San Francisco, June 2018: Der Ring, revisited

When I first saw that San Francisco Opera was planning to remount its 2011 production of the Ring cycle for summer 2018, I contemplated giving it a miss. Francisca Zambello's conception of the work is riveting, and I recall the 2011 Ring as one of the most profound operatic experiences I've ever had. I wasn't sure whether viewing it for a second time might not prove disappointing. In the end I decided to go, however, and I'm glad I did, for this production was differently slanted, even though it employed the same sets and much the same staging. The 2011 Ring centered on Brünnhilde--appropriately, since Nina Stemme, who sung the role, is such a powerful actress. Consequently, the redemptive element of the cycle emerged early in Walküre and predominated throughout. This time around, Zambello chose to direct more attention to Wotan, exploring the complexities of his character and treating him as the source of all corruption--other tragic choices, like those made by Siegmund or Brünnhilde, are indirectly owed to his agency. Greer Grimsley handled the challenge well, though in the present political climate he couldn't help seeming a Donald Trump with less hair and more self-awareness. In fact, I pointed out the family analogies on a Facebook posting, but my classicist friends, as bemused by my fondness for Wagner as they are puzzled by my passion for horses, greeted the observation with polite chuckles at best.

Other aspects of the San Francisco trip were problematic. Weather was supposed to be in the 70s, but I had not brought a warm jacket, and walking back to the hotel was very cold. We had some nice lunches and dinners, though our one excursion on the Napa Wine Train wasn't worth the money this time around. Our get-together with my sister Jeanne and her husband Norm also didn't go quite the way I had hoped. I thought that Jeanne, with her extensive knowledge of home remodeling, would be able to give me advice on having our new house built. Unfortunately, I prefaced my discussion of that topic with a description of the two existing homes for sale we had visited. When I mentioned that the one homeowner was very anxious to sell, Jeanne pounced on the fact, and no amount of explaining how poorly maintained the house was (hard-water scale coating all the shower enclosures) could get her off the topic of picking up a bargain. Getting our house ready for the market is bad enough--the idea of taking on yet another renovation project in another location just freaks me, no matter how much time and money that might save.

The most stressful part of the trip was the return. At 7:00 a.m. I learned that Southwest had cancelled our 10:40 a.m. flight. Over my cell phone I rebooked on a flight leaving at 5:40 p.m.--there was nothing earlier--and changed our van pickup time to 3:00 p.m., or so I thought. With an extra morning of vacation to play with, we breakfasted for the last time at La Boulangerie on Hayes and Octavia, caught the Embarcadero bus to Pier 39, and did tourist things--viewed Alcatraz and sea lions

and browsed through shops. Had a very nice salad and glass of wine on the pier, then caught the bus back to the Days Inn. At that point the trouble started. The van didn't arrive. Calls to the shuttle service only gained us reassurances that it was "on its way." A half-hour later, we were picked up, only to spend another half-hour waiting downtown for a fare that didn't show. When we finally arrived at the airport, we would have been in danger of missing our flight, had it not been delayed for an hour. Then on to worrying about the connection--itself delayed for ten minutes. To sum up: home by midnight, cranky and frayed, imperfectly prepared to deal with a needy and whiny cat. No compensation offered by Southwest or by the van service for cancellations, delays, and inexplicable procrastination. These are the issues--rather than the operas presented--that cause me to wonder whether our twice-yearly excursions to San Francisco are worth the stress. True, it's important to maintain regular contact with Jeanne and Norm. Since Jeanne will probably be unsympathetic once she learns that we're not going to take advantage of what seems, to her, a splendid real-estate opportunity, I'll have to be prepared to cope with that as well. Back now to repeated follow-up calls to window-glass sellers, garage door technicians, etc. 

Baja California: Tijuana, Ensenada and the Guadalupe Valley, May 2018

Some trips you look forward to with trepidation, wondering whatever possessed you to sign up. This was one. When I enrolled Ron and myself in the Road Scholar program "The Bounty of Baja: Food, Wine and Local Life in the Guadalupe Valley" a year ago, I was anticipating just a nice little break from the normal summer routine. Since then, though, I had made some momentous decisions. First, I realized that this was the proper time to quit adjuncting. Over the past few years the department has hired several really outstanding junior faculty. I was no longer needed in the rota, and it would be the graceful thing to leave. Second (and this was actually the more painful choice), I had come to the conclusion that we ought to sell the horse property and move to a retirement community while we were both fit and able. Luckily, the University of Arizona is affiliated with Academy Village, an active adult community that promotes lifelong learning through lectures, concerts, activities and volunteer opportunities and also affords the choice of aging in place. There are two assisted-living facilities on the campus, so we would not have to uproot ourselves again should need arise.

Once I had posted my grades and turned in my office key, I began organizing the move in earnest. Downsizing came first: finding new homes for my books and donating horse tack, electronics, memorabilia and clothing. We met with builders to explore the option of purchasing a lot and having a home built to our specifications and we listed our house with a real-estate agent. In the middle of it all, however, with email inboxes full and long to-do schedules on my desk, I found myself boarding a plane for San Diego.

The first afternoon and evening were in some ways not too promising. The Courtyard Marriott, where the group assembled, is a typical business-oriented establishment: no sit-down restaurant but a bar/food service combo where items are ordered at the counter. We got in early and had lunch, which was only passable. Nothing to visit in the immediate vicinity: the Marriott was just one in an interminable row of motels. That evening the fourteen participants assembled in a meeting room where the tour leader, Luka Rangel, gave a very informative and clear overview of what we would experience. Our tour companions were quite diverse in ages, background, and ethnicities and, from their introductions, a very interesting group of people. We bonded very quickly, thanks in great part to Luka, who drew us all out. The only negative part was the catered dinner, which featured a tepid and disappointingly chewy lasagna. This made me wonder if the food in general would reach a higher level. I needn't have worried.

After crossing into Mexico (quite painlessly), our first stop was La Caja Gallery in Tijuana. Its mission is to bring art to the community, as proclaimed by its arresting façade (left). Inside, an equally arresting mural (right). We met with the gallery owner, who explained the various outreach activities undertaken by the La Caja collective of artists and performers and walked us through the performance spaces under construction. After that stimulating tour, we were taken for lunch to Caesar's Restaurant, a Tijuana institution displaying countless photos of celebrities who have enjoyed its Caesar salad, supposed to have been invented there. Yes, the original recipe uses anchovy fillets, hooray. No, it doesn't include chicken.

Our hotel in Ensenada was the Las Rosas Resort, a great improvement over the Marriott, though similarly located on a busy highway where there was no place to walk. The only English-language television news channel was Fox. Hard to watch it for more than fifteen minutes. However, our days were organized around long morning-to-late-afternoon excursions and two- to three-hour dinners, so we did not miss television at all.

In their lectures on the bus and on-site, Luka and her colleague and assistant Jasmin broadened the focus of the tour beyond viniculture and gastronomy--though there was plenty of information on those topics--to include the history of Mexico and Baja California and, most interesting of all to me, the ins and outs of current political disputes surrounding proposed development of the Guadalupe Valley. Like the Sonoita and Willcox wine districts in Arizona, the valley was originally a purely agricultural, cattle and produce farming area into which vineyards were introduced rather late. Because it is now so popular with tourists, developers want to build resorts there, and residents have had to mobilize to stop them. Luka, whose sympathies were obviously with those seeking to preserve the traditional character of the region, vividly described their struggles with the system. I was reminded of the fight my neighbors put up to stop the building of a high school on Snyder Road and changing the zoning around the Catalina Highway-Snyder intersection to commercial use.

This is not to say that the Guadalupe Valley farmers are reactionary. On the contrary, one of its leading oenologists, Hugo D'acosta, is the driving force behind La Escuelita, a winemaking school for prospective vintners. We tasted just two wines there, a white and a red, but both were markedly better than those offered at the next winery, Monte Xanic, an overly commercial establishment where the pourers recited canned scripts. Of all the wines we tasted (and there were eight winery visits overall), I would rank the wines of La Escuelita and Tres Mujeres the best, and those were, not surprisingly, the two places where the creative passion of the director or owner was most evident. Ivette of Tres Mujeres, who founded the winery with two friends, is also an accomplished ceramicist, and her cellar doubles as a tasting room and gallery. I learned something new about winemaking from her. There is more than one method of cultivation in use among the surrounding growers. All other factors being equal, the way the vines are trained affects the finished product.

As for food, our restaurant experiences were amazing. We had one four-course lunch at Laja, one of the top 50 restaurants in Latin America, which featured products from its own orchard, farm, and vineyard. The lettuce salad with beetroot and aged cheese was exceptional, as was the entrée of local lamb. All four courses were paired with Guadalupe Valley wines. We had another great lunch at Deckman's, located at the El Mogor winery, and a fine dinner at Ophelia in Ensenada--to which I would love to return, because I wasn't able to do justice to their dessert sampler. Still, the best meal of all was one we prepared ourselves. Under the direction of Chef Juan Hussong, we learned techniques of cooking Baja-Med dishes, which fuse traditional Mexican flavors with Mediterranean ingredients, and put together our own three-course dinner as a farewell celebration. This was a fitting conclusion to a program that worked on so many levels--intellectual, aesthetic, social, and sensual--and allowed me to relax and appreciate my surroundings for the first time in many months.

Croatia and Montenegro, May 2017--Going Solo

For several years now, traveling with Ron has not been easy. There were times when he got confused at being in a strange place, especially when he woke up. He had limited energy, so often he fell asleep in the afternoon or was ready for bed right after dinner, while I was still wide awake. Walking excursions, the main attraction on a cruise, proved difficult because he couldn't keep up. It was upsetting that he didn't tell me when he started feeling pain, and then blamed me when he was really hurting. Worst of all was that I didn't know whether he was enjoying himself or not. I sometimes felt guilty because he didn't seem to be getting anything out of the vacation I was looking forward to so much. It was becoming clear that what for me was a much-needed, stimulating adventure was for him an ordeal.


In January of this year I tried an experiment. When I went off to the SCS meeting in Toronto, I called in a caretaking service, Family Home Care, and arranged for a visiting caretaker to drop in for a two-hour shift every other day. I also bought him a FreedomAlert pendant so that he could press a button to call 911 in an emergency. Both measures proved successful. While Ron didn't think he needed the caretaker, he welcomed the company, and he himself was happy to have a means of summoning help in case he was by himself when he fell.


This May, a week after the semester ended, I arranged for a caretaker again to cover my ten-day absence on a Road Scholar small group tour of Croatia and Montenegro by ship. It was a way of winding down from what had been a difficult year. In the fall I had taught CLAS/GWS 362 to a very diverse class including Black, Muslim, Native American, and transgender students. Getting them through post-election panic and depression took tremendous finesse and tact. Consequently I had not given as much time and thought as I usually do to preparing my spring Latin reading course on Martial and Juvenal. I had taught these authors once before, using the same textbooks, and figured the number of lines from Martial's epigrams I assigned and the selections I chose were about right for students at the 4xx/5xx level, but I had miscalculated badly and we fell behind at once. We struggled through the first four weeks reading only about half of what I expected. Then it turned out that they found Juvenal (Juvenal!) much easier than the previous class had, so I wound up preparing extra lectures, PowerPoints, and discussion sessions to fill in the class time after they had finished translating. It didn't help that one of the graduate students was forever nitpicking the translation and taking issue with statements in the commentary. I got through the semester, as I always do, but I knew it wasn't one of my stellar performances and I needed something else to think about.

Since my flight from Phoenix took off at 7:00 a.m., I arrived at the Stagecoach Shuttle at 2:45. The itinerary, from Phoenix to Dulles and then to De Gaulle, followed by a connection to Split, was a demanding one, so I was pretty wiped by the time the program director, Luči, met us at the airport and took us to the Cornaro Hotel. This was a small hotel, and not all its facilities were in operation--supposedly there was a rooftop spa and a downstairs wine bar, both closed. After a get-acquainted meeting, the 23 participants had dinner in the hotel dining room--excellent seafood, as I recall. Then I went out to look around the neighborhood and buy a hat, something I always forget to pack.

It was nice to discover that the hotel was within easy walking distance of Diocletian's Palace, the object of the next day's excursion. Ron and I had visited it during a previous trip to Croatia, but there was a lot we missed. I didn't know, for example, that the statue of John the Baptist in the former Temple of Jupiter was by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, about whom Luči was quite informed--we learned a great deal about him. During the lunch break, which was on our own, I took the time to watch the Emperor Diocletian come out of the palace to address the crowd in passable Latin (he was, after all, Dalmatian by birth, so it wasn't his first language). Touristy, but neat.

The next day we embarked on the ship, which was indeed small. Besides the dining room, which was also used for lectures and other events, there was no fully enclosed space apart from the cabins. There was a seating area in back of the dining room with steps leading down to the main deck cabins, but it was only partially roofed. Forward, on the top deck, there was a lounge area, of course without a swimming pool. Those were the only two common areas in which to hang out. I had brought along a PDF of the ms. I was reviewing for Cambridge UP and had hoped to make considerable progress on it. But working on my computer in public was difficult, as people were always interrupting me, and I had no real desk space in the cabin itself. While our choice of beverages at lunch and dinner included a beer or glass of wine, sitting around with drinks after dinner wasn't an option, as the bar closed as soon as dinner had been served. People generally split up and went to their cabins. I'm afraid I started to feel claustrophobic after a while.

It was encouraging that more than half the people on the tour were women traveling by themselves or as a twosome. Obviously no one saw anything odd in the fact that I had left my husband at home--there were others who had done exactly the same thing. I did hit it off with two women in similar circumstances, so I had people to go around with. It was also nice that many of the solo women were academics. Since Road Scholar attempts to offer learning adventures, we were given a great deal of historical background, dealing chiefly with recent events--Luči recounted her experience of the Balkan War as a student in Kosevo--but also some classical and medieval history as well. Troubled relations with the Venetian Empire came in for a lot of discussion, especially when we arrived in Dubrovnik. 

Sites visited on the various islands were mostly medieval and Early Modern cathedrals and monasteries. On one fairly drizzly day, we hiked in National Park Mljet to a saltwater lake, where we took a boat trip to, guess what, a twelfth-century monastery. Museums were not that interesting, except for the Meštrović Gallery in Split, whose permanent exhibition houses a large collection of the sculptor's works from all periods. We did stop twice for lunch in Dalmatian villages, once at a family farm owned by a priest (he inherited it after his family were casualties of the Balkan War) and once at a well-known vineyard on the road to Montenegro. Dubrovnik was the high point, and walking around the city walls a memorable experience. In the opening episode of this season's Game of Thrones, Cersei and Jamie look out to sea from the battlements of the Red Keep, which are famously the Dubrovnik city walls; it was a thrill to realize that I had been exactly where they were standing.

Montenegro, where we spent the last two days of the tour, reminded me amazingly of an Italian town, with the population taking an evening passeggiata along the main street of Herceg Novi (as opposed to the riva, which was where our hotel was located). I truly loved the Cat Museum in Kotor, which I visited on my own, and wish I had allotted more time to it. There are no actual cats (except for the mascot, asleep in her bed), but plenty of amusing cartoons and cat kitsch, including a wall of four-color pages from the Corriere del Sol illustrating amazing cat stories (e.g. a mother cat receiving a medal from the mayor and the town council of an Italian village for rescuing her five kittens, one by one, from a fire).

The hotel we stayed in was a fairly expensive resort right on the beach. For some reason, one of the assigned rooms was a suite, and they gave it to me--probably because the door of my cabin on the ship was constantly sticking and I had to call crew members down to open it several times. Dinner was, again, at a long reserved table in the hotel dining room, but I had a privileged seat right next to all the events at the farewell dinner and was able to snap a great picture of Luči being presented with a gift of appreciation, and a well-deserved thank you from all of us.

In retrospect, everything about the Croatia trip was fine except for the limited options onboard. The food both on ship and on land was superb, the native Croatian wines I sampled excellent (derived mostly from the Primitivo grape, the ancestor of Zinfandel), and the field trips generally interesting. Too many monasteries, but that was to be expected. The lesson I've learned from this experience is to  travel with Road Scholar, but be selective about where you are going and the type of cruise ship involved--pick larger vessels. Next March I'm booked to go to Jamaica and Cuba aboard an Aegean Odyssey ship, and in July I will be going to Iceland, again with Aegean Odyssey. For all my many trips to Italy and England by myself, cruising alone is a new experience, but I'm learning.

Recollections of Bucharest to Budapest Cruise, May 2016

The summer after our Bordeaux trip, we traveled with Viking again, this time on a cruise up the Danube from Bucharest, Romania, to Budapest, Hungary. Prior to the actual cruise, we spent three days touring Transylvania by land, not because I had any particular desire to visit Count Dracula's reputed or real haunts, but because the trip included an excursion to Constanta, ancient Tomi, and I wanted to see Ovid's place of exile. In Ovidian studies, the commonplace is that Tomi, far from being the desolate barbarian settlement described in the exile poetry, was actually a flourishing Greek seaport located on the Black Sea coast with a very temperate climate. Indeed, Constanta is now a popular beach resort.

So. When we arrived there by bus, rain was imminent. We managed to get in a visit to the derelict Casino on the beach and a local Greek orthodox church with fourth-century BCE ruins outside. I would have liked to look at the ruins, but then the rain started. The party was booked for lunch at a restaurant about a mile away, and the guide decided--since the bus couldn't navigate the narrow streets--that the best course of action would be to walk, pressing close to buildings and diving under awnings. Fifteen people in a narrow file slopping along, all drenched after the first two minutes. The restaurant was on the town square, opposite the archaeological museum, and the famous statue of a pensive Ovid occupies the center of the square. As we passed it, I looked up and muttered "OK, OK, I believe you."

During the rest of our trip, naturally, we mostly enjoyed excellent weather. Highlights of Bucharest included the remains of the Old Court, where Vlad Tepes ruled, and the Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum, recreating burgher and peasant life. On the first day after embarking, we went to the Bulgarian villages of Veliko Tarnovo and Arbanasi, where I bought a bagful of Damascus Rose soaps and fragrances as gifts. Belogradchik Fortress in Vidin was the one obligatory military installation--glad to get that over with. The next day, cruising through the Iron Gate in Serbia, we were able to see both the Tabula Traiana, an ancient inscription commemorating the emperor's conquest of Dacia, and the modern statue of his adversary Decebalus. Trajan is popular in these parts, but they have to pay tribute to the local defenders as well.

We then arrived in Belgrade, starting to feel discombobulated by going through so many countries so quickly and having to learn new currency exchange rates in each one. The big event was a chance to go backstage at the Serbian Opera House and see costumes being sewn. Near Vakovar, Croatia (another day, another currency), we were taken to meet Suzi, a German woman who owns a bakery in an outlying town and served delicious coffee and kuchen as she explained why she had settled there. On the return to the ship, our bus passed numerous abandoned farms and houses, an indication that the Balkan War had affected even the remoter parts of Croatia. Indeed, the effects of the war were a recurring theme in country after country.

The next stop at Kalocsa, Hungary, featured a touristy but still interesting display of Puszta horsemanship, a rider driving four horses cantering abreast while standing on the backs of two. Not sure of any practical applications for that trick. Finally we arrived in Budapest, where the rain caught up with us. Our hotel was right on the central square, close to the Matthias Church, a good thing because the weather remained unpredictable. Lunch on our own in the Central Market Hall was a zoo. We were able to take in one of the major museums in our free time and had a nice sunny morning when we went on our final excursion to the village of Szentendre, an artsy-craftsy place with attractive embroidery and woodwork.

All in all, this tour was a good deal more informative than the previous France cruise and it whetted my appetite to learn more about Eastern Europe, specifically the Balkans. That was the major reason I chose to go on a small-boat tour of Croatia and Montenegro by myself in 2017.

 

Recollections of Viking "Chateaux, Rivers and Wine" Cruise, May 2015

I've been remiss in keeping this blog up-to-date, largely because of my involvement with the University, my volunteer work with the horse rescue group HEART, and my commitment to finishing an annotated bibliography of research on Catullus for the journal Lustrum. The bibliography, which took six years to complete (2010-16) finally went to the publisher last year and was published in January. With that and other deadlines met, I find myself for the first time in ages with extra time available, and I've promised myself that I will complete necessarily brief summaries of our trips to France in 2015 and Eastern Europe in 2016, as well as a much more detailed account of my solo visit to Croatia in May 2017. So here are my impressions of the river cruise around Bordeaux and environs, necessarily fuzzy because it's been two years.

What sticks in the mind two years after a vacation is a good test of whether the trip accomplished its aims and gave value for money. That's a consideration because Viking Tours caters to an upscale market. My rationale for choosing one of their offerings was increased accessibility for Ron, who isn't able to handle stairs on a ship any more. So the accommodations and the food were definitely better than those of Voyages to Antiquity, with its rather cramped cabins and buffet-style meal service. Viking emphasizes the cultural immersion over the educational experience: there were no on-board history lectures, and shore excursions included a truffle hunting excursion and a visit to the Camus distillery to sample cognac and blend your own. We also visited a citadel, the 17th century Fortress of Blaye constructed by Louis XIV. One military site or castle per trip is my limit--I find towering stone walls depressing. The tour included visits to several vineyards, tasting well-known French varietals--Sauternes, Burgundies and Bordeaux, and the wines of Saint-Emilion. We had a banquet at one of the chateaux with accompanying house wines, served in an eighteenth-century hall. Very gracious ambiance. Other than that, most of the on-shore activities involved city walking tours, again a problem for Ron.

Of the shore excursions, the Saint-Emilion visit was the most memorable. The town is charming, but predictably thronged with tourists and expensive. Prices for bottles of vintage wines were out of sight. Still, it was pleasant to explore the streets of the old town and then have a glass of wine in the ruins of the Des Cordeliers convent. I also enjoyed the visit to the Camus distillery, where I blended my own bottle of cognac. After putting it away for the requisite twelve months, we tasted it and it's not bad at all; we still have some left for next Christmas, although the bottle is getting low. While I was sipping cognac, Ron took the truffle-hunting excursion. He was delighted that the dog they used looked a lot like Annie. 

 

At the Blaye citadel, I saw a group of saddled horses tied up and wondered what they were doing there. Their tack, though reminiscent of dressage saddles, had extra equipment attached. Maybe they were going for a trail ride starting from the monument. That would have been more fun than trudging along stone walks.

After the cruise, Ron and I caught the train to Paris, where we spent three days at the charming Hotel Alma. It's centrally located, within walking distance of Les Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb. We took the opportunity to see both, because we hadn't been able to fit them in on previous visits. Faute de mieux, since I didn't want to go back to the Louvre again, we also took in a fascinating exhibition of medieval magic texts and artifacts at the Jewish Museum. That too was a highlight, and one I absolutely hadn't planned for--we were walking past, and there it was.

Grade for this trip: B. Not a whole lot of serendipity except for the museum visit.

Cruise: Treasures of Belize, Guatemala and the Yucatan, February 22 to March 1, 2014

This AIA-sponsored tour aboard the Yorktown was my best cruise experience so far. Our two previous cruises on the Aegean Odyssey were fascinating in terms of places visited, but disappointing otherwise. With a couple of exceptions, I really didn't think the guides at the Greek and Turkish sites were that informed, so I found the excursions rather superficial. Site visits on the cruise to SE Asia were much better, but there were long days at sea with nothing to do and there was very little direct contact with other passengers. This time, the size of the ship and the dining arrangements made everything different. The Yorktown only holds 130 guests to begin with, and the tour wasn't completely booked. A week was long enough for us to get to know most of the 82 other passengers. A number of people were traveling solo, which meant they were more likely to come up to you and begin a conversation. Finally, tables were set up for six persons, so we never ate by ourselves. By the end of the cruise, the tour group had formed something like a community. From now on, I'm going to keep the social dynamics in mind when I make travel preparations, because large cruise ships, though much cheaper, are definitely more isolating. Although Ron and I have been to a number of Maya sites before, starting with Copan in the early eighties, I learned considerably more about the culture on this voyage. Maya studies have exploded in the past thirty years, chiefly because of the decipherment of the writing, but also because of the gigantic amount of archaeological research recently done. One of the study leaders for the voyage, Sandra Noble, was the former Executive Director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, so she was very much on top of the current discoveries and theories. I will say that the other two lecturers, Maria Luisa Crawford and former Ambassador Heather Hodges, were equally authoritative. In addition to the instructional staff, the ship also had an expert birdwatcher and two biologists on board to discuss aspects of the ecological system. Lectures catered to a variety of interests and were uniformly entertaining.

While the trip itself was enjoyable, getting to Honduras, where we embarked, had its drawbacks. For the second time in as many trips, we ran into a flight delay straight off--weather in Denver was preventing the equipment from returning to Tucson. We had to wait for several hours, finally boarding at 9:30 p.m. Since we didn't arrive in Denver until 11:10, we made our connecting flight to LaGuardia with just minutes to spare. Baggage, naturally, got left in Denver. However, the staff made arrangements for our suitcases to be collected at the San Pedro Sula airport and taken to the next port of call, so we only had to wait one day for a change of clothing. One good thing--the last two legs of the flight were business class, which allowed us to arrive in Honduras completely rested. Flying into Honduras, I was shocked to see the extent of deforestation. That was already a concern on our first visit back in the 1980s, and now whole swathes of rainforest, which I remember surrounding San Pedro Sula at that time, have completely disappeared. The city has also become a major narco-trafficking center and consequently has one of the highest crime rates of any city on the American continents. Later on the voyage, passengers who overnighted in San Pedro Sula shared their concerns about going out on the street even in the vicinity of their four-star hotel. Arriving in the early afternoon as we did, we saw little of the city and were taken by van directly to the ship. After embarkation, we had a cruise briefing, the usual mandatory life jacket drill and then dinner. By that time the long journey had caught up with us, so bed followed immediately. I had no idea, incidentally, that a fellow Classicist, Sally Davis, was also on the cruise. It had been some time since we had seen each other, so it was great to know she too was enjoying retirement. On Sunday, the 23rd, we enjoyed our first excursion. After arriving in Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala, Ron joined the group to see the Mayan site at Quirigua near Copan, while I opted to visit San Felipe Fortress. The fortress was chiefly interesting for its armament and its prison. Two cannons bore the emblems of the British Navy, because they had been captured in a skirmish. The prison cells, below ground and shallow, just a place to chain someone up, must have been an excruciating experience. While most other excursions involved Mayan ruins, we were taken on a very enjoyable hike through the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary. Unfortunately, we saw no wildlife outside of insects. People who had no previous experience with leafcutter ants marveled at how they could carry leaf fragments bigger than they were. Since I'm fully aware of what they can do to a rosebush, I wasn't as thrilled as my companions. Another interesting excursion was the resort town of Placencia, very colorful and exotic, with many great photo opportunities. I'm not quite sure of what one would do there, though--there's a beach and several restaurants, but outside of swimming and partying, the place didn't have much to offer. I got the impression that it's mostly for singles and honeymooners. While we didn't have much opportunity to shop, Ron purchased a hand-carved cane on which he's received many compliments, and I was able to find a ring with three colors of amber and a turquoise necklace that works very nicely with some of my dressy pant outfits. The best opportunities for photography, though, were the sunsets and sunrises at sea. I've never seen such colors in the sky, even in Tucson.

On the last night of the cruise, we were treated to a congenial reception and farewell dinner. Again, a marvelous contrast with the receptions and dinners on the Aegean Odyssey, which in retrospect were pretty formal and stiff. I noticed that people were dressed differently on the two ships--the Aegean Odyssey guests wore very expensive, fussy clothing (problems packing, I should think), while on the Yorktown dress was more casual but many outfits were nicely put together. Picking a cruise, I'm beginning to see, takes a lot of knowledge and skill. You choose the wrong one and you're paying an extravagant price for sitting on deck reading a book. On the right one, conversely, you have a great time, even if you're not all that enthusiastic about Mayan ruins after seeing four or five sites.

San Francisco Opera Summer Miniseries, 2013

From July 1 through July 5 we were in San Francisco for a summer out-of-town miniseries: Cosi Fan Tutte, Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and Tales of Hoffmann. We were lucky enough to be able to book a room at the Inn at the Opera, and--perhaps because they recognized us as returning patrons--we were given a much larger room than we had ever had before, on the top floor, facing the street. Getting from the airport to the hotel was a better experience, too. The day we arrived, BART went out on strike. Gambling that it probably would, I made airport shuttle reservations in advance and was surprised to discover that the round trip for two, with door-to-door service, was only $20 more than it would have been on BART. Since using BART involves trundling our bags a half-mile to or from the station, I'll definitely opt for the easier route from now on. Monday night's Cosi was sung adequately, with a cast ranging from excellent (Philippe Sly as Guglielmo) to lackluster, but the concept was what made it memorable. It was updated to 1914 and set in a Mediterranean resort town. The audience was constantly reminded that hostilities were about to break out. At the very end of the opera, instead of reuniting with their original fiancées, Ferrando and Guglielmo join up with the army for real. Perhaps they were thinking it would only be a couple of months--enough time to teach the girls a lesson? At least, that's what I took from the conclusion. Incidentally, some reviews of the production (actually a revival) were enthusiastic, but the Chronicle called it "unpredictable." Nicola Luisotti received very low marks for letting the tempo drag through the second act. Tuesday's performance was Mark Adamo's Mary Magdalene, actually commissioned by the SF Opera. It was a disaster. The fundamental problem, I think, was the utterly banal libretto, compared to which The DaVinci Code reads like Shakespeare. When Adamo tried for sublimity, he fell painfully short; when he tried for humor, as in the joking among Yeshua's male disciples at his bachelor party (!), it was so embarrassing I squirmed in my seat. Add that the plot itself is preposterous and the music an ungainly blend of dissonance and Steven Sondheim. We left after the first act. Again, I've been reading the reviews; while some disliked it, others thought Adamo's work was profound. I think they were responding to the political correctness. Hoffmann redeemed everything else. I was disappointed that Natalie Dessay, who was originally supposed to sing all four of Hoffmann's women, only took the role of Antonia and was not particularly distinguished in it. However, Matthew Polenzani as Hoffmann and Christian Van Horn, singing Lindorf, Coppelius, Dr. Miracle, and Dapertutto, arrestingly carried the lengthy performance; but, like the Chronicle reviewer again, I would say the standout member of the cast was mezzo-soprano Angela Brower, who sang the Muse/Nicklausse. Though Hye Jung Lee as Olympia was exceptional, too--it's amazing that she can go from Madame Mao in Nixon in China to a role that demands such perfect vocal precision. I also admired the sets, which drew on the work of the Symbolist painter Leon Spilliaert. This was a much better production than the Met's Live in HD version of two years ago. Apart from seeing operas, we had a nice lunch on Tuesday with Jeanne and Norm, catching up on family news. We planned to get together again on the holiday to watch a Fourth of July parade in one of the small towns near Antioch (Jeanne assures me it's comparable to Butte's parade) but missed connections, thanks to a problem with my cell phone. For Christmas, if not before, I'm going to treat myself to the latest make of I-phone if it can work with T-Mobile. We also visited our favorite haunts--lunch at Pompei's Grotto on Fisherman's Wharf and shopping and lunch at the Ferry Building. Sale merchandise at Nordstrom's and Macy's was unremarkable, though I did pick up a pair of Max Mara jeans, originally $225, for $60. Our most exciting discovery was a small French corner restaurant, Chez Maman, in the Hayes Valley--terrific food and inexpensive prices. When I first saw the listing for the 2013-14 SF Opera summer season, I had decided not to go--they're offering Traviata and Butterfly, both of which I've seen too many times lately, along with Showboat. I am not one of those who believes in blurring genre lines between opera and musicals, so my immediate reaction was "if I want to see Showboat I'll attend the local high school production." After enjoying Hoffmann so much, though, I decided to subscribe for next year. Who knows--they may do something just as compelling with the Verdi or Puccini next time. As for Showboat, the libretto, at least, is less clichéd than Adamo's.