My activities for the first part of 2023 are chronicled here. On May 13 Neil Montague finally succeeded at using MailChimp to send out an email for the New England Bridge Conference! My travails in trying to turn over my … Continue reading →
My activities for the first part of 2023 are chronicled here.
On May 13 Neil Montague finally succeeded at using MailChimp to send out an email for the New England Bridge Conference! My travails in trying to turn over my responsibilities in these and other matters involving communications are detailed here. This was a great relief for me. Some of the emails that I had sent in the previous few months promoted online events that paid gold masterpoints. Each one made me cringe.
On the same day Dan Jablonski finally sent me an email casting the deciding vote in the Weiss-Bertoni award. You can read the details and discover who won the award in this blog entry.
On the 17th I mowed the lawn for the second time. The high pollen content of some areas of the yard made it somewhat difficult, as it has in every May for the last decade or two, but I completed the task without resting.
June
On June 1 I tried to beat the heat by departing for my 5-mile walk at 8:30AM. I nevertheless found it as much as I could bear,1 and there was precious little shade. I noticed that the SmartFuel gas station on the north side of Hazard Ave. near the South Road intersection had closed after only a few months of operation. It replaced the Shell station that had occupied the location for decades. Signs said that it would become a Big Y Express station.
Raveis Realty, located in a house a little bit to the east of of the station, has also apparently one year. A few years earlier a spectacular display of tulips appeared near the west side of the Raveis building.
Zillow’s photo of 2 Park St.
The corner house on Park St. (the street address is 2) is somewhat mysterious. It had appeared empty with no “For Sale” sign for months. I saw two girls there the previous week. It seemed empty again on this occasion.
In the last quarter-mile I was passed by a female walker. I was pretty sure that that had never happened to me before. I did not like it, but I was too exhausted and hot to try to hold her off. My speed and endurance both decreased noticeably as I got older.
It was still very hot on the 2nd, but then it turned much cooler with a misty rain. I attended both days of the sectional in Johnston, RI, and played with Abhi Dutta. Details have been recorded here.
On June 7 forest fires in Canada were causing in the local area thick haze from the smoke. It was quite eerie and absolutely unprecedented, at least in my lifetime. Two days later the air quality still poor.
I learned that day I should have closed my dad’s IRA account at Country Club Bank in Kansas City earlier. There was not much money in it, but it took weeks to get them to send me a check. .Deidra Tossato finally sent me the form fifteen days after I requested it.
The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) scheduled an individual game for June 20, the first day of of the regional tournament in Nashua, NH. I played at the HBC, but I did not enjoy myself, and I did not score well. My adventures in Nashua are recorded here.
On June 28 I played with two new partners—Jim Macomber at the HBC in the morning and Barb Gallagher at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) in the evening.
On June 29 and 30 my nose ran all day. Despite this I had no trouble sleeping. I had no fever or any other symptoms of Covid-19.
July
I woke up on July 1 after ten consecutive hours of sleep, close to my all-time record. I experienced a little dizziness when I arose from bed, but it disappeared shortly thereafter. I tested negative for Covid-19 using the rapid antigen test that the federal government supplied for free.
Sue’s cousin from Michigan (on the Locke side) was in town. Sue visited with her, but I did not go. We visited her, her parents, and her sisters on our trip to Michigan in 2008, as described here.
Up to nine inches of rain fell in sections of western Connecticut on July 10, but Enfield received hardly any. The weather definitely seemed more extreme in the twenties, but it is still rather mild in southern New England.
The next morning the temperature dropped to 66° at 4:30. It was the first time that it had been below 70° in weeks. It rose to 90° that day and much hotter on the next. There was no bridge game at the SBC on either the 5th or the 12th.
On July 13 at 5:44AM the bookshelf in my bedroom came crashing down. It missed my head by about two inches. If it had hit me, I would have been seriously injured. The shelf disappeared into the black hole of Sue’s “sewing room”.
On July 14 thunderstorms began at 2:30AM. Flooding wreaked havoc in the northwest part of the state. The Connecticut River was 6′ above the flood level. Damage, however, was minimal.
John Willoughby, the president of the HBC, died on July 14. Both Sue and I had been his occasional bridge partner. I worked with him on the Planning Committee when he was the vice-president.
On the following day I heard Steve Jarmoc, a local farmer and ex-politician, on the radio complaining that the flooding in Enfield had caused him crop damage. The land around our house, which was perhaps two miles from his farm, was absolutely dry. Furthermore, Jarmoc mostly grew tobacco—an addictive drug that caused cancer and other ailments. In the previous few years he had converted much of his land to fields filled with solar panels. I seriously doubt that he suffered much damage, and what if he did? Every business suffered occasional setbacks.
I had a horrible bridge day on July 23. Donna Feir reported that the HBC now had 415 members2. It was 89° and sunny when I left after the conclusion of the Board of Trustees meeting. Up to 91° on I-91. By the time that I reached home it had fallen to 68°, and it was raining buckets. I was very relieved to find that there was no flooding in our basement.
August
On August 3 I discovered a document with my notes about the San Diego vacation that Sue and I took with Sue in March of 2006. In the evening I also found a paper bag with flyers and souvenirs from the same trip. I deleted the 1,000+ words that I had previously written about this adventure and started the entry, which you can read here, anew. It was rather thrilling to relive that week.
On the next day I walked five miles in the Enfield Square Mall. A strange new store, Da Money Pit, had opened. They seemed to sell sneakers, ball caps, and sweatshirts.3 The sneakers on display were wrapped in plastic, for no obvious reason that I could see. My “ghost walks” in the mall have been detailed here.
On the 5th the HBC held a memorial to honor John Willoughby. One dog and lots of people, including a surprising number of children, who were relatives or friends of John’s attended.
The next day I learned that Maria Van Der Ree, who was over ninety, had Covid-19. She recovered within a reasonable period of time.
At the HBC John Calderbank and I had a 54 percent game on August 8. That was by far our best performance up to that time. On the next day I scored 58% at the HBC with Barb Gallagher. There was no game in Simsbury because we only five pairs registered to play.
On August 9 the big news was about the devastating fire on Maui. The most destruction was in my favorite town, Lahaina, where 217 buildings destroyed or damaged. The gigantic tree that was the symbol of the town was badly damaged, but there was hope that it would recover.
Mark Oettinger.
On the same day I learned that Mark Oettinger had “resigned” as vice-president of the New England Bridge Conference. I later learned that Peter Marcus and his friends had pretty much forced him out at a meeting of the Tournament Scheduling Committee that I was unable to attend. This news saddened me greatly. I liked and respected Mark.
On August 12-13 I played in the Western Mass sectional in Great Barrington. That adventure has been described here.
On my birthday I played with the woman whom I had been mentoring. Fran Gurtman (introduced here). We did not do well. Sue bought me three shirts and some shorts from Kohl’s. Sue and I ate supper at Francesco’s in Suffield. I ordered Linguini d’Alessandro, which was chicken, sausage, peppers, mushrooms in wine sauce. I really enjoyed it.
On August 23 Sue brought cake to Eno to celebrate my birthday, but she did not arrive until just after 6:15. We had 4 tables.
On August 24 Fran and I had a 52 percent game, which was an improvement of 18 percentage points in our previous game. I made a costly mistake on the last hand.
On August 26 fifteen pairs came to the HBC for the Saturday afternoon game. We played a Swiss with 7.5 tables. It was the biggest turnout on Saturday by far since the pandemic. Peter Katz and I had a 76.1 percent game, by far my best score ever. More details can be found here.
The Ocean State Regional tournament was held August 29-September 1 in Warwick, RI. My adventures there have been cataloged here.
September
September must have been a boring month. The only notes that I recorded concerned the loss of my Costco Visa card from Citi. The details of this remarkable event have been recorded here.
The University of Michigan football team, one of the favorites for the national championship, started the year with five easy victories. They defeated East Carolina 30-3, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas 35-7, Bowling Green 31-6, Rutgers 31-7, and Nebraska 45-7.
Coach Jim Harbaugh did not participate in the first three games because he had purchased lunch4 for a prospective player. Four interim head coaches were assigned. Jesse Minter coached the first game and Sherrone Moore the second. Jay Harbaugh (Jim’s son) and Mike Hart each coached for one half in the third game. A random co-ed could have coached for all three games, and Michigan would still have won them all easily.
October
On October 3 and 4 I moved all of my programs and data files from my Lenovo desktop that was running Windows 10 to the Asus computer running Windows 11. I documented the experience here.
On October 10 I discovered that Windows did not want me to use Shuffling, the Dutch program that I had downloaded to creates pbn files. I did anyway. However, I also received an error in Dealmaster Pro. I had to reconnect the Lenovo box and run it there. This problem was fixed, but I did not record how.
I decided not to play with Alan Godes at the regional tournament in Marlborough. It turned out that he could not play on the only day that I needed a partner. I asked Ros Abel to play in the sectional in Orange, but she was not available. .
As usual, I started my preparation for lunch by boiling water for ShopRite’s store brand of chicken noodle soup. I was shocked to discover that the package contained no noodles at all. I have opened hundreds of these packages over the years, but this had never happened before.
This box in question bore the ShopRite brand, but at some point in the year the store stopped selling the product. A short time later a new brand called Bowl & Basket appeared. The price of a box containing two envelopes of soup was $.99 before the pandemic. As of October of 2024 the price had not changed, and the quality and quantity of the contents remained the same, at least apparently. I could not name another food item of any description that maintained its pre-pandemic price.
I woke Sue up at 6:30AM on October 11: She was scheduled for jury duty in Hartford. She left the house at 8:08. When she arrived she learned that her service was not needed. That evening Kathie Ferguson returned to the SBC on that same evening after a lengthy illness..
Throughout the last few months my car had repeatedly flashed the message that one of my tires was low on air. In the past this had happened once or twice a year. On those occasions I had just brought my car into Lia (without an appointment), and told them about the message. They checked all four tires, filled whichever one was low, and I drove away. The process took perhaps fifteen minutes.
On October 23 I brought it in to Lia Honda again. Because it had happened several times in the recent past, I asked the mechanic to tell me which tire was low. He reported that one of the tires needed patching and told me to sit in the waiting area. After 2.5 hours the work was completed, but the attendant told me that there was a problem with the brakes. I made an appointment for three days later to address this problem, which necessitated spending another few hours in the waiting area.
On October 27-29 the Connecticut Bridge Association held its fall sectional in Orange, CT. The details are posted here.
After only one day of rest I attended the regional tournament in Marlborough, MA. It ran from October 31-November 4. My thoughts about this event have been recorded here.
The Wolverine juggernaut continued with three more easy victories. They defeated Minnesota 52-10, Indiana 52-7, and Michigan State 49-0.
November
On November 16 I sent a recap of the attendance at the sectional in Orange. I have posted it here. The only person who responded to it was Cindy Lyall, who agreed with my assessment.
From left: Jan, the drummer, Peggy, the bass player, and Patty.
On the next evening my wife Sue talked me into attending a concert by the Patti Tuite band at the public library in Ellington. Although I was not crazy about the music, which was mostly blues, I definitely appreciated the skill of the two main musicians—Jan on the synthesizer, flute, and key-tar and Peggy on the alto sax, violin, and harmonica.The band also had a guy on bass guitar and a female drummer. The one number that I really liked was an instrumental with a complex melody that was unlike anything else that they did. Sue liked the entire performance. Patti announced the name of it, but my notes did not record it.
On November 18 I emailed to members of the Executive Committee my attendance analysis for the tournament in Marlborough. It has been posted here. Both of these reports required quite a bit of work because I no longer had access to the ACBL’s files that provided attendance information in a comprehensive fashion.
On the next day Sue and I decided not to drive up to Burlington, VT, to visit with the Corcorans on Thanksgiving. They had invited us much earlier. However, their house would be full of relatives, and we would probably be “fifth wheels.” We felt our of place the last time that we joined them.
On November 22 my Honda warned me that the battery on the fob was low. Over the next two days Sue located a suitable batter. I managed to replace the old one without much difficulty.
November 23 was Thanksgiving. Sue cooked a turkey. We ate our meals on TV trays and tried to think of something that we should be thankful for. I did not record that anything occurred to us.
A very strange thing happened in the last round of the game at the HBC on November 29: Eric Vogel and I were playing against Tom Gerchman and Lea Selig. After the bidding Tom announced that his integrity was intact because his partner Lea Selig bid 6♥, not he. He then disclosed that he had previously overheard Mike Carmiggelt talking about the hand.
I put my cards in the carrier, said “I quit”, got in my car, and drove home. Tom later sent me an email in apology. I replied, “No harm, no foul.”
That same night Ken made many strange bids at the SBC game. He invited to game knowing that we had a maximum of 24 points and only 8 trumps. I recorded that I did not see how the SBC would be able to hold any games in December. I was right. All of the games for the month were canceled.
Michigan finished its Big 10 season with four more victories to finish the regular season undefeated and ranked #3. They defeated Purdue 41-13, Penn State 24-15, Maryland 31-24, and Ohio State 30-24. Sherrone Moore was the head coach on the sidelines for the last three games because Harbaugh was suspended because of a ludicrous sign-stealing incident engineered by a rogue staff member named Connor Stalions.
December
The new month was welcomed by the first flower on the larger Christmas cactus that had been in Denise Bessette’s office. The other one displayed its first flower on the 18th.
On December 2 Michigan shut out Iowa 26-0 in the Big 10 Championship game. It was U-M’s third consecutive win in that game, and the tenth consecutive win for the team representing the East Division. Michigan, now seeded #1, was scheduled to play Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinals in the Rose Bowl on January 1. There was some controversy because Alabama was chosen to play over undefeated Florida State despite the fact that the Tide had lost to Texas in September.
The temperature on December 15 and 16 reached the fifties. I walked five miles outside on both afternoons.
I learned on December 17 that Eric Vogel had contracted Covid. I wore a mask at bridge all week.
On December 20 the electrical connection for my cellphone’s charger stopped working. I had to plug the cable into a USB port on Asus. This was only a minor inconvenience; Asus has many ports, four of which are in front. I was astounded to learn that Sue had no recollection of my previous phone dying while I was on the 2022 cruise that has been described in detail here. We went to the Verizon store together, and the salesman showed me that the Pixel 2 I had been using was swollen in the middle. He said that it was probably dead. A little later Sue bought me a refurbished Sony Galaxy. I found this lapse of memory quite concerning.
On December 29 I received an mail from someone named Frank Wilson5 asking about downloading a zip or pdf file of Stupid Pope Tricks. I tried to reply to his reply address, fdmw@gmail.com, but it was blocked because the address was not valid. I had no idea what that was about.
On the next day I (and many others) received a shocking email from Peter Marcus that indicated that he was resigning from all his posts in the New England Bridge Conference. This reportedly had something to do with scheduling conflicts with another district”s tournament.
1. At least once in the nineties I ran more than five miles when it was over 100°. When I was in my twenties I considered no temperature to be too hot for any athletic endeavor. Boy, has that changed!
2. It was incredible to me that the HBC did not actually know how many people were officially members. Eventually, I wrote a set of programs that would allow the club to keep track of the membership—dues, contact information, and other things. The story of that system is documented here. The number of members exceeded 500 in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.
3. The store is still open in October of 2024, but in all my trips to the mall I had seen fewer than a handful of customers.
4. This infraction was widely ridiculed by Michigan fans and called Hamburgergate. It was common knowledge that many large programs arranged for players to be paid under the table. By 2023 the NCAA had ceded the rights to the names, images, and likenesses (called NIL) of the players to the players themselves. By the next year some of them were earning upwards of $1 million to play their favorite sport for a few months out of the year.
5. Of course, I immediately thought that this might be J. Frank Wilson, who, with support from the Cavaliers, in 1964 recorded the remake of Wayne Cochran’s “Last Kiss”. It made it to #2 on Billboard.
By the end of 2022 Americans were still contracting Covid-19, but very few died or became seriously ill. Most people had either contracted the virus already at least once or had been immunized with boosters. I still wore an N95 mask outside of the house for the first few months, but by the end of that period few people joined me.
January
For decades I have been an avid college football fan. New Years Day was ordinarily one of my favorite days. In 2023, however, it fell on a Sunday. The semifinals of the four-team College Football Playoff had occurred on December 31 Only pro games, in which I had little interest, were held on January 1. I was in my office in Enfield for most of the day.
On Monday, January 2, I played with Nancy Calderbank as part of the mentoring program at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC). She had asked me to coach her through the transition from Standard American to Two-Over-One (2/1). Our results were not very good that day, but there was one memorable hand, which is shown at the right.
I had the dubious privilege of holding the cards in the East hand. When I received a miserable collection like that one, I like to add up the number of pips that are on my cards. In this case the total was 59, the second-lowest that I have ever seen.1 What made it really amazing was that more than half of the pips were clubs. Also, if deuces were aces, threes kings, etc., this hand would be worth 30 high card points. West’s monstrosity has only 70 percent of that number.
On the day after this bridge game I learned that one of my regular partners, Peter Katz, and an occasional partner of both Sue and me, Fred Gagnon, had contracted Covid-19 over the holidays. Neither became seriously ill, and both were back at the tables within a week or two.
On January 5 I sent the first email to the committee for the Weiss-Bertoni Award. The details of this project have been chronicled here.
The garbage disposal in the new kitchen had been stopped up. Apparently it was my fault. Sue said that all fat and grease must be removed with a paper towel before scraping the garbage from plates and cooking utensils into the sink. A plumber came out and fixed it on the 14th. He returned three days later to address a leak under the sink in the old kitchen. Tennessee Ernie Ford came to mind.
On the 15th I started work on a third-person autobiography entitle Cowboy Coder from Kansas. When the blog entry for this project is completed, I will link it here.
My wife Sue informed me that someone had told her years ago that we could get a break on our real estate tax because I am a veteran. That program exists, and we might have been able to use it in the first few years that we lived in Enfield, but our income, which is primarily from social security, seemed much too high.
On January 18 Sue was in a funk all day.. She played at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) with Maria Van Der Ree in the evening game. Even though they came in last out of eight pairs, Sue seemed chipper at the end. She needs to be out with people much more than I do.
The infamous Tonto email went out on the 19th. The tale is told here.
Bob: Several early entries in the 2023 notes for the pandemic concern the demise of Sue’s cat, Bob, our last surviving pet. The notes for January 3 reported: “Bob drools a lot and smells bad. Sue gave him a bath of some kind, but his saliva is rancid. He sleeps most of the time, but he bothers Sue when he is awake.”
The litter box in the basement. The grey items near the box are pieces of litter that absorbed water when the basement flooded. The water later evaporated.
We had cats in Enfield from the time that they moved there. Throughout this period all of them were able to use the cat door installed in a basement window to go outside when they felt like it. They could be relied on to make use of it whenever they needed to relieve themselves. However, in 2022 it became necessary to make a litter box available to them. At first it was in the basement. By the beginning of 2023 I had to move it upstairs because Bob was no longer able to negotiate the stairs.
Bob finally died on January 28. In some ways it was a sad occasion, but neither Sue nor I thought that he enjoyed the last few months of his life the way that our other cats seemed to.
Sue and I get a reminder about Bob every evening at 8:55. Her phone announces “Eight fifty-five Meds Slash Bob”. We call this announcement “Slash Bob.”
February
The coldest day of the year, by far was February 4. It approached 0 in Connecticut, but it was much colder on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. The temperature was 8 below but the windchill index was an incredible -109° Fahrenheit.
February 7 was the first day of the regional bridge tournament in Southbridge, MA. Sue played with Mark Aquino in the Open Pairs. They did not do well. My adventures in the tournament have been described here.
In Sue’s absence I took my car in for the emissions test at Mad Hatter Auto Repair. Afterwards I calculated that we would owed $500 in income tax for 2022. The biggest reason for this was the cost of the cruise (described here) that necessitated a fairly large distribution from my 401K.
On February 10, only six days after that extremely cold day, the temperature reached a balmy 62°.
March
The first post-pandemic limited sectional was held at the HBC on March 26. It drew an incredible fifty-seven tables. The whole story is revealed here.
“Donald, my book will be coming out soon.”
On March 30 Donald Trump was indicted by the state of New York on 31 counts of business fraud! The indictments were in regard to Trump, through his fixer at the time, Michael Cohen, paid Stormy Daniels $150,000 to Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about their affair during the run-up to the election. Trump misused corporate funds to reimburse Cohen. That is what made it a crime in New York, which was, at that time, the official location of the companies. It was being filed as a felony because it was an illegal attempt to influence an election, which was a felony in New York.
An important Zoom meeting was held for replacement of the relational database that I had designed and implemented for the district. Details of that meeting have been posted here.
April
The income tax situation worked out better than my preliminary calculation had indicated. I had to pay the IRS $181. However, we received a refund from CT of $1996 I used one of the free filing services, but I had to pay $15 to file electronically in CT.
For the 2023 National Debate Tournament, U-M’s top team of Rafael Pierry and Kelly Phil won the Copeland award and were seeded #1 in the tournament. I could hardly believe that seven assistant coaches were going to attend the tournament in Chantilly, VA. Pierry and Giorgio Rabbini had also won the Copeland award in 2022 and were second in 2021.
Pierry and Phil.
Pierry and Phil were 7-1 in the preliminary rounds with 21 out of a possible 24 ballots. The U-M second team of Rabbini and Joshua Harrington also was 7-1 with only one fewer ballot. Pierry and Phil made it to the final round, but they lost to Wake Forest. Pierry attained the final round in three consecutive years, an achievement that will probably not be duplicated in my lifetime. I was nearly as disappointed with this result as I was with my own failure to qualify for the NDT in 1970, as described here.
There was quite a bit of activity about the Weiss-Bertoni award.
On Saturday, April 8, we went to see Tom, Casey, and Brian Corcoran in Tom’s house in Wethersfield. When we came back I found a dead mouse in the toilet of the bathroom in the older part of the house. I set traps the next day, but I caught nothing. Some mysteries are never solved.
On April 13 the temperature reached 90°. I walked five miles, but I had to stop, rest in the shade, and cool off three times. The next day it reached an incredible 96°, breaking the previous record by fourteen degrees. That temperature was never exceeded in the summer months.
The first CBA sectional was held in Orange on the 21st through the 23rd. I played all three days. Descriptions of my adventures were posted here. My most memorable achievement was the 512 miles that my Honda logged on a tank of gas. It took over 13 gallons when I filled it, but it claimed that it could have gone another fifteen miles. .
May
It was about this time that I discovered Bosch on Freevee. Sue and I watched it nearly every evening, and it didn’t cost us a penny. This and other ventures into the land of streaming are cataloged here. We could not believe that Amazon, which purchased the service from IMDB, was allowing people to view this high-quality police dram for free.
It was very hot on May 1 when I mowed the portions of the lawn that face either North Street or Hamilton Court. I was not able to mow the rest until three days later.
On May 8 I volunteered to send out the HBC’s emails for the summer through MailChimp. Lori Leopold had been doing it, but she had a lot of travel scheduled for the upcoming months. I somehow also was saddled with creating the official calendar from Donna’s handwritten version.
On May 11 the national health emergency for the pandemic officially ended. For several months I continued wearing my mask wherever I was likely to be in fairly close contact with others.
The day-by-day blog entry for the rest of 2023 has been posted here.
1. The lowest total that I have ever seen was an incredible 53 at the Simsbury Bridge Club fairly early in my bridge career. Unfortunately, although I often had my camera with me in those days, I did not record this event, and no hand record was available because the SBC was not yet using a dealing machine.
This was the most difficult to write of the hundreds of entries in this project. I decided to set an ending date of 1970 because after I left for the army face-to-face contacts with my mom were quite limited. My dad came to see me when I was working at the Hartford, but it was only for a day at the end of a business trip. Mom stayed home. I don’t remember them visiting us at all for the three years we lived in Plymouth. They both came to Detroit once, and they did not like it at all. After my wife Sue and I moved back to Connecticut they visited a handful of times, but, except for the first trip, they spent most of their time with my sister Jamie and her family.
Sue and I visited them in 1973. After that we were too poor and too busy to travel much until I started flying much more in the nineties. I arranged a stop in the Kansas City area whenever it was feasible, which was pretty often. However, the ones when she was still alive were mostly for parties or other celebrations. I remember very little of the conversation. Also, through much of this period she was reluctant to contribute much.
In fact, I reluctantly admit that the sum total of my knowledge about my mother is pitiful. Dolores Ann Cernech was born on October 2, 1925, in Kansas City. Her parents were John and Clara Cernech. My understanding is that Clara was half German and half Polish. Cernech is a Croatian name. John’s mother was at least partly Irish.
Mom grew up in Kansas City, KS. In 1943 she graduated from Bishop Ward High School, which was less than a mile from the Cernech residence at 40 N. Thorpe. Students in her graduating class were asked to specify who their favorite band leader was (!) and what they hoped to become in life. Dolores Ann Cernech answered “Tommy Dorsey” and “Private Secretary”. The latter seemed like a peculiar response in the age of Rosie the Riveter.
I am not sure how she met my dad, who was a year older and went to high school in Atchison, KS, about fifty miles away. My understanding is that they were already acquainted before my dad enlisted in the army in 1942.
I wish that I had learned more about what my mom did in the period between her graduation and Jim Wavada’s discharge from the army in February of 1946. I have a vague recollection that she had worked in a clerical position somewhere, but she must have been communicating with my dad while he was in the army. They were married on September 1, 1947, which was eighteen and a half months after he was discharged from the army. It definitely was not a shotgun wedding. It was officiated in St. Peter’s by my dad’s brother, whom I knew as Fr. Joe. I did not show up until eleven and a half months later.
What transpired in the year and a half between my dad’s discharge and the wedding? Decades later he disclosed two nuggets of information about that period: 1) Mom’s father was against the marriage, but Clara persuaded him that it was for the best; 2) He might have gotten into serious trouble if he did not get married.1 He also mentioned something about pinball machines, which in those days were common in bars.
Dolores and Jim took up residence in the Cernech’s house in KC KS. I am not sure if John and Clara lived there at the time. It was not a large house, and I know that at some point John, an employee of the Boss Glove Company, was transferred to Grand Island, NE. I have dozens of questions that I should have asked while they were still alive. Did they have a honeymoon? If so, where? Presumably my dad worked at BMA. Did mom work, too, at first? How did they get around? They did not have a car until 1954.
I have no doubt that my mom ran the household’s finances from day one. My dad was nearly incapable of balancing a checkbook. For the most part she was very frugal at least during the time that I lived at home. My dad bought suits and other dress clothes for work. My mom sewed most of her own clothes.
I am equally certain that my mom took on any task that involve any kind of a machine or any tools. My dad had the least mechanical aptitude of anyone whom I have ever encountered. What about yardwork? The house on N. Thorpe had a very small yard. I doubt that the family owned a power mower. So, somebody must have mowed the grass with an old-fashioned push mower. Uncle Rich might have helped, but my money is on mom. I can’t imagine my dad doing it even once.
Life in KC KS 1948-54
The first big event after the marriage was my birth on August 17, 1948. It must have been a horrific shock for her to see my mangled face. I have been told that the physicians performed the first surgery shortly after birth. There were follow-up procedures before I started going to school and another one after I completed the eighth grade.
My parents almost never brought this up. They had obviously discussed the matter and decided that they wanted me not to fret about my appearance. That certainly succeeded. Very few people whom I have met paid as little attention to appearances as I did.
I remember one trip to the shoe store when I was quite young. The salesman talked mom into purchasing arch supports for my very flat feet. I think that that only happened once. After that off-the-rack was good enough. I did not start using arch supports regularly again until I was in my seventies. Those came from Walmart, cost $10, and could be worn with any shoe or none.
I cannot remember my grandparents ever living in the Cernech house with us. Richard Keuchel2, Clara’s youngest brother, lived with us. He kept to himself most of the time, but I remember that he occasionally brought me a small present or gave me some coins for baseball cards.
I vaguely remember mom taking me with her on a few shopping trips. Most of the time she probably walked to Central Ave., a lively retail area just a couple of blocks from the house. We might have taken an occasional bus or “street car” (trolley) as well.
The one type of excursion that impressed me the most was trips to the library. I was allowed to pick out my own books in the children’s section. My tastes primarily ran to westerns. I don’t remember her reading these books to me, but she must have, at least at first. I remember also that I had a rather large book that had fables in it. The only one that I recall was about an ant and a fiddle-playing grasshopper.
My recollection, which is probably at least a little off, is that I had the run of the neighborhood by the time that I was four or five. I am pretty certain that I walked to both kindergarten and first grade, and I remember spending a lot of time with my friends in the neighborhood. I don’t think that I was allowed to cross the alley in back of the house by myself, but I remember playing with friends up and down N. Thorpe Street. I also remember our telephone number, FAirfax 9890.
I remember attending several weddings and funerals of mom’s relatives. However, we had no automobile. Maybe those took place after we moved.
Did my mom have any friends? I don’t recall any. She knew everyone on N. Thorpe. She grew up there. Someone told me that she selected one of her classmates from Ward High to be her maid of honor. I have a photo of the wedding, but the people are not identified. I think that the same lady might have been my godmother, but she did not have any role thereafter in my mother’s life.
Maybe looking after me was all that mom could handle. Four instances came to mind that might have made her wonder what she had gotten herself into:
In addition to all of the trips to the hospital, she also arranged sessions for me with a speech therapist. This was apparently in anticipation of difficulties in speaking due to the amount of plastic in my upper lift. I don’t remember ever having trouble articulating, and I did well in the formal presentation required by the therapist.
I related the story here about the rock-thrower whom I beat up in kindergarten. I received no punishment that I remember. Mom and the teacher explained that what I did was wrong, but I don’t remember their reasoning. My reasoning was that “he had it coming.” In westerns this happened to people all the time.
One morning I made a scene at Mass because The Lone Ranger was on television3, and I did not want to miss it. I think that mom had to escort me out of the church on that occasion, but I am only guessing.
The problem that I had with the box of letters in first grade is also documented here. I would really love to know what mom thought when the nun informed her that I seemed incapable of reading and writing.
The only other vivid memory that I have of life on N. Thorpe was of mom painting a fruit tree freehand on one of the walls in the kitchen. Everyone praised it. In retrospect it made me wonder what else she could have accomplished if she were not so devoted to our small family. Unfortunately I inherited my artistic ability from Jim.
There might have been some trips. I think that the two of us took a train trip somewhere in the south. Clara (and maybe John) may have also been along. It seems to me that we spent some time in Hot Springs, AR. I am pretty sure that we also visited mom’s relatives in the Dallas area either on that trip or a separate junket. The mother’s name was Jule Palmer or something like that. Either or both of these might have been after the move, but I don’t think so.
Mom loved animals. I remember a dog named Trixie, which was, I am pretty sure, Mom’s pet before she got married. Trixie must have died before we moved. I have no recollection of her at our new house. I am pretty sure that we also had a pet parakeet named Mickey before we moved. Someone taught him to talk, probably mom.
Prairie Village
I found a set of four photos developed at Katz drugs, which was near our house in PV. They were dated Easter 1955. The other three are also at a train station, and they all include a couple whom I don’t recognize.
In early 1955 the three of us moved to 7717 Maple, Prairie Village, KS, about twenty miles south of the house on N. Thorpe. In addition to setting up a household in a suburban location, mom almost immediately had to deal with my childhood illnesses—chicken pox, measles, and whooping cough—that I contracted one after another. Fortunately, that was pretty much the last time that I was sick until I contracted the Russian Flu during exam week in college.
Evidently mom’s father did not think much of the blue house on Maple St. He called it “a cracker box.” My dad told me much later that my mom uncharacteristically retorted, “Yes, but it’s our cracker box.” Well, theirs and the bank’s.
I remember that mom took me to the doctor to receive the smallpox vaccine. I have always hated the idea of injections, and I dreaded this. I had to return for a second (and maybe a third) vaccine because the first one “didn’t take.” The second one did not either. I never got that little volcano-shaped scar on my arm. For the only time that I can remember mom took me aside and told me in a deadly serious tone that I must NEVER forget what she was about to tell me. If ever there was another outbreak of smallpox, it was critical for me to receive the vaccine again.
I spent no time in the hospital while we were living in Prairie Village, but I spent a lot of time at the doctor’s office. I ran into a shopping cart at the grocery store one day. It did not require stitches, but the mark is still visible just a quarter of an inch from my right eye. I ran into a parked car on the lot of Queen of the Holy Rosary during recess. I dodged the tag, and the nineteen stitches in my mouth were a badge of honor. I got four more stitches when I ran into the barbecue grill in our backyard while catching a popup that my dad threw to me. While returning a punt on the football field my nose got smashed and bent a little. On all of these occasions mom drove me to see Dr. Battey, our family physician. On one of the later occasions he told her that my head was held together by catgut.
I almost forgot one incident. Mom insisted that I take the free swimming lessons offered at the PV public pool. I rode my bike to the pool for the morning lessons. One day a German Shepherd came running out of a house on my left, growled, and chomped me on my leg. Someone called mom, and she came and got me. I don’t know how many stitches were required. The dog did not have rabies or anything else. He just got loose that day.
I hated the swimming lessons because I got so cold that my teeth chattered. Also, that was where I realized my footprints looked like they were made by a duck with toes. However, I later was glad that I learned how to swim.
When my myopia became evident in the third or fourth grade, mom took me to the optometrist. Since then I have seldom been seen without my specs unless I was in water or playing football.
My mom drove me to many activities. While writing this I began to wonder when and how she learned to drive, and how she got her license. Maybe she learned before she got married.
Aside from my tendency to run full-speed into inanimate objects, I did not cause many problems for her. She never helped me with homework, but I didn’t need it until I got to the chain rule in calculus class. She didn’t need to nag me to do it. I got tired every evening and voluntarily went to bed at about the same time. She never had to wake me for school. I was usually awake before she was. I took the bus to school, and I was always ready and waiting for the Bluebird.
What she did help me with were projects. I remember that we had to make a map of a state or country out of papier mache. I picked France. I was making a big mess of it until she stepped in. She also helped out with my years in scouting. She was an excellent den mother for a while; all the guys said so. When I had trouble growing bean plants for the Nature merit badge, she gave me a tip (I don’t remember its nature) that allowed me to succeed. She also made a costume of St. Peter for me for wear for an all-saints version of Halloween.
In retrospect I find it incredible that she was willing to get up to drive me to Queen for the 6am Masses for which I was a server and then pick me up when it was over. She also carted me around to sporting events. I often stayed after school (and therefore missed the bus) for band practice or great books or safety patrol or scouts or the school newspaper or football or basketball. Sometimes I walked home, but at least half of the time I engaged mom’s taxi service.
I do not remember Mom giving me much advice beyond basic Catholic principles. However, I very clearly remember her reaction when I got into a fight with Michael Bortnick. He was my age but considerably bigger. I came into the house crying and told mom that he beat me up, and he was bigger than I was. She merely replied, “Then you should have avoided fighting him.” I remembered that and applied it with great success throughout my remaining life..
As soon as I was old enough I got to play on a team in the local 3&2 baseball program that served as a Little League for Johnson County, KS. The team was sponsored by Sunflower Drugs. I undoubtedly made the team through the intercession of Don Wood’s father. This was the last summer before I got glasses. I was a good fielder and base runner, but I batted .000. I only hit the ball once—on my very last at-bat.
The next summer I did not make the team. I was ready to quit baseball, even though I really wanted to play. I was even more depressed than I was when I missed a catechism question in second grade (described here). I was totally unprepared mentally for failure.
My mom told me that I should not quit; there were plenty of other teams. It was good advice. I somehow learned about the team sponsored by Bauman’s Red Goose Shoes. I had a good time on that team, and I even got quite a few hits.
Mom did not like the idea of me playing football in the seventh and eighth grade, but she allowed me to go out for the team. Even after she had to take me to the doctor after I got clobbered on a punt return, she let me continue. It meant a great deal to me.
I remember that for a short period we (I am not sure if Jamie was involved) spent a few minutes every evening reading the Bible from start to … well, I think that we finished Genesis before the project was abandoned. I would love to have heard that decision being made.
Like millions of other Americans our family owned a nicely bound Bible with those incredibly thin pages. Ours, of course, was the Douay-Rheims version, which is the only English version recognized by the Catholic Church. It had a dozen or so brightly colored illustrations. I don’t know what happened to it.
My mom was friendly with all of the neighbors, but the only ones that she socialized with were the Leahys. I remember that once when I was in second or third grade she was late getting home from somewhere. For perhaps the only time ever I was all alone after the school bus dropped me off. I started crying, and Jean Wallace, the lady with three kids of her own who lived directly across the street, calmed me down.
At some point we procured a phonograph player and a few records, probably 78s, which in those days were made of very brittle shellac. My dad’s favorite song was Eddie Fisher’s version of “Oh, My Papa”. I was playing it one day. When I took it off the turntable, I dropped it, and it broke. I was very upset, but mom consoled me.
The only television shows that I remember my parents watching were Your Hit Parade and Perry Como’s show. As the English say, my mom fancied Perry. We watched a lot of other shows, too, but none of them stand out in reference to my mom.
When she was working, which seemed to be doing all of the time, she often broke into a song. The one that she sang the most was the Andrews Sisters’ version of “Dance with a Dolly”4.
Jamie
One day shortly after we moved to PV my parents announced to me that they were “praying” to have another child5. I thought that this was a great idea. I would have a baby brother whom I could boss around and eventually teach “the ropes”. Imagine my shock when dad told me that mom had given birth to an girl on January 4, 1956. Did they actually pray for a girl? Why?
Jamie was nothing like me. Her face was decidedly not mangled. By the time that she was a few years old she had blonde hair6. Even I thought that she was good looking. Furthermore she avoided crashing into objects much better than I did. Her visits to Dr. Battey’s office were always routine.
I was approximately seven and a half years older than Jamie. I figured that she could figure out pat-a-cake on her own, and so I mostly ignored her. However, we often watched CaptainKangaroo and Romper Room together before I went to school.
The fact that mom had another little one to mind nearly all the time that I was in grade school made it even more remarkable that she was willing to drive me to all my activities. I think that it also explained why she let me roam the neighborhood with no evident supervision. She even let me shoot off firecrackers on the Fourth of July.
Decades later Jamie told me that as she was walking to kindergarten at Tomahawk School some older boys accosted her. I had heard nothing about this, but I was often oblivious. I wonder what I would have done if I knew about this. I would have been in the eighth grade, at least two years older than anyone at Tomahawk.
I remember that I asked mom one year whether I could help with playing Santa Claus on Christmas eve. She let me do it. I don’t remember any details.
Our pets have been discussed in some detail here. My mother’s role was central. My dad had no use for animals. He was obviously either fearful of or disgusted with them to an extent that I never saw in any other person. Mom made sure that they were
Mom handled the tricky situation that begin with the appearance of a dachshund (eventually named Sam by me) with no tags brilliantly. She allowed him to go back to his owners on his own, but for some reason he seemed want to stay at our house. She advertised somewhere that we had him, and eventually someone claimed him. Jamie was crushed, and I was also upset, but mom explained to us that we had no right to take him from the other family.
My grandmother Hazel came to the rescue by giving us her pet dachshund Tippy. However, he seemed to want to spend most of his time with me.
Leawood
At the end of the 1961-62 school year the Wavadas moved south and east a few miles to 8800 Fairway in Leawood. Once again we were in a new parish, Curė of Ars. Jamie started grade school in September at C of A, and I started my freshman year at Rockhurst High School. So, this was a new experience for everyone.
I don’t recall having many conversations with my mom. I cannot remember asking her any probing questions. My recollection is that on most days she worked pretty much from the time that she got up until the supper dishes were in the dishwasher, and all of the food and accoutrements had been put away. The one major incident in my youthful life that she had to deal with was the time in 1964 when she had to accompany me to traffic court. Nothing came of it, but I did grow up a little bit that evening.
My mother was a great cook. We enjoyed delicious meals almost every day except, of course, on Friday. My parents decided that instead of eating out occasionally, we would have steak on Saturday evening. My dad grilled them over charcoal on the patio in good weather. If the weather did not allow that, mom broiled them. My favorite meal, by far, was fried chicken7. We had it once a week, usually on Wednesdays.
I was not big on breakfasts. Cereal usually sufficed for me. A special treat was “pigs in the blanket”, which were link sausages baked inside of biscuits that had been folded over them.
My lunches were the envy of everyone in my classes. Usually I had a ham sandwich, an apple or other fruit, a small bag of chips, and a thermos of soup. Most kids had to put up with cheese sandwiches or PB&J with little or no variety. I went to a Catholic school; many of those moms were making at least a half dozen lunches. In high school I usually ate lunch in the cafeteria.
Trips
My dad worked in the sales department at BMA. Every few years my dad and mom would take a business trip together for big meetings. They were generally at a resort or in the vicinity of special events. They were usually gone for the better part of the week. Sometimes they hired someone to take care of Jamie and me. I had very little interaction with these women. I remembered that the suppers that they prepared with uniformly disappointing.
I found four photos that were labeled “Easter 1957” by the company that developed them. At the time I was finishing second grade, and Jamie was a little over one year old. They show my mom and dad stepping onto a train. Based on her outfit, this must have been a business trip on which she joined him. Someone must have taken the photo. I am guessing that it was Clara Cernech. She probably took care of us while they were gone.
My mom did not regale us with tales of these adventures. I remember that she was most impressed by the one in Banff, Canada. I have no recollection of her talking about any of the other places, and I doubt that I pestered her for details.
Details about our family vacation trips have been provided here.The four of us took one big vacation to the east coast while we were living in PV. Mom took over the driving for a part of the trip. That was the only time that I ever saw my dad riding shotgun. Most of her time was spent with Jamie, who was only three or four years old. Our other trips were usually to Minnesota. Mom must have enjoyed the breaks from cooking and cleaning, but she mostly seemed to busy herself with other things.
Health
My mom was in good shape. She did not smoke. She drank very little, and ate mostly fresh foods in moderate amounts. She also exercised. I remember her watching Jack LaLanne and his dogs, Happy and Walter. I never partook of these activities, but I remember being awestruck when Jack nonchalantly did vertical pushups on a step on a ladder.
She also played golf a little. She played with my dad and me a few times, and while I was waiting to get drafted we played as a twosome. I think that she played with other ladies off and on. She was a good athlete, but her golf swing got worse the more that she played. In the end she bounced her torso up and down on every swing. This peculiar motion made it very difficult to hit the ball cleanly. I always suspected that advice from my dad was responsible for the degradation of her game. I don’t know how much (or even if) she played after I entered the army.
She wast 5’7″, which was considered quite tall in the forties. She was skinny enough to be nicknamed bird-legs in high school. She never got fat or even a little pudgy.
I only remember mom being sick a few times, mostly during the Christmas season. Overworking and the pressure probably got to her. She did have a few issues. Her “sinuses” bothered her a lot. She took Dristan tablets for the “sinus headaches”, but they did not help much. I also remember some kind of saltwater purge that she did. When my dad quit smoking many years later this issue disappeared almost immediately.
She also suffered from varicose veins. I don’t know any details. She might have also had diabetes. I know that her mother did. Mom never complained about anything, and she never let any symptoms slow her down.
When she was in middle age she started to have problems with memory and confusion. It was not Alzheimer’s, but the doctors never were able to pinpoint what caused her so much difficulty. My dad said that she asked him one time, “Jim, what did I do wrong to deserve this?” Of course, he had no answer.
When she died in 1998 (described here) my dad did not request an autopsy to determine what the source of her problems was. I rather hoped that he would, because I wanted to do something about it if I inherited it. I am older when I write this than she was when she died. So, I guess that I did not get it.
The biggest regret in my life is that I squandered the opportunity to know this wonderful woman better.
What I inherited from my mom:
Skin color
Hair
Build
Social reticence
Love of music (but different taste)
Work ethic
General demeanor
Aversion to arguments
Early bird.
1. The fact that I asked no more questions is, to me, convincing evidence that I must be somewhere on the autism spectrum. I have never asked people about their lives. Although I have always been good at remembering names, I almost never remember the names of relatives of acquaintances, even if I have seen them many times. For example, I have a great deal of difficulty remembering names of members of Sue’s family. I know my own cousins, but I could not name any of their children. It never really occurred to me that I was excessively solipsistic. I just considered myself less nosy than most. In my defense I always try to think of the potential effect on others before I do something, and I never deliberately do anything that might inflict pain on someone else.
2. Uncle Rich apparently died in 1972. My recollection is that he worked for a company called Gustin Bacon Mfg. that manufactured pipe joints and, for a time, air horns for trains. I have no idea what he did there. I also don’t know if he remained in the house on North Thorpe after the Wavadas moved south in 1955.
3. I don’t know when we purchased the TV, but I was a big fan of the Howdy Doody Show, and I am almost certain that I watched Hopalong Cassidy, which only ran until 1952. I cannot picture our television in the house on N. Thorpe, but we must have had it there.
4. This was a bizarre song: three women fantasizing about dancing with another woman. “All the fellows wishing they were me.”
5. This naturally raises the question of whether my parents employed birth control. The Church has never sanctioned anything besides the “rhythm method” for birth control. If that was what they did, they were certainly good at it. I was conceived a little over two months after their marriage. Jamie was conceived shortly after they moved to a new house with a spare room.
6. It turned quite a bit darker by the time that she went to school.
7. When I started cooking for myself I almost immediately tried to fry chicken. I never got it quite right. It is difficult and time-consuming. The spattering of grease makes a mess. I eventually just gave up. It did not seem to me to be worth the effort.
8. In my dad’s estate I found a used ticket for Super Bowl III and one for the Rose Bowl in 1970 that featured Michigan and Southern Cal.
By the end of 2023 I was thoroughly disgusted with the state of affairs in the district. The new president, Susan Miguel, and vice-president, Denise Bahosh, had ideas about running the district that were drastically different from the ones that Bob Bertoni and the people who had run things prior to the pandemic had promulgated. They insisted that every tournament should have a party atmosphere. They also seemed to think that the only way to induce new players to attend was to bribe them.
The final tournament of 2023 in Marlborough, MA (described here) included a meeting of the Executive Committee. One of the last things discussed was how to attract people to the evening games. I, at the last minute, suggested trying a Pro-Am pairs game in which each pair must have at least one non-Life Master. I remembered that we had attracted two sections of players to such an event before the pandemic. Susan asked if I would agree to host it. Thinking that she meant at the next tournament in February in Southbridge, I agreed. The complete story of the 2024 Pro-Am is posted here.
Playbook NLM Regional in Mansfield, MA
The first event of 2024 sponsored by District 25 was called the Playbook NLM Regional. It ran from Tuesday through Friday, February 6-10. The site was the enVision Hotel and Conference Center in Mansfield, MA., that was formerly a Holiday Inn. The Harvest Regionals were held there for a few years. The all-weekday schedule was, as I recall, devised because the hotel was not available on weekends. In late 2029 the Executive Committee, of which I was a member, held an email vote whether the Tournament Scheduling Committee, run by Denise and Susan after Mark Oettinger was forced out, should continue to investigate the feasibility of a gathering that included an open sectional and a limited regional for non-Life Masters with less than 750 masterpoints. The event was placed on the calendar without a subsequent vote.
The Gold Rush events drew nine or ten tables per day. The sectional drew more than twice as many people, but the five-day event drew approximately the same number per day as the sectional in Watertown, MA, in February 2023. Neither Sue nor I attended. The tournament broke even financially.
The Executive Committee met on Thursday evening. I attended via Zoom. As usual for the previous three years I went away both disgusted and frustrated. The only good news that I heard was that Joe Brouillard had somehow been able to report that the district had over $147,000 in liquid assets. The next tournament would be a five-day (April 17-21) affair in the Wellsworth Hotel in Southbridge, MA. This hotel was once headquarters for American Optical Company and served as the previous site for tournaments under a different name.
For some reason the Executive Committee did not meet in Southbridge, but there was a Zoom meeting on April 2. Among other things this contained the incredible news that New England will probably never be allowed to host an NABC. That means that the district now had roughly $150,000 in liquid assets and no fixed expenses whatever!
My overall reaction to the meeting was uniformly negative. We talked about everything but tournaments. The district’s leadership seem to be getting distracted from our role of running good tournaments for our players by all kinds of extraneous stuff. I let off steam with a long email to CBA president, Bill Segraves.
I am so exasperated with the attitudes of the people on the Executive Committee that I cannot sleep. I think that I must resign for my own mental health. My wife was subjected to an hour or so of ranting after this painful 2.5 hour meeting. If I had my way, the word “fabulous” would be removed from the dictionary. I am so sick of hearing how fabulous and fun everything is in an activity that I see as falling apart.
Prior to Covid I played every day in nearly every regional. Up until 2016 D25 ran six regional tournaments, one hybrid event for I/N called the Rainbow weekend, and face-to-face qualifying events in both the NAP and GNT. Here it is April, and the only open event we have held since the crappy Halloween tournament was a sectional. The only thing scheduled before June is a “right-sized” tournament in Southbridge that has been (in my opinion) poorly promoted.
Bob Bertoni, our former District Director who died in 2021, implemented the philosophy of holding outstanding tournaments through a combination of good schedules, good sites, and good marketing. Since his demise we have lost our way. In my opinion the purpose of the NEBC should be to present as many good events as possible. Online events do not qualify for many reasons. As I have written before, the online game resembles bridge in some ways, but it is not bridge any more than softball is the same game as baseball. In fact the online game is, I am quite convinced, rapidly destroying the game that I and thousands of others loved before the pandemic.
I voted against moving the GNT and NAP to online in 2021, but no one else on the ExComm did. The decision was called a no-brainer by the acting District Director. I played in one online GNT qualifier and absolutely hated it. Now we learn that we are having a difficult time attracting players to the online qualifiers, and, even though the president admitted that “the bloom is off the rose”, the best that the ExComm can do is put together a subcommittee to come up with a suggestion. To me the solution is obvious. Bring back the Rainbow Weekend (or its successor, the Gold Mine) for the Flight C GNT and hold the others at tournaments. No one even mentioned this as a possibility. Maybe we would lose a little money. So be it. The context of all of this is that we have the incredible sum of $137,000 available, and it is “99% certain” that we will be deprived of the opportunity to use it for an NABC event in New England.
To me nearly every bit of the discussion at the meeting was away from the two critical topics — online bridge and really good tournaments. Maybe we cannot do much about the ACBL’s pact with the online devil, which will apparently be expanded, not eliminated. I cannot brook the way that the Executive Committee management now seems to be focused on so many distractions from its primary purpose of putting on good tournaments. We do not need committees and brainstorming sessions to find out how to do this. Good tournaments have good sites, good schedules, and good promotion. Maybe we will lose money if we go back to this formula, but if we put on really good tournaments, I suspect that the world will come to them. If I am wrong, then at least we went down trying to do what we were supposed to do.
On another subject: The CBA board needs to be notified immediately about the massive increase in the STaC charge. I don’t think that many board members will want to accept such a large increase in the amount the CBA spends on the few clubs who run these games. Certainly not Cindy. As I said, if the HBC has to pay the table fees, I think that it might no longer participate in the STaCs, at least in the open games.
Your proposal to give scholarships to people organizing bridge clubs in college may be a good idea, but where is the evidence that there would be a lasting effect? From what I heard, as soon as the enthusiastic organizer leaves, the program generally dissolves. That is what always seemed to happen in the world of intercollegiate debate with which I am rather familiar. I don’t have any evidence about bridge clubs, but it seems to me that if we are to invest in college bridge, the money might be better spent in subsidizing the clubs themselves rather than the charismatic leaders. Also, I think that it makes more sense for this to be proposed to the ACBL educational fund rather than the NEBC, the mandate of which is to put on tournaments.
I am serious about all of this. I am tired of being the lonely vox clamantis in deserto. I cannot stand what has happened to bridge in New England during the last few years. Maybe I should just spend my efforts trying to help the Hartford Bridge Club survive. The perspective of the people there seem to accord better with my world view.
Thanks for listening.
Bill responded to my email. We exchanged views on a few of the things that I mentioned.
Spectacle Regional in Southbridge, MA
In Southbridge I arranged to play in events with teammates Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. On Thursday my partner in the Open Swiss was Abhi Dutta. On Friday I played with Eric Vogel in the 0-4,000 knockout, a two-day event.
My experience with lunches in Southbridge had not been positive. I therefore made myself a sandwich before leaving on Thursday. I also brought a package of diced peaches and a bag of potato chips. As usual, I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford on my way to Southbridge for my usual sandwich. It was very slow, expensive, and they added cheese to my sausage biscuit with egg, thereby ruining McD’s best sandwich. I resolved to try something different on Friday.
I located my teammates. Mike and Jim played North-South. We lost our first round by 19 points. The second round was even worse, a by 21 point shellacking by Michael and Ulla Sattinger’s team. One of the swings was our teammates’ fault. On the other one I opened 1♥. Abhi raised. I had twelve points consisting of three kings and three jacks. We were vulnerable, and so I did not want to pass up a potential game. However, when I counted my losers, I was astounded at the result—9! I passed and then took eleven tricks. Michael must have been more aggressive. They bid the game. He was right, but Losing Trick Count, which I always consult in non-competitive auctions when we have a fit in a suit, had never let me down so dramatically.
So, we were assigned to the second three-way. We won both of those rounds, one by seven and one by one. At lunch I ate my sandwich and some of the chips. I bought a can of Diet Pepsi for $3. I did not eat my peaches because I forgot to bring a spoon. I put them back in my cold pack.
After lunch we won the fifth round by 14. We should have won the sixth round, too, but Abhi made a lead-directing double that diverted me from leading correctly after I took my only defensive trick. We won the final round by only two imps, and we needed an eleven-imp swing on the last hand to achieve it. One of our teammates’ opponents got mixed up and bid an impossible slam. They say that it is better to be lucky than good.
It seemed as if we had been playing badly, and I did not think that we had played any really good opponents. Nevertheless, we somehow ended up third in the Y strat and won 3.93 gold points even though our score of 63 victory points was 10 percent less than average.
On Friday morning I varied my routine slightly. I stopped at the McDonald’s in Scitico. The sandwich was very good and no more expensive, and the service was excellent. I also stopped at Big Y and bought a chicken Caesar wrap for lunch. I had also brought chips and the unopened container of peaches.
Eric was my partner for the Swiss that determined the four qualifiers for Saturday’s knockout. Fifteen teams competed in the 0-4,000 flight and eight in the top flight. In the old days our flight would have been split into three five-team brackets or at least an eight- and a seven-. They did not do it that way in Southbridge.
We won our first match by 17. We then lost to John Lloyd’s team by 5 because out teammates failed to bid a routine notrump game. We also lost the the third round when Eric did not look for slam after I opened 1NT. We would have lost that round anyway due to errors at the other table. We also lost the fourth round to Eli Jolley’s team. He and Judy McNutt had been our teammates in Marlboro in 2023. So, at the lunch break, which we ate with our tails between our legs, we were 1-3 and in twelfth place out of fifteen. We had almost no chance of qualifying.
At lunch Susan Miguel made a peculiar announcement. She said that there were actually two brackets hidden in the 0-4,000 Swiss. A total of eight teams, not four, would qualify. This certainly sounded illegal to me. Who ever heard of changing the rules at the halfway point of an event? Susan characterized it as “exciting news”.
In any case it did not help us. With more than 9,000 points we were surely in the top group. We would still need to pass eight teams in the three rounds after lunch. It seemed hopeless, but in actual fact we did better than that. We faced three teams that were in the lower “bracket”, and we defeated them by 19, 6 (Abhi’s team), and 19 imps. That brought our total victory points to 77.99. I did not think that that would be enough to qualify, but in fact only three teams had more, and one of them was in the lower bracket.
Tim Hill, the director, cut a deck of cards to determine the matches in the semifinals. We drew the Sattingers, who were the top seed. That was fine with me.
On Saturday morning I repeated the routine that I established on Friday. This time I remembered to bring a spoon so that I could eat my peaches. I also bought a 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke.
It is very painful to write about the semifinal. Mike and Jim played against the Sattingers. We played against Lew and Linda Millenbach, who were friends of the Sattingers. Both couples lived in the Albany area. In our room it was a very friendly match, although Linda upbraided Lew several times for not following their conventions.
Eric and I played very well in the first set. On the very first hand he bid and made a slam that netted us 13 imps. Our lead at the break was 14.
I had great cards at the beginning of the second set, and I made the most of them. In the first five boards I bid and made two slams. They were also bid and made by Michael S. in the other room. However, on the sixth board Eric made the inexplicable play of ducking the setting trick in a game contract. That exactly erased the 12 imps that we had gained on the first and fourth hands. We lost 11 more on two hands in the second group of six, but we still had a three-imp lead in the match going into the very last hand, on which the Millenbachs made an overtrick on a strictly routine game contract that somehow Mike and Jim failed to find. We lost by four. I was absolutely crushed. I could not possibly have played any better, and Eric was also at the top of his game in the second set.
The consolation match was against Richard Underwood and Joanne Schlang, whom I had never previously met. They lived in Voorheesville, NY, which is west of Albany. I was wearing my Michigan sweatshirt.
Joanne announced that she had attended U-M between 1966 and 1970. I responded, “So did I.” She then told how she had been the absolutely last freshman admitted in 1966. I had nothing to add to that story. When they asked me what I studied, I admitted to “not much of anything.” That was the truth. She admitted that she never attended a U-M football game. I told the story of how I only missed the very last one, one of the greatest victories in Michigan history.
I got terrible cards for the entire match. I kept my attention up, but the disappointing results from the other room outweighed the mistakes made by our opponents, and—once again!—Eric and I lost both head-to-head matches in a knockout in Southbridge. Eric told me that he did not want to play with Mike and Jim any more.
I felt like quitting bridge. If we did not play with Mike and Jim, who would we play with? I had experienced great difficulty in finding partners and teammates since the pandemic. I was in a miserable mood for the entire drive home.
Sue went to a movie somewhere in southern Connecticut on Saturday evening. I bought a bag of fried chicken at Big Y and devoured a thigh and two legs while I watched Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks (an unpleasant experience). The chicken must have been under the heat lamp all day. It was not very good.
Granite State Regional in Nashua, NH
I could find no one who wished to play with me in the regional held in Nashua, NH, June 11-16. A few weeks before the tournament I asked Sally Kirtley, the D25 Tournament Manager, if she would be able to play. She said that she could certainly play on Saturday. I agreed to that and filled out Google forms for the other six days to indicate that I needed partners. Denise set me up with a man named Steve Banwarth, a resident of Nashua, for Wednesday. He only had 1716 points, which meant that he would have been better off with a partner who could play in the so-called Gold Rush Graduate (up to 2250 masterpoints) events, but our styles seemed quite compatible. We not only agreed to play on Wednesday, but on Thursday and Friday as well, assuming that everything went well on Wednesday.
Sue did not arrange for any partners. She exhibited a rather foul demeanor before and during most of the trip. Part of her attitude was due to her frustration about the Pro-Am, which has been documented in another entry.
Sue had a dental appointment on Tuesday, June 11. When that was over we packed up1 and left for Nashua at about 4 p.m. The drive was devoid of the horrendous delays that often occurred on I-495. Google Maps took us through Worcester on I-290. We also evaded the interchange between I-495 and Route 3 by going through side streets in Westford, MA.
When we arrived at the Sheraton Nashua I dropped off all of our luggage at the hotel’s door. I then circled around and parked my Honda in the handicapped space closest to the main door. Meanwhile Sue went inside the hotel to acquire a luggage cart. We needed to check in together because, although I had made the reservation using my Schwab American Express card, the paperwork was associated with Sue’s Marriott account.
After we had gotten settled in to room #361, we dined (at my suggestion) at the Mexican restaurant that I had visited while participating in a tournament before the pandemic. It took us only a few minutes to arrive at La Hacienda del Rio on the Daniel Webster Highway.
I ordered a combo plate that contained a beef taco and a beef burrito. I washed them down with a margarita. I forgot to tell the waitress that I wanted the frozen version of my beverage, but otherwise I really enjoyed the meal. The service was good, everything was tasty, and the price was reasonable.
As usual, Sue ordered much more than she could eat. This time it was three flautas. Two were chicken and one pork. She complained that she could barely tell the difference between the two. She also had a margarita. That surprised me because she almost never drinks any more.
Our room, #361, which was almost as far away from the elevators as possible. We were also on the opposite end of the building from the playing area, and so the stairs were not an option. Sue asked someone if we could move to a closer room. The staff eventually offered room #324, which was within a few yards of the elevator. However, by that time Sue had unpacked. I did not care one way or the other, but Sue had no energy left for the task of repacking and moving.
The hotel had been a Radisson on my previous visits. Now it had reverted to its original branding as a Sheraton, which has been owned by Marriott International since 2016. We noted were four significant problems with the rooms. There were no microwaves outside of the lobby. The refrigerators were tiny and difficult to open. Getting in and out of the show was difficult and dangerous for septuagenarians like us. Worst of all, the closet was in the bathroom. This bizarre arrangement disrupted the normal protocol that Sue and I have used in hotels for years. It inconvenienced both of us.
I slept pretty well on Tuesday night. At one point I was awakened by the cacophony produced by the blower on the air conditioner, Sue’s oxygen unit, the CPAP machine, and the television set that she had left on. I located my earplugs and was able to get back to sleep within an hour or so.
I spent the hour before game time at a table near the partnership table to interact with people who wanted to sign up for the Pro-Am game on Friday evening. There was no signage about the Pro-Am game; only two signs were on the table at which I sat. One advertised signing up for the Bracketed Pairs (not possible yet); the other incorrectly announced the date of the Board of Delegates meeting as Saturday. Sue never arrived until after the game had started.
I sat at the table from 9 until 10 every morning. Eventually a very nice sign was affixed to the mirror behind the table at which I sat. A few Pros told me that they would play “if I needed them.” I matched one or two up with Ams who had contacted me directly or through someone else.
Steve appeared at the table at about 9:40. I called Petko Petkov, the only person for whom there was a card at the partnership table indicating a desire for teammates for Wednesday’s Open Swiss. It happened that he was just entering the building. He called me back, and Steve and I ended up teaming up with him and Bunny Brogdon after Petko verified that we would be a C team. They had driven down together from Maine. We bought the entry and took our seats for the first round.
Our first opponents were another C team. We beat them by 20 imps. I did not get excited. Sometimes it is not a good idea for a C team to win its first match easily. We were forced to play the team captained by Ethan Wood. Steve and I faced Adam Grossack and a client. Evidently the North-South pair at the other table made some reckless bids that Petko doubled. At our table we had a misunderstanding on one hand. I opened 1♦. They bid 2♦, which showed hearts and spades. Steve bid 2♠. We were playing Unusual over Unusual. We had not talked about the details, but the commonly used meaning of that bid was that he had at least invitational values and diamond support. Since I had seven diamonds headed by the AKJ, I jumped to 5♦. The client bid 5♥ and went down four. Steve actually had five spades and only one diamond. Adam called the director, Bob Neuhart, but he let the result stand. We won the match by seven imps.
The third match was the low point of the morning. We lost by two imps to a C team captained by Ann Johnson. I teamed up with her and her partner, Chris Pettingell, in the bracketed pairs game on Sunday. The margin was all on one hand on in which we defeated 3♥ by three, but Ann and Chris made 3NT. Either Steve or I should have doubled. If we had, we would have won by seven or eight imps.
The highlight of the whole event (in fact, the whole tournament) was the fourth round. We defeated Tom Gerchman’s team, which included Linda Starr and Bob and Ann Hughes. At the lunch break we were in second place, one victory point behind Ethan Wood’s team.
The best part of playing in teams games is that occasionally your team finishes early, and there is time for conversation. I had given my calling cards to the other players. During a break Steve asked me what the designation “papal scholar” on my card meant. I bragged that I knew a lot about the popes—all of them. He disclosed that his first name was actually Cletus. He wondered if I knew anything about one of the very early popes, whose name was Cletus. I explained that Cletus had been removed from the list of popes at some point in the twentieth century. Apparently he and Anacletus, who for centuries had been listed after Clement I, were actually the same person. The current list showed Anacletus as the third pope after Peter and Linus. I wrote about this in Chapter 1 of Stupid Pope Tricks.
Then Petko made the mistake of asking how I got interested in Popology. I explained how I had listened to A.J. Jacobs talking on the radio about the famous trial of Pope Formosus (as I have related in this entry). Petko was rather familiar with the history of Eastern Europe. He verified that Prince Boris of Bulgaria tried to determine whether the Greek or Roman flavor of Christianity would best suit his country.
At lunch I bought a so-called Caesar salad (no anchovies) and a Diet Pepsi. I paid for both, but I left my can of soda on the counter. I went back after finishing the salad, and the man running the cashless cash register handed me the Diet Pepsi. The salad was edible, but the price was obscene. From my perspective it fulfilled the requirement of keeping my digestive system busy without supplying soporific carbohydrates.
We won both the fifth and sixth rounds after lunch. We were bumping along in second place. Unfortunately we got undressed by Greg Klinker’s team in the seventh round. At our table Cilla Borras and Alex Taylor bid and made three slams in the eight hands. Two were cold, but we could have set one of them if I had played my honors in a side suit differently. Our teammates only bid one of the slams.
We won the last round. We ended up third in A, second in B, and first in C. We had beaten both of the teams ahead of us. We won 4.73 gold masterpoints. What a great start for a new partnership.
In the evening I ate a roast beef sandwich from Sue’s grocery stash and potato chips from a bag that I had brought. I drank half of the water in the free bottle that came with the room. By the time that I had finished my little supper and dealt with my emails it was pretty late.
Sue and I drove to the Dream Diner for breakfast. When we entered only one woman was on duty waiting tables, but more arrived presently. I ordered a ham and Swiss omelette. Sue had hash and eggs. It was a pleasant listening to the pre-Beatles music while eating.
We saw Al Votolato and Grace Charron sitting in a nearby booth and greeted them as we exited.
On Thursday Steve and I played in the Open Pairs. Nothing else was available except the knockouts, to which our new friends from Maine had committed to play. The Open Pairs had a very large field of 31 tables that included several big names.
Steve and I scored a 55 percent game in the morning. That put us in fourteenth place (out of sixty-two) and sixth in B. The highlight was getting to play against Michael Dworetsky, one of my principal partners a decade or so earlier, and Joe DeGaetano, who splits his time between Florida and New Hampshire. The low point was the very last hand, in which I made an embarrassing defensive error against two of the very best players, John Hrones and Bob Lurie. They finished the session with a 70 percent game.
Our afternoon game was even better. We were East-West and followed the two newest members of the Hartford Bridge Club, Bart Bramley and Kitty Cooper2, two experts who had recently moved to Avon, CT. I remember two of the rounds. In one we played against Jane Verdrager, who runs a club in New Hampshire. She and Steve made arrangements to play together on Sunday. The other round was against Jori Grossack, mother of the two great professional players from Newton, MA. She thanked me for what I had done for bridge.
We ended up in tenth place, fifth in B. That was worth 3.39 gold points. Lurie and Hrones won the event, a result that did not surprise me a bit.
Sue and I should have eaten supper together on Thursday evening, but she did not want to.
On Friday Steve and I played in the very first occurrence of an experimental event, the Bracketed Pairs. We were assigned to bracket #2, which consisted of nine tables that included a large number of players whom I knew very well. Steve and I played very well. I circled only one hand in each session. We had a 55.65 percent game, which tied us for third place.
We played the same direction in the second session as the leaders. After the last hand the BridgeMate reported that we had a 61 percent game and first North-South. So, we definitely had picked up some ground on the leaders. When the “final” results were posted, we were listed as the overall winners. However, an hour or so later a new score was poster, and we were second. The margin was 1.5 points, much less than one percentage point. We were happy with the 11.74 gold points that we earned, but first place paid an incredible 15.65 points.
After the game I talked with Steve about future tournaments. He said that he might play in the Ocean State Regional in Warwick because his son lives in Providence. I certainly hope that we can arrange something. He said, however, that he does not like to stay in hotels, and he does not drive at night.
Sue and I played together in the Pro-Am on Friday evening. We did not do well.
We should have gone to breakfast on Saturday morning, but Sue could not get moving in time. I received a phone call from long-time friend and former partner, Judy Hyde. She and Ann Hudson (another former partner) had finished second in Bracket 2 of the knockout, and they wanted to team up with Sally and me on Saturday. I promptly agreed. Even if we did not do well, it would certainly be a pleasure to play with them.
We won our first match by 3 imps and lost the second one by 5 to a strong B team. In the third round we were hammered by Ethan Wood’s team, but we came back to win the fourth round. We were only a little below average, but we found ourselves in a three-way for the first two rounds after lunch. We were pummeled in both matches. We won the seventh round over Joe Brouilliard’s team. We also won the last match. Sally and I played against Eli Jolley and Judy McNutt. So, our foursome won four out of eight matches, but we finished way out of the money. We could hardly complain; we played against none of the best teams.
At some point on Saturday morning Sue hooked up with Shirley Wagner, a very nice person from Central Mass with whom I had worked on the Executive Committee. They did not do well in the morning session, but they improved in the afternoon after Shirley advised Sue to concentrate on “restraint”.
The Executive Committee meeting was painful. I was Connecticut’s only representative. Bill Segraves attended for a few minutes by Zoom. Denise served soda and cheese and crackers. The district has $158,000 in cash, but it can no longer afford to buy supper for the committee. AND they expect people to play in the evening games after the meetings.
Sue Miguel passed out a list of items that she and Denise have accomplished. She highlighted a new committee of unit presidents. They reportedly had a “fabulous” meeting on Thursday evening. This group is precisely identical to the Executive Committee minus Joe, Carolyn, Brenda Montague, and me, the four people whom she cannot count on for unthinking support.
Mark Aquino talked about his research on previous the sites of NABC tournaments. Because of his position on a committee he thinks that he might be able to salvage an NABC in Providence at some point in the future.
Sunday morning’s BoD meeting was more of the same. A lot of people from Connecticut were in attendance. At the very end I tried to draw people’s attention to the district’s huge pile of cash and emphasized that, in my opinion, some of this should go to supporting clubs. I don’t think that anyone was listening.
I learned that the Fall tournament will be at the Holiday Inn in Norwich CT.
My partner on Sunday was Paul Burnham. We had sat at the same table at the BoD meeting and agreed on a convention card for the Bracketed Swiss. We met Ann Johnson and Chris Pettingell at the partnership table. I totaled up the points and bought an entry using four different credit cards. We were in the lowest bracket, but there was some pretty tough competition there. Evidently the less experienced players had not learned the lesson that the best way to get gold points was in bracketed events.
The bridge is mostly a blur. I remember that on the first hand I opened 1NT with only one small club. I was still discombobulated from the meeting and the chaos at the registration table. One of my spades was sorted next to the singleton club. I only went down one in an impossible 3NT contract, but miscues at the other table caused us to lose this and three of our other five matches.
At lunch Paul and I sat with Ann, Chris, and some other woman. The conversation was extremely tiresome. At no point did I have anything to contribute. Eventually Paul stood up and announced that he wanted to “take a walk.”
The only round that I remember rather clearly was the fifth, which we played against Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. I quickly explained the WavaDONT defense to Paul. I needed to take at least a half hour because, believe it or not, they opened 1♣ three times in eight hands. On the first occasion I overcalled 2♦, which meant that I had diamonds and a higher suit. I had a seven-loser hand, which is my standard for this bid, but I had no time to explain that to Paul. After Jim bid 3♣, Paul, who had four cards in both majors, bid 3♥, which Mike doubled. I corrected to 3♠, which Mike also doubled. I went down four for -1100. Disasters ensued on several other hands. On the last hand I tried a 6♥ slam3, which also went down. It was the only slam bid my me or any of my partners during eleven sessions of play.
We won the last round to salvage a little respect. Our opponents were from Connecticut. Paul and I played against Marie-Jose Babouder-Matta and her husband Nadim. At the other table were Rick Seaburg and Gayle Stevens. They were shocked that, despite the fact that they had won only two matches, they were assigned to play against Paul and me.
The drive home was not too bad. Sue, who had played in one session of the Gold Rush Pairs, wanted to stop for supper. We could not think of a good place anywhere on the way back to Enfield. We ended up at the Longhorn Steakhouse, where we spent $100 on a lackluster meal that we ate while shivering in a booth in which the temperature was at most sixty degrees.
This was the best tournament, in my opinion, since the pandemic, but I still felt sad and somewhat bitter about the meetings.
I learned that the fall tournament will be at the Holiday Inn in Norwich CT. The three flights of the district’s NAP qualifying events will also be held there.
Ocean State Regional in Warwick RI
I was hoping to use my large collection of IHG4 Rewards points to pay for my attendance at the district’s most popular tournament, the Ocean State Regional which was held annually at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick, RI. It was usually held before Labor Day, but in 2024 it was scheduled for Tuesday, September 3, through Sunday, September 8. Unfortunately, although I tried to do so more than a month in advance of the tournament, I was unable to score even one free room. I immediately turned my attention to the November tournament in Norwich. I used points to buy four nights. IHG threw in the fifth night for free.
As I was I looking up the dates for the Norwich tournament, I was surprised to learn that the schedule (which can be viewed here) was a throwback to the simplistic schedules of 2021. I resolved to find out at the Executive Committee meeting whether this was a deliberate move by the people who design the schedules. I hoped that the dominance of open events was a temporary measure.
Jim Osofsky asked me and Judy Hyde to play with him and Mike Heider on four of the six days. They did not want to play on Tuesday, and they had already arranged to play with another pair on Saturday. I had not played with Judy since 1997. We agreed to play the card that she customarily used. We played together at one online game sponsored by the Northampton Bridge Club and did pretty well. We later cleared up via email and a phone call a few things concerning the convention card that I had created and sent to her.
I received a bizarre email from Sue Miguel about the use of paper by the district. It stated that the Secretary of the Executive Committee would no longer hand out reports to attendees. Pdf files would be sent by email, and each member would be required to print his/her/their own copies. She also wanted to eliminate as much paper as possible at tournaments as well. This was supposedly going to create a greener ecology. In my opinion the best way to save paper would be to buy scoresheets with room for results of pairs games on both sides. The other side of the ones that they distribute currently have blank convention cards, which are almost seldom needed by tournament players.
Before I left for Warwick I made sure that all of the household bills were paid and that the invitational email for the game at the Simsbury Bridge Club was scheduled on MailChimp for release on Friday morning.
I consulted Google Maps to determine how long the drive to the Crowne Plaza would take. Its answer was one hour and forty minutes. I was ready to leave at 7:15 on Wednesday morning. I wanted to give myself some time to consult with Judy before the first round. I went in to ask Sue where she had put my laptop. On my way I noticed that two HP laptops were on the table that she had been using for paperwork in what was at one time our dining room. She was using my laptop in bed. I loaded the rest of the stuff in the car while she finished what she was doing and powered it down. I had to wait a few minutes for her to complete this task. As usual, she could not make the program she was using do what she wanted and was cursing at it.
I left at 7:30. The remote for the garage-door opener in my car successfully opened the door but failed to close it. I had to turn the car off, use the button on the wall in Sue’s garage to close the door, unlock the door, walk through the house, exit by the door that faces Hamilton Court, lock it, and return to the car. I then tried to engage Google Maps on my cellphone. It reported that Maps was “not responding”. I was pretty sure that I knew the route, or at least all but the very end. I finally hit the road at 7:45.
I had forgotten how unpleasant it was to drive east on sunny mornings at this time of the year. The sun was directly in my eyes for most of the trip. I wore my flip-down sunglasses, and I deployed the car’s visor, but on several occasions I was blinded for a second or two. Part of the problem was that the front window was smudged enough to defract the sunbeam.
I also found my car stuck behind several trucks in Somers and three school buses in Stafford. One of the buses made several stops to pick up students. While waiting for its flashing red light to be turned off, I tried Maps again, and this time it connected. I later ran into construction on Route 74 in Connecticut.
I arrived at the hotel at 9:35. I had intended to stop at McDonald’s for my customary breakfast sandwich, but there was not enough time. After I had parked the car near the playing area I was unable to find my car keys. I looked everywhere in the vicinity of the driver’s seat. When I stuck my hand between the seat and the console I bruised my right hand in several places. I also checked on the floor in the back seat and on the passenger seat. I tried to start the car. That worked, which meant that the key fob was still inside the car. I walked to the back of the car, where I had set down my backpack and portfolio. I dumped everything from the backpack. No keys.
It suddenly occurred to me that it was pretty warm out. I remembered that I had worn my jacket when I left because the temperature was in the forties. After.it warmed up I had doffed it and cast it onto the carpet in front of the passenger’s seat. I went back into the car and quickly found the missing keys n the jacket’s right pocket. I gathered my gear, locked the car, and went inside.
I was still pretty frazzled when I found Judy sitting by herself at a table. She had paid for my share of the entry. I promised to pay for both of us on Thursday. I got a cup of free coffee at the concession stand and then discussed with Judy a few items on our convention card. I realized that the one that I had inserted into my blue convention card holder was obsolete. However, i was able to locate the correct one in the portfolio that I had brought in from the car.
Twenty teams played in the Open Swiss. The field included many good players, but most of the pros and other stars were playing in the contemporaneous second day of the knockout. Our team won all four of its matches before lunch. None of the wins was decisive.
Sue had made a sandwich for me. I sat by myself and ate it with a handful of Utz potato chips from a bag that I had placed in my backpack. I also bought a 12 oz. can of Diet Coke for $2 at the concession stand and drank it. Cindy Lyall and her mother, Sandy DeMartino, came to my table, seated themselves, and asked me how the unitwide games worked in Connecticut before the pandemic. I explained them as thoroughly as my seventy-six-year-old memory could muster.
We also won the first three rounds after lunch, but we were only tied for second place behind a team that we had already beaten—the one that Cindy and Sandy played on. However, we had already played most of the A teams. We had a good eighth round against a so-so opponent, and we actually finished first overall. It was the very first victory in an open event at a regional tournament and (I think) the other members of my team.
Room #644 was was the second window from the right in the wing on the right.
I left the playing area before the final results were posted. I drove my car to a spot closer to the hotel’s main entrance. I then retrieved my suitcase from the trunk, went inside, and registered. They assigned me room #644, which may be the highest number that they have. I was at the far west end of the building. There were rooms beyond mine, but I don’t think that they rented them out. The Housekeeping headquarters was directly across the hall from 644 and beyond it was a small lobby that contained an elevator and a microwave oven.
I unpacked and then called Sue. She previously had informed me that she would “probably” drive up to Warwick on Wednesday, but it did not surprise me in the least that she had not left yet. She described her encounter with a musician friend of hers who was living in upstate New York. Sue had offered to let him house-sit while we were at the tournament.5 She also said that she did not want to drive during the traffic of the morning rush. She would “probably” leave for Warwick at about 4 a.m.
She was duly impressed when I told her that we had won all of our rounds. I then spent a few minutes trying to get her to hang up so that I could meet up with my teammates in the hotel lobby. We planned to drive to the Bertucci’s near the airport for a celebratory dinner. We all ordered drinks. Mine was a Guinness. Jim, Mike, and I ordered small pizzas. Judy asked us to share a piece with her. I gave her one willingly, as did Mike. I don’t think that Jim did. Judy announced that two pieces was just right for her.
I asked Jim what he had done when he worked in advertising. He said quite a few words, but he never quite answered the question. I concluded that he had been an account rep, but he might also have been involved in planning. He said that he was quite good at helping clients launch new products.
On the return drive to the hotel I asked Judy what she had done in real life. She related that she had taught English for a while. She got married when she was very young (and later to Tom Hyde). She described both of her husbands as very quiet men. Somehow she got into social work, where she concentrated on dealing with parental abuse of children. On one occasion a man shot his own child in her office. It was a traumatic event for Judy. Recently she has become closely involved with the prevention of enslavement of children worldwide. This affirmed what I have always said: “Nearly everyone in bridge has an interesting backstory.”6
In my room I watched episode 5 of season 3 of the spectacular German television series, Babylon Berlin, on the MHz Choice website on my laptop. I had already seen it, but in the previous week I had discovered that I had accidentally skipped episode 2. So, I had rewatched episodes 3, 4, and now 5. They made much more sense the second time.
I got this from the HBC’s library.
I took a shower and then read a chapter or so of Gene Wolfe’s Pirate Freedom. I had no trouble sleeping until about 6am. I then went down to the playing area, grabbed a bagel and coffee and sat with Jim. It wasn’t much of a breakfast, but it was free.
On Thursday our foursome was scheduled to play in the knockout. We found ourselves in the second bracket, which was our hope. We would have expected to get clobbered in the top bracket, which had only six teams.
Seven teams were assigned to our bracket. Many of them were familiar foes. We were in three three-ways. We comfortably won the first two rounds, which gave us ten wins in a row. We were also in the lead in the two half-matches before lunch.
I retreated to my room and ate the second sandwich that Sue had made for me and some more potato chips. I drank tap water upstairs and purchased a Diet Coke to consume in the afternoon matches.
At some point I realized that I did not have my cellphone. In a panic I went back down the elevator to the playing area and searched around the table at which we had sat all morning. There was no sign of it. In the end I found it in my backpack. I can not imagine why or when I had placed it there.
This is the pencil that I brought in from the car. The rubber grip was mushy and eventually fell off.
I returned to room #644 to brush my teeth. This time I realized that I was missing the mechanical pencil that I had been using for at least five years. I never found it, but I remembered that three similar pencils had been in the console in my car for months. So, I retrieved a blue one that was sort of gummy and used it for the rest of the tournament.
We won the second half of both half-matches. However, our winning streak of twelve consecutive matches was ended in the last three-way. We were decisively defeated by Susan Mullin’s team, but we won the other match. That made us the top seed of the four teams that qualified for the knockout portion on Friday.
I paid for our entry, but I let Mike Heider pick our opponent in the semifinal round.7 He decided that we would play against Susan Liincoln’s team that we had defeated in the first round rather than Susan Mullin’s team that had brutally vanquished us in the three-way.
Sue arrived at the tournament at some point after lunch. She was miserable because she missed the morning session. She blamed Google Maps for sending her in the wrong direction on a detour. While wandering around southeast Rhode Island she had been talking over the phone with her partner, Nadine Harris. When she came to our table I gave Sue a room key so that she could could bring her stuff up to the room.
Judy had other plans, but Mike and Jim asked me to go to a restaurant for supper with them. I said that I would let them know after I talked with Sue. She was very upset about life in general, but she was also an extremely sociable person. So, we decided to join Jim and Mike. We all drove to the Hibachi Grill & Supreme Buffet in Warwick. It was a pleasant and stress-free change. I had won ton soup and a plateful of other Chinese items. Despite all of her trials and tribulations Sue was her usual cheerful self.
On Friday Sue and Nadine decided to play in the experimental event, the Bracketed Pairs, in order to try to get some gold points.
On Thursday I noticed that Debbie Prince, whom I knew from the HBC and the Board of Governors of the CBA, was in attendance. Before going downstairs I placed my copies of The Book of Evidence and The Sea by John Banville in my backpack. On my way to get coffee I saw Debbie and gave the books to her. She was very happy that I did so. I did not know it at the time, but this was the best moment of my day.
Our team played the semifinal of the knockout. As we sat down to play against Steve Kolkhorst and Carl Wikstrom in the hallway just outside of the main ballroom. The first set of the match was a disaster. Over the course of only three hands we lost a total of twenty-five imps. The other nine were OK, but we faced a deficit of twenty-one imps when we resumed play.
In the second through fourth hands of this match I had the following distributions: six hearts and zero diamonds, six hearts and zero diamonds, and six hearts and one diamond. These were “shuffle-and-deal” hands shuffled by three different players, one of which was myself. I will remember this for times in which someone claims that computer-generated deals are not random.
We came roaring back in the first half of the second set. Our opponents made a series of big mistakes, including missing a very easy grand slam. Unfortunately, Jim and Mike did not find it either. Even so, we erased all but five points of the lead. However, they won most of that back in the last six hands, which were poorly played by our teammates. I made a costly mistake on the last hand as well.
The tournament’s concession stand is famous for offering hot meals at lunch. My favorite has long been the sausage, peppers, and onion grinder. I bought one and brought it up to my room to eat with the potato chips. I drank water from the faucet.
I was mostly a spectator in the consolation round against our old Nemesis, the Sattinger team from the Albany area. I played what I called a D&D match—defense and dummy. I declared only three hands. We won five imps on those three, but we surrendered enough on the other twenty-one so that we once again lost.
As I was searching for Sue I encountered Sally Kirtley in the hotel’s lobby. She asked me if I was going to the Executive Committee meeting. The materials that I brought with me said that it was on Saturday, but her reminder made me realize that that designation had been corrected in a subsequent email. I had looked for a sign about it in the area of the partnership desk, but there was none there. There was a sign near the main entrance, but I did not look there.
The meeting was called to order by Denise Bahosh because Sue Miguel was busy with one of her dozen or so responsibilities. The only food served was cake for Sue’s birthday. Her Majesty arrived fashionably late literally shouting her own praises.
Mark Aquino, after a few minutes paying tribute to how fabulous things were, announced that he wanted to go easier on alleged cheaters because the number of members of the ACBL was decreasing! The problem was that people are “flagged” by a faceless algorithm and then offered unappetizing choices.
Sue did not answer my questions about Norwich schedule. Instead she complained that the ACBL would not let her run the events that she wants or run or to advertise them the way that she wants. Meanwhile I had to look at Sue’s feet on the chair that separated us. I felt very sad and frustrated.
The meeting ended with Sue Miguel ordering everyone to play in the night game without eating supper.
My wife Sue and I ignored her instructions and ate.supper at the loud Texas Road House. I could not use my ear plugs because Sue’s voice does not carry at all. I liked the ribs but not the atmosphere.
Burt Saxon.
On Saturday we were in Bracket 2 of the Bracketed Pairs. We did very poorly. There were only two high points. The first came at the very beginning. I got to talk with Burt Saxon and his partner, Steve Emerson from Pennsylvania. Burt formerly was a columnist on the CBA’s bridge newsletter, The Kibitzer. I wrote to him once when he asked for experiences people had had with the Flannery convention. He published my note and responded to it. He also wrote often about his games online and in person with Steve. We also played against Burt and Steve at the very last table. I should have given him my calling card, but I forgot.
The other enjoyable moment came just before lunch. I noticed that Jill Marshall, who had appeared on the cover of the September Bridge Bulletin. I asked her to sign my copy. She did so said that I had made her day. She even went up to one of the directors and borrowed a Sharpie to make the signature memorable.
Sue also had a terrible day in the Bracketed Pairs. She was in a very low bracket but still did poorly.
Sue and I ate supper at Chelo’s on Route 1. I had a Reuben sandwich and a tall Narragansett. Sue had some kind of seafood that she rated as below average. Sue took three boxes and a small cup of chowder back to the hotel. The refrigerator in the room was already full before she crammed her leftovers in.
I was not a bit surprised that Texas creamed the reigning national champions at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. Evidently the game was not even as close as the lopsided score indicated. I watched a bit of Iowa State’s comeback against Iowa. Then I turned the television off and watched episode 6 of Babylon Berlin.
On Sunday morning I woke up at 3am. I went into the bathroom and wrote up notes for this journal entry. The last three words were “Sick of life.”
I fell back asleep at about 4:30 and did not arise for several hours. At 8:00 I packed, got ready, walked with my luggage to my car, and then went to the playing area. Sue’s plans at that point were unclear. She had apparently put in a request for a partner, but she did not get any responses.
The event was held in the hotel’s “pavilion”, which was actually a huge tent with rather easy access from the hotel. It was constructed about forty feet from the first floor of the hotel. Access was pretty easy.
One thing that the pavilion was missing was restrooms. The closest one was next to the hotel’s restaurant. That was quite a hike. Two rooms were also left open and reserved for players. They each had only one toilet. So, unisex lines formed there. This was not a popular arrangement.
The other problem was that it was quite breezy that day. One side of the tent was left open, and the tables near there, where Judy and I played the last round, were quite chilly. I zippered up my nylon jacket, and I was still cold.
Paula before she became proud of her white hair.
Before the bridge started I reminisced with Paula Najarian, who was my teammate in a similar event the last time that the tournament used the pavilion on the last day. I think that it was in 2009 or maybe 2010. My partner was Steve Smith, and she was playing with Marcia West. In the last round Steve and I faced Ron Briggs’s team. They were in first place; we were close behind. On the last hand Steve had bid a risky major-suit game that was impossible to make. He was slowly leading out cards in a side suit in hopes of getting an idea. I noticed that Ron had revoked on the ninth or tenth trick. So, Steve in fact made the bid, and, in fact, we won the match and the entire event! I have always used this as an example of great dummy play. Marcia and Paula were shocked and elated by their victory.
In 2024 our team was assigned to the third bracket of the Round Robin. Seven teams were in our bracket; so, we played six rounds of eight boards each. We won our first two matches, but then we lost two. We also split the last two. The only saving grace was that in the last round we soundly defeated the HBC team of Sally, Donna Feir, and the Hugheses.
Other things made me miserable, but I enjoyed playing with Judy. She indicated that she also liked sitting across from me. I asked her if she would be available to play in the regional scheduled for Norwich, CT, in November.
The drive home was even more brutal than the one on Tuesday morning. The traffic was not a problem, but the setting sun was awful.
One of the first things that I did after arriving home was to send to all members of the Executive Committee an email explaining my attitude about the schedule for the Norwich Tournament. Here is the text:
I don’t think that in the ExComm meeting I explained my concerns about the schedule for Norwich schedule very well. Here, for reference, is the schedule for the five-day event in Mansfield, the last time that the NAPs were held in conjunction with a tournament.
On Wed. there was a 2-2 schedule. Thursday started a knockout. Sunday had a three-flighted Swiss. Was this schedule illegal?
The Norwich schedule for the first four days is the following:
Monday seems to have a 2-1 schedule, Tuesday a 2-2 schedule (assuming the practice counts as a flight), Wednesday a 1-1 schedule (assuming the NAP does not count as a flight), and Thursday a 1-2 schedule (assuming the NAP does not count as a flight).
My questions are: 1) Is it not possible to have 2-2 or 3-1 schedules on one or more of these days? 2) Is it not possible to schedule a knockout?
Her reply struck me as nonsensical, but I knew from all my experience as a debater that it was foolish to get into an argument with the person doing the judging.
I hear what you’re saying and agree whole-heartedly if this were a normal, traditional tournament.
We need to realize it’s just not 2019 anymore. Not only that, this is a new tournament, in a totally new city/state on a new date AND new days of the week. Each of these changes tends to drop attendance, never mind having them all at once. Not only that, it’s the week before Thanksgiving. That gives us an potential problem on steroids.
To mitigate the potential damage and maximize our chance for success, we decided to go with a streamlined, simple schedule – focus on getting people out for the NAPs – and keeping them for the other events. This way the events will be bigger. We can’t afford to slice a small pie into tiny pieces.
We also can’t run mid-flight/GR events when we are sending people into NAP B/C. An encouraging the C to also play in the B and the B to also play in the A.
As a result, this isn’t your normal tournament.
It’s all about encouraging people to come ready for NAP, NAP, NAP! And stay for the rest. Let’s concentrate on making this fun, challenging and create buzz for next year. Once we live through the experience, we can expand our offerings where it make sense on non-NAP days. Not to mention, we’ll be on a more traditional Tues-Sun and well away from holiday schedule.
Hope that enlightens.
It didn’t. The remark about not being 2019 any more really frosted me. It is not 2021 any more either. I think that an organization with over $150,000 in liquid assets owes it to its members to provide a quality product.
Fall tournament will be at the Holiday Inn in Norwich CT.
1. Sue brought an unbelievable amount of stuff to New Hampshire. Her huge blue suitcase was filled to the brim. She also brought her oxygen unit, her CPAP machine, two canes, and at least three shopping bags filled with food, utensils, and all kinds of other stuff.
2. Bart and Kitty were the biggest point winners of the tournament.
3. This slam was a move prompted by desperation. I figured that we were probably going to lose by a wide margin, probably a blitz. Unfortunately, our auction made it impossible for me to get much information about the possibility of success. I opened 2♣ to indicate a very strong hand. We played that his response showed “controls”. He bid 2♥, which betokened an ace or two kings. Since I had all four kings, I knew that he had an ace. I had two of them, and so I knew that we had only one certain loser. I also had six hearts headed by the AK, but only one outside jack. I needed to know about his queens and jacks, but there was no way to get that information. So, I just bid 6♥ and hoped for the best.
4. The InterContinental Hotel Group owns the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotels, as well as many other. I had a Chase credit card that provided reward points that could be used for free rooms at those hotels.
5. If this sounds incredible to you, you do not know Sue.Taking in strays is one of the primary aspects of her personality. Many of our pets were strays. Most of the rest were gifts from people who were desperate to get rid of them. I have often thought that Sue took me in when I was a stray. I certainly was different socially from the other actuaries with whom we worked.
6. Maybe not actuaries.
7. This was, rather incredibly, the fourth time in less than three years that I had been in the position of selecting an opponent for the semifinal of a knockout. Twice we had lost both the semifinal and final matches, but at the 2023 tournament in Warwick we won both matches.
Introduction to opera: It was a very important incident in my life, but I have only the sketchiest memories of the occasion. I am pretty sure that my viewing of the movie The Pad (and How to Use It)1 took place in the TV room in the basement of Allen Rumsey House. The movie was released to theaters on my eighteenth birthday in August of 1966. I am pretty sure that I watched it by myself on Bill Kennedy’s afternoon show. He showed only old movies, and so I am dating this entry as 1969, the year that Kennedy moved his show to channel 50, WKBD. However, it might have been a little earlier, when he was still on CKLW, the powerful station in Windsor, ON.
The movie was based on a play by Peter Shaffer called The Public Ear. In it a guy meets a woman at a symphonic concert ( Mozart’s 40th, as I recall) and invites her to his apartment for supper. I admit that I watched this movie because of the promotions that portrayed it as a sexy comedy. In reality there is no sex at all. Parts of the movie are definitely funny, but the ending is tragic.
This was as racy as it got.`
The guy (played by Brian Bedford), has mistakenly concluded that the woman (Julie Sommars) is an aficionado of “long hair” music. In his “pad”he shows her his sophisticated phonograph system and plays excerpts from Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer and the Humming Chorus from Pucini’s Madama Butterfly.
I was not familiar with either of these works. The Wagnerian selection did not do much for me (and still doesn’t), but I found the Humming Chorus really moving (and still do). The woman, on the other hand, was much more interested in the guy’s neighbor (James Farentino), who had volunteered to cook a romantic supper for them.
This viewing occasioned my purchase of a few vinyl record albums. In those days full operas came in boxed sets of three or more records, which made them pretty expensive. One-disk recordings of the highlights from operas were also available. I purchased one of those for Madama Butterfly, and I really enjoyed it. I also purchased a couple of “greatest hits” albums from famous opera singers such as Renata Tebaldi and John McCormack. I also found some collections dedicated to individual composers. The one that I liked the best contained Rossini’s overtures. I should emphasize that I bought almost all of these records after they had been heavily discounted. I seldom paid more than $2 apiece.
I also frequented the small library of recordings that was available in West Quad. I don’t remember finding anything there that I really liked, but it exposed my ears to some new composers.
I had little or no success in getting any of the other A-R residents to listen to these records. I am not sure that I even tried.
I had no phonograph when I was in training in the army. At my first permanent station, Sandia Base in Albuquerque, I was occasionally able to assemble and conduct a small group of air musicians to accompany my recording of the overture from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. That was fun. In my final assignment at Seneca Army Depot I finally found a kindred spirit. That experience has been recorded here.
Live performances: Operas have always been expensive. For the first half of my working career my wife Sue and I could seldom afford to purchase opera tickets. After the company became more successful my attitude changed.
The first opera that I ever attended was Verdi’s Aida. In 1981 the Connecticut Opera Company (CO) staged an elaborate production at the home of the Hartford Whalers. I have written about this experience here.
I did not attend another opera until more than a decade later when we went to the Bushnell in Hartford to see a production by the same company of Bizet’s Carmen. Denise Bessette accompanied us. I was interested in the music, Sue wanted a night out, and Denise was hoping to be able to pick up some phrase of the dialogue in French. I do not remember much about the experience. I only recall that we arrived too late to attend the talk that preceded the performance. That put me in a very foul mood. I had purchased a CD of the opera that featured Agnes Baltsa. I was surprised that the performance in Hartford (like every other performance that I have heard or seen) used the recitatives that were added after Bizet’s death.
Willy Anthony Waters.
Sue and I also attended at least one performance before 1999, when Willy Anthony Waters took over as artistic director of the company. I remember watching a very bizarre version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. For some reason the stage director had women dressed in purple wandering around the stage in nearly every scene. They were supposed to represent Don G’s memories of his previous amorous conquest.
At some point in the early twenty-first century I purchased two season’s tickets to the CO. Each year thereafter I renewed the subscription, and each year my seats and the performances got better (in my opinion). In the last year we were in row F right in the middle. I would not have traded seats with anyone.
The CO put on several performances of three operas per year. I am pretty sure that I was able to attend each opera for the period during which I had season’s tickets. However, I can only remember the details of a few performances.
Jussi performed in Hartford! So did Luciano!
I remember a performance of Don Giovanni in which only one set was used. It consisted mostly of doors.
There must have been a production of Le Nozze di Figaro, but I remember no details.
I am quite sure that I watched a production of Die Zauberflöte by myself between two empty seats. That experience was depicted here.
I am sure that I saw Verdi’s La traviata performed in the traditional way with a soprano that I liked a lot. I don’t remember her name. During this show an Italian lady sat next to me. On the other side of her were family members or friends who had purchased the tickets with her in mind. She softly sang along to “Di provenza il mar, il suol”, but she did not seem to think much of the rest of the performance.
A year or two later the same soprano starred in a production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. I remember that the program made the strange claim that the only reason to stage this opera was to showcase a new soprano.
We definitely saw Richard Strauss’s Salome. It had more dancing than singing and was very short.
There was definitely a production of Verdi’s Rigoletto that starred a Black baritone who appeared in several other shows.
He was the star of the (rare) presentation of Puccini’s one-act opera, Il tabarro. It was coupled with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci in which he played Tonio.
I have never been that enamored with Puccini’s Tosca. The one that was performed in Hartford had a very unimpressive climax. It was promoted by Mintz and Hoke, the one agency in the Hartford area that never agreed to talk with us.
I am pretty sure that one year Pagliacci was paired with its usual partner, Mascagni’s Cavelleria Rusticana.
I distinctly remember seeing Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel. I did not like it much.
We certainly saw a production of Puccini’s La bohème. I also remember seeing photos in the lobby of previous productions. Both Jussi Björling and Luciano Pavarotti starred in this opera in Hartford.
Presenting Richard Strauss’s Salome, a short opera with no memorable arias, was a strange choice. The big attractions were the dance of the seven veils and John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter.
I vaguely remember a production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia.
One of the last operas that we saw was definitely the best, or at least the most surprisingly good. I went to see Rossini’s La cenerentola with low expectations, but I left with a real appreciation for what this company was able to do before its sudden demise.
The last season for the CO was 2008-2009. I attended the presentation of Don Giovanni in the fall of 2008. The attendance in Hartford was pretty good, but evidently the one performance in New Haven bombed. In February of 2009 the company abruptly shut down without refunding tickets already purchased. However, I had paid for three sets of two tickets using American Express, which refunded me the total cost of the tickets, including the portion for the one that we had attended.
I was shocked and very sad to hear about the OC’s demise. I enjoyed every aspect of attending operas at the Bushnell. By this time I was more than just appreciative of opera. Although the list of composers whom I did not like was fairly long, I really could hardly tolerate other forms of music. They seemed trivial by comparison.
In August Sue and I would sometimes drive to Cooperstown, NY, stay overnight at a horrendously overpriced hotel, and attend one or two performances in the beautiful Alice Bush Opera Theater. The theater was a very nice place to watch a show, but it had a tin roof. Those inside could really hear it when it started to rain. It also lacked air conditioning, but it was never intolerably hot.
I remember watching Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček, and Verdi’s attempt at comedy. Il regno di un giorno, There were probably others. I think that the last performance that we saw was Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, which starred baritone Dwayne Croft, whom I had heard many times on broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. His performance did not make anyone forget Robert Preston.
Sue and I also went to a couple of performances by traveling companies. We saw Carmen performed twice by foreign companies, once in Storrs and once (I think) in Amherst. We also attended a low-budget version of Figaro in Springfield, MA. After I had seen these “war horses” several times I no longer went out of my way to see them.
Sue and I also attended a couple of operas when we were on trips in Europe. We saw Donizetti’s Don Pasquale in Rome as described here on p. 65. We also got to see an entertaining version of Figaro in Prague, as is described here. You can also read here about my adventure in Vienna that was capped off by a performance of the same opera.
Sue and I attended two operas in Pittsfield, MA, La bohème and Figaro. Both included a world class diva, Maureen O’Flynn, and both were extremely professional and entertaining. They were shown in and old-time movie house in downtown Pittsfield. Unfortunately the Berkshire Opera went out of business shortly thereafter.
In 2001 Denise Bessette and I witnessed a performance of Il trovatore in San Diego. That experience has been documented here. In 2006 Sue and I also spent a week in San Diego. On one evening we attended a performance of Carmen in the same theater. I also wrote about that vacation and posted it here.
I attended one opera on a business trip. It was in 2008, and the the client was Lord & Taylor. I walked from the hotel in which I was staying in Manhattan to Lincoln Center to watch a performance of La traviata by the Metropolitan Opera. That aspect of my relationship with L&T has been posted here.
Class: A guy named Mike Cascia2 gave presentations at the Enfield Public Library the week before the Live in HD performances shown at the local Cinemark. I attended a few of these. He also taught classes in opera for the continuing education program conducted by the Enfield public schools. I never enrolled in any of them because they conflicted with the Italian classes that I attended
Mike had a very impressive set of recordings. He played quite a few selections from each of the operas that he covered. However, his presentations did not, at least in the classes that I attended, provide a great deal of insight.
I also saw Mike at the Cinemark at Enfield Square mall a few times. He always sat in the first row behind the horizontal aisle, and so I was four or five rows behind him.
Recordings: In the early nineties I purchased a Sony Walkman so that I could listen to tapes while I was jogging. My cars for that period, the Saturn and my first Honda, also had cassette players. I discovered that Circuit City had a large selection of inexpensive cassette tapes of classical music. I bought a fairly large number of them, mostly just to find out what I liked. They were discarded long ago. I remember that I had samplings of many composers, including opera composers. I also somehow obtained a recording of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
I also bought from The Teaching Company3.several sets of opera courses conducted by Robert Greenberg4. The details are explained below. I really enjoyed listening to these courses, which covered in some detail a few operas and the backgrounds of the composers. The most astounding thing that I learned was that Tchaikovsky was coerced into committing suicide so that his sexual orientation was never made public.
I bought several CDs as well, including the following full-length operas:
Georges Bizet opera: Carmen with Agnes Baltsa and José Carreras. I once listened to this recording, which has dialogue rather than recitative, a lot. That, however, was before I discovered the recording on YouTube in which Maria Callas sings Carmen.
Sutherland and Pavarotti.
Donizetti opera: Pavarotti and Sutherland are wonderful in Lucia di Lammermoor. The quality of the YouTube recording is inferior, but the performances by Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano are the stuff of legend.
Four Mozart Operas:
Figaro conducted by Sir Georg Solti with Sam Ramey (from Wichita, KS) in the title role. This was one of the greatest opera recordings ever. The cast included Kiri Te Kanawa, Lucia Popp, Frederica Von Stade, and Thomas Allen. It also included the arias in the last act by Marcellina and Don Basilio that were almost always left out of live productions. I remembered listened to this recording as I was hiking by myself in the Dolemites in 2003, as described on page 18 of this posting.
Don Giovanni conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini featuring Eberhardt Wachter, Joan Sutherland, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Giuseppe Taddei. I have listened to and watched a large number of performances of this opera, and none measured up to this one.
Die Zauberflöte conducted by Sir Neville Marriner. Ramey and Te Kanawa also perform in this recording.
Così fan tutte One of the three disks was in the portable CD player that I left at an airport. I was too cheap to replace something of which I already possessed 2/3 of the contents. Te Kanawa shines on this recording, too. I once heard her say that there was no room for error with Mozart. She said that she always strove to hit the middle of each note.
Three Puccini Operas:
La Bohème with Jussi Björling and Victoria de los Angeles. For some reason it is not in stereo, a fact that I did not realize until I played it.
Tosca with Renata Scotto and Plácido Domingo. I am not crazy about this opera, but you can’t beat this performance.
Turandot would have been Puccini’s best opera if he had finished it5. I never tired of listening to Pavarotti and Sutherland. Luciano never incorrectly answered any of the riddles. I often have stopped listening after Liu’s aria. The rest of the opera was written by Franco Alfano after Puccini’s death.
Two Rossini operas:
My copy of Il barbiere di Siviglia featured Domingo (a tenor) in the baritone role of Figaro. He handled it easily. Kathleen Battle is superb as Rosina.
Agnes Baltsa played the title character in my recording of L’italiana in Algeri. I bought this before attending a performance of it so that I would have some familiarity with it.
Three Verdi Operas:
You haven’t heard La traviata until you hear Pavarotti and Sutherland.
The version of Rigoletto that is in my collection features Domingo as the count. This is the only set that I have that did not come with a box and a booklet containing the libretto.
James Levine discouraged Domingo’s ambition to sing Otello for several years. I had a recording of their ultimate collaboration. Renata Scotto sang the Desdemona (which in Italian is pronounced dehz DAY mo nah) role.
Cav/Pag: I bought two recordings of the one-act operas that are often paired in performances, Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The one that features Callas and Di Stefano was recorded in the fifties. The technology for the other one, with Pavarotti and a pair of excellent female vocalists, is several decades newer. I prefer Pavarotti and Mirella Freni in Pagliacci, but Callas’s performance of Santuzza (which she never sang on stage) in Cavalleria is unforgettable. It ruined the opera for me whenever anyone else attempted it.
Singles: I purchased a dozen or so individual CDs. Most of them were collections of arias by various artists, including sets of Verdi arias by Callas by Andrea Bocelli. My best individual CD was probably the highlights from Aida with Leontyne Price and Domingo.
I downloaded some software that allowed me to make MP3 files out of all of my CD’s. I am not sure that I even had a CD player in 2024 when I wrote this entry.
Radio: From the eighties until the time that TSI closed in 2014 I worked at the office nearly every weekend. I often listened to two shows early in the afternoons, the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on Saturdays on WAMC from Albany6 and Sunday Afternoon at the Opera with Rob Meehan on WWUH, the radio station of the University of Hartford.
For many decades the Met broadcast its Saturday matinees live on public radio. The performances were mostly from the standard repertoire supplemented with a few new operas commissioned by the company. The singers and the production values were almost always first rate.
One of my favorite parts was the Opera Quiz that was held during intermissions. When I first started listening, my favorite participant was Fr. Owen Lee, who was an enthusiast of Wagner’s music, but not his politics.
Willy Anthony Waters from the Connecticut Opera often appeared on that program. I remember that he challenged listeners to name the character from La bohème who appeared in another Puccini opera. I never discovered the answer to this question, and it has bugged me for decades. La rondine and Manon Lescaut are also set in Paris, but I could not identify the two-timing character.
In order to enjoy the performances more I purchased a Bose Wave Radio, which remained in my office until TSI was shut down. I still had it in 2024, but I hardly ever used it in the last decade. For the most part streaming supplanted radio listening for me.
Rob Meehan in 1980.
During the months in which the Met was not transmitting, WAMC played recordings of operas from other famous opera houses, primarily San Francisco.
Meehan’s show was quite different. It featured his huge collection of opera recordings, some of which were very obscure. Occasionally I had to turn his show off because the music made my ears bleed.
Met Live in HD: In 2006 the Met began transmitting HD recordings of its matinees live to theaters around the world that were capable of showing them. This was a terrific way to allow people who did not live close to a company that staged operas to see and hear the very best presentations. The Met also showed encore presentations on the following Wednesdays, originally in the evening and currently in the afternoon. They also showed repeats of three or four previous operas during the summer months.
Here are some of the operas that I seem to remember seeing at the theater. I may have actually watched a few on my computer when I subscribed to Met Opera on Demand, as listed in a lower section.
Kristine Opolais filled in with only twenty-four hours of notice and gave a great performance as Mimi in La bohème.
I have watched at least two productions of Rigoletto. The first one was an update to the rat-pack days in Las Vegas. The one shown in 2022 was also modernized, but the most striking thing about it was that Gilda was portrayed by Rosa Feola as a mature woman. That part worked fine, but the problem with moving the opera away from Italy is that the “Maledizione!” declaration that links the first act with the last just doesn’t ring true at all.
James Levine’s conducting of Verdi’s Falstaff was the last of a trio of “great comedies” that he conducted in the teens. It featured Ambrogio Maestri in the title role. The Met’s HD presentations always feature live interviews with the performers. Maestri gave a cooking demonstration. Since he did not speak English, his wife translated. I did not enjoy this opera much at all, and I cannot imagine how Levine could think that it was better than Il barbiere di Sivigla or L’elisir d’amore or several other works.
I enjoyed the 2012 production of Verdi’s Otello featuring S. African tenor Johan Botha, whom I had never heard before, and Renée Fleming, who was, of course, perfect. Botha and tenor Falk Struckmann both had previously specialized in the works of Wagner. In an interview Struckmann said that he had great admiration for the abilities of Bel Canto tenors.
The new opera, Marnie, which was shown in 2018. It starred Isabel Leonard, whom I have enjoyed greatly in other operas. I did not however, think much of this one. Why the composer made an important character in a modern opera a countertenor escaped me.
The Exterminating Angel was supposed to be a nightmare, and it definitely was. It did feature the highest note, which sounded like a honk, ever sung on the Met’s stage.
I was surprised at how dark Jules Massenet’s opera, Werther, was. I watched it mainly to see Jonas Kaufmann, but I liked the music enough to watch several additional operas by Massenet.
I was not familiar with Francesco Cliea’s Adriana Lacouvreur until I saw the performance with Ana Netrebko and Anita Rachvelishvili. They both were good, but I was really impressed by Rachvelishvili.
I liked Massenet’s music in Cendrillon, and I especially appreciated Joyce DiDonato (of Prairie Village, KS!) as Cinderalla. I found the production, which I viewed in 2018, a little contrived.
The Met showed Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci together in 2015. I think that I must have seen the summer encore a few years later. I liked the updated Pagliacci, but CR did nothing for me. I kept comparing it with Callas’s rendition of the Santuzza role on my CD, and it came up very short. The entire story takes place in the piazza of a church in Sicily. I see no reason to stage it on the carousel. The dancing was an unwanted (by me at least) distraction.
I am quite sure that I saw the version of Hector Berlioz’s grand opera Les Troyens that was shown in Enfield in January of 2023. I remember that someone in the audience complained about Deborah Voigt’s performance as Cassandra. I thought that she was OK, but I had nothing for comparison. I recall that I was sure that Fr. Puricelli would have approved of Susan Graham as Dido.
I remember virtually nothing about watching Verdi’s Ernani in 2012 except that the man later known as Emperor Charles V was a central character.
Hvorostovsky also played the title role in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. I enjoyed Renée Fleming’s Tatiana much more. I absolutely hated the stark production. I had been spoiled by the wonderful YouTube video mentioned below.
I also watched Domingo in The Queen of Spades I found it depressing and tiresome. I had missed out on an opportunity to view a performance of this opera in Budapest in 2007. That misadventure has been described here.
I saw Faust, composed by Charles Gounod, in Enfield in 2011. I watched his Roméo et Juliette in Lowell, MA, in the middle of a bridge tournament. In both cases I was by myself. I did not really like either opera very much. Since those are the only operas of his that are ever performed, I have concluded that I do not like Gounod’s operas very much.
I might have watched Roberto Alagna’s performance in Samson et Delila on the computer, but I think that I saw the HD telecast in the theater in 2018. Alagna’s listed height was 5’8″, and his costar Elīna Garanča claimed to be 5’7″. She certainly appeared to be at least as tall as he was, and it was difficult to imagine Alagna tearing down the temple with his bare hands. Still, Camille Saint-Saëns’s music was enjoyable, and the performances by both leads were impressive.
I had purchased a record album of highlights of Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chenier in the sixties or seventies. I never saw that opera until I watched the Met on Demand version during the pandemic. In 2023 I went to the theater to watch Giordano’s less familiar Fedora with Sonya Yoncheva and Piotr Beczała. I enjoyed it immensely.
I had seen the same two stars (along with Domingo in a baritone role) in Verdi’s Luisa Miller in 2018. I had never heard even one aria from the opera before that occasion. I don’t know how I missed it. The Met’s performance was very good. The only thing that I found hard to take were the duets by the two basses.
Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow is an operetta, not an opera. I only watched it in a summer rerun of the 2015 performance because Fleming sang the title role. She was great, but the story was tiresome.
I decided to attend Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 2014 primarily because I had heard that it was Fr. Owen’s favorite opera. It was also conducted by Levine as part of his trilogy of great comedies. The third reason was to hear Botha in an opera. I enjoyed it, which I cannot say about any other Wagnerian opera that I have seen or heard.
If the Met showed a Puccini opera, I went. In 2014. Sue and I saw Kristine Opolais fill in for the artist scheduled to play Mimi in La bohème on 24 hours notice. I liked her performance, and I really liked the staging by Franco Zefferelli. I appreciated that Opolais was thin enough to pass as a victim of consumption. I went back to see her in the puppet production of Madama Butterfly and a traditional Manon Lescaut. In the latter she kept taking her shoes off in every scene that included her costar, Roberto Alagna, who was reportedly the same height but appeared considerably shorter even in his lifts.
I don’t think that I ever got to see Zefferelli’s production of Tosca, but Sue and I did attend the presentation of La fanciulla del West in 2018 with Kaufmann and Eva-Maria Westbroek. We both enjoyed it immensely. I could easily understand why Puccini considered it his best opera. The Met’s production actually included a brawl in the saloon.
One of the very few modern operas that I really liked was Nixon in China by John Adams. I saw it in 2011 with James Maddalena in the title role. Parts of it, especially the parts that included Henry Kissinger, who was portrayed as a clownish figure.
I came late to Vincenzo Bellini’s operas. The first one that I saw on the screen was Norma, which the Met showed in 2017. It starred two of my all-time favorite performers, Sondra Radvanovsky and Joyce DiDonato. It was an amazing performance of beautiful music and a pretty good story. It caused me to search for performances of the other three famous Bellini operas.
When Sue and I went to Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in 2017 there was a problem with the transmission or perhaps with the equipment. We got to see most of the part of the opera that I was most interested in, namely Fleming’s performance as the Marchelin. The theater gave each person in the audience a voucher that was sufficient to pay for another performance. We used them for a different opera. I later watched the entire performance of this one using Met on Demand.
Nobody thinks that Roberto Devereux is Donizetti’s best work. Met on Demand has no audio recordings of the work and only one video. I doubt that there will be another any time soon. Sondra Radvanovsky game such a memorable performance in 2016 that no one is likely to want to undertake the role for decades to come. For some reason her renditions of the other two queens that year, Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda were not selected for Live in HD. I had to watch performances by others on Met on Demand.
I absolutely hated the production of Verdi’s La traviata that the Met staged in 2012. For some bizarre reason a big clock was in the middle of the stage and a bright red couch that was carried around. However, there was one saving grace, the absolutely brilliant performance by Natalie Dessay as Violetta. It caused me to seek out her other performances on Met on Demand and YouTube.
Levine’s 2014 version of Mozart’s Figaro was updated to the Roaring Twenties, and it worked marvelously. This was the third of his Levine’s comedic trilogy. The entire cast was good, but Marlis Petersen stole the show with her phenomenal interpretation of Susanna. I was so impressed that I made myself watch her in her famous role as the focal character in Lulu.
I saw the live version of Don Giovanni in 2023. The title character (and nearly everyone else) was a gun-toting gangster. I hated the production, but the singing was good.
The production of Massenet’s Manon that was screened in 2019 may have exceeded my expectations more than any other. Lisette Oropesa was absolutely outstanding in the title role, and the production was superb. I had seen her in several smaller roles before in Werther and Rigoletto, but she just knocked me out in this one.
I did not think that I would like the updated version of George Frideric Handel’s story of Nero’s mother, Agrippina. However, there were a lot of good reviews. I found the whole thing silly, and I must conclude that I just don’t like baroque opera.
I had low expectations for Akhnaten, by Philip Glass, as well. I am sorry, but I cannot stand listening to a countertenor for nearly three hours.
The latest version of Lucia was set in Detroit in the twentieth century. It did not work. The character of the priest is critically important in this opera, and it made no sense in a drug-infested Detroit neighborhood. The tattoos did not help. Javier Camarena nearly saved this disastrous production with Edgardo’s arias in the last act.
I hoped to see George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess when it was show in 2020 just before the .pandemic hit A few years later it was shown as a summer encore, and I went. The singing was fine, but the story was embarrassing. If this was a great American opera, it says a lot about American opera.
It is doubtful that anyone will attempt to put on Luigi Cherubini’s Medea again in my lifetime. Nobody had attempted it since Maria Callas, and no one could hope to match Radvanovsky’s stunning portrayal in 2022. We can only hope that she finds a few more plum roles before retiring.
Verdi’s La forza del destino was once part of the Met’s standard repertoire. The Polish production that Sue and I drove to Buckland Hills in 2024 to watch attempted to update it to the twentieth century. Parts of this approach worked; parts of it did not. What really upset me was that important aspects of key arias were (presumably deliberately) mistranslated.7 However, it was still worth the cost of admission to listen to the fantastic singers, the orchestra, and, more than anything, the chorus. I always have hated Peter Gelb’s idea that current audiences cannot appreciate the historical background of the original story. It certainly requires a little education to enhance appreciation of the traditional presentations, but if it takes something like this to get some outstanding operas back on the stage I am for it. By the way, this production included the worst knife fight that has not yet appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The Met used this shot from the worst scene in the opera to promote the telecast.
On April 24, 2024, I canceled my bridge game with Eric Vogel so that Sue and I could drive to Buckland Hills to see Puccini’s La rondine with Angel Blue and Jonathan Tetelman, who, according to Gelb, had to make his Met debut with allergy problems. I just love this opera, and they, the other principals, Emily Pogorelc and tenor Bekhzod Davronov, the orchestra, dancers, and chorus definitely did it justice. Tetelman will surely be an international star if he was not already. He has a fine voice, is a good actor, and is 6’4″. A tenor! The only cringy part was when Blue and Tetelman were obviously uncomfortable dancing in the second act. After the women of the dance troupe had been flung around on the stage, the timid swaying of the stars seemed out of place. I was also a little put off by the problems that Blue’s appearance created. The maid, who was certainly less than half her size borrowed her clothes, and Ruggero failed to recognize her after meeting her in a group where she certainly stood out for her size and complexion. On the other hand, Pogoreld and Davronov were delightful, and a special treat was the analysis of the score by conductor Speranza Scapucci during the intermission.
Video Recordings: I subscribed to the Met on Demand service before the pandemic. This allowed me to watch some of the large number of operas recorded by the Met while I was walking on the treadmill. I set my laptop up on top of a cabinet that Sue once used to hold shoes. I then started plugged in my earphones, started the opera and then turned on the treadmill. Here are some of them that I remember watching.
Pavarotti, a harpist, and Guleghina.
I definitely watched the 1996 rendition of Andrea Chénier that featured Luciano Pavarotti in the title role. It was perfect for his “park and bark” style of acting. I was also quite taken with Maria Guleghina’s performance. I had never heard of her.
I also enjoyed Guleghina’s performance in Verdi’s Nabucco, which I had never gotten around to seeing. I think that she was wearing the same wig that she used in Andrea Chénier. I wasn’t crazy about the opera in general.
I guess that I must have seen Bellini’s I puritani with superstar Anna Netrebko, but I don’t remember much about it. I have never thought much of Netrebko’s acting prowess. However, her performance in Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur was fairly impressive. She insisted that her interview be conducted before the day of the opera because, she said, she wanted to concentrate on her singing.
I liked the other Bellini opera a great deal more. La sonnambula starred my favorite soprano, Dessay, and the champion tenor of the Del Canto world, Juan Diego Flórez. The attempt to update the story to the twenty-first century did not work at all, but it was still better than nothing. The story depends upon the notion that an entire town would be unfamiliar with the concept of sleep-walking. This premise seemed even less valid in the updated version.
I also watched the same pair in a traditional rendition of Donizetti’s La fille du régiment with the same stars. Dessay was outstanding, and Flórez was given an encore to showcase his rendition of a string of high C’s.
Flórez was much less successful in the 2018 production of La traviata. He just did not seem right for the dramatic role of Alfredo.
I was surprised to discover that Teresa Stratas played Marie Antoinette in John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles. I did not recognize her. A young Fleming was also in this production, but Marilyn Horne stole the show as the exotic entertainer Samira.
As I mentioned above. I was able to view the rest of Der Rosenkavalier on my laptop.
I watched the Met’s 1979 production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, written by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Don’t ask me to explain it. I think that this was the show that made me a fan of Teresa Stratas.
Fleming made Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka an enduring part of the Met’s repertoire. It did not exactly showcase her skills. She was mute during one entire act. I am pretty sure that I also watched the Opelais rendition of this opera, either at the cinema or at home.
Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice was very short. There was not a single break. I was familiar with the famous aria “Che faro senza Euridice?” from my recording of arias sung by Maria Callas. The star in the Met production, Stephanie Blythe, was a virtually unknown mezzo, who reminded no one of Callas. It was a big disappointment.
For some reason the Met decided to record Joyce DiDonato’s rendition of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda in 2013 rather than Radvanovsky’s in 2016. I like DiDonato a lot, but I would have liked to see what Radvanovsky did with the role. Likewise I wish that Radvanovsky’s portrayal of the title character in Anna Bolena had been recorded.
Marlis Petersen was fabulous as the central character in Alban Berg’s Lulu, but nothing would make me listen to another Berg opera.
Watching Natalie Dessay in Lucia was a big treat for me, even though it was that horrible production with the giant clock. She claimed in the interview that she had missed a note in the mad scene, but I doubt that anyone noticed.
She also starred in the 2003 production of Richard Strauss’s fantasy, Ariadne auf Naxos. I found it weird (twenty-foot tall women) but enjoyable. I probably would enjoy anything that she was in.
I thought that I might like Wagner’s Parsifal, if only because it starred Jonas Kaufman and René Pape. It also featured the so-called Lance of Longinus, which I was quite interested in. I was wrong. It was unbearably long and, in my opinion, just silly.
I did not think much of the 1989 telecast of Bluebeard’s Castle either. I have enjoyed other works of Béla Bartók, but I think that this one deserves its obscurity.
The Met has three videos of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. I watched the film of the oldest one that starred Pavarotti. It used the Boston version in a production that I could barely tolerate. I did not realize until I researched this that the Swedish version was shown in 2012, and it included Radvanovsky. I have put it on my bucket list.
I was disappointed with Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. It had two things going for it. The doge actually wore that peculiar crown, and the female lead was Kiri Te Kanawa. The story, however, did not keep my interest.
A large number of video files of full-length operas have been uploaded to YouTube. I have watched quite a few of them. I have also used some software that I downloaded to make MP3 files out of dozens of operas. I have listened to them on a tiny MP3 player that I carry with me while walking as well as in my 2018 Honda, which can play MP3 files stored on flash drives.
Here are some of the YouTube videos that I could stand to watch from start to finish. In many cases I started and gave up on operas in which either the video quality was bad or the production was bad.
By far the best one that I watched was Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore performed in 2005 at the Vienna State Opera House. The stars were Rolando Villazón and Netrebko. She was OK, but he was unbelievably good. I often listen to his rendition of “Una furtiva lagrima“, for which he was allowed an encore. You can watch it here.
The second-best one was also fantastic. “Best Tosca Ever”, a film shot in 1976 featured virtuoso performances by Domingo, Raina Kabaivanska, and Sherril Milnes. The real star, however was the production. which was somehow shot in authentic locations—the church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, Palazzo Farnese, and the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo. The video has been posted here.
Number 3 for me was the version of Eugene Onegin that was televised at the New Year’s Music Festival in 2014. This one does not have famous names as performers. In fact it has Russian singers for most roles and separate actors who were lip-synching. For me the most outstanding performances were Michel Sinéchal as Monsieur Triquet and the fantastic John Aldis Choir. The film lasts less than two hours, which meant that parts of the original score has been cut, but that did not bother me much. What was left told the story in a remarkably effective way, as you can witness here.
One of the comments written by a viewer of the Eugene Onegin film led me to discover Cherevichki, the comic fantasy written by Tchaikovsky about Christmas in the Ukraine. When I first sought a recording on YouTube, the only one available was a video of a concert performance. Later an audio recording of Russian singers was added. I have listened to it dozens of times while I was out walking. The tenor is exceptionally good. I later discovered the existence of an obscure DVD of a performance of Cherevichki at Covent Garden. The singers on the DVD are not as good as the ones on that album, but the finale is great.
I am sure that I watched one of the recordings of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, but I don’t remember much about it. I think that it might have been the BBC telecast.
I really enjoyed Ramey in the 1987 production of Don Giovanni that can be watched here. It is the only one that I have seen or heard that measures up to the one on my CD.
I also enjoyed watching Te Kanawa at the Glyndenbourne Festival production of 1973. Dame Kiri herself posted it here so that you could see it.
I am almost positive that I saw a British film of Verdi’s Macbeth on YouTube that starred a black woman as Lady Macbeth. When I researched this entry I could not find it. It was striking, but I did not enjoy the music much, and the filming was very grainy.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio did nothing for me. The plot seemed preposterous to me, and none of the music was memorable. At the Met’s previous home Beethoven was one of the few opera composers memorialized in an exhibit. In retrospect this seemed ridiculous. He only wrote one opera, and it was seldom performed.
Puccini’s La rondine has become one of my favorite operas. At first there was only one video with English subtitles. It was posted by a Russian woman who starred in it. Her Italian pronunciation was horrible. She even got her lover’s name wrong. The second version that I saw got the ending wrong! They had Magda walking into the sea. I wanted to watch the Angela Gheorghiu version, but the captions were in Japanese. I did find a wonderful recording of the entire opera that featured Anna Moffo and Daniele Barioni. You can listen to it here.
I was disappointed with the production of Massenet’s Le Cid with Domingo. I can understand why it is not part of the standard repertoire. I dimly remember the movie with Charlton Heston. At the time I had no idea of the historical context.
Alexander Borodin’s opera Prince Igor is not often performed. When it is, the part that everyone is interested in is the ballet known as The Polovtsian Dances. The performance at the Bolshoi Theater that was posted to YouTube (here) is the only ballet that I have ever seen that I considered worth watching.
My fondness for Natalie Dessay was put to the test by the version of Jacques Offenbach’s insufferable Les contes d’Hoffmann. I skipped to Dessay’s section and quit when it was completed.
My recording of arias sung by Maria Callas included one from Gluck’s opera Alceste. I forced myself to watch a production on YouTube. I did not like it at all.
Tom Rollins was voted the greatest intercollegiate debater of the seventies
Recorded Lectures: The Teaching Company was founded by a great debater named Tom Rollins. I watched him in an elimination round one. It was something to behold.
His company contracted with academics from around the world to produce recordings of series of lectures about specific topics. The professor that he signed up to explain the world of symphonic and operatic works was Robert Greenberg. Each course came in several book-sized boxes that contained a number of magnetic tapes8 and booklets that were less than transcripts but more than outlines. The format provided a good way to learn, at least for me. The prices were very high, but the company often had sales. I paid between $20 and $30 for each course. I found four of these courses on the shelves in the basement.
The first course that I purchased were How to Listen to and Understand Great Music. Its forty-eight (!) lectures were organized chronologically. So, it was essentially a history of western concert music. A list of the titles of the lectures can be found here. Greenberg included musical samples of many of the periods. I don’t remember much of this but I do recall that the sonata-allegro form and explained that it was derived from the structures of three- and four-act operas. He also presented a great deal of historical information about various composers. The most striking story was the dastardly tale of how Tchaikovsky’s contemporaries coerced him into committing suicide rather than reveal his sexual orientation to the public. The other amazing revelation concerned how productive Mozart’s career was even though he died at the age of 35. Greenberg said that the best way to think of it was that Mozart was twenty years old when he was born, and he was therefore a productive composer from the age of twenty-five through his death at fifty-five.
Concert Masterworks contained less history and more details of compositions. Included were piano concertos from Mozart and Beethoven. A major part of the differences between the two styles was accounted for by the presence of much better pianos after Mozart’s death. There were several lectures on Dvořák’s ninth symphony, which I really liked. I preferred Beethoven’s violin concerto to Johannes Brahms’. In fact, I don’t think that the work of Brahms has held up at all. The last two composers were Felix Mendelssohn, a child prodigy who seemed to burn out in middle age, and Franz Liszt, who was a genuine rock star.
My favorite course was How to Listen to and Understand Opera, a subject that had haunted me since my college days. I learned in this course that the ancient Greeks apparently had what we would consider as opera, but the technique of combining music with plays was lost for centuries. A small group of men in Florence (including Galileo’s father) in the early Renaissance resolved to bring it back. Claudio Monteverdi’s9 L’Orfeo was still being performed in 2024. I learned about recitative (or recitativo in Italian)10, which refers dialogue that was sung at a conversational pace. Greenberg contrasted Mozart’s ponderous opera seria, Idomeneo, with his comic masterpiece, Figaro. He also played and discussed Il barbiere di Siviglia, Otello, Carmen, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Salome, and Tosca.
The twenty-four lectures of The Operas of Mozart inspired me greatly. They brought the young genius to life in my mind and also explored the details of Cosìfan tutte, Figaro, and Don Giovanni. I was quite surprised to learn about the Masonic elements of Die Zauberflöte, which technically was a singspiel, not an opera. It contained a great deal of dialogue.
Robert Greenberg
During the pandemic I purchased one more course, Understanding the Fundamentals of Music. These lectures, which catalogued the various elements of musical composition came on CD’s. Although Greenberg considered them his most satisfying set of lectures, they did not enhance my appreciation much. For example, I still could not recognize key changes.
Books: I found six books about opera on the shelves in my office. Several of them were gifts from people who knew that I liked opera.
The one that I have consulted the most is John W. Freeman’s Stories of the Great Operas. It has short histories and synopses of 150 operas that have been performed the most often. My only objection is that it included the laughable Boston version of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.
Johanna Fiedler’s Molto Agitato was an entertaining read. It included a lot of gossip about Kathleen Battle’s off-stage shenanigans.
Jacques Chailley’s The Magic Flue Explained provided a lot of details about the Masonic influences in Mozart’s masterpiece.
Italian for the Opera by Robert Stuart Thomson was something of a disappointment. It explained a few things that had puzzled me, but it hardly helped me to listen more attentively at all.
The A to Z of Opera has synopses and short histories of hundreds of operas, many quite obscure. I had forgotten that this book came with a CD set that I had not played for decades.
I likewise had no recollection whatever of a short book called Quotable Opera. It was a collection of quotes by and/or about people involved in opera. I must have gotten to page 48 at some point. That is where I found a bookmark. My favorite quotes were both about Wagner. Mark Twain quoted Bill Nye, the humorist from Wyoming, as saying, “I have been told Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” Rossini opined that, “Wagner has some beautiful moments but terrible quarter-hours”
Miscellany: I discovered while doing this entry that Google capitalizes every major word in German and English operas. However, it only capitalizes proper nouns in Italian and French operas. I never discovered the reason for this discrimination, but I followed the same rules in this entry.
I did not mention in the YouTube section the recording that I listen to the most. It has fifty arias performed by Maria Callas.
1. The movie has apparently disappeared. As far as I can tell, the two images displayed here are the only traces of it on the Internet. I have found no recordings in any format. Its IMDB site is here. Presumably if recordings are located, they will be listed there.
2. Mike Cascia died in June of 2020. His LinkeIn page says that he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston until 2008. His obituary, which detailed his efforts to promote opera, has been posted here.
3. The Teaching Company was founded by Tom Rollins, whom I knew of as a legendary debater. I only got to see him in action once, but It was an awesome experience. He was extraordinarily talented. He later was chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Relations. The company was sold in 2006 and now operates as Wondrium and The Great Courses. Tom’s LinkedIn page can be found here.
4. For several years Robert Greenberg had an arrangement with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He supplied the lecture; the orchestral provided the music. Sue and I attendedseveral of these performances. His webpage is here.
5. Puccini could not think of an ending to the story that work. I think that I could write a good one, but it would require rewriting at least one of the trios by Ping, Pang, and Pong. It would also require staging a murder by an arrow that appeared to be shot from a bow. That could be done, right?
6. Because of its powerful transmitter located on Mt. Greylock in the Berkshires, the reception of WAMC in Rockville, Enfield, and East Windsor was much better than that of WNPR, the local public radio affiliate.
7. In Don Alvaro’s primary aria, in which he provides the motivation for his character, he says the following (in Italian):
My father wished to shatter the foreign yoke on his native land, and by uniting himself with the last of the Incas, thought to assume the crown. The attempt was in vain! I was born in prison, educated in the desert; I live only because my royal birth is known to none! My parents dreamed of a throne; the axe awakened them!
I could not locate a transcript of what was in the captioning at this performance. It certainly was nothing like the above. For me the acid test of a novel production is whether its captioning needs to lie about what the characters were actually singing. Incidentally, the word “last” in the third line is feminine Italian (“ultima”). So, in the original version Don Alvaro’s father married the last surviving Inca woman. So, the “forza del destino” driving Alvaro. The forces driving Carlo are family pride, racism, and Church-sanctioned colonialism. This version muddles all of this in favor of blaming everything on war.
8. During the period in which this transpired I had a Walkman and a cassette player in the Saturn and my first Honda.
9. Monteverdi in Italian means “green mountain”. Greenberg in German means the same thing.
10. Greenberg used the Italian term “recitativo”, but he pronounced the “c” like an “s”, as it would be pronounced in French. He mispronounced numerous other Italian words.
