Joe Cillo

FURY

Anger is never without a reason,
But seldom a good one.
Benjamin Franklin

Whenever I go back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I am immersed in non-stop road rage.  Drivers swerve around you, hit the accelerator to get ahead of you, blast their horns to tell you to get out of their way and spew hate all over the highway.  I find myself getting just as angry as the other drivers as I try to weave my way through 6 lanes of traffic to get to my destination.  I come home exhausted, despising humanity and hating myself for succumbing to the hysteria that clogs our roads.

It is a glorious relief to come to peaceful Brighton where I walk everywhere, smile at everyone and love treading the streets. Humanity charms me when I am here and I find myself enjoying the kindly hustle and bustle on North Street.

I have always thought that road rage was so foreign to those who use public transportation in Britain, that they would sooner stage a massacre than be rude to another person.  Besides, it is not in the British personality to be rude or overbearing.  The people in this country are obsessed with being politically correct.

Or so I thought.

I just spent two weeks in London living in Stockwell and taking the tube to Leicester Square. That was when I was exposed to Tube Rage.  If I dared to try to tap my oyster card on the entrance gate during rush hour, I risked black and blue marks, mangled hips and fractured elbows.  When I approached the escalator, I was so terrified I shut my eyes and prayed to the almighty that my foot wasn’t crushed and I was not hurled down the moving staircase because I forgot to stand on the left.

It turns out that all this pushing, shoving, jostling and crushing is not due to rudeness at all.  It is the result of poor ventilation.  In fact the director of the British association of Anger Management warns that lack of oxygen is sure to cause uncontrolled acts of aggression.

What a relief!! I thought all those people shoving me around were ageist brutes who didn’t care that I am elderly and frail.  How wrong I was! When the British push you out of their way, it is a silent cry for air.

Which brings us right back to Brighton where fresh air is always swirling about us, filling our lungs with new oxygen from France.  I boarded a train at London Victoria and two people hit me in the shin in their rush to get to the coach first. One lady smashed her suitcase into my hip and another yanked my shoulder into a vertical position to reach the aisle seat.  The minute we all got off the train in Brighton, everyone was smiling, inhaling the lovely oxygenated air and loving one another.  A gentleman carried my case to the station, a lady held my arm lest I trip and two lovely young men with grandmother complexes bought me a coffee.

The oxygen cure would not work in America however.  It isn’t the air that infuriates them; it is the government.

 

 

 

 

“Journey’s End” is a romantic title for the R. C. Sherriff play that just opened at The Barn Theatre in Ross.  To get a better idea of what it’s about, go up close to the stage, and examine the set. Rough beams cross the ceiling, sweaty-looking cots sit on either side, wrinkled old papers are pinned to the walls, dirt spreads over the floor, and a view through the curtained opening shows more dirt outside. “Journey’s End” is not an idyll; it’s a war story. This is a British dugout in W. W. I France,  and the trench outside leads into battle. One of the play’s first lines is, “It’s coming pretty soon now.” Flashes in the sky outside and booms from distant artillery confirm that. But when?

 

This mid-season production from Ross Valley Players departs from the rest of the season, especially from the two comedies that bracket it. “Journey’s End” shows the tedium of waiting for battle and the ways the plucky cook maintains service, no matter what food he has to work with.  Captain Stanhope, who’s been here three years and whose nerves are “battered to bits,” numbs his existence with alcohol, while a newly-arrived junior officer is excited about the prospect and thinks it’s “an amazing bit of luck” that he’s been assigned to Stanhope’s battalion.

 

This all sounds remarkably real, and it was. Sherriff served in the war and was twice wounded. It has been said that “Journey’s End” was his tribute to those who didn’t survive. It came to the stage in London in 1928, with an appropriately young Laurence Olivier in the role of Stanhope. The Ross Valley production was directed by James Dunn, who’d seen the play in London in 2005 and was determined to bring it to Ross Valley, where it is having a west coast premiere. Dunn’s respect for the material shows in every scene.

 

The British accents seem natural and the pronunciations unaffected. Stanhope is referred to as “Stanup;” the town of Ypres is called “Wipers.”

 

The set, so important to the mood of the story, was designed by Ron Krempetz and assembled by Ian Swift. The Army costumes, helmets included, were  collected by Michael Berg. Maureen Scheuenstuhl arranged the dugout’s props.

 

Stephen Dietz, who plays the self-controlled 2nd Lt. Trotter, also designed the very effective sound effects. Ellen Brooks and Ian Lamers did the lights, which become more important as the play goes on.

 

Francis Serpa has the role of idealistic young Lt. Raleigh. Tom Hudgens is Lt. Osborne, everybody’s “uncle,” and Philip Goleman is the terror-stricken Hibbard.

 

Sean Gunnell portrays Pvt. Mason, the tireless cook, with Jeff Taylor as the Company Sgt. Major. David Yen appears in the Olivier role as edgy  long-termer, Capt. Stanhope, explaining his alcohol consumption as, “I couldn’t bear to be fully conscious all the time.”

 

Two former Peninsula  lads — Ross Berger and Steve Price — are double-cast. Berger plays Lance Cpt. Broughton and a German soldier, and Price is both Capt. Hardy and the Colonel.

 

R. C. Sherriff, says James Dunn, didn’t set out to write a pacifist play, but that’s what he wrote. It’s a strong and moving piece of theatre, and it comes almost 100 years from the beginning of that war.

 

“Journey’s End” will play at The Barn Theatre in Ross Thursdays through Sunday, Feb. 16. Thursday performances are at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Ticket prices range from $13 (children and students on Thursday nights) to $22. A “Talkback” with director and actors will take place after matinee performances in February.

 

To order tickets, call the box office at 456-9555 or see the website, www.rossvalley.players.com.

 

 

 

KNIT ONE, PURL TWO AND YOU’RE FREE

Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit,
and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.
Elizabeth Zimmerman

I was a nervous child.  I was terrified of the horrible dangers that lurked around every corner.  If I talked to strangers because they would abduct me; I must never argue with my mother or she would give me back to the Indians.  I couldn’t cross a street without risking my life; if I dared to boil water, the steam would blind me.  Touching the pan would cost a finger. Boys with nasty leers jumped out behind bushes at little girls like me, and teachers got angry for no reason at all.

Reality was too much for me to absorb.  My nerves were jangled and my nails bitten to the quick.  I jumped at an unexpected sound; I screamed when a light flashed; I hid under the couch when someone slammed the door.

My mother was a redhead with an attitude.  She was afraid of nothing. Danger actually thrilled her and she met it head on with eyes flashing and acid repartee that quelled the bravest among us.

And it was she who made me quiver and shake at the thought of facing another day with all its pitfalls.  It was she who reminded me that I might trip if I ran too fast; I might break that dish I was wiping; or jam the brush into my eye when I brushed my hair.  She couldn’t stand the fidgeting, the nail biting, and the twitches.  “This kid is driving me crazy,” she told my Aunt Hazel.  “She is a nervous wreck.”

My Aunt Hazel was a pragmatist.  When she didn’t get enough meat for dinner, she left home.  When she couldn’t earn enough money to support herself she married a bootlegger.  She was one of the first in that generation to think outside the box.  “Teach her to knit,” she told my mother.

“Are you crazy?” said my mother.  “She jiggles so much she’ll poke her eyes out with a knitting needled. “

“Well that’s one way to calm her down,” said Aunt Hazel.

So it was that my aunt took me with her to the Stitch In Time Knitting shop filled with yarn in every color and an oval table piled high with pattern books. Several ladies sat around that table drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes (this was 1943) chatting about the war effort and knitting scarves, mittens and caps for our servicemen.  Their needles clicked and they smiled and laughed as they worked.  As I watched these women moving those needles at the speed of light, I saw to my amazement that they were creating all kinds of garments: sweaters with lace sleeves, block patterns and colors, plaids and stripes and polka dots.

“I want to do that,” I told my aunt.

“I thought you would,” she said.  “What would you like to make?”

My aunt took me home that afternoon and told my mother, ”She’s knitting a scarf.  That will keep her in line.”

That was back in 1943, but my aunt’s wisdom holds truth even today.  In fact, a maximum-security prison in Brazil came to the same conclusion.  They have decided that if their inmates knit something for three days, it is worth one day off their sentence.  They know what my aunt figured out so many years ago.  Knitters don’t have time to get in trouble.  They might drop a stitch.

 

THE CLEAN PLATE CLUB

Life is uncertain;
Eat dessert first.
Ernestine Ulmer

Peter Svacha was halfway through eating his chocolate pudding, when the restaurant where he was eating told him it was closing time.  He was furious.  He left the place, got a chain saw, sliced a hole in the establishment’s door and crawled back to the table to finish his pudding.

I know exactly how he felt.  I too would obliterate anything that kept me from finishing my dessert.  I blame this determination on my mother.

My mother’s forte was creating yummy desserts.  She had one number that she always served after spaghetti dinner that was amazingly beautiful and absolutely luscious.  She would bake an angel food cake from scratch (my mother would have sooner danced nude on a fire hydrant than use a cake mix).  The finished product was so light she needed to weight it down to stay on the plate.  She whipped up a custard of eggs, milk, vanilla, sugar and pineapple juice and frosted her cake with it.  She decorated the entire production with pineapple slices, maraschino cherries and strawberries and served it with a lots of whipped cream and a flourish.

BUT there was a catch.  My mother never allowed us to touch dessert until we cleaned up everything she put on our dinner plates. Before we could tuck into her pineapple delight, we had to demolish spaghetti with meatballs, broccoli in a cheese sauce, a green salad and garlic bread. We suffered for that cake.  Indeed we suffered. We endured tummy aches, stomach spasms and guilt…but we managed to down it  and when we did, we finished it down to the last bit of pineapple.

My mother’s chocolate cake was the eighth wonder of the world.  It was made with six eggs, a ton of butter and enough chocolate to keep a candy store supplied for ten years. She topped it with a mint chocolate frosting to die for and set it in the middle of the dining room table so we could see what we had to look forward to at the end of the meal.

But first, we had to finish dinner. Remember?   She would serve us a huge slab of steak, potatoes with cheddar cheese, asparagus hollandaise, a tossed salad and wait until we cleaned our plates before we could touch that cake. I still feel the pain of forcing that cake into my packed middle but I know that even if my stomach burst, I would let absolutely nothing interfere with my demolishing that wonderfully melt in your mouth cake.

All I can say, is “go for it Peter Svacha. “ Finish that pudding and never count the cost.  For what is dinner without a sweet finish?? It is nothing more than duty with no reward, a rose with no fragrance, sex without climax. Life is to be lived, of course, but if it is to be savored, we must have dessert.