I’m sick. Now if you’ve been reading my musings for a while, you probably already reached that conclusion some time ago and are wondering why I am just now getting there myself. But I’m talking about the physical stuff. I started to develop cold symptoms on Wednesday which shifted into bronchitis by mid day on Thursday with full fledged laryngitis by Thursday evening. Fortunately, with a long weekend, I was able to spend most of the last couple of days trying to sleep it off, alternately dosing myself with DayQuil and NyQuil, my concoction of choice for such times. I am improving slowly, and should be more or less back in fighting strength by the time I get back to work on Tuesday morning. I had had some plans for the long weekend involving a little time away and a walk in the woods, but those have been dashed. I am here with my Kleenex, a couple of cats curled up beside me, some hot tea with a dollop of rum, and a bunch of films lined up on streaming.

Now that the holidays are over, I have been in touch with my editor regarding the future of the Accidental Plague Diaries. We have come to the decision that there will be one more volume in book form, covering America in the Age of Omicron (which sounds like something out of the Marvel Universe). We’ll launch into the editing process starting in February and should have it in shape by June and it should be out late summer/early fall. It will end with Joe Biden’s Sixty Minutes appearance announcing the end of the pandemic. We all know that wasn’t the end, but it’s a good marker for a change in thinking about the pandemic by society away from the reactive to the more contemplative of how do we live with this as part of our lives going forward. Once the last one is done, I suppose I’ll have to turn my attention to the next writing project. And we’ll have to get a Kindle version and an audiobook out there as well. And perhaps we’ll have to sell them as a boxed set, maybe with a premium? Accidental Plague Diary tea towels? Ginsu Knives?

So where are we with Covid? It felled a couple of celebrities at the Golden Globes award show. The new omicron variant XBB 1.5 is now up to somewhere between 40 and 50% of the infections in the US and remains highly transmissible. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear to be any more virulent than previous strains and vaccines continue to hold it at bay. It would be a really good time to get your bivalent omicron specific booster if you didn’t get it this past fall as it appears to have additional protection against both developing a new infection and lessening the duration and severity of the infection should you happen to get it. The mortality rate has ticked up some from about 350 deaths a day to about 550 deaths a day. As the majority of the deaths are in the elderly with significant chronic disease burden at baseline and not so much among the young and healthy as was happening in the past, society doesn’t seem to be as concerned as they were a year or so ago. Should we be? Covid has been the third leading cause of death in the US since it appeared and doesn’t look like it will be dropping out of the top five anytime soon. The current relatively low levels will have it come out with about double the numbers of breast cancer or prostate cancer in terms of total mortality.

In non-Covid news, I’m through the first week of rehearsals for Dearly Departed and it is coming together quite nicely. We should have no trouble having a show for y’all next month. I am in need of a tech type or two to design/run sound and lights so if anyone is interested or has a friend that might be interested, send them my way. It’s pretty basic. The lights are mainly of the up/down variety with a few isolated areas and the sound cues are mainly offstage noises of various stripes that can be done via a playlist. Most everything else is falling into place.

My headache is coming back so I’m going to end here and go make myself another cuppa and try to sleep again. This isn’t Covid but whatever virus it is, it’s unpleasant and I am decidedly ready for it to depart.

I’m two rehearsals in on Dearly Departed and it feels like the process is going well. The cast seem to be enjoying working together. I feel like I’m adequately prepped for rehearsal and we’ve been able to get two of the four big scenes up on their feet with minimal fuss. I was worried about directing as it’s been quite a while since I’ve done it and it’s been a number of decades since I’ve directed a non-musical. In some ways it’s easier, in others it’s harder as you have less bells and whistles to hide behind and you can’t turn things over to the music director or choreographer when you’ve hit a sticky spot.

It’s always been my practice to block on paper prior to rehearsal and to have the basic shape of the scene in my head before ever putting the actors on stage. I have a reasonable visual imagination for stage picture so I generally do OK but then, when I have the actors walk it, I notice all the things I hadn’t thought of before and the things I wish I had done differently and then I start second guessing myself and I have remind myself in my head that I know what I’m doing.

I’ve never taken a class in directing. I’ve learned by observing, doing, emulating, taking things from other skill sets, and avoiding things that other directors have done in the rehearsal room which I, as a performer, have found unhelpful. I have no idea if I’m any good at it or not. The shows I have directed in recent years have turned out OK but I don’t know how much of that has been me and how much has been talented casts and creative teams. And then there’s Tommy. The only other two shows I’ve directed in the Birmingham phase of my life were collaborations with Tommy, me as director and he as producer. Tommy was a demanding colleague, especially of me. He knew what I was capable of and would not let me rest until I had it done. I would sit at the dining room table with a set floor plan and my bunches of colored pom poms representing various characters, maneuvering them in and out of doors and up and down levels and he would make sure those ideas were formalized and legible on paper before bed. I don’t have him here on this project to keep me focused. I worry about that. Will I be able to do the same thing without his energy?

I just hope we keep moving forward at a proper pace and we don’t have anything that knocks the production for a loop such as a Covid outbreak in the cast. Covid numbers locally appear to be relatively stable. I hear about new cases routinely, but my patients or acquaintances that are falling ill aren’t getting terribly sick and are pretty much back on their feet within a day or two. The current recommendations remain five days quarantine and five days masking after a positive test even if you’re feeling fine. The local ERs are melting down with excess patients again but the issue doesn’t appear to be Covid. There are some cases of course, but the numbers of inpatients aren’t appreciably higher than they were this past fall. It seems instead to be the cumulative effect of pandemic changes on the emergency medical system that are leading to an inability of the system to function as designed. The departure of clinical folk to safer, less stressful jobs has led to short staffing. The wholesale retirement of senior clinicians means those most able to work quickly through the complexities of patient care on missing. Certain specialists are in such short supply that the ability to get the testing and care necessary in a timely fashion has ground to a halt. The receiving institutions for the ill such as rehabilitation centers and nursing homes are so short staffed that they can’t admit, leaving those ready for discharge, but not for independence at home, languishing in inpatient beds, blocking them from being used by new admissions, leaving them hanging out in the emergency department or some hallway as there is nowhere else for them to go.

The acute phase of the pandemic may be over and my Accidental Plague Diaries may be morphing into something new and different, but the effects of the coronavirus are going to continue to tear at our society for years. Today, I heard of a friends child who may have permanent speech issues as their impaired hearing could not be treated during the pandemic as no pediatric ENT would see them in person during a crucial year for speech development. I heard about an acquaintance with newly diagnosed colon cancer who was at risk and whom had had their colonoscopy postponed for three years. I had to deal with a patient on a house call who had had nothing to eat or drink for a day or so as he was unable to get himself out of bed and there were no staff in his senior facility available to assist him. None of these are especially noteworthy on an international level, but they mean the world to the families involved. There’s also the butterfly effect. We cannot begin to know the outward ripples from each of these small issues that the pandemic has brought to bear.

The new congressional term is beginning. Per usual, the lunatics are running the asylum; perhaps a bit more than in the past. I can’t help but wonder what the pandemic and the political battles over public health are going to do to shape governance for the next few years. How will all of this determine what rises to the top in terms of new legislation? Will the needs of the diva egos of certain congresspeople trump common sense? What happens if a new mutation makes our vaccines and relative immunity useless? The currently spreading omicron variant in the Northeast, xbb 1.5, is spreading so quickly and appears to be so much more contagious than the previous variants, it’s been nicknamed The Kraken. It’s gone from about 2% to 40% of cases in the area over roughly three weeks. It’s not here in the Deep South yet but it’s coming. It doesn’t appear to be more virulent, but monoclonal antibodies are ineffective against it. (Paxlovid still works). Vaccines and natural immunity appear to be holding the line. If you still haven’t gotten a vaccine, be prepared to fall ill due to its R0 which seems to be somewhere between 5-10.

With my luck it’ll get to Birmingham and the set of Dearly Departed round about tech week.

Dateline – Birmingham, Alabama

Sorry about the delayed update on the last piece of the UK trip but I was tired after a long double show day on Tuesday and Wednesday turned into an interminable travel day of some twenty-five hours between the London hotel and my Birmingham condo so I am only just surfacing now with enough energy and functioning neurons to be able to string a coherent sentence together. I’ll bring you all up to date today and then I’m likely to be dormant for a few days while I figure out which end is up, what time zone I’m in, and how to piece together all of the crazy pieces of my life.

On Tuesday morning, David Pohler and I got up, breakfasted and under way across town to The Tower of London. Our very smart guide suggested that we get there within a half hour or so of opening at 9 am and that we make a beeline for the jewel house. We followed his advice, tubed from the west suburbs to the east end, were on the Tower grounds about 9:15 and in to see the crown jewels by 9:20 as no queue had yet formed. By 10 am, the line was significant and was somewhere between 40 and 75 minutes the rest of the day so here’s your travel tip of the day. If you want to see the diamonds and the gold, go early. St. Edwards’ Crown, which is used to crown the monarch as it’s being prepared for Charles III’s coronation in a couple of months. These are working pieces after all. The rest of the sparkle was all very much there. I’ve been to the Tower several times before but I’ve always enjoyed letting my mind drift back over a thousand years of history and who was walking which halls when. They’ve redone a lot since my last trip fifteen years ago including opening up some new apartments from the 13th century in the Wakefield Tower which I found quite interesting.

Then we took one of the river ferries across the Thames to the south bank and the Globe Theater. Those who recall their theatrical history know that Shakespeare’s Globe burned in the early 17th century when one of the cannons being used in a performance of Henry VIII malfunctioned and set the place on fire. The current Globe is a loving recreation as close to the original site as they could put it. As the Globe was open air (no theatrical lighting…), it’s not very practical to stage shows in the winter months so there is a second theater, The Wanamaker (after Sam Wanamaker, the actor who spearheaded to recreation of The Globe project) which is indoors and uses the same sorts of proportions that an indoor court theater of the Elizabethan period would have had. Small, intimate, the audience seated on benches in three tiers, and best of all, lit by candlelight as would have been done back in the day.

The play was Henry V. A company of six men and four women in modern dress concentrating on delivering the language clearly. No major technical effects (although an upstage drape rises to reveal a silvered wall when we get to the battle scenes). Some very interesting interpretations – casting Orleans and Prince Louis with opposite gendered actors gives that relationship new meaning and depth; the princess’ translation scene played for fear and highlighting her lack of autonomy over the usual comedy. I quite liked it.

After the Shakespeare, the five of us who had attended wandered the south bank and stopped in at a temporary holiday bar devoted to curling. I had a cocktail. I did not play with the curling stones. David and I then bid adieu to the rest, crossed the Golden Jubilee footbridge to Charing Cross station and to The Kit Kat Club (The Playhouse Theater) and the most recent revival of Cabaret. We were a bit early so we ended up being the first in. You enter throgh a rear service door and down through maintenance corridors hung with beads as the staff welcomes you to the Kit Kat, hands you a shot of schnapps to chug, and the lighting is mood and haze hangs around. You emerge in a bar. The Kit Kat performers are starting to warm up, the band is playing jazz. And then it’s upstairs to a second bar with charcoal drawing murals a la Schiele or Grosz on the walls. The Kit Kats are dancing on the bar and hanging from the ceiling. Up to a third bar for champagne and charcuterie while waiting for the house to open. Then into the theater for more champagne and light supper before the show begins. The interior has been completely renovated for theater in the round. The stalls are now cabaret tables. A second set of stall sits with its lights and telephones where upstage and backstage would normally be and the dress circle continues fully around in the fly space. The drum rolls. black out. The lights are up on a blond MC in a silly little party hat who has appeared out of nowhere center stage and we’re off.

Most of you know that Cabaret has a certain significance in my life from playing Herr Schultz twice to my late life performing career beginning with the Politically Incorrect Cabaret Ansager who owes a good deal to Joel Grey. It’s a show I have seen over and over again. Sometimes done well, sometimes not. This version is the same script as the Studio 54 production with Alan Cumming. It’s inventively staged, hits the right political points and does some things with the finale which are new and different and which are scary in a completely different way than the usual Nazi tropes.

Back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep before having to be up at 5 AM London time to catch the car for Heathrow. Heathrow was packed. For some reason we were booked back to Atlanta via Amsterdam which meant a quick flight to Schipoul and sitting around for hours so we didn’t board the transatlantic flight until some nine hours after first hitting an airport and, as it was a smaller plane, about nine and a half hours to Atlanta. And then having to get through all the usual immigration and customs and on to a Birmingham flight. I hit my condo roughly twenty five hours after leaving the hotel in London. I have rarely been so happy to see my bed when that was all finally over.

Here endeth the London travel diary. I have no idea what’s going to come next in this space. The Plague Diaries are also pretty much finished and I haven’t figured out what I should be writing about going forward. My next big project is directing a play which I have not done for some years. I may discuss my process for approaching that. I may write some sample chapters for a couple of pieces of fiction swirling around my head. Something will make itself known and demand to be let out. It usually does. In the meantime, I’m going to bed early.

Dateline: London, UK

And now on to the important part of any trip to London, cramming in as many West End shows as possible given the vagaries of ticket availability, holiday scheduling and the like. Over the years I have seen Lena Hone, Rex Harrison, the original never replicated staging of Starlight Express, the original production of Noises Off, Les Miz, the musical version of The Lord of the Rings, and various other productions – both exceptionally good and of the ‘what were they thinking variety’. Today and tomorrow are both two show days before packing up my bags and winging my way back across the pond to some semblance of my normal life. I need another week here. Fortunately, that’s already scheduled and is due to happen at a time when the weather is likely to be a bit better.

Prior to curtain, up and breakfasted and then headed to Buckingham Palace to watch the ritual of the Changing of the Guard. Large crowd, fancy medieval costumes, and for reasons that surpass understanding, the Horse Guards band playing ‘Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend’. I looked at David Pohler quizzically asking ‘is that what I think it is’ before we both started singing along. Any other show queens in the crowd would have gotten it but it seems to have flown over the heads of most of those assembled. I could not quite understand the choice (the piece immediately prior was Non Piu Andrai from The Marriage of Figaro which was also a bit odd given its plot function in the opera). I surmise a music director with a cheeky sense of humor or some political points to make whose superiors aren’t smart enough to get it.

From there, David and I had a few hours to kill so we headed over to Mme Tussaud’s . I had not been there for some years. It’s expanded and taken over the planetarium building next door as well as its traditional headquarters. I was disappointed that most of the historical figures from the 18th century that she sculpted from life (Ben Franklin, Voltaire) were not on display as they have been in the past, replaced by the likes of the Kardashians and Taylor Swift. But it was still good fun and we took lots of pictures. I’ve always wanted to have breakfast with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly.

We then marched from Marylebone to the West End for our matinee. It was a bit longer distance than I had calculated so we had to race walk the last half mile or so but we arrived at the theater with five minutes to spare to take in the new musical version of Back to the Future. I booked tickets as I was interested in the stage craft, not because I thought that was a property that called out for musicalization. It’s supposed to arrive in NYC this summer at The Winter Garden. It needs a bit of work if it’s going to succeed. The score is pedestrian – the few musical bits interpolated from the film (The Power of Love, Johnny B. Goode) being much stronger than any of the new material. The lyrics are downright clunky – a myopia/utopia/hopin’ ya rhyme made me audibly groan causing the family in front of me to turn around and stare at me in disapproval. The first act has a number of completely unnecessary musical numbers like a big gospel production number for Goldie Wilson (the African-American guy in the diner who ends up as mayor), a minor character who has absolutely no bearing on the plot. There’s also a big song for the father when he’s being a peeping tom on the mother that’s a complete misfire. It’s no ‘Someone in a Tree’. The second act is better structured and paced and redeems the show which also ends with an impressive coup de theatre that I’m still puzzling out how they did.

Met up with others of the Alabama gang for a pub dinner in Covent Garden and then on to our second show, the new stage version of The Life of Pi. This was a triumph of staging with the animal puppetry being absolutely stunning and seamlessly integrating the animal and human characters. The basic design concept of the animals was driftwood sculpture fitting in to the sea setting of most of the story. It has not yet come to New York, but when it does, it’s very definitely worth seeing. I’ve never been terribly fond of either the book or the film but this production is making me rethink my relationship with the material.

And so, as Samuel Pepys says, to bed… One more full day before this week draws to a close.

Dateline: London, UK

Happy New Year! I suppose. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions or go for New Year, New Me or any of the other usual cliches as I have found through my life that things evolve more quickly than one might expect and whatever you might think you’re going to have happening in June, it usually ends up being something completely different. I have nothing against those who do such things – it’s just not me.

I did not write an update last night as it was New Years Eve and I allowed myself to indulge a bit in the grape. Our group, joined with other groups through the same travel company, took over an Argentine restaurant in the City called Gaucho and were fed an excellent steak dinner with free flowing wine and champagne. I’m not sure that we were supposed to get as much as we did (we had only been promised two glasses of wine and a glass of champagne at midnight) but the restaurant staff kept pouring off the special order that had been brought in for our group. I ended up with five glasses of wine and two of champagne with is about three times as much as I usually drink these days. I remained vertical and did not have to be carried to the bus at one in the morning but there was no hope of my being able to string words together in a coherent fashion.

Besides over imbibing, yesterday and today were relatively slow days with the ability to sleep in for the morning. Yesterday, after a leisurely arising, David Pohler and I headed off to the east side of the city where we had not yet done any exploring. We walked around Tower Bridge, The Tower of London (planning on going back and going in on Tuesday), and then through the city to St. Paul’s and down across the wibbly-wobbly Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern and the Globe theater. When that was done, it was time to head to the West End for a matinee of the Aaron Sorkin adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird with Matthew Modine as Atticus Finch. It was fascinating as an adopted Alabamian to see it with a British audience and to see what parts of the story they reacted to. We both loved the production. The adaptation is a much more interesting play than previous versions as it does not try to tell the story in a linear fashion. It weaves back and forth in time, trimming out some of the secondary characters to focus on the central themes that are all brought out in the trial. It’s currently touring the US. If it comes close to you, it’s worth seeing.

Today, after sleeping off the wine (fortunately no hangover), we had a leisurely brunch and then all seven of the Alabama contingent went off together for a Shakespeare/Dickens walking tour taking in various sites important in both of their lives (most of the original buildings long since destroyed due to either the Great Fire of London or the Blitz). I’ve done a number of walking tours through the company London Walks over the years and I highly recommend them if you’re in town. Our guide, Steven (who refused to give his surname) was obviously a Shakespearean actor at some time in his life and had the various speeches down pat. I impressed him by knowing the answers to most of his trivia questions. The result of an expensive education and an inquiring mind. From there, a quick race across town to The London Eye where we spent thirty five minutes being hoisted gently up in the air for views up and down the Thames. The day finished with a pub dinner of chicken schnitzel and chips. Two more days here, both double theater days with a little sightseeing around the edges…

This is my fourth trip in forty years to London. I have a jumble of memories as I walk the streets. That’s the restaurant in which I had lunch with Tommy in 2007. That’s the theater I saw Bombay Dreams in with Lynn in 2002. That’s the spot from which I first saw the parliament buildings and Big Ben. It’s the same city, but in other ways completely different – cleaner, more prosperous, more cosmopolitan, more energetic. What’s interesting this time is that my next visit to London is already planned and coming up in six months. There’s a coronation between the two visits so I imagine that when I’m back in June, the city will be fully spruced up as it’s only going to be four weeks after the big event. I’m not worried about anything I miss this time around, I’ll pick it up this summer. And the weather is going to be a good deal better. Hopefully new Covid variants will not cause difficulties.

Dateline – Stonehenge, Salisbury and London, UK

Today it was time for a trip to the West Country. Up early, breakfast, and on to the motorcoach through the west suburbs of London and eventually out of the metropolis and into the rolling, hills, downs and copses of Wiltshire. After about an hour and three quarters, the circle of monoliths known as Stonehenge appeared, looming out of the mists on the right side of the motorway. We hit the coach park, pulled on our rain gear (drizzly, blowing and a good ten degrees colder than central London), and shuttled up to the venerable circle. I’ve seen pictures for decades but had never seen it in person. In some ways, it seems a bit smaller than one might imagine, but in others, when considering how neolithic peoples of five millennia ago had to drag the stones for dozens of miles from their quarry sites it seems enormous.

As I have aged and become a bigger believer in the power of narrative and ritual, and connection to both previous and future generations, I think the monument means a good deal more to me now than it would have if I had wandered around it on my first trip to England nearly forty years ago. The generations of people that needed to be involved in the planning, the erection, the support of the builders, the still somewhat mysterious purposes that drew people to that site for thousands of years, reworking the placement of stones according to their seasonal calendar. It may have been a blustery day but it felt just right being out there on the grass, ignoring the other tourists and reaching back in time. I’m sure ancestors of mine were involved. I’m about 100% British genetically. Who knows if owe my existence to some chance meeting on the building project?

From Stonehenge, off to the nearby town of Salisbury, a midsize market town for lunch. (Fish and chips in a traditional pub accompanied by hot mulled wine to get the chill out of my bones from standing out in the wind and the rain for an hour or so). The town is prosperous, full of medieval and Tudor period buildings still functioning as various businesses, and very walkable. The centerpiece of town is Salisbury cathedral, with it’s spire of over 400 feet and the tallest building in Britain until the 1960s. It looks like every Constable painting you’ve ever seen and is one of the most uniform of early gothic cathedrals as it was built in the 13th century in less than forty years, unlike the usual two to three century building plan that most of them went through. The interior is light and airy as most of the windows are clear rather than stained glass. It has a clock which has been working continually since 1386, predating dials and numbers, and which is still wound every night. It also has one of four extant copies of the original Magna Carta which I could not read, even with my four years of high school Latin.

We got back to town around dinner time and most of the gang got together and went over to Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper’s old stomping grounds for an Indian food dinner in Brick Lane. Fun fact. One of my great great uncles was a coroner on the Ripper case. Then some wandering around looking at Christmas lights, a night cap and so to bed. No need for an early start in the morning so I get to sleep in a bit. I’m not feeling overly tired as I napped in the bus back from Sailsbury and got a second wind.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the Covid statistics for the UK. It has roughly 1/7 the population of the USA but its current rates are roughly 1/15 those of the US so they’re running about 50% of what we’re running. Deaths remain relatively low other than amongst the oldest and most frail. Currently, London is jammed and I’ve had to hold my breath and squeeze to get on the tube a few times but I figure it’s spreading less rapidly here than at home. What’s the difference? If I had to guess it’s because 2/3 of Britons have had the fall bivalent booster against omicron. It’s less than 20% in the USA.

Europe is not where the real questions are going to be for the next few months. Those are going to come from China. For the last three years, it had been running a zero Covid policy, locking down any city or neighborhood where cases were spreading. This past month, they’ve reversed (after noisy public protests) and are basically no longer monitoring the population at all, stopping all mitigation measures, and no longer even collecting data on cases. As they were never that great at getting their population, especially their elderly vaccinated, it’s now spreading like wildfire through a huge and vulnerable population. Their health system is being overwhelmed worse than ours was that first terrible year. It’s a perfect storm for creation of new variants. And if they do arise, they will come. We shall see…

Keep those hands washed before heading out for New Years Eve. And stay home if you feel unwell…

Dateline – London, UK

Day two of the trip dawned a few degrees colder but a good deal clearer this morning. After a breakfast, with passable eggs benedict and without baked beans, it was time to hop on the bus for a quick guided tour of the city (covering a good deal of the same ground walked yesterday) made entertaining by a rather witty tour guide who eventually dropped us off at Trafalgar Square as we had not opted for the days extension to Windsor Castle. After some conferring the Alabama Theater Seven split up and went various ways. David Pohler and I headed down Whitehall and toured Churchill’s underground war cabinet rooms (a place to which I had never been) and the small Churchill museum attached. The relatively untouched interiors of the various offices which were rapidly abandoned with the end of the war in 1945 were fascinating – a combination of spartan efficiency and attempts of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances to make things just a little more cheery. I knew the broad outlines of Churchill’s pre World War II career but it was interesting to see them filled out in some detail in the various exhibits. David and I decided our favorite was his burgundy velvet romper. The man had style.

Then, as we still had a few more hours before meeting Kathy McMullen and Bill McMullen for dinner, we wandered back to Westminster Abbey and headed inside. I had been there several times before but it was David’s first time to explore the various royal tombs, Poet’s Corner, 13th century architecture, and the various royal tchotchkes in the gift shop. An added bonus was the choir rehearsing for the Evensong service later in the day. Choir rehearsals are pretty much the same the world over but I can’t say I’ve ever participated in one inside a major tourist attraction in the middle of the day.

We walked back to Covent Garden and met up for chicken biryani and a couple of gimlets at a very good Indian restaurant before departing for our first night of theater. For David and I, it was the long running production of The Woman in Black. I of course have often heard of it but had never seen it (although I had seen the Daniel Radcliffe film version some years ago about which I remembered next to nothing). It’s extremely effective relying on two versatile actors, some simple visual effects, some sharp sound cues and audience imagination to create a chilling tale with a number of jump scares. Then into the crush of the Leicester Square tube station to head back to the hotel.

This is my fourth trip to London. I’ve seen a lot – both in the city and in the theaters. It’s changed some from my first trip nearly forty years ago. It feels cleaner, richer, and more embracing of the full panoply of human experience than it used to. I suppose this is due to the huge shifts in population to more cosmopolitan demographics over the last few decades thanks to immigration from Commonwealth nations and the European Union. And I suppose it’s a reaction to this by the smaller towns and countryside that led to Brexit. I like what it has become. It feels safe and tolerant and vital and full of a young energy that didn’t use to exist there.

The city has definitely decided that the pandemic is over. I rarely see masks, no matter how crowded the underground and there’s none of the checking of vaccination documents and Covid testing that was so prevalent on my last trip to Europe fifteen months ago. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not a good thing. It is what it is and we all have to deal with whatever human behavioral changes will bring when mixed with viral replication. I hope I don’t come back with Covid as I did a year ago the last time I traveled with David. But if I do, I’ll deal. Just like I usually do.

Dateline – London, United Kingdom

After being delayed for a year by Covid, specifically the omicron surge of last New Year, the long promised and looked forward journey to London for the New Year has begun. The seven intrepid folk whose common denominator is a background in Birmingham theater circles have all made their way by various routes and redeyes to reunite at the Dorsett Hotel in Shepherd’s Bush. (Holland Park I hear some of you Absolutely Fabulous fans shriek in unison but this is definitely Shepherd’s Bush as the hotel fronts on the Shepherd’s Bush Green on Uxbridge Road.

My personal journey was rather uneventful. Despite the subfreezing temperatures of this week and the complete and utter meltdown of Southwest Airlines, my flight from Birmingham was on time and a reasonable 11 AM hour so I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and stumble blearily through the concourses of Birmingham’s Shuttlesworth International Airport. (A misnomer as I don’t believe an international flight has either departed or landed in the quarter century I’ve been in residence in Aabama.) I met up with old friends, the McMullens who are the other folk still in the Birmingham area and we passed a pleasant afternoon catching up while waiting through a four hour lay over in Atlanta.

That flight wasn’t quite as smooth. I had a prognostication of bad juju when I was stuck on the jetway behind a very zaftig lady who’s idea of proper travel attire was skin tight leggings in a flesh tone so I felt like I was staring at her unclothed derriere for the ten minutes it took to get down the jetway and on to the plane. The flight was delayed an hour for little things like ground crew carrying paperwork away with them and someone having to run fetch it back. But we did eventually take off. And I found myself the only passenger in my row of three seats so I was able to stretch out and doze off and on as we winged our way east.

Deplaning was uneventful at Heathrow although there were still signs of recent baggage handler strikes. There were. piles of luggage standing around in the baggage claim area. The handlers had refused to unload it when the planes landed. It was unloaded some days later, and stacked. Where it has been sitting for some time until the airlines can figure out how to reunite it with passengers long since scattered. I imagine some of them will eventually end up in Scottsboro, Alabama – home of the only thrift store specializing in unclaimed airline luggage.

The weather was pure Seattle when I emerged from the terminal. High forties, gloomy and intermittent showers. A nice suburban was waiting to ferry us from the airport to the hotel as we all straggled in from our flights over the next few hours. First small disaster was finding that I had packed by European plug adapters rather than my British ones. Fortunately the hotel is two blocks away from the biggest shopping mall in the British Isles and that problem was quickly fixed by a trip to Boots, the chemists. Then, as it was still only noon, on to the Underground and off to Central London to do some walking and reacquainting of self with surroundings. This is my fourth trip to London and I know it fairly well but it never hurts to spend some time getting ones bearings again. So walk we did. Oxford Circus to Picadilly, Picadilly to Leicester Square, Leicester Square to Trafalgar. Then down to parliament, the Embakment, down the Mall past Buckingham Palace and a stop at Harrod’s and the food halls before retuning fro nine and a half miles of rambling.

Some dinner and so to bed early, thoroughly warn out to try to sleep my way into the correct time zone. We shall see how I am in the morning.

It’s Christmas Eve again. It rolls around every year around about December 24th whether I’m prepared for it or not. I’m a bit ambivalent about Christmas these days. I think it’s because I’ve had so many wrenching life changes so I don’t feel a lot of continuity in the holiday. And, at least to me, one of the most important reasons for holidays is for there to be a sameness, a uniformity, a tradition that carries on year to year so that we can feel connected to both past generations and those generations yet to come. I had one set of customs with my family of origin, but those have morphed over the years and, as I only make it home for Christmas every few years, most of those changes have happened without my being present for the decisions that have caused them to be implemented. Steve and I developed a different set during our years together. And then Tommy and I developed a completely different set. I haven’t yet figured out what I need to do to replace all of those with something that’s uniquely Andy.

What all of these erratic turns in life has gotten me is bin after bin of Christmas stuff in storage. Decorations bought for different houses and different tastes and different stages of life. No matter how much of it I get rid of or donate to theater companies needing stuff for holiday season shows, I always seem to have more. It breeds like rabbits in the corners and every time I venture down to storage, I find another bin filled with tinsel and baubles of various colors. It doesn’t help that both late husbands were very visual people and fond of holiday decorating. With thirty years between them, I’ve learned a trick or two myself and can put up all sorts of themed trees with a modicum of effort. I just wasn’t able to muster up the energy to do more than my music tree in the living room this year.

For Christmas 2020, the shut down Christmas and my first holiday season in the condo, I hauled all the boxes out and figured out how to put up six trees plus various other decorations. There were no holiday parties or performances that year so I had to content myself with something else. Decking the halls was it. I had a few other people in my bubble so I did have some help getting it all up and in place. I did very little last year as the omicron surge wiped out some plans and allowed me to unexpectedly go home to Seattle for a few days. This year will probably become the norm. One tree, the mantle, a few wreaths… We shall see. If I retire in the next few years, I may make a project of sorting all of the accumulated Christmas crap in new ways and come up with some completely new themed trees of some sort without having to actually buy anything new. I have boxes containing ornaments that haven’t seen the light of day for several decades.

Steve’s parents, especially his mother, grew up poor in rural Indiana. When they escaped the Midwest for Southern California in the early 50s, his mother used her post war prosperity to make beaded silk Christmas ornaments all through the year. Steve inherited several hundred of them, each representing many hours of her labor. We used them on our trees all through our time together. The Christmas after his death, I broke out the box in which they were stored each in their own little baggie. In the bag with his favorite one was a little note from him. ‘Andy – this is the only one I want you to keep. Love, Steve’. I took him at his word. I sent sets to his mother’s sister and cousins. I gave a set to each of my siblings and cousins. I still had plenty left that I used for a few years until I heard from Steve’s long lost niece. I sent her the remainder other than the one he had picked out for me. It’s on the tree in the living room and will always be part of whatever tree I have.

Tommy adored decorating for Christmas. He didn’t like the gift giving and commercialization of Christmas but he was all about holiday entertaining and holiday music. To him, Christmas was about the presence of others and showing them that they were important by feeding them. The first Christmas we had together after he moved in, he went whole hog insisting on the purchasing of a number of trees and swaths of garland. We began our traditions of Christmas Eve dinner and stockings for his family and our soon to become legendary Sunday after Christmas holiday open house. Those last few years, I don’t see how we made it through December. Getting the house ready, family dinner, Messiah with the symphony, prepping and producing the children’s pageant at church, holiday open house, Christmas Eve service. December was a marathon towards a New Years finish line. And then there was the year we were having the house painted in the middle of it and had to do a significant part of it from an extended stay hotel room…

I went to Christmas Eve candlelight service at church this evening. I’m sort of expected to show up when the choir is singing. I’ve always liked Christmas Eve carol services in any denomination. The Congregationalist in which I grew up, the UU to which I now belong. The Methodist and Episcopalian I have attended at various times. There’s something about singing carols that have been sung for centuries by people with the same general hopes and fears that I have that helps me feel grounded in human experience and connected with the world. I’m not especially religious but the nativity with its themes of light and hope in the darkest of times and that new life always brings with it a hope of salvation speaks to my brain on a very primitive level. We need that myth of hope, especially in the times in which we find ourselves.

Tonight’s service was uneventful. The choir sounded reasonable. We’re actually very good for an unauditioned choir without any ringers or paid members. We’re all there because we want to be there. And we have a director who is an excellent musician and who wants us to be the best we can be. And who isn’t afraid to get eclectic with our music selections – tonight’s ranging from a traditional French carol to ‘Holiday Road’ from the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies. It ended with the usual symbolism of candle lighting candle while the congregation sang Silent Night. I always hold my breath at this moment. Fifty years ago, at a similar service, my little brother managed to light the hair of the lady in the pew in front of us on fire with his candle. Her Aquanet went up in a whoosh of flame which my grandmother had the presence of mind to beat out immediately. The startled woman hadn’t a clue what was going on when the woman behind her started hitting her on her head. Fortunately, only her hairspray burned. Her hair and scalp were unharmed.

I have finished all of my must do stuff for the week so I have two days of relative torpor before I get on a plane and fly across the seas for a week. Going into travel diary mode shortly. Until then, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night and God bless us, everyone.

Three vocal ensembles. Three rehearsals. Three performances. That’s what’s been going on over the last forty eight hours. One was the Messiah (full Christmas section and most of both the Easter and Resurrection sections – 16 choruses in total) with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. One was a Lessons and Nine Carols (nine choral anthems and nine carols) with East Lake Methodist Church Choir. One was my usual Sunday morning with the Unitarian Universalist Church Choir. Only two choral anthems for this one including ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch’ (only the UUs would use that as an anthem in service). Even though I had the bass solo, I felt underused in comparison. Let us just say that I am choral sung out for the season. There is still another rehearsal and a Christmas Eve service with the UUs but that’s going to be a piece of cake in comparison.

I sometimes wonder how I ended up as a choral singer. There was no tradition of it in the family. My father has a nice tenor voice and likes to sing but never sang with any sort of group to my knowledge. My mother was a soprano who would sing in church and with the family but never at any other time. My brother is a decent singer and has been since a very young age and sang in various ensembles when he was in school and has been garage banding off and on during his adult life. He’s also a decent guitarist. My parents strongly believed in developing an appreciation for music in their offspring so we all learned to play an instrument and were taken to musical theater, the symphony, the opera, and other such things from a relatively young age.

I enjoyed musical theater as a kid but it didn’t become a passion until high school. My struck by a thunderbolt moment came in the balcony of the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco half way through my senior year in high school. We had a Jan term week where you would spend a week exploring some topic in depth over that time and that year, I was on the trip to San Francisco from Seattle (a city I was very familiar with as my maternal grandparents lived there) with a bus load of classmates to take in the cultural sites. Our teacher chaperones bought us a block of tickets to the National Tour of the original production of A Chorus Line. We may have been up in the heights, but that night changed my life. The cinematic staging, the way the story was told as much by the lighting design as by the acting, the honest depiction of gay characters where that was not the central focus of their lives… I don’t think I moved for two hours.

I came out of there determined to learn as much about the art form of musical theater as I could. My high school wasn’t big enough to have a drama program that really did much in the way of musicals so, even though I was heavily into tech theater at this point; all my experience was with straight plays. Back in Seattle, I reapplied myself to learning more about how plays progress from words on paper to a theatrical experience. I stage managed. I built sets. I did costumes and scavenged for props. I got my first chance to direct a one act. I started going to the theater around town more to see what other people did and what was possible with imagination. I did a little performing but I wanted to work with music theater and I didn’t sing. I had never been in a choir or glee club or sung seriously in church. I was pretty sure I couldn’t.

The next year I was off to Stanford and settled into what would eventually become a double science major. But the siren call of music theater would not leave me be. I started off small, helping on some set crews. Then I was asked to direct our dorm play my freshman year because I had at least directed before and no one else had. ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ turned out rather well for a dorm lounge production and some of the more important theater types on campus saw it and decided I had a modicum of intelligence and talent. I was given more and more chances to work on student produced and drama department produced shows and I kept learning. And reading. And studying. And worked my way to the top of the Stanford theater food chain in a few years.

On my return to Seattle for med school, I had the skill set to work my way into the musical theater scene of the mid 1980s. Stage managing, assistant directing, directing for the most part. I made a lot of friends and was slowly starting to climb the ladder. But med school ended and it was back to California for residency. And goodbye to music theater as it simply did not mix with every third night on call. And then there was Steve. Steve put up with my residency and my fellowship and my being gone a couple of nights a week for overnights at the hospital. When that phase ended, he wanted a more settled home life with me. He didn’t want me out at rehearsal every night. I complied. Besides, I had been away from theater for some years and hadn’t established any local bona fides. We made up for it by becoming major theater goers, usually going once or twice a week to something.

I was starting to poke my nose into Sacramento projects and making some friends when we found ourselves propelled to Alabama and, shortly after that, Steve’s illness and death took priority. And here I was, forty years old, widowed, grieving, and with no connections or local reputation. I figured music and theater would be something I would attend moving forward but would have no real space in my life. Surprise. Tommy came into my life from a classical music theater background. He twisted my arm into joining first the UU choir and, some years later, the Opera Birmingham and Alabama Symphony Choruses. He insisted on my taking voice lessons. He told me that my lack of belief in my own singing was just that, a lack of belief and that I simply needed to be taught some rudimentary skills. Something must have clicked for the two of us became mainstays of the local scene within a few years.

Tommy’s death has pushed me into a need to challenge myself and I’ve been auditioning for meatier projects and roles the last couple of years. And sometimes I have surprised myself by actually landing them. The pandemic shut down showed me how much I like singing with others. I’m not really a solo singer. Even with all the lessons and the experience, I don’t have a great instrument. But I’m just fine in ensemble and I can sell a character in musical comedy. (The only roles in the standard opera repertoire I’m right for are Lillias Pastis and Buoso Donati). But I’ll probably stay a choral singer as long as I can read the music and not get lost on my way to stage left. And people seem to like having me around. I suppose it’s because I show up to rehearsal, I’m usually prepared, and I have XY chromosomes.

I suppose I’m living proof that life can change in unexpected and hugely gratifying ways, that you can teach an aging dog a few new tricks, and that you should never say never. Because it’s a very short road from listening to Hotel California on the car stereo to singing choral backup for The Eagles.