Wednesday – Jordan over for History Night (the Battle of Midway)

Friday – Fools’ show and CVCA Talent Show
Saturday – Cilantro for supper and Freud’s Last Session with LT and Audra

Our church, New Baltimore Community Church, has an active youth group. They have ministered on the streets of Cleveland to the hungry and homeless, and have visited the elderly in nursing homes, and done various other ministries. They decided recently to minister to the congregation, and so offered to come to the houses of the congregation to bring supper and fellowship.

Mer and I loved the idea, but were a little hesitant because we live almost forty-five minutes from the church. We gave the youth the option to skip us, but they came up anyway. So on Wednesday we were visited by an adult driver and four teens – three guys and a girl. They brought spaghetti and garlic bread, and we ate together and were able to visit for a little over an hour. The youth led a short Bible study stressing the importance of Christian fellowship, and then they had to head home because of the length of the drive. They did a great job, and it was fun to hang out with them. Mer and I both work at a school because we like youthful people, and we had a genuinely good time on Wednesday.

On Thursday I continued the fellowship theme by meeting some former students at Eddy’s Deli here in Cuyahoga Falls. We used to meet there last year for “wings night,” when you could get unlimited chicken wings and lots of other food for just ten dollars. I knew three of the students well, and recognized another former CVCA student. My students also brought three college friends whom I did not know, and my friend and colleague Craig showed up as well. It was a merry gathering.

We ate and talked and laughed together for about two hours. In fact, another customer swung by our table on his way out to say how entertaining we were (and he was not being sarcastic). I love hanging out with these guys; I miss them when they are away, and it was good to see them.

Mer had met up with her old friend Dave for supper at nearby Retro Dog. When I drove by the restaurant, I saw Mer’s car there, so I stopped. Dave had invited two other high school classmates and their families, so Mer introduced me to them. I had met Dave several times before, but the two women were people Mer had not seen since high school. They were just wrapping up supper when I arrived, so I got to drive home (in separate cars) with Mer. That was a companionable way to wrap up a couple of days of good fellowship.

Friday was a pretty big day for CVCA. A donor had arranged for the popular Christian singer Michael W. Smith to come to E. J. Thomas Hall in Akron, and had arranged for the CVCA Royal Ringers Handbell Choir to open for the concert, and for the CVCA choirs to sing as backup for Michael W. Smith for several songs at the end of the evening.

Mer was very excited – Smith had risen to popularity during the 1980s, when Mer was a teenager at CVCA. She loved his music, and was very excited when she was able to buy his first three CDs as a single set for ten dollars at the concert. Mer had also arranged for us to join one of her friends from high school, Marie.

Mer got us tickets, and they were in the way-back of the balcony, but that was fine for a concert. The sound carried back to us well, and we had good command of the whole stage. The evening went off quite well. Smith is an energetic and entertaining act, with good stage presence, and good stories to tell, and high-energy songs. He is fifty-five years old, but looks great and still runs and jumps around the stage with tons of energy.

I was pleased and surprised at how many songs I knew. I think Michael W. Smith may have covered some of the songs, but whether he wrote them or someone else did, I still knew about one third of the songs, which was pretty good for someone who did not grow up listening to Smith. The choirs joined Smith toward the end of the evening, and they sang well. In fact, Smith included them in an encore song, which they had not practiced, but were able to follow. It was a good musical evening, and quite a concert for the students involved.

Saturday was a fairly nice day, with lots of sun and temperatures in the high forties. So I bought a couple of chocolate bars and took Mer to hike a trail in Akron that we had never hiked before – the Oxbow Trail, which is best known for a dramatic scenic overlook of part of the Valley. The trail was muddy in a few places, but not too bad, especially for early March. We stopped after the first part of the trail to eat our chocolate by a branch of the Cuyahoga River. It was a pleasant and quiet spot. We continued up a steep section of trail, to the overlook, which includes a platform that juts out over the steep banks of the river. It was pretty, even with the leaves off the trees – it must be spectacular in the fall. It is a great trail, and is handicapped-accessible, so I hope to be able to take Mer’s parents there when the weather improves.

In the late afternoon, Mer had plans, and so we headed off east toward Pennsylvania. We took the ninety-minute trip to Grove City College, to see a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Mer had a former student in the production, in a small but important role. We grabbed a bite to eat at a crowded Perkins restaurant, and then headed over to the college theater.

The quick plot synopsis of Measure for Measure is that a duke bails on his corrupt kingdom for a time, leaving a righteous and strict man in charge, with the expectation that he will clean up the city. The judge cleans up the town by being severe, sentencing a young man to die for getting his fiancee pregnant out of wedlock. The young man’s chaste sister goes to the judge to beg for mercy, and the judge says he will grant mercy if she sleeps with him. The play works itself out from there, ending as a comedy with a slew of marriages.

The production was quite fine. The leads were solid actors, and while some of the supporting actors were not in their class, there was no one who did not belong on stage. The set was largely a judge’s chambers, a jail, or the town streets, and worked well to support the action of the play. Mer’s former student did well, and was quite pleased we had come. By any measure, it was a good production.

Last Tuesday was a mid-week date night for me and Mer. For Christmas, Mer had gotten me tickets to a production of the musical Sister Act when it came to Cleveland, and Tuesday was finally the night. Mer was spiteful of the weather and wore one of her late spring dresses so she could feel dressed up without winter boots and gloves and bulky coat and so on. We ate at home, and then drove up to Cleveland Playhouse.

The play is based on the same story as the movie with Whoopi Goldberg from the 1990s. The main character is a nightclub singer who sees a murder, goes to the police, and then is hidden in a convent, where she spruces up the church choir. It has been years since I have seen the movie, but I feel as though the musical added more musical numbers and made the play a bit more slapstick, with good results. Even though I had gone into the play with some skepticism (since it was derivative of a movie, I was afraid it would be a lamer adaptation), I was won over pretty quickly. The music was fun, the jokes were funny and quite clever at times, and the humor of the plot was slapstick in places, and it was a grand effect. It had been a long time since Mer and I had gone to a “fluff” musical where we could just enjoy being entertained. While I love “deep” theater, it was fun to go to a goofy play.

The talent was top-notch, which is not surprising for a traveling Broadway company. All the singers were fantastic, and the dance numbers worked well. The pit orchestra was good, and the sets were fabulous. It’s pretty much what you would expect from a professional troupe. It was a fun evening, well worth going to, even on a school night.

Last Thursday was a fun little evening – I went to a nearby location of the super-cheap pizza buffet chain called Cici’s. It only costs five dollars to eat all the pizza you want (I think my Spite was $1.50 more). I met five of my CVCA Connections-group guys there for an evening of eating pizza and talking, plus a few arcade video games thrown in for good measure. I had a really good time, and we spent about an hour and a half there.

On Saturday, I was supposed to go with Meredith for her state-level junior high Academic Challenge meet. Academic Challenge is sort of like competitive school Jeopardy!, where students answer trivia questions against other teams. I was supposed to be a question reader, which is actually pretty interesting, since I like trivia. However, all of those plans were thrown off, as I was still recovering from a light flu or heavy cold, and I was not sure I would have the stamina to make it for the seven-hour day it would involve. In retrospect, I think I could have done it, but there was no way to know that when I woke up still feeling slightly sick.

Anyway, Mer entered three CVCA teams – a seventh-grade team, an eighth-grade team, and a team made up of two freshmen and two eighth graders (two freshmen are allowed on teams since some junior high schools go up through ninth grade; there are even some sixth graders who compete in these big competitions). Mer’s teams did very well, going a combined 17-1 in the qualification rounds, and all three teams qualified for the playoffs, which was a feat that had never been done by any school at that tournament (sending three teams to the playoffs). Sadly, all three teams lost very close matches in their first-round matches, but two of the three teams placed highly enough to qualify for a national-level tournament in Washington, DC, and if any team from a school qualifies, then they can all go; so, Mer has the option to send any and all members of her team who can make it. Unfortunately, Mer and I will be on vacation that weekend (we have plane tickets already), so Mer will have to send a proxy coach in her place. Still, it was a wildly successful day for her team.

Saturday evening involved another success – our friends Eric and Shanna have a band called Bethesda, and they held a CD-release party in an Akron club called Musica. Mer and I went with our colleague Craig. The place was packed out, and Musica finally did a great job mixing the sound for Bethesda. Eric and Shanna had both been struggling with illness, with Shanna even losing her voice on Friday. Happily, Shanna had tons of people praying for her, and she saw a doctor who gave her some medicine, and she sang effortlessly. She later said it was the easiest she has ever sung. The audience was really into the music, and you could tell the band was excited to be playing – the CD was recorded last summer, so this evening was a long time in coming. Bethesda played for about an hour, and put on one of the best shows I have seen them do (the one we saw them play at the Kent Folk Festival was pretty close, in my opinion).

Last weekend was a busy, but fun, little weekend. On Saturday, Mer and I headed up early to Cleveland, to the Idea Center next to Playhouse Square, for the regional National Shakespeare Competition. Regional schools are encouraged to hold school-wide competitions, and then compete for the regional title and a chance to go on to the national stage in New York. We were there to support CVCA’s entrant, a talented young woman who was doing the “unsex me here” Lady Macbeth speech from Macbeth.

There were about twenty-five or thirty schools competing, so we were split into two groups. Three finalists were to be selected from each of the two rooms, and then those six would compete for the regional title. Each contestant had to do a monologue from a play and a sonnet as well. Our student was going pretty late in the competition, so we got to see what she was up against.

The level of acting and reciting was quite good, as one would expect from school champions. In our room, Mer and I felt that about five or six of the competitors, including our young lady, all had a good shot at the three finalist slots from our room. When the results came in, we were disappointed. Two of the three slots were understandable – they were quite good, and I could see where the judges were coming from. The third slot was the one that made me and Mer confused and a little angry. The third slot went to a contestant who did an adequate job, but was not in the top six of either of our lists, let alone the top three. In fact, we were questioning whether the performance was even worthy of the top ten in our room of thirteen or fourteen. It was not a bad performance; it was just really bland, with little movement or inflection. So, for the second year in a row, we left the competition confused as to what the judges saw (last year we could not see what the judges saw for the second-place finisher, who was pretty clearly not as good as the third through fifth finishers). I hope this does not come across as petty; Mer and I wanted our girl to win, of course, but we thought she could lose out to four or five others. Where we got upset was when one of the slots went to someone neither or us had even considered as a contender. Very strange.

We left before the finals, since we were supposed to be heading to Ellen’s in Michigan. I did not see putting off spending time with a good friend to see Shakespeare monologues when we had already seen three of the six. Happily, Mer agreed, so we headed out earlier than we had expected. We stopped at Steak ‘n Shake for lunch, but we still got to Ellen’s place in Hillsdale around 3:00 or so, about two hours earlier than we had hoped. I think we caught Ellen still wrapping up getting supper going, but she was gracious and happy to see us. Ellen is the standard-bearer for hospitality for people roughly our age, and she took our visit as an opportunity to organize a small dinner party of her own.

We got installed in Ellen’s guest room, and she surprised us with a couple of CDs as belated birthday presents. One was an English Christian band called Mumford and Sons that has an eclectic and interesting sound. The other was a Norwegian folk singer with a crystal-clear voice. Both CDs were thoughtful gifts, and we have already gotten much profitable listening out of them. To return the favor (in a less giving way), I introduced Ellen to The Anonymous 4, a group of women singers who do arrangements of hymns and folks songs. Ellen took a liking to them and ordered a CD the same day. That was gratifying.

As was the dinner. Ellen had invited her pastor and his wife, and her headmaster and his wife, and so we had a party of seven. Ellen made some spectacular food (a great soup and make-your-own burritos), and the evening was lighthearted, with quite a bit of laughter. We talked until about 10:00, when the others had to go. I headed to bed directly, but Mer and Ellen stayed up for a bit to chat.

On Sunday, we went to Ellen’s church, which is a Presbyterian church that meets on the campus of Hillsdale College. They are in the process of buying a property to renovate as a church, but for now, they still meet on the campus. It was a good service, and it was pleasant to have a personal connection with the pastor from the dinner the night before. They had a brief congregational meeting after the service to discuss the new property, so Mer and I took that opportunity to take a short (and cold) walk about Hillsdale College to check out the campus. We wandered the main square before retreating back to the student center for warmth.

Back at Ellen’s, I made brownies while Ellen ran over to school. We all had leftovers for lunch, which was fine by us. A good meal called for a nap for me, but Mer stayed up to grade. In the evening (post-nap), I ran out for dessert supplies, and we spent the evening eating and visiting (a common occurrence when we come over).

Monday was the reason for our visit. Ellen teaches English at Hillsdale Academy, and for the third year in a row she had invited me to speak on the play Rosecrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Mer used to teach the play, and when she did, I came up with a talk on the relationship between some of the odd things in the story and some of the odd things that happen in the world of quantum mechanics in physics. It has been over twenty years since I have studied quantum mechanics, so my theory is rusty, but the ideas behind the equations are still pretty fresh and interesting to me. We are also both happy to see Ellen in action – she is a very good teacher, and teaches some pretty interesting works (Dante’s Purgatory and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby on this particular day).

I gave my presentation, which was received quite well after a slightly rocky start (I had forgotten what some symbols in an equation meant for a moment, on the first slide. Ooops.). The students were very well behaved, and several of them seemed to be quite engaged. That is always gratifying. After the class, Mer and Ellen went off to a writing class, but I had the good opportunity to chat with a senior from the college who was sitting in on Ellen’s class. He was a social studies major, and wants to teach; we had a great conversation about the modern period, C. S. Lewis, historical methods, and more. He is a bright young man, and I hope he does well.

Ellen took us to a local deli for lunch, and we finished up the afternoon with Gatsby. Sadly, Mer and I then had to head home and back to our usual jobs (and, as it turns out, to both of us getting sick for the following week). Still, I look forward to speaking in class again next year if Ellen keeps the play on her class list.

Last Friday was a great day – Mer and I got to go over to Nate and Rachel Gurnish’s house for a dinner party. I love Nate and Rachel and their family, and it had been about eight or nine months since I had really had a chance to visit with them. Nate worked at CVCA for four years and was a very good running partner of mine, but I had not seen him since he left CVCA last June. As an added bonus, Rachel (and Nate, for that matter) can really cook!

Nate and Rachel have been living with their boys in a large camper that they have used to see parts of the United States. They set up their party at Nate’s parents’ house since Nate’s folks were out of town. It was a small gathering – just me and Mer, Nate and Rachel, a friend of Rachel’s, and another couple (Ben and Amanda) that are friends of the Gurnishes, and who happen to go to the same small church that Mer and I attend. Having seven people made the evening feel festive without being crowded.

The food was fantastic, and Rachel, in a humorous nod to Mer’s and my loving dessert, made three different kinds of dessert, as well as a “take-home” portion. She is gracious that way. The evening consisted of various conversations, which included my getting caught up on Nate’s life, and we ate a ton of good food. I hope it will not be another eight months before I catch up with Nate and Rachel again.

Tuesday was another wonderful “Educators’ Evening” at Playhouse Square. Several times a year, the playhouse invites teachers to come up to see a presentation on a play, then hear a talk about the play, and then see a play, all for free (and they even feed you). Meredith gets to go because she teaches English, and they let me come along because I coach an improv theater group. It is a pretty fantastic program.

Last Tuesday was a play called The Devils’ Music, based on the blues singer Bessie Smith. All of the things that were discussed in the play were factual, although the dialogue was created by the playwright. The Educators’ Evening discussion was based on how perspective is important to any story. We had some good discussions on the importance of perspective in both English classes and history classes, and as educators we were encouraged to think about how to represent multiple perspectives in our classes.

The pre-show talk was focused mostly on the events that led up to the blues as an art form, and some of the founding figures of the blues who were an early influence on Bessie Smith. We also got the background on Bessie’s early life and how she started into show business at a fairly early age.

The actual show was set entirely in an empty speakeasy-type saloon. Bessie and her band had just walked out on a show since the theater management was asking her to use the back door since she was a black singer. She refused and left. The play takes up from that moment, and we see much of Bessie’s life as told from her perspective in snippets. There were three musicians on stage with the actress playing Bessie – a sax player, a piano player, and an upright bass player. All three were amazing musicians.

The woman playing Bessie is a professional singer, and she raised the roof on the place. Man, that woman could sing. She was a very engaging actress as well – she got the audience on her side right away, and kept me engaged for much of the play. Her voice and stage presence were both huge.

I liked the play on the whole. I did start to “drift” from Bessie as she kept telling more and more stories of a hard partying lifestyle that seemed to be a near-endless stream of alcohol and sex and fighting. She did not seem to have any stable relationships in her life, at least as presented in the play. She was a huge talent and a huge monetary success, but by the end of the two hours, it felt hollow to me. I felt sorry for Bessie, and sorry that her life seemed so tragic to me.

The play was well done, and the music was grand, and given that it was all for free, it is hard to complain. Even when a play leaves me with questions, it still makes me think, and that is good theater.

Sunday morning was the marathon, and so Mer and I were up early (around 4:30, I think). Since the race started at the oddly specific time of 7:03, I wanted to get there a little before 6:00, which meant leaving around 5:00. We made it out the door on time, and we got to Birmingham a little before 6:00. To my great delight, we quickly found on-street parking that was only two or three blocks from the starting line. That is an advantage to a smaller marathon (there were about 5500 total runners for Birmingham, counting the half-marathon).

We walked to the starting area, and took advantage of the port-o-johns (several times, with my usual pre-race jitters). It was quite cold – only twenty-eight degrees, and I while I was smart enough to leave my sweatshirt on, I had taken my sweatpants off in the car, leaving my shorts-clad legs to deal with the cold. I did not care about my sweatshirt, so I was not concerned if it got lost at the start of the race, but I did want to keep my sweatpants. It turned out that Mer and I were able to maintain contact up to the beginning of the race, so I could have kept my sweatpants on. Ah, well. It meant some pre-race shivering.

I’m not sure if it was an indication of laid-back southern habits, but in the northern marathons I have run, runners are in the starting chute forty-five to sixty minutes before the race starts. I got into the nearly-empty chute about thirty minutes before 7:00, and there was almost no one in the chute. It was disconcerting. With about fifteen minutes to go, the chute began to fill, and with ten minutes to go, the chute was crammed with walkers and slower runners trying to make their way to the back of the line against a sea of unyielding bodies. I have to admit that this annoyed me somewhat, especially when I spent the first two to three miles dodging these slower runners who lined up way too close to the front (race etiquette says you should line up according to your anticipated race pace, which is handily posted along the chute; sadly, many people ignore these things).

The wheelchair racers started at 6:53, to an abrupt-sounding command of “go” over the PA system. We had a similar blunt command at 7:03 that was odd to me. Usually, in all the races I have run as an adult, we start them with a playing of the national anthem. The lack of music made the start seem rushed. Mer gave me a kiss and wished me well and headed off to a vantage point at about mile two on the course.

I won’t go into great detail about the whole race. It is a 13.1-mile loop, done twice by those running the full marathon. The course is quite spectator-friendly in the downtown area, where runners can be easily seen two or three times on each loop. Once the race leaves downtown, spectators get a bit sparser, although I was pleased that there were some spectators along much of the race. The race goes up a slight, but long, series of hills from miles 18 through 24. I did not notice them at all on the first lap, but they finally forced me to walk at mile 22 on the second lap. I ended up walking about 1.5 miles of the last four miles of the race, which was too bad. I was on track for a personal best time (of 3:28) up through mile 22, and that slipped away as my legs gave in to fatigue. I ended up with my third-fastest (out of ten) marathon time, just edging 3:36 at an official time of 3:35:54.

Mer was a great sport, as she stood around and cheered me along. She saw me start, and then saw me twice more on the first loop. She saw me at the end of the loop, and then again on the course, and finally a few hundred yards from the finish. It is remarkable that anyone would get up at 4:30 on a weekend to go and stand in the cold for four hours.

After the race, I met up with Meredith, and she walked and I hobbled back to the car. We drove back to Kelly and Paul’s house, stopping for some candy bars along the way so I could get a little food back into my system. Kelly and Paul and family were going to a dinner party at a friend’s house at 2:00. Mer decided to go along, but I passed, as I did not feel up to it. Instead, I slept for a few hours before limping downtown to eat at a Waffle House and then a Coldstone Creamery. I met everyone back at home, and I made a quick peanut butter dessert for my sister, who loves peanut butter. I got to read a story to WCNep before he went to sleep, and I got to wind up WCN before her mother told her she had to calm down and go to sleep. Mer and I passed the short remainder of the evening chatting with Kelly.

In the morning, I caught Paul just before he left for work. Mer and I went along with Kelly and the kids as she took them to school. We got to see the schools and classrooms of the kids, and said goodbye to them. Kelly then took us to Another Broken Egg, a breakfast place right on the river. It had a pretty view and great food, and the only slight downside was that we had to leave at 9:30 to make our flight in Atlanta; that meant we had to rush breakfast a bit more than we would have cared for.

The drive back to Atlanta was less tedious than the drive in the dark on Friday had been, but it was still less than riveting. We returned the rental car with happy efficiency, and we were at out gate a little over an hour before the plane was supposed to take off. That gave me time to get a crepe for Mer as a dessert treat. I found the crepe-making process fascinating to watch, to the extent that I bought a crepe-maker when I got home. I’m looking forward to trying it out.

Our flight to the Akron-Canton Airport was smooth and on time, and we were able to walk to our car in the “remote” lot (one of the great joys of the small regional airport). Since we were south of home, we decided to swing through Hartville to go to the Hartville Kitchen, an excellent Mennonite restaurant, where we both ended up eating too much.

It was certainly a whirlwind tour, but it had been a great trip to Alabama. I wish Kelly and her family lived closer, but I am grateful we have been able to see them twice in the last twelve months.