Oliver

When Oliver raised his paws to beg,
My heart gave in to the world.
There was no chance I could renege;
Resistance was unfurled.

Northwest by south he came to me
And crept into our lives
But not until he climbed a tree
And a plan he could contrive

A way to join two snarling beasts
In a household full of hearts
Where his gentle kiss earned daily feasts
And treats of chicken parts.

His self respect drew instant friends;
The dogs knew who he was.
And Kitty tried but couldn’t oftend,
If challenged, he’d simply pause

He hunted, though, he was no prude
And ate his prey sometimes
And left entrails, but never crude,
He’d never deal in crimes.

On the grass of hearth or tennis deck
He’d ask you with his Aowh!
To rub his droopy belly, his neck
Then hum like a garbage scow.

Oh, Oliver, Oliver! I’m glad you came
To share your life with us.
We’ll miss your plaintive flailing game
Send back your succubus.

Carthage College Commencement

May 7, 2000

I'm here today to say some positive things to you, graduates, by talking about myself. I'd talk about you, but don't know you. Besides, that would be disobeying instructions. I know myself only a little, but every year I get to know myself a little better. Some days I wish I could just leave me and go be someone else. I'm stuck with me. But since I have always felt this way, became the only thing I could be, an actor.

I've had more failures than successes. But I refuse to quit. And fortunately, fans-including people in my business who do the hiring-remember only the good work. I remember all of it.

Some other day, if you wish, I could come back and tell you hair-raising stories of rejection and disillusionment, of disappointment and grief. But not at commencement.

Today is a day of launching, another beginning, or I should say a continuance. Today is your day, not mine, and you ought to be looking up. I am.

Thank you, trustees and faculty, of Carthage College, for having the generosity and good sense to invite me here. I would not want to seriously impugn your judgment but have wondered on other such occasions like this, and there have been a few if you might not have been able to secure someone a bit more significant. As an actor, I have not yet gotten over

wondering that often, when someone actually casts me in a significant role on the screen or on the stage.On the other hand, lest you think me charmingly self-effacing, I have had for many years of

this long career the feeling that you and they, all those producers and directors who did hire me, and especially those who did not, were, and would have been, lucky to get me. Can you tell yet? I am an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I am an entertainer, so have come to entertain you, if only briefly.

John Daniel Davies taught me this: Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; then tell them you told them.

He was Mr. Davies to us all at Mary D. Bradford High School. Only we called it KHS. I spent many out-of-class hours in Mr. Davies's office. Not as punishment and not idly. worked when I was there. First on my Dramatic Declamation, as it was then called. He felt me chances were better than good in the upcoming Forensic League regional and even the national competition. I couldn't imagine the latter, and I tried not to think about the preliminaries. wanted to be be in that event. I did not want to be in Original Oratory.

But Mr. Davies's will prevailed. I would practice my declamation, and I struggled for weeks to compose a decent oration. I followed Mr. Davies's dictum, and that helped. I wrote an oration. It had a certain balance and some dramatic flourishes, but basically it was empty and phony. When I read it for my it mentor, or I should say, half-delivered it in his office, he smiled

knowingly and said, jingling his key chain, as was his habit, "Well, you’ll win . . . on delivery."

The timing of his delivery was impeccable, with a deft pause after "win," and a tilt of his handsome head as he spun away to continue his rounds. He was right. did all right with that vapid little piece, but I never thought it was more than pretty well written. Substance, I was relieved to find out later, came, well later.

One Saturday, this Jupiter-at least he was to me-suggested coaching me at his Elks

Club. Going downtown for a special session with Mr. Davies literally gave me, at the age of seventeen, palpitations. Afterwards, he said casually, "You know, think you might have a career ahead of you as an actor, if that's what you want," or, are thinking of, or some such phrase. I have words to describe my feelings at that moment, but they wouldn't be evocative enough. In the fall, I was practicing more with my body than my mind, though mental discipline was crucial to those workouts as well. Charles "Chuck" Jaskowich was the coach of the varsity football team. In his heart he was a teacher first. He liked athletes who were good students. l

was a determined, you might say rabidly good student. Many years later I understood that much of my energy came from a need for approval.

In my house, Ma and Pa were emotional. Sometimes I felt so much emotion that I thought I couldn't go on a living, it was at such a high pitch. Not that Ma and Pa didn't love and care for me. No family, not even traditionally devoted Italian immigrant parents and four equally attentive big brothers and sisters, or any other family on the planet had enough approval or extra time to give me my fix.

But teachers did.

They were always there. To teach me. To encourage me. They were at Bain Elementary and McKinley Junior High, and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, The Yale School of Drama, and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles.

And in many film and theater companies. They were at my service. And they were an audience. An attentive audience.

Coach Jaskwich’s was so good an audience that he knew what to say to each player, how to glance or glare at each one, and what tone to apply to elicit the response he wished from each.

All for one purpose: to win. Not to punish, not to humiliate, not to embarrass, and not for personal gain. One afternoon during practice behind the now erased Lake Front Stadium downtown here, he embarrassed, humiliated and punished me with remarkable precision. And gained my attention.

He was over on the sidelines with the team and the coaching staff. was on the other side of the field, not noticing that I was alone. I had run out to cover a pass, practicing defense.  I hated defense. I got no glory there. could have been hurt. I was a fool. Somehow running straight up the middle on offense, through huge opponents all concentrating on not only stopping but destroying me, never scared me. I was too afraid of fumbling. And I was the

center of attention of not only the enemy, but of my own superb team.

As I trotted back to where they were all standing, I suddenly saw that everyone was looking at me. I had loped out half-heartedly, failed to prevent the catch, grumbled to myself and started to jog back to the others. When I was in the middle of the field, the sun a burning

spotlight I had not sought this day, and all alone, Zeus spoke: "Travanti, you a shatter a principle I've held for my entire coaching career, that if a guy can play offense, can teach him to play defense. Why don't you go make a DECLAMATION!" learned to play defense. Okay, I can't lie to you. Mostly I relied on my defensive end, Tom Brickley. Between my convincing

portrayal of a linebacker-I'm an actor, right? and Tom's genuine skill, we were a brick wall, most of the time. I received some of the credit on our end of the field, but trust me, Tom did it.

Miss Hall had warned me about shirking, and I was still learning. She was my first grade teacher at Bain Elementary. One day she executed the dreaded kneehole isolation punishment. When you did less than your best in Miss Hall's class, the worst thing that could happen to you was to be put down there on your haunches for a short period, which seemed very long, while everyone tried not to watch while you tried not to cry, or touch Miss Hall's skirt,

and prayed for the humiliation to pass quickly. But before she went through with the sentence, stern but compassionate, tough but sweet little Miss Hall, with tears in the corners of her eyes, 

leaned close and whispered straight into mine something like, "Daniel, I want you to

understand that I have to do this, even though it hurts me, because you were naughty, and you know the rules; and someday I believe you are going to be known by many people, and I want

you to be a good man." And Jaskwich’s thought he was tough!

I can't be sure how much influence those two had on my character, but I'm still telling the tales at the age of sixty.

A dozen or so years later, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I was onstage

rehearsing my first big serious part, with a "real" director, Professor Ronald Elway Mitchell, after whom a fairly new theater there is now named. was scared and nervous. But I didn't show it. I kept shoving my hands into my pockets, knowing they gave me away, but not that

even that gesture betrayed me. One day, this kindest and most elegant of men, not unlike Mr. Davies, strolled down to the apron of the stage with a student assistant and said, "Daniel, every time you put your hands in your pockets from now on, I am having Tom here (or whoever he

was) shout at you. And if that doesn't work, I am going to have both pockets sewn up!"

do not wish to tell you that respond only or best to criticism, constructive or otherwise.

respond to praise. I repeat, praise pleases me, stirs me, inspires and warms me. But please don't let me walk blindly into the invisible pit waiting for me around the corner, or into the path of the speeding truck.

Only four years ago, known for some pretty good work and respected for my

professionalism, I stood in a rehearsal hall at the highly regarded American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before a splendid company of actors and told the director that he might as well send me home, because I could not play that enormous and demanding role

-it was Cornelius Melody in "A Touch of The Poet" which even the playwright, Eugene O'Neill, had said could not be played by any living actor, not Spencer Tracy or even Laurence Olivier. I did not know he had said that, until the reviews came out. But I could have told the

critics and the world better than anyone how true that observation was.

Well, they were stunned. I was fifty-four years old, but really just Ma's and Pa's over

emotional kid, Miss Hall's little boy, coach Jaskwich's perplexing player, and Professor

Mitchell's promising but green actor.

The distinguished director Joe Dowling, who currently runs the prestigious Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, spluttered a bit, telling me that was nonsense, and tried to laugh it off. But I was still in trouble. Soon after, with about a week to go before the first performance, Mr. Dowling muttered in my direction while was grumbling about my failure to find the key to this

character, "Well, you're nowhere near the anger yet, Dan." Wanna see the reviews?

So, what have told you? Let me put it another way: What do know of life and work that I might wish for you?

If you're naughty, be prepared to get on your hands and knees and repent. You may want to do better next time because, who knows, the world may be watching. If someone tells you that a good delivery alone could get you a win when you're sixteen, that's okay. But at twenty

Six or sixty, a little substance will likely be required.If you're okay on offense but rotten on defense, get yourself a Tom Brickley to back you up.

Of course, you ought to do your best to get on a superlative team in the first place. Then always be good, and compliment your fellow players, they'll do better, and make you look good.

If you can't find anything useful or effective to do with your hands, keep them still at your sides or in your lap, or on the table or lectern. Please don't stuff them into your pockets, because that'll give you away. Stay loose and be prepared.

Be prepared to yell for help when you've done everything you could think to do. I've even learned to be prepared to step aside if I think someone else could do it better.

"What else have you told them, Daniel?" Mr. Davies might ask. To be honest, I wasn't at all sure, before I started writing or even as it went along. I tend to reveal myself to me by talking and writing . . . and acting. I was always this way. And that's what I have confirmed through

this process. I am here to tell you that whoever I was in those earliest years in Kenosha, I still am.

That may be distressing to some of you. I can't help that, but I hope not. have always

been determined, though took many peculiar turns that would give the opposite impression to someone familiar with me. I often relied on others to either suggest what I might be good at, or for their encouragement, criticism, or advice. To amend Tennessee Williams's character,

Blanche Dubois, only slightly: I have (almost) always depended on the kindness of strangers.

And the limitless support of my family and friends.

In recent years, have finally figured out some of the roles I ought to be playing, those that would make properly rigorous demands on my considerable abilities. But I remain at the mercy of others for most opportunities.

When I get them, you can depend on me. will deliver! That much I can take some

substantial credit for. But not entirely. I am the product of my genes, my family and friends, my neighborhood, my education, my colleagues, my teachers, and plain happenstance, some painful, some happy.

have no words of wisdom. But I can testify and demonstrate that it is possible to pursue a far-fetched dream; to try to self-destruct, but fail and thrive-a story for another day; to be healthy and vigorous after thirty-seven years of work in a difficult, disreputable business, but

an honorable profession; to maintain a throbbing sense of humor; and to be eager to get back to work, when the material is good. wish all of your work that's lucrative and satisfying. hope you will own your successes as well as your disappointments, and never stop trying. To sum up: I've told you as much as could about myself in only a few minutes. I've expressed some of my fondest wishes for you.

But I'll conclude with caution, one I take to heart.

If you're at all successful, and they applaud you, praise you and give you prizes, and even confer upon you honorary doctorate degrees, duck! Remember George Bernard Shaw's play,

"Saint Joan"? Its message is simple. If the army says it can't win without you, and the king cannot regain his throne without you, and the church needs your help, RUN! Before all three decide you have to be burned at the stake. Never mind that afterward they may have to

declare you a saint when all the fan mail comes pouring in.

I've had a good time here. Thank you.

Congratulations, graduates. I hope you will make the most of all your opportunities. This graduation is an impressive accomplishment. So, keep laughing and having a good time. I will.

Soon I'll catch a plane back to southern California. But before my flight, I'll hug and kiss my family and friends here in Kenosha, stop at my home in Lake Forest, where they have to take me in and love me because that's what home is; and pet and play with all my animals. Then I'm going back to work, because the church, the state, and the army may be breathing down my neck.

Good luck and Godspeed.

If you want to play the game, you must have the balls

The framers of our Constitution feared three things above all: kingship, religious influence and foreign interference in our political processes.  Today, thanks in large part to the Republican party, we have a dictator-king, evangelicals and other religious zealots interfering in secular legislative matters and a clearly identified assault on our electoral processes by Russia above all, and probably other foreign governments.

     We are in a game.  We are in a vital, frightening game for survival, and the democratic republic called the United States of America is in danger of losing.  The game is between the majority Democratic party electorate and the minority Republican citizenry.  In order to play this particular game, the most important outcome of which will be the election of the next President of the United States, on November 3, 2020, we need balls.  We need a large number of balls, balls of high quality.  In the political game, these are called policies.  The point of the game is to dribble and score, shoot through hoops on our end of the court projects, laws, regulations and protections that will benefit the American people, all the American people, and temporary and long-term visitors.

     We Democrats have the best policies, the highest quality balls with which to win the game.  We propose these policies as we play the game, we legislate these policies as we play the game, or promise to legislate them when we win; and we vow to protect and improve these policies as needed, later.  We choose these policies because we Democrats actually believe that all men and women are created equal and that they are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We Democrats believe the promise of the framers of the Constitution that the laws in this document to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare of all Americans must be implemented and defended.  We Democrats believe that with these balls we can win the game, and thereby protect and improve the conditions of our nation and all nations and the earth itself.

     We promote these policies, not in isolation.  We are playing the game for the benefit of American citizens.  We ask the American people, who elect an executive to supervise, a bicameral Congress to legislate and fund, and an elaborate judiciary system to implement, promote and protect the policies that the majority of American citizens favor and demand and have a right to expect from their elected representatives.

     The game is underway.  The game used to be called civics in the classroom, sometimes political science, and these days, by almost everyone, politics.  Politics.   The collective affairs of the people of the city, its Greek origin tells us.  This is our game.

     We have the balls.  We Democrats have the balls, the policies that Americans favor.  The policies that the majority of our party and the majority of the entire American electorate and citizenry favor.   Their will, the majority will, is what makes a democracy a democracy.

     What do they wish?  We, Democrats, favor and honor their wishes.  The American people, in majority numbers overall including all parties, favor gun controls, the limited and regulated ownership of certain high-powered weapons intended only for use by trained military personnel, and not even by most civilian law enforcement officers.  The requirement of registration and a license to own a gun; the sale of a gun only to an adult, and only following his background check.  The majority of Americans polled on the question favor a woman’s right—and her man’s— to choose abortion when subject to unplanned or unwanted or unsustainable pregnancy.   We hold that ball in our court.

     We, Democrats, support equal pay for equal work for women who do the same work or provide the same service as men in equal situations, in the Federal government, as well as in the public sector.  Republicans don’t carry that ball. We Democrats will protect and strengthen the Social Security system.  Republicans long to bounce that ball into private corporate hands. We carry the ball-stamped Medicare.  Democrats, with majority public support, will strengthen the Affordable Care Act. The Republican health care bill is stamped insurance corporations and Big Pharma. Immigration laws need above all to provide more judges to clear applications for United States citizenship.  Republican xenophobes dribble a ball labeled the Presidential pronouncement, “The United States is full.”  We majority Democrats know that the right thing to do is to naturalize DACA men and women.  Republicans keep passing that ball around the court, without taking a shot.

     Democrats, inspired these days by the soulful memory of John Lewis, will attack the basket again to score a new Voting Rights Bill, to keep the game honest.  While Republicans re-apportion and re-district constituencies and suppress votes.

     All other world governments and the Democratic party recognize the damaging effects of global warming.  All acknowledge the scientific data that show human industrial and agricultural practices are responsible for the rapid rise in temperatures worldwide that literally inflame the earth; and for the poisoning of the air, the land and the waters by the fossil fuel corporate-industrial complex.   The Republican party, unique among nations, denies the scientific facts and the corroborating evidence collected and labels the entire climate change phenomenon a hoax. No balls. Democrats are dribbling and shooting in the court of awareness.

     The US Postal Service is one of the two most respected American Federal institutions—along with the U.S. military—and it is remarkably efficient.  It has been pummeled and bounced around by the Republican party for several decades in an effort to weaken it, delegitimize it, and condemn it to private ownership.  Their efforts threaten a fair election. Their obstruction and efforts to discredit the Postal Service itself is another example of cheating to win.  Because they do not have the balls to win honestly. One Democratic ball can legitimately be said to carry the patriotic logo “In honor of the USPS.”

     In honor of the United States Postal Service, which is being dishonorably weaponized by the Republican party to do what they can’t do honestly:  play a fair game.  They do not have the balls.

     When one team does not have the balls, it can’t play the game.  If it can’t play the game, the only chance it has of winning is to cheat and lie.  If Republicans keep repeating that this economy is a Republican economy, it is lying.  This economy is the longest continuously growing economy in our history.  It started in the Democratic administration of President Barak Obama.  It has not yet been halted by the present Republican leadership.  But it will be.  Unless Democrats take over in time, on January 20, 2021.  We have the balls.  They don’t.

     Some of the Republican cheating can’t be remedied.  Many—too many—ultra-Conservative judges have been appointed by the grim reaper and approved by the block-voting lockstep Republican Senate.  Many of these judges, as reported by the legitimate watchdogs who rate them, according to their evaluations, are under-qualified for their high, lifetime appointed positions.  The Republicans did not have the balls, that is, the declared will of the majority electorate, so they stuffed in and railroaded through their ideological enforcers as quickly and invisibly as they could. By winning in November, we Democrats can halt the cheats and lies, and prevent further damage to our judicial system.  Americans want qualified justices.  We Democrats represent the majority.  We have the balls.

      If they had had the balls, they would have welcomed Democratic opinions for a bipartisan or compromised decision in every case.  If you don’t have the balls, bend, even break the system of laws, to win.  On the Supreme Court sit two bent-law appointees, situated to influence for decades policies, inevitably, favored by only a minority of United States citizens.  We Democrats had the balls, but we didn’t have the court.

     We have the balls to win, this time.  And we must. We have the balls, for this election, to win the court advantage.  To win the game.

     A pandemic is killing thousands worldwide.  We have had these before.  On the Democrat watch of Barak Obama and Joe Biden, a plan to deal with future pandemics was written and preserved.  The Democratic president handled the Ebola crisis so well that few died.  He had the balls.  He played the leadership game and won for the United States.  The plan to check a future pandemic was scuttled by the Republican president and his Republican Senate. They threw away the ball.  Principally because the plan bore the name of his predecessor, not because it wasn’t useful.  When we win in November, our plan will be activated, and Democrats will rescue the nation once again.

     This president is dangerous.  The evidence is clear.   He must not win.  Democrats must prevail.  We have the balls to win again. We’ll play the election game and win.  The majority of our national electorate are on our side.  If they play with us, they can’t lose.  And even if the Republicans cheat and lie, they can’t win.  The stands are full of voters who favor our team.  They came out to games all across the nation in the mid-terms.  They cheered and voted, and Democrats, playing with superior balls, won…. bigly.  Republicans will lose this time, too. Because they don’t have the balls.

Comey

To Donald Bertelle:

Hope you’re feeling comfortable these days.

            Okay. I’ve watched and read and heard plenty. This once eminently honorable man, whose ethics and righteousness were so effective for decades as head of the F.B.I, was rendered so drunk and unbalanced with the narcotic power of oversight of a herculean political combat being followed and highlighted in the flattering golden glow of an international spotlight, like so many charismatic figures in history when a rare, supremely dramatic opportunity presented itself to them, lost his composure.

            His level and doctrinaire judgement, his Eagle Scout’s flame of righteousness flared up and enveloped him.

            Lordy, this is exciting!

            He violated the rules of his own playbook. In his fateful summer, he spoke out of turn about an ongoing investigation. He closed the investigation and declared it closed.

            In his declaration, he violated another tenet in the F.B.I book of rules: he thrashed the subject, self-consciously presenting his condescending reprimands as if it pained him to do so, and concluded with an anticlimactic verdict of some “reckless” behavior and intimation of possible harm caused by it, but no grounds for prosecution. He was directed by his own rule book not to editorialize, but he did. His only statement should have been that after a thorough investigation of her emails he and his team had found no grounds for prosecution. End of news conference.

Skirting the edge of his Directorship precipice.

            Finally, he went over the cliff. Fourteen days before the election, he sent a letter saying that he was reopening the investigation. He violated protocol. The letter could have waited. F.B.I tradition was clear, no new—especially no vague and unsubstantiated information—was ever revealed so near the day of a federal election. A well-known clear practice.

            He wrote that he had new emails he had not seen before, and needed to pore through them for some possible new evidence. The emails in Uma Abedin’s emails revealed nothing new. BUT he wrote the letter to Congress before he know anything at all about what they showed. At best, precipitous. At worst, reckless.

            Eleven days before the election he declared, “Oops, sorry. No harm, no foul.” But the damage was done.

            Pity that he cannot face his stupendous error in judgement even now.

            Tragic. It fits the literary definition. A tragic flaw. The little boy who was bullied, I just found out. The plot thins. I know there are more details in his background, traits and incidents that foreshadowed this leap over the edge into infamy.

            The accounts of his interchanges with Scum may redeem his legacy. I wish him well. But I deeply regret his incompetence.

            P.S. I’m perplexed by his reasoning that he thought he was deciding between disclosure and “hiding” what might be in the as yet unexamined emails on Abedin’s computer.

            I’m disturbed by his not recognizing first, that there was no risk in withholding an announcement of said messages; even if there was new evidence in them, because he should not have been speaking publicly about a continuing investigation in the first place; and second, that it seemed not to occur to him that the public airing would likely damage Hillary’s chances; and thirdly: that he already regarded Scum as unfit for office (I’m sure) and he would be helping him win.

            So…the worm in the wood of his psyche was probably the suppressed REPUBLICAN. You once said sneeringly that Obama had appointed a Republican and should have known that Comey would be apt to turn if any pressure arose.

            I think Mueller in the same position (which of course he held before) would not have succumbed like that.

            Comey’s weakness, after all, when his deepest character was challenged. And his cloaked inferiority complex. As an actor, I find his complex psyche very interesting. Personally, too. An egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I have described myself as that.

            Hugs and Kisses,

            DjT

P.P.S. The Lordy boy is now on a moral crusade. Won’t walk out from under the follow spot and out of the keylight (when being filmed, I’m always aware of the keylight; on the stage, as well)

Compound Deceptions

Think of the compound deceptions: take the cane and crush, pound, strip and squeeze it. Drain it of all nutrients. Throw away the nutritious essence; boil it, strain it, and dry it until all you have left is a dead white granular anti-nutrient. Eat it, crave it by the millions of tons. But regret it only because it has calories. So, take this false food and imitate it by combining chemicals, to produce an imposter of an imposter, but one that doesn’t have calories. To accomplish what?

COMEY’S CHOICES

            In July, Comey told us his conclusion, after extensively investigating Hillary’s emails. His team were looking for possible breaches in security and the possible breaking of laws. His conclusion: he and the searches could find no reason to recommend an indictment of Hillary Clinton on any provable charge. That was his duty: to report to the American people.

            But he did not execute that duty properly. He went further. He broke a code of never elaborating in detail upon his findings, or on his OPINION of Hillary’s actions. He called her actions “reckless” but not criminal. Comey went too far. Why?

            The only answer can be, the ONLY ANSWER can be, that he felt PERSONALLY that she had behaved badly. He had no mandate to say so. No other F.B.I. director had ever gone that far past a curt, official verdict of this kind. Some have suggested that he wanted to assure the world that he saw Hillary’s flawed judgment. WHY? There was no legal justification. There was no threat to the integrity of the F.B.I. There was only his ego, his self-centered presumptuous feeling. THAT FEELING SHOULD HAVE REMAINED PRIVATE.

            Comey violated custom, protocol, and decency. His EGO required it. He put himself above the law. He put his ego above fairness.

            Ten days before the election, having opened the laptop emails of Anthony Weiner and his wife, Hillary’s personal aide and adviser. Most of the emails there he and his team had already seen. There was nothing pertinent to his investigation of Hillary. Probably a day or two of examination would have corroborated the fact that no NEW details were there. Comey should have kept silent, until he had concluded the examination of those emails.

            Instead, Comey sent a letter to Congress, expressing VAGUELY that there might PERHAPS be some new emails pertinent to the Hillary inquiry. He could have dismissed that possibility in a matter of hours or at most, according to experts, a day or two. There was no sound to an alarm.

            Comey then announced that there was nothing new in those Weiner household emails. Never mind. We were excited for a minute, but all’s well now. The clearance came too late. The damage to Hillary had been done. The ALL CLEAR couldn’t clear the cloud away from the Hillary campaign.

            Comey’s choices: To remain silent until he had drawn his conclusion. Instead, he sent the letter to Congress. Why? To pre-empt a possible leak to the public and to the press? A leak of WHAT?

            Supposed he had not covered himself—as the letter was clearly meant to do—and the news of the investigation of another batch of emails did reach the public. It was Comey’s job to conduct his investigation IN PRIVATE. That’s the F.B.I rule—law?—protocol. The proper way to behave. ESPECIALLY IN AN ELECTION YEAR and SO CLOSE TO VOTING DAY.

            Why did he do it? I submit that his MOTIVE COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN PERSONAL. I submit that his motive COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN out of his wish (DESIRE?) to influence the election. He could not have been unaware that the letter would do that. He could not have been unaware that the ONLY INFLUENCE WOULD HAVE BEEN TO AID TRUMP and harm Hillary. He should have known that NOT SENDING THE LETTER COULD NOT HAVE BEEN HELD AGAINST HIM, even if some new evidence surfaced later. He WAS NOT OBLIGATED TO ANNOUNCE POSSIBLE NEWFOUND INFRACTIONS. THAT was RECKLESS and IRRESPONSIBLE.

            Why did he do it? It must, positively, without a shadow of a doubt, have BEEN A PERSONAL gesture to cause the Hillary campaign distress.

            IT SIMPLY WAS NOT justified.

            Even if more evidence had come out that could have justified a re-evaluation of Hillary’s culpability in using an unauthorized server, or of having endangered U.S Security, actions against Hillary would have continued.

            Therefore: Hillary could not have avoided possible charges, so justice would not have been thwarted.

Dear Earnie

Dear Earnie,

I don’t remember whose idea it was that we room together in Connover Kronsage at UW Madison, but I do remember why I admired you from our high school days in Kenosha.

            You were a boy of uncommon grace and determination. Ambitious people can sometimes be overbearing. I myself have sometime been fierce and aggressive. You, on the other hand, seemed always to be steady and consistent in a passionate but courtly manner. I have no doubt that current friends and colleagues say that that same young man became the dedicated father, husband, surgeon and colleague they know now and love.

            You stretched and limbered up systematically and thoroughly in the spring prior to track practice. You kidded me about not preparing as carefully. You were right. I think I joked that maybe there was something wrong with you, because I had olive oil in my joints, and as a fellow Italian surely you must have had, too. Obviously your discipline made a lasting impression on me.

            Some days, I walked by your house to join you on the way to Mary D. Bradford High School. Kenosha High, to us then. You and your brother Ron were mandated by your attentive father to finish breakfast before leaving. I think oatmeal was a staple, and your father was firm. I liked that. Again, I hold the good memory.

            I don’t remember at all what we must have talked about. We just got along. What we three had in common was that we studied and learned. We paid attention. And most probably held common views.

            No one knew I was already thinking about becoming an actor. You may already have decided to be a doctor. I know for certain that you were taking pre-med courses in your sophomore year when I was a freshman and we were roommates. I know you found studies demanding. Tough going. I recall you telling us that while viewing your first dissection of a cadaver that you were nauseated and had to leave the viewing; but that you returned to overcome it. More than once, before your stomach settled? Uncommon grace and determination.

            You had a heavy course schedule. You spent long hours reading and writing. I did, too. However it came about—you recall the decision—I knew you were a person I wanted to have as a friend and colleague. I was in fact flattered that you, an upper classman (though but barely) would consider me for a roommate. But I take some credit that I had the good sense to choose you, too. One of my better decisions in life.

            When I began to appear in plays on the Student Union stage, you and others kidded me a little. I guess acting made me the Bohemian on the floor. But you enjoyed the idea. You and others came to see me in all five productions. Thanks for the encouragement. Remember Carter Denniston, Kent Gregorious, Bill Kaiser? Scholars, all.

            The next year I roomed with them just off campus.

            They and you, especially, in a seminal way, helped steady me in that sometimes wildest, most bewildering, exhilarating, gratifying yet often frightening, doubting and ultimately nourishing time of our lives.

            I am grateful. You live in my heart.

            With hugs and kisses, I am

                                                                                                Yours Truly forever,

                                                                                                            Daniel J. Travanti

Scientific Conclusions

           The beauty of the pursuit of scientific conclusions is that they don’t have to be precise or even correct. Scientists are always in a muddle. Mathematics and physics—sometimes—are precise. But scientists are otherwise only issuing temporary answers. “Mankind is _______ years old. Yes, definitely!” Six months later, when someone else uncovers one more skeleton, we hear, “No, no, thanks to the scientific method we know now that mankind is ____ years old. Isn’t that wonderful?”

            “The streets of Pompeii were frequented by prostitutes and shoppers looking for bakeries and the baths. And these little alcoves were post offices, and we can prove it!” Fifteen years later, another Scientist twists around all those facts and utters new, even more startling facts!

            The serious scientist relies on hard facts. Unless he can prove a theory with hard facts, through scientific tests—usually in laboratories, never minding common sense or clear actually—it’s not a threat or true. Malathion is not a threat because no tests have proved that it is. Never mind common sense, which tells us that all chemicals—especially those manufactured by man—are poisons. Sure, some natural substances are poisons too, but they are not bottled in intense concentrations. They’re dispensed naturally for natural purposes, which are usually in aid of the cosmos. (This is in anticipation of the use of that lame cliché argument against my tirade). The air, land, and water are dying thanks to our polluting of them. NO, no, no, that’s not scientific. NO, it’s merely the truth that any cretin could see—if he looked and opened up his sealed, moldy mind. Many scientists work for Industry, of course, and there lie some criminal activities of the lowest order; that is, of the lowest level of sensitivity.

Science

    Melody Road

            Science reveals its laws gradually. Or, humans only gradually come to see natural laws. We learn in stages. When we discover a phenomenon, it becomes a scientific truth. Physicists, engineers, physiologists, mathematicians, archaeologists, geologists, astronomers, botanists, lepidopterists and all manner of scientists come to understand their truths across national boundaries and cultures. What is so in one place is also true in any other. The natural laws are universal. Insofar as we know now, even the laws of interplanetary motion are understood by all inhabitants of the Earth equipped to grasp them. All such laws change. Some of these truths are expanded—we learn more in addition to a particular phenomenon or mathematical operation. Some laws are supplanted by better information. All scientists recognize the previous error (entire or partial) and a new law is put in place. And new laws are discovered regularly. Whatever they are, these laws are not hidden from the view of some because their superstitions or politics disallow their acceptance or understanding. God, or the notion of a high all-powerful controlling force, may reveal itself gradually, too.

            It seems only logical and fair, then, that as revelations of this force occur, they be recognizable and comprehendible by all peoples, as laws of science are. Laws of nature are not the exclusive property of certain tribes or nations. Nature prevails over all. God must certainly operate in the same way.

            One nation tells you that there are certain laws of behavior dictated by god. Another nation will tell you that its set of laws is the correct set of laws, dictated by god. Can they both be correct? If five or eight nations tell you that its set of rules dictated by god are the correct ones—with which to achieve one’s happiness and eventually one’s reward in the next life, and each set of laws has in them rules that contradict laws in the others—which laws can be proved to be correct? Can it be that god promotes this confusion? Can it be that god will not reveal once and for all the absolutely correct single set of rules of behavior? Or is man foolish to follow orders that can at best be merely relative notions of right and wrong, not applicable to all people in all places now and since the beginning of time? Can each tribe, nation or cult really believe that it alone of all peoples has found the secret? Can it believe that god would keep secret in the first place, laws of correct behavior? What would that secrecy accomplish? Confusion and fear, hatred and conflict. Could that be this god’s intention? If the sets of rules are numerous, mankind must be mistaken. If mankind had several sets of laws of electricity and light, none of which could be proved, every set logically would be mistaken. So, are all religions therefore wrong? Of course.

            Then where on earth are the rules, the laws of this god? They must be clear—if there are any. This power, god, is by definition clear. Clear is unconfused. Nature is clear. It is observable. It is before us, all around us. It has been functioning since before our time. It does not require our understanding, or even our comprehension and acknowledgement, to exist or go on functioning. We are in it. We are of it. We have some small ability to interfere with its operations. We try to alter specific functions. We harm and destroy. We never improve, as we claim. We don’t have that power. But we vainly insist that we do. We arrogantly tamper and thwart. Always, in the end, we fail. And we pay a price. Of pain, confusion and death. Nature, its laws and relentless force, continues.

            The power we call god does, too. There do not seem to be varying laws for scattered ant colonies around the earth. There do not seem to be varying laws of thermo-dynamics or gravity or light among the continents. Seasons operate according to varied climates, but always in clear patterns. Alterations occur through the millennia, but always in discernable patterns traceable through mathematics and physics. The power we call god must have been operating always and openly for all peoples in all places since the beginning. If there are laws for the human creature, they can only be laws that have always been discernible. From the beginning. Compile a set that can be seen clearly to have operated since our beginning, and you may have found the rules of the behavior all religions have searched for in vain.

            To accomplish this, we must go back and observe the earth and its inhabitants, not the heavens. Not the fanciful heavens, that is, of the imagination. Astronomers know the heavens as they are; a book of mathematics, said Galileo.

            If there were multiple books of mathematics that contradicted one another, and none of them could be proved to be correct, all of those books would be invalid. Because there is a book of laws of mathematics that can be proved. If there are multiple books of the laws of god, and none can be proved to be a true or correct collection of rules or laws, then none of those books can be the correct one. Since no book has yet appeared to outline rules and laws that must have been operating since the beginning of time, there cannot be a book of the rules and laws of the god all religions of the world identity as the higher power.

            The three most widely followed religions are all based on living humans who declare—according to their own and the accounts of later followers—that to enter into the good graces of the omnipotent god, one must believe in that human and his declarations. Each man asserts that the god we all seek spoke through him. That this god does not speak directly to all people. That the laws each of these men delineates are inerrant. That only people who learn these laws can gain the love and rewards this god offers. So, anyone born before these men existed can’t have this god’s good offerings, not in this life or the next. In other words, this force, god, revealed itself for the first time, starting only about thirty-two hundred years ago; through Moses. Then again through Jesus, and through Mohammed. Before their time, people had no valid understanding of this god, and none of this god’s promised benefits. And ever since, each (along with his followers) declares that only by following his set of rules can humans have these benefits.

            Unlike the rules of mathematics and the laws of gravity, these three sets of rules oppose one another on many counts. In fact, the accounts of the Christian Bible contradict one another repeatedly on very many important details. The accounts of the older Hebrew Bible were written by anonymous figures and contradict many points of the later Christian texts. The declarations of the Koran are a new set of orders widely different from the other two. Yet all are the “word” of this god. Each set of beliefs is the one and only correct set. Each of these “messengers” of this god is correct. Only he, in fact. Any other person’s declarations are incorrect. All three texts warn that anyone who fails to adhere to its rules will be punished. Here on earth in some cases. And in the next life, for certain. What happens to someone who follows none of these books?

            Anyone who doesn’t understand the laws of mathematics, gravity, thermo-dynamics and interplanetary motion will always be subject to laws nevertheless. He need not even acknowledge the laws to benefit from them. He certainly is not required by this god to understand them, in order to be subject to them. He is entitled, by mere virtue of existing. I think the same must be so for the so-called laws of this god.

            The first human and the last human, in every place, of all time, benefits from the forces of nature and god. Nothing else is required of humankind. If a human chooses to kill and destroy, or nurture and create, he is entitled to the benefits of this god.

            No religion has ever been devised or declared, with its rituals and requirements for salvation, and rules of living, that is universal. No concept of a single god has ever been stated that could be understandable by all people in all times, everywhere. Perhaps this is because humans have ignored the most obvious signs of a god’s presence.

            Nature, with its complex connections and orderly laws, is surely the best evidence of a creative force and overruling power. Grand enough, powerful enough and rather easily understood, or at least observed, by all people everywhere from the beginning of human existence. Nature does not keep its secrets. It functions the same for all people. It requires only the simplest understanding, to live in it and cope with its demands and dangers. It supplies everything a human could possibly need. It does not require tribute, only understanding, acceptance and prudence in the face of its ultimate power to give life and take it. It does not even require understanding beyond a minimum awareness. Education, apart from experience passed from one generation to the next, in its complexities, is not a necessity. Nature does not punish. Nature merely operates. Nature does not reward. It merely functions. If one takes its abundance, one feels rewarded. If one is caught in an avalanche or a tidal wave, one is harmed. These functions are what we call “natural.” They are not the exception. Nature operates unfailingly by rules. Only humans, in fact, of all creatures, seem to break natural rules or laws. The result sometimes is God, or the originating and controlling force, like all operations of nature, must have been operating always. From the beginning of time. Gradually, humans come to see these operations. If the workings of nature are seen one way in one place on the planet and in another in another place, comparisons are made between them. Scientists do not argue much about what can be proved. Electricity, wind, seas, light, heat, planets, forests, mountains, genes. All always have been. All always are. All always operate in one discernible way. Discernible by all in one way. If there is god, it must be so for that force, too. Nature is not a mystery. It operates whether we understand it or not. It does not need our permission. And it operates according to its own laws even when we interfere. It operates upon all always in the same ways. Nature does not select. It hums along, causing and affecting.

            God must operate in like manner. From the beginning of time. Upon the entire planet. Upon all people. Without our understanding. With our understanding, should we ever have any.

            The trouble with religions is that they are all incorrect. If any religion were correct, it would be clear and comprehensible to all. It could not be relative. It would be absolute, like nature. Religions are all relative. Believers say that the word of god is written in Arabic, Aramaic, Chinese, English, Latin, Greek. God does not operate in words. Words would limit god, and god is limitless, like nature. Religions say that their set of laws are absolute. There can be only one set of laws, like the laws of nature. If the scientists of five different nations proposed five varying sets of laws of planetary motion and declared each set of laws incontrovertible, the world would laugh. Only one set of laws could be the correct one, or it could be that none of those nations has observed the correct set. But there is one. And it is obtainable. By all.

            If the people or churches of ten different nations proposed ten varying sets of laws of god and declared each set of laws incontrovertible, the world ought to laugh. Instead, the nations condemn and threaten one another, in the name of each nation’s god.

            If one asks for proof of the truth of any one of these sets of beliefs, the believers say that the ways of god are mysterious. Which means, of course, that there are no proofs. Sometimes, they will offer a prophet or prophets as proof. If a scientist cannot prove a premise, he might try offering a prophet as proof. People would laugh if the scientist say that Aripope said it was so. Where is the proof? Never mind, Aripope is our proof. In fact, for centuries the Western world took Aristotle as their proof. Universities taught “received wisdom” of Aristotle as all the truth one need know. Until the scientific revolution proved that Aristotle could not have known many things that only science could prove. And that, in fact, Aristotle was wrong. The Pope said the sun revolves around the Earth, which was the true center of the cosmos. He had Galileo jailed because he said the opposite.

            Only humans punish. And viciously, sometimes. Humans guard virtuous behavior jealously. So jealously that if someone is seen to be unvirtuous, that person is sometimes punished unto death. This is the “I am better than thou” syndrome. Some people are so frightened of life that they need an advantage. Cloak yourself in “belief” and you are superior. And unassailable. Anyone who doesn’t understand is inferior. Anyone who contradicts is a heretic. That person is doomed. But we who “believe” are saved. Nyah, nyah!

                                    But do devout people doubt?

            Why do they need to “convert” others? To feel less lonely? If they fail to convert others, then they condemn those they have failed to bring “into the light.” Or do they just pity those? No, those who remain outside are a threat. To the convictions of those who seek to convert others.

Lake Forest

            Winter is staying here. It may have traveled to Lake Forest from the west; no, I think it slipped over the border from the north, and maybe slightly west, over the corner of Minnesota. May is its very latest deadline, I would think, but it’s not going.

            Blackie is the most careful evaluator. She scoots around the edge of my half open bedroom door and sniffs up. Her fangs show when her head is tilted and her read end is flattened against the deck because she has only one leg back there. Her head bobs up and down. I read that cats see in a different manner from us. They need to align shapes, so they bob and twist their heads to get their eyes in the right position. Her nose tells her the temperature while she is viewing the sky and checking the light. I know she will stay close if the temperature is cool. This morning it is chilly.

            Daisy wanted to be released to the big yard, so I let her charge out the back door. Antonio is working out back, putting in dozens of flowers. I have discovered New York Asters. They have small starry blooms (aster means “star”) on flayed out bushy stems in the fall. I’ll pull in many more mums in late summer. They will keep the blooms past July. The trick is to keep the flowers coming without annuals. Annuals strike me as too little bang for the buck. Pansies and petunias are paltry. I don’t like to denigrate flowers, but those two disappoint me. Probably because they are displayed incorrectly in gardens. Americans think “variety” is important. They don’t understand massing. Italians do. The French, too. And English gardens use large clumps of roses and hydrangeas for dramatic effect. Scale. Americans don’t see it. They plant tiny flowers in massive containers. Too low, too pale. If I planted pansies, I’d place one color (or one multi-colored version) in low beds in a serpentine shape, like a fat snake. But annuals have to be replaced yearly. No, thanks.

            So my perennial plantings carry me through to snow time. (We had some a few weeks ago!). No letup. But this late-arriving summer and spring give me more time to plant. Leaves are slow arriving too, so my new forsythia (fifteen bushes) get more sun for blooming. The daffodils are just beginning to fade—an extra long display. While they sit, I can see spaces to fill. And I’ll have Antonio divide them. Neighbors don’t bother. So scattered clumps awkwardly bestrew nearby yards. My blooms are spread like a quilt, and wider each year. They multiply, but you have to help out by separating. The result is uplifting. There is a cozy feeling from the coverlets and a harmony between the trees and shrubs wrapped by the splotches of color. I have no plan, so my paintings are impressionistic. Sometimes they’re awkward, sometimes graceful, often surprising. You keep altering. Move it here, shove it over there, put those two together, separate those. No, leave it. What the hell, dig it up again!

            My stone path is garrulous. It declares itself, then whispers, crunches and scrunches you to the new pool patio fountain and the yard. My own peculiar shape and statement. The out buildings are a vivid gloss green. All the pickets are gone (some lining the back property line) and mature flat-bottomed round-topped gray and taupe stones surround two flower gardens. Just sitting atop one another. As natural as unnatural placement can be. But no mortar. Only gravity, wind, rain and critters to set them askew from time to time; to honor nature. Sometimes I squat on them, low to the ground, and think I’m a New England farmer. They are a barrier, but a necklace, and so low as to invite a stepover. The flowers feel safe but included in the party.

            New copper bird feeders are large and canopied, like coolie hats. Big scale, which I prefer. Large capacity and shelter from the rain: feasting troughs. One fountain trickles water down a ragged slate face, lit from above, into a copper basin; another looks like a rough black rock on a tall square plinth. Water bubbles up from the center of the ball and creeps down the curves. It’s really fiber glass. Both gurgle soothingly.

            Blackie sniffed the air and scooted back inside. Daisy is back on my bed. I’m off to the nursery again.

            Thinking of you with  Love,

                  Daniel J.

Dear Mary

Dear Mary,

            To continue. Not that Hollywood is fine. The traffic is unmoving. It moves you, to wonder why. Why do so many put up with inadequate roadways? More cars than any other nation. Yes, the U.S. is first, California is second.

            And the architecture is silly. Downtown has its wonders. The Disney Hall of Frank Gehry is startling. So shiny that crews have had to buff down the glint because it was blinding condo livers nearby. And down the road, no doubt. But the malls—everywhere!—are obese. Yes, they are overeating, over-selling, over-stocked, over-emblazoned. There are so many signs that they are un-seeable. Impossible to actually read. Store aisles are not traversable. Too many displays stuffed into open spaces. Customers are intruding. Strange. Whimsy is dead. Killed by garnish and gold (fake) and zig-zaggy. TOO MUCH.

            But Saturdays on Ventura Boulevard, the Valley’s main drag, was pleasant. Quiet and sunny, breezy in my two weeks, and old-fashioned. I am actually thinking of a condo, but not there. In El Segundo. I wonder where El Primo is. The former is near the airport. The bike path, wide and breezy, separated from the sea by a hundred foot deep pristine sandy beach. People go there only on the hottest sunny days. Ninety-eight percent of the time it’s yours alone. I rode my bike from Santa Monica twenty miles some days, down past El Segundo through Redondo and Manhattan Beach. Stopping to read my school assignments. At ages 34-37. They gave me an M.A. in Literature. The rides helped save my sanity. Sobriety left me wide open to totally clear, razor-sharp life, TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY! My brain was hungry, my body screamed for ACTION. So…bike rides A.A. meetings, school, appointments, bike rides.

            Three years later I was about to be famous.

            Since then I have been…grateful, happy, miserable, certain, confused, resigned, enraged, chastened, disappointed, gratified and still determined. The condo would be for family and friends, too. But only if I can expect regular work there.

            The breezes and the traffic are freer, spaces are uncluttered and the bike path beckons.

Dear Nancy

Dear Nancy,

           Over twelve years ago, an agent had a compilation tape of my film work. I couldn’t look at it. I stashed it.

            It surfaced last year, out of the lake of flotsam and jetsam after ten years in this house. I could barely watch. Snippets don’t work! Not Brando’s, not Judi Dench’s.

            I have sent you ADAM and MURROW.

            I’m much older, natch. But by the end of MURROW I’ve grown old and sick. I told Buzz Berger (remember Herb Brodkin’s and his THE DEFENDERS?) that I didn’t think I looked bad enough. He smiled and said, “Oh, yes, you do, and the acting does it all anyway.” Thanks.

            These should be watched straight through. Though I have never believed that producers or directors ever do just sit down and pay attention. They want you in their wardrobe saying their words for their particular project, and they won’t admit that. Plus. . . most of them have no imagination.

            However! These are for you and your people, correct? I hope you enjoy them.

                                                                                                Kisses,

                                                                                                Daniel J.

P.S. I’m curious myself. The photos you have are only four years old. I had misgivings last week, thinking they misrepresent me. And I have no patience with actors’ photos that clearly lie—ten years old and touched up, you know? This very day, I am having new ones made, by the same photographer, in Chicago.

Dear Eileen

Dear Eileen,

            I love and respect you. And I shall always be grateful for our friendship and our collaboration. As you have told me, “Old Wicked Songs” helped you a bit in a time of need. Me, too.

            Your board are an impressive band of believers: intelligent, generous and dedicated. I have been pleased to share in their exemplary qualities. I have not been much use, as I told you would be the case when you first asked me to join. This alone would not be enough to cause me to leave.

            I kvetch about my industry. I cry about my lost art. The art, I mean, that has been traded away by tee vee and movies, and too often disdained (literally, by the NEA) by sponsors of all stripes. Sponsors of the Boob Tube presentations (who cater not to their own tastes, to be fair to them, but to the masses, who disappoint me most gravely at the polls) are not in the only business I ever cared to show. My heart’s business has been always to show artfully crafted pieces of entertainment. High standards—too high, some have suggested to me—can keep an artist isolated. I have isolated myself, and my industry has given up trying to woo me back. I have not acted at all in almost two and a half years. I have cried about it and lain awake nights and brooded some mornings and afternoons. I have reasoned and rallied, bled and healed, railed and quietly accepted. I am feeling more peaceful about it than I have felt in ten years.

            Partly because I am accepting that I am the artist I claim to be, and have proved it enough times. I want more. But I have no power left to snatch it. My work speaks for itself, and it is seen and heard or it is not. It could be characterized as a Buddhist or even Talmudic resignation. Or the Existential defiance of Sartre, or Nietzsche’s aggressive despair. My only comfort is in release.

            When I feel I have finished my work, I feel better. When I take myself out of the theater, live and filmed, I feel better. When I disengage, I feel free. I have a household to run and family and friends to care for. I must take care of me and them.

            I want you to find someone to fill my spot who wishes passionately to build your new theater and present exciting plays and players. I shall continue to support you with dollars, but I respectfully withdraw from active promotion. With a proper optimism, I consider that someday I may regain my enthusiasm for my own work and for the theater. When the big light comes back on, I’ll call you.

            Stay well. And interested.

                                                                                    Sincerely, and with LOVE,

                                                                                                Daniel J.

If you feel it appropriate, do read this to the board.

Bush DJT 2004

            On the last night of the Republican convention, President Bush was clearly moved by his own words. But only when he got to the part about war. All religious zealots are clear about right and wrong. Their god is the one and only higher power, and all others are false. And all religious zealots are keen about killing the opposition. Check the Old Testament and the New. As Mark Twain tells us in brilliant bubble-bursting satire in “Letters From the Earth,” the Bible is a record of simplistic self-righteous bloodshed. For leaders like Mr. Bush, complex diplomacy is frightening. It requires a well-furnished mind that can understand subtle social nuances in a variety of rich cultures. Any understanding of Middle East societies requires deep reading and study. We all know our president brags about not reading. You can tell by his speeches. Though his writers may read more—one wonders!—they are careful to reflect their leader’s simplistic view of the world.

            If one Arab is a terrorist, all are terrorists. Killing one is as good as killing another. Just kill. If the rest of the world doesn’t agree, they just don’t understand. One nation can not only lead, it is the only one that knows the Truth. If other nations doubt this, the nation in charge (ours) can show them their guns and bombs and wave their trade agreements, subsidies and threats of embargo. Might makes right. The Bible says so.

            This president upholds not the Constitution, which he has sworn to follow, but another volume as the highest authority.

            I am afraid.

Entries 2001-2002

(Letter to Sybil Trubin, Santa Monica, California 1/1/02)

Sybilla—the food boobs think oil and butter are foods, but the staff are sweet, affectionate and efficient. Too much smoke escapes the designated ashtray areas, but the excursions are informative and well-conducted. The entertainment has been energetic, sometimes melodious, often frenetic, and a few evenings inept. McDonald’s arches loom like tombstones in every road-cracked, crumbling, dust-coated town. The penguins are nonchalant, pure and precious. We’ve sucked out of the trip every droplet of recuperative liquor allowed.

                                                                                                                        Love,

                                                                                                                        Daniel J.

(Note on the absurdity of human prejudice)

            Coleridge in the nineteenth century wrote of Iago’s motiveless malignity.

            Ralph Ellison writes of his hero in “Invisible Man” that he must be dogged. Bledsoe, a black man, a university president, someone who ought to be proud and glad of the chance to promote a young African American, instead writes in letters to influential white men the suggestion that they “keep this ****** running.”

            The viciousness seems unexplainable. So outrageous that is almost implausible. But we accept it as the author’s truth; but we try to make sense of it.

            It is not sensible—unless we are prepared to explore Bledsoe’s deep fears and hatreds and paranoia, perhaps. Ellison the author is not writing a book about Bledsoe’s neuroses. The novel is about his hero’s struggles.

            Shakespeare writes a play about Othello’s struggle with himself and his society. He is Iago’s ****** being kept running for no discernable reason.

            Hatred for a race, a nationality or a culture is not sensible. But it exists in all human tribes; always has existed.

            (Iago finds fidelity, purity and friendship absurd—existentialism?)

                                                            (12/24/01 Ushuaia Port, Argentina)

Destiny

…I thought I was controlling my destiny, regulating my moves—so I wouldn’t be too far out of N.Y. Actually, I was frightened and lonely. I was incapable of taking my own good advice. I’m so glad you’re operating sanely. I said the word would get around and someone would notice and be smart enough to take you. Try not to expect it to add up to anything. It may not. One piece of good work at a time—for George.

I fled from Madison. I’m glad to hear it’s a happy place for you, and northern Wisconsin sounds sublime. I hid out. I called myself a loner, but that was a euphemism for a confused condition of the spirit. Ellen and I met backstage at the Union Theatre, when it was a primary space. It seemed semi-abandoned when I stood on its stage in 1983. No experience is wasted. Nothing. Laurette Taylor didn’t act for ten years and then returned to the stage in triumph. But she was seldom happy. You’re cheerful about the half-assed work and fable attempts by the many assholes floating in and out of our world. Wait’ll the “press” intrudes. Like your high-roller attorney, these people are lonely, mostly, and can survive only by sucking other people’s marrow. They know nothing about acting, writing or directing, or patience, persistence, poetry, or pretty dreams.

 I think it was Goethe who said that after food, storytelling is mankind’s greatest need. He may have been right. Actors are among the most energetic storytellers. Like Shakespeare, we don’t judge, we just show it—all. Reporters annoy me when they go on about my playing normal men. I keep pointing out that I choose roles almost solely because they’re the best ones offered to me. Sometimes I turn down even a pretty good role because I don’t want to repeat myself. But I don’t give a fuck about campaigning for goodness, in my work, anyway. Sorry. There’s a complex slip and pun, combined. Be good—believable and interesting—but never mind how high or low the character’s morality.

Unfortunately, television, at least, has sunk to presenting nothing but morality plays anymore, or shallow comic book miniseries. I have to do some of them to support my theatre habit. Valmont is a complex, selfish son-of-a-bitch who fakes himself—like so many men today. It’s a beautiful, disturbing, amusing, suspenseful and entertaining, intelligent play. Most of my work over 27 years hasn’t been of such high quality. No matter. All you have is now. I have only this work for 7 more weeks, and that’s enough. You may be working in the Steppenwolf Company. Good. If not, you’re still O.K., because yours is the standard that stays with you. You keep it up. Alone. With others. But I’m with you. Keep laughing.

                                                                                    Best Regards,

                                                                                                Dan

Dear Tim

Dear Tim,

            I’m relieved to hear. You’re a better man that I am, Gunga Din. I pray your nightmare is over. Have you written about it? I find it helps. You’d know best.

            “The Aspern Papers” was an unpleasant experience, though my own fault. Bill Kenwright often hires people giving them two weeks of rehearsal. I was a fool to accept. He is a jerk to show such contempt for the material, actors and audience. But the cast was sweet. I had my own nightmare, returned from 1973, when I collapsed on stage to discover seven months later that I am an alcoholic. This time my distress over not being good, I thought, and the pressures of hanging on desperately to barely-learned lines shut me down early in the first scene one night in Liverpool. It happened twice more in London! After my darling Shepherd Tarot had to be put away. Ed took him in; I fell apart. Enough. But you’ll be interested to hear that an Indian doctor diagnosed grief as the culprit. He was astute, gentle, apparently wise and very soothing. Management was not pleased. I am still grieving for my loss of Tarot and the big girl, Blaze. Both were with me for just under twelve years; a time of need when they filled big holes in me.

            Today I have Daisy and Angel, both rescued from the streets of San Fernando Valley, by two women in my life. Angel is a devil and a worrier. She’s adopted Ed. Daisy is an angel and regards me as “food.” And a petting device. She’s enchanting. I know your child is. I hope and expect that she is always a comfort.

            On January 10, we closed “A Touch of the Poet” in Denver. Two cities only, I am grateful to tell. I had played Con Melody in 1994 at the Fine American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We were a loud hit. We were appreciated in D.C., but audiences were sparse. I’d play the Madman again, but only in New York, “The Big Spotlight.” The experience exhausted me, in a way that never happened with any other role. O’Neill? Age? Vulnerability—increased, that is. My accountant assures me I am set until age ninety. Do I believe it? I am Italian. I shall at least do my best to accept only roles worth the hard work and in the big arenas. I pray.

            Please stay in tough. Be well and peaceful and warm.

                                                                        Love,

                                                                                    Daniel J. Travanti

SHAOYU "An Inspector Calls"

New York City

“SIAO YU” and “An Inspector Calls” Play

            Sylvia Chang is earnest. Bright, intense, pretty. She’s been in ninety movies! An assistant told me. She directed nine films.

            The building where the production offices are located is a confident classic. It’s in the New York Registry, I was happy to hear. Sylvia and I talked about the relationship of the characters. I said that the basic difference is too often between what American film makers choose and what attracts certain foreign artists is that we tend to want a gimmick, an idea that can be pitched at a meeting—where there isn’t time to explain depth of a character or the surprises that come in emotional shifts, instead of in tricky shifts in plot. Whereas, Bergman and Fellini and Kurosawa and now as I see, Chinese directors, are inspired by complex characters in surprising relationships; by their weaknesses, desires and the force of their passions, which sometimes cause them to surprise themselves as well, with their decisions. Complex characters in complex situations.

            This script has that: character. The special effects are of the spirit, the mind and the heart. Sylvia has the confidence that human beings in an unusual situation and seemingly different from each other in every way, can discover that they are engaged irresistibly through a mutual need. This surprises them. It surprises us, but we believe it because such connections are inevitable, and yet we cannot anticipate them. When we see them, we recognize similar longings in ourselves and then we are taken with the protagonists, even if they do not look like us or live the way we do. It is a kind of betrothal or engagement by accident.

            Such an accident underscores the happiness that just the existence of possibilities for change, for improvement can bring. They’re out there. Sometimes they happen.

            If the characters we’re watching are fetching, vulnerable and flawed and earnest, possessing a sense of humor and patience in persistence; if they entertain us with their questions and their doubts, we will care for them, root for them and need to know their fate. It’s our fate. It’s our ballad for an hour and a half.

            I saw “An Inspector Calls” this afternoon. It’s a strained concept.

            It’s a morality play. It’s realistic but intended to rise to a low surreal perch, raised just off the stage of reality about as high as the shrunken house is in this set at the Royale Theatre. It’s described as a psychological drama, meaning that what we see until near the end has not actually happened in the flesh, but it might and after the final phone call, we realize, will. Or it already did. Or, it could. Or, it may at any time for any one of us. So, watch out! And care more about your fellow creatures.

            The set is in a slum, though it takes a while to realize that. At first, you wonder why the outside mess with its fragments of pavement and suggestions of an urban dump doesn’t match the interior of the bright cheerful rich interior. I read that the play was first presented in 1945. Maybe the original states that Wartime rubble is in evidence. The shrunken house is symbolic, I take it. Of the lives within. Of their views of the world, of humanity. They are elevated but squeezed; pinched brains, squinting eyes that don’t see past their desires. The house ends up toppled.

Higher Education

            The real problem of higher education for the highly educated one is that the rest of the world—most of it—is not very bright and doesn’t know very much. Therefore it cannot operate on a high intellectual level; so it brings down the level of thinking to its majority’s low level. It is not tolerant of high intellect. It doesn’t understand it, it fears it, and ultimately, it resents it. The low level masses win. This is because most human beings are not especially bright. Most believe in the old bad habits that have motivated human societies from the day the first cities were established. Most people do not understand the simple fact that people are only temporary creatures who are dependent on the microbes, worms, enzymes, gases, flora, and other fauna and chemicals that make the earth. Most people do not understand that we are composed of these chemicals, gases, and microbes, and are material manufactured by nature out of the earth. We are the earth, as the trees, the snakes, and the eagles. The rocks are fellow beings, out of the earth and, like us, not on the earth not having come from some other creation. We are created from substances of the earth and we are therefore inescapably bound to it, by it, in it, and upon it. Most people with little education and too many with a great deal of education, do not accept this irrefutable truth. The result of our relentless, stubborn refusal to see this is our own destruction. Until it is complete, the continuing result is agony.

Don Ameche

            Don Ameche died yesterday. He was 85. He was born in my hometown, Kenosha, Wisconsin. When his picture appeared in TIME Magazine in 1985, my picture was on the same page. Ameche was in a bathing suit standing on a diving board, I was in one of the morrow poses, cigarette in hand, in shirt sleeves, impersonating the great broadcaster for an HBO movie. I framed the page, saying that when I grew up I wanted to be just like Don Ameche. I was 45; he was 78.

            When I saw him in the movies during the forties, I thought he was loud—all of the time. Too direct. Too late, too nuance. He was oddly handsome. His hair was slick, his moustache neat, and his face unlined and a little too round. He stood erect always. He looked good in a tuxedo, with broad shoulders and his hands at his side. That’s a hard thing to do, for any actor; to just stand there with your hands comfortably at your sides, doing nothing but talking or being still. His voice was deep, resonant, sometimes sounding like an announcer instead of like a regular person just talking. He could shout and talk fast. He could sound poignant, but it seemed to me when I saw him after I grew up, that he was pretending to be poignant. But it was a good pretense. I understood that was his truth. He meant it; that’s how he expressed himself. His way, not mine. I liked him better.

            He was a big movie star for about ten years. That seems to be the standard limit, often. I’ve noticed that about many movie stars. They get popular—hot for a year or two. They get handed every great role, seemingly, then they fade away for a bit. Then they come back. It’s the fifth year that we’ve been noticing them. Then an Academy Award nomination comes. The actor doesn’t win. He gets another nomination and is the favorite, but doesn’t win again. Then he’s playing the second role with another hot big star or a great old star. Now it’s eight years. The transition comes. The actor is no longer cute or merely attractive and good; the actor is semi-respected. The actor plays one more good role, receives an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and fades once more. People say, “Whatever happened to . . . ? He’s always good, though, I always liked him. ‘Member when he was in _______; he was really great in that.” Someone else says, “He works all the time. I jus’ saw him in a European film, kind of odd but O.K. He was good.” It’s ten years later.

            Don Ameche once said to someone on a set, “I don’t know when I lost m name.” Sad. But he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. . . too much. He kept walking in Santa Monica. I used to see this man striding along. His arms would swing deliberately forward and back, like his acting. He was tall and stood erect, up one street, over to another and across, on a path, a trail, I guessed. I would follow him in my car sometimes, well, maybe twice, just to make sure it was he. He was eating one meal a day, he said, and staying fit. He loved to travel, he said, it kept him interested. He'd had his ten year, but he kept working. He had started in radio. He went back to radio for years. He acted on the stage and on television. He kept walking. For twelve years, he did not make a movie. Someone found him for a film in 1983. He was 75 years old. Three years later, he was in COCOON and they gave him an Oscar. His acceptance speech was an oration. It was clear, studied, and loud. He used repetition. With this award you. . . with this award you. . . with this award you have given me, and I hope I have earned, your respect. Thank you. He was Don Amache to the end. Maybe I can last as long.