September 11, 2008
Dear Everyone:
Seven years ago today, I was in a hotel room in
downtown “Hobby”, having discovered through various news media that two
planes had struck the
World Trade Center in
New York and another
the
Pentagon and, later, that a fourth had gone down in
Pennsylvania.
Sad times.
One week ago today, I arrived in
Ashland, Oregon,
for the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), something I’ve done (almost)
every year for 34 years.
This time I traveled alone, meeting up with a friend from high school,
her husband and two other couples.
This group decides on a particular extended weekend (Thursday
through Sunday) and a place big enough for all of them to stay, usually
a house or apartment. Then
everyone buys tickets for whichever plays they care to see in that time
frame. I purchased tickets
for the four plays that my friend and her husband would be attending,
although we would not be sitting together.
We met for dinner, introductions all around,
including a daughter who had come up from
On Friday, we saw
The Clay Cart, which is a 4th
Century Sanskrit play, but which contains many of the elements you would
expect to find in Shakespeare.
Friday night saw The Further Adventures of
Hedda Gabler, a comedy based on an
Ibsen
play. (Yes, strange
bedfellows; but it has some very funny moments.)
We had no plays on Saturday, although I realized in
retrospect that I might have gone to see
The Comedy of Errors (as a
musical set in the American Wild West), but that’s OK.
I’ve seen it before.
And before that. In the
meantime, my high school friend had finally realized that the
“allergies” that were bothering her was really a cold, so she spent the
afternoon and evening napping, so it was just as well we didn’t have any
performances.
Sunday was the last play,
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, in the New Theater.
It was a comedy (again), slightly marred when we learned that the
original actress had been severely injured in an accident just a few
days before. They had to
cancel the Friday performance and completely re-block the play, re-do
some lighting, before “the show must go on” on Sunday.
The major character “floated” in the air throughout the second
act, using wires suspended from the ceiling.
In the “new” version, a kind of costume “represented” the
character while the actress spoke her lines from the safety of the stage
floor. It certainly was
surrealistic.
On Monday, we met for breakfast, then went our
separate ways. I pulled out
of the gas station by the freeway right at 10:00 in the morning.
I decided to drive straight through without stopping for lunch.
However, about mid-afternoon, my stomach started to make
comments, so I picked up a bag of locally grown and harvested almonds
and munched on them. I
pulled into my carport just after 3:30.
When I came into the townhouse, I noticed that a
framed photograph of me and my siblings (the last one “Frankie” took
before we lost “Byron”) had fallen from a small shelf.
I didn’t think much of it until I got upstairs and saw the
adhesive tape lying on the bathroom floor.
Inside the bathroom, the cabinet was open, many small things had
fallen, lots of little bottles in the bathtub.
Then I went into the bedroom.
Most drawers slightly open.
A cabinet door completely open and small objects out of place.
Clearly, there had been an
earthquake.
(And I missed it!) I found out
later that it happened last Friday night.
By all accounts it was short but memorable.
All week long I’ve been finding things that had
moved. Just this evening, I
discovered that the cordless phone in the second bedroom, which serves
as a home office, had been flung out of its charger and under the chair.
And the computer cart is now several inches further away from the
wall than before.
But the wireless network is working fine as is the
printer, once I replaced the inkjet cartridge, so
All’s Well That Ends
Well.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |