In no particular order, here are the highlights:
1. Dylan concert on my birthday weekend. I went with Ed, of course, and with a friend of Lisa's, Marion. The set list was wonderful, combining old and new stuff, all re-imagined and re-interpreted by my hero, the king of second and third chances. The opening band, The Raconteurs, was a big, happy surprise to me--I'd never really heard of them, and loved their dramatic, LOUD, idiosynchratic material. A cover of Cher's Bang Bang, for example!
2. My birthday party, which I threw for myself. The theme, Late Bloomer, was intended to go along with the party activity, which was to be bulb planting. It rained torrentially all day, however, so no bulb planting, but lots of fun with good friends, nontheless.
3. My tire blowing out on my way home to my birthday party--I had just picked Libby up from a school friend's party, and since my own party was due to start in an hour, had raced out of the house without my cell phone. So . . . no phone, me and Libby, flat tire, pounding rain, party coming up . . . But wait, miraculously this happened right in front of the Newtonville Fire Department! Two firemen, Lorne and Tony, changed my tire in about 3 minutes, wished me happy birthday, and sent me on my way! An excellent birthday present.
4. My Harold Pinter lecture at the Brookline Center for Adult Ed. When I told a friend I was doing this, she said "Is he the one who wrote all those dreary plays?" I said, I guess, but this lecture is about his substantial contribution to cinema. "And what do you know about this?" she asked skeptically. A good question, one I asked myself as I did my research. It reminded me of a joke Pinter told in an interview about his friend and fellow playwright Tom Stoppard, who was applying for a political reporting job at the BBC as a very young man. The interviewer asked him who the prime minister was (it wasn't the prime minister, but something equally no brainerish) and Stoppard, who didn't know, said "I said I was interested in politics, not obsessed by them!" I'm interested, but not obsessed by Pinter--but it was great fun watching some favorite old films again--the Pumpkin Eater, The Go-between . . .
Ok, here's the highlight of this highlight! One of the ladies who attended the lecture asked me if I had seen Antonia Fraser, Pinter's wife, at the Brookline Booksmith the night before. No, I hadn't even known she was in town, I replied, but I wish I had, I would have invtited her to this lecture. "Oh, I did invite her," the lady said, "but she told me she had to be in Washington D.C. tonight!" I was immediately struck with two thoughts: that I was grateful she hadn't come, as there was quite a bit of sort of scandalous stuff in my lecture about her, and I would have had to throw some of it out . . . and that it could be that Lady Fraser had actually TOLD Pinter about my lecture, if she had phoned him that night!!!!!! "Oh Harold, someone named Maureen Tripp is lecturing about your screenplays here tomorrow night . . . " "Can't imagine anyone would be interested in that old stuff," Harold (perhaps) might have snorted . . .
At an advanced age, and in not great health, Pinter is still acting (just finished a two week run of Krapp's Last Tape in London last month), and, of course, still speaking out: his Nobel Lecture is impassioned in spirit, language, and delivery:
You can see it online at:
http://www.haroldpinter.org
On to tackle the wretched turkey brine . . . Happy Thanksgiving to all!
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