Global

“What’s the point?” Everybody (Nicole Erb) plaintively asks about human existence as she confronts Death (a playful Anne Gee Byrd as a not so Grim Reaper) in Antaeus Theatre Company’s Everybody, a rollicking adaptation of the anonymously-written 15th century Christian morality play, Everyman. With its modern twists, including projections (designed by Yi-Chien Lee), sound (provided by Salvador Zamora) and lighting effects (illumined by Bryan Ealey) plus dialogue that translates Middle English into the 21st century vernacular, including loads of obscenities, penned by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Antaeus’ mounting brings this Middle Ages classic alive. The setting is a sort of dreamscape (Nicholas Ponting is the scenic and props designer)

There they were again. The dangling irony of memorial Nikes . . .

I was walking home from my neighbor’s house. They’d just had a piano recital and I was still full of music when I saw the pair of tennis shoes flung over the telephone wire that crosses my street – instantly redefining, at least for me, this moment, this piece of earth and sky. Oh my God. I don’t believe it.

Here?

In front of my house?

Every now and then I see a pair of tennis shoes flung over a telephone wire – that wire stretching through a nearby McDonald’s parking lot, for instance– and every time I do, I think about a 12-year-old boy named Jose, who shoved a bit of reality in my face twenty or so years ago. He did so as a student of mine.

I was a volunteer writing teacher at the time. This was part of my decade-long struggle with the Chicago Public Schools, which my daughter attended. One day, when she was in third grade – this is when the school system begins the farce known as standardized testing, and “education” started to mean teaching to the test – she came home angrily and declared: “Dad, I hate writing!”

Before the premiere of Sophocles’ Oedipus, most of the outdoor tables at the Getty Villa’s café were filled, and while dining I spied from afar a longtime friend of mine, fellow reviewer Myron Meisel, tray in hand, looking for a place to eat, and I waved him over to our table. Joining us, Myron and I were pleased to see we had both survived the you-know-what. As Myron had co-made the 1993 documentary It’s All True, about Orson Welles’ unfinished South America film made during the 1940s, I told Myron that Voodoo Macbeth – a feature about the legendary Welles-directed all-Black 1936 production of the Scottish play reset in Haiti – had been shot, which was news to the astute Myron. I had received a press release about Voodoo Macbeth, which is to be theatrically released October 21, just a couple of days earlier.

Many media commentators have mentioned that the COVID-19 crisis of 2020 is similar to other national crises that have led the United States into wars that are profitable for the “oligarchs” (even.wars against nebulous “terror” or manufactured viruses)

Three other examples include 1] Germany’s sinking of the Lusitania on 5/7/1915 (that led to the entry of the US into WWI), 2] the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 12/7/1941 (that led to the US entry into WWII) and the self-inflicted, controlled demolitions of the three World Trade Center buildings on 9/11/2001 (that led to the G. W. Bush/Dick Cheney administration’s push to invade the Middle East in what many call Operation Iraqi Liberation (“OIL”).

For me, the most pertinent similarity between these events can be stated in the simple truism mentioned in the title above: “The first Casualty of War is Truth.”

One of my favorite blogs is that of Caitlin Johnstone. Why have I never written about how great it is? I’m not sure. I am too busy to write about most things. I have invited her on my radio show and had no reply. I do know that one of my favorite things to do is also one of hers: correct the mistakes of others. I like to correct my own mistakes too, of course, but it’s not as much fun, and only seems useful to write about when my mistake is shared by millions. I think Ms. Johnstone has now made, in her own talented way, a mistake shared by millions in a post called “In This Disaster We Are All, Ultimately, Innocent,” and I think it’s possibly a horribly dangerous one.

“You unpatriotic ‘9/11 Truthers’ can have annual conspiracy conventions on 9/11, with a host of speakers. To use a Russian expression, the dogs may bark as the train roars along. You are the dogs, and we are the train. Keep whining. We will keep on declaring ourselves unconvinced. We still own the TV, we still own the military, and you can chatter on the internet all you want as you fade into ineffectual obscurity.” –Tongue-in-cheek satire from fellow 9/11 Truth-seeker Greg Ziegler PhD, a former US Military Intel officer and retired professor, whose commentary inspired this column.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________________________________________________

Last Friday marked the 14th anniversary of 9/11/01 and the beginning of America’s bankrupting endless war against any and all so-called foreign enemies that, in the opinion of the ruling elites, need to have their sovereign nations de-stabilized so that any number of economic and corporate predators can gain access to the resources of the regions.

“As soon as I left prison, I went to Nael’s grave. It is adorned with the colors of the Palestinian flag and verses from the Holy Quran. I told my little brother how much I loved and appreciated him, and that, one day, we would meet again in paradise.”

The above is part of a testimony given to me by a former Palestinian prisoner, Jalal Lutfi Saqr. It was published two years ago in the volume ‘These Chains Will Be Broken’. 

As a Palestinian, born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, I was always familiar with the political discourse of, and concerning, political prisoners. My neighborhood, like every neighborhood in Gaza, is populated with a large number of former prisoners, or families whose members have experienced imprisonment in the past or present.  

Orwell’s Peerless Proletarian Parable: Socialism with an Animal Face

Not even Brecht or Odets could make this one up: Mere days before A Noise Within debuts a theatrical version of George Orwell’s classic satirizing the betrayal of the Russian Revolution, as if right on cue, the last leader of the Soviet Union dies. Mikhail Gorbachev, of course, embodied the central theme of Animal Farm: Could socialism be democratic in nature or must it be bureaucratic and autocratic? I always regarded Lucy Pollak as a great publicist, but even she couldn’t pull off a publicity stunt like staging Gorbachev’s death right before the premiere of this proletarian parable about the USSR. Not to mention the timeliness of the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kyiv…

ANW’s superb production presents Sir Peter Hall’s Animal Farm, with live music by Richard Peaslee and lyrics by Adrian Mitchell, is a perfect choice to open over Labor Day weekend. The musical premiered at the UK’s National Theatre in that most Orwellian of years – 1984, but of course – and adapts the 1945 novella by George Orwell.

Michael suggested the name Bob’s Rhubarb Lounge.

I couldn’t stop laughing, at least on the inside. I imagined commissioning someone to make a neon sign with those words, maybe ten feet high. I’d place it in front of my house, of course.

Why not? The point of the lounge would be to serve as a place where people can explore the meaning of life, just as I once explored the meaning of rhubarb. The imagination has no limits! At the same time, it has all sorts of limits, some of which are deeply painful.

All this emerged from an event at the house last week. My daughter, Alison — the Stained Glass Poet — who came to Chicago from Paris, is the one who organized it. “We should do a reading, Dad.”

As soon as I landed in Rome, I discovered that I was no longer able to access any Russian media whatsoever. Unfortunately, threats by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, that Europe should sever all links with “Russia’s propaganda machine” were taken seriously by the Italian government. 

As a journalist, having access to only one side of the Russia-Ukraine war story was a major predicament. How is one to develop a rounded view of such a complex issue when only a one-sided narrative of the war is allowed to be propagated? 

Of course, the problem is widespread, and has afflicted much of ‘democratic’ Europe. The continent that has often justified its political and military interventions in the affairs of other parts of the world in the name of spreading democracy is failing to adhere to the most basic principle of democracy: freedom of speech.