And we’re on to March, having survived Leap Day. Hopefully this one will be a harbinger of better times than the last one was, arriving just as the pandemic was seeding itself worldwide, outside of China leading to several years of topsy-turvydom which certainly led my life in some unexpected directions. I posted a photograph of the roof of the Castel San Angelo in honor of Leap Day but I don’t think anyone got the joke. Well I thought it was funny. (For those of you scratching your head, the last scene of Puccini’s Tosca takes place on the roof of that building in Rome. After her lover Cavadradossi is executed by firing squad, Tosca leaps from the battlements to her death in despair). There is an old story about the last scene in Tosca, probably apocryphal, about a production done on a limited budget somewhere in the Midwest. The supernumeraries hired to play the firing squad were, for some reason, not rehearsed. On the night of the performance, they were told to go on stage, shoot the person that was singing and then follow someone off stage. Of course, at the dramatic end of the opera, the firing squad shot Tosca rather than Cavaradossi and then decided to follow her offstage, filing up one by one to leap off the battlements after her. Live theater… there’s nothing like it.

My very long ‘to do’ list is starting to come under control. The one thing I haven’t been able to fit in yet is some hours doing some review question CME needed to maintain my boards in geriatrics. Fortunately, I have until the end of the month so there’s plenty of time. I just need to open them up and do a few so I feel like it;s in process and then things will feel better. Today’s ‘to do’ involved spending four hours waiting at the Toyota dealership so Hope could have her complete 30,000 mile check up. It cost a small fortune but I have been told she’s good to go for another 30,000 miles or so. At that point, she’ll be about eight or nine years old so I’ll consider trading her in on a newer model.

Covid is back in the news again with the CDC’s dropping of a specific quarantine requirement during the recovery period, bringing the recommendations for Covid in line with those for flu and RSV. Basically, you’re good to go once you’re 24 hours past fever/symptoms. From what I can tell this was just a bending to the reality that society was pretty much ignoring quarantine recommendations and, if that was going to be the case, it doesn’t really offer any additional public health protections to keep people locked away for additional days. This change seems to have caused a social media ruckus on both sides. On one side, those who advocate for protecting everyone from a virus which remains a serious unknown quantity, especially with the spreading on Long Covid, are upset by a relaxing of restrictions, quite correctly pointing out that there will be additional cases because of this. On the other side, a lot of bloviation regarding this proves that the virus wasn’t dangerous and that we shouldn’t have shut down, and that the vaccines are killing millions and other such nonsense. Calm down everyone. Here’s where we stand.

Covid-19 isn’t going anywhere and will be part of our world as long as any of us is around. There is now substantial immunity, both due to natural immunity from prior infection and from vaccine. This plus the evolution of the organism has apparently made it less virulent with recent strains. (There’s no guarantee this will last). This winter, it was killing about 2,000 people a week which falls to about 1,000 people a week as the weather warms up. After three years where it was the third leading cause of death in the country behind only heart disease and all cause cancer, it looks like it’s going to settle in at about 50-60,000 deaths a year, putting it at roughly the same death toll as colon cancer or pancreatic cancer and well ahead of breast cancer. In comparison, Flu usually only kills 15-20,000 a year so those who say it’s no worse than flu don’t know what they’re talking about.

It looks like we’re going to fall into an annual fall Covid vaccination to go along with the annual fall flu shot and that this should suffice for most of us. There is some data to suggest that the very elderly over 85, nursing home bound or the physiologically frail receive second booster in the spring but the jury is still out. Are the vaccines and boosters dangerous, yes there are some rare cases of myocarditis and neural issues that have been linked to the vaccines but the rates are about 1/1000 – 1/10000 the rates that an infection causes these issues so I’m going to continue to be boosted going forward. I’m in the minority. Only about 15% of American adults took the most recent booster this past fall. If the virus mutates rapidly into something unpleasant, we may be screwed.

We’re still not sure about Long Covid and what it is and who has it and who doesn’t. But there’s a lot of scientific study going on world wide to try and figure this out. Got to remember that Covid is a whole body, not just a respiratory disease. There’s a lot of data being published currently regarding the neurologic implications of Covid infection and Long-Covid. Covid interferes with the blood brain barrier and can cause neural inflammation. A bad case of Covid seems to knock about six points off your IQ. It’s unclear if that comes back or if additional infections knock off more in cumulative fashion. Every Covid infection you get, increases the chances of Long Covid so the best way to stave it off is primary prevention – don’t catch the disease in the first place. Wash your hands. Avoid sick contacts. Don’t spend too much time in enclosed spaces with poor air circulation with thousands of your closest friends. Fortunately, a lot of public buildings are starting to be retrofitted with better air flow systems which is one of the best prevention measures we have. Should you mask? It’s unclear but I would if I was immune compromised or had other conditions which would make me more prone to complications should I develop the disease.

I have two more short writing projects to complete and then I can peruse the streaming channels for a movie. If I have energy, MNM will be unleashed again.

It’s that time of year again. Time to sort out that large box of receipts and records and get everything ready for tax time. Fortunately, there’s not a lot different about 2023 from 2022 other than my income seems to have gone down in all of my income streams. I’ll spend a couple of evenings over the next week or so chasing various pieces of paper that have gone astray, enter numbers gleaned from all sorts of forms in my little spread sheet and then pack it all up in an accordion file and drop it off at my accountant’s office and cross my fingers that I’ll actually get a refund this year. I seem to bop up and down between a couple of different tax brackets and when I go up, I owe, and when I go down, Uncle Sam owes me.

I don’t mind paying taxes. I recognize them as being necessary to a functioning society where a pooling of resources allows for much bigger projects than we could possibly do on our own. I’m a fan of functional schools, public libraries, paved roads, working healthcare infrastructure and all of the other myriad things that tax dollars allow to happen. I’m not a complete socialist. I think the profit motive is healthy but that I do believe that there are certain segments of the economy in which capitalism either does not belong or should be heavily regulated in the public interest. This includes such things as education, health care, utilities, military, and corrections. Putting profits ahead of people in such areas tends to create more problems than it solves.

The next few weeks are about catch up in various areas of life. I have the car tune up, my annual eye appointment, and a diagnosis and repair on my home entertainment system all scheduled for the next few days. This latter is necessary as, all of a sudden, the dialogue channel is dropping out on some streaming services. The music and sound effects are there but otherwise it’s silent movie time. Fortunately, it’s not all of them so I can find something to watch when I’m in the mood. I haven’t really been watching a lot of TV the last few months. An occasional film but none of the streaming series I’ve tried has really grabbed and held my attention. Maybe I should go back and revisit something I haven’t seen for a decade or more, like Six Feet Under (which still has the best finale of any series ever).

I checked my sales figures. The Accidental Plague Diaries continues to sell a few copies here and there. I’m thinking there might be a decent market in another couple of years when the children of the pandemic – those who were in elementary school at the time and too young to fully comprehend what was happening age into middle and high school and might want some sort of relatively readable chronicle of what the heck happened and why. I have a couple of readings and signings coming up the next couple of months and I need to get off my butt and really start working on the new book. I just haven’t had the energy. And I’ll have to do it around my performance commitments for the rest of the season (a symphony concert, a play, an opera concert, a musical, and directing a Shakespeare between now and Labor Day).

Covid seems to be waning again locally. There are still cases popping up here and there but far fewer than earlier this winter. I wonder if that’s because we’re far enough out from holiday gatherings for those increased contacts to still be making a difference. The local hospital numbers are fairly low and I haven’t heard of a lot of deaths. I have heard of continued issues with Long Covid wreaking havoc in some peoples lives and that fact alone is enough to keep me caught up with vaccinations. There was some data showing that vaccinations had some mild associations with myelopathy and myocarditis – something around one in a hundred thousand. Given that the disease itself caused this about one in a hundred, I’ll err on the side of the vaccine.

Speaking of vaccines, there’s an outbreak of measles in Florida. There’s nothing that unusual about an occasional outbreak in this country. It’s one of the most contagious viruses known to humans so, if it gets into an unvaccinated population (recent immigrants, Christian Scientists) it spreads rapidly,. It’s so contagious that you have to have over a 95% vaccination rate to keep it contained through herd immunity. Florida, thanks to various antivaccine beliefs on both left and right, only has about a 90% vaccination rate so it’s going to continue to spread. It could be contained with a vaccination campaign and keeping unvaccinated children at home from the affected school but DeSantis’ hand picked surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, is busy ignoring over a century of science carefully collected on how to deal with a measles outbreak and pushing the opposite. I suppose those who are trying to out Trump Trump won’t be happy until there’s a line of children in iron lungs again. Measles is not a benign illness. It kills roughly 1/1,000 children it infects and causes serious complications in another 5/1,000. That doesn’t seem like that high a number but what if it’s your child who suffers permanent brain damage or dies. If a child dies in Florida in the current outbreak, will the parents have a case for wrongful death against the public health system for wantonly disregarding the known science?

Usually my jaw drops at the political news out of Texas and Florida which seem to be trying to race each other to see which can be crueler more completely to their marginalized populations. Alabama, of course, leap frogged over both of them with its rather unbelievable ruling that a frozen embryo was indeed a person. I can’t completely blame the Alabama Supreme Court on this one (although Tom Parker, the chief justice is a seven mountains dominionist). The legislature created and the population passed an Alabama constitutional amendment that clearly stares that unborn potential lives such as embryos are humans for purposes of law and the court decision merely pointed out what was already clear in the not very well thought out amendment that was pushed through by prolife forces. Just one more example of why politicians should not be practicing medicine. The Alabama legislature, with egg on its face, as well as in the petri dish, is desperately trying to back pedal on this one as it has caused serious issues for their rich white campaign funders as it basically prevents IVF and other advanced fertility treatments from happening as any mistreatment of an embryo could be construed as child abuse, or if the embryo is rendered non-viable manslaughter or murder. Perhaps the legislature will be a bit more hesitant to pass poorly worded laws about very complicated subjects in the future. Naaaah…

I’m jonesing for some KFC. Better head off to the egg section of the supermarket.

I feel like I am trying to dig out of a hole created by several months of devotion to Into the Woods. I was sure I had stayed fairly caught up but now that I have resurfaced, I’m starting to notice all of the little things that I had put aside to deal with after the show and the piles are starting to teeter. There are legal cases requiring reviewing, music to learn, auditions to prepare, an enormous stack of laundry, church projects, book readings/signings to prepare and schedule, stuff to do to maintain board certification, a passport to renew, a car in need of a maintenance tune up, and some friends whom I have recently neglected and need to figure out a time for brunch or dinner or at least coffee. I’ll get it all done. I always do. But I’m going to have to make sure I don’t take on anything new for a month or so while I’m whittling away at the pile so everyone out there who was thinking about asking me to do this or that… don’t.

Most of my fellow cast mates have been decompressing after the show’s closure this past weekend and reflecting back on what this particular journey into the woods meant to them. It’s been interesting reading their reflections, some of which are similar to my own and some of which take completely different perspectives on the material and the experience. The Virginia Samford Theatre touted this show as an All-Star Birmingham cast since most of us have been around for a while and have played leading roles there and at other local theaters over the last few decades. I don’t consider myself a star, just a journeyman character actor who occasionally gets a lucky break with a really juicy role and who has lasted long enough to be a known quantity when it comes to casting. I have good theater work habits, usually do well if cast in the right part or opposite the right performers, and am perfectly willing to take a minor role in a production in which I believe in order to hang out with insanely talented folks and learn from them. Over the last twenty years, I’ve been in something like sixty stage productions in this town, some very good, some very not. This Into the Woods enters my top five. I can never have a single favorite. It’s always apples and oranges. How do you compare an edition of Politically Incorrect Cabaret that’s firing on cylinders with a classic musical with a modern drama with a 19th century opera?

I just have to say I’m deeply grateful to Chelsea Reynolds for casting me and allowing me to play with these dear friends, many of whom I have adored for decades (some of whom I have never had the chance to actually share a stage with in the past, despite knowing and admiring their talents from the audience for years) and letting me be a small piece of the ephemeral work of art which is theatrical performance. Theater has power because it is real and it is happening with the collaboration of the audience, mirroring their aspirations and fears and it will never exist again in that form after the final curtain is brought down.

My Christmas gift to Tommy’s family this year was tickets to the show for all eleven of them and they came en masse to our final matinee. He has five great nephews and nieces (ages five to fifteen) who loved it. The five year old, born while Tommy was in the hospital with his final illness, was riveted and on the edge of his seat the whole time. It’s a very long show for a five year old but he was so caught up with the twists and turns of the story and the magic of live performance that he barely fidgeted according to his mother. Perhaps we have a new member of the family who will want to follow his great uncle into the world of mutual cooperation and teamwork and creativity that I discovered for myself all those years ago.

I was taken to my first adult theatrical performance at age five. It was the very last American tour of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s original staging of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore. I can still see it in my mind. The colors, the lights, the orchestra in the pit and remember the frisson I felt when the curtain rose and those real people enacted a story to music that I didn’t fully understand and still found mesmerizing. It has occurred to me, that if I live to 80 or so, that I will be one of the last people on the planet who saw an original staging of a Gilbert and Sullivan. Maybe that’s why I still enjoy them as much as I do. I’ve done Pinafore and an abbreviated Pirates. I’d like to do Yeoman of the Guard one of these days. I love the Mikado but the orientalism has become a bit problematic. It works fine, though, without the Japanese trappings if done by an imaginative director. If you don’t believe me, look up the English National Opera production of the late 80s with Eric Idle as Ko Ko.

I had a long talk with my editor/publisher this weekend about the new book. We have figured out a path forward in terms of how it should be put together. Now I just have to come up with the time to sit down and do some writing. Which is running into the issues mentioned in my first paragraph above. It will all work out in the end. I tend to do my best when under a bit of pressure. I don’t necessarily like how it makes me feel in general but I have figured out over the years just a little too much to do makes me more efficient in general and my work product tends to improve. Now if I could just figure out a way to get by on less sleep. Tommy and Steve both used to do just fine on five or six hours tops. I need about seven or eight. Perhaps I should induce a little hypomania. That’s probably not the best of ideas.

And so the Gregorian and liturgical calendars align this year to give us Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, and Valentine’s day all at once. I didn’t really celebrate any of them. Birmingham doesn’t really do Mardi Gras and Valentine’s doesn’t have a lot to offer widowers so I spent the last couple of days with my usual work tasks and a legal case that I have to have opinions on by Friday. My relationship with Valentines Day is a bit complicated as it is the day that Steve and I used for our anniversary. As we closed in on one year together, neither of us could remember when we had first met and started dating but knew it was mid-February so we picked the 14th as it would be easy to remember and kill two birds with one stone. As marriage wasn’t possible during our years together, we never had another legal alternative. Tommy and I, on the other hand, had two dates. October 27th, the day we met (and we both agreed that was the correct date after consulting a calendar about a year later) and July 11th, the date we were legally married in Washington in 2014. We celebrated the October date. Well, celebrated isn’t really the right word. Tommy hated culturally approved Hallmark holidays of any stripe but he loved presents when given at random intervals or to celebrate things out of the mainstream.

If Steve had lived, today would be our 35th anniversary. Would we have made it the distance? Who can say? We went through some rough patches but the rhythms we eventually developed here in Birmingham with him devoting himself to his art and to cultural pursuits made him happier and more peaceful than he had been at any other time of his life so I like to believe that just maybe we would have. He would be 75 now. Something I don’t care to contemplate. I don’t think he would have taken to elderhood with any sort of grace and I would be footing bills for Botox and hair dye and liposuction were he still with me. Of course, if he were still here, I would never have had Tommy or either of my other careers as performer and author. And someone else would be playing my role in Into the Woods this weekend. I might have gotten involved with theater again while with him (I was making a few moves in that direction in California before we were unceremoniously shown the door by the University of California) but it probably would have been a very different arc.

And so I have a very difficult relationship with Valentine’s Day. It brings up too many memories. They’re a jumble of good and bad. The problem is that they bring emotions with them and then I have my usual issues with my interior emotional life – not being very good at categorizing what those feelings are and, because i can’t fully understand or control them, my intellectual side tends to label them as ‘bad’ in some way and try to shut me off from them. I am well aware that this can infuriate people who are close to me as it makes me more remote and shut down as the emotional stakes get higher but there it is. It’s just part of the package. I don’t have a bad relationship with Mardi Gras. I tend to ignore it. Our first spring here in the South, Steve and I went to NOLA for a Mardi Gras weekend. We usually loved New Orleans but we hated that experience with tens of thousands of drunk college students and I’ve never been back during the season since. Tommy lived in the New Orleans area for a couple of years in his 20s working as a cook for Ralph and Kacoo’s seafood restaurant. He was in the French Quarter one Mardi Gras weekend night when someone pulled a knife and the crowd panicked. He fell and was trampled. His hips were never quite the same afterwards and he never wanted to return. And that incident was a knife. These days it would probably be an AK-47.

I did a presentation to a local social club yesterday on aging with a couple of readings from the books. It was an audience of aging gentility in a very exclusive gated community. I wouldn’t be caught dead living there but chacun a sont gout. The first volume is not yet three years old but it already is starting to feel like a historical document from another time when I read from it. I guess that’s part of the point. What I hope happens with The Accidental Plague Diaries is that they become a decent primary source for someone who is researching the madness of the early 2020s decades from now. As we continue to emerge from pandemic thinking to endemic thinking, events of even a year ago are starting to feel like a bit of a fever dream and it’s so very hard to keep memories and relative time of the last four years or so straight in my head. And it’s spilling over from public health thinking into all other areas of our lives. I think it’s one of the reasons why we are finding it so easy to reframe and rewrite the recent history of our politics and governance and why there’s so little pushback on the bald faced lies that seem to emerge from both state and national capitols on a routine basis.

The CDC is considering dropping its quarantine/masking recommendations for those diagnosed with Covid. It’s not that they don’t think it’s a good idea. They’re just acceding to the current reality of endemic spread – it’s everywhere and quarantining the few that test and play by the rules is really making no difference in terms of either spread or strain on the health care system. They haven’t made the change yet but it’s likely to happen shortly. The practical results of this will be Covid infected needing to go to work as they won’t be granted PTO by their employers and, if they have jobs interfacing with the public, a greater chance of spread from workplace to population and certainly a high incidence of infecting coworkers. My last Covid, caught in August of 2022, was a workplace exposure. Half my VA unit was out. It was a few days after our Joint Commission inspection so we’re pretty sure they brought it in to us. I’ll be interested to see what health care institutions do regarding staff infections should the CDC make this change given how thin our service lines are stretched and how efficient health care settings can be in spreading infectious disease.

I’m personally not terribly worried about Covid these days. I’ve had every booster as its become available. I wasn’t that sick with my last case and I tend to bounce back quickly from whatever ails me. I still have some trepidation regarding long Covid as that seems to continue to dog a certain segment of the population. No one knows how many as there’s no agreement on what it is and what it isn’t and, without a decent definition, how can you survey and count? The most recent numbers I could find suggest there are about 17 million Americans with long Covid and somewhere between 3 and 4 million of them are disabled enough to be unable to work. That’s 1% of the population out of the workforce due to a single disease that’s only been around for four years. Those numbers are huge. Roughly 13% of Americans have a disability of some kind and roughly 7% are so disabled they cannot function independently (mainly elderly). Long Covid makes this jump from about 7 to 8% or so, a 13% increase in need for supportive services at a time when the population is aging and people are leaving the health care workforce in droves. And people wonder why they can’t get a next day doctor’s appointment.

It’s going to get really ugly out there over the next five years or so. This is why I’m contemplating retirement and why I’m working on a new book…

It’s pushing midnight and I should really be pulling the covers up over my head and trying to get some sleep. Especially as I have to be up in the morning for choir rehearsal, church service, and to teach Sunday school, all before reporting to the theater for tomorrow’s matinee. But, per usual, it’s taking me some time to wind down from tonight’s performance. Into the Woods has found its groove and settled into its run nicely. Tonight was performance 7 out of 12 (or 9 out of 14 if you count our dress previews) and the cast have all found their timing, their comic bits, and their moments of playing off each other which come at this stage and gives the production a certain level of buoyancy it was just beginning to achieve when we opened last week. The word of mouth around town has been terrific and so audiences are coming in expecting something special. Tonight’s audience had obviously been at the bar before the show started as they were raucous and responsive to everything. That’s exactly what you want when you’re performing musical comedy. They were even laughing heartily at the black humor moments in the second act.

I love being in an ensemble show that just works all the way around without any weak links. You know you’re a part of something far greater than you could ever achieve on your own and that if any piece were to misfire, the whole edifice could come collapsing down. But, instead, you make it all the way to curtain call having held the audience for the whole two and a half hours. I’ve been in other shows where there were major issues. A poor performance, design misfires, low energy, and you can tell that it just isn’t landing with the audience so those of us on stage try harder and harder, but it’s ultimately a lead balloon. I’ve been on a roll in recent years. Most of the projects I’ve been part of have gone well. I hope I can keep it up. I just got a call back notice for another musical for early summer and I have a play in April and direct in July and August. Fingers crossed that I finish out the season on a continued high note.

This cast is full of very accomplished singers. I do not count myself among that group. I dislike the sound of my own voice intensely and I remain incredibly intimidated when onstage with those who have performance degrees and Broadway/National Tour credits. But the current round of voice lessons are helping a good deal. My teacher is trying to break a lot of bad habits and rebuild it. One of my fellow castmates, a woman whose talent and voice I have admired greatly for many years was listening to my mic check tonight and said she thought my voice was beautiful. It made my night. My biggest regret with this show is that there’s so little ensemble singing – only in the prologue and the two act finales. When we’re all onstage and singing together we really do sound good.

The message of Into the Woods (or one of the many messages) is that it requires community to solve big problems and that those who try to live only for self interest are ultimately doomed. I can’t help but think that’s a good theme for today as the unpleasant political news continues to pour in from all sides. It’s getting to the point where I’m dreaming of locking myself in my condo and turning off all media for the next nine months until after the election, especially as self interest seems to be the name of the game on every side. The attitude of I and mine are fine and screw everyone else is no way to order a functional society long term and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better, only worse as the tendrils of late stage vulture capitalism continue to infest every sector along with the attendant willful ignorance that’s needed to keep people from thinking critically about problems from multiple points of view and understanding that the answers to big societal questions require input from more types of people than are likely to live in gated communities with over zealous homeowners associations. The current attempts to ban, if not destroy books describing life from alternate viewpoints, defund programs that give voice to marginalized communities, and demonize religious principles antithetical to ones own are all about trying to preserve a very narrow reading of the gospel of America which doesn’t serve a globalized world of mutual interdependence.

If a certain class of people come to power and are given the means to execute their ideas of a fortress America, I wonder if they understand the consequences? The Stephen Millers want to rapidly deport millions. That would require a paramilitary of tens if not hundreds of thousands being asked to dehumanize their friends and neighbors. We would have no agricultural workers to speak of (and no ability to import produce with an impermeable wall at the Southern border). The hospitality industry would likely collapse. There will be no workers in child care or senior care requiring millions of adults (mainly women) to leave well paying jobs for domestic duties. We would have to have a system of internment camps that would dwarf what the Germans created in the 1940s with the attendant problems of sanitation, predation and other issues of overcrowding. And the legal issues that would be created between cities (mainly blue), states (divided) and federal (divided) would choke the court system for decades.

Ask yourself, if my friends and neighbors become immediately endangered by a rapidly hostile federal government, what are you going to do to protect them? I know what I’m planning.

Another Openin’, Another Show: And Into the Woods has launched itself on its three week twelve performance run. Per usual, everything gelled over the last few days with the addition of costumes, a completed set, lighting, sound effects, and all of the other myriad details that make up the live stage performance of a musical. One of my favorite things about performing in a large and complicated show such as this one is watching and learning the back stage patterns as everyone goes through their individual track. Life is made of moments, as the show says, and there are certainly plenty of them that performers revel in that the audience is blissfully unaware of. The complicated choreography of a quick costume or wig change. The moments that are cast favorites so that we all peek a bit from the wings. The need for everyone to either bunch up or race to clear the fly rail stage left as there simply is no wing space on that side. Meeting the same people at the prop shelf at the same time as you grab your prop as they return theirs. Things hum along in their little routine. The only significant issues I had tonight was a fake pearl popping off of a button of my second act vest but I caught it before it could get lost or trip anyone up.

This is my 20th show on the mainstage of the Virginia Samford Theatre and I’m just about six months shy of the 20th anniversary of my debut on that stage in a production of Jekyll and Hyde (as the butler). Leah Luker,, who also made her VST debut in that show, is playing my stepdaughter this time around. She’s one of my favorite people with whom to get into the sandbox. Over the years we’ve played fizzled romantic interests, father and daughter, bailiff and juror, and a bunch of other things. And there’s another half dozen of the Into the Woods cast that are part of the old guard and we’ve all been friends and playmates for so many years and in so many different shows. I came offstage into the stage left wing, doing my usual abrupt stop to keep from running into the fly rail and all of a sudden my brain opened up a kaleidoscope of memories of dozens of other exits through other sets – sometimes after simple crosses, sometimes after complicated musical numbers with the sound of a contented audience following. Most people do not realize how vital the audience is to the success of a theater piece, especially a musical. Those of us on stage enter into a symbiotic relationship and feed off of the energy of audience response and it informs the pacing, the performance, and the whole purpose of the evening. I generally don’t ‘see’ the audience. I feel them and I can tell when they are following and engaged or when their attention is waning. Tonight, being opening night and full of family and friends, it was definitely a friendly audience and I felt the piece moving forward in new and better ways.

I can never gauge my own performance and I never really believe that I’m more than mediocre in anything I do. I think it’s because I’m not really trained. I learned to perform and hold an audience from a decade or so of public speaking and lecturing, not from a bachelors or masters degree in any sort of fine arts performance. I did not appear on stage and sing for an audience until the age of 42. (Perhaps it was my answer to the ultimate question). I always feel inferior when around cast mates who have that kind of training so I try to make up for it with a good work ethic and a commitment to the project and the character. I’ve been told by trustworthy sources that I usually end up holding my own but there’s always a nagging doubt that I’m really not good enough. But then there’s the fact that I keep getting cast and that probably wouldn’t be happening if I didn’t have something going for me. It may just be the dearth of male stage actors locally of my type and age. I did put myself back in voice lessons a year or so ago and they have been paying off. I’ve given up on the dance piece of musicals. The joints have gotten too danged old. It’s going to be character roles that can fake it behind the ensemble dancers moving forward.

Now that I can come up for air a bit as I’ve just got to make room in my schedule for performances, and not for daily rehearsals, I need to take stock of some of the other pieces of life. Fortunately the work life has not been too pressured the last few weeks. Some additional clinical help has been procured and that has let some of the steam out of the boiler. I don’t feel quite as buried under the pile of everyone wanting a piece of me as I was a few weeks ago. The health care system continues to slowly collapse. The retirement of my generation of primary care physicians continues apace and there are no new ones to be had. New patient appointments for the few in town that are taking new patients are booking out about a year from now. Not particularly helpful if you’re middle aged, and have some chronic issues and need medications refilled in the interim. It takes me about four to six months to get my patients into needed specialty appointments these days. And don’t get me started on the appalling mess that short staffing has created in senior living facilities and community service agencies. There are no white knights riding in to help. This is the new normal – a health care system that cannot provide timely health care. It’s due to a myriad of issues. The pandemic pushing the older generation into retirement and creating a new chronically ill population of millions of long Covid sufferers with complex health needs. The emphasis on short term profit over the actual health needs of the population. The dismissal if not downright denigration of primary care and cognitive specialties by the health education system pushing people who might go into those fields into other career paths. The reimbursements that favor technical skills and mastery and machines and highly sophisticated procedures over cognitive skills and empathy. These are issues that have been compiling themselves for fifty years or so and there are no easy or quick solutions. It will give me plenty to write about in the next book which I can actually start thinking about now that I am coming out of the woods.

Covid and flu and RSV numbers appear to be dropping somewhat but all three are still out there and circulating. None of them seems to have gotten into the Into the Woods cast and crew (knock wood multiple times) but there have been a few cases of the general viral cruds. I’ve managed to avoid those so far this winter. I’m putting it down to three things. First, I keep my hands washed. Second, I’m up to date in all my immunizations. Third, I was never really able to isolate throughout the pandemic years due to the nature of my job and I probably ran into the cruds during that period and kept my immune system on its toes. Those that were more successful in isolating didn’t challenge their immune system as much over the last few years and now that they’re running into things again as social patterns return, they’re more likely to become symptomatic. If nothing else, I hope the whole pandemic experience has allowed us to retool the culture in such a way that when we get sick, we’re more likely to take a few days off and isolate and not power through and infect others and let ourselves get even more run down. But vulture capitalism isn’t likely to stand for that attitude for long.

My news feed has been full of stories on illegal immigration and how it’s supposedly destroying the country. I know a few people who live near the Southern border. Their lives are just fine, thank you, they haven’t noticed anything in particular being destroyed. Congress is, of course, playing politics over the whole issue as the Republicans think that if they don’t work to solve it, they can use the unsolved problems as bludgeons against the Democrats in the upcoming elections. Crass politics at their basest which anyone with a modicum of critical thinking should be able to see through. Of course, if we really wanted to stop illegal immigration, the easiest way to do it would be to start charging and jailing the executives of the companies that depend upon and hire the undocumented to do the jobs that make them money and which are necessary for our society to function. But that’s never going to happen. So we basically want and need to have a large undocumented class. Their status prevents them from having significant claim on the rights and privileges of the citizenry. The club of ICE and deportation can be used to keep them in line. Our society has just moved the underclass from slaves to Jim Crow combined with the mass immigration of the late 19th and early 20th century from which many of us descend and which manned the sweatshops and factories of the robber barons of the Gilded Age to undocumented immigrants from Latin America and beyond. We’re all complicit in a system that traffics in human misery in order for us to have what we want when we want it at a cheap price. Labor Unions, the New Deal and the Great Society tried to change all of that but capital will have its way and flow upwards so we’ve spent the first quarter of the 21st century being distracted with various scandals while those who really run things continue to quietly undo all of those policies. I don’t know why I went off on that tear. Probably because after a show my mind races for a couple of hours and things just come out. Time for bed now. I have a meeting at 7:30 tomorrow morning and that’ not too many hours from now.

Life feels unbalanced at the moment. I’m not exactly sure why that is but it’s likely from a combination of factors. The first is the wonky weather we’ve been having in the southland. This past week, we had ice and snow everywhere, things were shut down and the temperatures dipped into single digits this past Saturday. Here we are a few days later, and the temperatures are fifty some degrees higher, and it’s raining with such a high level of humidity that water is seeping absolutely everywhere. This is playing havoc on my condo building where condensate and water is getting into the elevator shafts and controls shutting things completely down. This is not a huge inconvenience for me who deliberately bought a unit on the first floor but I do feel for my multiple octogenarian neighbors above me who did not bargain on seventh floor walkups. Management says that things will be fixed shortly. But seeing as they have been telling me that they are going to fix the tile on my terrace for nearly two years now, I am not holding my breath.

I suppose the second is work. There’s nothing really new or especially wrong going on and last week, with the MLK holiday and the freezing weather, was pretty much a wash out. That’s allowed me to stay caught up. I think it’s because I know the time has come to figure out the final arc of my medical career but I have yet to have that come into sharp focus regarding what I should do and on what sort of timeline. I could retire now but I figure I had better wait until my Medicare kicks in in a little over three years. My health is stable, although I move a little slower than I once did, but I am all too aware of the things that can happen after the age of sixty that will upend one’s life and over which we have minimal control. UAB has finally seemed to have figured out that the clinical pieces of our jobs are becoming untenable and is making noises about moving in some new directions to reduce burdens but it remains to be seen if those noises will translate into anything with practical application.

We’re in crunch period with Into The Woods. Tonight was the final run before tech. The show is gelling nicely although there are bits here and there that still require some work. I’ve done the show before (in a different role) and had forgotten just how complex it is to perform. Enormous parts of the show are underscored and the timing and back and forth between dialogue, orchestra, and song, is very difficult to get just right. Fortunately it’s not much of a dance show. I was never much of a dancer even on my best days and now I have sixty year old hips, knees, and ankles. There is musical staging in the prologue and the finales but I finally seem to have gotten my steps all down. It just takes me a week or two of rehearsal longer than most. The set is fairly complete and has been fun to play with. We get costumes this weekend. Per usual, I seem to be supplying a good portion of mine. I don’t mind pulling from my extensive wardrobe. I know it will fit. I really haven’t changed size all that much in decades so I have stuff in my closet dating back to the 70s and 80s not to mention all the strange pieces I’ve collected over the years for various shows, especially Politically Incorrect. As I am playing yet another drunk with a flask in this show, I am happy to pay homage to PIC and Diane McNaron by using the flask I bought at her estate sale on stage. I am continuing my usual run of stage drunks, butlers, and aristocrats – this character being two out of the three.

I suppose I should say a word about Touch, the Helen Keller opera that had its world premiere with Opera Birmingham this past weekend. I had nothing to do with the actual production other than housing the pianist but I was the president of the board during most of the developmental period so I’ve been very interested in the process of seeing the show go from an idea to a fully staged work. I had seen it about a year ago in workshop where I noted some dramaturgical and musical issues that I thought needed addressing. I am pleased to say that the majority have been fixed in the opera’s current form and that the end result is musically lovely, and compelling, despite the familiarity of the characters of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. The opera deals with their later life, long after the water moment at the pump at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, starting with Helen’s graduation from Radcliffe and covering the next thirty or so years through Helen and Annie’s adult relationship, the men in their lives, and Helen’s emergence as writer and ultimately icon of the triumph of the human spirit. It’s the first time I’ve seen an opera in which the central character does not sing. Instead of Helen having a voice, a quarter of other actors are her inner voices. Alie B. Gorrie who played Helen, dominated the stage and production with a finely nuanced portrayal that was both funny and heart breaking and carried the show despite not singing a note. (Her one vocalization being one of the most effective moments). I still feel there’s a little tweaking here and there that could be done to make the piece stronger but we’ll see what the creators do. There is interest in other productions and I hope it has long life beyond this initial run. And if other companies are smart, they’ll hire Alie to recreate her role.

I got my annual statement on book sales. The Accidental Plague Diaries (all three volumes) continue to sell in dribs and drabs. It’s never going to make me rich but it seems to have found it’s own little corner among those who are interested in the pandemic and what it did to society. My publisher could use some more sales so if you haven’t bought a copy or recommended it to a friend yet, I would be most grateful. I could also use some Amazon or Goodreads ratings/reviews for those of you who are into such things. The thing I’m most curious about is who in Germany bought six copies. I’m wondering if an English Language bookshop ordered them or if some small book club in Ulm picked it at random. I have started on a new writing project which will involve essays on various aspects of the intersection between the aging Baby Boom and the health care system but I won’t really be able to think about that until after I get out of performance. Of course, I have a symphony concert in March (Brahms’ German Requiem) and a play I’m doing in April and I’m looking at auditioning for a musical that goes up in June but that’s all pretty typical.

I suppose the last major contributor to imbalance is the complete insanity currently present in American politics. Whether it’s the mass cruelty towards and bullying of the trans community (one of the smallest and least powerful groups in America), the complete undoing of border policy in order to make the current administration look bad at the behest of the opposition candidate (which seems to be devolving into threats of some sort of shooting war between the feds and state militias – I doubt it will come to that but if it were, I think the weekend warriors of the Proud Boys and their ilk, will be very unpleasantly surprised at what would happen when facing a professional well trained fighting force), or the barbaric execution which happened in this state earlier this evening. I’m sorry, but there was no excuse for that one and it’s a stain on the state and everyone in it that the officials we elected allowed it to proceed. My pastor was out front of the protests. I did not see the pastors of the churches of prosperity who purport to represent the message of Jesus anywhere in evidence. I suppose they were all too busy figuring out ways to bar the stranger, and continue to rally their congregants into voting for politicians who wish to continue to cut our meager social services, ban books and dumb down education in the name of protecting the children, and create more hell holes in our correctional system. Rant over. Maybe I should stop reading political news. (I refuse to watch it on TV). But withdrawing from the world won’t help. You can only change things through engagement.

I’m diving in over the weekend. I’ll be up for air the first weekend of February once the show is safely open.

My three day weekend has stretched into a fourth and looks good for a fifth due to weather conditions. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said ”Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it”. It’s bitterly cold outside with temps in the teens and there was a light dusting of snow earlier. All of that can be dealt with by dressing appropriately- the issue is icy roads. By several reports the hill onto which my garage exits resembles a ski jump with cars sliding down it as if in preparation to leap over temple Beth-El down at the bottom. Both the VA and UAB have cancelled everything today and for at least tomorrow morning which sits fine with me. I was supposed to be doing rural house calls today and the idea of spinning into a ditch in a VA car miles from anywhere in freezing temperatures is not my idea of a good time.

It may be a bit of an over reaction but it’s only been ten years since the great insta-ice storm of 2014 when every road in the metro area turned from asphalt to skating rink in about twenty minutes and people got stuck on freeways and in Walmarts and at school for several days. Memories of that will eventually fade and we’ll become a bit more blase to extreme weather but that process will probably take another decade or so. I didn’t have that much going on today and tomorrow so having a couple of extra days to putter around the house and play catch up isn’t really putting my life out of joint in any significant way. My guest suite is currently occupied by the pianist for Opera Birmingham’s production of the world premiere of Touch, an operatic treatment of the later lives of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan and the cancelling of rehearsals is causing more trouble for them as they’re losing a good deal of their tech time. It’s supposed to warm up starting tomorrow afternoon so there shouldn’t be any issues with performance but the lights may not be as focused as they should be and a set piece may come in the wrong way round due to lack of rehearsal.

Judging by the messages coming in to my electronic in boxes at both UAB and the VA, viral illness remains rampant in the community. The JN.1 strain of omicron variant Covid continues to spread like crazy and we’re losing about 250 people a day nationwide to infection. I remain more concerned about the unknown number falling ill and moving into the long Covid category and who will require significant health care resources going forward, not to mention the disruption in their personal and family lives. I still don’t think we have a very good handle on that one yet. I’ve been trying to track down estimates on costs of care, lost wages, impact on GDP and other such things but haven’t been able to find that data in an easily understandable format. Maybe nobody is really looking at it as they’re scared of what they’ll find. I’ve remained healthy despite my travels, rehearsals, and working in a health care environment. I wash my hands and I’ve had all my boosters. And I keep a mask in my back pocket and slip it on if I feel it’s warranted.

I’m in the middle of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon while lounging around the condo and working my way through my to do list. I had read the book several years ago and found it fascinating. Yet another story of the ugly underbelly of American history that has been kept from public view and which continues to have ripple effects today. (The Koch brothers’ fortune has its roots in exploitation of the Osage petrochemical dollars). I don’t know that Scorsese managed to really find a cinematic way in which to treat the material and it’s certainly way too long but I’ll try to find some energy to let MNM weigh in on it as she returns to her post. I figure if I can get that written and a brief assignment from my publisher regarding the possibility of a new book completed by the end of the week, then this enforced quietude due to arctic temperatures will have been a good thing in general.

Someone turned me on to a Substack entitled ‘Last Week in Collapse’ which is a news digest of all the horrible things going on world wide socially, politically and environmentally and which, when added up, seem to be pointing to the inevitable decline and fall of western civilization. I read through it out of curiosity as I have reached an age where I know there is little that I can do as an individual about any of it. I have a little bit of influence in the elder health area in some quarters but that’s about it. Empires rise, empires fall as George III sings. Maybe we’re in the unenviable position of living through a fall or interesting times as the old proverb/curse puts it. I sometimes wonder where the historians of the future will date the end of the American experiment to. The obvious answer would seem to be Trump but I think it’s earlier than that. I would go back to January 2001 when SCOTUS handed the presidency to Bush over Gore despite all evidence that Gore had actually won the Florida vote count. It’s been an accelerating downhill roll ever since other than a brief breather during some of the Obama years.

Going to go raid the pantry and rustle up something to eat. As I haven’t been cooking much recently, it’s likely to be an odd combination. As long as it’s vaguely nutritious and filling.

We’re into full rehearsal mode on Into the Woods and multiple fifteen hour days this week between work and rehearsal obligations are making me feel every one of my sixty-one years. Fortunately, I have only about fifteen minutes of stage time in a two and a half hour show so I have reasonable down time in rehearsal and can nod off when necessary and recharge for the next bit. It’s also fortunate that it’s not a dance show – just some movement in the big numbers that’s not beyond my limited dance skills. I have long joked that I am a graduate of the Terri Schiavo School of the Dance but, as I age, I’m starting to think it’s more Stephen Hawking. I’ve got a three day weekend and I’m pretty caught up with work stuff so I should be able to take a little down time so I can conserve my energy for next week.

I had a call with my publisher last night. The books continue to sell slowly but consistently. For some reason, copies are moving in Germany at the moment. I have no idea why. I’m still trying to figure out a way to do some no budget PR and see if I can raise their profile a bit. I’m using my social media, working my few connections and seeing if I can get those who cover LGBTQ writing to consider including it in their recommendations as I do talk about my two same sex marriages in them. Maybe I can get Moms For Liberty to try to ban them from Florida classrooms. If that were to happen, then I’ll know I’ve arrived.

Steve (my publisher, not late husband #1) has an idea for a new book using my original proposal of writing about the intersection of the aging Baby Boom and the health and senior care segments of society. His thoughts are not what I originally envisioned but it may be a more practical and quicker project as he has outlined it. I’m going to mull it over some and do some noodling around with ideas over the next few weeks. I’ll then likely post something and ask for some thoughts and feedback. More details to come as it becomes clearer in my mind. The Accidental Plague Diaries would never have been written without the comments and conversations people had with me about the material as I was writing them so I’ve come to trust all of you out there to help steer me in the right direction.

Making a brief detour into Covid, the numbers keep going up and it’s having real practical consequences. UAB was completely out of bed and emergency department capacity on Wednesday of this week. Was it due to Covid? That’s unclear as without the emergency to subsidize the collection and publication of data, it’s hard to really get a handle on things. It certainly seems to be due to respiratory illness in general. Influenza, Covid and RSV are all heavy hitters at the moment. RSV seems to have peaked and be tapering off, but the other two are definitely continuing to ascend. There is some evidence that the JN.1 variant of omicron which has rapidly become the dominant strain, is more infectious than other omicron strains, binding tighter to the ACE receptors of cells. I haven’t been able to find much about whether this is translating into increased virulence.

On the good news front, those who have kept up with their Covid boosters (which is a distinct minority) are much less likely to catch the disease this go round. (If you’re vaccinated and boosted, you generally have to be in close proximity with an infected person for something like six hours for transmission to occur. It’s much less than that for the unvaccinated). You are also about 70% less likely to develop long Covid after a case. So I continue to suggest that you keep up with those shots, especially if you are aging (like I am) or have significant chronic disease burden or immune deficiency. But I don’t argue the point. In the words of the hosts of keyboard warriors out there, ‘Do Your Own Research’. I just hope you do it at sites with actual science and not with sites full of propaganda masquerading as science. This lengthening time of exposure to transmit which seems to be a benefit of vaccinated populations means that you’re relatively well protected in normal social situations and activities which rarely last more than two to three hours. It’s best to be wary of close colleagues and might be reasonable to continue masking on long plane flights.

I haven’t written a movie column in quite some time. I’m trying to figure out why. Some of it has been lack of time and energy with all of the other things happening in life, but it’s more than that. Mrs. Norman Maine seems to awaken and go dormant on her own cycle. I can feel her stirring in the back of my brain so something may be forthcoming relatively soon. She’ll just have to explain her absence. It will have to be something other than cryogenic freezing this time as I can only use that once.

I don’t have to be at rehearsal until 11:30 tomorrow morning. I plan on sleeping in. The cats may have other ideas. If they’re too insistent too early, they will receive a free flying lesson.

Back to the grind tomorrow. It’s been a nice two weeks off but I have been told I have to start showing up again if I expect that nice direct deposit into my checking account next month. I have heard of this mythical state called ‘retirement’ where deposits show up without having to set alarms and get yourself out of bed but I’m starting to think that it’s some sort of fantasy. And so, because I still have a mortgage and other bills, showing up at the job remains a necessity. I am not looking forward to the next few days as I clean out all of the accumulated detritus from in boxes, both physical and electronic. At least next weekend is a three day one courtesy of MLK so I shouldn’t fall too far behind too quickly.

The end portion of the New York trip was uneventful. I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ with Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe. (Lindsay Mendez, the third lead was out but her understudy was sensational so I didn’t miss her). The show was well directed, finding the right balance between heart and bite, with a talented ensemble. I did have a few quibbles. I wanted a bit more from the physical production at Broadway prices (although a coup de theatre involving stars at the end of the show was lovely). The reduced orchestrations should have been jettisoned in favor of the originals. I will never agree with the jettisoning of the high school graduation bookends and the swap out of ‘Rich and Happy’ for ‘That Frank’ at the top of the show. I’m hoping the Sondheim estate eventually changes its mind on that one. The Hills of Tomorrow, the high school graduation song dropped when the high school scenes were dropped, is the musical foundation of the score as originally conceived. And every song that Franklin Shepard writes during the show is basically the same general structure and melodic line underscoring how as he sells out, his ability to create goes with it.

Merrily is a show that has always spoken to me because of my age. I was 19 when the show premiered in 1982 and really laying down my musical theater understanding as an undergraduate when the show opened…and closed. In fact, I was taking a course in American Musical Theater that quarter and the show and its failure were frequent topics of conversation. The original cast were the same age as I. I didn’t know any of them personally, but Liz Callaway had gone to high school with a friend and word would trickle through the grapevine about what was going on with the troubled production.

Modern theater audiences seem to have caught up with the backwards structure of the show and so that aspect no longer seems to be giving actors, directors, or viewers much difficulty. Perhaps the audience of 1981 wasn’t as able to deal with that and found it confusing. There’s also the issue of college age actors playing jaded middle aged types. Young actors can play young and they can usually play age. They have grave difficulty with middle age, however, and most college productions I have seen over the years of any work which relies on characters in their 40s and 50s flounders because of this. The second act of the cumulating with the three leads meeting on a roof top and singing their paean to youthful optimism, ‘Our Time’, makes me cry every time no matter what age the performers as it taps into my personal youth and all of the possibilities and how time and experience shaped and moved me in unpredictable ways, closing some doors, opening others, but making me, as a mature adult, someone young me would likely not recognize.

The drive back to Birmingham from New York was much less eventful than the drive up. The weather was fine and we were out of holiday traffic so nothing terribly untoward happened on the road to Columbia SC to drop off Frank or on the further back to Birmingham. I was back in plenty of time for my first staging rehearsal for ‘Into the Woods’. I don’t have a lot to do in the show (fine by me – I like small parts – you get to spend time creating with a group of talented people but you don’t have to tear your hair out trying to retain copious amounts of dialogue or come off stage at the end of the night feeling thoroughly drained) so I’m working out how I can maximize my material for best effect. Upstaging fellow performers is unfair but trying to steal a scene from them so they have to bring their A game and you all get better because of it is not.

Time for a spot of tea and a good book and early to bed so I’m well rested for the gazillion and one minor problems that have accumulated in my clinics in my absence.