Mom's
Refrigerator Door

One thing about being Steve's friend--it's never dull. This is a photo taken at the Ovation Awards ceremony in LA...
Steve and I with Carol Channing (who is a friend of Steve & his husband Jimmy)

Household Hints

from

A Medieval Home Companion:
Housekeeping in the 14th Century

Medicine to cure the bite of a dog or other mad beast.

Take a crust of bread and write the following: + bestera + bestie + nay + brigonay + dictera + sagragan + es + domina + fiat + fiait + fiat.

(there are no further directions--guess you have to figure out for yourself how this is supposed to help!)

tomorrow:
To make sand to put in an hourglass.

I am a theatre critic

OK...so it's a new "career", but if you're interested in reading my reviews, go here

Updated 2/11/01

WHAT I'M READING...

In a Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson

Christmas gift from my friend, Diane, who felt it was time I learn more about Australia

also

He, She and It
by Marge Piercy

Steve tells me I have to read this book.

WHAT I WATCHED...

The Davis City Council Meeting

That's it for today!

HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES

28 February 2001

I have returned home after a part of two days with Steve. He had been invited to participate in a class in the Graduate School of Business. The class was taught by a woman named Margaret, from the Medical Ethics Department, whom we met when Steve was a Jonathan L King fellow last October. Margaret invited him to speak with her class about his experiences being prescribed Crixivan, the medication which saved his life back in 1996.

We drove from San Francisco down to Palo Alto in the mid afternoon in order to avoid rush hour traffic, which we did. In fact, we got there a lot faster than I expected to, so we had several hours to kill before the class.

We first found the classroom, so we wouldn’t get lost later, and then walked around campus for a bit (is this the face of a university guest lecturer?) before going into downtown Palo Alto to windowshop, tour Borders Books, and end up at The Good Earth restaurant for a (somewhat) healthy dinner.

We still had an hour to kill, so parked by the GBS building and both took naps (Steve snores).

Finally we met with the students in Margaret’s class. It was an interesting look at the political decisions involved with the distribution of drugs, such as the drugs which saved Steve’s life. I found it interesting hearing the various ways that decisions are made when the number of people wanting drugs--for AIDS or cancer or any other disease--exceeds the amount of drug available.

(An interesting adjunct to this was written in an article in the New York Times magazine, about what is happening with AIDS medication in Third World countries, and is a real eye-opener as to the "ethics" of American pharmaceutical companies!)

At the end of the class, Steve and I went back to Margaret’s home to spend the night. What an incredible experience. She and her husband live in a beautiful home in the hills outside Palo Alto. Steve and I were kind of in awe as we were led to our rooms in the guest "wing." Margaret and her husband were wonderfully gracious. They fixed us a lovely supper when we arrived and a wonderful breakfast in the morning, and even gave us a gift when it came time for us to depart.

It’s not so bad being Steve’s chauffeur, if you ignore the snoring and the smartass comments.

This morning we returned to San Francisco and I left Steve at his friend’s house, while I got out of town before rush hour started. The drive home was beautiful. The air was so clear that you could see snow on the Sierras as soon as you got over the hills of Vallejo. I don’t remember ever seeing them so clear from that far away.

This evening I was a bad person. Well, perhaps not a bad person, but I wimped out. I had been asked to join with others in attending a meeting of the Davis City Council to speak out against use of city funds to help facilitate the building of a facility for use by the Boy Scouts in town (among others).

I am a member of a subcommittee of the Human Relations Commission and in that capacity have met to discuss the situation and have written op ed pieces for the newspaper, as well as letters to the editor on the subject, but when push came to shove, the idea of standing up and speaking in public was so terrifying that I hid at home and watched the proceedings on television. Bad Bev.

Despite the fact that our children all grew up on stage, I am still very much a behind-the-scenes person. I’ll write anything for you, but put a microphone in front of me and I’m a real spineless jellyfish.

Fortunately there were many people who spoke quite eloquently on the subject and I suspect that my absence was not noted...but I did feel a lot of guilt for hiding out at home (at least I watched the proceedings!)

Some pictures from this journal
can be found at
Club Photo

<- previous | Journal home | bio | cast | archive | next ->
Bev's Home Page

Created 2/25/01 by Bev Sykes