Greetings, with a Sunday puzzle-challenge:
Connect today’s pictures and links as possible clues, for a “rest of the newShrink story” to appear here in a week or two.
If by then you have come up with your own version, all the better. I’ll love to hear it, so please do share!
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Meanwhile, logistics:
Early in the week my dear friend, Mickey Addison, and I head for a few days’ trip to New York City. A central focus is the two, related plays pictured above. Taken both separately and together, they tackle issues with messages of rich relevance for us in today’s fractured America.
The evening before departure, we’ll see the 1996 film of The Crucible on Netflix. The trip’s centerpiece is the Broadway performance of the multiple-Tony-nominated play, “John Proctor is the Villain.” Mickey’s very close friend is the mother of the college-professor-playwright, Kimberly Belflower. Their special women’s group has embraced and applauded the play and its creator along its exciting performance-path to becoming her Broadway debut earlier this spring.
Our trip will also feature a lot of good walking, exploring and (literal) tasting in this favorite of destination cities.
Weaving the trip’s findings into the rest-of-the-story piece will be close as possible to next Sunday. That may run late or be held until the following Sunday. (July peak-houseguest season at the lake brings good friend- and family time but can mean uncertain schedules, arrival and departures.)
Now, some images and clues that have surfaced so far…
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#1. Today’s title themes
Words and fire, depicted with flame, are borrowed from the novels of George R.R. Martin, creator and a producer of long-running HBO series Game of Thrones. His full quote here is from “Fire and Blood,” in A Targaryen History #1. For me it sets a needed hopeful tone and grounds deeper roots of today’s more playful approach:
“Words are wind, but wind can fan a fire.
My father and my uncle fought words with steel and flame.
We shall fight words with words, and put out the fires before they start.”
How marvelous to imagine! (Of course, having a few of those majestic, trusty dragons as backup would help...)
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In the lede illustration above, starting at left…
#2. "John Proctor is the Villain”
Broadway play by Kimberly Belflower, Booth Theater
If you’re only to read one thing about this play, this commentary by Michelle Goldberg provides combination of factual review with several key contexts for how and why this play is having big impacts now. She brings clarity to quirky — and terribly, even violently, destructive — ways that political backlash happens. Particularly so when the backlash is attached consciously — or, far more dangerous when unconsciously — fueled and weaponized with extremist, intellectually and spiritually unmoored religiosity.
Why Adult Women Are Leaving This Broadway Show in Tears (New York Times column and review of the play by Michelle Goldberg)
The play centers on a group of small-town Georgia high school girls, grappling with the themes in their class study of "The Crucible"and in their own unfolding adolescence and identity. The New York Times called the play "urgently necessary" for its exploration of these themes.
The play honors the earlier classic’s undisputed excellence — having received permission from the Arthur Miller estate to use portions of Crucible. Yet ”John Proctor” takes on and explores deep misogyny and sexual abuse — themes inherent, yet largely unaddressed (or treated as heroics) with the Crucible’s allegorical take on the historic 1600s Salem “witch-hunt/witchcraft” trials. (Some of these links have good photos or video.)
Emory playwright Kimberly Belflower’s debut Broadway hit nets seven Tony nominations (https://news.emory.edu/stories)
Along with Belflower as a top contender for Best Play, the nominations included Best Featured Actor (Gabriel Ebert) and Best Direction (Danya Taymor.)
Review: In ‘John Proctor Is the Villain,’ It’s the Girls vs. the Men (NYT Critic’s pick)
Kimberly Belflower’s play, on Broadway starring Stranger Things star Sadie Sink, gives high school students a chance to prosecute a case against the misogyny, along with the witchcraft, in “The Crucible.”
John Proctor Is the Villain review – smart and snappy high school comedy/Booth Theatre, New York (Review in The Guardian)
Stranger Things star Sadie Sink takes the lead in a wonderfully written new Broadway show about high schoolers grappling with hot potato issues in 2018
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Now, a look at the Arthur Miller classic (both 1953 play and 1996 film pictured above at right.)
#3. “The Crucible”
Fictionalizing some characters and events, Arthur Miller’s 1953 Crucible is a white-hot protest against Senator Joe McCarthy’s vicious anti-Communist crusade. As mentioned above, the Miller play uses the literal 1600s historic witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, as its central metaphor.
I was frankly surprised, and heartened, that at least as recently as the 2018 small-town Georgia high school setting of the current play (and the playwright’s hometown) still teaches The Crucible. It’s unflinching — and richly educational — in its scrutiny of darkest American history and politics. It’s breathtakingly vivid in portraying how routinely, and under-the-radar, religiosity is wielded as a power-weapon to control, if not literally destroy, healthy sexuality (and worst of all, healthy women and girls).
We studied the play in my Charlotte junior-high, or maybe it was senior-high school. (Today that sounds unimaginable even to say aloud.)
Preparing and reading about the NYC play is prompting our Netflix viewing of the movie (starring Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder). And here’s a quick Sparks Notes overview version. The actual Salem witch trials were historic events in the late 1600s and resulted in more than 200 death sentences — most in America by hanging, not burning as is commonly assumed.
Consider this: Burnings at the stake, throughout Christian Europe by both Catholics and Protestants, were even more common than that during Henry VIII’s 16th Century reign. The Christian Inquisitions continued, an all too real and forceful counterpoint to enlightened advancements also underway in all powerful European regimes — for seven centuries: the 12th through the 19th.
Shifting now to a couple of other, similarly compelling though not directly related items. These kinds of things can tend to bubble-up for attention and interest in a parallel way with news unfolding over several weeks or a season.
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#4. Mark Rylance and “Wolf Hall”
Back around early May, national news was preoccupied with unfolding of full Trumpian excess in the U.S. Worldwide, along with increasingly militant Netanyahu’s Israel in Middle East-conflict came the death of a pope and selection of a new one in Rome.
Against those political and faith-world backdrops was when I streamed the final chapter of the Masterpiece series. Pictured at top center, it’s based on Hilary Mantel’s historical novels about the reign of British King Henry VIII and the roles that his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, played in it. Of particular significance were the adult life of Cromwell and how service to his king brought deepening involvement in gnarly, morally suspect at best, negotiations and actions.
Under escalating internal conflict, Cromwell would become:
fixer-and-dissolver of the king’s several son-less marriages (violently dispatching some of Henry’s multiple discarded wives in the process)…
dismantler of Catholicism as Britain’s dominant faith (violently dispatching some of the discarded clerics along the way)…
and co-creator of the Protestant Church of England (violently dispatching Catholic loyalists and prudish-disapproving Protestant-Lutherans along the way.)
(Spoiler alert for this paragraph!) Little wonder that Cromwell himself would at some point meet his own similar demise. Ironically, it would come not on battlefields of these ceaselessly warring-among-themselves European Christians. It would be Cromwell’s utter botching of his job as Henry’s pimp and marriage-matchmaker that cost him the king’s favor…. not to mention Cromwell’s own head.
Mark Rylance plays the role of Cromwell. Here is where I must confess (OK, a bit breathlessly!) The British actor is my long-enduring, tip-top of the hottest-crush-ever list on any screen or stage performance. Especially when bringing out the often-contradictory complexities of a character like this one, he is just… riveting.
I knew from history that Cromwell was beheaded, like most everyone closest to Henry once out of favor. Watching the well-done series, I knew this would likely be factually graphic, yet not deliriously overdone onscreen. Gruesome demises of Ann Boleyn and a host of others were portrayed similarly. (As if there can be a less-than-excessive viewing of beheadings and other executions??)
What I had not calculated was the cumulative emotional, visceral, somehow deeply spiritual/moral impacts of even viewing it. It was a gut-punch even passively, from arms-length, beholding and experiencing so much taken-for-granted-as-a-way-of-life: relentless, carelessly banal cruelty and violence…. utter moral depravity… complete denial and abandoned disregard for self-regulation of the characters’ own known instinctual appetites, etc. Those in focus here were not the masses of human beings living (and being kept living-under) the most primitive of instinctual-survival levels of existence dealt to poorly treated animals. All of those in combined political/religious power here were of various factions of Christianity (not some out-group wiccans, goddess-culturists, tree-worhippers or out-of-fashion polytheists from much earlier millennia.)
These were paragons of Europe’s dominant societies of their time — from which have derived many of the so-called traditional legal and moral verities Americans are supposed to cherish today. The characters here are the leaders, those most powerful over others… those ostensibly most enlightened, intellectually, spiritually, materially, experientially endowed.
This… barbarism, was and is, theirs.
For me, that terrible combination — humankind’s most unspeakable worst delivered with, and from, those in all ways most capable of its best in their time — rendered unwatchable the final episode and beheading of Thomas Cromwell.
(On a lighter note of consolation: At least this way my glorious Mark Rylance gets to keep his head on, to “fight-another-day”… in a role in which I am very sure his ultimate redemption awaits!)
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OK, so that’s my state of mind with the arrival of NYT columnist David Brooks’ next in a series of his periodic salient, often-wise essays along themes and concerns I share about Trump’s America. These have been a focus of my own thinking, writing— and citing and quoting of Brooks’ works in newShrink since the Inauguration.
Here’s the early May opinion piece from Brooks (he’s pictured above at bottom center.)
#5. “How to Survive the Trump Years With Your Spirit Intact”
The piece makes important, accurate and needed points — and I applaud Brooks’ direction and ultimate hopeful, positive conclusions he’s seeking here. The article was recommended by more than one person whose intellect and values I deeply respect, generally share (and I like to!)
On this one, though, I also keep getting stuck — have since first reading the article, and put it aside, Then other things (like this week’s plays and the Cromwell series) have kept bringing it back to mind.
It’s his use of the word(s) and concept(s) “pagan,” and “paganism” as the central metaphor and repeated reference-point for the entire rest of the case he is making here. From the introduction at the top of the piece:
“If there is one word to define Trump’s atmosphere, it is ‘pagan.’…”
Well, no, it’s not. That just isn’t the right word! “Pagan” — whether in terms of theology, political-power in societies, or both — just doesn’t mean all that Brooks is trying to hang on it here.
Aside from Christian and Jewish history, a quick look at the Oxford English dictionary definition clarifies. Pagan/paganism means religious practices and practitioners outside the dominant religious faiths and practices (of their society, place and time). The out-group status changes over time. This is illustrated vividly with the Jews and the former-Jewish earliest Christian followers of Jesus, after the crucifixion in 33 CE. These monotheists were, and had actually been, the “pagans” in the dominant polytheistic cultures of Greece and Rome. (That arguably has much to do with how and why they were being crucified.)
It would be some 60 years before emerging Christianity gained the power, political clout, recognition and wealth to begin redefining, marginalizing — and worse — to the Romans and Greeks of old, and centuries’ worth of outcast-others who had become the pagans..
Looking again at the Brooks article, I tried one simple word-substitution: Barbarism, barbarian, barbaric in place of his many uses of pagan. There may be other similar words that are better. For me this one began to illuminate the problem, and may point better to what he was trying to get at.
This is still bubbling on a back burner with me on this New York theater-dive, and I’m sure it will surface again with the “rest of the story” piece.
If you’re inclined to read, or re-read, the column meanwhile, I would value your thoughts if you try it with barbarism or some other replacement for all of the paganism.
As longtime readers might recall, I have this kind of ongoing love-hate/can’t-not-read-and-follow relationship with David Brooks. Sometimes I enjoy it, and him. More important, he has a very widely followed, often well informed and needed voice of sanity and moderation amid today’s time of chaos. That kind of influence needs to be precise and accountable,
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Speaking of the news front, before closing today here’s a necessary
Briefest of nods to the week’s national news
The somewhat spontaneous NYC trip and teaser-puzzle newShrink weren’t for intentional distraction, but it’s needed and welcome. Some days, developments and their ramifications for so many of the most vulnerable at this time in our nation are just too sad. That is stated with keen awareness of my own vast relative privileges here. For just one link to Thursday’s MAGA legislative victory story, signed into law by the president on July 4th as he had demanded:
Trump Administration News: House Passes and Trump signs into law) (Sweeping Bill to Fulfill President’s Domestic Agenda (New York Times)
The measure extending tax cuts and slashing the social safety net went to President Trump for his signature, but the debate over it exposed deep rifts in his party.
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And finally:
Writing home(s)
I had at first thought to add this link and the photo below solely as today’s standard, lighter-toned “writing home” closing-segment. In last week’s holiday week edition, I had accidentally failed to include the visual, or the link to what has been a perennial favorite July 4th piece in newShrink. Here’s that annual post, from the first Independence Day edition, newShrink, “Dearest Friend, Summer of Soul” 7/2/21 . More on that below.
Meanwhile, Grand Miz E, her parents and their dogs arrived for the holiday weekend with BIG news worthy of celebratory fireworks for their family… and utterly/delightfully also shifting the center-of-gravity for my/our family visits, new exploring and experiencing one another in new ways and settings…
A relocation:
FROM the misty Asheville mountains… TO sunny coastal suburban Charleston (James Island)… NOW!!
Basically, all came together in an amazing couple of weeks, on a much desired, carefully planned relocation. It had been expected to take as much as a year or more, because of complexities like different houses to be sold in Asheville and Charlotte, timing for schools, finding right short-term and eventual home in new community, unclear impacts of post-Helene recovery still underway in Asheville, etc.
Instead, the Asheville house sold for list price immediately after listing. Their planned vacation-and-camp Charleston visit this month has morphed into their move to well-located rental house in desired school district for Miz E’s start of 4th grade in August. (Both professional parents’ stable jobs combine mostly remote with established periodically scheduled trips for in-person contact.)
With tenants’ lease ending this month at their Charlotte (Plaza Midwood) house, after routine sprucing it will be listed for sale around Labor Day. (Charlotte-area readers: If you or those you know are looking to buy in popular Plaza Midwood, email me and I’ll be glad to share the listing when they get it together. I can provide details individually, too.)
Whew!
Suddenly, for this active outdoor sunshine-and-water lover, the regular back-and-forth to Grand Miz E is to be between Metro Charlotte/Lake Norman and sunny/beachy/New-South Charleston! (Occasional visits to much-loved people in vibrant Asheville and surrounds can be in seasons of long sunny days, and mood… on dry roads.)
My over-the-moon response to this new “gravitational shift” is a complete surprise and gift.
More synchronistic discoveries came on opening and revisiting the above link to that Independence Day newShrink.
The photo-caption describes this first of then-5-year-old Miz E’s shared pictures of her display "tableaux.” Part of that year’s 4th celebration was the exciting move she and parents were making then: From Charlotte, where she’d just graduated from great pre-school, to start her next school chapter with a family-relocation trying Asheville. Now 9, she heads to 4th grade on more than super-strong academic and general foundation. She hates and becomes terribly flustered by any mention of such things beyond this. So that’s all.
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One more surprising observation came on re-reading the earlier holiday post’s full letter, more meaty than popular one-liner quotes, from Abigail Adams to husband John during our nation’s formation.
As it turns out, Abigail just might have a summation for the “rest-of-the-story.”
We’ll see, in a week or two!
#6. "Dearest Friend”
And, that is all I have for now! Talk to you soon.
🦋💙 tish
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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