Last Country Music Concert (for the Time Being)

KPIG and Country Roots' An Evening with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder is the last concert we went to before the statewide sanction against COVID-19. To Paul's great delight, he won  tickets from KSQD to attend the show of Kentucky Thunder on March 11, 2020 at Felton Music Hall. I was invited to go along as his guest.

We had an early dinner and arrived promptly at the door at 7:00 pm. Fully aware of the social distancing, a long line of audience members kept a respectable distance from one another. Soon, the door was open, and people began to walk in. For some reason, Paul's name was not on the special will-call list. Apparently the sub-DJ at KSQD was too overwhelmed with radio procedures and calls during her shift that day. But the concert organizer admitted us in good faith and stamped our right hands.

We got two chairs in the third row which was shared by an elderly and unsteady couple. Before long, we realized that we needed to move to the center or, better still, to the front of the stage fully surrounded by Ricky Skaggs' fans. Many of them were not just standing, but swinging or dancing to the music. Moreover, the sound was far better here than in our seating area.

With our much improved sound and up-close view, I was impressed at how accomplished the whole band was. They gave the intimate audience the last and best performance before the sanctions would be lifted. They could play beautifully as a whole or individually, e.g., Ricky, Paul Brewster and Dennis Park (baritone vocals) sang in harmony or separately. Instrumentally, Mike Barnett played fiddle, Jake Workman, lead guitar, Paul Brewster, rhythm guitar, Russell Carson, banjo, Jeff Picker, bass, and Dennis Parker, rhythm guitar, mandolin, and fiddle.

As a lead singer, Ricky's voice was as smooth as old wine while his mandolin had a surprisingly wide range from gentle to white heat energetic. Perhaps fully aware that he would be away from his audience for a long time, he was reminiscent of his past concerts in Santa Cruz, his childhood and family songs, and his parental teaching about every cloud having a silver lining. When he first started to play mandolin, and it was out of tune, his father told him not to worry, "It will just sound like more people are playing."

The audience assembled was knowledgeably cognizant of Rick Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder. They followed the performance closely and fondly. They were longing for more after the band ended at 8:40 pm. After two more encores, Kentucky Thunder left the stage.

So long, we will meet soon!

Entitlement and Punishment

When my colleague Liz gave me a copy of The Dutch House, I was not prepared for it to be another rendition of gold diggers.

Having encountered a real-life gold digger two years ago in 2018, I felt insufferably indignant about the unique injustice. As time is the best healer, I have begun to learn to live and enjoy our own life, which is the precise story line of Ann Patchett's new book entitled The Dutch House in 2019, the same year Donna Leon published her Unto Us a Son Is Given on the same subject.

The Dutch House is actually about the Conroys, a couple from Brooklyn. A self-made real-estate magnate, Cyril Conroy, was business-wise, but wife-foolish. He bought from the bank the grandiose Dutch House in Elkins Park, outside Philadelphia, to please his wife Elna, but ended up suffocating and frightening her away to India to help Mother Teresa with the poor. Divorced with two young kids, three-year-old son Danny, and ten-year-old daughter Maeve, he married again with Andrea, a much younger women who only adored the imposing house and everything inside, to boot.

Three years into the marriage, Cyril not only found his new wife bringing two young daughters from her previous life, but also found himself, in the end, collapsed and dead on the stairs of his new building. Before long, the newly widowed Andrea assumed complete control of the family estate and finances through her capable big-city lawyer, and ordered Marve and Danny to leave the house at a moment's notice, since Cyril failed to mention any provisions for his own children in his will. So departing together were the house-keeper and cook, two sisters hired by the first wife. Four of them crammed into Marve's small car and drove away to fend for themselves.

Danny moved into his sister's tiny apartment and lived on her limited income from working for a vegetable refrigeration company. What enabled him to go to a private high school, Columbia, and its medical school was an almost forgotten educational trust Cyril had established to be shared by Danny and two step-daughters, minus Marve who had already started to work. But such a fortune was precarious and full of obstacles. His entry into medical school was met with fierce protests from Andrea who thought the trust only covered college education, not medical school whose expensive tuition would exhaust all funds for her daughters to enjoy, a typical entitlement of all gold diggers and leeches. Such is Pratchett's stock in trade: astute observations about human nature.

Just as their Brooklyn-born father, Danny and his sister worked hard to create from scratch their own fortune. Unmarried, Marve lived a fulfilled life, while Danny became a new real-estate magnate himself, even though he was a fully qualified doctor. But unlike their lonely father, the two siblings were surrounded with love from their families, friends, and former house staff. When Marve fell ill with heart attacks, their long missing mother Elna came back to their rescue.

There was always an unresolved issue with Marve and Danny: their lost Dutch House. They would often drive out of their way to stop by, wondering what was happening inside, but never mustering courage enough to go in until Elna accompanied them to pay an official visit. It turned out the gold digger did not fare better: Andrea had been suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's. One daughter never wanted to come back to the house while another daughter, a pediatric oncologist, as a result of Andrea's nagging about Danny's medical school, remained childless. As trained by Mother Teresa, Elna decided to stay on to help Andrea's daughter to care for the sick. Reduced to a less than childlike mental state, Andrea mistook Danny for Cyril, and died in the care of Elna two weeks later.

The Dutch House was at last rightfully returned to the Conroys. Danny purchased it back for his daughter. It seems that the former entitlement is not without it's ultimate due punishment.