Friday, February 03, 2012

Memorizing Shakespeare

I’m hooked on Shakespeare, I confess, and when I get back from a performance as hilarious as the “Twelfth Night” that finished its run at Notre Dame last week, I sometimes think of my high school English teacher, old Father D. He tried to turn us on to Shakespeare, but failed miserably.

The scene was a classroom in an old brick Catholic boys school. At the podium, Father D., dressed in black, his white wavy hair combed straight back, introducing the final section of “Macbeth.” Women scream somewhere in the castle; Lady Macbeth, no longer able to stomach her own corruption, has taken her life. A messenger tells Macbeth the news. Having “supp’d full” of his own horrors, he can hardly attend to his wife’s death. His words are heart-rending and hopeless.

At the front of the classroom, Father D. fingered his white clerical collar. Boys, he said, in the old days our students would have memorized a speech from Macbeth. Those boys had intellectual curiosity, and knowing Shakespeare was what it meant to be an educated person. But the boys of today, he said, looking around the room at us, I’m not sure the boys of today have same spirit, the same drive to learn. Perhaps tomorrow I will be proven wrong. Perhaps tomorrow one or two of you will raise a hand and say that you’d like to recite this speech by Macbeth. We’ll see tomorrow if any of you boys have that same spark of excellence as the boys of former days.

Father D.’s exhortation really burned me. But on my ride to school the next morning I read Macbeth’s speech over and over again until I easily had it down. In English class, Father D. returned to his grim theme. Well, he said, now we find out whether any of the boys of today have the same spirit of excellence as the boys of yesterday. I imagine that the answer is going to be no. Will any of you raise a hand now and step forward to recite Macbeth’s speech?

I didn’t like his crude motivational message any better the second day than I did the first. I ran over the opening of the speech in my head, and the teacher asked again: Will anyone step forward to recite? My hands were on the desk, and I left them there. Father D. moved his class on to other things.

That was a long time ago. I sometimes imagine meeting him again, walking up to him, showing him Macbeth’s speech typed out on a sheet of paper. Then I would crumple the paper and throw it down. I would speak the lines from memory as I do now, these words about the depths to which we must all hope not to descend:

[The Queen, my lord, is dead.]

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way
To dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

But let’s let Father D.’s ghost recede from the room now.  Life is for the living; and so is Shakespeare. In the classroom, some teachers think joyless grim discipline moves young minds. Shakespeare knew it was the juicy mess and horror and joy of humanity that move us. The standing ovations last week at “Twelfth Night” easily prove it so.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on February 03, 2012 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Arts & Entertainment • Education • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, December 23, 2011

A Christmas Gift

It actually was the night before Christmas and the two boys were running out of both time and money. With just a few dollars in their pockets, they walked the length of the shopping center, looking into any number of stores, but they couldn’t find a present for their grandmother.

They had never imagined that they might fail. After all, on the morning after Thanksgiving Santa’s helicopter landed in the parking lot of this shopping center to start the holiday season. Elvis Presley’s Rolls Royce had been displayed there, with 16 coats of gold paint flecked with real gold and leather seats in the back and a little bar you could see from the other side of the velvet rope. This shopping center had everything. Surely there was a present for their grandmother.

But she was not easy to buy for. She kept gumdrops in a dish for her grandchildren but she also owned a French poodle with a frantic, yapping disposition that only an old person could love. She believed that the Coca-Cola in six ounce bottles tasted better than the Coca-Cola in larger bottles. She made fresh applesauce. They knew her narrowly, the way kids do, and were unable to recognize her in the black and white photograph of the dashing 1920s couple. She was recently widowed and she didn’t drive and it was too far to walk to the grocery store or the church. She lived life almost completely in the kitchen and living room of her little house, they thought.

In the last hour before closing time, customers thinned out and the boys retraced their steps. The bookstore. She was their warm, familiar grandmother, but they had no idea what she might read there on the other side of the long divide between youth and age. The refreshment stand. They didn’t dare buy themselves a fresh pretzel to share, as their funds were so low. The gift carts were stacked with odd cheeses and meats that required no refrigeration and boxes of novelty crackers and sweets that felt half-empty when lifted for a closer look. They considered a number of strange knickknacks likely to be tucked out of sight in a closet forever. In the holiday spirit shopkeepers had conspired somehow to fill the whole place with junk. Taunted a little by joyous Christmas music, the boys pressed on. Their time grew very short.

By rehearsing what they knew of her circumscribed life, they ended up at last, nearly in desperation, in the housewares department of one of the larger stores. But a cooking spoon or a potholder seemed an embarrassingly bland present for their grandmother. The boys couldn’t have put it into so many words, but buying her housewares felt somehow like a cruel accusation that she was just an old woman living alone with her poodle dog in her little house.

But in housewares the boys found a white, quilted toaster cover with a happy poodle on the side. There was a loose thread, a Made in China label, and a price of three dollars, which they could still afford. A gift is a hunch about another person, a clue about how deeply the receiver of the gift is known. She did love her dog Mitzi. The white fabric was bright and the image of the dog was cheerful and vivid. They were out of time. Maybe this gift was okay. It would have to be.

So they bought it in the last half hour of Christmas shopping and wrapped it that night and handed it over dutifully the next morning. Later they heard that she loved it because it was so unexpected and so well chosen. And there on the tidy counter in her narrow, sunny kitchen that sometimes smelled of chicken roasting or apples stewing, she covered her toaster with the cloth image of that bouncing poodle for the remaining few months of her life.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on December 23, 2011 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Commerce • Customs & Rituals • Family & Friends • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, December 09, 2011

Outsiders, In

It may not be seasonably appropriate, but I cannot get that Pepper Spray Cop out of my mind.  What is it about that stolid guy that stuck so fast in the public imagination?  Was it his Kevlar-cool, his flat-line affect, as he methodically shook the mixing marble in his pepper can and strolled down the row of earnestly Occupying college students, training the toxic spray right in their faces at a distance we reserve for loved ones and dental hygienists?

That juxtaposition – the intimate proximity and neutral brutality, the arm stretched out not to touch but to maim – will stand for many of us a low mark on the barometer of compassion.  I have my book-slam ugly moments, sure, but I’d never unhook from humanity enough to do that.

This smug conclusion drummed its fingers on my conscience when I attended the Dismas House Forgiveness Breakfast, in the new Community Corrections and DuComb Center—an expanded halfway house that provides work release, stability, safety, and a web of friendship for ex-felons as they get their footing back in a community that rarely greets them with open arms.

That morning, the atmosphere in the Center was buoyant; people in suits – or the sweater-and-scarf academic equivalent – took in the dining room’s freshly painted, if institutional, concrete walls, and listened to several residents tell their stories with quiet composure, stories that were both harrowing … and familiar. A divorce, a layoff from work, a family tragedy, a dip into addiction, and then a bad snap decision – one any of us could make – and then, incarceration.

The cracked-open humility in those stories of growth reminded me, uneasily, that I’d risked little of myself that morning.  I’d shown up to sit with colleagues, I listened, I wrote a check, and after an hour I stood up with most of the rest of the room --pleased, absolutely, to have attended, but already mentally rehearsing the day’s campus appointments as I felt in my book bag for my car keys.  I’d taken notes on the fact that anyone can prepare a supper once a week for Dismas residents – not just to drop off the food, but to sit down, and actually share the meal. Would I do this?  I’m no pepper-spray cop, but I can hold at arm’s length situations that deserve better.

The generous vulnerability of the Dismas residents stayed with me, though, and loosened a sharp childhood memory that hadn’t risen to the surface in a while.

When I was nine, a mid-week suburban evening that had been humming along suddenly went dark and terrible.  I was in my bedroom, rereading a favorite book by the radiator, my folks were catching up after work in our paneled Seventies kitchen.  My older sister was outside … or had been, until there was a fumble at the back screen door and my sister staggered into the house, dark blood running from her ear down her neck, and so not my sister, but possessed, a crazy person, raving, eyes rolling. ~ Dad’s running to dial the phone, my mom’s trying to capture my sister’s flailing arms in her own, and I’m bawling and breathless, tearing outside at the first sirens I hear winding down out front – police cars? I shook my small arms, channeling grade-school outrage and yelled: “We need DOCTORS, not the police, stupids! Doctors for my sister!” I ran back inside, trembling with terror.  But then I went still as I tracked the cop’s practiced glance around the house, realizing that his deliberate sizing-up of the scene meant something even worse was unfolding. I saw our house through his wary eyes—the bloody, raving child fighting the arms of a parent, an after-work beer on the counter—and realized that my house, and my scared, heroic parents, were under suspicion.  I’ve never felt less safe, less sure who was on my side.

I ran back outside … and in the chaos of flashing lights and gawkers, I saw a still and open figure ten feet away.  Mr. Lundquist from next door, a towering, sharp-angled man whose booming voice usually scared me. But now he was transformed, kneeling low and quiet.  He looked me full in the face, eyes soft, and spread his arms wide. I ran right into them.

Inside the house, the misinterpretation quickly passed; the EMTs figured that my sister had fallen off our backyard jungle-gym.  It was serious: a concussion that soon bloomed into a coma, followed by a long recovery … but mercifully, a full one.

I, on the other hand, haven’t recovered, mercifully, from learning the bravery it takes to throw open your arms to another person … and the equal measure of bravery it takes to rush in.

Maybe this is a holiday story, after all.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on December 09, 2011 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Community • Family & Friends • News & Editorial • Permalink • Printer Friendly
Google
WWW Michiana Chronicles

A random pick from more than 460 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:

April Lidinsky -- Signs of the Times / Garden Bounty / A Fair Reflection on Planning Parenthood / Why I Want To Do the Splits / How Big Can A ‘Small Town’ Be? / Shades of Life / Against Tradition / Spring Cleaning / Taking on Taekwondo / The Raw and the Cooked / Mind Games / More essays by April

Joe Chaney -- Day Hiking for the Michiana Soul / The High School Football Scene / Thinking about the End of the World / Renewal in Our Nation’s Capital / The Most Important Job / I’m the Anti-Grade Inflation Czar (or, Words of Comfort for Teachers in their Time of Trial) / The Problem with Heaven / Swinging States / What about Binky? / Who Gets to Drive? / Useful to Be Useless / More essays by Joe

Ken Smith -- Santa’s Helicopter / Putting Away Childish Things / Do Not Call, Revisited / A Christmas Gift / Studebaker Stories / The Visiting Writer—Stephen Kuusisto / Do Not Call / College Visit / Vacation Mishaps / Watching the Stars / The Year in Review / More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- Let Me See / Good Eaters / Boomers Going Bust / Loser / Socks / Getting Together / A Mysterious Stranger / You Are Going to Die / New Year’s Thoughts / Nyanh, Nyanh / Heading Toward the Finish Line / More essays by Jeanette

Heather Curlee Novak -- Bored / Rude T-Shirt Guy / Neurotic / Wisdom / Bacon Before Husband / Death and Guacamole / Friendly / Running Music / Complaint Department / House Sick / Parenthood / More essays by Heather

David James -- Standardized Tests / It’s Not Easy Being Green / Grandpa James / Mourning Doves / South Bend Spring / The South Bend Free Press / The Family Dogs / Mandala / Mooyiinkweena / Jimmy Reed Live / Chicken Dance, Irish Style / More essays by David

Elizabeth Van Jacob -- Chronicle of a Death Told in Facebook Postings / Driving On / Be Ginger Rogers, or, How to Talk to Widows and Others in Grief / More essays by Elizabeth

Jeff Nixa -- Alley Dogs / Small Town Funeral / Bad Neighborhood / A Postcard from the Inner City / Real Estate Physiology / More essays by Jeff

Louise Collins -- Surviving the Heat-Wave / The Infrastructure of Everyday Life / Guys and Guns / The Tube and Terrorism / Klutzing with Clay / More essays by Louise

Jonathan Nashel -- How Paris Turned Into South Bend / Let It Rain / Why Morphine is Overrated / Riding a Big Rig / On the Joys of Flying / More essays by Jonathan