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81 We Are All Connected

1/30/2017

Each spring for the past three years, the Lauritzen Gardens (the local Omaha botanical garden) has had one of their many special exhibits in its exhibit space from about mid-January until about mid-May. It’s an exhibit I have come to look for and went to several times last year (the first year we were “Members” of the gardens) and I am looking forward to going again this year (probably more than once). That exhibit is entitled “Nature Connects: Art With LEGO® Bricks,” and consists of a number of assorted objects (mostly animals) created completely from Legos. It’s definitely something to see.

Of course, Bonnie and I have been fans of Legos for quite a while as can be seen (not terribly well) in this picture of the greatest part of our Harry Potter Assembled collection.

As you can see, it covers the entire top and six shelves inside the cabinetry, and the Durmstrang ship even spills over onto the stool next to the cabinet. And, that’s not the entirety of the collection. We still have at least five boxes of Harry Potter Legos which are still in their boxes because we have no place to display three more versions of Hogwarts and a couple of other things. Okay, we’re Harry Potter nuts, but our Lego collection is a part of that.

Anyway, the point is that we’ve never gotten too adventurous with Legos, but some people have and come up with some really neat things. For example, from last year, I rather liked the sundial.

I liked the Mama duck with her ducklings.

The Monarch butterfly really impressed me quite a lot.

But the Pilated Woodpecker reminded me of North Carolina,

which wasn’t a bad thing, even if I haven’t seen any of them around here. But, I may have enjoyed the birds and squirrels along the fence the most.

Okay, the flowers and plants are real, but the fence, the birds, the squirrels, even the birdseed in the feeder are Legos. That’s what I like about those little plastic blocks, they can be made into almost anything. But, I think the thing I enjoy the most about Legos is that they remind me of interconnectedness.

That is, the idea that each of us is connected to each other and to all of the universe. I think that’s at least a part of what I was talking about in my post #79 when I made reference to the idea that virtually all religions espouse, essentially, the same values, they just express them in (often very slightly) different ways. So, you see, as I said there, my problem isn’t with religious values, just with the sense of exclusivity that seems to be a part of religious organizations.

I believe that we are all connected to each other and to the Universe as a whole. I really don’t care what you call this connection. Personally, I rather like the idea of “The Force” as described by Obi-Wan Kenobi. “It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

You see, I don’t really care what someone says they believe; but I care very much about what they do. AS Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no try.” I suspect that that is why I find it hard to support any specific belief system; I don’t think the system is very important compared to behavior. I’ve known a lot of people who profess to a variety of different religions, but far more important to me has been their behavior. Are they kind to others? Do they treat everyone with respect? Do they actually listen to others ideas? Do they try to see the truth of actual (as opposed to “alternative”) facts, even when the facts contradict what they would like to believe? Do they think that it’s their right to force their beliefs on others, or do they respect other people’s right to have a differing opinion. Some of these behaviors bring us together; some force us apart. I like Legos; I like “connectedness;” I like the idea that together we can make a better world. I don’t think that’s going to be the end result of behaviors which are designed to keep us separate.

LLAP

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80 Heard Any Good Ones Lately?, #2

1/18/2017

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I think there is something about January which leads to the need for something to cheer us up. It’s probably the fact that the holidays are over and it tends to be cold, damp (maybe icy) and, generally, not a lot of fun. For me, this has been enhanced in the last few days by an ice storm and Bonnie being sick. Not seriously, but enough to be a bit upsetting. So, I’ve been trying to keep cheerful, a not always easy task when you are bored, trapped inside and slightly concerned.

Then I remembered that the local fish monger (who also runs several seafood restaurants in Omaha) usually includes a couple of jokes in the advertising emails he sends me. So I looked them up and thought I’d make a posting of some of them (and some other stuff I've collected) and a couple of cartoons I clipped from last Sunday’s paper. I hope they cheer you up as they did me.

I thought the Wizard of Id had the right idea last Sunday as we were having a bit of an ice storm (not as bad as it might have been, but I had no desire to try to go out in it).

As everybody seems to be worrying about having overeaten during the holidays, I liked this from Foxtrot.

These are funnies from the fishmonger (and other sources)…

A man is driving down the road and breaks down near a monastery. He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door, and says, “My car broke down. Do you think I could stay the night?”

The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, and even fix his car. As the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange sound.

The next morning, he asks the monks what the sound was, but they say, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”

The man is disappointed but thanks them anyway and goes about his merry way.

Some years later, the same man breaks down in front of the same monastery.

The monks accept him, feed him, even fix his car. That night, he hears the same strange noise that he had heard years earlier.

The next morning, he asks what it is, but the monks reply, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”

The man says, “All right, all right. I’m *dying* to know. If the only way I can find out what that sound was is to become a monk, how do I become a monk?”

The monks reply, “You must travel the earth and tell us how many blades of grass there are and the exact number of sand pebbles. When you find these numbers, you will become a monk.”

The man sets about his task. Forty-five years later, he returns and knocks on the door of the monastery. He says, “I have traveled the earth and have found what you have asked for. There are 145,236,284,232 blades of grass and 231,281,219,999,129,382 sand pebbles on the earth.”

The monks reply, “Congratulations. You are now a monk. We shall now show you the way to the sound.”

The monks lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says, “The sound is right behind that door.”

The man reaches for the knob, but the door is locked. He says, “Real funny. May I have the key?”

The monks give him the key, and he opens the door.

Behind the wooden door is another door made of stone.

The man demands the key to the stone door.

The monks give him the key, and he opens it, only to find a door made of ruby.

He demands another key from the monks, who provide it.

Behind that door is another door, this one made of sapphire.

So it went until the man had gone through doors of emerald, silver, topaz, and amethyst.

Finally, the monks say, “This is the last key to the last door.”

The man is relieved to no end.

He unlocks the door, turns the knob, and behind that door he is amazed to find the source of that strange sound.

But I can’t tell you what it is because you’re not a monk.

If you keep your feet firmly on the ground, you’ll have trouble putting on your pants.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

I changed my password to “incorrect” so, whenever I forget it, the computer will say, “Your password is incorrect.”

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.

A day without sunshine is like, night.

A man goes swimming in the ocean but gets sucked out to sea. A boat passes by him and tells him to climb aboard but he says, "I have faith, God will save me."

The Coast Guard comes by with a rescue helicopter and tells him to climb the ladder up, but he says, "I have faith, God will save me."

The man is now getting tired but thankfully a dolphin swims under him and starts to carry him to shore, but the man pushes the dolphin away saying "I have faith, God will save me.

The man dies and goes to Heaven. He asks God "Why didn't you save me?" God replies "I tried! I sent a ship, a helicopter and a dolphin!"

A teacher asked her class, "What do you want out of life?" A little  girl in the back row raised her hand and said, "All I want out of life  is four little animals, just like my Mom always says."

The teacher  asked, "Really and what four little animals would those be?" The little  girl said, "A mink on my back, a jaguar in the garage, a tiger in the  bed and a jackass to pay for all of it.

A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. “But why,” they asked, as they moved off. “Because,” he said, “I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

A 16-year-old came home with a Porsche and his parents began to yell and scream, "Where did you get that car?"

He calmly told them, "I bought it today."

"With what money?!" demanded his parents. "We know what a Porsche costs."

"Well," said the boy, "this one cost me $15."

The parents began to yell even louder. "Who would sell a car like that for $15?!" they asked.

"It was the lady up the street," said the boy. "Don't know her name. She saw me ride past on my bike and asked me if I wanted to buy a Porsche for $15."

"Oh my goodness," moaned the mother, "she must be a child abuser. Who knows what she will do next? John, you go right up there and see what's going on."

So the boy's father walked up the street to the house where the lady lived and found her out in the yard calmly planting flowers. He introduced himself as the father of the boy to whom she had sold a Porsche for $15 and demanded to know why she did it.

"Well," she said, "this morning I got a phone call from my husband. I thought he was on a business trip, but I learned from a friend he has run off to Hawaii with his secretary and really doesn't intend to come back. He asked me to sell his new Porsche and send him the money. So I did."

I hope these brightened your day at least a little.

LLAP

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79 Why I’m Not Into Organized Religion

1/10/2017

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I’ve touched on my personal problem with religion before (see #26 in the archives), but too many recent developments in our society have made me do some further thinking about my issues with religion and I think that it may be worth some further discussion. I have few difficulties with anyone else’s personal beliefs, as long as they are willing to acknowledge that I have the right to believe something else.

As I stated on the “About This Website” page of this website, “First Amendment issues and tolerance of differences are of considerable importance to me…”. I believe that that’s true because of my ancestors who were persecuted (one even was killed) because people felt they had a religious/civic duty to destroy those they weren’t confident believed what they did. Yes, there are a variety of explanations for the Witch Trials in Salem in 1692, but, based on my own somewhat limited study, it seems to me that all of them revolve around the idea that these folks didn’t totally conform to all of the socio-religious-political norms of that rather theocratic society. And I think that may have a good deal to do with my difficulties with organized religion.

Now, I am NOT a religious scholar. As a child, I was introduced to religious ideas by my parents. They, for a time, attended a Unitarian church in Evanston, IL, where I grew up. I seem to remember having good experiences there, but I must confess that I don’t remember much about religion from those days. As a teenager, I was active in the youth group of the Covenant Methodist Church in north Evanston with a number of my friends and participated in that group’s activities. I was a member of the Boy Scout troop that church sponsored and eventually joined the Methodist Church, although probably more for social than truly religious reasons. I did take a brief, high intensity Comparative Religion course late in my college career, where we studied a variety of Eastern and Western religions, so I got some, quite limited, exposure to a variety of spiritual traditions through a somewhat “scholarly” approach, if at a somewhat superficial level.

And, of course, it is impossible to have studied the history and development of Western theatre and dramatic literature without being exposed to the religious beliefs and practices which had a profound influence on almost every aspect of Western thought for most of that development. After all, we are reasonably sure that theatre developed out of religious-based practices, to some significant degree, even before it became a formalized part of the worship of Dionysus in the Classical Greek period. While religious influence may have been somewhat lessened during the Roman-dominated era which followed, it does appear that there were religious aspects to at least some Roman theatrical events, and the early Christian Church was concerned enough about the influences of these “pagan” events (to say nothing of the fact that some Roman theatricals openly mocked Christian beliefs and practices) that the Church, effectively, banned theatre, and many other artistic influences, for several centuries (the “Dark Ages”) as the Church consolidated its power in Western Europe and beyond.

In what may be the most amazing about-face in history, however, the church eventually turned to what can only be called theatre as a means of spreading its message (the Quem Quaeritis trope and its adoption as a playlet) about 950 C.E. From that little “skit” (see the Regularis Concordia) developed the Mystery and Miracle plays of the Gothic era and the entire history of Western theatre, which has come down to us. That’s to say nothing of the influence the Church had on painting, sculpture, architecture, music, etc.

All of this is just to indicate that, while I lack much formal education in religion, it has been an integral part of the things I have spent my life doing, as it seems to me that it’s essential to understand the ideas and forces which create theatre and drama, if one is to understand that theatre and drama; and it seems essential to understand it, if one is to present it effectively.

A good part of what I have learned about religious beliefs in general is that: 1.) They are personal. They are just so many words unless they have a significant effect on one’s actual behavior. If one doesn’t ACT on those beliefs, they can’t really be called “religion.” 2.) The underlying principles of all religions seem to be very similar. They may express the ideas a bit differently, but all of them seem to espouse the ideas that we should be kind to one another, do good deeds whenever possible (do no harm), speak the truth, respect one another, forgive others whenever possible, try to do and be peaceful to others and one’s self. I can’t, and have no desire to disagree with these ideas. So what’s my problem?

I think that my difficulty with religion starts to develop not with overall beliefs, but with religious organizations -- churches. Okay, a “church,” in this sense, is a community of fellow believers organized along a set of common practices, beliefs, etc. If we are going to have an organization, then we, by definition, have members (who subscribe to the “rules” of the organization) and non-members (everybody else). I think that’s where my difficulty lies. If we start out by separating the world into “fellow members” and “everybody else,” we have established an automatic level of discrimination. We are the “members,” the right ones, the holders of the “real” truth, while everyone else, who might be of some value, are different, not right, not followers of the “real” truth. Of course, one could extend this down to the completely personal stage, “all are equal, but some are more equal than others, and none are equal to me,” but I won’t go there.

On the other hand, while this notion of “we’re correct” may be easy to understand, it, far too many times, leads to the notion that, since “we” are “correct” and “proper,” it’s our right to attempt to get other people to become one of “us, correct ones.” Whether you call it evangelizing, proselytizing, missionizing, or something else, what it boils down to is a belief that it’s right and proper for us (“correct” ones) to try to get others to become part of “us,” even when they are perfectly happy doing their own thing. And, of course, if their lives are less than perfect, by our definition of perfect, then we are supposed to “save” them by encouraging/requiring them to conform to our beliefs. I have a problem with that.

Not being strongly “church” oriented, I tend towards the idea expressed by the character Jubal Harshaw in Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land that “A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human 'wisdom'...and the other twenty percent isn't very important.” I take this to mean that we are most likely to be wise, when we accept that others have the right to live their lives without us (or anyone else) telling them what they are “supposed” to do, think, feel, etc. By the way, that’s what I think the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”) is really all about. If one were to simplify it down to its absolute basics, it says to just leave people alone to believe, practice, and say what they wish, unless that somehow causes direct damage to the general society.

No, I don’t support human sacrifice, ritual rape, torture, etc., in the name of religion (although all have been justified on that score), nor do I advocate yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. On the other hand, virtually all wars for a good many centuries have been fought with God on both sides, at least if you ask the leaders, and the same is true today. Even within larger religious communities, wars have been (and still are being) fought over which particular set of beliefs are in fact the “proper” ones. As a consequence, Protestants (assuming that they can get along with each other, which hasn’t always been the case) mistrust Catholics (where, exactly Orthodox Christians fit in isn’t clear, but they are probably distrusted by both of the other major branches of Christianity); Shia don’t’ like Sunni Muslims; Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Jews have various disagreements among themselves, and; when you consider the influence that religion has on politics, things get even more complicated and dangerous. That doesn’t even start to consider the notion of “the state as religion,” which seems to be the situation of a few nation-states (North Korea and China, come to mind as possibilities), and which at least has the potential of making things even more complicated and dangerous.

That’s not to say that I think organized religion is, in all cases, a bad thing. Religious organizations can, and have, done many good things from which society has benefited. Providing shelter, food, clothing for those in need is a good thing, as is the offering of spiritual comfort. See, I’m not against a willingness to try to help spiritually, but I’m not in favor of religion being forced on people in need. The Red Cross (and Red Crescent) provides much assistance throughout the world, but doesn’t insist that it comes with your willingness to pray with them. I think that that sort of attitude violates the thinking behind Matthew 6, 5-6 (a biblical passage I’m rather fond of) which suggests that public prayer is, really, its own reward and that real prayer should be in private.

Naturally enough, I think MY ideas are correct and that the world would be a better place if more people agreed with me. That’s probably an essential ingredient to being alive and self-aware (having an ego). However, while I think I would enjoy knowing more about others thinking about these sorts of things, I’m not really looking for supporters. At my age I’m not trying to start some sort of “movement,” political or religious. I’m just struggling to put into words some of the things which have been kicking around in my head for a while and which I thought I might help clarify by writing them out. If they are of any interest to anyone else, so much the better, if it leads to some dialogue and/or discussion, better still. After all, that’s the sort of thing which allows us to

LLAP

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78 Thoughts on My Marriage: A Love Letter to my Wife (sort of)

1/3/2017

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A few days ago Bonnie and I celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary and it got me to thinking about those days and the good times (and less than good ones) that have come along the way. I confess that there are times when I wonder how she put up with me for all these years, and (VERY occasionally) I wonder how and why I have put up with her.

Anyway, when I was a junior at Indiana, my fraternity house received a telephone call asking if there was anybody available to come play the guitar to accompany the pledge class of the Alpha Xi Delta house on campus. To explain, the previous year, the Phi Kappa Tau house (to which I belonged) had sponsored a hootenanny for the campus, so it was reasonable that we might have the wherewithal to assist in this capacity. Anyway, Scott Kunkel (one of my “brothers”) and I dutifully showed up at the appropriate time and place (the AZD house).

Bonnie (who was a sophomore pledge, soon to become “active,” at that point) has always maintained that when we walked through the door, she decided that I was the one she was going to marry. I found that little hard to believe when I was told this (still do), but I wasn’t aware of my doom until a good deal later, in any event. As I remember it, I was unable to accompany the girls’ actual performance (although Scotty did, I think), but I did meet a number of the girls and ended up dating two (possibly three) of them before ever taking Bonnie out. In all fairness, Scotty beat me to the draw on dating Bonnie, but it wasn’t really a big deal at the time. Yes, she was attractive, but there were other fish in the sea…

By the next fall semester, Scotty had not returned to campus and I was dating Bonnie, at least on occasion. I found out later that she dated a fair number of other guys along the way, but I had made no commitment and didn’t until very much towards the end of the year, if then. Bonnie had plans to attend summer school that next summer and I was entering grad school the next fall, after not being able to graduate in May/June as I had expected to (due to an advising problem which everyone involved acknowledged as a stupid rule, but “rules are rules and we can’t change it, etc., blah, blah, blah”).

Anyway, I spent that next summer at IU’s Brown County Playhouse (mostly acting) and taking the last class, or two, I needed as an undergraduate, so I could graduate in August and a couple of grad classes, as well. Bonnie and I didn’t spend a LOT of time together that summer (we were both too busy) but the relationship did take on a more serious nature.

By the time the fall rolled around, I was a member of the Indiana Theatre Company (a company of grad students [taking a limited schedule] who rehearsed in Bloomington and performed there and on one or two night stands at IU’s branch campuses and anyplace else they could sell a performance within a reasonable distance by truck and bus travel over a long weekend). Mostly, we played smaller colleges throughout Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois, but we also made some longer trips over spring break and the like. Commonly, we (at least the tech crew) left Bloomington on Thursday afternoon, the rest of the company travelled on Friday in the bus, we performed on Friday and Saturday nights (sometimes moving in between) and returned home on Sunday. So, as part of the tech staff (I also acted in smallish roles), I could take classes on M & W and T & Th mornings, but I had to miss a class if it was too late in the day on Thursday. It was hard to get the classes I wished within the times available, but it was doable and I survived, actually learning more about (practical) theatre on tour than from any class I ever took.

Bonnie, who had done a couple of summer sessions, was due to graduate at the end of first semester that year and fairly early on it became obvious that it was going to be very difficult for us to maintain our relationship after her graduation, since she would, undoubtedly, return to Park Ridge in the Chicago area (where her folks lived) and I would be in Bloomington with the ITC. As it’s virtually impossible to transfer grad school credit, I was almost certainly going to have to stay in Bloomington for a second year to finish classes and the Master’s thesis schedule was uncertain. At that point in time, MFAs were still VERY rare (almost unheard of, in fact). If I returned to the ITC, it was unlikely that I could do more than finish the class work within the second year, with the thesis yet to go. If I didn’t stay in the ITC, I had no self-evident way to support myself, let alone a wife. All I knew was that life was definitely better because of this relationship, so we took a walk into downtown Bloomington and bought a set of quite inexpensive engagement/wedding rings (with four diamond chips and a garnet as a solitaire – I couldn’t afford a diamond) and considered ourselves engaged.

Being young, in love, and probably as stupid as that usually means (see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, etc.), we decided that we wanted to get married over the Christmas holidays, so we could stay together in Bloomington, being naïve enough to be convinced that Bonnie could get some sort of job to support herself, while I lived off of the “Fellowship” I received for being in the ITC. The big advantage of that, of course, was that a “Fellowship” was not taxable, as I was (technically) an “Artist in Residence” at IU. That didn’t make me rich, but I could survive by myself.

Somehow we convinced our parents that this was the way it was going to be (I am secretly convinced that both sets assumed that Bonnie was pregnant [NOT the case]), but they went along with this desire and provided the appropriate support. (The joke was on them, I guess, as Kate, our eldest, was born seven years later.) Of course, at least in my mind, we were already married by mutual consent and the need for a fancy wedding (in the church Bonnie’s grandfather founded and ran for many years) was mostly a formality of a family-socio-religious nature, which I didn’t consider all that important, but I knew others would, and it wouldn’t hurt anything to make them happy, too.

That may be the actual key to any success we have had in marriage; the recognition that it was a commitment and that a lot of stuff really didn’t matter all that much and there was really no point in making a big deal out of things that didn’t matter. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but I think there’s something to this idea.

Bonnie’s folks, once they got over the shock of this speedy change in affairs, helped us by purchasing a 10x50’ mobile home with an 8x10’ “roll-out” living room (which did a LOT to break up the “manufactured” sense of the place) with the understanding that we would pay them back as we could. Thus, we had a place to live that seemed adequate, if not luxurious, at least to us who had been living in rental rooms and sorority houses. It wasn’t fancy, but it was ours.

So, when we left to go home for Christmas, I had moved my stuff into the trailer and Bonnie’s boxes of stuff were pretty much dumped inside the door, but it would all be there, ready for us after the big event. There was a lot of the usual “fol-de-rol” one associates with weddings, but it was taken in reasonable stride and, in due course, the time elapsed for the big day. Bonnie and her mother were going crazy, of course, but about all I had to do was keep out of the way, rent a tux and show up at the church on time.

In those days the American Educational Theatre Association (AETA) had its annual conference between Christmas and New Year’s in Chicago every year (or, perhaps, every other year), so I spent the morning and early afternoon of that day at the conference (I have no recollection of the sessions I may have attended), took the subway back to Evanston, got cleaned up, put on my tux and went to get married. I suspect my Mother was a bit surprised by this, but I felt it was the easiest way to avoid the “sitting around all day and getting upset” phenomenon which seems to be associated with weddings.

We had a very nice wedding which was attended by a number of our college age friends and innumerable folks our parents knew (as weddings tend to be), but I can’t say I remember a lot about it, except that Bonnie was annoyed because she had moved the church’s poinsettias out of the way of “her” flowers and somebody moved them back out before she walked down the aisle. We spent that night in a hotel in Evanston (not the “Bridal Suite,” I was too poor). And, we left to go back to Bloomington the next day as I had to work on getting the set for Death of a Salesman built before classes (and rehearsals) resumed shortly after New Year’s.

When we got back to the trailer and I carried her over the threshold, we noticed that it was quite cold and the carpet “squished!” Turns out the furnace had gone out and freezing pipes had flooded the front half of the trailer and (we later discovered) the drain pipe from the kitchen sink (located at the very front of the trailer) was clogged up somehow and so the only working running water was in the bathroom. AND, I had to report to the shop the next morning because the production couldn’t wait. It took several days, but Bonnie managed to deal with plumbing problems, wet carpet, boxes of wet stuff, etc., and didn’t just give up in disgust. Of course, neither of us could afford that, but I’m not convinced that that’s all there was to it. There was this sense of commitment (dedication?), you see. In fact, after that horrendous start, most of the rest of our marriage has actually seemed positively non-troublesome.

I suppose that the early December night that Kate (our oldest daughter) was born at 2:47 AM and the car wouldn’t start when I tried to go home an hour (hour and a half?) later was a bit trying. The 2 ½ mile walk home through a cold, early December morning in 1973 Sylva ending with a hike up King’s Mountain to our apartment wasn’t pleasant, but it was that, or just check into the hospital myself, which didn’t really strike me as possible, although I suppose it was. Anyway, that was/wasn’t the happiest morning of my life. The morning we got a phone call from an OR nurse in Omaha saying that Maggi was going into emergency surgery for a badly infected, impacted tooth which (as it turned out) she almost died of (twice) and required 17 days in the hospital (11, as I remember it, in intensive care) wasn’t great, either, nor was the evening call that Kate had had a stroke at age 35.

Still, overall, after surviving our first week of marriage, these other events (and probably more) never felt insurmountable. The important thing was that we had made a commitment to each other and to the relationship and we were going to make it work. So we did!

So what’s this silliness about “a love letter to my wife?”

It may be most accurate to say that Bonnie made it work more than I did. I was all too often too tied up in my job to really be able to carry my full weight around the house. Okay, that job was our major, even sole means of support, at times, but, between teaching, scenic & lighting design & tech directing, it did interfere with a lot of what makes a home work with some degree of smoothness. I have been pretty good about being the one to cleanup the dishes, when she cooks (a deal we made when we were first married) although that was compromised many times because of my work schedule, etc. And, I’ve tried to carry my fair share of the load, generally, but I’ve always felt that she takes care of me more than the other way around.

In any case, after 50 years, I just feel an obligation to acknowledge how important Bonnie, and our relationship, has been to me. She’s always been there for me in ways I have no idea how to express. We made a promise to each other 50 years ago and, while it may have been tested a bit at times, it’s always been an important part of what I am, and, I think, what we are. She takes care of me when I need that, leaves me alone, when that’s a good thing, indulges my foibles, supports my decisions, keeps the finances straight (she IS the daughter of an accountant) and, in so many ways, just makes my life better. It’s probably mostly because of her that I have been able to survive as happily as I have so far and look forward to some more years ahead. I try to do/be the same for her, of course, but I never feel that I’m completely successful. Still I try…

I wish that everyone can find a life partner who means as much to them and who will help them

LLAP

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​81 We Are All Connected

80 Heard Any Good Ones Lately?, #2

79 Why I’m Not Into Organized Religion

78 Thoughts on My Marriage: A Love Letter to my Wife (sort of)

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81 We Are All Connected