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Staunton does Shakespeare and Italian food
Sunday, March 2 2003
This morning while I was still in bed, Gretchen drew my attention to something I'd scrawled on the wall. It was a cheesy little poem - obviously something that had seemed profound under the circumstances I was in when I wrote it but which had not, unfortunately, survived the taste test of time. It began with the line "There are stone oceans to discover," and ended up being something of an ode to fossils. Since Gretchen is a real poet, I immediately tried to distance myself from it, claiming I must have been really fucked up when I wrote it. For her part, Gretchen didn't think it looked like my handwriting and that the words didn't sound like me either. She thought that some former lover "naked in your bed" had written it. I tried to drop the subject as quickly as possible, since I found it all very embarrassing - so much so that I had an unusual feeling developing in my abdomen. But Gretchen was relentless, refusing to pick up on either subtle hints or, later, outright demands that she please stop bugging me about it. So we had a huge fight and I had to leave the Shaque to escape the torture. As novel tortures go, this one was the sort that could only be imagined by the wickedly sick mind of God - having your nose rubbed in your bad poetry by a girlfriend who has had her poems accepted by the Paris Review.
As usual when visiting the folks, the first thing I did this morning was to come down to the house and sit at the card table in the kitchen reading the Staunton Daily News Leader while drinking coffee and basking in the warmth of the 100 year old kitchen cookstove. There's something entertainingly depressing about reading the old local newspaper, the one to which I used to send satirical letters to the editor. They've long since lost what little local color they used to exhibit. Now they've been completely assimilated into their parent mega-corporation, Gannett News Services, the Clear Channel Communications of local print media. About a year ago I sent them this letter to the editor and they lacked the sense of fun necessary to print it.
December 8, 2001
XXX Stingy Hollow Road
Staunton, Virginia 24401
(540) 885-69XX
Dear Editor,
Readers will have to excuse me for not writing a letter to the editor for nearly two years. I've had a string of medical difficulties, the latest a result of rear-ending another SUV because of problems seeing through my flag-bedecked windows. But after seeing our proud Attorney General John Ashcroft facing off against the treasonous Osamacrats in the US Senate, now I feel compelled to write. Why do our elected politicians feel the need to protect the rights of those who would destroy our nation? I don't think anyone should be prying too deeply into the fates of the "people" rounded up in the aftermath of those horrendous attacks. Secrecy is paramount and necessary, so why ask questions? As part of our patriotic duty, we should have absolute faith that, behind the scenes, our government is doing precisely the right thing. Those who raise concerns, as Ashcroft so eloquently put it, are aiding the enemy. Polls have shown that 90% of Americans have absolute faith in our government's methods, even if it includes the secret torture and execution of every single person now in custody. With a mandate like that, it makes sense to begin rounding up the other 10% who answered the poll differently. Majority rule is essential in this great nation. It's been proven time and time again that majority opinion is always correct, whether the matter be the existence of God, the fallacy of evolution, or the infallibility of the King James Bible. Why then must we continue allowing people to question and probe the motives and methods of our newly-infallible Federal Government?
Sincerely,
Gus Mueller
xxx@spies.com
The writing used just in this morning's headlines seemed to encapsulate the paper's blandly propagandistic dreariness perfectly. "War on Terrorism Hits Home" it read, but the article was actually about the spouses of troops being sent off to fight Iraq in the urgent battle to distract Americans from news of corporate consolidation and economic malaise.
Sally seemed to be enjoying her vacation in Redneckistan. For a time this morning she was obsessed with chasing my parent's one remaining goat, a big ponderous white thing inappropriately named Snowflake. Goats don't normally go into the water, but for Snowflake Folly Mills Creek seemed like the only escape from the onslaught of our small black dog. It was in a low-level floodstage from melting snow, and I was a little concerned both about the strength of the current and the temperature of the water. I figured there must be a sound physiological reason for goats not going in water and it disturbed me to see her standing in it, much as it would have disturbed me to, say, see Britney Spears receiving a Nobel Prize in Physics. I thought Sally should be disciplined for her wanton disregard to our demands that she stop chasing, but Gretchen was more of the opinion that she couldn't help herself. We managed to have a fairly big disagreement on this.
After awhile we managed to isolate Sally in the Shaque and I waded into the stream barefoot to shoo the goat out. It was a warm, sunny day, and despite the fact that the raging waters had recently been in the form of ice, they weren't as cold as I'd expected.
My mother Hoagie is not the sort to structure the vacations of her guests, but this particular vacation was attended by rather extreme circumstances, and this caused her to arrange an organized event. What made this vacation unique was that Gretchen's parents were coming down to Staunton to attend their daughter's poetry reading, scheduled for tomorrow. While in town, they'd be visiting my parents starting today. This would be the first time that both my parents would meet both of Gretchen's parents. That this sort of thing has never happened before with any of my other relationships indicates the seriousness of the present one.
The event was a performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Blackfriars, a brand-new Shakespearean playhouse downtown. This being Staunton, the Queen City of Redneckistan, I was skeptical at first. In Staunton, one normally only finds beauty in the things people haven't gotten around to tearing down yet.
Mind you, I'm not a big fan of watching Shakespearean drama, but if Staunton is going to attempt culture, I can at least do my part and be supportive, if only condescendingly. We all rendezvoused at the playhouse, a big building across from Staunton's old library (near the Stonewall Jackson Hotel, erstwhile home to Staunton's closest approximation to a gay bar). It lies in a complex of brick structures recently built in a massive downtown revitalization project, a dramatic policy shift from past revitalization efforts, which mostly focused on notching Walmarts into hillsides at the edge of town.
Those in our rendezvous contingent consisted of both Gretchen's parents, Gretchen, myself, my mother Hoagie, and my brother Don. That last person was sort of a surprise. I found it very difficult to imagine my brother sitting still for two hours of Shakespearean drama. He's the kind of person who changes the station during the acoustic intro to a Metallica song because he can't be bothered to wait around for the power chords to kick in. Hoagie had apparently given him a big lecture about sticking it out, because he was amazingly attentive during the first half of the production. He jiggled his leg a little, let out a few loud yawns, and, when it became completely unbearable, flip open a book he'd brought about fish (he opened it to a beautiful two-page spread depicting the piscine evolutionary tree). But he didn't do other things he's famous for, such as muttering to himself or getting up and pacing around. I was impressed.
As for me, it wasn't an especially easy two hours. The complex poetic language of Shakespeare isn't something one can just dive into unprepared, at least not in these modern times. I recognized it for what it was, a beautiful production and valuable cultural experience. But I didn't really enjoy myself. On some level I even chided myself for being an intellectual clod and failing to fall in love with Shakespeare back when I had my chance. Instead of paying close attention to the drama, I looked around at the interior, the people who had come to it,
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and the actors and actresses and their costumes. It was all so lavish, expensive, and seemingly authentic. Inside, the theatre appeared to be a close reproduction of a period London playhouse, complete with semi-ornate post-and-lintel oak beam construction. Adding to the sense of authenticity, the play opened with a poetic introduction by the actor who played the fool. In rhyming iambic pentameter, he told us about he refreshments and seating upgrades available. For an extra two dollars we could get a cushion to insulate us from the hardness of the wooden benches, and for another two dollars, those without backs on their benches could spring for a attachment to provide back support. These seemed like the sort of in-demand "prison comforts" that might have been sold in Elizabethan times, close as they were comfort-wise to the stone age.
At the intermission, my brother had had his fill and announced that he couldn't stand it anymore and so took his leave. I went into the second half armed with a glass of white wine, and this had an amazing ability both to better focus my attention on the play as well as decrease the feeling of boredom it was giving me.
By the time the play was over, I was amazed. How had Staunton managed to capture such a world-class production? Who were the backers for this project? At what sort of loss was it being run? Gretchen concurred with my assessment, saying she hadn't seen such good acting on Broadway.
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In the evening, all of us from both families (except my brother) went out to eat at L'Italia, a quasi-fancy restaurant in downtown Staunton. The restaurant used to live up to its five-staresque trappings, but underneath it all it's ultimately just another mediocre eatery. After all, you can't expect a town the size of Staunton in the middle of Redneckistani desert to be capable of pulling off both fine Italian food and Shakespeare at the same time. We did, however, get our own private room upstairs.
I was concerned that dinner conversation would stray into a forbidden topic - something my parents know about me that my parents-in-law do not, such as the existence of my online journal or the fact that I never actually graduated from Oberlin College. When topics would stray to close to one of these subjects and I thought there was a danger that someone, particularly my mother, might accelerate it into a taboo topic, I would do what I could to steer it away again. One such subject was the tale of how my father got into the University of Wisconsin even though he'd been a poor student during his one year of high school. (Interestingly, when he saw the transcript this high school eventually prepared, he was amazed to discover that they'd retroactively made him into a straight-A scholar.)
Interesting dinner topics included the tale of how Gretchen's family had fled Uganda under the cover of night when Idi Amin began rounding up the Jews. Then my father told a few war stories, including an overview of his job as a military policeman guarding members of Germany's Afrika Korps in POW camp at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. "The Germans were treated really well," he said, adding, "They could go places that the local blacks couldn't."
Before we left, we ordered something to go for my brother Don. For some reason Hoagie wouldn't shut up about how the L'Italia people had included "rolls and salad" with the chicken in Don's takeaway.
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