It felt good to be back in the saddle again, sort of. I found myself being very careful about the arrangements for my big weekend of museum programs, March 7-8. Not knowing for sure how long (or if) I'd be able to stand and hold forth, I asked for a podium (my standard favorite on the old Chautauqua stage, to distinguish my authors from other characters who cavorted about), and a low stool. That way I knew I'll have something to lean on or perch on, if my energy flagged or pain caught up with me. Perhaps the excitement of being out doing things again would carry me through. I should have known that it would be the audiences that carried me, in Gainesville and then St. Augustine, two of my best beloved locales in Florida, places I've done decades of research, in the former, and lived a decade of pure delight, in the latter. As Lily Tomlin expressed in "Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe," the goosebumps come from what happens in the audience, not on the stage.
From the sheer amount of tears shed, you might have suspected I knew that it would be our last time in a long time to gather in groups together - to hug, and pat, and just generally treasure one another. Another few days more, all hell would break loose, and we would be gone from each other, with barely a wave goodbye.
There was an innocence to those gatherings, sixty minutes of "Boston Marriages Gone South" seen through the shared lives of Alice James and Katharine Peabody Loring, of Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields, of Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Crane, of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Carolyn Percy Cole. I had almost as much fun as in olden days of costumed performances. Yes, the new pain from metastasized bone tumors in my feet and legs was almost unbearable at times. By the time we got to St. Augustine the second day, I could neither stand nor lean on anything. I ended up sitting with my back to the audience, all of us fully immersed in the chock-full PowerPoint of "Scribbling Women in Florida" before us, a full ninety minutes of deep literary history - a dozen women who "got sand in their shoes," Orange Blossom Special-style, and were never again the same, after their time in the Land of Flowers.
Sitting across from and beside old friends and new, at dinner and at breakfast the next morning, none of us could have imagined how altered our lives would be in a week, two weeks. I had great discoveries to share - the juxtaposition of two of my scribbling women with the presidents of their era: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln, Rachel Carson and John F. Kennedy. All of them so soon dead, after changing the course of history together.
And now it is our turn, it seems, to change the outcome of our shared time, or not. Sad that we don't have a leader of anywhere near the caliber of those who met the dire challenge of slavery or the Bay of Pigs. The poets, the musicians, the beautiful doctors and nurses and scientists, all of us, will have to rise to the occasion to save ourselves, and each other.
"Virtual Chautauqua" is on the fast track, now, being the only gift I can give to the world in the near future. I burn the night oil again, hoping to have "Scribbling Women in Florida" adapted to a new format, ready for online delivery to students in the Panhandle next week, those who study in the wee hours, between jobs and childcare, to become nurses, paramedics, law enforcement, truck drivers. They, too, will save us from ourselves, from those who cannot lead us out of this. It will be the hourly workers, the ones who exhaust themselves in caring for others, who will be our legacy. We must stay out of their way and bang the drum to the beat of our human hearts, until we meet again.
I feel no longer the pain that accompanies this journey. Only the joy.
From the sheer amount of tears shed, you might have suspected I knew that it would be our last time in a long time to gather in groups together - to hug, and pat, and just generally treasure one another. Another few days more, all hell would break loose, and we would be gone from each other, with barely a wave goodbye.
There was an innocence to those gatherings, sixty minutes of "Boston Marriages Gone South" seen through the shared lives of Alice James and Katharine Peabody Loring, of Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields, of Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Crane, of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Carolyn Percy Cole. I had almost as much fun as in olden days of costumed performances. Yes, the new pain from metastasized bone tumors in my feet and legs was almost unbearable at times. By the time we got to St. Augustine the second day, I could neither stand nor lean on anything. I ended up sitting with my back to the audience, all of us fully immersed in the chock-full PowerPoint of "Scribbling Women in Florida" before us, a full ninety minutes of deep literary history - a dozen women who "got sand in their shoes," Orange Blossom Special-style, and were never again the same, after their time in the Land of Flowers.
Sitting across from and beside old friends and new, at dinner and at breakfast the next morning, none of us could have imagined how altered our lives would be in a week, two weeks. I had great discoveries to share - the juxtaposition of two of my scribbling women with the presidents of their era: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln, Rachel Carson and John F. Kennedy. All of them so soon dead, after changing the course of history together.
And now it is our turn, it seems, to change the outcome of our shared time, or not. Sad that we don't have a leader of anywhere near the caliber of those who met the dire challenge of slavery or the Bay of Pigs. The poets, the musicians, the beautiful doctors and nurses and scientists, all of us, will have to rise to the occasion to save ourselves, and each other.
"Virtual Chautauqua" is on the fast track, now, being the only gift I can give to the world in the near future. I burn the night oil again, hoping to have "Scribbling Women in Florida" adapted to a new format, ready for online delivery to students in the Panhandle next week, those who study in the wee hours, between jobs and childcare, to become nurses, paramedics, law enforcement, truck drivers. They, too, will save us from ourselves, from those who cannot lead us out of this. It will be the hourly workers, the ones who exhaust themselves in caring for others, who will be our legacy. We must stay out of their way and bang the drum to the beat of our human hearts, until we meet again.
I feel no longer the pain that accompanies this journey. Only the joy.
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