On January 19, 1995, I set off on a trip to Kazakhstan to help find ways in which American computer technology could help improve the safety and/or efficiency of the coal mining industry in that country, which had recently become an independent state, no longer under the domination of the Soviet Union.  I left Columbus on a Thursday evening, and traveled to Cincinnati and Frankfurt  before arriving in Almaty,  Kazakhstan early on Saturday morning.  (The total travel time was about 24 hours, but took place over parts of three days because of the different time zones.)  I’ll write about the two weeks I spent there and the adventures I had at a different time, but this note is about the hotels I experienced there.

I was picked up at the airport by Sasha, the driver for Alan Irving, an employee of the Agency for International Development and my guide for the two weeks I was in the country.  Sasha took me to the Hotel Kazakhstan in the center of Almaty.  I learned that the the hotel was the only large building left standing after a disastrous earthquake some years earlier.  It is a tall building, maybe twelve stories or more, and appeared to be very modern in its architecture.  The first thing I noticed was that there was a team of women who spent their entire day mopping the floor in the lobby – as soon as they had finished mopping, they would start over again, all day long.  I made my way up to my room where I met the dzherniya, the floor lady, who was responsible for everything that happened on the floor.

My room had a small bed that was made up with sheets and blankets wrapped up in a way to provide a very warm and snug place to sleep.  There was a small bathroom with a shower,  a sink, and a toilet through which water ran constantly, which made it tough to sleep.  I lay down for a few hours to try to adjust to the jet lag, but was awakened after a few hours, when the telephone rang.  It was a prostitute offering her services – apparently the prostitutes have arrangements with the floor ladies and call around to the rooms until they find a willing client.  (I was told that if a hotel guest repeatedly declines the services of a female prostitute, he will then start getting calls from male prostitutes, but that did not happen in my case.)

The next morning, Sunday, Sasha drove Alan and me to the airport and we caught a flight to Ekibastuz, a city of around 140,000 people in an area near a gigantic surface mining operation, which I consider to be the eighth wonder of the world.  (Ekibastuz also happens to be the city where Alexander Solzhenitsen was sent during the Soviet era.)  Alan and I were picked up at the airport and driven to the Gastinitsya Byelochka, the “Little Squirrel Hotel”, where me met Rick, the chair of the mining engineering department at the University of Kentucky, and Jim Dinger, a geologist from the same university.  They had already been in Ekibastuz for a week, working on ways to mitigate the pollution caused by dust from the massive mining operation which surrounded the city.

When we checked into the hotel, I was asked to hand over my passport!  I was concerned about that, but Alan assured me that I would get it back, that the police wanted to know every person who came into town.  Dinners at the hotel consisted of whatever the staff could find in what went for grocery stores there.  Rick and Jim had already made it clear that they were not going to have another meal of beets, so we were spared that, but we had a lot of thickened sour cream, which the Russians there considered quite a delicacy, eggs when they could find them, meat which was almost certain to have been horsemeat, and some vegetables, along with truly horrible coffee or somewhat better tea (chai).

We visited coal mines in the area on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday then flew back to Almaty on Thursday and checked back in to the Hotel Kazakhstan.  By that time, I was very happy to find a nice big glass of thickened sour cream for my breakfast on Friday morning.  Rick and Jim flew back to the US on Saturday.

On Sunday, Alan and I flew to Karaganda, a major city of about 640,000 people  around which were some twenty-six deep mines, twenty-five of which were on strike.  (The miners were on strike because they hadn’t been paid in months, because the coal mines had hot been paid by the power companies in months, because the miners had not paid their power bills in months, because…)  In Karaganda, we checked into the Gastinitsya Chaika, the Seagull Hotel.  At the front desk, they told us that our rooms would be the equivalent of $280 per night, each, but Alan talked them down to just $28 per night, which was more than enough, considering that that there was no hot water in the hotel!  (This was in the middle of winter in an area close to Siberia, where the temperature typically dips down to -40 degrees!)

One interesting thing about the Seagull hotel is that it was right next to Kosmonaut House, where the cosmonauts were taken to recuperate after spending time in space.  There is a plaque on the wall of Kosmonaut House with the names of some of the people who had stayed there, including Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to travel to space.

While we were in Karaganda, we went underground at the only coal mine that was working,  I was accustomed to going underground at coal mines in the US, but on this trip I found myself down approximately 2600 feet, half a mile, the deepest I had ever been.  During the time we were in the mine, we didn’t see a single lump of coal actually moved out of the face, because the equipment was broken down, typical of mines in that area.

On Thursday, we again flew back to Almaty.  As I tried to check back into the Hotel Kazakhstan, other people kept crowding in front of me, until I loudly yelled out “Nyet!  I was here first!”  They looked at me with shocked expressions, but made way for me to get up to the front desk and check in.

On Sunday mornings in Almaty, all of the people working for the AID would gather for brunch at the Hotel Dostyk, which had been the Communist Party hotel during the Soviet era.  This was the highlight of the week, with every kind of meat, eggs, pastries, and other foods imaginable, and with REAL COFFEE, rich, dark, hot coffee, and as much of it as you could drink.  The $25 price of the brunch was worth it just for the coffee.

On the second Sunday that I was there, I happened to look across the table at Jim Gershin, a guy who hosted a get-together for English-speaking people every Thursday at his apartment, where we could unwind after a week in the field working solely through translators and hear English spoken for the entire evening.  (It was my desire to get over to Jim’s apartment that Thursday after the time in Karaganda that made me yell out to get to the front desk at the hotel.)  Anyway, I noticed a ring on Jim’s finger and asked him to pass it over to me.  It was his class ring from the Harvard class of 1970, just a year before I graduated.  It turned out that he had been on the Harvard crew, knew my classmate Tom Tiffany, who had been the cox on the crew, and had been at the historic game in 1968 when Harvard beat Yale 29-29.

On the Saturday after the Karaganda trip, I flew back to the US.  Going that direction, I left on Saturday morning, and was back in Columbus Saturday evening – a time zone thing again.

I consider March to be the beginning of year three of the pandemic. It was in March, 2020 when the virus began to affect my life. My last in-person event at the Rose was a lecture by acclaimed artist Fred Wilson, followed by a select group going to dinner in Waltham on March 3, 2020. Last chorus practice on March 9. My day-timer says, “crazy at the grocery story” on Friday, March 13. My last day going to my gym was the 14th; all my doctors yelled at me that it was no longer safe to go there live (we were using sanitizing wipes on every piece of equipment, even the hand weights).

We were at dinner at a friend’s home on Sunday, March 15 when word came that our governor would shut down the state two days later. He saw the bars jammed just before St. Patrick’s Day and knew he had to put restrictions in place. COVID-19 was spreading like wild fire. We still didn’t know exactly how it spread. The lockdown had begun. We could only go out to get essentials: food, medicine and entry was limited in those places. I found Josie, teaching via Zoom, on Saturday, March 21. And so the pandemic had set in for real. We scrambled to get masks and hand sanitizer.

Little by little, life returned to some semblance of normal. We did go to Martha’s Vineyard that summer, but only ate outdoors. We called it the “summer of the backyard”. In February, 2021, the vaccine changed everything for us, as we eagerly got vaccinated as quickly as we could, never believing that the right wing would become the anti-science party, making a “political statement” about doubting the reality in front of their noses, not understanding the meaning of “freedom” and “liberty”, sacrificing the good of all for selfishness. People on their death bed refusing to believe they had Covid-19. Propaganda and lies are scary and dangerous.

March 10, 2022 was a wonderful, busy day for me. I had my hair done (I went back to that the second the hair salons opened, wearing a mask as long as it was appropriate to do so). I called my friend Christie’s mother, Millie, one of my favorite people and a real surrogate mother to me, to wish her a heartfelt happy 96th birthday. And I went to the first live Rose opening in two years. We had to show proof of vaccination and wear masks in-doors (that is a Brandeis policy). It was by-invitation only, to keep the numbers manageable, but it was wonderful to be back after two years of virtual events. The Featured photo was taken that evening (I am the person on the left). Invited guests went to dinner in Waltham again. It almost felt normal.

I’ve been back to my gym for some time now. Due to my ankle injury, I’m mostly doing mat Pilates, but decided that I could try riding the recumbent bike and some work on machines. Now that the indoor mask mandate is lifted, I don’t mind getting sweaty on the bike. I know that everyone who enters the gym must be fully vaccinated (that was necessary to enter when my gym re-opened after the lockdown) and they have installed huge air filtration systems, so I feel safe working out. I also tend to go at less-busy times of the day. I still stream Josie’s classes at other times as well. After so many months of inactivity, it is difficult to regain fitness.

On March 22, we flew to California for a long-planned trip with friends. We bought passes last September (after Delta, before Omicron) to the Sonoma International Film Festival. At the time, California still had a mask mandate and the festival said they required proof of vaccination. Sitting in a crowded movie theater gave us pause and at first, we wore masks, but quickly felt at ease. Our friends told us where they wanted to stay (they had stayed there years ago), so we also made those reservations and got rental cars. From there we would continue on to Carmel for several days, joined by another couple, also good friends from home and on the Vineyard. We would stay at the Cypress Inn, a dog-friendly place famously owned by the late Doris Day, with her movie posters adorning the walls and one of her movies playing on a loop (closed caption) in the eating area.

We waited until a month before the event to make our final plans and book our flights. We had all been boosted and felt OK about the travel and festival. It turned out to be a good festival; quite a lot of fun to be with our friends. The weather was better than Boston, though usually cool in the morning, warm later in the afternoon, then cool again in the evening, so figuring out what to wear was challenging (I know – layers).

I can’t really recommend any films, as most did not yet have US distribution. Perhaps our favorite was called “The Road Dance”. It takes place in the Outer Hebrides during WWI, is based on a book, though they changed the ending and the writer/director, Richie Adams was in attendance (as were many of the directors) and did a good Q&A. It turned out, he and his wife were staying at our hotel and we had a long talk with him over breakfast one morning, then we saw them again at dinner one night, and went with them to their final Q&A. They were lovely people and we appreciated how friendly they were. We also really liked a documentary on the blues guitarist Buddy Guy. So it was an eclectic range of films.

Then on to Carmel, driving over the Golden Gate Bridge.

One friend had made dinner reservations for every night the six of us were together, which was good planning, as the town was full. Three of our group played the par three (the Hay) course at Pebble Beach twice and enjoyed themselves (it had recently been redesigned by Tiger Woods) while Joan and I wandered in and out of the shops in Carmel and once bought some food and had a picnic at the beach, watching squirrels run around, fight, play and entertain us. It was good to just laugh and talk. This was the friend who had us to the last dinner before lockdown on March 15, 2020.

We had lunch at Nepenthe, a famous spot in Big Sur, tried to visit Pfeiffer Beach, but the winds were up, blowing probably 50mph and we got sandblasted.

We celebrated Henry’s birthday with drinks at the Inn at Spanish Bay while listening to the lone piper. Playing the bag pipes is not easy and this fellow was only so-so, but it is a spectacular setting and we enjoyed ourselves before driving back to Carmel for our final dinner together.

On April 1, we drove up to Palo Alto for a visit with my dear high school friends, the founders of Retrospect, Patti and John Zussman. Patti came over to my hotel for an afternoon chat, then we regrouped for an evening dinner. It was great to catch up before heading home.

Throughout the trip, we’d get updates from our London kids on what little Rosa is up to. She turned 3 months old while we were in Sonoma and they called (via WhatsApp) so we could try and sing her happy birthday with a cupcake and candle. She didn’t know what was going on and was not amused. But Anna sent a cute video, playing with her to Beach Boys music and getting her to laugh. And David demonstrated that she has found her vocal cords. She wasn’t cooing, more squealing, but definitely enjoying the sound of her own voice. It is so interesting to watch her develop so rapidly at this age. We will visit again in mid-May. That is the next big thing on our agenda before heading to Martha’s Vineyard for the season.

We both got our second booster as soon as we returned home. I wanted it onboard before heading back to the UK. The BA.2 variant seems to be waning there, but is definitely on the rise in the Boston area (though, fortunately, not severe cases or deaths).

My chorus went back to live rehearsals in February, as long as you were fully vaccinated and wearing a mask, but I did not go back. Not yet. I plan to go back in September. Dan was fearful about in-door singing, and a friend recently said that half the members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (those who sing with the Boston Symphony) have Covid. Not a good omen. And I have a full-plate of travel right now, so would miss lots of rehearsals anyway.

I acknowledge that each step towards normal we take must be assessed for our tolerance for risk, and we look at rising (and in London), falling caseloads appropriately. The mask-mandate on public transit had just been extended again to May 3. We leave for London on May 4. There is certainly still lots of COVID around; it rose dramatically in Massachusetts over the past week. We take each day as it comes.

I hope we are in the endemic phase of this and can now just have annual boosters. I am ready.

 

Stephanie and Me,  circa 1965

Posing for the Camera 

Before we all took selfies on our cell phones,  and before  “BFF”  and “besties”  were entries in the Urban Dictionary,  Stephanie and I were best friends posing for pictures in a neighborhood photo booth.   We were practically inseparable then and I’ve written before about our long friendship.  (See Postcards from a Secret Admirer)

We met in junior high and remained fast friends although we went on to different high schools and colleges.  Then we both stayed in New York for grad school,  and thus on the night of November 9, 1965 when the  lights went out in New York,  we were together at Georg Jensen,  the upscale Madison Avenue silversmith and jewelers.

I don’t remember why we were there —  maybe buying a wedding gift for a friend,  or window-shopping,  or maybe we just ducked in to get out of the winter chill.  But there we were in Jensen’s when suddenly the store was plunged into darkness.

I don’t think Stephanie and I worried about terrorism  –  it was in those innocent pre-9/11 days – and we were soon assured the blackout was an electrical failure.   In fact in the following days we all learned to refer to the “grid’.

And rather calmly as I remember we and the other shoppers held hands as we made our way out of the darkened store onto the street.   And then we had to decide what to do.

Stephanie was living in the Bronx then,  and I on the upper westside,  and with no buses or subways running neither of us could get home.   We decided to surprise my great-aunt Miriam in her midtown apartment,  we walked the several blocks to her building,  and much to Miriam’s delight we spent the night.   (See Aunt Miriam, Diva)

Looking back I believe Stephanie and I saw the blackout as an adventure,  and we didn’t know what dire national disasters – assassinations,  race riots,  bloody protests,  and foreign and domestic terrorism –  were yet to come.

And I didn’t know that tragically I’d lose Stephanie to cancer four decades later and way too soon.

Then we just two best friends,  young and careful,  posing for the camera in a Bronx photo booth.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

We could hear dull, throaty roars in the distance.  We were more than happy, thank you very much Mr. Guard, to be accompanied across the field.  Would they be willing to have us take their picture the next day, once there was light, if we gave them a copy?  Indeed, they would.
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