Thoughts Upon Return from a Two-Week Sojourn, 1-15 July 2023

Life companion Barbara Reed and I departed Minnesota on Saturday, 1 July, for a two-week sojourn to visit son Ryan Davison-Reed in Brooklyn, New York.  The trip was magnificent, including significant time spent in Oberlin and Cleveland OH, two boroughs of New York City, Washington, D. C., the Appalachian Mountains, Cincinnati OH, and the southeastern MN town of Winona.

 

Traveling long distances alters the perception of time.  The recognition abides that only two weeks have gone by on the calendar, but the amazing array of sites, sights, and landscapes brings the perception of many more days spent on the sojourn than actually would be marked off on the calendar.

The foray over to Oberlin brought Barbara and me into a town with signs of a progressive spirit permeating throughout, consistent with a heritage that was decades ahead of the nation regarding feminism and racial equity.

A brief drive into Cleveland on the same day (Sunday, 2 July) gave a fresh take on a city that features surprisingly radiant Lake Erie views, an appealing downtown, and even the aesthetically pleasing edifice for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (an institution that I regard as problematic for biases and errant selections).

The days (Monday, 3 July into Monday, 10 July) in Brooklyn provided a stunning array of excellent meals, love and camaraderie, and many of the those experiences and visual images that I love so well:  bustling streets, efficient subways, extraordinarily diverse mass of humanity, and the specific images afforded by Washington Square Park, Stone Wall Monument, the Chelsea Hotel, the Metropolitan Art Museum, the Brooklyn Reliquary, McCarren Park, East River Ferry (for an extended East River cruise), and Roosevelt Island.

On to Washington, D. C., we rolled, gaining convenient access to the national capital via a long ride from Interstate 95 along Pennsylvania Avenue, thence on a drive all around the area, followed next day (Tuesday, 11 July) by thorough coverage of the Museum of the American Indian and a mega-walk on my part all through the Constitution Avenue/Independence Avenue/Pennsylvania Avenue area wherein all of the major governmental national institutions are located.

We then had a day (Wednesday, 12 July) of driving through stunning Appalachian terrain, with rolling, verdant, scenes unfolding throughout sections of Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio all the way to the city of Cincinnati, where Barbara and I spent Thursday, 13 July, amidst red and brown kangaroos, under and above water scenes of a mama and baby hippopotamus, and many other respectfully environed creatures that for me included most memorably the newly encountered Aardwolf, African painted dog, and manatee.

Friday, 14 July, brought some challenging road repair and a thunderstorm, but we still pulled into Winona and were settled into the Plaza Hotel and Suites by 1:45 AM. 

A venue to which I have brought my students and Ryan many times over the years since initial performances in 2003, the Great River Shakespeare Festival (GRSF) was a uniquely joyful experience on Saturday, 15 July, for having Barbara with me.  This is the 20^th Anniversary year for GRSF;  Barbara and I attended the performance of As You Like It.

The play was consistently well-acted, typical for this magnificent event, with especially well-crafted performances by Ashley Bowen as Rosalind, Eliana Rowe as Celia, Christopher Gerson as both Jacques and Charles the Wrastler, and the sensationally lively Emily Fury Daly as Touchstone (fool).  Christopher Gerson is the actor who finally performed Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow/Life’s but a walking shadow” soliloquy in the careful, unhurried manner that I had long desired to see (and I once had a chance to tell him so), who gave the sensational performance in King Lear as a paraplegic Fool (also once had a chance to discuss that role with him), and in this play did an inspired rendition of Jacque’s “All the world’s a stage, and we the players…,”  recalling the unhurried delivery of the Macbeth’s “Tomorrow/walking shadow/She should have died hereafter” moment.

Amazing. 

Time.

Scene, event, spectacle, the joy of travel and that seen while traveling.

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I thought of my students many times in the course of our travels, wishing that more of them--- and the United States public in general---  themselves traveled more, gaining the increased knowledge and perspective that only getting out of one’s comfort zone and place of residence can provide.

I shall share these and other thoughts on life and the importance of knowledge, gained through books and experience, in articles to come soon, with reflections on the importance of education in all aspects of life---  what is gained when education informs and is acquired through experience, and what is diminished when the great well-springs of knowledge available in life lived artfully are not productively tapped.