Screw Cartography

"When we get this project going, it's gonna put this place on the map!"

"It's a problem now, but it's going to put us on the map."

"We need to get this place on the map."

I've heard it all before. Sometimes from people or institutions that end up in some way, on the map. Other times from people who couldn't even read a map, let alone get themselves on one.

My response? What the hell is so important about being on this proverbial map? You always hear people wanting to get there, but a small percentage of such people ever seem worried about producing a quality product, providing a valuable service, or just being a decent presence. Those things are viewed, if at all, as means to the map.

It has been my odd and unfortunate lot to stumble into organizations just as they are deciding to place themselves on the map. Or, as I like to think, just at the very moment they decide that the community they have been serving just isn't good enough. (Which is really, when you think about it, what "getting on the map" is all about. Escaping from a community that has been the heart and soul of what you do, but can no longer keep up with the greed, or thirst for power, or influence sought by the institution in question.)

My high school was a rather elite but small private high school in Maryland. For decades, it had established itself as one of the premiere private high schools in all of Maryland. Some out of state people attended as well, of course. Word of mouth being what it is. Not to mention the draw of the place's history. Yet once you got out of say the Maryland/Virginia/West Virginia tri-state area, my tiny high school, (population of less than 200 students at the time) was little known.

Until the year I, having been impressed by their pedigree, chose to enroll there after much thought. For it was that very year that somebody in the power structure decided that it was time to put this already highly regarded, rather elite, and solidly established private high school "on the map." They hired one of the nation's most famous and successful varsity basketball coaches. Hoping to increase the school profile.

Increase it, it did. By the end of my first year, the school was winning all kinds of tournaments. It was regularly featured on ESPN, Sports Illustrated and other such places. Indeed, more people became aware of our little high school by the end of that year, than in the previous 50, I dare say. And the term, "putting us on the map" was almost a rallying cry. Surely, this could only be beneficial to the alumni. The staff. The students, as well as impressive to prospectives.

That depends on how you look at it. Because while the school's name was becoming well known, things within the school itself suffered. Suddenly everything was channeled in one direction. Given the cartography of the basketball program, the sport, previously just one extra curricular activity offered within this academic mecca, became the pervasive theme of everything we did. Instead of academically minded students with an athletic interest, athletic powerhouse players from literally all around the world were now recruited to attend our high school, simply for the basketball program. (The means of which were always of questionable ethics to some.)

Pep rallies took place only for that team. The other teams received little to no official school recognition, and as a result, little to no attendance. Whether you played or not, basketball was part of your identity. Class pictures always included someone holding a basketball. Seniors, upon graduating, regardless of their reasons for being in the school, were asked to sign basketballs for the trophy room. An effort, at times rather forced, was made to equate being proud of attending that school with being proud of the team. And people who are proud of the team attend games.

For newer people, or people that were into this whole "map" thing, it worked. Enrollment increased. Portables went up like weeds, and more money poured in. But for a good portion of the last remnant of the "old guard", it meant that the mission of the school, its very founding principles which had served it, and students very well during their 100 years of semi-obscurity, were being abandoned. The very reasons I chose to go there were being pushed aside in order to gain fame. And resentment against athletes, who through no fault of their own were participants in a destructive program, built up over they years. But hey, as the waterboy wanna-be player in my class would always remind me when I complained, "Coach is putting this school on the map."

Thanks a lot, coach.

"Coach" is long gone, and the school now has 4 times as many portables, and has a population at last check of about 500 students now. Still small, but huge compared to what it was. Their plans to build a new facility have been put on hold three times since I left. There's your map.

The same thing happened when I went to college. When I arrived as a transfer student, it was a small, little known but locally renowned private college of about 1,100 students. Charming in its own way. Gorgeous old brick buildings. Wonderful mall area in the middle of campus. You could feel the history.

The second semester I was there, the announcement went out that that "Revitalization Plan" had been approved, and would be completed hopefully over ten years, starting right away. By the next year, ground was being dug up for a new ten million dollar sporting facility. (Not a sports school at all before then.) Half of the mall and walking area would be torn up a few years later for a huge, hulking 20 million dollar biology lab. Two new dorms as well, to house the proposed increase in the student population to about 2,500 when all was said and done. And with these mostly non-academic expenditures came of course, increases in student bills. The music program was cut, in part, in order to help save some money for all of this.

"A school is no more than the amount of students that come to it," a professor told me once. "And I want more resources for myself and you." She said that can only happen if we (say it with me) "put this school on the map".

Mind you, this school had been around in some form on that spot since the 1840's. That's the 1840's.

With this came the predictable results over time, not unlike what I mentioned for my high school. Getting on the map became a priority instead of being content to serve an academic mission that had remained in tact for generations. (Including two previous generations within my own family, whom I never met.)

Even the theatre department, one of the few things about this quaint, smaller, but changing college that I loved, underwent a bit of this change. The theatre, unchanged for many years, started to focus more on community relevance and spectacle, than on intimate and personal in-house instruction in the theatre arts.

Not that this was the only theatre program to suffer this fate in my presence. A local community theatre around here, with an excellent facility had been under the stewardship of a much beloved and still praised man for years. My first show there, however, happened to be during the first year after this man left. The new guy was quiet for a while. But soon everything became about expanding the brand, or getting corporate sponsorship, or raising thus and so amount of money by the end of the year. All in an effort to convert it into a professional, for-profit theatre one day. (This leaving those of us who for years had volunteered our time and energy to the place feeling as though our days were numbered.) Many regulars have over the years been driven away. Including myself. And of course the overall goal of this terrible, artless and talentless new manager was simple. "Put this place on the map." (Casting his own wife in every show being a major part of the strategy it would seem.)

You get the idea.

So my luck in showing up at places just as they are trying to "put themselves on the map" has not been good. I will concede it may have just been the manner in which these places went about putting themselves on the map that I found distasteful. But speaking from my personal experience I have yet to encounter a single example of "putting something on the map" resulting in something better.

Just once, I would like to find an institution, an organization, a company, or a group which is small, effective, special, steeped in tradition, not particularly well known, but content to be so. I long to be part of a community that doesn't fall into the first grade mindset of "whoever has the most toys wins". That making something bigger, by default, makes it better. (A lesson small towns with urban sprawl could, but have never learned.) That contributions to society are directly proportional to the number of people who have heard of you.

Not that I am against making money. (Though non-profits of course should not make a profit, though many act like they should.) Money is needed to keep things running. I am however against the idea of expanding just for the sake of making more of it. It's lazy thinking, and only partially effective. I'm against not opting to find a way to improve the budget in-house. I'm against selling off the earned reputation in order to purchase a flashier, emptier one. Why is everyone more worried about "getting on the map" than they are preserving what made them great in the first place?

Greed. Keeping up with the Joneses. A mistaken notion of keeping up with modern times. Lack of internal vision. (As opposed to external.) Who knows why? But if I were a school or a theatre company, I would much rather have my reputation proceed me, than have my reputation thrown in the faces of anyone who happens to pass by. I'd rather establish a mission that doesn't include expansion as a primary goal. Lighthouses, after all, don't move. They stay right where they are. And thank god they do. How many people would be lost without them? I'd much rather be a part of a light house, than have my name in bold print on a map.

Shakespeare Authorship and Our Expectations of Greatness

This is not a scholarly post. Let me make that clear. However, it is a response to a certain scholarship. The Shakespeare Authorship "question". Mainly, in how it relates to the way we perceive greatness, accomplishment, and creativity.

I am not guilty of the so called "Bardolatry". The author of the plays contributed by Shakespeare was a human being. He was not perfect, and neither was his work. (Neither the entire canon nor individual pieces.) That being said, I love much of the work of "William Shakespeare", and have no problem concluding that he is one of, if not the most influential poet/playwrights in the entire history of the English language, and certainly in the top ten for any recorded language on this planet.

And for any number of reasons, that really fries the asses of a lot of people.

To get a better idea of the authorship controversy, (one that I don't actually spend a lot of time on in my life) I encourage you to read books and articles about same. Lord knows there are plenty of them. That body of research has to date presented about 56 alternate candidates for authorship of the "Shakespeare" works. Some have gained modest but consistent traction, while others are mostly fringe theories by rogue scholars. Either way, some of the candidates mentioned by more than one source are:

-Sir Francis Bacon.
-Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
-Mary Sidney Countess of Pembroke
-William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby
-Queen Elizabeth I
-King James I
-Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

Are you sensing the patten yet?

To be fair, there are several candidates that are not noble or royal who have gathered followers over the years. Christopher Marlowe comes to mind. But the fact is, a great deal of the doubt seems to stem from the notion that a mere gentleman and son of an glove maker from Stratford-Upon-Avon simply didn't have the education, literacy, exposure, and depth to have penned all of the works attributed to him. No, the author must have been a noble. Must have had royal blood. Must have been "important". Must have traveled all over the world, and what glove maker's son could or would even aspire to do that?

Again, I am not presenting a theory here in support of the "Stratfordian" as author of the works. That would be scholarly, and I told you I was not writing a scholarly piece. Suffice to say that not only have both scholarly arguments (the sloppiness of the man's writing, his lack of a funeral, few surviving papers that prove he existed, his lack of attempt to make money off of his work...etc.) and not so scholarly arguments, (secret codes and embedded messages) have been made against this man. Suffice it also to say that proponents of  "The Stratfordian" have reasonable counter-arguments to each of these.

 Yet the argument that still slaps me across the face is the "he couldn't have been bright enough" declaration.

 One 19th century academic, Henry Caldecott, sums up this condescending view quite well.

"The plays of Shakespeare are so stupendous a monument of learning and genius that...people have come to ask themselves not only, 'Is it humanly possible for William Shakespeare, the country lad from Stratford-Upon-Avon, to have written them?', but whether it was possible for any one man, whoever he may have been, to have done so."

Ty Unglebower, a 21st century actor and writer and non-academic has responded to Caldecott's question with;

"Yes. It's very possible."

Setting aside dates, and scribblings, papers, and secret codes and historical likelihoods, why do people find it so damned difficult, or even impossible to believe that a man of humble beginnings, could have gone on to become the most important of all English writers? The most influential playwright the world has ever known? Creator of works that have, like it or not, touched tens of millions of people for centuries even while contemporaries like John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont have vanished into near obscurity outside of the universities?

Part of it may be that some have elevated William Shakespeare far higher than even he deserves to be. Attributing every word, every error, every comma to a perfectly predetermined plan on the part of a supernatural genius who woke up every morning and just scribbled out timeless perfection while sipping tea. That Shakespeare is absurd even to me, and no serious fan of his works, or of writing in general can long accept such a romanticized version of him. The desire to bring The Bard back down to earth no doubt is at least part of the reason so many have worked double-time to attribute his works to someone else.

Yet I have to wonder if any of the ruckus would have been kicked up about the "true author" if all along the plays had been attributed to someone like Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. I theorize that if it had been someone with a name and title like that to whom the "Best writer in the history of English" mantel had been given, fewer people would have questioned it. Some would of course, because people are always out there that want to rip something up, but by and large it seems that there is a subconscious acceptance of the "higher ups" deserving lavish praise outright, while somehow those "down there" must have some how cheated when they accomplish something of merit.

We know almost nothing of Shakespeare's life. So we can't say he didn't go to university simply because we can't find the paper work. But even if he didn't, so what? Where is it written that a man cannot have a potential for stunning intellect and mind bending imagination bestowed upon him by virtue of his natural abilities? Such a person would still have to learn facts, of course, as they do not just appear, but why would William Shakespeare have to have been a member of court to understand the nature of court life? Who says university is the only way he could have learned? He couldn't have envisioned from his own emotions and projections that there is "a Divinity that shapes our ends?"

We need to stop looking for genius in certain places and under certain conditions. Even when we look back at bygone eras. For while I concede that there are many unusual facts and omissions in the life of William Shakespeare, I don't conclude that those oddities make his authorship impossible. After all, someone who writes the stuff that changes the world is bound to stand out in some ways besides the words themselves. The extra something which made him stand out as a playwright in all likelihood did not stop at his pen. His uniqueness was almost certainly in evidence in every day life as well. How could it not be? Those who have the greatest impact usually are a bit weird.

Few examples of his handwriting? Maybe he had a tremor and dictated most of his stuff. No letters to or from him? Maybe he wrote none, or had them burned as a matter of privacy.  No funeral of note? Maybe he didn't want one. Few records? They might have burned. 400 years is a long time.

And again, we know so little about the real man, whoever he was. Maybe anonymity and ambiguity in his later years is what he wanted. Maybe he tried to erase his own tracks. Maybe a man gets to a point after his 11 year old son dies when he says, "That's it. I'm done. I don't want to be William Shakespeare anymore. I'm tired of being the Miracle from Stratford. I just want to go home." Maybe the Stratfordian was Too XYZ for all the notoriety, in the end, and tried to rid himself of it. Maybe he wanted his works to be what was remembered, and not his life.

Do I know he said this? Can I cite sources and cross reference? For the millionth time, no. I'm not about conducting research on this topic. I am about cutting the man, and people like him a break. People who show no logical reason why they be able to do what they do, but there they are. Those who contribute vast amounts to our collective social wealth, but who say and do the strangest things. Those who quite literally come from nowhere, and change us all, before returning back to nowhere.

I'd like to see people doubt such things less. Because if even if the Stratfordian didn't write Hamlet, there will always be another example of someone coming from the obscure to do something great, and there will always be an army of people there to explain why it couldn't possibly be true. Perhaps they are jealous more than anything.

But they shouldn't be. We each can contribute. And we can each do something great if we are willing to accept that our greatness is not always, or even usually defined by where we are, but who we are, and what we want. Your individual greatness may not be as obvious as Shakespeare's or Einstein's. But that doesn't mean it isn't there.

If you accept that your contributions are yours, and what is inside of you is inside of you regardless, it shouldn't be too hard to believe that a glove maker's son who sued people sat down and without knowing it, began to alter everything that humanity would ever be.

"I have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
And, from that full meridian of my glory,
I haste now to my setting: I shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
And no man see me more." --Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII Act 3 Scene 2