Some say death can be your ally. Yeah, maybe…

If you’re an Inuit shaman or a Yoruba priestess. Some days I can dig it. Mostly I doubt that death teaches us anything.

Today marks the year-one anniversary of ZL’s death. I first met Z when she ran into a theater rehearsal and shouted “they’re gonna put artists on a salary!” She was right. For five years, hundreds of us — filmmakers, theater artists, muralists, musicians — collected a paycheck and benefits for doing art in America. Impossible? No. Thanks to Z, we all applied for the program. Oh, the stuff we accomplished.

ZL lived in a Northern California commune through her 20s. We’re talking serious close-to-the-land self-sufficiency with a righteous point to make — this system sucks; we’re gonna build a better one. If you don’t mind wood stoves, kerosene lanterns and outhouses, they succeeded. When she returned to San Francisco, Z  lived on Dolores Street in a rangy pullman apartment that logged in more traffic than the Bay Bridge.

I knew Z best from working with her in the Pickle Family Circus. I put the band together, Z did advance work (we toured a lot), juggled, and worked as a roustabout. Boundless energy, stubborn positivism, and gallons of coffee gave the woman superhuman powers. When stricken, Z didn’t appreciate her condition; it pissed her off to be dying. No apparent lesson to be learned there.

HM was the next to go. He was one of my few male friends in Los Angeles. Guys. Most of them don’t age sociably. HL did. He was an exquisite guitarist and songwriter born in Boyle Heights when the community integrated — half Jewish, half Chicano. H was half Jewish, half Chicano. Brooklyn Avenue became Cesar Chavez Avenue and everybody in the ‘hood thought it was cool.

HM told amazing stories, had a great sense of humor and made me laugh, showed me where to buy the best guitar, get these special strings. H could play anything. We both sang and sounded great together, rarely rehearsed. We already knew the same tunes. We could play “Don’t Think Twice” as a polka and make it swing. H bailed because the cure grew worse than his disease. Lessons? H was wiser, funnier, and a better musician when he was alive. Dead, he’s just not here anymore.

HR played tenor and drove a cab. Born in Detroit, H split after college, came out to San Francisco. All time I knew him (decades), H wore a perennial beard and a black Greek fisherman’s hat.

I met H in Winter Sun, my first electric band. He came across to play with us in the Pickle Family Circus band. He was the calmest adventurer I’ve ever known. He’d say ‘why not’ and try anything. H loved jazz, his friends, and marijuana until he dropped it. He excelled without need for recognition.

When H learned what assaults he would have to endure to gain a few more months, he said ‘no thanks.’ His decision seemed very much in character. I guess that means he died the way he lived.

DL was my oldest friend. We rambled, raced, rocked and rolled together from fourth grade through high school. D was born in the UK but emigrated when his old man, a British colonial attache in North Africa and graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, decided he could not tolerate the socialist disaster that befell his precious bloody England when they booted Churchill out of Number 10 Downing. DL’s dad snatched up his wife and child and fled to our small Massachusetts town.

DL was smart but unpopular. His unorthodox intelligence suffered from the censorship of traditional education and an intolerant township elite. D grew to be an inspired liar and learned how to not give a damn. He did not-give-a-damn well, even flamboyantly. According to the club, D had already boarded the train bound for purgatory. I always liked the guy. We hung out in high school and I don’t think he ever crossed me.

I lost track of D after high school. After my old man died, my mother moved away and I lost track of everyone in that little town. David and I picked up at our 40^th high school reunion, the first we had ever attended.

DL may have gone to purgatory, but he returned as a fabulously rich man. He restored a house on the water in Duxbury with a ship chandlery from 1820 still outfitted in the back room. A vineyard ran down a gentle slope to Cape Cod Bay. He refitted an elegant, seaworthy 70-foot, ketch-rigged schooner from the Gilded Age and built a hilltop palace on St. Lucia.

DL and I had reached two different destinations, often traveling the same paths, but not together. I had been a revolutionary, D a hippie entrepreneur. We disagreed on everything. We didn’t give a damn; we loved each other unconditionally. I barked back at his smart but cynical worldview. He understood and supported my writing, the worlds I choose to explore. I marveled at the generosity of his extravagance.

D only shined me on one time. He told me he was fine when he wasn’t. He told me not to bother visiting him, he’d be back on his feet by summer. In reality— like HR — DL pitted the cure against the cause and the cure lost. All I learned from DL’s death is how much I miss him.

• * * *

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe death can be an ally, a mentor. It’s certainly a reality. But as the losses increase, life begins to feel like war. And — as with war — there are no lessons to be learned from death. Perhaps I’ll learn something after the fact. In the meantime, I love life too much to seek instruction.

# # #

I was so shy, I was a skirt-hugger. I loved to play with my dolls, the kids in my neighborhood and was dazzled by the performing arts. My first love was ballet and I started lessons at the age of seven. With flat feet and a sickly constitution, I wasn’t very good, and often missed class, so despite being quite musical, my mother pulled me out of class, though I did get to see my teacher as the Sugar Plum Fairy in a local production of The Nutcracker Suite. I was hooked, though didn’t get back to lessons until an adult.

I took requisite piano lessons in 5th grade but watched The Mickey Mouse Club instead of practicing. I was, however, showing a talent for singing. When my parents’ friends came over, I was trotted out to sing Broadway show tunes, which my mother taught me when I was very young. I would sing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” full blast on my swing set to summon my best friend/next door neighbor to come out to play. I knew quite a repertoire of Rodgers & Hammerstein and Lerner & Lowe songs at an early age. But I was a misfit at school; smart, qawky, with glasses and buck teeth. And a bad hair cut. At about this time we moved from Detroit to the suburbs and things got really bad socially.

In the summer of 1964 I began attending the National Music Camp in Interlochen, MI (now the Interlochen Arts Camp) as a drama and voice major. There I fit in completely and made the friends of my lifetime, both in the cabin and in the classes I took. One counselor and one teacher made a lasting difference in my life.

My counselor in 1966 was Marilynn Andersen, universally called “Grundy” for reasons that were never clear to me. She was a warm, gregarious person who taught friendship by example and played a great folk guitar, prompting boisterous songfests. I was still quite shy and unsure of myself, as many 13 year old girls are. Grundy’s infections good humor and compassion allowed me to blossom. Eight weeks can make a lifetime of difference. In her train letter to me (an end-of-the summer ritual, written to each person in the cabin to amuse her on her way home; I obviously still have the one she wrote to me 50 years ago), she said: “An excellent camper you’ve always been all along, and you truly are a virtuoso in the the art of living. Keep your sense of humor, enthusiasm, and intelligence always about you, and you’ll never ever lack for friends.” No one had ever said that to me before. It is not an overstatement to say that going forward into high school, I developed a certain self-confidence that has stood me in good stead ever since.

The next summer, in High School Division, I was able to take Operetta with Clarence “Dude” Stephenson. I had taken it as an Intermediate, but the High School production had really serious singers and a huge chorus, frequently as many as 90 girls. The leads had wonderful voices, some went on to real careers in opera and inspired me to take voice lessons when I returned home. But I was never of the calibre to get a lead role in Dude’s Operetta (always a Gilbert & Sullivan, fully staged with costumes rented from Tracy & Co in Boston…always a highlight of the summer). But I am just five feet tall, and was a Drama Major. Dude would line up the chorus by height, so I always led the chorus on and off the stage and he would give me special bits to do, knowing that I would be fully in the moment and could carry it off. And he rewarded me by singling me out to win the Operetta Chorus Award all three summers that I was in the division, and as the best Female Chorus member for the first 25 years of Operetta at camp. The first year I heard my name called was surreal. I sat there, not at all expecting the honor and heard “Elizabeth Sarason”. No one calls me “Elizabeth”…ever. So I sat there, thinking the name was familiar, but it couldn’t be me, not little Betsy. Everyone was looking at me. And suddenly I realized it was me. From a group of 90 girls, I was singled out. I had been noticed. And I learned that as individuals we DO make a difference. We do the best we can, we put our hearts into whatever we do and our efforts are appreciated. We are not all soloists, but being part of the ensemble is just as important. I learned that from Dude.

I went on to have a successful career in tech sales, which takes a willingness to get up in front of people and follow through with strangers. And Dude and I remain friends to this day.

Television came to our house late in the form of a used 10-inch Motorola with a cabinet as big as the Ritz. Sunday night was family night. Except for dinner, we weren’t big on family rituals but Sunday night was an exception. I’d be called inside to watch “The Ed Sullivan Show” (with varied interest — too many women with little trick dogs, too many guys balancing spinning plates on sticks).

However, I do recall one Sunday summer night when Ed Sullivan booked Elvis Presley for his premier on national television. By that time, I’d become a Top-40 freak, waiting patiently through 45 minutes of dedications to hear Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis really rock it. Elvis’ controversial moves were no more startling than my seventh-grade heartthrob’s audacious attempts to shimmy for the boys from her second-story bedroom.

Right after Ed Sullivan, “Robin Hood” went on the air. This half-hour drama was produced by pioneering Hollywood deal maker Hannah Weinstein and her Brit counterparts. “Robin Hood” was popular in our household. My old man — being blacklisted himself — admired Weinstein for hiring ostracized American writers including Ring Lardner, Jr, Dalton Trumbo, Waldo Salt, Adrian Scott.

Many of these guys later collected incognito Oscars for film work, but in 1955 they collaborated to create this witty, farcical morality series about resistance and the abuse of power. “Robin Hood” delivered a tongue-in-cheek drama with men in tights, and the phony-looking Sherwood Forest sets were hilarious.

Every Monday, the kids in my fifth-grade class would gather in the playground before school to recount the previous night’s “Honeymooners” episode. The live, improvised comedy churned out laugh-till-it-hurts one-liners, spats, and pratfalls. Every kid on the playground emulated Art Carney as Ed Norton, the self-styled “sanitation engineer” who worked in the sewers by day and competed by night with Ralph for Fool-of-the Week honors. Spouses Alice and Trixie called the real shots in the Brooklyn tenement with diplomacy, pragmatism and grace.

Next stop? “Mickey Mouse Club” drew me and my pubescent pals to the screen because of its main feature — Mousekateer Annette’s budding breasts. Darlene could really sing. Don’t remember much else about Mickey Mouse.

In high school, if I wasn’t at the recreation club dances, I watched the Friday night morality plays — Rod Serling’s weird and brainy “Twilight Zone,” Mister Dillon, Miss Kitty, and Chester in “Gunsmoke,” and the darker Richard Boone as Paladin in “Have Gun, Will Travel.” Paladin featured few female characters, but back then, who noticed?

“The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” left me cold except for Maynard G. Krebs, Dobie’s beatnik sidekick. I couldn’t relate to Dobie. He was as lame as Pat Boone, but Maynard… He was my kinda guy. I looked for the clever side of Maynard’s fool, to no avail. Disney wasn’t into glorifying anything that strayed far beyond the good girl, the cute boy, and three feet out of four on the ground.

After high school, my TV viewing experience went dark. It wasn’t intentional, but television just disappeared out of my life.

Later, I realized that I had stopped watching the tube in Quincy House, after I stood in the middle of my cinderblock living room and watched Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald — live on CBS. After watching Dave Garroway point over the Nevada mountains at the flash of a nuclear explosion, after the Cuban missile countdown between Kennedy and Khrushchev, after JFK’s assassination, nothing on live TV surprised me.

In spring semester of my sophomore year, I secured a transfer out of my galoot-dominated dorm suite occupied by a Harvard football player and his equally gigantic toady. I was listening to early Dylan, they were watching the tube and crunching beer cans. I have no idea when anybody studied.

I found shelter, stimulation, and cheer with another Quincy House folksinger and a guy from North Philly named George who took great joy in affirming his Harvard enrollment. “No, baby,” he would say, “not Howard… Harvard!” There was no television in our suite, only guitars, an autoharp, and a phonograph, spinning out jazz, folk music, Appalachian murder ballads, and r&b.

The next summer, I joined an SDS organizing project in South Philly. We lived in a tenement surrounded by a neighborhood where the working-class inhabitants — Polish, Italian, and Black — did not cross to the other side of certain streets. Again, no time for television, but the neighborhood doo woppers were busy on the sidewalks, inventing the Philly sound in the humid summer nights.

After that, I lived off campus on Putnam Avenue with a menagerie of Cambridge fringe fanatics. No television there either. Summers, I migrated to the Bay Area, exploring the Sierras (My cousin was a rock climber… insane.), building gardens, smoking kilos of weed and consuming gallons of Red Mountain rotgut available in  Zinfandel, Chablis, and a horrifying Rosé.

At night, fully loaded, we would cross the Bay Bridge and drop into the Haight to check out the bands — Jefferson Airplane at the Matrix, Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Straight Theater, the Avalon,Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Steve Miller Band, Bo Diddly, Eric Clapton and Cream, and, of course, the John Mayhall Blues Breakers, later to become Fleetwood Mac.

Between the music and the mountains, there was little time for television. But in the Haight or Fillmore, you could see a lineup of knockout rock for a buck and a quarter, dance your ass off, maybe meet somebody, and leave anytime you wanted. What the hell.

After graduation, I jumped into the the revolution with a dogged determination to overthrow the government of the United States thru theater, film, and music. It was a tough job, but somebody hadda do it. Again, no time for prime time.

Fragmented TV recollections from those days evoke images of war, a helicopter tipped over the side of an aircraft carrier, cop-demolished demonstrations, uprisings in the cities. Aside from the visual flashes, television didn’t bring Vietnam into my living room because there was no television and — at times — no living room!

I was already hip to network coverage of Vietnam. Although they later grew fond of congratulating themselves for their wartime reportage, CBS, NBC, and ABC often ignored earnest and urgent dispatches from their front-line journalists in favor of anti-communist demonizing and promoting Gen. Westmorland’s “light-at-the end-of-the-tunnel” mythology. They consistently under-reported antiwar protests, shrinking demo crowd estimates and trivializing demo impacts. The networks also loved to diminish and trivialize the counterculture. Everyone was a hippie or crazed Vietnam vet. Ten years later, the media were still at it. They put a human face on authority with “Hill Street Blues” as if to counteract broad public understanding of how repressive and impersonal law enforcement had been.

When the Movement fragmented and turned dark in the early 1970s, I retreated to a rough little town nestled high Rockies. Wood heat, no running water, no electricity. I’d work with my hands and “get my head together.” My only media experience then was a battery-powered record player and three albums: Carole King’s “Tapestry,” the Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” and The Band’s “Music from Big Pink.” There wasn’t even a television in the café.

Don’t get me wrong — people weren’t avoiding the tube; it just wasn’t happening.

Fast forward to my television reunion. Back in San Francisco, I embraced the medium via my sitcom fanatic, cop-show devotee, writer-actress girlfriend. She offered a brilliant pop-culture prism through which we viewed reruns of “Rockford Files,” “Columbo,” All in the Family,” “Saturday Night Live.” and the perennial “Honeymooners.” The second time around, there was so much to learn.

For better or for worse, I missed out on over a decade of television. Perhaps I lost a a window on the world. Perhaps I lost nothing. Who can say?

# # #

This world explored in my “resistance fiction series,” published by Harvard Square Editions.

I tend to love romantic movies; big sweeping costume dramas, though occasionally go for thoughtful dramas. It is difficult for me to pick just five that have rocked my world, as I love to come back to favorites and watch them over and over again, just for pure pleasure. So I will share my top five and then add a few honorable mentions.

Shakespeare in Love, 1998

Favorite all-time movie. Saw it 15 times in the theater. It became migraine therapy when I had a headache (which was frequent in those days) and I couldn’t take any more medication that day. It is absolutely the perfect film, combining romance, witty dialogue, the supposed genesis of “Romeo & Juliet” (my favorite piece of literature in the English language, and oft-used source for monologues in acting and speech classes in college…it was a sad day when I realized I was too old to play Juliet), gorgeous costumes and music. The source of continued battles in my household over the relative merits of this film vs. “Saving Private Ryan”, since it beat the latter for Best Picture Oscar. I watched it again last summer and found it as wonderful as ever. And it takes place during the time of Elizabeth I, my favorite period in history. What could be better?

The Last of the Mohicans, 1992

This took me by storm and continues to cause turmoil. Best movie kiss of all time. “Stay alive…I will find you!” Be still, my beating heart. Who knew that Daniel Day-Lewis had it in him. This movie hit me at a peculiar moment in my life. I was just turning 40, and saw it over Thanksgiving weekend, always around the time of my father’s birthday; he had just died two years earlier. I became obsessed with the movie and Daniel Day-Lewis, saw it 7 times in the theater, watched it the second it was released to video, my husband (almost as a joke) presented me with a laser disk of the movie for Chanukkah that year, (“That’s nice dear, we don’t have a player…oh you bought a player too!”) We wound up owning seven movies in that format. TOO early adopters.

As an acting major myself, I was fascinated by what DD-L did, how he transformed and I watched all his early work (I had only seen “My Left Foot”, brilliant, but didn’t cause heart palpitations). I spent hours in the library (this was pre-Internet), reading up on him. I decided I had to meet him and did (another essay, already written and quite long; I will post some other day). It took years before I came to see all the father themes in the movie and how I responded to them at that period. The movie still speaks to me. And Day-Lewis is, arguably, the finest actor working today, though even he had some clunkers at the beginning of his career. There was a straight-to-video number called “Eversmile, NJ”. AWFUL!

To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962

I read the book in 8th grade. I honestly don’t remember the first time I saw the movie, as it is now a home-viewing fixture. Quiet intensity, raw power. Though I grew up in integrated Detroit (not moving to the lily-white suburbs until nearly 11 years old), I had never encountered racism or rural poverty like this. And I looked so much like Scout at that age. Gregory Peck quickly became a favorite actor of all-time. I even own a self-portrait cartoon he drew, purchased at a charity auction. I wanted to be Scout and curl up in the protection of his arms.

The Americanization of Emily, 1964

Julie Andrews, James Garner, black and white, cynical WWII movie.  Brilliant use of Mary Poppins against-type in this anti-war love story written by Paddy Chayefsky. James Garner (long before Rockford) always reminded me of my dad, which didn’t hurt. This particular movie had him playing an irresistible cad who Julie Andrews falls for against her will, having already lost her husband, father and brother to the war effort. She doesn’t want to fall for another man in uniform and refuses to glorify the war. It takes place around the D-Day invasion and the search for heroes. Bracing. I don’t get to see it often enough.

Just about anything with Audrey Hepburn in it…here are my favorites::

-Roman Holiday, 1953 Black and white…Princess Anne escapes the strictures of the palace and falls for journalist Gregory Peck (see above), but gives up love for duty. Filmed in Rome, so locations to die for.

-Two for the Road, 1967 Bittersweet road trip in France with Albert Finney as boyfriend, then husband, filmed non-sequentially (which was radical at the time). Shows them as poor college students and successful adults, young marrieds, parents, cheating spouses…runs the gamut. Great cars and locations, true and difficult emotions. And Finney winds up with Hepburn instead of Jacquline Bissett! Some funny scenes, some with great pathos.

-How to Steal a Million, 1966 A comic trifle co-starring Peter O’Toole, great outfits by Givenchy, in the heart of Paris. About a wealthy family with art forgers at its heart, but stead-fast Audrey must find a way to clear the family name and enlists O’Toole’s help, thinking he’s an art thief. Of course they become romantically entangled and comedy ensues. I do watch this over and over and never tire of it.

Honorable Mentions:

Gone With the Wind, 1939

For someone who likes sweeping, romantic sagas, this is the biggest of them all. I read the book in 8th grade. Though I would never compare myself to Vivien Leigh, with my green eyes, pale skin, black hair and a 20″ waist, I did think I bore a passing resemblance to Scarlet, of the printed word. Clark Gable never did it for me as Rhett Butler, but those are little quibbles with this magnificent film. And the film proved to be a bonding experience with my mother, who saw it when it was first released and took me to see it when it was re-released. She had a second edition copy of the novel, a birthday gift from her brother, which is now mine.

Pride and Prejudice, 2005

I know everyone loves the Colin Firth version, but I loved the Keira Knightly recent edition and watch it over and over again. I find it literate and charming, though Matthew Macfadyen was a bit gloomy. The rest of the cast was just perfect and I loved the way it was filmed.

Romeo and Juliet, 1968

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli who cast gorgeous unknown British youngsters as the leads, I bought the album and listened to it ad nauseam. I could probably recite whole parts of it right now. Liberally edited (including cutting my favorite monologues) it still flows and makes sense. The leads wound up doing print ads for Yardley cosmetics. I still have those ads. It is considered the best Shakespeare ever put on film. I didn’t know, but learned while reading up on it for this essay that Lawrence Olivier (uncredited) spoke the opening and closing monologues. Very classy.

In the 60s and 70s our television was our hearth. My family gathered around the RCA black-and-white to watch together, and the next day most friends and neighbors would have watched the same shows.

Today we make a big deal about how music was the key cultural touchstone of that era, but I’m not so sure. TV generally followed where music led, but its reach was farther and its experiences were more widely felt. I was a huge Beatles fan in the 60s, but I have probably been shaped more by Star Trek than the Beatles. Television programs are more direct, more detailed, and can cover a lot more territory than love and rebellion. They’re far longer than what fits on a 45 rpm single, and they incorporate imagery, dialog, music, characters, and more. It’s not surprising, then, that they carried the most influence of any medium of the era.

We did not regularly attend a house of worship, so to some extent I received my moral grounding from TV. I learned about justice from The Rifleman, forgiveness from The Honeymooners, persistence from Gilligan’s Island, and many things from Star Trek, including racial harmony, loyalty, logical thinking, and teamwork. I even acquired a healthy sense of skepticism from Laugh In. Could I have learned any of that from Hendrix, Dylan, Lennon or McCartney? It’s a stretch.

DVR maker TiVo used to print employees’ favorite television programs on the backs of their business cards. Nine shows were listed: three from each of three life stages, which were something like “Growing Up,” “On My Own,” and “Today.” I sometimes wonder what would go on my card. Here’s what I’d put today:

Growing Up

• The Bullwinkle Show
• Star Trek
• Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In

On My Own

• Monday Night Football
• ABC News Nightline
• M*A*S*H

Today

• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
• Major League Baseball
• The Big Bang Theory

What programs would you list, and how have they made you the person you are?