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Friday afternoon I decided that my lingering cough was not a side effect of watching too much curling and went to see the doctor.
"You have pneumonia," she said after putting her stethoscope against my chest and listening to my cough. "Community-acquired pneumonia."
"Community-acquired?!?" I almost said. "I'm a freelance writer! I'm practically a recluse!"
But then she would have said: "You're no Salinger."
I got up at 6 yesterday morning, just in time to see the third-set tie-break and the presentation of the trophies.
The beauty of watching Federer at the top of his game is that you get not only to see great shots but - when the match is over and the microphone in place - to hear good lines. All tournament long he'd been brilliant and loose, coming up with responses - to both opponents and interviewers - that defied probability. He repeatedly rose above the relentless bludgeoning (to use McEnroe's term) of modern tennis and the deadening cliches of modern athletes. He was as deft with his quips as he was with his drop shots.
Yesterday, in accepting his trophy, he became the first player in ages to describe his emotions with the words "over the moon."
It was especially gratifying to hear remembering that, after last year's final, he seemed to be on the downward slope, replaced by the indefatigable and barely intelligible Rafael Nadal. This year's Open was a victory for athletic and linguistic grace.
Yesterday I took the Christmas tree down. It is one of life's most definitive the-party's-over moments. Nobody sings "Strip the halls of boughs of holly." The tree, a few weeks ago green and woodsy, is brittle and odorless. The ornaments, hung with holiday expectations, droop forlornly. Everything looks a little tired.
I put the balls in their box and the other ornaments - purchased and handmade - into their box. Then I looped the string of lights into a bunched circle and placed it on top where it sat, strangely but presciently, like a crown of thorns.
How do you like the new look? Of course, now I can never again complain about major league fences, the names of bowl games, the walls at tennis tournaments, renamed stadiums, race car drivers, Tour de France cyclists, European soccer players, commercials before movies, ads above urinals ...
Today is the birthday of two great New Yorkers - though both were born elsewhere - who have contributed immeasurably to the literature of travel.
Kate Simon was born on this day in 1912 in Warsaw, Poland, though she moved to New York at a young enough age - 5 - that she titled her first memoir Bronx Primitive. Her follow-up memoirs, A Wider World and Etchings in an Hourglass, benefited equally from her love of travel and her love of language. Written before the glut of memoirs, they are shining examples of the genre. Her "Uncommon Guidebooks" can still be found in used bookstores and they are still worth reading, for she interspersed the practical information with elegant essays. She is the great, forgotten American travel writer, and if there were any justice in the world, the Society of American Travel Writers would ditch Lowell Thomas and name their annual awards after her.
Calvin Trillin was born on this day in 1935 in Kansas City, Missouri, though he seems to be the ideal of a Manhattanite, with a house in Greenwich Village and a job at The New Yorker. For years for the magazine he wrote the U.S. Journal (steadfastly refusing to mention de Tocqueville) and in 1971 he published a collection of these pieces on people and places most everyone else missed. (One chapter is beautifully titled "Middle-Sized Events.") Eventually, he ventured farther afield, and became more autobiographical, straddling the tantalizing line - in books like Alice, Let's Eat - between food and travel. He was like M.F.K. Fisher with a sense of humor.
I interviewed him in 1991 at a conference in Key West, and after the interview he invited me to join him and Alice (and their two daughters) for lunch. He was probably the most famous person I'd ever interviewed, and the only one who invited me to lunch.
Whenever I'm feeling low now, all I have to do is read the comments to this blog.
"A great read. Thanks."
"Thank you for the great article."
"Very good article. Thanks."
True, they are a bit repetitive. And many are inaccurate, their authors unable to differentiate between an article and a blog post. Also, I have to admit, they're a tad impersonal, coming from places with names like Health Insurance Quotes for Texas. But these days, writers have to take compliments wherever they can get them.