Good morning, all! I'm not really taking the day off, I'm working at home on my OZ presentation and Victor Herbert affairs. The Upper West Side has been amazingly quiet this long weekend, and I have really enjoyed it. I think this afternoon my friend Chris is stopping by and it will be nice to see him. Perhaps we'll go over to Artie's or somewhere else for dinner and I can hear all about his current round of dating and what his band is up to. They're performing on July 16 and he's been busy in the recording studio with them for the past couple of weeks.
Last night I had a long dream about working in the Miami University Library and cataloging many large green-bound collections of plays. I couldn't tell in the dream if I were there as a student assistant, a job I held for three years of undergrad and two years of grad school, or if I were on the library staff, a position I held the last year before I left Oxford for good. Anyway, I woke up thinking about a number of wonderful ladies I knew, worked with, and admired during those six years: Helen Ball, one of the best employers I ever worked for, Sarah Barr and her mother Esther Crist, Ruth Hines, who was my supervisor in the periodicals dept for the first three years I was a library assistant, Katy Guckler, a concentration camp survivor, and her sister, whose name I cannot remember, but she looked very much like harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. Katy and her sister both spoke English with a heavy Czech accent and they were opposites: Katy with very wild white hair and her sister with black hair pulled back into a bun, both very funny and sharp as tacks with wicked senses of humor.
I don't know why I'm remembering these women today, and I guess that most of them, if not all, are longer living. Still, I remember and honor them.
