Daily Office Tuesday
¶ Matins: What a lot I’ve got to do today! Two pages to write, and at least five other significant items on the To Do list (kept in my head — and here, too, I guess), including making a recording of Mig’s text. I wonder if I still know how to use the equipment.
¶ Tierce: Mr Spitzer is still the governor; I may be losing friends faster than he is.
¶ Sext: A word or two about Lieutenant Governor David A Paterson, soon to be New York’s first African-American (and legally blind?) chief executive.
¶ Nones: Henrik Hertzberg leads off this week’s Talk with a surprising propostion.
¶ Vespers: William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba, at MTC — with the amazing Ms Merkerson.
Oremus…
§ Matins. Nobody has written to ask what happened to PodCasting at The Daily Blague, and I don’t know quite how to interpret the silence. The PodCasts that I recorded last fall taught me that I want to do something different, something more freestyle — and a lot more work. So: fewer, better PodCasts. Even-chew-alee.
I had thought that some readers might find it more convenient to listen to my Portico pages, but I think I was flattering myself.
The chair that I mentioned yesterday was indeed delivered this afternoon, but the building’s Homeland Security morons wouldn’t let the upholsterer bring it upstairs, since (a) I hadn’t made an appointment with the office and (b) Mr Solo (the upholsterer) wasn’t carrying a “certificate of insurance.” Mr Solo was allowed to place the chair on the freight elevator — a nice touch. When the guard said, “I’m sorry,” I snapped back, “No, you’re not; life is too short to hear you tell such lies.” “I just mean that it’s not my fault,” he said. “Well, then,” I replied, “don’t say anything.” The poor sap couldn’t have known that he was taking a bullet for the entire Bush fiasco.
According to Kathleen, the chair, happily in place in the bedroom, looks “frabjous.”
§ Tierce. Last night, I had to tell Fossil Darling that we cannot not discuss the Spitzer imbroglio. This morning, Kathleen had to say the same to me. In both cases, I was maddened by what I detected as a sanctimonious tone in their disapproval of the philandering governor.
These domestic contentions, while upsetting, have been clarifying. First of all, I’m no big fan of Mr Spitzer. His confrontational style is unfortunate — and talk about sanctimonious! So far the governance of the Empire State goes, perhaps it would be best for him to retire from the scene.
But I have terminally lost patience with any and all interference by the state in affairs of personal sexuality.* And when near and dear ones wonder, agape, “what was he thinking,” this white-knight prosecutor, when he slipped on his Client 9 role at the Mayflower (my favorite hotel, too!); when they say that he ought to have “known better,” they become, at least for the moment, quite as if freeze-dried: much less near and dear. In what could easily be misinterpreted as a suicidal impulse, I pray to be airlifted from this bad high school.
§ Sext. If it’s going to happen, it can’t happen quickly enough.
Lots of people find history boring. Here, in this single paragraph, is why I’m riveted and endlessly entertained by it.
When Mr. Spitzer selected Mr. Paterson as his running mate on Jan. 24, 2006, the move startled political observers, in part because the lieutenant governor’s job carries little authority and in part because Mr. Paterson had been poised to play a much bigger role in the state government if the Democrats managed to win control of the Senate for the first time since 1965.
Now look what happened!
§ Nones. Although you have to wonder if he’d have committed it to pen and paper (and press) in light of the current Albany debacle. Condi Rice might make a very appealing vice presidential candidate — but she might also wind up President. And also she might rise to the occasion, she’d have the heights to climb.
§ Vespers. I’d never seen a play by William Inge before. I knew his name, of course (if not how to pronounce it — think “Injun”), and I must have seen some of the movies that are based on his plays. But nothing on the stage until last Thursday night.
I wasn’t looking forward to the play itself. Oh, I wanted to see the star, S Epatha Merkerson, all right. But the play I rather dreaded. Fifties. Depressing. That’s not the half of it, in fact; but happily the production is so vital that the play’s bleakness is transmuted into theatrical gold.
As usual, our subscription tickets came toward the end of the run, so you’re spared my exhortation to “be sure to see this!” Be sure to see the play, though, if it comes to a theatre near you. There was nothing dusty about MTC’s revival. Come Back, Little Sheba is an American classic.
* We need a one-word qualifier that signifies “consensual, adult, &c,” so that I can append it here. I also understand that when fathers mire themselves with prostitutes, they cause their children a great deal of pain. As I said yesterday, prostitution is regrettable. But there ought to be a very broad gulf between this kind of “not okay” and “illegal.”