On Friday, I went to see my sister-in-law Sally Stroup's final dance recital. For 15 years she's been putting on shows with kids from four and up. This year's recital was held in the Marwick Boyd Auditorium. A thousand people. Two hundred dancers. Five hundred costumes. Forty-five acts.
The performance ran the gamut from old to new, from innocence to experience, from six year-olds in their tutus, to debutants in their black leotards and diaphonous skirts, to my niece Katie Martin, all of 24 years old, doing "All That Jazz." I got particularly choked up at the young girls pirouetting to "Edelweiss" (was trying to figure out some kind of geometry where chicken fat bisects love to create the point called schmaltz).
Seeing the performance gave me a chance to think about what we consider classical dance and how various forms of dance are added to what we call classic and how sensuality is added and subtracted from dance. Finally, it gave me a chance to not think at all, which is, of course, one of the best things about dance.
One more thing, something Benjamin pointed out to me: Sally included a note at the beginning of the printed program, but she didn't sign it, an example of how self-effacing she can be. In fact, her name was nowhere in the program. I can hear her now, "It was nothing." Yeah, Sal, the next time I feel like doing nothing I'll help raise hundreds of kids, teach them their right from their left, have them push the limits of their abilities, and then have them perform in front of a thousand people.
WQED has been playing the American Roots series, and I've been missing it. But I did find this great quote from the Arlo Guthrie interview:
Why do so many artists as well as listeners point to your father as an icon of American music?He really made the personal decision that it was better to fail at being himself than succeed at being someone else. That combined with the ability to write and sing about who he thought he was and who he thought everybody else was.
I have heard that the Governor of Pennsylvania has just obtained use of a 40-foot caravan for traveling around the commonwealth. At one time, I've daydreamed about becoming governor, but I didn't dream about having a large staff or directing the construction of large public works or using my political and financial acumen to trim health care costs. I dreamed about traveling through the state, walking its streets, standing by its hills and rivers.
I remember first thinking of this while in Bedford county visiting one more small town on the way to somewhere else, standing at the corner gas station with a view that was breath taking. I remember thinking about this when I was in Renovo, up north and in the middle, and admiring its dreamy, trapped-in-amber qualities. I don't want to wax romantic. There's plenty that's shabby about Pennsylvania, particularly among its roadsides. As a matter of fact, the farther away from the road side you get the prettier it is; and the slower you go the more you see.
The limits of Pennsylvania are defined by one line of longitude, two divisions of latitude (one of them known as the Mason-Dixon line), the Delaware River, and in the northeast corner, the Erie triangle. We learned in grade school that Pennsylvania obtained the Erie triangle from New York in 1795 order to have a fresh water port. I'm not sure how inadequate we would feel as a state if we didn't have a fresh water port. I do think that the state would look really strange without that little spout at the top. So most of Pennsylvania's borders are geometric and arbritrary, but the land itself is shaped by the Alleghenies, with the rivers, roads, and township and county borders following its contours. No big mountains, no vast oceans or deserts, but many fingers of roads to reach it all.
But if he's serious about using the van, called Commonwealth One, Gov. Rendell will have focused on what I think would be the best part about the job: to visit various parts of the state, talk to people, drink coffee and soda pop in its diners, eat pretzels and drink beer in its social clubs. Just being there, or should I say, here, I believe could have a healthy effect on the Governor and the Commonwealth. As the saying goes, the gardener's shadow is the best fertilizer.
