Just got back from a trip to North Carolina, where we attended our first LEGAL gay marriage ceremony on Saturday. You didn’t have to be able to see to know that Patricia and Lori were glowing. The attendees were glowing, too  —  you could feel it in the air.

The recent Supreme Court decision was mentioned more than once during the ceremony — the celebrant even read a couple of paragraphs directly from the August decision. “We asked her to read something from SCOTUS,” Patricia told me later. “We wanted to acknowledge that this really is an amazing time in our lives.” The reading didn’t evoke cheers — instead, it brought tears. Tears of joy.

Patricia and Lori’s only bridesmaid was a five-and-a-half-year-old cherub who referred to Saturday’s event as “the marrying.” The term caught on, and with time on our hands Saturday afternoon before the marrying, we headed to the North Carolina Botanical Garden to experience Homegrown, a recently installed Patrick Dougherty outdoor sculpture.

Checking out the stick sculpture with Whit.

Off-and-on rain that afternoon chased most other visitors away, leaving paths empty and easy for Seeing Eye dog Whitney to navigate. The rain made the garden more fragrant, too, and we didn’t care that the tour guides and docents had left early: we got all the information we needed about artist Patrick Dougherty from the volunteer holding the fort and managing the gift shop.

Stick sculpture artist Patrick Dougherty has organized hundreds of installations around the world – Homegrown is his 256th. Each Dougherty sculpture is created from twigs, branches, saplings and sticks, and the lady at the gift shop spoke admiringly of the 100+volunteers who joined the artist in the north woods last fall to forage for fallen branches and trees to use in Homegrown.

“Volunteers helped him build the sculpture, too,” she said, explaining how hundreds of volunteers from the community worked with Dougherty at the North Carolina Botanic Garden each day for three weeks to weave saplings into mystifying arches. As she said that, I sensed her eying up my 5’9” frame — I dwarf most southern belles. “They’ll reach way over your head,” she determined. “The only way the volunteers could weave them all together like that is if they’re young and supple.”

“You mean the trees?” I asked. “Or the volunteers?”

”The trees!” She laughed, appreciating the opportunity to describe some of the people who’d shown up to weave Homegrown: grandmothers alongside tattooed teenagers, churchgoers with aging hippies, scout leaders, schoolkids and academics of all ages and sizes working together in a big crew. I swear I could feel that mix of energy when I finally left the gift shop to check out the sculpture.

Newlyweds Lori and Patricia at the marrying.

A similar energy filled the North Carolina ArtsCenter for the marrying later that evening. Patricia and Lori have been together for years and have picked up an eclectic crew of friends from stops along the way. What a dream come true this past weekend must have been for the two of them. Not only the marrying, but the gathering of so many loved ones — everyone from preschooler Finn (he spent most of the reception under our table giving belly rubs to Whitney) to 80+-year-old Aunt Fran, who traveled all the way from Edmonton, Canada to be with her beloved niece Patricia on her wedding day. Patricia and Lori’s marrying wove us all together Saturday night. It was an honor to be there, and the joy in that room was so high that this tall girl from Chicago couldn’t reach It  — even on my tippy toes.

Patrick Dougherty’s Homegrown sculpture will be at North Carolina Botanical Garden until the piece completely dries out and disintegrates. Admission to the garden is free, so get there while you can!

If you watched the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off show Private Practice when it was on ABC a few years ago, you know who Dr. Gabriel Fife is. The genetics specialist was introduced in the third season as a love interest who worked for a rival medical practice. The character used a wheelchair, and so does the actor who played him: Michael Patrick Thornton.

Michael Patrick Thornton

Private Practice went off the air in 2013, but national TV watchers loss is Chicago’s gain: Michael Patrick Thornton is a native Chicagoan, and now that he’s back in town full-time we get to see him live on stage here.

I myself appeared on stage last week at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre with Michael Patrick Thornton, and after sharing the stage with him, you know, I just call him Michael. We were there with other disability advocates at “Greater Together,” Chicago’s first Cultural Accessibility Summit.

My job was to give a short testimonial on how important it is for civic and cultural leaders (hundreds of them were there in the audience) to support accessible programming at the museums, theatres and foundations they work for. Michael was there in his real-life role as the Artistic Director & Co-founder of The Gift Theatre in Chicago. He talked candidly with the audience about the spinal stroke he suffered at age 23 and what it was like to emerge from a coma three days later on life support.

“It took a while for doctors to figure out what happened to me — it was very Dr. House-like,” he said, the sound of dark humor in his voice. He left the hospital paralyzed from the neck down, and after years of hard work at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago he’s regained some of his mobility.

Michael Patrick Thornton’s interest in theater started when he was in high school, and he and William Nedved had founded The Gift Theatre Company two years before Michael’s spinal stroke. Michael didn’t take much of a break from The Gift during his recovery — a 2006 story in the Chicago Reader  marveled that months after suffering a second stroke during rehab, Thornton “was directing Language of Angels, holding auditions at RIC while still an inpatient.” During the Q&A last week an audience member thanked Thornton for applauding the work the Chicago arts community is doing to improve accessibility for patrons, but she wondered if the same could be said for performers. “Have things improved for actors in wheelchairs, too?”

Michael answered with an immediate “no.” Actors with disabilities are woefully underrepresented on stage and screen, he said. “I’m pretty much it.”

He told the audience that one thing he can do to advance the cause for other actors with disabilities is to take on roles as someone’s best friend, or a lawyer, or a criminal, people like that — avoid lead roles in inspirational stories about heroes with disabilities who triumph over adversity. “I want parts where the wheelchair never once gets mentioned.”

Michael Patrick Thornton played Iago in Gift’s production of Othello last year, and when I talked to him after our presentation last week he told me how thrilled he is to be directing the world premiere of David Rabe’sGood for Otto at Gift next month.

But wait. There’s more: in March of next year he has the lead role in Gift’s production of Richard III, which will be staged at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre to accommodate larger audiences. Here’s a prepared statement from Michael about the upcoming season, which will be The Gift’s 15th:

Great theater asks great questions. Our milestone anniversary season asks: ‘What does it mean to be human?’ In perfect circuitousness, we begin where many of us first met — at Steppenwolf. In collaboration with our lead production sponsor, The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, we will present a definitive ‘Richard III’ for the ages, performed in conjunction with Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary. It will re-define what disability, ability, and Shakespeare’s villain can look like.

Good for Otto opens at The Gift Theatre in Chicago’s Jefferson park neighborhood next month, and Richard III opens in March, 2016 at Steppenwolf’s Garage Theatre at 1650 N. Halsted in Chicago. Mark your calendars now and look for me at both performances — I’ll be in the audience this time.

About this thing in Kentucky: When you cut through the screeds and snark, it really is a pretty big deal. But something isn’t getting enough play.

That is: The First Amendment is why we have religious freedom in the United States. Preventing the government from promoting or projecting any one religion over another is why we can have so many people practicing so many different faiths. And when you think about it, without such a protection, things could get really ugly and crazy fast. Like, the government could promote one flavor of Christianity over another. Or Orthodox Judaism over Reformed.

Best, the founders thought, to keep government out of the religion business altogether, and to prevent it from stopping anyone from practicing their particular faith.

I think what we’re witnessing reflects a troublesome ignorance of the principles behind the First Amendment. That clerk in Kentucky doesn’t know that she’s spitting on the part of the constitution that ensures she can worship as she pleases.

Beyond ignorance, it takes a certain kind of selfish entitlement to presume that while working as a public servant she can refuse service to someone who doesn’t share her faith and attendant beliefs. They have the same right that she does–to worship (or not) as they see fit.

It borders on crazy. But that’s where we’re at these days.

If you’ve followed our blog for a while, you know who Wanda Bridgeforth is: She’s witty, she’s talented, she’s 93 years old and she’s been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for a decade now.

When Wanda was growing up on the South Side of Chicago, her mother worked “in private family,” which meant mama lived at the houses she took care of. Wanda lived with one relative one week, a friend the next, and sometimes, with complete strangers.

Your positive response to last Thursday’s post motivated me to share another essay from a writer in one of the memoir classes I lead, and this time, we’ll hear from Wanda.

Wanda at her 90th birthday party with her fellow writers in our Renaissance Court class.

My classes are taking a short break after Labor Day, and for their final assignment I asked writers in Wanda’s class to imagine they could have a guarantee that one specific person would read their memoir. “Who would you want that person to be?” I asked.  “Why? What do you want to say to them?”

Wanda was born on October 20, 1921, and she’d like a guarantee that her descendant born closest to October 20, 2021 will read her memoir.

”I pass my memoir essays to you,” she says in the opening of her essay, urging her unknown reader to read her essays carefully and discover the many conveniences that were unknown in her own day. “You will see how we LIVED without them, and hopefully you will realize the contributions we made to ease your life.”

A savvy young 74-year old writer in Wanda’s memoir-writing class has started a blog called Beth’s Class where she publishes essays she and fellow writers from that class have written. You can link to the Beth’s Class blog to read Wanda’s entire essay, and in the meantime I’ll leave you here with her powerful — and beautifully written — conclusion:

I have tried to present some of the struggles we had, the indignities we endured to make the world a better place. The Civil Rights Movement. The right to vote for all. Equal education. Lifting of covenants to ensure the right to equal housing.

You will see the many advances we achieved. There is still much to be done and I hope you will be inspired to pick up the torch and work for more equality and greater opportunities for the generations that will follow you.

I challenge you to find humor in life, meet it head on, not take yourself too seriously, love your fellowman whether he loves you or not.

LIVE and LOVE LIFE to the FULLEST,

Above All:

BE AT PEACE WITH YOURSELF!!!

Okay, I admit it. Asking writers in my memoir-writing classes to choose any photograph they want and describe it to someone like me, who can’t see, was pretty self-serving. Thing is, though, the writers came back with pretty remarkable stuff!

I’m having my husband Mike post the photo writer John Simmons chose here. Before you read on, stop and guess where this photo was taken. Just a quick guess:

If you guessed Chicago, you must live here. In class, listening to John’s words, I was sure no one would ever guess this photo was taken in the Windy City. “If I were to drop a plumb from our balcony, you would hear a splash as it enters the Chicago River.” That’s his first line, and that’s how close he and Mary Jo Field, the woman who took the photograph, live to what he described as the “storied river that was once a receptacle for garbage, toxins, and raw sewage — and maybe a few of Al Capone’s enemies.” That’s all in the past now, John says. “Today the river is almost as pristine as the baptismal font at Saint James Cathedral.”

John continues his piece by comparing living on the river to living in a vaudeville theatre. “The scene is constantly changing,” he writes, describing how he might see a Seagull flying low on a reconnaissance mission, then a resident Canadian geese squadron making its way along the western bank, and then a powerful barge navigating the turn by the Chicago Tribune plant. College rowing teams practice on the Chicago River, too. “In the late fall when it is still dark around seven o’clock in the morning, I sometimes catch a glimpse of eight men rowing in perfect unison so silently its almost eerie.”

Having set the scene, John then starts describing his photograph: three sculls idling on the water directly under the Grand Avenue Bridge while coaches in aluminum boats beside them shout instructions from bullhorns. “It takes enormous exertion to move these boats at top speed,” John writes. “The fact that the crews are at rest wearing their blue sweat suits with a white stripe suggests there is chill in the air.” He continues:

At this time of day, the river seems to have a silver hue from the reflecting sunlight of the late afternoon. You hear a clanking sound each time a car passes over the Grand Avenue Bridge, a classic built in 1913. It got a fresh coat of rustproof paint that is almost the color of burnt amber and glistens in the dying sunlight. The bridge spans the river, which is about a wedge shot from one side to other.

John’s research for the piece told him the Grand Avenue bridge is 270 feet long and is known as a bascule bridge. “I guess that means it opens by lifting both sections, something I have seen, but rarely.” He describes two quaint little clapboard houses painted in green trim at each end of the bridge and assumes they housed the bridge master. “A base of concrete and red brick supports the western end of the single span bridge,” he writes, taking note of a gray sedan, the only vehicle crossing the bridge when the photo was taken. “If you look closely you can see two white gates in the vertical position, signifying the bridge is open for business.”

And here’s the part of John’s essay that had me totally convinced no one seeing this photo would guess in a million years that it had been taken in Chicago. We’re known for crime, the lakefront and skyscrapers. Not riverfronts! “If you look through the bridge you can see redbrick townhouses, fronted by well-mowed green grass and a pedestrian walk where the local dog population enjoys a bit of fresh air, always on leach to comply with the covenants of condominium association.” Thanks to you, John. I can just picture this scene!