I came across your film as accidentally as you came across my Shakespeare at Swanton website.
As part of general downsizing efforts, a couple of weeks ago my wife, Jan, sent a beautiful Afghan dress she acquired in 1972, when we homesteaded in the woods of British Columbia, to a friend born and still living there, who took a photo of it, worn by her daughter riding a ropeswing on the property their family leases from us.
Seeing it reminded me of another woodland use of the dress in 1999 at Swanton Ranch. So I googled the old website to download a picture of it worn by a student playing Hermia in scenes from A Midsummernight’s Dream that the class filmed there.
I was amazed to find the link to your “Shakespeare at Swanton” video and astounded to watch it.
I’m still pulsing with the world wide web of connections it activated. Parallel surprises of happening upon a relic in the course of searching for lost treasure—lost through fire and aging and through the digital loss of “bitrot” and software updates.
And parallel grief for the losses of Time: 1960’s back-to-the-land hippies turning 80, ’90’s English majors now in their ’40’s, a 2021 forestry student graduated and out in the world.
And the transformation of it all, through memory and art, via the alchemy of Shakespeare.
Comments to Foundation Board of Directors and Finance Committee, May 7 2022
Seven reasons in three allotted minutes to divest Cal Poly Foundation from Fossil Fuel Investments
1.To respond to the well-informed, respectful and impassioned student testimony at previous meetings urging you to act on this.Clearly, today’s students and their children will be more impacted by the Climate Crisis than our generation.Providing financial support to Fossil Fuel companies that continue to play a significant role in worsening that Crisis is neglecting the University’s commitment to the welfare of its present and future students.Read the rest of this entry »
Deborah phoned me with word of your death a couple of weeks ago. Since then, you’ve been more present to me than even during the intense emails we’ve exchanged since the reunion I attended at your home in 1996. I regretfully declined to join any more of them because of the difficulty I’ve always experienced relating to individuals within the framework of the group. With no one was that contradiction between social and individual relationships more pronounced than with you.
Back in Netherland Park your role as the classic alpha male made you seem larger than life and me to almost disappear as the tiny omega called “mousie.” And when the girl I’d been in love with since fourth grade started going with you the annihilation felt complete. Read the rest of this entry »
