It’s the calm before the storm. Or perhaps I’m in the eye of a hurricane. (Trivia of the day: hurricane is one of four Arawak words still in common use in modern English – the other three are canoe, hammock, and barbecue.) I suppose if one were to calibrate one’s speed of travel exactly and could follow the correct course, one could always remain in the eye of the hurricane and be relatively safe from the winds and the rain. But that seems rather impractical for most of us as we aren’t exactly nomads in this day and age. And so we get warming gulf waters and the effects of Helene and Milton (shortly to be joined by Oscar if I read my weather news correctly). I’ve heard from all of my friends in the Asheville area and everyone is safe but the extent of the disruption to basic infrastructure such as water and sewer and electricity and telecommunications will require years to repair and restore. Not to mention the number of major roads which have essentially ceased to exist, making it difficult to get the crews and equipment to where they need to be.

I’ve been going to Asheville intermittently for decades. My first trip was in 1992 when Steve and I did the first of several cross country jaunts so he could work on the Spivey genealogy and peruse records in various Appalachian courthouses. I spent more time in the 90s then I care to think about flipping through microfiches of birth and death records and property transfer deeds. There are two clans of Spiveys in the US. The lowland Spiveys who originated in Virginia in the late 17th century after emigrating from the British Isles. These were the Spiveys with money. Then there are the mountain Spiveys from the hollers of Appalachia. Steve did a great job tracing all the blood lines down finding that they all converged on three brothers who settled in the Asheville area (Buncombe county NC) around 1770. Where the three brothers came from is a bit of a mystery. Spivey could be Scots-Irish or it could be an Anglicization of the Czech Spivak. (Some branches of the family had a legend that the Spiveys were originally from Bohemia so that would fit). Try as he might, he could find no record of them prior to 1770 tax rolls. The grandson of one of the brothers, WIlliam Spivey, lived just outside of Ashville from about 1840-1930 and ‘Old Billy’ was apparently a local fixture to the point that the hill on which he lived is Spivey mountain to this day. In the 1990s, Steve found a number of distant cousins in the Ashville area who had known old Billy when they were young which makes you realize just how young the country is in some ways. My grandparents were born 1894-1903 and I have a couple of great-grandparents born in the 1850s. That’s pushing two hundred years ago.

So Steve and I spent time in Asheville as ground zero for the hillbilly Spiveys. I suppose it served me well years later when I had my contract with the United Mine Workers Funds and would spend a week a quarter in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia. If you haven’t been to that part of the world, the topography is interesting. The mountains aren’t terribly high, but they are incredibly steep and separated from each other by very narrow valleys and chasms caused by water running off into streams and rivers. You live in the few places where the river valleys have created relatively flat land. This is why Helene’s floods were so devastating. Trillions of gallons of water was dumped in a small geographic area very quickly. The ground was saturated by prior rain storms so the water all raced down into the river valleys which, being confined, led to rapid rises and flooding. And, as all of the population lives in the stream and river valleys the infrastructure was carried away as well.

Tommy loved Asheville as well and we would usually go about once a year. He loved the river arts district, Biltmore village and, of course the Biltmore estate. He wasn’t too keen on the house, finding it highly impractical, but he loved the winery and we usually came home with a case of assorted in the back of the car. I haven’t been back since Tommy’s death. I haven’t really had cause to. And now I’m not sure if I ever will. I want to remember it as it was, rather than as what it will turn itself into. I have the same feelings about Maui after the burning of Lahaina. If I go back to Hawaii, I’ll probably hang out in Kailua-Kona. It’s not a Sondheim quote coming to mind but a Kander and Ebb one. ‘Somebody loses, and somebody wins. One day it’s kicks, then it’s kicks in the shins. But the planet spins and the world goes round and round’. And because of that, we live in cycles of constant change. Human nature is one of inertia, of trying to keep everything the same – but that’s a losing strategy. The best thing any of us can do is work on our resilience and adaptability because none of us has any real control over much of anything.

It’s calm around here because it’s a weekend without a barrage of deadlines hanging over my head. Added to that, the weather has been gorgeous. It’s Alabama fall meaning cool mornings, rapidly warming up to the 70s and, most importantly, not a trace of humidity. Yesterday morning, I toddled off to the Avondale Park amphitheater to see Opera Birmingham’s annual children’s opera (An adaptation of Dvorak’s Russalka into the Little Mermaid story, lasting about 45 minutes). Children’s opera at the amphitheater has caught on the last few years and there were lots of preschool and early elementary tots wearing their Ariel outfits and playing in the bubbles, and occasionally trying very unsuccessfully to sing along. But for the most part they paid attention and this is how you build new audiences; get them while they’re young and convince their parents they want to see La Boheme for date night. The amphitheater shows are a happy accident of Covid. The venue has been there since the 30s but has been relatively neglected and underused in recent years. In the spring of 2021, when indoor performance of opera was not yet possible, Opera Birmingham did an abbreviated Pirates of Penzance there (I was one of the policemen) and it was a huge success, being one of the first music theater offerings locally in over a year. The venue is outdoors, family friendly, easy to get to, and it became natural to put the children’s opera there in subsequent years. So not all Covid changes are necessarily bad.

I thought about getting out on my newly renovated terrace and doing some work, but the first thing that needs to be done is for me to finish spray painting my patio furniture, a job that was interrupted two years ago when the terrace refurbishment from hell got underway. I just didn’t feel like that kind of exertion (I think I’ll hire some teenagers of my acquaintance who need extra money) so that will wait for another day. But I did get a hundred pages read in my book for book club, a number of things written, a start on this years CME, completed all of my progress notes and still had time to laze around this afternoon. But I don’t think this languid pace is going to continue.

Rehearsals begin on Tuesday for my next theater project (The 2005 musical version of Little Women which originally starred Sutton Foster). Despite my lobbying for Beth, I have been cast as Mr. Laurence, Laurie’s grumpy grandfather from next door. Once again, aging up for the stage. I’ll probably have to grow out the white whiskers and look a little weird for a bit. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a cast of ten, most of whom I have known for years and usually, with a cast that small, it’s easy to bond and become an ensemble with minimal perturbations. Then there’s the writing projects. My publisher is working on a grand plan which would include websites, ebook editions, audio editions, republication with updated material, and a second trio of books which we’re referring to as the Four Horsemen series, the first of which looks at how Covid changed things. (Spoiler: What didn’t it change?). How and when I’m supposed to write all of this without the enforced seclusion of a pandemic and shutdown I’m not sure but something should come of it. I’m putting my faith into his planning. I just hope there’s some ROI.

Thank you to all of you who have expressed interest in telling your Covid/Pandemic story as part of the new book. We’re slowly figuring out interviews and topics. You’re not forgotten. If anyone has a particular change they have noted in society, behavior, public policy, healthcare or anything else they think I should explore, let me know and I’ll take it under advisement. I have figured out some of the themes but there are more out there.

Going to watch a movie for MNM and then heading out to dinner with my travel agent for a post mortem on South America and starting to think about what the major 2025 trip should be.

I’ve been reflecting on life choices the last couple of days. I do that every once in a while. Wonder whether I’ve chosen the correct road through the yellow wood and if where I am is inevitable or if I had made a wiser choice at some point in the past I might be at some greater apogee of achievement. And then I think I’ve actually done OK by myself. The career has been relatively successful, I have a full life full of interesting activities and people, I have things to look forward to and (according to my quarterly statements), I need not panic about my finances yet. I suppose I have the mindset of those of us who belong to Generation Jones – that micro generation born 1957-65 who are nothing like the older boomers and not quite Generation X. Always Jonesing for something more and never quite content with what we have.

As far as a quick update goes, the medical work life is fairly placid. I’m a little tired of people taking a stupid pill before paging me or sending me a portal message but I can usually put on my professional demeanor and answer even the most inane questions with a quiet rationality. (Yes, you may take more than one pill for nausea a day if you’re still being bothered. It says so on the bottle. No, you need not worry that your cholesterol was a little high at the age of ninety-four. High cholesterol is linked to premature cardiovascular disease, a condition not possible at your stage of life. No, I cannot stop the ambulance that dad called for mom and reroute it to a different hospital.) Every month that goes by is a month closer to retirement. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

My publisher and I have worked out a structure for the next book. It’s going to be a look, from five years on, at how the pandemic and Covid has changed us. It will be divided into a number of themed chapters, each looking at a different social aspect of the pandemic and what has ensued. There will be an introductory essay laying out the theme, a longer essay talking about the specifics of the pandemic, and an interview with an individual whose story of their experiences with the pandemic illustrates that change. If we can keep to schedule, we should have it done shortly after the new year.

I have a request of all of my readers. We will need about fifteen interviews/stories/narratives of people who were affected in some way by the pandemic or its aftermath. If you have an interesting or unique experience or know of someone who has or would just like more information, drop me a direct message. We would particularly like to talk to someone who had a major hospitalization, a long covid experience, a business that failed, a business that changed in some fundamental way, an experience of being trapped in a place during the shut down that made it difficult to get home, or anything else that might make compelling reading. We have a half dozen lined up and need more. I’ve written drafts of some of the essays and I may put them up somewhere for beta readers and comments.

Covid numbers are down (only about 1/80 people you meet are currently actively infectious compared to the 1/40 that was prevalent earlier this summer). They do, however, remain somewhat higher than they were a year ago and we’re still losing about 1,000 people a week nationwide to the disease. If annualized, this brings the death toll to roughly the same magnitude as breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, and motor vehicle accidents. (All between 42,000 – 52,000 deaths a year in the US). Will we have another surge with winter weather? It’s still unknown. The newly formulated Covid booster is now widely available. (Most insurances are paying for one annual Covid booster, two if you’re over age 65). I had mine a month ago. I really have no interest in enjoying long Covid which is the major risk factor for most of us.

I sang tonight with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra chorus which joined together with Samford University’s A Cappella Choir and Orchestra for a brief program of music from the opera world. It’s been a while since I’ve done some serious singing. The voice lessons are helping a lot but I’m still having a lot of trouble when things go above an E-flat. Someday… Rehearsals for my next show start in a couple of weeks. Can’t really post anything about that yet. I have signed the contract but the theater hasn’t officially announced the cast list. Let’s just say it will keep me off the streets in November and early December.

Hurricane Helene made a mess of Appalachia last week and now Hurricane Milton threatens to make a mess of the Tampa Bay area this week. We used to come together in times of crisis and make sure our fellow countrymen were OK and helped them through the difficult times. Now I see bald faced and easily disprovable lies circulating for partisan political advantage everywhere I turn. When scoring political points becomes more important than helping those in need, there’s a serious sickness in society – and it seems to have infected even religious institutions. There are days when I want to retreat into my condo, lock the door and shut everyone out other than the door dash delivery person. And I don’t think it’s going to get any better the first week of November, no matter who wins. I fully expect it to actually get worse. Maybe it is time to let it all collapse and see if younger generations can pick up the pieces and build something better.

If I had a lawn, I’d be yelling at kids to get off it. I suppose I’m entering my geezer phase.

Reality bites. It really does. I’ve had to come back down to earth as I have spent the last few days getting my life in order for the next few months. I’ve been double checking calendars, looking at rehearsal schedules, trying to figure out a writing schedule to be able to start knocking out chunks of the new book, and trying to cope with all the material that built up from work during the two weeks I was on the opposite side of the equator. I think the pieces are all in place and my personal life should go relatively smoothly. The only performance gig I have is a symphony chorus concert on the 8th where we’re singing a couple of famous opera choruses (all of which I’ve sung before). I’ve missed a few rehearsals but I should be able to get that back in my head in the two we have coming up.

Of course coming back into the country has submerged me into the fever pitch hysteria of the current election cycle. We’ve got a minimum of five weeks left of this crap. Potentially quite a bit longer if the results are not clear cut or if any of the promised chicanery actually comes to pass. The first rule of an authoritarian regime is believe what they tell you the first time and the Republican party has made it very clear between it’s full endorsement of project 2025, it’s interfering in a partisan way with election procedures in swing states, that they have no problem with the end justifying the means to regain executive power. They know they cannot win the popular vote but they don’t have to. All they have to do is prevent Kamala Harris from collecting 270 out of 538 electoral votes and throw the election into the House of Representatives. The constitutional procedures in place for such an eventuality pretty much guarantee a Trump victory.

Given all of the talented politicians in the Democratic party nationally, Kamala is not the one I personally would pick to be the standard bearer but nobody asked me. I am much more centrist in my politics than most people think given my history in progressive politics, especially in a satirical vein. I believe we are strongest when opposing points of view work together and pull against each other, but with comity and compromise to find middle ground. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of that going on these days (thank you Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell, the architects of the scorched earth partisanship of the last thirty years). I actually pay attention to issues and position papers and plans, not to stump speech rhetoric. I haven’t seen much on the R side in terms of policy that makes sense. Isolationism is no longer an option in a global economy. Immigration is a distraction, much like the pool table in River City Iowa, a scary thing not completely understood that can be used to gin up the base. The inflation of the last few years is not a result of Democratic policies, but a reaction to a world wide pandemic that unraveled supply and demand, transportation, and a host of other things and would have happened no matter who won the 2020 election. We’re actually in much better economic shape than most of the rest of the world, coming out of the pandemic over the last few years with a robust rebound that doesn’t exist elsewhere. The D side has hard data and facts, rather than talking points to bolster their positions.

Speaking of immigrants, we’re marching right along the ten steps of genocide with the rhetoric and the plans coming out of the Stephen Millers of the world. We seem to be at about stage 7 where we’re prepping the population and the bureaucracy to start rounding up ‘undesirables’. The current rhetoric against Haitians isn’t all that different than one would have found in Mittel Europa in the 1930s. Angry citizens have besieged more than one recent Alabama town council meeting practically ready to break out the torches and pitchforks to run a small number of Haitian immigrants, here legally and gainfully employed, out of town on rails. We seem to have cooled down a bit on the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and we’re only on stage 6 there. I guess it doesn’t play quite as well as most LGBTQ folk are native born with families and friends who would start asking a lot of unpleasant questions if authorities started rounding them up and marching them off. The only piece of that which seems to be sticking is book bannings and trying to protect children from drag queens. I have never heard of a drag queen molesting a child. I hear about conservative clergy being caught doing that on an almost daily basis.

If you look at actual crime statistics and not if it bleeds, it leads exploitation headlines, violent crime rates amongst immigrants are a good deal lower than they are amongst native borns. If there is a Republican victory and the worst begins to happen and authorities and social pressures make it dangerous for immigrants to continue to live their lives, what will you do? One of the comments I see on right wing news sites all the time is a variation on ‘if you think they’re so great, how many do you have living in your house?’ If things start going from bad to worse, there may be a number of them with me in my condo.

I don’t watch TV news. I haven’t for years. It’s all about grabbing attention, creating low level anxiety, and a need for a continued feeding of those limbic system centers with even more anxiety to keep the ratings up. I won’t participate. I read. I try to read things from both perspectives but I discount anything that has no hard data or fact to back up the opinion. I can tell the difference between the two. Pity that twenty years of No Child Left Behind and teaching to the test rather than critical thinking skills has created a population with some difficulties in understanding that opinions are fine and dandy but they are no substitute for facts and that a Google search is not adequate research on any topic and that you really should trust the people with years of experience and expertise over the charlatan with a good time slot and flashy graphics.

News today has been dominated by the god awful flooding in eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina from hurricane Helene. The damage there looks to dwarf anything that actually happened on the gulf coast. From what I can tell, there had been a few days of rain storms just prior saturating the ground in the area so when Helene made her Fujiwara effect turn to the left, it dropped ten inches of rain on ground that could not absorb any of it. All that water immediately hit the streams and then the rivers and, as they are constrained in narrow valleys, flash floods, rapidly rising waters, and whole towns gone in a matter of minutes. Never underestimate the power of water. The Appalachians, in the fullness of geologic time, were a mightier mountain range than the Rockies once. Of course, project 2025 gets rid of the National Weather Service and the NOAA which provide us with what tools we have to protect ourselves against such events.

To add insult to injury, UAB announced last week that they are scrapping the EMR system, installed just twelve years ago at great expense, in favor of a completely new EMR system to go live in about two and a half years. I put them on notice that I would adjust my retirement date to make sure it happens before that change. I am not learning yet another data system at my time of life.

I need a drink.

Rant over.

Dateline – Birmingham, Alabama by way of Santiago, Chile

In the interest of completeness, here’s the last entry in the South American travelogue (or, as I am referring to it in my mind, the ABC trip for Argentina, Brazil and Chile – the quasi visit to Paraguay doesn’t fit the mnemonic well so we’ll leave that out). As I am writing this from the comfort of my own bedroom with Binx the cat having got over his butt hurt at having been left behind for a few weeks (I had someone come watch over him – he’s been fine) I’ve given away the ending which is pretty much home again, home again jiggety jig. But let us go back 36 hours or so to the wine country of Chile.

It was another gorgeous cool but sunny morning in the Chilean coastal range. I found out we were less than ten miles from the coast where we were, but you would never know. So I guess the microclimate is very equivalent to the California wine growing valleys tucked in among the folds of that coastal range – Napa, Sonoma, and Ukiah. And similar latitude only south rather than north. No wonder it felt so familiar. I spent years in that part of the world. There wasn’t much to do other than get packed for the trip home and then get on the bus for a couple of hour ride back to the metropolis of Santiago. We got a bit of a bus tour of the city (uninspiring due to an uninspiring guide) and then dropped off at the Ritz Carlton in one of the nicer parts of town. Then, the obligatory three course lunch with three different wines.

As the tour was set up with the expectation that flights would depart the next morning, we were all booked into very nice rooms at the Ritz Carlton. I did not realize they were one of those establishments that rented rooms by the hour because I had all of about two and a half hours between the end of lunch and my needing to board the shuttle van to the airport as I was on the red eye back to Atlanta last night. I had fairly minimal time in Santiago but I did walk around a bit and snap a few pictures. It reminded me a lot of LA. A large city with a backdrop of snow capped mountains with a lovely warm climate, full of mid rise apartment and condo buildings (at least the parts of it I could see) with a cement channeled river running through the middle. No coast. That’s an hour and a half away in Valparaiso. I suppose the LA analogy holds true if you consider Valparaiso Santa Monica and Santiago the San Gabriel Valley.

There was worry about the flight back being majorly inconvenienced by hurricane Helene churning up the Gulf of Mexico but we went around or over it in some way and there were no more bumps than usual and got into Atlanta about half an hour ahead of schedule. This was a bit of a problem as customs was not yet open so we had to sit around while TSA early shift came to work. Being the first flight in of the day, the lines were short to get through passport control. The lines through security were another matter as they had obviously not scheduled enough workers to handle the incoming flights. Fortunately, I had a couple of hour layover so I wasn’t pressed for time. The Birmingham flight was a bit late as they held it for late passengers. Delta wanted to try and get as many people where they belonged before airports started shutting down across the Southeast. A friend picked me up, and I got home just after 9 am.

I’ve been dragging, but teleworking today trying to empty out all of my boxes and things prior to in person work on Monday. I’m slowly getting there and should be pretty caught up by the end of tomorrow. I hope. I even made my noon board meeting much to the surprise of the other members who assumed I would not be capable three hours after finishing international travel. I survived residency pre-workhour limitations. I know how to function without sleep. I just don’t enjoy doing it.

And so the trip is over. I’ll go back into travelogue mode at the end of December when I go off to London for a theater week with some of the usual gang. In the meantime, you’ll have to read me opining about public health, elder care, politics, theater, and all the usual things I write about. It may be a few days.

Dateline – Millahue Valley, Chile

Today was sort of a spa day, a palate cleanser before the very long day of tomorrow bleeding into Thursday which is the last leg of the journey. Most people are flying out Thursday morning or afternoon. For schedule and cost reasons I am on a red-eye Wednesday night and due back in Birmingham around 8 AM on Thursday. While I am technically working on Thursday and Friday, I am teleworking and I will get things done as I get them done as allowed by jet lag and all of that jazz. The one good thing about all of this is I am going to beat Hurricane Helene to the US by about 15 hours so I should get home without incident. Those trying to fly into the South East the next day may not be so lucky.

There actually is a spa at this chi-chi very upscale boutique mountain retreat in which i find myself, but I’m not particularly a fam of spa services so I took advantage instead of the spectacular views, the abundance of free wine, and a few organized programs that required minimal thought and effort. Those started this morning with a horseback ride through the vineyards. It’s been several decades since I was last on a horse but i was quite a good rider in my youth and I and Illusion, the bay gelding to whom I was introduced, soon came to an understanding about who was boss and the ride through the burning off morning fogs, the slumbering grape vines, and a variety of bird species which I did not recognize. I did see a rather lovely bevy of quail (I looked that collective up-I would have guessed covey and would have been wrong) which are instantly recognizable by their unique body shape and their adorable little topknots. We used to have a lot of quail on the Stanford campus and it was always fun in the spring to watch the mamas leading their little lines of babies around, sort of a live action version of The Partridge Family credits. I did not fall off and my muscle memory for riding returned rather quickly.

Then, after a brief interlude to get the horse smell off, a quick class on wine and chocolate pairing. Just the first of several wine centered activities for the day. Well, when one is staying in the middle of a vineyard on a winery property. Fortunately, I like wine and I’m also smart enough not to drink to much too fast. The cabernet paired best with a dark raspberry chocolate, at least to my palate. Then lunch (more wine) with a crab ceviche/seafood bisque and a fresh caught white fish. (We’re only ten miles from the coast – but then in Chile, pretty much everywhere is about ten miles form the coast. Apres diner, a nap.

Late afternoon we went back down the hill to tour the Vik winery. It’s a very 21st century construction, full of sustainable energy design, very modern architecture, and hundreds of large tanks and thousands of oak barrels. I’ve been through many wineries in the past and that was nothing new but this winery actually makes its own oak barrels and we saw the cooperage which was something I had not really had a chance to look at in the past. Then yet another multicourse meal (even more wine – both with hors d’oeuvres and with the meal itself) in the winery restaurant as the sun set over the hills. We returned up the hill to the hotel in total darkness and I took a few minutes to go out where there were no lights and look up at the southern heavens, identifying the southern cross and getting a really good look at the milky way as we are far away from city light pollution. And now, my last chance to get some decent sleep for about thirty-six hours. The last installment of this travelogue covering Santiago and the journey home may be a bit late depending on how I’m feeling when I finally get back to Birmingham. But I will write it.

Dateline – Millahue Valley, Chile

There’s no cure like travel wrote Cole Porter once upon a time. But then travel in Cole Porter’s day for the well heeled included a leisurely process of well appointed suites on ocean liners, private rail cars, and a small army of porters, bell boys, maids. valets and others to smooth all of the rough edges. Nowadays, even with a high end tour group such as this, a travel day involves hurry up and wait and endless standing in line. Up early for a 7 am luggage pull. Down for breakfast at the buffet where, after having eaten lighter yesterday, I gave the bacon and eggs another go, and on the bus by 8 am. The trip to the airport (the small one on the river as it’s a relatively short flight) was uneventful and it was actually possible to see some of Rio de la Plata as the weather was overcast and not pouring rain as it had been for our arrival.

Multiple lines: Lines for baggage check. Lines for security. Lines for boarding but we eventually made it on board our flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile with a minimum of fuss and an on time departure. Santiago is hosting some sort of religious convention this week and so the flight was very full of excited conventioneers. I was having none of it and slept most of the way. Off the plane in Santiago for more lines for customs, baggage claim, agricultural check, and eventually free to begin to get my bearings in the C of the ABC countries of this vacation. I have a bit of a recurring nightmare when I travel. I dream that I’m pulled out of line by uniformed police speaking a language I do not know into a Kafkaesque nightmare of detention and dehumanization. I’ve never had any issues and my life footprint is such that I am unlikely to be picked up for any sort of international skullduggery but I still keep having the dream. And I’m in Latin America, not North Korea. I can think of one country where I might be stopped at the border due to comments I made about the then ruler to a news organization (stating that his broken hip in the hospital was not a good prognostic sign). But it’s not high up on my list of places to go and as that was more than thirty years ago, they may have forgotten about it.

After getting out of the terminal, we got on yet another bus (this one exceedingly luxurious and painted in a rather astonishing combination of chartreuse and tangerine. MNM would be delighted. And a two plus hour road trip out of the city and into Chilean wine country. Santiago is built in a large flat valley between the Andes and the Chilean Coast mountain range. It’s rather like Seattle – mountains everywhere you look. We didn’t get the best view today as it was quite overcast.

The bus went whizzing south along the highway – which looks a lot like highways anywhere. A brief pit stop at a gas station cum rest area which was most notable for the flocks of golden California poppies growing amongst the grass. I was a bit bemused as it’s entirely the wrong time of year until I remembered that here it’s mid spring as the seasons are opposite. Eventually, we turned off the highway onto a bunch of two lane roads heading up into the foothills. Small towns and rural homes along the highway, all with the Chilean flag out front. (We are just past Chilean independence day which was on the 18th). Eventually we got to a dirt road and the luxury bus could go no further. Quick switch over to a much smaller and cramped oversize van and then up the dirt road cum goat track that switchbacked up a steep hill to our destination, the Hotel Vik. Positive energy prevailed and the clouds parted and the sun came out as we were making the transfer into the van.

The Hotel Vik is a small luxury hilltop hotel deep in Chilean wine country. It’s sort of like being dropped into an Architectural Digest photo layout. It was built by a Norwegian couple, the Viks, about fifteen years ago to indulge their passions for wine and art. Each hotel room is unique, designed by a different artist, and named rather than numbered. I am in ‘Hollywood’ (arranged by Wendy our motherly but efficient tour director who thought it suited my personality). It is adorned with large silk screened canvas prints of classic movie stills. Sean Connery as James Bond is looking down over my bed tonight and Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief are on the side wall. One whole wall is glass giving lovely views of the hills and a lake at the bottom of the one on which the hotel sits.

We had a lovely dinner in the dining room (I had poached fish for the appetizer and lamb stuffed ravioli for the entree) and I think most of us are retiring early after the 9 hour process of getting here. Tomorrow promises to be good weather for doing some outdoorsy type things around this rather stunning place. It’s as if Frank Gehry had designed Edoras for The Lord of the Rings.

Dateline – Buenos Aires –

Last night it was my neighborhood. While I was sound asleep here in Buenos Aires, someone turned a semiautomatic weapon on a crowd in Birmingham outside a club in the 5 Points South neighborhood and fired more than one hundred shots in just a few seconds killing four and injuring eighteen others. I don’t do a lot of clubbing these days but I am well aware of the location. It’s less than three blocks from my academic office. A block or so from some on my favorite restaurants. Close to the office of my travel agent. Less than a mile from my condo. There’s scarcely a day that goes by when I’m not either driving through or patronizing some establishment in the area. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about this. To my knowledge, no friends or acquaintances were among the victims but I have seen the names of friends of friends on social media as survivors. I think I need to do a deep dive into politics spurred by this and other events but I’m going to wait until after I get back to the US. I really don’t want to have to turn on that part of my brain while on vacation.

Today was a fairly low key day. The temperature dropped some and it clouded over, threatening another cloudburst which never appeared. As tomorrow is another travel day with an international flight, I’m not sad that there wasn’t all that much on the agenda for the last full day in Argentina. After breakfast (back in its usual location now that the society wedding has decamped and the guests gone back to their elegant apartments in the better districts), we headed over to the Recoleta cemetery which is only a few blocks from the hotel. I had wandered by the outside a few days ago but did not go in as I knew we had a tour visit today. I love old important cemeteries, the kind where lots of money and familial obligation leads to a sort of keeping up with the Jones’ in terms of mausoleum building and funerary sculpture. My favorite is Pere Lachaise in Paris where anyone who was anyone and died in the environs of Paris ended up from Peter Abelard to Oscar Wilde to Jim Morrison. Like New Orleans, Buenos Aires is built on the riverbank of a major river as it turns into an estuary and sea. This means high chance of flooding. (No longer a major issue but when the cemetery was plotted a couple hundred years ago it was very definitely a problem). And so, like the cemeteries of New Orleans, the graves were originally established above ground in family mausoleums. Due to space constraints, the mausoleums all sit cheek by jowl in blocks giving the place the feel of a miniature city of the dead. The mausolea run the gambit from simple plastered brick to huge gothic fantasies. The inhabitants are mainly from prominent Argentine families and not people with whom most North Americans would be familiar.

The exception is, of course Eva Duarte Peron. She does not have her own mausoleum, politics having seen to that. Nor is she buried with Juan Peron (Juan’s later wife, Isabel who is still alive at 91 saw to that). Instead, she is buried with her mother and siblings in the Duarte family crypt. Despite being deceased for over seventy years, she is sill getting offerings of fresh flowers from her people. Eva was a complicated person (and much of the complication was excised from the musical Evita – there is a non-musical film with Faye Dunaway which actually gets somewhat closer to the actual truth). The family tomb is a severe black granite with bronze memorial plaques attached. Would Eva be satisfied with this? Probably not. Her tastes were a bit more grandiose. I thought about going to the Evita museum but I just didn’t feel like it. Later in the afternoon when I could have. And it gives me an excuse to come back.

The next stop was the famous Teatro Colon opera house. They’re in the middle of tech for an opera that opens next week which is why there were no performances of note on the nights I could have gone. We did get a tour of the building with all of its spectacular marble foyers and the 3000 seat house with its boxes and frescoes and enormous chandelier suspended over it all. (Cue Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D major on the organ). Like most 19th century opera houses (although this one is technically 20th century having been dedicated in 1908), it has great acoustics and a huge system of boxes best suited to displaying the occupants to each other rather than giving them appropriate sight lines to the stage. Opera audiences of that day were familiar with the plots and music from repeated viewings and hearings so they need not keep full attention on the stage. They knew what was coming next.

With that, our official tours ceased. I returned to the hotel, fortified myself with some ice cream (when in Italian or Spanish influenced cities, ice cream is a must), and then took a walk through some of the parks over to the museum quarter. First stop was the national museum. Not as large as the great museums of Europe and with a mission to give prominence to Argentine artists, it never the less was a pleasant hour or two basking in the reflected light of creativity. The Argentine artists weren’t particularly inspired as, until about World War II, they seemed to spend most of their time copying European styles and schools so there was kind of a Monet and kind of a Corot etc. The last half of the 20th century Argentine works were more separated from progenitors. There were a few inspired by the terrible period of dictatorship in the 70s and early 80s and I expect there’s a lot more that can be mined from that experience I expected a lot more than there was. The works by artists you have heard of are mainly inferior work although there are some rather good Goya’s from his black period, and a couple of very nice Picassos. Then a little further down the road to the museum of Latin American art. I did not spend as much time as I should have as i didn’t want to be caught in the rain walking back. A lot of pieces by artists of whom I had never heard, many of them with good reason. I did make it back to the hotel without getting wet and with many steps on my pedometer.

I stayed in for the evening and worked a bit on a couple of essays for the new book but kept falling asleep so that’s a task that will have to wait until later. Going to just relax the rest of the night as there’s an early luggage pull in the morning and we have been told that the bus leaves at 8 am sharp with or without us and if we are not on the bus, we’re expected to take a taxi to the airport and catch up with the group. (apparently there’s been issues with missed connections at this juncture in the past). One way or the other, we’re due to arrive in Santiago, Chile mid afternoon tomorrow where we’ll be for a couple of days before returning home.

Dateline – Buenos Aires and San Antonio de Areco

Yesterday was city mouse day and today was country mouse day. The hotel was in hysterical preparations for a society wedding tonight with 400 guests expected so the usual breakfast buffet had to be relocated. The food was the same, even if it was on a makeshift series of tables in the lobby of the main restaurant one floor down. I have a feeling this was not the first time the hotel staff had been to this particular rodeo. After more than a week of overeating, I’ve decided to keep my breakfasts a bit lighter so it was coffee and pastry and fruit and let someone else explore the hot bar and this hotel’s version of scrambled eggs.

Then it was on the bus for a trip out into the pampas to the little town of San Antonio de Areco (on the Areco river) about thirty some miles northwest of Buenos Aires. A stop at a local crafts store to break up the bus ride (I bought a new belt as my current one is rather the worse for wear) and then into the town. The first stop was at a business located on the main market square – a working family silver smithy currently run by Mariano Draghi, the second generation to live and work at the location. His father, who started the business, was the child of Italian immigrants to Argentina. The Draghis have made a name for themselves by designing and making the fine silver accoutrements worn by the gauchos of the pampas on ceremonial occasions – gaucho knives, bridle and saddle tackle ornamentation, trophies, mate cups, and the like. The old family home is now part boutique, part museum, and part working smithy where Mr. Draghi was happy to talk about the art of creating the intricate silver engravings and lovely relief patterns for which he is known. There was nothing that caught my eye in my price range (a single hand done piece can take months to complete and is priced accordingly – he does a lot of commissions for wealthy collectors).

Then, a little further out into the countryside to another family owned business, Estancia de Rosario de San Antonio de Areco which is part horse farm for the training of polo ponies and gaucho rides, part event space, part polo club, and part family home. The weather could not have been lovelier with a breeze off the Areco river and we were treated to demonstrations of gaucho trick riding, horse training techniques, and then yet another three course meal, this one served al fresco on tables under the trees. Several members of the family whose home and business it is were there as hosts and were quite charming folks. I again ate too much and had maybe one too many glasses of wine. It was enough to convince me that a large dinner was not in the cards.

We got back to the hotel around 5:30 and I spent some time walking through Recoleta at dusk. I must confess I did stop for some ice cream. The hotel lobby was filled with Buenos Aires society awaiting the nuptials. The men in dark suits and ties, the women in gorgeous long formal dresses, more than one of which I recognized as major designer. I don’t know who was getting married but someone was obviously dropping a few shekels on the proceedings. There was a bunch of extra security buzzing around and it was pretty clear that, even as a guest of the hotel, you weren’t going to get more than a peek at the festivities. As I watched them all going on about their ways, admiring their get ups, all I could think of was the aristocrats chorus in the original Hal Prince staging of Evita and I kept expecting them to move as a single unit. I was slightly disappointed when they did not.

Tomorrow is our last full Buenos Aires day – tours of the Recoleta cemetery and Teatro Colon in the morning. (I checked and there was nothing much playing there during these few days or I would have gone to a performance) and fairly unstructured after. I’m thinking I’ll hit the major art museums. If anyone has a can’t miss thing I should see or do available on a Sunday afternoon, drop a note below and I’ll see if I can fit it in.

Dateline – Buenos Aires –

It’s been a rather full day and it’s after midnight local time and I have to get up in the morning for a trip out to the Argentine countryside to mix with some gauchos (the cowboys, not the 70s culottes that enjoyed a very brief vogue) so I’m not going to blather on as much tonight as I do some other times. I’m tired and had a little too much wine with dinner.

The first part of the day was a tour of various neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, some by bus but mostly by foot which is much more to my taste. We are staying in the Recoleta neighborhood which is sort of the BA version of Mayfair or the Upper East Side – full of embassies, wealthy beaux arts and art deco mansions, ritzy boutiques and modern high end high rise apartments. I’ve done a little walking around. It’s all very nice but how many Chanel bags or Gucci loafers does one need? So off the bus went a few blocks to Avenue Nueve de Julio which is the main boulevard of town and about twenty lanes across, leading towards the Plaza de Mayo and the important government buildings. Casa Rosada (with necessary Evita moment with the balcony) – check. National cathedral (former home of Pope Francis when he was a lowly archbishop) – check. Various government buildings in various 19th century architectural styles – check. Next on to the neighborhood of San Telmo, the heart of the Spanish colony which eventually developed into the city. There are still remains of colonial architecture including repurposed Spanish pueblas, cobble stone streets (I did not fall today), and lots of funky shops selling all sorts of things you have no real use for. It reminded me a good deal of the older parts of San Francisco.

The last neighborhood stop was at Boca at the harbor. This was the first stop for most of the 19th and early 20th century immigrants. Argentina, like the US, is mainly a country built by immigration and most people have immigrant grandparents or great-grandparents. 40% of the population of Buenos Aires, for instance, is of Italian descent. The shanty town aspect of the area is now celebrated, having been painted in all sorts of vibrant colors and filled with T-shirt and souvenir shops where you can get all the usual tchotchkes, lots of things dedicated to soccer stars Maradonna and Messi, and everything you can think of emblazoned by a local cartoon character Mafalda who seems to be an Argentine version of Nancy or Little Lulu from the old funny pages. I bought some street art and some leather goods. After a number of years of financial instability, the Argentinian peso isn’t worth much – about 1100 pesos to the dollar. The locals love an infusion of foreign currency.

Lunch was at a famous Buenos Aires cafe – Cafe Tortoni which has been in operation since the 1850s. It’s very old world European in feeling and looks very much like Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Follies Bergere’ could have been painted there. The food was not as fine as the ambiance. Or maybe after so many days of overeating very rich meals my system is starting to rebel. I came back to the hotel afterwards, took a nap and then went for a walk through the park to people watch and afterwards had some ice cream. With such a large Italian population, the ice cream is excellent.

Tonight’s dinner was dinner and a show at the Tango Porteno dinner theater. Three course dinner with wine and champagne (I did not feel like large cuts of meat so settled for the soup and the ravioli followed with white chocolate mousse) and then a live and in person tango show with a cast of 22 showing off their prowess as dancer athletes with all sorts of tango steps. The trouble with dinner theater is usually either the dinner or the theater is subpar. Both were perfectly adequate but uninspiring. It’s a huge cavern of an auditorium designed to introduce hundreds of tourists at once to the world of tango and reminded me of nothing so much as cruise ship dining followed by a revue on the main stage. I give the meal a B+. Given the number of plates they have to turn out rapidly, it would be hard for them to get much better. The show is flashy, well staged, full of technical flourishes, but about thirty minutes of material stretched to eighty. If they had put in a through line of some sort or given more visual interest to the dances so that they didn’t all end up kind of looking the same. And, if I were directing, I would have told the first violinist to rethink the hair. Under stage light, it looks as if he has a dead capybara glued to his skull.

Back to the hotel late and now I write this before finding something on TV to help me drift off. When I watch something in a language in which I’m not fluent, I get just enough of the words and drift to start making up highly entertaining alternate lines and plots which help knock me out all the sooner. I’m strange that way. To bed, to bed…