Haiku Redux (for Edward Duke)

 This bit was from 10 years ago, but it summarized Edward Duke and his  show, "Jeeves Takes Charge":

Edward Duke

June 17, 1953 - January 8, 1994

Slow tap-dance, quick change,

a heart full of joy.

His limited engagement.

Martha Swope, photographer; Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1983.

No Love

I sought “Love” in poetry encased 
in volumes long collecting dust
and realized, as I must, it would be unjust
to quote their thoughts
as though they were my own.

No love but my own will I ever know, 
if I ever do, but I know

your own vision lengthened when you met:
past, into one another’s experience;
future, into new destinations;
inward, into empathy beyond words;
outward, to worlds beyond a lonely reach.

Love that keeps you close will take you far.
No love leaves a heart that lives in “We Are.”

(for Rachel and Derek, May 9, 2024)

Window Visitors

The ladybug made

no sound but her wings' whisper

as the mourning dove moaned.

Arise, Jeeves!

Normally I’d only reminisce about Edward Duke on the anniversary of his birth (June 17), but ‘tis the season of my “Jeeves” reflections, ignited this year by the spectacularly long-overdue revival of Edward’s Jeeves Takes Charge stage frolic. 

At the time I saw it, JTC was billed as a “one-man, two-act, 12-character, award-winning comedy tour de force.” Now, the new adaptation lists 22 characters, managed nimbly (I imagine) by Australian heartthrob Sam Harrison in three sold-out performances, February 11–12, at London’s Theatre at the Tabard, Chiswick.

Sam Harrison

It is thanks to the P.G. Wodehouse Society of U.K. (and X/Twitter knowing all about my interests) that I discovered this revival. Following all the rabbit holes of social media, I also discovered that Edward’s   IMDb page had been (lovingly, respectfully, and I assume accurately) updated. 

The biggest treat of all was discovering the archive of original publicity photography for Edward’s “cheap little show” when it landed at New York’s Roundabout Theatre in 1983. 

Only a sample here; credit to Martha Swope, photographer; Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1983.

Edward Duke as Bertie Wooster

    

Edward Duke as Jeeves

Books of My Year, 2023

It was a big year for my Shakespeare reading, only coincidentally because it was the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio. Sundays are always good play-reading days, but I decided at one point to binge the Henrys.

Part one (Spring): Richard II; Henry IV part 1, part 2; Henry V

Part two (Fall): Henry VI part 1, part 2, part 3; Richard III

This is about the extent of my English history, so I’d guess Henry V was pretty much the best king. Also, in Shakespeare’s world, Joan of Arc was a villain (HVI-1). It’s all about perspective.

In addition to the books listed below I read a few magazine stories and poems and, less aesthetically pleasing, reports via PDF (to wit: January 6 Committee, USA v DJT). 

Unlike past years’ readings, I didn’t love everything here. In fact, a couple of things made me question how and why I majored in English (specifically the poetry and prose of Hart Crane, which I didn’t finish). I simply don’t have the mind for high, literary poetry. If I don’t know what you’re talking about, is it really all my fault?

That said, here’s what I read (omitting the PDF reports and stray stories and poems), roughly in chronological order:

1. The Sky Is Not the Limit (memoir) Neil deGrasse Tyson. Life as a smart, successful, charismatic Black man in America. Perspective matters even when your eye is on the sky.
2. Romeo and Juliet (play) William Shakespeare. I still think Juliet should have left with Romeo that night.
3. Living (screenplay) Kazuo Ishiguro. My favorite novelist. The film was quietly moving, emotionally restrained yet draining, like Ishiguro’s other tales. I’d read somewhere that the source material he adapted drew from ...
4. “The Death of Ivan Ilych” (short story) Leo Tolstoy. Sociology of ambition and frustration. 
5. Howard’s End (fiction) E. M. Forster. Liberated women and the men they try to save. 
6. America’s Presidents (biographical portraits), National Portrait Gallery. Good historical primer. As I learned in the Chernow history below, Washington had lots of portraits done. Lots.
   
   
   
7. The Philosopher’s Stone (quantum physics?) F. David Peat. Oh dear. I loved his other book, Einstein’s Moon. This one went totally over my head, and not in an inspiring, “look up at the sky” way.
8. Common Sense (political philosophy) Thomas Paine. Very witty. Interestingly, he had no love for the Quakers.
9. Come Looking (poetry collection) Dan Johnson. I still like the one about the Tastee Diner, but the rest made me want to turn in my English B.A. Huh?
10. Shadowplay (Shakespearean history) Clare Asquith. Was Shakespeare a propagandist trying to persuade Elizabeth I to go easy on the Catholics? Persuasive survey of the plays in the context of religious, social, and political history.
11. Utopia (political philosophy) Thomas More. Much like Plato’s Republic, and all “utopias,” really, it’s about structuring the irrational human condition. Is order better than just learning to deal with chaos?
12. The Gentleman Poet (Shakespearean fan fiction) Kathryn Johnson. An enjoyable romance with Shakespeare himself popping up in a Tempest-like milieu.
13. Ten Great One-Act Plays (theater) Moliere, Chekhov, Shaw, Williams et al. Since my copy is apparently from my college days, I recognized rereading the one I’d been assigned to perform in class, "Something Unspoken” (Tennessee Williams). I had no idea at the time it was about lesbianism. I guess I’ve always been clueless.
14. Alaska (travel) Bern Keating, National Geographic Society. It’s a nicely written and photographed travelogue from the 1960s. Educational, too. Did you know Alaska is both the Eastern-most and Western-most U.S. state? 
    
15. A Lesson Before Dying (fiction) Ernest J. Gaines. Endurance and dignity. Much in common with the deGrasse Tyson memoir (above). It’s important to experience the world from other perspectives.
16. As You Like It (play) Shakespeare. I do get some of the comedies mixed up. This is the one with the forest and the girl says something like, “Why talk we of fathers when there is such a man as Orlando?”
17. Stuart Little (children’s fiction) E. B. White. Some reading from my niece’s bookshelf. Charming, but the ending left me a bit unsettled. I won’t spoil it, though.
18. The Time Machine (science fiction) H. G. Wells. From my brother’s bookshelf. Better than the movie. The fact that the machine stays in one place and only travels through time satisfies my notions about how time travel should work. I’d rather do it without machinery, but even Quantum Leap’s brain wave transmissions need an accelerator.
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (fiction) Mark Haddon. Experiencing how someone navigates a chaotic (to them) world. Perspective, once again, matters. 
    
    
    
20. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (fiction) Mark Twain. Re-read from very long ago. Huck was the more interesting character, but he’s only beginning to evolve here.
21. Cradle to Cradle (environment) William McDonough and Michael Braungart. All about how to make the sustainable plastic paper out of which this book was manufactured. Truly the most difficult book I’ve ever had to hold in my hands, heavy, inflexible, exhausting. 
22. Contemporary American Short Stories selections: “Sex Education” by Dorothy Canfield, “A Shower of Gold” by Donald Barthelme. Both good, but show their age.
23. Beyond Gender (political memoir) Betty Friedan. The occasion of the book is a report on symposiums Friedan had organized in the 1990s, so a lot of this is quoted material. But the post-feminist point is that the whole battle of the sexes thing that mid-century feminism launched missed the point of what was happening to society and the economy. Women weren’t taking jobs from men; corporations were hiring more women so they could pay their workers less. Follow Robert Reich on X/Twitter now. Same thing Friedan was saying. 
24. The House of the Dead (autobiographical? fiction) F. Dostoevsky. A deeply humanistic look inside an abominable institution. 
25. Washington: A Life (biography, history) Ron Chernow. Probably not the best employer, but a damn good leader. 
26. Around the World in Eighty Days (science fiction) Jules Verne. Spoiler alert: There’s no balloon. 
27. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (play) Shakespeare. It’s all about getting the right lovers together in the end. And Bottom, who wants to play all parts. Ass.
28. For Whom the Bell Tolls (fiction) Ernest Hemingway. Far more graphically violent than I was expecting after having read A Farewell to Arms last year. But the writing is so good. And a bit mischievous with all the “obscenity” he’d throw in. The bottom line is that the “bell” tolls for all of us; that’s what ties humanity together.
29. A Life in the Theater (memoir) Tyrone Guthrie. All the names worth knowing at the time. 
30. The Drawings of Albrecht Dürer (art history) Heinrich Wölfflin. An opportunity to look closely at how lines create shape and volume.
31. Two Gentlemen of Verona (play) Shakespeare. It’s all about getting the right lovers together in the end.
    
    
    
32. Mayday (allegory; art) William Faulkner. Faulkner’s original drawings highlight a special edition Arthurian-type story written for a would-be girlfriend. Do you choose death (fame as immortality) or life (dull, unheroic)?
33. Here at the New Yorker (memoir) Brendan Gill. All the names worth knowing at the time, but unlike Guthrie (above), Gill comes across as a bit smug. 
34. Incarnations : A History of India in Fifty Lives (collected biographies) Sunil Khilnani. There’s more to the history of India than Gandhi (and the other lives surveyed here really make you rethink your hero worship of the former).
35. Remember When (Christmas season stories) Clay Aiken, editor, for Bubel-Aiken Foundation (now National Inclusion Project). Earnestly if not professionally written personal memories, some tragic, some comic, and all relatable and human.

Speaking of nonprofessional writing, again, I’ve collected a few more Wordle-generated “stories." Click to open the image in a new tab and zoom in. Thanks for reading!

Love, hosaa

Maybe I’ll just go to the movies next year.

Saving Rolfe, or: Reclaiming a Stolen Heart

 Clarence the Angel’s Final “Wonderful Life” Adventure?

FADE IN.

EXT. Heavenly Way Station (or is it a “weigh” station?) It’s a dark and stormy night. Or day? Who can tell?

CLARENCE, attired in his favorite pale-pink chiffon angel gown, confers with long-time Way Station clerk JACOB “BIFF” MARLEY. They are watching scenes from The Sound of Music on a tiny past-viewing tablet at Marley’s workstation.

CLARENCE

Hills alive with music and dancing, a convent filled with worshipful worshipers worshiping and taking vows. What a beautiful scenario. (He twirls around to enjoy the floating chiffon gown.)

MARLEY (scrolling and fast-forwarding)

And Nazis. 

CLARENCE

What do Nazis have to do with the price of schnitzel? 

MARLEY

Nazis are the classic foils for all of us putting-right-what-once-went-wrong guys.

Entering the scene quietly in a serene shimmer is our distinguished Way Station manager, the nattily attired and twinkly-eyed MR. JORDAN.

JORDAN

That’s right, darling Biff, you have anticipated me. Our mission is once again to save a soul left behind. Have you finished the scenario?

MARLEY

Just polishing up the second draft now, Mr. Jordan!

JORDAN

Now, Biff, don’t try and con me!

MARLEY

No, no, of course not, sir. I mean, Clarence and I are just going over the major plot points. We’re looking for the fork in this young fellow’s fate.

CLARENCE

Rolfe! Rolfe!

JORDAN

Down, boy. Good Clarence. Yes, quite. Now, why would this young Austrian tenor with a dancer’s remarkable agility suddenly take up with these … I even hate the word itself. Name-callers call people names with it nowadays.

MARLEY

I know what you mean. Even Nazis call other people Nazis. It’s so, so …

CLARENCE

It’s so “I’m rubber and you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks on you.”

JORDAN

Yes, in a preemptive sort of way. Exactly so. Now, sweet Biff, what are the coordinates for this past scenario we are amending?

MARLEY

We’re in Salzburg, Austria, in the last golden years of the Thirties.

CLARENCE

That’s the nineteen-thirties, sir.

JORDAN

Ah, I see. Between those two so-called World Wars. Well, if I recall my history, young men began rallying together to protest economic inequity, or something like that. Can we really blame them?

CLARENCE and MARLEY gaze at each other uncertainly and fail to answer JORDAN’s clearly rhetorical question.

JORDAN

Of course we do! Who answers being bullied by bullying everyone else? Bullies! And Cowards!

CLARENCE and MARLEY

And Nazis!

CLARENCE

Oh, my!

Drawing his lovely enormous wings around his two direct-reports, JORDAN soothes their fears and directs their attention to the images on MARLEY’s small viewer. He then sweeps his wings magically to cast the images onto a much larger cloud-view-screen-thing.

VIEW: Message-boy ROLFE arrives at the von Trapp mansion to deliver a telegram, speaking with fellow Nazi-sympathizer FRANZ the butler.

                           

BACK TO the angels conferring

MARLEY

A bit of a little-man-in-the-shadows-of-the-big-man syndrome, if you ask me. The butler and the messenger boy want to cut the Austrian Naval hero down to size, you betcha.

JORDAN

Yes, we’ve seen this situation often enough in this Way Station, haven’t we, sweet Clarence?

CLARENCE

Oh, yes. But sometimes the big men are the problems. Remember Mr. Potter? It was the little guy, our dear George Bailey, at the root of Potter’s wicked envy.

JORDAN

Yes. And in the scenario before us, the big man, again, is the problem.

CLARENCE

The Captain? But he’s the hero who saves his family and leads them to escape! How was he the problem?

JORDAN

It was he who was at the root of young Rolfe’s wicked envy. My dear Marley, if you please, let us first look at a few of young Rolfe’s exquisite production numbers, featuring von Trapp’s eldest daughter, Liesl.

ROLFE (on screen)

Some people think we ought to be German, 

ROLFE (on screen)

I’ll take care of you!

MARLEY (voice-over)

A promise is a promise, Herr Rolfe.

LIESL (on screen)

I’ll depend on you!

MARLEY (voice-over)

After all, he is all grown up at seventeen going on eighteen, right, Liesl?

CLARENCE (voice-over)

Oh, what a beautiful couple they are! They just make me want to sing and dance and head for Fezziwig’s House of Brides warehouse … 

BACK TO the three angels conferring.

CLARENCE (continuing)

See, see? Didn’t I tell you? This is where they start the happily-ever-aftering, isn’t it?

MARLEY

This is still only Act One, you stoo--

JORDAN

Now Biff. Language!

MARLEY presses a few buttons futilely trying to fast-forward the cloud-screen image.

JORDAN (with a sweep of his magnificent wings)

Oh, never mind.

On the big SCREEN: ROLFE confronts CAPTAIN VON TRAPP at the convent.

VON TRAPP (voice on screen)

Come away with us!

ROLFE (voice on screen)

“I’ll kill you!”

                                       

VON TRAPP (voice on screen)

You’ll never be one of them.

FREEZE briefly on ROLFE’s reaction, then BACK TO the angels

JORDAN, MARLEY, and CLARENCE, as one:

Stop! 

JORDAN

I believe we’re there. The crucial moment. Young Rolfe is disarmed and humiliated by the “big man” his friends call the enemy.

CLARENCE

Why was the Captain so nasty?

MARLEY

Derisive? Disdainful? 

JORDAN

We don’t know. But we must undo the damage, or young Rolfe is lost to us forever.

MARLEY

He should have stopped at “Come away with us.”

JORDAN

I know, right? 

CLARENCE

Is this where I quantum-leap in to somebody? Oh, oh, can I be the Mother Abbess?

CLARENCE sweeps his smaller-than-JORDAN’s wings across the cloud-viewer to show who he means, with a CUT there-to

:

CLARENCE (voice-over)

Shouldn’t she be the one singing to Rolfe, so he can climb that mountain at the end with the von Trapps?

BACK TO the angels

MARLEY

I could go. I know who needs to put right what once went wrong.

JORDAN

I’m sure you do, darling Biff, but I need you here for now. Our sweet Clarence can handle this. He is more, oh what’s the word. Romantic.

JORDAN sweeps his magical angelic wings and, with thunder and lightning and other grand effects, CLARENCE leaps into the convent rooftop where LIESL recognizes ROLFE

EXT. Convent roof top. Night.

CLARENCE (as LIESL)

It’s Rolfe! Father, please, will you let me handle this? He is my would-be boyfriend, after all!

CLARENCE (as LIESL, continuing)

Rolfe, please! Come away with us! We need you! You promised, remember? You’ll take care of me! I’ll depend on you!

ROLFE

I’ll … I’ll kill you!

CLARENCE (as LIESL)

But don’t you want to join our new act? We need your clear, bright tenor voice! Especially with Kurt just about to hit that voice-destroying teenager thing.

While ROLFE struggles with his conscience, the von TRAPPS escape. The LIEUTENANT enters to find out what’s keeping ROLFE from the rest of the storm-troopers. Er, the Nazis.

ROLFE

Run, Liesl, run!

CLARENCE looks heavenward for guidance

JORDAN (voice-over)

Run, Clarence, run!

CLARENCE dissolves away and real LIESL exits, running

CUT TO: Ext. The mountains to Switzerland. Day

A single RIFLE SHOT is heard in the far distance, stopping LIESL cold.

BACK TO: 

EXT. WAY STATION. Day or night or whatever. It's cloudy up there..

CLARENCE and MARLEY stare at the large cloud-screen as the image fades out on the von Trapps

CLARENCE

Was that shot what I thought it was? Oh golly. Those Nazis. I am so sorry, Mr. Jordan. I really thought I could save him. Poor Rolfe. What a sweet, young boy.

JORDAN

Oh, but you did save him. Because he saved the von Trapps. Don’t you see, darling? We are really only interested in souls up here. And as for you, Biff. Oh, sorry. Jacob. Mr. Jacob Marley. I have one task for you now. Please go to the waiting room and bring our friend here.

MARLEY

Right away, sir! My pleasure!

MARLEY exits and just as quickly returns with ROLFE.

JORDAN

Now my dear ones, I have one last surprise. Jacob Marley, Clarence Odbody: Your time at this Way Station has ended. You may now escort young Rolfe here up where he belongs, to join his beloved Liesl.

CLARENCE and MARLEY happily embrace each other, then JORDAN, and sweep ROLFE into their arms and, all dissolving upward into the clouds, whereto we also dissolve to the awaiting LIESL

LIESL

Wheeeee!!

FADE OUT.

Love, hosaa

And thereby we conclude our adventures of Clarence, the Wonderful Life Angel who just wanted to make everyone’s stories come out right. Me too.

Detecting More Art

Continuing a casual habit of inspecting the art work used as set decoration in films and television, I've grabbed a couple of interesting screen shots from Downton Abbey's alleged Piero della Francesca painting (or study for a larger piece, as the plot develops).

Not only are the season one and season five images themselves different, but so are the frames. I'm not the first one to notice this, as a quick Internet search confirms. A historian also disputes the authenticity of the piece and the fiction of the Crawley family owning it in the first place.

Truthfully, I'm pretty forgiving of these inconsistencies, especially when I love the fiction bringing art to us masses. Maybe that's why I related to Cora more than any other character at the Abbey.

The explanation, I think, is that prop masters may not anticipate what their show will require in future seasons, and how many seasons those shows will run. In Downton Abbey, the first della Francesca might have been lost between seasons one and five, requiring a reconstruction, frame and all. The latter set piece makes appearances in two episodes (two and four), and was a major plot point in that season.

Following my mother into her addiction to the Brit series As Time Goes By, I also get a kick out of noticing things like the brass bed that switches between two different designs as the series goes on through 10 seasons. And the front door that changes door handles on the inside and colors on the outside. It pleases me that my observational powers have not completely abandoned me.

Love, hosaa
frittering life away in details