January 21, 2017

Last night’s performance was better than opening night, partially because my anxieties were calmed by success. Everyone thinks it’s a masterpiece and I am a genius. That tempers and colors all perception. Talk-back afterward, enlightening and gratifying. Lost my voice. They gave me framed posters of both Night Music and Saint Patrick’s Well. Dragged back to the hotel for a final drink and a discussion with James, a personable hotel employee who had checked my sister and brother-in-law in an hour before, who was homeless for a while, and who is very involved with state politics, and with Jesus, in proportions that led him into a certain degree of contradiction, but what the hell. The bar staff fed us bits of leftover chocolate.

Linda and Jim were here in the morning. We breakfasted and headed out into the streets, where we encountered the Women’s March, the Greensboro version of what was happening in every metropolis in America.  It was peaceful, civic-minded, good-humored, powerful and inspiring. We thanked our luck to have been in the right place at the right time. Later we had lunch at Blue Denim surrounded by women just down from the demonstration, still exultant, still with their placards at hand. I was fired up by the assembly in the public square by the theater. I kept thinking “this is America at its best.”  We are all afraid of the same thing, and it is the right thing to fear.