politically Incorrect Cabarets there). The play is a Southern Fried Comedy with a Creole flair. Eccentric family, check. Funeral brings them together under high stress conditions, check. It’s not as mordant as the plays of Del Shores and not as sit com as the Hope Jones Wooten oeuvre which has replaced Neil Simon as the community theater comedy staple. It reminds me a bit of Dearly Departed which I directed for Bell Tower players a couple of years ago. I play a ghostly grandfather who bookends the show. Two weeks later, I have an Alabama Symphony Orchestra concert where the men are singing Schubert, the women, Debussy and everyone joins up for Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances (best known as the source material for the musical Kismet – Stranger in Paradise and He’s in Love are prominent in the piece we’re singing). And that’s it for a while. Something else will turn up, it always does. In the meantime, I have to buckle down to various writing assignments which will become my next book and a few other things. Fortunately, I write very quickly and do some of my best work under the pressure of deadline so something should have form by summer.

I just looked out my window. There is no snow and minimal clouds. So I opened my NOAA weather app (something that will cease to exist if Elon Musk has his way) and there’s a wall of snow just starting to cross the state line from Mississippi to Alabama. Things may be very different in the morning.

Dateline – London, England

It is midnight local time. I have three hours remaining before I have to start on the return journey. 3 AM is not my favorite time of day but when you have a 6 AM flight to Copenhagen prior to coming back across the pond, needs must. Especially when you have paid a tour company to deal with things like airport transfers so you don’t have to do so. Therefore, this is the last entry in the current travelogue. So far there are no solid travel plans for 2025 in the offing other than a quick jaunt to Seattle to check up on my now 92 year old father but I’m sure that will change based on whims, opportunities, and various geopolitical situations.

Today was a lovely sunny day, cold but clear. Perfect walking weather so Frank Thompson and I began the day with a long amble from the hotel in Fitzrovia to Knightsbridge for a pilgrimage to Harrods. Harrods is a lovely institution, bursting with luxury goods that us mere mortals cannot possibly afford and coiffed and manicured shop assistants that can tell I do not belong to the moneyed classes and am not about to drop $8,000 on an Armani suit for $350,000 on a golden piano shaped like a solar disc. Harrods exists for us ordinary folk to gawk at, for corporate expense accounts to order hampers, and for the world’s rich who have London residences to have their staff shop for them.

On the way, we passed Hyde Park barracks and the memorial plaque to my Great Great Uncle Matthew Fontaine Maury Meiklejohn who was killed on the spot in an act of heroism back in 1913. I’ve recounted that story before so if you want more details, you can check his Wikipedia Page. As he died some fifty years before I was born, I never met him. Just another oddball family connection of which I have many, as do most of you if you go digging around in your family history.

Next it was off to Southwark to see The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary, a hysterical farcical adaptation of Flaubert in which four very skilled comic actors send up 19th century fiction, mores, and everything else they can get their hands on. I haven’t laughed so hard in a theater in some time. I enjoy a good Theater of the Ridiculous presentation and this one reminded me a lot of Medea: The Musical that was a huge hit in the SF Bay Area in the 90s. (Sara James – it’s a perfect THEATRE DOWNTOWN show – I bought a copy of the script which you can peruse). This was followed by a walk up to the Thames near Tower Bridge for dinner at The Ivy (the one at Tower Bridge, not the one in Los Angeles for those of you who might be confused) where I had shepherd’s pie. I asked the waiter if I might have it peppered with actual shepherd on top. He looked confused. I don’t think Sondheim was his first language.

After dinner, next door to The Bridge Theatre for their stupendous production of Guys and Dolls. I had seen it before a year and a half ago when I was in London with Vickie Rozell and the ASO Chorus for our concert at Southward Cathedral and I was eager to revisit it. It’s closing soon (to be replaced by a revival of Richard II starring Jonathan Bailey – get those tickets now after the success of Wicked) so I’m glad I was in time to catch it once more before it goes off to theatrical heaven (it’s unlikely to be brought to the US for various logistical and financial reasons.) It really is one of the best productions of a classic American musical I have ever seen with the immersive staging in the round, the constantly moving levels of the set, the three hundred standees on the floor becoming part of the action as the crowds of Times Square. Even though I knew exactly what to expect, it made me cry tears of emotional joy a couple of times. Frank, Kathy McMullen, and Bill McMullen had not seen it before (in fact Kathy had never seen a production of Guys and Dolls before and didn’t even know the plot going in) and they were all thoroughly blown away. It definitely ended London theater week on a high note.

I’m not bothering to go to bed. I shall just watch TV or something until I have to drag my suitcase downstairs. There’s no point. I can sleep on the plane.

Dateline – London, England

Today was another low key day. Most of my compatriots got up and made a journey to Stratford. I decided instead to loll around for a few hours, and then get up and head into the West End for some shopping – both window and for a few souvenirs for others. The only thing I’ve been on the lookout for me is for an actual deerstalker hat but I have yet to run across one in any of the shops I’ve entered. I know I can probably get one from Amazon if I really want one but it’s not the same as saying ‘I bought it on a trip to London’. I did some wandering up and down side streets, running across a few interesting restaurant and shop names. Leave it to the British to have a breakfast place called Eggslut.

After a nice walk, I headed to my first musical of my double show day: Musical edition. The choice was Moulin Rouge (which I have not yet seen and I decided, because of the set, I had better see it in either New York or London and figured the $60 it cost me in London was a much better deal than I would ever find in New York). I went to see the film on the big screen when it first came out. Steve was very ill and it was the first time I had been able to escape the house in some months. I had made it a self care priority as I had fallen for Baz Luhrman’s unique visual style on seeing Strictly Ballroom some years previously and I try to see everything he has a hand in on as big a screen as possible. Steve died a few weeks later so the story, borrowed from La Boheme, of love cut short by illness resonated with me. As I watched it originally, there was so much color and music and over the top everything, that it felt somewhat assaultive (I have similar feelings about the film version of Wicked) but it also stirred me on a basic emotional level in ways that few works of art can – well done opera is one of the few that does this for me reliably.

The stage version has a fantastic visual production – all color and light, and fancy costumes and frenetic choreography and mashups of power diva ballads – changed from the original score as there has been a whole generation of pop music since 2001 and we had to shoehorn in Katy Perry and Lady Gaga and Beyonce and the like. But it’s oddly unmoving. The difference between film and stage medium is such that the whole things comes across as a series of moving postcards of stage pictures than any sort of emotional and involving story. It doesn’t help that the characters are wafer thin and the plot ain’t much. It wasn’t much when it was about Mimi and Rodolfo. And while it tries to revel in being naughty, it’s the kind of naughty you can take your grandmother to and not feel embarrassed. The cast in London is young, attractive, energetic, and charisma free. I can tick it off of the list of big shows that I have seen original productions of but have no need to ever see it again in this or any other production. When it is inevitably revived in thirty or forty years, I wonder if they will completely redo the score to contemporary pop hits? Will anyone in that future society even recognize Elton John once the demise of the Baby Boom lets the culture move on?

I treated myself to a very good dinner in a pan-Asian restaurant called Gilgamesh in St. Martin’s Lane. I apparently wandered in at the right time on the right night as it was two for one cocktails with my prawn dumplings, Thai green curry, and passionfruit cheesecake. Then up the hill a bit to Shaftesbury Avenue to the Gielgud theater for the evening show. My choice was Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Oliver! directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne. (It’s been pretty much sold out for months but I was able to find one cheap seat on Today Tix by looking at just the right time). I don’t want to hear one word about my fondness for good productions of the old warhorses of the classic 1940-1965 period. They have strong books, melodic scores, and often deep thematic material that gets glossed over in most community productions where the director doesn’t really understand it and the cast is too busy trying to remember their lines and their steps.

It’s an excellent production. It stars no one you ever heard of and with some interesting twists on Fagin. He’s the first sexy Fagin I’ve ever seen and he’s styled Ottoman Middle Eastern – he could be Jewish or Muslim, or Alawite Syrian. Hard to say. His Reviewing the Situation is done more as a mental breakdown than as a comedy number. Nancy is a good belter (I still think they should rewrite the second act a bit so that Oom-pah-pah has the plot function it has in the film rather than just making it a second act curtain raiser). The lesser characters are all tightly sketched, directed to be as unique and Dickensian as possible, and sing the heck out of the score. As a nod to continuity, Widow Corney is played by Harry Secombe’s daughter, Katy. She nails all the laughs. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it helped clear my mind of the last major production of the show I saw some two decades ago which was one of the worst things I have ever seen on stage. How you manage to leach the joy out of Consider Yourself I don’t know, but that production managed it. I have a soft spot for Oliver. My parents took me to see the movie when it was first released. I was five. I remember being most upset when Fagin lost his jewels in the muck. That bothered me a lot more than Nancy’s murder.

Tomorrow is another double show day and then that will wrap up this visit to the sceptered isle. I really don’t feel like returning to work on Monday but needs must.

Dateline – London, England

Today was a low key day. After last night’s protracted meal (accompanied by a pre boarding the dinner bus cocktail, a glass of champagne when seated, two glasses of wine with dinner, and a night cap), I slept in most of the morning. One look out the window showed that the day was cold, dreary and wet. As it is New Year’s Day, most things are closed so there wasn’t a lot of push to get anywhere. Frank Thompson and I headed into town towards Trafalgar Square to meet up with friends. We ran into the London New Year’s Parade which snarled traffic and made locating anyone a bit of a bothersome chore but finally we were ensconced in a pub (The Sherlock Holmes near Charing Cross) with a clutch of Dinsmores. (Tiffany Dinsmore, George Dinsmore and Seb Dinsmore) enjoying mulled wine and lively conversation.

As darkness fell, I headed back to the hotel to return to the larger tour group for a trip around the London Eye to see the city lights (unchanged from the last time I did this a couple of years ago) and then dinner at Covent Garden. (Frank had an alternate engagement – I ate both our entrees, risotto and chicken pot pie). After double dinner, back to the hotel for some relaxation. Two more full days remain. Both devoted to theater with matinee and evening performances scheduled both tomorrow and Friday before having to board a plane again on Saturday and once again make a pointless visit to Denmark. Tomorrow is musical day. Friday is split between farcical comedy and musical. More details forthcoming.

As there is not much to talk about in the travel department, might as well catch up with ‘In Other News…’ On the viral front, Covid cases in the US have tripled since the beginning of last month suggesting we’re heading into a winter surge. Test positivity and wastewater surveillance are also trending up. Fortunately, death rates remain quite low but, as that’s a lagging indicator, we’ll need to keep an eye on that through January and February as holiday related infections work their way through the population. H5N1 remains a bit worrisome. It’s one mutation away from becoming easily transmissible human to human and if that happens, we could be in for a very rough winter. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and refusing to take on problems that do not yet exist. Then there’s the personal viral front. My little quip from a couple of days ago seems to have leveled off at about 155,000 views on Threads. Amazon sales of the books have ticked up in the last 24 hours. I suppose this is what one would call viral marketing although it was not intended as such. It’s interesting. I put the same post on Bluesky at roughly the same time. There it’s gotten something like 10 views. I have no idea why it would take off on one platform and not the other as I’m not especially active, nor do I have an enormous base of followers on either.

The news out of New Orleans is horrible. We’re not getting a lot of details on this side of the pond so I have done some snooping through American news sites. The story appears to be much more complicated than initial framing would suggest. I’m afraid it will be used politically to attack birthright citizenship and has the potential to harm a lot of innocent people moving forward. We shall see. The Las Vegas story of a Tesla Cybertruck blowing up in front of the Trump hotel is rife with delicious symbolism but there don’t appear to be enough details there to have any informed opinions on anything other than the question of the quality of Tesla products but most intelligent folk have been proffering that one for a while.

My New Year’s Resolution for 2025 is to try and read more for pleasure so I’m off to bed early with a paperback Stephen King novel. Don’t judge…

Dateline – London, England

Happy New Year everyone from across the pond. It’s after midnight here. The fireworks, which sounded something akin to the blitz outside the window, have quieted and I have a little time to reflect, ruminate, cogitate and let my fingers dance across the keyboard before bed while those in the US are still making their plans regarding their NYE shenanigans.

Today was a lowkey day. No racing to catch a train or any such thing. After breakfast, I decided to take an aimless wander through the West End. The weather is cool, cloudy and quite suitable for walking long distances. I passed a lot of theaters, monuments, impressive public buildings and ended up at Foyle’s, the famous book store on Charing Cross Road. I, of course, looked to see if there were any copies of The Accidental Plague Diaries on the shelves (there weren’t). Perhaps I should sneak a set in and see if they notice. It will probably greatly confuse some innocent employee in six months when they shelf read for inventory. I browsed, had a nice cup of Earl Grey tea and a piece of carrot cake in the cafe, and people watched.

I then headed over to Theatre Royal Drury Lane for a matinee of Jamie Lloyd’s new production of The Tempest starring Sigourney Weaver as Prospero. Mr. Lloyd is the new enfant terrible of British theater, well known for stripping materials down in minimalist ways that highlight new themes. His current huge success is the new production of Sunset Boulevard that’s all black and white and projections and oodles of blood in the finale. I liked his version of The Tempest. I didn’t love it. The setting is a dark undulating rockscape (which I took to be a barren volcanic Mediterranean island) with a fabric sky and lots of very skillful lighting. The cast has been pared down to eleven: Prospero, Ferdinand, Miranda, Ariel, Caliban, Trinculo, Stephano and a ducal court of four. Everyone is in timeless outfits of grey, black, and pale blue (with some gold for Ariel) so it’s all very monochromatic with lighting setting scene and mood. Ariel flies, but there’s otherwise not much in the way of magic (and no masque).

Sigourney was a bit of a disappointment. Having seen several dozen of her performances in film over the years, she has no problem projecting, strength, power, and domination but here she’s less than. I don’t think she was helped by the staging which basically has her sitting center stage most of the time with the action swirling around her. She delivers the Shakespearean language fine but doesn’t get to use her physicality the way she might which I think was a directorial mistake. Therefore, the focus shifts away from her to Ferdinand and Miranda who are both excellent (in what are usually nothing roles). Ariel, however, is the one who really steals the show, especially with assistance from a sound design that allows his voice to change in tone and timbre.

After the show, time to get ready for New Year’s Eve. The tour group put us together with some other groups in a financial district upscale restaurant called Brown’s. The food was reasonable but not overly distinguished (I had lamb chops – when in England). It also took a rather long time to serve it. After three and a half hours to serve three courses, we decided we were done and headed back to the hotel to beat the NYE revelers rush on the underground. Tommy and I made the mistake back ion a visit to London n 2007 of going out to a nightclub for NYE. We came out about 1 am to masses of people leaving the Thames fireworks displays. It was impossible to go anywhere other than where the crowd was heading and we eventually got herded into Waterloo station along with a hundred thousand of our closest friends until we were popped like a watermelon seed into a tube entrance and were finally able to make our way back to our hotel. Not an experience I care to repeat, especially now that I am in my senior years. I was still in my 40s then.

Uncertain what tomorrow holds. There are supposed to be gale force winds so a number of things that are usually open are unexpectedly closed. It’s a dark day for theater so that’s out. I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with something in one of the world’s great metropolises which will keep me entertained.

Dateline London and York, England

For those of you keeping score, I decided on the quick side trip to York over the RSC matinee today. (It was A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I have seen three professional productions in the last two years, directed it and seen this RSC production on video so I opted for the less familiar). This meant getting up before dawn (at these northern latitudes, dawn isn’t until about 8 AM so it wasn’t all that early), high tailing it down to Kings Cross Station and boarding a high speed non-stop to York. (It was travelling on to Edinburgh and other points north – some sort of descendant of the Flying Scotsman I suppose – and if Skimbleshanks were on board, he did not make himself known although the terrier across the aisle and two absolutely adorable babies did). Two hours of cutting across the green fields of northeastern England past small country towns with their high streets and vaguely Norman looking churches at one end and out of the fogs of London and into relatively sunny weather.

York was achieved without incident. It was the second most important city in medieval England after London but, unlike London, seems to have been left rather behind by the modern world. The central city is still a warren of ancient streets running all higgledy-piggledy with a large number of early buildings still intact and still functioning as pubs and shops. Dominating it all is York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe with the two bell towers in front and an enormous central tower rising two hundred and some feet from where the nave, apse, and transepts all meet. I did not pay the extra six pounds to climb to the top. I’ve been up plenty of medieval staircases in my day and adding one more to the list did not strike me as a good idea with my aging knees. I did, however, along with Bill McMullen and Kathy McMullen take the guided tour where we were fed little tidbits of a millennium or so of York history. Deep in the catacombs, there are still extant pieces of Roman foundation and masonry from when it was the military outpost of Eboracum in the first few centuries CE.

I love gothic cathedrals. The height, the stained glass, the majesty, the knowing that as they usually took several centuries to complete that the majority of the artisans and engineers involved never saw the building complete but continued on with their jobs anyway through much more turbulent times and politics than we experience. Human beings of the last 10,000 years are just as smart as we are and just as resourceful and just as ingenious. They may not have had access to modern technology and tools but they were able to achieve the results they wanted. York Minster was struck by lighting in 1984 and a devastating fire severely damaged the south transept. The displays showing the damage and how it was repaired were fascinating – shades of Notre Dame. I suppose the closest thing we have to a gothic cathedral build is Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It was begun in 1882 and is still being constructed. I was last there in 2002 and recent pictures show a lot of additions since I last saw it. Recent estimates place completion around 2032 so maybe within my lifetime.

After cathedral gazing, a walk around the old city through the various market squares and the narrow little street known as The Shambles which has a number of Tudor buildings with the upper floor overhangs and which is obviously the model for Diagon Alley. Then a pub lunch of fish and chips. More walking past the former site of the castle (mostly gone other than a large drum tower) before heading back to the train for London.. The journey back was uneventful. I snoozed for most of it…

For entertainment this evening, we went full tourist and went to see The Mousetrap (now in it’s 73rd year). I’ve seen The Mousetrap numerous times in both amateur and professional productions but have never, despite six or seven trips to London over the last forty years taken in the original production that continues to sell out as an icon of London theater. We were in the upper circle (very steep and inadequate leg room) and therefore very much looking down on the proceedings. What can I say? Revelatory theater it ain’t but it’s still a smashing good time and it was fun hearing gasps in the audience at the denouement from people who obviously had no idea of the plot twists.

While on the train to York, I placed a little quip in this forum regarding the need for a concert to memorialize Jimmy Carter and when that might be scheduled. It wasn’t a wholly original idea but I found it funny. It was cross posted to Threads where it has gone viral with over 10,000 views and hundreds of comments and repostings. I’ve never gone viral before. I expect the trolls will come out of the woodwork tomorrow. Now if only my virus writings would go viral and people would buy some more books. (Speaking of which, there are announcements coming in that department but I won’t make them until all the ducks are in a row – and as my ducks seem to wander off into all sorts of places, that may be a while).

Tomorrow is relatively unscheduled other than a New Years Eve party so I have no idea what I’ll get into yet. Stay tuned.

Dateline – London, UK

It’s the end of the first full day in London. When last left, our intrepid hero was pining away in the bowels of Copenhagen airport on a six hour layover full of non-excitement. Eventually the flight from Copenhagen to Heathrow boarded, and we sat on the tarmac for an hour as the fog in Southern England limited the number of flights that could enter airspace. We did eventually get the all clear (or the fog lifted, I didn’t find out which) and took off. I don’t recall much of the flight as I wedged myself into a corner and slept for most of it, waking up as the plane bounced on touch down in jolly old England.

The process of deplaning, passport control (fully automated), baggage collection, and customs clearance went without major incident and I emerged to find my driver for the ride into the central city. I was dropped off at the hotel (a Holiday Inn close to Regents Park near Great Portland Street) about 6 PM local time, roughly 25 hours after walking out of my condo. Quick shower and change of clothes and then off to the local pub to meet up with my travel companions (Frank Thompson, Bill McMullen, and Kathy McMullen and the rest of the tour group). Chicken Schnitzel and a pint restored good humor but, despite it being Saturday night, I was pretty done in and crashed soon after, sleeping for twelve hours.

After breakfast this morning, a trip to The National Gallery (which I had not been to the last few London trips) to bask in a few masterpieces of Western Art. (Lunch in the museum restaurant – beef lasagna accompanied by mulled wine). Then some walking through town, collecting up a few other friends, another glass of mulled wine and off to Baker Street for a show entitled ‘A Sherlock Carol’ which is a rather clever mash up of Sherlock Holmes and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with six versatile performers leading us through familiar phrases twisted in new ways as Sherlock is visited by the ghost of Scrooge and… well, you have to see it. It’s rather difficult to explain.

Still feeling tired so turning in early again this evening. I have two choices tomorrow – a trip to York or a matinee at the RSC. I haven’t made up my mind yet. Stay tuned.

Dateline – Copenhagen (airport that is)

I finished up the few things I had left undone on Friday morning, threw some clothes, toiletries, and miscellaneous odds and ends into a suitcase, made a last run to Walgreens, stopped at Waffle House for hashbrowns, sausage and a waffle, and pointed Hope, the red Prius eastbound on I-20 heading for Atlanta. Rain. Slow traffic. More rain. A few stoppages on the back road to ATL which I discovered some years ago and which avoids the beltway altogether. Good thing I allowed plenty of extra time.

Got the car parked, caught the skytrain to the terminal, and then, as the new international terminal at Hartsfield is now open, had to take a shuttle to the other side of the airport. And I was, of course, right behind the guy who was taking his windsurf board with him as carry on luggage which made for interesting embarkation and disembarkation from the shuttle bus. Finally arrive at the international terminal (still plenty of time to spare) and catch my first break. I am the only person in line checking in at the SAS counter. And the security line was mercifully short. Made it to the gate with a good forty five minutes to spare.

This trip was booked as a group through a less chi-chi company than my usual travels so, for reasons known only to their economics, I was booked to Heathrow via Copenhagen. The flight itself was the usual trans Atlantic redeye. I put old familiar movies on low and doze fitfully while trying to find a comfortable position while wedged into a too small seat in economy class. Fortunately the seat next to me is vacant so I can spread a little. (There were a lot of vacant seats which probably explains my itinerary – SAS offered a deal to get some butts in seats on the flight).

And so, I have arrived at Copenhagen international to find that my flight to London isn’t for nearly six hours. I thought for a minute about leaving the airport, taking the train downtown, snapping some pictures and then taking the train back but there’s too much that could go wrong with that scenario at the holidays so I am enjoying complimentary wi-fi and what I can get at the snack bar while I look out the window at dreary skies and planes on the tarmac. I have texted my traveling companions and let them know I’ll get to London when I get there. We have no specific plans for today so not a huge deal.

In the meantime, I am perusing the news and there are a few things that have caught my eye. Covid news has been fairly quiescent recently but H5N1 bird flu has had some disturbing trends. First, there have been some cases in Americans without major agricultural contacts and testing of those strains has shown some mutations which would make human to human contagion more likely. Second, wastewater surveillance has shown H5N1 turning up in counties where there are no known agricultural sources suggesting it’s moving beyond the factory farms where it has generally been concentrated. In a normal public health political environment, I wouldn’t be too concerned but the combination of viral illness misinformation out there combined with political hamstringing of public health entities plus the caliber of individuals the new administration promises to install in positions of power means that anything could happen. Just keep in mind that the mortality rate of H5N1 in humans is somewhere between 20 and 50%, about 50x greater than covid.

The other trend which I am regarding with some amusement is the civil war that has broken out amongst the supporters of the incoming administration over immigration and visas. The MAGA movement is all about getting rid of anyone they view as ‘not American’, generally interpreted as not WASPy enough. The billionaire class that provided the resources that actually won the election wants to import more highly skilled workers from other countries to expand their business interests. The visas on which these workers come are the same visas on which foreign trained physicians come to this country – which has been a necessity for some decades as American medical schools and residency programs have been unable to provide enough graduates to meet demand. The majority of my colleagues in Geriatrics in recent years have been foreign born. Whomever is hired to replace me will likely have started on a work visa. Shut down these programs in the name of MAGA purity and it’s unlikely I, or any other geriatrician will be replaced as we age and retire out of the system. And the boom turns eighty in a year…

I got up, got dressed, went out but haven’t figured out what today’s good deeds are. They’ll likely present themselves at some point.

And we’re on to the second day of Christmas. No one left turtle doves on my porch today so I suppose I can take that as a win. If they had, the cats would probably have eaten them. Now that Edward, the ghost cat, has decided to come out of hiding, he and Binx are spending time together under my library table, likely plotting my demise. My Christmas was low key, and I celebrated in the traditional Jewish fashion by going out for Chinese with some friends and following up with a movie upon which I fell asleep. I suppose it’s another sign of aging. If I sit still following a meal, I will start to snore within minutes. I’ve grown accustomed to people elbowing me at work, at choir rehearsal, during classes etc.

This last week has been mainly about getting everything caught up so I can roar into 2025 without too much hanging over my head. My ‘to do’ list for the last ten days or so has been rather long but I have managed to winnow down to a few stray odds and ends that don’t have a specific deadline attached. I can now head off across the pond tomorrow without feeling guilty. A bunch of the usual gang are off to hang out together in London for a week, once again under the benign presence of Richard Polley who should keep us out of too much trouble. I’m driving to Atlanta tomorrow afternoon to catch my flight. For reasons I cannot explain, I am being routed via Copenhagen adding about five hours to the trip. I am less than thrilled. Suffice it to say that this space will become travelogue with the next entry for a bit and I’m sure I’ll have something acerbic to say about Scandinavian airports.

I’m looking for topics to take on in my next batch of writings about the after effects of the pandemic. If there’s anything anyone wants to learn more about or is dying for my pronouncements regarding, drop me a line. I think I’ve got enough material on paper for about half of the new book and I’m trying to get a full draft done by March sometime. As I don’t have anything major theatrical coming up, I should have enough evenings free to jot a bit more down. My publisher is also working on a number of ideas for repurposing the original trilogy in time for the fifth anniversary of the arrival of covid which happens in a couple of months. Just which of the ideas that have been bandied around will come to full fruition, I’m not wholly sure but I’ll keep everyone posted.

My late night just before I drift off TV viewing this last month has been a rewatch of Six Feet Under which I had not seen since it’s original broadcast on HBO a couple of decades ago. It holds up. It’s ability to deal head on with the messy issues of family and human biology really hasn’t been equaled. I’m waiting for an artist to take on the intersection between the Baby Boom and their belief in eternal youth and the realities of morbidity and mortality in some sort of form that transcends the mundane. I think there’s an opening there – not for me, I’ve never been able to write sustained fiction and I haven’t the vaguest idea as to how to construct a well written screenplay or television series. Six Feet Under still has perhaps the best finale sequence of any television series ever. Of course, you have to watch the whole dang thing, all 65 hours to get it to resonate properly.

Lest you think I’ve lost all culture points, I just finished reading (or more accurately listening to as it was my car audio book) Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. It’s one of those books that ends up on all of the ‘hundred books to read before you die’ lists so I figured I better give it a whirl. But then Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist also ends up on those and I found it rather twee when I finally got around to it a few years ago. Bulgakov was a writer in Soviet Russia and this, his major novelistic work, is a strange juxtaposition of Soviet social satire, magic realism, literary kerfuffle, and religious allegory. The devil and his minions come to 1930s Moscow and turn the lives of various writers and theatrical types upside down. There’s a very human cat, an execrated novel about Pontius Pilate, a satanic witches ball, and various episodes of mass hysteria. It’s one of those ‘glad I read it but I doubt I’ll ever reread it’ novels. I have moved on to my once a decade reread of Dorothy Dunnett. I have completed all six of The Lymond Chronicles and am on number five of eight of The House of Niccolo. I’m alternating these with other things plus have a few other books going at the same time including a Stephen King and a gay murder mystery. Eclectic is my middle name and I am looking forward to paying a visit to Foyle’s next week to pick up a couple of things that might appeal to the very British streak in my sense of humor (thank you mom).

Presuming all goes well, the next check in will be from some 4500 hundred miles away on tither side of the Atlantic. I must remember to pack tomorrow morning.

I haven’t written a piece of this type in a while. My publisher calls these sorts of essays my ‘explainers’. This immediately, of course, sets me off into my best Desi impersonation (Looocy, yoou got some splainin to dooo) before buckling down and trying to figure out how to put down complex ideas in simple language and make it palatable and, if possible, mildly amusing for the dozen or so of you who bother to read my stuff. (I suppose it’s more than a dozen as copies of The Accidental Plague Diaries, all three volumes, seem to sell from time to time – I should be able to afford a Starbucks caramel macchiato or even a dozen eggs with this year’s royalty check). So I won’t talk much about Little Women (closed after a successful eight performance run and great word of mouth) or Edward the ghost cat (now willing to leave the office of his own volition and explore the condo a bit more).

Tonight’s subject is one that I’m sure you’ve all been brooding over this holiday season. What’s going to happen with senior housing. I’ll preface this with an acknowledgement that my crystal ball is over at Madam Arcati’s for repair so I have no absolute idea as to what will happen any more than anyone else does, but there is a rapid collision of various social and market forces coming which I don’t think most of us, especially the policy makers, has really considered. It is likely to lead to the fulfillment of the ancient curse of ‘May you live in interesting times’.

We need to begin with a little demography. After all demography is destiny. The Baby Boom is one year away from beginning to turn eighty. The Boom officially begins on January 1, 1946 (almost exactly nine months after the end of the war in Europe) when the returning GIs came home, settled down and began to create and raise their families. The birthrate in the US began to skyrocket that month and we added roughly 10,000 babies daily to the population for the next nineteen years, things only beginning to slow down some in 1965 when there was a rapid and noticeable drop off in the birthrate, likely due to the widespread introduction of oral contraceptives, the changing role of women in society, and the various social upheavals of the later 1960s. The population of the US in the 1950 census was only about 150 million, less than half of what it is today so that increase had more than double the impact that children have today. (We have about the same number of total births per year now, but spread over a population approaching 350 million).

The sheer numbers of children and rapidity of the revival, refocused post war America away from the horrors of the Great Depression and the Second World War back to domestic concerns leading to the invention of the suburb, the nuclear family as a domestic ideal, prioritizing the educational system, introducing college as a more mainstream life choice, and creating the idea of a protracted adolescence as a somewhat separate stage of life to be protected against adult cares. That was decades ago. The Baby Boom is about to turn eighty. (January 1, 2026 is only one year and two weeks away). Given the sheer number of surviving members of the Boom generation, the current population of Americans over 80 (mainly the Silent Generation with a few scattered GI generation hanging on in their late 90s and early 100s) which is roughly 13 million, will nearly triple to about 33 million before it begins to shrink down due to the inevitable attrition of biological aging. That downhill course will set in sometime in the early 2040s and the Boom will basically be gone by 2060. Of course, the last member of the Baby Boom won’t exit the planet until about 2080. Someone, almost certainly female, from the last year of the Boom (1964) will make it to 115-116 which appears to be about the maximum life span a human can attain.

Where are the senior Boomers going to live as they move through their 80s towards their 90s over the next decade? Most of them likely haven’t given it a lot of thought. For the politically active classes with access to resources (the people who make the decisions regarding what becomes part of the national conversation and what doesn’t), those in the Boom category aren’t yet feeling old. First year Boomers include Dolly Parton, Sally Field, Sylvester Stallone, Cher, and the incoming president. They aren’t a group that’s exactly running around picking out rocking chairs. And, for people with access to education, health care, decent housing, and social supports, the 70s generally aren’t all that bad. There are more aches and pains, you’re a bit slower, the brain doesn’t work as fast, but most of the organ systems keep on going with the occasional tune up. The great public health achievement of the latter half of the 20th century, turning adults away from smoking, has probably helped keeping the playing field a lot more level as time as gone on. Reduction of cigarette use has greatly reduced premature death rates from cardiac and pulmonary disease.

Things start to change rapidly in your 80s. Most men start to hit a wall around 82-85. Most women start to hit a wall around 87-90. (There are both biologic and cultural reasons for this difference). It’s a relatively rare person who can live entirely independently after the age of 90. Joints don’t cooperate, vision, hearing and memory fade, balance sucks, cardiopulmonary capacity is reduced, kidneys stop filtering, the GI tract develops a mind of its own. The list goes on. The emphasis on the nuclear family often leads to each new generation setting up shop at significant difference from the older ones so Boom children and grandchildren aren’t on hand. Higher divorce rates means its more likely for a Boomer to be aging without a partner. Long term married couples who age together often form a symbiote – one functional organism occupying two bodies. That doesn’t work when there is no other half. (Fullly half of Boom women are expected to be living alone as they pass eighty due to never having married, childlessness or estrangement from children, widowhood, or divorce).

One would think that with the numbers of older seniors just about to skyrocket, developers would see an opening and be racing to build senior living facilities of various types to accommodate coming demand. They aren’t. The pandemic, with its need for isolation to protect frail seniors with imperfect and aging immune systems, led to a certain amount of exodus from group living facilities as older adults and families didn’t want to go through that sort of forcible parting. Current inventory has only really begun to fill up again over the last year or so. Most Boomers aren’t yet ready to consider themselves aging or infirm and aren’t willing to consider a transition of living of this nature yet (and will likely put it off as long as possible, only admitting to a need for help after a disaster has befallen a family system and not before).

Senior living is a for profit business. In general, it is paid for privately and not by public funds. (Medicare does not pay for custodial care for frail individuals. Medicaid does and the rules for that are written by each individual state. In Alabama, with certain limited exceptions, Medicaid will only pay for custodial care in a skilled nursing facility, not an assisted living with fancy amenities, and only after you are impoverished having spent all of your assets on care to that point). It tends to jockey to cater to the well heeled who can afford the four to ten thousand dollar a month price tag depending on services and luxuries plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in buy in fees for the most prestigious communities. If the ROI isn’t large enough, no company is going to expand in the sector and it just isn’t at the moment.

This is due to a couple of things all colliding at once. The first is a sharp uptick in construction costs. The supply chain disruptions and inability to move goods to where they are needed until relatively recently has led to significant increases in the prices of such necessities for building as construction grade lumber. Many of our raw construction materials come from Canada and Mexico. The threat of high tariffs is roiling those markets and, if they actually come into play in 2025, will increase costs to the point of making new builds somewhat impractical. In addition, the sharp spike in interest rates over the last few years is making financing of large projects more and more difficult. Senior living has cycled with the economy in the past. New construction came to a screeching halt with both the dot com bust of 2001 and the recession of 2008. There’s also a certain amount of NIMBYism in more desirable locations that makes the permitting of such facilities difficult.

A whole other issue is labor. As older adults become more and more frail, the human labor needed to keep them healthy and happy rises exponentially. We’re all fairly familiar with what it takes to keep a ten pound baby alive. Now imagine an older adult with similar intellect and functional state and how much muscle power it takes to provide for them – at two hundred pounds. It is work that cannot be automated, cannot be outsourced, and is held in disdain by most of the American workforce. Caregiving, as it is a traditionally female occupation, gets devalued in American society due to the ingrained misogyny of our culture. The industry has been sustained by what has been called a pink collar work force. Women without a lot of skills or education and without access to better job opportunities. The pandemic changed that. When 20% of the providers of clinical care in our health system vanished between 2019 and 2023 (retirement, rearrangement of family structures due to new responsibilities for child or elder care, illness/death etc.) all sorts of new and better paid positions opened up and a lot of the pink collar work force that the industry had long taken for granted dried up. More than 95% of the senior living facilities in the country are short staffed and there is no workforce readily available to staff new ones.

As caregiving jobs are low tier, a lot of them have been filled by recent immigrants, especially in larger cities. I imagine, with the need for warm bodies willing to do the work for the meager paychecks provided, that not all employers have been as diligent at checking immigration status as they might have been at other times. No one knows how many workers in the industry are undocumented but it’s probably not a small number. If some of the threatened purges of the undocumented happen, some facilities will simply become unable to operate. There has been a general improvement of wages in the sector the last few years due to the desperation of facilities to fill their staffing rosters, but the corporations which own the vast majority of senior living at all levels are not in the habit of losing money and if a unit becomes unprofitable, they’ll unload it one way or another.

So what’s the solution? Government policies that give tax breaks or other perks to developers to build more senior housing? A change in building codes so that all new home construction can easily be converted to more senior friendly living? (Levers rather than knobs on doors, walk in showers, wider halls and doorways, grab bars and rails, higher toilet heights etc.) Education of a rapidly aging Baby Boom generation on the realties of aging rather than their fantasies of living to 120 in perfect health? Public campaigns to raise the social status of careers that work in elder services? I haven’t the vaguest. I have a lot of ideas but most of them are politically impractical under Republican administrations as they currently articulate and advocate for social policy. All I can do is say get real with yourself. Nothing lasts forever. Not health, not function, not life. Expect the best, prepare for the worst and take what comes. My solution was to downsize into a dwelling space that my practiced eye determined could easily be modified should I need a wheelchair, a caretaker, or other significant functional help. It’s not a senior facility, it’s a rather nice, if aging condo building (this weeks adventure being the need to replace the boiler – it was nice to have a hot shower today after not having had hot water for nearly a week). I think I can make it work for my planned senior living for another decade or so and. at that point, I’ll probably be throwing myself on the pity of my nieces. As the early Boomers are going to start noticing their difficulties with stairs, after dark driving, and other common functional changes within the next five years, properties like this are going to become harder and harder to find. If a move is your solution, I’d start thinking about it sooner rather than later.