Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Two Lights at Sea

This is the favorite anecdote of one of the World Future Society's longtime members, Marvin Cetron, who led off a speech or two with it:

Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather off the California coast for several days. As night fell, the captain noticed the patchy fog and decided to remain on the bridge.

Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, "Light. Bearing on the starboard bow."

"Is it steady or moving astern?" the captain asked.

The lookout replied, "Steady, captain," which meant the battleship was on a collision course with the other ship.

The captain called to the signalman, "Signal that ship. You are on a collision course. Advise you alter course 20 degrees."

Back came the answering signal, "Advisable that you change course 20 degrees."

The captain said, "Send another message. I am a senior captain. Change course 20 degrees."

"I am a seaman second class," came the reply, "Change your course at once."

The officer was furious. He spat out, "We are a battleship squadron. Change your course 20 degrees."

The flashing light replied, "I am a lighthouse." The squadron changed course.

[Attributed to Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, via Lighthouse Prose.]


Lesson: Know which light you are, and which light you're looking at. Be prepared to change course.



Sunday, September 14, 2014

Middlemarchisms

"We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement." George Eliot

Now I really feel accomplished, having finished reading George Eliot's Middlemarch voluntarily and without benefit of BritLit professorial assistance. It's a slice of provincial life in the nineteenth century, much of the plot driven by money issues, so actually having also read Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century this summer helped.

dustjacket of the 1992 Book of the Month Club edition, to which my page references refer.

So for a Jane Austen fan to tackle the Eliot masterpiece, the first thing I had to get over was the hope that the heroine would end up marrying the right hero. As soon as Lydgate, the maverick doctor, entered the neighborhood, I figured he was the best match for the virtuous but clueless do-gooder Dorothea. But anyway, in a round about way, there were enough happily-ever-afters at the end of 800 pages to satisfy.

The other difference between Austen and Eliot is the complexity of the latter's sentences. It's not a fast read, but once I got used to it, there were many rewards and a lot of great thoughts. Here are a few of my favorite Middlemarchisms:

"Among all forms of mistakes, prophecy is the most gratuitous." (p. 83)

"O Mrs. Cadwallader, I don't think it can be nice to marry a man with a great soul." (p. 56)

"Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on." (p. 57)

"... and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts--not to hurt others." (p. 62)

"... the requisite things must be bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a poor quality." (p. 341)*

"'What is your religion?' said Dorothea. 'I mean--not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most?'
'To love what is good and beautiful when I see it,' said Will." (p. 377)

"Good meat should have good drink." (p. 379)

"Worship is usually a matter of theory rather than practice." (p. 416)

"Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids? He only neglects his work and runs up bills." (p. 417)

"Oppositions have illimitable range of objections at command, which need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw for ever on the vasts of ignorance." (p. 422)

"... and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?" (p. 421)

"... it is a little too trying to human flesh to be conscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have it noticed...." (p. 440)

"It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much." (p. 475)

"It had seemed to him as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other's presence, while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning." (p. 518)

"... to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?" (p. 555)

"... and, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better." (p. 700)

"Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a character to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive." (p. 703)

"... a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion." (p. 705)

"Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love." (p. 716)


"We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement." (p. 744)

"... husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order." (p. 787)

"... there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since it was always done by somebody else." (p. 790).


love, hosaa
standing on a perilous margin, but loving what is good and beautiful...

*ETA: In context, the quote about poor quality being bad economy was used to justify Lydgate's spending beyond his means to prepare his new household for his spoiled bride. But shortly following that episode was the discussion about making improvements to the farms and households in the villages as long-term investments (think of the copper plumbing rationale that Cosmo used with his customers in Moonstruck). So I still think the principle is sound: Poor quality is bad economy.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Love for Fools

Ah, so great to be back home in my little seat in the theater; this season I've moved up one day and over one seat with my new subscription for the Round House.

Also new at Round House is the digital version of the production program--e.g., Fool for Love now playing. Though I'm a known program collector, lots of people leave theirs behind in the recycle/reuse basket on the way out, and having the digital version available for reference is useful both before and after the show. (It's nice, for example, to know in advance that the play is performed without an intermission; it's also nice, after the show, when writing about it, to be able to look up spellings of people's names.)


It's also great to be back with "old friends" of my theater experience, including the ferociously fragile Katie deBuys ("May") and master of the hangdog drawl Marty Lodge ("Old Man"), previously paired in RHT's Seminar. Joining the cast of familiars is Tim Getman ("Martin"), who I'd just seen in Synetic's Three Men in a Boat, and new-to-me Thomas Keegan ("Eddie").

Playwright Sam Shepard is, of course, best known to me as the iconic actor portraying iconic test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. I hadn't seen any of his plays, so I was expecting tough, gritty realism. Instead, Fool for Love mixes fantasies and memories with the volatile, violent yearning that fools call love. (It isn't. Passion, yes. Lust, yes. Love? Not by my definition.)

The choice of this play is in line with the current "despicable people you don't want to spend time with" artistic direction at RHT, but the performances and production are so mesmerizing, I forgive the play. Katie's May, especially, pulls and pushes on the audience's sympathy even as she pulls and pushes at Keegan's Eddie, sometimes to comic effect.

Thomas Keegan, Katie deBuys, rehearsal photo via RHT Facebook

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard
Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland, September 3-27, 2014
Directed by Ryan Rilette

Cast:
May: Katie deBuys
Eddie: Thomas Keegan
Martin: Tim Getman
Old Man: Marty Lodge

Production credits:
Scenic and costume designer: Meghan Raham
Lighting designer: Daniel MacLean Wagner
Composer/sound designer: Eric Shimelonis
Fight choreographer: Casey Kaleba
Props manager: Andrea Moore
Dramaturg: Brent Stansell