Amantani Islands, Lake Titicaca and the Old American and Young Israeli Soldier

Among the many excursions I took while in Peru in the summer of 2012 was a trip to the Amantani Islands and Lake Titicaca. We spent a day and a half on the Amantani Islands in a rustic hostel with a host family. 

Julian and Rosa are the parents of eight children. The youngest daughter is still home. They live very simply, and so did we. They prepared us three meals on the only full day we were with them. The kitchen is a separate room and the stove is wood-fed. We were not served meat. It's too expensive, but there were cheese and other protein sources at each meal. We sat on a bench made with a wooden plank covered with fabric and resting on two big tree stumps. Julian and Rosa sat on tree stumps and conversed with each other and at times with us as we ate. 

Our rooms were spartan. We didn't really need anything other than a bed, and a bed and a table were what we got. There was one light but no outlets. The toilet was a modern one, but it was outside like an old outhouse. You flushed it by dumping a bucket of water into it. There was no shower, and there was no real private place to sponge bathe unless you could somehow manage to do so in the little shed where the toilet was. Not exactly the Ritz! I washed my hair and brushed my teeth with cold water in the cold morning air. I wanted to shave, but I decided to forgo it to go back up the stairs to my room and use the one towel provided to dry my hair. 

Julian and Rosa were very gracious and went out of their way to make us feel at home. It was certainly a back-to-basics experience. It is the only way to spend time on the island. There are no rich people on the island, and there is no Holiday Inn. Of course, I don't travel to live life exactly like I do at home. That would be silly. 

Julian demonstrated his graciousness as soon as we arrived. I had a backpack that was pretty heavy and a medium size suitcase. I had no idea what to expect when our boat docked on this island, no idea that we would have to hike up several hundred feet to our lodging. Julian immediately took my suitcase and threw it over his back. I think he is about my age. early sixties. Suitcase on back, he led the way up to his house. We were all huffing and puffing in that high altitude. There is absolutely no way I could have managed my backpack and my suitcase, too. I couldn't have rolled it up that path. It was way too steep, dusty and rocky. I don't know what I would have done. I guess I would have had to rest and then go back for it.

Julian spoke as he led us up the path. I couldn't say more than a sentence or two without completely getting out of breath. It really is amazing. Of course, the locals like Julian have been getting about in these hills at this altitude all their lives. Amazing that they can still do so into their sixties and beyond while lugging all kinds of stuff, from babies to tourists' suitcases, in beautiful pouches that the women weave. 

These pictures chronicle our day. First we took a boat out onto Lake Titicaca to reach the famous floating islands. Then we took a hike up the mountain on the Amantani Island to the ruins of a pre-Inca temple dedicated to Mother Earth, Pachamama. 

On the way up to the temple, I had a very hard time. When I finally reached the temple ruins, an Israeli soldier made my day. He immediately noticed that I had made it to the top of the mountain with the pre-Inca ruins of a temple for a prize. Indeed, unbeknownst to me, he had been observing me during my travail of a hike. He came up to me with a big smile on his face and congratulated me. He had observed how, about every 20 minutes, I would take a rest and then start back up the path to the temple complex some 4,000 ft on top of the mountain overlooking Lake Titicaca. He said he was rooting for me the entire way. He was inspired that somebody my age could do it. He told me that his Father was about my age, and all he did was watch TV.  I told him that I had been inspired when I was around his age by people around my age who were hiking in the Alps. It's wonderful to think that you can continue to do something you love for at least forty more years. He wanted his picture taken with me, and I had mine taken with him. Unfortunately, he's in the army and isn't allowed a Facebook account, but we will both always have this nice memory and nice photo of our encounter. Here is the photo,


I wasn't able to stay away from these Swiss guys during my time in Peru! The guy in the picture below to my left sat next to me on the bus ride to Lima when I visited the Nazca lines. We spent most of the eight hour ride talking English and German. We were in different hotels. I was surprised the next day to see him at Nazca, and, as things turned out, he and his friends were on the same little Cessna plane that I was to see the famous lines. We parted never thinking we would see each other again. Then, lo and behold, we bump into each other a week later on the top of the mountain at this temple! We decided it was fate and that we should all friend each other on Facebook. Two years later, we are indeed Facebook friends.

A Wild Parrot Chase

In the summer of 2012, I spent two months in Peru. I lived in Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, where I took a Spanish course and from where I took excursions nearly every weekend to different parts of that amazing country. One excursion was into the Peruvian Amazon. I went with to friends by train to our point of departure, Puerto Moldonado , and from there took a boat down the Tambopata River into the jungle. Our guide showed us many wonderful places in that jungle. We saw animals we had only ever seen before on TV or in zoos. Among them were hundreds of parrots first gathered in trees and then, from a hillside, licking clay to obtain the nutrients in it that their bodies needed.

The last morning we were in the jungle, we had a 3:30 wake up call so that we could ride up the river some two hours to see hundreds of parrots gather in the trees above the hillside. They seemed to tease those of us who had gotten up at such an ungodly hour to come to see them by staying high in the trees off in the distance, occasionally taking off in swarms to fly over the river only to return to the tree tops. Without binoculars and without much sunlight to pick up their colors, they looked just like big birds. It was hard to determine even that they were parrots. Our guide came equipped with a couple of sets of good binoculars and even a small telescope set up on the hill. 

After about an hour of the ho hum and whining, (But they don't even look like parrots from here! It's too dark to see any colors! Look! Did you see some green in the wing span of was it just my imagination!?), I was beginning to wonder if this early morning visit would turn out just to be a wild goose chase with no parrots at all.

Suddenly, the parrots began swarming again, this time to land by the dozens on the side of a hill several hundred yards off in the distance from the embankment where we had gathered hoping to see them in their full majesty of color. The hill contains clay, and in a morning ritual that goes on for eons into their distant evolutionary past, they gather at just about the same time to lick the clay and get nutrients their bodies need. Yes, once again, just as we were beginning to doubt the expertise of our guide, the snake, tarantula and bird whisperer extraordinaire, Jose Guillermo Moran Valer, the parrots had finally come home to roost by the dozens on the side of a clay lick several hundred yards from us.

The clay lick, or colpa, as its more commonly called in the local Quechua language, is indeed a source of food for these beautiful creatures that most people have only ever seen in in zoos or cages in their homes. Geophagy, the intentional consumption of soil by vertebrates, has long been documented in a number of bird and mammal species, which consume soil to increase absorption of certain minerals not naturally in their diet. It was hard to make the parrots out as they alighted on the clay lick, but with the aid of binoculars, it was easy to see that they were indeed parrots, and it was easy to pick up their green bodies with blue heads. When they spread their wings, we could also see red and yellow hues.

Even with a good lens, the pictures I took are clear only when they are enlarged. I hope you are able to do that, because enlarging them does bring out the full colors of the parrots. They seemed to stay on the hillside for five minutes or so at a time, then take off in flight to return to the tree tops and then once again to descend to the colpas. They entertained us this for way over an hour, and then they took off for deeper parts of the jungle. I am happy report that it was not for naught that we had risen at 3:30 a.m. and traveled nearly two hours up the river on a very chilly morning. We were indeed rewarded with a ritual of color and pageantry as old as the species itself. Next summer, I'll have to book a tour that goes even four more hours farther up the river to watch macaws perform the same ritual, and I'll bring along an even more powerful lens!

Basel Fastnacht Children's Parade or "Get them while they're young, Evita!"

In the mid-winter of 2002 I traveled to Basel, Switzerland to spend a week with friends and to attend my first carnival celebration., the famous Basel Fastnacht. As a German and Russian teacher, I had taught about this midwinter festival with pagan roots for decades, but I had never attended one. Karneval, Fasnacht or Fasching never really interested me much, but learning about it in order to teach it did lead to a fascination with the holiday. I was fascinated by its ancient pagan roots and by how Christianity adopted this pagan tradition and adapted the customs and food to the Chritian faith. This ancient pagan holiday became a pre-Lenten festival with its customs and traditions left intact, just understood with a different spin. It wasn't until I attended a celebration for the first time that I fell madly I love with it. Indeed, those few days with Andy, Wayne and their daughter, Olivia, may have been the most fun filled three days of my life.

The Children's Parade takes place on a Tuesday, and is just one day in a four day celebration. It is not one organized continuous parade but a series of a hundred (or more) parades that range in size and scope from two parents pushing a constumed baby in a stroller or pulling a toddler in a wagon to more organized brass bands made up of older kids and adults. The usual Cliques or adult clubs are still marching and playing fife and drum as well. 

The parades are higgledy piggledy all over the city! You can't escape them, even if you wanted to, and who would want to escape the utter cuteness of those countless cherubs? Parades crisscross each other on the same street. Stand on a main street. They pass by. Go down what seems like an empty alley way. They are there in no time. In among the spectators are parents with costumed children, as well, sometimes on their shoulders for a better view and sometimes curbside on their laps. 

Groups of little cowboys, princesses, pirate, bumble bees, and smurfs play in the confetti and chase each other and their parents with it. Older children are interviewed by Swiss TV about their day. Mischievous little boys and girls team up with each other. One approaches you to offer you a candy, and his or her partner in crime unleashes a big scoop full of confetti all over you. Older children are also pulled in larger wagons and toss candy, oranges and shoot confetti at the crowd from confetti guns just like the adults do. Seeing a toddler dressed up like a strawberry on a parent's shoulders pass by an old person in a mask being wheeled down the street by a son or daughter is not only touching but telling. Just like the love of the Jersey shore, the love of Fastnacht begins at the earliest of age and lasts a lifetime.

A review: Mary Poppins, the musical

"Mary Poppins" was directed by Richard Eyre, saw its Broadway debut in 2006. I must admit that I was skeptical. The only Disney musical that had enthralled me before Mary Poppins was "The Lion King," and that was mainly because of Julie Taymore's genius, not the good folks' genius at Disney. However, I liked it very much.  I think they succeeded in transferring the magic of the film onto the stage.  At first, I thought Bert, played Gavin Lee, paled in comparison to Dick Van Dyke, but, by the end of the show, I liked him every bit as much.  Ashley Brown as Mary Poppins was also wonderful.  Nobody looked as radiant and sang with as lovely as soprano as the young Julie Andrews, but Brown is very good. It was a pleasant surprise to me that one of my favorites, Rebecca Luker, played Mrs. Banks. At forty, she looks thirty, is gorgeous and has a soprano very close to the young Julie Andrews.  As a matter of fact, ten years ago, she would have made a great Mary Poppins.  There is at least one song when Mrs. Banks echoes what Mary is singing, and Luker's voice is prettier than Brown's. 

 

The staging was wonderful. A friend who saw it in London told me that the tuppance song, "Feed The Birds," was staged better than in the film.  It is.  I haven't seen the film in forty years, so I don't remember the context of the song, but in the musical, it helps Mary to cure the children of their snobbism and to teach them kindness and charity.  It's very touching. 

 

The show also has a couple of dark numbers, one in which the toys in the children's bedroom come alive and sing rather menacingly, "Temper, Temper," and another, "Brimstone and Treacle,"  (think evil potion), sung by Mr. Bank's nanny, a stock Disney character of evil who looks like a cross between Cruella Deville and Maleficent, the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty.  Apparently, the stories are darker than the Disney film, and these two songs are truer to the spirit of P.L. Travers' original tales than the film. Despite her song, "Practically Perfect," Mary Poppins is not all sugar and spice.  She can be a firm task master, she's a little too sure of herself, and she comes and goes "as the wind changes," apparently indifferent with regard to whom she hurts in doing so.

 

There is one number alone, which is (almost) worth the 110.00 price of admission.  It is the reprise of "Chim Chim Cher-ee," followed by "Step in Time."  The number got a thunderous, deafening applause, but it should have gotten a standing ovation.  It's pure genius, both the staging as the roof top morphs into the entire stage with London as a backdrop so that there's enough space for all the blacksmiths to come out of nowhere to sing and dance with their brooms.  Mary and the children interact with them, as well.  The choreography is spectacularly exciting.  Tap plays an important role but so do acrobatics, ballet and modern dance.  It's just marvelous. 

I was also moved by the story of Mr. Banks.  I remembered from the film that he was a stuffed shirt and that Mary's charms eventually won him over, but I didn't remember that we had any idea why he was the way he was. Distant parents who left him in the care of a wicked old witch of a nanny explain it all.  He's not just a distant husband and father in the musical.  He's mean, often cruel to Mrs. Banks, especially.  I didn't remember that from the film, although it might be there.  His transformation is credible and moving.

Review: Grey Gardens, the musical

Grey Gardens is the sad, strange tale of Jackie Kennedy's aunt, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, and cousin, Edith Bouvier Beale, and the filthy, cat ridden mansion in which they ended up as recluses. Those two deceased women, the mother, Big Edie,died in 1979 the daughter, Little Edie, in 2001, were very hot in 2006 when Michael Greif directed, Grey Gardens, the musical. Books had already been written about them and an important documentary had already been made.

 

I liked "Grey Gardens," and I liked it a lot. I wasn't bowled over by it, astonished by it, but I liked it very much.  I agreed with the critics and a lot of ordinary folk that the second act is far more compelling than the first act, but I liked the first act, too, and better than I thought I would after having read reviews from both of the above. 

 

The musical has every thing a very good musical, and certainly a great musical, should.  The music is very good.  It's not Learner and Lowe good, not Rogers and Hammerstein good, not Kander and Ebb good, and certainly not Sondheim good, but very good.  Each song does what it sould do, some in spades.  They entertain and provide comic relief when they should, they further develop the characters, shed further light on their relationships, and further move the plot along.  The best song, in my opinion, comes at the end of the show when the daughter, Edie, finally resigns herself to her fate, trapped in that house with her mother until her mother is dead. It's an aching lament, "Another Winter in a Summer Town."(The mansion is on Long Island.)  Another song, "The Cake I Had," which the mother, Mary Louise Wilson, sings, reminded me of the two most Brechtian songs in Cabaret, both sung in the revival also by Mary Louise Wilson, then as Fraulein Schneider, "So What?" and "What Would You Do?"

 

The direction is crisp, and things keep moving at the steady pace they should.  Your attention is always focused on what's happening on that stage.  Somebody said the characters didn't seem to come to life until the second act.  While it's true that they are far more interesting as eccentric recluses caught up in a sadly pathetic relationship characterized by anger, bitterness, and regret all mixed up with love, I don't agree that the characters weren't alive in the first act.  I liked the way they are introduced in the first act, which, if anything, is not slow at all, but much more frenetic than the second.  After all, it does take place as the family and servants are getting ready for a big event, the announcement of their daughter's engagement to Joe Kennedy, Jr.  The director does a nice job introducing and juggling all the plates he has to, a big household full of ten different characters, including a ten year old Jackie Bouvier, who's come over to play with Lee, a young, and very good looking, Joe Kennedy, Jr., and the grandfather, "Major" Bouvier, played with panache and flair by John McMartin.  Like most of the other characters, he has his own song, "Marry Well," and he's marvelous. 

 

As a matter of fact, the whole cast is marvelous, beginning with Mary Louise Wilson as Big Edie and Christine Ebersole as Little Edie. Some of the characters morph into new ones in the second act.  Especially good here is the young Joe Kennedy, Matt Cavenaugh, who in the second act, which takes place in 1972, has morphed into a long haired hippie who befriends Edith Bouvier Beale.

 

The staging is very good.  I was wondering how the cats would be handled.  They are handled by projections, and they work.  So does the transformation of the home, from the gorgeous mansion it once was to the dilapidated and filthy place it became.  I especially liked one touch in the masterfully designed living room of the mansion in its prime, one tiny example of that Baroque 3-D effect where cherubs' legs or flowers jut out from the painting on the surface of the wall.  

 

Two windows are smartly used.  They descend and ascend framing the facade of the house both before and after.  Somehow they managed to look pristine in the first act and old and dilapidated in the second act.  They are more than just examples of good set design.  The first and last image you see of the characters is through the windows.  Through them, you catch your first glimpse of the world you're about to enter. 

 

Last but far from least, the book is excellent.  You don't expect War and Peace from any book of a musical. But it is excellent.  It's every bit as good as the songs in the exposition of the characters and their relationships.  In both acts, the dialog is very funny.  I wish I could remember it all, but it would be worth reading, as a play.  I think much of the dialog is laugh out loud funny and would be so even on the page, uninterpreted by terrific actors who know how to deliver a line. 

Exodus: Reflections of a 24 Year Old Seminarian

I have already written one note touching on my short lived experience at the Episcopalian seminary of Nashotah House, a thirty mile car drive from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One day I will get around to writing the whole story of what happened there during a brief and very painful stay in the fall of 1975. Until then, let this reflection paper, the only paper I ever wrote and the only grade I ever got during my very brief stay at Nashotah House, speak for the left wing religious idealism of my youth, which also reflects the Zeitgeist in which I came of age. 

The reflection paper:

The saga of Exodus has stirred my imagination since I first heard as a child of those crucial events in the story of a people. Although I no longer understand it in quite the same way as DeMille depicted it, the story has become one of the focal points for the way in which I respond to the Christian message. 

The central fact of Exodus is a personal God who cares for and is involved with His people. "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt... I have known their sufferings and have come to deliver them." Here speaks a God of liberation, in this case, from political as well as spiritual bondage. Throughout Exodus, He initiates the liberation of a politically and spiritually oppressed people. 

Exodus speaks very personally to me, for I understand God, on one level, as a personal God who cares, who will not tolerate injustice and who acts through spiritually perceptive people to eradicate oppression, in whatever form that may take. The bondage of the Hebrews was two-fold, political and spiritual, and God's actions on behalf of them speak to both forms of slavery. 

After He restores their human dignity by freeing them from slavery, God reveals to His people ways by which they could unfold spiritually. From my own perspective, I would like to integrate the Church's traditions of the mystical and the prophetic into a theology that is both spiritually and socially liberating. It is Exodus' underlying motif of a God who acts, "He causes to be," in human history to promote freedom that I find most appealing about Exodus.

Exodus also raises serious questions for me, as a Christian, which I have not yet resolved. In order to free the Hebrews, God performs violent acts. After reading of death and destruction, I painfully ask myself what role, if any, violence might play for us today, whenever we are faced with an obvious evil oppression. Living in a liberal democratic society, which allows room within the system for cultural (r)evolution, the question does not torture me greatly. However, if I lived in a repressive totalitarian system, could I resort to violence as a tool for liberation? Although I doubt it was through a series of direct quotations, I am convinced that God inspired Moses. Exodus makes me grapple once again with the question of violence in the process of human liberation. How would God work through a contemporary Moses in Chile or South Africa? I do not have an answer, but I see Exodus speaking to the question of political liberation as directly as the resurrection speaks to the question of spiritual liberation. 

The love and concern of God for His people inspired me in many places in Exodus. His acts on behalf of His people are summed up poetically in what for me is the most beautiful statement about God in Exodus. 

"Who is like thee, oh Lord, among the gods?
Who is like thee, majestic in holiness
terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders?"

"Thou hast led in thy stead fast love
the people whom thou hast redeemed
Thou hast guided them by thy
strength to thy holy abode."

That these magnificent lines can be in the same book as: "Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death" offends me. When I came to Exodus 21 in my reading, I felt that the inspiration of God ceased and man's mind completely took over. To quote God directly as the giver of such laws made me angry.* 

I found Exodus 25-40 interesting in general. I was very excited by the theme of the tangibles by which we respond to the Holy. However, it did become boring to read all the details. Then again, the underlying theme of what place, what clothes, and what symbols we use to respond to the Holy was fascinating for me. It spoke to me personally, because my religion features symbols which help mediate the presence of God to me and the gestures which I feel, in some small way, must mediate to Him the absolute awe and humility I feel as I come before His love and majesty, the source of all creation. Even man's eternal donning of "elegant plumage" to confront God is evident in, "They shall receive gold, blue and purple and scarlet stuff and fine twined linen..."

I was inspired, baffled, bored, and angered by the book of Exodus, but it did most definitely speak to my faith. A personal God who loves us and who acts in human history is central to my understanding of the Gospel. I received this great truth from Exodus. To know this truth, which underlies all the sometimes funny, sometimes sad details of Exodus is to know that I must continue the joy and struggle of following our Lord. 

*In the professor's only comment, save for his final one, he underlined this sentence and noted, "It would be helpful to look more at WHY?"

The professor's second and final comment: "A fine paper! Thank you." I got an A. :-)


In front of the chapel

By the lake on campus I was told that Nashotah is an Indian word meaning "land between two lakes," but my memory might be faulty!

A review and a meditation: John Doyle's 2006 production of "Company" and the 22nd Psalm

In 2006, John Doyle followed up on his cast-as-its-own-orchestra approach in "Sweeney Todd"with a production of "Company" using the same approach. I saw the production and wrote a review for friends. This post is both a review of the show and a memoir or mediation on "Being Alive, Bobby's last song. The song always reminds me of the anguish I felt after an ill fated two month stay at an Anglican seminary, Nashotah House, about thirty miles outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I left Nashotah House after two months, and leaving began a "dark night of the soul" period in my young life, which took several months to come out of and longer to understand its role in my life. 

I loved "Company," just like I thought I would, but not immediately. It took some time to engage fully my emotions.  Even by the end of the first act, I thought that I might be overall disappointed.  My expectations were so high that I thought I was going to feel let down.

The set is intriguing. It captures the spirit of the play and the heart and soul, or what's left of both, of the aging upper middle class Manhattan sophisticates who are Bobby's friends. It all glistens and gleams and sparkles and shines, from the black bare brick wall of the theater to the Plexiglas cubes arranged in seemingly haphazard order, to the black lacquered Steinway, instruments resting here and there as if in a special exhibit in a museum, and to the spic and span hard wood floor polished to a fine sheen and with an equally glistening inter-lay of beautiful tile with an eye catching dark blue hue.  A lone gleaming white fluted Corinthian column anchors the set. It's as shiny and sleek as the rest of the stage design.  It's base is a little offsetting, though. It's looks like a round radiator whose flat top serves as a table for cocktails, ashtrays, and as a rest for the hands, arms and backs of the performers.

The performances are all strong.  I think some of the reason why I wasn't immediately all agog is the central the conceit of the production.  As much as the idea is unique, innovative and works on several levels, having actors playing their own instruments demands sacrifices that have been mentioned in other reviews. 

I've seen "Company" several times.  The choreography can be lots of fun.  I've seen the women in Bobby's life confront him with the "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" number in a variety of exciting ways.  Here, although the song is delivered as well as I've ever seen it, there's not much you can do with your hands, feet, legs and body while playing instruments.  "Side By Side," which opens the second act, is choreographed as imaginatively as possible, I think, if all the actors are playing instruments while performing it.  For that reason alone, it doesn't disappoint.  However, with all its energy and drive, it, too, is a choreographer's dream.  It works better without the burden of instruments.

Lack of specifically designed spaces for the action bothered me just a little, too. Company is nowhere near as complex a show as "Sweeney Todd," but there were still some moments when people unfamiliar with the play might not know exactly where something is taking place. If Bobby's friends don't have homes, if Harry and Sarah aren't sparring around real furniture, for example, if Peter and Susan, and later, just Peter and Bobby, aren't on a terrace for the terrace scene, if Bobby doesn't have an apartment, if he and April aren't in his bedroom in bed for the "Barcelona" number, and if Martha is not outside all by herself on a park bench when she sings "Another Hundred People," then these scenes don't pack the same emotional wallop, at least for me, as they otherwise would.  Maybe I've just been spoiled by TV and film.  Had I grown up listening to the radio, I might have a more finely honed imagination, and all of that wouldn't bother me one bit.

On the other hand, and this has been said, too, the convention allows you to focus more attention on the book and the remarkably profound lyrics.  Some of the action, some of the dialog and even a lyric here and there, are dated- middle aged couples experimenting with marijuana, because it's the latest rage with the kids, "my service will explain," but, of course, the themes of the show are as relevant today as they ever were.  They are eternal, and Sondheim's take on them is so amazingly insightful and rings so profoundly true that you know why so many people who love the theater think that he's a god. I paid more attention to the dialog this time around than I had before.  It's very funny and insightful.  The songs and the lyrics are still the highlight, but the book is solid, too.  I like all the New Yorker jokes.  I didn't remember them from before, lines like "The pulse of New York City is the busy signal." and "I'm a New Yorker.  Nothing interests me."

Esparza plays it low key throughout.  He always keep a slight emotional distance. Bobby is supposed to be so good looking, so personable, so socially accessible and adept, so charming, and so charismatic that all these people can't help loving him to death.  Esparza's choice takes something away from all that.  But it makes his epiphany, his great catharsis, Being Alive, all the more powerful. I've never seen it performed any better. When he sits down at that Steinway, the first time he plays an instrument, I knew what was coming, and I expected a lot.  Esparza delivered in spades.  Dorothy Parker delivered that famous one liner review of an early Katherine Hepburn stage performance, "She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.'' I don't know what the venomous wit would say about Esparza's "Being Alive," but his performance will forever remain for me the alpha and the omega of that song.  In part because until the moment he sits down at the piano, he's been so detached, but to a great extent because of his awe inspiring voice. He finds the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the song.  It's incredibly moving.

Christ quoted the opening line of Psalm 22 right before dying on the cross, "My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?" That psalm has been called " a cry of anguish and a song of praise."  It has particular resonance for me, because the last time I walked the beautiful grounds of Nahshota House, I cried out to God in my despair, and He remained silent.  Nearly a year later, I wrote a paper about my experience at Nashota House for a remarkable professor who wanted us to finish our research paper at the last possible moment.  She said she didn't care if we were still writing when she walked into the class to collect them.  She wanted our last possible reflections on the topic, which she wanted us to explore not only intellectually but spiritually and personally, as well. 

Thirty years ago, I wrote on Spiritualism and my experience with it, my religious quest until that date, and, to personalize it, I wrote about my experience with seminary.  I didn't finish the paper in the classroom, but I did finish it after midnight on Sunday morning before the Monday it was due.  The paper was incredibly healing.  Putting my thoughts down "black on white" about leaving Nashota House, almost a year after it happened, made me understand for the first time what really was happening inside of me and why it happened . 

Synchronicities surrounding the paper were quite dramatic.  To close the paper, I wanted a quote from the Bible, one that would capture the utter despair I felt the day I took a final walk in the woods between two lakes and the elation I felt as all the pieces of the Nashotah House puzzle fell into place for the very first time.  I went over to a Bible, pick it up and opened it randomly to Psalm 22.  This "cry of anguish and song of praise" captured perfectly exactly what I felt when I left Nashotah and what I was feeling at that moment of ephiphany. 

The next day, for the first time since I left seminary, I attended church. I laughed and cried throughout the entire service.  It was the celebration of Pentecost, the decent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples.  I had no idea. I couldn't believe it.  The sermon was not an angry one at, all but it was about our arrogance before God. The priest even wove into the sermon my passion for language, referencing the Tower of Babel and calling it not just a myth for the evolution of foreign languages, but, more profoundly, a story about the creature's arrogance before the Creator.  Nashota was to a great extent about my arrogance. God had very little to do with my call to the priesthood.  Upsetting the church, stirring things all up, being the first openly gay priest, eventually finding one and then living with my spouse in the rectory, all of this and more was what I dreamed about doing in my ministry. My call was all about me. I thought I had the brains and charisma to put it all off, to revolutionize the church.

Ever since I first heard "Being Alive," I have wondered whether Sondheim was inspired by Psalm 22 both for the structure of the song and its central emotional dilemma.  From anguish to joy is what both the psalm and the song are all about.  I wouldn't be surprised at all if that psalm, so important to me personally, did inspire Sondheim, and if that's one of the reasons hearing it always moves me so deeply.

Raul Esparza in "Company"

A Salute to My Father on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday

My relationship with my father has had its ups and downs, and that is putting it mildly! My relationship with my mother was easy for the most part. To be sure, we had our tensions along the way, but generally speaking, she loved me with all her heart, and I loved her with all my heart. There is no "generally speaking" with my father. The relationship has been far more complex. However, I have made a lot of progress in the last few years in coming to terms with the complicated gamut of emotions that I have toward my father. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, I was able to give him this tribute and mean every word of it.

It was easy to know where to begin this little tribute to my 80 year old father. I’ll begin at my beginning on March 3 1951. Recently lots of people on Facebook- it’s a computer thing, Dad, I’ll explain later- were posting the # 1 song in the country on the day they were born. I googled mine- another computer thing, Dad, and the # 1 song in the country on March 3, 1951 was “If” by Perry Como. I know that Dad always liked Perry Como and I thought to myself, “Cool. Dad must have been a very happy camper on March 3. Not only did his first child come into the world at 2:32 PM on that date- thanks, Mom, for the exact time- but also one of his favorite singers had the # 1 song in the country!

They say that children see their parents in a different light as they get older and that’s been the case with me. When I was younger, I noticed the differences between us. Dad was a gifted athlete. I never became much of an athlete. I excelled in the classroom. Dad was disciplined- jogging every day long before it became popular and people really knew what it was. I bet they used to look at him, scratch their heads and wonder, “What in the heck is that guy doing? He’s not walking! He’s not really running. There’s no track around anyway. It’s not a walking. It’s not running. What the heck is that is it that guy’s doing!?? I’ve never never been disciplined enough to jog every day. I fooled around on the tennis court when I was in high school, but I certainly never excelled at the sport like Dad did playing it up until just a couple a years ago. And I didn’t get any further than touch football with the neighborhood kids when I was boy, even though every fall Dad used to toss around the football with me, teach me how to hold it, kick it, run out for a pass and throw it. I remember those times fondly.

Now that I’m an adult I realize how much of my father’s child I really am, though. I love to read the newspaper. Recently someone sent me a picture that was taken while I was on sabbatical in what was then the Soviet Union. I’m reading the newspaper. Dad always loved to read the paper, and I remember it from my earliest years. I’m sure my love of the newspaper comes from Dad. I probably picked up a newspaper even before I could actually read much, mimicking my father’s behavior, as kids do. I love the water and I feel very comfortable in it. Being a Pisces might have something to do with that, but it really comes from Dad. He taught me everything I needed to know to feel comfortable in the water. It’s funny, but I remember the lessons. Dad started off with the doggy paddle, and I remember the lesson. He taught me how to swim, how to float, how to tread water, how to dive, and at Ocean City, how to ride a wave into the shore. I have scenes in my mind of all these lessons. And I am 58 years old, but I love to ride a big wave all the way into the shore.

I have a decent voice. It’s not nearly as good as Dad’s voice- I won’t ever be singing any solos or cutting any records- but it’s good enough to sing in a chorus and the chorus is good enough to have performed, along with many other choruses, on the stage of Carnegie Hall for a benefit for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Dad was always singing around the house, and Robin, Sherry, Mark and I do the same thing. My voice and love of singing comes from Dad.

The love of newspapers, the love of the water and the love of singing are three great legacies that come from my father. I’ve thanked him in letters for these before, and I’ll take this occasion to thank him publicly once more.

And there’s one more thing I’d like to thank Dad for. I know from friends that some fathers try to relive the glory days of their youth on the athletic fields through their children. Some fathers even make their boys feel bad if they don’t turn out to be the athletes that they were. Dad never did that! He knew early on that I was never going to be a football hero, and that was fine with him. He took pride in my accomplishments in the classroom and he never made me feel somehow inferior that I didn’t excel at sports. That was wise parenting and it came instinctively to Dad. I know for a fact that there are boys who will have to carry around the burden of inferiority complexes well into adulthood, because their fathers made them feel somehow unworthy that they did not take much of an interest in or excel at what their fathers did. I never had to deal with that, and it’s because Dad understood that I had my own unique talents, which he respected and nurtured.

I have to tell one story about Dad before I close these remarks. In 1967 when I was only sixteen years old, I went to Germany for six whole weeks. Of course, both Mom and Dad must have been very anxious about sending a sixteen year old abroad, even with a trusted chaperon, for six weeks. Especially back then, communication from abroad was difficult. There were no personal computers, Facebook, or Skype. Of course, people could make transatlantic phone calls, but, for the most part, only rich people called regularly overseas, and even that process was tedious. For six weeks, the only contact I had with my family and friends was through letters, that took a week to arrive.

Interestingly enough it was Dad and not Mom, who seemed more anxious about sending me to Germany for six long weeks. His fears for his firstborn focused on an afternoon excursion that our group was scheduled to make into East Berlin. Of course, we would have to go through the Berlin Wall for this excursion. Dad became fearful that the communists were going to kidnap me "for my mind." "Mickey," he repeatedly told my mother, "They're going to kidnap Kipp, and we'll never see him again!"

When we were on the bus waiting to go through the wall, our guide explained exactly what we happen before we entered East Berlin. Among other scary things, she told us that a soldier with a machine gun would come on to the bus and collect our passports. She told us that they would be reviewed and that this review could take a while. She told us not to bring any Western newspapers or magazines into the country. They were illegal in East Germany and would be confiscated. She told us not to strike up casual conversations on the street with East Berliners. We would not necessarily get into trouble, she explained, but they could. Their government could assume that they were spies simply because they were seen talking with Americans. We were, after all, the Cold War enemy, and they had been repeatedly told that the Wall was built to protect East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic, from a sudden invasion by West Germany backed up with the armed forces of the United States. I might add that during the Cold War, both sides feared this sudden invasion from the other!

After having scared both the teenagers on the bus and their adult chaperons, she ended her talk with what must have been a very well rehearsed joke. "Don't worry," she concluded, "Nearly 75% of everyone, who goes through the Wall, returns home the very same day!" The bus broke out into a loud nervous laughter. I thought to myself, "Please God! Please let me be one of the 75% or Mom will never hear the end of it!" Needless to say, we spent a fascinating afternoon in East Berlin, and fully 100% of us returned to West Berlin.

Happy 80th birthday, Dad. May we all be here 20 years from now to celebrate your 100th!!

Addendum I: I also want to say that my brother, Mark, Dad's last born, spoke as well. Except for the anecdote about being kidnapped by the communists, everything I said was from notes. Mark spoke extemporaneously, from the heart. He spoke this way at our maternal grandfather's memorial service and at our mother's. Mark has a real gift for speaking from the heart, and I admire him for that. Unfortunately, his wonderful remarks will not likely appear anywhere in writing, but all of us who have heard him speak on any number of occasions hold them dear in our memories.

Addendum II: Unfortunately, there will be no 100th birthday celebration. My Father died at the age of 83 in June of 2013.

Dad and Mom with their first born I am blessed to have a picture of me as a baby in my mother's arms.Reading the newspaper in Moscow. Photo courtesy of Alexandra BakerDad with his first and last born at Christmas of 2010Speaking at Dad's 80th birthday bashDad with his kids and kids-in-lawDad's cake with pictures from his youth and pictures of all of usReading the New York Times while visiting friends in Phoenix, Arizona in December of 2001.

Andrei Zhelnov's "Magical Mystery Tour" of the USA

In mid-December of 1989, my best Russian, then Soviet, friend, Andrei Zhelnov, visited me in the United States. He was among the early Soviets who were permitted to travel to the West during the Gorbachev Era of glasnost and perestroika. It wasn't easy to get him here. I had to send a formal invitation through the Soviet Embassy and take out a health insurance policy on him, but he did get here.

He flew into New York, and the next day mutual friends and I took him to the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. He was amazed by everything he saw from hydraulic lifts that worked their wonders during the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular to the drive in window at McDonalds. During our tour of New York he asked me what "those pretty songs I keep hearing" were. I said, "Andrei, they're called Christmas carols, and you sang them, too, before the Revolution. Maybe some day you'll sing them again." That's how isolated they were under communism. An educated man in his early thirties had never heard "Silent Night." After all, it's only been translated into about 150 languages! Andrei loved everything about Christmas. Only the ubiquitous wreaths unsettled him. In Russia, wreathes mean death. I assured him he didn't enter the country during the time of a plague.

After New York, we came home to Blackwood. We went into Gateway, after having stayed till about 4 a.m. watching ET. Andrei met with my very first Russian class and spent most of the day answering questions from students and teachers in the lecture room. That night, we went to a German Club Christmas party hosted by the Weisser family. It was bitter cold that evening, and the Weissers had a wonderful fire going. Andrei and I sat in front of the fireplace getting to know Mr. and Mrs. Weisser while the kids were downstairs playing pool. Suddenly, Andrei said something like, "It's so cozy to sit in front of a fire. The peasants all had fireplaces, but as soon as electrification came to the country, they boarded them all up because they were old fashion." Andrei had never before sat in front of a fire on a cold winter night.

When we excused ourselves to attend to my charges, we walked down the steps to the basement. Suddenly, Andrei caught sight of the kids playing pool at the Weissers' pool table. It would be one of the many times Andrei laughed out loud here. Billiards was a game played by aristocrats before the Revolution. There were pool houses here and there in the Soviet Union, but Andrei had never been to one, and he had certainly never seen a pool table in the home of someone in the middle class. It astonished him that middle class Americans could have pool tables in their homes.

I also took Andrei into Philadelphia. My nephew, Gregory, and niece, Adrienne, came over, and we made a tooth pick Christmas tree with styrofoam balls and artificial snow. Andrei thought it was funny that we had to go to three stores before we found artificial snow. In the Soviet Union, you might might go to ten stores to find a good cut of meat! Store to store to store and line to line to line was just a way of life in his country. After that, I took Andrei, Adrienne, and Gregory to South Street for Jim's steaks and then to the "Nutcracker." Andrei had seen it at the Bolshoi but was pleased with the Pennsylvania Ballet production.

When I got on the phone once to order dinner, Andrei just shook his head in disbelief. "You mean, you just make a phone call, order dinner, and they actually deliver it to your home!?" "Well, yes, Andrei, that's how it works." Again, astonishment. When on another evening, we pulled up to a drive in window at McDonald's, I ordered the food, and Andrei guessed that's what I was doing. "What happens next," he demanded to know with childlike curiosity! Just about everything astonished him.

Finally, Andrei and I left for Disney World. I drove. We broke up the trip by visiting a friend in Savannah, spent two nights there, and then left for Orlando the next morning. I won't go into all the wonders of Disney World, but I had never been there either, and I was impressed by it. At one point, we were walking through Polynesia. We weren't saying a word. We were both so stunned by how Disney had recreated Polynesia that we were speechless. All of a sudden, Andrei exclaimed, "Kipp, I bet this is impressive even by capitalist standards!" This time it was my turn to laugh out loud. "Yes, Andrei, it is impressive even my capitalist standards!" The first 3-D film that Disney showed that Christmas was Michael Jackson's Captain EO. I had tried to explain 3-D to Andrei on the way down, but I guess my Russian wasn't adequate to get it across. We put the glasses on, and Andrei wondered what they were for. "You'll see!" I had never seen 3-D that sophisticated before either, and Andrei had never seen it even once in his life. He just kept shaking his head and exclaiming "Obaldet," something like "Incredible!!" Later after the fireworks ending our first evening in Disney World, Andrei would use, over and over again, a much stronger Russian slang word for "Incredible!"

Introducing Andrei to Gateway was a highlight of my career. Introducing him to Christmas a highlight of my life. I think Andrei would say the same thing.

Talking Turkey

In the Summer of 2005, I received a grant from the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia to spend six weeks in Turkey. Educators were awarded the trip after having written several essays, including a proposal on how they would incorporated the experience into the curriculum for the subject they taught. I teach German. Germany invited its first "Gastarbeiter" (guest workers) into the country during the economic miracle in the mid-Fifties. Most came from Turkey. I proposed that I could better understand the cultural and social issues concerning the some 3 million Turks living in the Federal Republic of Germany, if I traveled to Turkey and got to know the country and its people.

The trip was all that I had imagined it would be.  I had no idea how many ruins Turkey has, more than either Greece or Italy, so we were told.  Of all the ruins we saw, which like the cathedrals of Europe, start running together after a while, Ephesus impressed me the most.  While walking around there, I could really imagine what it was like in its heyday. And the idea that Paul preached the gospel there was somehow moving to me. My fat ass could have sat on the same spot as Paul's did to rest while he marveled at the then still in tact Temple of Artremis. Gallipoli was even more moving.  Such a waste!  They're all in their late teens and early twenties.  Just a few years later Atta Turk was able to write that there was no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets who lie there. I'll have to rent the film with Mel Gibson and watch it again.

Cappadocia, whose enormous rock formations were created eons ago by volcanoes, had the most beautiful terrain.  I wish we had had a day to hike around in among those wonderful "fairy chimneys" instead of just a couple of hours. Fortunately, my mild claustrophobia didn't prevent me from exploring the underground cities which date back to the Hittites. It's remarkable what people did there.  They go many stories below the earth, housed as many as twenty thousand at one point and are complete with stables for the animals, cisterns for water, and large storage areas for food.  My mild claustrophobia did manifest itself once. About ten of us were squatting in a small room listening to our guide. Suddenly, I needed out. The only way out was through a two thousand year old pitch black tunnel that I had to scurry through all bent over. I prayed that wherever I wound up I would be able to stand and put my hands over my head without being able to touch the ceiling. Thank God, I could! After that, I was fine for the rest of the tour.

We had so much fun with the name Uerguep, one of the cities in Cappadocia which serves as a starting point for the tourists. It became a verb, an adjective and the name of a musical one of the teachers will write for her middle school kids.  She wants to dedicate it to me who became the first to start fooling around with the name and the Scandinavian-like intonation patterns of the language.

Istanbul is so exciting, beautiful along the Bosphorus, and Taksim Square on a Saturday night evokes Times Square.  I just loved how it teams with life. The last night we were there, we treated ourselves to dinner in a good restaurant, then took a taxi to the Bosphorus to see the Bogazici Bridge, which connects European Istanbul with Asia Minor Istanbul, all lit up at night and to enjoy the night life.

A trip to the Virgin Mary's house in Kusadasi was interesting, but I didn't feel moved in any particular way.  Perhaps that's  because I think it's just an interesting legend, although the Catholic Church declared it a place of pilgrimage and Pope John Paul VI visited there.  Nonetheless, de regueur I lit a candle and said a prayer for my mother, for my sister, Robin and for my niece, Jennifer.

One of the women on the trip was raised an Irish Catholic, but she rejected it all long ago and is pretty much an atheist now.  Nonetheless, out of respect for her father's memory, she always lights a candle for him.  She was startled to feel his presence so strongly by her side that she got goose bumps and started to cry.  She was moved to tears off and on the whole day by the experience.  I felt nothing, but, then, again, my mother wasted no time letting us know she was still around! :-)   A most likely still devout Catholic, her poor father had probably been waiting in eager anticipation for that very moment his daughter would find herself in the alleged home of the Blessed Mother.  Who knows? Maybe it just says something about how deeply ingrained it all is.  Even years after one thinks one has left it all behind, it still stirs from some place deep in ones soul.  I certainly took advantage of the fountains which carry water, said to be holy, from a near by mountain stream.

We did not have time to see a concert in one of the perfectly preserved ancient theaters, but that would have been wonderful. In the Aspendus theater, said to be the most perfectly preserved in the ancient world, the Kirov was performing Eugene Onegin.  Although we missed that, we did see dervishes whirl and bellies dance.  I was volunteered to dance, and along with five other men, walked out into the center of the room.  The dancer approached me first, and I was horrified when she started to take off my shirt.  Then she wrapped a silk skirt around my waist.  Almost immediately I just decided to go with the flow, and for about a half hour we five men, one of the guys wouldn't remove his shirt and was gestured back to his table, individually mimicked her every move and shook both our bellies and our booties as the eyes of some two hundred people were riveted to our every move.  It provided my group with a ton of laughs and made me realize the benefits of losing yet another thirty pounds just in case I ever get back there someday.   After it was all over, I went back to the table and straight for the Raki. After a few more shots, I didn't give a damn about the shirtless dirty dancing.

Never once did I feel ill at ease.  Except for the souvenir hustlers, nobody on the street paid any attention to us at all. Shop keepers and others would often ask where we were from. Nobody did anything but smile broadly when we answered, "From America."  Only a couple of times did politics came up in our encounters with regular Turks. In answer to a desk clerk's question in broken English about Bush, I said in equally broken English,  "America very good! Bush very bad!"  It seemed to sum up not only my attitude but his as well. It always got a smile and a thumbs up. I don't know what the reaction would have been had I said, "America very good!  Bush very good, too!''  It might have made things more interesting.  But like I said, there weren't that many occasions when politics came up naturally. We did have a visit scheduled with a representative from the government.  After a nice presentation, she surprised us by asking us what we thought about the Bush and Iraq. We tried to be diplomatic.  There was only one conservative in our group, and I felt sorry for her.  The rest of us, even the two boys, rising college freshman who plan to major in international studies, were flaming liberals.

 My mother, who could never travel with me while she was alive, seems to travel with me frequently in death.
Many remarkable synchronicities have taken place during my trips since her death in December of 2002, and they began on the very first trip I went abroad to Germany in the spring of 2003.  They followed through while I was in Singapore and then in Turkey. She has often used her sign, Taurus, in these meaningful coincidences.
The last thing I did before I went to Turkey was to take all my Mother's teenage drawings of cartoon characters to Staples and have them copied.  On the same day in Turkey, all this happened:  In the morning, I almost bumped into a woman on the street who was wearing a Bugs Bunny T-shirt. But it was a knock off T-shirt, because Bug's Bunny was spelled with the unneeded apostrophe, exactly as my mother spelled it on the picture she drew as a teenager. 

Then, later that morning in the Museum of Anatolian Antiquities,  I saw a three thousand year old relief of the god Pan-- one of Mom's sketches but hers was Pan by Disney.  By then, I wondered just how many of those characters Mom would manage to fit into the day. That night, instead of having a final drink in the bar with the rest of the group, I decided to watch some news and go to bed.  Just as I turned the TV on, all the Disney characters were there on CNN ringing the bell to open up Wall Street that morning.  She fit in every single one of them in the same day with just minutes to spare!  Had I come to the room just a couple of minutes later, I would have missed it. 

The next day, our guide told us that we were in the Taurus Mountains.  No, I don't think that my mother put an entire mountain range there just for me, but I do think that the fact that these meaningful coincidences took place during the two days of the two week trip that we were in the Taurus Mountains was significant.  I am sure she was very much at home in them.

Relaxing eight or nine stories under the earth. 


The cemetery at Gallipoli 


Theater of Pergamon, the steepest theater in the ancient world. No binoculars or hearing assists back then! If you were poor or hard of hearing, too bad!

The Treaty Of Kadesh, the oldest extant peace treaty in the world, displayed at the Archaeology Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Two ancient empires, the Egyptian and the Hittite, promised to live in "eternal peace" after the great Battle of Kadesh, which involved several thousand chariots.

I must admit I was proud of myself for being able to scale this rock and get up there. Here I am with our guide.

Ruins of Troy

The Grand Bizarre. A couple of vendors asked us why we were taking this picture. We said because of the light. They called their friends over and marveled at it, as if seeing if for the first time through the eyes of tourists.

Straddling two continents, Europe and Asia.

Grey Gardens: A review

I liked Grey Gardens," and I liked it a lot. I wasn't bowled over by it, astonished by it, but I liked it very much. I agreed with the critics and a lot of ordinary folk that the second act is far more compelling than the first act, but I liked the first act, too, and better than I thought I would after reading reviews from both of the above. 

The musical has every thing a very good musical, and certainly a great musical, should. The music is very good. It's not Lerner and Lowe good, not Rogers and Hammerstein good, not Kander and Ebb good, and certainly not Sondheim good, but very good. Each song does what it should do, some in spades. They entertain and provide comic relief when they should, they further develop the characters, shed further light on their relationships, and further move the plot along. The best song, in my opinion, comes at the end of the show when Little Edie finally resigns herself to her fate. It's the aching lament of missed opportunity, "Another Winter in a Summer Town." Just as poignant is the song," Around the World," Little Edie's sad rumination about how she's felt like a bird in a cage all her life in Grey Gardens when all she really wanted to do was to fly "around the world." The best book song in the show opens the second act. In a tour de force performance, Christine Ebersole shines in "The Revolutionary Costume," a song that captures both the Zeitgeist and the impoverished predicament that forces Little Edie to improvise to maintain a sense of fashion style. Another song, "The Cake I Had," which the Big Edie, Mary Louise Wilson, sings, reminded me of the two most Brechtian songs in Cabaret, both sung in the revival also by Mary Louise Wilson, then as Fraulein Schneider, "So What?" and "What Would You Do?"

The direction is crisp, and things keep moving at the steady pace they should. Your attention is always focused on what's happening on that stage. Somebody said the characters didn't seem to come to life until the second act. While it's true that they are far more interesting as eccentric recluses caught up in a sadly pathetic relationship characterized by anger, bitterness, and regret all mixed up with love, I don't agree that the characters weren't alive in the first act. I liked the way they are introduced in the first act, which, if anything, is not slow at all, but much more frenetic than the second. After all, it does take place as the family and servants are getting ready for a big event, the announcement of their daughter's engagement to Joe Kennedy. The director does a nice job introducing and juggling all the plates he has to, a big household full of ten different characters, including a ten year old Jackie Bouvier, who's come over to play with Lee, a young, and very good looking, Joe Kennedy, Jr., and the grandfather, "Major" Bouvier, played with panache and flair by John McMartin. Like most of the other characters, he has his own song, "Marry Well," and he's marvelous. 

As a matter of fact, the whole cast is marvelous, beginning with Mary Louise Wilson and Christine Ebersole. Some of the characters morph into new ones in the second act. Especially good here is the young Joe Kennedy, Matt Cavenaugh, who in the second act, which takes place in 1972, has morphed into a long haired hippie who befriends Edith Bouvier Beale.

The staging is very good. I was wondering how the cats would be handled. They are handled by projections, and they work. So does the transformation of the home, from the gorgeous mansion it once was to the dilapidated and filthy place it became. I especially liked one touch in the masterfully designed living room of the mansion in its prime, one tiny example of that baroque 3-D effect where cherubs' leg or flowers jut out from the painting on the surface of the wall. 

Two windows are smartly used. They descend and ascend framing the facade of the house both before and after. Somehow they managed to look pristine in the first act and old and dilapidated in the second act. They are more than just examples of good set design. The first and last image you see of the characters is through the windows. Through them, you catch your first glimpse of the world you're about to enter. 

Last but far from least, the book is excellent. You don't expect War and Peace from any book of a musical. Not even "Gypsy" gives you that! But it is excellent. It's every bit as good as the songs in the exposition of the characters and their relationships. In both acts, the dialog is very funny. I wish I could remember it all, but it would be worth reading, as a play. I think much of the dialog is laugh out loud funny and would be so even on the page, uninterpreted by terrific actors who know how to deliver a line.