Ken and I met on Valentine's Day in 1976, and it has always served as our anniversary date. This year, on our 47th, we booked a suite at the Pioneer Pocket Hotel in downtown Lubbock.

Beginning with the hotel restaurant, the  West Table, we shared a fine, if noisy, dinner—both partaking of a fine Scarpetta Pinot Grigio and a Pan Roasted Chicken with Warm Potato Salad and Lemon Caper Vinaigrette.

Thumbnail history: the Hotel Lubbock with six floors opened in 1925-26. Five floors were added in 1929-30. In 1961, it came under new ownership and was christened the Pioneer Hotel. It was replete with Italian marble floors in the lobby; the structure featured three restaurants; and its ballroom served as a center for civic events, including TTU fraternity dances. The May 11, 1970 tornado superficially damaged the hotel, but its steel-and-concrete structure remained a fortress (much better than the former Great Plains Life Building next door). Nineteen-seventy-five saw the hotel become a retirement center for people with low or fixed incomes and remained that way till the mid-1990s. It closed because the owners could not afford to make mandated changes in plumbing, heating, and air conditioning. It sat empty, boarded up for nearly a decade until the McDougal Companies bought it and converted the hotel into as many as twenty-five condos, some as large as 2,800 square feet. It opened in 2012, and in 2018, the third-floor spaces were converted into ten pocket hotel rooms or suites. It is difficult to pin down the term, but pocket hotels may have begun in Japan. The Pioneer Pocket Hotel features a "staffless" status. Clients book and pay online. On the day of arrival, they receive a text with door codes, and voila, there you are—ready to enjoy your stay fully stocked with fresh sheets, towel service, bottled water, and more. Our suite featured a TV in each room, but we didn't watch much.

​Ken and I enjoyed our one-night stay—an evening free from cooking—and will certainly consider staying again. It would make a great place for an overflow of guests in your own home! Note the gallery of photos directly below.

On February 20, as an extension of our anniversary celebration, Ken and I booked two tickets for the Czech Filharmonie Brno, established in the 1870s; the orchestra performed in Helen DeVitt Theater of the Buddy Holly Hall which opened in 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning. The program, as is typical of the Brno orchestra, features an all-Czech program, including Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta and Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 8 in G Major. Buddy Holly Hall's Helen DeVitt Jones Theater seats around 2,300 persons by way of orchestra and dress circle seats on the main floor, and three balconies: the mezzanine, grand tier, and balcony levels. A smaller theater can accommodate lesser audiences. I can't wait to see an opera in the venue because that's certainly what it feels like to be there! Note photos below.

See Buddy Holly Hall | Helen Devitt Jones Theater for Upcoming Performances, Pop and Classical

Rodgers, Mary and Jesse Green. Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers. New York: Farrar, 2022.

I’ve been a huge fan of comic Carol Burnett my entire life. I remember her belting out a song called “Shy,” when she appeared in a TV version of the play, Once Upon a Mattress. By today’s standards, it was a simple production and recorded on kinescope for us now to cherish by way of YouTube. The one highlight is Burnett as the princess singing “Shy” with some irony, her mouth open wide, her lungs full of air, no microphone needed. The thing I don’t know or realize at the time is that the music is written by the author of this book, Mary Rodgers—the younger daughter of composer Richard Rodgers.
 
Mary Rodgers’s book is co-written with Jesse Green, a lifelong friend. Rodgers at one point attempts to pen the book herself, yet always gets bogged down. But you’re a storyteller, Jesse tells her, a talker! So Mary tells her stories to Jesse, and Jesse does more than write them down. He creates a great book, handing over each draft to Mary for approval, until they arrive at what is this tome.
 
The title may not be quite so ironic when applied to Mary. Although she in many ways is bold, she is always reigned in, first of all, by her parents. Her mother, probably jealous of her daughter’s talent (this learned from Mary’s many hours on analysts’ sofas), belittles her and her work. Richard Rodgers, her famous father, is also begrudging with regard to how much time he spends with his daughter. Mary Rodgers (b. 1931) is an early feminist without the crusading. She must fight her way into every project she obtains until she reaches a certain point (probably when Mattress becomes a huge hit). Even after that, she doesn’t always get the big projects. Her fame comes more or less from writing projects for children.
 
In fact, she must love children a great deal, giving birth to six of her own (three each by two different husbands), one dying quite young. Her legacy, as she tells it, may to be a better parent than composer. She tries, in vain sometimes, to be a better mother than her own mother was. Ultimately she realizes she may not be able to have it all, as more recent feminists realize. At least not without a lot of help, women can’t have it all. (We’re talking the hiring of tutors, governesses, child caregivers, not to mention lots of domestic help—something available only to the wealthy.) At any rate, this memoir is enjoyable to read on many levels. Not always the greatest prose (transcription of an oral work seems to miss out on the finishing touches that grammar and phrasing can give it), with perhaps far too many footnotes that could have been incorporated into the main text, this memoir is still a pleasant and entertaining read.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Laura Lippman
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Muriel Spark
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Havelock Ellis
FRI: My Book World | George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

​Eisen, Cliff and The Letters of Cole Porter. New Haven: Yale, 2019. 

If you are a fan of Cole Porter and his music, you will probably enjoy this collection of letters. Though some of them refer to his bisexuality, most of them pertain to his many professional and personal connections. Such communications illustrate many characteristics about Mr. Porter. One, he is a consummate professional, in spite of his propensity to play and play hard during vacations and between gigs on Broadway or Hollywood. He answers every bit of mail himself, except when he occasionally calls on his secretary to take care of something. He is a team player, important for anyone working in a collaborative arena like the theatre. Second, he is also fierce but polite about not doing anything musically that would (in his opinion) ruin a show. At the same time, when overpowered by those above him, he sometimes gives in, particularly, it seems, when the issue does not matter that much to him.

​In a business that can be crass and cold at times, Porter is also very caring and thoughtful of everyone he comes in contact with. He sends thank you notes for the smallest favors, and, because he often runs short of money before he makes it big, he is generous with cash gifts and loans later in life. Third, his wit and sharp tongue are unmatched with regard to the social whirl of the 1930s through the 1950s. Though he wouldn’t dream of hurting anyone publicly, he does not mind getting off a zinger or two during a personal letter to a dear friend. Perhaps most interesting is how Porter shares some of his methods for songwriting:

A friend who travels with Porter in 1955 relates this story: “We were not stopped very long at the border. On the Spanish side, one of the soldiers came out with Cole’s passport in his hand, looked in the car, and said, ‘Cole Porter . . . Begin the Beguine!’ and kissed his fingers to the air, and began to sing the song. Cole’s music is known everywhere we go—even in the remote spots” (507).

​I think that just about says it all about Cole Porter, his music, and how many fans he still has in the world!