After the Garden - and the oddities of life in DC

I won tickets to see After the Garden - based on the one-week performance by Edith Bovier Beale - Little Edie of Grey Gardens fame.

George and I had been to see Grey Gardens, the musical, at Studio Theatre a couple of months ago. It is a good play about an interesting mother and daughter - aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

The show was quite entertaining and was performed in a back room at Miss Pinky's 2nd hand furniture store on 14th Street, NW. For starters we ran into someone I know from the band. Secondly - we recognized the accompanist from another musical at Studio Theatre.

But the audience was almost as entertaining and surreal as Little Edie. The seating was all patio furniture (After the Garden...) and George and I seated ourselves on a wicker sofa. Moments before the play started a woman and a large man decided to join us by squeezing onto the sofa. The woman introduced herself and sort of apologized. "I've just come from working out, so I may not smell as fresh as roses."

And then a man, well into his 40's entered wearing jeans and v-neck undershirt. Definitely too old to be dressed like that. He seated himself in the front row and introduced himself to some other men who were seated there. Throughout the show he seemed to mimic the gestures of Little Edie. Maybe he was an understudy or somehow part of the show. Or maybe he had dropped acid before he came in. The show is set on New Year's Eve 1977.

And that was my dose of culture for the weekend.

DC is a small town - lest anyone think otherwise. Prior to the play George and I walked up 14th Street just to kill time before the play started. We ran into Steve Sears, a friend of mine from Library school. I love Steve and wish we did things together. But I enjoyed catching up with him. He had been with some friends up on U Street and was heading...somewhere.

On Sunday evening George and I had plans to meet up with Harry Stubbs, an acquaintance of mine from FDIC days and a friend of Diana Smith's. Anyway we had made plans to meet up and George suggested a Thai restaurant on Connecticut Avenue.

We met at the appointed time and turned around and there was Diana's cousin Pam Smith and her husband Miguel Harvey! In one sense we weren't surprised at all and I decided that this was really supposed to happen. They are a delightful couple and it was a great joy to run into them and share dinner.

Diana had to run a lot of coordination for that one - and thanks!