Sunday, January 27, 2019

There's free food everywhere...

Have I mentioned there is free food everywhere here?  Everyone has more oranges, tangerines, lemons, limes and grapefruits than they can eat, so there are bags of them for the taking everywhere I go.  Panera, the local coffee shop, brings day old - but perfectly good - breads of all sorts to the senior center where I go for zumba.  At a local community center the other day, pounds of cheese - they had been given an over supply - was being given to all comers.  And, of course, there is the Seniors Farmers Market every Thursday, where all the produce is free to seniors.  (If this happens in Vancouver, I haven't discovered it yet!)

What else can I tell you?  The Metropolitan Opera in the Movies (as I call it) was showing Adriana Lecouvreur by Cilea, an opera - and a composer - which I had heard of but not seen.  It had a stellar cast that only the Met can deliver (Anna Netrebko, Anita Rachvelishvili, Piotr Bczala) and wonderful staging and conducting.  A great hit, and I am happy to say I have found a pal who will go to these events with me.  I am good going by myself, and (this being America) lots of fellow audience members to talk with who don't think you are a crazy old lady for talking to strangers, but still, it's nice to have company.  I met Sue at bridge - another snowbird, from Michigan - and we have already made arrangements to go to LA to see the LA PHIL in March, to go to a local philharmonic concert next week, and of course Carmen, the next Met offering.  I'm actually quite excited to have a fellow traveler, so to speak.

Classes started as well, just a few one-off - and free- teasers.  One, called Where Does the Dough Go? - was by one of my favourite instructors (in spite of his former occupation as an economic adviser st Goldman Sachs). It was about the Federal government, where it get's its money and where it goes. I'm taking a six week course from the same instructor starting next week, as well as a course on Shakespeare, a philosophy course on the devil in history, and a film course.  And people wonder what I do in the desert!!!!

But back to the present.  I added a new restaurant to my repertoire - it is called simply Michael's, and is a local brunch place quite near my house.  I went with John, my friend who recently lost his partner.  It was the first time he had been there - where he and Jim had been regulars - since Jim died in December,, and it was hard to watch him tear up when asked where Jim was (it happened at bridge also...).  So sad.  However, a great diner-type place, where I will definitely go again.

The 21st of January was friend  and bridge partner Alex's 80th birthday.  There was a party, to which his son and daughter-in-law from Spain came, as did his daughter - from somewhere - and ex-wife - as well as a number of friends.  Wish I had had my camera to the ready - Alex doesn't look anywhere near 80.  (But then, I don't feel like I look 72 either....)

Back on the cultural front, I went to the art museum again on Thursday, for a lecture, part of the Architecture and Design Series, entitled The Third Los Angeles.  Aside from the joys of the museum at night...



... the lecture was fascinating as well, about the architectural and transportation plans for the next LA.

What else?  Lots of bridge - and I am on a winning streak, scoring master points on 5 out of 6 outings.  (I am sorry to say that the streak was broken yesterday - Alex and I were abysmal - but there is always tomorrow.)

Books.  I finished Dorfman's Darwin's Ghost.  It really was a fascinating book, a dark fantasy based on the premise that a native - captured, taken abroad and abused hundreds of years ago - came back to haunt a current day progeny of two of the past abusers.  It left one thinking about the ramifications of abuses such as those perpetrated on previous generations. I take it back - Dorfman is every bit as good as Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Marquez.  Dorfman's play, Death and the Maiden is next up on my nighttable.   I rejected Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke - I thought it would be a Chinese The Master and Margarita, but no such luck.  Francis Duncan's Murder for Christmas was as good as his previous two, formerly mentioned.  Alan Holinghurst, on the other hand, I don't need to read any more.  I finished The Line of Beauty, which won the Man Booker prize, and an earlier book, The Swimming Pool Library. The Swimming Pool Library was interesting as a view of gay life in England pre-Aids, a life that will never be lived that unthinkingly again.  The Line of Beauty, on the other hand, was set in the 80s, in Thatcher's England, and reflected that and the Aids crisis as well as anything I have read.  On the other hand, that gay life was depicted as shallow and brutish - I wasn't much enamored with it, much as I espouse everyone's right to have the sex life of their choice!

Well, I'm off to cook up some of that free food!  More anon!!




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