Joe Cillo

San Jose Rep presents….

FREUD’S LAST SESSION

By Mark St. Germain

Directed by Stephen Wrentmore

Starring Ben Evett & J. Michael Flynn

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith

Than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.

Joseph Addison

This play is an imaginary glimpse into the minds of two great thinkers, C. S. Lewis and Dr. Sigmund Freud in a conversation the day before England enters World War II and two weeks before Freud, dying of oral cancer ends his own life.  The two men discuss love, sex and the existence of God and debate the value and impact of all three on the human condition.

 

Kent Dorsey’s magnificent set recreates Freud’s study and sets the mood for the 90 minute discussion between the two men.  Director Stephen Wrentmore manages to keep the play moving by making use of the entire stage.  The characters move from the tea table, to the couch to the radio to listen to the news proclaiming the imminence of war.  Somehow, the combination of excellent direction and superb acting keeps the dialogue from descending into a tiresome recitation of two men’s conflicting philosophies.

 

C. S. Lewis ((Ben Evett) has recently embraced religion and Freud (J. Michael Flynn) says, “I want to learn why a man of your intellect would abandon truth and embrace a lie.”  The remaining 90 minutes is spent hearing the reason Lewis knows that God exists and Freud is equally sure religion is a myth.

 

Freud points out that the very existence of Hitler proves that there is no supreme being watching over us and Lewis disagrees.  “Hitler’s actions reinforce the opposite,” he says. “We have to accept that there is a moral law.” And he goes on to say, “The wish that God doesn’t exist can be stronger than the wish that God does.

 

Freud counters with “Theologians hide behind their ignorance;” and as the discussion continues he says, “I always find what people don’t tell me is less important than what they do.”    Lewis sees that Freud is dying and he says, “How can a man of your intelligence think the end is the end?   When you are faced with death, then what?”

 

Indeed, through the endless back and forth discussion whether God exists or if He is a product of our imagination, the arguments presented were the same l ones religious leaders and atheist have been tossing back and forth every since religion began.  It was Michael Bakunin who said, “All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties.”

 

In contrast Calvin Coolidge said, “It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love.”

 

The debate we heard on the San José Repertory’s stage was the one that has been going on for centuries.  There were no shocking revelations, no new lights cast on the eternal conflict between religion and its opponents.  The play is saved by the virtuosity of the actors moving across an amazing set that recreates the time the play is taking place and the pace of the production.  You won’t hear anything new in this play, nor will the ideas presented convince you that your own belief is invalid.  I doubt that either argument presented in the script will be innovative or strong enough to convert a believer and convince one who does not.  The virtue of this production is in the acting and direction and for that alone it is well worth the price of admission.

 

 

 

FREUD’S LAST SESSION continues through  November 4, 2012

San Jose Repertory theatre

101 Paseo de San Antonio

San Jose

Tickets $29-$74 408 367 7255 or www. Sjrep.com

           

WHAT WILL THE TOOTH FAIRY DO?

Lynn Ruth Miller

 

Most people can’t even think what to hope for

 When they throw a penny in a fountain.
Barbara Kingsolver

There is talk on this side of the pond, of getting rid of money. “Today, only 7% of all transactions in the United States are done with cash, and most of those transactions involve very small amounts of money.“ says the internet blog, The Economic Collapse. “Our financial system is dramatically changing, and cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.”

 

These days, it costs more than it’s worth to manufacture the cash we stuff into our wallets and bulging coin purses. In America, it costs 11.18 cents to mint a 5 cent piece and a penny costs 2.41 cents.  It isn’t much better in Britain.  Although the Royal Mint will not reveal how much it costs to mint 1p, rumor has it that the cost from manufacture to distribution is approximately £3.

 

That doesn’t make sense.

 

Besides the cost to make them, there is the threat to our health and well being.  Coins and bills land in thousands of pockets, are touched by millions of hands and no one ever cleans them up.  The bills are tattered and full of germs; the coins are not only cumbersome but they create embarrassing bulges that aren’t what you think they are.

 

When coins were first invented, everyone thought it was the greatest idea since the fig leaf.  Coins didn’t rot or die on you.  Their value didn’t deteriorate with time.  You could stick them in the bank and they would be there for years and still have value. You used them to reward children and toss in fountains.  You stuck them under pillows when children lost their baby teeth and you put them in your shoe for good luck.

 

What will happen to the Piggy Bank when pennies are no more? When I was a child, this was the time of year when I began stuffing pennies in the little ceramic pig I got for Christmas last year so I could buy my Mama a present for Christmas this year.  Every day, I would put in a penny I had earned for helping her bring in the groceries or drying the dishes (now you know how old I am) and by December first, my little pig was bulging with the hard earned cash I had fed him. I would go to the jewelry store, hand the clerk my piggy bank and say, “What can I buy my mother with this?”  She and I would smash the bank and pile the pennies into columns of ten and then tabulate the results.  One year, I was able to buy my mother a silver candle snuffer and another time, I bought her a lapel pin with a little blue stone in the middle…all with the money I earned doing chores.

 

Children these days would either have to type in a code on their cell phones or swipe a credit card to pay for that special something they want to buy for their parents.  It just couldn’t give them the same sense of accomplishment.  Every penny I gave that saleslady had a story behind it. All a credit card has is an APR.

Say good-by to wallets when cash is no more.  You can keep all your credit information on your cell phone or slip your credit card in your pocket.   Profiles will be slimmer and, because seeing the cash, made you realize how much you were actually spending, expenditures will go up.  But who cares?  It’s all just numbers and as every politician knows you can make numbers say anything you want.

 

The good news is if you keep your pennies stashed away in a bureau drawer, they will become valuable relics from another time, like vinyl records and rotary dial phones.   Your heirs can sell your stash for at least 500% of their face value.  That should pay for your casket!

When I was young I thought that money

Was the most important thing in life;

Now that I am old, I know that it is.
Oscar Wilde

 

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

By Suzan-Lori Parks

Directed by Timothy Douglas

Starring Biko Eisen-Martin & Bowman Wright

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation –

Being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
Steven Biko

Be prepared to be spellbound from the moment Biko Eisen-Martin walks on the Marin Theatre Company’s stage until the climax of this disturbing, all too real drama, two and a half hours later. You will see and actually feel this story of two brothers barely scavenging their way uphill through one disappointment after another not because of their lack of ability or ambition, but because of what they are and what they have been.

 

Booth (Biko-Eisen Martin) is living in a one room tenement flat with no running water that his older brother Lincoln (Bowman Wright) is sharing with him because Lincoln’s wife has thrown him out of his former home.  Booth’s is the only bed and Lincoln sleeps in a recliner.

 

The brothers have managed to survive a rollercoaster childhood. They were abandoned by both parents two years apart; first their mother then their father.  Lincoln, at sixteen, was forced to watch out for Booth who was only 11 years old.  Throughout this play, Lincoln continues to worry about his younger brother. He still feels responsible for Booth’s well-being and he shields him from unpleasant truths.   He gives him the food he prefers, gives him money not just for rent and utilities but for special treats that Booth doesn’t really need.  Booth’s talent is stealing and he is so light-fingered he can take any product from anywhere undetected.  Lincoln’s talent is dealing cards but he has given up that kind of life for a conventional one with a real job with benefits….and he isn’t doing very well.

 

His job is Impersonating Lincoln the day he was assassinated.  He has to whiten his face to resemble the famous president  and he is being paid less than the going rate for his services because he is black.  He swears he likes his job because it gives him time to think about things and compose songs in his head, but he is worried he is going to be replaced by a fabric dummy.  The real reason Lincoln clings to the daily grind that is wearing him down is his determination to live the conventional way with a steady job, one where he isn’t depending on his wits for fast cash.  Before he started this job, he was a highly successful dealer in a Three Card Monte scam.  Three Card Monte is a con game that no one can ever win.

 

The game is as much a performance as it is a contest that proves the hand is always quicker than the eye.  Lincoln was so quick with his hands that he was the best on the street.  He made more money than he could spend and he felt good about himself.  His luck seemed eternal until his mark, Lonny, the man who starts the betting and keeps the game moving, was killed.  In that moment, Lincoln saw the game for what it was and he knew he wanted no part of it.   Still, dealing is his special gift and he is proud of what he could do.  “Lucky?” he says.  “Aint nothing lucky about cards.  Cards aint luck.  Cards is work. Cards is skill. Ain’t never nothing lucky about cards.”

 

Booth doesn’t share his brother’s sense of right and wrong and he is desperate to earn the kind of money his brother once did on the street. .  He believes the two of them can start their own game and earn a living together.  Booth is sure he can be a dealer because he is so quick and facile with his hands.  He is so adept at stealing that he managed to get both them both new suits, a room divider, a blanket and food.

 

This play is dialogue driven and the plot takes its shape from the brothers’ rapid fire conversation.  The acting is beyond wonderful and the two men manage to make their characters loveable and very vulnerable.  We know that they are trapped their life because of their color and because of the disruptive, chaotic childhood that prepared them for nothing but a desperate, frustrating fight to keep their heads above water.  The author Suzan Lori Parks says “There is no such thing as THE Black Experience.  That is there are many experiences of being Black which are included in the rubric….What can theatre do for us? We can tell it like it is, tell it as it was, tell it as it could be.”

 

And in Top dog/ Underdog that is just what she does, using rich and textured dialogue delivered with consummate skill by Martin and Wright.  Make no mistake.  This is not a play about being black.  It is about being poor and underprivileged.  It is about living on the edge of society, never feeling that your humanity gives you privilege.

 

This production sparkles and moves at so rapid a pace one cannot believe over two hours have passed since the play began.   Timothy Douglas’s direction is a masterpiece of movement and staging.  The men co-ordinate their actions across the stage as if in a macabre dance.  As their dialogue bounces off one another, we relive their hopes, their disappointments and we ache for them.  We watch in terror as they deceive themselves and each other leading them both to their own inevitable destruction.

 

I realize that I’m black, but I like to be viewed

as a person, and this is everybody’s wish.
Michael Jordan

 

Topdog/Underdog continues through Oct. 28.

Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley.

Tickets  $36-$57. (415) 388-5208. www.marintheatre.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPEED THE PLOW

David Mamet

Directed by Carole Robinson & Christian Phillips

Starring Joseph Napoli, Dean Shreiner & Sydney Gamble

Actor’s Theatre never fails to amaze me.  Christian Phillips manages by some miracle of talent and determination to put up truly compelling productions of American classics that speak to every generation.  He does this  on a minuscule budget in a tiny, spare theater void of any pretentious décor.

 

In this production of SPEED THE PLOW, he and his co-director Carole Robinson have gone far beyond their previous successes.  Their interpretation of David Mamet’s classic tale of unscrupulous greed and ambition has elevated this excellent script into a work of art that cannot help but mesmerize with its rapid fire dialogue across a stark almost empty stage. There is very little movement on stage, but every gesture makes an impact.   The program notes tell us that “Mamet’s plays often deal with the decline of morality in a world which as become an emotional and spiritual wasteland,” and the bleak stage with its bare walls is the ideal setting for a play whose central theme is how easily our souls are bought . All three characters in the play are merciless and narcissistic human beings  without a shred of compassion for one another.

 

Let us talk first about the actors.  It is hard to believe that these three people are not among the top performers in the bay area, so professional were the interpretations of their characters.  Dean Shreiner’s Bobby Gould is right on the mark.  He is a self-serving, greedy movie producer whose eye is always on profit at the expense of art.  As the play develops, we see beneath his brittle crust to the insecure, needy man beneath.    When, in the third act, we realize he has succumbed to Karen (Sydney Gamble)’s seduction, he says, “She understands that I suffer,” and his persona visibly softens.  The audience can see his vulnerability and feel his desperate need to do something “good” with his life. ”You look forward to your life and you think it’s never going to happen.  Deep down inside I never thought it would,” he says.

 

And Charlie (Joe Napoli)  replies “You’re a whore, Bob.” And he is right. The reality is that Bobby has compensated for that need to be special by being rapacious and hard- nosed in an industry where sentimentality is a death knoll.

 

Joe Napoli’s Charlie is perfection times ten.  His verbal pace is amazing, his expressions validate his words and his presence on the stage is mesmerizing.  He obviously sees himself as he really is and he likes his image.  ”If I’m just a slave to commerce, I’m nothing…” because for him, the selling and making movies is an exciting and dangerous game that he intends to win no matter what the cost. “We all hope,” he tells Charlie.  “That’s what keeps us alive.”

 

Sydney Gamble is a student at The Academy of Art in San Francisco but in this production she has the professional polish of an actress twice her age and four times her experience.  Her Karen combines an innocence with a hard core that is fascinating to watch and always believable.  When she visits Bobby to talk about the vapid script she just read, one senses that she knows as well as he does that it is not commercial. Her purpose in going to his flat was to better herself, not to report on the script.  She  has set her sights on producing that film with him and so she hits him where he is weakest: his self esteem.  “We are all frightened, she says.  “I listened to your heart and I saw you.  You were put in the world to make movies people need to see.“ (In direct contrast to Charlie’s pronouncement in the first act when he tells Bobby, ”Your job is to make movies that make money.”)

 

Karen knows she has scored a hit with Bobby when she appeals to his better self and she pursues her advantage by telling him she knew why he asked her to his apartment and she is willing to pay the price.  She knows it will get her exactly what she wants.  She says, “You asked me to come.  Here I am.”

 

There is not a trace of the coquette in her interpretation of her role.  Her speech seems innocent and altruistic and yet everyone in the audience knows exactly what she is.  We see in her very presence that she has a goal and that goal will serve her purpose, alone.   That is acting taken to its best level.

 

“When the curtain falls on this short and unsparing study of sharks in the shallows of the movie industry, it’s as if you had stepped off a world-class roller coaster. The ride was over before you knew it, but you’re too dizzy and exhilarated to think you didn’t get your money’s worth,” says Ben Brantley in his New York Times review of the production of the play in 2008 on Broadway.  “The slangy, zingy patter of exaggerated insult and tribute swapped by the studio executives Bobby Gould and Charlie Fox isn’t just air filler; it’s the existential warp and woof of their lives. ….”Speed-the-Plow” is about what happens when the shiny bubble produced by this talk is punctured by someone who doesn’t speak the language.”

 

And that sums up this Actors Theatre production, as well.  It is a polished, glistening gem of a play that shows us what we are beneath the veneer we assume in public.  Mamet sees us all as base creatures ready to sell every value for a pot of gold.  One walks out of one of his plays furious at the human condition and perhaps it is that fury…and that fury alone…that will spur us on to make ourselves better.

 

If you love theater, you will want to se this production of SPEED THE PLOW again and again.  It is everything fine dramatization should be from the first words spoken on that stage until the last.

 

Plays until November 10th, 2012; Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8pm.

Venue: Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush St, Between Taylor and Mason

Box Office: (415) 345-1287 or online at DramaList.com

Tickets: General: $38, Students & Seniors: $26

 

 

SLEEPWALK WITH ME

Directed by Mike Birbiglia

Starring Mike Birbiglia and Lauren Ambrose

 

Being in a relationship is a full time job

So don’t apply if you’re not ready

Unknown

I am a stand up comic.  I have been fighting to succeed in this very challenging profession for eight years and I am finally seeing hope.  So much of this movie rang true that it was actually painful to see.  Matt (Mike Birbiglia) wants to do stand up comedy because he can’t seem to succeed at anything else.  He has two big problems:  He has lousy material and he isn’t funny.  One would think that would be enough to discourage him from pursuing this very low paying often thankless job….but no…as his agent (Sondra James) tells him, “You don’t have to be funny…you just have to get booked.”

 

And she is right.  One of the most telling lines in the play and the most real is the “veteran” comedian(Marc Maron) who tells Matt (Mike Birbiglia) how disgusted he is that comedians who have no jokes and never get laughs are rising to the top, while he is struggling to get at least some gigs that pay.  This couldn’t be a more accurate description of this very difficult profession.

 

No one realizes how difficult it is to make a group of strangers laugh at something you think is hilarious.  When you are on that stage, the audience judges every word and all too often comedians simply do not listen to the response they get.  They refuse to admit that no one laughed at any of their jokes and indeed some people actually fell asleep.  Matt is one of those comedians. One laugh in the midst of 20 minutes of silence,  is all he needs to keep him plugging away at his new found career.  And somehow, some way, he manages to get paying gigs to sustain him.

 

Even as his comedy is improving (but not by much) he is overwhelmed with doubt about committing to an 8 year relationship with the adorable and very sweet Lauren Ambrose.  Just before he is about to break up with her, he reminds the audience in the ongoing narrative that holds the shaky plot together, “Before I tell you this part of the story, I want to remind you that you’re on my side.”

 

Perhaps some of us are.  Birbiglia’s persona is irresistible and his plight is acerbated by the severe sleeping disorder that he ignores.   He acts out his night mares and until the night he crashes through a window of his hotel room, he refuses to do anything to help himself.    His father’s (James Rebhorn) determination to get him properly diagnosed was a bit overbearing to me and his ditzy mother (Carol Kane) did not convince me that she was real.  Birbiglia and Ambrose carry the film and it is their charm that keeps our interest until the all too predictable end.

 

This is a very lightweight film, but there is something so real about the characters that the action holds our attention.   I thought it was charming, but then I too am fighting to become a recognized stand-up comedian and I know how all-consuming that can be.   I am not so sure it would hold together for someone not so involved in the field.

 

 

 

 

TheatreWorks presents…..

TIME STANDS STILL

By

Donald Margulies

Directed by Leslie Martinson

Starring Rebecca Dines, Mark Anderson Phillips, Rolf Saxon & Sarah Moser

Your only obligation in any lifetime

Is to be true to yourself. Richard Bach

This is a play about finding out who you really are.  “One of our greatest contemporary dramatists, Donald Margulies is a photojournalist of our lives, gifted with an extraordinary lens,” says TheatreWorks Artistic Director Robert Kelly.

 

In Time Stands Still, Margulies examines the conflict we all face in sorting out what we need to be as human beings and what we are actually doing with our lives.  Although the plot weaves many themes together, that of career, marriage, human need, and our obligation to ourselves and to society, the real story is the juxtaposition of the relationships of the two couples we see on stage.  The play “is very much about the choices and compromises we all make —in love, in work, and particular to this play, in war,” says Margulies.  “Ethical struggles touch on all aspects of life.”

 

Rebecca Dines is Sarah, a photojournalist severely injured while recording the terror and slaughter in Iraq.  We meet her when her lover Jamie (Mark Anderson Phillips) is bringing her home, her leg and arm broken and her body a mass of abrasions.  Jamie went to a hospital in Germany to be with her as she fought for her life. “I had my fifteen minutes (to become famous)  and I spent it unconscious,” she says.

 

As she contemplates her career and her need to return to it, she says, “I live off the suffering of strangers.”

 

Jamie counters with, “You help them in ways you can’t see,” but the truth is that Sarah gets far more out being in the midst of combat than a good picture.  She is addicted to the danger and feeds off the violence she captures on film. ‘The women and men who put themselves in unimaginable situations to capture images and stories…aren’t simply doing it for the public good,” says Margulies.  “Their courage is immense, to be sure, but there is an unmistakable kind of thirst for it as well.”

 

Jamie is a journalist who uses words to record the horrors that Sarah photographs and he has had enough.  “We don’t have to do this,” he says to Sarah.  “I don’t want to watch children die.  I want to watch them live.”

 

The other couple, Richard (Rolf Saxon) and Mandy (Sarah Moser) is in direct contrast to the tormented, battle scarred main characters.  Richard was once Sarah’s lover and employer. He is a newsmagazine photo editor and is instrumental in creating a book of Sarah’s photographs and Jamie’s writing.  He is wildly in love with Mandy now, an idealistic, sweet and unbelievably naïve girl thrust into the company of three hard core liberal realists. Richard excuses her:  “She’s young,” he says but Sarah delivers the final put down”  “There’s young and there’s embryonic.” she says.

 

Mandy has brought Sarah balloons to cheer her up and she says, “Balloons have an amazing way of making you feel better.”

 

Although Sarah and Jamie obviously dismiss her as inconsequential, Sarah Moser has given Mandy an exquisite persona the audience cannot help but love.  She is obviously sincere and there is a great deal of wisdom in her innocence.  She tells Sarah, “I’m an event planner,” and Sarah counters with, “I’m in events, too.  War.”

 

But Mandy refuses to be diminished and she will not allow Sarah to believe her relationship with an older man is nothing but fluff and sex.    “People think I am Richard’s mid-life crisis,” she tells Sarah.  “But it is not that at all.  Whatever it was that brought us together was what brought us together.”

 

As the action develops, we see that Richard and Mandy have built a solid foundation for their relationship.  It is a fulfilling one for them both without a hint of the sugar-daddy/bimbo infatuation Jamie and Sarah assume created it.   All the actors in this production are superb, but I have to say that Moser and Saxon mesmerized me with the veracity of their portrayals.  They brought their characters to compassionate life without a hint of sentimentality.  When Mandy hears that Sarah has photographed a dying child, she is horrified that the older woman did nothing to help or save that child.  She cannot believe the cynicism she feels in the room and she says, “There is so much beauty in the world.  I wish you’d let yourself feel the joy.  Otherwise what’s the point?”

 

It might sound trite and it might be a one dimensional sentiment said by anyone else, but Moser transforms her lines into exquisite observations on what we can make of our destiny if we really want to see its potential instead of its loss.  When the two get married and have a baby, Mandy decides to stay home to rear it.  “You make me feel like less of a woman because I want to stay home with my baby,” she tells Sarah and Sarah understands, but she knows that isn’t the life she would choose.

 

It is when Jamie sees how happy Richard is that he realizes that he and Sarah can have something more…the happiness, the positive future, the security…if they will but give it a chance.  He tells Sarah: “When a couple has been together as long as we have and has seen what we’ve seen and done what we’ve done, it’s time to call it what it is…a marriage.”

 

And Sarah agrees…in principle…but she doesn’t take into consideration her own drive to do the thing she loves and her thirst for the action that feeds her. She justifies the value of her work to herself and to Mark.   “If it wasn’t for people like me, the ones with the cameras, who would know?  Who would care?“ she says and he realizes then that the relationship isn’t going to work for him.  “You need drama more than you need me,” he says.

 

Until the final scene, the plot held together beautifully for me.  Leslie Martinson is a superb director and the movement of the characters, the use of silence, the juxtaposition of innocence and cynicism is masterful.  Erik Flatmo’s scenic designs are right on the mark, accenting the action and never detracting from the action on stage.  Both Dines and Phillips occasionally had trouble convincing me that they were the real thing and often their chemistry on stage disturbed rather than enhanced the action. There was falseness to their intensity that did not ring true.   It was Saxon and Moser who charmed me throughout.  That said, the entire production is a must see on every level.  The script is truly wonderful and TheatreWorks has given us a theatrical masterpiece, beautifully presented. As an ensemble production, it excels.

 

Time Stands Still continues through Sept. 16. at the  Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets  $23-$73.

More information: (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org.

 

 

WE WON’T ADMIT WE DID IT

I can remember when the air was clean

 And sex was dirty.

George Burns

When it comes to pre-marital sex, most of the people my age say one thing and do another.  There is no doubt that since the fifties, most people have sex before marriage.  But if you were born in the thirties, you will have a different mindset.  Sex was a danger for women, not a pleasure.  It could destroy a girl’s life forever.  For men it was a wild adventure fraught with the danger of venereal diseases that had no cure.

 

I was born in 1933.  When I was twelve years old, my mother sat me down and told me all about reproduction.  She discussed ovaries and fallopian tubes, penises and menstruation.  She never mentioned need or desire.  She did manage to convince me that any contact with anyone of the opposite sex including the dog, would destroy all my hopes for a decent future.  Gone my hope of a college education: “Smart girls don’t do it, Lynn Ruth,” said my mother.

 

Do what?  Menstruate? Ovulate?  She had never actually named this horrible act that would destroy me but she convinced me that I didn’t dare do it.   If I succumbed to temptation (and I have to say she didn’t make it sound very delectable) my hope of marriage would vanish.  “Men don’t want anything used,” said my mother.

 

That one really puzzled me.  I couldn’t think of one thing on my body that hadn’t been there ever since I could remember and I attributed the changes I was beginning to notice to eating too much chocolate or not getting enough sleep.

 

Today, you might think my mother was a demented alarmist, but remember she was talking to me in 1945. The pill did not exist.   Men did not use condoms.  Abortions were taboo and illegal.  You had that baby even if you were raped and most people blamed you instead of the rapist.   A venereal disease was virtually incurable and a stigma that haunted you for the rest of your life.

 

The girls I went to school with discussed love and sex continually, but they all agreed that it was way too dangerous to even consider such a thing before you had  the ring, the china and that piece of paper that locked the guy into supporting you ‘til death do you part.

 

I listened …indeed I believed.  I was a virgin when I married and I now know I was one of very few who actually held out until after the ceremony.  I believed that sex and love was the same thing.  I would no more have had sex with a stranger than I would have used his toothbrush and I assure you oral sex was not an option.  I did not know it existed.

 

Your parents were brought up with the same taboos that I had.  They didn’t always believe them and they didn’t always pay attention to the ridiculously rigid rules that limited me.  Like all parents, they brought up their children on the premise that they should do what they say not what they did.  It is as ludicrous for your father to tell you never to smoke pot when every kid who lived and breathed in the sixties tried it as it is for your mother to tell a daughter who knows about the pill, understands birth control and can take a morning after medication if all else fails that sexual intercourse will destroy her life.

 

To people of my generation, the danger of pregnancy was so immense it immediately erased any desire no matter how powerful.  That is why your mom told you to wait until you are married to have sex even though it is ten-to-one that she didn’t.  When you hear this kind of advice from my generation, you need to understand where it is coming from and why they believe they are saving you from pain and unhappiness.  You need to remember that they have not bought into the sexual revolution and deep down they still think sex is a dirty deed.

 

I am not sure if I would have been better off had I been more promiscuous.  I always believed that my first husband was the only one I had a right to sleep with…and I firmly believe that, for me, love must come first.  After two failed marriages and much heartbreak, I finally accepted that a marriage license was not the only permit for sexual intercourse, but I still held on the premise that I have to really care about a person before I drop my pants.

 

Most of us in my generation understand intellectually that this maxim only applies to them.  Times have changed and morals have loosened.  But when it comes to giving advice to your children or your nieces and nephews, it is a different story.  You want them to have extraordinary lives.  You don’t want them to suffer what you suffered.  Your head tells you sex is not the big deal it once was, but your heart wants to protect them from the hurt you suffered.  So it is that if you are a girl, your mother will tell you to keep your legs crossed to protect your virginity and if you are a boy, you will be told that girls who give you sex too easily are sluts.

 

You know it isn’t true and so do they.  Just don’t tell them you figured it out.

 

 

 

WE DO IT OUR WAY

Advice is like castor oil, easy to give, but dreadful to take.
Josh Billings

You are waiting for your mother on her front porch.  You watch her as she puts on her coat and grabs her purse.  She opens the door and smiles at you and then stops.  “I forgot my keys,” she says and disappears back into the house.  She returns to the door, opens it and says, “Oh dear! Fluffy!”

 

She disappears into the house and puts the dog in his cage.  She returns to the door, and then she pauses.  She goes into her closet to get her scarf.  She approaches the door and then she says, “Oh, Oh.  I can’t remember if I put money in my wallet.”

 

She checks her wallet and says, “Sorry, darling.  I didn’t mean to keep you waiting,” and   she pauses.  She goes back to her desk, takes out her check book and puts it in her purse.  She buttons her coat, shuts her purse gives the house one more look and beams at you.  “All ready!!!” she exclaims.

 

Then she stops.  “Did I leave the gas burner on?” she asks.

 

It is more than you can stand.  “Mother, why don’t you make a check list and tape it to the door?  Then you would be able to go right down that list and get everything ready before I get here.”

 

She looks at you and her eyes narrow.  “Why should I do that?” she says.  “My memory is perfect.  I know what I need to take with me when I leave the house.”

 

If you were smart, you would take her arm and help her down the steps without saying a word.  But you are human.  You had seen this ridiculous rigmarole every single time you take her shopping or to the doctor and it is just too much.  “Mother,” you say.  “I will make the list for you.  I have seen you do this at least a hundred times and it takes forever.  I got here fifteen minutes ago and now you are late for your appointment.”

 

You mother looks at you with fire in her eyes.  “You go on,” she says.  “I will call a cab.”

 

Why won’t she take your advice?

 

She won’t listen to you because she has spent a lifetime telling YOU what to do.  She has convinced herself that she knows better than you even though it is obvious now that she doesn’t.  To make matters worse, the next time you pick her up she is standing at the door completely organized.  She beams at you.  “Ellen was telling me how she had so many little things to think about before she left the house that she never got out.  So do you know what she does?”

 

You shake your head afraid to say anything and your mother nods wisely.  “She tapes a list to the front door and checks everything off. See?” and your mother points to a checklist taped to the side of the door.  “I thought that was such good idea that I did it myself.”

 

Your mother went to school with Ellen.  She was her bridesmaid.  The two of them exchanged advice about how to toilet train YOU and what to do when your dad got a wandering eye.  Your mother listens to Ellen and Ellen listens to her.  They have been on the same page for years.

 

Your father pays all his bills in person.  At the end of each month, he gets in the car and drives to the water company, the phone company payment center, the garbage collector and the gardener.  He writes his check right in front of them and waits for each of them to stamp ‘paid’ on the bill.  Some months this routine can take him two days to complete.  “I don’t trust the post office,” he said.  “They lose letters all the time.  I am not going to pay interest on a bill when I know I paid on time.”

 

“Dad,” you say.  “Your bank has an on line bill payment program.  I can show you how to use it and you could save all the money you spend on those personalized checks and all the time and gasoline you waste driving to all these companies by spending less than fifteen minutes at the desk.”

 

You father looks at you as if you had just suggested he run over an innocent child.  “I have been paying my bills this way for fifty years,” he says.  “I have a perfect credit rating.  I don’t owe one cent to anyone and I intend to keep it that way.”

 

You know better than to argue with that one.  You have been trying to pay off your credit card for five years now and your college loan is still years from being off the books.  Your car payments are overdue and you still haven’t managed to pay anything toward the principal on your mortgage.

 

Not two months after this conversation, your father takes you out for a beer and he says, “Son, have you heard about the new bill payment option at Chase Bank?  It is really simple.  My banker showed me how to do it in less than an hour.  Why I can even set up automatic payments and not have to worry.  I tell you, its amazing what these financial guys think of, isn’t it?”

 

And if you are smart, you will say, “It sure is!  How about another beer, dad?  This one is on me.”

 

No one likes to feel that they cannot handle their own business of living.  The last person in the world they think can tell them a more efficient way to operate is the child they brought into the world.  They spent a lifetime teaching you how to organize your life and they aren’t going to admit that you could have discovered an easier way to accomplish the same thing.  They take advice from people they think are experts and they listen to their friends.  When you think about it, your parents have underwear that is older than you are.  What right have you to tell them how to run their lives?

 

You will understand how they feel the day your five year old says “Daddy why are you trying to light that match in the wind?  It keeps blowing out.” and you say,” Listen Junior. You let daddy light this match his way and you go play with your scooter. “

 

Get it?

WHY DO WE NEED A COMPUTER?

To err is human, but to really

Foul things up requires a computer.

Farmer’s Almanac, 1978)

Edna Jane was 90 years old when she bought her first computer.  Her family thought it was marvelous that she wanted to learn to communicate the way they did and they were very proud of her.  She signed up for computer classes and she took a cab to the computer store to learn about her new plaything twice a week for 8 weeks. When they gave her a certificate of completion, she felt very confident and knew she was ready to send e mails to her family.

 

She came home, booted up and promptly forgot her sign-in name.  She called her son who explained how to establish a new sign-in name and a password and told her to make note of it so she wouldn’t forget again.  However, Edna Jane has macular degeneration.  She wrote down the proper information but now she cannot find that piece of paper.

 

Every now and then, she dusts off the computer and tries to reboot again but she KNOWS it’s not going to work.  It never does.  Then, she picks up the phone to call her daughter in law, Susan.  “Would you mind ordering my groceries, darling?” she says.  I”I have the list right here….but I can’t seem to find it.”

 

“Never mind, Mother,” says Susan who has had this identical conversation every Monday since she married George.  “I have last week’s list.  I’ll take care of it.”

 

Every one of you has an Edna Jane in your family.  Your mother reads maps instead of googling a location.  Your father doesn’t know what a video game is.  He does crossword puzzles.  Your Aunt Lucy takes books out of the library and when she wants to see a film, she drives downtown to a movie theater.  Your Uncle Jeff uses a dictionary when he can’t spell a word.  What is wrong with these people?  Are they still in the dark ages?

 

When I was your age, I used a telephone to stay connected with my friends and the people in my workplace.  I used the library for research on topics I wanted to understand better. I typed the articles I wrote for newspapers and magazines on an electric typewriter.  When I proofread my stories, I cut out phrases with a scissors and taped them in a new paragraph.

 

I drove or walked to the grocery store to select the food I would eat and I wrote letters to people too far away to be in my immediate circle when I wanted to keep in touch.

 

I bought a computer in 1985.  It was my substitute for that typewriter.  Nothing else.

 

It wasn’t until 1989 that I became hooked on e mail to communicate and I was ahead of my time.  Most of my friends didn’t get into e mail until the mid-nineties.  The idea of using the computer for anything but communication and composition is still foreign to me.  I know people do it, but I do not.  I have begun to check out news on the computer but if a story looks interesting I always print it out to read.  I like to see words in ink on paper.

 

It must be very frustrating to buy your mom a computer and spend several hours showing her all the wonderful things she can do with it.  She smiles and says thank you and never boots it up again until you come over to ask her how she is doing. You are ready to bundle up the computer and give it to your neighbor’s kid, but that would accomplish nothing.  All it would do is confuse your mom who is trying very hard not to hurt your feelings.

 

The truth is she is more comfortable living her life the way she has been living it all these years.  She doesn’t NEED a new way to shop, communicate or entertain herself.   When you are used to accomplishing a task a particular way, you really don’t want to change.  It involves too much effort and way too much concentration.

 

Most computer savvy people order products on line.  It has been years since I have browsed in a book store, or even wandered into a department store.  I wouldn’t think of wasting an afternoon at  Macy’s when I could be outside walking my dogs or painting a picture in my studio.  What has astounded me is how many people in your generation now have decided they would rather SEE the dress on the rack or the pot in the culinary display before they actually purchase it.  That is the way I used to do it.  I am amazed at how many of my old fashioned ways are back in style.  I suspect you are beginning to see it our way.

 

I walked into the Apple Store and it was crowded with people of all ages playing with computers and I pads.   Every one of those shoppers could have saved money by purchasing their computer on line but they preferred to actually SEE what they were getting. I for one have ordered my last two computers on line.  It saved me hours of time.  And after all, compared to you, I don’t have that much time left.  I don’t want to waste it.

 

The increase in farmer’s markets is another example of the way computer shopping is beginning to lose its luster for you.  You like to chat with the farmers, squeeze those melons and inspect the lettuce for vermin before you buy.  You are willing to spend almost double for organic produce you can see and bring home yourself.  My generation doesn’t feel that way anymore.  The aging process has changed our minds.   The truth is, it has become an effort for us to leave the house these days.  We don’t see the way we should.   Our joints hurt and our energy level fades with the sun.  It is much easier for us to go on line and order our groceries, buy our underwear and find discount books.

 

Entertainment is a different story.  We like to go out to see a play or hear a symphony.  We like to play board games or bridge with real people sitting across from us. Computer games don’t tempt us at all.  We cannot understand why your generation is hooked on them  There is one young man who got so involved in the virtual games on his computer that he couldn‘t pull himself away for four days.  He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat, and when he collapsed his parents took him to the emergency ward because he was dehydrated.

 

My generation would never do a thing like that.

 

The best way to explain our attitude about computers to you is to say, of course we use them, but for different things.   Our computers are only tools to make our lives easier.  Your computers set the tone of your day.  You might ask me why I don’t check out face book every morning to see what my friends are up to and I will say, “I if I want to know how they are, I telephone.”  It’s an age thing.