Carla sent out an email titled "life goes on" which said she is performing January 11 at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. in Berkeley. I urge everyone reading this, if you are within shouting distance of the Bay Area, please come. She has a delicious, sexy, clean, flexible alto voice that she can do pretty much anything with, and she sings with complete soul and committment. Now more than ever.

I made black-eyed peas for good luck this new year. It's a recipe I got from my friend Rebecca Chekouras, which I shamelessly adulterated over her strict injunctions to keep the Southern tradition from whence it sprang pure and simple. My apologies, but I think my additions taste good.

The recipe: soak a bunch of black-eyed peas overnight. Rinse. Put in a big pot with water to cover. Fry up a mess of bacon. Drain. Throw into the pot with the simmering peas and a couple of bay leaves. Crushed farlic and minced chive, salt and pepper. That is Rebecca's recipe. She would say: Serve it with hot sauce over white rice. I cooked it that way last year and it was good.

This year I added four tomatoes, a handfull of kale from the garden
(cut up,) a green Bell pepper and a red pepper, thinly sliced. G came over and ate a bowl and pronounced it very good. C ate two bowls, which is eloquent testimony. David and Libby had some, and if truth be told I had two bowls myself, and we're almost done with a huge pot I thought we'd be stuck with for weeks. I like having a big pot of something so we can just dish ourselves up some food whenever we feel hungry. I just don't know how to cook for less than six people--occupational hazard of growing up in a large family.

I read on-line that it is considered good luck if the first person to cross your threshold in the new year is a dark-haired man. It didn't say a big black bald man, but if G had any hair, it would be dark, so I'm going to call it a good luck year.

C's in his study, wrestling with composing music to go with a lyric I wrote him for Chanukah. I'm flipping back and forth between the Marie Antoinette play and the essay about the gym. I played tennis for an hour or two with G. We were both missing a lot--slow reflexes, plus wind, plus my hair kept falling in my eyes and I forgot my sunglasses. Towards the end we improved to the point of near-mediocrity, then his knee started hurting and we packed it in.

In 2008, I want a cure for ALS and an agent.