Shakespeare. Prayers. An empty St. Ides

8/7/11

Edward is there asleep when I open the doors.

Edward, wake up. You’ve got to go. Can’t sleep here during the day.

I’m not alseep.

Yeah, I know. I just woke you up. Time to go.

I’m goin.

Go inside. Start to work. Danielle arrives. Then John walks in. Wants to talk about his upcoming production of Shakespeare’s Gospel Parodies by his Dark Lady Players. He’s not only my advisor on business plans but has his own radical take on Shakespeare and through his research has discovered gospel parodies woven throughout Shakespeare’s plays. He’s also developed evidence leading to the conclusion that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by Emilia Bassano, a black Jewish woman, Shakespeare’s Dark Lady. His work is good strong stuff for interfaith exploration and dialogue. He’ll be using Woodshed’s sets to present his production as museum theatre with docents and all.  And we agree to host a talkback session after one of his performances with special invitations to our neighborhood clergy and their congregations. 


(For more on the Dark Lady Players, see  Website http://www.darkladyplayers.com/gospel.htm

Facebook www.facebook.com/darkladyplayers )

I see John out. Edward’s still there. Still asleep. 

Edward, you got to wake up man.

I’m awake.

You got to go.

I’m goin.

Danielle and I are reviewing what all went on while I was gone. A well dressed professional African-American or Afro-Caribbean woman walks in.

How can I make an offering?, she says.

You can give it right here, I say, and introduce myself. 

Her name is Desiree. She works at a mental health facility across the street. Been there about a month.

I saw the church, she says. The security guards told me it was closed and then I came over and praise the Lord, it was open! I like to come in here, gather my thoughts. Pray. It settles me. I’m thankful. I want to make an offering.

I tell her that’s why the doors are open. She’s welcome anytime. And we worship Sundays at 11. As I see her out, Edward is still there.

Edward...

I know, I know.

An older white woman walks by, looks at us.

What the fuck you lookin at?, he says, Get the fuck outta my face. She looks down. Walks on up the street.

Edward, you can’t be talkin to people like that. Can’t do it. Not right. How are you feelin?

Horrible. Like shit. Dead. His eyes are bloodshot, glassy.

Those Outreach folks want to help, you know? They can find you a place.

He waves me off, dismissively.

Anyways, you can’t stay here. I had to get you t the hospital man. I don’t want to do that again. It’s no good for you out here. 

As Danielle and I start again, Deacon James comes in. The VA is moving uo his trip to Nashville. Evaluation first, then the procedure. It’s wearing him out.

I saw my man out there, he says. I been there. Know what it’s like. He’s got some intelligence. Just messed up behind tha stuff, that’s all. I can’t even touch it anymore. Not with my blood the way it is. I got to tell him I’ll walk beside him if he wants, side by side. 

We go back outside. Edward’s gone now. Only a bag left. Let me guess, I say, yeah, a St. Ides 40. That’s his favorite. 

Danielle and I talk. Reachout wants to be kept informed. But if he doesn’t respond, well, the it will have to be 911. 

Stephen comes in. Checking out last minute details on the Woodshed previews starting Wednesday. The time grows near. 

A represntative of a non-denominational church comes in. They’ve been meeting at a public school. New church state interpretations mean they’ll have to leave. Looking for new space. Danielle will give him a tour. I’ve got to go meet Jane at office annex #2, ie, Starbucks. Talk about the sustianable boiler tour I missed. Our Wednesday night study series we’re planning. Collaboration.

When I get back, Marc is there to discuss contract issues. Hope soon arrives and we talk together about a social initiative we want to launch. And how to keep the AC informed.

I head to the backyard, our crumbling patio, as the Times called it, for a PHEWA call planning an intepretive event in Pittsburgh next summer. The need to share the context, the organizing change work going on. I agree to follow up on my connections. My old hometown. Stephen is sitting, looking pensive. 

Hope and Marc and Danielle are finishing up. Marc heads off to our gala meeting cross town. There will be more contract discussion.Strategizing. Danielle considers coming, too. Go home, I say. It’s been a long day. And mine has a ways to go.

Walking on water

8/7

Back from three days back home near Pittsburgh. And back with a back that aches so much it makes walking and standing painful.

I finish the service and go to print it only to realize that the printer is out of ink. I’ll have to carry my lap top down to the copy shop and take it from there. Then I’ll have to stop at the grocery store on the way back and pick up bread and juice for communion. The short trip is like torture.

At the church, when I return, I hear a voice. It’s only me says Deacon James. Hope arrives shortly thereafter and begins to clean. This is not the best crew this morning to get the church ready. We could use some help. I throw the doors open, put on the yellow gloves. I gather up the cardboard bed and a pile of extra cardboard and throw it away. But that’s as far as I’ll go this morning. Deacon Linda passes by. And talks to me about the value of physical therapy. Not now, she says, but when you’re better. 

It’s about time to begin. Andre’s not here, so I’ll have to do it on my own.  So I start off with Jesus shall reign where’ere the sun. Andre joins us as we’re about to begin reading scripture. And then, I see Regi and Domi come in. Regi was our associate pastor for 6 years. He led the Enlace de gracia mulitcultural service we had during that time in Spanish, Portuguese and English. He helped create our concert series with El Taller and led the creation of Point of Encounter/ Punto del Encuentro, our ministry with immigrants and our international engagement with Brazil.  I remember the joy and pleasure of working together. And going to Newark in the wee hours to a Brazilian restaurant to watch Brazil win the  2002 World Cup and then see the streets fill with joyous brasilieros celebrating. How we wore Brazil jerseys under our robes that Sunday.  Earning our doctorates together.  I’ll remember all that, not the tough and crazy times of 2007. He’s in Atlanta now, on the staff of the Interdenominational Theological Center. It’s good to see he and Domi here. And I have him read the gospel in Spanish.

Today I’m working mainly with the story of Jesus walking on the water.(Matthew 14: 22-33) But also a little with Joseph and his coat of many colors (Genesis 37: 1-4, 13-28) and I don’t care what the NRSV says about a robe with long sleeves, it’s still a coat of many colors to me. 

The walking on water is one of my favorites.  Feel like that’s where we’ve been so many times over the years.  The disciples look up and see Jesus walking and it scares them. He says, don’t be afraid, it’s me. And at least one of them thinks, yeah, that’s what we were afraid of. He’s out there doing what people aren’t supposed to do.  And then Peter, with the impulse control issues, decides to join him. And is actually doing it. He’s walking on water too. Until the winds come up. And he realizes what he’s doing . And starts to sink. Save me, Lord. 

Over and over again over the last ten years I’ve felt us step out of the boat. And actually start to walk. Do what we’re not supposed to be able to do. And then we get out there in the middle and lose heart. We’re brave enough to take the risk, not enough to keep going  until we  get there. The leap of faith that stops in the middle. In midair, like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner, and then down we go. If we start, we have to keep going.  And we’ve started again. We’re out of the boat. Been out of there since a year ago May.  Just have to keep seeing Jesus out there ahead. And keep going. No matter what anybody says. 

When we talk about this, Robin, a young mother from Nashville, talks about her little son Hudson pushing away a 700 pound pillar as it was heading towards him.  It’s quite a story. She’s come to New York for his career. Another story.

Part of the critique, the doubt casting, the oppositon is the natural, to be expected response to following a dream. Like Joseph’s brothers saying, "Here comes this dreamer.Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams." As if killing the dreamer could kill the dream. Like Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream.  And why we like the tag line, Dream. Real. Hard. As hard as it is, we can’t stop now. 

Then as dreamers, as walkers on water, as brothers and sisters, we celebrate together communion. Sing together, O God our help in ages past. I ask Regi to do a benediction. We sing our amens. The service is over. 

Talk with Robin. Learn more of her story. Go out to get an iced coffee at Barney’s before the session meets. Edward is on the steps. Laid out. Edward, man, it’s the middle of the day.

I know that.

You can’t sleep here in the middle of the day.

I know that. If I was sleepin’ I wouldn’t be here. (So Edward the wise ass is back.)

But you’re all laid out man. Can’t do that.

I’m waitin’ for someone, ok?

OK, but you got to get up. 

David Elias has come from St. Louis to visit his sister Leila. Haven’t seen him since we did his father, Samir's funeral two summers ago. Samir, who led the community singers. Who played the organ. He loved the church so much, it was sad to have his service in the SPSA basement.  Good to see David again. He checks out the building as the session meets. 

The Session meets with Marc to iron out contract issues. As usual, he listens well. Good plans, ready to go forward. We need to break the impasse, get the momentum going. Keep walking on water. 

I do a tour of the building. Woodshed folk working frantically to finish the sets and be ready for their first preview Wednesday. The New York Times article ran this morning. 

On the way out, I see Edward in deep conversation with another man on the steps.

The New York Times writes about Woodshed

The New York Times' Woodshed article...

No Space Too Dilapidated for a Show

Guy Calaf for The New York Times

Top, Evan Enderle and Teddy Bergman rehearsing “The Tenant.” More Photos »

By ALEXIS SOLOSKI

Published: August 3, 2011

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FOR about three years the West-Park Presbyterian Church, at the corner of 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, sat abandoned as architects, congregants and preservationists squabbled over a plan to build condominiums above the rosy, Romanesque Revival structure. When landmark designation last year quashed development plans, worshipers returned to a building much in need of repairs. In the parish house that abuts the chapel, paint peels, damp patches spread, and musty odors rise from the basement.

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‘The Tenant’

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Guy Calaf for The New York Times

From left, Teddy Bergman, Stephen Squibb, Emily Fishbaine, Jocelyn Kuritsky and Carl Faber of the Woodshed Collective. More Photos »

Yet for the Woodshed Collective — an ambitious New York theater company with a commitment to low-budget, site-specific productions (past locations have included an empty swimming pool and a ship) — West-Park’s dilapidated state has been the answer to a prayer. Walking through a meeting room in the church, Gabriel Hainer Evansohn, one of the collective’s three artistic directors, ran his hand along a rip in the wall that revealed layers of faded paint. “Recreating this would be so expensive and difficult,” he said. “Actually it would be impossible.”

On Wednesday the company will begin previews of “The Tenant,” a theatrical installation that uses West-Park as the setting. It is based on a 1964 novella by Roland Topor, later adapted by Roman Polanski into a 1976 movie that flopped. Teddy Bergman, another of the collective’s artistic directors, described the source material as “French, alienated, midcentury, Left Bank moodiness.”

The story involves a Polish man, Trelkovsky, who takes over a Paris apartment — “two gloomy rooms, with no kitchen” — that had been occupied by a woman who committed suicide. As the grim building and irascible neighbors press in on him, Trelkovsky experiences a crisis of identity: He begins to dress as the dead woman and then replicates her fatal plunge.

Woodshed will use all five floors of the parish house as well as the church chapel to recreate and expand on the events in the novella. The collective has gathered six playwrights — including emerging writers like Bekah Brunstetter and Tommy Smith — to draft a script for the inhabitants of each of the fictional building’s apartments. Duncan Sheik, who won two Tony Awards for his work on the musical “Spring Awakening,” is providing the music for the production, which opens on Aug. 24 and runs through Sept. 17.

With so much sinister action and so many stairs, the show is not for the faint of heart or weak of quadriceps. Audiences can follow one set of characters throughout an evening, or hopscotch from floor to floor, somewhat in the manner of the current Punchdrunk hit “Sleep No More.” But unlike Punchdrunk, whose top ticket price can run to $95 or more, Woodshed presents its annual project free. Though, just as at a church service, a collection plate is passed after each performance.

The opportunity to perform at the church arose when the Rev. Dr. Robert L. Brashear, West-Park’s pastor, donated use of the space to the collective. It was part of a commitment to reinvent the church as a community center “for social and spiritual renewal,” Mr. Brashear said.

Woodshed originated when Mr. Bergman, Mr. Evansohn and the collective’s third artistic director, Stephen Squibb, met through drama classes at Vassar. Their initial idea was to form a troupe that would take an innovative approach to classic plays. After graduating in 2005 they decided to focus on site-specific performance. In 2008 they presented Caridad Svich’s “Twelve Ophelias” in a drained swimming pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and in 2009 they staged an adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Confidence-Man” aboard the Lilac, a decommissioned Coast Guard vessel moored in the Hudson.

Creating site-specific theater poses challenges: securing spaces, making them safe for audiences, adapting sound and lighting equipment to fit untraditional environments. Anne Hamburger, the founder and artistic director of En-Garde Arts, the site-specific group that during the 1980s and ’90s performed in New York on piers, in parks, at an abandoned nursing home and on the streets of the meatpacking district, recalled: “It’s very complex in terms of logistics and production management. You can’t fight a site. If you try, it will win.”

Vallejo Gantner, the artistic director of Performance Space 122 in the East Village, which presented “Hotel Savoy” at the Goethe-Institut last year, said of site-specific work: “The predictability is much less. It’s great in terms of the excitement you feel about the piece, but it becomes a much more unwieldy beast.”

The Woodshedders have experienced that firsthand. Poor acoustics marred “Twelve Ophelias,” and uncooperative weather rained out several performances of “The Confidence Man.” In preparing “The Tenant” the crew spent two weeks just clearing away debris. But for these young men, who discussed their hopes for the show on the church’s crumbling patio, the difficulties are mitigated by the opportunities that nontraditional spaces offer.

The structure of the West-Park parish house has determined various creative decisions, influencing both script and staging. West-Park “is a character in the show, it’s a collaborator, it gets a seat at the table,” Mr. Squibb said. “As we’ve gotten to know it, it’s had different opinions of things. We wanted to use the bell tower, but it decided we didn’t get to, because it was overrun with pigeons.”

The building’s seat at the table is one of about 90 chairs, for the cast, crew, writers and designers, all of whom work free. “The Tenant,” which has a budget of under $100,000, according to the artistic directors, is Woodshed’s most ambitious undertaking: eight separate plays that must unfurl with meticulous timing as they intersect with one another. Sheaves of spreadsheets have been printed, and technical rehearsals were estimated to last three weeks. The prospect is enough to make most theater artists head for the nearest black box and stage some comforting Chekhov one-acts.

Still, Woodshed’s Web site describes its mission, in part, as creating “a genuine sense of wonder” by providing theatrical playgrounds through which audiences can wander freely, selecting their own experiences as they move from scene to scene, something a black box cannot offer.

Mr. Squibb said he was baffled as to why more theater companies don’t pursue the site-specific route. “There are so many incredible spaces in New York,” he said, “a boat on the Hudson, a giant Robert Moses pool, a church building that’s been empty for three years. And you want me to rent a theater and build a bunch of stuff and then throw it out afterward? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 4, 2011

An earlier version of a caption in this article reversed the names of Jocelyn Kuritsky and Emily Fishbaine of the Woodshed Collective.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 7, 2011, on page AR4 of the New York edition with the headline: No Space Too Dilapidated for a Show.

It never ends

8/1

There's a cardboard bed to remove.  Edward? Mark?

Just when you think....so it turns out there’s one  more asbestos covered pipe. How waas it  missed?  Our asbestos man's a bit sheepish about all of this. It will be  taken care of. But it feels like its never over. It never ends. 

A  day for writing. For catching up, for plannning.  Working on the business plan.  At the end of the day, I’m heading home. On the corner of 87th, there’s Edward, bumming a cigarette. A bottle in a paper bag in his hand.  

8/2

Clear away the cardboard. A bag of empties.

Danielle and I will be working right up to the last minute on the business plan. 

Elise joins  me in the back yard.  Her first day of vacation, a tragic death brings her back to the city. A funeral awaits.  It never ends, she says. We talk about the need to bring our various fundraising efforts together. Politicians, neighbors, clergy and church folk...there needs to be a comprehensive plan and soon. I do make it clear to Elise, however, just how much I’m enjoying what I’m doing right now. And how much I appreciate her support. 

Mim has come in from the Berkshires.  Danielle and I catch her up on everything that has been going on. We’re soon joined by Marsha. And Hope. And we bring Ted in by speaker phone.  Lots to review in the contract proposal by Mark and Sarah. Lots of questions.  As usual, a lot focuses on money. Not wanting to get into unplanned for expenses. 

We’re expecting the AC to arrive at 6:30. And then we realize that Woodshed will be using the whole buidling for their stumble through, the first actual run through of the play.  We need to figure out a plan. I decide that the best idea is the backyard. I go down to do a quick sweep up and wipe the tables while the others work on a response to Mark and Sarah.

As the AC members begin to arrive, the whole Woodshed Collective, 23 cast members, 70 volunteers and staff are gathered in the sanctuary. It is impressive. I show the AC members Norm’s archival display and then lead them down the back stairs to the backyard. AC and session members fill the tables and chairs. Mim stays with us too, to reperesent the Center. Answer questions if needed.

There’s a lot on the agenda. The business plan. (I've never done anything  like this before.) They are impressed that we have thought all this out.  Danielle has done a good  job on the figures and speaks intelligently to the money side of all this.  Emphasis on work in progress. 

Talk about evolving life of the Center, it’s relationship to the church.  Then tougher things, like progress in the lawsuit, negotiating the payment of an unexpected legal bill.  It never ends.  From Capital Hall, the Goddard-Riverside SRO above our yard, a voice cries out to us, Hey can I bum a cigarette?  Later, as I’m about to say something important, a light goes on, a man begins undressing in front of the window. I stop. Catch my breath. And laughing say, I love New York City. 

We talk about communication. Better relationships. It’s been a long, tough, good meeeting. We escort the AC folks out. Earlier , when Mim had left, JC had looked at the grill and said, You ought to fire ths up, cook up some burgers, sell some drinks. And I smiled to myself. Good idea. 

The session remains.  Some business items to wrap up. Our response to the AC offer re. the legal bill. Not done yet. More to negotiate. I hate that. First car I ever bought,I paid what they said the price was.  What did I know? Third world market places give me headaches. This is like that. The session response to Mark and Sarah. Most of our session has never been in our backyard before. It was pretty unusable for most of these last 15 years. In the cool end of the evening, with the small lights glowing, it’s pretty pleasant.

Everyone else has left. Stephen comes out. Offers me a cold one. We sit and review our long and full day. He’s happy with his first run through. It’s going to be fucking  great, he says, smiling. 

Outside, Edward and his lady are settling in. It never ends. 

Just Love

7/31

The steps are clean as I open up. Small miracle. Andre is the first to arrive. As usual. he tells me thst he feels he now can make it on Sundays without my wake up call. I go to pick up the bulletins. When I return, Hope is at work sweeeping up the sanctuary and John has arrived too. 9Let this be Sunday John.) I’d love to know what attracts him to us. Why he prefers fist bumps to hand shakes. (Reminds me of Amanda.) Amy has arrived and is working throuhg the music for the day.

Today I’m going to focus on the loaves and fishes story, (Matthew 14:  13-21) the feeding of the 5000 (not to mention the women and children.)  But I begin by asking who can explain to me ewhat’s going on with the debt ceiling crisis. The Wasington impasse. Micah in Berlin has asked me what the hell is going on. He admits his cyncism, but this seems beyond. Way beyond. We have a global economy. What the US does has global implications. And we dither on in arrogant ideological ignorance. 

Hugo of course puts it all in perspective as part of the crisis of international captalism. As we dicsuss, Jane comes in, sits in the back. I say it has to do with  living responsibly, faithfully, in the world...Jane quietly slips away to go to her own service. 

Then there is the Norway tragedy. And Bill O’Reilly’s meltdown over referring to the accused killer as a Christian. How he sees this as more perscution of Christians. OK then,so why is he so free to speak of  Muslim terrorism? And on the weekend of the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with terrorism defined as random violence intentioanlly directed against innocent civilians, no group or country has come anyhwere near to matching the US in massive terroism.

And I say this all has to do with loaves and fishes.

 We have two great stories today. First, the feeding of the 5000 +. It’s late in the day. The disciples approach Jesus. What is to be done? Their attitude? As usual, somebody ought to do something..They appeal to him: Jesus, Jesus, do something..And his response, No, you do something.....you feed them.

Raises serious questions for us. Considering hunger alone, whta we are coming to call food justice, we have to ask?

• What do we eat?
• Sometimes, like in the Saigon Grill situation, where do we eat?
• Where does what we eat come from? 
• How does it get to us? What does it take to get it to us?
• What is the  impact on others?

Wednesday at my meeting with the American Jewish World Service Committee, I learned that worldwide, a billion people go to bed hungry every night.. One out of every six childen. And according  to Ruth Messneger, AJWS President, there are more than enough resources to feed the world twice over. 

Last week, I met with national and regional Bread for the World staff people. Their current agenda includes:

• The Circle of Protection: seeking to draw a circle  around those federal programs that protect the most vulnerable among us, protecting them from massive cuts in the budget negotiations 
• The 1000 Days campaign, recognizing the importance in the first 1000 days from pregnancy thorigh 18 months of a child’s life
• And tying International aid to food sutainablity for poor nations. 

I recall our visit to Nicaragua last November. The issue of the systematic  destruction of the earth’s  seed heritage, the Monsantoization of food production, like the infant formula crisis ofyears’s past makimng global farmers dependen as crack addicts  on agribusiness seeds instead of what the earth has naturally provied. How a country like Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the hemisphere, has soil rich enough to feed its own people. 

And the demand  of the global economy, forcing land into economically driven land usage and away from food sustainabilty, even in countries like Cuba. All citrus products pushed into export, and land pushed into coffee production. The devouring nature  of corn based agriculture. The destruction of rural life leading to urbanization and catasrophization of natural disasters mutiplied by policy decisios. When the fact is countries can feed themselves...

The point is, the gospel story is a  miracle of distribution, not  production. But we only have five loaves and two fishes.  OK, you feed them. You feed them. You do something.

What somethings do we do? Significant for this small congregation: 

• We provide regular support for WSCAH, and the food panttry at Jan Hus
• Our participation in the work of Bread for the World. Amazingly, we have been one their most consistent congregations, thanks to Carol Wadsworth.
• Our monthly volunteering in the SPSA shelter
• Our founding of and continued participation in the Interfaith Assembly on Houisng and Homelesness
• Our work witj Justice Will Be Served
• Our founding role and and conintued particiapton in our Industrial Areas Foundation  local, Manhattan Together.
• Our participation in Dos Pueblos and the founding of the Presbyterian Nicaragua Network..

These issues,  when you think about them are hard. They require us to wrestle with God, like Jacob. He wrestles with an angel all night long. Doesn’t give in. And gets a new name. from Jacob to Israel because he has striven with God and man and prevailed...

It has not been easy. His hip has been thrown out of joint. But I love the image, Jacob exhausted and hurting, but still strong, limping resolutely into the sunrise.

What counts is the courage to bring what ever we have to God, five loaves and two fishes, and allowing God to work with it. Bless it....that is our call.   

When the service ends, the session meets.  Looks at a worship schedule through January. The need for consitent dependable music. Volunteer liturgists. Planning.  

Then Marc arrives and we work on identity. The new tag line: Just Love. I remember how in the 90’s, a PCUSA committee recommended a new sexual ethic based in justice love.  Well, that didn’t work out so well. But the idea was right. Just like Dream. Real. Hard., Just Love has a resonace and constellation of meaning. The poeple like it. It’s been a long, good, day.

Asbestos abated, crisis averted

7/30

Good news!  The crew under CES has worked all night and the asbestos crisis has been averted. The random test samples have proven negative. We are officially certified to reenter. The show will go on...

The Justice Will Be Served  anti-sweatshop team has  gathered in the sanctuary. Ready to hit the streets of the neighborhood to approach more businesses to sign the pledge to observe minimal labor standards. Just what the law requires would be a good beginning. Tracy, the organizer, has all kinds of questions.  I tell her of my background, growing up in Pittsburgh My ten years in Oklahoma doing urban ministry. My work with the farm workers. (Who can forget those menudo breakfasts? Tripe stew at 7 AM. The t shirts they had reading Menudo: El desayuno de los campeones....ie, breakfast of champions). My international work in Central America and the Middle East. My ten years in Pittsburgh. Work in the public housing projects. The collapse of the steel industry. My friendship with Barney, how he left steel worker organizing to become an unemployed organizer, the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee. 

I’m surprised that Tracy knows nothing of the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike. How Carnegie and Frick brought in the Pinkertons as a private army. That she doesn’t know about the Pinkertons, the Halliburtons of their day.  And how the steel workers and the community held off the Pinkertons for nine days. It was just awhile, says Barney, but sometimes awhile means a lot. The Lutheran pastors, profiled in the documentary the Fighting Ministers, who barricaded themselves in their churches when the hierarchy rejected their support of the steel workers in the early 80’s. Renegade organizer Charles Honeywell and the provocative  Denominational Ministry Strategies (later DMX) cadre.  The devastation of the Mon Valley as the industry collapsed and the exodus from Pittsburgh. She needs to know this American labor history. She wants to know if I consider myself a labor organizer. No, no, no. But I have lived in solidarity with those who  do. My relationship with Rabbi Michael and the Religion Labor Coalition.  I need to get to a family birthday party so I wish them well. 

Later that night, I stop by the  speakeasy. Talk with a young man who is a sound tech. Developing new technologies for the recording industry. Working with theatre companies. And his girlfriend.  Two couples  are dancing in the kitchen. Eugena has given her keys to CES so I will need to lock up. We move everyone out. Go through the building, turning off all the lights. We get to the last switch, turn it off. As the lights go out, Eugena says, And good night moon.