We're in almost the same section where we sat last time but it's 20 degrees cooler. In fact it's 20 degrees cooler than it was yesterday, too. I'm wearing long sleeves and I'm still a little cold. September. Go figure.
*****
It's the top of the third inning now, with no score. The Braves are a patient team. They know how to work a count. They're in no rush.
Baseball games are much more bright and colorful than they were when I was young. The Jumbotrons and scoreboards and advertisements are a visual riot, and the sensory overload doesn’t end there. Counting walk-up songs (Juan Soto’s are the best) and between-inning music and the national anthem, I've heard at least 30 different songs tonight. That doesn't include the organ music, which used to be the only music a person would hear at a baseball game. I like it. It's louder and more fun than it used to be.
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| There are ten different design elements on that scoreboard, and that doesn't count the actual box score display, which is tracking more data than a NASA mission control center. |
It’s Saturday morning now, and the Braves beat the Nats 5-0. But the music was good, and after a cloudy day, the sky turned clear and inky dark blue with just a few clouds floating past the yellow-white harvest moon. And Teddy won the Presidents’ Race. He cheated, of course. Teddy only wins when he cheats. It was Friday the 13th, so Jason Voorhees joined the race, hockey mask and all, and dispatched George, Tom, and Abe, leaving Teddy the only contender. Teddy is my favorite. After the game, we walked along the Anacostia Riverwalk to our car, about ¾ of a mile from the ballpark. It was a good evening.
*****
I don’t spend many Saturday nights at the opera, but that’s what I did last night. With free tickets from a musician friend, I got to see the Maryland Lyric Opera perform Il Tabarro and Cavalleria Rusticana, two very different one-act Italian operas with a common ending--the husbands kill the men who slept with their wives.
The operas were performed concert-style, with the singers in recital dress rather than costumes, and no stage sets or props other than music stands (and very amusingly, a jacket used as a shroud--you had to be there).
Both of the operas are tragedies, but Il Tabarro has comedic elements and characters, including Tinca and Talpa the stevedores and Talpa’s wife, Frugola. Cavalleria Rusticana is more dramatic and intense; but Il Tabarro is ultimately sadder, because we know that Giorgetta’s infidelity is driven by grief at the loss of her baby. When her husband kills her lover, poor Giorgetta is left with nothing. A mother also loses her child in Cavelleria; in this case, he’s an adult child, murdered by his lover’s husband.
Super fun, right? But it really was. The English supertitles played on a screen high above the stage, so we could follow the story while listening to the glorious music; and the performances were amazing, both musically and dramatically. All of the singers were wonderful. Susan Bullock as Cavalleria’s Santuzza was heartbroken and desperate and when the beautiful Joowon Chae sang Lola’s first notes, it was all I could do not to shout “Whore! This is all your fault!” And when Il Tabarro’s Frugola, played by the amazing Allegra De Vita, sings that it’s better to be the boss in a hovel than a servant in a castle, it sounds like a happily defiant rallying cry.
*****
It’s Monday now, 8:30 PM. I worked a longer-than-usual day, then attended a meeting at Rockville High School, and then came home, five minutes ago. I wish sometimes that I was the kind of person who could walk in after a long day and just stop working, but I’m not that kind of person. So here I am.
And hockey starts tonight! Yes, it’s 90 degrees outside again after Friday’s short preview of fall, and I wish I was still swimming; and yes, it’s only pre-season, but it’s HOCKEY! And I’m not watching it. My husband and younger son are toggling between Nats baseball, about which I care to some extent; and NFL football, about which I care not one tiny little bit. Fortunately, I’m here to help them re-adjust their priorities. In five minutes or so, we’ll be swinging to the sweet sounds of Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin.
*****
Tuesday, 9:05 PM. I’m watching “To Sir With Love,” a movie that I first saw when I was 14 or so. I read the book, too. It’s astonishingly old-fashioned now, but I still love it. I love the scene when the class shows up at their classmate’s mother’s funeral, as the camera pans back on the coal-stained East End brick rowhouses and the pale gray sky. Now I’m going to watch to the end so I can watch Sidney Poitier dance with Judy Geeson, and hear Lulu sing the title song. And that is a wrap on a few days of fandom. I think it’s time to read a book.
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