Day 4-Carnegie Hall, Maybe Happy Ending

by | May 6, 2026 | Uncategorized

I realized after I posted yesterday that the headline said we went to see the play “Oh, Mary,” but I had not written about it. As you may remember, we are seeing four plays, and as I write this, we have been to all four. I would have to say that most of the folks on the tour were very nice when they said that “Oh, Mary” “was not my favorite.” Others were downright critical and said it was one of the worst plays they had ever seen.

I have to admit that I liked it. Kathleen liked it even though she is not a big Maya Rudolph fan (she was playing Mary when we saw the show). It is a VERY broad and dark comedy. If you have not seen it and think that you might, spoiler alert. “Oh, Mary” is about our 16th first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. It takes place in the last weeks before Lincoln’s assassination. Mary is a drunk, she is bored and wants to be in a cabaret show (is this the start of a great comedy or what?). Maya made her entrance to great applause and proceeded to crack us up with almost five full minutes of over-the-top physical comedy without speaking a single intelligible word. For some, it was all downhill from there. Lincoln is portrayed as gay, and Mary is a horrible person who only wants booze and to perform. She is pretty much nasty to everyone. Her husband hires a man to give her acting lessons, who turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, later revealed to be Abe’s secret gay lover. There is even a scene where Lincoln is sitting at his desk screaming (you think it’s about the war), but when Mary leaves, he is actually having oral sex with a soldier who was under his desk. See what I mean? This play was easy to either love or hate. And I haven’t even (and won’t) told you the biggest twist of all. It ends with Mary's cabaret show.

Enough about that. More about the other plays later. Today’s post is about a kind of short day since it was Sunday. We were up late (we didn’t have to meet until 10:00 am) and off on a tour of Carnegie Hall. It was awesome. We had a great guide, and we learned a lot. The hall is beautiful. I only wish we could have seen a performance there. Photos are both above and below. And I almost forgot to mention that since we did not meet up as early, I had more time to roam around Manhattan and take photos. They are down there as well.

That afternoon, we saw our only matinée, “Sometimes, Happy Ending,” about two robots living in Seoul, Korea, who fall in love. I know, that sounds more absurd than “Oh, Mary.” But this was the play that most of us loved the most. I won’t go into all of it, but it was a beautiful piece with a cast of only five, so much heart, and so much to say about the human condition that we just loved it, no matter how impossible the situation seemed. I also have to mention that the sets were breathtaking, and the way they handled the entire show with sets, lights, and costumes was off the charts. No wonder this show won last year’s Tony for best musical.

That was about it (slow day on Sunday!), except for a group dinner at Marseilles restaurant. You don’t even have to guess that this was a French place and the food was excellent. I like escargot and have them when I can (mostly on ships). Their escargot was the best I have ever had.

After dinner, it was back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. Monday would be much busier.

Day 3–Theater Talk, Walking Tour, Tapas and Oh, Mary

by | May 4, 2026 | Uncategorized

After our big night out seeing Operation Mincemeat (which everyone generally liked), we were up again the next morning and off to a theater talk. This meant we walked about three blocks to a building that housed some small playhouse-type theaters (that hold about 50-60 people and are used for small plays, rehearsals, and the like) and went up to one of the theaters on the third floor to meet with two fantastic people. The first was Tim Dolan. Tim has been a longtime actor and dancer on Broadway and in touring shows. But a few years back, he decided he'd better find a more regular paycheck (because he now has a family), so he started a tour business giving tours of Broadway and also started one selling Broadway souvenirs. We have had him as our speaker twice so far, and he is an absolute font of Broadway knowledge. And because of his acting experience, he is a JOY to listen to.

This morning, he was moderating a discussion with Cassie Silva, who is a currently working actress that we will see on Tuesday night in the musical & Juliet. In the very short hour we had them talking to us, we learned so many behind-the-scenes facts and heard so many great stories that we wanted the talk to last all day. Sadly, we only had them for about an hour (but we got Tim back two more times later in the week). In the video below, I want to give you a small example of what the talk was like.

After our theater talk, the entire group of 41 had four walking tour options to choose from in the city. Group one headed out to walk the High Line in Midtown and visit the Little Island. I have walked the High Line numerous times, so I skipped that one. Group two would take a tour of the Gilded Age neighborhoods. If you are familiar with the HBO series of that name, you will know that this is the area where the turn-of-the-century new money clashed with the old. It’s a great story, and I highly recommend the show (created and written by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame). Group three took the subway south to Lower Manhattan and did a tour of Hamilton’s New York.

I chose to join the fourth group for a walking tour of Midtown and Grand Central Terminal with our guide, Bruce Roberts. I would have to call Bruce a mensch. A very interesting one. He used to be a full-time guide, but then he went into producing. He currently has productions running in two or three places around the country and is part of the production team for a West End (London) show coming to Broadway later this year.

Bruce had been brought in by Alex of Break-Away at the last minute. It seems we originally had only three tours scheduled: Hamilton’s NY, Midtown, and GCT and the High Line. I was excited to do the Midtown tour because I had never really been to Grand Central Terminal to take photos. But a group of ladies on the tour (unbeknownst to me) corresponded with Alex and asked about a Gilded Age tour. When we got here, I was fine with that and thanked Alex for setting it up for them, but he had worked it out by canceling the GCT/Midtown tour I wanted to do. I told him that and said, “It’s OK. I can walk over on my own.” Lo and behold, the next morning when we met up, Michael, our head guide, said, “We now have four tours and the Midtown/GCT tour was back on.” Alex really goes the extra mile for his groups.

Bruce got into all this because he has worked with all the guys who have been touring us around, and they called him to ask if he wanted to spend his weather-perfect Saturday walking a bunch of old people from Washington State around midtown. He said yes, and we got lucky. Our tour went from the theater where we had heard Cassie and Tim speak, through the theater district, to Rockefeller Center, around the Chrysler Building and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and we finished up at Grand Central Terminal. Photos are below. Remember to click to enlarge them. Again, we learned all kinds of trivia and heard many background stories about the city.

After that tour, it was a quick (I mean, really QUICK–3 minutes on the train from GCT to our hotel) ride, and it was time to dress for dinner. I had picked out what turned out to be an outstanding Spanish tapas place called Boqueria. The food was superb, the service excellent, the company better, and the Sangria the best I have ever had. We had a wonderful time.

After dinner, we headed to our second Broadway show. Tonight, we were seeing Oh, Mary, a complete farce about our 16th First Lady. Suffice it to say, they threw out the history books on this one. Mr. Lincoln was black… and gay. John Wilkes Booth was his gay lover. Mary Todd was a drunken, delusional want-to-be cabaret star. OK, are you totally mixed up? So were we, and we saw the play. There were mixed reactions within our party the day after this show. But with that kind of story, there have to be. Most of the folks were nice and said it was “Not my favorite.” I appreciated that. It’s not a play for everyone. Even with Maya Rudolf as Mary (she was hilarious, though in a very broad, physical comedic portrayal).

On Broadway, there is no censoring, just self-censorship and doing what makes sense.  —Robert Lopez

Day 2–Getting Lost, The Met, Lincoln and Mincemeat

by | May 3, 2026 | Uncategorized

This is my typical walk in NYC. Start one way, figure out it's the wrong way, go another way, no, that's the wrong way, and do it all over again.

Our day started with me walking. And as I write this on the morning of day 4, I can definitely say I have gotten older since the last time we were in NYC. I just can’t get my bearings. We have been here four times, and in the first three, I had no problem finding my way. Now I wander around like a lost child, looking for his mommy. Or my friend Mike and I wandering around Singapore pre-dawn. Yes, I could use a maps app on my phone, but I swear, when it says start route, I NEVER know which way to go. Supposedly, if I look at the little dot on the phone, it shows the direction I am going. But the buildings here seem to mess it up, and I will get half a block away before it tells me I have gone the wrong way. This morning I walked half an Avenue block (the long ones) before I realized I was going uptown instead of downtown, where I wanted to go. I know where I want to go; I just can’t seem to get my head in the right place. Check out this screenshot of my route. It’s nuts. I walk up a half a block, then back, then up the same block another way, then back and then a different block. The truly funny thing is that I get messed up when I go find these places in the morning but when we go out as a large or small group, everyone expects me to be the guide.

At any rate, Friday, after my walk, I went out and brought a small breakfast back to the room. We ate, then met the group for a "luxury motor coach" ride up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the way, we stopped at the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park for a quick walk and talk led by our excellent guide, Hardy. I need to say here that it would be really nice if Break-Away Tours invested in Whisper devices that let you plug the guide directly into your ear. With 41 of us in a crowded outdoor space, it is sometimes very difficult to hear the guides.

After our stop in Central Park, we continued uptown (I think ?) to the Met. It was PACKED! But we had a private tour arranged that lasted a little more than an hour. Our guide told us that seeing all the exhibits would take about three weeks' worth of 24-hour days, so he gave us a highlights tour of what he thought we might like to see. We saw Tiffany glass, African art, European portraiture, British sculpture, and Greek statuary. I have to say, our guide was very good. He shared things I had not heard before (I never took an art appreciation course) about the paintings. I truly enjoyed it. When he was done, he released us into the wilds of the museum to catch lunch (which we did) and then to wander for about an hour. At this point, Kathleen had walked more than she had in a long while, so I got her an Lyft (thanks for the freebie, Chase) and sent her back to the hotel for a nap while the rest of us moved on to tour Lincoln Center. I told Kathleen later that she made the right choice, as the Lincoln Center tour was the lowlight (so far) of our trip.

Our guide was new and didn’t know much. It was kind of sad. People would ask him questions, and he would say, “I will have to look that up for a future tour,” or “That wasn’t in our training.” Since we had split into three small groups, our group had just picked the short straw. We saw the other groups doing a lot more interesting things, and the reviews from those groups were great, but we just got the wrong guide.

After our tour at LC, we returned to the hotel for a brief rest before heading out to dinner on our own. Kathleen and I had made reservations for six or eight (depending on the night) at nearby restaurants. That night, we were dining with six other Trilogy friends at the famous Sardi’s in the heart of the theater district. This is where cast members (and a lot of famous people) come to have dinner or drinks post-show. Their walls are lined with signed (by the subject) framed caricature portraits. Some are easily recognizable, while others we had to go up to and read the signatures, and depending on how bad their handwriting was, we still don’t know who they are.

The food (like the previous night’s at Tony’s DiNapoli) was fine. I had lasagna because it hadn’t been part of the feast the night before. The menu leaned a little toward Italian cuisine, but there were other options. But you don’t go to Sardi’s for the food. You go for the history. It’s been there for 100 years. And it’s one of those places you need to go once. We did the same thing when we went to The Ivy in London two years ago, before a play in the West End. Good food, but you are there for the history.

After dinner, we walked about half a block to the theater to see Operation Mincemeat. It was quite the show. Five actors, 54 characters, about a thousand costume changes, some great songs (sung way too fast ?), some very poignant songs that brought a tear to my eye, and some hilarious laughs. Not my favorite show I have ever seen, but pretty darn good. And it’s based on a true story. Check out the description in my pre-trip post.

After the show, we were DONE! It was back to the hotel (thankfully only three blocks away) and bed. I was so tired I didn’t even bother to walk the next morning…which was OK since we walked a ton more the next day. More about that in my next post.

Photos are below. If my gallery module works, they will look good and work well. You can click them to enlarge. Hope it does. Sadly I can't figure out how to drop them between my paragraphs so today they are all at the end.

The fact that I even get in Broadway shows is, to me, still amazing, but then to win a Tony was just incredible.  —Jane Krakouski

Finally Back!

by | Mar 14, 2026 | Uncategorized

It certainly has been a while, but I think, hope and pray that I am back posting on my own website. The transition from WordPress.com to plain old WordPress on my BlueHost server has been interesting, frustrating and sometimes downright horrid, but I think it is on the way to becoming the site I want it to be and that I hope you will like. There are still a few things we are working on, but once I found a new software solution called Divi, things got better. Mostly due to their amazing tech support from a (sorry to type this) AI named Fin (Divi is made in Finland, thus Fin).

I know we're not supposed to love AIs, but I believe that helping with tech support is one of their best functions. One of the things I dislike most about human tech support via chat or voice is that if you don't understand something on the first try, they start thinking, "This guy must be really dumb." When you ask them for the third or fourth time how to do something, they really seem to think you are a total moron. I don't usually have to ask three times, but sometimes, when learning an entirely new way to do something, it takes that many repetitions. And human tech support, being paid by the hour and the number of people they assist, truly just wants people like me to go away so they can go on with answering calls and helping people with a computer IQ over 10.

An AI, on the other hand, doesn't care how many times you ask it a question. It will review the problem with you, again and again. And its AI is great at that. It even tells me it understands how frustrating it is to try to work through something and think it works, only for it to revert to the problem when you go back to it an hour later. Believe me, that has happened to me. And that's when I start to scream, cry, or both. Thankfully, I have a wonderful wife who puts up with me and an amazing dog who knows when I am stressed and gives me as many snuggles and kisses as I can handle when things go wrong. And in this journey to start the year, lots of things have gone wrong. Again and again and again.

Which brings us to here. My "new" website. Please take a minute to look around and let me know if you find anything that needs attention. I have had Kathleen and my buddy Bob looking at it this week and I think I have fixed most of the things they mentioned to me and the other thing is what Divi's tech support is working on.

It is pretty much the same content as before (other than this post), but in some ways a better design and in some ways worse. For instance, do you remember all those cool galleries that you could click and turn into slide shows of my photos? Well, it took me forever to figure out how to get those to work in the new format. But as you will see below, I have recreated it. Now I just have to figure out how to make the captions bigger and more readable when you click on the photo to see it. But that also means that if you look at past posts, those galleries are gone, replaced with just thumbnails of my photos that you have to click twice to see. For them to look like they used to, I would have to go back and change each one individually. As much as I love you, my readers, that's not going to happen. 

So, as my first post on the new site (we haven't really been traveling), I wanted to update you on what we've been doing in the first 2.5 months of 2026. 

January was all about the usual stuff. Seriously, for some reason, January always feels like a boring month. I just looked back at our calendar, and the most exciting thing that happened was that our dishwasher broke and was out of commission for nearly the entire month until the warranty company agreed to pay for the repair. 

But February was a bit busier. I went down to Olympia a couple of times to see the kids. I saw Maylee in a play (Frozen) and attended a basketball game where Mason's high school band was performing. I also met his girlfriend, Kyleigh (who is amazing), and caught up with the Olympia group in Gig Harbor to celebrate Mason's 15th birthday by playing Laser Tag (I LOVE LASER TAG–photo below). 

At the start of March, we both traveled to Olympia proudly to be there when our son-in-law, Joel, was promoted to Lieutenant in the Washington State Patrol. This is a pretty big deal, and there is a picture below. I would have added these photos here, but I wanted to make sure the gallery/slide show module worked correctly, so that's why you get to see them. 

The other three photos in the gallery are from walks I took this month, along with a photo I snapped outside our front door yesterday (March 13). Yes, we had snow on March 13, which isn't supposed to happen in Western Washington. We compared the weather with my brother and sister-in-law in Southern California, and they were unseasonably hot (mid-80s), while we were getting snow. Of course, the current regime running our government claims there is no such thing as climate change, so we know we will be OK. 

My next post will return to travel topics as I share details about our upcoming trips. We have three planned between now and the end of June. Stay tuned. Don't forget to let me know if you see any issues by commenting below. That will also help me verify that comments are working.

To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome, not the obstacles.  — T.F. Hodge

My Top Ten Photos of 2025

by | Jan 4, 2026 | 365

Having just finished a 365 project, I had more than my usual number of photos to choose from this year. Usually, I end up choosing only from my travel photos. That's when I take my camera with me. But this year, between my project to take a photo a day, family pictures, our trips to Southern Africa, up the Columbia River and a few other random shots, I think I had more than 2,000 photos to choose from.

I am going to start with my eight honorable mentions and then count down from 10 to 1—my best shot of the year...in my estimation. But I would love to hear what you think of my choices in the comments.

Don't forget: if you click the first shot, you can scroll through using your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE... don't look at my photography on a phone. Please...

Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, Oregon was peaking out of the fog when I took this shot. I was going to take out all the people but when I did that in Photoshop, it just looked terrible—there was no scale. This one I like more and more every time I see it.

Number 10—Dawn on the Chobe River

I took this one while out in a small boat with just myself and the amazing Gibson who insisted on taking me out on a pre-dawn bird watching cruise even though I was the only one who had gotten up and been ready. A number of the photos you are about to see in this top ten came from that two hour cruise on the Chobe between Botswana and Namibia. I took a lot of sunrise and sunset photos in Africa. They are almost always great. This was my best because I had the boat (which is kind of a river taxi starting it's run) as a focal point.

Number 9—Hippos in the Chobe

There were two major wildlife highlights of our Africa trip. First, we spent five days on the Chobe River, then four days in the Kruger Park area of South Africa. Many of the folks we were traveling with preferred the Kruger part of the trip to the Chobe part. I (as a photographer) liked the Chobe better. This is a great illustration of why. Almost all of my Kruger-area photos are monochrome, basically brown on brown. On the Chobe, we saw that brown along the river's shores and in Chobe National Park, but there was also the blue of the river and the green of the grass on the islands that dotted it. This shot of four hippos surfacing behind our boat just worked for me. And I learned something about hippos during our days at Chobe. Did you know they don’t swim? They walk on the bottom. They are also very dangerous. Gibson did not want to be too close to them, because they could easily slip down and up under the boat we were in.

Number 8—A dark street in Bellingham

We had gone north to Bellingham, Washington, to meet our friends Jayesh and Lisa and see an anniversary presentation of mine and Jayesh's favorite movie, "The Princess Bride." There was even a live question-and-answer period with one of the stars, Cary Elwes. We stayed at an excellent Airbnb on a very dark street in Bellingham, and when I went out to walk Keeley, I saw this shot. So I ran back in to get my Nikon and came out and got this shot. This is a really good example of a shot I never could have gotten with my phone. It takes a manual setting to be able to get this kind of photo.

Number 7—Birds in the trees on the Chobe

This is another shot from my pre-dawn cruise up the Chobe with Gibson on our last day on the river. He took me near Victoria Falls (just on the other side of these trees) and asked me where I would like to be. He was just awesome and got me right to wear I could get this shot—so many birds.

Number 6—My best product shot ever

I know some of you will wonder why I included this photo of my phone, watch, and AirPods. I have taken hundreds of product photos over the years for business. I have never been able to get the lighting the way I wanted, and on this one, I think it’s perfect. It was kind of a fluke because I had forgotten to take a photo that day and got this at the last minute. If Apple needs a new photographer, I am available ?.

Number 5—A sentimental favorite portrait

Every other Thursday morning, we have to leave the house while our housekeeping service comes in to clean. We could stay, but then we would have to pen Keeley up in our guest room, and she barks the entire time. So we go out and run around. Keeley loves to go for rides. For this shot (which I took on our 26th wedding anniversary), we were in the library parking lot, and I had just come back from grabbing a book when I saw this scene. The love of my life and my furry girl. My favorite portrait of the year.

Number 4—My best lighting

This shot of my granddaughter’s school play is one of the things I love about photography—light. Real photography is all about light. There is a great quote from (I believe) Ansel Adams that says, “New photographers obsess about gear—what lens to use, what camera to buy. Once you have a little more experience, you start talking about composition, color, and clarity. But a true photographer only cares about one thing…light.” This light blew me away.

Number 3—Cheetah

It’s kind of funny that my last three photos are all of animals. We start with this shot, which I was worried about cropping so tightly. But it’s the cheetah’s eyes that make this shot better than any of the rest of the wildlife photos I took in Africa (except one). Just in case you are wondering, I was about 10 feet from this guy when I took this shot.

Number 2—Our Girl

This was the day we got her, and it’s the best action shot I took in 2025 I keep coming back to it again and again, making it my favorite shot of her all year. She changed our lives. She made them so much better. We can’t imagine not having her.

Number 1—The mighty buffalo

On that early morning bird-watching cruise with Gibson, where I shot photos seven and ten, I got this photo. We were cruising back to the Zambezi Queen when we saw this gigantic water buffalo. He was standing on the bank of the Chobe, and Gibson turned the boat and put it right in front of him. Gibson told me the guides consider these majestic animals the most dangerous in Africa, not because they are so big but because they are so erratic. Lions, elephants, and hippos might be stronger or more fearsome, but the guides know what they will do. If they are eating on the side of the river, they will keep eating, but a water buffalo will attack you at the drop of a hat. This guy moved, and we moved away pretty damn quick. But what a shot. Pure power.

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! – Ansel Adams.