A friend and I went to the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown. The six hour drive was tiresome even though my friend is a superb driver. On the way we stopped at various auction houses.

Cooperstown is both upscale and down home. We stayed in a homey motel on the Otsego Lake. It’s the sort of place people return to, having been there with their parents. You can stay in the motel or in a cottage. We chose a large motel room. Its back door opened onto a lawn and then down to the lake. It’s very quiet.

The Baseball Museum was delightful, not crowded but filled with baseball enthusiasts. The Fenimore Art Museum was spacious and has a superb collection of American Indian Art and American Folk Art. Herb Ritts: The Rock Portraits has terrific photos and videos of the glamorous eighties and nineties.

At Glimmerglass’s main theater  we saw a matinee performance of Showboat. Too long, a meandering plot. 

The next day we saw The Ghosts of Versailles, music by John Corigliano, libretto by William M. Hoffman. For me, it was a delightful surprise.  

RIP Paul Findley

Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder. 

Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed ? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook?