Off to Carnegie Hall for the last Met Orchestra concert, conducted by Maestro James Levine. He was greeted, as usual, with thunderous applause as he maneuvered his motorized wheelchair to the center of the stage, waved, put his hand over his heart, turned his back on the audience and was lifted, wheelchair and all, a few feet so he would be visible above a structure resembling two doors placed on their long sides that surrounds the podium. We were off to the races. Conductor Levine led the orchestra in Antonin Dvorak’s Carnival Overture. The cellist, Lynn Harrell, played the Cello Concerto in B Minor. It was a perfect Sunday afternoon, two and a half hours of acoustic bliss.
I have always admired nurses but can’t think of any kindly, intelligent nurses in films. Can you? When I saw some friends at the showing of Carolyn Jones’s THE AMERICAN NURSE I leaned over one of them and said that Nurse Ratched was reporting for duty. I shut my mouth realizing it wasn’t the brightest remark in a group who were celebrating nurses. Across the aisle, a woman laughed. She turned out to be a nurse and, of course, couldn’t have cared less about my wise crack. She and her retired policeman husband (Quote: Nurses and cops go well together.) Invited me to sit with them and share their popcorn. THE AMERICAN NURSE follows the daily schedules of five nurses. Their disciplines are varied. They range from a nurse in Appalachia who works with the poor, a nun who wondered how long small community centered nursing homes could survive without being gobbled up by large companies, a nurse who works with veterans, one who works within the penal community, and a labor and delivery nurse. All five, three women and two men, were examples of kind, intelligent professionals.
Jessie Kulchek, Detective Steve’s daughter, breezed into town from Rhode Island School of Design. Her father took her to Basta Pasta. She had the dessert she always has, Tiramisu.
