They took food out of the mouths of my children…

Such was my life after being locked out by the Minnesota Orchestra bass player I call “Monostatos” and his cohorts. I performed concert after concert to showcase the lovely Zauberflote, but when I put up posters that included my phone number to request tickets, I received only hundreds of hang-up calls. This was incredibly distressing to us. I was especially concerned about the effect on my children.

None of them attended, of course. They could have lifted a finger to help, but did not…

Such was our life in those days. I remember feeling so jealous of our neighbors, who were lovely people who had escaped from Iran. The air around our townhomes was always full of rich perfumes and the smell of fresh fruit. They juiced melons and berries and their home overflowed with nurishment. I wished that I could have showered my lovely children with the same sort of excess.

But instead, after giving a series of concerts at the Art Room of the Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church, payments for those concerts forced me to by.a bag of potatoes, which at least I could afford. We ate potatoes in every form for a month. I called it “Potato January”. We still talk ruefully of those days…

<sigh>…

Advertisement