Jyms of Wyzdom for March 8, 2019

Right hand healing…still feels a little weird. Left side in 6 weeks. This carpal tunnel thing is from many years of painting scenery and using both hands to spatter and do special effects. Onward!

Now what’s all this nonsense about winter returning with a vengeance? Saw a review for a new book: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warning by David Wallace-Wells. He was on TV talking with Fareed Zakaria last week and also had a long book excerpt in the Sunday Times a week or so ago. He makes the assertion that we SHOULD be in serious panic mode right now. Not nearly enough people are taking the warming of the planet seriously. Meanwhile, the science is unequivocal. Bonnie and I grew up in Southern California and neither of us has ANY memory of the kinds of droughts, flooding rains, forest fires and catastrophes going on there RIGHT NOW.

Old age and the wear of time teach many things. [Playwright Sophocles]

Oscars: They managed to surprise me in several categories, chiefly Best Actress, that I thought was hands-down going to Glenn Close for “The Wife.” DO read the excellent novel by Meg Wolitzer if you haven’t already. I was also disappointed that Spike Lee has once again lost out on Best Director, though he did get a screen-writing award. No question that Alfonso Cuaron deserved his 3 Oscars for “Roma.” If it doesn’t play here, watch for it on the fall Film Forum list, unless you get Netflix. If “Roma” was such a masterpiece how could the Academy members not award it Best Picture? [OK, it did receive Best Foreign Film] All that aside, the show was perhaps the most diverse in many years, so congrats on all who made that happen.

Once in Eugene, Oregon, after a lecture in which I had dealt with the age stages as described by Dante, this young woman comes up to me and says, “Well, Dr. Campbell, you don’t understand. Today we go directly from infancy to wisdom.” I said, “That’s marvelous. All you’ve missed is life.” Scholar Joseph Campbell]

Theater: A Doll’s House, Part 2” by Lucas Hnath (nayth) has opened at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. We saw Hnath speak at Chautauqua last summer and are really looking forward to seeing it on Mar 31. I used to ask my dramatic lit students, after we had read something like Ibsen’s Doll’s House, “OK, now what? What happens next in this story? Why?” This kind of questioning can bring on some lively debate, especially for play in which the mother of 3 just walks away from her husband and kids. In Hnath’s play, Nora returns after 15 years to get a divorce. It’s a tight cast of 4 that includes the old nurse, Torvald, Nora, and Emmie, one of the daughters. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall in that confrontation? March 7 thru April 6 at Pittsburgh Public Theater, 412-316-1600.

When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things—not the great occasions—that in retrospect give off the greatest glory of happiness. [Comedian Bob Hope]

Bon hiver! (Sigh), Jim