Generally, I watch some YouTube videos and Colbert and/or Kimmel before I call it a night. Tonight, YouTube offered a story about Bob Fosse’s career as a trail-blazing choreographer. One of his Broadway musicals was Cabaret, which, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you need to. It was made into a movie in 1972, starring Liza Minnelli. (Trivia buffs: her parents were Judy Garland, and Vincent Minnelli, who directed Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis. This is an example of why I’m VERY interested in our local trivia at Birdfoot to have a Broadway Musical category once in a while - I’ll nail it, if it starts in 1980 and goes back in time from there).

I have been a theatre nerd since my first role as a mermaid in a play my brother Mike wrote and directed when I was maybe 8 or 10. Theatre got me - and bunches of other misfits and oddballs - through high school. I was the first student at Catholic Memorial High School to wear John Lennon-inspired wire-rim glasses (not sure how I got away with that, since until then all of us wore the same horrid black plastic frames that flattered no one; they must have been inexpensive). I kinda think that - until Lennon - only old people wore wire-rims, which of course meant they weren’t cool. Glad to have been part of that revolution, despite the silliness of it all.

The first time I ever heard a compliment (of sorts) is when my younger sister Katie told me that one of her high school classmates for some reason was apparently in awe that Kate and I were sisters. I don’t remember getting another compliment until after high school, when I was in the Milwaukee Players, a community theatre group under the umbrella of the Milwaukee Public School system. I can’t remember which show it happened during, but someone relayed to me that the director (Mr. Gillum) told her that I was “a fine little actress.” It would have been nice had he told me himself, but I guess the fact that he kept casting me may have been a clue. Gillum had been in the Broadway chorus of Paint Your Wagon. When he directed that same show for the Milwaukee Players, the musical director told him that I had the perfect range for Jenny (the leading lady). Mr. Gillum told him I was “too short” - because he’d pre-cast the male lead, who was 6’3”. So, instead of casting me, they cast a woman who couldn’t sing as well as I but was probably an inch taller…and they had her wear a borrowed wig that added about 4”-5” to her height. It was ridiculous. Ah, well.

Ahem…back to Cabaret. The movie came out the same year I had a baby and gave it up for adoption. My theatre friends and I would usually gather wherever I lived (I was the only one who worked and had a big apartment; the rest were in college dorms), and we’d perform scenes from favorite musicals. So one night, I’m all Liza Minelli, one foot up on a chair seat, and leaning into it when I realized quite suddenly that pretending I’m a Fosse-inspired dancer was a bit on the premature side. I should have waited until the stitches healed…

Fast forward to September, 1987. I was the Program Administrator at the National Theatre in DC, probably one of the best jobs a theatre nerd could get in Washington. It was the opening night of Fosse’s Sweet Charity. Fosse had been there, but was next door at the Willard Hotel with his wife Gwen Verdon when he collapsed. He died at the hospital a couple of hours later.

Joel Grey had directed Sweet Charity, and he and I were standing together, leaning on the wall at the back of the orchestra section of the theatre. We heard sirens, which got louder and louder, and then stopped - right next door.

Grey and the theatre management decided to withhold from the cast that Fosse had died until the next morning. He was only 60.

Back to the present: some of you said you’d like some of the rhubarb seeds I had in a bag out in the carport. Well…it turns out that the bag I had them in had originally contained fresh-roasted coffee beans from down the street. It hadn’t occurred to me that the bags James uses are lined - and the rhubarb seeds have been affected. They aren’t dry, brown seeds anymore. They’re black, and it could be they kind of cooked inside that lined bag. We won’t know unless we try scattering them out by a back fence and see if anything comes up there in the spring.

Just in case any of you are collecting pennies as I am, and finding it difficult to clean them well enough to find a date on them, I can highly recommend spearmint Altoids! They don’t ruin the coin’s patina. My usual go-to, Bon Ami, didn’t work. You’re welcome!

Lucy