“As we all understand, you can take a man’s show, you can’t take a man’s voice.” — David Letterman
I expect to see a lot of Stephen Colbert in the headlines this week, as the clock ticks toward the final episode of The Late Show on Thursday night. This is of course not a voluntary departure; CBS shocked the broadcast industry last summer by telling Colbert the upcoming season would be his last.
On top of that, it’ll be the final episode of The Late Show, which Colbert inherited in 2015 from David Letterman, who launched it 22 years earlier.
We had planned to spend the day in one of the masterpieces created by the Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudí, and wound up in another. It was a real lemonade-out-of-lemons experience, and it included one of my all-time vacation moments.
Weeks before our trip to Spain, I booked tickets for Sagrada Familia, the awe-inspiring cathedral Gaudí designed long before his death in 1926, and which to this day is still under construction. We have been there before, Martha twice. My visit there in 2018 was memorable, and I wanted to see it again — and also to see how much has changed in the intervening years.
The visit was not to be. I received an email the day before saying that a “private event” had caused the cancellation for our visit times, and that we were receiving a refund.
Montserrat is many things: a mountain, a monastery, a municipality, a park. It’s one of the most stunning places I’ve ever seen.
Martha and I caught a bus from Barcelona on Wednesday morning, making a short voyage in about an hour and a half. To get there, you ascend via hairpin turns in a highway that encircles the mountain.
On arrival, you see the popularity of the attraction: there’s not endless, Disney-style parking, but there were plenty of cars tucked into spaces as we made our way to the drop-off, parking by other buses. (There’s also a train connection from the city.)
The mountain is the main attraction, but this place is also famous for its thousand-year-old monastery, Santa Maria de Montserrat. It operates to this day with a small number of Benedictine monks, although almost everyone you will see will be a tourist or a staff person taking care of attractions.
The mountain is known for its unusual pillars and finger-like shapes — sometimes they’re called the frares encantats, or enchanted friars, a nod to the monks who sought to be closer to heaven by working at the top of the summit. The shapes have not always been there, of course; they’re the result of erosion and rainfalls over hundreds of thousands of years.
Views at Montserrat are a key reason to go, and you’re rewarded with every turn, after each ascent.
The photo above is after taking the Sant Joan funicular train, a zipper railway that runs up a steep hill. You’re welcome to hike up if you like, but I think most people take advantage.
The photo at the top was from the hill that we hiked up. In each, You can see the monastery and nearby buildings, including a prodigiously stocked art museum, at the base.
The day we went happened to be sunny, and the clouds in the sky were rich and plump … some looked fluffy, others looked like great dollops of shaving cream. Martha had been to Montserrat before, and knew that the weather there can also make the views dramatic. I imagine the mood would have been quite different under steady rain.
In Barcelona, we’ve learned that wayfinding often comes down to two visual cues: toward the sea, or toward the mountains. Montserrat, which is about 50 km or so outside the city, offers on a bright day unimpeded views, and you can make out the ocean as you gaze over all the hills.
We put aside a full day for the excursion: that’s because the bus we booked leaves at 5 p.m. That left ample time to amble about.
We left a lot of things unseen during this visit, including a fair bit of the monastery itself.
We instead concentrated on the museum, which has an impressive collection of art, much of it Catalan.
Ramon Casas’s Madeleine — featuring a young woman seated alone a tavern table, nursing a glass of absinthe with one hand and a cigar in the other, the world reflected in a mirror — is recognized as a masterpiece of the late 19th century, and it seems to be a symbol of Catalan feistiness, even if it depicts a Parisian scene. The young woman’s face is everywhere in the adjoining gift shops in Montserrat, adorning key chains, mugs, notebooks and many other things.
A few steps inside the museum tells you there are heavy hitters in the museum: Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso .. they’re all there. Picasso was not Catalan but lived in Barcelona during some formative years, and among his work on display is a portrait of a fisherman done when he was just 13. The range also includes holy work (not surprising, as there’s a basilica around the corner) and some modern paintings and sculptures, too.
What I’ll remember most about Montserrat, though, are the vistas: endless skies, clouds, mountains that seem to be ever-reaching upward, even when you realize erosion has been ever so gradually whittling them away.
I hope to come back again some time to while away an afternoon.
We set out for Spain on a Monday and got there on a Tuesday; an overnight flight from Montreal will do that. It was early in the breakfast hour in Barcelona when we arrived, and with the time difference, it’s likely that people we knew back in St. John’s might still have been up.
Martha and I are staying in Barcelona for a few days with her cousin Hari. We’re on a vacation that we had planned for 2024 that we had no choice but to cancel when a series of family emergencies began to pile up.
Anyway. Here we are, with a Spain-only itinerary, and a different sort of agenda. I haven’t been back in eight years, and this time we’re improvising a little bit more, leaning into a couple of booked items and otherwise floating around this amazing city, and then a week in Madrid.
After a power nap (and still feeling some jet lag) we set out for a walk with Hari to a local park in Putxet, the neighbourhood where he lives. In the warm evening, we set out downtown for a stroll and for some things to eat and drink. Hari has been living in Barcelona now for some years, and we’ll always trust his advice.
On Tuesday night, he had us over a barrel, somewhat literally. There was enough room in this tiny place for three to congregate over a barrel, and we started ordering dishes.
Pintxos — small servings, often served with a tiny stick and on bread — are part of the small-plates wonders that are tapas. Martha will always seek out boquerones, these small fish, on every trip. Allegy-laden me avoids all of that, but I had plenty of choice, including an adorable black pudding. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I inhaled it before the thought occurred to me.
The restaurant was in the Gothic Quarter, a very old and very touristy part of Barcelona. It’s fun to stroll around at dusk, though, and the place had legitimately good food. The staff would float around with hot dishes, while colder fare could be plucked from the glass serving counter. When the time comes to pay, all of the wooden sticks are counted and a total is punched in.
Then it was time to seek out some vermouth, or vermut as you’ll see it. Barcelona has a great tradition of knocking back some vermut — the sweet a.k.a. red type, not the dry clear vermouth that people barely put in their martinis — on ice with citrus. Hari guided us through the alleys for some minutes before we got to one of his favourites: a bar big enough to seat us and maybe a handful more.
While vermouth is spelled differently in Spain, it’s also pronounced differently, too. Saying “bear moo” will work just fine, I learned! (In Spanish, there’s not much difference in pronunciation between a V and a B.)
The drinks were … perfect. Even with the jet lag, they went down easily, and we found ourselves chatting as the dusk gave way to darkness.
We ambled back to the metro, scooted home to Hari’s apartment and fell fast asleep.
Many things — including many more small plates — await.
My niece Beth gave this mug to me, and it makes me laugh: it comes with a base with design elements from the Empire in Star Wars, and lights up the glass mug appropriately.
“The press can be surprisingly easy to co-opt. But remember the Woodward-Darman law, which dictates that a friendship between reporter and source lasts only until it is profitable for one to betray the other.” — Maureen Dowd
The last part of this observation from pundit Maureen Dowd has been repeated for years, but not so much the full quote in context … which makes sense, because the rest of it gets more dated as the years pass. It all comes from a May 1994 New York Times column titled Thou shall not leave a paper trail (gift link is included), which includes some rules of engagement.
Woodward is of course Bob Woodward, whose writings and books on Washington have defined (and sometimes rearranged) power in Washington since Watergate. With Darman, I needed to look that up to get a refresher, which speaks to how time and scandal both shall pass. Richard Darman was the budget director in the George H.W. Bush administration, and in the run-up to the fateful 1992 election (which was not going well for the Republicans), Woodward published articles in the Washington Post about rampant backbiting and internal strife in the White House. You can guess how the sourcing went once things got juicy.
Not two years later, Darman is all over that Dowd column, which is a bit of a rulebook for aspiring politicos (e.g., “always be the first with good news” for the boss, “don’t be afraid to leak”) that still holds up. The faces and names have changed, and of course the tactics, but much of it is still relevant.
“I’m not somebody who ever has regrets — I’m a great believer in doing things with the best of intentions, and then you learn rather than regret. There are lots of things I’ve learned by doing the wrong thing, but I don’t regret them.” — Monty Don
His answer may be about his own work in the garden — his home, Longmeadow, in the western Midlands, is often the backdrop of the BBC series Gardeners’ World — but I like how it applies to many other situations.
Monty Don is a fixture in our family. For the last few years, Gardeners’ World has been a balm to my mom in particular.
“Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.” — Leonard Cohen
It’s been almost a decade since Leonard Cohen died. His relationship with Montreal was deep, and the city clearly still has him in his heart.
So much so that there are two different murals in his honour.
Sir David Suchet was born on May 2, 1946. While he has had an extensive career in the theatre, movies and television, he will always be known for one role in particular: Hercule Poirot.
Suchet was in his early 40s when he signed on to play Agatha Christie’s detective with the egg-shaped head and exacting (if not exasperating) mannerisms, and he knew this would be the role of a lifetime. He was committing to playing the part, it was hoped, in every single short story and novel.
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life.” — Bertrand Russell
Over the years, optimistic humans believe that fear can be conquered, and superstitions can be eradicated. One can wish.
Almost six decades after the death of Bertrand Russell, who lived to be 97, we are still surrounded by fear, superstition and, yes, cruelty. The politics of our age are entwined in them.
“I don’t know where my ideas come from. I will admit, however, that one key ingredient is caffeine. I get a couple cups of coffee into me and weird things just start to happen.” — Gary Larson
“Weird things” of course were what brought millions of people back to Larson’s much-loved, much-missed strip The Far Side, which ran in newspapers around the world for only 15 years. Larson put away his pens and inks in early 1995, when he was just 44.
“My parents were less than thrilled when they got the news. I can understand that: a life in the arts is chancy in at least a hundred ways, ninety of them financial. My mother said, ‘Well, if you’re going to be a writer you’d better learn to spell.’ Spelling was not then, and is not now, my strong point. ‘Others will do that for me,’ I proclaimed. And so they have. Thanks very much, copy editors.” — Margaret Atwood
In her recently published Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, Margaret Atwood writes about telling her parents that a writer’s life was for her.
The nod to copy editors is significant, and I’m sure other copy editors would find it gracious. Not a few would say it’s unusual, too: writers (often rightfully) get praise for their ingenuity, but there’s generally not much discussion of the importance that copy editors play in the editorial process.
“Space belongs to all of us. There is science in dance and art in science.” — Mae Jemison
The first Black woman to go to space, Mae Jemison has sought out pursuits in the sciences — and in the arts, too. Before she was selected to fly aboard the American space shuttle Endeavour in 1992, she had already earned degrees in chemical engineering and then medicine.
Like many young girls, Jemison had dreams of being a ballet dancer. Her mother pointed her in another direction:
She considered becoming a professional dancer, but her mother advised her to do so after college, saying “You can always dance if you’re a doctor, but you can’t doctor if you’re a dancer.”
“I’ve found I have started to use small-time mob-boss tactics in my house. I figure out things that they like, and then threaten to hurt those things.” — Jerry Seinfeld
In November 2006, Jerry Seinfeld was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman. It was a much-watch episode, because he had hoped Michael Richards (who had spewed racist bile at a meltdown of a performance) would appear by satellite.
Everyone tuned in to see Richards try to salvage his reputation; in the interim, Seinfeld and Letterman had a pleasant, witty chat.
One of the topics was about parenting, and Seinfeld described how he was handling being the dad to three kids under six. Here’s that part of the conversation, cued up.
“Every baseball crowd, like every theatre audience, has its own distinctive attitude and atmosphere. You can usually tell as they are coming into the park whether it is going to be a happy, responsive crowd or a dead and sullen one.” — Bill Veeck
The baseball team owner and impresario Bill Veeck made that comment decades ago, in his colourfully titled memoir Veeck — As In Wreck, which a) answered readers’ questions about how to pronounce his name and b) gave them a hint of what kind of life he led. Veeck died in 1986.
I’ve been to a few major league games in a few cities over the years, and I have to say, the crowd can be the show. Years ago, on a family vacation in San Diego, I got some tickets for an afternoon Padres game for Nick and me while Martha was at a conference. We were seated amongst season ticket holders who all knew each other, and my memories are of their warmth and friendship rather than the game itself.
