It has been my practice at the end of each year to call on
my aged friend Miss Ann Thrope. It has
been some time since I last wrote about her. She is from a bygone era, I am not sure which,
and objects to the au courant prefix “Ms.” She is aged and ageless, and reputed to have
been the lover of Moliѐre.
Miss Ann, an
avowed deist, has been an invaluable source of secular wisdom for me over the
years. When in doubt about whether to
foist on my readership an audacious or questionable proposition, I call on Miss
Ann for advice and counsel. Regular readers of this column will no doubt
conclude my visits have been infrequent. She sleeps most of the time, but in those rare
moments when I catch her awake and sentient, she offers “the Spirit of wisdom
and understanding… of counsel.” Isaiah
11:2. I hope the blasé will not scoff,
for it is written that “[w]ith the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days,
understanding.” Job 12:12.
I arrived at
Miss Ann’s Victorian hideaway to wish her well for the new year and to seek her
advice on the advisability of sharing my New Year’s resolutions with you dear
readers. Because of the unprecedented
uncertainty this particular new year brings, prudence compelled me to solicit
suitable admonitions. Her caretaker and
companion Max greeted me at the door.
Max informed me that Miss Ann was in a deep sleep, but that perhaps she
might respond if I held her hand and spoke softly.
We entered her
spacious boudoir and made our way discreetly across the dimly lit bedchamber to
the large davenport upon which she reposed.
I parted the gauze curtains that surrounded her. I touched her small spindly hand and
whispered “Miss Ann, my New Year’s ….”
Before I could finish my sentence, she opened her eyes and uttered a
word, or cleared her throat, I could not tell which. What I distinctly heard was “worry,” the
second sound that escaped her wizened lips. She gently squeezed my hand and smiled or . . .
grimaced; I cannot say.
She
immediately fell back into a deep slumber.
I was puzzled and thrown off my orbit, my mind be still “no more a‑roving.” Did she utter a word before “worry” or was
that sound a cough, or a frog, I hesitate to say, “croaking” in her throat? If she did mutter a word, was it “not” or
“don’t”? My disquieting thoughts landed
on Neil Armstrong.
Did the first
man to set foot on the moon say to billions of people on earth, “a” after the
fifth word of his famous aphorism? Or
are astronauts good at math and physics but not so good at grammar? One can argue ad nauseam what Neil Armstrong
or Miss Ann Thrope said or didn’t say. I
was in a quandary.
Without Miss Ann’s
guidance, I opted for the less controversial of my New Year’s resolutions. I offer these few quotidian resolutions in the
hope they will bring inspiration to a reader or two.
1. I will try
not to criticize those (apparently most everyone) who use the infuriatingly
annoying adjective “iconic” to describe anything, most often the prosaic and
insignificant. I have even heard someone
at Thanksgiving refer to Sophie's “iconic turkey stuffing." Please. It is the most overused word on the
planet.
2. And that
brings me to the second resolution. I
will try not to complain about the use of the word "planet" to depict
the singularity of something or someone.
"He is the most talented taxidermist on the planet." Why not the universe?
3. I am
resolved not to foist on unsuspecting victims foolish limericks I make up on
the spot. This resolution requires some
background. Several years ago I wrote
about attending a performance of Verdi’s La Traviata. The program notes mentioned his lover, the
great opera singer Giuseppina Strepponi.
At intermission, while my wife was visiting the restroom . . . .
Why do they call it a restroom? In Europe, bathrooms are called what they are‑‑toilettes. Just thought of a new resolution. Call things as they are.
4. Getting
back to Verdi and Giuseppina. While waiting for my wife to return from the
toilette‑‑maybe restroom is better, I quickly penned a quatrain to honor theses
two iconic artists. I was sitting on a
couch in the downstairs waiting room where there are… restrooms containing
toilettes, when an elderly, elegantly attired woman sat next to me. She asked me if I enjoyed the opera and I read
her my limerick.
Giuseppina Strepponi
Loved Verdi and spumoni,
Was his lover, not a crony,
His muse, his rigatoni.
She got up and left. Can you imagine?
At the next
Verdi opera I attended, I wrote another verse, a version of which I shared with
you in this journal.
They, an island, not a Coney,
She, Verdi's love, his love only,
A love that's true, a love not phony,
Not Swiss nor Cheddar, but Provolone.
I think that
is quite enough. So I am resolved not to
burden you with more inane stanzas like the one I wrote after seeing Verdi’s
interminable masterpiece Simon Boccanegra.
I say interminable because the geniuses at the Music Center allowed for
only one intermission for this four-and-a-half-hour extravaganza. I was almost arrested for fighting my way out
of the hall before the intermission where I sprinted to the. . . place
where they have the toilettes.
They wouldn’t
let me back into the concert hall until the “intermission.” So to pass the time I wrote another stanza.
They had kids, quite a lot,
Not to keep, let others adopt.
One day they finally married,
But then no baby did she carry.
I could go on,
about their pets, and Busseto, the rustic village where they lived among the
disapproving townspeople, until they married, and about the dogs they adopted
to make up for the kids they deposited at the local nunnery. Query- Do they get a pass because they were
towering artists and lived in the middle of the 19th century?
5. I am
resolved not to criticize those of my colleagues throughout the state who in a
judicial opinion begin a discussion of the facts or the law with "at the
outset." Or worse, "at the
outset we note." Please note this
unnecessary redundancy. Oh dear. If it is redundant, it is ….
6. We in
California are blessed to have the most outstanding Supreme Court in the
nation. So who am I, even on rare
occasions, to chide them for doing something I consider ill-advised? I am resolved not to criticize our high court
. . . unless
they . . .
well, read the new rule that is published at the end of Vergara v. State of California (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th
619. Depending upon how well I do with
these resolutions, you may read about my conflicting views on this new rule in
future columns. Whether I agree with the
comments of the dissenting justices or not is beside the point.
So Happy New
Year. We and the United States Supreme Court
need one. But I am optimistic. I am just as sure that Miss Ann said “don’t,”
as I am that Neil Armstrong said “a.”
And may we all succeed in bringing our New Year’s resolutions to
fruition.
