the rhythm of a gentle bossa nova...

My little town is undergoing some big changes. Again. It's always undergoing some big changes. Again. When I first moved here in 1995, I can remember crossing a dangerous intersection (nicknamed "malfunction junction", of course) by looking at the license plate of the oncoming car. If the plate was Vermont's you could just go, the person driving the car would stop to let you cross. If the plate betrayed a New Hampshire origin, you waited - that driver would run you over. If it was Massachusetts, Connecticut, or New Jersey it was best to go in the opposite direction. All of that changed not long after September 11th, 2001 when there was a large influx of metropolitan expatriates. Within months, every time one of us got behind the wheel of our cars, we had to practice defensive driving to counteract the interlopers' offensive driving. Then they discovered that it was cheaper (and easier) to register their cars here; suddenly all the offensives had Vermont plates too. That was the tip off that things had changed beyond simple second home ownership.

Just off the main intersection of our town's Main Street (which runs parallel to the Connecticut River) is Brown and Roberts, a beloved local hardware store. But it's not just any hardware store. It's the kind of place where there are huge old wood filing cabinets which stand on old wood floors; the cabinets' many small drawers are full of various sizes of nuts, bolts, washers and other useful paraphernalia which can be purchased by the each rather than having to buy a huge box of something or other, most of whose contents will never be used. Buy what you need, not what you don't.

Brown and Roberts during the Strolling of the Heifers in 2011. The store to the picture's left, which used to be an A&P,
is now home to a florist and the Chamber of Commerce. To the far left you can see a little of the tower at the Brooks House.

When I first moved here, someone I knew was looking for one of those handles which one uses to lift the lids off of old woodstoves. They were hoping I could find one at one of the local flea markets. I went to Brown and Roberts, and sure enough they had a couple on hand. I know someone who bought a power lawnmower there. When they went to pick it up, it was already fully assembled - and came with a full tank of gas. It's that kind of place. A Home Depot opened in a strip mall on the edge of town, and couldn't compete. It seems people preferred the service they got at Brown and Roberts over the cheaper price they could get at Home Depot. The store is in the old Montgomery Ward building. While a number of people of a (ahem) certain age may remember the Montgomery Ward mail order catalogue, many don't know that there was also a small chain of retail department stores.

Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce 

The building's exterior here even has the "Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce" medallion designed for Montgomery Ward by sculptor J. Massey Rhind. When I first moved to town, the side of the building next to the Baptist Church had a large faded painted "Montgomery Ward" sign across the top. I'm sure I photographed it, but I can't find the pic anywhere. It has since completely faded away, or perhaps it was removed when they cleaned the building's exterior awhile back. It has just been announced that the business is being sold. The Putnam family has owned it for the last oh, fourty years or so. I don't know this for sure, but I assume that the "A.F. Roberts" that used to advertise in the local paper in the 1930s and 1940s is the original business.  In other words, it's been around for awhile. The purchaser owns several other hardware stores further upstate. It is being said that some members of the current ownership family are to stay on. I've been through enough of these kinds of purchases to know that they will most likely be forced out within a year and then watch out... but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that the business survives with only minor changes. Now, as it happens, my radio show this week will include a 15 minute broadcast by the Ink Spots from July 12, 1939. I include such a broadcast just about every week, and usually read from the local newspaper of the day of the featured broadcast. The following, taken from microfilm, are part of my files from our local paper during mid July of 1939.

Note the old 3 digit telephone number. As with the ad below, if you right click
on the graphic, you can open a much larger easier to read version in a new window.

Another big happening, hopefully of a positive nature, is that a consortium of architects, lawyers and money has finally put all the pieces in place to take possession and begin rehabilitation of the Brooks House. The Brooks was once a luxury hotel, and was the largest "Second Empire" style building outside of New York City. It had restaurants, various stores, meeting rooms, and a ballroom. It is the largest commercial building in town to this very day, and dominates the main block and corner of downtown. It's Main Street façade used to have a two story wrought iron veranda over 40 feet long. When it was built, no expense was spared - it was in many ways a gift to the town by a resident who had gone to California and returned a wealthy man.

Brattleboro has always loved a parade. The wrought iron balcony on the
Brooks Hotel must have been a great place from which to watch one.

In the late 1800's, social events held there were regularly reported upon in the Boston and New York City newspapers. Mr. Brooks also donated a beautiful library to the town, which was torn down to become a parking lot for the US Post Office and Courthouse.

The original Brooks Library, long gone.

By 1970, the hotel had fallen on hard times and was "rescued" by someone who bought it, stripped it of its architectural details, and turned the rooms and suites into cheap apartments. Eventually his son took it over. I have met people in town who to this day have not forgiven that family for what they did to the building. And that was before the horrible fire in April 2011 which destroyed the roof and much of the interior. The exterior walls of the place were fine, as they were made of extraordinarily sturdy locally kilned redbrick, and were 16" thick on the first two floors, with the third floor being 14" thick. My dear friend Laura, over at Austanspace, used to live there and moved out two weeks before the fire, which displaced close to 80 people who lost everything.

- from 1942 -
"Community Owned"

Our local community radio station, WVEW-lp, had its studio, transmitter and antenna there. We lost everything too, and were off the air for just about a year. We almost lost our license, returning to broadcast mode one week before such an event would have occurred. The revamped Brooks House will still be a mixed use building. The first two floors are expected to be expanded local branches of two commuter colleges. The original architectural drawings put the branch of the Community College of Vermont in the old hotel kitchen and workers' quarters in the back wing on the parking lot. Those drawings haven't been updated, and were done before the State put in a considerable amount of money to consolidate and expand the colleges. The other two floors (actually a floor and a half) will be apartments; most will rent in a price range of around $2,000.00 a month. The original proposal also included a few special low priced apartments - provided the potential resident meets low income guidelines, they could get a place at only $950.00 a month! I don't know who they think will be able to afford such rents, but they are allegedly 90% booked.

 

The fire at the back of the building, center mansard - April 2011

I don't quite recall where this picture and the one above came from,
but they aren't mine. I think they were from a local paper.

 

The Brooks has been sitting empty and partially boarded up for over two years now.

Another big change will veer a little more towards the restoration department. Our beloved movie theatre, the Latchis, will close its original screen (the largest operating screen left in Vermont) for a couple of months while the seats and the ceiling are repaired. The theatre is part of another hotel complex, one of the few art deco buildings in the state. What is said to be the theatre's old "crying room" (for mothers toting infants, soundproofed with a window to see the screen and with sound piped in) became a second screen. The old ballroom upstairs was cut in half, and one part became a third screen. The other half still sits there unused, and since the closing of the other local theatre (a miserable excuse for a movie house, a fourplex which was originally a Jerry Lewis Twin) there has been discussion of making it into another screen. An attached storefront became a small fourth screen recently. The theatre used to be a small affair with an entrance just off the corner of Main street on Flat Street. In 1938, as an answer to the then big bucks Paramount Theatre which had opened the year before, the present hotel and theatre complex was built as a tribute to the head of the Latchis family who had emigrated to America and started in business with an outdoor fruit stand on that same corner.

The original Latchis Theatre, on the corner of Flat Street and Main.

 



The Latchis just after opening in 1938.



From 1945, showing the marquee which had been added over the hotel entrance.

The foyer floor is terrazzo marble (used throughout the hotel), the auditorium walls have frescoes depicting Greek myths, the ceiling has wood inlays depicting the constellations and contains long broken "starlight" bulb enclosures. When I moved to town, the theatre had a huge cinemascope screen built in front of the old proscenium. (Cinemascope used to require curved screens to be shown properly without distortion; they weren't as deep as Cinerama screens though.) The Cinemascope screen was dirty and had rips and holes in it. I befriended the projectionist and began a whispering campaign - almost everything shown there would fit within the reaches of the old proscenium. It wasn't too long before the cinemascope screen was torn down, and a new screen was fitted within the proscenium, improving the image considerably. I don't know if I played any part in that decision, but I'd like to think I did.

Nice little mock up someone made of the auditorium with a picture on-screen. The only problem is that 'Casablanca' was presented in a different frame ratio (closer to a square image) than the widescreen style presented here, which cuts off much of the image. For the film series I ran there, we managed to track down the proper lenses to do things right.

Back in the day the Latchis Theatre was the first cinema outside of a major city to play 'Gone With the Wind'. When the 'Wizard of Oz' was shown there, some of the Muchkins participated in a special parade which marched down Main Street to the Theatre to welcome the movie to town. For a few years, I ran a Sunday afternoon classic and art film series there. Our first film? The then newly made IB Technicolor print of 'Wizard of Oz', of course. (It was the first IB process Technicolor print made in over 30 years. It was glorious, even better than earlier old IB prints I'd seen. Including myself, there were four people in the audience - the theatre manager didn't like the idea and 'forgot' to put the special screening in their ad. The Paramount (which burned out in the early 1990's) would show serials on the weekend, but the Latchis had stage shows with a minimum of 5 acts of Vaudeville. The non-profit which now owns the complex has plans to eventually rebuild and update the stage and dressing room areas. Now if they would only fix the balcony. (The 700 seat auditorium would then seat close to 1200.) The following short video shows a good bit of the theatre's interior.

 

 

Another local business, Renew Salvage, which used to strip architectural and reusable pieces of old buildings being rehabbed or torn down, for sale to builders and restorers, has just closed its doors.
Town government is going through changes too with the election of a, how shall I put this? - bizarre group of people to the Selectboard. Not long after the last round of elections, one Selectman suddenly got a new job elsewhere and resigned. (If I'd been in better health I'd have helped him pack up if it could have gotten him out of here quicker.) His appointed replacement was the lowest vote getting candidate in the last election, the one who doesn't know anything about the town or town government. The guy who missed by just a few votes wasn't appointed. Nor was the guy who lost by a slightly larger margin. The current Board wanted someone who would "go along". Then our Town Manager suddenly got a different job and resigned. Brattleboro has gone through a lot in the years I've lived here. I moved here just after a Walmart had opened across the river in New Hampshire. They'd wanted to have a store in Vermont, but the state refused to have them. So they built across the river where they could destroy the economy of the downtown of the area which is said to be the state's biggest financial generator. They almost succeeded. Brattleboro fought back, starting with "buy local" campaigns in the late 1990's, promoting ourselves as an art town, using the Latchis for film series and live events, a first Friday of the month downtown Gallery Walk, & etc. We've weathered quite a few storms (literal and figurative) since then. Whatever is or isn't happening, it seems more and more evident that big money is moving into Brattleboro. I begin to wonder how many years are left before those of us on smaller incomes, some of the very people who worked so hard to help keep the town vital, will be forced out. I hope it doesn't come to that.

Austanspace temporarily offline

As several of Austanspace's readers are kind enough to visit my page from time to time, I'm letting everyone know that Laura's computer is being quite naughty and refusing to cooperate with her. A healer versed in electronic minutiae is scheduled to reach the Shire on Tuesday afternoon for consultations and, one hopes, immediate results.

A note or two about my little town

Sometimes, most of the time in fact, I really love the town in which I live. It has been my intention to start writing a bit about it and telling a few of its stories.

Just yesterday, for instance, I started the day by hosting a Friday morning radio show on our all volunteer community radio station. Most of the two hour time slot was spent in a free wheeling discussion with Daryl Pillsbury, who works nights on the maintenance staff at our local hospital. I first met Daryl when he was the sole voice for the working class on the Selectboard which manages our town. He later spent 8 years as our county's representative in our State Government. Several years ago, he and another local citizen created the Heat Fund, a non-profit (no one gets paid a cent) which raises money to provide emergency fuel assistance in our county.  He'd come in after getting off work to promote the Heat Fund; we also talked politics and his work for the Marijuana Resolve (which he helped start) whose goal is to end the legal insanity and attendant costs of criminalizing pot smokers. By 9am I was training a new radio station participant, an older man who has spent years as a local realtor, whose show mixes advice on real estate with 1950's and 1960's rock and roll. As each song plays, he makes hand gestures as though he were performing the choreography of a doo-wop group. As I made my way to the post office, I ran into two different friends, both requiring stops for quick discussions. After running other errands, I attended the kick off of our holiday season at the tree lighting in the center of town. The tree is in a "vest pocket" park, which is a story or two in itself. Santa was there. As was a young father with his 3 or 4 year old son, both on Dad's bicycle standing off to one side. The Dad asked his son if he wanted to go over and meet Santa. The boy hid behind his Dad's legs and confessed that Santa Claus scared him. The park sits at the main intersection in town, in front of a Thai restaurant. By the time I made my way home, I'd had another training for another new DJ (Friday is our most difficult day to fill and it is filling up). Today, Santa will arrive via tractor, a yearly event in which he is, I believe, accompanied by Alfred, our local black drag queen (well, the famous one, anyway) who will be dressed as an elf. The annual sing-in of Handel's Messiah also takes place this afternoon. It has professional soloists, but those attending get to sing all the choral parts. There's lots else going on today - all in a town of 12,000 people. Well, it is the third largest town in the state.

Lest you think that I am joking about the Messiah Sing-In, here's an odd bit of video from You Tube. At the beginning of the video, there is a brief shot of the interior of the Centre Congregationalist Church where the event takes place. The church used to be on our town common, but was moved to Main Street and rebuilt close to the center of town back in 1843.



As I was starting the preparations for my regular radio show this week, I was thinking that I might use some of my research for a post. It was quite a surprise, therefore, to find that Laura over at the Austanspace blog had written about our Community Radio Station. As a part of my show, which covers the big band era, vocalists, songwriters, etc. I usually finish with a 15 minute or half hour broadcast from that era which is from the roughly the same week we are in, just a different year. As part of the set up to that finale, I read the news from the local paper published that day. As enjoyable and oddly familiar as the news might be, I think I get my biggest kick from the old advertisements. Here's a few examples from the paper of December 2nd, 1938:

This ad (above) was on the bottom of the front page!

The above ad was from one of the three movie theatres in town in 1938, the Latchis. 

It is part of the Latchis Hotel, one of the few art deco buildings in the entire state of Vermont.

The Latchis in 1938, the year it opened.

The opening was delayed due to the Hurricane that October, which hit the area pretty hard.

Above is the auditorium as it appears today, barely changed from the days when there were weekend stage shows (usually 5 acts of vaudeville) along with the movie. Many years ago I was successful in getting a series of Sunday matinees of classic movies played there. But the story of the Latchis, and my little part in its history, are stories for another day. In the meantime, I have a radio show to put together, and a gentle snow, the first able to leave a bit of accumulation on the ground, is falling. I must make coffee and stare out the window for a bit. 

The Kids table

When I was young, Thanksgiving dinner was always held at my Grandmother's.

My Grandfather had died two years before I was born. Nana had remarried and moved to the next town down the road when I was three.

Her parents (my great-grandparents) would be there. And her three sons, (and the eldest's wife), my brother and myself. And Nana's second husband's son, wife and at first two, then three kids. Then my youngest uncle would add a wife and a couple of children of his own. It was quite a crowd. All of us kids would have our own table. At first we were put at a card table in a corner of the dinning room, but in following years we were put at the table in the kitchen. It was special, and I dare say that we all felt very grown up to be off on our own. I'll bet our discussions were a lot more fun than at the big folks table. I do remember that once or twice an adult came in to quiet us down.

In those days, it would have been considered horribly rude to have the television on during dinner, or to eat in the living room with it on. There were no big football games to be watched - they hadn't started televising them yet (if they were even held), and no one in my family would have been interested. We did have Thanksgiving football, though. While the morning was given over to watching the Gimbels parade on the tv, early afternoon, for anyone interested (none of us were until our teenage years), was the high school's final football game of the year with our traditional and properly hated main rival.

For the feast itself, we'd not only put the extensions into the dining room table (and lay down the extra table mats), but we'd get out the special china, the special silver service (which came out of a dark wood box luxuriously lined with green felt), the crystal water glasses (we did not have wine, although I do not know if that was common or just my family - there were dark rumors of a relative from the 1800's who had been "lost to drink"... ). We dressed in company best clothes, too, even though we saw each other constantly - it was a nod to the day. My great grandfather always wore his suit.

That was all a long time ago now. These days, I live an 8 hour drive away from the town where I grew up, and all of my direct family members are gone; only an aunt, stepmother, and stepbrother and his family remain. I would love to see them all, but it's too long and expensive a drive (these days I have no car), and it is too expensive to go by train. I get together every year with Laura of the Austanspace blog for dinner - it's our own little tradition in a world where even traditions are now merchandised and made meaningless. But we carry on. We don't dress up, and there is no special china, or freshly polished silverware in a dark brown felt lined box, it's been years since Laura had a dining room (instead, we lounge around her living room - it's the modern version of the kids table). But there is still a feast to celebrate another year of our survival in an increasingly difficult world, memories to share of times and people gone by, lots of gossip, and an unspoken celebration of our family of friends who care about each other. And for that, I am truly thankful. May we all be so blest.

Best Wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

It's complicated

My little blog is under attack again. Some time back this site was discovered by spam bots which post voluminously and mercilessly at times. Their favorite choices for attack are "Uh, oh", which has (in two segments) a great piece from the Daily Show class warfare files, and "A Meditation on Valentine's Day". Most of their droppings push pills at discount prices. We are now knee deep in synchronicity, folks. Over at Austanspace Laura posted about the poor, and finished up with a clip from the movie "Caberet" in which Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey perform "The Money Song". As I was web gliding (I'm becoming more of a glider than a surfer these days, 'surfing' sounds too active), I chanced upon a blog with a video of Minnelli, Michael York, and Joel Grey at an event for a restoration job on the movie. All I will say is that time is not on our side. Oh - the restored footage chosen for the video was of "The Money Song". Liza, of course, is the daughter of Judy Garland. And you have no idea what restraint I am exercising in letting that description stand as is. The Meditation on Valentine's Day post used a song lyric written by Johnny Mercer. He wrote it to Garland as in, well, as in a love song. (Rather inconvenient as he met Garland at the time of her wedding to David Rose, but that's all another story. Maybe. It's complicated.)

Anyway, this past Sunday, I noted a couple of my personal reverberations for this time of year and the date of June the 10th. I left several things out (historically speaking, it's a busy day). The 10th was Judy Garland's birthday. To be honest, I avoided mentioning it because I didn't quite know what to say or do.

Garland was born on a June the 10th and died on June the 22nd. A friend of mine noticed that if you count it, as on a calendar, there are Twelve Days of Judy. "...on the sixth day of Judy my true love gave to me, six numbutol, five black bea-u-ties, four seconal, three... and a vodka chassseeerrrr". Well, you get the idea even if I can't sing.

What is there to say? The world has changed so much. Does the story still resonate with people today? Her parents vaudevillians who ran a movie house. Onstage at and from the age of two. Had to move when the stories about her father and the ushers started getting around. Resettled to the California promised land with a stage mother determined to give Rose Hovick a run for her money. Or in this case, her child's money. Under contract to the biggest, most powerful movie studio of the day, where the studio chief famously referred to her as his "little hunchback", and where she was given pills to keep her going, and pills to go to sleep. Hell of a story. Proclivity for drugs, alcohol, marrying gay men. Proverbial train wreck, multi car pile up. Pathos and bathos. It's one of those "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend" kinds of things. The story, and all that goes with it, the whole mythos, none of it really matters. What matters is that she was probably the best Goddamned entertainer who ever lived or who will ever live. For her last two birthdays, I unintentionally posted the same clip. Last year, I titled the post "Once every eternity". That about sums it up. See folks, this is what matters:

Happy Birthday, Judy. 

and Thank You.

Tag and I'm it, eh?

Okay, Austanspace tagged me (she'd been tagged by Lawless). From what I gather, I now have to answer the following 11 questions, then come up with 11 of my own and tag 11 people in turn.

So first, Austan's questions:

1. What was the last movie you watched? - The Artist. I loved it. It made me want to go to movies again.

2. Did you go to a theatre or watch a dvd? - saw it in a movie theatre.

3. What's the new movie you want to see? - Dark Shadows, the new Batman coming out this summer, and The Hobbit next December.

4. Always buy munchies at the theatre or smuggle them in? - usually neither. I generally only get refreshments when I'm with other people who want them.

5. Pay full price, hit the matinee, rent or buy? - I rarely go to the movies anymore, they're just too expensive for my pay scale. I pay whatever I have to for the movie I want to see. In the old days, I loved matinees. Even when I also could get passed in to most anything in town. I've only bought a few DVDs since I stopped running the video store. I usually only buy movies that I know and will want to see again. I never really got in the habit of renting.
. 

6. What movie actor/actress do you make a point to always catch? - I try to see Johnny Depp's movies, he picks interesting projects to do. Ditto Tilda Swinton, to some extent. Otherwise, everyone else on my list is gone - Chaplin, Keaton. If the mood is right Judy Garland or Bette Davis. 

7. What's your favorite movie of all time? - Casablanca

8. Do you have a special movie memory (a first date, e.g.)? Several - one I like to mention: I used to collect movies in 16mm and show them in my apartment. My cat, Jezebel, never took any interest in the 16mm movies, nor in anything on the tv. Until I showed a 16mm print of "2001 : A Space Odyssey". At the moment when the apes first touch the obelisk and learn to 'talk', she zoomed across the apartment, jumped up on my bed (which was underneath the screen) and watched the movie, looking from side to side (Cinemascope). I was very amused. The next time I showed the print, she did the same thing at the same moment. After that, she ignored the movies for the rest of her life.

9. What's the worst movie you ever saw? Sooo many. When I was in the film business I used to bring home several 16mm prints every week. And my assistant, who didn't have his own projector, would get a few and see them at my place, too. When I worked for Columbia and TriStar I had to go to all the trade screenings and report what the exhibitor reaction was like. I've seen movies that make "Wild Women of Wongo" look like art. I rarely remember their names. There is one Mickey Rourke picture, whose only relief from the tedium was an old carousel, which hides in some deep dark spot of memory that makes me shudder when I stumble upon it. 

10. Do you watch the credits? - Almost always. 

11. What movie have you seen the most times and how many times have you watched it? - Casablanca. I've no idea how many times I've seen it - I used to keep a record of such things with the 16mm prints (it helped keep track of bulb life as well as what I had seen). Friends always wanted to see it, which added showings. I just happen to know where the list is and just dug it out - and I never wrote down showings of Casablanca. Maybe 75 showings of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", at least 50 for "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and about the same for "Cobra Woman".

Okay, my 11 questions about the pop culture in your life:

1. What's your first movie memory?

2. What's your first movie memory with music (does not have to be a musical - just have music which was important to you)?

3. What was the first piece of music you remember getting or purchasing?

4. What medium was it in? (Sheet music, 78rpm, 45rpm, 33 1/3 lp, CD, VHS, mp3, etc.)

5. What the was first tv show you just -had- to watch?

6. When you watch tv or a movie on video now, do you listen to it in stereo?

7. What part of movie culture past would you liked to have experienced (eras of 3D, silents, black and white, movie palaces, newsreels, cartoons, etc.)

8. What was your first big name star/act who you saw live in a show or concert?

9. Favorite tv show or episode - ever.

10. Best music act you've ever seen in concert on tv.

11. Favorite mass media moment of all time?

I'm not sure I know 11 bloggers for the challenge. But most definitely
Austanspace at  http://austanspace.blogspot.com/

Twisted Scottish Bastard at http://twistedscottishbastard.blogspot.com

Gary at http://klahanie.blogspot.com

Rory if he's back at http://thescottishscribbler.blogspot.com

A few web friends who don't have blogs that I know of.... you know who you are if you stop by - leave a response.

Being Alive

It was May of 1970. At the time, I was living in Ocean City, New Jersey, and was in New York City for a day trip. I went to see a Broadway musical whose New York Times review had persuaded me that seeing it was a matter of great importance. It had only a semblance of a story, being told in vignettes surrounding a bachelor's birthday party. The revolutionary set used elevators and moving platforms to constantly remake itself into various New York City apartments and suggest their buildings. The leading man had been replaced just after the show opened. There was feeling it might not last.

The show, called "Company", concerned itself with alienation, with one man's loneliness in life, with the nature of friendships, with disillusion and disappointment. It was not your everyday musical comedy. There was one moment in particular, late in the second act, in which one character drunkenly savages her world and realizes that she is herself one of the "Ladies Who Lunch". It was devastating. That was the day I became a fan of Stephen Sondheim, the man who conceived the idea of, and wrote the music and lyrics for that show.

I was still living in Ocean City when a full page black and white ad appeared one Sunday in the New York Times' Arts and Leisure section. In those days, newspapers did not yet print color - it was only used for the Sunday funnies. The ad was relatively simple, yet complex, and made me think of Sondheim. There was something of a modern psychedelic feel about it. I taped it to my living room wall.

I knew immediately that whatever it was, I would be going to New York to see it. It tuned out to be an ad for Stephen Sondheim's new show, a nostalgic anti-nostalgia musical, which only reinforced my desire to go. Seeing it was one of the great experiences of my life. I ended up going to see that show three times. When I first tried to describe the multi-song finale (which consisted of spectacular "follies" styled numbers taking place in the leading character's minds) to friends, I said it was as if Federico Fellini had directed a Broadway musical. I was enormously gratified some years later to read a history of the show in which its producer/director (Hal Prince) described the concept for the staging of the finale in the same words.

Two more shows followed, both brilliant (A Little Night Music, and Pacific Overtures), both of which I was gratified to attend. Then came word that Sondheim's next show would be a bit of Grand Guignol based on an old melodrama.

One afternoon in 1979, my best friend Jerry Campbell and I were hanging out in his apartment in the East 90's. He had just purchased the newly released cast album for that show, which I hadn't seen yet, and insisted that I hear one particular number, "A Little Priest". I made him play it again. And again. It ends the show's first act, and, while composed in a standard musical comedy form, completely subverted the genre. I soon talked my good friend and former roommate, musicologist Keith Lacey into going to see it with me. It was another of the great experiences of my life. I saw it twice, once with the original cast, and once with the replacement cast. Here's the Little Priest number from the First National Tour, which was the Broadway production, with the original Mrs. Lovett (Angela Lansbury) and the 2nd Sweeny Todd (George Hearn). Mr. Todd, a barber seeking vengeance for a horrible wrong, has just slit the throat of someone who has recognized him. His landlady, Mrs. Lovett, who has a business making and selling meat pies, helps him think the situation through:



As the years after Sweeny ticked by, I ended up moving to Boston. One of the things which helped me decide to do so was a song from Sondheim's Pulitzer Prize Winning show Sunday in the Park With George. Before I left, an excerpt played on my answering machine.



 I returned to New York City for what turned out to be the last time with the express purpose of seeing Sondheim's Into the Woods as my birthday present to myself. Eventually, I moved here to Brattleboro. I soon found myself working three jobs to get by. One was at the Brattleboro Food Coop. I remember one shift, having just come out of the walk-in freezer, spying one of the meat department's two young female employees standing behind the counter a few feet away. She was having difficulty with a customer. After the customer left, I looked at her, and said something on the order of "Haven't you got poet or something like that?" She replied "The trouble with poet is how do you know it's deceased?" We've been friends ever since. It was Laura, now the proprietress of the blog "Austanspace". Although I'm not sure I've ever said this to her, she's been my best friend for the last decade at least. She's also the person who nicknamed me "Stevil".

At any rate, I wanted to take a moment here to briefly note how much I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim, which has greatly influenced and enriched my life.
Today is his birthday, and I can't believe that he is supposed to be 82 years old.
He's not, it's that simple.
Theater Gods do not age.

Sleepily, from the vaults

There seems to be a change underway. I start nodding off around 8 to 8:30pm these days, waking up once or thrice until I finally go to bed. If I'm not falling asleep, I alternate between feeling overly warm on the verge of sweating (or sweating slightly) and occasional chills. I've put weight on. It's winter and I suppose I'm really seeking to hibernate. There's lots of rational reasons for all of this, from starting work at 6:45am one day, and working afternoon and evening until 8pm or later the next, having to keep the thermometer set high so that my neighbor on the same heating circuit gets enough heat, aging, etc. I now wake up and get up around the time I used to go to bed - well, after a rather successful night anyway. I find it all fairly annoying.

As I go looking for various files whose names I no longer remember (if indeed I ever knew them) I find some things that I'd saved and forgotten. Like the text of the poem, "When I Am Old I Shall Wear Purple". Like the following. It's been on my computer since last May. I just found it again. And maybe it's because I'm starting to yawn and beginning to nod off, but I find myself laughing a little bit as I read it. Maybe Laura sent it to me (but I don't see anything like it in her emails from last May), or maybe I just picked it up somewhere. Whatever.

----------------


TEXTING for the Older crowd


Since more and more over 50's are texting and tweeting there
appears to be a need for a STC (Senior Texting Code). If you
qualify for Senior Discounts this is the code for you.
 
 
ATD: At The Doctor's
 
BFF: Best Friend Fainted
 
BTW: Bring The Wheelchair

BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth
 
CBM: Covered By Medicare
 
CGU: Can't get up
 
CUATSC: See You At The Senior Center
 
DWI: Driving While Incontinent
 
FWB: Friend With Beta Blockers
 
FWIW: Forgot Where I Was

FYI: Found Your Insulin
 
GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low!
 
GHA: Got Heartburn Again
 
HGBM: Had Good Bowel Movement
 
IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On?
 
LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out
 
LOL: Living On Lipitor
 
LWO: Lawrence Welk's On
 
OMMR: On My Massage Recliner
 
OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas.
 
ROFL... CGU: Rolling On The Floor Laughing... And Can't Get Up
 
TTYL: Talk To You Louder
 
WAITT: Who Am I Talking To?

WTFA: Wet The Furniture Again
 
WTP: Where's The Prunes?
 
WWNO: Walker Wheels Need Oil
 
GGLKI: (Gotta Go, Laxative Kicking In)
 
SDO: sorry, dosed off….zzzzz

-------------------------------------------

Over at Austanspace, Laura has written a nice little piece about recent unfortunate trends in horror stories,   films, and characters. The following is for her. Hey, I find it scary....

fin

A new arrival in town

Without much time to write, but before I get ready to go off to my 11:15am-7:15pm shit, I wanted to take a moment to welcome a new resident of Hobbiton, Ms. Hilde Beest. She is sharing quarters with Austanspace. Sadly, I shall have to wait to meet her, but any friend of Austanspace is a friend of mine. Well, usually, anyway.

I hope Laura wired up the tree so it won't fall over, just in case Hilde tries to climb it. When I first moved to New York City just after the 1972 election (it was one of the only places left where humans could be safe), I shared a studio apartment on the Upper East Side with a Student Veterinarian whose name escapes me for a moment. He had two kitties. They had a great time climbing the Christmas tree. And knocking it over. And destroying half of my ornaments at a go. So I started wrapping wire around the tree trunks, and fastening it to the wall or baseboard.

Gosh, I hadn't thought of that apartment for awhile. It was way east on 87th Street, about a half a block from the Mayor's Mansion. It was extraordinarily safe. Single women could (and did) walk their dogs around there at 3am without worry. Our next door neighbors (who became a one apartment, not two) were a radio DJ who broadcast as "Roy Fox", and his girlfriend Ada. She was a stewardess, and a real sweetheart. Every great now and again, she'd bring us a baguette baked fresh that morning. In Paris. Bitch.


My kitty, Jezebel, never exhibited the slightest interest in messing with the Christmas tree. She never climbed it, even though I always wired it up just for safety's sake. She never swatted at low hanging balls, either. I always thought she enjoyed the tree as much as I did and didn't want to mess it up. In all truth, she was probably indifferent to it.

Ahhhh, lookit the time. I have got to run and get cleaned up or I'll miss the bus...