In the morning I spent some time playing with the pics I took at the farmers market with the iPhone 16 yesterday. That camera is really, really good. Also I gave them funny titles: gallery.
At 1pm I brought the car around to take part in the three-car car-pool to the Pear theater). There were all told 15 CH residents that have season tix to the Pear and all use the same day (second Sunday) of the run. We comprised about a third of the audience.
The play was Once on this Island, apparently a well known musical that has had multiple Broadway stagings, and somebody reminisced that her granddaughter’s high school put it on. It’s nice. Not riveting, but nice. Doesn’t really have an ending. But the staging was unusual. The scene is a Caribbean island. They did it in the round, with audience on 4 sides, and in the middle the set consisted of an area about 20 by 30 feet square, piled with about 4 inches of beach sand. The actors were barefoot and everything happened on the sand, dancing singing, etc.
Nothing much on the schedule today until 5pm. I started with a nice walk to Mme. Collete’s coffee shop, then through the saturday farmers market taking pictures of fruit with the new iPhone (gallery).
The date at 5 was to the retirement celebration of Marshall Serwitz and Bob Sullivan, the financial advisors we went with sometime in the late 90s. A couple years ago they began a transition, selling their practice to Cerity Partners, a larger firm. Now the two original guys are completely out, and they invited their old clients to a party at the Los Altos Hills Golf & Country Club, which it turns out is just as posh as it sounds.
I put on my best clothes for this, including my sport coat jacket. I looked quite distinguished, I thought. Which was a good call, because when I got there I found 100 or so people dressed up as nicely or nicer than me. Quite a distinguished looking crowd — of strangers. Well, I knew Bob and Marshall, and said a brief “Hi” to them, and I chatted with Howard and Pat and a couple more people from their office that I recognized.
Then I found myself in my least favorite environment, a crowd of people I don’t know. I did have a conversation with a nice couple for a few minutes. Then I found out the schedule: there was a buffet line, and tables set for at least 150 people, and we were going to have dinner, and then there would be speeches around 7pm. Yeah, no. I had a coke and circulated a couple of times around the floor, and then I ducked out and went home. Late supper at CH.
Dunno if it was the high-dose flu shot or the covid shot or the combo, but yesterday was miserable. However I slept soundly from 9:30 to 5:30 and was feeling fine by midmorning. I took a shorter walk than usual.
Did some writing for the next writers meeting, using the cue “the soundtrack of your life”. Only idea that came to mind was “K J R Seattle Channel Ninety FIVE” — anybody who grew up in the PNW can sing that. Well, Wikipedia has a whole lot of history about KJR that I had no clue of, when I was listening to it in 1957-62 times.
I had been asked by marketing to have lunch with some prospects. Me and Joanne L and Erica, entertained Mickey and GIbson. Nice couple. I guess we represented CH well. Didn’t turn them off anyway.
Practiced some guitar. Quiet day. Hey, I’m a quiet person. Senior, you know.
Slept very poorly through the night. Woke up to a temp of 99.1, 1.5 degrees higher than the previous two days. And feeling crappy. Felt crappy all morning. Slept a lot morning and afternoon, although by afternoon I was feeling much better and actually did a little writing.
I assume all this was reaction to the pair of shots yesterday morning, Covid and high dose flu. Expecting to be normal-ish tomorrow.
Walked the mile to PAMF for an 8:30 appointment to have my flu and covid shot. Then to Peet’s nearby for coffee and pastry. Killed a little time there and then down University to the T-Mobil store for a new phone, but they actually recommended I buy it at the Apple store, so I went on to the Apple store and bought a new iPhone 16.
We had the monthly AV team meeting at 2pm. After supper I attended most of a talk by Ed Shikada, the Palo Alto City Manager. I say most, I don’t know how long it will actually run but I was there for 45 minutes of it. Palo Alto is being managed.
Let’s see, what did I do today? Not much. Couple of long naps were the major achievement. Attended the writers meeting but had nothing to contribute. Assisted a couple of teachers from East Palo Alto to set up for a presentation in the activity room. Played a little guitar for the first time since last Friday. Did an excellent job of clearing out my email inbox, which was satisfying.
Started with a walk. Dropped one leg of the usual walk because I just felt a little down. (Although I note I ended up at 3.8 miles and over 10k steps for the day, not sure how). At 10:15 I walked the five blocks to the main Library where FOPAL was having a social for volunteers. You know how much I love standing around talking to people? About that >.< much, that dot right there. I stood around and made chat for about 15 minutes and snuck out.
After lunch I had to hang about to 2pm when a nice nurse (is there any other kind?) came by my room as arranged to give me my annual wellness check. Do I know the date today? Yup I do. I killed the time before 2pm by fetching from the auditorium, the little MacBook Air and the Acer laptop that belong to the AV team, which only rarely get used. Charged their batteries and updated their OSes.
Then went down to the FOPAL office and processed 6 boxes of donations, 2 hours.
Nothing much today. Led a tour at the museum at noon, 20 people, it went well. Napped for about 2 hours in the afternoon, I guess that’s an achievement.
I was so wired after our show that I couldn’t sleep, which is rare for me. I have had 6 or 8 emails of congratulation on the show in general and some particularly on my performance.
Joan Baez was of course what made it a really special night. Here’s a picture somebody got of her, better than the one I took. Plus Jerry shot some video which you can view at this link, for however long he leaves it up. The longer clip is the one where she talks about her and MLK.
Today I had nothing on the calendar so I did a little catch-up. I updated the pictures of London Bridges on my outside wall display, with pics of Southwark and London Bridges. Next time I change it out I will put up a bunch of pictures of Tower Bridge, and that will be it for bridges.
I tidied away all the tech stuff that I just threw in a bag last night. Then I remembered this is the start of CalTrain’s new all-electric train service, with free rides. So I walked to the Palo Alto station and rode the new train up as far as Hillsdale, and then back again. They are indeed beautiful, clean, smooth riding trains. I think next time I go to the City for SFJazz I’ll do the train.
All day I was focused on the Folk Fest at 7:30pm. But for a relaxing change I walked to Cafe Zoe for breakfast. And yesterday by email I invited my friend Joanne to walk along, knowing that she usually takes a morning walk. So we had a pleasant walk and coffee and chatting about our neighbors and such. She’s a strong walker and as we approached CH she said, she wanted to walk the half mile up Homer street to where on Friday an artisanal bakery has a popup store. OK. So I ended up with over 10K steps, 4.2 miles. Thank you Joanne.
During the day I practiced my two numbers a couple of times. At 4pm I couldn’t stand it and went down and set up the auditorium for the show. Which only took 45 minutes. Then I had to kill more time. Got a quick bite of supper at 5:15 and then just went and paced around. The other cast and crew started showing up at 6, and by 7 people started to stream in.
Joan Baez arrived with my neighbors Tom and Nancy; Tom was her personal doctor from way back in the 60s, which is how we got her invited, and probably why she came. I think about a third of the 90+ people in the room had figured out who she was, but when about the 6th number in the program was a video of her singing Blowin in the Wind, she stood up from her front row seat, faced the audience, and led them in a sing-along, and everybody went nuts.
Joan B (in shawl) next to Tom, her former doctor. Craig standing.I forget which song this was, but it was introduced as a slow dance, and Joan asked Stew to dance.
A few songs later it was We Shall Overcome, and when she stood up to lead the sing-along, the whole room stood up with her. That was an emotional moment! Then she did a little Q&A, with Tom asking her questions and her reminiscing. Only thing I remember was, that when she sang We Shall Overcome at the famous March on Washington (the day of the “I have a Dream” speech) she remembers that every time MLK talked about non-violence, she would get teary-eyed, and he used to tell people he liked having her sitting nearby because she was always crying when he said that.
I opened the show with City of New Orleans, Craig Allen on harmonica. We didn’t suck, got a nice round of applause. An hour later in the program, after it was time for Mary and me to do You’ve Got a Friend, with John on piano. We not only did not suck, we did our best singing evah. Mary’s voice was the strongest I’ve heard her, and her harmonies were impeccable. I saw her husband Andrew making a video so I’ll probably have that later.
And we all sang Good Night Irene and it was over. Everybody had a good time. Joan B stayed for the whole show, smiling, singing along, and applauding, so I guess she had a good time too. There were several little slip-ups but nothing got badly screwed up. A number of people complimented my singing, and there we are.
Codgerville 