Tuesday, January 12, 2021
update
Sometimes I get reflective, even depressed, about my role as a Quaker. Am I good enough to be a leader? A lot of us have this kind of self-doubt, but in my case it's more like I need the Quakers more than they need me.
On the positive side, I have written a book and a half of Quaker plays, and there aren't many Quaker playwrights around. A visitor at a recent Cloud Quakers looked familiar, and sure enough, I think he was at a performance of Lucretia Mott, which might have been twenty years ago or more, in St. Louis. But it was the highlight of my play-directing life, as I had about 9 or 10 kids (we couldn't quite get them all up to St. Louis, about two hours, but we got most of them), and they all knew their lines pretty well, and people really liked it. It was a special occasion.
My second book of plays is all in a computer that has just frozen up. That's part of the negative side. I just have been having trouble actually producing anything, and feeling good about it, and making it all quakerly. I'm kind of stuck on Nixon, to tell the truth. He kind of got under my craw almost as bad as Trump. And I feel, watching all these people vandalizing and all, that I was almost mad enough back then to do the same. But I didn't, and I'm glad of that. Because, even if they don't have any of those cameras, that kind of stuff comes back to haunt you.
That reminds me of what I really wanted to say - that 50 years ago wasn't really all that long ago, in terms of a lifetime. Now I'm on the side of defending order, and justice, and propriety and all that. But there was a time when we were all out there wondering, if the government really let us down, shouldn't we go and make noise? I'm struck by the deep sense of woundedness of all these demonstrators. Maybe they feel like, as white rural outcasts, the world has just left them behind.
Grist for another play, I guess.
