A Tale of Two Twenty-Threes

It was the most generous of times in my hometown, it was the most self-serving of times in my other hometown.

In my birthplace, Northeastern Ohio, LeBron James announced that he and his foundation would fund college scholarships, in the amount of $41 million, for aspiring students who had completed his academic development program.
LeBron James, the four-time NBA MVP and two-time NBA champion, is ready to give thousands of children a college education.

The LeBron James Family Foundation and the University of Akron will fund full scholarships for students who complete the foundation’s academic program, which James has been sponsoring for five years.

Forbes, 8/16/15

In my chosen hometown of Chicago, a fading basketball hero, Michael Jordan, who no longer lives here, is suing a defunct supermarket chain for $10 million for using his name and "brand" without his permission.

The ex-Bull could testify as soon as Monday to explain why he meticulously guards his image.

Sports agent David Falk testified Friday that Jordan never enters into small, one-time deals because they weaken his value. He said Jordan prefers long-term mega contracts, like the one with Nike.

He likened Jordan to the Hope Diamond, saying it's so valuable because it's so rare and never cut into pieces.

Chicago Tribune, 8/17/15

As a long-term resident of Chicago, I often query my friends who have lived here all their lives, and ask them why they don't expect more from their community, their leaders, and their lives.  Why it stays the same, and no one pushes back.  The city is awash in corruption, and similar corruption has bankrupted the county and state as well--and they still vote for the same leaders.  They shrug their shoulders and say, "It's Daley's/Madigan's/Jesse Jackson's fault" and "It's the same everywhere."

Then there's the problem (and yes, I consider it MY problem up here on the north side) of the continuing death and violence on the south and west sides.  At a party recently, I posed the comparison of a city like Chicago, which has about 3 million residents and about 500 murders per year with a city like New York, which has 8 million residents and about 250 murders per year.  I think that this statistical comparison speaks volumes about an end-stage social system that one ethological research, John Calhoun, has called "the behavioral sink".  She told me that I focused too much on the negative, and asked why I didn't focus on the positive that was happening in the city!  As if the Millennial Park concerts, City Dance, and bike lanes speak to ultimate quality of life for all in our city. *

I compare and contrast the two 23s, both African-American basketball superstars, both from teams in Rust Belt cities, to suggest that different communities do indeed have different cultures.  

Jordan thrilled the city from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s with his style of play under the brilliant leadership of Phil Jackson.  He, too, left this hometown for a shot at professional baseball, and then returned for the second of two NBA championship three-peats.  And most  certainly, Michael Jordan sponsored charity ventures during his tenure here.  

That being said, Jordan came to Chicago, became rich and famous and gave citizens something to take their minds off of the terrible mess the city was turning into.  When his star set, he left.  Now, as his agent says, Jordan remains interested in his Chicago legacy, primarily by continuing to protect his private wealth and brand.  The Hope Diamond is an excellent metaphor to highlight the way in which the Chicago sports star acts as the 1% in a town of the 99%, from which he is emotionally, socially, and geographically distanced.  

Cleveland has been an underdog city for the last half century.  I grew up in a privileged and thoughtfully and intentionally integrated suburb next to the city proper, and so had some relationship with the city, but not a huge stake in its wellbeing.  Recently the city has done the work of gutting its corrupt county government system and finding more common cause with the rest of the "Red State" that Ohio is; Ohio was one of the states that has expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, something that Republican presidential candidate John Kasich underscores in his campaign speeches.  They have built up their internal strengths in healthcare and become a service and innovation powerhouse in medicine and research.  

LeBron James became a Cleveland Cavalier out of an Akron high school and carried the city's hope for a championship for many years.  Yes, the Cleveland community was bruised and angry when LeBron James went to Miami to make his national star.  Yet, when he returned, he and the city settled into a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship.  He took them to the championship finals in 2015.  Apparently, he is capable of  thinking of himself nationally and internationally, but he acts locally.  He invests in bettering the citizens and quality of life in his community, just as he does in building and maintaining his brand.  Sure, he'll age out of the NBA at some time, but his contribution will continue to impact Northeastern Ohio in a way that a Jordan's statue in front of the United Center or a great set of Air Jordan Nike sneakers, will never benefit this home town of mine.

I am wondering if Chicagoans will read this and ask for their leaders to change, or to organize to vote them out; or if someone else will think to ask their sports leaders, like the Blackhawks, who are so good at bringing the Stanley Cup around to be touched and photographed in selfies, to double down and to commit to the city and its underprivileged and hardworking young adults going to college.  I know that some of the much less rich and famous Chicago Bulls do good work in the community now, but as the saying goes, "To whom much is given, much is required."

Can you imagine requiring more of Chicago leaders?

*On Thursday, August 13, 2015, Kristen McQueary, an editor at the Chicago Tribune, published an editorial whose premise was that Chicago needed a Hurricane Katrina to "reset" its corrupt and bankrupt system!  
(I can't make these things up.) 

I can't find the original, but she states what was in her "heart":
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-chicago-hurricane-katrina-column-20150814-column.html

I cite this as another example of how city leadership, including the press, is in such profound denial of its own responsibility to be involved in exposing corruption and in providing information about  change that it conjures a massive disaster to fix the system.  And I rest my case about Chicago's violence culture.  To McQueary, widespread death, as in almost 2000 human lives lost in Katrina, is  just the cost of doing business in a city like Chicago.  

Topical Tuesday--#thinkingsystems about violence in the family and society: Walter H. Smith, Jr., Ph.D. on Violence and Emotional Process in Family and Society

On July 19, 2013, the Center for Family Consultation gave a warm, no, make that a very warm, welcome to Pittsburgh-based, Bowen-trained psychologist Walter H. Smith, Jr., Ph.D., who returned to the summer conference to describe his approach to violence in families and society.  The hot Friday weather sparked memories of the last day he presented to the CFC during Chicago’s lethal heat wave of July 1995.  Fortunately, cooler temperatures prevailed so that he could engage us in a wide-ranging conversation about the primacy of the multigenerational emotional process as the subject of investigation in work around violence.

But he did not come to implicate any particular "hot triangles" in the emotional processes where family or social violence occurs or to promote generalizations.  Quite the contrary.  In the morning presentation on the conceptual frame regarding the problem of child abuse, he asked us to take off our Bowen-colored glasses and to sharpen our descriptive and definitional skills to receive and perceive each family as a specific instance of a unique family process; and not to see “triangles” or to talk about relationships without very clearly defining terms.  As did the scientist that Dr. Bowen was, he invited us to observe, describe, and hypothesize, and to use our consultation space as a laboratory to study, not help, the families that come to us explicitly seeking “help” for the “problem” of violence.  He asked us to see the people in the room, and not the problem.

For the overfunctioners among us who work in the everyday, individual-oriented, pathologizing and even interactionally-oriented clinical world, this is no small task.  Yet Dr. Smith continued to demonstrate and embody how he interacts with a group of others to deliver information without influencing (“Having an agenda with a family is a form of aggression”, influencing being an attempt to fuse).  Moreover, I observed how he stands (or sits) alongside the system to ask questions and to listen, without forgetting his own presence as a member of another unique family system.  As he taught, he regularly diagrammed the nuclear family in the traditional format.  He would add the person of the therapist in the lower left corner, emphasize the emotional process/family system aspect by drawing a circle around the family; and then add a large amoeba-like diagram of the multigenerational family (“into which new members are being born and within which members are always dying”) in the upper right hand corner.

I especially enjoyed his paradoxical style of presentation.  In his interaction with participants, I thought that he demonstrated how to join a system and defining self while doing so.  For example, when I posed a question about active and more indirect forms of violence in an overfunctioning-underfuntioning parental dyad, using the typical therapist locution, “So is what you’re saying is that….?”, he promptly replied, “No, I’m not saying that.”  I could have made a logical and evidentiary-oriented case for what I said being an apt summary of what he had indeed said; yet after some reflection, I got from his response the invitation to be a self, and to say that not as an echo or interpretation of his ideas, but as my own take on it.  He also addressed the role of the therapist as regards his/her own family of origin in sitting with families whose violence may be difficult to sit with.  He talked about a primary triangle in his family of origin, describing the relief of seeing the person (a parent) and not the problem (abuse) and how that orientation and shift in relationship helps the therapist avoid getting ensnared in trying to help or fix the problem in one’s own family or any family.

Take-Aways

Dr. Smith had so many interesting ideas and refreshing viewpoints that it is daunting to try to summarize, Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite take-aways, as I recall them and have framed them.

·       Relationship

o      Can be defined as a condition of emotional responsiveness between two people or people and things that is fairly automatic    A <-->B

o      Attachment is the time and energy you put into sustaining a relationship. (“If I live to stay away from you, am I more or less attached?”)

o      Cut-off is not a verb describing an action between two people, it’s a condition of relationship within a family emotional process

·       Marriage

o      Can be defined as an intense emotional partnership for survival for the process of building a family.

o      Bowen quote of the day:  “My wife may be right about me about what I do wrong, but it’s none of her business.”

·       Violence

o      Can be defined as the use of aggression to control someone or something else.

o      Is a universal risk among humans.

o      Exists on a continuum—mental/thinking-->indirect/withholding emotionally-->direct/expressing emotionally-->verbal/physical/mechanized (guns/drones) (my characterization of a continuum)

o      Is first in a sequence—As opposed to being “caused” by another, “First you become violent, then you find the victim/target”.  (Question:  Is this part of why, despite racial profiling, “stop and frisk” may reduce mortality? The activation/violence has already arisen, there are lethal means of aggression, and the target is being sought.)

o      Of many forms can potentially be dialed back by “bystander” programs (for parent maltreatment of children in public (“One Kind Word”), for peer bullying) because being a bystander does not exempt a person from being part of an ongoing process.

o      Occurs in families as the underfunctioning parent actively abuses and the overfunctioning parent adapts or becomes desensitized/unresponsive to the child being abused (thereby creating a secondary aggression through neglect/disengagement)

o      Is differentially experienced and interpreted depending on the quality of the ongoing relationship within which the abuse occurs

·       Consultant Presence and Awareness

o      Be more interested in the people than in the problems

o      Help more by helping less

o      Care more about families, feel less responsible for families

o      Have a hypothesis for every family

o      Make your office a laboratory

o      It’s a “workout” to figure out how to stay neutral enough

o      Part of staying neutral is being aware that you’re part of your own emotional unit

He Left Me Wanting More

I basically would like to learn more from Dr. Smith about two topics.  First, he talked about the new agency he is heading up, and how families have been empowered to do some shaping of their own service needs and goals.  I’d like to hear about what those are and how the clinicians and system are processing these requests.  Would you like to hear more on this subject?

Second, I am personally interested in societal violence, especially in urban Chicago.  In response to my question, Dr. Smith opened the door to some interesting views of how social policies (choosing interstate/cars/suburbs vs. trains/people/cities in the 1950s) left urban communities emptied out of vital resources and large homogenous populations experiencing being “cut off” from both larger socioeconomic heterogeneity and from their multigenerational family process.  That really made me think very hard about how the urban Chicago system has may be one of cutoffs that are both geographical and economic (haves and have nots), but maintains this situation at the risk of the overall health of the city populous as a whole. 

I want to close by including several paragraphs from a recent Charles Blow column (Barack and Trayvon, New York Times, July 19, 2013) on violence , gender, and race in society.  It resonated strongly with Dr. Smith’s presentation about violence generally and multigenerational cutoff in a broad spectrum of societal arenas:

·       There is no denying that an enormous amount of violence — both physical and psychological — is aimed at black men. That violence is both interracial and intraracial. Too many black men inflict that violence on one another, feeding a self-destructive cycle of victimization until hope is crushed to the ground and opportunity seems beyond the sky.

·       All of this must be considered when we speak of race, and those conversations cannot be a communion of the aggrieved. All parties must acknowledge and accept their role in the problems for us to solve them. Only when the burden of bias is shared —  only when we can empathize with the feelings of “the other” — can we move beyond injury to healing.

·       Yes, we should encourage young black men to value themselves and make better choices that reflect that value.

·       But we must also acknowledge that poverty is sticky and despair, dogged. The legacy effects of American oppression — which destroyed families, ingrained cultural violence, and denied generations of African-Americans the luxury of accruing and transferring intergenerational wealth — cannot simply be written off.  (emphasis mine)

I think that the last sentence speaks to how cut off (“oppression”) has contributed to violence against black males.  The process has worked, in part, both by interrupting the flow of the material wealth of families, as well as by the dehumanization of black males, and our clients who are “multiproblemed”, by seeing them as separate from their multigenerationally “wealthy” emotional systems that all humans are part of, and will ever be.  This is why I want to become more able to use Bowen theory to understand larger systems and to reconnect people to their multigenerational family wealth.

Yours in #thinkingsystems,

Rosalyn Chrenka, Ph.D.

@dr_rozonthego #thinkingsystems

© Rosalyn Chrenka 2013

Greetings from Blogota!

I am amidst my fourth day of eight in Colombia, and it has been a whirlwind of meeting Pete's friends Holanda Maria and Doris, and their families, and his friend the finder of the future Sra. Gallagher, Charlie. Charlie runs a hotel, Charlie´s Place, which boasts ¨Coffeehouse & Bagels¨ but he doesn't really have bagels...also introductions of Colombian women to men from Europe and the US.
The first three days were like a 72-hour triadic multi-date, as Pete would court Holanda Maria while touring me around (I'd get consigned to the front seat of the small taxis here so that the two could have together time while we would make our way around), and I was graciously invited to share the holiday with both women´s families. Pete met Doris a long time ago, and they are now friends (she is helping him with a business venture down here), so eventually, I sat myself in the back seat with Pete. This somehow upset his cosmology of the women in his life, but by age and friendship longevity, I gave myself priority. It´s not bad sitting up front (there are seatbelts), but I came here to visit Pete, and not to be in chaperone position in multiple emotional triangles. Oh, yes, Pete has asked me not to mention one woman to the other, so on days when we visited with both, that was something of a trick. What happens in Bogota....stays in theactivelistener blog! :´)
By about noon yesterday, I got tired of not being able to spend any 1:1 time touring or talking with Pete, and with him not showing much interest in what I might like to do. That being the case, when Holanda-Maria went to powder her nose for about 15 minutes. I told Pete that I wanted him to spend Sunday with me, because I came to visit him, not him and his girlfriends. I had already expressed to him, to these women and to their families, how pleased and honored that they had me over to their homes, and had brought nice gifts for each woman. He sputtered that ¨I'm trying to decide if I want to marry this woman.¨ I followed by saying that I was going to be here only a few more days, that I might have liked to take a Sunday trip to a farm that one of their friends had invited us (casually but possibly). He said that he would be available to do things with me 1:1 during the week, but not until Monday. (But of course, right in the middle of the day, he has his phone session with his therapist in NJ, so...) And, before I got here, I told him that I wanted to see Cartegena (based on his strong recommendation) but he has shown no willingness to make even tentative plans or offer a day he might be available.
I don´t know why this disappointment was surprising, and I did whatever I could to decrease reactivity (take Sunday as me-time and a day of rest and reflection) and to differentiate--plan a solo exploration day--remaining connected and regrouping by evening.
For the last 10 years, Pete has been a friend, but a perpetual disappointment when I have needed anything substantial, emotional, operational, or como un amigo. He displays and throws large amounts of cash around during our menage a trois multidates, and that´s what he expects will smooth the way. It´s not nothing, of course, but it´s troubling that I infer that I am asking too much beyond the $$$$$. I´m contemplating a day trip up to Cartegena on Tuesday, con o sin Pedro.
Otherwise, yo tengo los tiempos muy felices. My Spanish is coming back some, but mostly it´s Spanglish all the way. After blogging and electronically connecting, I will saunter out to the shopping plaza next door, get a little lunch at the Crepes and Waffles, a national chain where all of the servers are single moms, and do some walking, shopping, and adventuring.
Blogging from Blogota.....

Burning Bowl Ceremony 2008-Creative Response Through Fire and Visualization

How do you say "goodbye" to a difficult year and move your life forward in a more hopeful and confident way? Do what I did, and try a Burning Bowl ceremony at your next gathering.
All you need are some double fold cards (Avery 5234 or make your own), writing tools, a fireproof bowl and a fireplace, and cards and envelopes to address and mail later. Make a card for each guest with his/her name on it, and explain the process of THE BURNING BOWL.
From the outgoing year, pick an experience, a relationship problem, a loss, a troubling work situation, or anything that weighs you down emotionally, and write it on the card with your name. The organizer collects everyone's cards in a metal or pyrex bowl, and after the idea of "letting go" of the past year is understood by everyone, the cards are set on fire and burned to ash.
Then, give each person a card/note (I offered postcards from my lifetime postcard collection, so it can be "chacun a son gout") and envelope. For this task, take some time with your guests to help them articulate what they'd like to see happen in their lives in the year to come. When these aspirations/visualizations/wishes are written down, participants address the envelopes to themselves. The organizer keeps the envelopes with the promise of mailing them to the participants at midyear, around July 1.
Skeptics like MFD groused about "witchcraft", but seriously...this is a simple group exercise that focuses people on common evaluations that most people make at this time of year--"Why did I gain 5 pounds?" "Why does my love life suck?""Why did one of my inappropriate and neurotic middle aged woman guests repeatedly ask me if I was 'really a man' because all I had in my refrigerator was beer and condiments?"--and promotes neutralizing these bad vibes and imagining something different in the new year.
As the saw says, "Time will tell." I think some people just barely tolerated it, others with profiles of significant loss and confusion appreciated the cathartic and visioning experiences.
I have put a bottle of celebratory champagne into circulation, to be brought from party to party among the Burning Bowlers, but not to be opened until the July party I'm planning for our rooftop deck! It's a leap year, and we have an extra 24 hours to revel in exciting changes...
Ideas for Posting
BURN?
--What would you "burn" from 2007? (This should be NTMI, not too much information, but a general statement of your unwanted residue from the year ending.)
BRING?
--What do you want to bring into your life in 2008? (New work, new relationship, relocation, marriage, etc.)
As theactivelistener, I look forward to "hearing" your Burn It/Bring It lists! And maybe even to some creative response.
And, oh, by the way, I have my New Year's Burn It/Bring It MixTape. With a few glitches fixed, it's listed below:
1. Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) Green Day
2. Time of the Season The Zombies
3. Every Day is a Winding Road Sheryl Crow
4. Bringing Democracy to Iraq Lewis Black
5. Let It Be The Beatles
6. Dancing in the Street Martha and the Vandellas
7. Shining Star Earth, Wind and Fire
8. Imagine John Lennon
9. Talkin' About A Revolution Tracy Chapman
10. Don't Panic Cold Play
11. I Won't Back Down Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
12. On the Road Again Willie Nelson
13. In My Life The Beatles
14. Auld Lang Syne James Taylor
15. New Year's Day U2

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

I'm slowly getting the hang of this blogging thing, with "slowly" being the operative word. I'm just back from Mexico and just started up with Chicago Endurance Sports to train and condition myself for a SoCal marathon on February 3, 2008.
See the pics from Hacienda El Labrador at flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/ellabradorsonora/sets/
A picture paints a thousand words, so count this blog entry as just short of 200,000 words!
More l8r.

Presidential Politics JEOPARDY

Democratic Candidates for $1000

The Answer is: Why Hillary Clinton is afraid to leave the house these days.

The Question is:

What is AL-GORE-APHOBIA?????

LOL

I thought this up a couple of days ago while talking to MFD while driving home from work.
Now that he's won the Nobel Peace Prize, Hillary's got it bad....

More later.

theactivelistener on the road and at the theatre

Going Home, Going to The Feast, Going to August: Osage County Part I AUGUST 21, 2007

August 14 Chicago--->Shaker Heights. August 15--->Feast of the Assumption procession, Holy Rosary Church, Little Italy Cleveland. August 17 ---> August: Osage County, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago
PRELUDE
Well, my trip had been planned for months, maybe for a couple of years. I had last been to see the procession at the Holy Rosary Church, which honors the “assumption” of The Virgin Mary into heaven, in August of 2005. Last summer, I missed it, having just started a new job and gone to New Orleans for the APA convention the week before the Feast. At the 2005 Feast of the Assumption procession, I rediscovered my family’s roots in Little Italy at a backyard “festa” with Mary and Rudy on E. 126th Street. Two of their children had just come back from a family pilgrimage to Alcara Li Fusi, in the mountains of northern Sicily, which was the home of Mary’s father, “Mister Nic”, and also, not coincidentally, of my grandfather, also named Nicola. I felt fortunate to be included in their celebration.
BACK STORY
Before ’05 I had last traveled to Cleveland to watch the procession in 2003; however, I was unable to do so “due to circumstances [way] beyond our control.” That feast day turned out to be a fateful day in the life of my family. My father was seriously injured as a result of an early morning fall on August 15 during the Great East Coast BlackOut of 2003. Cleveland Hopkins was closed until the afternoon, so I definitely missed the procession, and instead of going to the Feast on Cleveland’s East Side, I ended up visiting my father down the street from Holy Rosary at the University Hospital. He was just coming out of surgery to repair three broken bones. At the hospital, the computers were down and they were using bottled water because of the electrical failures all over town. When I called the next day, Patient (socalled) Information informed us that there was “no one by that name here” when we called to talk to him in his room!
YOU CAN”T GO HOME AGAIN
This August 15 marked a completion of a cycle, because when all was said and done, almost four years later and after a long journey to recovery and life under my mother’s care, my father suddenly succumbed to an unexpected and undetected massive tumor in his liver in May 20. This, after my overwhelmed and emotionally frail mother was consigned to permanent nursing care in January. So, going home is very different these days, and it means an entire reorganization of the family relationships and of my emotional reality.
August: Cuyahoga County
I thought that it would be nice to invite my sister Paula (MSP) to come along, because we were invited back to Mary and Rudy’s after the procession. Paula was born and had lived at Mary and Rudy’s two-flat in Little Italy where the backyard party was being held. She hadn’t been to the Feast for many years, and after some anxiety about the possibility of rain (“Paula, that’s why the Sainted Virgin gave us umbrellas...”), she said she’d come with me.
PARKING AND PROCESSING
After we improbably scored a late parking space across from the house on 126th Street and dropped off some cake I made, our precious photo albums from the 1940s, and two folding chairs at Mary and Rudy’s, we headed down to the corner where my mother used to stand to watch the procession. Folding chairs are an essential bring-along to Sicilian parties, whether they are held indoors or outdoors, because the home always has enough chairs for the close family, friends, and the grandparents, but never enough chairs for everyone who eventually shows up! The parties are full of good food and wine, irrational exuberance and Mediterranean energy, loud storytelling and joking, even singing and dancing! This festa would turn out to be no different, but first, the story of the procession.
When the bells started to ring around noon, The Virgin came out of the church and turned right at the corner of Coltman and headed down the street with the Knights of Columbus, the women of the saint societies, and the congregants following. I had toyed with the idea of doing the procession this year, and when I got Paula to entertain the thought of it, we brought up the rear and followed the priests and the float with Mary on it, as the preachers preached and the people sang. Like my mother did religiously in years past, the faithful lining the streets handed the Knights of Columbus $10 and $20 bills to hang on the drapes over Mary’s outstretched arms.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD
As we wove through the cobblestone side streets, I was struck by how much this procession was like one that I had seen in a seaside village in Ischia in 1999: That one was more opulent and shiny and octopus-like as it surged forward and seemed to take in whole groups of observers as it rolled along. We kept a steady pace and a contained line as we made a big figure eight around the neighborhood. I noticed that the streetscape was right out of the 1950s and indeed, we had gone back in time to a personal and larger family and community history.
WHERE DONA CONCETTA AND MR. NIC ATE, DRANK, AND DANCED
When we finished our circuit, it was only a matter of time before the table would be spread with the bounty of the Feast, and the truncheons of meatballs, bruschetta, and sausage and zucchini would appear. And the pizzelles! Mary (whose parents were known to my parents and family as Dona Concetta and Mr. Nic) made about 200 of these thin anisette flavored waffle cookies, and it was hard to wait for dessert to start enjoying these. People got comfortable in their chairs--another guest monopolized our highback folding chair from the house, and I fell over in one of the chairs that was set on uneven pavement! Nonetheless, MSP and Mary looked through the albums, which featured my parents as a young couple and included pics from my sister’s 1st birthday party, and I showed my family movie on the MacBook.
http://web.mac.com/theactivelistener/iWeb/www.theactivelistener.com/Magnum%20Opus%20Productions.html
But it wasn’t just the litany of memories and the elated shouts of, “Hey, Marge, come on and look at this picture of Joe Tano!”. It wasn’t just the home cooking and the homemade wine. At around 3:30 p.m., a strolling accordionist, who happened to be a family friend, strolled down the galley way. It was better than being in a restaurant and giving requests to the musician. Dennis, the man with the accordion, sat down next to Rudy, and the two of them crooned songs of Sicily and Naples. As the highlight, Rudy, who uses a walker and wheelchair, danced with the young ladies, and as he tired one out, he’d stand with open arms and say, “Next?” There were some moments when we held our breath, but he could still cut a figure on the dance floor and was satisfied to have so enjoyed this Feast day, despite Mary’s worries about his stability. “He dances with all the ladies at the day care,” she said with a smile.
BUONA SERA
Heading home at around 6 p.m., we wanted to go up the hill to see my father’s crypt at the Lakeview Cemetary, but the police had closed off the entrance and the Cemetary was closed for the night. I took Paula back to the house and headed out to see my mother. I told her that we went to the feast and I brought her the words to the procession music so we could go over them together. My sister thanked me for asking her and encouraging her to do the procession, and I thanked her for going with me. Although I could have had fun going alone as I had two years before, I had more fun going with my sister and it was important for both of us to get out, together, and to see old family friends who are really part of the family history.
GOING WEST
Because in 2007, it’s all about family, Part II of this entry will be about seeing and responding to the hot Steppenwolf Theatre Play, August: Osage County. A father who dies. A mother who’s in and out of the family reality. Adult siblings and spouses dealing with each other. Going back to the family home to be together. Art imitates life. Stay tuned.....

AUGUST 21, 2007
Going Home, Going to the Feast, Going to August: Osage County Part II A father who dies. A mother who’s in and out of reality. Going back to the family home to be together for a funeral. Adult siblings and spouses dealing with each other and their troubled children. Art imitates life. Stay tuned...

ALL THE RAGE
August: Osage County at the Steppenwolf Main Stage has been one of the hottest tickets of a hot summer. After reading the New York Times review about a week ago, my resolve was, once again, steeled to get a ticket to see this “huge” play about family. Alas, on the Monday of the review, every day and every show of the run was sold out.
GETTING TICKETS
I couldn’t get the idea of seeing this play out of my head, and around lunchtime on Friday, when I was making plans to go out this evening, I didn’t like the options, but my friend was willing to go to this play. When I went on the website, a miracle occurred--two tickets on the main floor were available, and I could have them if I completed my order in 13 minutes or less! I quick called MFC and we made arrangements to meet up for a 7:30 show.
THE PLAY’S THE THING
I can’t and won’t give a synopsis of the play, but I do recommend looking into the Steppenwolf Theatre website, including action from the play. But it was one of the best things I’ve seen at Steppenwolf since the days of Grapes of Wrath or The Song of Jacob Zulu. Unpretentious, alive, and at once riveting, rollicking, and wretched, this high drama (yes, the mother is the highest of the high) was thoroughly enjoyable. It was evident that the audience as a whole was right with the actors and their energized performance.
AUDIENCE CONVERSATION
Even though the actors gathered at the stage front for their last curtain call at around quarter to 11 o’clock, we decided to stay for the discussion with about 25 audience members and one of the production crew directors. She asked for some general responses to the play, and one man started by saying that he found the laughter and audience involvement were disconcerting and distracting. At some point I piped in that I thought that this play was a good example of what we learned about in literature class--theatre as catharsis, as in Greek plays that we had to read in AP English. I added that I think everyone was having their own personal experience through the onstage emotion and conflict. MFC talked about the laughter as a response to the vulnerability of all the characters who are exposed and in almost constant emotional pain on stage and likened it to “why we laugh at clowns.”
IS THIS PLAY HALF HOPELESS OR HALF HOPEFUL?
Another question had something to do with “what, if anything, was hopeful by the ending?” That brought out a lot of chatter about family dysfunction, the mother and daughter breakdowns, the sibling love relationship that is exposed near the end, and any number of other gloom and doom scenarios. I had a different viewpoint--and articulated it. That is...”I could see it being a lot more hopeless. Whether or not it was right that the father Beverly killed himself==his death left people with new possibilities for self=development and new relationships with each other. A father, a mythic man like this takes up a lot of space in the family, and only when he’s gone can people see themselves differently....” I also thought that a questionable interlude of music by the two “cousins” in love was a way in which the adult son was linked to his poet father.
PATERFAMILIAS PATTER
All in all, a fun mini-seminar after a rip-roaring witnessing of full-on theatre. On the way out, an older white-haired man came up on my right and told me, “I liked your comments.” I thanked him--a nice compliment from a stranger--and said something that, “Well, I’m a trained professional and I thought there was room for hope.” I asked him how he liked the play, and he said, “I like it a lot--I’M IN IT!” It occurred to me--”You’re HIS father.”
This was Dennis Letts, father in the play and father of the playwright, Tracy Letts. I had not recognized him and was completely shocked that he was sitting in the audience during the post-performance discussion. But--a serendipitous connection and affirmation. Since my father’s recent death, I have been in a zone of meditation on my family past, present, and future. The play spoke to me about the pain and possibility of the loss of the father and the surging ripples of rage, regret and loneliness that follows such a death. Maybe Dennis Letts liked that I focused on the role of the father; many critics, including the one in the NY Times, rave about that ice pick of a mother who knew all and who tried to eviscerate her daughters, one by one. And I secretly loved that it seems like wherever there’s a father figure, mythic, theatric, or one of the fathers in the audience discussion, I’m noticing him, speaking to him, and connecting with him.





October: Broadway’s Imperial Theatre
SUNDAY, September 2, 2007

August: Osage County by Tracy Letts is going to Broadway in late October.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/stage/chi-mxa0826artcoverrareaug26,1,3917609.story