The History of My (Relatively Mild) Symptoms (I invite you to skip this if you’d rather not be exposed to the gory detals)

 Last Tuesday I woke up with a light but productive cough for no good reason (usually gunk in my lungs would come from post-nasal drip after a cold, which I hadn’t had).  My appetite was a little weird. I had a headache, which was not so unusual.  Since it was the first meeting of a book discussion group I had helped to organize,  I figured I should be there.  I ate a light lunch and took extra strength Tylenol, and all was well at the discussion group and an extended smaller meeting afterward.

By dinner time the headache was back, I really wasn’t hungry,  and I was continually thinking about the fact that on Sunday our church pastor had announced that his partner had come down with the flu.  I called the consulting nurse at Group Health Cooperative.  My temperature was normal then, although, when I called again half an hour later, it had risen to 100 degrees.  I talked to the nurses for quite a while and got pointers about how to cope with the temperature–specifically, to make sure that I drank enough water.

The night was long and uncomfortable, largely because of the headache and a couple bouts of dry heaves, and the next day wasn’t great either.  Because I was most comfortable when I first woke up from sleep, I slept a lot, which meant I didn’t drink that much, and by evening I called the nurse again to get advice about dehydration.  I remembered from my experience in Israel that severe dehydration can look much like the flu– the irony being that the logical cure–i.e. drinking water–can be difficult because the water  comes right back up again.  The solution for them was hydration solution delivered by IV.  As it happened, I didn’t have to go in to Urgent Care for this–on the nurse’s advice Jim got me Gatorade, which was surprisingly refreshing and I was able to drink a fair amount of it.  (Once you’re really dehydrated you need the electrolytes and calories, so water alone won’t do it.  You can make your own rehydration solution with water, sugar and salt, but I can say from experience that Gatorade is much more palatable).

It was easy to decide to stay home from a book group meeting that evening, and I rescheduled an oral surgery that had been scheduled for the following day (Thursday).  I continued to sleep a lot on Thursday, and to read with some interest the government’s web site on pandemic flu, for which several concerned friends had sent me the link.  By now I also knew that our pastor had the flu too–the only other flu patient I knew with whom I had had any contact.  (Jim had been down with something very similar to my symptoms while I was in Cleveland–my sympathy for him having to deal with it alone was growing daily.)  I read the H1N1 symptoms carefully and concluded it was possible that I had a mild case of it.  I took note of the list of  scenarios in which one should go to the doctor, and nothing applied, so I figured that I was just in that blest demographic of people old enough to have been exposed to a similar strain in childhood and therefore likely to become less sick with it.

But I was improving daily, and on Friday I was able to take the car for its oil change, and I enjoyed a full dinner that evening.  (One bonus of this whole thing was that in a few days I had taken off 8 pounds or so that I had been wondering for a while how I might get rid of). 

By Saturday I was feeling pretty good, except for a terrible backache, presumably from all the lying around.  Since walking was more comfortable than sitting, I walked to the chiropractor and back home.  In the evening we had tickets to see the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s production of Utopia, Ltd., which I went to see, with the aid of 400 mg of ibuprofen to keep the backache under control.

Yesterday (Sunday) morning, it was announced in church that the pastor has Swine Flu and is quite sick with it.  Well, ok, I thought, I might well have had it, and could thank my demographic stars that I had recovered.  We had tickets to the Intiman Theatre’s excellent imported production of Othello, and enjoyed it.

Back at home, after dinner, I coughed up a hunk of thick, yellow-green  mucus.  Since then, my body has been trying to cough up more.  Since one of the flag symptoms for seeking medical attention on the flu.gov web site is “if the flu symptoms get better, then return with a fever and a worse cough”, I called Group Health again last night and reported the cough.  I do not have a fever.  But the fact I had been exposed to a confirmed case of swine flu triggered an appointment being made today for me to see my regular doctor.

Better, But Maybe Not Really

So I’m writing this in limbo as I wait for the time to pass until I leave for the doctor.  Other than the cough, I feel much better than I did and could carry on with many of my activities and obligations.  But if I’ve really got swine flu, it seems to me that I have a social responsibility not to expose others to it.  This includes the cable repairman and electricians that we’d like to bring in to fix our non-operative cable box and an electrical circuit that stopped working while I was sick.  I canceled a regular dentist appointment for today, but my rescheduled oral surgery is tomorrow, not to mention the next meeting of the book discussion group that I am expected to lead tomorrow at noon.

I know that, realistically, it’s unlikely that I will go in this afternoon, spend 20 minutes with my doctor, and know right away whether or not I have swine flu.  The best I can hope for is some sort of guidance as to how long I might be contagious with whatever it is I have, and what I should do during that period.

Eventually, there are some professional displays, one over on the Sammamish plateau, and one near the southern end of Lake Sammamish.  I can tell by the size, elaborateness, and speed of the fireworks that this is more than a backyard effort, even by a fairly wealthy lakefront property owner.  And these are wonderful as well.

In a way, I miss having my fellow citizens around me, as there would be had I gone to a public display, but I don’t miss the traffic jam getting away afterward.  Once the big displays have ended and the air is filling up with the smell of sulphur, I can just come in off the deck and close the sliding door.  Through the open windows I’ll be hearing more pops and bangs for a while longer, but eventually it will quiet down and another Independence Day will have been celebrated.

Two thoughts on this.  One is that ardent secularists object to the public presence of religious expression  (we have a brouhaha going on about this in our state capitol at the moment).  Second, since this came up in the context of Amazon.com  deciding to use the phrase  ”12 Days of Holiday” in an ad campaign instead of the more traditional “12 Days of Christmas”, I’ll point out that retailers want to sell to anyone they can, especially this year.  I expect they want to get your business no matter which holiday you might be celebrating. Ad copy about “The 12 Days of  Christmas” might not have the same resonance for someone looking for gifts for those eight days of Chanukah.  Yes, it’s a minor holiday, but the kids expect presents and the retailers want you to know they’re there for you.   (And, who knows, you might even get someone to buy something for Kwanzaa, even though part of its purpose is to be anti-commercial–in a tough economy, they could plead, you can’t blame a store for trying.)

I recall in past years hearing complaints from some conservatives  that the absence of the word “Christmas” in the commercial arena (ads, signs, salespersons’ greetings) showed the stores’ timidness in the face of pressure from godless humanists.  Maybe it’s my early indoctrination by watching A Charlie Brown Christmas  every year as a child, but it seems to me to be a good thing that the spiritual side of the holiday not be confused with the commercial side.  So I’d just as soon see the word “Christmas” replaced by “holiday” in the commercial arena, allowing Christmas itself to be an expression of love in forms other than buying gifts (which is a much later accretion). 

But I do appreciate Jeff Goldberg’s reassurance that, if I do say “Merry Christmas” to him, he will happily accept the greeting and enjoy the brightening of the season of winter solstice in whatever way is meaningful to him.  After all, God willing, December 25th will come for him just as it does for me, and, while his activities that day may be different from mine, I wish him joy on the day however he spends it.

So this morning when I looked out my front entry window and saw deer nibbling on the plantings I wasn’t as surprised as I might have been.  I grabbed my cell phone (I wasn’t sure if the batteries were charged in the digital camera) and snapped a few pictures, one through the screen, and one through a barely-open door when the deer and its companion had moved to the back of the house. 

Eventually they made their way to the top of the hill and disappeared, presumably by jumping the very low gate into the neighbors’ yard.

This explained why I had found hyacinth and daffodil bulbs dug up in certain areas of the yard but not others–they were on the deer’s “route”.  Since I had chosen those bulbs specifically because they are unappetizing to wildlife, the bulbs were unharmed and I could plant them in another part of the yard.

Deer by front door, unfortunately photographed through screen

The deer in the back yard

 More photos at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=42979&l=83918&id=834919379 .

It’s become increasingly clear that “marriage” is a word with deeply charged religious meaning for many people.  As long as the language of the law centers on the word “marriage”, it is easy for this mixture of civil and sacred concepts to activate the hostility of those whose religious views don’t sanction marriage between certain classes of people.  

For this reason, I would prefer to put energy into taking the government completely out of the business of saying who is and who isn’t married.  That can be a matter for religious organizations and individual conscience.  But government should act swiftly to normalize the concept of civil union to include not only those unions that it has previously called marriages, but also those that are in essence the same thing: two adults who have undergone a ceremony of lifetime commitment to each other.  The only difference would be that a larger number of religious denominations might view my relationship with my husband as a marriage than would grant the same status to Mr. Sullivan’s–but it is not a secular government’s place to control that. 

I know, I know.  This doesn’t feel like it brings gay people out of second-class status, because the concept of ”marriage” is so deeply ingrained in society, and many people in society would still exclude same-sex unions from this concept.  But I think that would happen regardless of whether the law recognizes same-sex “marriage” in so many words.  What is the difference between a marriage and a civil union with the same benefits and responsibilities as a marriage?  The answer must be that the term “marriage” has a social tradition that the latter does not.  And, admittedly, it’s awkward to talk colloquially about “civil union” since we don’t have the time-honored, emotionally-laden and socially resonant words for it that surround marriage.

(For an example of another term that has different meaning to people of different religious denominations, I submit the word “Christian” itself: while I am a member of a Congregational church, which certainly labels me a Christian to my Jewish in-laws and to other mainstream Protestant denominations, there are others for whom I would need to accept Christ in a formal ceremony of baptism by immersion in order to “become a Christian”.  Since we have no state-sanctioned religion, this question about my identity is not legislated, which is fine with me.  The government’s silence on the matter leaves me free both to settle my status within my own conscience and to deduct my contributions to the church from my taxes. )

If we cut the idea of marriage loose from the government, but fully normalize civil unions, then individual couples need only find an officiant to perform their ceremony of commitment (once a “civil union” license has been obtained, as one obtains a marriage license now), and, if it’s a marriage to them, then the government would have nothing to say against that.  If friends invited me to such a cerremony,  I wouldn’t hesitate to joyously attend and congratulate them on their marriage.

I can understand how much more powerful it is to have one’s marriage recognized by the state as a marriage than to simply have the government grant the benefits and responsibilities of marriage without using the word.  And I suppose it would be easier to make the argument that marriage is endangered if government stops making any kinds of pronouncements about it than if it tries to enlarge the definition of it.   So I’m probably wrong in thinking it would be more practical to simply have government butt out of using religiously-charged language altogether than to try pass a law that would run roughshod over some people’s religious beliefs. 

But, practical or not, I can’t help thinking it’s the best approach.

I find that the hopeful but sombre tone of Obama’s excellent speech suits my mood very well in the quiet of this partly sunny morning.  Oddly enough, I find myself remembering the Reagan administration and the sea change it brought about how I viewed my life in the US. 

The Carter administration had been the first of my post-college life.   Jimmy Carter was elected president during the first few months of my first job, and he was still president when Jim and I got married.  Historians will no doubt remember more than I do about that time, but I remember him making a sombre speech about how we would need to conserve energy in the face of the OPEC stranglehold on the oil we burned, and it’s impossible to forget the feeling of helplessness during the year or so in which American embassy personnel were held hostage in Iran.  It was easy to think that we had taken our strength for granted for as long as we could after World War II, and now the world was moving on and we would have to find a way to live in it.  I might have to accept the possibility of living with less than I had grown up with.

Then Reagan was elected, and I remember my horror and fear that we had elected an actor whose sunny outlook implied that he could not grasp the seriousness of our world situation.  And yet somehow the country muddled through, and, by the end of that decade, the nation was confident enough of its oil supply to be driving SUV’s, we had survived a huge stock market crash and several quick military actions into places like Panama and Grenada, and I had always had a good job with good raises.  The Cold War was ending and in short, everything we had been worried about ten years earlier seemed like it might not be a problem after all.

Of course, new problems came along to replace the old worries, and I’m sure that my personal experience is as much tied up with getting along in my career and gaining personal confidence as it is with the national mood.  But what I’m getting at is that I’ve seen how this nation’s psyche can change, and I deeply hope to see it change again.  Even if Obama’s single greatest contribution is to transform this country from one in which so many of us see so many others of us as The Enemy into one in which we can work together to meet each side’s underlying needs as best we can, then it will be a change worth seeing.

Tax policies, health care, education, military action, you name it–it can’t be done by one side alone because we’ve gotten pretty good at blocking what someone else wants to do.  A big lesson from the most recent Bush administration is that you can start out with a country more united after 9/11 than I have ever seen it since the Iran hostage crisis, and lose that unanimity by relying on sheer political power to push through policies that are deeply divisive.  And eventually, the backlash will be strong enough that no one will listen to you anymore.

While my support for Obama began when I read Andrew Sullivan’s article in The Atlantic and was reinforced a year ago at a party,  when I heard a Republican speak admiringly of Obama and disparagingly of Hilary Clinton (convincing me that Sullivan could be right about Obama’s potential for bringing the country closer together and perhaps improving our tarnished image among our allies and in the third world).  He completely won my vote when I heard his speech on race, which fed my hunger for discourse involving both intelligence and the ability to listen and understand. 

Every president I’ve lived under has been a human being, and I don’t see Barack Obama as the Second Coming, but if, by the end of his presidency, we have a new model for discourse, one in which we respect someone who disagrees with us rather than demonizing them, I will feel that my deepest hope for this country has been realized. 

For a start, it heartens me to see that one doesn’t have to choose between sombre seriousness of Jimmy Carter and Reagan’s ability to inspire hope.  Obama manages to embody both.  And it doesn’t hurt that he’s really smart.

My interest in Thoreau was revived on last year’s northeastern trip when I revisited Walden Pond one glorious autumn day.  I’ve read Robert Richardson’s excellent “intellectual biography” of Thoreau and given some thought to leading a discussion class on Walden, which may come about in January.  Jim was anticipating a busy workweek in Boston, and it seemed like a good opportunity to slip off and spend a few days in Maine.

I knew I would want to hike when I was there (although I knew that I would not be likely to take on Mt. Katahdin itself, at least not the whole summit, which Thoreau himself never reached either), and I didn’t think it would be wise to hike alone.  I spent more time than I like to think about in searching the web for walking tours or organized hikes that I might join on a weekday in October.  I was amused to see that the easiest sort of tour to join in that part of Maine is a “moose tour”, reminiscent of a tour we took from Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia, which was primarily a tour of the rainforest, but made a point of taking us to see crocodiles.  Since I had seen plenty of moose during the year we spent in Alaska, I kept looking. 

Finally, on a page listing registered Maine guides, I found Holly Hamilton, who runs the Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camps.  I wasn’t sure whether someone who was running a camp would also be available to work as a guide, but it cost nothing to email and find out, and I was thrilled when she said that she had room at the camp and (presumably because it was mid-week in autumn) she’d be able to take me hiking one day.

Thus it happened that I headed out of Cambridge, Massachusetts on a Monday morning in a bright red Rav4 (all they had left at Budget Auto Rental when I arrived to pick up my reserved Economy Car) and followed the interstate highways into Maine.  About six hours later I pulled up to the gatehouse at Baxter State Park, and they directed me to the trailhead for Katahdin Lake, where I would leave the car and hike 3.3 miles to the camp.  I should say that I have never actually been backpacking, so, while I have hiked before, and carried my travelpack through airports and on trains, and even hiked from lodge to lodge on New Zealand’s Milford Track, it was a new experience for me to carry all my gear to a place where I would be sleeping for several nights.

But, as I was getting the full-board option, I didn’t need to bring food, and the cabins have bunk beds with full linen service, along with their wood stoves, propane lights, and outdoor non-plumbing, so all I really needed to bring was enough clothing to keep me going for several days (and rather chilly nights), and of course my laptop , which I was able to recharge using the solar power they have at the main guest lodge.

I don’t know why I hadn’t realized it was going to take me over an hour to get to the camp from the parking lot, hiking as briskly as I could.  I had a flashlight in case of darkness, but I knew they would be serving dinner and I didn’t want to miss it.  I followed the blue blazes marking the trail (something I don’t see as much out here as I did in New England) and managed to not get lost (had to make a couple of guesses along the way, but the trail gods–or perhaps the spirit of Henry David Thoreau–kept me on the right path).

I found the camp just as dark was falling, and wandered into the kitchen where dinner was being made.  Cat, Holly’s assistant, showed me to my cabin, “Cobb’s Camp”, just above the shore of the lake.  Nancy, one of the other guests, who had arrived mid-afternoon, had gotten the fire going in my woodstove, which was a wonderful greeting when I arrived (but meant that I never saw the process of getting the fire started in that stove, which would have been helpful to have seen when I had to get it going myself).  I unpacked my clothes into the little chest of drawers, hung my jacket and raingear on the wall hooks, noticed that the one book on the shelf above the bed was–yes–a Gideon Bible.  I was quite proud of myself for having completed the journey, and joined my fellow guests Nancy and her husband John for a comfort food dinner of thick slices of ham, delicious macaroni and cheese, and applesauce made from the apples in the ancient camp orchard.

The camp has been around since the 1880′s or so and was absorbed into the area of Baxter State Park a few years ago after a complicated negotiation described in Down East Magazine.  It reminds me of another wilderness camp that I consider to be very special: Camp Denali in Alaska.  Both camps are privately run but located at relatively remote locations inside publicly owned parks, both have stunning settings with views of their state’s highest mountain reflected in a lake, both provide comfortable, homey cabins (without indoor plumbing or electricity) and three delicious meals a day.  (Camp Denali has way more infrastructure, as there are public flush toilets and showers, and the staff are also available to take campers on tours and hikes within the National Park–but it’s also way more expensive).

I had arranged to stay for three nights, giving me two full days at the camp.  Knowing New England weather as I do, I figured I had a better chance of really seeing Mount Katahdin if there were two possible days for the weather to be good.  As it was, the clouds only came in on the morning when I left, so I got to have a day of hiking near the mountain, and another day of exploring the lakeshore area, with Katahdin dominating the views in both locations.

Holly let me choose which hike to take on Tuesday morning.  Mount Katahdin itself had snow in the upper elevations, so it was closed to hikers above Chimney Pond (not that I would have been up for the 8-10 hours that it takes a reasonably fast hiker to make the climb and return–and I’m not a fast uphill hiker).  I waffled between hiking to Chimney Pond, and thus having my feet on The Mountain (although not in Thoreau’s footsteps, since he went up a different route), and hiking the relatively short, but quite steep, path up South Turner Mountain, leading to an outcrop with a great view of Mt Katahdin on one side and Katahdin Lake (where the camp is located) on the other.  I opted for South Turner. 

The trail was two miles’worth of wide contrast. We hiked at first on boardwalk over mud around Sandy Stream Pond, in the center of which a bull moose was posing for photographers (if presenting its rump to the camera while keeping its rack and muzzle down near the water as it grazed could be considered a satisfying pose).  Next we negotiated a boulder field to finish out the first mile or so of the trail, still level.  So we had a mile in which to gain 1700 feet of elevation.  This is one of the longest miles I have ever hiked; an exercise in keeping one’s feet moving upward.  Holly was hiking this trail for the first time, since in her three years of managing the camp she has always been really busy and couldn’t get away, so this was a treat for her.  She kept encouraging me by saying “I think it can’t be too much further” but I knew how to recognize an approaching timberline and could tell that it wasn’t scrubby enough yet.  But I persisted.  Holly estimated that we would need to turn around by 4 to beat the darkness coming down, and I was determined to make timberline and see the fabulous views.

It was about 3:30 when we came out of the (now very scrubby) woods and were greeted by a great view of nearby Katahdin–and by the blast of wind that descending hikers had warned us about.  I decided this would be a good place for me to stop and sit in the shelter of some rocks while Holly continued to the summit to get a picture of the Camp (which couldn’t be seen from where the trail exited the woods).  I figured that adding the punishment of the wind to the steep gradient would just slow me down further, so I would contemplate Katahdin and enjoy the dessert in the lunch Holly had packed.

Holly turned around fairly quickly as she judged it was just too dangerous to hike on an exposed peak in such high winds, strengthening my conviction that I had opted out, not wimped out.  We took pictures of each other being blasted by the wind, and then started down, reaching the trailhead at Roaring Brook as dusk began to fall.  Dinner was necessarily late that evening, and the wind continued to blow (although it wasn’t that cold, fortunately).  This was the one time I really missed creature comforts: I would normally ease away the aches in the muscles by taking a hot shower, which was not an option here (dipping into the lake wouldn’t have been the same thing at all).  And it took way too much time, kindling, and matches to get a viable fire going in the woodstove.  (When I took Arctic Survival in Alaska I had aced the written test but was always the last to get a fire going, and this ineptitude had followed me to Maine).

On my second day I set as my goal “Painter’s Beach” a.k.a. “Church’s Beach”, named after the nineteenth-century American painter Frederic Church, who had painted a famous View of Mount Katahdin from that beach in 1878.  In the morning I tried following the lakeshore itself, where there had been a trail at one time, but I don’t think I ever found it, and I got pretty tired of bushwhacking.  So after a delicious lunch of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, beef stew, and applesauce, I set out along the path/road used by a Bombardier tracked vehicle to haul supplies into the camp.  From this trail there branches a pleasant foot trail to the beach, where I sat for some time writing in a journal, talking to some canoeists who were reconnoitering for a sunrise photograph from the beach the next morning, and hearing a rustle in the bushes which turned out to be a fisher, or pine marten, a species of weasel that I had never seen before (in fact I couldn’t identify it it was Holly who said “fisher” when I described it to her).

The morning of the day I hiked out was cloudy and a drizzle fell while we were at breakfast.  Our meal group by now included  Caren Michel, one of the many artists who come to the camp to work.  She had been painting while I was bushwhacking the previous day.  Another artist, whom I never actually met, since he didn’t board with us, had livened the day up considerably by playing music from the roaring 20′s while he was working.  (Strictly speaking, Baxter State Park regulations don’t allow audio equipment to be played like that, so don’t come to camp counting on being able to do this yourself–since his choice of music was so bouncy and unexpected, and recalled a record that my mother used to play, I just let myself enjoy it).  I ate a second biscuit and settled my bill, then gathered my things together to hike out.  The drizzle had stopped, and I appreciated the fact that it didn’t resume while I was hiking out.

It took longer to hike out than it had taken to come in–possibly because there were a couple hundred feet of elevation gain going this way.  The fact that clouds were playing around Katahdin’s upper slopes meant that I could resist the temptation to drive around the mountain to see the more famous view of it from the other side.  This was good, because I in fact didn’t have a lot of time to spare, it being Yom Kippur when we were scheduled to break the fast with the family of Jim’s cousin Rana.  But before we could do that, I needed to stop at the hotel in Cambridge and get the shower that I had not had in several days, then return the rental car at Logan Airport, and take the subway to Davis Square in Somerville.   I had excellent luck getting into Cambridge at rush hour (I think the Big Dig has made a difference there–I remember long waits coming down 93 and across the Prison Point Bridge years ago), and my day ended with an excellent dinner of Indian food.

My previous post includes links to photographs of this adventure.

We’ve seen a raccoon walk up to the pond in the middle of the day and get into it, presumably looking for fish.  And now this morning, as I opened the shades from a large window nearby, the movement flushed a great blue heron from the pond.  I don’t know how long it had stayed there, patiently waiting for a fish to swim by for its breakfast.  And I wish I had come upon it in such a way that it would not have been scared off, because the presence of such a large wild bird in a suburban backyard charms and awes me, and also because I would have loved to get a picture of it.  But if it was truly hungry, I surely did it a favor, since it was going to wait a long time for its breakfast here.

So I’ll have to settle for posting a picture of the pond with some mallard ducks that show up from time to time to swim and mate in the pond, to sleep at its edge, and then to waddle over to the area under the birdfeeder, vaccuuming up the spilled seed from the ground with their great bills, and drinking from the birdbath. (The picture gives a good idea of just how small this pond is, and why it’s so incongruous for either ducks or herons to take it seriously).

A good one to start with is of my second full day there, when I stayed near the camp itself: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=36536&l=f06f5&id=834919379

My first full day I went on a hike with guide Holly Hamilton.  We climbed South Taylor Mountain, a short but steep climb up the mountain next to Mount Katahdin, visible from the camp: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=34089&l=ab417&id=834919379

I took a few pictures on the three-mile hike from the camp back to my car: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=36521&l=2e03e&id=834919379

To learn more about the camp, see their website at http://katahdinlakewildernesscamps.com/home.html 

I had previously seen Charlayne Woodard in the Seattle Rep’s premiere of Ariel Dorfman’s Purgatorio, a play that had puzzled me, although I had been quite impressed by the quality of the acting, so I figured I was likely to enjoy The Night Watcher.  I had also had the “compare and contrast” gene activated in my psyche by the chance to see this so soon after seeing Anna Deavere Smith.  I knew that Anna Deavere Smith had previously made quite a name for herself with her earlier one-woman shows, but I wasn’t aware that this is actually Charlayne Woodard’s fourth single-person play that she has written and acted in  (the others are Pretty Fire, Neat, and Real Life,  which are available as audio performances through Amazon.com and other sellers, or public libraries).  So this is a genre with which both women have substantial experience.

Good descriptions of The Night Watcher are available in reviews from The Seattle Times,  the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s theatre blog, and talkinbroadway.com.  I shared the reviewers’ engagement with Woodard’s performance and appreciation for the warmth, humor, and passion she brought to it (also the observation by one reviewer that her voice seemed to be showing some strain from the demands placed on it by the sheer number of two-hour performances it is being called upon to do, solo, with variations for different characters, and the occasional glorious use of song).  So maybe I’ll just humor that compare-and-contrast gene for a bit.

I think the biggest difference between The Night Watchers and Let Me Down Easy is the presence of the actress herself in the script.  As Woodard described the creative process in a post-performance discussion, she started with some stories of the kids in her life, then found that she had to add her own journey to it, beginning and ending with sequences exploring that most personal of questions: why she has no children of her own.   By contrast, Let Me Down Easy, while it certainly reflects a personal search and exploration on the part of Smith, is at least partly a tour-de-force in which Smith turns herself into the people she has interviewed, so that, while we are of course responding to her presence and the editorial choices that have gone into the building of the story, the goal is for us to believe that the people themselves are before us.

I would also say that, while there is warmth and humor in both works, as well as stories of aching sadness, Let Me Down Easy  stays in my mind as a more sombre work, perhaps because of its extended final sequence focusing on an individual’s response to one’s own mortality (not to mention the interivews with Rwandan genocide witnesses and American health care workers).   The Night Watcher is focussed on children and teens, and Woodard’s efforts to connect with them and help them enter life and meet its challenges (abuse, neglect, rites of passage), to be the kind of “Auntie” who helped her realize her dreams when she was young.

In looking back at these two pieces, I find I admire (and perhaps envy) each of these women.  I admire Anna Deavere Smith for her ability to move in so many circles, talk to so many different kinds of people, and then “channel” them in a presentation that shows so much thoughtfulness and a spirit of quest for the truth.   And, as a woman who has chosen not to have children, I am inspired by Charlayne Woodard’s willingness and ability to reach out and become involved in the lives of young people with whom life, friends and family have connected her, to accept the pain, and the occasional confrontation with the children’s biological parents, when she perceives young peoples’ needs that are not being met.  So I guess what these two shows have in common is that, as an audience member, I feel connected with these writers/actresses in a way that I don’t when there are multiple actors, a plot, a fourth wall, all of that.