Try to Remember....

Just saw a delightful version of The Fantasticks last night at the Ampitheater in Layton--a perfect night, cool and starry, with a huge orange half-moon. We tried to see this charming play years ago when we were in NYC, at its original home in the little off-broadway Sullivan Street theater, but it had closed. The show ran there for 42 years. Jerry Orbach (of Law & Order) played the first El Gallo. Now both he and the theater are gone. They have since torn the old building down, and put in a new GAP store (which closed 6 months later). I don't know what is there now.

Michael Ballam, whose classes at BYU Education Week I am devoted to, and attended all eight faithfully, two weeks ago, said when he last saw the old Sullivan Street Playhouse they were in the process of tearing it down. There were huge garbage dumpsters out in front and they were tossing stuff in. He asked if he could rummage through them, and found a tambourine, which he donated to the Utah Festival Opera. Apparently the Smithsonian has the magic trunk, and some other institution has the girl Luisa's little blue dress.... Things change. We live in a time where we are entertained most often by big-budget films with lots of loud special effects. A quiet little musical like Fantasticks is overwhelmed, is something of a dinosaur, I guess, with no special effects but a little colored confetti, a magic trunk, and a cardboard moon....

Anyway, I went home humming Try to remember a kind of September when grass was green, and grain was yellow....

I also spent a week in blooming California with my son Chris and his family. They flew to Salt Lake, and rented a van. It's a l-o-n-g drive through lots of desert. When we finally reached a WalMart in St. George, my six-year-old grandson Isaac said, "Oh, thank goodness, there are people here!"

Let me tell ya, there were people at Disneyland! -- Hindus, Bikers, Goths, white-bearded Sihks in turbans, Muslims, Lesbians, Jesus-people, people wearing ball caps and Mouse ears, saris, T-shirts that said Out of Order, Lucky, Dead Men Tell No Tales, USA, FBI, Dodgers, STeelers, Michael Jackson Forever, Beatles Forever, Grumpy, Ezekiel, Chocolate Rain, Kids for King Jesus, I Piss Excellence, Sugar Water Purple, Marge in Charge, and Murder the Government. I thought I saw Wanda Sykes coming back on the ferry from Tom Sawyer's Island, and Alec Baldwin in the Toy Story gift shop, Carrot Top in the parking lot, and Sonja Sotomayor, and Santa Claus...but maybe not. Isaac defeated Darth Vadar handily with his light saber at the Jedi School, and Keenan mistook me for the witch who gave Sleeping Beauty a poison apple....

Let me tell ya, I saw more cornrows, and dreds, and beads, and frozen lemonades, and baby strollers, and wheelchairs, and more Jazzi and Rascal electric mobility chairs than I could count. I lost my red hat in the Haunted Mansion, my son lost his sunglasses at the Pirates of the Carribean...people, people everywhere, looking for water, looking for shade, for ice cream, for a place to sit down for a while. We threw pennies and made wishes, watched absolutely fearless sparrows gobble up spilled popcorn, and generally had A GREAT TIME! Fantastick!

Wish you had been there! (Photos in my FaceBook)

Reliving the Dorm Experience

We spent last week on campus at BYU's (Brigham Young University) Education Week,(please click and scroll down) held every summer in August. About 23,000 people came this year, leaving the comfort zone of their homes across all 50 states and several foreign countries to get a little smarter about a lot of things. More than a thousand classes were offered. This year my husband and I decided to stay in the dorms rather than drive back and forth every night and every morning. Unfortunately, the couples housing was torn down for renovations, so we had to stay in different dorms. His roommie was a crazy man (I don't mean strange, but really crazy) who babbled all night and then snored like a jet engine. I had no room mate, so I could run around naked, fart and snore to my heart's content. The bed was as hard as a slab of granite, but there were lots of drawers to hold my levi's and socks, and a sink to wash up in. The bathroom and showers were only two doors down. I left every morning with the top half of me smelling of Calgon's sweet Hawaiian Ginger lotion and the bottom half smelling like Dr. Woo's Chinese liniment for my bad back. (Of course, my previous dorm experience, fifty years ago, I only smelled of Ivory Soap and baby powder...). Oh, think of the estrogen and perfume smell we left in that bathroom!

Probably 70% of the participants zipping down the walks between classes were either white-haired or bald, pushing canes, walkers, or in wheelchairs, the other 30% were middle-aged women who left their working husbands home, or teenagers with flourescent red or purple streaks in their hair, their hard bodies tan and muscular and beautiful. Evenings in the dorm were interesting. There was a community room with a TV where we watched the Olympics; around the edges of the room several women pushed together card tables and chairs and played loud and raucous card games, or Monopoly. Some of the other women were giving foot massages, painting one another's toenails and giggling like little girls. There was a piano at one end where, one evening, one little old lady accompanied four other little old ladies with creaky little old voices who sang "I Am A Child Of God." It was sweet, but a little annoying to those of us who were watching Shawn Johnson get her Gold Medal.

And I found out something I have previously suspected: I am definitely a people person. I do not like to be alone. If I had to live alone for longer than a week I would be as crazy as my husband's room mate. Alone in my room, I munched, looked over my notes, I read, and I wrote a little --well, a long--poem for Rick Mobbs Storybook.

(Oh, and I forgot to mention that our dorm was a MEN'S dorm. There was a sign on the door that said NO WOMEN ALLOWED PAST THIS POINT!--and there were URINALS in the bathroom! How often do I see those? I can't begin to tell you how HARD it is to pee standing up at one of those! I should have got a picture.)

Education Week 2008

I'll be on a vacation this week--it's time for Education Week at BYU again! How time flies! (Be back Saturday.)

A Long "Cool" Story

I have been to the mountain again! This wonderful week has ended (BYU Education Week) and I can't begin to tell you how amazing it was. The mountains were gorgeous, the flowers were in full bloom, and the teachers were superb. While they offered a variety of classes in Communication and Finance, History, Religion, Government and Political Science, Law, Literature, Psychology, and the Arts --this year I spent all my time in Music classes.

Marvin Goldstein is a concert pianist and comedian (in that order): "Two fellows, a Jew and a Chinaman, walk into a bar...The Jew punches the Chinaman in the nose and knocks him to the floor. He gets up and brushes himself off. "What was THAT for?" he asks. "That," says the Jew, "was for Pearl Harbor!" The Chinaman replies, "But WE didn't have anything to do with Pearl Harbor. That was the Japanese!" "Japanese, Chinese, they're all the same," says the Jew. The next day the same two fellows are in the bar and the Chinaman punches the Jew. He gets up off the floor and brushes himself off. "What was THAT for?" The Chinaman says, "For the Titanic!" The Jew says, "The TItanic! WE didn't have anything to do with the Titanic! That was an iceberg!" "Iceberg, Goldberg, they're all the same!" LOL (And no, I am not a racist, nor is Marvin Goldstein, but he was born in Israel, where he practiced and practiced the piano until he got really really good! His friend Marvin Payne, who does fantastic R & B, joined him. "You're Marvin and I'm Marvin," said Goldstein. "Who would do that to a little child? But your father is Marvin, too, isn't he? My father is SAM!" he boasts. Later, picking up Paynes guitar (which he cannot play), he strummed a spontaneously atonal little chord. "I used to be a Jew," he sang. "And I still am!" Even though he converted to Mormonism several years ago....

Jenny Oaks Baker is a concert violinist with many CD's to her credit. She used to be first violinist in the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC. She graduated from Julliard and Curtis Institute of Music, but is now raising 4 children under the age of 6. One of the phenomenal pieces she performed was Paganini's piece for unaccompanied violin, which she did flawlessly 10 years ago. "I'm going to try it again," she said, "but it's really,really HARD!" Her fingers flew across the strings. At one point she made a mistake, and started again. Then stopped, and started again, apologising. "Oh, my gosh!" she said. "I did it better than this in the bathroom this morning!" But she got a standing ovation anyway!

Michael Ballam (the guy with white hair) can't be compared to anyone else. He is the main reason I keep going back He's sung all over the world, and in New York, has made a ton of CD's. Now he is the founder and general director of the Utah Festival Opera Company. He is The Most Impressive of All. I'd follow him anywhere. He spoke on Music and the Brain. "In the arts there should be no wrong answer," he says. "The arts should be a safe environment, where you have permission to be unique." He also began the Utah Children's Opera in the public schools, where kids between the 2nd and 5th grades write, direct, perform, paint sets, publicize and finance their own operas with no adult input. They have 3 rules. Nobody Gets Hurt. Everybody Participates. It's Entirely the Children's Own Work. He went to the Utah school with the lowest grade averages, in the worst part of town, and gave every child a violin. They all learned to play. They performed. They practised the first 15 minutes of every class. (The math teachers were angry, at first, telling him they had little enough time to teach math as it was). Surprisingly, the academic scores began to rise, and now they're among the top in the state. The math teachers now have their own violins and they all play together for the first 15 minutes of class. "Not very well," admits Ballam. "But that's not what matters." He says, "The most important things a child can gain from education are a sense of community, the ability to communicate beyond words, and creative thinking. THese are much more important to know than that the capitol of Vermont is Montpelier."

James Oneil Miner played a lot of Golden Oldies: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Autumn Leaves, Misty, that sort of thing....

Btw, I kept hearing myself describing things as "Cool." Isn't it just the most asinine thing to hear a woman old enough to be your grandma saying "Cool?" All I needed were some bongos and a headband.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, I took scads of notes. The turkey and cranberry and cream cheese sandwiches were out of this world, as was the burnt almond fudge ice cream cone I had. The weather was nice. And I am tired.


Lost in Translation: The legendary stone marker that announces the motto of BYU should read "The World is our Campus." The photo is not mine, and was probably meant as a joke, but it works for me either way. The campus is a world unto itself, as well as being a part of the world at large. BYU has a couple of other mottos: "The glory of God is intelligence," and "Enter to learn, go forth to serve." Next time I'll be more careful (or use my own camera). Thanks, slick.

*

Burning the Orchards

I have been to the Mountain. And while all knowledge gained might not be of equal value, the things I learned this week are golden. Plus, it was fun! We are exhausted, from attending classes from 8:30 am until 9:30 pm for the last five days (which meant getting up at 6 and not getting home until 11, but it was worth it! Twenty-two thousand people attended 1,100 different classes offered at BYU's Education Week. The campus was beautiful, all the flowers were in bloom, the mountains were gorgeous, and the weather was nice. The teachers were fantastic and inspired, letting us hunt and peck around their brains and talents and souls in stuff like Music and the Arts, Films, Writing, Communication Skills, Dance (I don't dance. This is the main reason my husband married me. At least this is what he says), History, Government, Law, and Human Relations. (I took several excellent classes on Middle Eastern Perspectives, Islam, etc.--loved them all!) They had classes on Finance (Boring!) and Literature, and Psychology, and Religion (of course, this being BYU!). I had eight classes a day for five wonderful days! Can't wait for next year....

Anyway. Since I was away I thought I would share another poem for Poetry Thursday, one of mine (not that Walt Whitman's did not fill the bill--hmmmm. What, exactly does that mean:fill the bill?) So here's my POETRY THURSDAY, --Time--pt. 2

MANZANAR REVISITED

Mid-life I discover
the girl is gone-- the house
she lived in
inhabited by strangers.
Is this the crisis
I was led to expect
would unbury itself
from my mother's flesh
and spread like an infection
in an untended orchard?

My father took fruit
from wild trees, cut out the worms,
sugared the remains in honey.
The knobby red pieces drowned
in his sticky bowl like candy.

I used to think those wild pears
and apples bitter, the shriveled
orchard overgrown. This was a place
where men were kept
like yellow dogs in pens.
Like all things
it was transient. The black-haired
bastard boys who stood
at the wire fences,
the slant-eyed women who cried,
unable to embrace this insanity
are faceless and formless now
as the shadows of those skinny trees
they left behind.

The truth is
old orchards must be burnt
with all their worms, and
new trees planted. The strangers
who plant, mid-life,
luckily may find a girl in the ashes,
raise her. At least
she may have her share.
The sleeves of fire
may make her beautiful again.