Too Many Blogs

I may be the only one who knows I have three blogs, and that I switch from blog to blog at my will. This one is focused on my life now, my life in New Paltz, NY, but the other two still contain some pretty interesting posts on events in other places I have lived. They are not all chronological, but for the most part I stopped posted on "Finding Myself in Hoboken" when I moved away from there in 2012.

You would think I would have gone back to that blog to cover the political situation in recent weeks. I knew Dawn Zimmer, that is, I voted for her and followed her odd success during the time I lived in Hoboken. I say odd because it was known by the population at large that Hoboken was the kind of town with a government that would cooperate with anybody just to get a job done. There is no question in my mind that any of the people running against Dawn--all of whom vowed to end the local political corruption--would have done what she refused to do, promise the Christie people anything they asked for so that the Sandy-Aid money would go to Hoboken sooner rather than later. I have watched her from here, delighted that she is true to form. Innocent, trusting, earnest, and hardworking. How that situation will play out we shall see in coming months.

But I didn't post again on the Hoboken blog after I left, except when I was in promotion mode for my book That Was Tomorrow, which has a few chapters set in old Hoboken.

I'll be going to Fairhope for a month, the location of my blog "Finding Fair Hope." In other years when I returned for visits I posted on that blog, with pictures sometimes and commentary on events of the town.

When I think of it, where I post doesn't matter much to anybody but myself. I have posted less and less frequently and realize it's time to assume that one blog is enough. So even though I'll be in Fairhope, Alabama, escaping the cold for the month of February, I'll post my Fairhope notes here. The old blogs will still exist in cyberspace. I've done some interesting writing on both of them, if I do say so myself, and may occasionally link to them on Facebook or elsewhere. Sometimes I'm nostalgic for something I've already written about and I troll by own blogs to see what I said. I can't help it, I'm rather proud of some that I've posted and hope the posts will be discovered by people looking for a topic on the Internet.

If you're intrigued, go to the links on this post and check out those old blogs. I cover an amazing range of subjects and voice opinions on some surprising things. And bookmark this blog so you can check out what I might be commentating or opining about in the future. 

A Year in Books

Thinking back over 2013, I remember events leading to books—and books leading to events—and books leading to other books. By year’s end my choice of books has changed my course entirely, at least for the coming year.

I read a playful book (The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum), a laughable book (Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen), and an entertaining book (Unsinkable, a memoir by Debbie Reynolds and Dorian Hannaway). I read several biographies, one or two political books, and some of historical impact. I read The Scarlet Letter, a woman’s emancipation book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was the Hemingway of his day.

My regular reading was varied, prompted mostly by a desire for fun, but as I found the year moving forward, a strong direction became clear. It started with a presentation I wrote about on this blog, about two women’s suffragists in upstate New York in the 19^th century. I had heard, of course, of Susan B. Anthony, but this presentation included Matilda Joslyn Gage, who was totally unknown to me. Gage caught my interest, and I started reading her book Women, Church, and State, and made a trip to her museum in Fayetteville, NY.

There I learned, among other things, that Gage was the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, and she had some influence on him personally and on his writing. This led me to read L. Frank Baum, Creator of Oz, by Katherine M. Rogers. I put both of Gage’s books on my kindle and began to read. She was indeed a passionate and well-informed writer, and, having been a Feminist since the early days of Friedan and Steinem, I read her call to arms—a shot from the bow from the 19^th century—and was ready to arm the troops again.

Women who devoted their lives to the cause of enlightening others and were forgotten soon after their deaths have long touched my heart. Such a woman was Marietta Johnson, a progressive educator whose name is all but lost to history, whose work I have studied and written about. Now Matilda Joslyn Gage is on my radar, and I hope to write about her as I research more about the women in the early days of the women’s suffrage movement in this country.

I went on to read In Her Own Right/the Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, by Elizabeth Griffin, and Marmee and Louisa, by Eve La Plante. I’m beginning Margaret Fuller, by Megan Marshall. All of these have the backdrop of the 19^th century, and involve women who were well aware of their lack of rights and determined to see that condition change. The eye-opener to me about this period of time was that the suffrage issue was closely tied to the Abolition movement. The women who were working to free the slaves, whatever it took, found was that they had much in common with the Negroes of their day—women not only didn’t have the legal right to vote, they could not own property, and in actuality they too were property. Of their husbands. From this awakening came another, equally great movement, and it is not yet finished. The brave women who took a stand for themselves were pushed aside when freedom was established for slaves, on the grounds that the “woman question” was insignificant in comparison to rights for black men.

I have started reading about this period. I must learn more about Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists, and read about Susan B. Anthony, Carry Nation, Frances Willard, and Lucy Stone. I want to read what they wrote, and learn what their lives were like.

It’s going to be a busy year. I am looking forward to another year of reading, and being surprised.

Geriatric Dating

I’m beginning to think that dating is for kids. A friend once pointed out that at a certain time of life—youth, I believe it’s called—everybody loves pairing off with a member of the opposite sex. Hormones and energy are rampant, and hope abounds on all sides that there is one right person for everybody, and that the particular person I’m going to the movies with tonight just may be the one for me.

In my own salad days, we heterosexuals didn’t even know that gays dated. We also didn’t think old people of 30 or more could, would, or would want to date. That would be silly. What were they going to do? Hold hands in the back row of the movie? Kiss each other? Eww.

As time went by and Mr. Right came and went, and another Mr. Right did the same, I for one began to feel differently about dating. I’m talking about the Dark Ages here, before it was okay to live together without being married. The specter of sex hung over us all, unspoken and undefined, as terribly powerful as it was just about unattainable. Years erased some of the fears, changed some of the mores, and before I knew it I was old, widowed, and just a shade lonely. There was this new thing called a laptop, with treasures of all kinds locked inside. I started blogs, put up a website, played with Facebook, wrote pithy comments on twitter, and signed up for a senior dating service.

I made contact with some interesting men by writing a snappy profile and getting as good a picture as possible to identify myself. We started by emailing, but more often than not, I lived in too remote a location, no matter where I happened to be living, for an elderly man to consider trying to get to me. It seems older men don’t drive an hour to have lunch or see a movie with a woman, even if they think they might like her. Something must happen as the testosterone abates and a man is looking back at his life instead looking forward to slaying dragons and conquering worlds. The drive toward a woman is replaced with lethargy and a desire to be accommodated by her.

I did meet one really swell guy on the service, but he lived over an hour’s drive from me. This was when I was living in Hoboken, which has a tremendous parking problem. But he made that drive often, and we had some good times together. Sometimes I took the train to his little New Jersey town, sometimes we went on trips (even an Elder Hostel); and became fast friends until he actually met a lady who swept him off his feet. I was disappointed, but happy for him as we both had come to accept that the lightning was not going to strike either one of us, much less both. I got back on the dating service and tried again. I met one guy I really liked, but he was less interested than I (and the last lady he had met on the service wanted not only marriage, but demanded that he sell the house he loved and buy the condo in NYC adjacent to hers, so that they, as a happily married couple, would have the two apartments remodeled into one. He loved her, but not THAT much.)

I had been in New Paltz eight months before I re-enrolled on the service. I set up discussions with one man who called himself something like “Hilltop Hideaway” and described his home as far from town, in the woods, with a couple of big dogs. Hilltop had a lot of energy, wit, and we got along fine on paper, until he sent me a hate screed about how all Muslims are war-mongers who should be annihilated and asked me what I thought of it. Thinking it was a joke I told him just what I thought—it was ignorant, racist, degrading and dangerous. Then he wrote back that he agreed with it. All at once I could picture that hilltop abode (now a shack as I envisioned it) with its arsenal of weapons of mass and minor destruction. His friendly dogs became in my mind mastiffs and pit bulls trained to kill. He said politically we were too far apart. I agreed.

Then I met a sweet retired professor who suggested books for me to read, and he wrote emails back and forth before we actually did meet in person. He was good-looking and smart, a good conversationalist, and I thought we might become close friends at least. But he emailed me that there was no “future” for us, unless I just wanted to continue as a pen pal. After some reflection, I didn’t.

Yesterday I drove an hour and a half in heavy snow to meet a man who had ignited my interest. He lives near Albany. He seemed bright, dynamic, and multifaceted. My fantasy grew about our meeting as I barreled through snow and slush. My GPS wasn’t working and I took a wrong turn, pulling off the thruway to look for signs toward the town where I was to meet him. I called him to explain where I was, and ask for directions, and without any sympathy or emotion I could discern on the telephone he told me I had gone too far and instructed me to turn around and drive back onto the interstate about ten miles. I’m a bit of a nervous driver in strange surroundings and I couldn’t figure out how to get to the thruway going in the right direction, but I saw a couple of signs and was following them as best I could when my car hit an icy patch. I was fishtailing back and forth, couldn’t stop the car, but that was all right because it hit a wall and stopped itself. This was on one of those exits ramps to the interstate. I was really jumpy now. Two cars pulled over to help, and one of the helpful drivers called the police so a report could be filed. The two men waited with me a while, and finally I told them I could wait by myself, so I dismissed them. I called my date who seemed only inconvenienced, and his apparent lack of empathy, plus the time that had passed while he waited for me to join him for lunch made me realize this was not going to go the way I’d been imagining. I was not going to meet him at all. All I wanted was the comfort of my own cozy condo in New Paltz.

My car is in the body shop today. It drove fine until about halfway home when the light said COOLANT on the dashboard. I made it home and took it to the shop, hoping repairs would be minor and I might not even file an insurance claim. No such luck. The radiator has to be replaced (explaining the need for coolant), the hood has to be replaced, and who knows what else they’ll find when they look it all over. I am driving a rental car until the damage is assessed and repaired.

But I know this: I’m not going back to check my daily so-called matches on the dating website again. I gave it what we used to call the old college try. And I know if I happen to meet a man who appeals to me, and vice versa, it will probably be the old-fashioned way, by chance, through mutual friends or mutually satisfying activities. I’m not going to force the issue. There is a time for dating and a time when the game is not worth the candle.

Past Lives and Old Questions

Mary Lois Timbes, Merrell Williams Jr., The Glass Menagerie

I was scanning my online NY Times today when I came upon an obituary that hit my heart. Surprised, yes, in that it was of a man I'd known as a youth, with all the promise and energy that entails, a man who had lived a life quite different from the one we who knew him in those days would have dreamed.

Merrell Williams, Jr., of Jackson, MS, was the only one of our group at the Mississippi Southern Summer Theater Program whom I would have bet on as having what it takes to become a movie star. He was the most gifted among us, a natural in the James Dean mode, with a flair for comedy as well as easy access to his passionate nature, along with a lot of charm and ambition--surely as close to a guarantee of success on stage and screen as could be found. After the summer program, he enrolled at Baylor University, which was said to have one of the best theatre departments in the country. We knew his name was Merrell but he was known as Butch in those days.

A few years later I was living in New York and saw his picture in the Times in a coffeehouse production--all the rage in the early 1960s. I just assumed I'd soon see him somewhere onstage or on a big screen. I didn't hear of him again, however, until the late 1980s when he was mentioned on 60 Minutes as a whistleblower in the tobacco industry. I went to the movie The Insider, expecting to see something about him, but the movie was about Jeffrey Wigand, and played by Russell Crowe, who looked a little like Butch and also a little like Wigand. Apparently his life was spent not pounding the pavement looking for acting jobs, but instead riffling through files and copying documents to indict the tobacco industry, behind the scenes.

Merrill Williams Jr. in 1994

In a play early on, one write-up says, he portrayed a chain smoking ad executive, and found himself addicted to cigarettes by the end of it. His parents had both been heavy smokers and his father died young as a result. Butch was a driven sort of guy, and he apparently became obsessed with outing the corporations who profited from the sale of tobacco products, and did his part in exposing much of the corruption in the industry.

He died of a heart attack at his home in Ocean Springs, MS, known as a waterside resort, not unlike Fairhope AL, where I spent my childhood and went for another 20 years before moving back to the Northeast.

Our paths didn't cross again, but he was unforgettable. In many ways I'm proud of what he did do with his time on earth, and yet I get the feeling from what I read about him that he died an embittered man. Part of me wishes he had become a movie star.

Witnessed By the World: A Review

Max Gordon Moore and Charlotte Maier discuss writing a film, while television reprises the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald

Witnessed By the World, the drama previewing in Theatre B in Manhattan’s 59 East 59^th Street complex, opens the world of Kennedy assassination theories adding another one to the mix—what did Jack Ruby have in mind when he took out a gun and shot alleged Kennedy shooter Lee Harvey Oswald?

For those of us of a certain age, this was a world event that colored our lifetime, as, with television news turned on as a somber white noise in the days following the brutal murder, we all were witnesses to the event. It was said to be the moment television came of age, but I can’t agree with that since presenting history live for the first time does not seem to have made the medium any more mature in the years that followed. However, that was a moment in which television did its job—immediate, indisputable, horrifying—it brought the complexity of the murderous act into our living rooms. We saw it happen, the world saw it happen, and fifty years later we are still not in complete comprehension of what we did see.

The public by now has largely accepted the Warren Commission’s report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and Jack Ruby acted alone. Two lone rangers playing God, one for his own reasons wanting to eliminate the president of the United States, and the other, for no reason anyone has ever really determined, having the desire and opportunity to eliminate the man who did the deed. Playwrights Ronnie Cohen and Jane Beale bring us another possibility in Witnessed by the World, the possibility that both men were employed by the mob to do the jobs they did.

The play is well crafted, introducing an investigative reporter and a young movie screenwriter who are working together to produce a script about Jack Ruby. The reporter, Joan Ross, has had her eye on Ruby for years and feels his story has never been told and should be. The screenwriter does not want to make his mob opus another assassination movie, and insists that the story stops when Ruby makes a trip to Havana. A cast of earnest professionals present the story very persuasively. I would like to have seen the reporter a bit more single-minded in her task, more an aggressive reporter than a nice person. Charlotte Maier was excellent in the role as it was written, but I felt, particularly in the first interview with Ruby's sister (very sympathetically portrayed by Lois Markle), the audience should be aware that Maier, as Joan Ross, is mostly manipulating the older lady to talk more than she wants to. The night I saw it her "befriending" didn't have that edge of "pumping for information" that the scene required. Both actresses are first-rate, and I couldn't tell if it might have been made clearer by rewriting or by direction--or both. Max Gordon Moore (pictured above, and yes, he does look a bit like Woody Allen) does a creditable job of playing the somewhat naive screenwriter.

In a telling moment early in the play, when the reporter is pitching the story, she says, “If you’re looking for an interesting mob figure, I’ve been doing a lot of research on one who has a real story—Jack Ruby!" The movie writer says, “Who?” 

The scene demonstrates the reality that there's been a lot of water under that bridge since the assassination fifty years ago--that there are adults today who don't even know the names of the major players. Maybe the discussions have slacked off, but for years many were never convinced that it was possible that the events came together by accident--two unknown, unconnected, trigger-happy guys could not have unknowingly created the chaos that the waning years of the 20th century became after their actions. I won't spoil the show for you by revealing the authors' theory and its outcome in Witnessed by the World. I'm not totally convinced they are right, but I agree with them that it is time to reopen and reinvestigate the information we do have. I'm told Lynn Scherr will lead a panel discussion after the show on November 22, and there will likely be a number of different conspiracy theories brought to light that evening.

Witnessed by the World will be an intriguing contribution to the discussion. 

A Theatrical Adventure

For the review of Witnessed by the World, click here.

When I first met Ronnie Cohen, she was a housewife and mommy. It was the early 1980s and her husband, like mine, had gotten a great gig in the international business world, and we all were posted to Geneva. A rising star in the world of advertising, she was now in the business of raising a two-year-old, and in Switzerland to boot.

She contacted me in order to learn if I had a place for her in the theatre group I had started. As a youngster she loved nothing more than going to plays in New York, and she had seen the first two offerings of The Little Theater of Geneva and was looking for something to do.

Ronnie was one of the luckiest finds in all my time in Geneva. She was beautiful, talented, and fun to work with.

At first I had to show her the ropes, but I was doing that with all the expat Americans I could round up to participate. I asked everybody I met if they wanted to get involved--the conversation at a cocktail party might go something like this, "Have you ever been in a play before?" "I played the Christmas tree in the first grade." "Sounds good--we could use a man of your talent and experience!" Because the Americans were looking for things to do, and our crowd were clearly having fun, The Little Theater of Geneva, an American-style community theatre--grew like mad in just a few years. I and many others pulled four plays together, building sets, finding costumes, teaching acting classes, and a number of people who had known nothing about the theatre were now up to their necks in it.

After a couple of years graduating from gopher, troubleshooter, backstage hand, and stage manager, Ronnie asked if she could direct a show. She wanted to do Death Trap. My management style is that basically if I'm sure you know what you're doing, I let you do what you want. She asked me to be her stage manager, I agreed, and she was launched. The next season she took a role in Chapter Two, and she stayed behind the scenes after that until she and her family were transferred back to the States.
Needless to say it was a big loss for the theatre, and for me personally, but we kept in touch, even after I got back to the U.S. When I decided after 20 years in Alabama to return to the New York area, I looked her up. She was now in a high-powered advertising job and writing plays with a collaborator as a sideline. I came into the city to see a couple of her productions off-Broadway.

Tomorrow night, November 9, I'll be doing it again, with a big one. Ronnie and Jane Beale
have written Witnessed by the World, a play about Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald.

It's previewing at the 59 East 59th Street Theater, and may have a much bigger opening somewhere else very soon. I'll be there with bells on, sequins anyway, bursting with pride and delight at my young friend's success and perseverance. I'm the one behind the scenes now--way behind--but I couldn't be happier for her. I'll let you know how it goes.

Buster Keaton Has His Day

 

The face speaks volumes. Never mind that he has long been referred to as a deadpan comic, Buster Keaton learned early on that if he was seen to smile on film, it would ruin everything. He came to play a certain character, a sincere guy trying to prove himself against impossible odds, exhibiting his wondrous skills as an acrobat and visual comedian, without changing facial expression. Things happen to this feckless guy, and he reacts without contorting his face even with a smile. His eyes reflect his emotions and his limber body travels through the story taking the audience with him.

Rosendale Theatre Collective's Sunday Silents series will feature Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr., in a showing this afternoon at 2. It's one of his best, complete with visual effects that are unique to Keaton and have gone down in film history as major accomplishments. If you haven't been exposed to the art of Keaton or if you have little kids in your family who may not know the sheer joy of the silent film, I urge you to attend en masse. You'll laugh, you may even shed a tear for a lost art, and you'll leave the theater a Buster Keaton fan. So will the young people you choose to bring.

Beth Wilson, professor of film at SUNY New Paltz, will be on hand to answer questions and discuss the film at the end of the show. Marta Waterman, local keyboardist, will accompany the movie with a special score.

There will be popcorn, laughter, and you are invited to participate! This is what the Rosendale Theatre Collective is all about.