Month: June 2016

At the bus stop.
“I think everyone’s calmed down now, y’know. Since the vote. We can get on with our lives again.”

“Eh, ee don’t cum to mah work no more since that vote happened.”

“It’s all such progress though, isn’t it? We’ll benefit from it immensely.”
____

In a cafe.
“We’re off to the South of France next month to decide which village we want to live in for the rest of our lives.”

“Oh, lovely!” (looking at menu) “”I’m going to have a pudding, you see. So perhaps we could share a starch? And then we could each have our own meat.”

“Agreed.”

(Laying menu aside) “June is a dreadful month here. It’s always raining. I try to pop on over to Dublin on the weekends when I can.”

“But you’re off to Crete again soon, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes. To the same place as always. We feel quite comfortable there.”
____

Outside University Gates
1) “But I can’t decide about Balliol, Mummy. I need a tea first.”

2) “I have to wear this fucking “failed” shirt until dark. Wankers.”

3) “Are you fuckin’ mental? You know what he’s like when he’s on!”

4) (Young man racing up, eagerly)”Hey, do you know where everyone’s having lunch?”
(Two lads glancing slyly at one another) “Oh, sorry mate. We et already with Master Paine.”

_____

At the social
1) “Van Gogh is terrifyingly present in the luminescence of his vision.”

2) “The guy was a boxer–who knows if he could even play the piano.”

3) “We need to make the words delicious and chewable.”

4) “I’m studying German now. At last. In a couple of years I may just give up speaking English entirely. I’m serious.”

5) “I was thinking, it’s been at least three weeks since my publisher said he’d send on that advance.”

6) “Shopping and fucking? Sounds like a good day to me.

Di Trevis in a rare moment of stillness
and

Phoebe Zeitgeist challenging and confusing with their presentation

First, the sublime:
The masterclass with Di Trevis, legendary actor’s teacher, accompanied on piano by Dominic Muldowney, the Music Director of the Royal National Theatre. Too much to process right now but a couple of things jump to mind immediately.

She has been spending a good deal of her time in Palestine lately, working to help young people consider other options than strapping on a bomb, through her work with the Freedom Theatre of Palestine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freedom_Theatre

She spoke of how valuable the Freedom Theatre’s work is because they redirect angry, despairing and/or depressed people into the act of co-creation within the communities in which they find themselves trapped, often with bombs going off overhead in the evening.

“How much better is it to offer someone an opportunity to learn lighting, build sets, work on costumes, learn acting, actually manage a theatre, and through that work, find an outlet for your voice?”, she asked.

When asked her thoughts on popular theatre and the choices that play selection committees or the actual A.D. themselves make when they choose their seasons, she said,

“Well, it’s tragic. Every theatre now seems to care more about playing it safe and catering to their funders than making exciting theater. Let’s face it, usually an A.D. will say, we need two or three musicals, one or two surefire hits, and we can then slot in one “risky” production.

We show every manner of violence on stage these days without giving it a thought other than how many tickets it might sell. We show rape, we show child abuse, hell, we could probably show the rape of a child if it were done in neorealism and presented as arty. But the sad thing is that we cannot, and dare not, discuss Zionism because we’ve been told that would bring about the end of our theatre. The money will simply dry up if we make our moneyed patrons too uncomfortable. All other politics may be safe but we do not touch Zionism. And that’s bullshit.”

Her time in Palestine has had a huge impact on her sense that theatre can be a valuable tool in righting injustice if it gets off the big stage and away from expensive sets and out into the community.

“What is wrong with the priorities of theatre Boards?” she asked, rhetorically. “I mean, why on earth do they need to spend thousands of dollars on new light boards, fancy revolves, high tech sound equipment, set designs, costumes, buildings, but they expect actors to work for free to subsidize their investments? I mean, I have worked with actors who cannot afford a fucking haircut, brilliant actors who are expected to wait tables or hold down some other job just so they can perform? Theatre companies have their priorities all wrong.”

When working in the classroom, Di, emphasized that we need to get back to the basics. Define the action. Pretty Stanislavian, but with a twist of reductionism. She feels its a travesty that so many beginning or amateur actors think that weeping or becoming hyper emotional on stage is “good acting”. “That is a misunderstanding of the method. Well, actually, it’s a lack of a method, a lack of technique”.

I watched her work with one woman and it was like watching time lapse photography. She asked the woman to read the text. Just read it in place. Then, layer by layer, she had her re-do it, answering a series of questions about space, audience, message, use of pause, body and muscle action, until in less than 15 minutes, the woman delivered an excellent version of the words she had at first sort of overacted.

For myself, the work on repetition of a phrase within text was an eye opener. She called it the “Bellwether Effect” and likened it to a rule of 3, with the need to move the human heart, regardless of whether you are playing comedy or tragedy or singing a musical. Exploring the gestus within the repetitions helps to expose the most powerful delivery within a certain state of mind, whether it is comical point or dramatic.

Regarding musicals and singing text, she stated that one must consider each song like a small play of its own within the main play and stressed how important it is to follow the rules of telling the story.

She has very strong feelings against actors wearing microphones on stage, whether it’s for a musical or not.

“Everyone thinks it is so professional to mic their actors now, as though it is high art. But here’s the thing, when you mic an actor they then do not have to do the reach. The actor, deprived of doing the full reach, will never get the full emotional impact. It then steals the potential truth needing to be told from the audience. If the theatre is so huge that microphones have to be used for audiences to hear the performers you want to question what the real intention of the company is. And I would say it is to make money, lots of money, probably at the expense of their actors.”

There was considerable mention of, and work on, not being seduced by the beauty of the music when you are singing, but rather steeling oneself to remain with the importance of the lyrics. “Let the music be beautiful if it is beautiful. Your job is to sing the story truthfully”.

She said so many amateur theatre made the mistake of casting musicals for the “best” or “prettiest” voice, when in fact, often the magic occurs with the untrained voice which is unafraid to go within its guts. As an actor who sings but is not a singer, I appreciated that.

Moving ahead some hours to the second part of the day, we come to Phoebe Zeitgeist and their workshop in which the actors do not use their voices at all until they have found the “raw and naked truth at an animal level of the text they are determining to deliver”.

From Milan, Italy, the group was young and very intense. They first presented a fragment, an “immediate composition”, rather than an improvisation, which the Director feels it a dated approach. I have to say, it looked and felt like structured improvisation to me, sort of like what you might see at a comedy improv night when the cast has tuned into one another and done some advance work on punchlines, timing etc. But what do I know?
There was a lot of noise within the silence because the third character was a musician, who used drums in both traditional and non-traditional ways, cymbals, and a xylophone. Plus the actors kicked a lot of bells and cymbals around the floor as they physically assaulted one another in some kind of meditation on power and control.

Two men were dressed only in soiled underwear the entire time, except for when they each donned horses tails in an S&M struggle which ended with them making love roughly.

It reminded me so much of early Living Theatre work of the 70’s and some of my own early actor’s training workshops that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud a few times. Who knows? Maybe that was what they wanted. However, as I looked around the room at the scholars and academics in the room, they looked annoyed and several were openly smirking at the action on stage.

It all went on for a long time until we were treated to a video, which incorporated voice and lights.

Then it was the talk back. The Director read a lengthy paper in her beautiful Sicilian accented English about their process of deconstruction of expectation and a lot of other stuff. She also explained that the video was a staged version of what we had witnessed today, only each workshop performance is a research for them so no two are the same.

When it was time for questions, no one spoke. I felt bad for them because they had worked very hard out there, so I asked about the physicality within the power-and domination-leading-to-sex part of the improvisation, er “immediate composition”. “Within that construct, how do you determine who is going to be the top in any given performance?” I ended my question with.

My fellows sniggered but I was serious and besides, I wanted to give something back to them, which at least could be some sense of interest.

They spoke to one another in Italian for a few moments, taking my question very seriously, and then answered that there are subtle cues within the mood of the observers, in the musician’s accompaniment, and in the text, which they have in their minds even if they are playing unclothed, or “fully exposed” and in silence.

All in all it was a very Italian, very 70’s feeling piece and the workshop felt the same. Still, it was alive and the company has a definite voice.

As people filed out of the room leaving them standing alone up front, I approached and said, “Thank you for taking such a risk today and for sharing your work with us”. They seemed so happy to be approached and each one of them took my hand, shook it, embraced me, and we all parted feeling a little bit better about things.

Men wear jackets. The slightly rumpled tweed is still very much in favor for those who self identify as academics.

Women wear sensible, expensive looking leather shoes. A few of the younger women sport black boots and heels are occasionally seen on the younger, non-English women.

There exists a surfeit of men of all ages wearing neatly cropped beards. It seems de riguer to stroke or pull on one’s beard when one is engaged in conversation.

Vegetarian food usually means some form of pasta.

The double decker buses which run regularly are all electric hybrids and most are equipped with wi-fi.

Very few women color their hair. My white mane does not stand out like it does at home.

Likewise, very few women of any age wear make up. Clean faces shine everywhere except among the non-native English speaking women from other countries. Even then, it is artfully applied. However, curiously, nail polish seems big.

Double cooked chips are a “thing”.

There is more sugar involved in the daily English diet than I have seen in years. It starts with biscuits (which are cookies) or sweet rolls at breakfast alongside coffee or tea with multiple spoonfuls of sugar added, continues into lunch where one starch and perhaps a protein, or a whitebread sandwich, will be supplemented by a “pudding”, which is a sticky sweet cake, then afternoon tea includes a few twee little sandwiches plus a lot of cakes, custards or bicuits, and concludes with a dinner of one starch, a small portion of carrots, beans and/or beets if one is lucky, and concludes with a pudding, often a cheesecake or chocolate/caramel thing which is larger than the protein. I am desperately missing my veggies and a good salad. I try to avoid the biscuits and most puddings.

As a bit of a counterbalance to all of that sugar, most people do a good bit of walking. Though my bum has gotten weary from so much classroom sitting and I take my breaks walking in the gardens of St. Hugh’s. Strangely, very few of my fellows do the same.

There is a definite, though certainly unspoken (and perhaps even unconscious) hierarchy around here. At the very pinnacle are the German speaking professors actively teaching and publishing.

When I asked, “Why German?” I was told “Because it the language of the financial center of Europe”. And of course, since a big thread of this summer session includes Brecht and the post-dramatic community, German seems to be the ticket into the inner sanctum.

Following down the hierarchy, we come next upon the Professors currently affliated with a university. Indeed, the very first question I am invariably asked is, “What is your affiliation?  Uni or other?”.

Then, the students currently enrolled in University, and particularly those whose advisors are here as their fellows. Curiously, non-English students receive higher stratification than those who are England born.

Those of us who identify as theatre people enjoy a kind of “special” status and are accepted as intellectuals and artists who are desired in company.

Very strange to me is that the medical professionals are a bit apologetic about their status, especially if they are GP’s and not specialists.

No one admits to being a merchant of any kind and social workers are discussed as if they are an embarrassing necessity.

I have brought the word and concept of disability with me into every interaction and though I am open about my own, no one else mentions it. Not even the Professor who appears to be very much on the Autism spectrum.

One tiny success is that yesterday, finally, one of my fellows who was presenting on the topic of what should political theatre look like today actually included the words “people with disabilities” in her presentation as she discussed working toward a fuller inclusion. I felt a small frisson of success.

I have experienced repeated cognitive dissonance here, interacting with, and learning from, people who profess a commitment to “elevating the masses” and changing society while doing so from a position of total privilege and unaware of the irony.

When we discuss political action and I share my experiences Chairing two Human Rights Commissions, one Disabilities Commission, countless terms on school advisory committees or city planning committees or national policy making bodies I am always applauded for my efforts.

When I enquire or pursue what my fellows are doing, most of them discuss the books they have written or are writing, though a few do serve in political positions through their connections and money.

All self identify as radicalists or political leftists.

Cognitive dissonance from a blue collar Amerikan.

Tony Kushner with Tom Kuhn

Tony was asked by one someone in the class (who had previously admitted a preference for complete adherence to the performance text) about how he, as an author, playwright and screenwrighter, felt about that issue.

I was curious how he would respond. I had had a conversation while rehearsing Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit a year ago about that very subject when I had raised the issue that a couple of the references, written when they were, would now be considered racist. The text in question didn’t serve any critical purpose in propelling the storyline forward nor would it’s removal in any way damage the fidelity of the story. It was simply something which was written by Noel Coward so that Madame Arcati could get another laugh and it was at the expense of people of color. Given my history working in the anti-oppression arena for so many years I stated that I would not be speaking the lines as written.

There were also a couple of lines by other characters which served the same purpose: eliciting laughter from people of means while marginalizing the Other. I thought we should edit those, too. Had the lines carried social and/or intellectual weight with an outcome of stimulating thought, I would not have argued to remove them because they would then have served a different purpose. But that was not the case. They were a couple of 40’s racist and sexist attitudes glibly tossed off by supposedly witty intellectuals (whose characters were fully well established through other means). They existed for cheap laughs.

My feeling was, and remains, that we become complicit in furthering such attitudes when we do not take pro-active measures. Cutting a couple of non-critical lines seems a fair way to up-cycle a show and make it relevant to today’s audiences. Certainly people do it all the time through costuming, set design and/or the setting of historical plays in different situations than they were written for. Sometimes to brilliant effect.

The argument I faced on behalf of keeping these particular lines in was based upon the belief, like my Oxford classroom fellow’s, that an author’s text is sacred and that it is our duty to perform a script exactly as it is written, with complete fidelity to the text. Additionally, the theatre in question feared possible legal actions due to some self appointed “Guardian of the Realm” who allegedly had a history of reporting edits of scripts back to the licensing houses and demanding action.

So I was definitely interested in how Tony, the author of the much produced Angels in America, would respond to this.

First, he laughed good naturally.

“My show has been performed hundreds of times all over the world by now, and by the way, I am truly grateful for that. However, if I worried about every edit or adaptation someone made to my text, I would never get anything else done.

You need to let go of your concern for fidelity to the text in your own work. Particularly as it becomes more popularized. And as producers, directors, performers, it is healthier to develop that same attitude.

If a change works, then it’s thrilling and exciting. I mean, look at how many variant versions there are of Hamlet, Galileo, the Greek tragedies, and on and on.

I was once invited to attend a production of Angels by a colleague. He had literally edited out nearly two hours of the text! But the thing is, it worked. For his audience and in his region of the world, it worked. It didn’t hurt the overall point of my piece, it simply re-arranged and drove to the conclusion in a different fashion.

I could see why he made the changes where and when he did. It wasn’t how I envisioned the piece when I wrote it, it was a little bit uncomfortable for me at first, but it worked. And let’s face it, Angels is a big piece. (laughing) But it worked. It was powerful and it worked and that should be our concern.”

He concluded, “A narrative should be more than a series of plot points but also about character, intention, emotion, purpose. All of it. I hope this answers the question.”

Tom Kuhn then followed up with the point that many great authors simply lifted ideas and even lines from other great authors, and certainly many great directors sometimes took some out.

I appreciated this approach to the subject. I have been involved in a few productions over the years in which text has been edited by the director merely to cut the running time, sometimes badly, sometimes with more success. The suggestion that we should feel free to edit thoughtfully for relevance of content or clarity or, and especially for, anticipated cause and effect, makes perfect sense to me.

I don’t think my classroom peer was entirely convinced but he did seem to be re-considering. And isn’t that why we do the work?

Such a voice!

Inducted into the South Australian Music Hall of Fame just two months ago, Robyn Archer’s talent makes it easy to see why. An out lesbian in a country which keeps such things mostly under wraps, she has still been invited to sing with the Sidney Philharmonic, the Nexus Opera, and in London on the West End at the Wyndham Theatre.

I had no idea who she was and sat with her at meal time, exchanging tales of the fight for marriage equality in our respective countries and worrying over how the Brexit vote might influence upcoming Australian and American elections.

Imagine my surprise when our highly promoted and lauded evening’s entertainment turned out to be my dinner buddy. She is definitely not a self promoting braggart of a theatre person, which just makes me like her even more.

Robin sang us a Cabaret program of 23 songs, including rare gems from Tuchoslky, Hollaender, Wedekind, Bizet, Kreisler, Ringelnatz, Weill, Eisler and Brecht, and even with two encores, neither her voice nor her energy seemed to wear out.

I was impressed by her abilities, a genuine Cabaret artist, not only capable of singing complex arrangements requiring a supple voice and range versatility, but able to act out and embody the characters within the stories she was telling.

Robyn was accompanied on piano by Michael Morley,

the Emeritus Director of Drama at Flinders University, who has written widely on European and German theatre, has been published by Methuen Press, and been musical director for a number of professional productions in South Australia, San Francisco, and overseas. Michael was awarded the South Australian Premier’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in 2012.

He was a brilliant pianist, a funny sidekick who harmonized on a few musical punchlines, and really, just a very nice man. He and I walked over to the hall together before the show and on the way there, he related how much he was looking forward to hopefully getting some sleep tonight. Since this has been my quest since I’ve arrived, we commiserated, shared an ironical laugh and then wished each other sweet dreams 🙂 .

But then, the show they delivered was such high energy, entertaining, thought provoking, hilarious, and occasionally downright poignant that I forgot my fatigue and it certainly seemed that for the duration, so did he.

It was a lovely way to end a very long, cerebral overload kind of day.

Lunch with a Japanese theatre director, a German scholar of theatre and communications, an English socialist magician(!) and an Australian secondary school drama teacher. What a range of experiences and ideas! They were all fascinated by my earlier “cracker barrel” on social justice work on behalf of–and working beside– people with disabilities, especially my use of theatre techniques to help the “oppressed of the oppressed” (as Hans called those of us with disabilities and to which I agree) find and then use our voices to demand change in social and political policies.

I had no idea that what I’ve been doing for nearly twenty years was considered so “revolutionary” in other countries.. Just proves what a sad state the world is really in for those of us who experience disability in our daily lives. Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed didn’t recognize nor sufficiently incorporate disability when it sought to mobilize the marginalized. Social class, race and gender were the primary targets. I’m here shedding light on the genuine intersectionality of disability and why that matters.

Advocating to bring the needs of PWD beneath its branches

I found myself discussing the hierarchy of disability, which many may deny but which I have certainly felt, seen and worked against and the dirty truth that within disability cultures, people with intellectual disabilities are generally perceived as at the bottom.

Having spent my time in special education, I experienced that first hand, and of course, spending 14 years Directing the Abuse Education and Prevention (Training) Unit for the State of Oregon exposed me to the political realities within the service system, but my real education in this had to be while serving as Chair of the Commission on Disabilities. I watched it play out by my peers with disabilities who were elected to represent the interests of their constituent groups. I remember working very hard to facilitate a different outcome, beginning with the idea that we should do some cross disability education among ourselves if we were to be effective within the general population.

As we talked of these things, it was if a light went on for the Japanese woman. She teared up and asked if she might email me later with some ideas she is just beginning to develop. Of course I said yes.

I’m grateful for the reception of my experiences and the things I have to offer and so glad not to feel like the outsider I was worried I might be.

Meanwhile, there are just so many amazing sessions to choose from every day that it is almost overwhelming, the brilliance surrounding me is incredible.

Tony Kushner, Tom Kuhl, Di Trevis and Thomas Bailey this evening in a round table discussion followed by the premiere of a dramatic fragment.

It’s all a bit awe inspiring and I’m just so happy!

The front entrance to the world’s first University museum, free to all

“My cabinet of curiosities” is how the museum’s founder, Elias Ashmole, described the original collection he donated to the University of Oxford in 1677.

And what a cabinet of curiosities it has become! Spanning three wings and towering four stories, the museum hosts huge collections of archaeological specimens side by side with fine art. It has one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, majolica pottery, English silver, rare coins, book engravings and geological specimens of any museum. It even had the stuffed body of the last Dodo bird ever seen but, sadly, the bird decomposed before new protocols for preservation were developed, so that now all that remains is a claw and its head.

The archaeology department includes the bequest of Arthur Evans and so has an excellent collection of Greek and Minoan pottery. The department also has an extensive collection of antiquities from Ancient Egypt and the Sudan, and the museum hosts the Griffith Institute for the advancement of Egyptology.

Since I only had a couple of free hours to explore (I could happily spend weeks inside, browsing room after room) I decided to focus on the ancients and the tactile, beginning with the marble collection of the Earl of Arundel.

First, the women:
This is Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom and sponsor of the arts. She sprang, fully armored, from her father, Jupiter’s head. That’s an unknown Roman lad and lady in attendance.

This piece is known as “The Wounded Amazon”.
Missing all of those limbs and her poor head, she is definitely wounded. I love the draping of her gown.

Here we have “the headless muse”, thought to be Clio, the proclaimer of great deeds, Zeus’s historian daughter.

The foot, the foot! And her posture…

“Some say the Muses are nine: how careless!
Look, there’s Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.” Plato

And look again! It’s the colossal head of Athena, the Greek version of fair Minerva. Athena, the Goddess of wisdom, courage, truth and justice.

What would a dash through antiquities be without a Sphinx?
AD 50-200

And as a theatre person, how could I not include this 1st century BC Greek tragedy mask?

Moving to Minoan Crete, we have two very important Snake Goddesses. AE 1106
It is thought by some that they represent the Paleolithic tradition of honoring women, particularly the domesticity they shepherded so successfully.

We’ll end this brief collection of female figures with this disturbing Egyptian frieze carved in high relief.

It depicts Leda, wife of King Tyndaeus of Sparta, being raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. We’ve all heard that story.
It’s part of the normalization of rape culture, right? In any case, the two nymphs on her sides are holding eggs which symbolize the conception of her children, Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux.

It seems fitting after this that we move along to the Boys:

Old Jupiter himself

Hercules, fighting the Nemean Lion. Off to the left you can see the missing upper body of the nymph, Nymea, who holds an oak wreath for the winner. Do we think it was the lion?

And here, gentle Eros, sleeping. His torch is down, however, which is not a good sign. It signifies death.

This next piece is pretty dramatic. We see the Trojan priest, Laocoon, and his sons fighting flesh eating snakes. No wonder so many people have Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes).

Pliny the Elder says this sculpture was made by three Rhodian sculptors: Hageandros, Athenodourous and Polypros, who were commissioned to create a warning. It is believed Laocoon had sex in the temple of Apollo- a big no no.

And here we find Apollo himself

the God of Learning, Truth and Music. He’s beautiful, isn’t he? He is. And look at that quiver for his arrows! So very Greek (even though this statue is Roman)

Speaking of phallic centric art? Get a look at this gentleman.

His name is Min.

Min is a Pre-dynastic Egyptian God, from 3300 BC, Temple of Koptos. This boy is huge. All that’s left of the penis he is holding is a stub but you get the idea. He is, of course, the God of Reproduction. Great feasts and orgiastic rites were held in his honor so that he could spread his semen around. People were worried about their harvests….

So, let’s end our little trek through the wonders of stone with this fabulous crocodile God, Sobek, who also cared about harvests. He is the chief God of the Fayum and his sculpture was taken from “The Labyrinth Pyramid” at Hawara.

Sobek is known as a “fluid” God. He is also Apotropaic, which means he keeps evil away. He protects the people, the Pharaohs, the Nile’s fertility, all of it.

I leave him to protect you, dear reader, and me, as we go about our lives. May your days and nights remain as fertile as you wish them to be, in whatever form that fertility may take.

Blessed Be.

This is Radcliffe Camera.
It was constructed between 1737 and 1749 with 40,000 pounds (a shit load of money in those days) that were donated by Dr. John Radcliffe upon his death. His intention was to create a library to partner with the Bodleian and he endowed it toward that end. However, it eventually ended up housing exclusively science books, which I imagine is meant to be a tribute to him. The Camera is still an active library but it is not open to the general public.

Mr. Radcliffe was a graduate of University College, which is one of those colleges many people think of when they think of Oxford. He went on to become a doctor and moved to London where he became a very rich man, probably through becoming Royal Physician to William III, Mary II and Queen Anne, among other well heeled individuals. Naturally, he served a stint or two in Parliament.

The most generous Dr. John Radcliffe

While I haven’t found out a lot about Dr. Radcliffe’s personal life it is worth noting that he was “very fond of the drink” and was occasionally “found frequenting public houses with soldiers”, with whom he seemed to enjoy spending some of his off time.

The story goes that once he had to be literally physically carried away, quite drunk (and protesting), in order to provide emergency medical services to someone in need.

Dr. Radcliffe lived until either 62 or 64 years of age depending on which source you read. He never married and died childless, a fact which apparently did not bother him. It has been suggested that he “enjoyed the company of a few close and most trusted of man friends”.

Therefore, I was delighted with how fitting this was when I came across it today:
The little tags all along the fence are individually written tributes to the victims of the recent Orlando mass shootings.

Each one is different and as a whole, they are quite moving. I loved one which said, “I fly beside you, no longer afraid to come out.” Many of them said such simple things as, “No one should have to die because of who they love” or “I love you, whoever you were”.

This particular gentleman was very curious about what they said. He read each one of them carefully even though the woman who accompanied him seemed annoyed with the whole business.

I choose to think that foxy old Dr. Radcliffe would have approved.

St. Hugh’s College main lodge from the interior courtyard

No, I don’t sleep very well in my new digs. Too many sounds, even with earplugs. I expect I will adapt. I’d better….

I did have the most amazing dreams. My mind spend the night processing a couple of not so pleasant past events into peaceful resolution, merging my actual experiences with fragments of unknown historical figures comforting me. I wake up feeling comforted, if weary. That seems a fair exchange and I think about the significance as I shower until I realize I have less than 27 minutes to dress and get to the dining hall for breakfast before they close the doors.

17 minutes later (it’s a big campus with lots of stairs!) I enter the student’s dining hall. It’s pretty much empty by this time, though a few stragglers like me do make their way into line.

Breakfast consists of dry scrambled eggs, one overcooked piece of bacon, two deep fried “hash brown” patties which I just cannot eat, a small cup of weak coffee, and a banana. I manage to pocket an orange and kid’s size apple juice for later.

Breakfast eaten, I make my way outside to see the lovely grounds of St. Hugh’s College. As I stroll across the gardens, a man begins to set up a croquet court. They certainly didn’t have that at the University of Oregon.

However, my friends and I did set up our own croquet court underneath the freeway overpass on many of the weekends when it wasn’t raining in Eugene.
We would get dressed up in our hippy whites and, drinking cheap champagne, we’d hold raucous tournaments that lasted for hours.

No one comes out to play here, though. The weather is grey and threatens rain. Most of the usual students have just gone home for summer break. The college seems to be filling instead with an interesting assortment of people. Some are summer session course specialists like me. Some are clearly wealthy youth from other countries enrolled for summer term.

One young man from China proudly sports his Oxford garb. A couple of young women from France chatter companionably away as they stroll by, arm in arm. One of them has a shaved head and is wearing a school uniform. A finely dressed gentleman is speaking to an equally finely dressed woman. I catch what I believe to be the rolling sounds of some Eastern European language I can’t quite make out. Croatian?

I overhear part of the heated conversation of a couple of young women with North country English accents. They are discussing the phenomenon of “the Oxford Lad”, which I discover refers to upper class young men who flaunt their privilege, sexism and homophobia. They are disgusted that the rugby team hired a stripper and that Oxford chose to allow this to happen.

“It isn’t about free speech, at all.” One of them states. “It’s about continuing the outdated traditions and elitism of this university.”

“It doesn’t feel safe to be a woman anymore,” her friend says, “there’s some kind of backlash. Oxford is filled with hypocrisy”.

Later, I read an article in the student journal about a wealthy young woman from a “good family” (her words) who decides to do sex industry work for a summer job so she can finance her trip to Greece, a trip her family doesn’t want her to take.

She justifies her decision by writing that all women end up having sex with men for money, food, etc. anyway whenever they date, so she just chooses to do it “consciously”, with a request for “an allowance” from her sugar daddies up front.

“It’s all a bit of a lark, really”, she writes. “I can dine out on the stories from this for years. And in the short term I make $400 pounds a night a couple of nights a week from sad, middle aged graduates of the colleges in town whose wives won’t give them blowjobs or who enjoy the odd bit of kink.”

This causes me to remember the daughter of an old friend of mine who has done something very similar to this in America, turning it into quite the cottage industry for herself.

Meanwhile, the referendum for Brexit carries on all around me

and at home, I discover that the Democrats have a good, old fashioned sit in to try to force the Republicans to simply put to the vote a bill they introduced to ban the sales of assault weapons to people on the no fly watch list. Of course the Republicans respond by recessing congress so they can regroup.

The world is spinning, rain is falling, bigotry is rising and feminism seems to be morphing into something which posits the objectification of women as progressive.

I head out for a walking tour of old Oxford before my course begins.

While in Georgie’s side yard yesterday, a man in his early thirties approaches us, a salesman doing his thing. He has a tattoo on his neck, the number “17”, in blue ball point ink, the kind of tattoos which are generally made while one spends time incarcerated. I don’t ask him what it means but I am certainly curious.

Apparently he has his own curiosity because the next moment we are having the following exchange.

Him: “You’re an American, right?”
Me: “Yes. (laughing) Is it so easy to tell?”
Him: (A bit embarrassed) “Yes, sorry.”
Me: (sorry I embarrassed him)” Oh, don’t be sorry. I imagine my accent is easy to spot. I’m from Oregon.”
Him: “Right. Listen, I know this may be a bit random, but my friends and me have been having some discussions.” Pause. “Er, about…um, that shooting…um, in Florida.” Long pause.
Me: “Orlando?”
Him: “Yeah. Orlando. Bad, that.”
Me: “Yes, it was horrible. Another horrible mass shooting. It is beyond sad.”
Him: “Yeah, well that’s the thing. Some of my mates wonder if maybe it isn’t all a conspiracy.”
Me: (Surprised) “A conspiracy?”
Him: “Yeah. You know. Sandy Hook. Orlando. Texas.”
Me: “Oregon. My own state. Twice.”
Him: (Excitedly) “Yeah, right! So many of them. All of the time. We were thinking maybe it is a conspiracy, all of those shootings, to try to force gun control laws.”
Me: (Studying him quietly. Noticing the rest of his tattoos. Full arm with skeleton among them)
“You know, I really don’t believe that it’s a conspiracy to force gun control.” (Becoming very serious) “I think it has to do with all of those things that contribute to mass shootings, like not enough jobs that pay living wages, not enough quality education for people, not enough mental health treatment, intolerance and bigotry. Homophobia. Religious fanatics. That kind of thing.”

He is thinking for moment, then, “Right, right. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Me: (very quietly) “I wish it did.”