Journal: September-October 2022

• September 15 – New journal format; Bill’s Labor Day trip to Boston; England/Cornwall planning; AmericanaFest
• September 20 – News roundup: Queen Elizabeth, Ukraine, January 6 Committee; Sarah/Tylor dinner in Georgetown; Larry/Ashley trivia night at Cattail
• September 28 – Susquehanna Wine and Seafood Festival; Barb retirement date (4/30/23); Hurricane Ian
• October 5 – Barb office picnic at Patapsco Park; Hurricane Ian aftermath; Mary/John dinner in Rockville; Tanvi/Rick wedding in Charlottesville
• October 24 – Barb/Bill to Boston for birthdays; Amythyst Kiah concert
• October 31 – Halloween, Indian lunch with Mark, dim sum with Jeremy and Deanie, retirement planning with Schwab and Tuttle, new iPhones

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September 15

Welcome, dear reader, whomever you might be. I’ve decided that the Covid-19 pandemic is effectively over and my Coronavirus Journal should come to a close. I started this journal in March 2020 with the advent of the Covid lockdown. It was the first time I tried to keep a journal and I’ve found it to be quite useful and therapeutic. So I aim to keep up the practice but will rebrand this into a more regular journal that I can carry forward in a proper corner of the Billzpage site. This also gives me some incentive to tidy up the Coronavirus Journey into a coherent part of the site and draw some conclusions from the experience of surviving one of the most impactful worldwide experiences of my lifetime. It will take me some more time to get this together but at least I have a plan.

Why, you might ask, haven’t I made any journal entries for the first 15 days of September? It’s not out of indolence or lack of work on the site. I was happy to go visit Allie on short notice over Labor Day weekend. It took more than another week to write up my summary of the trip, which I know is not very efficient but in doing it I learned quite a bit more about the places we visited such as Gloucester, Castle Island, and the Emerald Necklace of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. I recognize this effort of cataloging our travels, activities, dining and even day-to-day life is self indulgent and largely mundane, but I truly enjoy doing it and find the practice of writing and researching each item is often educational…for me, at least. And it helps refine the list of things we want to do next time we visit Boston or any other place. So I’m gonna keep doing it.

In addition to working on the summary of my Boston trip, I’ve made some headway researching our trip next year to England. I’ve pretty much developed a two-week itinerary and settled on dates in May so we can be home in time for the pool opening on Memorial Day weekend. As of now, we will spend 3 nights in London, 2 nights in Oxford, 1 or 2 nights in Devon (probably Exeter), 2 or 3 nights in Cornwall (probably Falmouth), 1 night in Bristol, then 3 more nights in London. I’ve just stumbled across a recent BBC series available on YouTube (season 1, anyway) called Rick Stein’s Cornwall. I don’t really know Rick Stein but he seems omnipresent as a chef and travel host on BBC. I’ve started watching and it may well induce some changes in my plans, but I’m getting closer. I need for Barb to OK the basic plans and dates so I can start making reservations.

This is the week of AmericanaFest (website) in Nashville, a five-day music festival and conference, featuring an Awards show at the Ryman held last night. I’ve been mildly tempted to attend someday and kept an eye on the proceedings this year. Many of my favorite artists are involved or performing at various venues. For example, Molly Tuttle was at the Grand Ole Opry on Tuesday. I tried watching but could find no broadcast anywhere, so instead I listened via WSM online – a largely dissatisfying experience. I had somewhat better luck with the Awards show last night. I was able to stream the whole thing but got a good dose of why the show is not actually broadcast live. There were a lot of false starts and dead time, not to mention a lot of lame banter. The performances were good but not great. The show will be repackaged and broadcast by Circle Network in November and later by PBS for Austin City Limits in 2023. It will be mildly interesting to see how they each handle it.

I filled my summer concert bingo card with winners of the various awards: Allison Russell won Album of the Year, Billy Strings was Artist of the Year, and Brandi Carlile’s “Right on Time” was Song of the Year. One of Allison’s two cello players, Larissa Maestro, was Instrumentalist of the Year as well. I was glad to see Allison (and Larissa) win, and Brandi’s song is an undeniable juggernaut of sorts, but I wasn’t so enthusiastic to see Billy Strings win. It goes back to the basic problem of defining “Americana” which no one can really seem to get a handle on. Brandi Carlile had a good line calling it “Country music for liberals.”

All that said, I wasn’t particularly encouraged to head off to Nashville for AmericanaFest anytime soon. It seems like a fine gathering of the tribe and I applaud the effort to give more recognition to this little nook of ill-defined music and artists, but I don’t think I need to be there or figure out how to hustle around Nashville to various venues over 5 days. 

Perhaps the best music news of the week was the release of Allison Russell’s joyous 4-song Tiny Desk Concert. The crystal clear sound makes it easy to actually understand her lyrics and the exuberant performance of the whole band is fun to watch. It’s the best video introduction to Allison’s music that I’ve seen. 

September 20

Some events of note so far this month: 

Queen Elizabeth passed away on September 8; her elaborate funeral was held yesterday but I missed (skipped) most of it. There have been gallons of ink spilled in the past two weeks recounting her life and legacy. I don’t have much of anything to add. I admire her personal sense of dignity and service, but there’s not much about the institution or its role in modern society that appeals to me. Nor do I have much hope that the new King Charles will improve things greatly. Their show will go on, it seems.

Ukrainian forces have had a very good month, regaining a wide swath of territory in the north eastern Kharkiv region the Russians took in the early stages of the war. Today comes word via Turkey’s Erdogan that Putin may be willing to start negotiations, but it seems likely to be a red herring. The Ukrainians seem more interested in pressing the fight and expelling the Russians altogether, even from the Crimean. For the first time, this seems at least somewhat plausible. Simultaneously, there seems today to be a move to annex the Russian-controlled areas into Russia through sham local referendums, at which point the Ukrainian counteroffensive would be on “Russian soil” and could trigger a wider, more awful war. 

The various investigations into Trump’s malfeasance continue; the NY Times has a good summary of them here. Nevertheless, there is no timeline for real prosecution and no indication that any of these investigations will deter Trump from running again. Meanwhile, Trump seems to be cozying up to ever more radical fringe elements, including QAnon. Last week’s Frontline documentary, “Lies, Politics and Democracy,” lays out how Republicans fell under Trump’s spell, now stand behind his lies, and move us closer to an existential political crisis. The drumbeats continue as we march toward November midterms and then 2024. 

The House January 6 committee will hold the first of its “wrap up” sessions next week, it appears. They’ve done a good job and may possibly have persuaded enough voters to make a difference at the polls, but unless there’s some teeth behind the investigations from the Justice Department it still seems likely Trump will run in 2024, is already declaring victory and accepting no other result. How we get from here to 2025 without political violence is hard to fathom. Steve Bannon must be delighted.

With all that going on, what are we up to? Barb and I had a nice dinner with Sara and Tylor last Friday at La Chaumiere in Georgetown. They were in town for one of Tylor’s aunt’s birthdays; Emmy stayed in Colorado with Betsy. Sara seems very well, in a new, better paying project management job for a software company in Denver and deeply consumed with wedding plans that are still a year away. It was a nice evening all around, despite the always soul-sucking 90-minute drive into DC on a Friday. La Chaumiere was already an institution in Georgetown when I went to school nearly 50 years ago but we’d never been. Now we can check it off the list. It was serviceably good French fare and we ordered straight down the middle of the road: escargot, lobster bisque, steak au poivre, Grand Marnier souffle – it was basically our old Sunday meal at the Repulse Bay Hotel. And yet it wasn’t nearly the same. 

The next night, Larry and Ashley joined us for Trivia Night at our country club. (Aargh! What have I become? I am my parents!) We had a good time with Larry and Ashley but the meal was mediocre and the trivia took more than two hours which was at least one hour too long. We were playing as tables against about a dozen others, none of whom we knew. We ended up tied for first place, and in a playoff (team to closest guess the length of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”) we finished second, good for a $100 gift card at the pro shop. I used it to buy a new tennis racquet and bag, presumably the last ones I will ever need to get, since my current ones have lasted nearly 20 years.

On Sunday, Barb and I went with Leslie to See How They Run, an instantly forgettable murder mystery loosely constructed around Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. It was a light trifle of a film, with Saoirse Ronan being cute and Sam Rockwell being miscast (they could’ve used any number of actual British actors). It might have helped if any of us had actually seen The Mousetrap, the longest running play in the world, going more or less continuously in London since 1952. There’s never been a movie of it because of a contractual obligation to wait until the end of the show’s theater run, or so they say.  

The movie was a good excuse for us (minus Leslie) to get brunch at the Madrid Spanish Taverna near the Snowden theater. Unfortunately, this may have been the third strike for the restaurant as a destination for Barb and me. We’ve found very little on the menu that is compelling or that we can share. The restaurant is a good idea but not very well executed. It would be OK to go with enough people to enjoy drinks and a variety of the tapas, but going on our own basically means ordering one or two individual tapas and they’re just not very good. Once Barb has tried a plate and didn’t like it (in this case, their mussels and shrimp dishes), she’s loath to order it again. So it may be quite a while before we go back, or at least until Allie returns, perhaps.

My lawnmower stopped working again two weeks ago and it’s been in the shop since then. My lawn is getting quite shaggy but I haven’t resorted to calling on Janice yet. I have hopes the mower will show up in another day or two. I guess I should give them a call. Meanwhile, it’s nice to have an excuse not to do any yard work.

I’ve used the time to continue to research our trip to England next May. Based on input from the Rick Stein BBC series on Cornwall, I’ve shifted time away from Devon to spend 4 nights in Cornwall. Now I have to get Barb to agree so I can actually book things. The tail of this trip is wagging the dog of getting her to think about retirement. I spent 4 hours this weekend watching a retirement seminar from her work so she didn’t have to. But we still don’t have a date, yet, nor do we know exactly which websites we need to access to fill out all the forms.

And so, I continue fiddling while Rome burns. I feel guilty that I‘m not doing much of anything to make the world a better place at the moment. Instead, I’m up to my eyeballs in my various indulgences. I keep telling myself it’s the privilege of retirement. I’m not totally convinced, but I’m enjoying myself while we all go to hell.

September 28

Now we’re getting somewhere. Barb and I had a nice little outing to the Susquehanna Wine and Seafood Festival on Saturday…after she had already done aerobics and then dim sum with her friend Sheila. The festival itself was pleasant though not really all that special…but much better organized than the Asian Night Festival fiasco we experienced in August. I had grilled oysters that were just okay, followed by a shrimp quesadilla that was good, as was the fried fish Barb shared with me. I got one glass of pinot grigio from the Fini winery booth while Barb took a virtual reality balloon ride over their northern Italian vineyards. The little town of Havre de Grace is getting to be a nice place to visit, with some good restaurants and a nice boardwalk along the Chesapeake. Too bad it’s more than an hour of obnoxious driving on I-95 to get there.

On Sunday, Barb had brunch with her aerobics friends and went shopping for her office picnic coming up next Thursday. She’s busy on weekends now that the pool has closed. Tomorrow she’s having her first post-pandemic office picnic since 2019.

We’ve been able to talk about dates for upcoming journeys and things, including her retirement date. As of now, she is aiming for April 30 as her retirement target. That in turn lets me lock in our England trip from May 10-25. We also decided on a short Aruba trip in the first week of March. All of these decisions allow me to actually start making reservations to lock in these various journeys. I feel much happier getting some dates nailed down. Barb could still change her mind about the retirement date – she doesn’t need to actually start the paperwork until January, but at least this gives us something to work with. 

This coming weekend we will have dinner on Saturday with Mary Salhus and her husband John at the Tower Oaks Clyde’s restaurant in Rockville. Someplace new for us, and Mary’s happy that it’s a Clyde’s. Then on Sunday we’ll drive down to Charlottesville to attend the wedding of one of Barb’s colleagues, Tanvi Parmar. We’ll stay overnight (and hope it doesn’t rain too much from the remnants of Hurricane Ian) and drive home Monday. On Tuesday, we’ll drive up to Boston to spend the rest of the week with Allie. We have some nice plans for dinners on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by a leaf-viewing drive into western Massachusetts on Friday and a day trip to New Bedford on Saturday before returning home Sunday. 

While all this is going on in my little life, I’m watching Florida get pummeled by Hurricane Ian today and likely through tomorrow. It came ashore near Sanibel and Fort Myers as a strong category 4, just shy of category 5, already one of the strongest storms to ever hit the US and definitely the worst to hit that part of the Florida coast in a century. It will move slowly across the state, raking Orlando and not crossing the east coast until tomorrow afternoon. It’s bound to cause severe – possibly Katrina level – damage with the storm surge near the Gulf coast predicted over 15 feet and inland flooding from the slow movement. I’m jumping around CNN, The Weather Channel,  MSNBC and NBC, playing the game of seeing who has the most informative and/or dramatic coverage. No one’s winning though each is running an unconscionable number of advertisements through their coverage.

I’ve never known the towns and geography of the Gulf coast of Florida very well. I’ve been to Tampa for work events and visited Len once in the 1990’s when she lived in Fort Myers. We also celebrated Mom and Dad’s 50th anniversary on Sanibel Island back in 1990. But there’s been a lot of growth since then. I’d started to think if there was any part of Florida that might be appealing for a potential retirement home – especially since Florida has no state income tax – it would be this area. In the past couple of pandemic years I’ve been tempted to revisit the area, especially as the Orioles keep advertising Sarasota as their spring training camp. As I type this, a Weather Channel guy is broadcasting from Sarasota noting that they still have power, so credit to their town planners for the time being. But this storm is greatly reducing my interest. And then there’s that Ron DeSantis fellow and all the other crazy Republicans in Florida. Staying here in Maryland is increasingly appealing.

October 5

Happy Birthday to Allie! We are in Boston this fine day to celebrate with her. But first, allow me to fill you in on the past few days.

Last Thursday, Barb had her first office picnic in three years. She said it went very well on a cool but sunny afternoon at Patapsco State Park. We made potato salad, Charles Bailey made a heap of smoked pulled pork, Leslie made her creamed corn and I’m sure others did interesting things. Barb brought home a lot of these three items as leftovers which more than sustained me for the next few days. I think I gained 5 pounds as a result of her picnic.

A digression about the Patapsco Valley State Park: this is the main state park in our region but in my 30+ years living in Howard County I’ve been in it only a few times. I find it a frustratingly underused and poorly promoted resource. There are a number of different entrances, many of which seem closed much of the time or you have to pay to access them. There are a number of trails through the park but I’ve only been on one or two and didn’t find them very accessible or pleasant. There’s no connection to Ellicott City or other readily accessible areas that I have found. I’ve never found an easy walk along the river, much less the “stunning vistas, hidden treasures of the past, babbling brooks, pleasing waterfalls and a sense of wilderness that is within steps of the suburbs of Baltimore” the website promises. I’ll admit I’ve not made a whole lot of effort, but it seems the whole Patapsco River valley could be a more beneficial asset to the community.

Thursday was also the day after Hurricane Ian made landfall on Florida’s southwest coast near Fort Myers and Sanibel. I spent a fair chunk of time watching coverage of the aftermath and the continued progress of the storm as it headed toward the Carolinas. It was quite bad for certain communities, especially older ones like the island of Fort Myers Beach. I’m mildly surprised that so many newer structures seem to have come through relatively unscathed and the death toll is not quite as bad as I feared (just over 100 people as of today, though some searches are still underway). I guess there’s something to be said for newer hurricane building codes. Nevertheless, the hurricane’s toll has been devastating, financially likely to be one of the worst in U.S. history because it raked so many heavily populated areas. 

Saturday evening’s dinner with Mary Salhus and John Ricotta at the Tower Oaks Clyde’s restaurant in Rockville was pleasant enough. Mary used to work with Barb but has been retired for three years now; John is still working at the IRS. Mary is a very lovely person but she’s developed a hearing problem which makes conversations a little more difficult and a gluten intolerance that makes sharing food more difficult. John was actually a little more engaging than in the past; they’ve been longtime, long-distance friends though they live in Reston, not that far away. They have a daughter and grandson now living in Denver…so there’s a lot of overlap in our lives. We’d considered the possibility of taking a vacation or cruise with them at some point in the future, but after Saturday’s dinner that seems like less of a possibility. It would be nice to find some compatible travel buddies but I don’t think Mary and John are going to be the ones. I will say that the grilled branzino I had at Clyde’s was quite nice, with a crispy, lightly spiced skin. It was a virtuous dinner and not very expensive since we had no appetizers and a single drink each.

On Sunday, we drove down to Charlottesville for the wedding of Barb’s current workmate, Tanvi Parmar to Rick Heath. I’d never met either of them but Barb likes Tanvi a lot and had heard plenty about Rick over the years. Tanvi and Rick actually got married about a year ago (in Hawaii) while she was still pregnant with their baby. The Charlottesville wedding was the proper post-Covid celebration for family and friends. We had to take Covid tests the day of the wedding to prove we were safe; fortunately, we both passed. It’s the first time I’ve had to take a test to get into a specific event.

Barb and I drove the three hours down to Charlottesville through the rainy, blustery remnants of Hurricane Ian. We knew the weather was crushing Tanvi’s visions of an outdoor sunset ceremony in the Virginia foothills near where she grew up; Barb tried to console her by text and Tanvi later said that it helped.

We arrived at our hotel, the English Inn, and were able to check in. Neither Barb nor I remembered this rather old, somewhat musty hotel from when Barb went to UVA. We discovered it was built in 1983, three years after we graduated. I guess that makes us older and mustier. 

We had lunch at the Bodo’s Bagels next door, recommended by both Tanvi and TripAdvisor. Barb loved her ham and cheese – it was the right type of thinly sliced ham for her – and my chicken salad sandwich on an everything bagel was fine. It was nice to see a local institution doing well; Bodo’s existed during Barb’s time at UVA but this was a newer branch location. After lunch, we drove around Charlottesville for a bit, recognizing a few things and being disoriented by a lot of the newer construction. Barb did not have happy memories of her time in this town, and they persist. 

We headed back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. Our information said there would be buses to pick us up at the hotel at 3:30 or 4:30, with the ceremony starting at 5pm. We opted for the early one. A bus showed up a little after 3:30 but the driver said he wasn’t scheduled to leave until 4 and then had another pickup at the (more modern) other hotel in town. We sat on the bus for quite a while before convincing the driver that we were the only guests staying at the English Inn. He finally obliged but wasn’t about to change the overall schedule. Instead, he gave us a private tour around campus (excuse me, The Grounds) as Barb chatted away to get his life story. Turns out he was a psych major and graduated three years ago, before ending up driving a bus. The power of a liberal arts education.

The wedding location at the King Family Vineyards about 20 minutes outside Charlottesville would have been glorious on a sunny day, but this was not that day. Nevertheless, there was a nice indoor space that ended up working just fine…though I’m sure they could have saved many thousands by just renting a hotel ballroom somewhere.  

We met the only other person from Barb’s office attending, Uri Bilek, who drove down from Silver Spring and would be returning that night. Betsy Pelovitz had also been invited but was unable to make it. I was assigned to take photos on Betsy’s behalf. Barb chose to wear the cheongsam she had bought in Guangzhou when she and Leslie went to pick up Emory in 2003. She was pleased that it fit much better than it did 19 years before.

The Hindu ceremony got underway more or less on time. We didn’t really know what was going on, despite a cheat sheet that described a few of the major highlights. The priest rapidly muttered a seemingly endless string of prayers that went untranslated and unexplained, but we got the gist of the bride’s family giving away their daughter and welcoming the new son to the family. This went on for nearly an hour – afterward we learned we got a highly abbreviated version of a normal Indian wedding. We were thankful it didn’t go for six hours over multiple days. Tanvi and Rick did look resplendent in their Indian garb, as did their baby and grandmom. We were discouraged from taking photos of the ceremony; Barb got a later professional shot of the couple in their wedding outfits which I’ll include if and when I get it. The whole wedding party changed into more casual clothes for the dinner and reception.

With the ceremonies complete and the couple happily and officially wed (again), the reception began in earnest. There was a buffet of Indian appetizers which Uri and I enjoyed. Barb tasted a few things but didn’t find much she liked. Uri and I were also happy to find that the bars were stocked with an astonishing variety of top shelf bourbons. I happily indulged while Uri paced himself for the drive home. Before long, the main dinner buffet opened with more Indian delicacies. I found everything to be tasty but somewhat indistinguishable…but maybe that was the bourbon’s effect.

Uri left shortly after the dinner and speeches. Barb and I stuck it out until the first of the buses left for the hotel around 10:30, and after I had plowed through as many of the different bourbons as I could (I lost count somewhere after 6 or so). I’m reasonably sure I didn’t embarrass myself or Barb. It was a lovely evening despite the weather. Mission accomplished, I suppose.

We got up at a reasonable hour with no ill effects from the night. A winning feature of the English Inn (and the main reason we booked it) was a full breakfast buffet. We had our fill of eggs and bacon before getting back on the road to head home and rescue Manny. We enjoyed a quiet afternoon and evening at home, polishing off the last of the picnic leftovers before leaving the next day for Boston.

October 24

I see it’s been three weeks since my last entry, which is longer than I’d like, but I have been poking along on Billzpage. As is often the case, it took me longer to digest our October trip to Boston than it took to actually experience it. But in writing about the trip, I learned even more about Boston and New Bedford; I have a small list of new things to do and places to eat the next time we’re in the area. I find it a useful, if laborious, exercise to write up these trip notes – useful to me, anyway. Whether it benefits anyone else is an entirely different question. Actually, I do think it helps make for better, more efficient and enjoyable traveling each time, so that’s of benefit to Barb and Allie (and me) even if they don’t actually read these posts.

On Thursday morning of last week I discovered that Amythyst Kiah, one of the four members of Our Native Daughters, would be playing on Saturday night at the Kennedy Center. I get regular newsletters and emails from the Kennedy Center but somehow I missed that she was coming. I think I learned of her performance from scanning Facebook – I am loath to compliment Facebook but in this case it proved beneficial. I can’t remember if it was an ad or someone else’s post that alerted me to her performance. I wasn’t following Amythyst Kiah at that point but am now.   

Fortunately, I had Saturday evening open and quickly got dispensation from Barb to attend the concert. I also had a credit from Kennedy Center from our December 2021 canceled performance of Beautiful so the ticket for this show was essentially free. I considered it good homework to prepare for the upcoming Songs of our Native Daughters reunion concert I’ll be attending at Carnegie Hall in a couple of weeks. It also gave me an excuse to study up on Amythyst’s recent work including her 2021 album, Wary + Strange (links to reviews on Amythyst’s site) and her recent 4-song EP of covers, Pensive Pop, do a dive on YouTube for videos and performances, and rummage through various podcast interviews. I spent chunks of Thursday, Friday and Saturday immersed in her works (it’s nice to be retired), though I was actually surprised she didn’t have more recorded output over her decade-long career. 

The Terrace Theater at Kennedy Center seats just under 500 and I’d say there were between 300-350 attendees – not a great turnout, but then the show was not well advertised (was it?). The audience was largely older white folks like me – the NPR crowd, I’ll call it – with a smattering of younger (presumably lesbian) couples and people of color. I hate characterizing a crowd but I find it interesting to gauge the diversity of folks that show up for artists like Amythyst. A heavily NPR crowd is generally respectful, rarely boisterous, and typically not a healthy sign of commercial success. I get the feeling Amythyst wishes for a younger, hipper crowd. 

The show itself was good but somehow less than great. Amythyst has many talents, starting with her voice, a force of nature that invites comparisons with Odetta, Nina Simone and Joan Armatrading (by the way, this On the String article and accompanying interview are most informative and insightful pieces I’ve found on Amythyst), able to shift from a sweet tone to a mighty roar. Her fingerpicking guitar skills are quite good and her songwriting can reach impressive depth and resonance. “Black Myself” is her calling card anthem, “Wild Turkey” about her mother’s suicide is heartbreaking, “Firewater” about alcohol dependence is compelling. Those three songs are the spine of Wary + Strange and her show, and they are plenty good. 

While Amythyst has these strengths, she’s also reaching for indie-rock credibility (“Fancy Drones”, “Tender Organs”, “Sleeping Queens”) along the lines of Brittany Howard and Alabama Shakes, maybe. Here she falls a bit short, from my point of view, and wasn’t helped by her three-piece band of wispy white guys with whom she doesn’t seem to have any special rapport. They were competent but didn’t add a whole lot. She introduced them at the end but I didn’t recognize or catch any names other than the guitarist was named Chris.

Oddly, Amythyst made no mention of Our Native Daughters or her colleagues from that project. It would seem an easy and natural part of her story to relate. Surely a big chunk of the NPR crowd in the audience were in the room because of that album. Evidently, Wary + Strange was recorded three times, first as a folky album produced by Dirk Powell who did Our Native Daughters but ultimately shelved by Amythyst partly because she didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a folk artist. She was also writing alternative rock songs and recorded a separate album of them that also never saw release. Wary + Strange was finally recorded with veteran producer Tony Berg. For better or worse, the album came out the same month as Allison Russell’s highly acclaimed Outside Child and maybe suffered somewhat in comparison. Amythyst is not as exuberant, engaging or verbose as Allison which may also cause some level of tension (in the On the String interview Amythyst was very gracious and complimentary of Allison, but that’s the only instance among several interviews or podcasts I’ve listened to where she even discusses her one time bandmates).

Amythyst encored with a harrowing solo version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” sung from her perspective as the child of her suicidal mother (good version on YouTube). The song has become a kind of uplifting country music national anthem of continuity but Amythyst wrenches it back to its mournful roots. No longer a feel good singalong, it’s a powerful statement of loss. 

Having said all this, “Soapbox” is Amythyst’s worthy rejoinder to jerks like me who have no business telling her what to do (“You can keep your sophistry”). And truly, I have no business telling her what to do or how to do it. I can’t begin to know what she’s been through, what she’s going through or where she’s headed. I do root for her, though, and look forward to whatever comes next. And I’m very eager to see how these four ladies interact at the Our Native Daughters show in two weeks.

It has not escaped my attention that I am spending way too much time burrowing into the music and lives of this little cohort of Our Native Daughters women. There’s a bottomless well of performances, interviews, connections and conjectures to explore. It feels kind of worthwhile and important in the moment but I know it’s ultimately no more useful or productive than the vastly greater quantity of humanity’s brain cells that get burned up worrying about Taylor Swift, BTS, Harry Styles or any number of other pop stars. Ultimately, it’s all product for our eyeballs and clicks. Are we not entertained?

I have more to report on for the journal, but it will have to wait for another day.

October 31

Happy Halloween! We are overdue for taking an embarrassing picture of Manny in a Halloween outfit. We should have done it this weekend but forgot. I will include this not embarrassing but cute photo of Allie in her Kim Possible getup. She said when she went to several parties in it, the girls all recognized who she was emulating but none of the guys did. Their best guess was Lara Croft. A cultural statement. Allie didn’t realize the Disney Channel show (and maybe the whole channel) was mainly aimed at girls.

I again feel like I’m behind in my reporting but here’s a stab at catching up. I had a long overdue lunch with neighbor Mark. At my suggestion we tried a new Indian restaurant, Spice N’ Curry, and their lunch special format, thali, a sort of cross between tapas and a buffet. They bring you a selection of small dishes and you can ask for more of anything you like. It was pretty good, and reasonably priced, but not as indulgent or fun as a full Indian buffet. I thanked Mark for participating in my experiment but next time we can go back to one of our favorites.

Mark relayed that our neighbors Ron, Janice and Marv all had Covid recently. There seems to be more of it going around and word is the flu season is worse this year, especially with kids. Then I heard that all the Shinns came back from Peru with Covid and are isolating from Sue. Likewise, Maggie and Juan recently came down with it and their family is isolating from Laurie. So far, the symptoms seem relatively mild (though Maggie seems to have it worse than others) and as far as I know no one has had to visit a hospital or doctor. All of which is to say that Covid is not done with us but seems to be more or less manageable, along the lines of the flu. No one wants it but it’s much less likely to make one gravely ill. I still see a fair number of mask wearers in public places, but they’re a minority and I’m not one of them. Go boosters!

Barb and I had a nice dim sum lunch with Jeremy and Deanie Wu last weekend at Lao Sze Chuan, the upscale Chinese restaurant I found in Rockville. We shared a spread of soup dumplings, pan fried buns, mushroom fried rice, sauteed peapod leaves, fried shrimp with lemon sauce, seafood soup with a shell of crispy rice, and flaming cumin lamb chops. Most of the dishes were mild enough for Barb to enjoy and I think everyone liked the meal. We ended up with the leftovers so I ate well afterward too. Jeremy and Deanie told us of their travels, mainly Viking river cruises in Europe. They are an interesting couple, very gracious and bright but also down to earth though I can’t tell if there’s some false modesty to indulge in middlebrow entertainment and conversation with us. They seem unlikely travel buddies for us, but one never knows. I guess there’s a chance in the future.

Deanie mentioned that they are taking advantage of converting some of their retirement funds into Roth IRAs. This is a financial strategy I only became aware of a few weeks ago listening to Barb’s retirement seminar. Due to income limits, we haven’t been eligible for Roth IRAs for many years, but evidently you can convert an unlimited amount of regular IRA funds into tax-free Roths if you’re willing to pay the tax up front. I made a point of asking about this strategy with my new Schwab advisor when I met with him – I had a meeting scheduled for the following Wednesday. 

That financial planning meeting was an eye opener and anxiety producer. In previous plans over a number of years, I’d been pleased with a high confidence level that we had plenty of savings to cover 30+ years of retirement if we were lucky or unlucky enough to live that long. This April, however, I was blindsided by a larger than expected state and federal 2021 tax bill due to larger than expected capital gains. In 2022, I’ve had to withdraw more funds than I expected to cover paying the taxes for 2021 and making estimated tax payments for 2022. This in turn raised my budget and I’ve been trying to figure out if that would be an ongoing situation. For the financial plan discussion, I went with a higher level of expenses to cover taxes, expected hikes in vacation spending, and generally padding for a more comfortable retirement. That higher level of expenses drove down our retirement confidence level from 99% to 78% – still “acceptable” but not really. My new advisor, Ian, questioned the higher expenses and ran a plan with a number that split the difference between my old and new budgets. That raised our confidence level to 89% which was better, but I felt like I needed a closer look at my budget and needed a better handle on our tax situation as we transitioned into retirement. 

I quickly set an appointment with Bob Tuttle, our longtime tax accountant, for Friday, two days later. I spent a couple of restless nights trying to figure out why my budget had risen so much and contemplating a retirement of restricted spending – and the hell I would have to pay from Barb if that became a reality. It was no fun.

Independent of all that, Barb declared that she wanted a new phone so she could access her McDonalds app. The personal one she was using (as opposed to her work phone where she can’t load any apps), my old iPhone 6, was obsolete and for several months would not update her McDonalds app. This had become unacceptable. She said that, for her belated birthday, I should get a new phone so she could get my current one. That sent me to various websites to figure out which new model of iPhone was appropriate for me, and whether to get it from Apple, AT&T, Best Buy or Costco. Hours dripped by as I researched; I finally decided the best course was just to go to the Apple Store in hopes that they could take care of the whole process of upgrading both of our phones.

To make things worse, our dishwasher misbehaved and finished its cycle with a pool of water in the bottom. The dishes seemed clean but something was amiss. I spent hours chasing information on YouTube and from various websites, preparing to perhaps replace our dishwasher. And if we were going to do that, should we also replace the oven with the wonky door that doesn’t close all the way. And if we do all that, what happens to my budget and how can we ever have a nice retirement and on and on.

On Thursday morning, after thoroughly reading my KitchenAid dishwasher manual, deciding there were no filters I should clean or change, and finding a chunk of old broken glass that may have blocked the drain, I followed the manual’s suggestion to run an empty cycle with vinegar to help clean the insides of the dishwasher. Fortunately, this seemed to work. I’m not entirely sure why there was standing water in the bottom of the dishwasher the day before, but several websites said that sometimes a washer doesn’t completely finish its cycle and I guess (hope) that’s what happened. 

I ventured to the Apple store. The sales guy rather quickly convinced me that the new iPhone 13 was the appropriate level for my old guy profile, so I bought one and we started the process of downloading the contents of my current phone to the new one. As usual, this took longer than expected: the sales guy said maybe 30 minutes but we weren’t even halfway downloaded in that time. We also started the process of backing up Barb’s old phone so we could then shift her data to my old phone. After nearly two hours, my new phone was eventually updated and operational though there were a number of apps that still needed to be updated and logged into. Barb’s old phone was extremely slow to back up so the Apple tech finally suggested I try to finish it at home. Mission partially accomplished. 

I went to one of the kiosks in the mall to get a cover for my new phone. I chose a cover that was a little bulky but the salesman assured me was very safe. I bought it in some haste and quickly came to regret it; the cover made the whole phone heavy in my pocket and difficult to plug into my car. 

I then headed to Best Buy to look for a car holder for the phones since Barb’s kept falling when we drove to and from Boston. Relieved of having to buy a new dishwasher, I figured I would check into buying a new oven. I was put off by the price tag of $3,000 or more. I could live for a while longer with our wonky oven door. I did find a car phone holder, the kind recommended by the New York Times, even, but not the version that clipped to the air vent. I got it anyway to give it a try. When I got it home, the first thing it said inside the box was not to use the sticky suction base on Toyota Camrys as it could damage the dashboard. So I boxed it up to return to Best Buy and proceeded to order the version I wanted off Amazon. Bezos wins again.

By Thursday night, I was able to work through the various apps on my new phone to get them updated and logged into. Phone transitions are maybe better than they used to be but still a pain in the neck. I got Barb’s phone data backed up and then uploaded to my old phone. She was able to get into her McDonalds app and was pretty happy…except I couldn’t figure out how to get the phone service activated on her new phone. Another trip to Apple required. 

On Friday, I met with Bob Tuttle. We spent three hours going over various scenarios and I came away with a better understanding of how to anticipate the tax implications of various withdrawal strategies. He gave me some confidence that getting blindsided by the 2021 tax bill needn’t happen again with a bit better planning and we seemed to be on a better track. He clarified the situation with Roth IRA conversion (we don’t really need to do them but we could, really just up to us…not a big tax implication either way) and that I needn’t be too worried about Required Minimum Distributions when we turn 72. It looks like we might be able to hit a sweet spot between ages 66-70 where we can lower our regular income enough that we can avoid capital gains taxes on Barb’s regular investment account for those years.

Between Friday evening and Saturday morning, I worked up a spreadsheet that maps out our anticipated revenue streams for the next 10 years of transition as we start pensions, Social Security, and start tapping our 401K, IRA and TSP accounts. I was able to reconcile that spreadsheet with the Schwab plan and I’m now much more comfortable that we can readily stay on the higher confidence track and still have plenty for vacations and other expected needs and wants. My anxiety levels dropped appreciably.

I went back to Apple with Barb’s phone and the guy said we needed to swap the SIM cards from her old one to her new one (my old one…got it?). I couldn’t believe that was the answer and don’t know why that was never mentioned the day before but 30 seconds later, after he swapped SIMs, Barb’s new phone was up and running. Mission finally more or less accomplished.

On Saturday, Barb and I ventured back to the mall so she could get a new cover since she didn’t like my old black one. She shopped at three different shops/kiosks before finally deciding on a purple cover that she liked. I also got a new, less bulky cover. Everyone was finally more or less happy. Mission finally accomplished.