Joe Cillo

WHY ARE WE SO CHEAP?

I was brought up in an era when

Thrift was still considered a virtue.
Paul Getty

My generation saved their pennies.  They take pride in the ability to PAY for what they wanted.    They are aware of government services today that provide for people on low income, but they think everyone on welfare is either lazy or insane.  My generation believes taking care of yourself is a matter of integrity.  If our pensions don’t match our expenses, our solution is to trim the expenses and take advantage of savings we get from coupons and special offers. Charity is for the indigent.

 

How many times have you heard Aunt Sarah say, “It is disgusting how those people try to milk their unemployment benefits.  Why don’t they just go get a job?  When I was young, I didn’t ask the government for money.  If I wanted a new dress, I baby sat and washed dishes until I earned the money to get it.”

 

Don’t even try to tell her that “those people” paid into the unemployment fund or got a back injury that made them unfit for work.”  She will shake her head and say, something like “If they weren’t so lazy, they could find something to do.  I did.”

 

It has to look ridiculous to people of your generation when your parents won’t drive because the cost of gasoline is almost $4.00 unless you remember that $4 when they began to notice money had the spending power of almost $65.  You have to admit you, too would think twice before spending $65 for a gallon of gas.

 

Every generation has the same issue with the one before.  I can still remember my sister infuriated with my father because he spent all her inheritance caring for my mother at home while she had cancer.  She couldn’t seem to understand that it was HIS money and he earned it.  Yet, this same man who seemed so extravagant to my sister had three cars in the garage that no one ever drove.  He refused to sell them or give them away.  “I never know when I just might want to drive again,” he explained.

 

My father was 87 years old, had Alzheimer’s and couldn’t see.

 

I love the story of my friend Andrew, who actually MARRIED a woman when he was 70, only because she was so good at clipping coupons.  “She is saving me at least $40 a week,” he said.  “That kind of woman is one in a million.”

 

What  neither he nor his bride understood was that they really didn’t need all that toilet paper, cleanser and car wax they were buying with those coupons.  They may have saved $40, but they spend over $80 on products they would never use.  “You never know when a carton of air freshener will come in handy,” said Andrew.

 

It isn’t that we are cheap….it is that we are afraid of outlasting our money and we don’t like to ask our children to help us.  WE controlled the purse strings for THEM for too many years.  Losing control of your spending power is not just humiliating…it is terrifying.  You no longer have the confidence that you can handle the kinds of tragedy every older person dreads:  a surgery, an unexpected fall; a stock market collapse.

 

Think of it this way.  Would you ask your fourteen year old to lend you $25 from his paper route money because you had maxed out your credit card and needed to buy groceries?  Of course you wouldn’t.  Instead, you would go to the “reduced for quick sale” and buy something you could disguise with enough ketchup be palatable.  No one wants to ask their children for money.  It is embarrassing.

 

However, there are times when the concept of frugality can be carried to a ludicrous extreme.   It is the people who really don’t NEED to hoard money who are so hard to understand.  Mary Ellen is 93 years old and receives life insurance payments from the death of her husband John, money from his physician’s pension and social security.  When she heard that the United States government was thinking of reducing its social security payments to people with incomes over a million dollars a year, she was livid.  “Sam paid into that fund his whole working life,” she sad.  “He EARNED that money.”

 

That is how we think.  If you work for something, the payment you receive belongs to you and no one else.  It isn’t that we are not charitable. It is just that we believe the money you earn is as much yours as your house, your closet full of clothes and your automobile. The government certainly would not say to Mary Ellen, “Your income is so large we are going to take away your Mercedes Benz,” would it?  To my generation, that is just as outrageous an idea as reducing promised payments on a pension fund we had invested in with our own money.

 

It is the way we are cheap that your generation cannot understand.  My friend Grace will travel thirty miles out of her way to save seven cents on a gallon of gasoline, and then drop $100 dollars at the nearest casino on the chance that she will hit a jackpot no one has figured out for thirty years.   I can’t justify it to you except to say that Grace makes as much sense to me as you do when you spend hundreds of dollars to play games on your cell phone but will drive blocks out of your way to avoid putting money in a parking meter.

 

So when your parents insist celebrating their anniversary at Denny’s because they have a coupon that gives them one dollar off Tuesday’s at four, don’t tell them the food has so much fat and additives it will kill them.  Don’t even hint that they both could afford to go to a real restaurant with table cloths and candle light.  Just think to yourself, ”When I get to be their age, I want to have the right to spend what I have earned, any way I like.”

 

What is frugal to one generation is nonsense to the next.  It is no use telling your Uncle George that spending $10 on a cab makes a lot more sense than a thousand dollars on a new fender because he drove without his glasses.    He won’t hear you anyway.

I CAN’T HEAR YOU

 

Hear only the things you should hear – be deaf to others.
Ford Frick

I know it drives you crazy.  You walk into your parents’ home and the television is so loud you can hear it across the street.

 

You call Aunt Bertha and she cannot make out one word you are saying. You ask “How are you?” and she says, “But I LIKE Jews.” By the time you repeat “How is your sciatica?” twenty times, you don’t care anymore.

 

The guy in line behind you sneezes and you say, “Do you have a cold?”  He says “I KNOW I’m old; you don’t have to remind me.”

 

Why on earth don’t these people wear their hearing aids?

 

I cannot speak for every older person who discovers he isn’t hearing the way he once did, but I can speak for myself.  Perhaps my story will explain why we buy those hearing aids, try them for a week and then put them in a bureau drawer.

 

Nine years ago, I noticed that I confused numbers and I would give ridiculous answers to people’s questions. My friend tried on a new dress and said, “How do I look?” and I said,” I haven’t read anything good either.”  When my dentist told me I had a cavity I thought he said I suffered from depravity.  There is a lovely 8 year old child who tells me long involved stories every time she visits and I can honestly say I have never heard a world she has said…ever.

 

You get the picture.

 

It took four years of wandering through quiet streets and standing outside silent playgrounds to convince me that I needed some kind of device to clarify what was being said.  The evening I appeared at River Dance in my nightgown because I thought it was a sleepover, I knew drastic action was in order.  .  Something expensive would have to be done or I would wander around in a cloud of silence while the rest of the world got all the news.

 

It was time to go explore the world of hearing aids.  I discovered that the way the establishment gets back at decaying seniors for all those discounts and free services the ARARP managed to get for them is to charge triple or quadruple their own cost for eye glasses and hearing aids.  For some strange reason, our government doesn’t think hearing and seeing are necessary to live the good life.  Most people over seventy are living on pensions that are a fraction of the income they once enjoyed. They think twice before buying anything in three figures.  They experience a dangerous surge of blood pressure when the cost of anything is four figures.  I am one of those people.

 

I shopped and compared prices for several months until I found cheapest hearing aids I thought would do the job.  They cost $5000 for the pair.  The audiologist explained that if I got only one hearing aid, I would be lopsided.   Did she say I was misguided?   I wasn’t exactly sure, but I got her message.  It was $5000 to hear again or silence.

 

I had heard stories of seemingly sensible people who bought hearing aids, worn them for a week and shoved them in a bureau drawer and I said (with great conviction)  “I am not spending $5000 for something I don’t use.  Not me.”

 

The lovely girl who tested me said these hearing aids were state of the art and I believed her.   When I was in her office, I managed to make out a couple of the words she said after she inserted the aids, but after all I hadn’t heard 40% of the sounds around me for so many years. It would take me a bit of time to recognize them again. I knew if I worked at it “BLGHXBL!!”  would once again sound like the “hello” I once recognized when I was young.

 

My first hurdle was trying to get the things in my ear.  It seemed easy enough with the audiologist helping me but when I got home, I simply couldn’t figure out which one went where.  There is a funny angle to the ear canal and I have always been really bad at getting things in narrow passages.  I can’t get keys in locks.  I could never manage tampons.  I pulled on my ear lobe and pushed and said a dirty word, but the device kept landing in the sink.

 

However, I was not throwing $5000 dollars down the drain even though I almost sent one of the hearing aids there.   When I finally managed to shove both of them in my ears without piercing my eardrum, I sat down to eat  and I was horrified.   I had never heard my teeth make so much clatter.  They sounded like a thundering herd of cattle coming home for dinner.  I could hear myself swallow. I heard my stomach attempting to digest and I actually jumped when my stomach growled. The problem was that I still couldn’t hear anything my dinner partner was saying.

 

So I went back to the audiologist for some adjustments.  She fiddled, she adjusted, she tested and out I went to try again.  I wore these aids another 12 hours when I heard THE loudest ring I had ever heard in my life and realized it was a warning that the battery needed changing.  I was in a movie theater at the time (still not hearing what the characters were saying) so I couldn’t take them out to change the batteries.  Five minutes later, the ring was so loud and insistent, the person next to me screamed ( I heard THAT)  and then…silence.

 

I came home, shoved the hearing aids in the bureau drawer and refused to even look at them until two years later when I said to myself.  “Remember the days when you actually heard what the cashier said instead of fainting when you saw the receipt?  Give those things one more try.”

 

And I did.  I finally caught on to the three adjustments I had to make for noise levels.  I still didn’t feel like I was getting the aids in right, but at least they didn’t fall out of my ear.  This was progress.  I must have visited the audiologist at least twenty times in the next two months determined not to throw away $5000 dollars and even more determined to hear words.

 

And then I gave up.  No matter how many times they were adjusted, no matter how many times I tried, I still couldn’t hear what I really wanted to hear:  conversation.

 

It is now five years later.  I REALLY can’t hear what is going on.  I know I must take the plunge and try to get a hearing aid that works and I know technology has advanced.  In the past few years, I have gone to several other audiologists all of whom tell me that the devices I bought are third rate and theirs (which cost $7000-$10,000) are far more sophisticated.  When they see me turn pale and clutch my heart, they say, “But why not try these once more?”…and I always do …and I still don’t hear words. ….just strange noises that don’t make sense.

 

Now anyone that has a hearing aid that wears it will tell you they are not perfect devices.  Everyone has a different kind of hearing loss and mine evidently is unique to medical science.  I have to say though I have never heard anyone ever tell me they LOVE their hearing aid until this past month.

 

I don’t want to strain to hear every word that said to me.  I don’t want my voice to sound so loud people step back when I speak.  None of us do.  I don’t like asking you to repeat every sentence you say two or three times.  It is embarrassing.  But I would be willing to bet 99% of the deaf people who drive you mad because they won’t help themselves had exactly the same experience I had.  Sitting in the drawer, covered with dust is an expensive mistake they really tried to wear. My generation hates to throw money away.

 

So now you know.  We don’t wear our hearing aids because we just can’t make them work.

 

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT WORKING 9-5?

 

I don’t mind coming to work,

but that eight hour wait to go home is a bitch.

Anonymous

 

I have always believed that everyone needs a job.  When I hear dire reports on diminishing jobs I think, “How will these people support themselves?”

 

I think there is nothing like steady job with benefits to give your life a solid foundation.  Old values are so comfortable that I for one feel guilty when I chuck them in the wastebasket.  I want to meet the parent who doesn’t say to his college graduate, ”When do you start work?”

 

I figured out that a job didn’t mean happiness in the sixties and I can still remember how frightened I was to dare to forge ahead doing what I loved instead of reporting to an office five grueling days a week.  I decided I wanted to write stories about interesting people and I did just that.  I mailed them out to magazines every day.  Some were accepted and some were not.  I did a bit of baby sitting, tried my hand at dog walking, but always, I came back to the typewriter (what we used in those days) and did what I loved best: write. My parents thought I had committed a sin.  I couldn’t have embarrassed them more if I had stood nude on a busy corner with a sign saying “Available.”  And I agreed with them.  I felt I was being immoral to love designing my days to suit only myself.

 

If you think that attitude went the way of vinyl records, you are wrong.  When my friends Richard and Susan got married five years ago, Richard’s parents were horrified.  “You don’t have a JOB,” they said. “ How can you support a wife?”

 

I know in my head that there are many ways to support yourself that don’t involve a long commute and a desk in one office for forty years. I know hundreds of people who support themselves with a series of part time jobs or do low level work to feed themselves while they do what they love in the evening.   Henry has a degree in nuclear engineering and he is working at a coffee house so he can write his book.  Sean quit his teaching job because he couldn’t stand being confined in a classroom with 30 unwilling students.  Now he gardens for a living.  Paul cooks gourmet meals for busy work people and delivers them ready to eat at dinner time.  None of them are rich and all of them are happy….but if one of them were my kid, I would nag them to death.  “What will you do when the money runs out?” I’d say.

 

I see unhappy men my age who spent so much time working for someone else that they didn’t prepare for a life where they could do what they loved instead of what earned a steady wage.  My friend Tony retired from the business community when he was 65.  He decided that he had enough savings set aside that he could afford to pursue a life in the arts.  He became a successful playwright and in his spare time, (which he has now) he sings with his church choir.  He takes time to go on hiking trails with his wife and he is a happy man.  Yet, when his son was out of a job, he was beside himself with worry.  “How will he take care of his wife and three children?”  he said.

 

It want until I reminded him of how happy he was that he realized he was sentencing his son to the same frustration that he had endured for forty years.  It is another one of those cases of telling you “do what I say, don’t do what I do.”  All of us are concerned for our children’s future.  We all know that the proverb ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ can sentence our children to a life of thankless drudgery.  But we also know that food and shelter take money and no one wants to think of their children living in poverty.  That wasn’t part of the dream we had for them.

 

I know that no job ends when you leave the office.  I see young people on their computers in coffee shops and on the bus.  The work day never seems to end.  People these days don’t want to  work in one place for one person for forty years just to get a gold watch and a pension. Fulfillment.  Growth.  Experimenting.  That is what your generation is about these days and I think it is wonderful.  Now that I am of a certain age, I want in on the excitement you have every day.  Why not?

 

There are so many things I want to do before I die.  I want to run outside draped in a shower curtain and sing to the stars. I want to climb a flag pole sprayed with glitter singing “wish on a star.”  I want to wear flowers in my hair and do cartwheels on the pier.  If you join me, I will break dance in the middle of the freeway.

 

The difference is no one sends me on a guilt trip or says, “Why don’t you get a job?”

 

My parents are dead.

 

 

 

 

WHY ARE WE SO STUBBORN?

Why do you hit your head against the wall?

Because it feels so good when I stop.

I see so many people my age struggling to carry packages they could put in a trolley if they would only spend the money to buy one or staggering up set of stairs when the escalator is right there across the hall. I know there is a better way.  But just you try to TELL them that.

 

Do not even consider “Mother, if you would walk on the side of the street, you wouldn’t block everyone hurrying to the office” because it isn’t going to work.  Your mother knows that she keeps her balance better in the middle of the sidewalk and avoiding a broken shoulder is a lot more important to her than her social responsibility not to impede the pedestrians on their way to something she already did years ago….and if she wants to wear her bedroom slippers with that horrid coat…so what?  SHE is retired.

 

Just try telling your Dad that if he would have purchased power steering on that huge gas eating clunker he drives, he could parallel park in seconds and not keep smashing his front headlight.    He is going to give you that look you hate and say, “I bought this car used ten years ago and I paid cash for it.   I know how it works and it doesn’t give me any surprises.  If it takes me 40 minutes to park it, that isn’t MY problem….

 

I like familiar things.  I don’t have to learn how to use them.  Silly as it may seem, I don’t like a dishwasher.  It feels better to me to wash each dish and know it is clean.  It is the same with the car I drive.  I can still remember when I bought my Toyota Matrix.  It was bigger than my ancient Valiant, more fuel efficient and had a great CD player. The first year I drove it, I smashed the right fender so many times the auto repair shop recognized my voice when I called. I hit the wall of the garage twice and I drove in the middle of the road for at least 6 months before I figured out that there was plenty of room on the right.  My old car soaked up gas like a drunkard, didn’t have power steering and when it rained water flooded the back seat.  But I never hit anything with it.  It was familiar. You cannot get me to admit that it wasn’t the king of all cars.  I loved it.  I understood it.  And it understood me.

 

That is how it is with older people. We cling to what we used to do because that is comfortable and feels safe.  Take credit cards.  When I was a kid they didn’t exist.  I paid for everything with cash.  The idea of shoving a piece of plastic into the wall and getting money was as ridiculous to me as looking up at the clouds and expecting it to rain silver coins.  Now I cannot imagine living or traveling without my credit card but I know a lot of my friends who never use them.  They like to see the cash, pay with it and get the receipt for the same reason they like to watch your face when they talk to you before they give you an answer.  It might not make sense to you, but it does to them.

 

There is a couple across the street in their mid eighties who live in a three story house. Bob has sciatica and Sarah has Multiple Sclerosis.  They both are in so much pain, they had to crawl up the stairs to get to their bedroom.  Finally, after years of coaxing and talking and convincing, they allowed their children to buy them a stair-master so they could both ride upstairs in seconds instead of the half hour they both took, each helping the other.  You guessed it.  The stair-master has been sitting for five years now, in pristine condition at the bottom of the stairs and my neighbors struggle up the stairs to the bedroom they have slept in for almost 60 years.

 

I know just what you are thinking.  Why don’t they move the bed downstairs to the living room?  I asked them that and Sarah looked at me as if I had suggested she dance naked in the street.  “I love my living room just the way it is.  I remember when we redecorated it in 2000 and it took me forever to get used to where everything was.  I sure don’t want to go through that again.”

 

Will and Deborah will celebrate their golden anniversary this year.  It will be a sad celebration because Will’s Cerebral Palsy has gotten so much worse and he is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.  Their children have been begging them to have a care giver in to help Deborah cook meals, bathe Will and get him into bed but she is adamant.  “I don’t want strangers walking around my house,” she told her daughter.  “They all have butterfingers..”

 

About three months after she said this, she called her daughter and said, ”I just took Will to the doctor and he had the best idea!!! He told me about an agency that will send someone out to bathe Will and get him into bed.  Isn’t that a wonderful idea?”

 

Her daughter had the wisdom to say, “I think so too!” and not, ”Why wouldn’t you listen to ME when I told you the same thing?” The truth is that if we are going to change our minds, we have to hear a reason from what we think is an expert.  That expert is never our children.  Ever.

 

So next time you say to your mom, “Why don’t you order those groceries on line?” don’t expect her to say ”What a good idea!”  I will give you odds that her response would be “I like to pick out my own vegetables and fruit.  Those delivery people don’t care.  All they want to do is make money.”

 

The older we get, the more we do the things we want, not the things we should.  We have earned that freedom and you will too, eventually.  I make my own rules and take my own advice.  When I ushered at The Opera, I seated a 95 year old lady and when I went back to help the next patron, she moved two rows closer.  I came back down the aisle to seat someone in the seat she had moved into and I said, “Mrs. Stoneham, that isn’t your seat. “ She looked up at me her mouth a straight determined line.   “I LIKE it here,” she said.

 

That is what we are about.  We are going to do what we like and the only way you are going to understand it is when you are 95, sitting in a theater in the seat you want.  The usher might have moved you when you were 60 but when you are 95, you’ve earned the right to sit wherever you like.

 

 

WHY DO WE TALK SO MUCH?

If someone would teach the younger generation how to talk,

And their elders to listen, the generation gap would not exist.

Lynn Ruth

People my age talk a lot.  We do it because words are what we are comfortable using to express ourselves.  When we hear it, we can figure it out. You people communicate differently and I think that is great.  I saw a young couple standing together outside a movie theater sending messages to each other on their I-Pads.  They nodded wisely as if they were exchanging very special secrets.    I can’t do that.  I have to use my vocal cords to communicate.  Besides I don’t want to send anyone pictures of what I just did an hour ago. I was on the can.

 

I was in the grocery store and the clerk smiled as he was taught to do and said without looking at me, “How are you today?” and I actually told him.

 

I discussed how hard it was to get out of bed in the morning because of my sciatica, why my shoes didn’t fit because of the heat, the new place I found to shop for vitamins, and my problem with the neighbor’s dog.  When I finished, I looked at him expectantly and he said.  “83.43.  Cash or charge?”

 

When I was your age, I was really careful about everything I said. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and I wanted them to love me. Now, I am of a certain age and the brakes are off. Censorship went the way of continence.

 

Being blunt can really mess you up if you are looking for a date.  Not long ago, I enrolled in a new dating service in the states called Table for 6.  The idea is that if you get six people together around one table sharing ideas and talking to one another you will find the love of your life.  I went to one of their events and sat there with five strangers from my generation.  The talk never stopped because that is what we love to do.  One guy discussed his new dentures, the other his hiking trip in the Arctic.  A woman who looked 106 told about her face lift and another talked about her kid with Turrets.  “He shouts obscenities EVERYWHERE,” she said. “Just yesterday I was buying a screwdriver and some fertilizer when Percy shouted I WANT TO SEE THE MONEY SHOT!’

“I was humiliated.”

 

When the evening was over, we all knew all about each other and we knew we never wanted to see any of these boring people again.

 

I looked over at the next table. It was filled with 6 people in their thirties.  Everyone there was absolutely silent except for the clink of their wine glasses and the sound of their forks picking up their stroganoff.  Each had his I Pad in his hand and now and then one would tap his neighbor on the shoulder and point to a picture or hold it to her ear to listen to a song.  At the end of their meal, while everyone at my table went his separate way, the 6 of them paired off holding hands and staring lovingly into each others eyes.

 

My generation likes to hear the words you say, even though we don’t really hear that well.  Our eyes are shot and we forget how to end the sentence we just began.  I went to the funeral of my friend’s husband and she was standing by the coffin talking a mile a minute to the corpse.  “I TOLD you not to take that aspirin,” she said.  “But you never listen…and now look at you! Dressed in a suit you never wore on your way to God knows where with a mortgage that is sky high and a house underwater…”

“Millie,” I whispered “He can’t hear you anymore….”

“He couldn’t hear me when he was alive, either,” she said.  “But now he can’t walk away.”

 

The truth is talk was our style of communication even though I have to admit we really don’t say much that is memorable.    I think we want you to know we are still alive and we want to convince ourselves that we matter to you because believe me, you matter to us.  You are the ones who will care for us when we fall apart.  The thing is, when you can’t hear, your sight is blurred and your arthritis is killing you, it feels good to talk about it. The more you chatter the less you notice the pain.

 

I have tried your way of communicating and sometimes it works really well.  When I have a headache I would rather text my buddy to complain, but on the other hand, there is no way any computer message can ever make me feel as good as someone’s hand on my forehead saying.  “Let me put some ice on your head and make it better.”

 

Everyone has their own way of getting their point across and all of us need to feel we are heard.  I don’t mind reading what you say to my computer, but sometimes, when you aren’t running from one business meeting to a mixer or a concert, I would really love it if you’d answer the telephone.

 

 

 

WHY DO YOU GIVE US THE WRONG ANSWERS

Better be wise by the misfortunes of

Others than your own

Aesop

In the beginning, my generation heard exactly the same propaganda that your parents fed to you.  For example when I was a child I was taught that mother knew best.  “Look both ways before you cross the street,” she said.  If I didn’t listen, a car hit me.  Very effective.  Right?  I am willing to bet your mom told you the same thing.

 

When I was in my teens, this faith that my parents had all the answers began to fade.  “Stop smoking those disgusting cigarettes,” said my mother. This time I ignored her.  What did she know?  SHE was addicted to alcohol and you know what that did to her.

 

Once I began school, my teachers said, “Cheaters don’t prosper.” I knew that was rubbish.  If I looked at the guy’s paper next to me, we both passed the exam and who remembered the answer to those ridiculous tests the next week anyway?  In those days, if you complained about your teacher, you had to sit outside in the hall.

 

Those lessons we learned then were pounded into our heads over and over and we believed them.  The policeman is your friend.  Evil is punished.  Pretty is as pretty does.  That is where we are coming from.

 

Today, most of us know in our heads that these are ridiculous assumptions, but they guided us when we were young and we cannot let them go.  That is why your mother’s advice won’t help your social life.  Your mother grew up in a time when a girl’s looks determined her future.  If you didn’t look like a magazine centerfold, you were destined to live a barren life alone as a librarian, a secretary or a nun.  Catching a man was a fundamental life skill for your mom.  Looking gorgeous wasn’t a choice for her.  It meant her survival.

 

YOU don’t need to worry about silly things like that.   You are free to use your mind.  Marriage is an option, not a goal.  You can run a marathon and sweat…. You don’t have to wear a bra.  Your mother didn’t have that freedom.

 

The worst response you can give to your mother’s advice is “Are you out of your mind?”  Because the truth is, she isn’t. She is living in her own past, not yours.  Getting a guy is not a major goal these days.  Living a life is.  You can have sex and never see the guy again. You have the pill.  All she had was a coat hanger.

 

We love to give you advice that worked 30 years ago because we want you to avoid the mistakes we made. We love you, remember?   The catch is that now isn’t 30 years ago, is it?   I mean 30 years ago we ate rich, goopy potatoes dripping in fat and didn’t feel guilty; when we acted funny, they locked us in the attic, and being an altar boy was our first sexual experience.  You were a slut if you had sex on the first date. Now you’re a slut if you don’t.  Times have changed.

 

Look at the workplace.  The one we knew doesn’t exist.  Your dad is not going to be able to help you find a job because he doesn’t know about on line applications.  He read the want ads.  His advice won’t work because the job he had doesn’t exist anymore.  You dad believes you need a pay check you can count on because HIS parents told him that is what honorable men had.  Girls stayed home, had babies and cooked dinner.  My buddy Charlie Gunther told me, “I’d never send my girls to college.  It is a waste of money.  Why did you bother?”

 

See what I mean?

I can still remember complaining to my mother because my social life was dead.  She said, “Sign up for a modeling class.”  This was back in the fifties and I knew there were better ways to spark up my night life than learning to walk with a book on my head.

 

My mother was telling me how she got my father back in the early thirties.  My father was a workaholic who played golf every day. He left before I woke up and came home after I was in bed.  I was certainly NOT going to toddle with a book on my head for THAT kind of relationship.  I opted to sample everything out there and keep my relationships brief and interesting.

 

NOW I am 79 years old, and my goals for romance have changed because I have changed.  These days, I look for someone with a fat wallet and a full head of hair.  So don’t ask ME for advice on how to find a lover…I would tell you to shop for survivors at funerals.

 

If you want the right answers to help you solve the challenges you face in life, ask someone your age.  They have been where you are and they will tell you what they did to make it all work.  If you want a glimpse into the past so you can see how lucky you are to be living in today’s world, ask us, but for heaven’s sake don’t do what we say.  It’s not that we’re stupid…just out of date.

 

By now, most people in the Bay Area theatre community are aware that The Willows Theatre Company, after a run of 35 years, is out of business.  The Willows Board filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on August 16.

Cast members of The Willows latest (and last) production, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, were notified on August 13 that the final week of the show, August 15-18, had been cancelled.  Cast members reported receiving a phone call giving them thirty minutes to remove their belongings from the theatre in Concord.

I am, that is, I was the publicist for The Willows, on and off, from 2004 until the sudden closing two weeks ago.  The first I heard of the shut-down was when I read Lisa White’s Contra Costa Times online article, “It’s Curtains for the Willows Theatre,” on Monday afternoon, August 13.  Thank God for Google Alerts.

Many people knew that The Willows was on shaky financial ground, but what theatre isn’t?  The Willows had been through serious money problems before, closing its 210-seat Concord mainstage in 2009 and moving everything to its second space, the 150-seat Campbell Theatre in Martinez.  A new artistic/managing director team took over in 2010 and reopened the Concord stage in 2011.  The shows, as they say, went on – in both venues.

And then the lights went out.

How could this have happened?  Potential culprits abound: declining and ageing audiences, hard economic times, misjudging audience preferences, cannibalizing the same base of supporters with two theatres, fiscal mismanagement and overspending, corporate funding drying up, lukewarm community support, a board beset by too many problems coming at them too fast, perhaps even a publicist who couldn’t build a case for 9 to 5, the musical version of a 1980s Dolly Parton film – you can choose any or all of them all of them.

It’s probably too early for the autopsy, but in my view, at least right now, the demise of The Willows was caused by a series of Big Ideas that proved to be unsustainable.

“A Brief History of the Willows Theatre,” which appeared in each printed program for many years, recounts that “in the spring of 1977, Theatre Concord, a program of the City of Concord, began producing plays and musicals in the new Willows Theatre.  Nine years later, Theatre Concord became CitiArts Theatre, the first company in Contra Costa County to operate under a seasonal contract with Actors Equity Association.  In 1994 CitiArts Theatre became an operation of The Benefactors, a non-profit corporation organized in 1974 to support quality live theatre in Concord, and the company is now known as The Willows Theatre Company.”  In later years, The Willows estimated that it served over 70,000 patrons annually.

The Willows was dedicated to developing and producing “contemporary American plays and musicals,” although it extended its reach to include works originating in the U.K., as well.  It was, therefore, a real stretch for them to stage Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the only non-US/UK show in their history.

As for Shakespeare, records indicate a production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1987. Former artistic director Richard Elliott once told me, “there are enough companies in the Bay Area doing Shakespeare.  We leave the Bard to them.”

The Willows’ stated mission was to “strive to perpetuate the art form of live theatre by creating relationships with playwrights, designers, actors, students and other theatre artists whose work will impact current and future audiences.”

The next part of the mission hints at why the Willows’ demise hurts the theatre community: “We provide a valuable opportunity for first employment for many developing theatre artists.”  In addition, since the Willows was an Equity house, many actors over the years were able to work their way toward their Equity card by performing there.

My wife and I became Willows subscribers in 1994, not long after moving to Clayton.  The Willows was, in essence, our local theatre, and we found the shows well cast, well directed, and quite simply, fun.  For my money, four or five of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen were at The Willows, thanks to excellent casts and direction by Andy Holtz (Cabaret), Richard Elliott (On Golden Pond), Jon Marshall (Avenue Q), and Eric Inman (Chicago).

In our early subscriber days, my wife and I volunteered at the theatre. I read through stacks of unsolicited manuscripts, looking for the next blockbuster in the rough.  Kathy organized the mailing lists, using floppy disks that Rich or Andy would drop off at the house.  That was the state of technology then: no email, no Zip files, and disks that were truly “floppy.”

In 2004, after I’d started Rising Moon, Andy Holtz, the managing director, and Rich Elliott, the artistic director, contracted with me to do publicity for the revival of the theatre’s outdoor musical, John Muir’s Mountain Days, at the amphitheater in Martinez.  I was asked to stay on to publicize the next show, the musical version of The Night of the Hunter.  Both were stretches for a small East Bay theater – Mountain Days was a huge undertaking, with more than 50 in the cast, along with a team of horses. Hunter was based on the very creepy film that starred Robert Mitchum as an itinerant preacher who menaced two children and killed their mother. It’s the movie where Mitchum has the words “Love” and “Hate” tattooed on his fingers – hardly a show for the Hello, Dolly! Crowd, but it showed The Willows wasn’t afraid to take chances on a show that its Los Angeles producer was planning to take to New York.

In 2008, I was again contracted to do publicity for The Willows.  By this time, Andy Holtz had left for the Arizona Theatre Company in Tucson, and I worked with Rich Elliott and general manager Chris Marshall, the lady who wore a dozen hats and held the place together.  I was there from Brighton Beach Memoirs and Pageant, to the closing of the Concord theater in 2009, the restructuring under David Faustina and Eric Inman, the reopening of the mainstage in 2010…to what would be the last shows, Vaudeville at the Campbell and A Doll’s House at the original Willows Theatre.

So, The Willows is gone, joining the now defunct American Musical Theatre of San Jose, which died in 2008.  SF Chronicle critic Robert Hurwitt points out that, “a few years earlier AMTSJ had more subscribers than either A.C.T. or Berkeley Rep.” More recently, we’ve seen the departure of the Hapgood in Antioch, Arclight in San Jose, and Woman’s Will in Berkeley.

For many theatre companies, survival is day-to-day, show-to-show.  As one artistic director I know told me, “you’re only one flop away from closing the doors.”

Why did The Willows close?  Earlier, I listed a series of “culprits” that might have led to its going under, and to varying degrees, they are all probably to blame.  But I see the major problem as more than just running out of money.  That’s a symptom, not the cause.  In my opinion, The Willows went under because it was too ambitious, perhaps even too creative, and certainly too willing to follow a Big Idea.

The first Big Idea was getting a theater space of its own.  The Willows had for years been leasing its space in Concord’s Willows Shopping Center and grew tired of paying rent, along with all the associated issues renters face.  (Side note:  one positive for a theatre in a suburban shopping center – it solves the parking problem.)  As early as 2006, they were negotiating to move to the YMCA building in Danville.  While that idea remained on the back burner, Willows management looked north to Martinez and made plans to convert the old train station into a theatre, a plan that at the time found favor with the city of Martinez.  The Willows got as far as hiring an architect, developing blueprints and renderings, and starting a fundraising drive.  Why Martinez?  Rich Elliott and Andy Holtz lived there, liked the town, and thought it –and the train station – would be the ideal place for a theatre.

After the train station idea stalled, the Big Idea focused on another location – an unused auto parts warehouse on Ward Street. Thus, the Campbell Theatre came to be, thanks to a raft of donors led by the very generous Campbell family.

Every successful theatre has (or should have) a guaranteed moneymaker, a “Christmas Carol,” a “Nutcracker,” a “Sound of Music.”  Or an “Annie,“  the show that guarantees that every parent, grandparent, aunt, and uncle of the kids in the cast will buy tickets – and twice that number if you double-cast.

For The Willows, it was the Nunsense series, seven slapstick musicals by Dan Goggins (Nunsense, Nunsense Jamboree, Mushuga-Nuns, etc.) featuring five loony nuns. Ending the season with a Nunsense show pretty much paid for the rest of the year.  Nunsense became part of the Big Idea – the original proposal for the Campbell Theatre was for it to showcase nothing but Nunsense, year ‘round.  It would make money.

The all-Nunsense idea was soon abandoned, but the cabaret concept at the Campbell remained.  Was Martinez the right town for it?  Would Willows’ subscribers attend both theatres?  Or would the finite audience pie be divided in two?  Would a cabaret concept have to be marketed differently than a standard theatre?

As the theatre’s fortunes spiraled downward in 2009, the board and management decided the only way to save the company was to close one of the theatres – they chose to shutter the mainstage and move everything to the Campbell.

This turned out not to be a solution.  By 2010, a new management team was in place, led by managing director David Faustina and artistic director Eric Inman.  They saw that the only hope for sustaining the company was to return to Concord and reopen the theatre there, where the bulk of their patrons were.  Which they did, thanks to a fundraising campaign and a lot of volunteer hours, along with a big boost from the local IBEW, who donated the rewiring of the entire mainstage venue.

But for many reasons associated with the city of Martinez, the company wasn’t able to leave the Campbell behind; it had to sustain both theatres.  The Campbell was starting to find its audience, but it was too late.  What began as a Big Idea ended as Too Big a Task.

Another Big Idea was the amphitheater in Martinez, which was planned to be home to a whole series of outdoor historical musical dramas.  John Muir’s Mountain Days was only the first, and at first it was extremely successful.  It attracted a large audience when first staged at the amphitheater in 2005, but it was very expensive to produce.

Nevertheless, plans took shape under Andy and Rich for a series of seven musicals that would play in repertory at the amphitheater.  The next was Sacajawea, the tale of the Lewis and Clark expedition centering on the Native American woman who was their guide.  The book and lyrics for Sacajawea were by New York playwright  Mary Bracken Phillips, with music by San Jose native Craig Bohmler, the same team who had done Mountain Days.  Sacajawea was staged in 2008, but at the Alhambra Arts Center in Martinez, because the amphitheater was in disrepair.

The next in the amphitheater series was to be about the “Big Four,” the industrial barons (Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins) who brought the railroads to California.  However, the script for it and the other four shows in the series was never commissioned.  The amphitheater remained, however, as a continuing burden.  The upkeep was too much for the Willows, and the city of Martinez shied away from pumping municipal funds into the venue.  Another Big Idea foundered.  In retrospect, the historical drama project would have needed a Disney Corporation to make it work.

A third Big Idea is banking on a show to be a hit, or even artistic triumph that will lift the company to new heights and at least break even…and then seeing the show fail.  The Willows suffered its share of “one flop away from closing” events. The Kentucky Cycle, a two-part, six-hour production asked the audience to come to the theatre twice to see the story work out.  It was a wonderful piece, but it asked too much of its audience.  On another level, there was the afore-mentioned 9 to 5: the Musical – Dolly Parton brought no cachet.  Neither did two other musicals based on movies, The Night of the Hunter and The Wedding Singer.

Ironically, two weeks before The Willows closed, it was named one of the “Best Theatre Companies in the East Bay” by critic Charles Kruger in the Examiner.com and the CBS-5 web site. Kruger placed it in the company with Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, Aurora Theatre, and Central Works. Indeed, The Willows has, over the years, won more than its share of Drama-logue, Shellie, and Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle awards.

Kruger praised the theatre for “specializing in the great American tradition of the Broadway musical…delivering the old razzle dazzle with grace and style, presenting both classics and new musicals…constantly trying to take theatre to the next level.”

But it’s difficult, if not impossible, to rise to a new level when you’re tied to three very disparate venues – a proscenium house, a cabaret, and an outdoor amphitheater – at a time when the political and economic cards are stacked against you.

It will be interesting to see what rises from the ashes of The Willows…which shards will be reassembled, and by whom.

Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, I am only here to tell the tale from my perspective.  Others with deeper experience on the voyage of the good ship Willows are welcome to add their comments, corrections, and insights. – GC

Contact: Gary Carr, (925) 672-8717, carrpool@pacbell.net.  Learn more about Rising Moon Marketing & Public Relations at www.risingmoonarts.com.

Dreama Walker as Becky being questioned by Sandra and Marti.

COMPLIANCE,   film based on true events, written and directed by Craig Sobel, starring Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Philip Ettinger, and Pat Healy.

                                                             UNSPEAKABLE ACTS

                                                            By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith 

The shocking, cringe-worthy film, “Compliance,” has the look of a cinema verité documentary.  It takes place during winter in a small-town strip-mall fast-food restaurant with problems of spoiled food due to employee negligence and an illness related short-staff.  Sandra (Ann Dowd), the manager, a stressed-out, heavy-set, middle-age woman, gets a phone call from a man saying that he’s Police Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) who unfortunately can’t take the time to go out there in person because he’s very busy.  He tells her that one of her customer’s complained that an employee, Becky (Dreama Walker), stole money out of her purse an hour ago; she’s with Daniels now along with Sandra’s boss, the franchise owner.  The mostly young staff is on edge as it is; Sandra has warned them that a company “secret shopper” is coming in to rate the place.

When Daniels asks Sandra to take Becky into the break room and search her purse, you know something is not kosher.  From merely rummaging through her purse, the search escalates incrementally, orchestrated by Daniels as the rest of the oblivious staff out front continues serving the steady stream of hungry customers.  He cows and intimidates Sandra, flatters her so that she’ll do anything he asks.  A foreshadowing scene occurs early in the film between Sandra and Becky so that when she takes his side, even referring to Becky as a thief, it rings true.  The cook, Kevin (Philip Ettinger) and a grizzled supplier (Matt Servitto) are the only ones who aren’t fooled.  Sensing things are not right, they make phone calls.

The fact that the entire film is based on telephone dialogue neither constricts nor undermines the suspense and pace.  Plus, the camera breaks it up with shots of customers chowing down in booths; rusted, greasy equipment, dirty dishwater, piles of discarded cartons and wrappers (Chef Ramsey would be appalled), and a parking lot rimmed with melting snow-drifts.  Soon scene will segue to a bland-looking, early fortyish man in sweater and slacks, sitting in front of a littered desk, or making a sandwich, with a phone to his ear.

Daniels threatens Becky with jail-time and fabricates drug deals, implicating her.  Confused, she denies everything, protests his demands, and insists that she’s innocent. He tells her frequently to calm down and insists that she address him as “sir” or “officer.”  He ensures that there is only one person at a time in the room with her. Becky, who now sits naked, covered only by an apron, ends up allowing Sandra, her assistant, Marti (Ashley Atkinson), as well as Sandra’s balding, sheepish, beer-drinking fiancé, Van (Bill Camp), to carry out Daniels’ phone directed, step-by step searches tantamount to those perpetrated on prisoners suspected of concealing contraband in bodily orifices.  Daniels rewards Van for conducting the most egregious search with a sex act by Becky. 

            You ask yourself why Sandra and the others allowed this to happen.  People are conditioned through religion, education, and government to obey the law and not to question authority.  The man spoke convincingly, repeatedly stating that he was an officer of the law, asking, “Don’t you want to do the right thing?” “Help me out here,” and “The sooner you do this, the sooner it’ll all be over,” interspersed with threats.  Also, he had done his homework on these people, knew their weaknesses and used the information to his advantage.

 Can we use the message of the film to explain how tyrannical, imperialistic governments gain control of its citizens?  How 100s of thousands of people are coerced into leaving their homes and boarding freight cars that will take them to their deaths?  How millions of innocent people are driven from their lands, herded into reservations, or concentration camps as were Japanese citizens in California?  Can it explain the exploitation of women?  Minorities?  The undocumented, and so on? 

Though this cringe-inducing film takes place in the restaurant, mostly in the back room, it is not claustrophobic.  The acting feels natural, you sense that these are real, hardworking people asked to carry out unspeakable acts on an innocent person.

 

COME TO THE MASQUERADE

By Lynn Ruth Miller

People are so busy dreaming the American dream,

Fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be,

that they’re all asleep at the switch.

Florence King

Back in the dark ages when I was a child, I wanted to be a fairy princess.  I wanted to sprinkle everyone I met with fairy dust and create a golden paradise.  As I grew older, I wanted to become a beautiful dancer, a brilliant student, a sugar plum.

 

Little boys had fiercer dreams.  They wanted to be cowboys and bare-chested Indians with feathers trailing down their backs.  They wanted to shoot guns, kick puppies and punch each other. That was what little boys were supposed to do.

 

Those were the days when we all believed our streets were paved with gold and hard work could earn you a rainbow. We believed love and marriage was a right.  Every future needed lots of babies, a cute puppy and two cars in every garage.   That was the American way.

 

Attitudes have certainly changed, haven’t they?  These days, little girls want to be witches, vampires and black swans; little boys dream about pirates and fierce aliens. No one believes in miracles or magic.  We want power, money and lots of bling.

 

Little girls realize that to sprinkle themselves with fairy dust reduces them to sex objects.    Little boys know that muscles only get them jealous looks at the gym.  Healthy bank accounts, gas guzzling cars and a hot tattoo are in.  After all,  Galahads can’t pay the mortgage; and maidens don’t want to be saved.  It demeans them.

 

When you visit America, what do you see?  You see overweight human beings guzzling MacDonald’s hamburgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken while they listen to music on their I-pods, texting on their cell phones. You see huge shopping centers, clogged streets and no children playing on the streets. We put our children on school buses and worry that they will be kidnapped if they walk home from school. And no wonder.  2,185 children disappear every day in this country.

 

Americans awake before dawn to drive on packed freeways for hours to a job that pays too little and demands too much.  They battle traffic jams to get home too late to say good night to their children, turn on TV with a beer in one hand and a remote in the other. There is no time to admire the daisy that bloomed in the garden or the pink dragon their child made in school.  I see women dropping off their children at day care so they can go to an office, work until five, pick up the children, do the grocery shopping, clean the house and make dinner with no time to enjoy the money they have earned or get to know the children they have created. I see families buying gadgets they don’t need, wearing clothes that turn them into carbon copies of everyone else and I wonder if they know what they are missing.

 

There is a lot of good in the American way, of course.  I love that women have choices and men do the dishes. I love that, in California at least, you can be gay or straight, black, white or yellow and still have a shot at grabbing the gold ring.  I love that little girls play football and little boys are allowed to cry.

 

Not long ago, I was visiting a family in Edinburgh and when I opened the front door, their little girl was sitting in the hall singing to her dolls.  The first thing that occurred to me as I watched that child so wrapped up in her fantasy she didn’t know anyone else existed, was ”This could never happen in America.”

 

Just last month, I lost my way on a Brighton street and a woman I did not know walked me several blocks to my destination.  If you are lost in my town, it is your bad luck..  People here have deadlines.  They do not have time for compassion.

 

I wonder if California dreaming is fun anymore.  We make headlines every day. You can’t beat us for glitter, but something awful has happened to the gold.

 

We must stop talking about the American dream

And start listening to the dreams of Americans.

Max Beerbohm