Happy Fourth of July weekend, everybody. Last week we published a post Mike wrote about his visit to Pittsburgh and to the area in Western Pennsylvania where his parents grew up, and his visit with his cousin Linda. Well, that sparked Linda to write about one of the unique facets of the small town near the Monongahela River where her mother and Mike’s father were raised. Enjoy.

by Linda K. Porter

It’s here again: The 4^th of July weekend celebration of independence. Parades, fireworks, bells, whistles, and backyard picnics are already planned, and invitations are out.

No bar codes, no scanners. Just trust.

Our farmers market opened in Denbo once again this past week. Denbo has its own rich story, and my mother, Michael’s father, and our six other aunts and uncles all grew up together in a small two-bedroom house there. Juicy red garden tomatoes, delectable green onions, and crunchy green cucumbers are now available at the Denbo farmers market for 4^th of July picnic tables. The Ratica family has farmed the land for three generations and started to sell their goods to the locals about ten years ago. Word of mouth spread quickly, and customers are driving short and long distances to partake of the organic bounty.

It’s probably a lot like other farmers markets–except for one thing.

Our farmers market is based on the “honor system.” No cash register, no clerk to help with your purchase, no change, no credit, and no checks. The stand is devoid of modern technology. Farmer Bob Ratica restocks the vegetables once or twice daily and labels each package with a price. For a little over two bucks, you can buy three large tomatoes. One bite, and you would pay double or triple to get another. The buyer adds up the purchase, and deposits the money into a small slot in a locked money box: Dimes, nickels, and quarters are welcome.

And that’s it.

A roadside sign explains it all.

Attempts to cheat the farmer will get you something of a scarlet letter. I know of only one instance where someone was stealing. It has been said that Mr. Ratica caught the perpetrator by hiding out behind an old building nearby. The farmer didn’t even confront the thief, but instead posted a sign on a piece of jagged edged cardboard with a message in bold black marker: “Bubba Smith is Not Welcome Here.” (Name has been changed to protect the real Bubba from further scorn.)

As summer evolves, the farm will be stocked with corn, potatoes, watermelon and cantaloupe. There has also been asparagus, zucchini, parsley, beets, cabbage, lettuce and herbs. Farmer Ratica guarantees all of his products, and I don’t know of anyone who has requested a refund. This hardworking farmer, son of immigrants, good friend of the Knezovich brothers, has placed his trust in his neighbors.

In light of Mike’s visit back to his Denbo roots last weekend, I forgot to remind him: We don’t have coal or steel any longer, but we still have honor.

Happy 4^th of July!

In my playwriting post last week I promised a second post with more details on my failed attempt to memorize and perform a monologue without being able to see the script – or the audience.

I wrote my two-minute dog monolog on my talking computer, then listened to it line by line and repeated the lines one at a time onto a voice recorder. Throughout the week I’d listen to the recording, and I made a special point to do so before swimming laps for exercise. That way I could rehearse underwater, too.

And still, I arrived at class the next week feeling uneasy, and, of course, I flubbed my lines. So. Is it more difficult to memorize a script when you can’t read print? Would reading my monolog over and over throughout the week (rather than listening to it) have made my memorization efforts more of a success?

I don’t know.

The next classs went much better. We didn’t have to hand in that assignment, we just had to perform it. The teachers wouldn’t have my script in front of them. They couldn’t know if I was memorizing or ad libbing. Performing my piece in class this past Saturday was far less nerve-racking.

Our homework last week was to choose a famous book or play or movie, write a two-minute interpretation of that work, and perform it as a play in class. The play could be a one-person show or we could ask fellow students to take parts, too.

Our class is studying the Too Much Light (TML) style. We’re creating very short minimalist plays. No costumes (actors just wear their street clothes) and no elaborate set design. Each short play starts by announcing the title and saying, “Go!” Plays end by simply calling out “Curtain!”

A teacher sat next to me to describe the action when my classmates performed their pieces Saturday. I was one of three classmates helping one writer perform his interpretation of Batman, another enlisted other students to perform her piece on Harry Potter.

I was born to play the part. Here I am with friends at a high school costume party in 1976 — we’re dressed as the characters from Wizard of Oz. (photo courtesy of Laura Gale).

My favorite was the two-minute interpretation of the movie Titanic: It opened with a woman sitting in a chair with her back to us, hugging herself, moaning and making kissy sounds throughout the entire two-minute play. This was a minimalist portrayal of a character making out with someone non-stop. A second actor would periodically approach the make-out artist, nudge her chair and say, “Hey!” You know, like, “Hey – I’m out here!” The make-out artist wouldn’t even look, just simply shake her off.

The actor doing the nudging happens to use a wheelchair, which, to me, made the scene even more effective. She’d roll away, come back, nudge the make-out artist’s chair, say “Hey!” and be shaken off, then roll away and come back and say “Hey!” Over and over again.

Finally the nudger showed up with a water pitcher in her lap. This time, after saying “Hey!” she poured the pitcher of water over the make-out artist’s head. “Curtain!” There you have it: The make-out artist portrayed Kate Winslett’s character in Titanic, the nudger played the iceberg, and the entire movie that one an Oscar for best picture in 1997 was over in two minutes.

I chose The Wizard of Oz, figuring I could be Dorothy, and my Seeing Eye dog could play Toto. Our TML teachers had urged us to consider the theme of the work we’d be interpreting, so my free time the week before was spent pondering no place like home, the ruby slippers, clicking three times, and Dorothy’s dance segments with the scarecrow and the Tin Man.

Which led me to wonder: Why didn’t Dorothy dance with the cowardly lion? And that’s when it came to me. The Wizard of Oz as a night at a dance club. My class mates and teachers liked the idea and had plenty of recommendations afterwards of ways to enhance the script and my performance. I’ll end this post now with my original script. Enjoy!

Scene opens with me talking to Seeing Eye dog Whitney as we walk on stage, my feet obviously hurting.

Me: Man, she really was a witch, wasn’t she?

We stop in front of the stage, facing the audience.

Me: These shoes are killing me.

I lean down to adjust them, get a kiss from my dog and stay down there to talk with her face to face.

Me: We leave the farm, head to the city, try to meet Mr. Right, and jeez. The first guy was nice and all, but boy was he dumb. The second one was so stiff, and that third guy, what a chicken. God these shoes hurt.

I fumble with the shoes and finally stand up again to face the audience.

Me: These damn shoes! They’re so tight they won’t come off…

I run the heel of one shoe off the other, obviously struggling to get that one shoe off, to no avail.

me, grunting: One!

I run the heel of the second shoe off the first shoe, obviously struggling to shove that second shoe off, to no avail.

me, grunting again: Two!

I repeat with the first shoe, trying one last time, obviously struggling, to no avail.

me, grunting again: Three!

Curtain!

For the sake of convenience, I usually tell people my parents were from Pittsburgh. But really, they were from a tiny hamlet called Denbo, about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh. To put a finer point on it, my mom grew up in a company town, and the patch of row houses took its name from the local coalmine—Vesta 6. Her dad worked in that mine. The company owned their home, and they shopped in a company store and paid with company-issued scrip.

I remember our family visits when I was a kid as exotic—driving in from Illinois, the serpentine roads through the hills and valleys were like a roller coaster. We stayed in the house my dad grew up in, very near the Monongahela River. My uncle George lived there, and sometimes there would be an open fire roast of multiple chickens on a spit, as well as a lamb. It’s the first time I ever ate lamb, wouldn’t have touched it before then. But that lamb was different.

George always kept an ancient family tractor operable, and he had a trailer that he’d transformed from a defunct truck. He’d hitch that makeshift trailer up and take me, my sister and our cousins on a twilight ride along the river and then to the entrance of an abandoned strip mine. It was spooky in a Ray Bradbury way. There’d be talk of the old days, when my dad and his brothers swam in the river, sometimes hitching onto barges for a ride. It was impossible to comprehend, but kind of electrifying.

We only went every few years, but the whole place seemed never to change. It was like going back in time.

Of course, everything does change.

I was reminded of that this past weekend when I made a sojourn to western Pennsylvania.

Not your typical cemetery setting.

I hadn’t been to the cemetery at St. George’s Serbian church in nearly 25 years, when we buried my father there. Saturday I drove in around 11:00 a.m., somehow managing not to get lost. As I approached, the memory of my dad’s funeral day began materializing. It’s a beautiful drive, really, and then all of the sudden these enormous cooling towers from a power plant come into view. The church and cemetery are very nearly in the towers’ shadows.

That’s the kind of imagery that sticks with you.

It’s a very small church, and the cemetery is unassuming. No tombstones, just markers. Nearly a third of them also had a medallion indicating the deceased was a veteran.

I was utterly alone on a sun-soaked day. As I walked the grounds, the number of markers with names ending in ovich kept fooling me. But it being a Serbian cemetery, well… .

Then I saw a cluster, and there he was—with his veteran’s marker. And I remembered his funeral, the flag-draped coffin graveside, and the paunchy troop from the American Legion playing taps and firing their rifles in salute. And just bawling. Twenty-five years later, it was as clear as day.

I spent my time with memories of my dad—and uncle George and Aunt Bert and her husband Uncle Hunch, one of the all-time characters of all-time characters, who are buried steps away. And then I headed to Bert and Hunch’s daughter’s house.

Cousin Linda lives in a beautiful spot at the top of a hill surrounded by woods in Brownsville, Pa. I was treated to scrumptious homemade stuffed cabbage and fried chicken and pogacha, traditional Serbian bread. And to conversation with Linda, her husband Rich, and my cousin Johnny—Linda’s brother. We caught up on children, grandchildren, cousins, family dramas, and the cacophony of cicadas that had only recently subsided at their house. And it was wonderful.

A gem of a stadium in a gem of a city.

From there, it was back to my hotel in Pittsburgh for a nap and then a trip to PNC Park, home of the Pirates, who hosted the Dodgers that night. Decades ago I’d gone to Three Rivers Stadium with another uncle and cousins and seen the great Roberto Clemente play. Clemente played the game with a kind of artistic grace, and with flair. He has remained an all-time favorite.

The new stadium is splendid, the best baseball park I’ve been to—and the Pirates won in convincing fashion, with Andrew McCutchen hitting two homers. I had a kielbasa.

I spent Sunday walking downtown Pittsburgh, where a whole lot of construction is going on in some blocks, with other blocks and grand old buildings still suffering by comparison.

I felt a little empty all day, which I sort of expected. It’s a lot to reconcile. All those people and times gone. Poof.

But still somehow more vividly alive than ever.

It’s a mystery for which I’m grateful.

After Prince died, I asked the writers in my memoir classes to write a 500-word essay about a celebrity’s death that made them especially sad. We published writer Bob Eisenberg’s essay about Vidal Sassoon here, and it inspired my young friend Tara to publish an essay about Vidal Sassoon on her taraisarockstar blog as well. “His passing was very sad for me, too,” Tara wrote. “I’m not a hairstylist, but his technique became a major part of my life.” She gave me permission to excerpt from her post here on our Safe & Sound blog, and here’s that excerpt:

How Vidal Sassoon changed my life

by taraisarockstar

When I entered the London Sassoon Academy as a shy 18 year old girl, the creative director asked, “Are you looking for a change?” I had no idea that phrase would be the caption of my life for the next fourteen years.

That’s Tara modeling backstage, purple hair, Midwest Hair Show (photo of haircut by Tim Hartley)

Every few months, I was given the opportunity to hair model for the Vidal Sassoon salon in London and back home in Chicago. The hair modeling adventure pulled me in, and, like any other addiction, I couldn’t stop. The company made such an impact that I became a receptionist for the Chicago salon for five years.

I am a platform for the seasonal hair collections. With the color and cut changing every few months, my hair attracts attention wherever I go. Total strangers stop me walking down Michigan Avenue to ask, “Where did you get your haircut?”

The day I met Vidal started as a typical day of prepping for a hair show at the salon. Stylists pacing, cutting, and shaping hair. The local stylists made room for the international creative team as they poured in from various cities to Chicago, finding their creative space.

The international creative director was cutting my hair as Vidal strolled into the salon. Some stylists cheered. Some cried. I sat on the edge of my seat.

Sassoon stood, arms crossed, and watched Tim Hartley cut my hair. After a few moments, he whispered to Tim that he needed to add this haircut to the next collection. He took pictures with the staff, gave hugs and left.

His technique, taught in salons throughout the world, demonstrates to stylists how to treat hair like a canvas and hairstyling an art. They see geometric shapes, vibrant colors, dimensions. They find inspiration in architecture.

I admire these stylists and colorists who devote their lives to this evolving hair education. Truly, I see how the stylists admire the man who changed the world with his pioneering hair techniques. In the midst of devoting their lives to his method, the experience of meeting Vidal was meeting their idol. An icon. I am glad that I got to be a small part of it all. Thank you, Vidal, for changing my life.

I’m trying something new this summer, taking this weekly playwriting class at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago.

Over the course of 10 weekly 3-hour sessions that start on June 4, 2016, students will explore the process of creating a 2-minute play in the Too Much Light style, writing and crafting pieces based on true life experiences. The class will introduce tenets of honesty, brevity, audience connection and random chance, and will examine specific play formulas and styles that recur on stage– including monologues, object theatre, and even the difficult shortie play. The workshop culminates in a student-written performance of Too Much Light at Victory Gardens on August 13th, presented and performed for the public. In partnership with Victory Gardens’ Artist Development Workshop, Intro to TML at VG offers an opportunity to study the fundamentals of Neo-Futurism in a physically accessible setting, with accommodations provided for any student with a disability. Artists with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply, and will be given preference in acceptance into the workshop. (The class is open to everyone; however we will strive to maintain a majority of artists with disabilities in the class.)

Whitney makes the most of travel time.

Without being able to see the other participants, I’m not sure how many of us have disabilities. The first day of class, though, a voice rang out at about my height and requested I pull Whitney completely under the chair I was sitting in. “I don’t want to run over her!” Aha! That classmate uses a wheelchair.

We all got to work right away on our first day. Introductions, exercises to help us relax, exercises to loosen up, a game to inspire creative word choice, then freewriting — we wrote continuously for five minutes, without worrying about spelling or grammar. Topic: Something I Feel Strongly About.

After five minutes of freewriting we took a 15-minute break. Then we got right back at it. Teachers read a few Too Much Light monologues out loud for us. We discussed ways those writers utilized good word choice, unexpected props, and unique staging to make their one-person play more interesting. Our homework? Transform our freewriting “Something I Feel Strongly About” exercise into a two-minute monolog based on a true-life experience. We’d each use a prop and unique staging to perform our monolog in class the next week.

My freewriting exercise betrayed my disgust with people who fake or lie about a disability to pass their pet off as a service dog. My Seeing Eye dog Whitney served as my prop and I took suggestions from the teachers about staging. Writing the monologue was fairly easy. Memorizing it? Miserable. Performing it in front of my classmates? Painful! More on memorizing without being able to read print and performing without being able to see the audience in a future blog post. For today, I’ll leave you here with my monologue script:

Scene opens with a person sitting in a straight back chair, an empty chair right behind that person, me standing and holding the back of the empty chair, my Seeing Eye dog at my side.

Me: My Seeing Eye dog leads me down the jetway and onto the plane whenever I fly somewhere. When we get to our seat, I sit down first.

I sit down in the empty seat.

Me: Then I tell her to lie down.

I point to the ground and give Whitney the “down” command.

Me: I picture her like a pile of logs.

I lean down and start shoving Whitney underneath the seat in front of me. Thanks to that person’s weight in the chair, it stays still while I squeeze Whitney under. I say the next lines while continuing to get her situated.

Me: I shove shove shove her back under the seat in front of me. She sighs a sad surrender And lays her head between my shoes.

Whitney does that.

Me: One time while I was leaning down to get Wonder Dog all situated the teenager sitting next to me tapped my back and said she had, like, this really, like, funny story to tell me. I brushed my hand over Wonder Dog’s distressed leather harness one last time to make sure her flat back was completely under the seat

I Brush my hand over Whitney’s harness.

Me: My fingers spidered over to curl her tail under, too…

I spider my fingers down to Whitney’s tail and remain down there checking her out during the next couple lines.

Me: …so it wouldn’t get run over by the shaky drink cart. Finally confident that Wonder Dog was safe and sound, I scratched her nose and sat up for the funny story.

I scratch Whitney’s nose, and once I’m confident she’s under, I sit up again to deliver the next lines.

Me: The teenager told me she was traveling alone. She told me she was an only child. She told me she had a dog. She told me her German Shepherd was like a brother to her. She told me they hated to leave her brother at home when they traveled.

She told me her dad came up with an answer. “My dad wears sunglasses,” she said. “He, like, acts like he’s, like blind.” The teenager was laughing so hard she could hardly tell the rest. You know, about how her dad, like, had somebody at the leather shop, like, make one of those, like, harness things for Rusty. “He pretends Rusty’s a Seeing Eye dog and, like, brings him on the plane,” she said. “Can you, like, believe that?”

I lean down again to make sure Whitney is still secure under the seat in front of me. I stay down there with her to deliver the last two-word line.

Me: I could.