Courting

Joyce and I went to court last night.

No, there was no lawsuit--no divorce. (Whew!) It was a production of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution mounted by the Great Lakes Theater at the Hanna Theater in downtown Cleveland.

Joyce and I have been subscribers to the GLT (which has had several names, including the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival (they still do two Shakespeare plays a year) and the Great Lakes Theater Festival). And so we always recognize some of the principal players--as we did last night.

One problem: I remembered the plot twist, something I'd learned from that old (1957) film with Charles Laughton. (Link to some video of that film.) Joyce did not, and I offered her a deal: $20 and I'd keep my mouth shut. She thought that was amusing, but I was serious. (Not really.) Anyway, I remembered seeing that film at the old Hiram College Sunday Night Movie on June 15,1958. I was thirteen. And the ending shocked me. (As it shocked Joyce last night.)

The story involves a murder case (it is Agatha Christie, after all!). A young man has befriended a (wealthy) older woman (she's in her 50s!), who changes her will to benefit him. Then someone murders the woman; the young man goes to the police, tells what he knows. Then he's accused of the murder.

He finds a defense attorney (Charles Laughton in the film), and the case unwinds right in front of us.

By the way, the video I linked above shows that the GLT reproduced the film's look of the courtroom--a replica.

Downstage is the attorney's office, where more than a little of the action takes place.

The principal performers were very good--esp. the defense attorney, the prosecutor, the judge (who provided some comic relief--at one point he says he doesn't know what a "cat brush" is), the accused, and the "wife" of the accused. These parts were played, respectively, by Aled Davies (a GLT veteran), Nick Steen, David Anthony Smith (another veteran), Taha Mandviwala, and Jodi Dominick. I put quotation marks around wife because ... ah, ain't gonna tell you!

The audience--pretty much a full house--seemed to love it (as the Standing O at the end might confirm--though Standing O's are far more commonplace these days than they used to be).

I noticed some wee "holes" in the plot this time (one involved the blood types of the victim and the accused), but let's not get too picky.

I will get picky about the drive home. On I-480, near an on-ramp (I was in the right lane on the freeway), an entering, impatient driver roared by me on the right berm, doing about 80. My heart asked me if I wanted to go on living; I said I did. Okay, said my heart, just this one time ...

Anyway, lots of fun last night, watching with Joyce (and watching Joyce!), remembering the myriads of plays we have seen together--on Playhouse Square and at many other venues. One of my life's great privileges ...

And next month at the GLT? The Taming of the Shrew, a play I taught to my 8th graders for quite a few years at Harmon (Middle) School back in the late 80s, early 90s. And, as Fate smiles somewhere, the word-of-the-day calendar says that today's word is froward, a word I learned from a speech in Shrew, Kate's famous (long) advice to women at the end: And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour .... (5.2).

 

Stopping by Woods & the Memorizing Thing

This morning, Facebook reminded me that three years ago I had shared some information from Writer's Almanac (R.I.P.): Today is the anniversary of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," first published on this day in 1923 in the New Republic--and later collected in his volume New Hampshire, 1923.

The Robert Frost Encyclopedia, 2001 (yes, there is such a volume; yes, I own a copy), says that Frost did not write the poem quickly (as he sometimes claimed). Documentary evidence shows drafts, and those drafts show his labor.

Apparently, the horse-and-the-sleigh-in-the-snow was based on an actual incident near their farm in Derry, New Hampshire (which Joyce and I saw and toured on July 12, 2002). (See our pic below.)

The structure if the poem is intricate--and Frost's skill makes it subtle. Take a quick look:

Whose woods these are I think I know.  

His house is in the village though;  

He will not see me stopping here  

To watch his woods fill up with snow.  

My little horse must think it queer  

To stop without a farmhouse near  

Between the woods and frozen lake  

The darkest evening of the year.  

He gives his harness bells a shake  

To ask if there is some mistake.  

The only other sound’s the sweep  

Of easy wind and downy flake.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  

But I have promises to keep,  

And miles to go before I sleep,  

And miles to go before I sleep.

The rhythm is iambic tetrameter (duh-DUH, duh-DUH, duh-DUH, duh DUH in each stanza). But it's the rhyming that is so cool. Look at it. aaba is the first stanza--then bbcb--then ccdc--then dddd. In other words, the word at the end of the third line in each stanza provides the principal rhyme for the following stanza. Frost ended it the only way he could, really: by introducing no new rhyming words in the final stanza.

Anyway ... for quite a few years I had my 8th graders at Harmon School memorize this poem (I retired in January 1997), and today, responding to my Facebook post, a former student (and now a professor) commented that she still could recite the poem.

As I can. (I run through it in my head three days a week--MWF while I'm on the exercise bike at the health club).

This morning, at the coffee shop, a friend came in; He'd seen my post, and he alluded to "miles to go before I sleep."

I waited a few minutes, then walked over to his table and reeled off the whole thing for him.

I don't often do that--recite poems I've memorized. For some reason, it seems to annoy many people. So Joyce must suffer for all!

But my friend seemed grateful to hear the whole thing, and I was grateful I could still do it.

I've always believed that it's a good thing to have some great words in my brain--alongside all the clutter and detritus (the TV jingles from 1954, Mickey Mantle's batting average in 1956, the theme song from Wyatt Earp, the highest number of points I scored in a high school basketball game, the grade I got in Algebra II at Hiram High School, the name of my 2nd grade teacher in Amarillo, the ...).

And so Frost's words are there, and if you ever have the misfortune of asking me about it, get ready!

Obsolete Word, Enduring Relevance

The word-of-the-day arrived this morning from the Oxford English Dictionary: dade. I'd never read or heard that word (I don't think?!?). I knew of Dade County in Florida. I went to public school with a kid named Vaughan Dade. When I was a kid in Oklahoma, people would say some cowboy on TV had shot a black-hatted guy "daid." That's about it.

Dade, says the dictionary, is "obsolete." But here's the definition of it, its earliest known appearance in 1580: transitive. To lead and support (a person who totters or moves unsteadily, esp. a child learning to walk)

This, of course, had great emotional resonance for those of who have been parents. I well remember our son (born in 1972), absolutely determined to walk, teetering and tottering on his feet, the hands of his mother (or his father) cupped round him to make sure he didn't fall and hurt himself. Such moments are among the wonders of parenthood.

Later, my brothers and I would perform the same service for our father (who died in 1999) and our mother (who died in 2018). Both of them had experienced the Full Meal Deal of declining locomotion: cane, walker, wheelchair. Both took falls--sometimes bad ones. Both, you see, were determined to walk--as determined as any toddler.

Today, at the coffee shop, I witnessed an act of supreme kindness. A local man who has trouble walking came in the shop, took his order, headed out, then returned about ten minutes later--disoriented. Frustrated.

A coffee-shop friend immediately stood up, put on his coat, led the man to his car, took him home, came back and finished his coffee. I said some kind words to him; he waved them off. It's just what you do, you know? Help people who need it?

Actually, it's not what far too many of us do--in coffee shops and elsewhere. Self-reliance and all that stuff. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Asking for help is, you know, un-American!

Except it isn't.

Asking for help is human. Giving it is human. Not giving it is inhuman.

And, of course, this principle lives far beyond the walls of any coffee shop. We need to help one another--whether we've been asked to or not. Whether or not the recipients are "deserving."

So many of us seem so adamantine these days, our political views so firm and fixed that we can sometimes view those on the "other" side as inhuman, as unworthy of our help. They're not "like" us, and so ... you know ...

But this takes me to the other definition of dade: intransitive. To move slowly or with uncertain steps; to toddle, like a child learning to walk. Also fig.

If we live long enough, we will all move slowly ... with uncertain steps ... like a child learning to walk. I've seen it in my own family; I see hints of it--forecasts--in my own body.

For many, many people, however, it has nothing whatsoever to do with age or illness. It has to do with economic or  political or corporal circumstance.

And I believe that as we see others dade, we need to extend a hand--literally, figuratively, financially. It's the only way.

Jack London has a grim story he called "The Law of Life." It's one of his Northland tales and involves a dying old Native American man whose tribe gives him some supplies, then moves on, leaving him to die in the bitter cold and snow. Wolves arrive ... (Link to entire story.)

The old man is resigned--accepts what has happened, realizes his end is near, recognizes the Law of Life. 

Well, isn't it time for a new Law ... one that glows with empathy? One that recognizes that one day--sooner? later?--we will all ... dade.

Sullied Heroes

There was a story in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about how Charles Dickens, involved in an affair with actress Nelly Ternan, tried to put away his wife of twenty years in an institution. (Link to that story.) Oh, and she'd delivered his ten children.

It's depressing, isn't it? The more we learn about people the more we discover that they're ... people.

I've long loved Dickens' work--I've read all of his novels, most of his other works. For a few years I took my middle school classes in Aurora to see A Christmas Carol in downtown Cleveland. Right now, looking in on me, is a Dickens decal in my study window. (See pic above.)

Oh, he was a gifted guy--not just on the page but onstage. A talented amateur actor. He did a reading tour in the US in 1842--Edgar Poe interviewed him while he was here.

And he tried to put his wife away so he could proceed unimpeded with his affair.

Jerk.

But "Jerk," I fear, is a word we could employ for about just about any writer. I've read countless biographies of writers, and every time I do, I groan and moan with disappointment in them. Jack London had some racial issues. Mark Twain may have had a thing for little girls (later in his life). Mary Shelley, at 16, ran off with a married man. Percy Bysshe Shelley, married, ran off with a 16-year-old girl. Edgar Poe was a drunk and druggie; he married his first cousin, a teenager. Melville wasn't faithful. Norman Mailer stabbed one of his wives.  Saul Bellow was continuously on the make. Robert Frost had an affair--in the lovely, dark, and deep woods? Faulkner was unfaithful. Hemingway? (Need I say more!?!)

It's a good thing we don't know more about Shakespeare than we do. If we learned a bunch of darkness about him, would we end the productions of Romeo and Juliet?

Oh, we do know a few things ... he lived apart from his wife in London (she was back in Stratford-upon-Avon)--so for whom did he write those sonnets? (Speculation about the identity of the so-called "Dark Lady of the Sonnets" has raged for centuries.)

All of these assorted failures, of course, belong, as well, to artists, musicians, politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, et al.

To you?

To me? (I'm running out of space--too bad I can't really get into it.)

So .. what do we do about it? Banish from the curriculum all writers and others who violated moral and/or ethical standards? And if we were to proceed with those excommunications, who would be left? Anyone?

So ... what do we do? I guess we go case-by-case. We draw a line. If the person has crossed that line, well, too bad for him or her?

I do think we need to be generous with those lines, however. As I said, if we exclude all who are less than perfect, then our classrooms will be empty: no curriculum, no teachers, no students. And every other profession will be pretty much unpopulated as well.

Right now, as you know, we're having some intense cultural and social debates about what is tolerable. Lots of people have fallen--many, no doubt, deservedly so.

But, as I said, if we become too rigid--if we draw our lines too close to the edge of perfection--will we really like the result? Will our lives be better? Or worse?

Just asking ...

Pizza Time!

I remember the first time I ever ate pizza. I was in high school, so the year was, oh, about 1960, I would guess. Beatrice Zeleznik, a girl a year or so ahead of me (in school!), had a cast party at her house--one of our school plays. Her mom had made pizza.

Oh, I knew what pizza was--but it just hadn't seemed all that appetizing to me. I'd never tasted it--at all. I'm not a big tomato fan (cannot--to this day--eat a fresh tomato), so I couldn't see how I could possibly like this food that had tomato sauce smeared all over it like blood at a crime scene.

But some friends convinced me. I tried it. Addict!

I cannot remember when I first made pizza, but it was probably not long after I started baking with sourdough (the summer of 1986, when I acquired my starter). I initially used pans and baked with them.

But then I discovered the pizza stone (one now lives in the bottom of our oven), and pretty soon I was baking them regularly--by "regularly" I mean, oh, every month or so--maybe ever couple of months?

It takes a bit of work. Mixing the dough. Letting it rise, etc. Shaping it. Then the toppings. Transferring the unbaked pizza from the "slip" (the big spatula, basically) to the stone.

The baking. Removal from the stone. Cooling and cutting. Consuming.

And, oh, the mess to clean up afterward.

When I was younger, I never thought two seconds about all the labor. I just did it. Loved it. When I was teaching, I sometimes had students over for homemade pizza.

I've also baked them for our son and his family--though not so much in recent years. My energy has declined dramatically (let's not get into the meds I'm on, the meds that have taught me some new rules about what I can and cannot do).

But this weekend ... I decided it was time to do it again. One reason for the decision? I didn't need to bake regular bread this week: The freezer is stuffed. So ... what to do with the starter? (I use it every week--it's like a pet (or a child!) that needs regular feeding--and attention.)

Joyce wondered why I didn't invite our son and family over. Here's why: I hadn't made pizza in so long that I was afraid I would mess it up, and I didn't want to do that in front of my family. Let me get the technique back, I thought. Then I'll try it in public again.

And so ... here's how it went.

• I fed the starter on Sunday night--let it bubble away all night.
• In the morning, about seven, I separated a couple of cups of starter to store in the fridge for next week, left the rest in the big mixing bowl, covered, in the fridge.
• About 11:30, I took the bowl out, allowing time for the dough to warm up a little.
• About 1:30, I prepared the pizza dough: sea salt, a bit of water, some olive oil, some local honey, some flour (oat, whole wheat, white).
• I let the dough rise for a couple of hours or so.
• The risen dough provides enough for four pizzas. Because Joyce prefers veggie pizzas, we had decided to make two veggie, two chicken-and-pineapple (which I love). We would bake the first two--one of hers, one of mine--then eat some of the second two.
• pizza sauce (I tried, for the first time, some made in Cleveland's Little Italy--good!)

It mostly went pretty well. I say "mostly" because I had a little trouble with my first one (Joyce's first had gone without incident). I use semolina flour on the slip so that the dough will not stick, so that the pie will slide easily onto the baking stone.* 

But after Joyce's something went wrong with my first one. It stuck a little, and it took some doing (and some other implements) to get it onto the stone. I nearly had a meltdown, by the way--another side effect of my meds: emotions lying very close to the surface.

From there on--no problems, really.

And, oh, did it taste fine. But let's not get into that: I'm veering too close to self-praise, something my parents taught me was a no-no. (And considering the near disaster with pizza #2, I have no cause to bray.) Pic below shows three of the four I baked.

All the classes from Hiram High School (which closed its doors forever at the end of the 1963-64 school year) meet each July for a reunion in Welshfield, Ohio (five miles north of Hiram). A couple of years ago I saw Beatrice Zeleznik at the reunion, and I told her that her mom had made the first pizza I'd ever eaten.

She told me her mom had loved to make pizza--had been so good at it. And I can most definitely confirm that. It changed my life--my waistline. And baking it myself has brought me tremendous joy over the years ... if it weren't for all that clean-up!

*I'm thinking of trying parchment paper next time; I've been using it the past few years with my regular bread--and it works spectacularly well.

Sunday Sundries, 220

1. AOTW: How about the woman in the grocery store this morning, a woman whose cart was blocking an entire shelf (with some things I needed, naturally), a woman who was texting merrily and just having the Best Damn Time ... while--politely, in cowardly fashion--I stood and waited for her to notice me--which took a bit of a while.

2. Last night Joyce and I drove down to the Nightlight, an independent (very small) cinema on High Street in Akron. We have known about the place for a long time but had never gone there. (Habit, Habit, Habit!) But last night they were showing Stan & Ollie, a film about Laurel & Hardy, a film that both Joyce and I have wanted to see.

The Nightlight is a simple place. A small concession stand, only one apparent employee, limited (but comfortable seating), two single-person unisex bathrooms (not that I needed one, of course). The young man working the concession (and ticket) area also came out just before the start to tell us about the film--and about some upcoming ones. A literate, intelligent, lucid young man. (It reminded me of our days of going up to the New Mayfield and hearing little talks before each film.)

The film was wonderful. I first heard about Laurel & Hardy from my dad (who loved them); Dad had told me about how he and my mom's brother, Ronald, had seen Way Out West together in Enid, Okla. (where both of them were at Phillips University). Dad said they had laughed themselves into two puddles of sweat. So I was touched last night when some of Stan & Ollie was about the filming of Way Out West (1937--Dad was 24--and two years away from marrying my mom).

This new film deals with that film--the team's break-up--their reunion in 1953 when they went on a tour to the British Isles, trying to attract crowds to give them some support for a new film they were planning about Robin Hood. (All is based on true events.)

The two actors (John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy, Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel) were superb--absolutely convincing in their roles--both masters of the mannerisms, facial expressions, movements of the two comic geniuses they were portraying. They never descended to caricature, and I believed both of them, absolutely, all the way through this very moving film about decline and fall--and friendship--and love (the two women who played the actors' wives were also great--Shirley Henderson as Lucille Hardy, Nina Arianda as Ida Kitaeva Laurel).

I loved the film (as did Joyce) ... and what was that wetness in my eyes? A leak in the ceiling?

Many years ago--at Aurora Middle School (pre-Harmon)--I used to teach film history courses, and I always showed Laurel & Hardy's The Music Box--about the two guys moving a piano up some steep outdoor stairs. There is some talk about that film in Stan & Ollie--and a sly reference to it when, on a steep stairway in an English city, their big trunk gets away from them and slides to the bottom. (That whole film (The Music Box) is on YouTube now.)

Link to film trailer.

3. I finished two books this week ...

     - In the Galway Silence (2018) is the latest in Ken Bruen's startling series of novels about Jack Taylor, a former cop in Galway (Ire.), dismissed for drinking, now an informal P.I. who has the worst experiences, I think, in P.I. fiction.

I first learned about Taylor (and thus Bruen) by streaming the series about him (Acorn? Britbox? I forget). I loved the series--and decided to read the novels. I'd originally thought the TV shows were dark. Nah. They glow with hope compared with the novels.

In every one he suffers some grievous loss (sometimes more than one)--physical, psychological, the death of someone he cares about. It is g-r-i-m.

In this current novel someone is going around killing people who don't deserve it. Some are known to Taylor; some, very close to him.

So ... vigilante time! (He's good at that, vigilantism!)

I love the unique style of the novels, too (Taylor almost always narrates--the p-o-v sometimes shifts, too.) Colloquial in style--though Taylor is a great reader--with a unique way of writing dialogue (as you'll see if you read them).

     - Regular visitors to this site know that I've been deliriously travelling through the writings of Kate Atkinson, whose work I accidentally stumbled across in a New York Times article about some writers making appearances in NYC (link to that piece from July 31, 2018).

Anyway, I thought I'd give her books a whirl--and what a whirl it has been, a life-changing one. She is one of the best writers I've ever read. From her first novel (Behind the Scenes at the Museum, 1995) to Transcription, 2018.

She also has written five detective novels featuring Jackson Brodie (the fifth will be out this year); I read these after I read her "literary" novels, discovering, of course, that there's little difference between them (between, that is, her "literary" and "detective" work). The same unique style, the same sly allusions to Shakespeare and other major writers (and popular culture), the same amazing movements about in time, in point of view.

I just finished her third Brodie novel, When Will There Be Good News? (2008), and she had me from the epigraph (an Emily Dickinson poem--"We never know we go when we are going"--which I loved so much I memorized it). This one involves--among numerous other things--a horrible murder of a mother and two of her children thirty years prior to the main action of the novel. One little girl escapes, and she has grown up to become a physician.

Brodie gets on the wrong train, which wrecks. He's out of it for a while.

Enter Reggie Chase, a teenager, who hears the crash, goes to it, saves Brodie's life. She's an amazing character--one of the bright lights of the book. She works for the physician (whose family was murdered) and ... well ... let's not spoil it.

Just this (which is true in all the Atkinson I've read so far): Everything's connected. Every single plot thread (and there are lots) is in the hands of the mistress of marionettes, Kate Atkinson. She is a WONDER.

Her next Brodie novel--Started Early and Took My Dog (2010) is on its way to me--and I've also got her short story collection (Not the End of the World, 2002) and her play (Abandonment, 2000).

4. Last word--a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--the OED says it's "rare"; we should make it less so!

imaginarian, n.

A person concerned with imaginary things; a fantasist. Also: one who stresses the imagination.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: imagine v., -arian suffix.

Etymology: <  imagine v. + -arian suffix.

 rare.

a1729  E. Taylor Metrical Hist. Christianity (1962) 278 Constantinople calls Nicephorus A Laick vain Imaginarian.

1833  J. Montgomery Lect. Poetry  216 The greatest realists, and the greatest imaginarians,—if I may coin a barbarous word for a special occasion.

2003 Independent on Sunday(Nexis) 27 Apr. (Features) 15 Northern State are three white feminist rappers from Long Island who describe themselves as ‘vegetarian, humanitarian, imaginarian not a liberatarian [sic]’.

2005  J. Ehrat Cinema & Semiotic  i. 58 In the context of film theory, the debate between the ‘ontological film realists’ and the ‘imaginarians’ could certainly profit from this Peircean insight.

Those Darn Kids!

As I posted here some time ago, around the time of the New Year, I decided I would write for my two grandsons, every day, a little doggerel based on the word-of-the-day that appears on my tear-off calendar. (I'd given them one for Christmas.) I look at the word in the morning; I write the lines; I text them to the boys and their parents.

I confess--it's been kind of fun (for me, if not for them).

Today's word was katzenjammer, a word I already knew only because of a newspaper cartoon that I used to enjoy in my boyhood--Katzenjammer Kids--a comic about some trouble-making kids. And I see online something else I'd forgotten: They starred in comic books, too. (The cover below tells all!)

I don't remember who told me what the word meant--probably my dad: He had taken German in college (not to mention his WW II service in Europe), and he always loved to tell the story about the day a classmate was reading aloud in class and came to the German noun die Fahrt (journey); he cried aloud, said Dad: "Hey, that's fart!"

Dad thought that was hilarious. So did the eight-year-old I. (So does the seventy-four-year-old I, I'm afraid.)

Anyway, the newspaper cartoon. Below I've pasted a couple of examples of it at the bottom of this post.

Well, what did Boyhood Me learn from all of this? The boy who had to listen to a record of Manners Can Be Fun? Who had to answer the phone by saying, "Dyers' residence--Danny speaking." The boy who had to clean his plate at every meal (or no dessert), who had to say "Please" and "Thank you," who had to go to church every Sunday? Who had to go to VBS (though, in his day, it was "Vacation Bible School"--a term that puzzled me: How could you put vacation in the same phrase with Bible and school?). Who had to "pronounce the participial g in -ing words (no "talkin'" in our house--just "talkinG"). Who ...You get the idea?

Well, I thought those two little kids were awesome--my heroes. The anti-Dyer-boys. And so (dare I blame them?) I absorbed some of their naughtiness, naughtiness which remains (thank goodness).

Oh, the evil influence of comics! (That was the "evil" of my boyhood--not computer games or social media, which, of course, didn't exist.)

I just checked, by the way: The strip started in 1897 (Yukon Gold Rush!); it's still going. (I've put a recent one at the very end of this post.) The boys--Fritz and Hans--were twins. They've been honored on a U.S. postage stamp.

So ... words provoke memories (as if we didn't know that). And today--a word propelled me back to boyhood, back to my father's (naughty) story, back, back, back--back to a time when all was possible, when  the road ahead seemed so long I was positive--absolutely certain--it had no end.

A NEW ONE: