Let's write about "Doubt: A Parable" as an American theater classic

 Doubt (Broadway):  Recalling Meryl Streep’s “Half-Assed Genuflection”

Amy Ryan, as Sister Aloyslius, Zoe Kazan as Sister James and Liev Schreiber as Father Flynn

As a Roman Catholic, my opinion about the play "Doubt" is to consider it an American theater classic, because the story (based on an actual experience) describes the classic struggle women have encountered when speaking truth to power. This story is based on the life experience of the play's author, but I know if readers check the Archdiocese of Baltimore's website, they can find a report about a similar incident that occured at Saint Rita's Parish, in Dundalk Maryland.  

Sister Margaret McEntee inspired the play “Doubt,” by her former pupil John Patrick Shanley. Her fellow Sisters of Charity went to see the Broadway revival. Review by Michael Schulman published in The New Yorker.  

To her friends, Sister Margaret McEntee, of the Sisters of Charity of New York, is Sister Peggy. In 1956, when she was a twenty-one-year-old rookie teacher at St. Anthony School, in the Bronx, she was Sister James, a name that she shed in the late sixties, after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. 

Among her first graders was a shy kid named Johnny. “Every day, he’d raise his hand: ‘May I sharpen my pencil?’ ” she recalled recently. “The pencil sharpener was at the end of four windows, and he watched everybody going by. Finally, I said, ‘Johnny, you don’t have to sharpen your pencil. You just want to see what’s going on out there!’ ”

Decades later, in 2004, Sister Margaret found out that her former student, John Patrick Shanley*, had written a play called “Doubt,” in which a young nun named Sister James, who teaches in the Bronx, is torn between a charismatic priest, Father Flynn, and her rigid supervisor, Sister Aloysius, who suspects the priest of molesting a schoolboy. Sister Margaret attended a performance Off Broadway, and Shanley nervously watched her watch his rendering of her younger self. “It’s magnificent,” she told him. 

In fact, she saw the play again when it moved to Broadway, and met with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams when Shanley turned it into a film. “They would sit together with the habit on, and they’d be knitting,” Sister Margaret recalled of the two actors. “I said, ‘Oh, I knit,’ and I used to bring my baby booties over. The three of us, we had this little knitting circle.” Streep thanked her by name when she won the sag Award.

“Doubt” is now back on Broadway, in a Roundabout revival, and Sister Margaret, a cheery, chatty eighty-eight-year-old, had once again met with the cast, including Zoe Kazan, who plays Sister James. “They always pick a good-looking young actress to play me,” Sister Margaret boasted. She sat in a former novitiate, now an administrative building on the Riverdale campus of the University of Mount St. Vincent, which the Sisters of Charity founded as a women’s academy, in 1847. (About sixty Sisters live in the on-site convent, and the “Doubt” film was shot at the chapel.) 

Sister Margaret had seen the revival two nights earlier, but some thirty Sisters were about to catch the Saturday matinée. They boarded a chartered bus, wearing cardigans and trousers and blazers. “Doubt” is set in 1964, when the Sisters still wore black robes and bonnets, but the order abandoned the habit in the late sixties, post-Vatican II, to be more accessible to the community. 

Many of the nuns had short white hair and spoke in honking New York accents. Sister Donna Dodge, the order’s current president, had enjoyed the movie, but was critical of Streep’s “half-assed genuflection.”

In the sixties, there were more than a thousand Sisters in New York, but their number has dwindled to a hundred and forty, with a median age of eighty-five. 

After two decades in which no new members had joined, the Sisters voted to take a “path of completion,” meaning that they will let the order, which began in 1817, die out with them. 

“We prayed about it, and then we asked people to vote, and it was unanimous,” Sister Donna said. Laypeople will continue to run their ministries, including a housing program and a home for foster children. The Sisters, meanwhile, will put their affairs in order while they’re still spry enough—a task akin to drawing up a will. “Women have a lot more opportunities to serve in whatever way they want,” Sister Donna noted. “It’s just not an attractive life style, for some reason.”

They arrived at the theatre and filed through metal detectors. After the show, they convened in an upstairs lounge and snacked on pretzels. The play brought back memories of the old days. “The whole idea of ‘the priest is always right,’ ” one Sister said. “Sisters had a place and shouldn’t overstep their boundaries.” Another found the bows on the actors’ bonnets “a little droopy.” The cast emerged from the elevators, to cheers. Kazan, who had changed into a T-shirt and ripped jeans, hugged Sister Donna and said, “I’m so moved that you guys all came.” 

Someone asked her to sign a Playbill. The nuns had strong feelings about Sister Aloysius, played by Amy Ryan. “She was such a bitch!” one salty Sister told Kazan. “I felt very bad for you.”

They took a group photo; Liev Schreiber, who plays Father Flynn, towered above the Sisters. “Was your cap tight on your ear?” Sister Mary Sugrue, who joined in 1955, asked Kazan.

“It itches sometimes,” she confessed. They traded notes: Kazan used part of a milk jug to stiffen her bonnet; Sister Mary had used a Clorox bottle. “I keep thinking, Sister James is a nun even on her day off,” Kazan said. “She’s always got to wear this habit.”

“It took a while for that to change,” Sister Mary said. “Then they allowed us to wear white habits in the summertime, which was much better.” ♦

* John Patrick Shanley  Maine Writer post script:  Shanley created a theater classic about a deep rooted cultural epidemic in the Roman Catholic Church, a story that exposes the damage caused by inequities between women and men in the religious life.

Let's write about collecting great stuff

The One-Bedroom Museum

Enjoy this echo essay by Design Editor Wendy Goodman: Meet Thomas Lollar — ceramicist, teacher, and, most of all, collector — can always find space for a new discovery, published in New York Magazine (Intelligencer).

The Living Room: The secretary by the back wall is Charles X, found in Baltimore*. The painting above of the lyre player (possibly Bacchus) is French Empire. The headless sculpture in the foreground is a Jim Dine silver Venus. The etching over the sofa is by Sandro Chia. Photo: Jason Schmidt

(Maine Writer: Neither have I.....) So, I'd never even heard of a strigil (a tool for the cleansing of the body- who knew?)... before my visit to the ceramicist, Thomas Lollar’s apartment. 

But, his living room is a consolidated museum tour — an orderly jumble of all manner of curiosities, including Roman keys; a traveling sundial; silver Italian Futurist objects; a Georgian English Paul Storr tureen; and a pair of silver entrée dishes belonging to the Duke of Cumberland, brother of King George III — holding a 2,000-year-old bronze grooming device that looks like an archaic shoehorn. Lollar explained that strigils were used in ancient Greece and Rome to scrape off dirt, sweat, and the oil that was applied before bathing. “Some scholars think that perhaps physicians would pick up the dead skin cells and use them to repair wounds,” he tells me as I examine the curved blade he’d taken off a nearby wall.

Lollar’s fascination with the past is part of his present-day curriculum teaching studio art at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where he has been on the faculty since 1988. Eight years after taking that position, while also working at Lincoln Center as director of visual arts, he bought this 500-square-foot one-bedroom, attracted by its unusual layout and very high ceilings, in a prewar building nearby.

He’s been filling it up with what interests him ever since — to the point where it’s hard to imagine he’d ever find room for more. And yet he does. He is interested particularly in “utilitarian objects, handled by the people of the time,” he says. “Ancient hand mirrors, silver spoons, cutlery, and utensils such as the patera: a saucepan-like object sometimes worn by soldiers for eating in the theater of battle.”

The impetus for his collecting was a visit to his uncle in Cornwall, England, as a teenager. “I was gardening one day, and I found a silver medallion that had the date of 1706 on it,” he says, “and that made me very interested in medallions commemorating great events in culture and history.” 

Since then, he has amassed close to 400 of them, in bronze and silver.

Lollar brings in pieces from his collection to show his students. “They are making objects, so what will those objects say about the period in which they are creating them? What can we learn about the objects that were made in other eras, and what do they say about the history of that time?” Everything in his apartment tells a story about long-ago everyday lives. “I collect ancient mirrors,” Lollar says, holding up an Etruscan one that would have been highly polished bronze when new. “Reflection in the ancient world had a different meaning than today. It was a rare experience to see one’s image 2,000 years before the introduction of plate glass or cheap mirrors as we know them today. To see one’s reflection in an ancient Roman mirror is haunting when realizing that someone 2,000 years ago was doing the same thing!”

His own sculptures (in collaboration with Ricardo Arango) are inspired by those very old hand mirrors and will be exhibited at the Venice Biennale next year. These days, Lollar makes his work in a studio in Riverdale. But, he lives amid his collection. 

For example, the kitchen off the entry hall is barely noticeable, and the oven has never been turned on; in fact, it’s hard to make out where the oven is. And lest you think he’s slowed down, during our shoot for this report, Lollar held up an 18th-century French lock he said he recently found in a junk shop and gleefully reported that it still worked. 

“I don’t know what I am going to do with this,” he mused, surveying the rooms. Minutes later, it had found its place in the entryway, hanging by a collection of keys that range from Roman to 19th century.

The Bathroom:  Fornasetti plates cover the walls. The fragment of the 1748 Nolli map of Rome on the ceiling was applied by hand by Lollar, who made a copy of it in an architect’s office, had it printed on large sheets, then cut it “in various ways. When I take a bath, I walk through sections of Rome. Before the pandemic, I spent a month a year in Rome.”

The Galley Kitchen: Has never been used for preparing or cooking food.

Maine Writer Post Script: This descriptive essay could easily have been written about my home, although I have managed to fill up 2,800 square feet! Thank you Thomas Lollar and Wendy Goodman.

*Baltimore: My home town....

Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange celebrated during Black History Month

Opinion echo By Ralph Moore Jr. and Willie Flowers

Black History Month recognizes the Sainthood of Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange published in Afro Media News Baltimore.

Also:
Archdiocese of Baltimore link here.

Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange (b. 1784 in Santa Domingo but some sites say in Haiti, she died 1882, in Baltimore MD.)

OPINION- With all of the issues, problems and concerns in Baltimore City, why are some Marylanders, Catholic and non-Catholic, devoting this Black History Month to a letter writing campaign addressed to Pope Francis? The campaign is to declare Mother Mary Lange a saint “santo subito,” or “to make a saint immediately.”

Mother Mary Lange is, unofficially, the patron saint of education for the Black poor children in the city of Baltimore. She was one of the founders of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the order of African-American religious women, and established St. Frances Academy in 1828. Mother Lange died in 1882 in her room on the second floor of the school. Many followers of the faith are perplexed as to why she has not been declared a saint by the Pope, since her sainthood has been recognized by the public acclamation for years.

Oblate Sisters of Providence 

Mother Lange and three other sisters showed holiness in their courageous commitment to teach reading to children of slaves when it was illegal. The sisters could have been killed for educating slaves. They risked martyrdom by doing the right thing and answering a higher call.

For sainthood, the Catholic Church requires proof of miracles or a death by martyrdom for the faith. The fact that St. Frances Academy, born during the time of slavery, has survived through the period of legal segregation and has sustained through mass incarceration and mass poverty should be proof enough of Mother Lange’s leadership and sainthood. So, why hasn’t it happened?

So, if now is not the time for sainthood for Mother Lange, then when? Now that the Archdiocese of Baltimore is built and will operate an elementary and middle school to be named after her, it is time for her church to officially declare Mother Mary Lange a saint. It is up to the Pope. He declared Pope John Paul II and Mother Therese “saints suddenly,” so why not declare sainthood for an African-American woman who lived and labored for God in the United States. Apparently, there are no Black United States citizens in heaven despite 250 years of slavery, 100 years of legal segregation, mass incarceration, and mass poverty cursing people of color in America.

Please join the Baltimore Racial Justice Circle and Maryland State NAACP, led by Willie Flowers, in this Black History Month campaign to send letters to Pope Francis calling on him to canonize Mother Mary Lange.

There are two addresses for Pope Francis in Vatican City:

St. Peter’s Basilicais
His Holiness, Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City

The apartment for the Pope
His Holiness
Saint Martha House
00120 Cita del Vaticano, Vatican City

Please address your letters to either or both addresses. Knowledgeable folks say the more concise the letter, the more likely the Pope will read it, so please get to the point. And please network with others in your family, your neighbors, your co-workers and church members of all denominations. Email your letter to me or please be kind enough to send copies to Ralph Moore at vpcs@yahoo.com and to https://.www.naacpmaryland.org.

Ralph E. Moore Jr. is the cofounder of Baltimore Peace Camp. Willie Flowers is president of the Maryland NAACP.

The opinions on this page are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the AFRO.
Send letters to The Afro-American • 1531 S. Edgewood St. Baltimore, MD 21227 or fax to 1-877-570-9297 or e-mail to editor@afro.com

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden talks "Bright April"

https://thinkprogress.org/librarian-of-congress-explains-why-kids-of-color-need-to-see-themselves-in-childrens-books-9e85de966d6a/

The first black woman Librarian of Congress’ favorite children’s book

Library of Congress 

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden — the first black woman to hold this position — explained why it’s so important for children of color to see themselves reflected in children’s books in an interview with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown this week.

Hayden talked about a children’s book that holds particular importance to her: Bright April, written and illustrated by Marguerite De Angeli and published in 1946. The book portrays a black girl’s life in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and her experiences with racial prejudice.

Hayden connected with the book as a child because she was able to relate to the main character.
"She was a little African American girl who had the little socks and two pigtails and she was a Brownie. And at that time, I was a Brownie, I had two pigtails, and I had a family that was reflected in this book. There weren’t many books that showed African Americans in a sympathetic way."

Dr. Carla Hayden, believes in citizens' right to access information. “It should feel very special because it is very special,” ...

From 1993 until 2016, she was the CEO of Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.

“It really emphasized later when I became a children’s librarian, about how children really need to see themselves reflected in books,” she said. “Books can be mirrors and they can be windows.”

Hayden is the first woman and the first African American to head the Library of Congress. In her interview, she pointed out that being able to break these barriers is especially significant considering that slaves used to be punished harshly — and sometimes even had their fingers amputated — for trying to learn to read.

“Being the first African American really resonates because, for so many years during slavery, slaves were forbidden to learn how to read,” she said. “So to have an African-American head up the largest institution that signifies knowledge and information resonates with me quite a bit.”

Research over the years shows that when black students see their experiences reflected in lessons and reading materials, students are more likely to be interested in the curriculum. 

It seems like common sense to make curricula relevant to the students engaging with it. Yet, too often, traditional representations of American history leave out or quickly pass by important pieces of history for the black community, such as the Harlem Renaissance, or fail to accurately teach the realities of slavery. Some educators also say that the literature that students are reading isn’t diverse enough.

Noah Cho, who teaches middle school English, wrote about the importance of teaching students with literature they can identify with in The Toast last year. Cho said he understands the importance of diversity in literature because he didn’t have it growing up.

I always had trouble connecting with the novels I read in high school — The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice, Heart of Darkness — because I saw so little of myself in those works, and was in consequence less motivated to read and study them … But once I started reading works in college that spoke to me, sang to me, suddenly I couldn’t stop writing. I fell in love with literature again.

The Librarian of Congress isn’t exactly a high-visibility position, but that doesn’t mean the work the librarian does isn’t important. The Librarian of Congress has major influence over copyright — which means they have influence over the free flow of information — is in charge of choosing the U.S. Poet Laureate, and can add new sections to the Library of Congress. In her role, Hayden could choose to prioritize literature from writers of color.

Hayden has already embraced somewhat of an activist approach to her work as a librarian — working to reclaim libraries as important public gathering spaces. When she oversaw Baltimore’s public library system, for instance, she kept libraries open even as the city declared a state of emergency following protests after the death of Freddie Gray.