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.

Dateline – New York, New York –

The trip up North is about to tie up loose ends and I hit the road back to the Southland tomorrow. But the time off from work still has nearly a week to run. I’m not due back until Monday the 8th. Which is just as well, as I may need a couple of days to recuperate from the city that never sleeps. Personally, I’ve been alternating between sleeping a lot and adding a nap days with run around and do it all days. So far so good. But on those run around days I’m starting to feel my age. Perhaps if I colored my hair…

What has happened since I last checked in? I had a day of Sondheim with Josh Groban in Sweeney Todd for the matinee (Annaleigh Ashford was out but Jenna de Waal was fabulous and I can’t say I’m sorry for that.). It remains one of my favorite pieces of theater and it was great to hear and see it in a Broadway size house with the full orchestrations. Groban sings it beautifully – not the scariest and most imposing of Sweeney’s but he has settled into the role nicely and he and Jenna had great chemistry in their scenes together. My only complaint with the supporting cast was the Toby who was, to my mind, too old for the role and they had to transpose keys way down for them. In group stuff where changing the key would have been tougher, he was singing down the octave. I particularly liked the foppish turn from Beadle Bamford (whose name I do not remember and I’m too lazy to get up and go check the playbill). There are plans afoot for another theater weekend this spring and, if so, I’ll come back and check it out with Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster who take over next month.

For the evening show, I went to Here We Are, Sondheim’s last work which is receiving an Off Broadway production at The Shed at Hudson Yards. Hudson Yards had not yet opened when I was last in New York so this was my first trip over to that part of the west side. It was lovely at night, all dolled up for Christmas with fairy lights everywhere. The Shed is devoted to modern and avant-garde works of all kinds and it was an appropriate venue. The theater, reached by ascending many escalators, is a large black box which can be configured for just about anything. The show was in 3/4 on a thrust stage. It’s based on a couple of Luis Bunuel films and is an ensemble piece with a sterling cast of eleven including Denis O’Hare, Bobby Canavale, Steven Pasquale, Micaela Diamond, and David Hyde-Pierce. In the first act, a group of idle rich bourgeoisie have difficulty finding brunch. In the second, they’re trapped inside an opulent room in a mansion while the end of the world may or may not be ending outside. The show is quirky, erudite, unexpected at times and only Sondheim and David Ives could possibly have written it. The score is most reminiscent of Sunday with riffs and melodic lines that build and recombine. It feels unfinished. Which it was as he was still working on it when he died.

New Years Eve and New Years Day were off from theater as I had no intention of being anywhere near Times Square and the theater district for that madhouse. The younger members of the extended party went down to the Battery for the fireworks over the harbor. The old folk stayed home and did a puzzle depicting Times Square. It remains unfinished but progress has been made. To celebrate the new year, I and Frank Thompson and Ginny Stahlman Crooks spent the latter evening at Marie’s Crisis singing show tunes. Frank brought the house down with Trouble (and that crowd knew the backup lines) and Ginny had a big diva moment with If He Walked Into My Life. We have been told to come back… and bring more friends.

I’ve been a bit melancholy the last few days. Some of it is New Year and the thoughts of what’s past and what’s to come and feeling a bit unmoored. Will this year bring retirement? Are the finances in place to allow that to happen? How to I replace the void of not working on a multi volume social history of the pandemic? As the world returns to normal, what should that mean for me? There’s also been a ton of memories, good and bad, flooding in of me, of Steve, of Tommy, and how we all intertwine in New York and with theater over the course of the last forty years. I know that when I get back, when work is in full force, and when I’m in rehearsal for Into the Woods that should all take care of itself. In the meantime, it’s off this evening to the last of the trifecta of Sondheim with Merrily We Roll Along with Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff.

Dateline: New York, New York

I know that I have been in radio silence the last few days; something in my brain has been telling me just unplug and live in the moment so I’ve not been doing the usual travel journal thing. Besides which, I’ve made any number of trips to Manhattan over the years and have likely exhausted my supply of New York City anecdotes. It’s been 36 years since my first trip – on the occasion for interviewing with some New York based residency programs. The one of which I liked was Cornell; and I ranked it highly but knew they would never take me. A cursory glance at their class statistics over the previous decade showed that they had only taken two residents from schools west of the Mississippi over the last ten years and I was pretty certain I was not going to be the third one, having been a somewhat indifferent medical student. No one at the University of Washington School of Medicine expected much out of me. But I was still the first member of my class to be appointed to a medical school faculty. The joys of tying oneself to underserved subject areas.

Christmas Day was pretty quiet. I slept in. Gave the kitties their Christmas treats (although they much prefer knocking pens off a table and chasing them around the room to any patent cat toy I’ve ever brought home). Spent the afternoon with my friend Holly and her family to get in a little of children showing off their Christmas gifts time. I do enjoy borrowing other peoples children occasionally. I suppose it’s why I continue to teach Sunday School at church. Also, being the one teacher without children in the program, I’m good at shaming the congreagation into volunteer jobs that need to be done.

On Boxing Day, Bill McMullen picked me up in his SUV and together we pointed the car towards points east and headed off into the rain. Traffic was light. Even Atlanta was freely moving. And we stopped in Columbia, South Carolina to pick up Frank Thompson continuing to dive up I-20 until it met I-95 where we made a left and headed to the North, spending the night in some wide spot in the road in Southern Virginia which had a Hampton Inn. We got up the next morning for the 7-8 hours of remaining drive time – and pulled into Manhattan nearly eleven hours later. The vile weather and holiday traffic combined to make the drive north one hell of a slog. But we made it and made it to our curtain time with five minutes to spare.

We were joined at the Belasco theater by David Pohler, Stephen Crooks Felis and Ginny Stahlman Crooks, reuniting six of the Alabama Seven from London (Kathy McMullen due to arrive the next day). The first show was ‘How to Dance in Ohio’ which is a musical, based on a true story, about a group of young people on the autism spectrum getting ready for a spring formal as part of social skills therapy). I had heard some mixed things about the show going in but was keeping an open mind. I ended up loving it. The subtext of the show is that people should be allowed to communicate their own stories in their own way, not through the lens of someone else’s worldview. And as the autistic characters are all played by performers who are themselves on the spectrum, there is a connection and an energy there that could not be replicated with better trained actors. The show has Heart that cannot be faked. I am hoping good word of mouth keeps them going for a while.

The next morning, I was up early, had breakfast with a friend at The Harvard Club in midtown and then wandered over through Times Square which was relatively quiet in the gray and the mist as the costumed characters don’t show up until about 10:30. I had nothing else on the schedule so I ran over to Lincoln Center and joined Frank for the family matinee of The Magic Flute. It’s the Julie Taymor production with the amazing puppeteering. Tommy and I had seen it on simulcast at the movies years ago but it was the first time for me to see it live. We were the first and second slaves in the Opera Birmingham production about a decade ago. I remember some of my chorus music but I can’t say that the plot makes any more sense in English than it does in the original German.

Lunch and some more wandering and then David and I went on to the evening show of the revival of Spamalot. It’s a show that requires a half dozen expert farceurs. They have them in the current cast. There’s not a wasted moment and every line of the script has been mined for jokes. And how can you hate a show that ends with an audience sing a long to ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’. I then broke one of my cardinal life rules about never driving in Manhattan by taking Bill’s car up to Hamilton Heights where David lives and the parking is free. I am proud to see that I made it up the whole length of the island from 20th street to 145th street without crashing the car or needing a Xanax. But I did collapse on returning back to the condo.

I slept for quite some time and did very little today. Until it was time for everyone to gather for dinner, having been joined by the McMullen junior generation (Tricia McMullen, Trevor McMullen and Lee Hedgepeth). Lovely Mexican dinner right off of Times Square with Darrien Hess as our waitperson). David and I then opted for Harmony as our show for the evening. Barry Manilow’s score is pretty darn good (except for that one obvious steal from ‘Ragtime’) and it’s expertly performed (and wonderful to see local theater kind Kate Wesler in her Broadway debut). The show has some inconsistencies of tone and relies a bit too much on a memory play narrator at times. It mines some of the same ground as ‘Cabaret’ but comes at it from a different angle. The design is pretty great. They’re finally figuring out what they can do with projections to add to a concept rather than detract.

I’ve been away from most of my Covid news sources but one thing I have heard is that morbidity and mortality numbers are continuing to increase as the JN. 1 variant continues to spread rapidly. It’s up to about 50% of cases since first being identified several months ago. And deaths are up to abou 2000 a week. They were under 400 a week prior to Thanksgiving. Wash your hands! Wear a mask where appropriate! Get your shots!

And so we reach another Christmastide. I’m not ready for it. Between work and rehearsal/performance obligations I’ve just not had the energy to do some of the things I had every intention of doing this year like put up a Christmas tree. I do have tomorrow morning free so I suppose I could schlepp down to the basement storeroom and pull decorations out. It’s not that I don’t have a choice of six trees down there. If I do put one up, I think I’ll put up Tommy’s Teddy Bear tree. The Teddy Bear was his symbol and he had quite the collection. Our traditional souvenir from our travels together was a Teddy Bear representing the city/country/region. He worked out a way to get them to sit on a Christmas tree and – voila. It’s actually a fairly quick assembly and looks impressive. Or maybe I’ll just download a photo of a tree and print it and stick it on the front window with Scotch tape. At least, if I do it, I will be liturgically correct. Christmas decorations are supposed to be put up on Christmas Eve and taken down on Epiphany.

I have more or less finished the work year. Everything is wrapped up for the VA until the second week of January. I still have a few things to deal with for UAB. I volunteered to do the call for the long holiday weekend so all of my colleagues with children and family obligations wouldn’t have that hanging over their heads. I’m also behind on progress notes and am steadily working my way through the backlog. They should all be done by Monday morning. Which is a good thing, as I am heading out for NYC on Tuesday. I have a Christmas Eve service to sing at church tomorrow late afternoon and I have a couple of ideas for Christmas day that I’m kicking around. Although there’s a part of me that sort of wants to hibernate. The loss of Tommy has fundamentally altered my relationship to the holidays as our marathon of holiday shows/church pageant/Messiah/family Christmas/annual open house was so much a part of who we were as a couple. It took the two of us to pull all of that off as we could support each other/cajole each other/fight with each other and give each other the energy necessary to cross the finish line. Alone, I just can’t do it.

Of course, the pandemic has completely upended my being able to lay down any new traditions for my single state. And retirement is going to do yet another major shift. I’m thinking that ultimately, some sort of travel at the holidays might end up being the best solution. Perhaps an exploration of the Christmasmarkts of Eastern Europe – or escaping the cold altogether with something in the Southern hemisphere. The pandemic is not exactly over, but it’s certainly in a very different place in terms of our societal relationship with the virus which is why I’m not writing about it nearly as much as I once did.

(The exotic Christmas Market of Cullman, Alabama, about an hour up the road)

Speaking of the pandemic, for those who do not follow public health news, the numbers continue to increase – both in terms of hospitalizations and in terms of presence of virus in wastewater samples. We have a new variant, still omicron, known as JN.1 which appears to spread more rapidly than some of the other omicrons we’ve had as it is more efficiently transmitted and clings tighter to the ACE receptor molecule once it enters the body. It will be the dominant strain by New Years. Does this mean much of anything? In theory, because of the tighter binding, long Covid symptoms might become more frequent but there’s no real way to know in advance. The booster that came out this past fall seems to be quite effective so, if you haven’t gotten it yet (and something like 85% of adults have not), you might give yourself a Christmas present down at your local CVS.

This will be my first trip to New York since the pandemic. I was last there in 2018. And it’s also my first trip during holiday season since 2004. I have a little bit of trepidation in going as I am well aware of how many people you have to share too little space with. I will pack a few masks. I’m not that worried about Covid as neither of the two cases I have had has been particularly severe. But urban America is having a banner year for all sorts of other respiratory viruses as we’re all making up for the lost time of the last few years and busily trading our biomes with each other. And I have a long tradition of getting one in January which usually morphs into bronchitis with a cough like a seal for six weeks. And I would rather not deliver my most famous line as ‘The closer to the family bark bark bark the closer to the wine’.

American cultural Christmas developed during a time when there was usually at least one and often more than one adults in the home who could do the baking and the decorating and the corralling of the overexcited children. Now, when most adults must work outside the home to survive, doing all of that stuff has to happen in many fewer hours. And no one can keep up. We’re fed these images of perfect holiday season through Hallmark movies and other cultural tropes and then we look around at our lives and feel inadequate as it doesn’t measure up. Perhaps its time for us to reevaluate the expectations for a new millennium.

As I’ve grown older, my favorite part of the holidays is Christmas Eve service. I’m not explicitly Christian so it really doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus, but rather the much earlier mythos of light and hope springing from darkness and how each new child, no matter how low they are on the social pecking order at birth, has the potential to be a savior in some way as they mature. And we celebrate this hope with music and traditional carols that have been sung generation after generation and singing those songs, at least for me, helps me feel connected and part of a much bigger story than I can ever comprehend. Angels We Have Heard On High dates to the 12th century. That’s nearly a millennium of ordinary people belting out ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo’ together – and I find magic in the community of choral singing. We need to do more of it.

It’s coming to the end of another Advent weekend and I am moving towards being caught up with life. Not completely… that will never happen… but I am at least done with everything that has to be finished before the next, and last work week for the year begins in the morning. I am hoping that the tendency of people not to want to go to the doctor continues as I feel in need of some R and R. I am going to get that starting on the 22nd when I can hang up my shingle until January the 8th. I am headed for NYC for a good bit of it- the gang who went to London for New Year’s last year is hitting another cultural capital this year- so if you’re NYC based and want to get together sometime between the 27th and the 3rd, drop me a line. I have made a deliberate decision to do minimal advance planning and scheduling and just let that week happen. Maybe I’ll see some shows. Maybe I’ll sleep fourteen hours a day and read a couple of good books. Maybe I’ll have them lock me in the Metropolitan Museum after hours so I can have a ‘From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler’ moment.

Seven Santas closed this afternoon with the matinee performance and another project has been put to bed. I really quite enjoyed this one. There’s something therapeutic about screaming in another actors face or going from despair to uncontrolled rage to sardonic laughter in about three minutes. Given the triggers written into the script for my character, Red, putting the show to bed is about as apt a metaphor as I could come up with. I’ll miss my other six Santas and Mrs. Claus as it was very much an ensemble show with each of us being an integral part of the structure and staging. All eight of us got along exceedingly well and had a blast working together to create the rather depraved humor of the piece. I won’t have too long to mourn theatrically, however, as my first rehearsal for Into The Woods is tomorrow evening. I finally received the full cast list and it’s very definitely split into the old guard, people with whom I’ve worked many times over the years, and the young uns who are up and coming and whom I am looking forward to getting to know better.

Respiratory illness is definitely continuing to spread locally. There’s been some Covid, but most of it is the crud. I continue to search for good information on what Covid is actually doing these days but the usual fragmentation of public health information that happens when the federal government is not involved in an active emergency situation stymies any easy digesting of the numbers. There’s also the overlay of antivaccine movement noise that tries to interpret issues in ways that favor their worldview whether that’s what the data actually say or not and you have to try to sift through that as well. Hospitalizations and deaths, while up, are not anywhere near where they have been in the past. But as I start to think about it, these are not the most useful metrics for this phase of the disease. Much more useful would be numbers that allow us to track Long Covid or post Covid complications with clotting or heart or neurologic issues in relatively young people that may have enormous bearings on total morbidity and mortality for society as time goes on. No one seems to be counting and reporting any of that in any sort of systematic way. No one can even agree on what Long Covid is and is not.

There are a couple of local physicians whom have set themselves up as specialists in Long Covid and vaccine injury. I imagine there are a few in every community who are seizing on this business opportunity. From what I can tell, they are preying on desperate people with promises based on therapies with no scientific data to back them. And selling all sorts of supplements out of their offices to boot. There’s an old saying in medicine. The A students become medical school faculty, the B students become good doctors, and the C students become millionaires. I was a B. I would not have become med school faculty i I had not chosen a field that was enormously underserved. If you come to me with signs and symptoms of Long Covid, I’m going to tell you what we know (not much), what we don’t know (a lot), and figure out a treatment plan with some rationale that will interdigitate with your other disease processes and who you are. I’m not referring you to a self styled specialist who seems to be motivated by profit.

There was a long article in today’s Washington Post (which I posted elsewhere) about one of the dirty little secrets of American health care – the Assisted Living industry. There are three basic levels of residential senior care – independent where you live as you please but where the community may offer services such as communal dining and housekeeping – assisted where you have staff to help you with things you cannot do for yourself safely such as bathe when you are wobbly on your feet (it gets subdivided in most states into regular and dementia/memory care) – and skilled nursing which provides those who need regular nursing attendance to care for their own bodies or who have major issues such as catheters and feeding tubes.

Most people assume that all of these are licensed and regulated in the same way. They are not. Skilled nursing, as it can be paid for with federal dollars (mainly through a state Medicaid program although Medicare does step in in certain limited situations to help someone get over the hump after illness or injury) is subject to intense federal regulation, similar to that which polices hospitals. There are more rules and regulations on skilled nursing facilities than practically any other industry in the country (including commercial aviation and nuclear power) and the feds have significant powers over a SNF in terms of fines and licensure. They don’t always exert those powers, but that’s another story. The up side is that there are regulatory teeth and the facilities and their operators understand this. The down side is that the RN is more likely to be doing paperwork to ensure better audit scores than actually providing any meaningful patient care.

Assisted living, however, is not regulated at all at the federal level as no federal dollars flow into them. (A state Medicaid program can pay for assisted living if it so chooses, but there are no requirements. This does not happen in Alabama.) It’s entirely up to the states. And the industry lobbies long and hard to prevent federal regulation and to keep state regulation cursory at best. ALF regulation is actually pretty good in Alabama. It’s one of the best states for oversight. As there are minimal public funds going into them, they are pretty much entirely private pay and generally attract the upper classes on the socioeconomic scale. The lower ones handle their elders at home as a fee of $5000-7500 a month is beyond their means.

What do you get for these costs? You will be told, especially for the demented, that you will get 24/7 supervisory care to prevent accident or wandering or any of the other major behavioral issues that make dementia patients difficult at home. They represent a safe alternative to being at home and getting into mischief when a broken brain makes an older adult do things that they believe are entirely correct (they often still think of themselves as healthy vibrant adults not in need of supervision) but which families and the world in general may look upon askance. There are promises of frequent checks, trained staff, nutritious meals etc. And there’s the money that goes into the furnishings in the public areas to instill a sense of security in families.

The Post article takes a deep dive into the thousands of patients that wander away from Assisted Living every year and the hundreds that have died from exposure or other misadventure as they cannot find their way back due to the disorientation that often accompanies dementia. It then goes into the consequences of these events (not much) and how they come to occur (understaffing, under trained staff, an emphasis on collection of monthly fees over actually providing care). And, as the federal government is not involved, when something goes drastically wrong, the legal remedies are somewhat limited. And in many cases, a clause limiting to binding arbitration is part of the admission documents.

I do a little medical legal work on the side. It’s how I get the money I give to local theater companies so don’t judge me too harshly. Doing this sort of thing has allowed me to peek behind the curtain when something has gone wrong and see how the long term care industry operates. It used to be a not for profit sector but no longer. It’s now mainly corporate chains hiding behind cozy local names with multiple interlocking companies used to shield each other from trouble. One company owns the building and another employs the nursing staff and a third runs the kitchen etc. A dogged plaintiff’s lawyer can cut through all of it but it can take years and most families aren’t cut out for the process. But when they are, you can finally get the budget sheets for the kitchen and find out that the allocation for meals per resident is just over four dollars a day. (That’s not the norm – that was something that came up in a case of adult failure to thrive and weight loss where the resident kept complaining to the family about the quality of the food.)

I encourage everyone to seek out the article and read it. Because the issues highlighted are about to get much, much worse with the aging of the Baby Boom. They have yet to really hit the dementia belt but that’s going to change within the next five years. What will those pressures bring? Federal regulation? Unlikely without federal dollars being involved. Improved state regulation? Industry trade groups will be able to outspend concerned citizens at every level. Probably just more sad stories and a decline in the number of existing beds if corporate America feels that the sector is going to become unprofitable. And then there’s the continued issue of lack of staffing. That’s not likely to improve anytime in the near future, especially with the current negative feelings towards immigration. Nursing aide is often the first step on the ladder for new immigrant women.

In the meantime, I am not trying to discourage anyone form using Assisted Living if it’s the appropriate solution to their family’s needs. But Caveat Emptor. Don’t make your decisions based on marketing materials and floral displays in the dining area. Ask around. I’m happy to give my impressions of local senior living communities. I’ve been in most of them, know many hard working and dedicated people who work in them, and listen to what patients and their families have to say about their experiences.

I should be writing this week’s incomplete progress notes but I really don’t feel like diving down that rabbit hole on this dreary gray afternoon and so I have the television playing old episodes of CSI Miami in the background and I’m playing catch up on various household things that have been neglected the last three weeks as my spare energies have been channeled into learning the six minute monologue and 45 minute scene that comprise my piece of Seven Santas. I am proud to say that I have forced all of those words into my brain and that they mainly come out at the right time and in the right order on stage. There are a couple of lines that I seem to drop routinely and I have no idea why I have such a block against them but my castmates have figured out which ones they are and there are plans in place to keep things on track when I screw up. We officially opened last night. The audience seemed to enjoy it. Although I’m not sure it’s the sort of play you enjoy as much as take in and cogitate on as it’s got some very astute political and sociological points to make in the trappings of mordant black comedy. Two more performances this weekend and three next, and then it’s on to Into the Woods, the next project in the queue.

We’re in that lull period of the work year which lasts from roughly Thanksgiving through MLK day. People have way too much on their plates so they tend not to schedule routine physician visits and all of those problems that generally require them to send multiple portal messages magically go on hiatus while there are other things to occupy the waking hours. Things take off like a rocket again in January, however, when the out of town kids come to visit the parents for the holidays and realize what has been covered up or minimized and they then start pushing their elders in to deal with the cognitive and physical changes that the out of towners recognize more than the in towners as the delta of chronic disease is big enough between visits to declare itself. I have two more work weeks, then two weeks off. I’ve taken the post Christmas holiday period the last two years so I probably won’t be able to take it next year. It will be someone else’s turn. Unless I retire in the interim.

Covid numbers continue to go up. Hospitalizations have been going up by about 10% every ten days or so throughout the fall. It’s not high enough to cause significant impacts on the system, but it is high enough to raise eyebrows on those who make it their business to follow public health trends. All of the deaths I’ve heard about the last few months have been anecdotal. They’ve all been relatively young and healthy people. I’m probably hearing about them because of this so it’s a skewed sample. I haven’t seen any scientifically sound data suggesting that mortality rates for serious infection have shifted significantly since the beginning of omicron two years ago.

There have been a couple of things of note. First, the CDC has a new nifty little tool that summarizes the wastewater surveillance results by region. It’s available at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/… and it’s a handy way of seeing what trends have been over the last few weeks and months. Second, immunization numbers for the most recent booster are pretty abysmal with fewer than 20% of adults having taken advantage of it. Some of that is messaging. Some of that is the end of the emergency and the federal government stepping out of distribution. Some of that is the residual follow out of the vaccine wars and a certain level of skepticism. And the third, and perhaps most important, data is coming out confirming that with every subsequent Covid infection, chances of developing long Covid symptoms increases, to the point that it rises to about 35% chance after a fourth infection. That’s enough to keep me heading off to the pharmacy for boosters as they become available. I have seen enough of long Covid to know that it’s not something I want.

I’m off to NYC for New Years. I plan to avoid Times Square on the evening of the 31st. That might have been fun at twenty or twenty five, but at sixty, it just seems nightmarish. It will be my first trip back since the pandemic. I haven’t decided what theater I will attend. I’m pretty caught up after two weeks in London this past year. The thing I would most like to see, the revival of Merrily We Roll Along, is priced astronomically so it’s pretty much out. I’ll make it up as I go along. The one thing I can say about theater is that it’s usually possible to get a single seat to even the most sold out show. You just can’t get two together. The gang that went to London last year is doing a different cultural capital together this year. Should be fun. And we’ve worked out how to do it on a budget… other than theatre tickets…

I think a nap before call time is in order. The cats have the right idea.