APRIL 2024

The Path of Totality

On April 8, 2024 we experienced an eclipse.

I had seen an eclipse before. We drove up Mount Besparmak in Turkish Cyprus. The drive involved narrow switchbacks and white knuckles by the men in the car. Both Gary and I had neglected to bring our international driver’s licenses, so Gary’s wife, Cindy, was driving. She did very well, though you wouldn’t know it from the looks on my and Gary’s faces. Such are the myriad ways in which marriages are tested.

We got out of the rental car and waited among some wilted olive trees. The event was only a partial ellipse and it  happened slowly but was over so quickly. I remember looking at the reflection of a leaf during and seeing it shaking, perhaps quaking, on a large slab of granite - at least I thought I did. 

It is so nice when something heralded doesn’t disappoint. Everyone is talking about it. It’s marked on the calendar. The news is blathering on and on… the storm of the century is coming - start filling up the sand bags! 

“Disappointment is simply the action of your brain recalculating reality.” – Craig Groeschel

That made sense to me. The recalculation based on the actual event after the collection of data. The luminescence of hindsight shining absent the anticipation.

Then came the solar eclipse. 

This spring we were in the path of totality. This time was going to be different. The news was blathering on and on. The event of the century. Won’t happen again in our city until 2444. The police were on alert. All officers called to duty. They’re going to close the beach park! All the hotels are sold out! People vowed to stay home. They stocked up on groceries, presumably toilet paper. This was going to be amazing.

We had Mattie, Maryrose and John and from out of town at our house - everyone had guests at our neighborhood by the lake. Everyone was outside with their cardboard glasses. The drinks were flowing. Music was playing. Our neighbor, who we rarely talk to, brought over some celestial pudding shots. People hiked by the house, cars lined our road by the lake. There may have been dancing. Totality was to be three minutes, from 3:14 until 3:17. Cell Phones were chiming as people got social media messages from areas ahead of us on the path. 

Typically the weather in Ohio in April is not good. Locals refer to the sky as Great Lakes gray. It is as much a sign of living in Cleveland as the orange barrels on the shoreway in the summer. A guy in the locker room at the gym was deriding the eclipse and all of the idiots buying up hotel rooms. He hoped it was as gray as always and that they all wasted their money. Such are the myriad ways in which views of our neighbors are tested. 

But the eclipse day was gorgeous. More Carolina blue than Great Lakes gray. Perhaps something was afoot.

It started at 1:59. We all sat on chairs in the backyard as did all of our neighbors. Crowds of people headed to the beach with chairs, complex camera equipment, and backpacks, presumably full of extra toilet paper. We talked, laughed, and wore our glasses. 

Slowly, inexorably totality occurred. Suddenly there was no music, no conversation, no sound at all. The temperature had dropped 10 degrees. We tentatively removed our glasses and as one we 

slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings. (John Gillespie McGee)

Out over the lake, the light was so different that I thought it looked like a sunrise in Hades.

I think what made the ellipse so powerful to me was the community nature of the event. We had all gathered. We saw each other. We laughed and we talked. And then it was quiet. When those two celestial bodies became one, something happened. Something out of all of our control. The universe showed itself in all of its vastness - in a way that was personal, yet common to everyone present. 

NOVEMBER 2023

Daisy - a nighttime story

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Daisy. Daisy was a bright, inquisitive girl who lived in a house behind which was a field that sloped gently down to a ribbon of rocky beach at the edge of a great lake. In the fall, the flowers atop the grasses of the field would turn a rich color that, when touched by the angular fall sunlight, would almost exactly match the color of Daisy’s hair piled carelessly atop her head. Each morning her mother would lift Daisy up onto the old farmhouse sink and fuss tirelessly with an ivory comb, had been handed down from her grandmother, to achieve this careless effect.

Daisy’s mother was a poet, and each day she would sit in the small room upstairs facing the lake and look out over the grass field to the often gentle, sometimes malevolent surf. Often on warm fall days she would see Daisy running through the field, her hair moving counter to the grasses stirring in the quiet fall breeze. Sometimes she would leave her leather folio, her dip pen, and run down the curving wooden stairs to the hill, her raven dark curls swirling, to catch her daughter. 

One day while she was at work, her husband came up behind her, nuzzling her neck, attempting a peek at the intricately formed letters in front of her. She demurred, as always, and standing took his hand (rough from working on the cedar boat that he had been building since before Daisy was born) and together they walked down the curving wooden stairs, across the kitchen  and out the back door to look for Daisy.

As they entered the grass field they found the lightly worn path that curved gently downward toward the beach. Soon they noticed a single daisy petal in the center of the path. Daisy’s mom stooped and picked it up and as they moved forward, about every ten steps (or twenty Daisy steps!) they found and collected another petal. The wind had begun to pick up a bit, and Daisy’s father wrapped her linen shawl around his wife’s bare shoulders - he had grabbed it on the old chair in the kitchen on the way out of the house.

As they broke out of the grass and onto the rocky beach, they saw Daisy sitting on the large rock by the half finished boat holding a daisy in both hands. She turned, saw her parents, and for but a frozen moment the sun caught her face, a single tear below one eye shone brightly in a blue that matched the color of the lake, the same color as Daisy’s eyes, her father’s eyes. 

“No more petals Mommy!”

Daisy’s mother saw the tear, the flower stem devoid of petals, the lonely yellow center describing the sun high above. She noticed too, the goose bumps on Daisy’s bare shoulders and wrapped her arms around her. Daisy’s father looked at his small beautiful family and wrapped the red wool afghan, crocheted by his mother with the big daisy in the center, around both of them - he had grabbed that too, of course. Daisy’s mom cupped the petals, joining her hands with Daisy’s. Daisy looked up into her mother’s eyes and smiled knowingly, bright as the sun. Together they threw their hands upward, the petals flying high on the breeze.

JANUARY 2023

Planning for an apocalypse?

Planning for an apocalypse?  Sure, many people think Wyoming or Montana. Get off the grid. Buy a horse. Get a nice rifle. Chop some wood.  No neighbors for miles boy…

But how about an island surrounded to the north by a genuine Great Lake and to the other three sides by a marsh which is reported to contain poisonous snakes? Only one road in, the same road out. Famously, the road is called Corduroy. It was originally constructed by chopping down trees and laying them on the swamp perpendicularly to the intended direction off the island, layer by layer, until their wagons could tentatively cross.  You can still feel the ripples below as you and your Hummer scream north for the quartermile trip to the island.  We could close it down and do it again if necessary - of course we could!

You’ve got breathtaking sunsets. You’ve got four seasons - four!  Each with their own glorious attributes. No summer is more temperate. No fall is more colorful, with the leaves gently floating on the warm lake breezes. Some people complain about winter. Sure the lake used to freeze, but now with climate change - no problem.  The wind off the lake is bracing, sure, but so great for creating a ruddy complexion! The Marlboro man is nothing compared to lake guy or lake gal. And spring? It’s a festival! It blooms everywhere! Cherry, pear, apple trees - all the fruity blossoms in the air.  Sure, the wind is a bit cool, but that causes the blooming to occur later.  All your friends will have already taken all their Instagram pictures. You’ve seen them and can plan.  They’ll never know what hit them.

And how about politics? We’ve got equality of viewpoints! We’re 50/50! Half your neighbors will be with you to the glorious end, no questions asked. The other half? The hell with them. But still if you need them, they’ll be there.  They’re your neighbors and here they know what that entails. They’ll guard your house.  They’ll ward off outsiders.  Painting?  They’ll pick up a brush.  Something heavy to lift? They’ll pick up an end. They’ve got you. When you move in - you are definitely getting a cake.  Someone dies? There are absolutely going to be some casseroles. You’ll need an extra fridge in the garage.  It’ll be good for beer too. When you are outside washing the truck and people swing by, and they will, you’ll want to hand em’ a cold one. 

Forget the wild west.  Forget the sagebrush and bumpy mountain paths. Planning for an apocalypse? You are going to love the north coast!

MAY 2022

The First Storm of the Season

It was late afternoon when I heard the first rumble.

Is that thunder?, I mused. The corners of my mouth bent into a gentle, knowing smile.

I stepped out onto the upstairs deck, staring out over the water. The lake was assuming the color, the storm color. I have spent a lifetime staring out at the lake, bragging to any that would listen of my ability to predict the weather. The color of Lake Erie is like a mood ring to me - I wear it proudly, revel in it as a source of profundity. My lake is rarely blue, certainly not the azure turquoise that reaches up to you as you fly into the Caribbean. It is not green either, though some say it is, with the algae blooms, the decline of the perch population, the decreasing oxygenation. It is not brown, not really, though after the violent turmoil that storms cause in our shallow basin it can appear so, the sediment kicked to the surface. Dead fish sometimes line the beaches. Amateurs equate this with pollution, reminiscing about the flaming Cuyahoga river, which happened more than fifty years ago in 1969. Today the river is a glimmering testament to remediation, like the bald eagle or spotted owl.

The lake is a subtle muse. It is figuratively inscrutable, literally impenetrable. It bids I observe, seek to understand, knows it will never be understood. 

The caps of the waves began to brighten, catching the diminishing sunlight to the east. The wind intensity increases, blowing left to right, west to east, the crabapple blossoms taking flight in eddies of pink snow. The color of the water darkens to a very deep green, as the sky became a panorama of activity, a moving panoply of grays. The waves had begun to rage. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes by far, never attaining a depth of more than two-hundred feet. The neighboring lakes, Michigan and Ontario are more than nine-hundred feet. This causes Lake Erie to rile up quickly and dangerously. To the east, the lighthouse on the breakwall began its mournful wail. 

This might be a good one, I thought. I was really smiling now.

The plastic Adirondack chairs skidded across the deck below, fighting for position against the railing. The lone red chair ended up atop the two blues, in pride of place it caught the wind and was gone, cartwheeling across the neighbors back yard.

Michelle, her friend Sharon and our aging golden retriever, Kayla ran up the stairs from the beach below, heading into the yard surrounded by a maelstrom of pink blossoms, hair tousled, cheeks red. The rain began, not hard yet, but with the huge drops typical of the storms along the north coast in the spring. 

The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees, my cheek stung as an immense droplet struck my face. I noted my sodden shirt as I raised my arms over my head and screamed into the wind.

This is a good one.

JANUARY 2022

Written as an exercise in the style of:

The Geranium by FLANNERY O’CONNOR

“Old Dudley folded into the chair he was gradually molding to his own shape and looked out the window fifteen feet away into another window framed by blackened red brick. He was waiting for the geranium. They put it out every morning about ten and they took it in at five-thirty. Mrs. Carson back home had a geranium in her window. There were plenty of geraniums at home, better-looking geraniums. Ours are sho nuff geraniums, Old Dudley thought, not any er this pale pink business with green, paper bows. The geranium they would put in the window reminded him of the Grisby boy at home who had polio and had to be wheeled out every morning and left in the sun to blink. Lutisha could have taken that geranium and stuck it in the ground and had something worth looking at in a few weeks. Those people across the alley had no business with one. They set it out and let the hot sun bake it all day and they put it so near the ledge the wind could almost knock it over. They had no business with it, no business with it. It shouldn’t have been there. Old Dudley felt his throat knotting up. Lutish could root anything. Rabie too. His throat was drawn taut. He laid his head back and tried to clear his mind. There wasn’t much he could think of to think about that didn’t do his throat that way.”

The Freighter

Robert walked to the large window and stood in the usual position arms akimbo and looked out over the backyard and beyond it to the great lake. He was looking for his freighter. It was just possible to see this time of year. There were plenty of freighters among his father’s journals as well as the books that he had bought over the last forty years. The pictures were sharper, clearer with abundant detail. But he was looking for the real thing, no ancient film, no digital reproductions. His freighter was the real thing, live, no one else’s view. A couple walking by stopped and sat on his bench looking out over the lake pointing due north in the direction of a ship. They had no business being here looking out like that. They shouldn’t be there. Robert felt his hand on the door knob, his entire body tensing with the movement. Tourists. There wasn’t much he could do about them yet he continued to stand tense as a statue staring out at the lake below.

JULY 2021

My Lake

He took his hands off the wheel, steering with his knees, and massaged his aching hands, wiggled his tingling fingers. He had been driving all day, his knuckles white on the wheel through the freezing rain, but as he began the gentle ascent up Little Mountain the sun appeared beneath a band of clouds. As he crested the hill he could see the lake for the first time and he rolled down the window a bit. He could just smell it. The lake. His lake. He was heading home. In the morning he would walk along the rocky beach shore, search for ‘mermaid tears’ at the waterline, sort them by color, search for the rare deep blues, the elusive red.

Lake Erie was the first of the Great Lakes to be uncovered during the last retreat of the glacial ice, making the lake about four-thousand years old in its current form. The oldest rocks from which the basin was carved are about 400 million years old. 

The sky had the particular purple hue of early morning as he walked along the beach. He held a handful of rocks in his left hand. Each shared a common shape, a similar size and thickness. Clearly not satisfied, he bent to pick up another one, tossing it in the air, gripping it with the finger and thumb of his right hand, flicking his wrist in the familiar motion. It was smooth in his bare hand and as cold as time. He nodded, satisfied, letting the others drop. He walked slowly toward the water, cocked his arm and with perhaps the best wrist snap ever employed on the north coast, watched it skip across the calm water, heading due north, disappearing into the mist. 

MAY 2021

Elliott’s Semester Abroad (in Ohio)

Selected for use in The Access Theater Project’s Hindsight 2020: A year in retrospect

Elliott’s a coder. He stares at his screen, intent. He speaks the language of the machine, recognizes the level of fluency he possesses, seeks to improve, to further understand. He can recognize the syntax of other programmers, note the subtleties, consider: does this work? Is it better? In this quantitative world, on his screen in two dimensions, Elliott approaches his work with a qualitative bent. He asks questions, takes ‘deep dives’. Elliott doesn’t settle.

It was early on in March when Michelle and our daughters made the decision to keep their planned trip to Panama. It was a bit risky. Stories had begun to circulate. Preliminary warnings started to promulgate. The girls week had been long planned though, and like the adventurers they are, the three women set off. Mattie arrived first. Her flight from Boston a few hours ahead of the other two. In Panama, Mattie went to the beach, got too much sun, headed back to the hotel. Not having heard from her mother or sister, a small inkling of fear began to creep in, just a little, where were they? Is there a problem? Meanwhile Michelle and Kira met up in Houston, flew together into Panama, headed to the hotel from the airport. Reunited, the threesome had a few good days in the sun, the unlimited buffets, the rum drinks flowing. Quickly things began to change. The pool was closed, all of the deck chairs, umbrellas and tables gone. Then the bar, the restaurants. The resort tried their best, food brought to rooms, free bottles of wine in a basket outside the door, but it was time to go. Several days early, the airlines surprisingly accommodating, they headed back to the US. Kira and Michelle were able to go straight to Ohio, but Mattie had to return to Boston and risk an additional flight, two more airports, and fly a few days later. 

Outside the kitchen window we planted the buckeye tree years ago. The poor tree has had a difficult life. Early on it was run down by an errant driver and was flat on the ground, rootball in the air, when I found it and stood it back up, stomped the ground around it. During our time of quarantine I sat at the head of the table facing the window and watched that tree denote the seasons. In March it was bare - spring in Ohio, particularly along the Lake Erie shore, comes slowly. 

It was a few weeks later when Elliott decided to come to Ohio. He had decamped to his parent’s home in North Carolina, joining the great migration from NYC that was an early harbinger of the time of Covid-19. He and Kira had discussed it thoroughly, and having been engaged just a few months earlier, decided to be together in Ohio. Elliott and his father headed north, Kira and her mother headed south, and the so-called ‘prisoner exchange’ was conducted in Wheeling, West Virginia. Outside my window the buckeye tree was beginning to bud.

We settled into a comfortable routine. A cooking rotation was established and each of us, even I!, took turns cooking dinners. During the day we pushed our wifi bandwidth to the limit as our privileged group worked from home. At night games were played, backgammon, euchre, rummy and Catan. The inside lid of the Catan game lists dates and orders of finish of each “settling”. We are a competitive group. The variety of games was necessary to establish some parity. We watched a variety of boutique TV shows and discussed them with vigor.

Now the buckeye tree has lost its’ brilliant bright, pink cones as at our kitchen table - summer has come to the north coast. Mattie agonizes over her law school choices, Kira wrestles with her devotion to Maria Montessori’s principles over Zoom, and as their NYC apartments sit vacant in the ravaged city, Elliott stares at his screen, intent.

APRIL 2021

Thoughts Post-Chekhov

The old beach park pavilion was deserted. Looking in through the dirty windows, I noted a mirrored ball hanging from the ceiling, inert, harkening back to days long past. I worked as a  lifeguard at this park decades ago, before the current lake levels of Lake Erie made beach swimming here untenable. Still, sitting here in my car in the parking lot sipping a venti coffee staring at the lake put me in a reflective mood.

Trying to be someone new is a challenge. It’s not that I didn’t like who I was. Not really. But did I ever get to say: 

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Or,

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

or even,

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Chekhov said those things, of course. Now, in this new life, I can say things like that sometimes. I can play with iambic pentameter. I can try to summon emotions, to emote as they say. Michelle sometimes calls it that. Emoting. I get to play with new friends. Young actors -  ‘graceful as a poplar, young innocent, pure, and radiant as a summer dawn’. They inspire me.

I really like the way a play develops. There is the audition, a nervous time, maybe even more so on Zoom. I check the listserv each day, look for possibilities. Who needs an older guy with a beard? I even tried playing Santa Claus for a season, though not this year, not during a pandemic.

It is thrilling to get a part. Even as an amateur, even without financial remuneration, it is a thrill. Then finding the conflict dates, setting up the rehearsal schedule. I’m retired, but I still have conflicts, who knew? Then getting to know the cast members, the director. In the best cases you get to share ideas, work together to create a vision of what you might do with a character. My favorite directors beg me to go big! Make me tell you to dial it back, Robert! Take a risk!

I am trying for less Robert, more of a character, as I perform. 

Then there is advertising, social media stuff. Small local theaters are really struggling right now. I love that some of my friends are willing to help. Willing to watch me. It occurs to me that it is kind of a lot to ask really. Hey, wanna watch me? I’ve become like a grade school soccer player. Watch me, mommy! But some of them do. It is a kindness that I cherish. 

Then, opening night! Michelle paints on Vasili’s clown make-up. She frets to get the eyes right, learns to use the sponge. She has always been my most supportive audience, but is now my make-up artist, my crew. She handles the props. 

Then, it’s over. It is so intense, so bright, so brief. Then just see you down the road... I hope to work with you again sometime. And, the funny thing is, if you keep doing it, you will see them, in different configurations, different theaters, varying relationships, in front of other flats, together, in the light.

So what knowledge am I putting into practice? How do my years in schools serve me? I mean, any idiot can retire, take a pension, work in the yard. It’s the day to day that wears you out, of course.

So this morning, walking the dog in the crisp snow along the lakeshore, we stepped off the road into the deeper snow and I looked south, away from the lake. Particles of light were glinting on the snow like a shattering mirrored ball against the faithful cerulean sky. I thought about those particles, traveling more quickly than the light through the medium of the atmosphere that created this impossible blueness, and, squinting snow blind into the depth, I smiled and pondered Chekhov and his famous gun.

Chekhov said: “One must never place a loaded rifle on stage if it isn't going to go off.”  

Thus the mirrored ball. 

FEBRUARY 2021

Eulogy for 2020

Sinead was making a little speech. For someone who was so serious as she led department meetings, who at a young age had established herself as a progressive educational thinker who was going places, Sinead was at this task, in this moment, quite emotional. She said of Robert “he is the youngest old person I know”. She said many other very kind things, but the line about being an old person stuck with him. The veteran of many of these year end sessions in international educational settings, he had observed closely the tight knit communities that developed so quickly. They were all aware of the transitional nature of these schools, the need to say goodbye often, to welcome new people with warmth and kindness - and hope. He had been the subject, among many others, several times. He had made these presentations himself in fact, always striving to balance sarcastic humor and kindness, to express sadness and offer hope at the next school, the next country. Robert didn’t think of himself as an old person. I mean sure, everyone says you’re as old as you feel, or as old as you act, or that age is just a number, or other such shit, but seriously, ‘the youngest old person’”? Jeez, that left a mark. 

On Facebook Robert had noticed that Sinead had married a year ago and today had announced the birth of their first child. Such beautiful pictures and the wonderful Gaelic subtext in her messages. She is a school administrator now, of course. Her life is moving along the predicted arc. Back in the U.S. at his home by the lake, Robert ponders as always, but differently perhaps in this time of quarantine. His daughters spent the winter months in quarantine there. He delighted in watching them work at their various jobs. The older daughter, the teacher, finds her way on Zoom to trigger the young minds in her care. He ponders her place on this arc, but notes the different emotional reaction that this pondering engenders. Of course, this is his daughter, his pride and joy. Sinead was like a daughter he now realizes, a bit of training for the feeling he has now. He has the gift of time, of relative prosperity. With all the talk of essential workers, this small group recognizes their privilege in being able to work from home. 

Robert retired just before the time of quarantine. He has time to ponder, to reflect, to look out the window at the changing seasons, watch his daughters moving forward with their vocations, thinking about Sinead’s little speech. This year Robert let go of feeling young.

JUNE 2020

Home

After nearly a decade living in the desert the green was jarring. It was blinding really. The grass, the maple trees in the second growth forest just off the path to the left - such bright verdancy!  To the right was the lake, of course. Always the lake, always north. It had been difficult living without this compass point, the constant that had been available for the last forty years. The gulf had been a compass point too of sorts, but it wasn’t the same. It was salty and so hot! Unbearable in July. Still, he had always charted his course of life by large bodies of water. They were his anchors providing a sense of calm, of changeability, of occasional malevolence.

Now walking down the path he looked right, past the poplars near the shore, blowing gently in the spring breeze off the lake. It was always ten degrees colder here in the spring and he was glad of his state college hoodie. The lake was calm today. “As calm as a mill pond”, his stepfather was fond of saying repeatedly. After about a mile the path turned to the left. Here it was darker, the canopy above more dense. The sunlight that came through was in shafts, beams penetrating into the woods. He quickened his pace.

Ahead was another path, an offshoot heading deeper into the woods. Here the path was less well kept, less traveled. No golf carts tread the path here. He made the turn and began to be more attentive to his footsteps not wanting to turn an ankle. A sign that he had seen years ago at a ski resort in Vermont flitted across his mind, “It will be as cold and lonely in the mountains tonight as it was 200 years ago. Don’t ski alone”. He shivered briefly but the thought passed as he noted the spot where he would head off the path and up the hill to the meadow. The path was increasingly muddy from the spring thaw and heading off the path was a real challenge. His trainers would not be the same after this trip. Grabbing saplings as handholds, he made his way, occasionally needing to ford a small stream or scurry over a downed tree. The darkness began to ebb, sunlight more prevalent as the meadow appeared through the trees ahead. He took the last few steps and was suddenly blinded by the sunlight, by the greens and yellows. It was much warmer here, the ground dryer and he pulled off the hoodie as he strode up the hill. 

Reaching the top of the hill he looked out over the old tombstones scattered about, seemingly haphazardly. They were less visible than they had been the last time he was here. Facing north he could see the lake below, glistening blue in the sun, the breeze beginning to freshen, white caps forming on the crests. There wasn’t a cloud in the cornflower blue sky and looking out at the horizon, the line between water and sky was difficult, perhaps impossible to see. There was a freighter miles offshore, minuscule in the distance, and he thought of being in a kayak in the lake and how huge and menacing the giant walls of the iron hulls had appeared. Staring at the seemingly slow progress of the ship in this bright tableau, he pondered centuries of nautical travel on this lake, remembering his grandmother talking about how sailors had used celestial navigation to find their way in an imperfectly charted world. His grandmother had explained that it was the permanence of the stars that allowed the early settlers to do their work. He walked to the familiar tombstone and sat down in the warm grass. It felt like a reunion of sorts and he smiled.