Stratford Sundries, 2017-1

Stratford City Hall
Stratford, Ontario
31 July 2017

We're back!

A couple hours ago we arrived--again--in Stratford, Ontario, where, tomorrow afternoon, we begin our annual Orgy of Plays. We'll see eleven plays in six days here at the Stratford Theatre Festival--something we've been doing for more than fifteen consecutive years now. We are enormously fortunate, enormously grateful.

At the end of April this year I believed there was no way I'd ever be here again. I could barely walk I was so dizzy, and I even spent a night in the ER up at UH in Chagrin. Test after test after test ...

But I've been getting better--slowly, slowly--and here we are. As is our wont, we've parked the car in our hotel's parking lot, and we will not drive again until we leave for home on Sunday next. Walk everywhere.

There are four main theater venues here--the Festival, the Avon, the Studio, the Tom Patterson--and we will see shows at all of them. Only the Festival is a bit of a walk; the others are pretty close to where we "live."

We left Hudson about 10:45 this morning, arriving here about 5:30. If we could have driven straight across Lake Erie, it would have, you know, been quicker--if wetter. Instead, we drove all the way west to I-280, then up I-75 to Detroit, crossing the Ambassador Bridge there to Windsor, Ontario (where I once spent a wonderful day at the University of Windsor Library chasing down stuff about the Northwest Police for my Jack London/Call of the Wild research). And then we basically reversed our morning trip--this time along the northern edge of Lake Erie.

I love the rural parts of Ontario--reminds me so much of boyhood trips in the Midwest before urban sprawl ... Lovely sights of farms and small towns and many farmers bringing in their hay crops and ... Dear Memory held my hand and whispered in my ear ... and I felt. And listened.

Joyce and I are now unpacking and getting ready for a busy week. For a lovely busy week, and I will post here about the shows we're seeing--and about all the other excitin' stuff we do!