Joanna Presents Richard Nelson

Jacquie's Email
Hello Literary Ladies! I hope you all had memorable Thanksgiving holidays with very little unnecessary family drama. I was home with the flu (and missed Thanksgiving at my mother-in-law's on Long Island) while the rest of my sisters and their families celebrated in Chicago. I have so far heard one sister's account of the weekend and the various little dramas that occurred, many of which she instigated. (Politics! Driving skills! Appropriate container size for leftovers!) I can't wait to hear from the others. Life really is the stuff of drama. It's going to be a veritable Rashomon!
   And what a perfect segue talk of family gatherings is for Joanna's topic for our meeting this Wednesday, as she will be presenting on playwright Richard Nelson. Since there have been more Literature Club firsts in the past few years than we can count, I wouldn't put it past Joanna to have us all prepare a meal as she presents!
   Once again, we will be meeting in the Orr Room of the Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library at 12:30 PM, with curtain at 1 PM. For all who wish to join us on Zoom, please let us know you will be tuning in, so we know to simulcast the presentation.
   Hoping I'll be joining you in person on Wednesday! -cough-cough-sniffle-sniffle-Jacquie

Christine's Minutes

Ten members of the Literature Club gathered in the Orr Room, where we had an excellent view of the pouring rain. We were joined again by Kathy Sullivan, as a guest. President Constance Stewart rang the sacred bell at 1 PM. Due to the recording secretary’s dereliction of duty, there were no minutes read. Due to the treasurer’s absence, there was no treasury report.

We were all pleased that Gita was able to join us via Zoom. Jacquie suggested that her emails announcing each upcoming meeting, should contain a link to the minutes. We discussed, not for the first time, what should be our Covid-careful protocol over the winter. Whatever we do, it was agreed that there will be no lunches served. Obviously, this remains a very sad thing.

The first words from the day’s presenter, Joanna Reisman, were: “I am not dressed like a schlump.” In fact, she was, untypically, dressed rather schlumpily. But this, she explained, was in homage to several characters in the Rhinebeck plays of Richard Nelson, her subject.

Richard Nelson was born in Chicago in 1950. His family moved a lot. Among his 45 listed plays, ten were produced at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the first in 1975. From 2005 to 2008 he was chair of the playwrighting department at the Yale School of Drama. Working with Russian translators, he has translated and produced several works of Chekhov. Nelson has won several awards. He has also written screenplays. Since the 1980’s he has lived in Rhinebeck. We could just walk down the hill and get on a train and visit him this very afternoon.

Joanna’s presentation focused on the Rhinebeck plays, known as the Rhinebeck Panorama. There are four plays about the Apple family, three plays about the Gabriels, and another 3 pandemic plays, written to be performed on the Zoom medium, revisiting the Apples, and then two plays about the Michaels. Nelson’s style of theater has deep roots in Chekhov. He strives for what he calls verisimilitude. All the plays are staged in the round, in a kitchen, and sometimes a dining room. There is lots of cooking and eating. Real food. A real refrigerator door opens and closes. There are adults, who could be you or me, speaking naturally, about personal experiences, politics, very current politics.

Each play begins with a dark, bare stage. Then the actors enter, bringing in the furniture and props, and setting the stage while the audience looks on.

In Nelson’s plays, there is minimal conflict; his characters do not try to impose their views; there are no great ‘reveals”. The characters already know everything – the drama exists in the audience becoming aware.

Nelson generally works with the same actors, to the extent that they feel like a ‘troupe”. Most notably, MaryAnn Plunkett and Jay Sanders, who are married in real life, appear variously as siblings, or as in-laws.

The actors wear no makeup (or if they do it is damn hard to tell), and they wear casual, often sloppy clothes, – hence we have Joanna’s un-characteristically schlumpy attire today.

The plays require a special very sensitive sound system, involving lots of tiny dangling microphones, so the actors can speak in normal voices.

Members read from Oscar Eustis’s insightful introduction to a collection of the plays.

(Meanwhile, in contrast to the warmth of cooking food in the Apple kitchen, outside the Orr room, the bare branches are whipping in the wind, and the flagpole is issuing an eerie screech in sync with each gust.)

Then, Joanna introduced us to the cast of characters in the first Apple Play: Richard Apple, a lawyer in Albany, his three sisters, Barbara, a teacher in Rhinebeck, Marian, also a teacher, Jane, a writer from the city, Tim, Jane’s boyfriend, an actor slash waiter, and Uncle Benjamin, who was formerly a well-known actor, but recently has had suffered a heart attack and has memory loss.

Members read from scene one, which opens on November 2, 2010, and is called “That Hopey-Changey Thing”.

Scene two is “Acting and Forgetting”. Scene three is called “American Manners.” The last scene ends with Uncle Benjamin reading a Walt Whitman poem, The Wound Dresser.

The third Apple play, called Sorry, occurs on the November 2012 elections. Barbara and Marian, now living together, are taking their Uncle Benjamin to the nursing home because they are unable to care for him any longer.

Members read a short scene.

(Meanwhile, the wind outside is still wailing for her demon lover…)

We also read from the fourth Apple play, Regular Singing. This one is set on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of JFK, November 22, 2013. We learn that Marian’s husband, Adam, from whom she separated after the tragic death of their daughter, is now dying, somewhere in the house. He remains offstage.

Then Joanna turned to the Gabriel family; these plays take place only months apart. But as in all the Apple plays, each play takes place in a single day. Again, members read a passage from Oskar Eustis’s introduction to the plays. Then we read sections from Boxes, and The Buzzards.

Following the Apple plays came the pandemic Zoom plays, and then the “modest” two-part drama about the Michaels.

Joanna ended her presentation with the program notes from the Apple plays. After which we all had to leave the warm upstate kitchen, and return to the blustery day in Hastings.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner
Recording Secretary

Lori Presents Anne Washburn

Jacquie's Email
Hello Literary Ladies! It's time to line up for more great drama! Our next meeting is this Wednesday, November 9th at 12:30 PM at the library. Lori will be presenting on the playwright Anne Washburn.
   If you'd like to join us via Zoom, please let our tech crew... I mean Sharon know. They're not the best seats in the house -- sometimes only partial view -- but certainly worth the price of admission! Sadly, for me, I will not be with you all this Wednesday, but I'll see you next time. Thank goodness for season tickets! Have a joyful Thanksgiving! -- Jacquie

Christine's Minutes
(Written from Laura Rice’s notes)

Eight members of the Literature Club, plus one guest, gathered in the Orr Room of the library on November 9th. The bell was rung at 12:55 PM. Linda introduced her neighbor, Kathy Sullivan. In Christine’s absence, Connie read the minutes. Lori reported that our treasury contains $389.

Linda noted that she has been having trouble with her email. Kate Atkinson’s new book was recommended, and Sharon told members about Plays for a Plague Year.

The day’s program was presented by Lori Walsh, on Anne Washburn. Right off the bat, Lori announced that there would be few biographical details, as they are scarcely available. Her age is nowhere listed, but we can assume she is “our age.”

To prepare us for Mr. Burns Post-Electric Play, Lori reminded us of the old days of TV, when a family might gather round the television in the living room and share the experience. She noted the way that certain episodes, in The Seinfeld Show, or The Simpsons, can become cultural touchstones easily referred to, and how they can connect people.

Anne Washburn was born Berkeley, California; she frequently acted in school plays, and also wrote poetry. She went to Reed College and studied theatre and literature. After college she wrote some radio plays, with success. She moved to New York City and attended NYU’s Dramatic Writing Program.

Washburn is considered an experimental playwright. She has co-founded the theatre company, the Civilians, and received many awards, including a Guggenheim and a PEN theatre awards. She is a risk-taker.

Her play, Ten Out of Twelve, was a love letter to the theater; it consists of direct quotations from tech rehearsals.

Mr. Burns was first produced in 2012 at the Woolly Mammoth Theater, in Washington. In 2013 it came to New York’s Playwrights Horizons, and received rave reviews. Members read aloud from reviews in The New York Times.

Washburn sets Mr. Burns Post-Electric Play in a post-apocalyptic time, after a great nuclear melt down. There is no electricity and people are wandering around, searching. There are three acts, covering 75 years. The first act takes place after the nuclear meltdown. The second act is seven years later, and the third act is seventy-five years later.

Lori then passed out copies of the play and assigned parts. Washburn has explained that she created the first act by inviting a group of actors to remember Simpson episodes, and she made a transcript of their talk. The importance of The Simpsons in American culture – our shared memory – was discussed. The episode that Washburn uses in the play is the “Cape Feare” episode from Season 5 of the The Simpsons.

 Lori played a recording of Washburn discussing significance of the episode.

The second act of Mr. Burns Post-Electric Play contains lessons on capitalism and the nature of art. It is seven years after Act One, and the strangers we met earlier have now formed a theater group which travels around performing Simpson episodes. The troupe has become well known for the quality of their commercials.

Members read several scenes.

The third act is about how cultural mythologies grow, and how they are framed. It is now eighty-two years after the nuclear meltdown. The retelling of the Simpson episode is now presented as a Greek tragedy. Mr. Burns is conflated with Sideshow Bob, as a mythic villain. The play is transformed into a musical, with songs from Britney Spears and Eminem, and of course, Simpsons theme music.

Members read various scenes.

Lori ends by explaining Washburn’s conviction that it is storytelling that will allow us to cope, and even survive the unthinkable.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner (from notes by Laura Rice)
Recording Secretary

Jacquie Presents Wendy Wasserstein

Jacquie's email: Hello, Uncommon Women All!!
I don't know about you, but I am SO excited it is finally almost Wednesday, October 26th when I will be giving my presentation on the plays of Wendy Wasserstein -- not just because I think it's going to be a lot of fun, but because after almost two years I will finally make my deadline! 
If the weather cooperates (I'm ever the optimist) we will be meeting in Sharon's lovely backyard at 12:30 pm. If the weather looks bad, we will meet at12:30 pm in the Orr Room of the Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library. Even though Broadway houses, and now the opera and the ballet, will be allowing audiences to be unmasked during performances, numbers are starting to tick up, and it seems like a good time to see if our library option is a comfortable one. (That said, if you have a seat cushion or two you can bring along, that might help make the library's stacking chairs a bit more comfortable. I can bring 11.)
Please look for my email on Wednesday morning for the final decision on where we will be meeting. In addition, carpooling might be helpful for avoiding limited parking options.
Again, if anyone would like to listen along on Zoom please let me know and we'll send you a link. Until then, Jacquie

Christine's minutes: In yet another first in these seasons of firsts, thirteen members of the Literature Club gathered in the Orr Room of the Hastings Library, and Lyn McLean joined us from North Carolina, via Zoom. The day started out foggy and remained weirdly warm and threatening throughout; but we enjoyed magnificent views of the Palisades all dressed up in colors, just for us.

President Connie Stewart rang the bell at 12:50. (I had 1:50 in my notes, but that can’t be right.)

The minutes were read and accepted. Lori, our treasurer corrected last month’s report. We actually have $389.50

There was an effort to keep our discussions brief, knowing that Jacquie had a grand program awaiting, and we did not want her to curtail it in any way. Still.

Sharon reported that she has a list of desired books from Debby Quinn, the Head Librarian, and she noted that they are all – but one – written by white men. The books are already ordered, so that is a done deal. Nor is this to say they are not good books, but the fact remains that women, of all colors, are woefully underrepresented. We all agreed this is an important issue, one that we can easily discuss at great length; it was decided that we will put it on the agenda for our annual meeting in March.

Laura asked what is our policy regarding inviting people who do not live in Hastings? There seems to be a tacit policy that all members either live in Hastings, or originally lived in Hastings (e.g. Louisa, Carla, Laura). Someone who lives in Laura’s building in Ossining has expressed an interest in coming. It is Catalina Danis, who lived in Hastings for decades, so we all agreed that would be fine.

In the spirit of Show & Tell, Diana announced that she has found the most wonderful small, portable light for reading in bed – and she showed it to us – it looked quite fetching draped over her shoulders.

The latest news on Gita: she has been living with a daughter in Long Island, but would like to return home. She does not expect to be attending this year, but that may change.

Now, at last, the lights go down, the chattering stops, cell phones are silenced and the play begins.

It was no surprise to anyone that Jacquie approached her topic with enthusiasm and imagination. She said that upon reading Wendy’s first play, Uncommon Women and Others, she became concerned that this play about the first world concerns of a group of Mount Holyoke alums, could seem, well, trivial, when lined up next to climate change, the war in Ukraine, the Dobbs decision, and the rise of nationalism and xenophobia.

But not at all. Jacquie plunged into Julie Salomon’s biography, Wendy and the Lost Boys (which she recommended highly) and began to see that the plays must be read in the context of their time and place, and also that – Derrida be damned – an understanding of the playwright, described as “complicated, fascinating, amusing, frustrating, intuitive, completely open yet enigmatic” could be, if not essential, an important key to understanding and appreciating the plays. In Jacquie’s view, the plays are not “classics per se”, but sociological studies reflecting the Baby Boomer experience, in real time, aging along with the playwright, reacting in real time. But do they still entertain us – which is, according to Tom Stoppard, the main task of theatre? Oh, indeed they do. We were well entertained all afternoon.

Before delving into the plays, we learned a bit about Wendy’s remarkable life. Beginning at the end, with the memorial service in 2006, attended by everyone in theatre, when Wendy was praised for her talent, her bravery – she had a child, Lucy Jane, at the age of 47, on her own – and her truth telling, as well as her invention.

Wendy Wasserstein was born in 1950, to Morris and Lola. And as was often remarked, she was “born into great material.” The family euphemism for death was that the deceased had “gone to Europe.” Hers was a family of über-achievers, who kept their secrets well. While Morris was a ‘decent, hardworking’ father, tiny Lola was the mythmaker. Wendy the playwright, Bruce the billionaire, and Georgette known as Gorgeous, only learned in adulthood of the existence of another brother, Abner, institutionalized since his childhood.

Wasserstein Brothers was a successful ribbon manufacturer in Brooklyn. While Wendy would describe her childhood as Camelot, her much older sister who was also her cousin, Sandra, experienced the hardscrabble childhood of recent immigrants. Wendy attended Yeshiva in Brooklyn, then Ethical Culture, and then Calhoun in Manhattan. She is described as a mediocre student. Still, she entered one of the Seven Sisters, Mt. Holyoke, in 1967 – just when college life was on the cusp of radical change. After college she returned to New York, studied with Israel Horowitz and wrote her first play, Women Can’t. In 1973 she went to Yale School of Drama where she met William Ivey Long, Christopher Durang, James Lapine, all of whom became fast friends and colleagues. Her play about Mt. Holyoke students, Uncommon Women and Others, had a production at the Phoenix in 1977 and was a great success. Next came Isn’t it Romantic. Then The Heidi Chronicles, her greatest and most indelible success. It opened on Broadway in March of 1989 and closed the following year after 622 performances.

The Heidi Chronicles is a brilliant history and send-up of 25 years in the life of Heidi Holland, art historian, and 25 years of women keeping up the struggle for some kind of equality.

Members were handed copies of the book, and assigned roles, as we would read pivotal scenes in the play. Act one, scene one features a high school dance, and awkward conversations between Heidi and a certain boy. Scene two in another dance, with Heidi and Scoop Rosenbaum.

It must be pointed out that every scene was accompanied by a song, appropriate to the period: we were treated to Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Aretha Franklin, and so many others.

Scene three is set in a church basement, where a women’s consciousness-raising group is meeting. Your secretary enjoyed the chance to read the part of potty-mouthed Fran. Jacquie summarized the next few scenes, each one emblematic of its era: a protest in front of the Art Institute in Chicago; we learn that Nixon has resigned, Peter, now a doctor, comes out, and Scoop is clerking for the SCOTUS; a wedding at the Pierre where Scoop married Lisa Friedlander; Heidi lecturing on art; and onward until Act 2. We read Act 2, scene 3, where Heidi is being asked to consult on a movie about contemporary women. And finally, the last scene in Heidi’s new apartment, with the now very rich Scoop, whom she chose not to marry.

As Jacquie said: “That particular paradox – of being better than everyone else but not good enough – [would become] a recurrent theme in Wendy’s life and in her work.”

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner

Recording secretary

Barbara Presents Moliére

Google Doodle: Celebrating Molière (google.com)

Jacquie's email: Hello Literary Ladies!!! Wednesday's forecast calls for sunny skies with a high of 69°, so that should make it fine weather to meet outdoors in Carol's lovely garden to hear Barbara's presentation on Molière. As before, the house will open at 12:30pm, with curtain called for 1pm. À bientôt! Jacquie

Christine's minutes: Thirteen members of the Literature Club gathered in Carol’s back yard for our first proper presentation of this year of drama. And it was as proper as any play by Moliere could possibly be.

Your recording secretary arrived late, and quite possibly missed the day’s most exciting news, but alas. She immediately read the minutes of our previous meeting.

Our treasurer, Lori Walsh, reported that the amount in our treasury remains the same, but will soon be lessened by the $275 we will donate to the Hastings Library.

The idle chatter that followed was hardly idle, pertaining, as it did, to the theatre. Sharon loved the new production of Top Dog/Under Dog. We touched the subject of how enormously a play read to oneself from the written page differs from a play performed on stage. We assume that this subject will return in various forms throughout our year.

President Connie Stewart rang the bell at 1:25pm; the lights dimmed, the curtain opened, and the play began. (Brief pause to thank our gracious hostess for her lovely garden setting.)

We might almost say that Molière dominated the stage that afternoon, but not entirely, because our presenter wisely began with Richard Wilbur, the translator par excellence of Molière.

A recent piece in the NYRB inspired Barbara, our presenter, to choose Molière as her topic, using the magnificent Richard Wilbur translation.

Wilbur was born in 1921, and died in 2017, by which time he had won almost every possible award for poetry. Members read selections from Geoffrey O’Brien’s review of his complete translations. We also read from Adam Gopnik’s introduction to the Library of America edition of the plays.

Molière wrote in rhyming alexandrines, a poetic meter of 12 syllables, usually split into two 6-syllable lines. Wilbur transformed Molière's classic French verse (French being a language in which it is notoriously easy to rhyme) into English iambic pentameter. Not only did he also create brilliant rhymes [heaven’s eyes with compromise; pupil with scruple], but he kept the edgy spirit of Molière alive in every play.

Molière, the pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, was born in 1622 (almost 300 years before Wilbur), into the France of the Sun-King, Louis XIV. His father was an upholsterer to the court, but Molière had no interest in his father’s trade, and went directly into the world of theatre. In 1643, he co-founded the Illustre Théâtre, and wrote his first plays. From the beginning, the target of his biting humor was extremism of every kind. He was a poet of common sense. His first success in Paris was Les précieuses ridicules, a comedy of manners satirizing the social climbing of the middle class and their salons. It was so popular that the company was able to move to the Palais Royal in 1660.

Molière was constantly busy writing, directing, acting and perhaps most significantly, staying in favor with Louise XIV. But the power of his ridicule and wit bothered and outraged many clerics, courtiers and other playwrights. Tartuffe was initially banned when it came out in 1664. The ban was lifted in 1669, and since that time it has been regarded as one of Molière's greatest comedies. Moliere was active on the stage until the day of his death, literally. After playing the part of Argan in Le Malade Imaginaire, his last comedy, Molière collapsed on stage and died the same day, at the age of 51. The church, stinging from his criticism, refused to grant him a holy burial. However, in 1804, with great fanfare, Moliere’s earthly remains were translated to Père Lachaise, where he enjoys the company of La Fontaine, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Marcel Proust, Marcel Marceau, and Abelard and Heloise.

Members read from George Meredith’s 1877 essay “On Comedy”, in which he commends Molière for his “unrivalled studies of mankind in society”, and from Eric Auerbach’s book, Mimesis.

And then to the plays. First, members read from Le misanthrope, written in 1666, and according to Wilbur, “a study of impurity of motive”. Alceste, the main character, is an aristocrat who truly longs for the ‘genuine’, but at the same time he is terribly jealous and critical. We read scenes between Alceste and his friend, Philinte; between Alceste and Celimene, the object of his love; and between Celimene and Acaste, another of her lovers.

On to Tartuffe. The central character, Orgon, is a bourgeois of middle age, with grown children, and a second very attractive wife, Elmire. We learn from Dorine, the maid – and the servants are often the ones to offer common sense explanations in Molière's plays – that recently Orgon has been behaving foolishly, and is compensating with extreme religiosity. At which point he discovers Tartuffe, a brilliant hypocrite and manipulator, who moves into the house and swindles the family.

Members read scenes between Orgon, his brother-in-law Cleante, and Dorine the maid; between Orgon and Elmire, his wife, and a later scene when Orgon learns that Tartuffe has been making passes at Elmire. For our grand finale, we read the famous farcical scene in which Orgon hides under a table in order to spy on Tartuffe’s slimy attempted seduction of Elmire. Finally, Orgon’s eyes are opened.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:45.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner
Recording secretary

The Curtain Rises

Jacquie's Email: Hello Literary Ladies!
   Roll out the red carpet! Turn on the klieg lights! Wednesday, September 28th is opening night of the 2022-2023 Season of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson -- Drama!!!
   Our premier will be held at Joanna's open-air theater, and there has been a change to your programs. This week we will be reading Act I of Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, compliments of Christine. Barbara will present on Moliere at our next meeting. Doors open at 12:30 pm. Curtain goes up at 1pm.
   For those unable to make it in person, Sharon, aka tech crew, would be happy to make the reading available on Zoom. Just let us know if you would like to attend virtually, and she will provide a link and the time it will be live.
   Let's get on with the show!!!

Christine's Minutes: Ten members of the Literature Club gathered dramatically in Joanna’s lovely sunlit garden for the first and exceptionally dramatic meeting of our 2022-2023 season, in which our topic will no doubt be Drama.We missed our esteemed President Connie Stewart, but she was off in Scotland making sure Great Birnam Wood was still moving with deep drama towards Dunsinane Hill.

Our esteemed corresponding secretary, Jacquie, sprinted across highways, through backyards and forests in order to retrieve The Bell, so that Vice-President Joanna, acting as President, could most dramatically call the meeting to order.

The minutes of our May 18th meeting were read and accepted, most undramatically.

Our treasurer reported that the coffers are full with $394.50. There was a brief but dramatic discussion of our donation to the Hastings Library, but it was decided to await the return of our president.

Laura Rice said that the Hudson Valley Music Club, of which she is a member, will be performing on Mondays at 1 pm, at the Irvington Presbyterian Church. The first program on October 24th will feature works by women composers.

Because of scheduling changes there was no official program, which is also why there will be no official minutes.

In lieu of said officiousness, Props-person and Stage Manager Christine arrived with a kimono, a cowboy hat, a papal miter, and a Bruegelian helmet (tea cozies), and several highlighted copies of the first scene of Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play, Top Girls. The first American production was presented at the Public Theatre in 1982, and featured Linda Hunt as Pope Joan.

The casting was done arbitrarily, that is, in alphabetical order, so that anyone whose part did not include costumery should not feel personally neglected. But it will be noted that such a slight will never happen again.

Absent any rehearsal, members read their parts brilliantly: Marlene, the newly appointed Managing Director of the Top Girls Agency; Isabella Bell, the intrepid traveler, naturalist, and explorer; Pope Joan, who inhabited the chair of Saint Peter from 854-856 CE, and ended rather badly; Lady Nijo, a Japanese courtesan and later a Buddhist nun; Dull Gret, also known as Mad Meg, who streaks across the eponymous painting by Bruegel leading a crowd of women through Hell; and Patient Griselda, the pathologically obedient wife we know from Chaucer’s “Clerk’s Tale”. All these women came alive, most dramatically, in our bucolic circle in Joanna’s backyard.

Lee Strasberg would have been proud. The neighbors would have been stunned had they known what shady characters were cavorting in their midst.

Although the casting was in fact done arbitrarily, if dramatically, Linda announced that the fact of her being cast for the role of (the possibly apocryphal) Pope Joan was serendipitous indeed. It turns out that her great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great-grandfather was the one and only Jewish King of Poland.

The meeting was adjourned at 3 pm.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner
Recording Secretary


Below, photos from the meeting. Top to bottom, left to right: Christine hands out props and costumes; seated left to right, Linda, Laura, Sharon, Jacquie, Lori; Joanna studies her part (second Lady Nijo); Jacquie and Lori, as Dull Gret and Patient Griselda; Carol; Carla; Laura practicing (first Lady Nijo); Sharon slightly miffed she didn't get the kimono (but was over it in 3 minutes); Linda, Laura and a more cheerful Sharon

Picnic at Christine's Pool

Here we are, enjoying our annual summer picnic by the side of Christine's pool. On one side - the west - it is an "infinity" pool. Over this watery edge, the Hudson Palisades can be seen in all its dramatic beauty. A marvelous setting for talk about what we're reading and what we're doing. Photos from Connie

Carla Presents Margaret Wise Brown

 Jacquie's Email

Hello Literary Ladies! Could it be possible that fortune is smiling down on us and the forecast is looking splendid for our in-person meeting this Wednesday???!!!

For fear of tempting the weather gods, I will not make too big a deal of this and merely say that we will be meeting this Wednesday, May 18th in Joanna's verdant garden for a brown bag get-together to celebrate our final meeting of this 2021-2022 season of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson, and to hear Carla's presentation on Margaret Wise Brown. To take advantage of the setting, the weather, and the fact that we will be together IN-PERSON, we will be meeting at NOON.

With that, I wish you all a lovely few days before our meeting. I will not bother you all with the tale that has plagued me lo these past 22 years of my mysteriously disappearing copy of Goodnight Moon...

Until Wednesday, Jacquie

Christine's Minutes

At last. Was the sigh of blessed relief audible across the border in Dobbs? It may well have been, as, thanks to some convergence of the planets, there no leaf blowers, no lawn mowers and no earth movers to be heard as fourteen members of the Literature Club gathered in Joanna’s lovely back yard for an in-person meeting. Additionally, a delicious luncheon was served to surprise our outgoing President, Fran Greenberg, along with our newest and very intrepid member, Sharon DeLevie.

President Connie Stewart thanked Joanna for her lovely venue, and thanked Fran for her exceptional leadership during the past two years of COVID 19, Zoom, and all the attendant uncertainties.

The minutes were read and accepted. The treasury is currently flush with $520.11.

For our final program of the year, what could be better than Carla’s presentation of the biography of Margaret Wise Brown, of whom it could safely be said that while we all know her famous Goodnight Moon, we knew nothing at all of her life and who she was. She proved to be a fascinating character.

Carla, in the persona of the “little old lady whispering hush,” wore an apron, a necklace full of vegetables, and rabbit ears.

The two biographies used in the presentation – in elegant juxtaposition – were Margaret Wise Brown, Awakened by the Moon, published in 1992, by Leonard Marcus, a prominent reviewer of children’s books, and In the Great Green Room, 2016, by Amy Gary, a former Director of Publishing at Lucas Films. Carla described the latter’s approach as being novelistic; additionally, it has a foreword written by James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr, MWB’s fiancé at the time of her sudden death.

Margaret Wise Brown was born in 1910 in then-fashionable Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the middle child of well-off parents, both with illustrious ancestors. Later, the family moved to Beechhurst, and then to Great Neck. Margaret attended both public and private schools, and later a Swiss boarding school. She went to Hollins College, her mother’s alma mater, and encountered her early mentor, Marguerite Hearsy, who encouraged her writing for many years. After college, Margaret moved to Greenwich Village, famously filled with writers and artists. She held various jobs and was also subsidized by her father. But then, hearing good things about Bank Street’s education program, she applied and was accepted as a student teacher. While there, she met William Scott, a publisher she would later work for. Margaret joined the Bank Street Writers Laboratory, a group of writers for children who met, read, and critiqued each other’s work. Had our own Carla only been twenty years older, she would have met Margaret, as Carla was in the writers’ lab in the sixties.

While on a ski trip with friends, Margaret grew tired of hiking up the hills (in those halcyon pre-ski-lift days) and returned to the lodge and wrote The Runaway Bunny. The motif and rhythms are based on a French Provençal ballad, of a woman threatening to leave her lover: a love story, recast as a hunt or quest, involving transformations (perhaps with some credit to Ovid?)

Around that time, Margaret met Michael Strange, the pen name of Blanche Oelrichs, a thrice-married older woman and intellectual. For the next ten years, they would maintain a somewhat tortured relationship.

Having been introduced to Vinalhaven by a friend, in 1942 Margaret bought a Wharf Quarry manager’s house, for the princely sum of $1600, the back taxes owed. There was no electricity and no indoor plumbing. She called it “The Only House.”

Margaret also formed a strong friendship with Ursula Nordstrom, the legendary editor at Harper, publisher of The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon. She continued writing – in her short lifetime she wrote over 100 books. Soon many were published by the new imprint called Golden Books. Life magazine printed a profile of Margaret, along with photos. Have I mentioned that she was quite beautiful? She was also commissioned to write about children’s literature for the Book of Knowledge.

In 1952, while on vacation on Cumberland Island, she met the much younger James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr, nicknamed “Pebble”. They fell madly in love and were soon engaged. But then on a book tour in Nice, France, she went into the hospital after experiencing acute pain, and was operated on for an ovarian cyst and appendicitis. As she was recovering, she kicked up her leg to demonstrate her good health, dislodged a blood clot that quickly traveled to her heart and killed her. She was 42 years old. Dozens of her books are still in print and are translated into many languages.

To end this delightful presentation, members read aloud The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, sharing the illustrations with all, à la library reading time. I think we were all misty-eyed when the readings came to an end.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

Carla's presentation in Joanna's garden