A Play and Two Encounters with Homeless Men

A Play.  This evening I went into Boston to see a play titled "We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia Formerly Known as South-West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika Between the Years 1884-1915," or, for short, "We Are Proud to Present a Presentation …"  It depicts a troupe of actors trying to prepare a dramatization about the genocide which reduced the Herero tribe from 80,000 to 15,000 during the period of German colonial rule.Their main problems are that they have little primary material other than letters sent home by German soldiers and that there are differing opinions about how to go about constructing the play. There is a lot of comedy along the way, especially in the earlier parts of the play, but it does give an outline of the events of German rule as a lecture at the beginning (which works surprisingly well as a bit of theater). There were lots of laughs and some serious issues raised.

Two Encounters.  As I was walking down Washington Street from the subway station toward the theater, I noticed a young man sitting on the concrete pedestal of a light pole. As I approached he asked me if I could spare a dollar or some change for a homeless man, and he thanked me for looking at him. As I reached into my pocket, I asked how he came to be homeless, and he said he had lost his job because his employer had lost business in the poor economy. I had pulled some bills from my pocket intending to give him a dollar. As I looked at the money, I thought that it would be easier to take two of the dollar bills and hand them to him than to separate one of them. But I made the effort, and pulled a single bill from the bunch. Why am I so stingy? Nevertheless, not knowing that I had thought of giving him more, he thanked me and said, "God bless you." I hope he will.

When I got to the theater, I discovered that I was mistaken in thinking that the performance started at 7:30. It wasn't until 8:00, and the lobby wasn't even open yet. So I walked around, looking for a Dunkin' Donuts, where I bought a jelly donut and a small black coffee. (For years coffee and a jelly donut was my workday breakfast.) I ate the donut there and then headed out to have my coffee. When I got back to the theater, I hadn't finished it, so I continued down the street, and encountered a maybe 40ish man who asked for money. I stopped, and he remarked that most people pay no attention: on a recent evening nobody in the crowd leaving the theater paid him any attention. I gave him a dollar. He asked my name. I told him, "Joe," and asked his. "Chuck," he said, and extended his hand up toward me; and we shook hands.

By then I had had all I wanted of the coffee. I found a trash receptacle, poured the remaining coffee down a nearby storm drain (for which a passerby complimented me), and put the cup in the trash. As I headed back to the theater, I passed Chuck, and we exchanged brief greetings, which I hoped would encourage anybody who heard it to think of giving him something.

Pot Roast; "Our Town"/Finding Someone

Pot Roast.  I cooked a pot roast on Tuesday. I had 3 1/4 pounds of chuck (shoulder meat) which I figured would give five servings. I sprinkled it with pepper, nutmeg, and garlic powder. Then I browned it in olive oil on the stove top. Toward the end, I added some coarsely chopped onions which I had sprinkled with dried oregano and parsley. Then I sprinkled it all with dried thyme and a little marjoram, savory, and dill, poured enough boiling water over it to come about halfway up the roast, covered it, and set it in a 325°F oven. After a couple of hours, I turned it over and added 14 oz. of sliced carrots — peeled, sliced crosswise and lengthwise, and sprinkled with thyme. At that point I also poured a bit of Japanese soy sauce (maybe 2 tsp.) and sprinkled a bit of sea salt (maybe 1/4 tsp.) into the liquid. After another hour or so, I added four potatoes, peeled and cut into fifths (maybe 1 1/2 lb. after peeling) and let it cook for another 45 minutes or so.

Here's a picture of the roast and two servings of the veggies.

The meat was cooked to the point that it tended to shred when I tried to cut it.

Here's a picture of the herbs and spices. (not shown: soy sauce and sea salt).

BTW — I had bought the meat last week. It had a last sale date of January 17. I had thought I'd cook it on the 19th, but my brother wasn't here that evening. Then on Sunday he took me to dinner for a birthday (eve) celebration; and on the birthday itself some friends invited me to their place for dinner. So I didn't get around to cooking it until the 22nd. It was still perfectly good.

Bonus pic: snow on the spirea outside my kitchen window one morning in late December.

Click on photos to enlarge.

"Our Town"/Finding Someone.  Last week I went to a performance of the play "Our Town," by Thornton Wilder, about life in a small town in pre-WWI New Hampshire. The town has about 2,400 inhabitants, as I recall, and the central focus is on George Gibb and Emily Webb, who are high school classmates and next door neighbors in the first act and marry immediately after graduation in the second. In the third act Emily has died in childbirth and joins other decedents in the town cemetery.

It's a very good play, IMO, with much to think about. I saw it when I was in high school in a production by our drama department, and I had remembered some of it. So it seemed familiar, even when I didn't remember specific bits.

Anyway one point I've been thinking about is that the Stage Manager indicates that most people get married and go through life as a couple. Added to that is the fact that most people stay in Grover's Corners after they finish high school. George and Emily have known each other just about all their lives. Perhaps it's not inevitable that they get married, but it's not surprising by any means. More broadly, the play implies that almost all the young people in the town find someone to marry from within their circle of acquaintances. I'd guess that in a town that size, there would be no more than 100 people (of the opposite sex) within the normal age range for likely spouses. And that was enough for almost all of them to find someone to marry and go through life with.

Along the same line, I think of how things were when I was in high school. Most people were able to find someone to go steady with. It was a larger town than in the play, but I'm sure that if we all had stayed in town after high school, almost all of us could have found a spouse from among our contemporaries.

So that leads to my conclusion: "finding someone" does not depend on having a wide range of possibilities. If one is not excessively picky, "someone" can be found in a circle of acquaintances of any size. In fact, urbanization and social media may make it harder to find someone because it becomes easy to imagine that there is someone better out there, and to feel that it is not necessary to settle for someone who is basically compatible and good enough. Urbanization and social media also tend to impede finding someone by preventing us from focusing on a small number of people from whom we might choose; they draw us out of true community into a broad circle of acquaintances among whom we don't have a real opportunity to make connections.

Of course, I know that people continue to find each other, but I think it may not be as easy as it was in smaller communities (and perhaps the wider range of acquaintances also promotes divorce by presenting new possibilities after marriage has taken place).