Aging and Redemption Resonate On Golden Pond at Palm Beach Dramaworks

Dramaworks’ version of On Golden Pond returns to what the playwright, Ernest Thompson, originally intended, a less sentimental, more honest rendering of what we all ultimately face: aging, and as with many families, disconnection and hopefully reconciliation.  While this is the stuff of most great American drama, the playwright inextricably links humor and pathos, leading to the ultimate question: what does it mean to be?  This is a tender rendition, performed by an interracial cast under the direction and inspiration of Paul Stancato.

Novelist and environmentalist Wallace Stegner once said “we live too shallowly in too many places.”  Not Norman and Ethel Thayer who for 48 years have made their summer home on Golden Pond in Maine the bulwark of their lives, raising their only child, Chelsea, during their summers away from Wilmington.  Dramaworks’ striking set characterizes the rusticity of lake side living as well as years of memories, both happy and hurtful.  It is in some state of disrepair.  Take that cranky screen door which is always falling down for instance, good for laughs but serving as a metaphor for aging and neglect.

Norman is a retired university literature professor on the eve of his 80^th birthday.  He has his routines in the cabin which mostly revolve around arranging his fishing hats, and curmudgeonly railing at the annoyance du jour, but now he’s also having memory difficulties, perhaps the early signs of dementia.  He’s convinced that his impending status as an octogenarian will mark his last year at Golden Pond. “Oh shut up,” the ballast in his life, devoted wife Ethel says to all that death talk.  And, then there is Chelsea, a chip off the old block of Norman.  They’ve become ever more remote with Ethel as the reconciler.

A touching secondary story-line involves Chelsea’s once-upon-a-time boyfriend when she was growing up --a “townie” -- who is now the mailman, delivering the mail by boat to the residents around the pond.  Charlie Martin is still in love with Chelsea, but while that ship has sailed, he gives the play many nostalgic moments as we glimpse at those yesterdays.

The rising action of the play is a letter that declares Chelsea will be arriving from California with her fiancé, Bill Ray to celebrate Norman’s 80^th birthday.  Unannounced is that they are bringing along Bill’s 15 year old son, Billy.  And as the first act ends, we learn that Billy will be left with Chelsea’s parents for a month at Golden Pond as Bill and Chelsea travel through Europe.  The clock is wound and the stage is set for change.

With the opening of Act II, we find that Norman and Billy have created interesting new lives for themselves during that stay.  Then with Chelsea’s return and at Ethel’s urging, Norman and Chelsea finally have their moment of acquiescent truth.  Bill and Chelsea were married while in Belgium.  The screen door has apparently been fixed.  And so life moves on in unexpected ways.

Pat Bowie, John Felix, Casey Butler, Karen Stephens, Jim Ballard

Director Paul Stancato makes the most of the play’s many bittersweet comic opportunities, having the actors pause for a beat, simultaneously capturing those humorous and heartrending moments.  He sets the play in 1988 before the ubiquity of cell phones and the associated diversions of the Internet. Stancato is an accomplished musical director as well and he finds rhythms in the play, almost pacing it as a piece of music with an Andante tempo.

John Felix excels as Norman, who persistently laments about how little time there is in his future.  He wears “curmudgeon” as a badge of honor, and yet Felix’s interpretation makes him likeable, even lovable, approaching the Aristotelian definition of a tragic hero, evoking a sense of pity and fear.  After all, Norman’s fate of physical and cognitive decline is one which awaits most who live long enough. 

Felix seizes the opportunities to embellish his death obsession with laughs, the perfect tonic for his depression.  He is particularly effective during those moments.  He explains to Ethel that this summer he’s been casually looking for a job because “I’m in the market for a last hurrah.”  To which Ethel responds “Why can’t you just pick berries and catch fish and read books, and enjoy this sweet, sweet time?”

Here the dark comedy becomes serious, Felix’s demeanor changing to a heartfelt confession:  “Do you want to know why I came back so fast with my little bucket?  I got to the end of our lane, and I…couldn’t remember where the old town road was.  I went a little way into the woods, and nothing looked familiar, not one tree.  And it scared me half to death. So I came running back home here, to you, to see your pretty face, and to feel that I was safe.  That I was still me.”

Pat Bowie, John Felix

Pat Bowie’s Ethel is the “great woman” behind her now declining man.  She lovingly replies “Well, you’re safe, you old poop.  And you’re definitely still you….”  Bowie carries a heavy burden of Ethel’s constant sacrifice and devotion to the love of her life, trying to keep his thoughts of death under control:  “I swear you just get more morbid every year.”  

Watching the Loons

She is always listening for the loons, a metaphor for life and in her mind capable of speaking to her.  While she is the positive to Norman’s negative, Bowie’s portrayal of Ethel shows vulnerability as the years and the estrangement between her husband and daughter have taken their toll on her as well.

Karen Stephens as Chelsea longs for love from her father but the chasm which has built over the years seems insurmountable.  Stephens brings sublimated pain into her role, expecting so little from her father, accustomed now to call her mother, Mommy, and her father, Norman.  She even sets up her fiancé so he is already on guard before meeting Norman: “Bill, you want to visit the men’s room before you go through the shock of meeting my father?”

Paul Tei, Karen Stephens

Chelsea still feels “like a little girl” whenever she returns to Golden Pond.  Stephens channels that pent up anger saying to her mother, “I act like a big person everywhere else.  I do.  I’m in charge of Los Angeles. There’s just something about coming back here that makes me feel like a little fat girl.”  She goes on to accuse her mother: “Where were you all that time?  You never bailed me out.…  You don’t know what it’s like being reminded how worthless you are every time that old son of a bitch crosses your path.”

Ethel does not back down, even slapping her daughter: “That old son of a bitch happens to be my husband.  I’m sorry, Chelsea.  That he’s not always kind.  It’s not…always easy for me either.  You’re such a nice person, can’t you think of something nice to say?”  With that she plants a seed for reconciliation between husband and daughter.

Jim Ballard comically plays Bill Ray, Chelsea’s fiancé, nervously stumbling into the cabin with their suitcases, convinced he’s seen a bear.  His first encounter with Norman is especially amusing, Ballard playing the foil to Felix’s Norman, clearly ill at ease, not only in meeting Norman but left alone while the others go down to see the lake.  He tries to bring up the sleeping arrangements, his expecting to sleep with Chelsea while visiting though they are not yet married (after all, it was the times and these are two vastly different generations).  This results in an awkward but funny give and take.

Pat Bowie, Jim Ballard

But as Bill has been forewarned about Norman, Ballard turns serious, even admitting to the similarities between Norman and his daughter.  His monologue is in contrast to his initial unease.  “Chelsea told me all about you, about how you like to have a good time with people’s heads.  She does it, too, sometimes, and sometimes I can get into it.  Sometimes not.  I just want you to know that I’m very good at recognizing crap when I hear it.”

This “speech” as Norman calls it begrudgingly commands Norman’s respect.  Ballard has appeared on the Dramaworks stage twelve times and shows his gift to deliver both dramatic as well as the comedic moments.

Paul Tei plays Charlie, a local who has long loved Chelsea, motoring around the lake in the summer to deliver the mail.  Tei is perfect for the part, his infectious goofy laugh reaching out to the audience.  He poignantly relates his memories to Chelsea about her camp years, when he used to help his Uncle deliver the mail, and when they came by the camp.  “I’d swing the bag out onto the dock, and then I’d pick up the outgoing mail, and somewhere in there, I’d look for you.  And you’d always be standing in the back, kind of all alone.  And you’d smile at me, and I’d feel like I was the best thing going.”

It’s such a wistful memory exchange between Chelsea and Charlie, and so tenderly delivered by Tei.  This leads to Chelsea and Ethel singing the camp song, which concludes with “But we’ll remember our years, On Golden Pond.” Both mother and daughter attended Camp Koochakiyia as kids, another hat tip to the passage of time and continuity.

Young Casey Butler last appeared at Dramaworks in the challenging play Acadia.  He is already a seasoned pro.  Now as Billy Ray, Bill’s fifteen year old son, he expresses the unbounded energy and innocence of youth.

John Felix, Casey Butler

When he and Norman first meet, it’s as if two different species are in shock looking each other over, an antediluvian confronting a Marty McFly.  Ultimately, both are redeemed by one another.  He is the grandchild Norman never had, and Norman is the teacher who will make a difference in Billy’s life.  Norman is now a different man with a reason to live.  Casey’s portrayal of Billy as Norman’s lifesaver is spot on.

Dramaworks’ production is firmly grounded in spectacular scenic design by Bill Clark, his PBD debut.  It evokes all the themes of the play, but in particular the Thayer’s love of Golden Pond, its woods, and its wildlife.  The wood pillars of the structure seem to reach for the sky, the forest in the background, the solid stone mantelpiece displaying the age of its construction, 1917, presumably the year Ethel’s father built the cabin.  Ethel’s toy doll, Elmer, now 65 years old, sits on the mantle shelf along with photographs, and many others strewn about the living room.  It’s an award-winning set, a perfect backdrop for the action on stage.  

Brad Pawlak’s sound design reproduces the eerie calls of the Loons across the lake.  Add the sounds of the forest, the fluttering of bird wings, even the insidious insects, Charlie’s boat approaching, as well as the rising wind in September, all so evocative of a summer in Maine.  Musical interludes such as “Moonglow” and “Sentimental Journey” during scene changes contribute to the ambiance.

Lighting design by Donald Edmund Thomas captures the time changes, from the deep dark of night to the blazing sun off the pond, as well as enhancing the changing emotions on stage.

Resident award-winning costume designer Brian O’Keefe emphasizes the casual dress of country living, as well as Bill’s comical 1980’s California style jacket and pants.  His rendering of Billy when he first arrives indeed reminded me of Marty McFly in Back to the Future.  It is an amusing touch by O’Keefe.

Veteran Stage Manager, James Danford, keeps things moving along, all props in place for the five scene changes in the play.

Dramaworks’ production of On Golden Pond is a deeply satisfying play, perhaps the perfect tonic for our times and the theatre company’s traditional audience.

Norman and Ethel say goodbye to Golden Pond for the season

 

Many of South Florida’s Best Theatrical Professionals to Perform this February

Those of us in Southeast Florida will be treated to not one, but two stirring plays which will open early next month, Dramaworks’ On Golden Pond, and the Maltz Jupiter’s An Inspector Calls.  On Golden Pond is a feel-good, but provocatively thoughtful and humorous play about aging and reconciliation, and An Inspector Calls is a psychological thriller which in its examination of capitalism is eerily relevant to today’s world.

But the factor that ties these two plays together is many of the best acting, directing, and technical professionals of Southeast Florida will be featured.   And it is just serendipity that these plays should run almost concurrently. Tickets will go fast for each.

On Golden Pond is perhaps the best known because of the movie.  Dramaworks’ version will stick closely to what the playwright, Ernest Thompson, originally intended.  I was able to interview some of the actors and the director for a Palms West Monthly news article, and I provide the link here: http://palmswestmonthly.com/2018/01/20/on_golden_pond_palm_beach_dramaworks/

The Director of the Maltz production of An Inspector Calls, J. Barry Lewis, said it “is considered to be one of the finest plays written in the previous century. Such plays remain relevant because they portray everyday people – you and me – often at our worst.“ First performed in 1945, it is one of J. B. Priestley’s best known works.

On Golden Pond is directed by Paul Stancato and features John Felix as Norman. the cankerous octogenarian who learns to forgive and to accept, Pat Bowie as his devoted wife Ethel, Karen Stephens as Chelsea, their daughter who holds onto grudges like her father, Jim Ballard as Bill Ray, Chelsea’s fiancé, Paul Tei as Charlie, a local who has long loved Chelsea; and Casey Butler as Billy Ray, Bill’s teenage son.  Scenic design is by Bill Clark, costume design is by Brian O’Keefe, lighting design is by Donald Edmund Thomas, and sound design is by Brad Pawlak.

Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s An Inspector Calls is directed by multiple Carbonell Award-winning South Florida director J. Barry Lewis.  The play features James Andreassi as Inspector Goole, Rob Donohoe as family patriarch Arthur Birling, and Angie Radosh as matriarch Sybil. Also appearing is Charlotte Bydwell as the Birlings’ eldest child Sheila, Cliff Burgess as their youngest child Eric, and Jeremy Webb as Sheila’s fiancé Gerald Croft. Scenic design is by Victor Becker, lighting design is by Kirk Bookman, costume design is by Tracy Dorman, and resident sound designer is Marty Mets.

Between the two plays, it is an all-star slate of theatrical professionals.

For ticket information Dramaworks’ On Golden Pond runs February 2 – 25. Call 561-514-4042 ext. 2 or visit https://www.palmbeachdramaworks.org/

Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s An Inspector Calls runs February 4 – 18. Call (561) 575-2223 or visit www.jupitertheatre.org

 

The Solitary Journey

Last week my long-time college friend, Bruce, wrote “My brother died this morning.  I tell you because you are my oldest friend, and also, because I sat down just now in front of our fireplace with the logs burning and read On Growing Old and remembered that we memorized that poem together.”

My first thought was of Camus’s novel L’Étranger which I read in French in school (alas, no longer have any ability in that beautiful language). But those haunting first words sprang to mind: “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.”  There is finality about it.  This is part of life.

I also remember memorizing John Masefield’s great poem On Growing Old with Bruce.  We were romantics back then and Masefield wrote so poignantly about what we thought was the unthinkable in our youth.  I wrote something about that experience on my 70th birthday which is now more than a half decade ago. 

I bring this up because last Saturday night I had to go to the local hospital ER.  I had been on antibiotics and Prednisone for a bronchial infection and late Sat. night I could hardly breathe, persistent uncontrollable cough in the chest in spite of all my medications.   Pulmonary Embolism?  Congestive Heart Failure?  That was the motivation to go.

My wonderful wife, Ann, was with me every step of the way but eventually, when they get you in that ER bed, everything is out of your control and even trying to explain my complicated health history seems of little interest except for recent medications. 

She was exhausted by midnight and as our home is five minutes from the hospital, I asked her to go.  And so, alone.  Then I was sent off for tests, x-rays, CAT scan, blood tests, finally being admitted to a room at 3.00 AM.  Indeed, a solitary journey.

Hospital life: constant interruptions, no rest with nurses and Doctors (most of whom I don’t know) popping in unexpectedly at all times.  Nighttime is the worst.  TV is useless of course so I brought one book in particular that turned out to “save” me.  It calmly and poetically put living (and dying) in perspective.

It is a recent book by one of my favorite writers, Richard Ford.  I wish I was writing this blog when his earlier Frank Bascombe novels were published, but I covered his last, Let Me Be Frank With You,which is actually a collection of novellas.  As I said in that entry: “I feel I know this person as I knew Updike’s Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom.  Frank is four years younger than I and Rabbit ten years older.  But the times recounted by these characters are of my era.  No wonder I’m so familiar with the landscapes of their lives.” 

I also loved his last novel, Canada, which was not from the Bascombe line, but Ford’s voice is unwavering.  I thought it one of the best novels of the year.

His latest work is essentially a memoir Between Them; Remembering My Parents.  It was particularly affecting reading it in my hospital stupor and I felt that Ford drew me away from the illness into the very private lives of two ordinary people, who did the best they could, swept along by the rivers of time and chance.  Edna and Parker marrying early in life, both from the deep south, building their lives as a partnership, accustomed to living on the road together as he was a salesman, even successfully surviving the depression.  It was just the two of them until later in life (in their 30s) along came their only child, Richard Ford.  The title of the book is particularly revealing.  It was in effect a life separately lived by the parents, and then Richard coming between them.  It changed the formula and as life dishes out the unexpected, so we make our adjustments.

Parker, Richard, and Edna

For Richard, this meant having a part-time Dad, who, even when he was in Richard’s life, wasn’t particularly interactive with him.  Neither was my father, who I loved dearly, and although he returned from work each night, he lived in a marriage which was essentially unhappy.  At the end of this entry I am pasting the brief essay I wrote about my own father.

What stunned me about Richard Ford’s sparse lapidary memoir is he poses as many questions about the multitude of blanks, things he could not even conjecture at, regarding his parent’s relationship.  Here he shines as a creative writer, while this blog, which is fundamentally an ongoing memoir, is the work of an essayist.  Ford engages the reader to think about those blanks as well, whereas I’ve tried to define some, probably woefully incorrectly.  Memory is so faulty, so fungible.

My mother carried most of the fury of my parent’s marriage.   My father was the “beaten” one emotionally. One neatly fed into the other.  But Ford’s memoir, reading it while I lay vulnerable in my hospital bed, reminded me there was another side to her.  The loving one.  Memories swelled, one’s I’ve forgotten. 

Silly ones, like the time we were driving back from my cousin’s house in New Hyde Park to our home in Queens one late Sunday night and my mother and I asked my father to stop at a drug store as we both were dying of thirst.  We jumped out of the car and in the paperback rack I saw one of the then best-selling books, Don't Go Near the Water, a 1956 novel by William Brinkley.  I showed my mother the cover as we were asking for water and we began to laugh so uncontrollably that those in the drug store probably thought we were wacky.  Funny how a memory like that, unlocked for years, could be unleashed in a hospital bed in the middle of the night while reading about someone else’s parents. 

In Ford’s skillful hands, the very ordinariness of these two forgotten people, his parents, is elevated to a kind of tribute to the human condition: the solitary journey we’re all on.

Some other writer’s memoirs emphasize how they developed as writers, influenced by parents, particularly mothers.  Ironically, I read the late Pat Conroy’s My Reading Life after emerging from open heart surgery now seven years ago.  His mother used to read him Gone With The Wind, instilling a love of reading.

Richard Russo also was influenced by his mother in that regard.

I had no such mentoring and apparently neither did Richard Ford, although Ford supplies a teaser on that subject.  One day the young Richard and his mother were shopping at the “Jitney Jungle grocery,” and his mother asked him to look at a woman in the store.  Richard looked and saw “someone I didn’t know – tall and smiling, chatting with people, laughing." His mother said, "‘That's Eudora Welty. She's a writer,’ which was information that meant nothing to me, except that it meant something to my mother, who sometimes read bestsellers in bed at night. I don't know if she had ever read something Eudora Welty wrote. I don't know if the woman was Eudora Welty, or was someone else. My mother may have wanted it to be Eudora Welty for reasons of her own. Possibly this event could seem significant now, in view of my life to come. But it didn't, then. I was only eight or nine. To me, it was just another piece in a life of pieces.”

In Ford’s Acknowledgements at the end of the book he gives thanks (among others) “to the incomparable Eudora Welty, who in writing so affectingly about parents, have provided models for me and made writing seem both feasible and possibly useful.”  So there is an arc there, from that vague memory of being with his mother to becoming a writer.  Although in the Afterward he says something that Updike might have said as well about writing: “Mine has been a life of noticing and being a witness.  Most writers’ lives are.”

Unfortunately for me, I did not come from a reading family.  My father read Reader’s Digest Condensed books.  I can’t remember my mother reading anything but magazines.  But Ford and I share the fact we were poor students in high school.  He refers to a disability.  I had several, one an emotional one coming from a troubled family, feeling shame, and I was a small kid, trying to make up for it by excelling in baseball, and even basketball to a degree, anything to fit in.  But I also think I had a form of dyslexia.  My mother interpreted my disability as the need for speech therapy, which was also embarrassing as the speech therapist worked at the high school and I was still in elementary school, and had to walk through the halls with the high school kids, standing out as any young kid would.  I hated it.

And that of course was not the only problem.  My spelling was atrocious.  And as I said although my parents generally did not read to me as a kid, I do remember one that was read.  I loved to look at the pictures.  It was probably their sense of well-intended therapy: Boo Who Used to be Scared of the Dark.  I had reason.

In school I read only what was assigned and it wasn’t until I came under the influence of two great teachers in my life while a senior in high school that I discovered the joys of reading.   After publishing thousands of books in my publishing career, I guess I learned to compensate, word processing being a good crutch for poor spelling. 

Ford does not deal with the leap from his hardship in high school to his days at Michigan State to writer.  Not appropriate in this work as it is about THEM and less about HIM.  And there is yet another ironic thing we had in common.  He first thought of going into Hotel Management.  It is no wonder; his parents frequently took him on his father’s road trips, living in hotels all over the Deep South.  No such explanation for me other than Kent State had such a program and I vaguely thought of that as an escape route from my family (this plan did not work out thankfully).  I was flotsam in the tide of life.

Between Them is really two separate works, one about his mother which he wrote soon after she died, and the other about his father, which he recently wrote.  But you wouldn’t know it, as it flows with such continuity.  His prose is breathtaking.  Here is one paragraph that was particularly affecting (to me), about his father:

“But hardly an hour goes by on any day that I do not think something about my father. Much of these things I've written here. Some men have their fathers all their lives, grow up and become men within their fathers' orbit and sight. My father did not experience this. And I can imagine such a life, but only imagine it. The novelist Michael Ondaatje wrote about his father that ‘... my loss was that I never spoke to him as an adult.’ Mine is the same - and also different - inasmuch as had my father lived beyond his appointed time, I would likely never have written anything, so extensive would his influence over me have soon become. And while not to have written anything would be a bearable loss - we must all make the most of the lives we find - there would, however, not now be this slender record of my father, of his otherwise invisible joys and travails and of his virtue - qualities that merit notice in us all. For his son, not to have left this record would be a sad loss indeed.”

Yes, a sad loss, especially from such an exceptional writer, Richard Ford.  The book was a gift from my wife for my birthday and the coincidence of it landing in my hands while in the hospital, helped deal with the travails of my setback, and even more so with the ultimate philosophical question I’ve quoted many times before by Eugene Ionesco: “why was I born if it wasn’t forever?”   

I got to know two perfect strangers, now memorialized, and appreciate Ford’s writing even more.  I will always look forward to his next work 

As to my own brief essay about my father, I reprint it below as an appendage.  

An Unspoken Obligation

Up Park Avenue we speed to beat the lights from lower Manhattan in the small Ford station wagon with Hagelstein Bros., Commercial Photographers since 1866, 100 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY imprinted on its panels. The Queens Midtown Tunnel awaits us.

It is a summer in the late 1950s and, once again, I’m working for my father after another high school year. In the back of the wagon I share a small space with props, flood lamps, and background curtains. The hot, midtown air, washed by exhaust fumes and the smoke from my father’s perpetual burning cigarette, surround me.

Me and my Dad

My father’s brother and partner, my Uncle Phil, occupies the passenger’s seat. They have made this round trip, day-in and day-out since my father returned from WWII. They speak of the city, its problems, the Russians, and politics disagreeing on most matters. Meanwhile I sleepily daydream about where my friends and I will cruise that evening in one of their cars, a 57’ Merc, probably Queens Blvd., winding up at Jahn’s next to the RKO on Lefferts Boulevard.

The family photography business was established right after the Civil War, soon after my great-great grandfather, Carl, emigrated from Cologne, Germany with his brother, settling in New York City.  Their portrait photography business at 142 Bowery flourished in the 19th century.  The 20th century brought a new focus: commercial photography which necessitated moving to a larger studio, better located, at 100 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 15th Street.  There the business remained until the 1980’s, occupying the top floor.

My father took it for granted that I was being groomed for the business, the next generation to carry it on. Uncle Phil was a bachelor and since I was the only one with the name to preserve the tradition, it would naturally fall to me.

This was such an understood, implicit obligation, that nothing of a formal nature such as a college education was needed to foster this direction. Simply, it was my job to learn the business from the bottom up, working first as a messenger on the NY City streets, delivering glossies to clients for salesmen’s samples, or for catalog display at the annual Furniture Show. As a youngster, I roamed NYC by subway and taxi with my deliveries without incident – after all, this was the innocent, placid 50’s.  Eventually, I graduated to photographer’s assistant, adjusting lamp shades under the hot flood lamps so the seams would not show, and, later, as an assistant in the color lab, making prints, dodging negatives of a clients’ tables, lamps, and sofas to minimize any overexposures.

I see my father through the lens of his working life, revealing a personality normally invisible to me. At home he was a more contemplative, private person, crushed by a troubled marriage. My mother expected more, often reminding him of his failures. But strolling down the halls of his photography business he is a transformed person, smiling, extending his hand to a customer, kidding in his usual way. “How’s Geschaft?” he would say.

His office overlooks the reception area and there he, my Uncle, and his two cousins preside over a sandwich and soda delivered from a luncheonette downstairs. I sit, listen, and devour my big greasy burger. They discuss the business among themselves. Osmosis was my mentor.

In spite of the filial duty that prompted me to continue learning the photography business, I inveigled his support to go to college – with the understanding I would major in business. By then I think I knew going to school would be the first step away from the family business, a step, once taken, would not be taken back. The question was how to reveal this to him.

However, as silently was the expectation that I would take over one day, my retreat was equally furtive. We both avoided the topic as I went to college and yet continued to work there during the summers. Once I switched majors from business to the humanities, we both knew the outcome of the change, but still, no discussion. This was territory neither he nor I wanted to visit at the time.

My reasons were instinctively clear to me, in spite of the guilt I often felt. In the studio he was larger than life, the consummate photographer, but he was also provincial in his business thinking. He had bet the future on producing those prints for salesmen, discounting the impact of the developing mass media.  My opinion on the matter would mean little. After all, he was my Dad and I was his kid. So I kept my silence and progressively moved away.

Why he never brought up the subject I will, now, never know, although I suspect he understood I wanted to find my own way in life. Ultimately, I married and found a job in publishing with an office, ironically, only three blocks from his studio. I still occasionally joined him for that greasy burger at his office during those first few years of my publishing career, his greeting me with a smile when I arrived, “so, how’s Geschaft?

Reassessing the Use of Time

BlogSpot tells me this is my 600^th entry.  It only took 10 plus years, but it would make several books of writing.  I think in terms of “books” because of my publishing background.  Looking back it seems like I used these pages early on to frequently express my views about the Wall Street induced recession and then later on resisting the rise of anti-intellectualism in the age of Trump.  I still occasionally turn to comment on “the Zeitgeist” but I’ve been on Twitter over the past year for much of that, clocking in at nearly 1,000 tweets, realizing though it’s merely venting without the possibility of affecting change.

Progressively the Lacunaemusing blog has morphed into articles about cultural events, traveling, books, music, family history, reviewing plays, just about such event I feel compelled to write about. No doubt it will go more in that direction as time permits. 

When I posted my 200th entry, I thought had a good explanation of “Why I Do This?”  It’s still stands the test of time.

Twitter is no doubt cannabis for the brain, seductive and addictive.  That is a New Year’s resolution, to cut back on Twitter.  Maybe I’ll have to go cold turkey altogether, but still find it to be a valuable news source, frequently seeing what’s happening even before it hits cable news.  But should I care about the slight lapse of time?  Maybe so if there is a Twitter post announcing the first Nuke has been launched.  Might give me time to scurry to the basement.  Wait!  I have no basement! T.S. Eliot: In a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

I’ve used Twitter to say some things about my blog, including this recent one:

I'm not sure whether my blog https://t.co/p79UzrDSWe qualifies me as a writer, but the pay of zero and the satisfaction does. https://t.co/YW5eZRSxPh

— Robert Hagelstein (@lacunaemusing) December 30, 2017

Indeed, no pay but plenty of satisfaction, for keeping it up, and by and large I’m proud of its contents.  The collected thoughts of an aging everyman.  

But how do I leave this entry without saying something about the Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury, an expose about the chaos at the White House and the child-like behavior of our President who has defiled the Oval Office?  My question is why should this be “news” as his sociopathic narcissism was well documented by his own behavior well before the election?  We elected him nonetheless, but by an extremely thin margin of the popular vote in three states, WI, MI, and PA, which swung the Electoral College his way.  I had something to say about that on Twitter too:

The most remarkable thing about Michael Wolff’s book is the characterization of Trump was well known before he was elected by the now outdated Electoral College. Why should urban America be held hostage to rural America? When does Congress take action on both issues? https://t.co/M9mv3nzIRi

— Robert Hagelstein (@lacunaemusing) January 5, 2018

H.L. Mencken so prophetically opined nearly 100 years ago:  “As democracy is perfected, the Office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete moron.”

The time has come and our inner soul has been laid threadbare. We have met the enemy and we are them.