Hamnet--don't miss it

 

Way back when--in the years I was a graduate student--I took a class titled simply "Shakespeare" from a middle-aged prof who I thought, as did others, to be an expert on the Bard. He was, for certain, an apologist, very much in love with Will Shakespeare with an intensity that made every class period bountifully dramatic in and of itself.

What made Prof. Doebler particularly effective was his knowledge of the era--the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras of the English Renaissance--a culturally rich time in English history when the theaters were full and not just the province of society's elite. I remember him going on and on about how ordinary people, including the lower class, were entertained by staged productions, Macbeth being seen by loads of people right off the street. 

When he'd talk about the Globe Theater, Shakespeare's own stage sounded like something akin to a World Cup soccer stadium offering a game between, say, Spain and Brazil, a madhouse. It wasn't difficult to get a reading on how the show was going over. The teeming audience made sure you knew.

I thought of Prof Doebler during the last scene of Hamnet, the very popular movie now available on Netflix. You have to see it. It's riveting, beautifully shot and wonderfully assembled with just enough mystery to keep you attuned. Honestly, I can't say enough about it. It's just must-see.

That last scene lingers for a long, long time. Shakespeare's estranged wife has come to London for seemingly the first time and becomes one of the common people who are given the floor of the Globe to stand and watch the production, which happens to be a new play by her husband, a brand-new show titled Hamlet. 

What director Chloé Zhao does in that long scene is bring her audience ring brand new meaning from the most treasured soliloquy in all of Shakespeare and tie it into a story of loss and sadness in a way that gives all new meaning to "to be or not to be." How she orchestrates that long, final scene is just plain brilliant, unforgettable. 

Hamnet is, first of all, a story about unfathomable grief--anytime, anyplace. It's about losing a child, period.  It shakes the disbelief out of you by putting Agnes (Jesse Buckley) and her overwhelming sadness on the screen so succinctly that, even if you'd rather not experience the suffering Agnes does, you're powerless to turn away. 

But Hamnet is also about art, about what art can do for us, for all of us. "The play's the thing" in a fashion I'd never seen before, or experienced. What Zhao does in this movie is bewitchery, beautiful bewitchery; she determinedly rings brand new meaning--and redemptive meaning--out of a few words the whole world knows. Something deep as real human anguish gains a step toward healing when Agnes, amidst society's rabble, hears words her husband's most famous utterance convey to all right there in the madhouse theater.   

Hamnet streams right now on Netflix. It's marvelous, plain marvelous. Prof. Doebler would love it, I'm sure, as do his old students. 

Me and guns and Joni Ernst

 

One of the most read posts in the long history of Stuff is this one--2700 readers, eight years old.

I once shot a goose from the back of a motor scooter. Seriously, I did. I wasn't trying to show off, never guessed I'd hit it. We were riding along the Lake Michigan shoreline, putt-puttin' on the wet sand, late October probably, when a lone goose came by. My double-barrel, 16-gauge was loaded, so I aimed--sort of--let loose, and down came the goose. 

I'm not making this up.

We hunted crows with a phonograph. This old friend of mine had a record with nothing on it but a gaggle of crows gaggling. All that racket from the turntable would haul in crows from hither and yon, we thought, and we'd shoot 'em. That was the plan. Didn't happen, but we had fun. 

I hunted pheasants and deer and once upon a time got woefully lost in a Kettle Moraine forest hunting ruffed grouse I never once laid eyes on.

A day or two after JFK was killed in Dallas, a friend and I walked in a woods just outside of town, lugging our shotguns, supposedly hunting rabbits. Didn't come home with a bunny, but the two of us, not yet 16, had a memorable conversation about state of the union, as did the whole country.

In my Wisconsin childhood, I spent more time with guns than I did eating cheese. I learned to love the lakeshore woods by following an neighbor who walked as carefully through those pines and hardwoods as some Kickapoo might have a hundred years before. He taught me to love trilliums and buttercups and jack-in-the-pulpits. I watched him shoot a possum that stumbled into his trap, the first time I'd ever seen an animal die.

I've got my own treasured past with guns. I understand the attachment. I do.

On Wednesday night, a commentator on Fox News told the host that when he was a boy, he had a .22; but he never, ever entertained thoughts of shooting anyone. He was as dismayed as the rest of us, as perplexed about a problem that worsens with every passing month--18 school shootings already this year, eight inside the walls. In Florida, thousands are mourning 17 students and teachers who are dead.

I know what that guy was talking about. I shot a goose from the back of a Cushman motor scooter, but it never entered my mind to turn that 16-gauge on anyone else. Never. 

But then, I never carried an AR-15 either. Couldn't have. Wouldn't have thought of it. 

If the President can blame Democrats for the deaths of people killed by undocumented immigrants, shouldn't he also tag Second Amendment Republicans for the deaths of seventeen people this week in Parkland, Florida?

And shouldn't Joni Ernst, the hog farmer from Iowa, return the three million dollars+ her campaign blissfully received from the NRA? Shouldn't John McCain give back the seven million? Shouldn't the President himself fork over the $21,000,000 he got from a group who idiotically argue that Nicolas Cruz, a broken, parent-less, misfit 19-year-old, should have the perfect right to own a combat weapon as much like my 16-gauge as that Cushman scooter was to a Sherman tank?

What is wrong with us?

_________________________

For the record, On February 14, 2018, a mass shooting occurred when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people. This post is dated February 18, 2018.  

Sunday Morning Meds--Transgressions (Psalm 32)

“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven. . .”

 Alice Munro’s Runaway, includes a story titled “Trespasses,” a word only slightly less archaic, perhaps, than “transgressions.”  In typical Munro-vian fashion, she weaves together several plot lines and a gallery of fully human characters who move relentlessly toward an end that is as foreordained as any ending she’s ever written.  In fact, the story begins with a tableau—four unidentified people performing some unspecified ritual late at night, on a river bank—a scene which is also the story’s own dramatic climax.  In the story’s first page and a half, Munro shows us where we’re going; then she spends the next half hour of reading time explaining how we got there.

Great stories defy summary, so I’m on dangerous ground, but I’ll try anyway.  Lauren, an eleven or twelve year-old “only child,” meets Kate, who works at the restaurant where kids her age stop after school.  When Kate shows Lauren a ton of attention, singling her out from her friends, readers can’t help becoming fearful.  Slowly, the truth emerges:  Kate has spent some significant time finding Lauren, a child she believes to be her own, a child she once gave up for adoption. 

 But Lauren—still very much a child—knows a story Kate doesn’t because once upon a time she stumbled on a vial her father quietly explained held the ashes of her sister, a baby who was killed just before Lauren was born.  He warns her, however, never to bring up the story in front of her mother, who cannot bear any reminder of the accident which took the baby’s life.  That baby’s name was Lauren.

When Kate threatens to open up the whole story, something must be done.  Soon, the story of the accident emerges, a story which began in a fight about abortion because Lauren’s father wasn’t interested in another child.  Lauren’s mother took off in the car, an accident ensued, and the baby—the adopted child Kate had given up—was killed because she wasn’t fastened into the seat.

The story is rife with pain—her father’s, for not wanting Lauren; her mother’s, for her inattention; and Kate’s, for once, long ago, giving her child away. 

 So one night, in an attempt to find what people call today “closure,” the four major characters of “Trespasses” head out to the spot of the accident, repeat some lines from the Lord’s Prayer, and leave behind the baby’s remains.

 That’s not the end of the story, however.  In some ways, the denouement is even more horrifying because Lauren, the only child, is left carrying the greatest burden of all, the child of a marriage that has been bleeding grief ever since she was born.  Her parents are distanced, from each other and from her.  The only adult who’d ever shown her any love, Kate, now leaves, having rejected Lauren once she discovered the child wasn’t hers.

Munro doesn’t trumpet closure for the adults of this story; we really don’t know whether or not they’ll ever find the peace they’ve never felt.  What we know, however, is that this second Lauren will wear forever the livery of her parents’ trespasses. 

 It’s a story that reminds me of the great Old Testament curse of sin, that it will live for generations—“punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

 The Blessedness with which Psalm 32 begins is created by that most marvelous of nouns—forgiveness.  But forgiveness really can’t be appreciated with anything less than a full-bodied understanding of sin, our sin.  The miracle of our forgiveness works only when our sin is wholly acknowledged.

 The miracle of forgiveness—and it is a miracle—is experienced only when we know our sin.

Which is to say, those who know real forgiveness once knew, for real, their sin.

". . .and for Governor. . ."

 

It's not easy to pinpoint the specific feature that does it, but there's no dispute that something in Rob Sand's very countenance creates the impression that he should be running for student council--not yet, at least, for Iowa governor. 

Maybe it's the slightly jug-ish ears or the long neck. His clean-shaven face makes you wonder whether or not he could grow a beard at all. His clear blue eyes convey an innocence that suggests boyhood too. The fact that there ain't a bit of silver in the mop of hair that flops, kid-like, over his forehead makes you wonder how it is that a kid like the guy up front could be serious about running for Gov. 

Whatever combo of factors create it, his kid-dish looks are remarkable to just about everyone in the room, so remarkable, in fact, that he uses his shockingly youthful appearance, uses it himself when his campaign speech does a little winsome self-abasement. "How can someone with this face be a rotten politician?" He didn't say it exactly that way last night at a campaign stop in Sioux Center, but he gets a laugh when he says something similar.

Rob Sand is an interesting guy, a resident and native of the northeast corner of the state, a Luther College grad, a Dem who loves to hunt and fish (and is unafraid of saying it). He's the only Democrat to hold elective office in the state and has been, or so I'm told, a fierce critic of politicians who have a penchant for spending the public's money.

At times, he seems to want to project his innocence. He held forth last night, took questions from an audience that may have been entirely Sioux County residents, but wasn't all Dems, and throughout the evening spread lots of good cheer without being silly or childish. He accounted himself well and likely secured at least a few more votes from a corner of the state where the Democratic party regulars, people say, used to meet in a phone booth. 

Amazingly, his stump speech never once mentioned the word "Trump," despite the fact that he could have held our President over an open fire.  He never used the word "president" either, not because he has sympathy for our commander-in-chief, but because the heart of his appeal is his assault on a two-party politics that makes Iowa neighbors into enemies. He says if he gets elected, he'll work on making Thanksgiving a joy again (people chuckle--they know what he means!)

He was impressive, very impressive. That he can take Sioux County, however, is a real stretch, about as likely as a July blizzard. What works against him here, of course, is not his almost shocking youthfulness or his take on any of the most pressing political issues, but a long and deep conviction in lots of Sioux County hearts that voting Democratic is abomination, a sin, and no matter what Rob Sand says about the horrors of the two-party system, he's a Dem.

Last night in the Sioux Center library, I thought he was terrific.

When I can't seem to learn

I don't know exactly what the little machine looked like. What I do remember is that its sole purpose in your life or mine was to facilitate this new thing that tons of people had begun to use--e-mail, or electronic mail. That was its sole purpose. It was fashioned to resemble a work desk. The idea was that it would sit on an ordinary desk without getting in the way of other work. All it was meant to do was make the process of emailing easier than it was when it was only one function of a desktop computer. 

We're talking two decades ago here, I'm thinking, although I won't swear by the numbers. What I remember best is that it seemed perfect for my dad, who'd spent most all of his working years in offices. He knew his way around numbers and letters, but this whole computer-thing was sweeping its way into his life without being formally introduced.

I bought the little machine--it wasn't terribly expensive. I figured on a trip home I'd introduce it into the spare bedroom we'd sleep in and he used as an office when no one was using the spare bed. That was the purpose of the cute little email-er--make the processes of the new digital world a little less intimidating.

So the two of us went at it, sitting there at his desk. "Watch the words you type run across the screen here, Dad," I told him. His son was no expert, but this cute little machine was a great little foray into the tech world.

"Now hit 'Return,'" I said, maybe two dozen times. I don't think he was quite 80 years old at the time, about my age maybe. 

A thriving classroom requires a two-way street, equal doses of clear exposition and a willingness to learn. Dad was increasingly impossible. It seemed to me that he wasn't paying close attention. Nothing I said would go in. I was a teacher, for pity's sake. I knew how to find a way into a student's brain. This email thing?--there was no way he couldn't learn. 

My frustration level went through the roof, made me ever-increasingly angry. "Hit return, his return." I tried not to show it, but that frustration piled up like a bank of snow I hadn't seen coming. I'd never begun to imagine that with the help of this little electronic wonder, Dad couldn't learn a ridiculously easy task: to send us emails. Sheesh! Piece of cake or what?

I don't remember ever getting an email from him. That cute little machine got dumped, I'm sure. I don't believe he ever used it.

A few years later, Dad died. On our last visit, I stayed at his hospital bedside for a couple of days while he walked very much alone down a well-trodden path. When he died, his doctor left us a card expressing his sympathy and listing four or five causes for Dad's having passed away; one of those causes was a surprise--"Alzheimer's." 

That was news.

Our TV is just a few years old, our old TV set got soaked in the flood. This new one is a smart TV, I'm told, but it insists on showing us a donut that circles and circles and circles some more. We're trying to understand what a "cache" is and how to live with it, but it ain't easy to learn when you're approaching 80 years.

Ain't at all easy, I know.   

Rigged?

 

The red card this man from the U.S. World Cup soccer team was given regularly carries with it a one-game suspension for whatever foul play triggered the sentence. This man, U.S. forward Folarin Balogun, was sentenced to sit out the next US game by the long established rules. Balogun had scored three goals and is acknowledged to be one of the mainstays of the American team. The U,S., without him, would clearly miss him and be playing at less than optimum strength.

Apparently, the President of these United States heard about the sentence (quite controversial, I'm told) and apparently decided to do something about it. He called the  FIFA president Gianni Infantino. 

Then something very unusual happened. Suddenly--and largely without notice or documentation--that suspension was lifted, and the U. S. team will operate at full strength when it faces Belgium today.

Highly controversial, I'm told, although there is a possibility that the President's call to the Commish had nothing to do with the Balogun suspension. The world--and me too!-- may simply have fallen to a classic logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc, "after the fact therefore because of the fact."

All of which might well be easy to believe if it weren't for the fact that the President of the United States is far too capable of the kind of shenanigans behind the highly unusual resolution to the problem. And, of course, the crooked story does nothing for the reputation of the U. S.  of A. As the Pres himself likes to say: "it was rigged."

The truth? Who knows? The smell, however, is altogether too familiar. 

And don't look for the stink to drift away by game time tonight. 

_______________________________

Oops. Forgot to hit "Publish" yesterday. The U. S. lost last night, ending what had become a wildly sweet story AND defusing the problem our President had struck up by butting into the business of the World Cup. Losing is far worse than it's cracked up to be, and last night's game was a case in point. Wasn't fun, watching. I'm sure it was even less fun there. No one wants to lose.

But if you look hard enough for a silver lining, there's at least one. Trump didn't triumph. Had Folarin Balogun played a great game, had he led USA team to a glorious victory, the win would not have gone down well with the rest of the world. It would be forever smudged by the President's deliberate and very public intervention. It would have stunk.

But he didn't, and the team looked like the team that should have lost, Belgium's superior strengths so vividly on display. And, thus, the President's leaning on the commissioner became, at worst, a footnote. And that's a blessing.

So while no one would choose to end the US's Cinderella story in this year's World Cup, at least we can say that Trump can't claim the trophy.

Independence Day iii

 

He found the captain sitting at his desk, a map before him, roast pork still steaming on the plate to his left. The door was open to the warmth of that July morning. Johannes knocked.

"Yes?" The captain turned in his swivel chair and looked over his shoulder. "What is it?"

"Captain, my people would like to sing. Would it--"

The captain looked up at him blankly.

"Psalms," Johannes told him. "We would like to sing the psalms."

"Psalms!" the man repeated, puzzled. He unbuttoned the top buttons of his coat. Johannes waited. "The psalms, you'd like to sing?" He wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. "But today is the Fourth of July. No one I know sings Psalms today--in church, yes. Maybe Christmas, you know, or Easter--but on the Fourth? You don't know other songs?" He leaned back, smiling as if the thought was absurdity.

Johannes shrugged. "We would like to sing the psalms."

The captain pushed aside his plate as if he was finished eating. "All of them?" he asked.

"Surely not. Just maybe some?" It felt to him like a good idea, like something they should do. "We would be happy like the rest. When we sing the Psalms, we can be happy. We can celebrate too."

The captain raised his fist to his lips and burped, not loud, then stood and put his hands in his pockets. He walked to the doorway, past Johannes, and surveyed his deck. Most of the crew and many of the emigrants, the passengers, were still eating. He stood a head taller than Johannes, his thick black hair falling nearly to his collar. "That would be good maybe--I don't know," he said, as if addressing them all. "If it would make you happy--all the Hollanders--then go ahead and sing the Psalms." The captain turned to look at him. "Some of them, eh?" And giggled. "Not all."

"It would make us happy," Johannes told him.

"Then go ahead and do it." He smiled as if the whole idea was an odd joke the two of them had shared. "It's not what Americans do, you know," he said. "This psalm-singing on the Fourth of July, but you say it will make you happy? Then it's a good thing--a good, good thing."

The shooting continued later until the ammunition was spent, but the emigrants, adding their own bit of celebration and their own vision of independence, raised their voices in Psalm 68, one of their favorites, Johannes as voorzanger.

Let God be praised with reverence deep;
He daily comes our lives to steep
In bounties freely given.

The captain strolled over, shaking his head, his hands clasped behind his back. The crew, nearly exhausted from all the celebration, listened and laughed, then smiled. Some Germans joined in, their own language harmonizing with the Dutch.

God cares for us, our God is He:
Who would not fear His majesty
In earth as well as heaven?
Our God upholds us in the strife;
to us He grants eternal life,
And saves from desolation.

They never felt exactly like they did--the psalms they sang, the notes moving along faster than normal. He had only to determine pitch, for his people moved independently at a pace too strong and joyous to be tempered by the voorzanger. The captain was right, of course. It's not what the Americans did, but until his people did it--sang the psalms on the deck of a ship going across the ocean--they hadn't either.

He heard the needy when they cry,
He saves their souls when death draws night,
This God is our salvation.

Beneath them, the ship moved almost silently beneath them through calmed seas once again, pressing ever closer to the Newfoundland banks.