Ray Bolger as the scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz.” Was he smart enough to be president? Courtesy cinefox.com.

As Chris Matthews puts it, “The Republicans and Democrats are running two scarecrows for presidents,” with more negatives than positives. But I’d like to dig under those two stiff posts out in the corn field — into the nitty-gritty of voter perception.

Donald Trump has blatantly earned his negative judgments from both voters and members of the formal Republican party, from delegates, to Congress Reps to Senators to his many competitors for the nomination.

Even many people who still support him admit a variety of things they don’t like about him which undermine the values of America — opportunity, diversity and equality, as a land of immigrants. Please remember the essence of Emma Lazarus’ great poem emblazoned into the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Plaque photo courtesy schmoop.com

Donald Trump’s only values are the kind that glimmer or stack into green, rectangular piles. If he’s a different kind of politician I would characterize him ultimately as the anti-statesman, the opposite of what we hope every politician aspires to.

So, why some seemingly reasonable people still support Trump remains one of the nitty-gritty questions that’s hard to answer. Some see his rhetoric against America’s emerging oligarchy as a way to right America’s wrongs. But it’s easy talk these days: Trump’s tax plan to buttress the top one per cent does little to change America’s vast income equality gap.
Part of the Trump camp is backing their way in, with a kind of negative “I’d never vote Hillary” value system or obstinancy. This has partly to do with Hillary Clinton’s remarkably high negativity ratings, which is what I would like to address, and I hope some readers will respond to.

Hillary Clinton. coutesy affinitymagazine.us

Starting from what I call the higher ground of this scenario, Clinton needs a large number of Bernie Sanders supporters to gain a more comfortable margin than the average of 7 per cent lead she currently holds nationally over Trump in state polls. But many of those voters apparently will not switch to Hillary, until Sanders formally gives up the ghost and endorses  her which, recently on an interview with Chris Hayes on CSNBC, the Vermont senator said he still was not ready to do.

The two campaigns need to get closer on issues important  to the Sanders camp. In the Hayes interview, Sanders prioritized an aggressive breakup of Wall Street banks, and fighting for abolition of the death penalty in America. Clinton supports death in rare cases, such for Dylann Roof, the alleged hate-killer of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, S.C., last year.
Bernie also remains vehemently opposed to the TPP trade agreement, which Clinton initially supported but now opposes. So an endorsement from Sanders seems only a matter of time. But as for now, many of his supporters remain in lockstep behind him, for fairly righteous reasons.
Of course, the bottom line is, even if they vote for a third-party candidate, that amounts to a vote for Donald Trump. Because it takes one liberal/Democratic vote away from Hillary Clinton.
Let’s not forget the devastating effect of Ralph Nader’s  refusal  in 2000 to support Al Gore, who, given his post-election record, would’ve done at least as much as Green Party candidate Nader to improve the environment, and probably more.

Nader did hand the presidency to George W. Bush, though hardly intentionally. More, I think, out of irresponsible, willful hubris. It never should have come down to a decision left to the Supreme Court, who desecrated the democratic will of the people, as Al Gore received the most popular votes: 50,999,897 to Bush’s 50,456,002.

Here’s some info that shows how troubling Nader’s role was in that election:

When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for “his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash,” and “the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician,” and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated 27 October 2000, defending Al Gore’s environmental record and calling Nader’s strategy “irresponsible.”^[95] He wrote:

You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states. Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge… Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless.^[96]

Perhaps this seems like dirty water under the bridge by now. But it gets me to the question of why leftists or independent moderates are not ready to support Clinton, a candidate who President Obama — twice-elected and at a peak in popularity — has described as perhaps the most qualified candidate who as ever run for president, certainly in recent times.

Sure Republicans will nurse Hillary conspiracy theories-from-nowhere from now till doomsday. But Hillary is not going to be indicted on her e-mail use, according to Chuck Todd, which he reported recently on Meet the Press. That’s the latest, and it’s good enough for me, even though I will watch the FBI investigation to the end.

We have a very serious and consequential election to decide.

So what is it about Hillary Clinton for all those Hillary haters and doubters? It seems to come down to the oh-so-subjective factor of trust.

And here is where progressive and liberal males ought to give her a break, especially because virtually any of the wildest theories about her profit-mongering and corruption seem to vanish into thin air the closer you look at them.

What people respond to are the insinuations. And I observe such progressive males with great dismay because, of course, Hillary is hardly perfect and, yes, she’s took money from Wall Street firms corporations to speak but, to me, that means she’s smart enough to work the system, profoundly flawed as it is, because you can’t get elected without huge money in that system. I trust she’ll work to overturn Citizens United as she promises to. It goes against the progressive principles she’s held for decades.

In general, she strives very hard to keep a tidy ship, despite the incessant bombs lobbed at her, so it’s no surprise she can get into perceived trouble when she gets self-protective and choosy about her explanations of countless activities. But none of that proves anything nefarious. So without proof, what do we have to stand on? As Daily Kos put it recently, “Clinton is the most investigated woman in history — and the most exonerated.”

That makes her arguably the most persecuted woman in history. The Benghazi hearings were her trial under fire, and she single-handedly dismantled the countless and redundant counter-examinations with grace, courage and determination. It was an amazing demonstration of her grit and intelligence, as well. Imagine Trump squirming and whining under similar circumstances.

Here’s a problem: A recent salon.com analysis of voter attitudes asserted that it’s increasingly evident that many progressive men seem guilty of a sexist attitude towards the woman who might be the first female president in US history.

The analysis doesn’t have a lot of evidential proof, aside from a profusion of circumstantial evidence. Like the gang of “Bernie Bros,” for one example. And I’m beginning to wonder about Bernie himself, who’s increasingly quixotic, as high-minded as he talks, being now out of the real race.

So I wonder, what their problem is with her, really? They always assume the worst of her. Could this come down to an excess of old-fashioned American guy arrogance which often feeds its admirable can-do attitude as well?

Well, just consider what the final effect of this self-righteous choosiness is. Some women are especially peeved at Donald Trump’s assertion that Hillary Clinton “enabled” her husband’s sexual indiscretions. What on earth did they and Trump” enablers” expect the then-First Lady to do publicly? Condemn and pillage her husband publically when women make salacious accusations? Even when Bill Clinton finally confessed to something, wasn’t that enough? Can’t we also suspect that the motives of the women involved were far less than pure, envisioning the president as easy pickings for their wiles?

Of course, it was sordid then, but what really does that have to do with today, and Hillary Clinton’s extraordinary capabilities as a politician and stateswoman?

If you go as far as to blame her for marrying the guy, well some marriage counselors might concur, but remember, she established her personal vision of her political career before she ever met Bill Clinton. That vision, as it’s played out over her own career, is what she should be judged on and everything that she has accomplished on her own merits since.

Yet, still people regularly conflate Bill Clinton’s policies with Hillary. What do they think Hillary Clinton will do? Is she some kind of intellectual zombie from the 1990’s, A Bubba lapdog?

A…Barry lapdog? The media hasn’t helped.

Cartoon courtesy thepeoplescube.com

I post the image for rhetorical irony. Either notion about Clinton is obnoxiously sexist. Plus, such thinking forgets the alternative.

Trump.

And remember, the whole world is watching this election, with great angst and dismay.
Here lies a glaring reminder of how far behind we are so many other advanced democratic nations in electing a female leader. Not that it’s a race, but what do you say when the nation that proclaims itself the greatest democracy of all may fail yet again to elect a woman, such a capable woman?

The Huffington Post reports: “There have been over 70 female prime ministers and presidents in the world since Sri Lanka elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960. The length of their tenure has varied immensely, as have the powers that they have held. Some women were in office only days or held largely ceremonial roles, while others played a defining role in their country’s history.”

Among the most famous women leaders of nations (in chronological order) are Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India, Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel, President Isabel Peron of Argentina, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of The United Kingdom; President Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, President Mary Robinson of Ireland; Prime Minister Hana Suchocka of Poland, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany; President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of  Australia, and President Park Geun-hyem of South Korea.

It’s time for a brilliant and determined woman to come in and clean up the remaining mess from the Recession — wrought by the Bush years — and get to work on rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, which will begin to create many of the dearly-needed jobs we clamor for.

Ray Bolger as the scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz.” Was he smart enough to be president? Courtesy cinefox.com.

As Chris Matthews puts it, “The Republicans and Democrats are running two scarecrows for presidents,” with more negatives than positives. But I’d like to dig under those two stiff posts out in the corn field — into the nitty-gritty of voter perception.

Donald Trump has blatantly earned his negative judgments from both voters and members of the formal Republican party, from delegates, to Congress Reps to Senators to his many competitors for the nomination.

Even many people who still support him admit a variety of things they don’t like about him which undermine the values of America — opportunity, diversity and equality, as a land of immigrants. Please remember the essence of Emma Lazarus’ great poem emblazoned into the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Plaque photo courtesy schmoop.com

Donald Trump’s only values are the kind that glimmer or stack into green, rectangular piles. If he’s a different kind of politician I would characterize him ultimately as the anti-statesman, the opposite of what we hope every politician aspires to.

So, why some seemingly reasonable people still support Trump remains one of the nitty-gritty questions that’s hard to answer. Some see his rhetoric against America’s emerging oligarchy as a way to right America’s wrongs. But it’s easy talk these days: Trump’s tax plan to buttress the top one per cent does little to change America’s vast income equality gap.
Part of the Trump camp is backing their way in, with a kind of negative “I’d never vote Hillary” value system or obstinancy. This has partly to do with Hillary Clinton’s remarkably high negativity ratings, which is what I would like to address, and I hope some readers will respond to.

Hillary Clinton. coutesy affinitymagazine.us

Starting from what I call the higher ground of this scenario, Clinton needs a large number of Bernie Sanders supporters to gain a more comfortable margin than the average of 7 per cent lead she currently holds nationally over Trump in state polls. But many of those voters apparently will not switch to Hillary, until Sanders formally gives up the ghost and endorses  her which, recently on an interview with Chris Hayes on CSNBC, the Vermont senator said he still was not ready to do.

The two campaigns need to get closer on issues important  to the Sanders camp. In the Hayes interview, Sanders prioritized an aggressive breakup of Wall Street banks, and fighting for abolition of the death penalty in America. Clinton supports death in rare cases, such for Dylann Roof, the alleged hate-killer of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, S.C., last year.
Bernie also remains vehemently opposed to the TPP trade agreement, which Clinton initially supported but now opposes. So an endorsement from Sanders seems only a matter of time. But as for now, many of his supporters remain in lockstep behind him, for fairly righteous reasons.
Of course, the bottom line is, even if they vote for a third-party candidate, that amounts to a vote for Donald Trump. Because it takes one liberal/Democratic vote away from Hillary Clinton.
Let’s not forget the devastating effect of Ralph Nader’s  refusal  in 2000 to support Al Gore, who, given his post-election record, would’ve done at least as much as Green Party candidate Nader to improve the environment, and probably more.

Nader did hand the presidency to George W. Bush, though hardly intentionally. More, I think, out of irresponsible, willful hubris. It never should have come down to a decision left to the Supreme Court, who desecrated the democratic will of the people, as Al Gore received the most popular votes: 50,999,897 to Bush’s 50,456,002.

Here’s some info that shows how troubling Nader’s role was in that election:

When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for “his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash,” and “the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician,” and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated 27 October 2000, defending Al Gore’s environmental record and calling Nader’s strategy “irresponsible.”^[95] He wrote:

You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states. Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge… Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless.^[96]

Perhaps this seems like dirty water under the bridge by now. But it gets me to the question of why leftists or independent moderates are not ready to support Clinton, a candidate who President Obama — twice-elected and at a peak in popularity — has described as perhaps the most qualified candidate who as ever run for president, certainly in recent times.

Sure Republicans will nurse Hillary conspiracy theories-from-nowhere from now till doomsday. But Hillary is not going to be indicted on her e-mail use, according to Chuck Todd, which he reported recently on Meet the Press. That’s the latest, and it’s good enough for me, even though I will watch the FBI investigation to the end.

We have a very serious and consequential election to decide.

So what is it about Hillary Clinton for all those Hillary haters and doubters? It seems to come down to the oh-so-subjective factor of trust.

And here is where progressive and liberal males ought to give her a break, especially because virtually any of the wildest theories about her profit-mongering and corruption seem to vanish into thin air the closer you look at them.

What people respond to are the insinuations. And I observe such progressive males with great dismay because, of course, Hillary is hardly perfect and, yes, she’s took money from Wall Street firms corporations to speak but, to me, that means she’s smart enough to work the system, profoundly flawed as it is, because you can’t get elected without huge money in that system. But if that’s the worst you can say of her, in reality not innuendo, give it up.

In general, she strives very hard to keep an upright ship, even though part of her effort can get her in trouble when she gets self-protective and choosy about her explanations of activities. But none of that proves anything nefarious. So without proof, what do we have to stand on? As Daily Kos put it recently, “Clinton is the most investigated woman in history — and the most exonerated.”

That makes her arguably the most persecuted woman in history. The Benghazi hearings were her trial under fire, and she single-handedly dismantled the countless and redundant counter-examinations with grace, courage and determination. It was an amazing demonstration of her grit and intelligence, as well. Imagine Trump squirming and whining under similar circumstances.

Here’s a problem: A recent salon.com analysis of voter attitudes asserted that it’s increasingly evident that many progressive men seem guilty of a sexist attitude towards the woman who might be the first female president in US history.

The analysis doesn’t have a lot of evidential proof, aside from a profusion of circumstantial evidence. Like the gang of “Bernie Bros,” for one example. And I’m beginning to wonder about Bernie himself, who’s increasingly quixotic, as high-minded as he talks, being now out of the real race.

So I wonder, what their problem is with her, really? They always assume the worst of her. Could this come down to an excess of old-fashioned American guy arrogance which often feeds its admirable can-do attitude as well?

Well, just consider what the final effect of this self-righteous choosiness is. Some women are especially peeved at Donald Trump’s assertion that Hillary Clinton “enabled” her husband’s sexual indiscretions. What on earth did they and Trump” enablers” expect the then-First Lady to do publicly? Condemn and pillage her husband publically when women make salacious accusations? Even when Bill Clinton finally confessed to something, wasn’t that enough? Can’t we also suspect that the motives of the women involved were far less than pure, envisioning the president as easy pickings for their wiles?

Of course, it was sordid then, but what really does that have to do with today, and Hillary Clinton’s extraordinary capabilities as a politician and stateswoman?

If you go as far as to blame her for marrying the guy, well some marriage counselors might concur, but remember, she established her personal vision of her political career before she ever met Bill Clinton. That vision, as it’s played out over her own career, is what she should be judged on and everything that she has accomplished on her own merits since.

Yet, still people regularly conflate Bill Clinton’s policies with Hillary. What do they think Hillary Clinton will do? Is she some kind of intellectual zombie from the 1990’s, A Bubba lapdog?

A…Barry lapdog? The media hasn’t helped.

Cartoon courtesy thepeoplescube.com

I post the image for rhetorical irony. Either notion about Clinton is obnoxiously sexist. Plus, such thinking forgets the alternative.

Trump.

And remember, the whole world is watching this election, with great angst and dismay.
Here lies a glaring reminder of how far behind we are so many other advanced democratic nations in electing a female leader. Not that it’s a race, but what do you say when the nation that proclaims itself the greatest democracy at all may fail yet again to elect a woman, such a capable woman?

The Huffington Post reports: “There have been over 70 female prime ministers and presidents in the world since Sri Lanka elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960. The length of their tenure has varied immensely, as have the powers that they have held. Some women were in office only days or held largely ceremonial roles, while others played a defining role in their country’s history.”

Among the most famous women leaders of nations (in chronological order) are Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India, Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel, President Isabel Peron of Argentina, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of The United Kingdom; President Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, President Mary Robinson of Ireland; Prime Minister Hana Suchocka of Poland, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany; President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of  Australia, and President Park Geun-hyem of South Korea.

It’s time for a brilliant and determined woman to come in and clean up the remaining mess from the Recession — wrought by the Bush years — and get to work on rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, which will begin to create many of the dearly-needed jobs we clamor for.

Charles Pierce of Esquire magazine, now also frequent commentator on political cable talk shows, often gets things as right as a journalist can. He frequently does so with the delightfully snarky exasperation of a person who suffers fools as gladly as an passenger plane pilot would hand the controls to a Trumphead — drunk after a rally of cheering Donald’s “reality” fantasies and minority bashing — his rifles and pistols clanking under, or over, his clothes.

Here’s Pierce blogging Monday (June 13):

“And Trump’s back on campus, saying things like this (about Hillary Clinton):

“Her plan is to disarm law-abiding Americans, abolishing the Second Amendment, and leaving only the bad guys and terrorists with guns. No good. Not going to happen, folks. Not going to happen.”

Jesus H. Christ on a firing range, how many times is he going to say this before someone hits him with a polo mallet for being such an absurd man? Presidents cannot abolish constitutional amendments. Only the people, acting through their elected representatives, can do that, and the process can take years before it finally fails. (The folks who used to be pushing for the ERA can give him some tips about how that can go.)

I’m looking at the political landscape and, quite honestly, I don’t see three-fourths of the states agreeing to touch the Sacred Second…

He is a ridiculous man running a ridiculous campaign and any dispatch from that campaign that doesn’t make that basic point is committing journalistic malpractice…”

Pierce notes one way Trump tries to “distinguishes himself” with business savvy from the Democratic presidential nominee.

“He accused HRC’s immigration proposal of costing too much money that could have been better spent fixing our roads and bridges. Of course, this was after proposing a vetting process that would cost billions of dollars, proposing  to fight wars all over the world, and proposing to increase the workload of  the intelligence community. Unless, of course, he figures that, as president, he can get them to do the work and then stiff them on their bills. I don’t think the usual business plan will fly with, say, the Marines.

“This, once again, was the Presidential Trump. (Look! A teleprompter!)  It was silly in January. It’s sillier now, but infinitely more dangerous. How in the hell did we get here? Our lines are open.” 1

For some, Donald Trump may seem to be self-destructing in a haze of helpless narcissism and conspiracy-mongering. But you never know what will happen in this crazy year. He is “infinitely more dangerous now” because he theoretically could be president. And the combustible unpredictability of the world shows there’s always potential for Republicans to exploit fear in their Gothic and perverse ways. And for this theoretical president to react as erratically as any unknown threat from anywhere on the globe or from a natural disaster.

Trump seems to embody many of those twisted motives and behavioral traits in one man. Yet he’s “persuasive” because some people want to buy his “product” on his terms, which to them smells like Trump steak on the grill. Why are supporters like those above pictured smiling? They don’t seem interested in much more than the sizzle teasing their nostrils. They, like Trump, don’t appear interested in the facts of our domestic politics or international relations, or our fight with radical groups like ISIS, which prey on fear and the mental illnesses of America, such as this vast collective obsession with guns. Another horrible mass murder — of 49 gay people — and gun fanatics stumble over each other to buy the same assault weapon in a chilling mimicry of the killer’s recent purchase. They fear possible restrictions on their “right” to buy and shoot these war weapons — regardless of whether they constitute any imaginable “well-regulated militia,” as the Constitution specifies for the right to bear arms.

Yes, that’s a base hunger the gun-slobberers — not honest, decent hunters — want to satisfy, and then all will be well, America will be “great again.” Yet how much “greater” can we get when it remains business as usual for a kow-towed Congress, the gun industry and the NRA. How does no change on common-sense gun safety make us “greater” than we are now?

And we also know that groups like ISIS prey upon clinically mentally damaged individuals like the Florida killer, who are easily swayed emotionally and psychologically — even if ideologically confused “lone wolves” like him — through social media. It is like our worse angels flitting from shoulder to shoulder through their seemingly empty heads. And what would that first great Republican president, who gave the notion of “our better angels” timeless resonance, think of these small Republican politicians, lining up behind such a man, even if they are oh, so quietly kicking and screaming?

Would grandly melancholic Lincoln imagine that Jesus Christ, were he alive today, would be pumping clip-after-clip of AR-15 bullets into a bull’s eye-adorned bale of hay, while fantasizing over a dirty fed or an Islamic radical?

One only hopes that intelligence prevails among those merchants and small-business people and working men seemingly wooed by Trump’s bar room-talk cons. A bar’s a great place for a roll-up-your-sleeves political debate but we need more than a bar boaster in this big, complicated world of many languages, cultures, beliefs and presumptions. And many, if not most, foreign leaders, aside from those in North Korea and maybe Russia,  think that with such a candidate America is flirting with madness — thus the increasing danger.

The honest business person or worker might draw wisdom from this merchant who pauses from the pleasures of intoxication to reflect on truth in The Confidence-Man, Herman Melville’s extraordinary parable about a riverboat (another vessel-as-America metaphor, like Ahab’s The Pequod,) teeming with the hydra-headed monster of the con-man impulse run amok:

“At intervals, they slowly quaff several glasses in silence and thoughtfulness. At last the merchant’s expressive face flushed, his eyes moistly beamed, his lips trembled with an imaginative, feminine sensibility. Without sending a single fume to his head, the wine seemed to shoot to his heart, and begin soothsaying there. “Ah,” he cried, pushing his glass from him, “Ah, wine is good, and confidence is good; but can wine or confidence percolate down through all the stony strata of hard considerations, and drop warmly and mortally into the cold cave of truth? Truth will not be comforted. Led by dear charity, lured by sweet hope, fond fancy essays; but in vain; mere dreams and ideals, they explode in your hand, leaving not, but the scorching behind!” – The Confidence Man, Herman Melville. 2

Note how Melville valued the imagination of the “feminine sensibility,” that which produces by creating (or pro-creating) A far cry from Trump’s deeply sexist, testosterone-filled candidacy.

Not simply a satire, Melville’s book is a meditation on the nature of trust in a capitalist society. Here’s a fine essay on that theme, as it plays out in the book. 

Melville, one of the first original American thinkers, ultimately had confidence in the nation’s authentic merchants, and in any American who works honestly for a living, unlike Trump, for whom “livelihood” and “honesty” are an oxymoron, which, again, he embodies.

Let us hope and pray than those who might pause in the voting booth in November have their better angels guiding them.

_______________

1. Charles W. Pierce quotes and photo from.
2. Melville knew too well the tragic connection between guns and suicide. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of his family life was when his 18-year-old son Malcolm died in his bedroom from an apparent suicide or accident, with a gun. Here’s a plethora of facts about America’s gun “problems.”

Once, many years ago, I took a bus trip up North Avenue in Milwaukee to apply for a window-washing job, partly because I really enjoy heights, and was a mountain climber of sorts in those days, having scaled a number of mountains in the Tetons.

I never made it to the window washing job, because instead of getting off at 30th and North, I mistakenly, or perhaps subconsciously, got off at 3rd and North, where the Radio Doctors Soul Shop was located.

I said, “dang,” and then “oh, well,” and walked up to Radio Docs and saw a sign for “help wanted.” I went in and got a job there that day as an album buyer and store clerk, which helped determine my future in music and the arts, as a journalist.

But yesterday, when I returned home — after hearing Steve Cohen and Li’l Rev play some down-home blues for lunch hour at Anodyne Coffee on S. Kinnickinnick Ave. — I came face-to-face with people working in high, vertically-challenging places where ordinary humans rarely tread. I found a small mountain of detritus from an old roof being torn up and tossed down on the sidewalk of the side-door entrance to my upper flat, in Riverwest.

I was immediately struck and a bit fascinated by the tough, daring work of these roofers. The roofers carry each of the large plywood panels up a wobbly, two-and-a-half-story-tall ladder, while hanging on to the heavy, cumbersome wood panel with one hand and to the ladder with the other hand (see below).

Notice that on a roof this steep the workers need belay ropes to secure them. But there’s still plenty of danger. These appear to be primarily Latino roofers, who work hard and didn’t stop until it grew too dark to see your next step. They’re at it again this morning. You get a sense of some of the rest of the job, I hope, in these photos.

I shot these roof views from my second-floor flat and balcony, so they are up fairly high..

So I offer this little photo essay as a tribute to roofers. They help to beautify and protect our homes. Yet this is one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Here’s an article on that http://hubpages.com/living/Roofing-is-on-the-top-10-list-of-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-world.

The risks and skills of roofers hold much less glamour than, say, skyscraper construction workers. But they are, in their own way, the sort of workers who have made America great, for a long time — house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, town by town, city by city.

As I crane my neck to watch them, my hat falls off to them.

Rooftop tightrope

Here a roofer measures the size of a top corner which will need on odd-shaped slab of plywood, the base material for the roof, beneath the shingles to come.

Stripping the old roof (previous three photos).

The walkway to the entrance to my upper flat, on the right.

Antipholus (Ken Miller, center) and his servant Dromio (Nicole Goeden, right) are befuddled enough by encountering their estranged identical twins. Here, they also have to deal with a courtesan played by Ian Muenther, in Stone Soup Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors” at the Shorewood Public Library. All photos by Ed Valent unless otherrwise indicated.

After a Sunday Sheboygan performance, in which the company played through a huge cloudburst, their summer tour of Comedy will conclude with dates in Nelson Park in Decatur, IL on June 10; Mineral Springs Park in Pekin IL on Saturday, June 11, and Senior Citizens Memorial Park in Chicago on Sunday June 12. , IL. See information on Stone Soup Shakespeare and their remaining tour dates here.

“I to the world am like a drop of water that, in the ocean seeks another drop that falling there to find his fellow forth, unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.”

The timeless magic and the madness of live theatrical performance — in a virtual reality-removed world – felt palpably alive when Stone Soup Shakespeare performed its gloriously low-tech version of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors at the Shorewood Public Library Saturday.

The “madness” is the company bucking the seemingly inexorable technological zeitgeist by doing Shakespeare in free performances that bend and stretch dramatic principles but reach for the sky, in both their fairly strong textual fidelity and effort to touch ordinary people who might never otherwise go to a Shakespeare production.

The magic came in how they theatrically conjured an entertainment so witty, dynamic and ingenious with only their bodies and a few hand-crafted props that you sat in wonder when you weren’t giggling or laughing. That experience seemed evident in an audience ranging from toddlers to folks in their 90s.

The physical comedy comes fast and furious in Stone Soup Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors.” Here Adriana (Julia Stemper, top) faints on her sister Luciana (Jen Pommerenke), who is falling for Adriana’s husband Antipholus.

“I don’t like Shakespeare, but that was fabulous,” enthused playgoer Frank Pipp, a middle-aged man from Fox Point, who later declared that he might now take a class in Shakespeare. Such a genius is always worthy of study. But Stone Soup proved that you don’t need to, and even if you didn’t quite follow some of the play’s fast action and mistaken-identity mind bending, you got plenty of the play’s comic genius, especially with the smart, energized elan of this Chicago-based company.

A poster from an 1879 production on Broadway, featuring Stuart Robson and William Crane. Courtesy wikipedia.org.

Indeed these young Shakespeareans have mastered their stage craft to approach the ease of a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton defying physical limitations to broaden the possibilities of comic art. And yet, as far as I know those comic greats never attempted Shakespeare. 1

So, as a fine mist fell over the library green space in a cool June dusk, this company entranced and delighted an audience by doing Shakespeare on their terms, which brings his work to vivid life in a way that I think even he might’ve delighted in.

Comedy of Errors does have a story line, being a “family reunion” story, of sorts. But it is constantly subverted, twisted and goosed by Shakespeare’s devious string-pulling, based primarily on an improbable but not impossible circumstance of doppelganger goofiness flirting with tragedy. The company’s online synopsis posed the situation thusly: “What do you get when one pair of estranged twin brothers (both named Antipholus) and one pair of twin servants (both named Dromio) all wind up in the same city for the first time ever, completely ignorant of the others’ existence?”

As David Newell has commented, “This unlikely expansion of a classical formula is fun for the audience, but a nightmare for its victims. But the bewildering dream experiences of the visiting Antipholus convince him that  Ephesus (an ancient Greek city in present-day Turkey) is a hotbed of sorcery and deception.” The social germ of the chaos is that “there is nothing like the natural mimicry of twins to pull the plug on solemnity and dignity.” 2

A young man named Antipholus comes to Ephesus in a long search for his long-lost twin brother. Things quickly turn both weird and capitvating for him.

The backdrop is that the Antipholus twins’ father, the merchant named Aegeon from the ancient Sicilian city of Syracuse (Ian Muentener) is condemned to death for violating a travel ban between the two cities. This dramatic circumstance resonates in our current times of public concern and policy, both rightfully fearful and paranoid, over immigration and terrorism.

Without a formal set to evoke the mise en scene totality of a city, or an abbey late in the play, the company treads lightly on the play’s dramatic aspects.

But that works because Shakespeare created a play that is seemingly magical and absurdist centuries before The Theater of the Absurd. For that matter, The Bard’s play anticipates by centuries The Marx Brothers, the modern masters of comic chaos in, for example, the way several characters toy with their own identities and presences with full length mirrors (made here of large cardboard and tin foil) with which they spin, self-regard and hide behind. Think of Groucho’s famous routine with his “mirrored” self in Duck Soup. Shakespeare probably knew intimately the farcical potency inherent in doubled identities, being the father of twins.

Stone Soup’s DIY theatrical dynamics make the production hang together like a great gyrating amoeba rolling through time. They even ride that dynamic at times, with a wonderfully evoked ship on the high seas. No wonder Antipolous feels like a drop in the ocean searching for his fraternal drop.

At other times, they ingeniously employ audience members as props, without dragging anyone out of their seat. One viewer suddenly became, in effect, a tree stump to hide behind, and his personal existential reality might have shifted slightly in that moment.

Adriana (Julia Stemper) hides behind an audience member/tree stump in a madcap moment in “Comedy of Errors.” 

The madcap spontaneity of Stone Soup makes one think many of their physical gags are developed in improv sessions.

Still, conflicted emotions do transmit amid this show’s slapstick cavalcade. Among the sufferings endured is by bedeviled Antipholus, a bit of a lost soul despite his strong presence, and his wife Adriana, who grows quickly suspicious of her mate’s amorous intentions amid his travels. Company artistic director Julia Stemper plays out Adriana’s resentments and jealousies with a pulsing power that is by turns real, surreal and sensual. She shoots sparks in all directions that trigger anyone’s funny bone, because such physical comedy transmits wordlessly, even as it is accompanied by the world’s greatest dramatic poet. Stemper makes Adriana a sort of anti-heroine who manages to be lovable for being so human and insecure yet fearlessly “out there” about her feelings.

Ken Miller as Antipholous (as both twin bothers, actually) is tall, dark and handsome — the sort of husband a wife might be jealous of, regardless of the relative truth of her specific suspicions. He’s so utterly flummoxed that he’s deemed insane. Yet in fact, he is falling in love with his wife’s fetching sister Luciana (Jen Pommerenke).

Antipholus is bewitched, bothered and bewildered in Stone Soup Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors.” Part of his dilemma is that he’s falling for his wife’s sister Luciana (below)

Among the show’s most remarkable performers is Nicole Goeden, who plays Dromio, the twin (and same-named) servants belonging to the twin bothers, Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Epheus. Goeden flops around the stage like a living, breathing rag doll in a myriad of zany, hilarious bodily and facial contortions, which suggest an Olympic sport is needed called Slapstick Gymnastics. And she funnels plenty of emotion through her zig-zagging expression.

And Muentener, a sturdily-built man, steals several scenes strutting about as a courtesan, done up deliciously in makeup, high heels, a tight black-and-white print shift and black feather boa. The actor slyly steals another scene as an arresting police officer in cutoff long underwear, twitching a giant fake handlebar mustache, back and forth, sort of like the fickle scales of justice in a world gone slightly mad, where common assumptions, identities, facts and social and political institutions seem topsy-turvy. Syracusians, such as Aegeon, are accused of fomenting seditious revolution against Greece. Does that sound familiar, by the way?

Thank the theater gods that this is not real life, only a “comedy of errors.” And hang onto such consolation for dear life.

The company is aptly named for “stone soup,” the name of an old folk story in which hungry strangers manipulate the local people of a town into sharing their food, by offering them soup made of stones. Yet this company, in a variation of the starving artists story, offers a goulash full of Shakespeare bottomless riches, in the hopes of wooing a few dollars into their donation bucket at the play’s end.

The non-profit organization gets funding for its annual spring-summer tours anyway they can and though this is its third visit to Shorewood, it needs funding to return here and other places.

They’re worthy of such support, for Comedy exemplified how — as well as any artistic group I can think of — Stone Soup attempts to joust with a windmill, with heroic integrity and ingenuity. If what they’re doing seems quixotic, the world needs more of this type of impossible dreaming. It shows how you can make even visions of Shakespeare come to life along a city street,  even for people who “don’t like Shakespeare,” or thought they didn’t.

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1. In a 1923 Buster Keaton short, his girlfriend briefly imagines him playing Hamlet.
2. David Newell, introduction to “The Comedy of Errors,” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Alexander Text, introduced by Peter Ackroyd, HarperCollins, 2006, 124