CLOUDED LEOPARDS: A CAT ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE-AND MAYBE A SCIENTIST OR TWO

Well, Bless Your Heart...

At SCBI, the Smithsonian's wildlife conservation campus in Front Royal, Va., the rather complex study of hormones, behavior and habitat enables scientists to better understand the health and reproductive system of endangered animals.

Later this year, a cluster of turret-roofed huts at SCBI are being converted into a conservation facility for red pandas and clouded leopards, both endangered. SCBI took on clouded leopards because zoos were having trouble pairing and mating the animals. It didn’t help that males often killed their mates. Experts say the cat suffers from a fair amount of stress, related to both breeding and habitat.

“They are the most challenging cat there is,” says JoGayle Howard, a scientist and head of the clouded leopard conservation and research program. Even when SCBI was able to create some pairs that successfully reproduced 71 cubs over a 12-year period, about half were killed by the mother. But ongoing efforts, including hand-raising the cubs and pairing males at a young age, have improveD cub survival.

In recent years, experts have determined that the clouded leopard wants a habitat with height, so the interior of the new facility will be high, and the outdoor area will have tall climbing towers.

THE SWEET SOUND OF FOLGER'S TWELFTH NIGHT

Twelfth Night is one of those William Shakespeare plays with followers, meaning those extremely well-versed, if authoritative, fans. These are the ones who anticipate the play’s iconic lines—alas, its first, “If music be the food of love, play on,” garners a collective sigh—as  well as every twist and turn of this joyously confusing comedy. It is the story of Viola and Sebastian, twins who are separated after a shipwreck and, convinced the other has drowned, are finally, happily reunited while also finding romantic love in the far-off land of Illyria.

         But, thanks to Robert Richmond’s polished interpretation of Twelfth Night, showing through June 9^th at +Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C. to close out the Folger season, even a Twelfth Night “novice” would be able to (a) follow the complicated story; and (b) appreciate how exceptional this particular staging of the play is, if not for some glamorous costuming (Mariah Hale) and grand set design (Tony Cisek), than for the infusion of a some more suitably-rousing music selections than the play-write intended, but surely would have found agreeable.

            It has become acceptable, if expected, to see a beloved William Shakespeare play get fitted with an alternate setting.  To his foundational stories, the tragedies, the epics and, here, the warm-hearted and tearfully happy Twelfth Night, we’ve seen in film and on stage so many variations, including many in Washington, D.C., by our local acting companies. Among them is the Arlington-based Washington Shakespeare Company (WSC). There was the provocative, prickly Measure for Measure set in the Jim Crow south of the 1950s (directed by WSC’s artistic director Christopher Henley); Troilus and Cressida, (directed by Joe Banno) whose Trojans, including Paris, held court in an ritzy, country club world with comforts that win the vacuous Helen over faster (never mind that she was kidnapped) than you can say “Achilles’ heel.”  And then, there is the thematic overlay, without the overlay, most memorably WSC’s critically-acclaimed all-nude Macbeth (directed by Henley).

            In 2003, the Folger Theatre staged an “updated” Twelfth Night under the direction of Aaron Posner, where his Sebastian and Viola are hip, Gen-X urbanites, in twin leather jackets, loose pony-tails and crocheted vests. But, whatever the veil, Twelfth Night, for all of its light-heartedness, is a forceful story with a capacity to put anyone’s perspective in a better place.

            In this production, the warm-hearted tale of love resonates from start to finish, and Richmond’s concept, circa 1915, in which the sinking of the RMS Lusitania serves as the tragic vessel from which the story unfolds, sparkles and shimmers, quite literally, thanks to Andrew Griffin’s masterful lighting design. Griffin and Cisek came up with a massive, lilting, stained glass medallion for the scenic boat disaster that sets off the story—a  glass window borrowed from what looks to be the Empress of Ireland First-class Music Room inside the Lusitania, and a symbol, perhaps, to honor the epic craftsmanship that incased the lush interiors of the ill-fated luxury liner. (Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the British vessel was believed to be carrying munitions—which has since been confirmed through maritime research. A German U-boat torpedoed the ocean liner 11 miles off the coast of Ireland, in waters they had declared a war zone, sinking the massive ship within 20 minutes, and killing nearly 1200 people.)

            But this world of the early 20^th century—lavish yet precarious, and energized by curious yet sensible Edwardians—serves as an easy world for the mysterious mini-kingdom of Illyria, where love, music and mischief ultimately cure nearly everyone from a collective bout of melancholy. 

Feste (Louis Butelli) greets Viola (Emily Trask) in the land of Illyria

            Among them are: Lady Olivia (the aquiline Rachel Pickup), who pines for her dead brother—and a companion; where Duke Orsino (the strapping, stately Michael Brusasco) longs for the same, unaware that his new servant, Cesario, the disguised Viola (endearingly played by Emily Trask), will prove to be his great love; where Sebastian’s (a solid William Vaughan) odyssey reunites him with Viola and  into the arms of Olivia; and, where, in the bigger picture, devoted love transcends caste and social standing, as is the case in its most barefaced between Sir Toby Belch (Craig Wallace) and Olivia’s maid, Maria (Tonya Beckman). Only Malvolio (a wondrous, neo-archetypical Richard Sheridan Willis) is left to ponder his empty heart. To be sure, Twelfth Night followers, (some, at this point, spiritedly hanging from the upper rafters of the Folger’s 250-seat Elizabethan-style playhouse), are no doubt planning the Willis garb for their next, ‘Come as Your Favorite Malvolio’ get together.

            It is the music of this Twelfth Night, however, that captures the play’s mischief, and spirit—that willful voice whispering something about suspended disbelief, because, yes, wishes can come true. Under the music direction of Joshua Morgan, this turn-of the Century Twelfth Night benefits from a treasure trove of gorgeous time-appropriate composition from which to draw. Indeed, Morgan and fellow musical arranger Joel DeCandio must have had a field day leveraging this delightful coincidence.           

             Claude Debussy’s beloved piano piece “Clair de Lune” plays early on in the play, its romantic resonance a perfect backdrop for Duke Orsino’s lovesick opening command. Debussy published “Clair de Lune” around 1890 and published it in 1905 as part of his famous Suite bergamasque.  Equally compelling and used variously during heights of glum self-loathing on the parts of Olivia and Orsino, is the choice of Alfredo Catalani’s melody from his opera La Wally, first performed in 1892. La Wally’s famous opening aria, popularized for anchoring the story line of the 1981 film Diva, deals with a heroic woman who decides to go far away from her home forever, her suggested solitude in a distant land analogous to Illyria’s despondent natives.

            Michele Osherow, Folger’s resident dramaturg, writes about this sweet iteration of Twelfth Night: “This production coaxes out fancies by triggering our own illusions of times past. This happens most immediately, I think, through music.”

            While Shakespeare’s original play is riddled his own musical scoring, such as, “Oh Mistress Mine,” performed superbly by Feste (Louis Butelli) and company, this production augments that vision. A number of terrific melodies are infused, and, even when the lights are up, the cast sways and sings along as if song is a far easier language than the mere exchange of words.

            In the hands of Butelli’s Feste and his ukulele, song and dance buttress an already-buoyant story, while a piano plays such period hits as “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” (written by Gus Edwards and Edward Madden in 1909), and “Ain’t She Sweet,” (written by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen in 1927). To underscore the intimate nature of Twelfth Night, the cast engages the audience, particularly through its folk-like ditties, and, pleasantly, even during the intermission, most memorably with “Daisy Bell”, written by Henry Dacre in 1892. Butelli’s skillful plucking is a production within a production.

Walter Howell Deverell's 1850 canvas, Twelfth Night

            It is Feste, after all, who some might say embodies the musical playfulness of Twelfth Night. So resonant is this notion—that of the relationship between love and music and one’s state of mind--- that countless artists captured the scene in paintings centuries later. Curiously, in an exhibit that just ran its course down the road at the National Gallery of Art, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900, more than 100 works of the volatile mid-19^th century art movement known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were on display. Among them was Walter Howell Deverell’s “Twelfth Night,” a larger than life oil on canvas completed in 1850 that captures Shakespeare’s music-loving Illyrians in all of their technicolor daftness. In it, Deverell himself modeled for the Duke while his colleague Dante Gabriel Rossetti posed as Feste and Rossetti’s future wife is seen as Viola dressed as the page Cesario. It is a painting from which one can practically hear the heartsick Duke plead for more of Feste’s music, while asking his new page, Viola/Cesario, “How dost like this tune?”, to which she/he replies, in words that stir his heart, thus, binding him uncomfortably to his servant, “It gives a very echo to the seat where love is throned.”

Ticket and Info. to Twelfth Night, @Folger Theatre

http://www.folger.edu/wosummary.cfm?woid=744

CONSERVATION'S AGENT

The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) is more than just a research facility, it is a philosophy in the name of sustaining biodiversity, says its director and anyone who works for SCBI in sites around the world, including Hawaii, Panama and Gabon. Nonetheless, an expansive Front Royal campus has been home and hub to SCBI’s headquarters operation since 1975. And, in the last year, the facility, which formally had its name changed by Smithsonian Institution’s regents last January, is aggressively upping the ante on global—and local—leadership in the study of conservation biology, ecology and species survival, while still managing to furnish the National Zoo with all of its hay...


In Front Royal, Virginia, about an hour west of Washington, D.C., we are driving along the rolling roads of a 3,200-acre government facility, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI). A distinctly manicured parcel of land, SCBI’s headquarters sits at the tip of the Shenandoah Mountains in Warren County. As we make our way through one gated entrance after another, there are dozens of outbuildings speckling the grassy slopes, once home to herds of horses that belonged to a U.S. Army remount depot.

It is a crisp, sunny day in early spring, and through a gated enclosure on a hill, a large Maned Wolf appears. There are two at SCBI, Rambo and Ibera. This one sits up halfway to look; it has big ears, and a thick brown coat with a shawl of black around the scruff, its fur swaying in the chilly winds that are the last traces of winter.

Several cranes come into view in enclosures down another hill, representing the red-crowned and white-naped cranes living at SCBI.

The tour guide explains that the animals we are seeing—there are about 30 in Front Royal—are at SCBI for a reason, because they are being studied. She points out a cluster of what looks like huts. They are being converted into a conservation facility for red pandas and clouded leopards, both endangered and part of research being conducted by SCBI’s Center for Species Survival. Likewise, the nearly extinct Prezwalski horses, which roam in different enclosures all around the facility, are part of SCBI’s Species Survival Plan. The endangered Maned Wolf, once a thriving species in much of South America, has been part of an ongoing cooperative breeding program at SCBI for 30 years. The 16 cranes in captivity are there to be studied for reproduction, “SCBI,” we are told, is “cracking the code on cranes.” SCBI’ scientists have even figured out how to “sex an egg” of a crane, which means identify the sex before it hatches. We are also told one of the cranes “imprinted” on her human keeper, which means she has identified him as her partner.

We are moving yet again through another gated entrance, to Cheetah Hill. This time the driver must get out of the car and somehow gain access through the fence. Once on the other side, to our left, a tall, jaunty female Cheetah comes loping down the hill to see who is there. We continue along the road.

In the next fenced off enclosure, there is another adult female who happens to have some company: in a spot of warm sunlight at the far end of the enclosure sits Zazi and her two cubs, one of which was “adopted” by Zazi after she had her own cub last December, in what made big headlines. SCBI cheetah biologists managed to unite, or “cross-foster,” a two-week-old male cub with Zazi’s newborn, and Zazi has been raising the two as her own since then. What is more: thanks to a web cam, spectators at the National Zoo in Washington are able to view this very scene.

There are many heartwarming stories that transpire amid the work performed at SCBI, particularly in the area of species survival. For thirty years, the Front Royal facility was used primarily as a breeding center for endangered birds and mammals. Yet, today, even more is slated to come out of the SCBI. Its ongoing, if rapid, growth in conservation science training, ecological studies, and as an academic facility in general—coupled with its renowned name in endangered species science programs and animal endocrinology—are thrusting the facility into the spotlight, where, presently, it has taken center stage as a champion for a better understanding, overall, of what conservation biology actually means.

Steve Monfort, director of SCBI, talks about the significance of the name change for SCBI, which, until January 2010, was known as the National Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center, or CRC.

“CRC was basically a department of the Zoo and with SCBI, we are partner with the Zoo,” says Monfort. “We are a focal point for an entire discipline across the whole Smithsonian, and the name change signifies that there is finally another space for conservation within the Smithsonian family of science.”

Monfort sites the Smithsonian’s new strategic plan, in which the language for its grand challenges was changed in order to advance “understanding and sustaining a biodiverse planet.” “In the old days, it was ‘studying and understanding’,” says Monfort. “There was nothing explicit about saving anything, conserving anything.”

“This is the first time the Smithsonian has explicitly stated that this is a priority to actually conserve species,” adds Ruth Stolk, head of strategic development for SCBI, “With SCBI, the Smithsonian regents renamed what was already the National Zoo’s conservation science arm. Now the meaning of the name is to be more inclusive and to establish a conservation institute and have a presence in the world.”

Stolk puts SCBI’s annual budget for running its science centers at about $12 million, with roughly $3 million more per year in facility costs at Front Royal. Forty percent of the budget, however, is generated through competitive grants that the scientists bring in. The facility is closed to the public save for an open house once a year, when visitors can tour the complex for its Autumn Conservation Festival, always held the first weekend in October.

In the meantime and well before it’s name change, SCBI had already established an unparalleled reputation for professional conservation training programs, both at the Front Royal Campus and “in country,” meaning in the more than 20 international locations where SCBI has a presence. For 30 years, the training programs have served undergraduate and graduate students, and university, zoological and field management professionals from more than 85 countries –with an eye on serving people and institutions from developing countries.

Kate Christen, SCBI’s graduate and professional training manager, will tell you that conservation biology, in case anyone asks, involves an integrative approach to the protection and management of biodiversity that uses appropriate principles and experiences from basic biological field such as genetics and ecology; from natural resource management fields such as fisheries and wildlife; and from social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and economics, and even the humanities.

“It’s tricky,” said Christen, “Conservation biology is a subset of conservation.”

Yet, says Christen, conservation biology involves “integrative interdisciplinary work”, which deals with being both a scientist and a manager. Even the Smithsonian press materials try to make layman’s sense of the term by writing: "Conservation biology is based on the premise that the conservation of biological diversity is important and benefits current and future human societies.”

Monfort stresses an understanding of conservation biology because he believes it is at the heart center of sustaining biodiversity. “We aren’t just there to study and understand, we’re there to save some of the last individuals on earth,” says Monfort. “At SCBI, we’re envisioning the focal point for conservation. We want to be recognized as the convener, the connector and the scientific source for conserving habitats and species.”

Christen, who runs SCBI’s training programs, herself teaches SCBI courses in conservation biology. She said SCBI’s scientists and staff collaborate to teach courses to the visiting students and professionals. The range of courses includes spatial ecology, conservation conflict resolution, effective conservation leadership, non-invasive genetic techniques in wildlife conservation and statistics for ecology and conservation biology, all taught as intensive one or two-week courses for either professional training or graduate credit, says Christen.

“It’s both scientific techniques and practices and then also human dimensions, so we have a suite of training courses,” says Christen. “I don’t think there are many places that are doing professional and graduate training combined and taken the way we are, which allows for a nice mix of people communicating with each other.”

Still, in 13 months in conjunction with its new name, the institution has transformed, if not expanded, its workload and portfolio significantly, including forging a wide range of new partnerships on both the global and local stage.

“We are branching out to different audiences,” says Monfort.

From the World Bank, the National Science Foundation and U.S Fish and Wildlife, to Virginia’s George Mason University, the Piedmont Environmental Council, and the Shenandoah National Park Trust, SCBI is highly engaged, and “adding value” through its new partnerships, he says. Stolk is quick to site the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), a high-profile program in which SCBI and World Bank have partnered to lead a global alliance dedicated to stabilizing and restoring wild tiger populations, as a good a example of what it means to be raising the bar for SCBI’s training presence in the world.

SCBI has always had ties, says Stolk, to Asian conservationists, whom she says “grew up” in Smithsonian certification and training programs and have become heads of wildlife departments in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka, countries that also happen to be tiger range countries in which the world’s remaining tiger populations live.

“The Global Tiger Initiative has become the cornerstone of our new training presence in the world,” says Stolk. “It’s really exciting to bring together some of the old ‘graduates’ of Smithsonian conservation training programs, and then all kinds of new people that are the new generation beyond them. So we’re actually tapping our own network out in the world. This is our old training presence in the world, but with steroids.”

The notion of a next generation for conservation biology is an important one to Monfort and SCBI, and even more devoted to this idea is the ever-growing George Mason University, whose main campus is in Fairfax, Va. Less than two years ago, SCBI and the university’s College of Science established the Smithsonian-Mason Global Conservation Studies Program, a sort of “semester abroad” in which Mason undegrads spend a semester immersed in SCBI’s active research community, while earning 16 credits through a course load of five classes. The program has hosted about 20 students a semester and is wrapping up the fifth and last of its “pilot” semesters, thus, shifting, into the growth phase. Mason has brought in capital resources to bolster additional fundraising that will allow SCBI to renovate an existing building at the facility as well as build a dorm, which will house up to 120 students, the projected size of the program over the next several years. The partnership with George Mason is “big” for the Smithsonian and SCBI, not just because it brings an accrediting capacity to the institution, but because Mason is so entrepreneurial and forward-thinking in terms of conservation science, says Jennifer Buff, SCBI’s academic program manager.

“SCBI has a long history in capacity building and the Mason program ups the ante,” says Buff.

Buff credits the faculty at George Mason University for pushing forward and integrating their conservation studies program with the scholarship at SCBI.

“George Mason University is willing to take risks in doing things,” says Buff. “They are thinking that the professions the students will be in and that the conservation questions they will be dealing with ten years from now aren’t even dreamed of yet, and George Mason recognizes that the students need to be approaching this world slightly differently.”

SCBI’s Virginia-based partnerships are blossoming not just in the academic arena but also by way of directing SCBI’s scientific talent toward protecting and enhancing Virginia’s native habitats through cooperative efforts that are helping local landowners become better stewards of their land. Even more, an outgrowth, as it were, of this effort, allows for more hay at the National Zoo, which SCBI produces en masse, unlike any zoo in the country.

“Hay is one thing we don’t have to worry about,” says Mike Maslanka, head of department of nutrition, in charge of procuring all the food for the zoo animals, including meat and produce. And, there are even some active bamboo stands in Front Royal, used on a sporadic basis, says the nutritionist, to feed the pandas. As it stands, there are about 190 acres of land—or hay pastures—at SCBI that yield up to 16,000 bales of hay, much of which can be stored in hay barns which hold 600 tons of hay, or a year and half supply. Every five or six weeks, hay is loaded and sent to the National Zoo, where, hands down, the elephants consume the most, says Maslanka. Maslanka says the animals consume mainly cool season grasses, specifically orchardgrass.

He said they are also experimenting with growing grasses native to Virginia, and that portions of the hay fields have been planted largely with certain warm season grasses for this purpose. Maslanka is working with SCBI ecologists Bill McShea and Norm Bourg in an effort intended to reach beyond SCBI’s borders so as to be embraced by Virginia’s large landowners. Called “Virginia Working Landscapes”, SCBI has partnered with the Piedmont Environmental Council and Shenandoah National Park Trust to pique local landowners’ interest in biodiversity enhancement and in conserving their land, much of which is put easements and left unattended. The program encourages the landowners to devote some their acreage to establishing and harvesting native grasses or engage in species studies by monitoring native wildlife—all meant to be an information-sharing network to study best practices in the management the of “working landscapes.”

Meanwhile at SCBI’s veterinary hospital, Janine Brown, SCBI’s chief of endocrinology, is talking about her work on a program recently funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services entitled, "Using Science to Understand Zoo Elephant Welfare." She will participate with fellow scientists around the world in a study of the world’s population of elephants in captivity, about 290 at more than 70 zoos, to look at factors for improving their reproduction, health and welfare.

Brown, an authority on wildlife endocrinology, and the team at SCBI have conducted extensive studies on elephant ovarian cycles, or the absence of them, known as reproductive acyclicity.

“We discovered a unique hormone pattern in elephants,” said Brown, referring to the circumstances surrounding the birth of Kandula, one of the first calves in the world to be born by artificial insemination. It was Shanthi, then a 26-year-old female Asian elephant who was a gift to the National Zoo from the children of Sri Lanka as a calf back in 1976, who gave birth to Kandula on November 25, 2001, and both live at the zoo today, along with Ambika, an Indian elephant born in 1948.

Recalls Brown of those days a decade ago: “I said when Kandula was born, I could die happy.”

Monfort says he has evolved into becoming a conservation biologist, though other scientists might think that is too applied.

“I am proud to have that label,” says Monfort, who, by training is a reproductive physiologist, endocrinologist and veterinarian. “It’s a different level of intensity…We want to solve problems, we want to save species, we’re cause driven, we have a passion for animals and for species and for saving habitats with the science knowledge that we have, and we view ourselves in that way, and that’s different.” -30-

VIRGINIA'S ARTFUL SHRINE MONT

From Arlington, Virginia, it is a two-hour drive to Orkney Springs and Shrine Mont Retreat Center. Shrine Mont, a 950-acre parcel of land in the Allegheny Mountains, has, for about 80 years, served the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia as “a place apart for rest, devotion and fellowship.”

The invitation also extends to any number of organized corporate or cultural groups that care to use this rather wonderful, if austere, complex of tranquil gardens, toe paths, cottages and balconied dorms to accommodate up to 600 hundred visitors. And, many do—Shrine Mont is host every year to the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival and the annual Bishop’s Fourth of July Bluegrass Festival, among others.

Shrine Mont was established in the mid-1920s as a property of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia after it was deeded to the church by its owner-founder Dr. Edmund Lee Woodward. Woodward and his successor Wilmer Moomaw, served, respectively, as the facility’s director through much of the last century to see through a vision they shared that the complex be a natural setting for worship and reflection.

For their purposes, they eventually purchased the historic Orkney Springs Hotel. Built in the mid-1800s, the hotel was something of an early-American resort for people seeking the medicinal benefits of the area’s mineral-rich springs. Today, the old hotel is known as Virginia House, a towering four-story, 96,000-square-foot structure, wrapped on every level by unfailing balconies. The tallest structure at Shrine Mont, Virginia House stands in the middle of the plat of 40 similarly-styled crisp wooden buildings—white paint, black window trim, arched roofs-- which descend outward to form a generous complex of smaller houses and dorms. Just about all the housing—bare bones accommodations that have the endearing charm of a tired yet dependable Inn--are wrapped in the all-important balcony and furnished with Adirondack seating for Shrine Mont’s most important pastime: socializing, sipping drinks, laughter, observation, and reflection, not to mention that they make terrific treadmills for children.

Within the stunning setting that is part of the Appalachian chain, Shrine Mont, which lies at the foot of the Great North Mountain, feels sunken, as if in the heart center of the Alleghenies. As one looks to the sky, it is readily understood that the grounds are surrounded by a measureless, verdant wall. It is as if you are swimming in a dense swirl of Virginia’s native trees--majestic white oaks trees, cherry poplars, maples and pines.

As one approaches the Cathedral Shrine of the Transfiguration, the outdoor shrine that is Shrine Mont’s centerpiece, there is a tranquil little stone monument to the Orkney Spring, from which, naturally, a gentle flow of water pours eternal. It is dressed with a plaque that is tied to the ecclesiastic roots of the place: “The Orkney Spring, 1783, Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow,” and then commemorates the life of one Georgia Moore, 1861—1931.

Shrine Mont makes first time visitors feel somewhat like the new arrivals at the professor’s sprawling country estate in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe: unattended, a visitor can, with every twist and turn, find something mysterious, if not enchanting. And so at dusk, in a stealthy pilgrimage from our little room in Maryland House, while my daughter went to a children’s movie at Lexington House, I set out to see the outdoor Cathedral Shrine of the Transfiguration.

It was on this tour that I stumbled upon a rather significant collection of oils on canvas in a house called Art Hall, no less. To my eye, it was a monument within a monument—a little museum of landscape paintings housed in a rustic Shrine Mont lecture room—a musty parlor of sorts, with an old stone fireplace and characteristically dull lighting, which I unhesitatingly flipped on so I could see the walls of art.

There were more than 70 paintings, and all were the work of John Douglas Woodward (1846-1924), the uncle of Shrine Mont’s founder Edmund Woodward. Thankfully, there was a printed guide to his paintings. One side of the room featured American landscapes, and the other, a glorious array of landscapes from his travels around the world. There was a painting, in particular, worth coveting, a scene on a lake with an exciting pink sky—like a Hudson River School sky, which was likely given Thomas Cole and his peers pre-date Woodward by about half a century.

It was amusing to guess ever so briefly where and what the image was before looking at the guide, and getting an answer. This favorite of mine was #67, “Varenna, Italy on Lake Como.” Moving on, the small and medium size canvases were a joy and the guessing game continued for a while with other beauties including #23, “Wind Swept Road, East Hampton,” and #68, “Villa Carlotta” also on Lake Como.

But, at last, it was time to get a glimpse of the outdoor shrine before the blue twilight turned to total black. The small hike to the shrine was a dreamy little flight over stone bridges and paths that put visitors into simple wooden pews facing the alter, a primitive handmade edifice of stone that is haunting and magnificent.

“Each of its stones,” says Shrine Mont literature, “was pulled by horse or rolled by local people from the mountain that embraces it. The baptismal font was originally a dugout stone used by Indians to grind corn.” In the dark, it was a scene to behold--the first religious setting that felt to me quite profound, or extreme, what with its dark, sturdy authority, its Gothic spirit, the multitude of crosses, and every podium and surface made of stone, with a grand, softly curving bell at the top. As it was time to leave, I stepped into the aisle over the discarded mums from a service earlier that day, their orange and yellow color still vivid amid rocks.

The handmade architecture is breathtaking for nothing more than the fact that it exists with casual fortitude. For those descending the hill, leaving the sacred grounds that encircle the Shrine, there is an archway—a simple affair of five thick branches mounted in stone foundations on each side-- with a rectangular sign that reads “Depart in Peace.” Depart in peace: a wonderful mantra for contemplation in any faith and frame of mind—and, to which I rejoined in a whisper, “I’ll be back.”

BLINDING LIGHT: PAUL THEROUX’ NARCISSISTIC YET LOVABLE WRITER

Blinding Light by Paul Theroux very definitely shifts my opinion about the writer’s being a kindred spirit of Graham Greene, to his being Graham Green’s descendant hippie cousin who is having a hell of a lot more fun. Theroux’ absorbing 2006 novel touches on a number of engaging and amusing themes that are aired mainly by the story’s principal character: Slade Steadman, the oversexed, spoiled, lovable pain-in-the-ass central character, and also, to a degree, his lover, Ava Katsina, a similarly narcissistic, sexual being, but, appropriately, so very much smarter and purely selfish than our protagonist Steadman.

The story is laced with contemporary, tell-all glimpses into the rarefied world of accomplishment and power with Slade Steadman at its center. Steadman, a celebrity A-lister inside the heady East Coast best and brightest set—i.e. he is tight with the President, the Walter Cronkites, the Bill Styrons, the Mike Nichols, all of whom make cameos in the book-- is an author who earlier on penned a seminal travel book called Trespassing, based on a two-year world adventure he made in his late twenties without passport, credit cards, luggage—nothing.

We don’t need too much information about Steadman’s book to understand that he struck gold with his simple idea of boldly traveling the world, defying authority and legal barriers while making grisly, exciting discoveries in the world’s darkest corners along the way. His book spawned an image and a brand—as his handlers frequently and forcefully remind him—that led to an industry known as “TOG”, “Trespassing Overland Gear,” a retail empire that sells high-end travel accoutrements—knives, watches, compasses, clothing. In short, Steadman’s Trespassing became a lifestyle and a look—a la Ralph Lauren, or Eddie Bauer-- with huge mass appeal, not to mention a feature film, a television series and so much product development that Steadman is a fabulously wealthy fifty-year old one-hit-wonder living in his native Martha’s Vineyard. When we meet him, he is a self-loathing gentleman farmer living in his walled estate, who thinks only about his failure to write another book, and about sex.

“Virility, he thought, was not just an important trait in an imaginative person but was a powerful determiner of creativity.”

We are introduced to Steadman and Ava together as they make a journey to Ecuador in search of a possible story idea—a drug tour—that might help trigger a new book for Steadman. At this point, Ava and Steadman’s affair is winding down, though they had committed to the trip, and so begins the first section of the book. Theroux’ use, to my way of understanding, of a limited third person perspective is unwavering from start to finish, which is perhaps why I have come away from the story with bemused frustration, and affection, for Steadman—the paradox. We see so much through his eyes, yet not his voice. So, as he travels to Ecuador, somehow we are in on a conversation in which we really understand his disgust with his company of new-rich travelers in search of the next best jaunt, and, naturally, ensconced in the most expensive TOG clothing and accessories.

“…Trespassing had spawned so many imitators, it created a genre, inspiring a sort of travel of which this Ecuador trip was typical: a leap in the dark.”

Of this trip, we get Steadman’s cynicism, and sadness that adventure and risk are somehow disingenuous if all it takes is money:

“Trophies, all of them. And this – the trip to the Oriente, the visit to a shaman in a jungle village, the search for a true ayahuasquero and the trance-drink itself was another trophy for these romantic voyeurists.”

Adding insult to injury, one of the travelers is packing Steadman’s Trespassing, carrying it with her as if it is a survival manual. When asked about the book, and unaware of Steadman’s identity, she describes the author as a “notorious has-been.” Readers can hear his grumbling self-pity, and the journey has only just begun.

Theroux’ mastery is hard to describe, but without feeling preached to or hearing loud messages, I could still feel Steadman’s heart race and pulse rise with every mishap, and moment of pleasure. In Ecuador, Steadman finds what he needs, a drug with a pretty name, Datura, that essentially blinds the user temporarily. However, in lieu of seeing black and morphing into a sightless, frightened invalid, Steadman’s blindness gives him the subconscious visions that drive the story line for his second novel. His Datura, a flowering plant whose root he dissolves into liquid and drinks each morning so as to achieve his visions and heightened perception, transforms our spoiled hero into something of a confident, sexy, sardonic Mr. Hyde. Upon returning from Ecuador, he and Ava remain together at his Martha’s Vineyard estate for the year, their physical relationship having taken on new meaning by their erotic pact in the name of finishing the book. She will take dictation and role play according to his every memory, unfinished boyhood fantasy and fetish. He, for example, cherishes not the flesh, but what exists between him and a woman’s flesh, as is evident in some of his prose that will go into his second book:

“Certain items of women’s clothing unfailingly raised his lust…the soft hand of silk, the open weave of lace, the tug of elastic, the neat cut of pleats in a short skirt, the way the satin smoothly bulked over the skin –and particular loose combinations, warmed by a warm body. Much more than a woman’s nakedness, the clothes were the powerful aphrodisiacs. They were veils of enticement.”

Such is presumably the tone of Steadman’s entire novel, brazenly named by the author The Book of Revelation. No doubt a knock at today’s publishing industry, Steadman’s comically bold title isn’t even questioned by his book agents, surely because of the presumed formula for success that Steadman represents to these reckless publishers, regardless of whether the novel is good or not. In fact, it is made clear several times over that reviews are poor but sales are great.

Naturally, in the course of writing his book, in which Ava is both formidable, indulgent lover and cautious, sober doctor, Steadman gets carried away and embarks on a grand deceit that will ultimately, scarily crumble around him. In public, he feigns his intelligent, psychic blindness, coming off as a brilliant Seer, the upbeat, resilient role model of a cripple. Even the President wants the alluring Steadman to sit by him at a Martha’s Vineyard Clambake, so that Steadman, the stoned, psychic showoff, can recite every geographical twist and turn of the villages across Nantucket Sound, blind and at night, while jaws drop around him and he, in effect, upstages the Commander in Chief. At the dinner, Steadman keeps coming back for more, such as when the President gets word that Princess Diana has been in a car crash in Paris, and Steadman enthralls the glittering guests by advising them, as if a prophet: “Don’t die today. No one will remember.”

As Steadman’s mid-life drama plays out, his disastrous, self-adoring character is carefully juxtaposed to the President himself, who also happens to be a shameless narcissist with a secret. In what makes for a good read probably because of our media saturated culture, Steadman is exposed for having written his book with the aid of a mystery drug—and then, because of his damaged karma, actually goes “bag over his head” blind in the process. Concurrently, the President is brought down, too, by his own stench of a scandal concerning a White House intern. These sad, sorry days enshroud the story—and, we long for things to improve.

Steadman’s rise and fall are to be expected. Ava’s growing disgust with Steadman’s abuse of the Datura provides enough foreshadowing for us to be prepared for Steadman’s rather nightmarish discovery that real blindness is about to eclipse his psychedelic blindness. For any of us who have felt despair for whatever reason on the streets of New York, the egoistic Steadman suffers his initial spiral into a handicapped hell, appropriately, on these mean streets.

It is normal for Steadman to fail to see his good fortune—his pleasant status quo—and so every mishap is a metaphor for his lack of gratitude. The poor sod, for example, is groping his way from the Carlyle, no less, across the east side, where he gets hijacked, robbed and yelled at in the process, just so he can lob any evidence of Datura into the East River. Finally, Ava comes to New York and rescues Steadman from his book tour that has officially gone to hell along with his eyesight, and Steadman is returned to his Vineyard house, this time an infantile, paranoid victim. At this point, the course of his and Ava’s relationship has changed:

“She was in charge; she made him feel lost and helpless. She too seemed like someone else, bigger than ever. The way she touched him had seemed rough and abrupt…She seemed less like a lover than a caregiver—one of her hospital words.”

And while Steadman consistently fails to see that he is a lucky man, his much-deserved treacherous odyssey notwithstanding, he will be just fine. And this is why we like him, for in spite of his being a petulant, self-absorbed, sexually obsessed man (with his own sexual history more than anything else), Steadman is a nice guy with a very good sense of humor. Even when he is smug, he isn’t cruel, such as in a fight with Ava about his self-induced blindness at the clambake.

“Yes, he had liked being noticed at the party. It had reminded him of the great days when he had been a celebrated prodigy.
‘So, I’m as vulgar and susceptible as everyone else—so what? Hey, what about the president?’
‘You liked upstaging him.’
‘Probably,’ Steadman said. ‘Then Diana died and upstaged us both. What a night.’”

Steadman’s more run of the mill passions also reassure us about him and why we like the guy. His respect for the natives of Martha’s Vineyard, drawn in part because his family is among the island’s landed gentry, is a kind little homage to the locals as compared to the elite newcomers who occupy the island three months a year.

“Still it was home for him, and for that reason, prettier than anywhere else. Old money built discreetly and dressed down and didn’t show off and was famously frugal. Old money fraternized with the locals, formed alliances, got things done—or, more often, managed to be quietly obstructive, meddling for the good of the island. What new money there was remained intimidated by the locals, gently browbeaten, never understanding that the gentry prided themselves on and gained self-esteem by knowing the workers, for the boat builders and the fishermen and the ferrymen and the police and the raggedest Wamponoags were the island’s true aristocrats.”

Certainly the most vexing part of Blinding Light is its central subject: sexual desire, and the peripheral treatment of love. Steadman’s second book is, to his way of thinking, the height of personal drama, and, thus, a complete effort, a tour de force—a sexual bildungsroman that will define his canon of work.

“But if you used your own blood for ink, and what you wrote was the truth, and your life was the subject, one novel was enough; there was nothing else to know, no more to see, a heart laid bare. So he believed.”

Surely the fellow has to be brought down a few pegs.

Still, with Ava and the sexual passion they have in the beginning of their relationship as well as during the writing of his book, some heavy ideas come the surface, especially on the subject of love. Toward the end of his affair with Ava, Steadman reflects on how he and Ava never used the word love, disdainfully referring to “the moth-eaten expression I love you, which had become diminished and become so meaningless it had been reduced to a casual salutation.”

The two of them vow, as their sexual bond is on the ascent, never to get married, and she says:

“’I want to be your friend. It’s purer. It’ s much better. Friendship asks nothing, it gives everything, and friendship with desire is paradise.’”

And, Steadman, rejoins: “I agree. Love doesn’t make you better. It excludes the whole world. For a brief period you have an adoring partner, and later an enemy. Love is like some horrible twisted religion the way it changes you. An afterwards, when love ends, you’re lost.’”

Ultimately, I’d say I’ve bought into Blinding Light the way the fictional public of Theroux’ story bought in to Slade Steadman’s book Trespassing. With the arrival of Slade, you have a big character so funny, so tortured, and so attractive—you’re drawn to him, and he holds his own. In the end, Steadman is sick, alone and put to shame, yet somehow, as abject as his plight may be, he keeps his wits about him. For at his core, he’s a boot-strapper, a gritty New Englander, an island local who will just have to keep learning life’s lessons the hard way. Nonetheless, we want to believe that he’ll be back on his feet--smiling, in fact-- ever the sacrificial hero.

MAE WEST IS VENICE

SHIRLINGTON, Va.--Probably the most poignant moments in Signature Theater’s Dirty Blonde, an astute, dark little tribute to Mae West, involve the two central characters, who, as modern-day fans of their beloved Mae West, meet by chance at the star’s Cypress Hill Abbey grave in Brooklyn to celebrate her birthday on August 17, (I shall not provide her birth year—as Ms. West would have preferred).

They are both city-dwelling lonely hearts, society outcasts—obscure people who accept Gotham’s mean streets, their drab apartments, their small jobs and go on, even with shameful secrets and never-to-be-resolved family problems. Yet, they are grounded almost singularly by their connection to the early film star, whereby they regale each other (or reflect to themselves) with stories of her wit, her rise to fame, her good heart. For heaven’s sake, they compare her to Venice, “How else can you describe Venice, there is nothing like it?”

With Mae as topic of conversation, they are at once calm and confident thanks to their Brooklyn-born “tough girl,” and she helps them laugh thanks to her great, irreverent insights: “I don’t care if it’s a bad name as long as it’s my name.” All of this is fleshed out in dialogues between Jo (Emily Skinner) and Charlie Conner (Hugh Nees), who along with J.Fred Shiffman cover key characters in West’s life (Shiffman plays West’s only husband, FrankWallace, and her companion Joe Frisco, among others). Skinner commands the two central roles, moving beautifully between silly contemporary Jo and the downright beautiful and crushingly funny-- I am a fan like Charlie and Jo—Mae West.

Dirty Blonde, written by Claudia Shear, is running in Signature’s ARK Theater from August 11 through October 4, 2009 in Arlington, Va. The hour and 45 minute play runs straight through and takes us back and forth between bleak commuter New York of 2009, where Jo and Charlie are getting to know each other through their mutual love of West, and 1911, in which a young Mae is exploring how far she can push the limits on stage without getting fired or arrested, while Shiffman and Nees serve up many colorful show biz types and lovers in the star’s life as she rises to fame.

Charlie, a film library archivist, tells Jo that he went to Los Angeles as a teenager to meet West—and we see the awkward encounter. Skinner treats the audience to West at many points in her life, including the young, bawdy and brunette Mae, to the established star as platinum blonde, to aging platinum blonde, and, when she can barely walk, a glittering, sweet caricature of herself, albeit eerie, shortly before she finally dies. We are reminded that only two people attended her New York burial.

Most recall West as being an older “star”, because she reached the pinnacles of success at that time. Her eyes, as Skinner achieves so magnificently, begin to close with age, so that you get only her penciled eyelids that set off the angles of her face and the famous porcelain skin. With the long tangled blonde tresses topped by a crazy hat, the rest of her is covered to the floor in sequins and jewels—this, perhaps, being the image we remember best, when she was around 50.

Dirty Blonde is a Hollywood history lesson, and a Los Angeles blast from the past—two things dear to me as a native Angelino. When young Charlie is unexpectedly taken to dinner with the aging West and her companion, they are headed to Man Fook Low, a Chinese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, near the meat packing and produce district—and a restaurant my father always frequented, as a young stock broker working downtown. As a child, we would make our Sunday pilgrimage from West Los Angeles downtown just for the foil wrapped beef.

Hilariously, the story also touches on one of West’s great, albeit weird, hygienic rituals--her use of colonics. I would hear this from my parents now and then (they are well-versed in Hollywood lore), and puzzle over what on earth they were talking about, and alas, it was meaningful enough for Shears to verify here. And, the fun Hollywood nuggets, such as her meticulousness about her beautiful costumes, made by Edith Head, among others. We learn she chose Cary Grant to be in her first film, She Done Him Wrong, a move that helped catapult Grant to fame. We see West in court after being arrested during the Broadway run of her play Sex. For its suggestiveness, she went to jail for ten days and paid a fine of $500. Later, she tired to open another play called The Drag, dealing with homosexuality, but, hard as she tried, the play never opened, having been blocked by such groups as the Society for the Prevention of Vice . She hated W.C. “Bill” Fields for his drinking and lack of professionalism. And, she probably resented that she rose to fame at a ripe age, rather than in her youth. Consequently, she was adamant about concealing her real age. At one point, West gets a phone call from Billy Wilder asking her if she would consider the lead for the film Sunset Boulevard “about a washed up movie star,” and she refuses on the spot. Hanging up the phone, she asks her housekeeper to draw the drapes to protect her skin from the light. It feels too close to home for all us.

But what is best is Skinner’s work, her mastery of Mae’s voice, so that the brilliant, burlesque one-liners ring with perfect pitch—

“You don’t appeal to my finer instincts.”
“What are they?”
“I dunno, but I must have them.”

--and, they way Skinner’s character manages to pull her big pretty lips back over her teeth in such a way that she achieves West’s sincere, sexy and, to my eye, infectious smile. At West’s peak, when her trusted friend, Mr. Edwards, played by Shiffman, is dolling her up and introducing her to a platinum wig—and so too is Charlie, dressing Jo up for a Halloween party—the double-play scene culminates in Jo/Mae turning around before us, her first go with the now-famous hair topped with a huge marabou hat, and she, wrapped in a boa and covered in fuscia sequins. The audience takes her in, gasps and claps.

“A boa,” says West. “A boa covers a multitude of sins.”

By the end, when Jo and Charlie discover they can overcome each others’ oddities, we understand the play is also a tribute to why we like to love glamour, things that sparkle and things that make us laugh—and that is why we love those who have the guts to facilitate these images for us. West, who we learn “was not a piker” and “always took care of everyone” and who made a fortune on wise real estate investments, kept going until the end—even through horrid decisions like the 1978 movie Sextette, and to her Vegas stage performances where muscle men gently volleyed her back and forth like an antique doll.

In 2000, Shear’s Dirty Blonde was nominated for five Tony Awards, and Signature’s artistic director, Eric Schaeffer felt it was a good way to kick off the Arlington theater’s 20th anniversary celebration. www. Signature-theatre.org.

NEWS: CAR COLLECTORS INDULGE

CENTENNIAL OF THE 1909 OCEAN TO OCEAN ENDURANCE CONTEST UNDERWAY FROM NEW YORK TO SEATTLE
55 Model –Ts Ambling Their Way from White Plains to Seattle

As this moment, a group of car enthusiasts are making their way --at the wheel of one of their beloved antique vehicles--from Olathe, Kansas to Abilene in what is the 10th leg of a month-long cross-country car race. The racers, mostly well-heeled middle agers who care about things historic, geographic, natural, and on four wheels, are traveling from White Plains, NY to Seattle, Wash., in celebration of the Centennial of Robert Guggenheim's original 1909 race that helped promote the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (AYP) Exposition in Seattle that year.
The original race started in New York City on June 1, 1909, when President William Taft pressed a golden telegraph key from Washington, D.C., setting off two events at once: the opening of the AYP Exposition in Seattle, and giving the signal to New York city Mayor George Brinton McClellan, jr. to fire a golden revolver, thus, launching one of history’s greatest, if not most colorful, cross-country car races.
Today, hearing the story warms your heart: what with all that American ingenuity and energy and innovation at the dawn of the invention of the automobile. It conjures an appealing and inspiring image of men in their peculiar machines enduring a 22-day trip and overcoming miserable driving conditions. The summer rains were relentless, and the mud, quicksand, desert and badlands consumed the drivers and their cars in one way or another throughout the formidable journey.
Henry Ford entered two automobiles, convinced correctly so that a “cheap, tough, lightweight, flexible car” was what was needed for the impassable roads along the 4,106 mile trek. And it was Ford, consummate industry force that he was, who in fact claimed first place at the finish line of the race, though, in truth, the victory did not belong to his 1909 Model-T, in spite of the vehicles’ heroics: one for catching fire and the other for sinking four feet in the snow. It was the Shawmut, in fact, that was the victor, though it arrived 17 hours after the Ford.
Indeed, the Ford 1909 Model T was declared winner at the finish line, on the spot today where the Drumheller Fountain sits in the center of the University of Washington campus. Henry ford was on hand—his photo captured that day—and thrilled to no end. He would go on to leverage the victory so effectively in the ensuing six months that the world became convinced through his brilliant media blitz that the Ford Model T was the car to buy, and for the next eight years, more than 15 million Model Ts were manufactured.
Quietly, in November 1909, the Shawmut, a heavier car as compared to the Model-T, more akin to its fellow entrants the Stearns, Acme and Itala, was acknowledged winner of the race by the Automobile Club of America. Of course, the victory was too little too late. That the Ford team had broken one of the race rules by illegally substituting the engine for part of the distance bore no repercussions—and today, the 2009 centennial race has in its line up more than 55 Model-Ts that are following the original route, stopping in towns in which racers stopped a century ago.
How quintessentially American is that? We forgive, we forget and we move on, unwavering in our love affair with cars.
Forthcoming post: The 2009 Centennial Race Participants' Profiles and Reporting.