Interesting Times

Friday, February 3, 2006
New York City
I have been waiting for two days for inspiration. Today I decided that I needed to write to keep my commitment to myself to post something every two or three days, not just when I had a sudden flash of brilliance. So, here I am looking at a blank page which is every writer's nightmare.

It's been an interesting few days since I returned from Miami. In fact, it has been a very social couple of days. Michael, my art director friend, invited me to join him and another friend from our coop to preview an annual benefit art show for The Little Red Schoolhouse, a liberal-leaning school downtown where a lot of artist and performers send their children. Parents donate a piece of their work that is then sold at a silent auction.

There was a color photograph of snowcapped mountains taken and signed by Richard Gere, for example, with a minimum bid limit of $250. I have to admit it took me a minute when I looked at the signature to realize it was THE Richard Gere ( I don't think I'll ever totally be other than a midwest girl who forgets this isn't Kansas anymore so to speak ), but once I got over that, I decided the photograph itself wasn't very interesting. The reason to bid on it would have been the novelty, an expensive one at that.

After the show, the three of us went ot La Luncheonette, a tiny French bistro around the corner from the gallery in Chelsea. Over dinner, I found out that the other guest, Frieda, who markets La Prairie products, had actually been to Waterloo, Iowa, my childhood home--and to Iowa City where I taught at the University of Iowa--in the 70s. She went there to manage a fashion show for one of the department stores.

Now for those of you who cannot imagine Iowans having fashion shows, this is food for thought. Not only are there folks in the plains interested in couture, they even go to theater and opera. OK, I suppose that sounds a bit sarcastic. But you'll have to indulge me a bit. When I first moved to east, to Washington, D.C. in 1971, I mentioned to a transplanted New Yorker that I was going to see La Boheme at the Kennedy Center. " Do you know opera? I didn't think they had opera in Iowa", he said, incredulously. I guess it would have been out of the box thinking for him to imagine that Iowans or any midwesterner might take a wagon train to Chicago to the Opera House from time to time. Far more people questioned my ability to evaluate culture in those early years. Now, of course, no one knows I'm from the midwest because I have lived in the east for the lion's share of the past 35 years. Hard to believe.

Anyway, Frieda, Michael and I talked and laughed for a good two hours nursing our pinot noir and even having two desserts between us. We had a lot in common, as it turned out. We're all about the same age, I suppose. But that doesn't really mean anything except we may have common timelines. However, whatever topic came up, one or the other of us could add to the event.

For example, Frieda started talking about the stage production of West Side Story, which she saw early during its run on Broadway. I told her how I envied her that experience. I read the review word for word in Time magazine when I was 17, imagining the stage production. Then, the film came out and I went a dozen times. I thought, of course, that I was Maria. "But I'm sure Natalie Wood ( played Maria in the film ) lip-sinked that role in the movie", I gossiped. Michael, with a twinkle in his eye asked if I remembered the name of the boy she loved in the performance. "Richard something. Richard, last name starts with a B."

"I'll buy dinner if you can come up with his last name, he tempted." I couldn't produce the name. Those brain cells and engrams are full, full, full of stuff from the past 50+ years.

It didn't matter. It was wonderful to discuss parts of the past four decades with contemporaries: civil rights, women's rights, Vietnam, Jimmy Carter, the various scandals.

"Let me live in interesting times", the Chinese quote goes. I think I have. I think I do.