1999

Greetings!

The holiday season (gasp!) is at our throats again: will I get all these mailings out in time??

I felt like Mrs. Dalloway in February, helping to hostess at a series of teas given by a friend (four, over three weekends): standing near the entrance in a pseudo-1930’s style outfit, as the guests arrived at the top of the stairs, and then “pouring.” These parties were gatherings of the progeny of some of the 1930’s “English colony” here plus some members of the local Episcopal church. Services had been held in my friend’s house (formerly his grandmother’s) in the days before a church was built. He managed to do this the year the church was about to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Two other people helped (the wife wearing a 1920’s drawn-work linen dress belonging to the host’s aunt). Then after the guests had gone we changed clothes, transforming ourselves into scullery maids; I washed thousands of dishes while the couple dried them, and the host hand-washed all the Irish lines. One misses the era of household staff! Nevertheless it was a lot of fun and the guests enjoyed being spoiled with all the home-made and imported goodies.

In March I went to San Francisco to see the “Impressionists in Winter” art exhibit, which was wonderful. And I was very lucky to get a last-minute cancellation ticket for the sold-out stage play “Indian Ink,” by Tom Stoppard. I’m not a fan of Stoppard’s. But the point was to see the actor Art Malik “live,” whom we were familiar with in the part of Hari Kumar in “The Jewel in the Crown” TV series some years ago. He still has his looks and charisma, despite some balding.

The “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs” exhibit drew me and millions of others to Los Angeles in May. I got there during the exhibit’s last few days when the museum kept the show open literally round the clock. Fortunately my ticket was for the afternoon. (The paintings were on loan from the Netherlands while the home museum was being renovated.) I loved the exhibit, especially the pot of chives and the crab at a skewed angle on its back--I have some respect for the species through experience catching lots of them in home-made nets in our bay as a teenager.

I also took in an exhibit of elegant calligraphy from the heyday of the Turkish Ottoman Empire--both religious and secular documents.

By a stroke of serendipity, an American production of the French play I’d seen in Paris in 1996 was underway, Enigma Variations, starring Donald Sutherland in the role originated by Alain Delon. Interesting contrast: the French production was dead serious, sad and cruel; the American take, 180º different, was one of wry humor with constant bursts of laughter from the audience.

[NOTE: If you attend anything at the performing arts center in LA, you get a substantial discount on your room atthe Intercontinental Hotel, only 2 blocks from the center.] Making it a really busy long weekend, I also went on an all-day tour of some private collections of California art with an enthusiastic museum group I belong to in Orange County.

As you know, I can’t really get through a year without a Wagner fix. So after my summer vacation had begun I went to San Francisco for a week filled with the Ring (4th orchestra I’d heard, live, doing this work. Singers pretty good too. But I must say even if she is now the world’s “leading Wagnerian soprano,” Jane Eaglen’s 400-500 lb. body works against the aesthetic.

I had volunteered to assist at our Wagner’s Society peripheral events, and I was told I’d be selling T-shirts (!) at the opening reception. Fortunately, when I got there they said I would be hostessing at the champagne table instead. A decided improvement. I definitely prefer a Mrs. Dalloway role any time. (And with catering staff to open the bottles.) It was great fun greeting guests literally from all around the world as well as the rest of the U.S. and introducing some of them to our president so she could welcome them as well. They held a reception before each of the four cycles, so the world-wide Wagnerians could attend a welcoming party and meet their local kindred spirits.

The Society also sponsored a screening of a novicefilmmaker’s movie (Valhalla) about some young men in LA staging their own amateur Ring for their house-bound father who’d become too ill to travel to see a real one in Bayreuth. It was both funny and moving.

My usual gallery and museum crawling and visiting friends rounded out the SF week, as well as a week in Carmelat Easter and a few days in Santa Barbara in August. And I organized a batch of volunteers to sit at local history display table at the Harbor Festival in October.

The most unusual event of the year was a quick trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, in early November. I had worked in the Cardiology Division at Stanford Medical Center for some years. Our former chief left there in 1986 and has been building up the University of Cincinnati Medical School ever since. Partly to celebrate his birthday and partly to take advantage of the fact that many of our former post-doctoral fellows would be traveling to the American Heart Association meeting not far away in Atlanta, he decided to set up a 2 ½ day reunion gathering for the former fellows whom he’d mentored early in their careers.

I turned out to be the only “civilian” in the crowd other than our former business manager. The program included a tour of the new hospital there and the new Center for Molecular Studies (designed by Frank Gehry, whose art museum in Bilbao, Spain, has created something of a stir internationally), and presentations of scientific papers and personal comments. As the most unscientifically-minded person on the planet, I of course opted for the latter. I, who struggled hopelessly with high school chemistry and found it hard to take college biology seriously. So there I was, standing at the lectern of a Frank Gehry auditorium, reading my “Reflections of a Cardiology Civilian,” sandwiched in among some of the best medical brains in four countries speaking on such topics as “The Rationale for Using Beta Blockers in Heart Failure,” “The Impact of Clinical Trials on the Treatment of Ventricular Arrhythmias,” “Neutrophil Mediated Mechanisms of Myocardial Reperfusion Injury,” and “Reduced Event Rates with Use of Coronary Stents.”

Dinner parties and more personal comments rounded off the social aspect of the gathering. It was great fun seeing so many of the old gang and catching up on their subsequent careers. Rather like an “old home week,” but in a distant setting.

After everyone had left on the Saturday I went to the Taft House Museum and Cincinnati Art Museum on my ownhandsome buildings with wonderful art collections! And walked down to the river’s edge to get a close look at Roebling’s pre-Brooklyn Bridge! But I was unable to find anyone around to sell it to me.

There are a lot of other interesting things to see in the Cincinnati area, but I had to return to California on the Sunday. My cat Whiskers had insisted on it. As he sprang onto my shoulder and purred madly, a frog sang out a loud welcoming croak from his perch on the rain barrel.

Earlier in the year I had peered into the barrel and discovered I was godmother to about 150 tadpoles. But on  subsequent inspection I found they’d grown up and left home. About four adults have remained to keep the Fred Dynasty going. Hope this “La Niña” weather continues as predicted to provide adequate rain for the tribe.

ions all his life, has been transformed into a picture of health by starting on a home-made diet last February, thanks to a book by a veterinarian (Dr. Pitcairn), Natural Health for Dogs and Cats. There are several recipes but Whiskers prefers the “Beefy Oats.” A mouth-watering mix of various vitamins, bone meal, lecithin, yeast, kelp, eggs, salad oil, oatmeal-and ground-up raw beef liver.

The preparation of this once a week is quite a job, and an unparalleled aesthetic experience. In expendable costume and big plastic apron I poke large slices of liver into an old 1930’s meat grinder and crank away as the bloody pulp extrudes out into the bowl containing the other ingredients. Blood oozes and drips all over the counter, the floor, and me. The cat sits on a nearby stool, watching with great interest. It’s surreal: “The Bride of Dracula Cooks!” (Watch for my upcoming TV culinary show.) Then when everything is mixed, Whiskers gobbles up a liberal serving-with fresh parsley garnish, of course.

So think about that as you whip up your elegant cakes, pies and cookies for the holidays!

Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing your news. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!