 "Patti Liszkay is an Ohio-based playwright and author. Listen to her advice on how to write a popular blog, how she made the move from plays to novels and how she aims for universal appeal when writing comedy." - Author Groupie 100, Under Quarantine, And Still Fabulous  Ten years ago my mother celebrated her 90th birthday with a family party to which she also invited 200 of only her closest friends. (I'm serious. She wanted to invite more people). My sister-in-law, who'd overseen the considerable logistics of the celebration from renting the venue to ordering the invitations to arranging the decorations and food, joked afterwards with my mom that pretty soon we'd have to start planning for her hundredth birthday party. "Oh, I'll never make it to one hundred," I recall my mother chuckling. "Yes you will," said my sister-in-law, "and wait 'til you see that party." My mother did, indeed make it to one hundred years last Wednesday, June 24. But how strange that she should reach this birthday when the world is in the grip of a pandemic and instead of celebrating her century of life surrounded by her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and some good old friends, she should be isolated on this day from her near and dear ones under the restrictions of quarantine and the rules of social distancing. And yet, thanks to the kind, caring staff at Sunrise of Gahanna, the senior care facility where my mother is a resident in the Memory Care unit,  ...my mom did have her 100th birthday party, such as parties have become in the age of COVID-19. The wonderful Sunrise Activities Coordinator organized a quarantine-friendly community drive-by party, decorating the front porch with banners and balloons,   ...including a banner sent by one of my sisters-in-law. I sent over cake for the Sunrise residents and staff. According to the quarantine rules, I was allowed to be present at a safe distance, so a chair was set up for me at the other end of the porch from my mom. While one of the staff was at the CVS parking lot across the street from Sunrise organizing the participants of the drive-by, other staff members gathered around the porch,    ...and the birthday girl was led outside to her place of honor.   Buddy, the Sunrise resident dog, came out for the festivities.    At 3 pm the party guests arrived, kind friends recruited by the Sunrise staff and some of my friends,  ...who drove by and offered their good wishes.  Among the guests were my daughter, son-in-law and grand daughters from California who are quarantining with us here in Ohio for part of the summer.   After the drive-by guests left my mom received a group phone call, set up by my sister, from her children and some of her grandchildren,  Then she opened her cards and gifts,   Among the gifts she received was a star bracelet made by my grand daughter and a rosary bracelet from me.  She also received a letter from Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who, along with birthday wishes, also thanked my mom for her military service as a World War II U.S. Army Nurse.   A photograph of my Mom taken at the U.S. Naval base in San Juan, Puerto Rico where she was stationed during World War II  After the the festivities had wound down my mom said, "What I'd like to do now is take everyone out for big ice cream sundaes! Isn't there an ice cream store around here?" I explained - well, lied - to her that unfortunately there wasn't, but one of the staff members showed her one of the cakes I'd brought over and told her - truthfully - they were now going back inside for cake and ice cream with her friends, and she seemed happy that her party was still going on.  And so, though it wasn't the 100th birthday party we her family had imagined for our mother ten years ago or even four months ago, she seemed perfectly delighted by her drive-by party, which in fact seemed perfect, just enough, just right. Nor could we have asked for more love, kindness and good wishes than were showered upon our mother that day.  Still, it was a bittersweet moment for me when I had to kiss my mom good-bye from afar; a reminder, as almost everything is these days, of the times we live in.
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 On a number of occasions I've heard or read remarks from people who support Donald Trump to the effect that although they disapprove of his lying, his tweeting, his ineptitude, his nasty obnoxious language, his immorality, and his bad behavior in general, they still support him because of his conservative policy positions and his commitment to turning the Supreme Court into a politically far-right entity. What an ironic turn last week, then, for those who've spent three-and-a-half years holding their noses and tolerating Trump's malfeasance when the Supreme Court with its majority of conservative justices, two of them hand-picked by Donald Trump himself, nonetheless delivered two major defeats to the conservative agenda when the Court ruled not only that transgenders have rights in the workplace but that the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers who were brought to this country as small children have the right to stay here. These are rulings that might as well have been handed down by a Supreme Court shaped by Hillary Clinton. But perhaps the opinions of the highest court in this country are really shaped not so much by whether the Justices are liberal or conservative, but by We, the People. If a Supreme Court Justice is astute and insightful they will know that - as Lin Manuel Miranda might put it - history has its eyes on them, and each of these judges will themselves be judged by history. And we are now living in a moment in history when the American public is calling out for tolerance, equality, inclusiveness, and civil rights, and not even Donald Trump's megaphone mouth, ham fists, appointed judges and personal army of automatronic puppet sycophants can hold back the tidal wave of change that is washing over our country. Further irony is that it is Donald Trump himself who has been a driving force behind the very tidal wave that he now can't stop. Trump has solidified a deep divisiveness among Americans and stoked public outrage by his cruel policies against immigrants, his attempts at suppression of LGBTQ rights and his encouragement of White Nationalist and racist attitudes in this country, attitudes that were bad enough when they were forced to stay put under the rock of social censure. But it's been during Trump's presidency that racism, bigotry, homophobia and xenophobia have boldly slithered out from under that rock and risen to their ugly ascendancy. But, of course, there's far more to the social changes going on in our country than a reaction to the doctrines of Donald Trump. It's taken one too many acts of police brutality, one too many murders against a person of color, for white America to finally be shocked into awareness - no, not true awareness, nowhere near true awareness, but perhaps the the merest hint of a shadow of awareness - of the realities of life for people of color in this country. So let the statues that have celebrated the sins of oppression, slavery, and racism come down. Take down all the remaining symbols of our national shame and let them cease to oppress those whose ancestors suffered under the power of the men of which they are the representations. And by all means, make Juneteenth a national holiday. Let Juneteenth be a day of remembrance and a celebration of heritage for those whose ancestors were freed from the cruel, evil yoke of slavery. And let Juneteenth also be a day of celebration for all Americans that on June 19, 1865, the day slavery was finally abolished in the United States, this land became a better place than it had been since the first African slave was brought to the shores of Virginia in 1619. One hundred and fifty-five years later we as country still have far to go. But hopefully these days we're getting a little closer.  Reference: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/interactive/slavery-united-states/ MEET DONALD TRUMP'S OTHER SON. PAGE 31 "Hail Mary," sequel to "Equal and Opposite Reactions," is now available on Amazon. Only $5.99 on Kindle https://www.amzn.com/1684334888 "A hilarious, bizarre, sometimes ribald tale." -R. Bruce Logan, author of "As The Lotus Blooms" "Liszkay continues to dazzle with fresh and funny characters from beginning to end." -Daniel B. Oliver, author of "The Long Road"  The Law Is Catching Up with Jesus, Doctor Seuss And Most Of The Rest Of Us  I don't have a law degree from Harvard or Columbia. I'm not possessed of a brilliant mind or a great intellect or profound wisdom. I haven't made a career of studying, deconstructing, and interpreting the law. I'm not a member of the United States Supreme Court. But even without all that I could have told you that everyone deserves to be treated fairly. Isn't that just basic morality, learned from childhood, taken for granted by every decent human being? Did it really take many battalions of lawyers, judges and justices of the highest level fifty years of poring over arcane legal ifs, buts, and what-have-yous to come to the amazing conclusion two days ago that it's wrong to deny one group of people the same civil rights in the workplace as are given to everyone else? I could have told you that. In fact decades earlier Dr. Seuss clearly elucidated the concept in his children's story, "The Sneetches."  And twenty centuries before that Jesus summed it all up in less than a dozen words: "Treat others as you would want them to treat you." But here we are, twenty centuries and millions of words later, and finally the most learned lawyers in the land have declared that the same employment laws that have always protected one group should protect us all, whether we're plain-bellied, star-bellied,  ...switch-bellied,  ...or somewhere-in-between-bellied. So to speak. And this is good. It's a cause for celebration, even if it's taken twenty centuries for the way we should have been treating each other all along to become law.  Though most of us probably didn't need a law to tell us that everyone should be treated fairly. We already had Jesus and Dr. Seuss.  YOU NEED SOMETHING GOOD TO READ. "HAIL MARY," SEQUEL TO "EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTIONS," IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. https://www.amzn.com/1684334888 "A hilarious, bizarre, sometimes ribald tale." -R. Bruce Logan, author of "As The Lotus Blooms" "Liszkay continues to dazzle with fresh and funny characters from beginning to end." -Daniel B. Oliver, author of "The Long Road"  The Night We Met Yo-Yo Ma  While writing the post last week about cellist Sara Swain, who took up Yo-Yo Ma's #Songs of Comfort challenge (See post from 6/4/2020, "A Couple Points of Light, Part 2: #Songs of Comfort by Sara Swain), I was reminded of the time my daughters Maria and Claire and I met Yo-Yo Ma. My four children studied strings from a young age, the girls cello, my son violin (his choice; since his two older sisters played the cello he picked up the notion that cellos were for girls). Here they are performing together at a party in the summer of 1993,  ...and here at Nordstroms around Christmas time in 2001, the last time all four performed publicly together,  ...though they still goofed off together when the opportunity arose,  ...and they did play at each others' weddings.   According to the date on the the photographs I took, it was January 19, 1994 that Maria, Claire and I met master cellist and United Nations Messenger of Peace, Yo-Yo Ma (here in a more recent picture than when we met him),  ...and world-renowned pianist Peter Serkin (also in a more recent picture),  ...after a concert the two musicians played together that evening at the Ohio Theater in Columbus. It was my daughters' cello teacher who'd impressed upon them that, as young cellists themselves, seeing Yo-Yo Ma perform would be an inspiration, and added the incentive that if we went to the concert she'd arrange for us to meet him afterwards. "He's really a regular Joe," said their teacher of the most celebrated cellist in the world. And so I got our tickets for the Yo-Yo Ma/Peter Serkin concert, which we awaited with anticipation. As it turned out, the concert almost didn't happen. On the day of the concert there was a storm of snow and sleet, and by evening the streets were treacherous. However the concert wasn't cancelled, and I decided to make the drive downtown to the Ohio Theater, oh so slowly and carefully. We arrived to a less than half-full theater, and shortly before the performance was scheduled to begin it was announced that the concert would be delayed, as the musicians' plane had been delayed due to the weather. So we waited, though I don't remember how long. I think the delay might have been an hour or so. But the musicians finally arrived on stage - dressed in their traveling clothes. Apparently their luggage had been lost along the way. At the beginning of the performance a smiling Yo-Yo Ma said, "Welcome, everyone, to the first of the Casual Concert Series." The girls' cello teacher later remarked that it's likely that a different pair of celebrities might have insisted that they must have their formal performance attire and held up the concert even longer while assistants scrabbled around Columbus trying to round up tuxedos. But, thankfully, Yo-Yo Ma and Peter Serkin didn't feel the need to belabor this detail. The concert was wonderful, and to us it felt all the more special and intimate to see the famous musicians playing in their everyday clothes. The encore was an exciting surprise as Yo-Yo Ma and his accompanist played a cello piece that Maria and Claire had played (and Theresa would eventually play), the Bach Allegro Moderato.  Yo-Yo Ma, however, added some of his own beautiful ornamentation to the piece, and Peter Serkin played a more scintillating piano accompaniment than I, my children's accompanist, ever did. My daughters' teacher told us that Yo-Yo Ma was known for sometimes performing student-level pieces so that some of the cello students in the audience might recognize a piece they played. After the concert we met up with the girls' cello teacher at the arranged rendez-vous point near the front of the theater. The teacher then took us to a clandestine elevator that went to a level beneath the theater where there were dressing and waiting rooms for the performers. Years later when my youngest daughter Theresa was a member of the Columbus Children's Choir she and the other choir members and I and the other choir parents would spend considerable time in that same waiting area.  But that night was my first time backstage. Or rather, beneath stage. We waited with the teacher among the other people there to see the performers. When Yo-Yo Ma and Peter Serkin entered the area Yo-Yo Ma was set upon by a group of young people, evidently ardently admiring fans, who surrounded him for photos and autographs.  As the path to Peter Serkin was clearer, we approached him for a picture, with which he graciously obliged us.  It seemed pretty clear that we wouldn't be able to get close to Yo-Yo Ma, who was still surrounded, so we just stood off at a small distance and watched him smile and joke with the crowd around him.  However at one point he looked beyond the crowd over to us standing by ourselves. He called us over. "Would you like to take a photo?" he asked. We sure did. In fact we took a couple.   Claire, who had brought her cello repertory book, then asked him if he would autograph it. He opened it to the first song - which happened to be one of the movements of the Seitz Concerto - and at the top of the page drew a little elephant head with a cartoon bubble coming from its trunk saying, "Good job!" Sadly, that book - Suzuki Cello Volume 4 - was lost in the shuffle somewhere, I think it was during a music workshop the girls attended that summer, and had to be replaced with a new one, unsigned by Yo-Yo Ma. The following year the girls began studying with a new teacher, Bin,   ...who, it turned out, had studied with Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood.
Small world.  These days, with murder victim George Floyd looming large in minds and hearts all across the planet, I sometimes find myself thinking about his mother, the person he cried out for in his final agonized breath as the life was being slowly, painfully crushed out of him. “Momma!” George Floyd called out, “Momma! I’m through.” George Floyd's mother died two years ago. But if she were still alive how would her heart not be shattered? When would her pain ever end? What mother doesn't feel a stab of pain reading those words and imagining her own child being so cruelly and heartlessly tortured to death, their murder carried out as a public horror show? William Shakespeare wrote, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." If George Floyd's mother were still alive I wonder if she would ponder in her sorrow the greatness that was thrust upon her son in that most terrible way. I wonder if she would cull any comfort today, knowing that as his body is laid to its final rest in Houston, Texas,  ...from his death has been born a great national movement demanding police reform, social justice, and racial equality. I wonder if she would have been able to wrap her mind around the fact that her son, the child she held in her arms and watched grow from babyhood to boyhood to manhood, would, in the last eight minutes and forty-seven seconds of his life, change the world, change history and be forever remembered and revered. And I wonder if George Floyd's mother would trade all the good his death will bring about, all the everlasting honor his name will invoke, just to have her son back again. Today, on the day of George Floyd's burial, as his mother cannot be there to say a few words of love to her son, this mother would like to offer a few words. Mine are not the words his own mother would say, but words from an old Joan Baez song decrying the death of two Italians at the hands of the American justice system, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti - who may have been victims of bigotry against their nationality - in 1920's. Their death brought about a national cry at that time for social tolerance and justice reforms for the working class.  So today I offer Joan Baez's hauntingly beautiful, dirge-like song, "Here's To You," as my eulogy to George Floyd.  I've changed the original names to his name: Here's to you, George Rest forever here in our hearts The last and final moment is yours That agony is your triumph  May you be with your mother now.
 On March 13 master cellist and internationally-renowned nice guy Yo-Yo Ma,  ...performed a beautiful rendition of "Going Home" from Dvorak's "New World Symphony" and then posted it on Youtube. Here's the Youtube link for Yo-Yo Ma's performance of "Going Home." : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBOkHfvNSY  This heart-touching song was the starting point of a project Ma conceived and named #Songs of Comfort. #Songs of Comfort was a call by Yo-Yo Ma to musicians everywhere, encouraging them to post online videos of themselves playing their music in an effort to bring some comfort and cheer to people during this time of sickness, anxiety and isolation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Musicians from all over the world have answered Yo-Yo Ma's call and have been making and sharing music videos online. Among them is Chicago cellist Sara Swain.  Sara is a member of the Evanston Symphony and also manages Foundation and Government Relations for the Chicago area music festival Ravinia. In addition, Sara is a master baker of special-request birthday cakes,   ...even if the request is for an Elsa shark cake.  She's a connoisseur of chocolate chip cookie dough by the bowl - not the ice cream, the actual dough -  ...though she'll eat the ice cream, too.  Sara is an aficionado of all things sparkly and fun,  ...and, of course, of the cello;  ...and Sara is a former housemate and close friend of my daughter Claire.  Of such a sunny good nature is Sara that her fellow sunny good-natured cellist Yo-Yo Ma would doubtless be proud that her job once entailed the opportunity to hold his Stradivarius before one of his Chicago performances.  (She probably gave Yo-Yo Ma's Strad some extra-good karma). Like cellists everywhere, Sara is a devout disciple of Master Ma. And so when he asked musicians to share songs of comfort Sara's response was, "When Yo-Yo Ma says, 'Jump!' I say, 'How high?'" On March 20 Sara joined the #Songs of Comfort project and since then she has jumped high, indeed. Instead of posting a cello piece, she has posted a cello piece every day on her Facebook page and intends to continue posting a song a day as long as there is a need, in her words, for "some calm during these turbulent times." And so Sara is the second point of light in my "A Couple Points of Light." series. (For the first see the post from 5/28/2020: "A Couple Points Of Light, Part 1: The Gift Of Laughter From Mark R. Harris"). So far Sara has performed and posted a song every day, 77 songs as of today.  Her #Songs of Comfort repertory is full of the cello classics: Bach, www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163588265840150/ Mozart, https://www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163554642900150/  Fauré, www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163147222995150/ ...and Webster, among others. www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163554605420150/?t=8  But she also takes requests, among which have been for: "Yesterday" www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163162480715150/?t=15www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163168351785150/?t=6 "I Can't Help Falling in Love with You" www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163535596785150/?t=2 "A Whole New World" www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163572160065150/?t=6 "Hallelujah" www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163181587640150/ "Ashokan Farewell" www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163162480715150/?t=15 ...and "She thinks My Tractor's Sexy" by Kenny Chesney. https://www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163514011495150/?t=84  Several days ago Sara played the hauntingly beautiful Vivaldi Sonata in E Minor, calling it a sad song for her sad city, yet offering the hope that "we can come back from this- and stronger!" www.facebook.com/sara.swain.77/videos/10163593480525150/?t=80 You can find Sara Swain's #Songs of Comfort on her Facebook page. The songs are lovely. As is Sara.  YOU NEED SOMETHING GOOD TO READ. "HAIL MARY," SEQUEL TO "EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTIONS," IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. "A hilarious, bizarre, sometimes ribald tale." -R. Bruce Logan, author of "As The Lotus Blooms" "Liszkay continues to dazzle with fresh and funny characters from beginning to end." -Daniel B. Oliver, author of "The Long Road" |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY 
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio 
Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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