Return to Seidman Cancer Center

Seidman Cancer Center
Beachwood, Ohio

Yesterday was my regularly scheduled visit with my oncologist--a visit preceded by some blood work: a metabolic panel (all basically okay--sodium a tad low) and a PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) test.

A little reminder/history. Late in 2004 a biopsy on my prostate revealed the presence of cancer. It didn't seem too worrisome a number (Gleason score of 5--on a ten-point scale), so I finished the school year teaching at Western Reserve Academy, then, almost exactly a dozen years ago, had a prostatectomy (removal of the gland) at Cleveland Clinic.

The bad news was swift: My biopsy had been wrong: My Gleason was a 9--very dangerous. But my subsequent PSA measurements came back "undetectable" for nearly two years. Then ... the score began rising, and soon it was time to act again. In January 2008 I underwent daily radiation therapy down at the Clinic for six weeks.

My PSA dropped--then began climbing again early in 2010. It continued rising--accelerating, even--and so in July 2013 I began quarterly injections of Lupron (a drug that kills my testosterone--the "food" of prostate cancer). All was good for a couple of years--"good" now a very relative term. Lupron has permanently altered my life. (Low energy, depression, heavy sweating periodically, total loss of libido, etc.)

But in September 2015 my PSA reappeared, started rising. In April this year I went on a second testosterone-killing med: bicalutamide. My PSA had reached 18.67. A number that shows the cancer was back in business--serious business.

So ... I was concerned about the test result yesterday. But my score had fallen--to 12.9, Not awesome, but, hey, in prostate cancer, score down is always better than score up!

My oncologist just wants me to keep doing what I'm doing--and did not schedule any additional bone scans (prostate cancer loves to move into the bones--as mine had begun to do), and I will see him in mid-August. And I'll have another PSA blood test just before I see him.

Yesterday, I asked him "What's next?"

He said there are some other oral tablets I can take--then ... chemo.

But all of these things--I well know--are delaying tactics. Temporary roadblocks. There is no cure for me. And cancer is a most determined self-driving vehicle, one that is totally unafraid of crashing through roadblocks.

So ... I'm going to keep on doing what helps. Exercising most days. Eating well/right. (Except for a rare visit to Stoddard's Frozen Custard in Kent, a place we've patronized for nearly fifty years; we went yesterday evening to "celebrate" the day's decent news. We'll probably not go again this summer. Well ... maybe once or twice more?)

And I will continue to try to do the things I love for as long as I can. Reading, writing, being with Joyce, our son and his family. I am, I know, a rich man in all the ways that really matter.

***

My oncologist was concerned about my continuous dizziness/wooziness (of which I've written here). So far ... no answers from any of the specialists I've seen; I see a neurologist next week. So maybe then ...?

Until then, I have to remain very careful about all of my movements. I've begun working out again--very, very prudently so. No quick movements here and there. I ride the exercise bike. Walk a mile of laps. Do 100 pulls on the rowing machine. Do some curls. But I move around like recently awakened Rip Van Winkle: What is this world where I've found myself?

Sunday Sundries, 145

1. AOTW: Not really anyone qualified this week--nothing beyond the usual annoyances of drivers who need a refresher in Driver's Ed--or should be in prison.

2. We saw Wonder Woman Saturday night at the Kent Cinema (about half full--or half empty ... depends, you know?), and we both kind of enjoyed it. I liked her--and have always been a fan of Chris Pine. Of course, the irony (?) was not lost on me--of an anti-war film that chockablock with violence that's clearly supposed to be enjoyable. Countless people died. But, you know, they're just minor characters in a comic, right? Still ... I enjoyed watching it, recalling boyhood days of reading DC comics while my parents were despairing for my future ... (film trailer) ...

3. This week we also finished--at last!--this year's Oscar-winner for Best Documentary, the multi-part OJ: Made in America, which has been streaming on Hulu. It is painful to watch for all sorts of reasons--the brutal murders, of course, of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman but also the racial/racist context in which the filmmakers place OJ's wonderful/horrible story. Loved the interviews with some of the principals--from F. Lee Bailey to some of the cops involved to Marcia Clark. It was wonderfully done--but so intense I could take only about a half-hour or so at a time, a few days a week. So it took a while ... ! I have clear memories of learning the verdict during the day at Harmon School, October 3, 1995, a little after 1 pm. Some teachers (I?) had TVs on ... (link to film trailer)

4. I finished three books this week.

     - The first was Michael Chabon's 2007 adventure novel, Gentlemen of the Road, a novel I really enjoyed--though it's a bit lighter fare than some of the other items on his menu. It's about 950 A.D. in the Caucasus Mountains--a novel about royal conflicts, about revenge and restoration, and, ultimately, about the variety of people who must "get along" in order for anything to work. Our questing heroes are a motley crew, including the last survivor, a young teenage boy, of a family who should be ruling but are embroiled in war and revolution. And we learn a surprising secret about him later on. In his Afterword, Chabon writes: 

All adventure happens in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstop or the county line, into that place where the structures, laws, and conventions of your upbringing no longer apply, where the support and approval (but also the disapproval and repression) of your family and neighbors are not to be had, then you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret (201-02).

I love Chabon's work, and as followers know, I'm slowly reading my way through those books of his that I somehow missed over the years--in the order he published them.

     - The second was a fine account of the recent world-wide tour of Hamlet, a tour by players from Shakespeare's Globe in London--Hamlet Globe to Globe: Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play, by Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director at the Globe from 2006-2016. The tour was part of the celebration (?) of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 1616. Dromgoole saw some (not all, not most, not many) of the productions in about as wide an assortment of settings (and audiences) as you can imagine.

The book is a mixture of several things--an account of the journey (and the experiences in far-flung places), some insights into the play itself, some ruminations about why Shakespeare continues to endure, geopolitics. And more. Several times he talks about their (failed) attempts to take the show to North Korea. One of his conclusions: "Hamlet fitted in everywhere" (250).

I taught the play the final ten years of my career at Western Reserve Academy (2001-2011), and I know the text pretty well--but Dromgoole made me think about some things I'd not thought much about before--e.g., I n the play "everyone is telling a version of the truth" (93). He also talks about the excitement of the company players when they got to perform some of it for Pres. Obama at the site of the new Globe.

     - Finally, a book that disappointed me, the latest entry by the Hogarth Press in their presentation of contemporary novels based on Shakespeare's plays. (Link to Hogarth's Shakespeare site.) I've read them all as they've come out--contemporary versions of A Winter's Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, and The Merchant of Venice. I've enjoyed some more than others. But I was kind of looking forward to this newest one, an adaption by Tracy Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring, etc.) of Othello. She calls it New Boy.

She does do some things I understood and liked. She compressed the story into a single day. She divided her text into five parts (the Bard's plays, remember, all have five acts, thanks to that 1623 posthumous publication, the First Folio, which contained thirty-six of his plays).

But the time and setting she chose gave her problems she couldn't surmount. 1974. A group of sixth graders in an elementary school in Washington, DC, a school that has no black students at all--until the new boy arrives. Osei. (He tells people to call him "O.") He's a boy from Ghana; his father's a diplomat.

Chevalier sets virtually all her key scenes on the playground: before school, morning recess, lunch, afternoon recess, after school. Ian is the Iago figure, and he's a schemer no one really likes--but the younger kids, especially, fear him. He's a creep.

Daniela ("Dee") is the Desdemona figure--and so on.

A problem. Sixth graders are eleven years old. And for the homicidal passions to rise--in a single day--to the height (or depth) that Othello requires was a bit of a stretch for me (and, remember, I taught in a middle school for thirty years--I saw a lot!). And would she really include the murder and suicide of Othello? (Ain't tellin' you!)

I also felt Chevalier was too obtrusive in her attempts to "date" the piece--inserting allusions to popular culture in fairly blunt, unsubtle ways--as if she were telling herself "Time to remember to let people know it's 1974." Joe Namath comes up in a lunch conversation.

Also, a prominent teacher, Mr. Brabant (based on Brabantio, Desdemona's father; Dee is Mr. Brabant's favorite), is, natch, a racist, and Chevalier shows this, again, in some unsubtle ways. For example, he sometimes breaks off in the middle of a word he knows he should not be saying. In an emotional exchange with the principal (Miss Lode, based on Lodovico), he says this: "I didn't expect much from a bl--" he glanced at Miss Lode.

So ... I just didn't care for it--though I understood what she was endeavoring to do. In my view, it's the weakest of the series so far. Which disappointed me. I really wanted to like it.

5. Final Word--a word I liked this week from my various online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from wordsmith.org

prodnose (PROD-nohz)

verb intr.: To pry.

noun: A prying person.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Prodnose, a pedantic and nosy character, who appeared in the columns of J B Morton in the Daily Express. Earliest documented use: 1954.

NOTES:

J B Morton wrote under the pen name Beachcomber. Twenty years before the word appeared in his column, the poet Dylan Thomas wrote in a letter to someone in 1934:

“I want you to think of me today ... singing as loudly as Beachcomber in a world rid of Prodnose.”

USAGE:

“The lines between government prodnosing and charitable work become ever more blurred.”

Libby Purves; Charities Must Get Back to Doing Good Works; The Times (London, UK); Dec 23, 2008.

“Now Wallace wants to take this gang of Minnesota prodnoses to the national level.”

Alexander Cockburn; Leave the Press to the Court of Public Opinion; Los Angeles Times; Dec 27, 1996.

Fake News?

Fake news is nothing new. It has ever been with us. Probably those first distant folks who started writing/carving symbols on stone and papyrus were careful to write down only those things that favored themselves--and their "kind." And that disparaged their opponents.

Scholars today who write about ancient history are always careful to note that their ancient primary sources are--let's be kind--not always reliable. As we all know, the ancient historians who wrote accounts of battles and leaders were generally writing from the side of the winners.

For various of my own writing projects, I've had occasion to read newspapers from early in American history, a time when political factions published their own accounts and views of what was going on. Exaggerating their own positions; lying about their opponents'. These accounts could be (often were) vicious, personal, fake.

There really was no time in our history when we had a disinterested media--though in the earlier years of my life there were some noble attempts among the mainstream press and, later, among the broadcast media, to be, well, fair and balanced. Newscasters like Walter Cronkite and Huntley & Brinkley sought impartiality--and were greatly respected across the country. But we know now, looking back on their reporting, that they didn't always manage to keep their political biases out of their coverage.

Those days are long gone, though--those days of that attempt to be reasonable.* And I can't see how they will ever return. For one thing, there's far too much corporate profit in keeping us polarized. Far too much profit in keeping people afraid of one another--disdainful of one another. Far too much benefit to the powerful for them to declare that anything critical of them is "fake"--a term that far too many of us are far too willing to apply to anything with which we do not agree.

It's frightening to me, this attack on the press. My older brother was a career journalist (Boston Globe). Our son was a reporter for ten years for the Akron Beacon-Journal--until he saw the dire fate of the print media and headed off to law school. I know how they did their jobs. Thorough. Determined to get things correct.

I have been a freelancer for many years and have always tried to be, well, fair and balanced in the reviews and op-ed pieces I've done. But I know that savage reviews get more ... hits. (Check out the reviews on Amazon--some of those folks are downright saurian!)

Not many people are happy to read something unpleasant about themselves in a newspaper or magazine, in a Tweet or blog or posting of some sort. I remember some years ago when a reviewer of my annotated edition of The Call of the Wild gave me a hard time about a couple of things I'd said. I raged, raged against the dying of the right and envisioned many pleasant scenes of sweet evisceration. (Which, of course, I never enacted: I'm far too ... pacific, you know? But I still wish I could have sicced Buck on him!)

But this current climate alarms me--this idea that news we don't like is, ipso facto, "fake." The willingness--the eagerness--I see on Facebook to share posts and memes that are clearly deeply biased, if not patently false. I remember one clearly from a year or so ago: an image of the Obamas saluting the flag by holding their left hands to their hearts. Oh, the umbrage of the person who posted! (The person who just did not want to see that someone had obviously reversed the image.)

Now, I'm no saint: There are all kinds of "news" stories that I want to believe. As my friends and some followers know, I am a lifelong Democrat--not some wild-eyed cliche of a Lefty but a person who believes in human rights, in equality, in labor unions, in health care for all, in paying taxes to help those who need it, etc. (However, I don't like lattes, and I don't wear tasseled loafers.)

So when I see some anti-Trump or anti-Right "news," part of me wants to believe it. But my mommy and daddy (and many others) have taught me to be more ... judicious. To employ that ability we all have (but too often choose not to employ)--critical thinking. It's often the case, isn't it, that when we see something that seems too good to be true (for our political "team"), we are quick to believe it? And slow to check it out? (If we even bother to do so.)

And these days, confirmation and refutation are so easy to seek. A click or so away. So when I see something on a news site, something that seems distorted (even in my favor--especially in my favor), I check it out. There are all sorts of Internet sites to hasten the process. It's really inexcusable not to use them. (Of course, there are those who claim those sites are "fake," too--especially if they fail to confirm that the Obamas, say, were honoring the flag with their left hands.)

But you can also just ask yourself: "Who benefits from a story like this? Who is hurt? Who has published or posted the information?" Etc.

I saw a story on Facebook the other day that said that Nancy Pelosi had been taken from her office in handcuffs. Search on it: the story was all over the Internet. And it's also demonstrably false.

And I think it's our duty--on both sides--to make sure something is factually so before we begin condemning and Tweeting and ripping new ones for folks. I'm willing to wait to see about all this Russia stuff and the Trump campaign/transition team. What's the evidence? Is it credible? What did he know and when did he know it? Etc.?

Meanwhile, I know I'm trying to counter a ferocious wind with a bicycle tire pump. But I refuse to cry "Fake!" until I have checked, until I am certain. Then, I guarantee you, my bicycle pump and I will be out there battling the tempest.

*I often check NPR ... they do well in this regard. I have friends who swear by PBS, as well.

Frankenstein Sundae, 312

Near the end of her edition of her husband’s poems, Mary wrote affectingly about his drowning in the summer of 1822 near the coast of Viareggio, Italy. A sort of spell surrounded us, she wrote of those waiting for the boat’s return, and each day, as the voyagers did not return, we grew restless and disquieted, and yet, strange to say, we were not fearful of the most apparent danger.

The spell snapped; it was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt—of days passed in miserable journeys to gain tidings, of hopes that took firmer root even as they were more baseless—was changed to the certainty that death had eclipsed all happiness for the survivors for evermore.[1]

She praised Trelawny for his efforts in the cremations (required by Italian law) and his arrangements for the return of the ashes. He was indefatigable in his exertions, she wrote.[2]

Following the publication of Bysshe’s poems—and the wrenching experience of writing about his final days—Mary was near a breakdown. In her journal—some time in March 1839—she wrote: Illness did ensue—what an illness—driving me to the verge of insanity—Often I felt the cord wd snap & I should no longer be able to rule my though[t]s with fearful struggles—After long repose, I became somewhat better.[3]

Nine months later her next entry appeared, and it was hardly more sanguine: A hope gleams through the clouds of my life—will it break forth into sunshine?—Never![4]

Like her late husband, Mary was quite peripatetic. She was moving here and there, hither and yon, discovering each time, of course, that her happiness did not reside in a place. Her happiness, she recognized very clearly, was something that would never return to her. It lived nowhere.

In June 1840, she and her twenty-year-old son, Percy Florence Shelley (and a maid), set sail for the Continent, for a journey she would later recount in her final book, Rambles in Germany and Italy, published on August 1, 1844. In the next few years she would return a couple of more times, in many cases revisiting sites that had been so significant to her in her years with Bysshe.

---

[1] Ibid., 718.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Journals, 563.

[4] Ibid.

... and 50 years ago about now ... (final)

It was on June 5, 1967, that the students and parents at Aurora Middle School got a look at the first play I directed in my teaching career, which had begun barely nine months earlier. As I've recounted in the previous two posts on this subjects, it was a script I wrote with some seventh and eighth graders throughout the year in our Drama Club, a group that met a couple of days a week after regular classes during our school's hastily created "Activity Period" (a hasty arrangement occasioned by a bus-scheduling problem).

I told a bit about the plot last time--a plot that makes me cringe to this day. But--hey!--I was barely 22 (in years and, apparently, IQ), and my Heart, if not my Sense, was in the right place.

In 1967, June 5 was on a Monday. I'm not sure what that was about (why not a weekend performance?), but June 5 arrived all too swiftly. That I remember.

I don't remember a thing about tryouts for the show. I assume I held them in my classroom, Room 116 in the old middle school building (now, mostly, the administrative offices for the district). I do know that I was stunned by the ability of the kids who tried out. John Mlinek, who played the Rev. Ku Klux, was a bright talent--and has remained performing in and directing local theater productions for decades. I later got to see him play Hamlet as a student at Kent State University--and even later, at an outdoor production in Columbus, he was a great Macbeth. (Managing to ignore, by the way, a stray dog that wandered up onto the stage!)

Dave Prittie was another great one. He drew the cover of the program (which you can now barely see), performed as Laertes in same KSU Hamlet with John, and went on to have a career in commercial art in NYC.

And so many of the others just shocked me with their talent. I was lucky. They deserved a better script, a better director.

I remember a terrible--and very fundamental--error I made at the outset. We were practicing and performing in the middle school gym, and I decided that those not onstage at the time would wait out in the hallway with the doors closed. (What could go wrong?)

What an idiot.

The kids could have learned so much about performing by watching the other kids work on their parts in the gym. And I could have gotten to know them all a lot better. Instead, I created a big Discipline Problem by leaving seventh and eighth graders pretty much unattended out in the hallway. (I'm surprised the building is still standing.)

I never did that again, by the way--separate the kids from the rehearsal. And we would use that gym floor until the mid-1970s when we moved to our new building, Harmon School, which had a stage, a curtain! (And the most primitive lighting system this side of Thomas Edison.)

I see in the program another thing I'd forgotten. The scenery that we had (such as it was--and I can't picture it at all) was done by Mrs. Janet Walter and her 8th grade art class. I wish I could remember it. I wish I had taken some damn pictures! But, of course, I didn't ... I was 22 (in age and IQ, remember?) ...

We performed in the afternoon for a student assembly--and I think the show ran about 45 min-an hour?

And ... it went great. I couldn't believe it. The students loved seeing their classmates out there pouring their hearts into this dumb story I'd thought was so awesome--and I could see the cast members deeply affected by the positive responses from the crowd.. Energy flowed both ways. John Mlinek, who has remained a loyal friend ever since, told me later on that it was an experience that altered his life.

Mine too.

I would go on to write other scripts with the kids in the ensuing years--one about Robin Hood, another about the American Revolution, another about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and others ... Because of The Founding of Aurora I began to see myself as the "drama guy" in the middle school, and by the time I was getting ready to retire (January 1997), I was doing three shows a year, including our annual Eighth Grade Farewell-to-Harmon Show, a show I wrote for the kids for, oh, ten years or so. For me, those 8th grade shows were among the highlights of my career. And life.

The kids and I both got so emotional on closing night of those 8th grade shows. They were moving on to the high school; I was watching them go--these kids I'd come to admire and love. I am now Facebook friends with many former cast members, and there remains among us, I feel, a bond of intimacy that I will forever value.

I am no longer 22. Fifty years have gone by. I am 72 (age and IQ--I got smarter as the years went along).

And yet I can still remember those kids on June 5, 1967, out on the gym floor, the bleachers packed with classmates and parents, their eyes lit with surprise (actors and audience), while I sat there and realized I'd just discovered something I really wanted to do. Something I loved.

Frankenstein Sundae, 311

When There Were No More Novels

Although she would write no more novels after Falkner appeared in 1837, Mary Shelley had not finished her writing life. Nor had she shut down her intellectual life, a life she’d cherished since she was a little girl in the household of her father, William Godwin—novelist, philosopher, political theorist, social reformer.

She continued working on the encyclopedia entries that we’ve already dealt with; she wrote some stories, some other pieces. And there would be one more book about her European travels in the 1840s.

But her life was changing in fundamental ways. Her son, Percy, began his tenure as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1837, about five months after Falkner appeared. She continued her correspondence, her social meetings with friends. And in August, 1838, she finally acquired permission from Sir Timothy Shelley to publish an edition of his son’s poems. He insisted, though, that there be no biography attached.

Clever Mary agreed—then appended annotations to the poems, annotations that provided all the necessary biographical information on Percy Bysshe Shelley. Originally published early in 1839 (and edited by “Mrs. Shelley”), the four volumes were collected together in 1994 by the Modern Library (see image below), and her opening sentence in her Preface says much by saying little—and is a tribute to the pasive voice! Obstacles have long existed in my presenting the public with a perfect edition of Shelley’s Poems, she began. These being at last happily removed, I hasten to fulfil an important duty,—that of giving the production of a sublime genius to the world, with all the correctness possible, and of, at the same time, detailing the history of those productions, as they sprang, living and warm from his heart and brain.[1]

In the rest of her brief Preface she waltzed very near the edge of Sir Timothy’s disapproval by writing briefly about Bysshe’s life and death and influence. But, as I said, it was in her notes on the poems that she supplied the biographical information she felt was necessary. In her “Note on Poems of 1820, by Mrs. Shelley,” for example, she wrote about their time in Florence, in Leghorn, in the Baths of San Giuliano, and Pisa, where the extreme mildness of the climate suited Shelley. And she made some observations that remain very affecting.

But for our fears on account of our child, I believe we should have wandered over the world, she wrote, both being passionately fond of travelling. But human life, besides its great unalterable necessities, is ruled by a thousand lilliputian ties that shackle at the time, although it is difficult to account afterwards for their influence over our destiny.[2] 

---

[1] The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (New York: Modern Library), vii.

[2] Ibid., 674.

... and 50 years ago, about now ... (part 2)

As I wrote a couple of days ago here, it was fifty years ago that I directed my first play at the Aurora Middle School (thirty-some would follow).

The (barely-legible) program above is the only token I retain from that experience, my first year of teaching (1966-67), not counting, of course, the memories of the students involved, some of whom remain in my life via Facebook.

I mentioned that the members of the Drama Club at AMS met with me a couple of times a week during the school's "activity period" (whose genesis I wrote about in the earlier post), and I really can't remember how we decided to write a comic version of the founding of Aurora--but that's what we did.

We worked on it throughout the fall, on into the winter, and when spring break arrived, we were not quite finished, but I knew I would have to finish it over the holidays, or we would not be able to produce it for the school--long our intent.

So ... over break ... I "borrowed" the school's lone electric typewriter (which sat on the desk of that wonderful AMS secretary, Mr. Fiddes) and went to work on assembling and revising our various drafts. Then I typed the script on ditto masters (!!!) and took it over to the home of Bud and Donna French, whose oldest daughter, Linda, had been one of the writing team.

Oh, the Frenches! One of the first families that welcomed me to Aurora--that made me feel I was doing some good (long before I was actually doing so). Their support throughout the years was unwavering, and I had the privilege of teaching almost all of their seven children, some of whom were in subsequent plays I directed.

Anyway, I read the play aloud to the assembled Frenches, and they responded,, as I recall, with enthusiasm--though I well knew that they would never have done anything to make me feel bad. And so ... with more confidence than the thing merited ... preparations for the production began.

Our full title was The Founding of Aurora; or, The Grapes of Wrath. And the story involved some things that I'd rather forget. (I still have a script, but I am not consulting it for these blog posts; I already remember too many unfortunate things about it!)

In the single program I have remaining, the names of the writing team are barely legible--and in some cases illegible. Here are the ones I can read: Lin French, Mary Sarvadi, Virginia Dart, John Mlinek, Kevin Hale, Anna Lebas. (If there are others that you veterans of that production recall, let me know!)

The story ... yes, the story. Here's what I remember: A group of settlers arrive in Aurora; they are led by the Rev. Ku Klux. (!!!!) They are met by the local Native Americans, led by Chief Vine-in-the-Mind. His daughter is Polkadotus. (Even my keyboard is groaning at this point--at the creakiness of the puns, at the absolute cultural cluelessness of the teacher who promoted all of this.)

Here are some names of the other characters: Nodnyl Nosnhoj (read it backwards), Drib Nosnhoj (his wife--read it backwards), Shamrock Holmes, Ima O'Biddy, Concord Welcher, Rolling Grape, Shrunken Raisin. There's also Blanche Moody and John Buck.

Well, the Rev. ignites a war with the Indians--but before all is lost--Love breaks out. Peace and fraternity reign. Etc. (Whew.)

One of the elementary school teachers in Aurora loaned us some plastic grapes to use (see title), and when the show was all over, the grapes were pretty much ruined. And I had to come up with $$ to replace them. And for me in 1967, $$$ were not easy to come up with. (I think I paid her back on the installment plan.)

to be continued ... next time: tryouts, rehearsals, the production!