Christmas surgery

Happy Christmas, everyone. (I suppose it's only because it's not so common that I prefer "happy" to "merry." Familiarity and contempt, you know).

It was a quiet day here; we opened presents -- way too many -- had breakfast (fresh cut bacon with eggs and homemade biscuits) and dinner (Prime Rib and the trimmings). And we're supposed to be vegans! We probably shouldn't make this a tradition.

It was a quiet day here; until I mutilated three bears! The stuffed variety, but still.

We gave each of the dogs a new teddy bear for Christmas. Paulo, the only puppy, was also the only one to really take to his new playmate. Within hours it was shy an eye. I realized it was time to act. To protect Paulo’s innards I surgically removed all the remaining eyes from all three bears.

It was not a pretty sight.

Oddly, I had just recently shared the lines below from a popular Christmas carol with my friend Don. Somehow they make more sense now. Christmas is about bleeding and dying. Who knew?

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume

Breathes of life of gathering gloom

Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying

Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

All three patients are recovering well.

Christmas thoughts

The sun is shining, the grass is green,

the orange and palm trees sway.

There's never been such a day

in Beverly Hills, L.A.

But it's December the twenty fourth,

and I am longing to be up north.

Not everyone knows this introduction to “White Christmas,” probably the most popular holiday tune of all. Bing Crosby didn’t sing it in his classic version and many others don’t either. To me, it’s essential, as it sets up the whole song.

I AM up north but I too can only dream of a white Christmas. Temperatures are in the 50s here in New Haven and while the grass is no longer green, it isn’t painted white either, and there’s little hope it will be.

It’s a low-key Christmas; I’ve been unable to cut a live tree, so there’s a small artificial one on the coffee table. Likewise the knee has kept me from climbing a ladder to put candles in the windows or hang the large wreath on the front of the house. But the usual ornaments float over the dining room table (above), which is laden with gifts, candles and reindeer.

I didn’t grow up with a lot of Christmas traditions. Some years we went to midnight mass, some years we didn’t; often we opened presents on Christmas eve; just as often it was Christmas morning; the tree had icicles or it didn’t; angel hair or not. I remember driving around Richmond singing carols, looking at house lights, but I think that happened only once. Likewise I participated in a community Christmas pageant -- once.

As an adult I had a Christmas Eve party several years in a row. It was during my touchy-feely Education of Self days and so at some point in the evening we’d gather in a circle on the floor and take turns reading “The Velveteen Rabbit.” One of my more cynical friends was overheard telling his date they’d better leave “before Walter brings out that damn bunny book.” (Wait; there was someone more cynical than I?)

Ransom spent our first Christmas together sick in bed. Of the twenty-four since, he’s often been sick. We kid that he’s allergic to Christmas but the truth is more likely that his body, having been pushed constantly for months, finally rebels when things slow down over the holidays. Most Christmas Days we exchange presents, take the dogs for a long walk in the woods and prepare a special meal.

In 2001 I returned to the church and to midnight mass; I loved it for several years. Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven, is well known for the quality of its music, which never shines more brightly as it does on this night: both the Choir of Men and Boys AND the Choir of Men and Girls sing. I haven’t been for two years and will likely not go this year, but I cherish the memory.

I think Christmas is largely for kids, and for old people who remember the thrill of being a kid at Christmas. I’m becoming more and more solidly in the latter group. It’s also a time for curmudgeons to shed their crusty skin a bit, as proven by the picture below.

As he has for maybe 30 years, this little fella tops my tree.

Out of it, still

The Golden Globe Award nominations were announced a short time ago and I was painfully aware that I have not seen one single nominated movie or performance. On the TV side of things I do better: I know Glee and Hung; I loved Mildred Pierce, The Hour and the first season of Downton Abbey; I like Game of Thrones and am hooked on Boardwalk Empire. But still, it’s a tiny piece of the American entertainment pie that I feast on.

I did watch the Live from Lincoln Center broadcast of New York City Ballet’s The Nutcracker – or, as they awkwardly insist on calling it, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker -- last night, but that probably makes me less in-touch rather than more, considering how few people watch PBS over all.

I’ve said it before: I am NOT your average American consumer. I see no advertisements on television, watching everything time-shifted via TiVo; I listen to no commercial radio; and, apparently, I go to no movies. I have never consciously heard a Lady Gaga song and I know that Kim Kardashian is someone who got married and divorced in little over two months, but I don’t know who she was or why people care.

I have never seen American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, a Barbara Walters interview or whatever Simon what’s-his-name’s new show is. I also own no clothes that have graphics or writing on them, nor any designer label items. (Thank Fran Lebowitz for that; she famously wrote “most people don’t want to talk to you; what makes you think they want to hear from your clothes?”)

Yes, I admit, I say all this with some small amount of pride, but it’s really just a fact of who I am and where I live. I was telling my friend Don just yesterday that, living near New York, I see some of the best the country has to offer in theatre, dance, opera and music. It does make me far less tolerant of anything less than wonderful.

And it does make me wish more people got off their butts, out of their houses and downtown – wherever they live – for some true, live, meaningful culture. Being a couch potato should be something we are ashamed of.

Note: Lebowitz also said “When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.”

You read it here first

Spring, 1957. Somewhere in Manhattan. Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim watch with equal parts excitement and fear, as West Side Story is presented at a backer’s audition. It fails to garner support, but they continue their work and in September of that year the show has a successful opening, going on to become a smash hit. (Oddly it lost the Tony for Best Musical to The Music Man). Who were the people in that first audience? Clearly they had no idea that they were watching the birth of a classic.

Last night Ransom and I shared their experience. At a rehearsal studio on 26^th Street we attended a staged reading of Andrew Gerle’s musical Gloryana. A cast of ten sang their hearts out with backup from a band of six. There were perhaps 75 people in attendance.

Will Gloryana follow West Side Story’s path, or will it become another project that fails to find a following? I don’t know, but if it succeeds, Ransom and I will be pleased to say, "We were there," for we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Gloryana is a musical about race, about opportunity and about choices. It features a love story between a Confederate Civil War soldier and a Union nurse, as well as a contemporary tale of a wise-ass kid mouthing off with fatal consequences. It includes perhaps the most in-your-face anthem I’ve ever heard in a musical, “Why Ain’t We Angry,” powerfully sung by the amazing Angela Grovey. Megan Lewis is equally good as the clever redneck waitress Jewel. Gilbert L. Bailey II dances and sings Jamal with conviction; F. Michael Haynie convincingly portrays the crazed neo-Confederate Mason, while John-Michael Lyles finds the right balance between macho and child as a young man growing away from his mother and finding Walt Whitman while trying to avoid the lure and tragedy of the ‘hood.

If all this sounds like too much, well, it is. The show needs to be tightened and a character or two might have to be jettisoned. But musically it is brilliant, as composer Gerle finds just the right voice for each of his characters -- and each of those characters was convincingly played by a way-talented group of actors, all Equity members. There are moments of hilarity and others of transfixing intensity, just as there must be in any great musical.

Better shows than this have likely been written and lost. Gloryana deserves better and I wish all involved great success.

Yin yang

I last wrote about Paulo, our new puppy (see below); he has brought joy and love to the house, just as they all do. More importantly perhaps he has put to rest the painful memory of Tasha’s passing and made the family whole again.

Today though was anther day and I was pretty much immobilized by pain and depression. I didn’t get out of bed until 3:30 in the afternoon, missing the Hartford Symphony concert I subscribe to. That at least is consistent: I haven’t made it to any of their concerts yet this year, all for the same reason.

It was still light out though so Ransom and I walked the dogs in the fields and woods across the street. It is one of the best things about this house: we are surrounded by hundreds of acres of non-developed land, interlaced with lovely trails. I don’t know if Paulo’s nose-to-the-ground gait is due to his breed – do Pointers share characteristics with hounds? – or if it’s just that everything is new to him, having spent his first nine months in a kennel; whatever it is, he is a happy camper out in the woods.

I’m paying the price for the hike though. I just got ice for my knee and took another Vicodin. The drugs don’t stop the pain, they only mask it -- unless, I suppose, I take as many as Dr. House does. I’m afraid to do that and, believing as I do that life is largely about suffering, I'm probably taking the right amount.

We’re sitting together in the living room: Ransom, Paulo and Cassie on one couch, Zeus on his favorite chair, me on mine. The wood stove is cranked; it’s very peaceful – and with so few lights on, it’s hard to tell how dirty the house is! I love late fall.

Ransom and the dogs. And the picture at the top,

in case you weren't sure: just the right number of dog bowls drying.

As stated, the pack is back

Four members of the pack; photo taken by the fifth.

He’s nine months old and a purebred, we’ve been told. He was brought to the Woodbridge CT Animal Control Center, along with a brother and sister, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, from a breeder who was no longer able to maintain her business. Her bad fortune became our good fortune.

He seems to be adapting well. Zeus, the three-year-old Husky has found a new friend. Cassie, the eleven-year-old alpha is not so thrilled, but she’s adjusting. He slept his first night on the bed with me and though he’s not house-trained yet, he made it through the night just fine. He's a Portuguese Pointer and we’ve named him Paulo.

Two two-legged critters and three four-legged: we’re back to full strength on Peck Hill.

Perspective is everything

I’ve been suffering with my g-d knee for over ten months now. During that time the pain has been relentless, hardly noticeable, sharp, dull, debilitating, manageable – in other words, all over the place. Sometimes I cry out in pain before I even realize it’s hurting. Other times I go six, maybe even seven, minutes without thinking about it.

Some walks in the woods have been pleasant; those are usually the ones when the dogs are calm and the deer hiding. Other walks have been painful every step of the way.

I just started watching The Bucket List, Rob Reiner’s take on what two men do when they’re told they have only months to live. I’m only forty minutes into it, but the early scenes of Jack Nicholson’s character experiencing chemotherapy made me sit up and take notice. Nothing I’ve experienced yet with my knee comes anywhere close to the pain he portrays.

I’ve said this before; as bad as it is for me, it’s a lot worse for lots more people. That doesn’t make it any easier for me, but it is important to keep that perspective in mind.

But don’t fear, I expect it will all get worse. A woman who works down the hall asked me how I was feeling this morning. I told her that nothing had changed and that I didn’t expect it would. She resolutely said that I would feel better; she knew it.

Faith. Where do they sell that stuff?

Update 1: it's now three doctors who concur: they don't have a clue what's wrong.

Update 2: the pack is back.