The long low subway corridors that lead from 7th Ave to 8th, a long block underground, are full of strange sounds, like Prospero’s isle, and music. Drumming, mostly, but Pan pipes, and jazz. Not until last night – to my knowledge, anyway – opera. To my amazement I heard in the distance, a quarter of a mile away, the strains of ‘La Donna e Mobile,’ sung with skill and gusto. Turned out there were 4 singers taking turns, part of an Opera Collective, or indeed The Opera Collective. Fine singers all. The sweetest part of it, as they battled the massive thunder of subway trains all around us, arriving and departing and echoing in the tiled corridors, was a young black guy who stood absolutely enraptured, listening open-mouthed as singer after singer delivered party pieces. I stood beside him as each one sang, until the tenor’s turn came around and he delivered ‘Della Sua Pace,’ a perfect conclusion to my subway listening evening.

Something about the first thick snowfall (early, this year, and who knows how much more to come – lots, if the forecasts are correct) – it seems more photogenic than any subsequent snowfalls. Chiara came home to us for the holiday and we went to the Hoffmanns for our Thanksgiving dinner, as we have for the better part of twenty years. This morning I really needed some exercise to shift the potato, stuffing, and pie, all full of cream, from last night, and before breakfast I managed a mile in the pool at the Y, as comfortably as before the arthitis outbreak – which avocados seem to have banished completely. I could have gone on for a second mile, but as so often there wasn’t time. And after an hour of it, swimming back and forth becomes atrociously dull, unless there’s a story underway that needs unriddling, to keep my mind entertained.

Erratic NYC weather – on Tuesday it was cold at 4:30 when I set out for some quick Dr. Cicero work with John, and balmy at 6:30 when I supped with Lydie at a place in Park Slope which gave itself over to a quiz game at 7:30, and that was the end of our evening. On Wednesday snow was forecast as I set out for breakfast with Linda (attended by huge Christmas decorations – if you look closely you can see poor shivering Cristoforo Colon on his column behind them) and work on Act II of our Hollywood musical with Jimmy, but as so often in the U.S. never arrived. It was coming down strongly upstate, as my country-update will show, as they say here, ‘momentarily.’

Thanksgiving fast approaching, and only a few more weeks of the teaching semester left. Plenty happening on the Dr. Cicero Books front, as we attempt to complete editing the three novels to be brought out in the New Year along with two volumes of poetry, the opening salvoes in the Dr. Cicero Books Poetry Series, edited by Robert Kelly – a wonderful feather in our cap. Amazing to think that among the great authors mentioned in the novel of John’s we’re about to publish, Robert is cited, and that this was written before John ever met Robert or even knew that he was a cherished friend of mine. On Saturday night Chiara and I attended Robert’s poetry reading to celebrate his wife Charlotte’s birthday – a recently established but already acclaimed ritual – at Bard Hall, where I’d read from my own book a few weeks ago, introduced by Robert. At the wonderful, inspiring and moving reading, both the poets Dr. Cicero is publishing in Robert’s series, Billie Chernicoff and Michael Ives, were present in the audience, and I was able to maneuver them into a threesome line-up for the camera.