Beautifully said, thank you Mike. I am still learning and re-learning every day how to listen to language and speak it with love -- yes, what Doc taught us -- and attempting to share it with as many young folks as I can every day too.
I miss all of you very much and look forward to our next gathering.
cheers,
cs
On Sep 25, 2013, at 7:02 PM, Mike Godwin <mnemonic@gmail.com>wrote:
Let me tell you how I feel about Godwin's Law (sometimes "Godwin's
Rule"). I think about it the same way I think about my best
performances in the Barn. Sometimes you hit the language and the
moment the right way, and people remember it.
Would I perform Clayton's transmutation of Molly? In a heartbeat.
Because Clayton and I love language the way we do, and because Doc
taught us to listen to language and to speak it with love.
--m
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 7:30 PM, Jerald Head <jlhead1952@gmail.com> wrote:
I have printed Claytons piece out and have placed it on my bullion board at
work to read when I need a lift, to remind me of this wonderful place and
experience, Winedale. Indulge me, as no one wants to hear about other
peoples dreams, but even last night I was at Winedale, this time the older
student, watching all. Of course a good dream would not be perfect without a
tornado, which appeared as we took cover. I have always been a friend of
Dorothy though.
On a separate topic," Godwin's Rule" was mentioned this morning on "Morning
Joe," as they commented on our nasty Senator Cruz bringing up Hitler and
Chamberlin into his healthcare rant, just after he read from "Green Eggs and
Ham." Nice shout out, Mike.
Jerald
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 25, 2013, at 5:18 PM, Aubrey Carter <aubreycarter@sbcglobal.net>
wrote:
this is so beautiful...it's no wonder the place, idea, thing is so deep
inside all of us.
Aub
ACDO
1401 E. 7th St.
Austin, TX 78702
512-472-3393
On Sep 25, 2013, at 4:25 PM, "Barker, Michael" <Michael_Barker@spe.sony.com>
wrote:
This is unbelievable. I would like some stalwart to perform this on the
stage in the barn.
Amazing stuff.
\m
From: winedale-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:winedale-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jerald Head
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 4:37 PM
To: Clayton Stromberger
Cc: Shakespeare at Winedale 1970-2000 alums
Subject: Re: [Winedale-l] Current class members on KUT
Oh Clayton,
How lovely. You got me tearing up in the HEB parking lot. Again.
Thanks
Jerald
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 2, 2013, at 12:15 PM, Clayton Stromberger
<cstromberger@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 10:31 PM, James Ayres <jayres@cvctx.com> wrote:
Hmm. How in the world did something like this ever get started? Pretty
amazing, I'd say.
It IS amazing, isn’t it? From Samuel Lewis who built the cotton gin back
there in the woods behind Hazel's somewhere to the folks who built the
Stagecoach Inn to George Joseph Wagner, Sr., who bought it and made it home
to the pipe-smoking, hat-wearing immigrants who took the big hand-hewn cedar
beams from the gin and used them to build a hay barn in a meadow to Papa
Wagner who punched the tin lanterns (let there be light) to Hazel Ledbetter
who bought the Wagner house and then showed it to her friend Miss Ima who
fell in love and restored it all and gave it to the university and loved it
until the end to Virginia who planted the roses and gardens and raised money
to a dark-haired professor whom Miss Ima met one fall day and told to go
look inside that Barn and do Shakespeare there and who not so much later
walked the Parlin halls snagging kids with fire and joy in their eyes who
drove out there and found a Forest of Arden and an Eastcheap and a country
store full of country folks who worked hard and drank der beer and could
dance a mean polka and sang Germans songs to an accordion and wore straw
hats in the sun and rode horses and understood animals and heard the wind
through the trees and made Winedale a living place populated by characters
out of Dylan Thomas’ Wales but speaking in musical German-Texan accents with
names that had a chime and a ring and a thump, Zwernemann and Hinze and
Klump, Marilyn & Rollie, Gloria, Edith & Liz & Ronnie, Angelene, Delphine, O
what a name, Delphine who sang on his tractor in that amazing baritone
(dipping effortlessly into bass?) voice that floated across Lake Winedale as
he mowed, and Rosalee who loved her beer and loved young people, they were
the future, and Verlie, how I miss that wry deadpan drawl, to Percy and
Norma and all the others whose names came and went in my head and who after
a squint or two opened their sun-toughened arms to the long-haired kids with
fire in their eyes and beards both real and spirit-gum who laughed and loved
and sang there Donald Terry Jerald Alice Mary Robert Michael Buddy Dolly
Gail Laura Carol Rob Craig Jan Aubrey Maggie Robert Jeff Joy Bruce
MichaelCarlErnieDavidMalouNickGrahamRobinBonnieTeresaJeanneEliseTamsenJohnBillBrittBetsyDavidSteveMarkJamesKrisWillieBrianLeighBob
okay take a breath who am I leaving out? I’m just getting warmed up here and
only that dark-haired professor knew them all over thirty years, the
professor who pushed them hard and played hard too and said Let wonder seem
familiar, he remembers all the names and faces, and had I but world enough,
and time, I would get all the rest of those lovely names down, so then on to
-- yes -- you too reading this now and then on to all the audiences who saw
the flyer brought by the guy driving the milk truck and came and came back
and sat on the metal folding chairs in the heat without complaining,
transported, and drank the lemonade and the beer (yes) brought their
families and friends bought the t-shirts and told their friends and the
folks who gave to the endowment and believed in what was happening there on
to JoAnn a new life in Round Top and then on to James who took the reins and
Laurel and all the folks who helped the next generation get rolling and now
Liz and her husband Rob and Elroy with the walrus mustache who takes care of
the grounds and has his own country twang though not German and Barbara who
worries in Gloria’s old office about how the buildings are getting old and
there’s not money to repair them and then on to all of James’s students in
the past decade who are now feeling very grown-up at the ripe old age 30 or
such but still come back when they can, some with children in tow and on
laps in the front row, and on to the baby-faced young people (the future,
remember) who are there this very moment with James (full thirty times hath
Phoebus' cart gone round since James and I first played on that ground) who
were in a baby stroller when some of us wearing powdery hair-white there in
that Barn or were even just a twinkle in their parents’ eyes and now they
are speaking the words of Gonzalo and Dromio and Caliban and Adriana and Hal
and Ariel in that same space and many of us no longer need to add any more
hair white as we listen to them speak the old words anew and hope for them O
a muse of fire – and through this long chain of building and creating and
sharing and giving and sacrificing and laughing and singing and playing and
crying and wearing trousers rolled and giving of oneself it has remained a
place that you have to find, and once you find it you never forget it and
you strive to know the place again for the first time, even if you don’t
know you are doing that. And this place can be found around the world, if
you look for it, in Urinetown and Mickee Faust’s mad tavern world and
hospitals and courtrooms and classrooms and stages, the full-throated joy
and the sound of the stirring pecan trees and the straightness of the pines
and the crickets at night as the lights glow orangey on the warm wood under
the Milky Way are all in there: England and nowhere, never and always. In
the dazzling stillness of a hot summer afternoon when you hear the cicadas
again; the voice of the hidden waterfall and the children in the apple-tree.
And now the name some pipe-smoking hat-wearing German came up with while
glancing across a cascade of grapes in the leafy shaded green (perhaps, on
some sunny day, long ago, in a world where Lincoln had died just the other
day) is a word that sits on the tongue of hundreds of even younger young
people (the future, Rosalee!), some seniors in high school, some just going
into fifth grade, who rouse themselves at the name of Winedale and unroll
their texts and say I played such a one there, and they think back on a day
there, or a weekend, or of two weeks of camp, or a childhood of summers, and
think: I liked that place, and willingly could not waste my time in it,
over and over again every summer or spring, as often as a parent will drive
them out there, and you ask them if they want to go back to Winedale and the
answer is yes I will Yes.
Some day it will all be gone with the cloud-capped towers and the gorgeous
palaces and the great globe itself but until then they say: Yes. Name what
part I am for and proceed.
Pretty amazing indeed.
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