A chorister is celebrated at St. Paul's Cathedral Evensong

(First draft)

Little Zander's family were ahead of me in line
His sister struggled to keep it together
I sat in the row behind them
She    tried to sit in her mother's lap
too     big at 14
she    looked at me and I recognized
she    was lost on the autistic spectrum
too    much going on
St. Paul's Cathedral
too    big for her

The      stained glass windows
the       awesome relics and shiny floors
the       way her slippers slid on the marble
the       organ vibrating my sternum, her ear drums
too loud, even with both hands covering her ears

the    Spaniards next to us trying to follow along
the    impossible to understand words of a hymn

sung in a major key with 8-part harmony

echoing to the ceiling

they left    in the middle of the prayer
speaking   their language the whole time

We saw the choir come in
little Zander was in all black in the back
the    Dean of the Chapel made a speech
the    Choirmaster put a white apron robe thingy over his head
the    collar stiff up to his chin
now he matched the others
But the Dean - he smiled and said, "It's time to twirl"
8 year old Zander spun and his white robe made angel wings
revealed an underlay like a little girl's tutu
his older sister stood up and clapped while everyone sat

She had been "so good" the whole time
then    they sang a strange Evensong
the    creepy anthem written in a minor key
the sinful behavior going down in Athens
and Jesus rising     above the alter in a Buddha pose
hands uplifted to reflect the Light

Zander's sister lay across their mother's lap
exhausted  sucking her thumb  rocking back and forth
with one eye on her, and one eye on Zander
Mother watched her son take a seat in the choir
and held tight to her big girl.

26 January Getting Roman

Walking across Tower Bridge to London's Roman Wall.  Sunny in the morning, freezing in the rain later that evening.

My friend's flat on the South Bank.  The tide is rising.  Spectacular views.

Look at this fat Squirrel eating in front of the Tower of London prison - he chewed out some tourists who were getting their selfie sticks too close!  Let's put a Yeoman outfit on him.

Mithraeum in the Bloomberg European HQ + Susan Hiller's Jukebox of 76 songs, a new installation of songs about London streets.  Michael Bloomberg's group excavated this old temple to Mithras and moved it about 18" so that it wouldn't continue to degrade with the high water table near the Thames. I couldn't find it until a security guard showed me the entrance.  Free!

Concert at St. Paul's Cathedral with chorister initiation, WW1 cross, Christopher Wren design.  Free!

OK, so I wasn't supposed to take pictures during the service or during the little boy's initiation rites into the Choristry, but when I asked a docent after everyone left if I could take a picture of the WW1 memorial cross, he said no.  Then he winked and said, "I'm turning my back."  I had just a second to put my phone in selfie mode and hold it behind me and hope something good happened.  You can see Christopher Wren's incredible architectural design and splendid ceilings, but you can't see Jesus in his Buddha enlightenment pose.  Rats.  It's above the tiny blue window towards the bottom left.

Sara Bareilles' Waitress

1.25.2020

My new friend Liz Ireland (from the Virginia Woolf society) recommended the musical Waitress, so I got tickets online and showed up in the West End again.  I had never seen the movie, so the plot was a mystery, but from the moment the lead singer playing the role of Jenna opened her mouth, I knew she was something special.  Later I learned Sara Bareilles was actually scheduled to begin the show on Monday, and Desi Oakley agreed to fly in for a few shows since the first Jenna had to leave before Sara started.  How terrifying would it be to join a new cast with different dynamics and tempo and try to pull off the show, after only a short rehearsal to block it?  The songs were the same as the Broadway version, granted, but there's something about practicing with your teammates that really helps.  I never guessed this was the behind the curtain drama, but one of the other actors gave Desi and her leading man bouquets, as they were leaving so that Sara B. and her leading man could take over.  I dunno,  I mean a musical is supposed to have show-stopping numbers that get patrons out of their seats, but tonight Desi's voice and emotional connection to the material were much stronger than the lyrics and arrangements.  She had three standing ovations!  I fully supported them all.  Not all musical leave you lifted, but this one did.

Des is holding her daughter, who had a brief part in the end, and flowers in this picture.  If you ever get the chance to see her, do!

Before the show, I saw the Chinese New Year's celebration beginning.  While I had a mask in my pocket, I stayed away.  Sigh.

So I went to the Opera Bar for some fish and chips, and my first organic beer.  England has been using fair trade and farm to table sourcing for years, and the food is tasty!

Cheers!  I finished the beer but not the fish.

Virginia Woolf Society Meeting

1.25.2020

On the way to the meeting, I walked around Bloomsbury and imagined what it was like in the time of the Bloomsbury Group.  In Russell Square Park, the Chow Society was meeting.

I learned why I was so enthusiastically encouraged to join the Virginia Woolf Society:  in the U.K., a Fellow is a very respected academic position, above a professor.  I am a Composition Fellow at St. Mary's College, and my position is the lowest in the faculty there.  So, I was greeted and adored and asked to attend the tea after the presentation.

Professor Claire Davison of the Sorbonne gave the talk.  Here's her first slide.

At the "tea," everyone drank way too much red and white wine, we cut a rum-filled birthday cake in honor of Virginia Woolf's birthday, and I won a book for a lottery prize!  I'll try to backfill this entry with more on the lecture, but I will say Claire offered to let me in the Sorbonne next week as you have to have a faculty sponsor to be admitted to the building.  We'll see if I can navigate the French transportation strike!

Mrs. Dalloway walking tour

1.25.2020

A day following Mrs. Dalloway's footsteps must be compressed into a couple of hours if I'm to make the Virginia Woolf Society annual meeting and lecture at the University of London.  I take the Tube to Westminster Station and am enthralled by the new station's bowels.

I suspect the area around Westminster is very different from Virginia Woolf's time.  I'll bet Mrs. Dalloway would be surprised to see her beloved Big Ben silenced and under refurbishment.  It should be done by 2021.  Also, the London Eye was not around in 1924, as well as much of the South Bank.

So many people, so much traffic on a Saturday.  I can't believe all of these tourists are getting in the way of my serious academic efforts!  On to Bloomsbury, and my fellow Virginia Woolf society members.

Kunene and the King

1.24.2020

Sometimes it's a good idea to go to a show and know nothing about it.  I did know this play was written by a South African actor to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the end of Apartheid.  I didn't know his brother had died of liver cancer on Dec. 19, 2019 until I read the program while waiting in the front row for the show to start.  I would be looking up all night, which would be good for my teacher's neck.  The Ambassadors Theatre is part of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and David Suchet, my favorite Poirot, has written a piece in the program.

It's opening night, and there's a buzz in the house.  The stage manager tells me they've double-booked my seat and takes my ticket.  Next to me is a drama critic and his two daughters.  She returns with my ticket and I get to stay.  A simple set of a living room with books, easy chairs, and a carpet.

Kunene is a nurse assigned to care for a famous actor with stage 4 liver cancer.  This actor has been given the role of King Lear, his lifelong dream, and he is trying to stay alive so he can be in the play.  As you might expect, he recites some of the famous speeches as he's rehearsing.  You might also fear, as I did, that Shakespeare's lines would be sprinkled throughout the play to make the point for the playwright, or to provide linguistic humor.  That only happened one time, for the script made use of famous plays but did not depend upon them.

I could write a full review, but I want you to see this play when it comes to the U.S.  And, it will.  Dr John Kani, who wrote and starred in it, has crafted a piece for the class of people who love Shakespeare and will come see a play about race relations.  I hope other people, more likely to need an education that includes multiple perspectives on power and oppression, will see it as well.  Kani's incredible "actor's" voice is capable of singing and speaking in his native Xhosa language as well as belting out Mark Antony's funeral speech in English.  The two actors cover a lot of territory, and the end is surprising and uplifting.  I hope they bring it to San Francisco or Berkeley.

Time to Rally

1.24.2020

Eddie the doorman and I become friends within minutes.  My keys are ready and I'm in the flat watching red double-decker buses drive over the Tower Bridge.  I open my bags, and everything is perfect.  There's a note from US Customs that they've been in my bag.  They left the wine bubble-wrapped, and I think I'm so smart, except that I've packed far too many books.  I pull them out, sit on the reclining sofa, pour myself a huge glass of water and a beer.  I scan the TKTS.co.uk site for last minute show tickets, and find a bargain front row ticket for £25 to Kunene and the King.  If I buy it, I will go, but I'm starting to slow down.

The Marks & Spencer market had Greek salad, incredible raspberries and blueberries, and I am happy.  In the beer aisle, a man in the store starts flirting with me when I ask for a suggestion.  Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is there, and while I'm tempted to buy my favorite, I tell I am want to be a tacky tourist and buy the Wimbledon beer.  He says, "Where have you been all of my life?"  We both laugh and I can't believe how comfortable I feel in this country.

Back at the flat, I have my meal and try to get up.  My body weighs too much.  I call it Happy Fat.  A soak in the bathtub confirms it:  I'm floating.  Too many bottles of wine in 2019.  The good news?  My Geodesy made it, and I'm going to the show.

Before Commute Time Commute

1.24.2020

Have you ever tried to take off compression stockings after a ten hour flight?  They become permanent body paint.

Running shoes back on, I prepare myself for the mile hike from the United terminal to the customs area, all underground.  Above me, planes rumble past.  The Concorde is up there for viewing, no longer in service.  Last year, I stood in Custom's Disneyland lines for 2.5 hours waiting while the workers did a slowdown work strike.  Something out of Pajama Game.  This year, the U.S., Canada, and other Commonwealth countries have been added to the European Union line.  I open my passport, put it face down in the scanner, and walk on.  No humans question me, and I never miss a stride heading out to baggage claim.

I 've never checked a bag going overseas.  Would Jean's Pledge Multi-Service Cleaner plastic bottles be broken?  More importantly, would my 96 point Geodesy wine be intact, or did it break inside my boots?  Would everything be covered under a proprietary red blend?

I decide not to look until I get to Jean's flat.  I knew the drill.  Heathrow Express, Paddington Station, Tube, and a long walk from London Bridge to the Tower Bridge.  I time my commute, and I'm talking to her doorman at 3:35 p.m.  We landed at 1:37, I was off the plane at 1:50, had my bag at 2:10.  I had the option of sitting on the Piccadilly line.   How could this journey be better?  All of my pre-trip anxieties became joy when I saw the Tower Bridge in the fading light.  I will try to deserve this.

Fort Jenyth in row 50

1.23.2020

I resisted the temptation to upgrade my cheap flight.  Again.  Originally, it was 328.00.  Then I offered to bring some cleaning supplies to my friend Jean and realized I would have to check a bag.  There's another 50.00.  Then I saw the best seat on the plane was open.  In the second to last row on a Boeing 777, there are two seats.  That means you can put your humongous, overfilled backpack under the aisle seat in front of you, and have leg room under the middle seat.  I snagged it.  Airfare now 428.00.  Still a bargain.

But, this morning, I saw a Premier class seat open with a sleeping pod.  I've never been in any class other than public-school-back-of-the-plane-economy with the tired and overworked flight attendants. Would it be worth 800.00 to sleep and have the beautiful ones bring decent wines?  Nah.  Business class had two open seats for an additional 210.00.  It appeared those seats reclined as well.    The plane hadn't sold many seats.  17 people were on the free upgrade list for Premier, but only 2 on the free upgrade list for business.  So, they wanted to sell those seats instead of giving free upgrades.  I understood that.  What is this pricing strategy?  I was experiencing my daughter's world of behavioral economics:

Demand Based Pricing is a pricing method based on the customer's demandand the perceived value of the product. In this method the customer's responsiveness to purchase the product at different prices is compared and then an acceptable price is set. 

If you've ever bought an event ticket on the secondary market, you've experienced demand based pricing.  By the time I figured what was happening, the two seats were gone.

Well, I kept my 51B.  Last boarding group.  In rows 44-46 were a dozen British businessmen, clearly drunk from their last call.  Several delightful attendants greeted me in the back of the plane, and one said in a lovely British accent, "We've only 77 passengers on the plane, so once we're at 30,000 feet, you may change your seat."  I'd been thinking about that all day, yet my seat was the best.

I could smell delicious food? On a plane?  The trolleys didn't stop by me.  I leaned my head out about 90 minutes into the flight and caught the eye of the surfer dude attendant.  "Yo, I know you're there.  I don't think they gave us enough dinners," he sighed.  A young British attendant looked distressed.  I opened my bag of pretzels.  The third attendant asked me how I felt about Ravioli Florentine.  I said I loved it.  He returned with an extra Premier class (actually hot) dinner, complete with a tiny bottle of Chateau Lafitte Bourgogne.  I rarely drink on a plane, but I didn't want to disappoint the chef who had married the meal and wine.

After dinner, the thought of a fulling reclining business seat sounded so appealing.  I could make my own:  a row of three seats with the armrests up.  I made the move to row 50.  The Brits were still singing, softer now, and United provided three pillows and three blankets per row as well.  Time to make a fort.

In the old days of flying Southwest with my girls, we'd get the last two rows on the plane during early boarding.  Three seats facing front, three facing back, and a playpen on the floor. (Don't judge - I was never a germaphobe.)  Those were the pre-9/11 days of no TSA and lots of fun making forts with blankets and having pillow fights.  In honor of the girls I left behind, I put up the armrests, took three blankets and made a tent top over the seats.  Six unused pillows meant no seat belt buckles digging into my back, and I was off to Lala land.   The young British attendant looked underneath and I showed her my fastened seatbelt.  I'm in first class.

1.23.2020

New garden at the end of the United International Terminal.  My TSA-pre status allowed me plenty of time to walk the entire terminal and catch the sunset and a fellow traveler's magenta sweater.  Not sure how I would interpret the metal sculpture but it does say something.