In his sensitively wrought memoir, Messages from my Father, Calvin Trillin ruefully observed that upbringings have themes. So, too, does the calendar. This past week’s theme had to do with disruption and loss.
The most obvious rupture was wrought by Hurricane Sandy, whose ferocity not only left a trail of immense and, in many instances, unimaginable physical destruction, but also occasioned heroism and compassion.
The other rupture was the one on view at Theatre J’s beautifully rendered and imaginatively executed play, Our Class, which I saw a day ago. Dramatizing the sequence of events that led in the summer of 1941 to one half of the Polish town of Jedwabne turning murderously on the other, the story it told rent the landscape as fiercely as any act of Mother Nature.
Go see Our Class if you can – and make haste. It’s closing any day now. On the other hand, the impact of Hurricane Sandy will be with us a lot longer. Both, though, remind us of the volatility of the human condition and of the small acts of kindness that sustain it.
