So what should we do? The best I can do is say, "It depends." That enough uncertainty for you?
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As Yogi Berra supposedly said, “It's déjà vu all over again.”
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We were jet-lagged but happy to be in Paris in spring again. But the first full day we were there, instead of wandering the streets, taking in tulips and new leaves and La Vie en Rose, my husband and I were pounding the cement catacomb labyrinth under the Gare de Lyon. We wanted a week-long Carte Orange, which needed a photo.

After an hour of following one set of directions after another, we found the photo kiosk. It was occupied. A very stylish set of heels sat beneath the orange and gray geometric curtain. So we waited. Leaned against the gray tile walls, as there was nowhere to sit. Watched the few passersby, as this was a truly out-of-the-way corner of the station. Waited some more.

The curtain started wiggling, and we stood up, ready to take our turn. But instead of opening, a black-and-white striped knit shirt dropped behind it onto a leather carryall by the shoes. Coins dropped. The booth lit up. Flash, flash, flash, flash. More wriggling and a gray silk ruffled shirt joined the pile. More flashes. A beret dropped, missing the bag. Then a black cloche hat. We were witnessing a one-woman fashion shoot unfolding in a cramped booth.

We waited on. Began to worry we were wasting precious hours of the trip. Waited some more.

Finally, the curtain swept open and a brunette with careful makeup and a stylish tilt to her head emerged. She glowered at us as she slung the large sac to her shoulder and clicked off.

It was our turn. I went first to decipher the instructions. Deposit a coin, center your head, and watch a count down. Then, do not smile. The instructions, plastered everywhere, read, NO SMILING for ID photos.

After more time, losing coins and sangfroid, we had our black-and-white photo, but also deeply wounded vanity. In Paris, one wants to at least pretend some level of presentability, if not chic. These photos, four on a card, were neither. Top-lit, etching every line, wrinkle and frown mark, the camera had captured two villainous, glowering, elderly pusses. These were not pictures. They were mug shots.

We got the Carte Orange, and that week had a delicious time traveling everywhere—the Tutankhamun exhibit, the African museum, Pere Lachaise, Montmartre, museums, the opera, Ile de la Cite, and Fontainebleau. The weather was cold and lovely, early still. A perfect time.

And as it turned out, no one ever asked to see those ids. So no one ever knew that in March 2019, an ancient Bonnie and Clyde had wandered the streets of the City of Light. And left it unscathed. We tore up the offending passes as we left Charles De Gaulle.

Mother was very insecure and depressed. She didn’t like to cook, had a maid for much her of life, didn’t know how to do laundry or iron, wasn’t good at domestic chores. She got by. Her entire life, she never drove on a highway.

She didn’t like her own looks and projected that displeasure and neuroses onto me, which didn’t help my own sense of self-worth.

Before I married I remember she told me that “sex wasn’t all it was cracked up to be”. That was not helpful advice. She belittled and criticized me a lot. I sought out surrogate mothers for comfort and support; older cousins and friends’ mothers. Also my warm father, who eventually divorced her. Yet, when the time came that she needed assistance, I moved her to an assisted-living complex near me in the Boston area, and cared for her for the final 15 1/2 years of her life. I felt that obligation. She did teach me about commitment and follow-through.

From my mother, I learned to be a lady. I learned good manners from her (before the complete breakdown of her mental health caused her internal filter to collapse and she said anything that popped into her head; frequently something nasty or inappropriate).

But mostly I learned to love the arts from her. I took beginning ballet at the age of 7. She spent a year in New York in 1935, studying with the greats of the era, trying to be a modern dancer. It wasn’t to be, but she looked back at that time as the happiest of her life. She appreciated and encouraged my interest in acting and singing. I began talking voice lessons in 11th grade.

“Songs My Mother Taught Me” from the classic song book 56 Songs You Like to Sing was the first song I sang with a new teacher, a former opera singer, in 12th grade. Mother did teach me the Broadway repertoire when I was a very young child. She’d sing Rogers and Hammerstein show tunes while bathing me. She had a lovely voice and I was a quick study. I’d sing them out, full-blast, on my backyard swing each morning; “Oh what a beautiful morning”, to the amusement of our neighbors. For that, I am eternally grateful.

I came full-circle at the end of her life, as I would sing a recital of Broadway show tunes, accompanied by the Activities Director, once my mother moved to the skilled nursing section of her life-care community. I went once or twice a year to sing for the residents. Mother just beamed. My singing finally gave her pleasure. As I was friendly with all the staff, I continued for five years after her death, until the Activities Director retired.

She took me to see the great European ballet companies when they came on tour to Detroit. My parents had season tickets to see the Broadway touring companies and would take my brother and me to appropriate shows (Carnival, Camelot, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying). The Metropolitan Opera came on tour to Detroit every year; my parents took me to one performance each season. I remember on a flight home from Brandeis one year, I noticed a man studying a score in the row in front of me. I engaged him in conversation and discovered that he would be singing in the opera that I would see the next evening.

My mother took me often to the Detroit Institute of Art and the Cranbrook Institue of Art, two of my favorite places on earth and molded my love and appreciation for the fine arts early. We dressed well. She had taste and refinement. I learned all that from her.

When it came to parenting, I did not ask for any advice from her. In fact, I tried to model my parenting after my father, who was a sweet, gentle soul, always good at listening, rather than my mother. Instead, I tried to be UNLIKE my mother as a parent. She was not a good role model. These days, I try to dwell on the good and move beyond the difficulties I encountered with her.

My wonderful Core instructor, Josie Gardiner, posted the above on Facebook as I wrote this story. She inspires me every day. I think her wishes speak volumes and I second her thoughts for all mothers and children.

 

 

This week we are asked to write about our forebears’ refugee/immigrant experience. I wrote what I know about how my maternal grandparents came to this country several years ago and will link to that story at the end of this essay.

I wanted to tell a more urgent story, given that this story will go live four days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, what we are witnessing at this moment in Ukraine, and the rise of authoritarianism around the world. This story is real and urgent. We will NEVER forget. It is a compelling story of inhumanity, ultimate survival and redemption. It is the story of how a close friend (Henry) came to this country as an infant refugee. I have his permission to tell it. He related it to me in depth a few weeks ago.

In the Krakow Ghetto there were five siblings in the Ferber family; four sisters: Erna, Cecile, Geiza and Rose, one young brother and the two parents, along with an aunt and her baby boy. After the fall of the ghetto, they were rounded up and sent to Plaszów, run by Amon Göth, as depicted in “Schindler’s List”. Henry told me they really did live in fear every day, as Göth would wander onto his balcony with his rifle and randomly shoot at anyone passing by. They were soon processed and sent on to Auschwitz.

In Auschwitz, the parents and brother, aunt and baby were immediately gassed. The sisters were in their teens and were useful workers, so sent to Birkenau to work. Every day they had to line up first thing in the morning to be accounted for. On one particular morning, Rose, the youngest was ill with dysentery, or something similar. The sisters took care of her and helped her out to the line-up. Anyone who couldn’t work would be murdered. They were the last four to line up that day.

As it happened, a train of 800 Jews, headed for slave labor at a munitions factory, stopped at Birkenau that day. 20 had died on the trip and the Germans needed replacements. They took the last 20 from the line-up, including the Ferber girls. Though freezing and starving, they spent the rest of the war in relative safety, working at a munitions factory. Rose’s illness saved them at that moment.

The end of the war was near. The Germans knew they had to hide their atrocities so rounded up their prisoners and began “the Death March” back into Germany from Poland, knowing that many of the woman would die from starvation or exhaustion along the way, or they would be randomly shot. But that way, there would not be mass graves to be discovered. The sisters could barely make it, but leaned on each other for support. One cold night, all the prisoners took refuge in a barn. The sisters found a few loose floor boards. They hid under them, swearing everyone to secrecy. The next morning, the German soldiers came to roust the prisoners to move on. The sisters didn’t move. They could see the soldiers’ boots through the cracks in the floor above them. They remained silent. No one revealed their hiding place. They stayed put all day, fearing a soldier might come back to look for someone who tried to hide. They didn’t leave their hiding place until night fell. They had hidden for 24 hours.

Exhausted and starving, they made their way through the dark woods. They walked on and finally saw a light, glimmer in the darkness. A farmhouse came into view. They didn’t know what or who they would find. It was occupied by an old woman who greeted them with an American flag. They were saved. Her husband had been conscripted into the army, she was alone. She fed them and allowed them to rest, but only for a few days. The Russians were about to liberate Poland. It was better to be in Czechoslovakia which would be liberated by the Americans, so the sisters moved on and took to the road, just before American troops arrived to liberate them. They were finally free and had survived together; miraculous.

Cecile moved on to Germany, working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) in Tirschenreuth, as a child welfare worker. Roman Kriegstein, another Polish Jew who, along with his mother, had survived the war, roared into town on a motorcycle with a sidecar. He had studied to be a dentist before the war and was on his way to reclaim his dental tools, but stopped for a moment. He laid eyes on Cecile. She helped him find a room for the night and invited him to come to a dance that evening. He never returned to Poland to get his dental equipment. He found love and stayed with Cecile, but he did need to make money.

He met a man named Skeresky who had survived the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He had a bus that ran on wooden fuel. Together they started a bus line, as transportation was scarce. It grew and grew. They named it “ESKA” (from their initials). Eventually, they sold it to raise the funds to get to America. It still exists today.

Cecile and Roman were married in Germany by an American Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Eugene Lipman, who was with the first group of liberators. He became very close with them and married everyone in the family, including my friends. Twin sons Henry and Arnold were born on March 31, 1949. Eight months later, sponsored by Roman’s Aunt Lucille (refugees had to have sponsors already living in the United States), they made their way to New York.

The new Americans originally lived in Washington Heights. Roman worked as a dental assistant and commuted every day into lower Manhattan. On the long commute, he made a friend, Sam. Sam designed jewelry and had two daughters. They had a long time to talk. At that time, the only people who could acquire gold were people in the dental business (for fillings) or jewelers. With his delicate dental skills, Roman knew how to work the gold and began designing jewelry, which he and Sam sold over their lunch break. Soon, they were doing so well that they quit their “day jobs” and rented space downtown to design and sell the jewelry.

Within a few years, even that space was too small and they looked for a factory to buy. A watch case factory on Long Island became available. The watch case houses the movement of the watch. It is made of gold and was a good business for the remainder of Roman’s life. He used his knowledge, savvy, and very hard work to live what used to be called the “American Dream”.

The family had moved from Washington Heights to Teaneck, NJ when the boys were still young, but now moved to Roslyn, New York. Henry and Arnold went on to Harvard and Yale, respectively and both became doctors. Their parents had one more son, much younger than the twins. Roman and Cecile were devoted to each other for their entire lives.

Henry is an ophthalmologist with a speciality in the retina. He practices on the South Shore and Cape Cod, lives on Martha’s Vineyard all summer. We have traveled extensively with him and his wife. Many years ago, I began seeing light flashes in my left eye and knew the signs of a problem with my retina. We have no help for this on the Vineyard. I pondered what to do and had a “eureka” moment. I asked Henry if I could leave the island with him on the early ferry, come to his Cape Cod office and be examined. He found a hole in my retina, lasered it closed and we returned to the Vineyard together that day. He literally saved my eyesight. He is a brilliant, gentle man.

 

##################

Written almost five years ago, here is the story of my maternal grandparent’s immigration to the U.S.

My Grandparents’ Story

 

 

Through our years as active art collectors, we attended many art auctions, but rarely bought anything. An exception were the two works we bought from the Mass College of Art in 1994 done by celebrities that we hang in our bathroom, just for fun. We both love Gregory Peck and Steve Martin, so these were “no-brainers” for us. They were not expensive and a great way to support the school.

In 1995, with a vibrant committee, I helped start a group called the “Young Patrons of the Rose”. We developed a wonderful three-part program; a tour of the museum followed by dinner, a visit to a collector’s home, and a visit to an artist’s studio in or around the Boston area. We had the formula down and the program was a great success. The Chair of the Rose was deeply involved and suggested we plan a fundraiser – an art auction.

We put together a great committee, headed up by the Chair’s step-daughter. Including the Brandeis Development Officer involved with the arts, there were 11 members of the committee, which began in 1999. I brought on the director of one of the leading galleries in Boston. She connected us with her stable of huge artists.

We met at least monthly, frequently more often. We batted around ideas and quickly came up with a winner – making boxes – 8″ wooden cubes, with the top left off, to give to an invited group of artists to be auctioned off, with the top-tier (10 of them, including Sol LeWitt, Shellbourne Thurber, Michael Mazur, Annette Lemieux, Philip Taaffe, who had just had a solo show at the Rose, and a few other notable local artists) auctioned live, the rest going silent from bid sheets. We put together a wish-list of artists and assignments to committee members to contact the various artists we wanted to make us the boxes to be auctioned off.

We called the event “Out of the Box”. We set the date of the event for Sunday, November 5, 2000. It had to be at a time when the Rose galleries would be empty (there was no Lois Foster wing at the time), as we took over the entire building to display the boxes and bid sheets. We erected a tent on the lawn in front of the museum (where the Chris Burden “Light of Reason” sculpture now resides, erected in 2014) for dining after the silent auction.

I was still an active collector at the time and knew all the top galleries in Boston, so approached many and got some of the top artists in Boston to participate. It was only a short time since the long-time and well-respected Rose director, Carl Belz, had left. I remained in touch with him. Most of the area artists knew him well. I used that relationship to leverage my “ask”. Many of these artists had work in the Rose collection, or I had bought work from the galleries I contacted.

Once we had all the boxes handed out and knew who all the participating artists would be, I was assigned the role of “artist wrangler”. I was in contact with the entire list of artists to make sure they completed and returned their finished works before the auction so we had time to inventory, price and our curator (the current Rose curator at the time) could figure out the installation.

We asked 66 people to make art work (including the president of the university and some of our committee members). I had a spreadsheet of who had picked up the boxes, when were they returned, how often I called them, etc. This was before the days of essential use of email, or even cellphones. I had studio phone numbers, addresses; people came in person to pick up and drop off boxes. I tracked it all (and still have the worksheets to prove it).

Others on the committee worked on catering details (cold food given out in boxes, of course), invitations, lists of people to invite, etc. Putting on any sort of a fundraiser is a huge endeavor. Reaching out to people who will spend money on art boxes is a specific crowd, but our “Young Patrons of the Rose” committee had been together for some years now and we had a built-in audience. And of course, we tapped the broader Rose membership and the Boston-area art world writ large. We had excellent artists doing interesting work. We spent 18 months putting it all together.

The curator put together a fantastic-looking show. Other members of the committee put the bid-sheets together and had the team ready to check out the winning bidders and wrap up the boxes efficiently for the trip home (at least they were relatively small and not too fragile). Through friends in the auction world, a professional auctioneer donated his services for the live auction. Dan and I bought two tables to the event to help ensure good turn out and some interesting people who could talk up what was valuable.

Of course it was a rainy, blustery November night. Inside the museum it didn’t matter. Getting under the tent…well, we all had fun. Just before the event was due to begin, we realized we needed someone to make announcements “hawking” what was available in each room, urging people to buy, and most of all, closing each room (there were three) where the silent auction took place. We looked at each. Yes, I was the theater person who could speak the loudest. I volunteered for the assignment and spent the evening hollering from the center of each room (upstairs and downstairs in the main Rose building, then in over the the Lee wing). We closed each room 15 minutes apart from the next. Much to my delight, Dan got into the spirit of things and bought one box from the silent auction, a lovely Jim Stroud black on black work. He is mostly known for his print making, but this a subtle beauty.

We trudged through the inclement weather to the tent for some food (admittedly, the low point of the evening), libation, and the live auction. Dan got more excited by bidding wars going on for some of the well-know artists. The Sol LeWitt box, which he had de-constructed, was purchased by a Rose Board member and one of the largest contemporary art collectors in the US (he was fondly reminiscing about it to me earlier this year – it remains on his coffee table today). Others went for large sums of money. Dan got excited about the Shellbourne Thurber, a conceptual artist, whose work we followed at the Krakow Gallery in Boston. She had covered her box with pages from Freud and inside, placed a mechanical toy, turned on by a switch underneath the box. When activated, the toy rattled the box and said, “Help me, help me! Will you let me out of here?!” We loved it and paid a goodly sum of money for it. Dan hosted one table, I hosted the other. Our friends cheered us on, as Dan bid for the box. It was a heady experience.

In my file, I find a letter, written the day after the auction, thanking all the artists for their participation in our successful event. Of course, we found as many sponsors as we could to help underwrite it. We charged to attend, but the sale of the boxes was what made us money, as we had lots of expenses associated with the effort. I’m sure just renting the tent was very costly. In all, I believe we made a profit of about $40,000. The proceeds were used to underwrite the first show in the new Lois Foster Gallery, which opened in September, 2001, the Rose’s 40th anniversary year.

On a recent shiva call, I was in the home of one of my fellow committee members. Highlighted on shelves surrounding a fireplace in a condo full of exceptional artwork were two boxes from that evening. Another world-class art collector and I commented on them. She told me she still has her Gerry Bergstein, a box bought during the live auction. It is good to know more than two decades later, these boxes still have pride of place in the world.

 

 

A picture is worth a thousand words... unless it isn't.
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When I think of photo booths, I think of freaking out in an MRI tube.
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On January 19, 1995, I set off on a trip to Kazakhstan to help find ways in which American computer technology could help improve the safety and/or efficiency of the coal mining industry in that country, which had recently become an independent state, no longer under the domination of the Soviet Union.  I left Columbus on a Thursday evening, and traveled to Cincinnati and Frankfurt  before arriving in Almaty,  Kazakhstan early on Saturday morning.  (The total travel time was about 24 hours, but took place over parts of three days because of the different time zones.)  I’ll write about the two weeks I spent there and the adventures I had at a different time, but this note is about the hotels I experienced there.

I was picked up at the airport by Sasha, the driver for Alan Irving, an employee of the Agency for International Development and my guide for the two weeks I was in the country.  Sasha took me to the Hotel Kazakhstan in the center of Almaty.  I learned that the the hotel was the only large building left standing after a disastrous earthquake some years earlier.  It is a tall building, maybe twelve stories or more, and appeared to be very modern in its architecture.  The first thing I noticed was that there was a team of women who spent their entire day mopping the floor in the lobby – as soon as they had finished mopping, they would start over again, all day long.  I made my way up to my room where I met the dzherniya, the floor lady, who was responsible for everything that happened on the floor.

My room had a small bed that was made up with sheets and blankets wrapped up in a way to provide a very warm and snug place to sleep.  There was a small bathroom with a shower,  a sink, and a toilet through which water ran constantly, which made it tough to sleep.  I lay down for a few hours to try to adjust to the jet lag, but was awakened after a few hours, when the telephone rang.  It was a prostitute offering her services – apparently the prostitutes have arrangements with the floor ladies and call around to the rooms until they find a willing client.  (I was told that if a hotel guest repeatedly declines the services of a female prostitute, he will then start getting calls from male prostitutes, but that did not happen in my case.)

The next morning, Sunday, Sasha drove Alan and me to the airport and we caught a flight to Ekibastuz, a city of around 140,000 people in an area near a gigantic surface mining operation, which I consider to be the eighth wonder of the world.  (Ekibastuz also happens to be the city where Alexander Solzhenitsen was sent during the Soviet era.)  Alan and I were picked up at the airport and driven to the Gastinitsya Byelochka, the “Little Squirrel Hotel”, where me met Rick, the chair of the mining engineering department at the University of Kentucky, and Jim Dinger, a geologist from the same university.  They had already been in Ekibastuz for a week, working on ways to mitigate the pollution caused by dust from the massive mining operation which surrounded the city.

When we checked into the hotel, I was asked to hand over my passport!  I was concerned about that, but Alan assured me that I would get it back, that the police wanted to know every person who came into town.  Dinners at the hotel consisted of whatever the staff could find in what went for grocery stores there.  Rick and Jim had already made it clear that they were not going to have another meal of beets, so we were spared that, but we had a lot of thickened sour cream, which the Russians there considered quite a delicacy, eggs when they could find them, meat which was almost certain to have been horsemeat, and some vegetables, along with truly horrible coffee or somewhat better tea (chai).

We visited coal mines in the area on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday then flew back to Almaty on Thursday and checked back in to the Hotel Kazakhstan.  By that time, I was very happy to find a nice big glass of thickened sour cream for my breakfast on Friday morning.  Rick and Jim flew back to the US on Saturday.

On Sunday, Alan and I flew to Karaganda, a major city of about 640,000 people  around which were some twenty-six deep mines, twenty-five of which were on strike.  (The miners were on strike because they hadn’t been paid in months, because the coal mines had hot been paid by the power companies in months, because the miners had not paid their power bills in months, because…)  In Karaganda, we checked into the Gastinitsya Chaika, the Seagull Hotel.  At the front desk, they told us that our rooms would be the equivalent of $280 per night, each, but Alan talked them down to just $28 per night, which was more than enough, considering that that there was no hot water in the hotel!  (This was in the middle of winter in an area close to Siberia, where the temperature typically dips down to -40 degrees!)

One interesting thing about the Seagull hotel is that it was right next to Kosmonaut House, where the cosmonauts were taken to recuperate after spending time in space.  There is a plaque on the wall of Kosmonaut House with the names of some of the people who had stayed there, including Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to travel to space.

While we were in Karaganda, we went underground at the only coal mine that was working,  I was accustomed to going underground at coal mines in the US, but on this trip I found myself down approximately 2600 feet, half a mile, the deepest I had ever been.  During the time we were in the mine, we didn’t see a single lump of coal actually moved out of the face, because the equipment was broken down, typical of mines in that area.

On Thursday, we again flew back to Almaty.  As I tried to check back into the Hotel Kazakhstan, other people kept crowding in front of me, until I loudly yelled out “Nyet!  I was here first!”  They looked at me with shocked expressions, but made way for me to get up to the front desk and check in.

On Sunday mornings in Almaty, all of the people working for the AID would gather for brunch at the Hotel Dostyk, which had been the Communist Party hotel during the Soviet era.  This was the highlight of the week, with every kind of meat, eggs, pastries, and other foods imaginable, and with REAL COFFEE, rich, dark, hot coffee, and as much of it as you could drink.  The $25 price of the brunch was worth it just for the coffee.

On the second Sunday that I was there, I happened to look across the table at Jim Gershin, a guy who hosted a get-together for English-speaking people every Thursday at his apartment, where we could unwind after a week in the field working solely through translators and hear English spoken for the entire evening.  (It was my desire to get over to Jim’s apartment that Thursday after the time in Karaganda that made me yell out to get to the front desk at the hotel.)  Anyway, I noticed a ring on Jim’s finger and asked him to pass it over to me.  It was his class ring from the Harvard class of 1970, just a year before I graduated.  It turned out that he had been on the Harvard crew, knew my classmate Tom Tiffany, who had been the cox on the crew, and had been at the historic game in 1968 when Harvard beat Yale 29-29.

On the Saturday after the Karaganda trip, I flew back to the US.  Going that direction, I left on Saturday morning, and was back in Columbus Saturday evening – a time zone thing again.

I consider March to be the beginning of year three of the pandemic. It was in March, 2020 when the virus began to affect my life. My last in-person event at the Rose was a lecture by acclaimed artist Fred Wilson, followed by a select group going to dinner in Waltham on March 3, 2020. Last chorus practice on March 9. My day-timer says, “crazy at the grocery story” on Friday, March 13. My last day going to my gym was the 14th; all my doctors yelled at me that it was no longer safe to go there live (we were using sanitizing wipes on every piece of equipment, even the hand weights).

We were at dinner at a friend’s home on Sunday, March 15 when word came that our governor would shut down the state two days later. He saw the bars jammed just before St. Patrick’s Day and knew he had to put restrictions in place. COVID-19 was spreading like wild fire. We still didn’t know exactly how it spread. The lockdown had begun. We could only go out to get essentials: food, medicine and entry was limited in those places. I found Josie, teaching via Zoom, on Saturday, March 21. And so the pandemic had set in for real. We scrambled to get masks and hand sanitizer.

Little by little, life returned to some semblance of normal. We did go to Martha’s Vineyard that summer, but only ate outdoors. We called it the “summer of the backyard”. In February, 2021, the vaccine changed everything for us, as we eagerly got vaccinated as quickly as we could, never believing that the right wing would become the anti-science party, making a “political statement” about doubting the reality in front of their noses, not understanding the meaning of “freedom” and “liberty”, sacrificing the good of all for selfishness. People on their death bed refusing to believe they had Covid-19. Propaganda and lies are scary and dangerous.

March 10, 2022 was a wonderful, busy day for me. I had my hair done (I went back to that the second the hair salons opened, wearing a mask as long as it was appropriate to do so). I called my friend Christie’s mother, Millie, one of my favorite people and a real surrogate mother to me, to wish her a heartfelt happy 96th birthday. And I went to the first live Rose opening in two years. We had to show proof of vaccination and wear masks in-doors (that is a Brandeis policy). It was by-invitation only, to keep the numbers manageable, but it was wonderful to be back after two years of virtual events. The Featured photo was taken that evening (I am the person on the left). Invited guests went to dinner in Waltham again. It almost felt normal.

I’ve been back to my gym for some time now. Due to my ankle injury, I’m mostly doing mat Pilates, but decided that I could try riding the recumbent bike and some work on machines. Now that the indoor mask mandate is lifted, I don’t mind getting sweaty on the bike. I know that everyone who enters the gym must be fully vaccinated (that was necessary to enter when my gym re-opened after the lockdown) and they have installed huge air filtration systems, so I feel safe working out. I also tend to go at less-busy times of the day. I still stream Josie’s classes at other times as well. After so many months of inactivity, it is difficult to regain fitness.

On March 22, we flew to California for a long-planned trip with friends. We bought passes last September (after Delta, before Omicron) to the Sonoma International Film Festival. At the time, California still had a mask mandate and the festival said they required proof of vaccination. Sitting in a crowded movie theater gave us pause and at first, we wore masks, but quickly felt at ease. Our friends told us where they wanted to stay (they had stayed there years ago), so we also made those reservations and got rental cars. From there we would continue on to Carmel for several days, joined by another couple, also good friends from home and on the Vineyard. We would stay at the Cypress Inn, a dog-friendly place famously owned by the late Doris Day, with her movie posters adorning the walls and one of her movies playing on a loop (closed caption) in the eating area.

We waited until a month before the event to make our final plans and book our flights. We had all been boosted and felt OK about the travel and festival. It turned out to be a good festival; quite a lot of fun to be with our friends. The weather was better than Boston, though usually cool in the morning, warm later in the afternoon, then cool again in the evening, so figuring out what to wear was challenging (I know – layers).

I can’t really recommend any films, as most did not yet have US distribution. Perhaps our favorite was called “The Road Dance”. It takes place in the Outer Hebrides during WWI, is based on a book, though they changed the ending and the writer/director, Richie Adams was in attendance (as were many of the directors) and did a good Q&A. It turned out, he and his wife were staying at our hotel and we had a long talk with him over breakfast one morning, then we saw them again at dinner one night, and went with them to their final Q&A. They were lovely people and we appreciated how friendly they were. We also really liked a documentary on the blues guitarist Buddy Guy. So it was an eclectic range of films.

Then on to Carmel, driving over the Golden Gate Bridge.

One friend had made dinner reservations for every night the six of us were together, which was good planning, as the town was full. Three of our group played the par three (the Hay) course at Pebble Beach twice and enjoyed themselves (it had recently been redesigned by Tiger Woods) while Joan and I wandered in and out of the shops in Carmel and once bought some food and had a picnic at the beach, watching squirrels run around, fight, play and entertain us. It was good to just laugh and talk. This was the friend who had us to the last dinner before lockdown on March 15, 2020.

We had lunch at Nepenthe, a famous spot in Big Sur, tried to visit Pfeiffer Beach, but the winds were up, blowing probably 50mph and we got sandblasted.

We celebrated Henry’s birthday with drinks at the Inn at Spanish Bay while listening to the lone piper. Playing the bag pipes is not easy and this fellow was only so-so, but it is a spectacular setting and we enjoyed ourselves before driving back to Carmel for our final dinner together.

On April 1, we drove up to Palo Alto for a visit with my dear high school friends, the founders of Retrospect, Patti and John Zussman. Patti came over to my hotel for an afternoon chat, then we regrouped for an evening dinner. It was great to catch up before heading home.

Throughout the trip, we’d get updates from our London kids on what little Rosa is up to. She turned 3 months old while we were in Sonoma and they called (via WhatsApp) so we could try and sing her happy birthday with a cupcake and candle. She didn’t know what was going on and was not amused. But Anna sent a cute video, playing with her to Beach Boys music and getting her to laugh. And David demonstrated that she has found her vocal cords. She wasn’t cooing, more squealing, but definitely enjoying the sound of her own voice. It is so interesting to watch her develop so rapidly at this age. We will visit again in mid-May. That is the next big thing on our agenda before heading to Martha’s Vineyard for the season.

We both got our second booster as soon as we returned home. I wanted it onboard before heading back to the UK. The BA.2 variant seems to be waning there, but is definitely on the rise in the Boston area (though, fortunately, not severe cases or deaths).

My chorus went back to live rehearsals in February, as long as you were fully vaccinated and wearing a mask, but I did not go back. Not yet. I plan to go back in September. Dan was fearful about in-door singing, and a friend recently said that half the members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (those who sing with the Boston Symphony) have Covid. Not a good omen. And I have a full-plate of travel right now, so would miss lots of rehearsals anyway.

I acknowledge that each step towards normal we take must be assessed for our tolerance for risk, and we look at rising (and in London), falling caseloads appropriately. The mask-mandate on public transit had just been extended again to May 3. We leave for London on May 4. There is certainly still lots of COVID around; it rose dramatically in Massachusetts over the past week. We take each day as it comes.

I hope we are in the endemic phase of this and can now just have annual boosters. I am ready.