1998

Greetings!

Time for the annual massive clerical effort that is Christmas! Even if I have only one year’s worth of news to report! (And I must kill your eyes with small, crowded print, in order to fit this on one piece of paper.)

Nature provided a dramatic highlight in February with a violent “El Niño” storm that took out the electricity, telephone and TV cable service in many parts of town including mine, and gave us a day off work. Because of the lack of electricity and so many fallen trees blocking the roads, they had to close the schools. Staying home for a day by candlelight and firelight was not too bad, since I have a wood fire and gas heat and gas cooking which were in working order. None of my trees crashed, including a dead one, although many branches and tgs came down. Two healthy trees crashed only a block away!

During the April Easter vacation I went to Carmel and continued my researches and catching up on the art galleries and museum, etc.

At the end of May I took some time off from work and went to Arizona, staying one night outside Phoenix in a delightful inn once the home of a famed cowboy artist (Lon Megargee). The heat was just about overpowering (about 101º) so my sightseeing and art gallery viewing was rather a chore. Then I left this hot, flat cactus-dotted landscape and headed north in a rental car to a high-altitude, pine-dotted hilly region, to stay in Flagstaff, and take in Arizona Opera’s production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle, as well as to see the Grand Canyon and other features of this region, where I’d never been.

The combination of four heavy-duty Wagnerian operas plus all this Wild West surrounding made for a schizophrenic vacation. My hotel in itself was almost more entertaining than the operas. I’d chosen the 101-year-old Weatherford, because (a) it had been the “grandest thing of its day” there, and (b) Theodore Roosevelt, one of my favorite people in history, had stayed in it. It had gone downhill, turning into a youth hostel for a time, but was now being renovated and upgraded back into a regular hotel. A real period-piece: creaking floors, heavy, darkly-stained woodwork, small rooms with high, high ceilings, TRANSOMS over the doors!-and real sash windows you could open and close! A tiny, shallow clothes closet, for which I had to REQUEST some clothes hangers--and a tiny but modern bathroom. There was a huge Victorian bar (“The Zane Grey Ballroom” on my floor, [Zane Grey also used to stay at this hotel.] In addition, there was another bar/poolroom downstairs, and a “bar & grill” restaurant with fabulous food. Most American hotels have a Gideon Bible in every room--but in my room here, there were instead four Zane Grey paperbacks and one Louis L’Amour!.

There never seemed to be anyone on duty at the reception desk, so one wondered “Who’s minding the store?” There were always lots of young men shooting pool at the bar/poolroom beyond the reception area, which added to the rugged western atmosphere, but on closer scrutiny they all looked pretty clean-cut, probably college students.

Flagstaff and environs are at about 8000 ft altitude, which means less oxygen (huff, puff up those hotel stairs, for me--and oxygen tanks for the opera singers backstage between scenes and some hidden onstage as well, we were told). The acoustics of the theatre (belonging to the Northern Arizona University) were wonderful, as were many of the singers.

I attended an opening reception gathering, where I teamed up with an old opera buddy from the east coast, whom I’d met on the horse-carriage tour in Bavaria before going on to Bayreuth for Wagnerian opera in 1988. Another highlight organized by the opera festival was a ride on a restored old train to the Grand Canyon, with two cars reserved for the operagoers and singers. Since this train trip is a regular Wild West tourist feature every day anyway, they have “colorful local characters” in appropriate costume and exagerrated picturesqueness of manner, story-telling andsinging cowboy songs to entertain the passengers. So our opera singers were tossed into this milieu to walk up and down the aisles talking to passengers about the opera. Duelling genres, you might say--statuesque Valkyries up against grizzled cowpokes and vintage railway conductors. Freia meets Walter Brennan, so to speak. The gods were there too, Wotan, Donner, Froh, Loge--and none under 6ft4in., the latter being made to feel “short.” “Mimosa” drinks served with the brunch added to the jollity of the ride.

We were then taken by bus to a very “casual” barbecue picnic lunch, in a rustic forest-clearing area. Lunching with the gods and goddesses, we all grow mellow, awash in wine. Not your usual opera type meal.

Then we were taken to the Grand Canyon to view this flabbergasting ancient gorge on our own--some just strolling a few hundred yards peering over the edge (like me), some clambering down into it. I have to say this site is even bigger and more beautiful and more ancient and awesome than all the photographs one has ever seen. I was duly impressed.

I took several other tours of the region on my own, seeing things like the Painted Desert, a huge meteor crater, a beautiful wooded canyon, and the overrated tourist trap village of Sedona (horrible, thanks to gross commercialism), and in Flagstaff itself, the old Lowell Observatory, where the planet Pluto was discovered many years ago. There are several kinds of huge telescopes used over its lifetime, showing the evolution of this technology.

The American astronauts were taken to the meteor crater to learn how to identify various geological and meteoric specimens in preparation for their trip to the moon, and also visited this planetarium to expand their knowledge of the universe, they were about to explore.

A segment of what’s left of the famous former U.S. transcontinental highway “Route 66” goes right through the middle of the town (remember the old song “Get your kicks on Route 66”)--and every year they have a Route 66 Festival; I went over to look at a display of vintage cars from various “Route 66 Auto Clubs.” The prettiest one that caught my fancy was being watched over by a couple of young men, one wearing guns--not a policeman, not a uniformed security guard; in fact I’d seen him in my hotel at breakfast, with guns. I asked him if he was the owner of this beautiful car. “No, we’re the hired goons,” he said, adding that it belonged to the owner of my hotel, and then, “Would you like to sit in it, Ma’am?” Faced with guns at such close range, I circumspectly declined. (If I had inadvertently scratched the car, would he have shot me?)

After my return to California and winding up the school job for summer vacation I spent a week in San Francisco for a bit of recreation, including an opera performance of Alban Berg’s Lulu. This was disappointing. Based on the story of the 1920’s German films (Pandora’s Box etc.) featuring Louise Brooks as the amoral sexpot who comes to a sticky end, it could hardly compete with the old films, especially with such slow, insipid music. None of the hard edge and darkness of the films.

Much of my spring and summer was taken up nursing my sick cat “Whiskers” through the extremes of hyperthyroidism, thyroidectomy, severe post-op anemia, hypothyroidism, and his usual severe skin allergies. Many trips to the veterinarian, tests, medications, home-cooking and hand-feeding, changing of “bedsheets,” etc. Poor little fellow. He was pretty well shut down for some time. But by October he began to seem more like his old self, and by December about 95% in shape, though he hasn’t got his winter fluff coat fully in place yet, nor his handsome ruff. He needs this to look like “a lot more cat,”-- and to insulate him from winter’s cold.

At the end of August I went to Carmel and Monterey for a few days, cramming a week’s worth of galleries/museums etc. into about 2 ½ days, including a visit to the new Steinbeck Center in salinas, not far away. A comprehensive “multimedia/interactive” museum plus gallery for rotating exhibits (on this occasion, paintings of the Depression and WWII era, reflecting some of the poverty and despair elements found in his books, though not so harshly depicted). The exhibits for each book are intriguing and especially attention-grabbing for youngsters. A large blow-up photo of him receiving the Nobel Prize is accompanied by a recording of his acceptance speech. The book & gift shop sells not only the usual themed gift items and all his writings, it sells all the classics he loved to read when he was young as well.

He was despised and resented in his home town when he started publishing his gritty novels, but after all these years of literary pilgrims coming through the area from all over the world, the younger generations has glommed onto him as a veritable gold mine. The Center is unique and should do very well in drawing even more visitors.

I had a day in Santa Barbara and saw the exhibit of the Chinese artifacts and the lifelike clay sculptures of soldiers dug up from an early emperor’s grave site (buried with replicas of his entire army, it seems). I was intrigued by the unusual “saddle” on a cavalryman’s horse, covered with round button-like bumps on what may have been leather, or wool--which looked extremely uncomfortable to sit on! And of course no stirrups in those days.

The only operas I’ve seen this Fall were Tristan und Isolde (somewhat disappointing--the orchestra didn’t “blow you away” the way you expected to be blown away). Norma (beautiful music, Carol Vanness not bad--but no one can live up to Joan Sutherland cum Marilyn Horne in that opera, so far, anyway! And AStreetcar Named Desire--newly commissioned just for the San Francisco Opera. Well done, music (by Andre Previn) suits the story and characters for the most part--but no tuneful numbers to stay with you or to be sung in the shower. The old Marlon Brando/Vivien Leigh/Karl Malden film can hardly be improved upon, with or without music!

Attended a Wagner Society lecture by the President of the Barcelona Wagner Society! (He’s even named his children Tristan and Freia!) His lecture subject was the career and a work of a Spanish artist who did traditional paintings and stage designs for the Barcelona Opera.

On the home front, sadly I lost my aesthetically-mostimportant tree, which succumbed to a disease decimating the Monterey Pines of California, and it had to be cut down. Cleaning up the ensuing mess of small debris and rehabilitating the Vinca and Mesembryanthemum ground covers will take a long time. So far 5 truckloads to the dump and about 12 garbage cans full to the “green waste recycling.” Probably many more cans to be filled, at the present rate. Am researching to try and find another type of pine to plant that can resist this disease.

I continue to shelter a few small frogs in my “rain barrels” (plastic garbage cans full of rainwater), and they continue to favor me with an occasional song. No, I flatter myself. Actually they sing to attract other frogs as mates. One seems to have come into the house and hidden under the water heater and I haven’t been able to lure him out. I’m worried that the bursts of gas flames may be too hot for him whenever the heater kicks on!

That’s about it for the year, up to early December, at any rate. Look forward to hearing YOUR news. Meanwhile best wishes for a happy Christmas and New Year!