4 March 2025

Hard to process, the nauseating, preposterous attack on a genuine hero, Volodymyr Zelensky, perpetrated by the Felon-in-Chief and his Smarmy Vice Suckup last Friday in the Oval Office, where only days before the Unelected Muskrat’s spawn picked his nose and wiped the results on the Resolute desk, an apt summation of the current state of affairs in these Un-tied States.

The day before I had finally seized an impulse to unpack the six heavy boxes of Murphy family photo albums my thoughtful brother-in-law had sent me last July, which ever since had sat undisturbed behind our big library table.  They contained 25 large and 5 small photo albums, all carefully labeled and dated, the life-long work of my mother Virginia, her documentation of what she so clearly saw as her sacred vocation:  raising her two daughters.  Virginia is in almost none of the photos; she was always taking the picture.  I managed to get all the albums out of their heavy cardboard packing boxes and stack them so the dates of the photos they contain show on each cover, break down those cartons, and get them out to the street for recycling pick up the next day before I lost my nerve after opening just one album from 1955, dissolving, and then deferring further investigation until some future date.

All my life, to the end of my mother’s life, now lies on the library table, testament to a world that no longer exists.  I’m glad my veteran dad George and my mom, whose little brother Calvin died on the USS New Mexico when it was attacked by two kamikaze planes in May 1945, are not around to witness the deconstruction of everything fine for which so many of their generation sacrificed.

Winter lingers on here, and though the days lengthen, the warming alternates with polar blasts, so ice dams and glazed driveways are a hazard.  I’m weary of the daily footwear decisions:  which boots, which set of ice cleats to wear?  Will the Stabilicers do, or must I have the full monty punk spikes and chains?

When I’m not weepy over my mother’s devotion to her children, now with only me surviving, I’m trying to figure out how so many of my fellow citizens have been taken in by the imposters currently posing as servants of the people.  I’ve recently learned a new term:  “kayfabe. ” Possibly originating in U.S. carnival slang, kayfabe is the term used in professional wrestling to describe the illusion that the wrestling is authentic, a code word used by wrestlers and others in the industry to acknowledge that what the audience sees is a scripted performance.  Anyone deluded into believing kayfabe real is a “mark”:  the same term used by grifters running a con to describe a potential victim.  Why can my fellow Americans not see through the kayfabe underway in the executive branch, and recognize that they are the marks of despicable narcissistic opportunists and sociopaths, interested only in further lining their own already bulging pockets?  I note here that the Felon-in-Chief has just named former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon as U.S. Secretary of Education.  Why can’t folks see through this palpable device?

Perhaps my emotional vulnerability and grief at all I see slipping away made the performance of Swan Lake I saw Sunday at Boston’s magnificent Opera House all the more moving.

The story is fairy-tale tragic:  the evil sorcerer, Von Rothbart, casts a spell on a young girl turning her into a swan, Odette, a spell that can only be broken when a young man pledges himself exclusively to Odette.  The handsome prince Siegfried, seeing this beautiful Swan Queen in her nighttime human form, does just that, but on the next night at his coming-of-age ball, the evil Von Rothbart presents to Siegfried his daughter, Odile, transformed to appear as Odette, though now dressed in black.  When the deceived Siegfried, believing this beauty to be his Odette, swears his devotion to Odile, his vow to Odette is broken, and Odette and all her transformed friends who inhabit the lake formed by the tears of her grief-stricken mother will be swans forever.  In the fourth and final act, the Swan Queen Odette tells the swans they are captives to Von Rothbart’s spell for eternity.  Siegfried appears and runs to her, and passionately describes how he, too, was deceived by the wicked Von Rothbart.  Bound together by the power of their love, Siegfried and Odette defy and destroy the villainous sorcerer, but even in death, Rothbart’s spell is so powerful that Odette and the swans remain doomed.  Odette returns to the lake, and the heartbroken prince follows her into the waves.

That fourth and final act begins with a real coup de théâtre:  the curtain rises on the moonlit lake, its surface shrouded in a thick layer of mist, from which, cued by Tchaikovsky’s sumptuous score, the swans suddenly unfold their lovely, lithe selves to a very satisfyingly audible audience gasp.  And later, when Siegfried lifts Odette high above his head, the power of her forgiveness and their love destroys the evil Von Rothbart.  But still they perish.

It’s performance, that ballet, and it’s powerful.  Just the thought of all those dancers, musicians, artists, designers, choreographers, and the brilliant composer devoting their lives to producing that collective experience for their audience moves me.  I was especially privileged to have a friend, Elizabeth Olds, playing the Queen Mother, and she brought me backstage to see some of how the magic is made.  The view of the house from the stage is extraordinary, and a thrill even for this civilian.

Elizabeth, once principal dancer for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and now assistant to Boston Ballet’s Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen, told me she’s danced every female role in Swan Lake, from court attendant to cygnet to Odette/Odile, performing her 32 fouettés in the Black Swan pas de deux.  (Insider info:  from her on-stage throne, Elizabeth counted prima ballerina Viktorina Kapitonova doing 33 in our performance.  Mon Dieu!)

Tonight the Felon-in-Chief (FIC) will address a joint session of Congress, where he will no doubt brag about the destruction he has wrought during his first 43 days in office, making every effort to deceive his audience with his performance.  I’ll be thinking about the difference between Swan Lake and the FIC’s performance, the kayfabe designed to hoodwink and cheat his fellow citizens, we the marks, by playing to our worst instincts, and contrasting that with the artists performing for a purposeful assembly: we the people willing to suspend our disbelief long enough to be moved by the spectacle of the literally elevated Odette, soaring to the Tchaikovsky and lifted high by her devoted and forgiven Siegfried, the embodiment of love strong enough to slay the evil Von Rothbart. 

Can love survive, even defeat the hate that spews from the current leaders who embrace enemies as allies and scorn allies as enemies?  Here’s to all the artists who pose the question.  Dear Readers, I hope we can answer yes.