Authentic

Jack is eight years old and he is in the midst of this year's production of the annual Shakespearean play at his school. All the students are fascinated with this. The 'project room' is full of incipient costumes and bits of scenery and the bulletin boards bristle with wonderful pictures of the various characters in the play. Today I brought a CD of images of Verona and Italy so the kids could see some pictures of Italian arches and architecture they might use as parts of their art for the play tee shirts they will make and wear proudly for this new production.

I go here every week to volunteer in the place I retired from as a teacher and director. My grandson now is in kindergarten with the most talented teacher of small kids I know. Quincy pays scant attention to me, and that is o.k. But he did save me a seat beside him so we could eat pizza together. He told me the entire plot of "Finding Nemo".

In the project room I am looking for scraps to use for designing the tee shirts, and there is a mom there who is helping with the costumes. Katherine and I chat a bit and start imagining the costumes the kids will wear. She has hit the estate sales and come up with some incredible medieval swags, perfect for the sleeves for Romeo's costume and I will connect these to the blue costume, designated for him. We wonder, who in the world would have anything like this in their house?

And, now I know. This evening, after a pelting rain commute home, we went to a so-called cottage meeting of folks hereabouts to learn about our local St. Leo University. We were dressed as usual (but clean!) Despite being under dressed for this catered event, many people sucked up to us because they knew we were major philanthropists in the community.

The house where we went was in a gated community with the usual conspicuous consumption names. A Jaguar and a Lexus in the courtyard. Looking around at the three living rooms, the huge gourmet kitchen, the media room, and the master bedroom with HUGE poofy bed things all in shades of beige, I had to go outside to draw breath. In the massive screened enclosure there was a koi pond ($300 a pop for the fish, as the proud owner told me.) There was a swimming pool with a couple of waterfalls, and I must say, it was quite beautiful.

I love being anonymous- in my jeans and kind of wrinkled and old. So I could poke around. And then, I saw it! There were the swags on some windows- the very ones, found at an estate sale that I will make tomorrow into the sleeves for the ten year old Romeo! Maybe next weekend these people will have another estate sale because of a foreclosure, and , who knows, we may have some more sleeves for Shakespeare!

Life comes around!

What can one say? ("My! You seem you have a large footprint on the earth?") This conspicuous consumption truly disgusts me and I truly wish we could be over that. Yet, I understand that some of these folks are really supportive to our local concerns.

Just so you know, blogger followers, I know how judgmental all this may seem. I try to be humble, but I have been opinionated since birth.