Hello, all! I'm back sporadically till my health is flourishing, but I've missed you all enormously, and I want to thank you all for your support, kind words, emails and phone calls. Bruce is right: this is the best site on the web.
I've been going through several health problems which have had me under the weather physically and emotionally. I've turned down three jobs since July, which is depressing, and I've depleted all my funds from Goodspeed and the Mickey-Judy show through prescriptions, car service and taxis, food deliveries, and daily living expenses. Today I saw an orthopedic surgeon who checked out the left leg and foot that have been giving me sleepless nights and committed me to a pair of crutches since early August. My HMO caregiver decided it was gout even though the emergency crew that took me to the emergenvcy room of St Luke's Hospital around 4:30 am believed it was a sciatic nerve problem. Finally, three weeks ago, my doctor referred me to an orthopedic surgeon, but his first free date was Oct. 7. I called every day he had office hours looking for a cancellation, and he saw me today. Things are looking up, but I still need minor surgery on an abscess in my hip that will not heal. Today's diagnosis has lifted a great deal of emotional weight from my shoulders and mind.
Dear Friend BK, how is your toe today? I hope that you didn't break it or that you don't lose the nail.
When I gave up my car and moved to New York in 1979, I think there was dancing in the streets at the State Farm corporate headquarters. I was never a good driver, but I was an enthusiastic one. I remember in June 1973 driving in one day from Cincinnati to Lee, Massachuseetts, in the Berkshires to work box office at the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, and how glorious the Hudson River looked at dawn as I drove across it. Today, I only drive in areas I'm familiar with so that any out-of-town job I take means I need to stay within walking distance of the theatre, and I only keep a drivers license so that I can drive in Ohio when I visit family.
My first car, secondhand, was a 1962-64 (I don't recall the year) green Volkswagen beetle, which I loved. My next car also green, when I was in graduate school, was a car owned by friends of my Father. I don't recall its make, but I do remember that it had sat for around a year in a farm lot facing the road, and the farmer who owned it had written on it in chalk or soap "FAST GREEN ROADSTER FOR SALE CHEAP." The sun faded the paint on the car except where the chalk protected it, so my car was affectionately known on the Miami University campus as "the fast green roadster." I wonder whatever became of it. I don't remember giving it up, but I do remember the winter of 1970-71, when the battery died every morning in the cold and I lived with a pair of jumper cables in my hands. My next car was a Plymouth Duster, which I drove to Lee, Mass, and my last car was a Gremlin, which I sold in 1979.
I like the MTA transit system when I can find a seat, but I have to rant and say that at 8 am it's impossible to find a seat on the bus becausae of all the schoolchildren and their irresponsible parents who hog the seats. When I was a child my mother would say, you're healthy, give that old man your seat. I can be on the bus with crutches and a neck brace and those moronic mothers with a sense of entitlement for producing one or more children they're raising to be selfish asses totally ignore you. The same happens around 2 pm-4 pm with the returning children. The other day I got on a crowded No 7 bus, and a lady in front offered me her seat; it was sweet of her, but there were seats in the back, and I went there.
