7 October 2024

On this the last morning of my 71^st year, I asked the phlebotomist drawing blood (completely sans pain; she was really good at her job) whether my 71-year-old blood today would be any better than my 72-year old blood tomorrow.  She replied that the 72-year-old blood would be even better, and asked me if I had any birthday plans.  My question had broken an awkward silence, and engaged her and the trainee in the room, both now smiling.  So I answered that yes, I did:  on Thursday I would go with good friends for dinner, followed by Emanuel Ax’s performance at the lovely Groton Hill Music Center, now a venue for Boston’s Celebrity Series, its warm wood interior like being inside a cello. I did not say that in 2002, “Manny” Ax had stayed at David’s and my home, and had asked if it would be okay if he practiced on David’s Steinway first thing in the morning.  (I thought, “Let me see.  How would it be to awake to the sound of Emanuel Ax playing downstairs?”).  Of course we said yes.

That’s one of the many indelibly wonderful memories my imminent birthday inspires.  Earlier this week I emailed Mathilde Handelsman, who had so wonderfully played that same piano to entertain my guests here on my 70^th birthday.  Now she and her fellow musician husband Edward Cho are both happily employed at Wake Forest U, where they also fortunately dodged the worst of hurricane Helene.  And last birthday I had our nephew and niece Rob and Pam Andrew visiting to help me celebrate, another happy time. 

But this year, on the anniversary of the 7 October attack that ignited ongoing horrors in the Middle East, so poignantly falling between the high holy days, celebrating feels a much greater challenge.  My stepdaughter and family in Asheville will be living with Helene’s damage and without running water for a long time, and my widower brother-in-law and nephew will leave their less storm-resistant Safety Harbor home on Tampa Bay tomorrow to shelter from Hurricane Milton’s approach with other family behind hurricane-proof windows. “Safety” Harbor indeed. The times and climate are out of joint.

And this will be my first birthday without my sister Jane’s good wishes and overly abundant gifts.  I put out her cards from last year to remember her, but only exaggerated the void her February death has left.

And then there’s Will to Live, my book begun 25 years ago and finally published at the end of August, replete with formatting mistakes added by Amazon/KDP that have quashed all desire to celebrate that long-anticipated event.  The fraught vicissitudes of my year-long relationship with self-publishing should be a cautionary tale to anyone considering working with KDP, and however worthy I still believe my book to be, I’m straddling the decision to keep fighting with KDP to correct their mistakes and fulfill our contract, perhaps with legal support, or to simply let it all go.  Dear Readers, if you are interested and find some value in the book, please let me know.

Yesterday I lamented KDP’s not supplying their promised fliers-with-QR code which I would have left there in Cambridge at the American Repertory Theatre’s closing performance of Romeo & Juliet.  But today I find that regret mollified by gratitude for the privilege of once again experiencing the power of that script interpreted by capable artists and one truly gifted actor, Emilia Suárez, who so completely inhabited Juliet as to make all that role’s famous lines completely spontaneous and so exquisitely, painfully moving.  Movement and choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (the Capulet ball was gangbusters!) and fight consultant Thomas Schall’s brawls were all extraordinary.  In fact, I found myself crying during the Mercutio/Tybalt/Romeo sequence:  a first, that.  And when Romeo’s intervention allowed Mercutio (another role extraordinarily realized by Clay Singer) to fall on Tybalt’s dagger, an audible gasp of horror escaped from the young woman sitting next to me.  I didn’t agree with all director Diane Paulus’s choices:  the death at Romeo’s hand of an incongruously fey, fruity Paris (Adi Dixit) was omitted, thus making nonsense of the Prince’s later lamenting his loss of “a brace of kinsmen.”  But man, did Shakespeare’s Juliet ever live and shine through Ms. Suárez! 

And so, my Libra-like balancing act kicks in with a little help from Will—a very long “life assist” in my case.  Besides, bracketing my passage to and from the Loeb Theatre there in Cambridge was the Harvard Square 45th Annual Oktoberfest in full career on a sun-drenched early autumn afternoon. Hard to be a sourpuss while making one’s way past the lederhosen and dirndls.

So what if for the first time ever I’m seeing even the woolly bears turned prematurely white with worry?

Despite the anxieties that bracket every morning awakening (OMG, the election!  My book!  My aching, antique joints!) I can still take satisfaction in the modest success of the Strafford County Democratic Committee Picnic on 28 September; we took in $8K.

And I still look to the heroic strength and devotion of President Jimmy Carter, 100 years and 1 week old as I turn a mere 72 tomorrow.  In 1987 I was teaching at Centre College in Kentucky where President Carter was the commencement speaker.  All faculty members got to shake his hand, and when my turn came, I was astounded to hear him greet me by name!  Turns out someone had shown him a Centre annual with photos of all the faculty members, and with his eidetic memory, a great gift for a politician, he had learned all our names.  Centre was indeed a small college with relatively few faculty members, but President Carter’s personable gesture then reflects the genuine, always interested kindness of the truly great man he remains.  What a privilege to have shaken his hand.

So. I’m turning my gaze forward and upward.  On Thursday, before I’m off to hear Manny play once more, I’ll stream the launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft currently scheduled for 12.31 pm; see https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/events/2024/10/10/watch-the-launch-of-nasas-europa-clipper-mission/ . My dad George, who once shook hands with Orville Wright, always rose early in our St. Petersburg home to try to see the launch of NASA spacecraft from Cape Canaveral across the Florida peninsula, and often he was able to.  Rocket scientists hope the Europa Clipper will help determine if one of Jupiter’s icy moons could support life.  Research suggests an ocean twice the volume of all of Earth’s oceans exists under Europa’s icy crust.

Well. We’ll see.  In the memorable words of Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song,” Dear Readers:

               Just remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure

               How amazingly unlikely is your birth

               And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space

               Because there’s bugger all down here on Earth.

Time for another new year.