Mary Panttaja

Or not. In the air, on a bus, now on a train from Newark to NYC for a day of meetings. What started out as a light trip has filled pretty much up to the brim: a morning meeting, a required trip to Roberto’s (purveyor of fine saxaphones and Jim’s current favorite sax shop), an afternoon meeting and then “Moon for the Misbegotten” with Kevin Spacey, Eve Best (up for a Tony), and Colm Meaney. Tomorrow, two more meetings and a train to Boston. The weekend is also filling with a social schedule—partly adopted from our daughter, Erin.

This is theatre month. For folks who live in the country we tally up a lot of theatre, mostly in one week when the entire family goes to Ashland, Oregon for the Oregon Shakepseare Festival (usually 6-8 plays in 4-5 days). Unknown by most people, half of the OSF productions are modern plays written by modern playwrights. We have a relatively serious relationship to theater in the family and everyone takes it quite to heart. Luckily my son’s wife and my daughter’s boyfriend are also into the theatre experience so everyone shows up. Nowadays someone has to hang out during each play to watch the babies, but that is also a coveted opportunity.

So adding MFTM in NYC to June is a kind of warmup. It starts at 7PM which must be for some reason—and we hope to be able to sleep in a bit tomorrow.

We are trying out a new, inexpensive hotel in midtown this trip. Hotels in NYC have priced themselves out of any sense of reasonableness—though as long as folks pay the price, I guess it’s fine. I love spending time in the city, but it’s hard to justify a $600 per night room. We’ll see how this place goes—I’m excited to find something reasonable ($200). I finally figured out how to really find a good cheap hotel (anything under $350 per night—we bought the Rough Guide to NYC—the book European travelers use to find their way around—it was a big help. All the web sites promoted the same hotels and advertised low rates that never panned out. So we’ll find out how 414 Hotel turns out. I’m very hopeful.

Crossing under the Hudson River. The day looks to be beautiful, not too hot or muggy. And not raining.