Last month at this time I was busy prepping for the opening of my all-time favorite play to direct, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. This was one of the tightest rehearsal schedules I have ever had. Years ago, when I started directing, I came upon the magic number of 25 rehearsals being the optimal amount of rehearsal time. At 2 hours a rehearsal, those 50 hours seemed to yield a quality production. This time the rehearsal period got squeezed like a, what, like a Florida orange, I guess.
Another colleague was doing a play earlier this spring that needed a bit more time, so he postponed the production by two weeks. The problem for me was given the unmovable boundaries of Prom and Graduation, I couldn’t extend my production dates. And on top of that, we had to take a sabbatical due to spring break and the madness around AP tests …so in order to do the play, I simply had to move everyone a little faster. It’s a little like rushing a 9 year-old in taking the training wheels off the bicycle…I think I did the play in about 60% of the time I usually need.
But I am getting ahead of myself…in case you don’t know this play, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, let me give you an overview, and I want to see if you can tell why this play is a provocative choice for us here in the Middle East. Here are the notes I wrote for the program last month that provides some background for the play:
In the summer of 1942, a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia—Terezin to the Czechs and Theresienstadt to the Germans—had settled into a deadly rhythm, fulfilling its role as a great reservoir for Jews in central Europe. These Jews came to Terezin on their way to the “Final Solution” at Auschwitz. However, Terezin became known primarily as a “children’s camp,” and a camp noted for its schooling, and its emphasis on the arts. Music and poetry thrived in such an odd place, certainly an unlikely place for a cultural celebration. In fact, strangely enough, the Germans encouraged cultural activities as the Nazis transformed Terezin into a public relations coup. Terezin earned the name of “The Paradise Ghetto,” for the Nazis created Terezin as a false front camp to deceive an all-too-believing outside world. The Nazis used the model ghetto well, wringing every potential drop of propaganda out of the place. Foreign dignitaries and the International Red Cross paraded through Terezin to view how the Germans treated these refugees, leaving with their stamp of approval for the “Paradise Ghetto.”
Many books and films about the Holocaust founder on the hugeness of its scale: individuals get caught up in, and blur into, a faceless mass of victims and victimizers. But I Never Saw Another Butterfly is the particular story of one survivor, Raya Englanderova, a young woman on the cusp of adolescence who endures the unendurable. Her family is a typical family in Prague, stunned at the news of Nazi occupation, and shocked at all the changes in their lives. The family conversation gives the Holocaust a narrative frame and also a pathos. Papa Englanderova and son Pavel are at odds, both coming from different perspectives about what resistance means, and how to deal with the enemy. Eventually Raya is separated from her family and she goes to Terezin, where she joins Irena Synkova’s classroom, a teacher who has found the will to live by nurturing her children. In I Never Saw Another Butterfly author Celeste Raspanti uses the actual poetry from children at the Terezin concentration camp and thus has found a way of imagining the Holocaust, an event that is commonly described as unimaginable.
Through this memory play, one comes away knowing the workings of the ghetto black market, the threat of typhus, the degradation of camp life, and the treasured moments of working together in the classroom. Children like Raya, Zdenka, Bedrich, Olila and Honza kept alive not only their glowing sparks of creativity, but did not shy away from making their art a weapon, a teaching device—pictures which terrify and engross the viewer, but also elevate and enlighten. Besides the opportunity to study and hear the poetry of the children, I Never Saw Another Butterfly raises large and complex questions about survival, about freedom, about suffering, and about the moral choices that people make in response to these issues. Although the Englanderova story is a somewhat fictionalized creation in itself, one is compelled to consider the terrible relation between history and the real human beings who are history’s casualties. As Celeste Raspanti writes, “this play is history as much as any play can be history, showing the best and worst of which the human heart is capable.”
Oh, doesn’t that just stir the soul?!
If you know me well, you know this play. I Never Saw Another Butterfly is the only play I have directed in all four of my schools, and it has been one I have repeated as often as I felt I could. My debut production of I Never Saw Another Butterfly was way back in 1988 at Gaston Day School. Then at Charlotte Latin School I directed the play in 1991, in a summer production in 1992, and as a farewell production in 1996. At Hackley I trotted out my warhorse in 1999 and then again in 2003. This is a play near and dear to my heart! It is a director’s dream, but also, very, very cheap to produce. All you really need is some battered stools, some rags, some endearing young actors, and, if you can swing it, a great spotlight.
Did anyone notice anything from the director’s notes that seems different?? Anyone who knows the play well? I will give you a hint…check out the lead character’s name…see it? I spelled her name Raya. That was the first time in all my productions I spelled it Raya. That isn’t a typo. When I decided to do the play here in Jordan, I thought it wise to change her name from Raja to Raya. Why, you wonder?? One of my great students here at KA is a guy named Raja (and an exceptional historian, I might add). Pronounced the same way as the character in I Never Saw Another Butterfly; spelled the same way as the character in I Never Saw Another Butterfly. I just thought it smart to let Raja stay Raja, a young man, and change the young woman character name to Raya.
I also made a leap of faith in the casting of this part. This part of Raya/Raja is a huge part with 12 monologues and the actress appearing in every scene. She carries the play, and she needs to be an instinctive, gifted actress. Over the years Kathy Grice, Liz Donlevy, Kathleen Coyle, Liz Asti, Megan Winter, Mandy Cloud, Jennie Nolon, Liz Gunnison, Sam Barnard, and Erin Steiner have essayed this role. When I decided to do the part here, I decided I would cast a non-native English speaker for the part. As a director with many non-native English speakers I wanted to send a signal that I didn’t just cast actors with American accents in lead parts. A lovely young woman named Fakher won the part, and while it took enormous effort (for example, she had some early problems with pronouncing all the words, like ‘barracks’) she performed the part with dignity and grace and humor and poise and eloquence. Fakher takes her place with the other fine actresses I have directed and became a model of hard work and commitment. And she did the part and all the monologues in a second language!
The next part that is close to my heart in I Never Saw Another Butterfly is that of the dedicated and wondrous teacher, Irena Synkova. Each of us hopes to know at least one Irena in our lives, a teacher who transforms and loves and cares for the children around her. This part must be played by someone wise and compassionate, an actress who can communicate all the despair and hope in the world just by sitting down on a battered stool. My adult friend Mary was the first of my Irenas, and now from Jordan, an exceptional young woman named Hana Mufti played the part. Irena has one of the great moments in drama when she leaves the schoolroom for the last time and offers a look like the one Mary Tyler Moore offered in her last look at the WJM newsroom at the end of her sitcom. (I still can manage a sitcom reference!!)
There is a sort-of love interest in I Never Saw Another Butterfly as well. Honza is worldly, kind of, goofy, kind of, strong, kind of, caring, kind of, and must credibly convey the promise of what young love offers. In this part I cast the young man whose own friends have dubbed him, “The Mayor of Awesomeville.” Abdullah Khalayleh is one of the most natural actors I have ever directed, and he has the intuition and awareness—dare I use the German word, gewahrsamkeit—of a pro. Abdullah is also reliability personified. At times when an actor could not seem to make it to rehearsal, Abdullah would step in and play that role at that rehearsal. Abdullah can play heartbreaking and then funny in a heartbeat.
Raya/Raja has a family scene that is gripping and dripping with subtext. The family scene is set in Prague as they await to see what the Nazis will do to their lives next. The parents cling to normalcy as they wait and see. It requires actors with skill and patience and also a tension that must explode and haunt. I gotta say Thaer and Hanna and Suhayb delivered the goods. Later in the play there is a wedding scene that is so simple, but since it takes place minutes before the families must part forever, it must have an unsentimental but raw joy to make it work. Suhayb and Giulia looked lovely as they stood there in the night air of the courtyard showing how love can conquer all.
But the heart and soul of I Never Saw Another Butterfly always will be the sections with the children. I have had as few as 8 children in a production, and as many as 45. It is a flexible amount, obviously, but in the school scenes as we see Irena help them process through the realities of their lives, and we hear the plaintive, poignant words these real children once wrote, it never fails to take my breath away.
I am not tired of this play, perhaps never will be, and this production in the deserts of Jordan in May, 2011, stands as a hallmark of my work here. I remember when at my great Khosrowshahi/Polcari going-away party in New York in 2007, dear friend Adam Kahn said he couldn’t wait until I did I Never Saw Another Butterfly in Jordan.
Tomorrow I will write about why this was not a simple decision and how the impact has been on our community.
Oh, I love suspense…come back tomorrow!
For now, savor the words that Raya/Raja says so confidently and unapologetically at the end of the play as she faces life, “not alone, and not afraid.”
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Utterly So
I have been to many, many graduations. I have been to probably 25 graduations now as an educator. I have been to graduations in the morning, in the evening, with caps and gowns and teachers in academic regalia, with students in suits or white dresses. I have been to graduations inside and outside, in gyms, in auditoriums, under tents, in the open air…I know of graduations.
They all start out pretty much the same, once everyone has been seated. The headmaster welcomes the board of trustees, the parents, the faculty, and of course, let’s not forget the graduates.
But you know it is an uncommon graduation when the headmaster begins with “Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies,…” and then goes back to the usual parade of names. Royal Highnesses and Excellences?? Where might I be? Oh, yes, I am living in a kingdom, near other kingdoms, with students who are children of royalty and children of very modest means. It is our graduation at KA. And even beyond that flashy opening, it is a stunning graduation.
This year’s graduation was so much easier than last year. For one thing, we had done it before. We had a template. We had an idea how to deal with the security, with the 1800 or so guests, how to include the entire school, how to…well, you name it. For another thing, the class of 2011 was a bit more “loved” than last year. I hate to be so plainspoken about it, but it is just true. This class was easier to love. And, in case you don’t know, faculty want to love a class. They sincerely do.
Anyway, we learned a thing or two from last year, but mostly used the well-designed template from last year. We did make it an hour later since the desert sun can still be unforgiving at 5:00 in the afternoon.
The first exciting thing about our graduation is the procession—the entire school forms a double inversion gauntlet. Say what? Our founding headmaster, Eric, loved the idea of having the entire school march in a procession through the rest of the school and then invert and continue into the graduation. He calls it the WIG—the Widmer Inversion Gauntlet. What that means is that the underclassmen are all lined up, and then the faculty march through a gauntlet of 11th graders, 10th graders, 9th graders, then they march through a procession of us, and finally, the senior dean and the King lead the seniors, the graduates through a gauntlet of the entire school. It is a heady experience to see the entire school march and parade in front of itself. The dais is exciting because there is His Majesty, and the chairman of the board, a man who formerly was an Ambassador to the US, and our headmaster now, our founding headmaster, and Alia, the one who will read all the names. There is a royal bagpipe crew that played the entire gauntlet and lead us into the grassy area where the graduation is with about 1500-1800 guests.
Two students deliver speeches, one in Arabic, and the other in English. The two students were chosen from a panel of adults and they do a beautiful job. In fact, about every five minutes like clockwork my eyes well up with tears in this graduation.
I probably remarked about it last year, but the graduation last year was a graduation with no tears. I felt robbed! In over 20 years I had never gone through a graduation without tears. I guess it is like people at weddings. It isn’t just the graduates themselves—it is the moment when we graduate our children from childhood and exhort them to follow their dreams and mine their potential. What isn’t there to love about a graduation moment??? We don’t need to go into it anymore, but this was my first graduation since 2007 then with the usual tears and how-will-I-make-it-through-and-I-am-going-to-miss-them-so-much. Two final awards were given: the student as the Valedictorian, and the student chosen by the faculty for the King Abdullah spirit award. I know both young men well, taught them over and over.
The graduation speakers were the Widmers, founders and role models for the early years of the school. Dr. Eric reminded the crowd that when the ground had been broken for the school a few years ago, His Majesty had remarked that this school was certainly four things and must be these four things: “utterly idealistic, utterly progressive, utterly optimistic, and utterly necessary.” They spoke of the genesis of the school, and now here was the first class to go all the way through four years at King’s Academy. Again, I was very weepy as I thought of these students and what these four years have meant.
The aftermath of the graduation at KA is not my favorite part, however. There isn’t a recessional. We tried last year, but the crowd just stormed over Julianne and me as we tried to do the recessional we loved at Hackley, and then the reception is too crowded and too rushed. And, well…really nothing to nosh on either. The evening party at a hotel in Amman is just too over-the-top and loud to be enjoyable. I think I will skip that in the future. It just isn’t what I want in a graduation party. So actually I thought about what I missed from other graduations.
Since I now have nearly a quarter-century of graduations under my belt, I miss the string quartet playing outside of Gaston Day School supporting the small graduating class with Mozart and Haydn. I miss the academic regalia of Charlotte Latin School. I miss the white flowers on the lapels of the young men’s suits at Hackley. I miss the recessional at Hackley where the faculty recessed and then formed a gauntlet and tearily and happily greeted the new graduates as they marched out. I miss the reception where Anne and I stayed until the bitter end hugging and saying farewell. If you said you couldn’t find us—you didn’t really look. We waited until we were the last. I miss the graduation events from Charlotte Latin and Hackley where you visited with families, had backyard cook-outs, or tasteful receptions at country clubs. I miss the sweet presents and letters given from Hackley students.
But there is one part that has been hard from the first graduation as a teacher. How do you relate to these, your former students now? They are not your students anymore, nor are they your peers. It is always a strange paradox, and one in which they seem almost brand-new to you. I have long told senior classes that when they graduate, they get to call the shots about our relationship. I can’t dictate any more. I act more aloof than usual, waiting for them to decide if we will be more friends, or just a great memory. I suspect it is a little like a parent watching a child go through his or her 20s wondering how they will relate to them as adults. I am reminded of a great line from the musical based on the movie, Big. The mother is singing into the cradle of her son, thinking about how fast it all goes in her ballad, “Stop, Time.” She opines in song:
“Nobody warned you of this parent’s paradox. You want your kid to change and grow, but when he does, then another child you’ve just began to know leaves forever.”
I had thought I might write about a number of the seniors, but I think I am just emotionally kaput! I have written college recs about them that quoted Frost, and Flaubert, and Lincoln, and Joyce and Julian Barnes, etc. and lifted passages from their best works about the Greeks or the Europeans, and spun the top about them in class comments and advisor reports—I fear I am out of words for this lovely bunch.
But there is a very fitting way to end the report on this graduating class, and it isn’t about parties or sunny days or caps and gowns or tears. I am thinking of what His Majesty said about this school: “utterly idealistic, utterly progressive, utterly optimistic, and utterly necessary.” That also neatly sums up this class as I have known them these four years. They have been indeed “utterly idealistic, utterly progressive, utterly optimistic, and utterly necessary.”
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Graduation Day, 2011
It is Graduation day here in Jordan, and in just over two hours I will watch our 100 graduates leave the fold and go out into the world. This is bittersweet, as every graduation is, since this is the last class (of two) who was here on the first day the doors opened to this school in the Middle East.
The Class of 2011 chose me to offer a valedictory address last night at the senior dinner. How very honored I am that I got to speak to them at this beautiful dinner under the stars. Here are the remarks I made about this special class:
I Could Talk About Your Class All Night…
I am not allowed, but I could talk about your class all night!
Many of us here tonight were here when the school opened, and we celebrate our first four-year class at King’s Academy. Before the school opened, the faculty were here for four weeks, and during that time, we wondered, what were you going to be like?? Finally, in the third week here, on a random trip to the Administration building, I bumped into a King’s Academy student, two students in the same day. I met Leen. I met Reed. I finally had met one of you. They smiled. I smiled. We talked. They were nice. I thought—this is going to be okay.
They were my first two! Eventually over these four years, I would teach 2/3 of this class. I got a list the other day of your class and I counted up the number of you I would eventually teach. 2/3 of this class—you see why I could talk about your class all night! And then I would teach 31 of you twice, 12 of you three times, and there is a special place in heaven for those 7 students I have taught every day the school has been open.
In your 9th grade year, I taught 37 of you, but it was not easy at first. I don’t know if you remember, but you couldn’t sit still! I brought in a camera to experiment if you could sit still long enough for me to snap your picture. And then there was the problem that almost none of you brought paper and pen to class! Remember? I called a friend of mine and asked what I should do! She said, “Give them candy if they bring pen and paper!” Within a few days, Karim al Zeine brought pen and paper!
I love to remember the candy story because one year later, I taught 10 of you in the first AP history class here and you earned some of the best scores in the world.
In that first year I remember the day, the class, the lesson about ancient India, when you finally thought in class—the day you rose above just filling in answers and thought deeply and sophisticatedly. I remember walking by one of your rooms at night, and one of you was reading Shakespeare for the first time and you said, “This Shakespeare is amazing!” I remember the end of that first year, when we gathered in the courtyard, and many of you spoke so emotionally about how that first year here had affected you. Some of you cried. I remember who cried. For some, I don’t think school had been very meaningful before. I have watched you find meaning in your work, in your school, in each other, over these four years.
I remember in your sophomore year, the night four boys came to my apartment late, and told me I needed to make up a new exam for the following morning. They explained that some of the juniors in AP history had told them what was on the exam that they had taken that day. Those four guys said they wanted an honest chance to see if they knew the material. Really knew what they were doing.
I could talk about your class all night!
As these stories tumble out of my mouth and out of the scrapbook in my brain, there is a common theme here: I have seen you at your best, I have seen you grow, improve, evolve. All these stories are about your best selves.
But your class is not just about me watching—your class is linked to my life’s path. I have stayed in Jordan because of your class. When I came at the beginning, I think I planned to stay about two years. But during your sophomore year, Jude Dajani, the wonderful Jude Dajani, said, “You couldn’t possibly leave until we graduated!” Jude is persuasive! She was right. Jude offered me a verbal contract that has been binding—I have stayed because I love your class. And you know, I am staying past your graduation because of your class as well. You are what King’s Academy can cultivate. I want to see another class match you. I am staying in large part because of the standard you have set. Thank you, Jude Dajani.
At Graduation time, as you are finding out, no doubt, well-meaning adults like to offer advice. Oh, my. They want to tell you what to do, how to do it, and often how to avoid mistakes that they have made. I don’t have advice, per se, but I have two stories to share about when I was your age.
In the fall of my senior year, I attended a conference, and one of the things we had to do, was take a piece of paper with a word on it, and define that word to our small group, and explain how we might apply that word to our lives. Okay… how very Dr. Phil. I open the piece of paper, and on it is written the word, risk. I think about it. I know what it is, but how do you define it, explain it, tear it apart, apply it…So I defined the word to my group: Risk is when you sacrifice who you are for what you might become. There are a few words in there that are loaded. Sacrifice? No one wants sacrifice something, to give something up. But I suggested that we embrace “risk” and sacrifice who we are for what we might become. That word ‘become’ is a beautiful word—transformative, evolving, graduating. But I didn’t guarantee success in my definition of risk. I sneaked in that word “might.” What you might become…
I don’t have tell any of us here tonight about the power of taking a risk. Each of us here shares one risk in common. Each of us came to an infant school, sacrificing where we were, our comfort zone, for what this school, for what we might become. We know the power of risk-taking.
My other story comes from a few months into my senior year. I had an appointment to meet with my college guidance counselor. It was different in my class of 800—you met maybe once, and they asked if you were thinking about college, and then they gave you a thumbs up and said, “Good luck with that!” So I went in to meet Albert Bross. I sit down, he had my file in his hand, that file with everything important about me in it. Albert Bross asked my plans. I said, “I want to go on to college.” Sure enough, he smiled and said, “Good luck with that!” Then he asked if I knew what I wanted to do. I had thought about it for, maybe, days. I said, “I want to be a history teacher.” His reaction was not what I expected—I am not sure if I thought he would applaud, but I thought it might earn a smile and a thumbs up and a “Good luck with that!” No, he looked perplexed, dug through the file, and said, “Um, John, that is not a good idea. In your file it says you have this speech problem, and as a teacher, you have to talk every day. It would be very unwise to be a teacher.” Then he smiled, and said, “But I see you have good grades. You could be a lawyer who researches and then you don’t have to talk.”
I absorbed his well-meaning advice. He must be right. I mean, if you have talked with me, for a half hour or more, it is clear, that I have a speech problem. He was an adult, he was being helpful and sensible. I should follow that advice.
About a year later in college, I thought about his advice again. I really wanted to be a history teacher. So against that expert advice I pursued that. I remember driving to school on my first day to teach, and it’s as if a ghost of Albert Bross appeared in my car warning me, “Don’t do it John. It would be unwise!” Well, I survived that first day, and I have been doing this now since long before you graduates were born.
My advice is, don’t let someone’s “No,” determine your path. And I don’t mean rules and laws as ‘no’s’ but someone’s roadblock from what you feel you are meant to do. Sacrifice who you are for what you might become.
My hope for all of you is that you find a path, a course, a road, on which you find as much joy as I have known, and especially known in teaching you.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
My most frequent excuse!
"I have been working on a play."
How many times in the last 24 years has that been a response as to why something has not gotten done? Oh, dear reader...many times...
Since "Fiddler on the Roof" in the spring of 1987, I have been busy with high school productions three score times...and that line has helped explain many things from unintended silences, to almost-missing-tax-dealines, to you name it.
"I have been working on a play." That is where I have been, and starting tomorrow, I will be back again.
Just to tantalize any readers left, here are the titles of the the next four blog entries, all hopefully-completed by Sunday evening:
"Butterfly Kisses"
"She asked, gingerly..."
"The People in the Picture"
"Camping with Henry and Tom"
Everything is well, I am relaxing today after a whirlwind rehearsal schedule, and ready to go to a colleague's apartment for dinner in just a few.
We'll catch up this weekend...
How many times in the last 24 years has that been a response as to why something has not gotten done? Oh, dear reader...many times...
Since "Fiddler on the Roof" in the spring of 1987, I have been busy with high school productions three score times...and that line has helped explain many things from unintended silences, to almost-missing-tax-dealines, to you name it.
"I have been working on a play." That is where I have been, and starting tomorrow, I will be back again.
Just to tantalize any readers left, here are the titles of the the next four blog entries, all hopefully-completed by Sunday evening:
"Butterfly Kisses"
"She asked, gingerly..."
"The People in the Picture"
"Camping with Henry and Tom"
Everything is well, I am relaxing today after a whirlwind rehearsal schedule, and ready to go to a colleague's apartment for dinner in just a few.
We'll catch up this weekend...
Saturday, May 7, 2011
“Jerusalem” Bookends
As I wrote the blog entry the other day on the “bookends” of “welcome home,” I realized there were more than one set of bookends to my delightful spring break in New York and Cincinnati. So today and tomorrow I will devote some time musing about two other pairs of bookends from my trip.
There is a song in England that is more beloved, according to recent surveys, than any other national song—more than even “God Save the Queen,” or “Land of Hope and Glory.” The song is called “Jerusalem,” and at the beginning of my spring break week I encountered the song in a curious way, and then at the end of the week the song “Jerusalem” made another appearance.
On a glorious Easter Day, after church at Advent Lutheran (where I attended for years, oh, and did I mention that Tina Fey sat behind me in church??) I took the wondrous Anne Siviglia to see a play that had opened just days before to rave reviews. We saw Jerusalem, by British playwright Jez Butterworth. I didn’t know anything about the play beforehand except that the play revolved around a magnificent performance by British actor Mark Rylance. As we entered the Music Box Theater (sigh for a moment, as I remember the days when it was not infrequent that I got to go to plays at the Music Box. Okay, end of sigh. End of diversion.) the entire proscenium and curtain was festooned by a monumental flag that looked ancient. Anne and I, anglophiles both, figured out that it was the flag of St. George, a powerful symbol of old Britain. As the play opened, a girl that looked like a fairy or something adrift from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, festooned in green and with wings, came out and plaintively sang a bit of a song called “Jerusalem.” Neither Anne nor I knew the song before, but we learned from the “Director’s Notes” in the program that this “hymn is held very dear by the English people. Its words have helped form an idyllic sense of aspired Englishness.” Oh, my.
Yet when the flag/curtain raised, it was a totally different scene: a thunderous party in and outside of a cheap mobile home with unbelievably stoned partyers. We soon meet the head hedonist, Johnny “Rooster” Byron, a boastful wreck of a man held together by drugs and drink. The time is now, the setting is Johnny’s squalid mobile home in the middle of a gated set of estates in Wiltshire, just a stone’s throw from pre-historic Stonehenge. In Act I you meet Johnny’s mates, mostly teen-age ne’er-do-wells who rely on Johnny for drugs and drink. What a strange juxtaposition of this hallowed hymn and then this story of Johnny’s last stand against the philistines who would evict him from his home.
Johnny isn’t particularly likeable, and certainly is no hero, although the playwright and the actor have created an indelible portrait of contemporary, as some may say, “poor white trash.”
So what in the world does this have to do with the opening? This “hymn is held very dear by the English people. Its words have helped form an idyllic sense of aspired Englishness,” as told to me in the “Director’s Notes”??? Anne and I started to wonder during the first intermission. (Yes, this has an old-fashioned structure of three acts and two intermissions and is a three-hour odyssey of a play.) William Blake wrote this poem in 1804 inspired by an apocryphal story that Jesus actually traveled to England and inspired the Britons to create a new, and perfected Jerusalem. Let’s look at the words of the poem:
And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.
Anne always cultivates a good discussion and we surmised that this Johnny guy, again, a bravura performance by this Mr. Mark Rylance, kind of incarnates the spirit of a mythic England that may never have been but that everyone, on some level, longs for. This is a state-of-the-nation play and Jerusalem functions as a metaphor for a heaven on earth, where people live in peace, and in connection with the land. When Blake wrote this poem, in 1804, the growing pains of the Industrial Revolution convulsed England, and there were many social ills from the new “Satanic Mills.” Blake summons up the spirit of a desired place, an Arcadia, in the hope that it can be created again.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.
In the midst of the Great War (now we call it World War I since we had a sequel) King George V wanted a rallying cry, a song that would give faith to the British soldiers fighting a terrible war. In 1916 Hubert Parry set the Blake poem to music and it has inspired the British ever since.
The play takes place on St. George’s Day (aha! That is why the flag greeted us in the beginning!) in this nothing-small-town in Wiltshire County. This is an annual fair (since the Medieval times, we learn) to welcome spring. But as we learn in Acts II and III, there is little to welcome with the crowd at Johnny’s submarine-like mobile home. They come to get high because life is one big disappointment. Johnny acts as a Robin Hood-like hero to these cast-offs from society and they reminisce about the good old days when England was good and life was grand. Here is where the play became profound for me, and like many another experience at a play in New York, it is what art can do so well—find grandeur in unexpected places. You don’t like any of the crowd here, but you see how they have been numbed by the resignation of what life has offered. Everyone has a hunger to believe in legendary figures but these are times of shriveled fantasies. Johnny is a loser. Yet they hunger for the mythic. This starved theater-goer enjoyed the play and a performance that I can talk about with glassy-eyed rapture for years.
At the end of the week, the song “Jerusalem,” came up again! I had gotten up at 4:00 a.m. on Friday, April 30. Dear friend Sylvia had invited me over at that ungodly hour to watch the coverage of the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Sylvia made scones, and we sat there in the pre-dawn darkness enjoying the veddy British treats of scones and lemon curd and tea, lapping up all the coverage of this royal wedding. I can’t believe how fast those hours sped by as we saw Britain do what it does best—orchestrate a fairy-tale wedding with precision, pomp, and pageantry.
During the wedding the congregation in Westminster Abbey—yes, they may have been invited, but I am sure we had the best seats with the most gorgeous photography and close-ups of this Gothic wonder and all the posh invitees—sang three hymns. The one that had the most rousing sound was the Blake/Parry hymn, “Jerusalem,” the very song that had started out my week at the Music Box Theater. Sylvia and I were watching NBC’s coverage, and as the song ended, Matt Laurer commented, “What was that song? I have never heard such devotion to a song!” Evidently the British crew members sang it reverently and he was overwhelmed. Fortunately, a Brit was there to provide context about this song. We learned that this song is offered at the end of every Labour Party Conference, and at the conclusion of many a rugby and soccer game. Everyone in England, according to the broadcaster, feels they “own” this song. It was also a favorite song of Princess Diana’s, we learned.
Go figure. Here today, on that perfect fairy-tale wedding day in England was the same song that Johnny “Rooster” and his cohorts claimed. The situations and contexts of the play in Wiltshire and the refined wedding before two billion people around the world couldn’t have been more different. Well…maybe it is not such a reach. My friend Tracy texted me at 5:00 a.m. that morning asking, “Why are we watching a wedding of people we don’t know?!” Of course, we want to know them. We want to know William, son of that charismatic Diana, heir to a throne that Americans shrugged off some 230 years ago, but for which we have never lost a fascination! Here was the prince marrying a commoner. Yes, everyone has a hunger to believe in legendary figures and for many, these are times of shriveled fantasies. A wedding is a perfect antidote to hard times. Maybe it will work. Maybe the will be happy. Maybe this will usher in a new era. Indeed, we persist to hunger for the mythic. Sylvia and I enjoyed the wedding coverage and I am sure that I will talk about it with glassy-eyed rapture for years.
Yes, it is a British hymn, a song that just two weeks ago I did not even know, but bookending my spring break I came to love this gorgeous poem and melody. Of course “Jerusalem” transcends ownership because its sentiment is so optimistic, so yearning, so human. Let us all think about the personal struggles we make to improve the world, to create a new Jerusalem.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem…
There is a song in England that is more beloved, according to recent surveys, than any other national song—more than even “God Save the Queen,” or “Land of Hope and Glory.” The song is called “Jerusalem,” and at the beginning of my spring break week I encountered the song in a curious way, and then at the end of the week the song “Jerusalem” made another appearance.
On a glorious Easter Day, after church at Advent Lutheran (where I attended for years, oh, and did I mention that Tina Fey sat behind me in church??) I took the wondrous Anne Siviglia to see a play that had opened just days before to rave reviews. We saw Jerusalem, by British playwright Jez Butterworth. I didn’t know anything about the play beforehand except that the play revolved around a magnificent performance by British actor Mark Rylance. As we entered the Music Box Theater (sigh for a moment, as I remember the days when it was not infrequent that I got to go to plays at the Music Box. Okay, end of sigh. End of diversion.) the entire proscenium and curtain was festooned by a monumental flag that looked ancient. Anne and I, anglophiles both, figured out that it was the flag of St. George, a powerful symbol of old Britain. As the play opened, a girl that looked like a fairy or something adrift from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, festooned in green and with wings, came out and plaintively sang a bit of a song called “Jerusalem.” Neither Anne nor I knew the song before, but we learned from the “Director’s Notes” in the program that this “hymn is held very dear by the English people. Its words have helped form an idyllic sense of aspired Englishness.” Oh, my.
Yet when the flag/curtain raised, it was a totally different scene: a thunderous party in and outside of a cheap mobile home with unbelievably stoned partyers. We soon meet the head hedonist, Johnny “Rooster” Byron, a boastful wreck of a man held together by drugs and drink. The time is now, the setting is Johnny’s squalid mobile home in the middle of a gated set of estates in Wiltshire, just a stone’s throw from pre-historic Stonehenge. In Act I you meet Johnny’s mates, mostly teen-age ne’er-do-wells who rely on Johnny for drugs and drink. What a strange juxtaposition of this hallowed hymn and then this story of Johnny’s last stand against the philistines who would evict him from his home.
Johnny isn’t particularly likeable, and certainly is no hero, although the playwright and the actor have created an indelible portrait of contemporary, as some may say, “poor white trash.”
So what in the world does this have to do with the opening? This “hymn is held very dear by the English people. Its words have helped form an idyllic sense of aspired Englishness,” as told to me in the “Director’s Notes”??? Anne and I started to wonder during the first intermission. (Yes, this has an old-fashioned structure of three acts and two intermissions and is a three-hour odyssey of a play.) William Blake wrote this poem in 1804 inspired by an apocryphal story that Jesus actually traveled to England and inspired the Britons to create a new, and perfected Jerusalem. Let’s look at the words of the poem:
And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.
Anne always cultivates a good discussion and we surmised that this Johnny guy, again, a bravura performance by this Mr. Mark Rylance, kind of incarnates the spirit of a mythic England that may never have been but that everyone, on some level, longs for. This is a state-of-the-nation play and Jerusalem functions as a metaphor for a heaven on earth, where people live in peace, and in connection with the land. When Blake wrote this poem, in 1804, the growing pains of the Industrial Revolution convulsed England, and there were many social ills from the new “Satanic Mills.” Blake summons up the spirit of a desired place, an Arcadia, in the hope that it can be created again.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.
In the midst of the Great War (now we call it World War I since we had a sequel) King George V wanted a rallying cry, a song that would give faith to the British soldiers fighting a terrible war. In 1916 Hubert Parry set the Blake poem to music and it has inspired the British ever since.
The play takes place on St. George’s Day (aha! That is why the flag greeted us in the beginning!) in this nothing-small-town in Wiltshire County. This is an annual fair (since the Medieval times, we learn) to welcome spring. But as we learn in Acts II and III, there is little to welcome with the crowd at Johnny’s submarine-like mobile home. They come to get high because life is one big disappointment. Johnny acts as a Robin Hood-like hero to these cast-offs from society and they reminisce about the good old days when England was good and life was grand. Here is where the play became profound for me, and like many another experience at a play in New York, it is what art can do so well—find grandeur in unexpected places. You don’t like any of the crowd here, but you see how they have been numbed by the resignation of what life has offered. Everyone has a hunger to believe in legendary figures but these are times of shriveled fantasies. Johnny is a loser. Yet they hunger for the mythic. This starved theater-goer enjoyed the play and a performance that I can talk about with glassy-eyed rapture for years.
At the end of the week, the song “Jerusalem,” came up again! I had gotten up at 4:00 a.m. on Friday, April 30. Dear friend Sylvia had invited me over at that ungodly hour to watch the coverage of the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Sylvia made scones, and we sat there in the pre-dawn darkness enjoying the veddy British treats of scones and lemon curd and tea, lapping up all the coverage of this royal wedding. I can’t believe how fast those hours sped by as we saw Britain do what it does best—orchestrate a fairy-tale wedding with precision, pomp, and pageantry.
During the wedding the congregation in Westminster Abbey—yes, they may have been invited, but I am sure we had the best seats with the most gorgeous photography and close-ups of this Gothic wonder and all the posh invitees—sang three hymns. The one that had the most rousing sound was the Blake/Parry hymn, “Jerusalem,” the very song that had started out my week at the Music Box Theater. Sylvia and I were watching NBC’s coverage, and as the song ended, Matt Laurer commented, “What was that song? I have never heard such devotion to a song!” Evidently the British crew members sang it reverently and he was overwhelmed. Fortunately, a Brit was there to provide context about this song. We learned that this song is offered at the end of every Labour Party Conference, and at the conclusion of many a rugby and soccer game. Everyone in England, according to the broadcaster, feels they “own” this song. It was also a favorite song of Princess Diana’s, we learned.
Go figure. Here today, on that perfect fairy-tale wedding day in England was the same song that Johnny “Rooster” and his cohorts claimed. The situations and contexts of the play in Wiltshire and the refined wedding before two billion people around the world couldn’t have been more different. Well…maybe it is not such a reach. My friend Tracy texted me at 5:00 a.m. that morning asking, “Why are we watching a wedding of people we don’t know?!” Of course, we want to know them. We want to know William, son of that charismatic Diana, heir to a throne that Americans shrugged off some 230 years ago, but for which we have never lost a fascination! Here was the prince marrying a commoner. Yes, everyone has a hunger to believe in legendary figures and for many, these are times of shriveled fantasies. A wedding is a perfect antidote to hard times. Maybe it will work. Maybe the will be happy. Maybe this will usher in a new era. Indeed, we persist to hunger for the mythic. Sylvia and I enjoyed the wedding coverage and I am sure that I will talk about it with glassy-eyed rapture for years.
Yes, it is a British hymn, a song that just two weeks ago I did not even know, but bookending my spring break I came to love this gorgeous poem and melody. Of course “Jerusalem” transcends ownership because its sentiment is so optimistic, so yearning, so human. Let us all think about the personal struggles we make to improve the world, to create a new Jerusalem.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem…
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
I still believe in the sea
It is the beginning of May, and for most of my adolescent and post-adolescent life the beginning of May signals the beginning of the AP test season. Except for my years in college and graduate school, there have been only three Mays in the last 30 years that I have not been preparing to take an AP exam or readying the troops for battle against an AP exam in this week. Whew!
Yesterday the troops rallied and conquered the AP Art History exam.
I am not allowed at the test site (not me, in particular, mind you, but according to the rules of the College Board, no instructor is allowed within 50 feet of the test site) but as the three hour+ exam came to an end, I did hover near the test site so I could greet the happy warriors as they emerged from battle.
I never fancied myself, particularly, such a martial person or educator, but a decade ago, I was honored by a former student at her college in South Carolina, and in her testimonial, she remembered that I “prepared the AP students for battle against the test.” She called her peers “intellectual warriors.” Since then I have embraced the phrase and I note to the students all year that we are preparing for battle! Because of that image, I enjoy having a water-gun fight with the students the night before the actual AP test. We have the battle after listening to Kenneth Branagh’s rendition of the immortal St. Crispian’s Day speech from his 1989 film of Henry V.
I remember in that first year of teaching AP Art History at Hackley, wondering what I should use as the very last art work to study at the end of this incredibly long course. In that year, 2001-2002, of course, the year was tinged with the sadness and horror of 9/11 in the first week of school. I loved the challenging questions, “What should be the last piece of art we study after hundreds of art works this year? What piece has the gravitas with which to end our parade of millennia of art?”
In that first year I chose a work from 1996 by Anselm Kiefer called Bohemia Lies by the Sea. I have used it ever since as well and I love this confounding work. Just look at it.
What is it?????? What has Kiefer depicted in this painting? Is it a landscape?? Can you sense whether the paint is thick or thin? Has it been applied smoothly? Does the technique have an effect on the work’s mood or meaning? Who is this Kiefer guy?How will some knowledge of his life help us decode this painting???? Oh,the many exciting questions one can explore!
Anselm Kiefer is a German born in the final weeks of World War II. Think of what
context, what burden, what stew of history he must endure in this lifetime—as he says, “my work is to come to grips with my country’s past, our Nazi past, and to try and understand the madness.”
The road that leads us into the landscape, a standard device used in many 19th century landscape paintings, here invites us into Germany’s dark past. This is a work which constitutes a rich blend of references including recent history,
ancient history, the distant past, poetry, literature, and the future. Wow…
Once you have unpacked the metaphors, the piece allows for a rich, personal interpretation. Start with what you see…a rutted country road…
and let’s go from there…
But still—there is more…the title is most intriguing, and Kiefer writes the title on the painting in two places, alongside the road, and on the horizon…let’s explore the title…
In William Shakespeare’s play, The Winter’s Tale, the bard sets Act III, Scene 3 off the seacoast of Bohemia. Huh??? But—Bohemia is landlocked. Well, you see, Shakespeare’s Bohemia is an imaginary place beyond our ordinary sense of geography, a vision in which the extraordinary becomes possible. His ‘Bohemia’ in this play is a place where problems have been solved and life has become beautiful.
An Austrian poet, a friend of Kiefer, borrowed this theme from Shakespeare and wrote a poem which in turn inspired our artist Kiefer:
If Bohemia still lies by the sea,
I’ll believe in the sea.
And if I believe in the sea,
I can hope for our land.
***
I border, like little else,
On everything more and more,
A man from Bohemia, a vagrant,
A player who has nothing, and whom nothing holds,
Granted only, by a questionable sea,
To gaze at the land of my choice.
In the fields beside the road one spies poppies—a flower not lost on anyone European of the last century. Poppies were planted where the millions of soldiers died in The Great War, in the rutted fields of France and Belgium. You may be familiar with the poet John McCrae who wrote during the “Great War” in 1915 about death on the battlefield:
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders field.
What is the symbol of poppies? The well-educated from AP Art History will remember that the poppy is a symbol that goes back to ancient Greece…to the promise of young men cut down by war, and the paradox of death and resurrection.
How do we put together meaning for this painting…is it appropriate for the end of the course?
I love this painting, and last week when I was at the Met, I took my friend Gary and his mother Marilyn on a tour, and used this painting as a point of discussion and reflection at the end of our afternoon. You cannot see this work for just a moment or two. You have to adjust your eyes, you have to see past the clutter and gunk of the paint and his technique. We cannot really see the end of the road, no, that would be too easy, but if you believe in the sea, even the land-locked Bohemia, you can believe in…what? Hope? Utopia? Arcadia?
Educators had better believe in a better day, in a better future, in Hope, that “thing with feathers,” as Emily Dickinson observes. Each year I send those students in to do battle with this notorious test, and I am so proud of them for their confidence, for their stamina, for their knowledge.
In 2009 I wondered if our KA students could manage the AP World History exam. Manage it, they did. And last year, when it was our first time to attempt the “boutique” course of AP Art History, I wondered a little too if they would hold up against their seasoned American counterparts. But I believed in the proverbial sea, I believed, against sensibility, that Bohemia, land-locked Bohemia, can lie by the sea.
Yesterday at 4:00 the students spilled out of the test site, aglow with how excited they were, and how they trounced the test. One shouted about the Egyptian art work they got, or the Greek sculpture, or the comparison of Manet and Titian, but they were jockeying for a position to tell me which art works they had used on the big essays. One commented that this “exhilarating feeling is priceless.” Bohemia indeed has a port on that sea today.
This afternoon His Majesty the King came to speak to us, as he does from time to time. He wanted to discuss the domestic policies and his vision for the future of Jordan. In his typical candor he addressed the last few months, what he is trying to develop for the future, and the parts these students will play as young leaders in the years to come. He is trying to instill in Jordanians a sense of how to develop political parties that transcend tribal issues and concerns, how Jordanians should develop attitudes and ideas about health care, women’s rights, welfare, and taxation. He discussed how he has been studying the transformation of eastern European governments since the 1990s, studying how to transform the youth of Jordan and help them explain to the “old guard” how changes must work. He discussed how the economic issues of the nation keep him up at night—how do you deal with subsidies and job creation? As usual, he was magnificent, and full of hope.
I have no idea if HMK has heard of Anselm Kiefer and this painting or the poem, but judging from my four years of studying this man, he would certainly buy the idea of belief in a land, belief in progress, a belief that if you wish it hard enough, Bohemia can lie by the sea and you can create an Arcadia that elevates society.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Welcome home
Is it silly to have a “favorite flight”?
I mean, we have favorites in many categories: favorite TV show, favorite aunt, favorite ice cream flavor, favorite teacher, favorite book from junior high, favorite comfort food, favorite color, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum (if you need answers to any of these, please feel to write and ask for my favorites in these categories). I fly very often, so I guess it should come as no surprise that I have a favorite flight. This flight just seems magical, maybe because it seems to whisk me from one world to the other more swiftly than usual. It leaves at bedtime in one world and arrives with a whole day ahead of it in the other world. And on my favorite flight from Jordan to the United States, that magical Delta flight that leaves Jordan at about midnight and lands at JFK airport in New York at 5:30 a.m., I have two favorite moments in my re-entry to the United States.
When I come through passport control, I give them the passport and paperwork that marks me as a U.S. citizen but a resident of Jordan, the passport control officer asks why I am living in Jordan. I explain that I am teaching there, he stamps the passport, and invariably this officer of immigration control says to me, “Welcome home.” A short, but very sweet, sentiment. I don’t know if they are trained to say this to the ex-pats, and I think not, because I have entered the U.S. in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago too, and I don’t get that lump-in-the-throat-inducing, “Welcome home.” I smile, and head toward getting my bags. And I treasure the remark.
This time when I came home to New York and Cincinnati for spring break, I waited for it. And like the blossoms on the trees every spring, it came as expected, and is more beautiful than you expect. I can’t say why I find this comment so heart-warming, but I do find coming to the United States for breaks more invigorating, and yes, more heart-warming, than traipsing around as a tourist somewhere else new to me. I am sure some people thought I would never tire of traveling and discovering new places, and I am not sure I am tired of it, I just prefer coming back home for a respite.
The other moment I rank as a favorite is about a half hour after the first with the encounter with the passport agent. I have retrieved my bags (never once have they been lost or held up at JFK!) and gotten on the airtrain shuttle that takes me to the place where I can connect to the subway system of New York. As we swing by this one locale, there it is: the next favorite moment—the sun rising over New York City. Again, you expect the dawn, but it can be more beautiful than you expected. Streaks of orange or red or a yellow ball reaching up to welcome all of us to the new day. At this moment the trip feels as it will be perfect—the dawn of a break, the break of dawn.
Two favorite moments…
And the trip did not disappoint. I crammed as many of my favorites as possible into a few days in New York and even fewer in Cincinnati. My breaks consist less of seeking out newness, but greeting old favorites, reveling in the friendships and sights of my American home. As usual, that first day plays out as they always do now from this magical flight. I arrive by subway to my friend Christy’s house, at about 7:30 a.m. with a real New York Times newspaper suddenly in my hand. Christy has gotten up earlier than usual and prepared her monumental oatmeal. (While oatmeal may not be considered a monumental breakfast choice, hers is crowned with walnuts and blueberries and strawberries.) Shave and shower and by 9:00 there is still a whole day in front of us to enjoy! See why that flight is my favorite?? You maximize your time buzzing around an exciting city and not just sitting on a plane! We will look at what plays to see, and by the early afternoon we will have walked through the park, had a trip to the Met, and had the lunch special at Ivy’s Chinese food on 72nd Street.
The rest of the vacation there is full of favorites: lunch with Kate, seeing Gary, visiting with dear Anne and enjoying a fabulous dinner, talking with as many people as I can, theater, walking in the park, heck, just walking around. Amman is a not a walking city, so just walking the blocks in Manhattan is thrilling.
By the end of the visit we will have had my favorite pizza at Patsy’s on West 74th Street (oh, and their olive oil is the best in the world!) and my favorite Vietnamese food at Saigon Grill on Amsterdam and West 89th Street—I must admit I felt a twinge of guilt as I entered since some people were picketing the other day, claiming they don’t pay their workers enough—oh, I felt a little bad, but no one else makes my favorite Papaya and Beef Salad! We enjoyed Easter services at Advent Lutheran Church at Broadway and West 93rd Street, with Pastor Brown--one of my favorites--preaching as eloquently as always. Oh, and this is fun--guess who sat behind me in church?? Tina Fey!! I found reasons to keep turning around and checking that this was indeed the TV star. One time, she just nodded at me, kind of a reassuring nod that yes, indeed, I was seated in front of a TV star. Since I am on the name-dropping part of the blog, I also saw Neil Simon, chatted with the actress who was Paul Reiser's mother on Mad About You, and sat in the airport with TV news hounds Harry Smith, Lester Holt and Dan Rather. I had to find a way to shoehorn in the celebrities with whom I rubbed elbows!
What a rush of favorites on that trip! Then I head out to LaGuardia (driven by that favorite Gary after a breakfast with bacon) for a flight to Cincinnati. There, in the span of a few days, I will indulge in more favorites: my family, of course, how can they not be among the favorites on my Planet Favorite! There will be a buffet at the Farm, a BLT at the Imperial Diner with Pam, ice cream at Graeter’s, and I could go on and on (some will quip that I have!) that my trip is simply my chance to go through the favorites of my life.
I come to the end of the trip, and the trip always ends the same, with another of my favorite comments said so simply and heartwarmingly. When it is time to go, my dad takes me to the airport, and after we have checked the bags and weighed them (he always comes inside in case there is excess stuff he needs to take home) we come to the point of good-bye. Then my dad, with those soulful, wise Andy-Griffith-like eyes, looks at me and says, “Thank you for coming home.”
What great book-ends of a trip! That passport control agent, so anonymous to me but so kind with his “Welcome home,” and then that greatest of men, my father, thanking me for coming home. It is hard to beat those comments. My colleagues went to many places over the break, among them, Turkey, Italy, Egypt, Spain, Africa, Thailand, England, but I went home. And loved every minute of it.
Sad to say, that favorite flight is going away. I learned in the last couple weeks that Delta is suspending service to Amman, and so on June 1st, there will be no more of those magical flights. I will be fine; I will fly either to Paris and then Cincinnati, or Chicago then Cincinnati, and Royal Jordanian Airlines will still fly to New York—it just leaves mid-day and gets there mid-afternoon. Not much magic in that flight!
But I took some comfort in a sight yesterday, when I returned to Jordan after spring break, a new banner greeted me. HSBC, one of my two banks in Jordan (don’t get me started on the inane practices of Jordanian banks!) had a new banner shouting, “Welcome Home.”
It may not be those nice passport agents in JFK in the pre-dawn hour, but it was a kind greeting. I’ll take that!
I mean, we have favorites in many categories: favorite TV show, favorite aunt, favorite ice cream flavor, favorite teacher, favorite book from junior high, favorite comfort food, favorite color, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum (if you need answers to any of these, please feel to write and ask for my favorites in these categories). I fly very often, so I guess it should come as no surprise that I have a favorite flight. This flight just seems magical, maybe because it seems to whisk me from one world to the other more swiftly than usual. It leaves at bedtime in one world and arrives with a whole day ahead of it in the other world. And on my favorite flight from Jordan to the United States, that magical Delta flight that leaves Jordan at about midnight and lands at JFK airport in New York at 5:30 a.m., I have two favorite moments in my re-entry to the United States.
When I come through passport control, I give them the passport and paperwork that marks me as a U.S. citizen but a resident of Jordan, the passport control officer asks why I am living in Jordan. I explain that I am teaching there, he stamps the passport, and invariably this officer of immigration control says to me, “Welcome home.” A short, but very sweet, sentiment. I don’t know if they are trained to say this to the ex-pats, and I think not, because I have entered the U.S. in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago too, and I don’t get that lump-in-the-throat-inducing, “Welcome home.” I smile, and head toward getting my bags. And I treasure the remark.
This time when I came home to New York and Cincinnati for spring break, I waited for it. And like the blossoms on the trees every spring, it came as expected, and is more beautiful than you expect. I can’t say why I find this comment so heart-warming, but I do find coming to the United States for breaks more invigorating, and yes, more heart-warming, than traipsing around as a tourist somewhere else new to me. I am sure some people thought I would never tire of traveling and discovering new places, and I am not sure I am tired of it, I just prefer coming back home for a respite.
The other moment I rank as a favorite is about a half hour after the first with the encounter with the passport agent. I have retrieved my bags (never once have they been lost or held up at JFK!) and gotten on the airtrain shuttle that takes me to the place where I can connect to the subway system of New York. As we swing by this one locale, there it is: the next favorite moment—the sun rising over New York City. Again, you expect the dawn, but it can be more beautiful than you expected. Streaks of orange or red or a yellow ball reaching up to welcome all of us to the new day. At this moment the trip feels as it will be perfect—the dawn of a break, the break of dawn.
Two favorite moments…
And the trip did not disappoint. I crammed as many of my favorites as possible into a few days in New York and even fewer in Cincinnati. My breaks consist less of seeking out newness, but greeting old favorites, reveling in the friendships and sights of my American home. As usual, that first day plays out as they always do now from this magical flight. I arrive by subway to my friend Christy’s house, at about 7:30 a.m. with a real New York Times newspaper suddenly in my hand. Christy has gotten up earlier than usual and prepared her monumental oatmeal. (While oatmeal may not be considered a monumental breakfast choice, hers is crowned with walnuts and blueberries and strawberries.) Shave and shower and by 9:00 there is still a whole day in front of us to enjoy! See why that flight is my favorite?? You maximize your time buzzing around an exciting city and not just sitting on a plane! We will look at what plays to see, and by the early afternoon we will have walked through the park, had a trip to the Met, and had the lunch special at Ivy’s Chinese food on 72nd Street.
The rest of the vacation there is full of favorites: lunch with Kate, seeing Gary, visiting with dear Anne and enjoying a fabulous dinner, talking with as many people as I can, theater, walking in the park, heck, just walking around. Amman is a not a walking city, so just walking the blocks in Manhattan is thrilling.
By the end of the visit we will have had my favorite pizza at Patsy’s on West 74th Street (oh, and their olive oil is the best in the world!) and my favorite Vietnamese food at Saigon Grill on Amsterdam and West 89th Street—I must admit I felt a twinge of guilt as I entered since some people were picketing the other day, claiming they don’t pay their workers enough—oh, I felt a little bad, but no one else makes my favorite Papaya and Beef Salad! We enjoyed Easter services at Advent Lutheran Church at Broadway and West 93rd Street, with Pastor Brown--one of my favorites--preaching as eloquently as always. Oh, and this is fun--guess who sat behind me in church?? Tina Fey!! I found reasons to keep turning around and checking that this was indeed the TV star. One time, she just nodded at me, kind of a reassuring nod that yes, indeed, I was seated in front of a TV star. Since I am on the name-dropping part of the blog, I also saw Neil Simon, chatted with the actress who was Paul Reiser's mother on Mad About You, and sat in the airport with TV news hounds Harry Smith, Lester Holt and Dan Rather. I had to find a way to shoehorn in the celebrities with whom I rubbed elbows!
What a rush of favorites on that trip! Then I head out to LaGuardia (driven by that favorite Gary after a breakfast with bacon) for a flight to Cincinnati. There, in the span of a few days, I will indulge in more favorites: my family, of course, how can they not be among the favorites on my Planet Favorite! There will be a buffet at the Farm, a BLT at the Imperial Diner with Pam, ice cream at Graeter’s, and I could go on and on (some will quip that I have!) that my trip is simply my chance to go through the favorites of my life.
I come to the end of the trip, and the trip always ends the same, with another of my favorite comments said so simply and heartwarmingly. When it is time to go, my dad takes me to the airport, and after we have checked the bags and weighed them (he always comes inside in case there is excess stuff he needs to take home) we come to the point of good-bye. Then my dad, with those soulful, wise Andy-Griffith-like eyes, looks at me and says, “Thank you for coming home.”
What great book-ends of a trip! That passport control agent, so anonymous to me but so kind with his “Welcome home,” and then that greatest of men, my father, thanking me for coming home. It is hard to beat those comments. My colleagues went to many places over the break, among them, Turkey, Italy, Egypt, Spain, Africa, Thailand, England, but I went home. And loved every minute of it.
Sad to say, that favorite flight is going away. I learned in the last couple weeks that Delta is suspending service to Amman, and so on June 1st, there will be no more of those magical flights. I will be fine; I will fly either to Paris and then Cincinnati, or Chicago then Cincinnati, and Royal Jordanian Airlines will still fly to New York—it just leaves mid-day and gets there mid-afternoon. Not much magic in that flight!
But I took some comfort in a sight yesterday, when I returned to Jordan after spring break, a new banner greeted me. HSBC, one of my two banks in Jordan (don’t get me started on the inane practices of Jordanian banks!) had a new banner shouting, “Welcome Home.”
It may not be those nice passport agents in JFK in the pre-dawn hour, but it was a kind greeting. I’ll take that!
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