The Man Who Fell for Eartha

Driving home from work I listened to Eartha Kitt. I hate how all of the legends that I grew up knowing are one bu one departing this earth. Like most my age, my first encounter with Eartha Kitt was when she played Catwoman on Batman. My father taught me more about her: his Aunt's husband was a major investor in "New Faces of 52" the Broadway show that made her a star (and had my friend Ellen's mother, Faith Stewart-Gordon in the chorus).

I bought her albums, I went and saw her at The Ballroom, at Cafe Carlyle, any chance I could get. Then there was that one special night: It was partner David's birthday, and we had planned to see Eartha at the Carlyle. Unfortunately, her night off was the same as David's and we had to cancel the plans. David had a friend, Jon, who worked with her on tour and remained friendly with her, and we were all going to go and have a drink with her afterwards. We were bummed.

We planned to just have a dinner party instead. I had graduated from cooking school and was eager to show off. We invited Jon and a friend of mine for a small party. A few minutes after David left for the matinee Jon called. He told me that he was bringing a guest to dinner and that it was Eartha. I scrambled to get the house spotless and really pull out all the stops.

When David got home, things were buzzing. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang and I asked David to get it. I heard the door open and David call out "Oh my God! Eartha Kitt's come to dinner." And so she had.

We had no dining room or real table to eat at and usually gathered around a huge square coffee table. Eartha pulled off her boots, sat on the floor at the table and we spent the next six hours talking politics, theatre, anything and everything. We were all overwhelmed by her intelligence, her intensity, her warmth. She admired a wooden bird my father had carved, and I had Dad send her one the next day!

Just a few years ago, David was hired to design the hair and provide the wigs to the Off-Broadway musical "Mimi LeDuck," in which Eartha was starring. It was another chance to ge to know her. She liked the wigs David made for her for the show so much, she ordered more after the show closed.

It's odd that most of the people around here that I encounter don't have any idea who she is. I'm feeling old, very old...how can one compare an Eartha Kitt, a Hermoine Gingold, a Marlene Dietrich to Britney Spears, Kindsay Lohan or any of these contemporary "performers"?

If you don't know about her look up what she said a luncheon held at the White House by LadyBird Johnson.

Where's Einstein When You Need Him?

OK, this is CRAZY. We left Ft. Lauderdale Florida, Eastern Standard Time. Sailed east to Cartagena, Colombia, which technically was one hour ahead of us, but we did not set our clocks forward. We then sailed west to Panama, certainly crossing back into our original time zone, and going through at least one in the other direction, probably two (central time, mountain time). We did not change our clocks. Last night, after going through the Panama Canal and sailing into the Pacific Ocean, we set our clocks back one hour. We are now sailing up the Pacific coast of Central America, where everyone is living on pacific Time, yet we are on U.S. central time. Twice more on this cruise, as we sail north, we will set our clocks back one hour, until we arrive in San Diego at US Pacific standard Time. We will then get on a plane, fly to New York and be back on Eastern Standard Time. Our time zone has nothing to do with location and everything to do with “I said so, that’s why.” I need Mr. Einstein to explain this whole time thing to me. Who came up with this whole 24 hour day thing anyway? Why aren’t there 10 really long periods of time instead, divided by ten shorter (but longer than a minute) or 100 longer than a minute units of time. Why this twenty four, divided by sixty thing anyway? Most of the world is on the metric system, but universally our time is on this 24-60 system. I’m not even sure I get this seven days a week thing. Why aren’t there six or eight days (I could use that extra day for laundry and yard work). We would simply adjust our months accordingly. As of now, things don’t always quite work out. We do have leap year, after all. The Hebrew Calendar, a lunar-based system has a leap month every seven years, for Pete’s sake! (actually we know it’s not for Pete, especially if by Pete, we’re referring to St. Peter, who might have started out Jewish, but certainly didn’t wind up that way – but I digress). You’ll have to pardon these ramblings, but as I write I am staring at the blue-grey Pacific as it meets the white-blue sky at the horizon, moderately early in the morning. Is it &:00am? 10:00am? 8:00am? 9:00am? HELP!!!!!!!! I’m caught in a whirlpool of timezones.

A Man: A Plan: A Canal: Panama

A hot, hot and humid day…sun beats down on us as we stand or sit along the railings of the ship as we slowly creep into the first channel of the Panama Canal the tugboats and pilot boats come along side, the pilot boards our ship. A marvel of engineering that takes water from the river which pours into the lake and dumps 26 million gallons a day into each of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, all relying on gravity. Hot people, sweaty people, pushy people, obnoxious people, people who won’t let others get the photos they are getting, people who are happy to complain about everyone else, people who are happy to lend a hand to someone else, who are generous of spirit and railing position.
The lush thick green jungle on either side of this human-dug waterway was pregnant with animals and birds. Every second we expected to see some creature make its appearance on the water’s edge. Finally, a small crocodile came out of some weeds on the shore and went for a swim just close enough for us to see it with our binoculars.

It was exciting to go through the canal, yet I can’t quite figure out why. The actual process was slow and tedious. The ship moves slowly, the gates close behind you, an act you can only see on the aft deck, so if you are anywhere else, you don’t notice. The boat stops for 30-45 minutes, raising or lowering almost imperceptibly. The gates in front of you open (which you can’t see because even if you are at the bow, you are too far above and your own ship gets in the way. The ship slowly moves a little bit, then repeats the process. After the first lock, it’s the same thing three times, a slow sail through a lake, then more of the same on the Pacific side. So why was this exciting? Was it crowd mentality? Nearly 2,000 people lined up around the edge of the ship waiting with antici------pation for this to start. Was it a sense of history? The nature of seeing something we learned about in history class in person, for real, ourselves? Was it the fact that this was something to do, something mildly exclusive? Not everyone, in fact no one I knew had ever been through the Panama Canal, so although the actual passage through was not exotic, the act of the passage was. Learning about the failed French attempts to create a canal, and then the eventual success of the UNITED States, the more than 20,000 deaths that resulted from its construction , how it was actually constructed, the political machinations and corruptions: these are all interesting and somewhat exciting to me. The actual, boring process of going through the canal was not exciting after we were halfway through the first lock’s machinations……so why did I take over 500 photographs today? Why could I not turn away from the activity, moving from bow to stern to port to starboard, up to the highest deck, down to the lowest? Why the hell was I so excited?