Memory: Not so bad after all

I gave up acting seven years ago. I couldn’t remember my lines as the baker’s father in the Prizery’s “Into the Woods.” Kids young enough to be my grandchildren were coaching me. Too old,  I guessed.

I did join the (over-55) Double Nickel Players in Clarksville in 2021, but I didn’t feel up to performing in skits in their annual “Sunday Funnies” show. I liked the group, though, and sang songs during scene changes for four years.

I was thrilled when.    helping get  the Clarksville Community Players to stage “Guys and Dolls” this past February, but as music director. I didn’t have to memorize lines. I was on stage a bit but singing songs again.

When Double Nickel decided to do two one-act plays this fall, I was mildly interested. I did  not want to put on a crazy costume in “Frankenstein Slept Here,” but the other show, “The Potman Spoke Sooth” was intriguing.

Monica Walter, who had been director of “Guys and Dolls,” figured I could be “the playwright” in the show. OK, but 37 lines? That’s more than I have ever done and my memory is fading at age 84.

So I did play the writer who is upset and offended when actors don’t like his work. He gets mad when they mangle his lines and complain about the script.

Wow. This is already me. I don’t need to act at all!

The show seems to call for an angry creator. Regardless of the script, how would I really feel about these complaining actors? I would feel hurt, violated.  So instead of being outrageously angry, I am almost in tears as I fret over the actors’ complaints about my writing.  I become the kind of wimpy, sulking guy that Monica says would be beaten up by bullies in the schoolyard. Is this hard? No, it’s how I feel!

Somehow the 37 lines came together. I was so panicked about forgetting them that I rehearsed them in my mind over and over again—in the bathtub, on a walk, driving a car Now I cannot stop. I am young again.

Freed from carrying a script, I can raise my hands in disbelief, glare at my enemies and beg the audience to take my side. In real life, I’m not supposed to yell at my wife or servers that mess up my order. But on stage, I can scream loudly at evil characters who have done me wrong.

 I can imagine they are the bank employee who put me on hold, the guy who cut me off in traffic, the telemarketer who woke me up from my nap. One of my lines is, “You fake!” Another, “You hear that? You lousy, stupid….” And “You’re crazy!”  Oh, that feels good! Maybe it will add another year to my life.

You too should join the Double Nickel Players, which puts on about two shows a year. We only rehearse in the daytime! Come to a meeting, held at 1:30 p.m. the third Thursday of the month at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Clarksville.

Come and see our shows at 7:30 p.m. Saturday Sept. 19and 2:30 p Sunday Sept. 20  at the Clarksville Fine Arts Center. Tickets, for $15, can be bought at at Clarksvilleplayers.org.

 

 

 

 

War diaries: Connecting with my uncle again

I finally did it! I can check off the item at the very top of my “bucket list.” Reading my uncle’s World War II diaries. (In fact, it was the only thing on my bucket list.)

I had always wanted, in theory, to go through these tiny books that I looked at briefly at my cousin John Gee’s  house on the West Coast. But I didn’t have time to examine them further—you know, we never do.

But I was inspired after seeing my Clarksville friend Holly Stadtler’s PBS production of “The Green Box,” about the diaries of a war veteran discovered by his son.

So John and his wife Susan Rumsey agreed to send some of the diaries of Fred B. Gee to me just a few months ago.

When they arrived I was wondering  how I was  going to read them.  The handwriting was clear, but it was very small, and my vision has been getting worse.

Well, I found an app for my iPad called “Pen to Print” that can take cursive handwriting and translate it into printed text. It is far from perfect, and a lot of the clearly written pages produce fairly garbled text. But it was good enough that I could get the point of his notes.

The diaries follow him from his entry into the Army in 1942 through his voyage across the ocean to his stationing in England, France, Belgium and Germany past V-E (Victory in Europe) Day in 1945.

My uncle appears to have worked mainly as a supply sergeant near the front, rather than out in the field through most of the war. But he frequently describes the bombings, the fireworks and the historic events going on around him as the war progressed.

But I have to admit I did not get many first-hand battle accounts I might have seen in a war movie. No hand-to-hand combat or life and death rescues from foxholes. No John Wayne.

In fact, most of the accounts are of daily barracks life and the men he went to war with.

And there are some references to love: “ Geneva Lee's letters are increasingly sweet and they now have priority over all except Dad's - in opening and answering.  I've let all friends and relatives know how I feel toward her - and everyone heartily approves.

 

There is passage after passage of good times with our English relatives and tourist sites such as  Stonehenge  and  Kaiser Wilhelm’s destroyed statue in Germany.  You’d think the war was great fun.

But there is one entry in 1945 that stands out. He says that military censors had banned soldiers’ diaries and that he would face court martial if he wrote any more. Understandably, the brass were afraid the enemy would get ahold of the diaries and a soldier would give away positions and battle plans. Yet, he did continue writing in smaller books but with more innocuous messages.

So I may never know what really happened. John recounts his father telling him toward the end of the war in Germany that he had to step over many dead German soldiers, but I could find nothing in the diaries about that.

Here are some good examples though of memorable moments in the war:

--New York: “We march from our section to the depot, thousands of us, with a 130-pound load on our backs. The bands were all lined up, playing martial music.”

--On the Atlantic: “We are jammed everywhere on board like in the slave trade before Civil War days. We were in the lower level and nervous about torpedoes.”

--England: “Events are swinging toward the invasion day. Last night an estimated 150 German planes rained bombs around us and a German plane crashed near us and the pilot was apparently uninjured and hiding somewhere nearby.

--France: “We got hopelessly lost and found ourselves in the heart of Paris (before other Americans) with people mobbing us and kissing us and shaking hands.”

--Belgium: “A Canadian bomber crashed in flames into a house after the German night fighters hit a huge, allied formation. We saw tracers and heard the roar of a 2,000-odd formation and then suddenly the bombers fell, turning into flames, and four airmen and five civilians were killed.”

--Germany: “We crossed the river on a pontoon bridge and a buzz bomb hit right behind me and blew some apartments sky high. The shock was terrific.”

--Germany:  “We saw hundreds of German soldiers being checked in as prisoners from the front. We saw a big airfield full of German planes, some wrecked but most in good flying condition but no gas.”

--May 8, 1945: “The greatest day in European history,  meaning the end of six years of vicious warfare.”

My uncle was an extrovert and enjoyed others’ company. I don’t think he came out of it badly damaged. But I can’t believe the war was one big moving party as the diary seems to convey in parts I left out.

The biggest thing I got out of these diaries was the resumption of a close bond I had with this man over the years. As a toddler, I used to follow him around the house. Once he took me with him as he called on businesses as an insurance salesman.

He had always wanted to be a journalist, and when I went into that profession, he sent me letters several times a week along with local newspaper clippings before he died in 1981.  His writing was superb, in the style of the famous San Francisco columnist Herb Caen. Man, if he was still alive I could have used him as a correspondent when I ran the Kiplinger California Letter.

Reading through these diaries brought back my memories of him. I was re-connecting with my favorite uncle all over again.

Then I thought: What was the purpose of these diaries? Was he writing just to let off steam? Was it a historic recording for posterity?

You know, I am even mentioned in them, first on my birth in 1942 and again on one of my birthdays.

Maybe he was writing these for me?

Loving and hating AI

There is a lot to dislike about AI: it eliminates jobs, it uses up energy, kids use it to plagiarize papers, it makes mistakes, it steals other people’s work.

But face it: it’s here to stay. We might as well make use of it. A lot of us resisted switching from typewriters to computers, too. But would we still want to be using white-out, the bottle of stuff used to cover up mistakes?

People who refuse to try Chat GPT and others say their search engine is just as good. Well, surprise: they are starting to use it, too.

Want to know what time the show starts at the local theater on Saturday night? Instead of combing through its  website, you ask AI and it comes right up quickly. I asked it a few weeks ago to gauge the reaction to the World Cup Finals half-time show only an hour after the game was over. It came up with numerous details. How did it know? It told me it combed through Facebook and Instagram accounts by people who let anyone read theirs.

I’ll admit that some of it is scary. Having trouble reaching my doctor, I have been asking AI medical questions, and it has done a pretty good job. But it remembers details that I’m not sure I want. “You’re getting old. You probably should not be trying that pill,” it tells me.  Or: “With your history of back trouble, you probably shouldn’t do a lot of heavy lifting.” Yes, Mom!

It keeps asking me questions back, and the conversation can go on and on. Well, how am I to argue with something that has access to the combined knowledge built up of all human history?

I’m not keen on AI-written  books, however. I had it write my column once and it did a terrible job. But if I trained it with some of my past columns, it might have done better.

Change is hard for people. I’m sure blacksmiths were telling motorists in the early days: “Get a horse!”

If you haven’t tried it, just go to www.chatgpt.com and ask it any question at no cost (for now anyway.)