wavyarms | Dec. 25th, 2005

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I hope you are all of good cheer.

I had quite a fine Christmas. I got good music and good books, including one from

a517dogg by Margaret Cho (the newest.) I also got a pack of Bush playing cards shaped like parallelograms (leaning to the right!) and we played cribbage with them. Wallace and Gromit was on TV. We lighted our candle-lit tree before dinner and had eggnog in front of it. And then we had a very nice dinner - we only had one guest, a good friend of my mother's who is an octogenarian practicing African Art researcher and anthropologist, and a fascinating lady. I found out today that she had a career for about 5-7 years of being a music agent, and that she represented Maureen Forrester (and was the one who introduced her to Bruno Walter!*) and that Glenn Gould asked her to be his agent, and she turned him down because he was too crazy and not reliable enough. Damn. Other dinner topics discussed included but were not limited to opera, including Mozart's librettists and hot black men wearing Speedos in onstage lakes (come to Spoleto this year and find out), where Picasso got his cubist ideas, ancient Roman history and Norse history, my brother's policy brief on torture for which he got an outstanding grade in his Global Security class, bugs, Berlioz, and friends. This, people, is why I love my family. As well as being funny, likeable, and loving, they are interesting and smart. And we think like each other. I can relax my guard in a lot of ways - my opinions won't insult anybody because they share them. Quite a relief sometimes. See above re: playing cards. And yes, I do realize how lucky I am.

I hope you are all having a good day and I send some warm candlelit hugs out to all of you.

*Maureen Forrester and Bruno Walter had a very close and successful artistic relationship. See here.