Good writing is not complex and dense. It does not require someone to work hard to grasp the message. It should not require a dictionary.

It should sound like conversation: business people talking with business people. That can happen if you picture your reader (or primary reader) and write as if you were face-to-face with that person. If you would say something in a conversation, you can put it in writing.

This gives writing a clarity and simplicity few people achieve. It gets your message across. And most importantly, it helps you to achieve your purpose in writing.

This concept is not new, but the law itself is. The prolonged budget battle in Congress this year created havoc with the dates of compliance issues. Now people are looking around and saying, “What do we do now?”

First, a simple explanation of what it means. Wikipedia does it pretty well: A generic term for communication styles that emphasize clarity, brevity, and the avoidance of (they could have said “avoiding”) technical language–particularly in relation to official government communication, including laws. The intention is to write in a way that is easily understood by the target audience: appropriate to their reading skills and knowledge, clear and direct, free of cliche or unnecessary jargon.”

The Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan arm of the Library of Congress, took its shot at explaining the law. They did it with a 14-line paragraph averaging 43.5 words per sentence (anyone care to diagram those puppies?), containing 25 pecent passive voice, and with a reading grade level of nearly 14.

Oops.

The regulation itself requires upper-level management monitoring of the process, communicating its requirements to government employees, offering them training, establishing a compliance system, informing the public on the agency web site (accessible from the home page), and designating a contact person to receive comments from the public. Further, all of this must be in place in “every document” one year from the law’s passage.

I have been teaching Plain Writing all these years, it appears. I have always encouraged people to write simply, using words their readers know and understand, using a conversational style and active voice. Business Writing Solutions is, as it turns out, Plain Writing Solutions.

I offer this as my Solution to the agencies which must comply. But I will go the entire challenge one or two better. I will also teach them a writing process that works–that produces results, and makes the entire writing effort take 30 percent less time than it did before. That’s a productivity boost people can take directly to their bottom lines.

Do we need to talk?

My first answer would be, “all of them!”  But realistically, some are better “first opera” experiences than others.  Some of them might require a little preparation or attitude adjustment.  They will ALL be outstanding productions, however.

Opera by opera (with dates), here are some comments on each.  Perhaps this will help you make your choices.

The Met’s 2010-11 Season Live in HD Transmission Dates:

Wagner:  Das Rheingold – Live: October 9, 2010, Encore: October 27, 2010 The first of the RING cycle.  It’s got a great story, wonderful music (the “Rainbow Bridge” orchestra interlude at the end is justifiably famous).  This opera runs 2:45 with no intermission (four scenes that Wagner insisted be connected).  That actually makes it perhaps the shortest of any of the live transmissions.  But make sure you pee before it begins.  The problem with this opera (for an non-RING aficionado) is it ends in such suspension, since it only tells the first part of the story.

Mussorgsky:  Boris Godunov – Live: October 23, 2010, Encore: November 10, 2010 Wouldn’t recommend this as the first opera for anyone.  Powerful story, with gripping (semi-historic) characters.  Dark Russian style. Just tough for a first go.

Donizetti:  Don Pasquale – Live: November 13, 2010, Encore: December 1, 2010 A comic opera that moves quickly and has a lot of the early Romantic (bel canto) music.  Good time guaranteed.

Verdi:  Don Carlo – Live: December 11, 2010, Encore: January 5, 2011 No matter what else I see or hear, this opera is always lurking in my top two or three all-time favorites.  I LOVE this opera.  It’s filled with great drama, a great story and superb music.  Verdi’s greatest effort, in my opinion.  They are doing a new production this season, and it looks “interesting” (translation: I may or may not like it).  Did I mention I love the music?  Act III scene 1 has a nonstop plethora of fabulous scenes, confrontations, and singing.  The best scene of all time.

Puccini: La Fanciulla del West – Live: January 8, 2011, Encore January 26, 2011 Puccini’s set-in-Gold Rush California opera is underperformed and underappreciated.  This is filled with lush melodies and memorable characters.  It was the next opera he wrote after MADAMA BUTTERFLY, at the peak of his power.

Adams: Nixon in China – Live: February 12, 2011, Encore: March 2, 2011 A contemporary opera with a contemporary setting.  It’s certainly John Adams at his most creative and melodic.  One of the top 3-4 operas written in the past 50 years, for my money.  We remember the time, and the events.

Gluck:  Iphigénie en Tauride – Live: February 26, 2011, Encore: March 16, 2011 Gluck was one of the most influential opera composers of all time, paving the way for Mozart and from there to Rossini and the opera style we most often think of (and relate to).  This is based on Greek mythology, and is a star vehicle for the incredible mezzo-soprano Susan Graham.

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor – Live: March 19, 2011, Encore: April 6, 2011 LUCIA has it all: superb drama, great music, a mad scene (probably the most famous in all of opera) and an equally famous sextet.  Excellent choice for first-timers.  Natalie Dessay is one of the generation’s greatest singers (and an equally accomplished actress).  This is also the first opera the Met has repeated in the five-year history of the broadcasts.  That ought to tell you something!

Rossini:  Le Comte Ory – Live: April 9, 2011, Encore: April 27, 201 0 One of Rossini’s final operas, written in Paris (and in French) shortly before he retired from opera composing in the middle of his life after William Tell.  It’s a silly story (yes, it’s comic) of deception and intrigue.  Like IPHIGENIE, this is also a star vehicle, this time for Juan Diego Florez, the greatest bel canto tenor in the world today.

Richard Strauss: Capriccio – Live: April 23, 2011, Encore: May 11, 2011 A third “starstruck” opera in the season, this one for Renee Fleming’s benefit.  I love Richard Strauss’s operas; this is the last one he wrote and its main focus is on the age-old question, “What’s more important: the words or the music?”  Strauss was always a Romantic composer, even though the world of Schoenberg eclipsed him late in his life.  Some of the music is “spiky,” and the final 20 minutes are drop-dead gorgeous (an achingly beautiful orchestral interlude and a long soprano soliloquy on the opera’s main topic)…not a bad valedictory for a composer whose career spanned from Wagner to Menotti.

Verdi:  Il Trovatore – Live: April 30, 2011, Encore: May 18, 2011 A raw and exciting Verdi work featuring four great roles suitable for only the top voices available.  A convoluted plot, but filled with great solo turns and, of course, the Anvil Chorus.  Fun time guaranteed.

Wagner:   Die Walküre – Live: May 14, 2011, Encore: June 1, 2011 Of the four RING operas, this is the one that stands alone (as opposed to being part of the cycle) in opera repertory most frequently.  This is Wagner at his finest, and he creates the most heart-wrenching pathos in a story (with contemporary application) of what happens with greed, lust for power, and the need to control everything.  The Valkyries’ ride is of course the most famous music from this, but later in the third act we are treated to the best music Wagner ever wrote: Wotan’s farewell to his favorite daughter, Brunnhilde.  I cry for the last 20 minutes of this opera, every time. In the theatre, or in the opera house, or just listening to a recording or a broadcast.  I’m toast.

During the past three or four weeks, and particularly Wednesday night, when Patrick Kane slipped in the Goal That Nobody Saw and began his solo celebration of winning Lord Stanley’s hardware (at least five seconds before anyone else in the building, including his own teammates, realized what had happened), I realized how much a part of my sports soul the Hawks were at one time, and in a sense, have always been since those early years.

My first-ever in-person hockey game was Game 6 of the 1965 Stanley Cup finals.  My friend Jerry Derck and I had taken the train from campus into Chicago to see a late April Cubs Sunday doubleheader at Wrigley Field.  It was wet and raw, but ever hopeful, we stepped off the Howard Line at Addison Street.  We learned the games had been postponed.

What to do?  We were already in Chicago, and the whole day lay ahead of us.  We remembered the hockey game at Chicago Stadium, and we bought standing room tickets that afternoon and witnessed the Hawks evening the series at 3-3.  The series would return to Montreal for Game Seven, where the inevitable happened.  The Canadiens of the 1960s were like the Yankee dynasty streaks.  The hockey gods ordained much of this in the original six-team league by giving Les Habitants draft rights to the best player in French-speaking Canada every year.  Players like the Richard brothers and Jean Beliveau ensured a steady stream of great players to augment an already-great roster.

The next fall, I was hooked, seriously.  I found a group of Wheaton College hockey fans who were eager to travel into Chicago for home games.  Some had cars; others didn’t.  Sometimes we took the train.  But we always bought standing room tickets in the second balcony (for the exorbitant price of $2.50).

The games started at 7:30, and the gates opened at 6:00.  A mad dash up six flights of stairs (we were young then) ensued, and we would stake out our positions on the rail right at the center line for a great view of the action.  Not all of my friends did this.  We were the Center Line fans; they were the Rink End fans.  They liked to stand right behind the goal the Blackhawks shot at for two periods.  They claimed it was more fun to see the plays develop as the puck went up and down the ice.  My group maintained we’d rather see the action well at both ends.

But we yelled at each other (no one with a ticket for a seat would arrive for at least a half hour).  When Al Melgard, the legendary Chicago Stadium organist, began to play, we would call out songs we wanted to hear.  One was always the Wheaton Fight Song.  He knew it because our college basketball team usually played one game a year as part of a big-school/small-school doubleheader.  He usually accommodated us.

My junior year, I blew big bucks and bought second balcony season tickets.  They were on the top row just before the corner, and not at the end where the highest row was at least 20 rows higher than we were.  I was just in front of the standing room crowd then, and it was fun to arrive just before the puck dropped, push a way through the standees, and slide under the rail to the seats just before the national anthem.

The Hawks were popular in those pre-Chicago Bulls (1967-68 was their first year) days, and always filled the building: exactly 16,666 seats, according to the official attendance announced at each game.  I learned that was a maximum attendance allowed by the Fire Marshal to be in the building from a safety standpoint.  I also had a friend whose uncle was involved the last time they painted seats in the building.  He said they painted more than 20,000.

Smoking was commonplace in the 1960s, and if the person next to you smoked, too bad.  By the third period, it was sometimes difficult to see across the building through the layer of smoke that had risen up to where we sat.  The public address announcer would always say (just once, before the opening face-off), out of consideration for the player (!!!), please refrain from smoking during the game.  That was always the signal for a couple thousand lighters and matches to suddenly go off all over the building.  The request was never enforced.

My senior year I came to my senses and let my tickets lapse.  But I still went to many games, and in the season following graduation, when I still lived in the Chicago area, I bought them again.  They were still in the second balcony (to this day, my all-time favorite spot to have watched hockey), but down near the other end by the face-off circle, and only four rows up from the balcony rail.  The official scorer’s nest was attached at center ice to the front of the second balcony, and in the pre-instant replay days, was where the scorers assigned goals and assists.

Many years later, when I could afford it, I saw a Blackhawks game from an expensive lower level seat.  It wasn’t the same, and the last time I ever saw a game in the stadium, I bought a pair of tickets for me and my wife Susan from guys in the street, between the first two periods.  The price had come way down, and I paid only $10 each because I wanted the second balcony, to show Susan what I had seen all those years earlier.  Amazingly, what we ended up with was exactly one row behind those seats I had 20-plus years earlier.  I think this was late in the 1993-94 season, the last year of Chicago Stadium.

What a team the Blackhawks put on the ice in the 1960s!  Player movement was limited in those days, and most teams retained the bulk of their rosters year after year.  The Original Six of the NHL played 70-game seasons, meaning they played every other team 14 times a season: seven home, and seven away.

Hardly anyone wore helmets, either, and I knew the players in the entire league so well I rarely bought a program.  I could recognize many of them by face, or by the way they skated.

With teams playing each other that often, significant rivalries and feuds developed.  Gordie Howe was in fights that often lasted for weeks, breaking out time and again whenever his team met the team with the player he was still angry at.  The Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings often played home-and-home weekend series: Saturday in Detroit, and Sunday night (the Hawks’ best attendance night) in Chicago.  Howe and a Blackhawk would have at it Saturday, and we all waited in eager anticipation for the rematch that would occur sometime in the Sunday game.

The Wings also had a pesky role player, Bryan (Busher) Watson, whose only job was to tail Bobby Hull and harass him.  Often he took it a little too far, and a fight would break out during the Saturday game.  We couldn’t wait for Sunday, because we knew Watson would get it.

Glenn Hall played goalie, at one time logging an NHL record that will NEVER be approached, playing 502 consecutive complete games.  That’s right: every minute of every game for a stretch of more than seven years.  The Hawks didn’t even suit up another goalie, and few teams did then.  The backup (if there was one) often watched the game in street clothes from the press box, and if an injury necessitated a change of goalies, the games would stop until the substitute could dress and warm up.  Hall played the entire streak (as all goalies did then) without a mask.

Pierre Pilote anchored the blue liners, along with Doug Jarrett.  The first two forward lines played intact for several seasons:  the “Scooters” of Kenny Wharram and Doug Mohns, centered by hall-of-famer Stan Mikita, and the “HEM” line of Bobby Hull, Phil Esposito (who began his career as a Blackhawk) and Chico Maki.  The third line was less fixed, but usually included Hull’s younger brother Dennis.

A few other flashback memories from those impressionable pre-adult years:

When a player scored a hat trick, REAL hats cascaded onto the ice.  Businessmen’s hats. Expensive hats.  No one would have dreamed of throwing anything as tacky as a baseball cap (which you only wore if you were playing baseball).  I think the team collected them and kept them somewhere after the game, where people could go to retrieve the merchandise they had tossed in exuberance onto the ice.

I recall one fan with big lungs who, several times a game, would wait until a quiet moment, and then yell out BOBBBBBBY HULLLLLLL!  as loudly as he could.  Another fan, annoyed by Jim Pappin’s unproductive season after the previous year had suggested potential star status, would yell, “What Happin to Pappin?” when the winger came over the boards.

When the fans disagreed with an official’s call, or non-call, they would throw things onto the ice.  Programs.  Beer cups.  I never liked this, and it always caused a stoppage while maintenance people with shovels and baskets came out to clean up.

The lady in front of me one year hated Dennis Hull.  Dennis was a fine hockey player whose only mistake was being Bobby Hull’s brother.  He wasn’t as good, and he didn’t claim to be.  But this leather-lunged, foul-mouthed woman hated his guts.  He could do nothing right.  She also liked Howie Young, a journeyman defenseman who had wasted his career to alcoholism.  Near the end he turned his life around, sobered up, and still had enough to play a regular shift on defense.  It was a good story.  Anyway, this woman loved Young.

In one game, she had been on Dennis Hull relentlessly.  The puck came to the right point, and Young fired a slapshot toward the goal.  Dennis skated through the face-off circle and deflected the puck into the upper corner of the net—one of the prettiest deflections I have ever seen.

My “friend” hadn’t seen the deflection, of course.  She was certain her beloved Howie had scored a rare goal.  She jumped up and down and screamed, “Howie!  Howie!”  I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around.  “You’re going to be surprised,” I told her.

A few moments later, the official announcement came:  “Blackhawks goal scored by Number 10, Dennis Hull…”  “WHAT?????” she screamed.  I leaned over and said, “Told you it would be a surprise!”

I left Chicago in 1969 and have never lived there since.  My enthusiasm for hockey has cooled.  Sometimes it has warmed again (Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers did that for me in the 1980s; the early days of the Phoenix Coyotes, when I was a season ticket holder), but it has never captured my attention like the Hawks of the 1960s.

Except for this week.  That’s a fine team that won this year’s Cup, and I could get attached to them.  Again.

At 11:40 p.m. last night, it was over.  The curtain dropped on North America’s first ever staged production of Richard Wagner’s first opera (written was he was 20), DIE FEEN, at the historic Pasadena Playhouse in California.

I’m not sure how, but Lyric Opera of Los Angeles’s Laura Sage somehow pulled this off in spite of a host of annoying technical glitches.  And she staged a damn good production anyway.

Our evening got off to a slow start.  Curtain time was supposed to be 7:30, but at 7:25 we finally got word of difficulties involving the surtitles.  The entire orchestra finally tuned at 8:01, and at 8:03 Conductor Robert Sage’s baton came down and the overture began.

As it turned out, the entire first act took place without surtitles, a flashback to the days 30-plus years ago when you needed to know the language, know the libretto and story; or just sit and listen to nice music without being sure what, exactly, was going on.

When the second act started, we had surtitles:  BIG ones.  Way too big to fit on the screen.  Several minutes into the act, the person doing the work decided it would be better to screen them lower, onto the blank screen at the back of the stage (which had contained projected scenes in the first act) where most of the titles fit.  We lost our scenes, but at least had our words.  By the third act, the size issue was also solved, but the focus issue (or the length of some of the slides, spilling off both the left and right edges) never was.

Nevertheless, we had DIE FEEN.  And parts of it are very good, and most of it was done very well by LOLA’s cast and 30-piece orchestra.  On a shoestring budget (more on that in a moment), the production ended up with some fine, strong singers, excellent chorus work, and a sophisticated reading of the orchestral score.

This is an opera that reminds the listener of a lot…of what had already occurred in the opera world, and what was to occur in the developing mind of the amazing Wagner.  The 12-minute overture features a five-chord progression in the early measures: chords only Wagner could have written.  There’s a lot of Weber in there, and a melodic line later that didn’t get changed much for TANNHAUSER.  Several times it also sounded like Mendelssohn.

By Act III, I was noting similarities in the story with operas past and future.  The magic intervention foretold Hoffmanstal’s story in DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN.  Two ladies (not three) oohed and aahed over the sleeping body of Arindal, the hero (who, with his shirt off, certainly displayed a finely-tuned body), a la ZAUBERFLOTE.  When the spirits attacked Arindal in his effort to free Ada from having been turned to stone (ahem), the staging resembled the third act of FALSTAFF.  And when he finally sang a song to win his wife back, well, you know who liked to use that convention!

Wagner wrote a killer tenor role (gee!) for Arindal, the mortal who married a fairy (IOLANTHE).  Josh Shaw did most of it very well, but his voice was nearly spent by the time the final aria to wake up Ada, followed by a concluding duet, occurred.  He slid into falsetto for a few of the highest notes. VanNessa Hulme sang an impressive Ada, and when she was singing, she had our attention.  Many of the supporting cast also had lots of work to do, and did it well.

“How did you like our ‘only’ dress rehearsal?” chirped the ever-optimistic Executive Director?  “Come back again, please!” pleaded Robert Sage.  I can’t, but that’s all right.

This is a work that deserves to be seen, and that leads to my sad final comment.  The Pasadena Playhouse is a historic (for California) masterpiece of Spanish Colonial Revival.  It seats 671 and is a perfect place to stage opera.  It’s right in Old Pasadena, a great neighborhood filled with wonderful places to eat and a casual atmosphere.  It’s located in a metropolitan area of 15 million people.

Unfortunately, I estimate fewer than 150 people were on hand for the first performance of this rare work, in spite of the publicity and its inclusion as part of the LA Opera RING Festival this month.  Thanks to the delays, the glitches, and the late finish, only about 60 people were still there at the end.  I fear this will be an economic catastrophe for a company that does such a great service to rare and neglected works.

If you’re in the area tonight or next weekend, it’s worth the visit (and your support).

But does anyone else in the world have stubs indicating paying to see both of those games, other than I?  Because in the first game, the Black Hawks’ Bobby Hull scored his 51^st goal of the 1965-66 season, eclipsing the all-time single season record held by three players but never (at that time) exceeded.

In the second game, in 1994, the Los Angeles Kings’ Wayne Gretzky scored his 802^nd goal, breaking Gordie Howe’s career record of 801 and en route to a career goal record I believe will never be surpassed.

The circumstances of the two games could not be more different.  Less than a year before the Hull goal, I witnessed my first hockey game of my life.  It was a Stanley Cup finals game between the Chicago Black Hawks and the Montreal Canadiens.

Attending that game was a fluke.  My friend Jerry Derck (he of Jim Northrup Fan Club fame) and I had taken the train and el into Chicago for a Sunday doubleheader in early April at Wrigley Field.  When we exited the Howard line train at Addison, we were greeted by the news: the dismal, drizzly weather had postponed the doubleheader.  We were in town with no place to go.  But there was a Stanley Cup game at Chicago Stadium later in the afternoon.  Why not go there and see if we could buy standing room tickets?  We did.  So I started at the top!

Within a year, I was an addicted hockey fan.  And more often than not, I was either bumming a ride (from some of my upperclassman Wheaton College friends) to 1800 W. Madison St., or riding the Chicago and Northwestern commuter train from College Avenue, Wheaton, into Oak Park, from where I would take the Lake Street el to Lake and Ashland, four blocks from the stadium.

Hull had the most prolific goal-scoring season in NHL history, and reached 50 goals with several games left in the season.  Then he (and the team) hit the wall.  For three games, every player focused on Hull (a popular teammate) and getting him the puck.  They forgot to play offensive hockey themselves, and their reward was three consecutive shutout losses.  The Chicago Sun-Times sports section, after the third loss, wailed, “Will Black Hawks Ever Score Again?”

So it wasn’t surprising I ended up at center ice in the second balcony, willing to stand the entire game for a chance to witness the historic goal.  Again, the Black Hawks couldn’t get their game going.  Entering the third period, they were still scoreless, trailing the New York Rangers, 2-0.  They had played nearly four full games without lighting the lamp.  Hull’s chances had been few, and insignificant.

Shortly after the third period began, Hull got some room to skate, and ended up with the puck as he skated into the offensive end.  Puck and player still sliding in the direction of the goal, Hull drew his curved stick back to unload his magnificent slap shot.  A fraction of a second later, the puck was in the net, the red light was on, and the Stadium exploded in excitement.

With the goal-scoring drought broken, the Hawks scored three more times in the third period, including Hull’s 52^nd goal, and won the game 4-2.

Hull ended that season with 54 goals (in only 65 games), far surpassing the mark of 50 on which everyone had been stuck. In 1968-69 he pushed his record out to 58.   A few years later, Phil Esposito, his linemate for the 1965-66 season, would score 76, and finally the guy named Gretzky extended the season record to 92.  Hull’s 54-goal season has now been eclipsed 73 times, and the season is 12 games longer.  But at the time, it was sensational.

That would have been enough memory for a lifetime, but in 1994, The Great Wayne Gretzky was working his way toward an unapproachable mark: Gordie Howe’s 801 career goals.  Gretzky was no longer the goal-scoring machine he had been earlier in his career, and was in the midst of a goal-scoring slump, stuck on 799 for two weeks.

I was innocently planning to attend a game in San Jose, to notch the arena there on my all-time list.  I had two days of seminars schedule in the Bay Area (including Monday in San Jose), then the rest of the week was in Southern California.  Susan was planning to fly in to Ontario to join me on Wednesday afternoon.

On Sunday, March 20, 1994, I bought a ticket behind the goal the Kings would be shooting at for two periods.  In the first period, Gretzky broke his slump, scoring his 800^th goal.  Then, with under two minutes to play in the third period, he finally got the Kings into a 6-6 tie by scoring again, from just off the right side of the crease.  The Sharks fans groaned, but I was on my feet cheering.  I had seen the Howe career record tied.

The next Kings game was a Wednesday night home game at the Forum, March 23 against the Vancouver Canucks.  By now, I was convinced I was going to get there, one way or another, and get in to see what I hoped would be the historic goal.  I picked up Susan about 5 p.m. in Ontario, and we pushed our way to Inglewood, crossing almost the entire greater Los Angeles area and arriving a little after 7.  We found a scalper who had two tickets, but they weren’t together.  No matter.  We would both be in for the game, and a few minutes later (and $250 lighter), we were inside the Forum.

The atmosphere inside was electric, and rose to fanatical levels each time Gretzky touched the puck.  About halfway through the second period, he broke free at the blue line, headed for the left slot.  The puck reached his stick, the crowd rose to its feet in anticipation, and The Great One planted it behind Kirk McLean to eclipse his hero Gordie’s career mark.

That the game ended in a 6-3 Canucks win didn’t seem to matter.  Fully half the sellout crowd left the Forum after the celebration following the goal, and Susan and I got to sit together the rest of the game.

Gretzky scored 92 more goals in the following five seasons before he retired to immediate enshrinement in the Hockey Hall of Fame, with a final total of 894 goals.  But I saw the one the mattered the most.

Has anyone else seen both of these as a fan?  I suspect a few hockey people or writers might have been fortunate enough to attend both games.  I’ll bet I’m the only one who bought his way in to both.

To accomplish something by design requires some false starts, some adjustments, and more than a few “close, but no cigar”s.  Two of those involve baseball’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, and perhaps the player whose career I admired the most, George Brett.

In 1992, George Brett’s next-to-last season, he was approaching the 3,000-hit milestone.  Six weeks earlier, I had looked at Brett’s totals, the number of games it appeared he would need to reach the mark, and where the Kansas City Royals would be playing.  If he was to do it in 1992, it looked like he might just make it before the season ended.

I finally decided on the final weekend home stand in Kansas City, October 2-4 against the Minnesota Twins.  The last three games followed a road trip to the West coast.  I purchased tickets for all three games, and had my airfare and hotel already booked.  As the dates approached and Brett’s hit total grew, it appeared I had hit the weekend right on the button.  The Royals entered the next-to-last game of their road trip, Wednesday night, September 30,  in Anaheim, with Brett sitting on 2,996—four hits short.

Counting one more game in Anaheim and the three weekend games, Brett had five games in which to get four hits…a nearly perfect alignment of the numbers.

But Brett, alas, did not cooperate.  I opened Thursday’s paper to read that he had gone 4-for-5 the night before, and reached his 3,000^th hit in his final at-bat.

I’m sure many Kansas City fans (where I had lived when Brett first came up, and for the first 12 years of his career) were disappointed not to be able to see their future Hall of Fame hero reach the milestone.  Many were season ticket holders.  Others had bought tickets for the games without realizing it potential significance they might have offered.

But few, I suspect, had planned an 1,800-mile trip for the sole purpose of seeing the hit.

By the way, Brett sat out the afternoon game in Anaheim on Thursday, and returned to go 5-for-10 against the Twins in the season-closing series.  So I had been right…but George didn’t cooperate.  I forgive him because his great career offered many great memories.

My Pete Rose quest has even more oddities associated with it.  This was in 1985, and again, I calculated early in the season the time at which Rose was most likely to beat Ty Cobb’s all-time career total of 4,191 hits.  I identified a weekend in early September in Cincinnati, and again bought tickets to all three games.

By the time that weekend rolled around, it was evident Rose hadn’t kept up a pace strong enough to position himself to break the record.  He was 11 hits short when the series began.  Still, we had the tickets and the reservations, and enjoyed the three games in Cincinnati that ended with Rose still eight hits short of passing Ty.

But the story doesn’t end there.  The Reds took to the road for the following week, ending their short trip with a series against the Cubs at Wrigley Field on the weekend, before they returned to Cincinnati.

As Rose got each successive hit, it looked like he might be in position at least to tie the record on Sunday, September 8.  I was scheduled to do a seminar in Chicago on Monday, and already had a flight to O’Hare that arrived about 5 p.m.

This was in the days when airline tickets were completely transferable, and I considered taking an earlier flight up in time to get to the game.  But when I heard on Saturday night that Rose would probably sit out Sunday’s game, it didn’t surprise me.  The Cubs were starting a left-hander; and Rose, a switch-hitter throughout his career, had stopped batting right-handed.  As player-manager, he determined when  he would start, and since he didn’t hit left-handers well at that point of his career, he would not play.

That also made sense because it would allow him to pass the record in front of his home fans in Cincinnati during the following week.  So I didn’t change my plans.

When I arrived in Chicago late that afternoon, I learned things had gone a little differently at Wrigley.  The Cubs had started right-hander Reggie Patterson; Pete had put himself into the lineup, and he got two hits that afternoon to match Cobb’s career total of 4,191.

I could have been there, but I wasn’t.  Circumstances had changed at the last minute, and I missed out.  Even more significant, later statistical study reduced shows two of Cobb’s career hits were counted twice, so he only had 4,189.  (Major league baseball has never changed the total from 4,191.)  Technically, and in retrospect, Rose broke the record in Chicago that day.

But that meant the record was almost certain to fall in the Reds’ first home game on Monday.  But the San Diego Padres announced lefthander Dave Dravecky as the starting pitcher, and Rose didn’t play.   For some reason I no longer recall, Pete didn’t play on Tuesday, either, although the Padres went with LaMarr Hoyt, a righthander.  That lined up Wednesday, September 11 (later to become a most memorable date for other reasons).  Rose announced himself in the starting lineup.

I was teaching classes all week in the Chicago area, with the programs ending at 4 p.m.  I couldn’t skip out of a class as a contract seminar speaker, or leave early to try to get to the airport for a quick one-hour flight to Cincinnati.

The game started at 7 p.m., and Cincinnati was in the Eastern time zone.  By the time I was finished with the class, it would already by after 5 p.m. in Ohio.  There was no way I could be there for the first inning and Rose’s first at-bat.  What if he beat the record his first time up, while I was perhaps in a taxi trying to get to Riverfront Stadium?

I even called my pilot friend Dick Abernathy, who owned a charter flying service in Kansas City.  Yes, he would love to go himself, and would have met me at a nearby Chicago airport (not O’Hare) to fly us both to Cincinnati.  IF he had been available, which he wasn’t.  He told me UPS had their overnight packages hub in Dayton…maybe I could bum a ride with someone flying from Chicago.  That didn’t seen possible, either.

So, like millions of other fans, I watched Pete Rose hit a soft liner into left-center field off Eric Show to become the all-time hits leader.  I watched the celebration that lasted nearly 20 minutes, and eventually walked out of my hotel room into a warm September evening in Kankakee, Illinois.  I looked in the dark sky to the southeast, wishing I had been somewhere else, but knowing I had done as much as I could.

Recently, I saw a mounted copy of Page 1 of the Cincinnati Enquirer from the next day.  I had forgotten how deeply loved Pete Rose once was, before the gambling charges that destroyed  his image. And, unlike a comment on that page that Rose should bypass the Hall of Fame and go directly to the Smithsonian; this is now a man permanently on the outside looking in, who no longer has anyone’s respect and will never be in the Hall of Fame.

It was MUCH better for Petey in 1985.

As the music continues, short white lines begin to develop from the “stars.” Sometimes they intersect, sometimes they form shapes.  Some of them disappear and others slowly grow.  Suddenly, several lines come together and stay together.  It creates an angular shape, appearing to be pointing somewhere.  Then it begins to rotate until it is pointed straight up.  And suddenly, a white-on-black outline of ship begins to sail right out into the audience.  Applause is spontaneous.  I applaud, too…even though I have never applauded a set before.

Three hours later, as the crowd leaves the spectacular new Winspear Opera House in Dallas, I witness something else I have never experienced at a “new” opera.  The audience is bursting with enthusiasm, excitedly discussing what they have seen and heard.  There is none of the polite, “Well, that was interesting” talk that usually prevails with a new work.  And by now it’s obvious.

Jake Heggie has a (sorry!) whale of a hit on his hands.

Later, over a glass of malbec at the Dali wine bar across the street, the exultant cast is still fired up over what they have done, even though this is already their third performance.  And the news is out: today another opera company has asked to rent and stage MOBY-DICK.

It’s hard to believe there hadn’t even been a full dress rehearsal a week ago.  In spite of the challenges of the animation, the staging and the new music, last night’s performance clicked almost perfectly.  It’s impossible to say a discouraging word about it.

Full-throated all-male choruses with the full large orchestra underneath…dramatic scenes of whale encounters and men overboard…quiet, pensive moments as one or two characters discover themselves or share ideas.  This is a work of great balance and pacing.

Gene Scheer’s libretto—part Melville, part Scheer—also works spectacularly.   MOBY-DICK has no one-dimensional characters. And, no need to get your knickers in a twist about the opera not starting with “Call me Ishmael.”  It’s in there, and perfectly placed in the story.  I’ll not spoil it unless you want to ask me privately!

Robert Brill’s curved white wood backdrop to the stage (reminding one of the inside of a ship) also performs some spectacular tricks to aid in the staging of this work that poses so many potential difficulties.  And the depiction of a whale rendering in the background for most of the second act is jaw-dropping.

Oh yes:  the singers.  Ben Heppner hit his stride last night and inhabited Captain Ahab from beginning to end.  This is the best I have heard him sound in years, and he nailed the music and the role.  How he managed to do that hopping around on a peg leg…well, it just speaks to the accomplishment.

Much of the cast involved singers I had not heard before.  Three were astounding:  New Zealand-born Samoan Jonathan Lemalu as Queequeg; Morgan Smith’s Starbuck (IMO the best-developed character of all); and Talise Trevigne’s (the only woman in the cast) Pip, the cabin boy.  Stephen Costello as Greenhorn seemed to get off to a slow start, but caught up with the surge quickly enough.  Bob Orth’s salty Stubb provided what little humor the script contained, portraying a happy man who loved to sing.

I’m sure the general directors in San Diego, San Francisco, Calgary and Adelaide have breathed a collective sigh of relief, and now look forward with anticipation to presenting this work to their audiences.  Long may the Great White Whale rule the opera stage!

By the way, the Winspear Opera House is sensational, too!  It possesses the intimacy of European houses, a stunning chandelier, great sightlines and marvelous acoustics.  It might be only five miles away from the cavernous barn of the Fair Park Music Hall, but it’s light years ahead of what Dallas Opera had to endure for so many decades.  It’s worth the trip, just in itself.

After two and a half decades in the Humphrey Metrodome (of the ear-splitting decibels and “Hefty Bag” right field wall), the Twinkies have ventured outside again into the cold and cruel Minnesota weather with their new park at the opposite end of downtown Minneapolis, just behind Target Center (those folks have the city covered) where the Minnesota Timberwolves play.  It’s easy to reach, and right beside the new light rail system.

This was not a park I had to visit during the first home stand.  April…Minnesota…no, thanks.  But by the end of May, it seemed like a chance worth taking, and the May 28 game I took in with my intrepid park-collecting college friend Don Mering was played on a gorgeous evening of a day with a high of 87.  It was, as it turned out, a perfect night for baseball.

Target Field is, to me, a park that is not trying to “be” something or make a statement of some kind.  It’s simply a great place to see a baseball game; and from a convenience and viewing standpoint, in the top echelon of today’s stadia.

We sat on the club level just to the third base side of home plate.  Behind the club level is a huge restaurant, bar, and comfort facilities area, with a massive glass wall opening to the field.  A perfect place to retreat for when the weather isn’t as warm as it was this time.

I like the park’s subtle nostalgia for the early years of the Twins.  (The Twins are playing their 50^th season in Minnesota since leaving Washington, a fact that makes me feel very old.)  In dead center field, above the bleachers, is the corny original logo of two goofy ballplayers (“M” and “STP”) shaking hands across a river.  When the sun goes down, the logo lights up in red and blue.

There’s also the original flagpole from Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, the team’s home for the first 20 years.  Apparently it was stored away in some American Legion all these years, and resurrected for Target Field.  With a current or retired member of the Armed Forces doing the honor, they actually raise the flag, before each game, during the National Anthem.  Our Anthem was sung by an elementary school choir: only in Middle America, and a welcome change from the self-indulgence of most performances these days.

Of course, no new stadium would open without having some exclusive “regional” eats, and Target Field is no exception.  At a stand called  “State Fair,” fans can buy cheese curds (I’ll never think of them without remembering a Prairie Home Companion show in which Garrison Keillor interviewed cheese curd fans at the Minnesota State Fair), and something called “Walleye on a Stick” (you can also get “Pork Chop on a Stick”).  The freshwater Walleye Pike is, I think, the Minnesota state fish.  If it has a state fish.  And if it doesn’t, it should.  If it does, it should be the Walleye.

For $11 (no kidding), they sell a breaded fillet with a thin, popsicle-like stick skewering the fish, with fries.  Unfortunately, we reach the Club Level and our seats before we realize we have blown our only chance to buy the Walleye on a Stick.  Ever the enterprising, Don volunteers to retrace our steps all the way back to center field on the lower level, and soon he returns with his catch.

We had just gotten up from McCormick & Schmick’s Happy Hour (and its great, cheap, food), so we weren’t that hungry, and sharing one Stick between us was plenty. It wasn’t that large, and didn’t last very long.  We resolved to go for the Cheese Curds later in the day, and our usher was quick to tell us exactly where we could buy them in the area behind our seats.

However, this was not to be the case.  Nowhere on the (hoity-toity?) Club Level can one purchase and enjoy Walleye on a Stick OR Cheese Curds.  We left curdless, but that’s all right.  I forgot to check on State Fair when we passed it to see if they also sold Deep-Fried Twinkies.  That would be perfect for a team that has that ESPN-assigned nickname.  I don’t think they did.  But they should have.

Target Field seats around 40,000, and does not appear to have any bad seats.  A three-story restaurant-and-bar structure hugs the left field foul pole, and we got to see it come into play in a home run turned foul ball by video replay.  The Rangers’ Ian Kinsler lined a ball past the foul pole that the umpire ruled a home run.  Immediately the fans out there began to scream, because the entire structure (and its concourse) is in foul territory.  Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire went out to challenge it, and sure enough, the umps looked again and overturned the original call.

Kinsler had run the bases and returned to the dugout, so he went to the plate again and stroked a double down the right field line.  He eventually came in to score the only Texas run, so everyone ended up satisfied with the outcome.

Twins fans are knowledgeable, and greatly supportive of their often-overachieving (for a small market) ball club.  The Twins rewarded them with a 2-1 win over the Texas Rangers, and all went home happy.

Meet Laura Sage and Elisa Jordan.

I spent the weekend in Southern California attending an old opera (Verdi’s NABUCCO, in San Diego) and a new one (Kenneth Wells’s THE FIRST LADY, at UCLA).  Both events were followed by enjoyable visits to local eating and drinking establishments with friends old and new, in which we closed the joints down both days.

After the UCLA event, I met Laura Sage, founder and president of Lyric Opera of Los Angeles.  Laura’s organization is dedicated to presenting unusual, rarely-performed operas.  I saw them do Verdi’s UN GIORNO DI REGNO several years ago, and they have been on hiatus until now.

In June, this enthusiastic young impresario’s organization will present the first-ever North American staged production of Richard Wagner’s first opera, DIE FEEN.  A juvenile work dating to his 20^th year, it sounds nothing like the voice he discovered a few years later with RIENZI (and subsequently refined throughout his career).  But it’s a nice bel canto work full of melody and energy, with an overture that occasionally gets its own hearing in an orchestra concert program.

DIE FEEN is an official event surrounding the Los Angeles Opera RING cycle, the four magnificent operas best performed in six days in a single week.  Other events include a University of Southern California production of Wagner’s SECOND opera, DAS LIEBESVERBOT, and the incredibly funny musical takeoff on the RING, DAS BARBECU.

Working out of her home and assisted by her father, a lifelong musician, single mother of two Laura Sage began LOLA several years ago to present repertory she wanted to see herself.  Money is always an issue, and even though the opera is cast and rehearsals scheduled to begin this month, it’s an iffy situation.  Fingers crossed…here’s hoping she makes it.  Any extra donation dollars, I’m sure she would gratefully accept.

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Elisa Jordan is a 20-year old voice major at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.  I met her and her family at dinner after NABUCCO, where she and several of her friends sang in the thrilling chorus numbers of that early Verdi opera.

A year ago, Point Loma eliminated the funds for the annual school opera production.  Jordan and her vocal associates were crushed, but not defeated.

Using her parents’ kitchen table for a conference room, they set up the Point Loma Opera Theatre (PLOT), and began raising money though requests, promotions, and smaller singing gigs.  And in November, they put on both DIDO AND AENEAS and GIANNI SCHICCHI.  Next fall they have already scheduled CENDRILLON, a full-length opera by Jules Massenet.

A visit to the PLOT web site shows a full calendar of singing events, including many in assisted living centers and retirement homes.  Their history page describes them as “idealists,” except now they are “seasoned idealists.”  I love it!

The “can do” attitude of these young women at opera’s grassroots is most encouraging for the future of this wonderful art form!  Bravas to both!