Author Archives: susanjustwrites

       

Are you a fan of Broadway musicals?  I cheerfully admit that I am. Thanks to my parents, I’ve been an enthusiastic fan since my early childhood.  I must have been only 5 or 6 when our family began heading to “summer stock” in the suburbs north of Chicago.  Where a shopping mall now sits, musical productions introduced me to the excitement of live performances combining music, lyrics, and dialogue.  The most memorable was a production of “Song of Norway,” a musical that opened on Broadway in 1944. It features songs with lyrics set to the haunting music of Edvard Grieg.  Those songs have stayed with me my whole life, and as a bonus, I became a great admirer of Grieg’s music.

My parents first introduced me to a genuine theater experience when we watched “South Pacific” at the Shubert Theater in downtown Chicago when I was only 9.  In the leading role of Nellie Forbush, starring Mary Martin on Broadway, was Janet Blair, an American actress and singer who played this part for three years in a touring production that popped up in venues all across the country.  Chicago was one of the first.  We bought the album and played the songs over and over.  Rodgers and Hammerstein won my heart right then and there.

Around the time I turned 12, while my family was still living in Chicago, my parents treated us to a production of “Oklahoma!” that I’ve never forgotten.  Guess who played Laurey?  Relative unknown Florence Henderson, later of TV fame, who was so good that I made a point of remembering her name. We also saw a memorable performance by the revered D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, featuring energetic Brits in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” and “Trial by Jury.”

When our family moved to LA, and my father died later that year, my attendance at musicals stopped short.  But after I returned to Chicago as a teenager, my fascination with Broadway shows revived. Touring companies kept coming to Chicago, and I discovered that I could either attend them with a paid ticket or attend free by becoming an usher. 

At that time, ushering was a very casual affair.  I could just show up, usually with a friend, and volunteer to usher.  I’d be directed to the woman in charge, who would always say “Yes” and find a spot for me somewhere in the theater, where I would check tickets and seat patrons before finding a seat for myself.  In this way I saw a lot of Broadway shows, both musical and purely dramatic, during the late 1950s and throughout the ‘60s. 

I could of course sometimes pay my own way with my babysitting earnings, and buying tickets became a gift sometimes bestowed by my mother.  In this way, I saw “West Side Story” on stage at the Erlanger Theater (later demolished to make way for the Daley Center), and, to use current parlance, I was blown away by its drama, music, and choreography.  I’d already attended quite a few Broadway shows by that time, but I’d never seen anything like it.

Other memorable musicals I saw during those years included “My Fair Lady,” “The Pajama Game,” “The Music Man,” and “The Most Happy Fella.”  Film actor Forrest Tucker was formidable as music man Professor Harold Hill in his touring production (it ran for 58 weeks at the Shubert Theater).  I bought the LP recordings of all of them and played them over and over on my small Webcor phonograph, trying to learn the lyrics.  (I saw many dramas during these years as well, but those aren’t within the scope of this post.)

During a brief visit to New York City in 1967, my mother and I saw an exciting performance of the original production of “Mame,” starring Angela Lansbury as Mame and Bea Arthur as Vera Charles.  I’ll never forget watching these two phenomenal women dancing together, arm in arm, while they sang “Bosom Buddies.”

Before I changed my life and moved to LA in 1970, I saw a few more Broadway hits in Chicago, including “Man of La Mancha,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Camelot,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “Bye Bye Birdie.”

I met and married my marvelous husband (I’ll call him Marv) in LA in 1971.  We shared a great deal, including a love of the theater. During the year we lived in LA, we saw a lot (including a play featuring screen-legend Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln).  Remarkable productions of Broadway musicals were, notably, “Company” with an exciting cast and “Knickerbocker Holiday” starring Burt Lancaster.  Lancaster, not known for his singing, wrote in his playbill blurb that he’d learned how to sing from his friend Frank Sinatra.  

Fast-forward 15 years. Marv and I saw countless plays and musicals while we lived in Ann Arbor, La Jolla, and Chicago.  (We also saw the original production of “Grease” during a brief stay in NYC in 1973. That’s a story for another day.)  

But I’ll zoom ahead to London in March 1986.  My sister had visited London shortly before Marv and I decided to travel there that March.  Although I didn’t always take my sister’s advice, this telephone call was different. She enthusiastically praised a new musical production in London called “Les Misérables.”  Based on the Victor Hugo novel, the story is set in 19^th-century France, where Jean Valjean is arrested for stealing a loaf of bread. It follows him after he’s released from prison and goes on to lead an admirable life while at the same time he’s relentlessly pursued by a ruthless police inspector, Javert. 

Sis had seen this new musical, and she couldn’t praise it enough. “I know it’s expensive,” she said, “but it’s worth it!”  Marv was earning peanuts as a math professor, I was “between [my poorly-paid part-time] jobs,” and when I checked, the tickets were $75 each, a real stretch for us.  But because of our love of the theater, and because we’d already seen many plays and musicals in London (beginning in 1972) and never been disappointed, we plunged ahead and ordered those pricey tickets.

You’ve probably guessed what happened next.  We witnessed the original production of “Les Misérables,” transplanted from a smaller theater to the enormous Palace Theatre because of its gigantic success.  Once we heard the very first notes of the overture, introducing the astounding performance we were about to watch, we were enthralled by the phenomenon that has become “Les Mis.”

We were especially enthralled by the astonishing performance of one man:  Colm Wilkinson, inhabiting the leading role of Jean Valjean. Wilkinson, a 42-year-old Irish tenor and actor, gained worldwide fame when he originated this powerful role, first in London and later in New York.  His rendering of the song “Bring Him Home” made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  I’d never heard a performance like his in any Broadway musical I’d seen. 

The entire production, including songs like “I Dreamed a Dream,” “On My Own,” and “Master of the House,” was memorable enough to last a lifetime, and it still thrills me today.  My love affair with “Les Mis” led me to see it twice more back in Chicago, taking my young daughters to witness it with me.

Fast-forward one more time:  San Francisco in 2023.  After moving to SF in 2005, I saw great Broadway hits like “Wicked,” ‘In the Heights,” “The Book of Mormon,” “Something Rotten!” and “Hamilton.”  My younger daughter (another theater-lover) and I joyously went to most of these together.  A year before the pandemic hit, my older daughter (M) asked me to join her to see “Cats” in San Jose in 2019.  Please don’t laugh.  It was incredibly good!  (It’s unfortunate that the ill-conceived film version has besmirched a great musical that, if done well, should be seen and heard live.) 

But the pandemic sadly put a halt to my attending live theater performances.

M has a love of “Les Mis” much like mine, and she knows the history embedded in it (she earned a summa cum laude in French literature and history at Harvard).  When a touring company announced that it would appear in San Francisco this year, M knew she wanted to see it again. 

Soon I was invited to join M, her husband, and her daughters at a performance in late July, and I jumped at the chance.  The pandemic had lessened its grip, and I promised my younger daughter I’d wear a mask throughout the performance.

So I was thrilled last month to see “Les Mis” for the fourth time, about two decades after the second time in Chicago.  The production was exciting, and all five of us loved it.  Midway through, I began thinking about the man who had inhabited the role of Jean Valjean in my first go-round and searched my memory for his name. “Colm,” was it?  During intermission, I glanced at my phone and searched for both Colm and “Les Misérables” in 1986, and I came up with it: Colm Wilkinson.

As we left the theater, I began to tell my family how I’d seen the original Jean Valjean in London, Colm Wilkinson, and just how wonderful he was.  As we approached our parking structure, a woman walking near me must have overheard and looked at me in disbelief.  Clearly a knowledgeable fan of “Les Mis,” she skeptically asked, “You saw Colm Wilkinson in London?”  “Yes,” I replied, nodding.  “My husband and I saw Colm Wilkinson in London in 1986.”  This woman (I’ll call her W) repeated, with emphasis, “You saw Colm Wilkinson in London in 1986?”  I nodded again.  Startled and amazed, W felt the need to say something.  She blurted out:  “Congratulations on your life!”  I smiled and nodded again, thanking her for her stunning turn of phrase.

I was indeed stunned by this phrase, one spoken by a complete stranger.  On reflection, I want to thank W for saying that I should be congratulated for my life.  In many ways, I have indeed had a remarkable life.  Watching Colm Wilkinson as Jean Valjean in London in 1986 constitutes just a tiny part of it.  It was an astounding performance, and I’ll always remember it.  I was extremely lucky to see him that night.  But all that Marv and I did was buy our tickets and sit in the audience, thrilled by his performance.

I honestly hope that the whole scope of my life—what I’ve done to effect positive change for our planet, to sponsor worthy political outcomes, to help people in need, to work for equal rights for all Americans, to be a good wife, mother, and grandmother–in short, to live the kind of life I’ve always tried to live–is what truly deserves, on balance, a small measure of congratulations. 

To begin, let’s define “cashmere.”

The 1985 edition of The American Heritage Dictionary states simply:

1. Fine, downy wool growing beneath the outer hair of the Cashmere goat.  2.  A soft fabric made of wool from the Cashmere goat or of similar fibers. [After Kashmir, a region in India.]

The Cashmere goat is described as a goat “native to the Himalayan regions of India and Tibet, and prized for its wool.”

We can probably find a lengthier, more recent, description in Wikipedia, but the old definition is just fine.

Now, let’s consider the disturbing role that cashmere sweaters played during my high school years.

I attended a Chicago public high school decades ago.  My school was filled with a wide variety of students stemming from a number of different ethnic groups. Some of my fellow students were aspirational and willing to work hard to achieve success both academically and socially.  In many ways it was an inspiring environment.  Unfortunately, however, a bunch of cliques held sway, dubbing each student “popular” or not.

I was generally viewed as one of the popular kids.  I was a member of the most desirable social clubs, I was elected to class office—twice–and I was chosen by Mrs. Keats to join the mixed chorus.  (Mrs. Keats admitted you to the mixed chorus only if you were either a great singer or you were a good-enough singer who was also popular. I fell into the latter group.)  So I was spared the worst treatment doled out by the cliques.

But it was an evil system, allowing the social clubs to blackball potential members and do countless other destructive things.

One of the most destructive focused on the clothes we wore. I have no knowledge of the boys’ clothing choices.  But I do remember that most of the girls were eager to acquire what they viewed as fashionable clothes. Often these were pricey, and not everyone could afford them.

Chief among the clothes in this category were cashmere sweaters and, frequently, matching woolen skirts. (Yes, girls were required to wear skirts to school in that benighted era, even when Chicago temperatures dipped below-zero during our frigid winters.  This was one more example of gender-inequity.) 

Emphasis on cashmere was particularly noticeable.  When gift packages were opened at birthday parties, the cry would go up:  “Cashmere!  Cashmere!”

After my father died when I was 12, my family of three lived on a modest income, no longer supported by the breadwinner my father had been.  I became quite frugal, choosing not to add to my mother’s budget problems.  But, ironically, because my mother’s family owned a women’s apparel store, I was able to wear clothes not terribly different from my friends’.  I simply had fewer of them. 

My mother, raised in her family’s retail business and now working part-time in their store, thought it was important to wear the right clothes for every occasion.  So I wasn’t completely shut out of the cashmere game, and I owned one or two cashmere sweaters. But what about the girls who couldn’t afford to buy them?

Once I began working and had my own disposable income, I sometimes added a new cashmere sweater to my wardrobe.  Truthfully, cashmere can be soft and warm, making it desirable in cold climates.  But I stopped buying new cashmere sweaters years ago.  Please read on….

Let’s look at the way cashmere is promoted.

In March 2023, I wondered just how cashmere sweaters are currently bought and sold.  Knowing what I do now (see below), I wouldn’t consider buying a new one for myself.  But cashmere sweaters are readily available.

Checking the website for one store in the mid-price-to-upscale category, Nordstrom, I discovered the following:

Hundreds of cashmere sweaters were listed on the website in a wide range of prices, beginning at about $100.  Among the highest prices I came across were a Balmain brand for $1,995 and a Loro Piana brand for $2,050.  Some of the sweaters had reduced prices as winter sweater-wearing weather wound down.

Nordstrom partially redeems itself by having a policy called “Sustainable Style,” in which at least 30% of an item is made up of “sustainably sourced” materials.  A few sweaters include “recycled cashmere.”  Without doing further research, I assume that the store is aware of the price we pay for luxury goods, not merely in dollars but also in the harm they can cause to the environment.  (Of course, “fast fashion,” which is generally cheap, is also harmful.  But that’s a story for another day.)

Patagonia is a high-quality retailer featuring outdoor clothing.  With a history of concern for the environment, it has recognized the harm inherent in cashmere and has stated the following on its website:  “We use recycled cashmere (blended with 5% virgin wool) because of its soft, lightweight warmth.”  The website says a lot more, which I’ve added below.

Now let’s consider something I’ve been hinting at:  The harm done to the environment by the production of cashmere.  I’ll hazard a guess that most of you are totally unaware of this harm.

In her 2019 book, inconspicuous consumption: the environmental impact you don’t know you have, Tatiana Schlossberg devotes a chapter to “the yarn that makes a desert.”  This chapter is a cleverly written discussion of the worldwide demand for cashmere, along with the destructive path the breeding of cashmere goats has caused.

Schlossberg focuses on Mongolia and its Gobi desert, where nomadic herders have been shepherding their cashmere goats for thousands of years.  These goats have “some of the world’s warmest, softest hair,” which “used to be considered a true luxury item.”  Unfortunately, the goats also damage the soil, harming the plants they eat and changing grassland to desert.  The result is, according to Schlossberg, that 90 percent of Mongolia is at risk of becoming desert unless management practices change.  Climate change plays a part, but “right now, the goats are directly implicated.”

Increasing demand for cashmere has driven down the price, so the herders breed more goats, and the supply of high-quality cashmere has shrunk.  “To be sure, there is still a lot of really expensive cashmere out there,” but there is notably a desire for cheap cashmere, particularly in the US.  Schlossberg makes clear that it’s not the fault of the consumer that some cashmere is now cheap, and “it’s not wrong to want nice things or to buy them, sometimes.”  But…”we can’t all have unlimited amounts of cashmere if we want to live in a world that isn’t spinning into a desert, in order to keep us swathed in cashmere at cheap prices because that’s what we’ve decided is important.” 

She adds:  “It’s all part of the same problem, and it’s not just cashmere.  It’s everything we wear and how we use it.”  [Please see my August 2022 blog post on the issues related to cotton, “Totin’ Cotton,” https://susanjustwrites.com/2022/08/18/totin-cotton/.%5D

Now let’s look at the Patagonia website, which confirms everything Schlossberg has written:

“In the 1960s and ’70s, cashmere was used as a luxury material for overcoats, suits and sweaters. As people became familiar with its soft, warm feel, demand for the material grew. Today, cashmere is widely used throughout the industry as a commodity fiber, which is leading to the overbreeding of cashmere goats, a decrease in fiber quality and the desertification of the Mongolian region where the vast majority of cashmere goats live.

“Patagonia uses high-quality recycled cashmere to buck this trend and reduce the environmental cost.  We started using recycled cashmere in 2017 after reviewing our supply chain and noticing an increase in the overgrazing of cashmere goats in Mongolia. Today, we collect pre-consumer scraps from European factories and send them to a sorting facility where they are meticulously sorted by color and then put in large machines that shred the fiber. We blend those fibers with 5% virgin wool to create a strong, undyed yarn that we use to make sweaters, beanies, scarves and gloves.”

Patagonia adds:  “Innovations like Cashpad—a mechanical recycling program for cashmere and wool textile waste—are helping us scale up the production of recycled cashmere. In coming seasons, we hope to incorporate it into more of our products.  Together, let’s prioritize purpose over profit and protect this wondrous planet, our only home.”

By the way, even Patagonia isn’t shy about asking high prices for its cashmere sweaters.  A women’s “recycled cashmere” cardigan is listed on its website at $269.

Some concluding thoughts

It’s heartening to learn that changes are happening in the retail world.  “Recycled cashmere” may begin to diminish the harm done by breeding cashmere goats simply to add to the world’s supply of cashmere sweaters.  “Consumerism”—the desire to acquire more and more things–still rides high in our world, but we appear to be moving towards more enlightened consumerism.

Looking back on my high-school years, I clearly see that our fixation on cashmere was all wrong.  We honored the wrong values.  Instead of clamoring for cashmere sweaters and other pricey material goods, we should have set other goals for ourselves.  I believed in the value of an excellent education, and I worked hard to get one, but I should have aspired to do more than that.  “To make the world a better place,” as the current phrase goes. 

I was aware of poverty in Chicago, and I was vaguely troubled by the unequal position of minorities in the city, but I never tried to achieve change.  It wasn’t until much later that I recognized the need to do so.  Instead, during high school I bought into the desire to wear cashmere sweaters.  Although I was not among the more affluent students–those who could afford countless luxuries–I never thought about those students who couldn’t afford any of them.  

Looking back, I regret that I had such a limited outlook on the world at that time.  I like to think that I’ve lived the rest of my life in a way that has tried “to make the world a better place.”

I’d like you to know about a prize-winning poem that inspires all of us to “make ourselves good.”  In short, it inspires us to make ourselves into the kind of people we strive to be—every single day, for as long as we can.

First, the poem:

Make Yourself Good

By Meredith Alexander Kunz

“Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live.”

–       Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4:17

Remember that this moment

Is all you have: 

Each flying second

Your personal eternity

To make with it 

What you can

On this earth. 

Each flash of consciousness 

Your own, your true possession,

The source of your power 

To choose, and choose well,

In this temporary existence.

Focus on this alone and stay true.

That’s what you need to remember

To concentrate on what must be done.

God or atoms? No difference. 

Each of us must make our own way.

And that inner daimon—

That guardian-spirit 

Inside you, inside us all,

Knows the path to virtue 

And the good. 

When we listen, 

We find happiness.

Some days, some years even,

We will be down and out, 

Dispossessed, beaten up

By the whims of the world,

Liable to gnash our teeth, 

Fill our brains with worry, 

Fear, desire, resentment.

But still: We hold the keys to mastery 

Of all that really matters.

It’s a lesson for the ages: 

“While you have life in you, 

While you can,

Make yourself good.”

Check yourself. 

Channel Marcus.

And if you’re veering off course into

Love of status, money, looks, things—

If you’re consumed 

By trepidation

Of what lies ahead, 

And dread of what

Surrounds you,

Stop—

And recall the philosopher-king 

to rule them all. 

He’ll set you right. 

And you’ll start the next day

Ready for the fight. 

Now for some background:

The poet, Meredith Alexander Kunz, is a writer and editor who has worked in journalism, higher education, and the technology industry.  Her writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines including Newsweek, The San Francisco Daily Journal, The Stanford Report, and The Industry Standard.

In 2013, she published Words That Carry Us, a collection of her poems.

A mother of two daughters, she created The Stoic Mom blog (www.thestoicmom.com) in 2016 to explore the many ways that caregivers and kids can benefit from practicing modern Stoic life philosophy. You can follow her blog on Substack at https://thestoicmom.substack.com. 

Meredith is also a contributing editor for The STOIC magazine and has shared her writing, talks, and interviews on the Stoicism Today blog, podcasts, NPR-affiliate radio, and conferences.  

—-

Meredith submitted her poem “Make Yourself Good” to the Odes to Marcus Aurelius international competition held by Modern Stoicism and The Aurelius Foundation to celebrate the Stoic emperor’s 1900th birthday.

The poem won second place in this international competition. 

Her goal: To get to the heart of Marcus’ Meditations, and what she hopes to keep in mind each and every day.

Her own audio recording of the poem is online on You Tube.  You can click on this YouTube video to hear her read her poem:  https://youtu.be/oLyBZLKyIa0