A year’s blogging

Because of Mrs. T’s illness, I didn’t post quite as much in this space in 2019 as I have in previous years. Nevertheless, I’ve been a reasonably active blogger, and I thought you might be interested in revisiting ten of the postings I liked best from the year just past:

• In 1939, Edward G. Robinson commissioned and sat for a family portrait by Edouard Vuillard. Go here to find out how “La famille d’Edward G. Robinson” came to be—and what ultimately became of it.

• Don Shirley was the first black musician I ever saw perform in public, all the way back in 1969. As I recalled in February, “The ‘Don Shirley’ of Green Book is in many ways very much like the man I saw on the stage of the Smalltown Middle School gymnasium.”

• “It happens that I’d never been in an auto accident before. What surprised me most about the experience was how loud it was. The crunching sound that you hear when another car runs into you is really quite overwhelming ….”

• “It struck me a couple of months ago that Mrs. T’s recent travails had made her even more deserving than usual of a just-because-I-love-you present. Since she now spends most of her time at our farmhouse in Connecticut, I decided to give her a work of art that would not only be pleasing specifically to her (our tastes are not identical, though they overlap widely) but would also be suitable for hanging there….”

• “I was twenty-two when I met Harry Jenks, the first great jazz musician to enter my life. He taught me more than any of my teachers, and meant as much to me as a person as anyone outside my immediate family. Not a week has gone by since his death that I haven’t thought about him….”

• “Eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger now fills me with memories of one of the most joyful parts of a largely happy life….”

• “Ten years ago tonight, the Santa Fe Opera gave the premiere of The Letter, the first of my four collaborations—three operas and a cantata—with Paul Moravec, whose music I loved long before either of us thought of working together. Writing it changed my life utterly and profoundly….”

• “Two weeks ago, Mrs. T’s cellphone, which she keeps turned on around the clock, as I do mine, in the hope of learning that donor lungs have become available, rang at three a.m. The caller, a transplant coordinator from New York-Presbyterian Hospital, told her that the hospital had just received an ‘organ offer’ from UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing, for which she was the number-one match on the waiting list….”

• When a friend dies far too young, you’re likely to find yourself reflecting on your own latter end. That’s what happened to me in September.

• “In New York City, where I’ve lived since 1985, family traditions, like family ties, are what you make of them, and I know many people who are content, or at least willing, to make nothing of them at all. Not so, however, in Smalltown, where past and present are as close as the pages of a book….”