1991

Greetings!

Time for the annual report again. Incidentally, some of my correspondents may have had the impression that I do absolutely nothing but chase around to cultural events. Wrong. It’s just that I don’t think you really want to hear about my job, my housework, yardwork, plumbing repair, sewer roto-rooters, termites, mold, rust, corrosion, dry rot, moths, laundry, marketing, cooking, dishwashing, housepainting, vacuuming/squishing/fumigating spiders out of the garage, etc. etc., do you? Let’s focus on more interesting matters.

Took a couple of trips to Los Angeles last winter to attend some art exhibits and also saw a wonderful performance of “Love Letters,” the two-person show that ran for over a year and has recently been brought back again, in which different pairs of actors take part each week. Since there are so many actors running around Los Angeles who find it easy to fit in a week somewhere between their other assignments, if you lived there you could see just about anyone you ever heard of in this play The night I went we had Ben Gazzara & Gena Rowlands, who were perfect in this beautifully-written piece of work.

Speaking of actors, I had forgotten to mention that the previous year I had arrived in L.A. one night on the train, finding everything to a blaze of intense light, and picked my way into the station through a snakepit of big black electric cables all over the floor. People were bustling around in 1940s--vintage clothes, including men in various WWII uniforms. I’d done it again for my second time--stumbled into a film set. I was preoccupied (and sleepy) trying to retrieve my checked bag so I never found out what show was being filmed--probably some TV program.

My own show biz career came to a halt at an early stage, in elementary school, to be exact. (Credits: Humpty Dumpty, in a stiff, scratchy white buckram shell (age about 5 or 6); and Ghost, draped in the limp grey gauze, assuming what the director called “grotesque positions” around a graveyard to the tune of “Danse Macabre” in a Hallowe’en tableau (age about 10). So I do enjoy these occasional brushes with the Real Thing, Hollywood-style, from time to time.

I haven’t been running a car of my own for some time, but had to rent one to haul one of my father’s paintings down to the L.A. area for a small museum exhibit at the beginning of March, and then go back to fetch it at the end of the month (Easter weekend). Driving the maze of 6 to 12-lane freeways down there is an adrenaline-churning adventure of the first magnitude, especially trying to remain on the designated route without finding oneself channelled off the right-hand lane at the wrong place. (I was proud of myself not having come off in the wrong place more than 3 times per trip!) The museum group had a nice little buffet luncheon for the lenders on both the hanging and taking-down days, and the painting was well received.

In the spring I was one of the “volunteers” hostessing on a garden tour sponsored by the American Association of University Women. The place I was assigned to was very small, the display consisting of assorted rosebushes at the front. At the back of the house the owner had 80 plastic trashbarrels filled with rainwater he had collected during the short but heavy period of rainfall we’d had in March. He exulted over the fact that the rainwater was “free,” but he must have spent at least $1200 on the barrels, not to mention getting up in the night and all hours of the day to move them to and from the drain spouts.

(I myself had bought “only” 3 metal garbage cans to save rainwater, a lot of which I had then transferred into plastic gallon jugs. For my non-California readers--we are now in the 6th year of drought here--bad news for gardens, and water is rationed--and expensive.)

In the fall I volunteered again for the AAUW, which this time was one of many groups involved with the town’s “Harbor Festival,” a sort of Breughel-by-the-Sea affair which raises funds for the groups sponsoring it and other charities. All kinds of seafood being sold and consumed on the spot (cooked in every conceivable way), and vendors selling all sorts of artsy craftsy goods, etc. I was assigned to collect the admission fees at the main gate. Swaddled head to toe to keep off the sun, including wearing the biggest straw cartwheel hat I own, I attracted a newspaper photographer who, my dentist later informed me, had to put my picture in one of the local papers. (I subsequently obtained some copies, of course.)

In August I spent a few days in San Francisco going to museums and art galleries and then went to Carmel for their Art Association’s annual anniversary show, which this year featured work by six of their early women artists. I had loaned a small etching (by M. DeNeale Morgan)* to the exhibit. The CAA held a lovely reception for the lenders and members, and I also enjoyed seeing a few friends there as well. (*Miss Morgan was a friend of my parents when they all lived in Carmel in the 1920s.)

Sprinkled through the year were a few short jaunts to Santa Barbara, and I also heard a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in a splendid setting, the old 18th c. Spanish mission church in San Luis Obispo.

In September I went to San Francisco again for a couple of operas (Traviata and Don Giovanni, and to a small reunion party of college friends. (The hostess then went abroad on vacation for a few weeks, returning to find her house had just burned down in the massive Oakland fire in October. Major shock!) Colossal disasters, California’s specialty--

Some of my correspondents have inquired after Fred, the frog of whom I wrote last Christmas. I regret to say that he was only with us a few weeks. This engaging little fellow disappeared, and I fear the worst--that he must have perished in the digestive tract of Whiskers, the cat. I felt terrible. I should have moved Fred’s water dish deep into the interior of the hedge. Neighbors tried to console me--”He probably just moved away,” or “Frogs dig themselves holes in the ground in winter, don’t they?” etc. -- But he is gone, and I feel a special sorrow for the only frog I ever had.

Whiskers is doing reasonably well, despite his allergies (it seems there’s no real advantage being a cat, if you get all the ailments that people get). Lately he has taken to perching on the ridge of the garage roof, alternating with the house roof, like a furred weather vane into the wind, grooming himself busily the while. From there he also keeps an eye on his territory, plus all passersby on both streets. He still declines to function as a Working Predator, despite my daily requests that he “Get out there and catch those gophers who are undermining my yard!” He continues in the pampered and fey dilettante role he prefers. In addition, he prefers to drink out of my saucepans, mugs etc. instead of his own water dish painted “Cool Cat,” or even the one painted with “Cat” in four different languages.

I look forward to hearing your news--in any language. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!