Catching Up With Ann and Alan

Alan with Kitty Carlisle Hart, who spoke (and sang), at 94 an appropriate speaker for the Senior Theatre League!

The ceremony was grand, but Las Vegas, hmmm.... We’d been there years ago and, while we hadn’t expected to be physically accosted by slot-machine matrons while exiting the jetway, the "gambling rampant" wasn’t a surprise. What differed this time is that we had just been to Italy, absorbed in the REAL stuff, so the ersatz of places like Caesar’s Palace, discovering that the exterior of The Venetian was really just contact paper and that the gondolas below sailed on a swimming pool (not even a moat!),
here's the Venetian, contact papered
and hearing one couple exclaim that this was better than actually going to see the originals.... Another surpise awated on our return: we were honored with one of the first Harold Awards by the Columbus Theatre Roundtable, for our work in preventing the demolition of the Clinton Theatre, the 1920’s Clintonville neighborhood movie theatre. The honor was much greater because the Harolds honor a great and good friend of many years, Harold Eisenstein, for many years artistic director of performing arts (and the Gallery Players) at the Yassenoff Jewish Community Center. One other theatre event for the year: Alan organized a weeklong retreat in Columbus for members of the International Center for Women Playwrights; up to two dozen playwrights attended over the week, writing during the day and having readings in the evenings.

But back to the winter: we'd just gotten home from Las Vegas when Kate’s ship left for the Persian Gulf, with Kate leading the sonar team. Every miiltary parent knows the dread we felt, never far from the surface, yet we barely had time to worry ourselves sick when Ginger, Alan’s mother living in an assisted-living apartment in Front Royal, Virginia, began a series of illnesses that had us rushing to Virginia six times in under two months, lurching from crisis to crisis. Now 91, she’d been remarkably healthy and independent for many years, but was now clearly needing more help, and needed family to be closely monitoring events and advocating on her behalf. We concluded we were now beyond having her living eight hours away, even with around-the-clock caregivers. So, in June, after delivering the UK Award for Todd Lacy, world-tour producer of The Lion King, among other lavish musicals (the award opened into a 3-D pop-up of the UK logo and played “My Old Kentucky Home“)

and a plexiglas sliding display case Ann had designed for the 2002 award to Tim Lake,

we two moved first Ginger -- who took the trip better than expected -- then all her earthly belongings in two more back-to-back round trips from Front Royal to Columbus in 4 days. Thank heaven for lifting belts and dollies. And for Min and Jae Roh, our Korean siblings, who came from Chicago to be with Mother while we did the moving.

Hardly recovered, we got news that the USS McFaul was on its way home, to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Navy had invited families to meet it, then sail back to Norfolk on what’s called a Tiger Cruise. We decided to take them up on leaving our car on the base in Norfolk and joining McFaul families on the chartered bus up to Halifax. They had told us the trip up would take about 9 hours, and though we thought them off somewhat, we were too distracted by our plans for mother, the cats, and just life, to really look into it. As it turned out, the bus company--Promise Land Tours (we kid you not) -- not only had the time off by double-digit hours, they didn‘t even have a map with them, so that when the lead driver on the first of the two buses (ours) went to take a much-needed nap, the substitute missed a turn. That lost us four hours somewhere in upstate New York (we were now at 9 hours). Rerouted, we headed into Maine and up the coast, still without a map --and on the scenic coastal road, having left the interstate. Finally, the passengers woke up and began discussing the situation: next stop we all got maps and, stuck as we were, the good-natured but serious grousing began. By the time we reached the Canadian border we were 18 hours into the trip with still a long, long way to go. As if this weren’t enough, white fumes suddenly began pouring from the back of our bus.

With nowhere to turn, we piled into the other bus -- all 103 of us into a capacity-63 -- and we do mean piled: kids across feet and on laps, adults tripled up, me on Alan’s lap, people draped everywhere. At 36 hours this comic scene lurched into Halifax and, cheated of any chance to actually see that wonderful city, beyond hunger and exhausted, we literally fell into the ship’s racks (after greeting Kate) and fell asleep. What an ordeal.

The next couple of days aboard ship were fascinating: we were treated to tours (sanitized, as they say) through the machinery of this floating city, to steering the ship, sitting

Sonar Tech Woods at her console
in the captain’s chair, observing sonar watch and even an “underway” refueling as the crew showed off what the McFaul was capable of. We enjoyed finally seeing the ship’s flag that Kate had designed, and in meeting all the crew. And we both got to fire machine guns into the Atlantic. Then things grew gray, cold and windy -- the hurricane that had lingered off Florida

Ann takes aim at some waves, and hits them!
days before suddenly turned northward, into our path. Not exactly the summer sailing weather we had packed for. To avoid it, the captain steered us farther out to sea around it, then back
at sea
into Norfolk, where the shore literally came alive with cheers as we rounded the cape and came into view of the other waiting families. It rings in our ears still. A joyful day with Kate in Norfolk followed, before it was home again to Columbus. And politics. We both got enormously involved with John Kerry’s campaign for the Presidency, and hosted several ‘get out the vote’ meetings for MoveOn. That connected us with a number of like-minded neighbors and folks from the immediate vicinity -- as well as attending rallies (including one
Claudia Kinder signs for Kerry at OSU
with Bruce Springsteen and Kerry, and another huge event on the river in downtown Columbus--a large-screen telecast of the first debate between the Presidential candidates capped with an appearance by John Edwards).
The Boss sings for Kerry at OSU

September had Alan serving as dramaturg for CATCO’s production of Uncle Vanya, along with teaching an Honors Class that would culminate in a week in London in December. While Alan was teaching, Ann hosted noted letterist Eliza Schulte Holliday at her Grasmere Avenue studio for a workshop in graphite techniques for a lucky group of advanced students. Then it was time to pack for England! After posing at the remains of the Roman Wall,

and marveling at the incredible display of fruits and veggies at a greengrocer's near the hotel--in December!--

he helped guide one of four groups of 25 students around the city‘s sites (with the help of a fabulous OSU assistant).
students and fabulous staffer Cheria Dial (pointing) at Leeds Castle
Ann tagged along, at times joining the group for sightseeing and performances (and Holly Hunter, in Marina Carr‘s Irish updating of Medea was spectacular, as was -- in a different way entirely, the musical version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) but generally staying just out of their way,
our group of students astride the Prime Meredian
spending most days in either the Victoria and Albert National Art Library or in the spectacular new British Library pursuing her own research. Heaven. Then, waving the students bon voyage for home, we snuggled in on for another week. And what a wonderful week. It would take just that long to tell you all we did, so we’ll just mention our one-day trip to Oxford









here's an interior courtyard in Oxford

(the Bodleian for Ann, while Alan took in its strange medieval scholasticana), a whole lot of London theatre (including a terrific, very physical, Icelandic production of Romeo & Juliet--with Sir Derek Jacobi as guest star speaking the epilogue), and walking the city, marveling at London’s underground, its art and Edward Johnston’s lettering, and visiting many museums and historic places. We’d planned to travel home on Christmas Day, thinking traffic would be light, only to discover first that EVERYTHING, even the entire city transport system, closes down in London on Christmas Day (we ended up taking a charter bus to the airport), and second, that a whole lot of other folks had had the same idea. Kate, home on leave to be with Ginger that week, picked her exhausted parents up. Next day, she left for Norfolk, and Ann promptly came down with a nasty bronchitis and never saw the next nine days.