Readings of "Menagerie," "Meditations on History" and "Roselily", circa 1992, Side 1

Web Video Text Tracks Format (WebVTT)

WEBVTT

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Speaker 1: The work of Charles Johnson, a Seattle based educator, professional philosopher, fiction editor of the Seattle Review, novelist, TV producer/writer, anthologist and storyist, is from his collection "The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Other Tales."

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Speaker 1: The piece that will be presented has its feet in the truth-speaking tradition of the fables. Has its heart in the comedic wing of the blue stomping school of irony. And its head, to continue this anatomical foolishness [[laughter]]
Speaker 1: in the Emersonian transcendental tradition, blah blah blah. [[laughter]]

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Speaker 1: To make sense of all this is herself, Ms. Gloria Foster, to my mind the most compelling presence on the American stage, screen, and tube. Can I get a witness? [[Applause]]

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Speaker 1: "Medea", "Agamemnon", "Cool World", "In White America", "Comedians", "Nothing But a Man", "The Private Files on Jill Hatch", John Sayles' "City of Hope", Bill Gunn's "Forbidden City", "Yurma". And in this spring, this spring, "Blood Wedding" at the Public Theater, in a version translated and mediated by Garcia Lorca's friend and colleague, Langston Hughes.

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Speaker 1: Were we to come to our senses I think we would recognize that Ms. Foster's gifts in any one arena alone deem her a national treasure. Our national treasure was Gloria Foster.

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[[applause]]

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[SILENCE]

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Gloria Foster: "Menagerie", a child's fable, by Charles Johnson.

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Among watchdogs in Seattle, Berkley was known, generally, as one of the best. Not the smartest, but steady. A pious German Shepherd, black-forest origin probably, with big shoulders, black gums, and weighing more than some men. He sat guard inside the glass door of Tilfurd's pet shop. Watching the pedestrians scurry along 1st Avenue, wandering at the derelicts who slept ever so often inside the foyer at night. And sometimes, he nodded when things were quiet in the cages behind him. Lulled by the bubbling of the fish tanks, dreaming of an especially fine meal he once had, or the little female poodle, a real flirt. Owned by the aerobic dance teacher who was no saint herself, a few doors down the street. But Berkley was, for all his wool-gathering, never asleep at the switch. He took his work seriously, moreover he knew exactly where he was at every moment, what he was doing, and why he was doing it. Which was more than can be said for most people, like Mr. Tilfurd, a real gumboil, whose ways were mysterious to Berkley. Sometimes he treated the animals cruelly, or taunt them. He saw them not as pets but profit. Nevertheless, no vandals or thieves had ever brought trouble through the doors or windows of Tilfurd's pet shop. And Berkley, confident of his power, but never flaunting it, faithful to his master, though he didn't deserve it, was certain that none ever would.

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At closing, time Mr. Tilfurd who lived alone as most cruel men do always checked the cages left the beggarly pinch of food for all the animals and the single bisquit for Berkley. The watch dog always hoped for a pat on his head or for Tilfurd to play with him, some sign of approval to let him know he was appreciated. But such as this never came. Mr. Tilfurd had thick glasses and a thin voice, was stubborn, hot tempered, a drunkard and a loner who sliding towards senility sometimes put his shoes in the refrigerator. And once a Berkley winced at the memory. Put a persian he couldn't sell in the mix master during one of his binges. Mainly the owner drank and watched television, which was something else Berkley couldn't understand. More than once he'd mistaken gunfire one screen for the real thing. A natural era since no one told him violence was entertainment for some. How the loud enough to bring down the house, and Tilfurd booted him outside. Soon eough, Berkley stopped looking for approval. He didn't bother to get up from biting fleas behind the counter when he heard the door slam. But it seemed one night, too early for closing time, his instincts for this had never been wrong before. He trotted back to the darkended store. Then his mouth snapped shut. His feeding bowl was as empty as he'd last left it.

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1: "Say Berkeley", said Monkey, whose cage was near the store room. "What's going on? Tilford didn't put out the food."

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1: Berkley didn't care a whole lot for Monkey, and usually he ignored him.

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1: He was downright wicked. A comedian, always grabbing his groin to get a laugh. [[laughter]]

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1: Throwing feces, or fooling with the other animals. A clown who'd do anything to crack up the iguana, frog, parrot, and the Siamese. Even if it meant aping Mr. Tilford, which he did well. [laughter]]

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1: Though Berkley found this parody frightening. Like playing with fire, or literally biting the hand that fed you. [[laughter]]

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1: But he too was puzzled by Tilford's abrupt departure.

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1: "I don't know", said Berkley, "He'll be back, I guess."

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1: Monkey, his head through his cage held onto the bars of his cage like a movie inmate, "Wanna bet?"

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1: "What are you talking about?"

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1: "Wake up!", said Monkey, "Tilford's sick. I've seen better faces on dead guppies in the fish tank." [[laughter]]

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1: "You ever see a pulmonary embolism?" Monkey ballooned his cheeks, then started breathing hard enough to hyperventilate, rolled up both red-webbed eyes, then crashed back into his cage howling.

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1: Not thinking this funny at all. Berkeley padded over to the front door, gave monkey a grim look, then curled up against the bottom rail, waiting for Tilford's car to appear.

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1: Cars of many kinds and cars of different sizes came and went. But that Saturday night, the owner did not show. Nor the next morning. Or the following night.

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1: And on the second day, it was not only Monkey, but every beast, bird, and fowl in the shop that shook its cage or tank and howled at Berkeley for an explanation.

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1: An ear shattering babble of tongues, squawks, trills, howls, mewling, bellows, hoots, [[brawting?]], and belly-growls, because Tilford had collected everything from baby alligators to zebra-striped fish, an entire federation of cultures. With each animal having its own distinct inviable nature, so they said.

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1: The rows and rows of counters screaming with a plurality of so many backgrounds, needs, and viewpoints that Berkeley, his head splitting, could hardly hear his own voice above the din.

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1: "Be patient!", he said, "Believe me, he is coming back."

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1: "Come off it", said one of three snakes.

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[[laughter]]
1: "Monkey says Tilford's dead. Question is, what are we gonna do about it?"

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1: Berkley looked witheringly toward the front door, his empty stomach gurgled like a sewer. It took a tremendous effort to untangle his thoughts. "If we can just hold on, uh-"

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1: "We're hungry!" shouted Frog, "We'll starve before old Tilford comes back."

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1: Throughout this turmoil, the shouting, the beating of wings, which blew feathers everywhere like confetti, and an angry slapping of fins that splashed water to the floor, Monkey simply sat quietly taking it all in. Stroking his chin as scholar might.

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1: He waited for a space in the shouting then pushed his head through the cage again.

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1: His voice was calm, studied like an old time barrister before the bar. "Berkeley, don't get mad now, but I think it's obvious that there's only one solution."

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1: "What?" "Let us out," said Monkey, "open the cages." "No, we've got a crisis situation here."

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[[laughter]]
1: Monkey sighed like one of the elderly tired lizards as if his solution bothered even him.

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1: "It calls for courage, radical decisions. You're in charge until Tilford gets back. That means you gotta feed us. But you can't do that, can you? Only one here with hands is me."

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[[laughter]]
1: "See we all have different talents, unique gifts, if you let us out we can pool our resources. I can open the feedbanks."

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1: "You can?" the watch dog swallowed. "Uh-huh."

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1: He wiggled his fingers dexterously then the digits on his feet. "But somebody's gotta throw the switch on this cage, I can't reach it. Dog, I'm asking you to be democratic."

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[laughter]]
1: "Keeping us locked up is fascist!"

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The animals clammered for release. They took a monkey's cry, self determination. But everything within Berkley resisted this idea. The possibility of chaos [[unintelligable]]. So many different quarrelsome creatures uncaged, set loose in a low ceiling shop, where even he had trouble finding room to turn around between the counters, pens, displays of paraphinalia, and heavy bubbling fish tanks. The chances for mischeif were [[unintelligable]] no question of that. But slow starvation was certain if he didn't let them in the store. Furthermore, he didn't want to be called fascist, didn't seem fair, monkey's saying that, making him look bad in front of the others. It was the one charge you couldn't defend yourself against. Against his better judgement, the watchdog rose on his hind legs and prayed this was the right thing to do. Forced open the cage with his teeth. [[unintelligable]] moved, monkey did not move. He drew breath loudly and stared at the open door. Cautiously, he stepped out, stood up to his full height, rubbed his bony hands together, then did a little dance and began throwing open the other cages one by one. Berkley cringed, the tarantula too. Monkey gave them a cold glance over one shoulder. "You should get to know 'em, Berkley! Don't be a biggot." Berkley shrank back as tarantula, an item ordered by a Heck's angel who never claimed him shambled out. Not so much an insect it seemed to Berkley. [[Unintelligable]] on legs. "Be fair!" he scolded himself. "He's okay, I'm okay, we're all okay." He watched helplessly as monkey smashed the ant farm, freed the birds, and then the entire troop united by the spirit of a bright common future, slithered, hopped, crawled, [[unintelligable]], flew, and clawed its way into the storeroom to feed. All except [[unintelligable]] old tortoise, who monkey happened to [[unintelligable]], who in fact, didn't want to be released, and snapped at monkey's fingers when he tried to open his cage. No one questioned

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Gloria Foster: Tortoise had escaped the year before, remaining at large for a week. And then he returned mysteriously on his own, his eyes strangely unfocused.

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[SILENCE]

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Gloria Foster: Hunched inside his shell, hardly eating at all. Tortoise lived in the shop, but you could hardly say he was part of it. And even the watch dog was a little leery of him.

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Gloria Foster: Berkeley for his part, had lost his hunger. He dragged himself wearily to the front door, barked frantically when a woman walked by, hoping she would stop, but after seeing the window sign, which read D-E-S-O-L-C, from his side, she stepped briskly on.

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Gloria Foster: His tail between his legs, he went slowly back to the store room, hoping for the best. But what he found there was no sight for a peace-loving watchdog.

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Gloria Foster: True to his word, Monkey had broken open the feed bags and boxes of food. But the animals who had always been kept apart by Tilford, discovered as they crowded into the tiny store room, and fell to eating, that sitting down to table with creatures so different in their gastronomic inclinations took the edge off their appetites. [[laughter]]

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Gloria Foster: The birds found the eating habits of the reptiles, who thought eggs were a delicacy, disgusting, and drew away in horror.

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Gloria Foster: The reptiles, who were proud of being cold-blooded and had an elaborate theory of beauty based on the aesthetics of scales, thought the body heat of the mammals clawing and nauseating, and refused to feed beside them.

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Gloria Foster: And this was fine for the mammals, who, led by Monkey, distrusted anyone odd enough to be born in an egg and dismissed them as low-lives on the evolutionary scale. [[laughter]]

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Gloria Foster: They were shoveling down everything, bird food, dog biscuits, and even the thin wafers reserved for the fish.

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Gloria Foster: "Don't touch that!", said Berkley, "The fish have to eat too, they can't leave the tanks."

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Gloria Foster: Monkey, startled by the watchdog, looked at the wafers in his fist thoughtfully for a second, then crammed them into his mouth. "That's their problem."

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Deep inside, Berkeley began grumbling bock, let it build slowly, and by the time it hit the air it was a full throated growl, so frightening that monkey jumped four maybe five feet in the air he threw the wafers at Berkeley, "OK OK give it to him but remember, one thing dog you’re a mammal too it’s unnatural to take sides against your own kind." Scornfully, the watch dog turned away, trembling with fury he snuff up the wafers in his mouth, carried them to the huge man sized tanks and dropped them in amongst the seahorses, guppies, and jellyfish throbbing like hots. Goldfish floated toward him his voice and fins fluttering he kept a slightly startled expression. "What the hell is going on? Where is Mr. Tilfid?" Berkeley strained to keep his voice steady, "gone for good?" asked goldfish. "Berkeley we heard what the others said, they'll let us starve." "No," he said, "I’ll protect you." Goldfish bubbled relief, then looked panicky again. "What if Tilfid doesn’t come back ever?" The watch dog let his head hang the thought, seem too terrible to consider. He said more to consult himself and goldfish, "It’s his shop, he has to come."

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Gloria Foster: "But suppose he is dead, like Monkey says!" Goldfish's unblinking, lidless eyes grabbed at Berkeley and refused to release his gaze. "Then it's our shop, right?" [[laughter]]

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Gloria Foster: "Eat your dinner."

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Gloria Foster: Goldfish called, "Berkeley, wait!"

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Gloria Foster: But the watchdog was deeply worried now. He returned miserably to the front door. He let fly a long, plaintive howl, his head tilted back like a mountaintop wolf silhouetted by the moon in a Warner Brother's cartoon. He did look like that.

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Gloria Foster: He- his insides hurting with the thought that if Tilford was dead, or indifferent to their problems, that if no one came to rescue them, then they were dead, too.

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Gloria Foster: True, there was a great deal of Tilford inside Berkeley, what he remembered from his training as a pup.

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Gloria Foster: But this faint sense of procedure and fair-play, hardly seemed enough to keep order in the shop, maintain the peace, and more important, provide for them as the old man had.

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Gloria Foster: He'd never looked upon himself as a leader, preferring to attribute his distaste for decision to a rare ability to see all sides.

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Gloria Foster: He was no hero like Old Yeller, or the legendary Gelert. And testing his ribs with his teeth, he wondered how much weight he'd lost from worry. Ten pounds? Twenty pounds?

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He covered both eyes with his black paws, whimpered a little, feeling a failure of nerve. A soft, white core of fear, like a slug in his stomach.

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Then he drew breath, and with it, knew determination. The owner couldn't be dead. Monkey would never convince him of that. He simply had business elsewhere, and when he returned, he would expect to find the shop as he left it. Maybe even running more smoothly like an old switch watch that he wound and left ticking.

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When the watchdog tightened his jaws they creaked at the hinges, but he tightened them all the same. His eyes narrowed. No evil had visited the shop from outside, he'd seen to that. "None," he vowed, "would destroy it from within."

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But he could not be everywhere at once. The corrosion grew day by day. Cracks and fissures began to appear. It seemed to Berkley everywhere and in places where he least expected him. Puzzles, and pyramidal plops were scattered underfoot like traps. Bacterial flies were everywhere. Then came the maggots. Hamsters gnawed at electrical cords in the storeroom. Frog fell sick with a genital infection. The fish, though the gentlest of creatures, caused undertow by demanding day and night protection, claiming that they were handicapped in the competition for food, confined to their tanks, and besides, they were the most ancient tree. "All life came from the sea," they argued. The others owed them.

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Old blood feuds between beast erupted to grudges so tired you'd have thought

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them log buried but not so. The Siamese began to give Berkley funny looks and left the room

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whenever he entered. Berkley let him be thinking he'd come to his senses. Instead, he jumped

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rampant, when Berkley wasn't looking. The product of this assault promising a new creature,

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a cabbot, with jackrabbit legs and long feline whiskers never seen in the pet shop before.

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Rabbit took this badly. [[Audience Laughter]] In the beginning she sniffed a great deal.

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And with good reason. Rape was a vicious thing. but her grief and pain got out of hand. And soon

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she was lot in it with no way out like a child in a dark forest and began organizing the females

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of every species to stop cohabiting with the males. [[Audience Laughter]] Berkley stood back, afraid

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to but in because rabbit said that it was, "None of his damn business." And he was as bad as all

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the rest. He pleaded reason, his eyes burnt out from sleeplessness, with Puffy bags

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beneath them, and when that did no good, he pleaded restraint. The storerooms half

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empty, he told monkey on the fifth day, "If we don't start rationing the food, we'll starve."

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"There's always food." Berkley didn't like the sound of that.

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Gloria Foster: "Where?" Smiling, Monkey swung his eyes to the fish tank.

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"Don't you go near those goldfish." Monkey stood at bay. His eyes tacked hatefully on Berkeley, who ground his

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teeth possessed by the sudden wild desire to bight him. but knowing finally that he had the upper hand in the pet shop, the power.

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In other words, bigger teeth. As much as he hated to admit, the only advantage if he hoped to hold the line, his only trump,

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if he truly wanted to keep them afloat, wa the fact that he outweighed them all. They were afraid of him.

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Oddly enough, the real validity of his values and view point rested, he realized, on his having the biggest paws.

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The thought fretted him. For all his idealism, truth was decided in the end by those who could be bloodiest

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in fang in claw. Yet and still, monkey had an arrogance that made Berkley weak in the knees.

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"Dog," he said, scratching under his eye, "Oughta sleep sometime." and so Berkely did.

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After hours of standing guard in the storeroom, or trying to console Rabbit who was now talking

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of aborting the Cabbot [[Audience Laughter]] begging her to reconsider, or reassuring the birds

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who crowded together in one corner against, they said, "Threatening moves from the reptiles."

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Or splashing various medicines on Frog, who's sickness now spread to the Iguana, after all this, Berkeley

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did drop, fitfully, to sleep by the front door.

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Gloria Foster: he slept, greedily, dreaming of better days. He twitched and woofed in his sleep, seeing himself

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shtupping the little French Poodle down the street [[Audience Laughter]]

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And it was good. Like making love to lightning, she moved so well with him. And then of his puppyhood, where his worst

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problems were remembering where he buried food from Tilford's table. Or figuring out how to sneak away from his mother, who told

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him, "All dogs have cold noses because they were late coming to the Arc, and had to ride next to the rail."

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His dreams cycled on as all dreams do, with greater and greater clarity from one chamber of vision

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to the next until he saw, just before waking, the final draw of dreamworks spill open

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on the owners return. Splendidly dressed; wearing a bowler hat and carrying a walking stick,

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sober, with a gentle smile for Berkeley (Berkeley was sure) Tilford threw open the Pet Shoppe door

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In a blast of wind, and burst of preternatural brilliance that rayed the whole room

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evaporated every shadow, and brought the squabbling, the conflict of interpretations, mutations, and internecine battles to a halt.

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No one dared move. They stood frozen like a fish in ice, or a bird caught in the crosswinds,

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The colorless light behind the owner so blinding, it obliterated their outlines,

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blurred their precious differences as ef- as if each were a rill of the same ancient

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light somehow imprisoned in form. With being formed itself, the most preposterous of

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conditions, outrageous, when you thought it threw because it occasioned suffering, ment

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seperation from other forms and the illusion of identity. But even this ended like a dream within the watchdogs dream

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and only he and the owner remained.

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reaching down, he stroked Berkeley's head.

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Gloria Foster: Like God, whispering to Samuel, "well done." It was all Berkeley ever wanted.

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He woofed again snoring like a sow and scratched in his sleep. He heard the owner whisper begun,

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which was a pretty strange thing for him to say even for Tilford,

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even in a dream; his ears, strained forward; begun Tilford said again, and for an instant,

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Berkeley thought he had the tense wrong, intending to say now we can begin

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or something prophetically appropriate like that, but suddenly he was awake

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and Parrot was flapping his wings and shouting into Berkeley‘s ear.

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"The gun," said Parrot, "Monkey has it!" Berkeley's eyes still phlegmed by sleep,

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blearily panned, the counter, the room was swimming, full of smoke from a fire

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in the storeroom. He was short of wind and worse, he forgotten about the gun.

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A Smith & Wesson that Tilford had bought after pet shop owners in Seattle were struck by thieves,

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who specialized in stealing, exotic birds. Monkey had it now. Berkeley's water ran down his legs.

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He'd propped the pistol between the cash register, and a display of plastic dog

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collars and his wide, yellow grin was frighteningly like that of a general

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congress just given the go ahead to on a scorched earth policy. [[Audience Laughter]] “Get it”

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said Parrot, "You promised to protect us, Berkeley"

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Gloria Foster: For a few fibrous seconds, he stood, trembling, paw deep in dung.

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The odor of decay, burning his lungs, but he couldn’t come full awake,

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and still, he felt himself to be on the fringe of a dream, his hair moist,

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because dreaming of the French poodle made him sweat, but the pistol... there

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was no power balance now. He'd been out-played. No hope unless he took it away

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circling the counter, head low and growling or trying to work up a decent growl,

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Berkeley crept to the cash register his chest pounding, bunched his legs to leap

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then sprang, pretending the black explosion of flame and smoke was like television gun fire,

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though it ripped skin right off his ribs, sent teeth flying down his throat and

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blew him back like an empty pelt against Tortois's cage.

00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:09.000
He lay still now he felt nothing in his legs. Purple blood like that deepest

00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:16.000
in the body cascade to the floor from his side, rushing out with each heartbeat,

00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:26.000
and he lay twitching a little only seeing now that he'd slept too long.

00:39:26.000 --> 00:39:36.000
Flames licked along the floor. fish floated belly up in a dark unplugged fish tank.

00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:45.000
The females had torn Siamese to pieces Speckled Lizards were busy sucking baby Canaries

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:55.000
from their eggs, and in the holy ruin of the pet shop, the Tarantula roamed free over the

00:39:55.000 --> 00:40:06.000
corpses of Frog and Iguana. Beneath him, Berkeley heard the ancient Tortoise stir, clearing a rusty throat

00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:14.000
clogged from disuse only he would survive the spreading fire given his armor.

00:40:14.000 --> 00:40:23.000
His eyes burning, from the smoke, The watchdog tried to explain his dream before the blaze

00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:37.410
reached them ,"We could have endured. We had enough in common. For Christ's sake, we’re all animals!"

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:50.000
Gloria Foster: "Indeed," said Tortoise grimly, his eyes like headlight's in a

00:40:50.000 --> 00:41:01.000
shell that echoed cavernously. "Indeed."

00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:45.000
[[Audience Clapping]]

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Unknown: During intermission, friends, the box office is open and tickets are on sale for fut-

00:41:48.000 --> 00:43:30.000
Silence

00:43:30.000 --> 00:42:41.000
A few selected shorts, a couple of coming attractions announcements, this Monday

00:42:41.000 --> 00:42:47.000
movies, and our Italian Film festival on Monday evenings, this week at seven thirty on Monday night,

00:42:47.000 --> 00:42:54.000
the original uncut version of this Visconti's film about the mad emperor Ludwig. A rare opportunity to see this

00:42:54.000 --> 00:43:00.000
film in this form, so please do come. A radio reminder, this weeks radio shorts, Sunday evening from

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:07.000
six to seven p.m. on WNYC, 93.9 on your F.M. dial, this week, Gloria Foster reads Bessy

00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:12.000
Head and Linda Lavin reads Grace Paley so tune in Sunday evening. Then, a week from

00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:18.000
this Saturday, on March 28th, 11am to 11pm, Cynthia Space leads off the 8th week celebration

00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:25.000
by 11 New York organizations of the 100th anniversary of the death in 1892 of America's great

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:32.000
poet visionary Walt Whitman. Leaves of grass, our event, will be a 12 hour Whitmaniacle

00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:37.000
weaving of which the warf and whoof will be the poems of leaves and grass plus Whitman's

00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:42.000
Prose works, specimen days, his letters, all read by 60 notable actors, including many of your

00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:47.000
favorite shorts readers. Musical settings of Whitman, for chorists and soloists including 5 world

00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:54.000
premiers of new setting that we've commissioned for that day. Whitman's letters, kids from PS75

00:43:54.000 --> 00:43:59.000
in children's poem inspired by Whitman, leaders of government industry and the arts reading his predictions

00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:04.000
from democratic vistas. This will be the only theatrical appearances this season of such folks as

00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:09.000
Congressman Ted Weiss and Bill Green, [[Audience Laughter]] Burrough president Ruth Messinger, Grace Paley,

00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:14.000
Assemblyman Jerrold Nadler making a rare stage appearance, Senators David Patterson and Franz Leichter

00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:20.000
Council speaker Peter Vallone, in his theatrical debut, and as Walt Whitman would say, lots more.

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:26.000
Sex, war, politics, lyrical beauty, and it's all free a week from Saturday. That's 11

00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:32.000
in the morning. Now folks, a moment for some personal service, the kind of

00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:36.000
thing that makes you want to give large tax deductible contributions [[audience laughter]]

00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:42.000
to symphony space. This is from last weeks village voice and the classified personal ads I'm not making it up

00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:53.000
the ad read, "Larry at Selective Shorts, March 4th, enjoyed our conversation." [[Audience Laughter"]]

00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:58.000
"Let's meet for coffee. Victoria." And then Victoria giver her telephone number.

00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:08.000
Now Larry, [[Audience Laughter]] man to man, if you're sitting here

00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:12.000
and perhaps he isn't, March 4th was a non-subscription night, he could have been anybody,

00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:19.000
but if you can here this Larry, there are several possibilities. A) you saw the ad and you called.

00:45:19.000 --> 00:45:23.000
If so, fine, I have nothing further to say, you're both consenting adults

00:45:23.000 --> 00:45:30.000
and what follows is none of Symphony Spaces business. B) You saw the ad and you didn't call.

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:35.000
In which case, ditto, life can be cruel, I think it's a shame, but ditto.

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:40.000
Or C) You didn't see the ad at all because you don't read the Village Voice

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:43.000
and who can blame you, I don't either. Someone called the ad to our attention,

00:45:43.000 --> 00:45:48.000
But if this is the case, two other possibilities occur now that tonight's intermission is over

00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:54.000
and we'll call them D an E. D) You never saw the ad but you and Victoria just happened [Speaker Laughs]

00:45:54.000 --> 00:46:00.000
[Audience Laughter] happened to run into each other tonight at intermission. And everything is going just fine

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:08.000
and you don't need me, but also possible is E) You never saw the ad, you have not seen Victoria

00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:14.000
here tonight, either because she's not here, or because after all, a woman has her pride and while

00:46:14.000 --> 00:46:17.000
you're worth the price of an ad, you're not the only man that ever walked on God's earth

00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:24.000
Larry, and so now Larry, you are sitting here totally surprised by all this, intrigued

00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:31.000
flattered, provoked, stimulated, and wondering what to do. Look for her after the show is over,

00:46:31.000 --> 00:46:37.000
and explain your failure to call, but what if she's not here? Call her? What's her number?

00:46:37.000 --> 00:46:42.000
that issue of the voice is no longer on the stands, Larry you are in trouble, but don't worry, I have the number.

00:46:42.000 --> 00:46:50.000
I'm not gonna say it out loud now, in public for fear of embarrassing Victoria, though for God's sake

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:55.000
she published her number in the Village Voice, but I will be standing near the exit door after the show,

00:46:55.000 --> 00:47:00.000
and you can get the number from me as a community service from the neighborhood arts organization that cares

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:02.000
[[audience laughter]]

00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:13.000
And now- Victoria. Victoria. Man to woman, Victoria. If it's A, C, D, or E, you know

00:47:13.000 --> 00:47:21.000
where we stand, good luck to you, but if B, you never here from him, forget about him. See me later, we have a

00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:26.000
list of eligible, attractive, literary subscribers for a small tax deductible contribution less than

00:47:26.000 --> 00:47:31.000
another voice ad. You can have the numbers of 12 of them, 6 of them named Larry. [audience laughter]

00:47:31.000 --> 00:47:38.000
See me. Thank you. [Audience Laughter].

00:47:38.000 --> 00:47:48.000
Now, to present this evening final story, here once again is out host for this evening, Toni Cade Bambara

00:47:48.000 --> 00:47:54.000
[[Audience Clapping]]

00:47:54.000 --> 00:48:01.000
Toni Cade Bambara: Thank you. Just back from Jamaica is Charles Keating. Who's just completed a pilot

00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:06.000
for the Hallsy-Brett production, Going to Extremes. This is the same outfit

00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:10.000
that brought Northern Exposure to television, and I'm sure Mr. Keating is familiar

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:19.000
to all of you from Another World. He'll be [[Laughter]] [[Audience Laughter]]

00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:25.000
He'll be reading an excerpt from a rather extraordinary piece, called Meditations on History

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:31.320
by Sherley Anne Williams, a Fresno reared, San Diego based educator.

00:48:33.000 --> 00:49:03.000
{Speaker 1} Screenwriter, poet, novelist, critic, and storiest. Sherley Anne does something boldly unexpected in Invitations. Most practitioners who attempt to encourage and equip us to re-vision the past, such as Toni Morrison in "Beloved", Gail Jones in "Corregidora", Ishmael Reed in "Flight to Canada", Al Young in "Everything." Um.

00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:36.000
{Speaker 1} Make use of elements from the emancipatory narrative tradition- that tradition that we've been trained to call the slave narratives. From the abolitionist tradition. Sherley, adopts a writing form that was characteristic of the 19th Century pro-slavery pseudo-scientific industry, that attempted to answer such mind-boggling questions as: "Why do enslaved Africans run?"

00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:40.000
[[laughter]]

00:49:40.000 --> 00:50:16.000
{Speaker 1} That is to say she appropriates a reactionary method for an emancipatory enterprise, and in making- in doing this, she makes a pact between the character Odessa and the reader against the narrator: a Euro-American pseudo-scientific pro-slavery big dog, and in this pact encourages us to liberate ourselves from delusional thinking from the conventional ideas of historiography.

00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:28.000
{Speaker 1} "Meditations on History" is available in a double-anthology by Mary Helen Washington called, "Black Eyed Susans and Midnight Birds", and here with the excerpt is Charles Keeling.

00:50:28.000 --> 00:50:37.000
[[applause]]

00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:43.730
{Charles Keeling} Good evening, it's good to be here again. Give me half a second, yeah? To get set up.

00:50:52.000 --> 00:51:01.000
Charles Keeling: It's always easier than you think, isn't it? [[coughs]]

00:51:01.000 --> 00:51:15.000
[SILENCE]

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:24.000
Charles Keeling: The Hughes Farm, near Linden, Merango County, Alabama. June 9th, 1829.

00:51:24.000 --> 00:51:50.000
Charles Keeling: I must admit to a slight yearning for the comfort of the Lyndon House. A comfort that is quite remarkable, considering Lyndon's out-of-the-way location, but Sheriff Hughes' refuse generous offer of hospitality enables me to be close at hand for the questioning of the negress in this circumstance must outweigh. The porosity of creature comforts, which his gable room provides.

00:51:50.000 --> 00:52:02.000
Charles Keeling: The negress is housed here in a little used root cellar until such time of sentencing could be carried out. Hughes told me at dinner tonight the amusing story of how the negress came to be housed in his cellar.

00:52:02.000 --> 00:52:07.032
[SILENCE]