by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Jul 11, 2023 | Featured, Personal, Politics, Travel
Last month I took a trip because I wanted to “feel” what it was like to live in WWII Germany and the Soviet Cold War occupation in Czechoslovakia and Poland.
I already knew the dates, places and times from textbooks, but it’s quite different to experience what it was like to have lived during those times.
Of course the trip would come alive in museums and, unexpectedly, it brought back for me a long lost feeling I had years ago when I was just a young boy. I had gotten lost off shore in Buzzards Bay in a small motorboat that was running out of gas on an outgoing tide in thick predawn fog.
It is odd how we learn through memories and association.
How odd that museums, which were about imprisonment, brought back the feeling of drifting out to sea, creating an odd claustrophobia without barriers other than an endless borderless fog.
The claustrophobia slowly kicked in when I visited Checkpoint Charlie, the famous heavily guarded passthrough in the Berlin Wall, which kept the East Germans imprisoned inside.
It started with a set of pictures of a boy who had scrambled to climb the wall in an effort to live in freedom, but the photos chronicled how he had died riddled with bullets, hanging from barbed razor wire near the top of the wall.
How odd that I could feel claustrophobic under wide-open skies?
A few days later, the claustrophobia increased in one of the East German museums that focused on the Nazi SS and their little gray bread trucks. These had no windows, just a sliding door on one side and three closet-sized cells so small that prisoners could not stand but only sit in a narrow chair, hands by their sides, while they were taken to a concentration camp somewhere outside of Berlin.
A few days later as we traveled toward Prague, we stopped at another prison that was three or four stories high with interrogation cells on the top floor. The inmates who would not answer were showed pictures of their family who would be killed if they continued to resist.
Putin had spent six months in the house across the street when he was in Soviet intelligence, attempting to flip the tortured inmates to become Soviet spies.
The claustrophobia wrapped around me in that silent building when I realized what it must have felt like day and night in there. It was missing the noise of slamming cell doors, the echoing screams and the smell of the single bucket in the corner, which acted as a bathroom in each cramped cell, with three to a single bed and no mattress.
I know now why the feeling I had on this trip was claustrophobic but I thought it was still an odd reaction to the history of the past until I realized I had lived my whole life free in a democracy.
All of a sudden, I felt imprisonment under borderless wide open skies as a psychological imprisonment which became unbearable.
All of a sudden, I could feel the last breath of the boy crucified and bleeding from razor wire on the top of a Berlin Wall as a reaction to my claustrophobia and his death.
Years ago, as I slowly ran out of gas in my little boat, I saw the outline of a cliff as the late morning fog broke. There were connected ladders and a climbing set of stairs. I beached the boat and climbed to the top of the cliff and knocked on the door of a little cottage overlooking the ocean.
A woman with the Sunday newspaper tucked under her arm answered the door. I breathlessly asked, “Where am I?” She looked at me quizzically and answered “Menemsha,” then paused, “Martha’s Vineyard,” and then paused again… “The United States of America.”
I remember feeling happy and alive.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Jul 4, 2023 | Featured, Personal, Travel
I have not posted a blog in the last three weeks because I have been to hell and back. I traveled to the darkest place I’ve ever been, and then returned to a place of joy, laughter, love and light.
I went on a trip through World War II in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, and then returned to witness my son’s wedding and its explosion of joy.
History as dates, places and times is taught and graded, but only the imagination can bring it to life and give it meaning.
In Poland, at the end of our trip, I went to Auschwitz, the concentration camp.
Auschwitz had the most efficient business plan I have ever seen.
I stood at the exact location where the trains emptied, and a guard made an instantaneous decision, pointing either left or right. To the left went children and their mothers (if their mothers could not work) to the gas chambers. To the right went men and women who could be worked to death. The life expectancy of those who could work was pre-calculated to be three months. Excess food was not waisted on them since there was an endless supply of new labor coming off the trains each day. They killed thousands upon thousands of these people each week.
Inside the camp today, there are multiple display cases. Behind the glass of the display cases are piles of clothes, shoes or pots and pans, which had been carried by the executed. In one display case, among the scattered clothing, there was a little pair of red children’s shoes unbuckled. In another, a perfectly intact three-foot-long braid of hair cut from the scalp of a young child. It had a light blue bow still in place at the end.
It seemed impossible to me that the neighborhoods of little country houses outside the camp did not know what was happening in there as the trains rolled in and crematoriums belched smoke that fouled the air. Could they not hear the cries of children as their parents were separated from them or of the families who came to realize that they were not being taken to a safe place outside of Germany as promised, but were living their last moments before they would die.
I was reminded of a time when I was still practicing law, when I was hired to represent a slaughterhouse in a zoning dispute. The slaughterhouse was comprised of two buildings in a suburban neighborhood in Baltimore County.
There was a little house where the business offices were located, and there was a two-story building, which had a ramp that zigzagged up to a door where three cows were lined up head to tail, waiting in line motionless.
The slaughterhouse owners were Christians, and I was introduced to a rabbi who was hired to insure that the process was kosher. I was given the tour of the site in preparation for the trial and I traveled up the ramp that held the three cows and then into the building. I remember doing a double take as I noticed the eyes of the lead cow. I saw that they were wide-eyed and afraid.
Inside the door, I passed the carcasses which had been stripped of their skin and hung swaying on hooks headless as they were carried by a conveyor belt to the efficient butchers, who cut the meat into steaks, fillets, rib roasts, and further down the line, ground beef.
Two days later, I returned from Europe and flew to Houston, where I presided over the rehearsal dinner celebrating my son’s wedding the following day.
The bridesmaids had known each other since high school. Months before, they had celebrated common birthdays together on a weeklong trip to Paris. They were destined to be lifelong friends. My son’s friends had also gone to school or college together and shared comparable deep friendships. The joy and humor of this collective group as they mingled the day before the wedding was palpable and full of laughter and love and friendship on so many levels.
After the wedding ended, the bride and groom traveled into their new life down a runway that was lined on both sides with family and friends holding sparklers.
On the flight home from the wedding, I could not forget the story I was told by our guide at Auschwitz when I asked, “did anyone ever escape?” He replied, “Only the Polish prisoners would occasionally get away because Auschwitz was in a Polish neighborhood where the prisoners could disappear and be exported out of hell by their friends.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | May 23, 2023 | Featured, Man Machine, Personal
Last week, I wrote about the untimely death, due to Covid, of my play, The Grace of God & The Man Machine, just before its Off-Broadway debut, but I also wrote about its planned rebirth on Monday, June 12th at 7pm at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Studio Theatre in Baltimore’s financial district.
This week, I wanted to share the history of where the play came from over 50 years ago. (You have marked your calendar for Monday night, June 12th, right?)
In the summer of 1967, I was a teenage boy who travelled for the first time down south from my home in Massachusetts to the eastern shore of Maryland. Less than a month later, not far from Easton, where I was staying, the civil rights riots in Cambridge, Maryland exploded late that July, when H. Rap Brown, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had been invited to lead a peaceful protest in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which had not been recognized down in Cambridge.
Activist Gloria Richardson, who had invited Rap to speak, admitted later that he went beyond the assigned bounds, but also asserted that the black neighborhoods were set on fire in retaliation, and the white-operated fire trucks refused to put out the fires.
Shortly thereafter, Governor Spiro Agnew went down to Cambridge and chastised the black population for lighting their homes on fire. Agnew got national headlines and, as a result, Richard Nixon asked him to be his running mate in the upcoming presidential elections.
Within the first two days, I knew I was an outsider. The blacks in Easton would not make eye contact with a white boy whose hair was a little longer than the buzz cuts of his contemporaries in Easton. When I was invited to swim at the Easton Country Club, the lifeguard rushed over to stop me, saying if I wanted to swim there, I would have to wear a bathing cap.
I looked around. Not even the girls swimming in the pool were wearing bathing caps. I felt uneasy.
That afternoon, I tasted Chesapeake Bay blue crab for the first time at The Crab Claw restaurant overlooking the Bay. My host, a local doctor, snapped his fingers and used the N-word to call the waiter to bring more crabs and more beer as the afternoon progressed. I felt very uneasy. Similar experiences leading up to the riots that steamy July never left me.
I was forever changed by these experiences and this play came from the scars that were left more than 50 years ago.
Several months ago, after the Off-Broadway run was cancelled, I got an unexpected phone call from Steve Eich, telling me that he had read the play and he would like to talk.
Steven Eich is a remarkable figure in American theatre. Years ago, I had been fortunate to have bought a single ticket to see his Broadway production of The Grapes of Wrath, which had just received a Tony Award for Best Play.
- Steve has been Managing Director of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, 1979–1995.
- Managing Director of Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, 2000–2008.
- Executive Director of the Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena, 2009–2012.
He has been an award-winning producer and director, whose credits include The Grapes of Wrath, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Paul Simon’s The Capeman, The Trial of an American President, and Frank The Man, about Frank Sinatra.
Steve has been a great champion of the play, and wants to present it in the area where the events of the play took place. The goal of our June 12th reading is to find supporters and a venue for its future life. It’s going to be an exciting night, with a talkback afterward where you can meet Steve and the actors.
I would greatly appreciate it if you can help me spread the word. Feel free to like this post and share it, and I will see you there.
Chesapeake Shakespeare Studio Theatre
206 E. Redwood St.
Baltimore, MD 20212 (map).
Parking one block away at:
Arrow Parking, 204 E. Lombard St., Baltimore, MD (map).
Doors open at 6:15, performance begins at 7:00.
Please CLICK HERE to RSVP: https://robertbowiejr.com/rsvp
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Feb 7, 2023 | Featured, Personal, Travel
Twelve or 13 years ago, in Indonesia, I saw a homeless woman resting in the shadows of a side street holding a sick child in her arms. She looked up indifferently at me as I passed through the shadows, but I saw her eyes.
They were part of a portrait of incurable poverty, not drugs or alcohol. I saw no family, no food, no resources and no hope.
It is a moment I can’t forget.
She was so beaten down. I could not tell her age. Her child was so young and quiet. Her eyes seemed vacant and without hope. It was a combination of abject poverty and also a renaissance portrait of Madonna and child.
Without thinking, I surprised myself. I reached into my pocket and handed her what I had. I have no idea how much money I gave to her. It was everything but it was a foreign currency.
I was instantly embarrassed at this unexpected burst of emotions, so I didn’t look back. I just kept walking.
I have come to conclude that no matter where we go, we live in our American culture, its vision of itself, and only caricatures of the outside world which have been baked into me and I take for granted. As Americans, we believe ourselves to be kind, but while it may be our nature to be kind, we protect ourselves from caricatures, like the poverty of strangers when it becomes too much.
When the caricatures fall apart, a different world takes its place.
She was not begging. I just found myself giving her a fistful of money and I kept walking. The money was balled up into my fist when I gave it to her.
I didn’t see her after I gave it to her.
When I turned away, I left the shadows and went into the sunlight and tried to leave it all behind. To forget about what I saw and what I had done. I was surprised to find that she had gotten up and followed me. She’d put her hand on my shoulder. Was she touching me to acknowledge the amount of money I had given her?
Yes I think so, but I think it was something more.
She pointed at my camera as if to say, “thank you and remember me.” She did not smile as I took her picture. She just looked at me with those eyes I can’t forget. I don’t need the photo but I return to it off and on.
I wonder if they are both gone now. It was a while ago. I still have that photograph. It is posted here. I want to remember her and never think of her as a caricatures of poverty.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Jan 24, 2023 | Featured, Personal
I have always been a soft touch when it comes to animals. It has gotten me in trouble and on occasion broken my heart.
My heart is broken today but it has also been reawakened.
On the 4th of July, years and years ago, my first wife and I were driving past Towson University when I saw a baby raccoon alone near the entrance. Without hesitation, I pulled the car over and went to the little fella. He had been abandoned and was sick and starving. He was curled up and about the size of my hand. He was probably only a week old and was all alone, so of course I scooped him up, named him Thomas Jefferson, and took him home. I got instructions from a vet and fed him with a dropper.
I became so attached over that first week that I set my alarm to ensure his steady feedings, and when he died very late one night I, without a second thought, gave him artificial respiration.
My wife was justifiably horrified and insisted I get rabies shots, which I did. Thereafter the joke in the neighborhood was “if you see a rabid animal, call Bob because he can bite back.”
My animal advocacy and militant, often imprudent, protection of animals was acquired early. When I was about nine or ten, I lived next to a high school which held a “Sportsman’s Show” to raise money for the school.
Somebody had blown up a wading pool and put 100 trout in it so that the “sportsmen“ could use barbed treble hooks to snag the trout, which were then promptly cleaned and taken home to be fried.
I was horrified by the cruelty and the thought that everyone of these trout was doomed.
I went back home to my the piggy bank. I returned with money and a net to buy three trout with my savings, but I did not want them killed.
I had a plan.
I filled up the bathtub in the third floor of our house, placed the trout in it and refused to take a bath until my parents drove my fish to be released in New Hampshire. After a week and a half of no baths, my parents became persuaded.
It got worse.
Back then, if you went to the circus, you could buy chameleons which had little strings around their necks and a safety pin to clip them to your shirt. They didn’t stand a chance.
I again emptied my piggy bank to buy as many chameleons as I could, and then housed them in an old aquarium. I built a landscaped jungle with little waterfalls and a window screen top for air circulation. That summer, I traveled with a tiny little fish net, so I could catch live flies for food. I concluded that the pet store food was not good enough for them. It was less organic than my free-range flys.
It got worse.
I cared for a small alligator that was shipped to me from Florida back when that was legal, and it lived in my bathtub until I, again, convinced my parents that life would be better for it at the zoo.
It got worse.
There were birds with broken wings, which I fed all of the bay scallops that were scheduled for dinner. There were these two kittens that I acquired while hitchhiking, when somebody had fed them both LSD so they were wet with sweat from fighting hallucinations. I named them Fruehauf and Brockway, the names of trucking companies.
One summer, we rented a house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and my job was to care for a pregnant cat that lived in a woodpile in the barn. Of course I was there when the nine kittens were born. I spent the rest of the summer forever getting them back to their mother in the woodpile.
Over time, my parents gave in and we adopted a black stray female mixed-breed who, of course, jumped the fence and had three puppies in the garage.
When I met my second wife 11 years ago, she had a one-year-old puppy named Winston, which made me love her even more. Several months ago, Winston developed tumors and problems with his lungs and hindered legs. Last week, we were told by our vet that Winston had only two or three months left.
My wife and I were scheduled to visit her family in Florida last weekend, but the vet told us that even though Winston could last for a few more months, it would be too stressful to board him at her kennel, given the noise and his condition. I volunteered to stay home with Winston so my wife could be with her family. Unexpectedly, Winston went into decline, and we decided the only humane thing to do was to put him down as soon as possible.
I was up several times throughout Sunday night to give Winston painkillers. The doctor came at 10:00 in the morning yesterday, sedated Winston, and then administered the shot. After we waited, she gently took out her stethoscope and softly pronounced him dead.
Winston knew my wife longer than I have, and they loved each other dearly. When she decided to put him down, even though she couldn’t be there, I recognized it was a sacrifice for her. There were tears, but she said she cared more for the quality of his life than for the pain she would feel not getting to see him one last time.
It is one thing to love animals, but it is another when you see the humanity of someone who sacrifices their feelings for those they love.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Jan 17, 2023 | Featured, Personal, Poetry
I have just met a lot of feral cats in My Lady’s Manor in Monkton, Maryland, and I really like these feral cats! These are not the fighters on fire escapes I knew when I lived in inner-city apartments.
Slightly before Thanksgiving, I was invited to set up an open mic by Angelo Otterbein, the new owner of the new Manor Mill in My Lady’s Manor in Monkton, Maryland.
So what is an open mic? What is My Lady’s Manor? Where is Monkton, Maryland, and who are these feral cats?
The town of Monkton is about 45 minutes north of Baltimore and about 5 minutes south of the Pennsylvania boarder and the Mason-Dixon line. It includes a old grist mill, a miller’s house, a small hotel with a little cluster of houses next to the Gun Powder river, all nestled around a mid-1800s whistle-stop of the defunct North Central Railroad, the tracks of which are now a walking trail that runs next to the river.
In 1713, Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron of Baltimore, made a 10,000 acre gift of land to his fourth wife and christened the estate “My Lady’s Manor.” Monkton and My Lady’s Manor are known for sprawling countryside, horse farms, and old, stately homes set back from the country roads.
Angelo recently purchased the old grist mill and has revived and converted it into a historically renovated creative arts center, and the old Hotel now houses trout fishermen and nature walkers.
An open mic is an invitation to performers — poets, in this case — to stand and deliver their work in front of a live listening audience.
These cats are poets.
As a lawyer for over 30 years, my professional life offered me a chance to submit plays I wrote to the Baltimore Playwright’s Festival, but I had little or no access to local poets.
Angelo’s invitation to develop an open mic on Monday evenings unexpectedly provided the opportunity to meet the poets of the region, and it has been amazing to watch these cats in front of an open mic.
These cats are poets because they observe and take the time to write down what they observe and, by committing to this practice, they develop their own voice.
The more one writes, the more one discovers one’s own voice.
It is a solo voice that is created through omission and selection. What you leave in and what you leave out. It is your speaking voice on paper, but it is a solo voice.
All of a sudden, I have been surrounded by a wonderful collection of solo voices that are quite different from each other’s and from my own. All of a sudden, I discovered there are small but selective poetry magazines, published all around me, whether on paper or virtually. It is a world alive and well, created by this remarkable community of feral cats.
Over the last few months, I have been putting together these open mics on the first Monday of every month. The hustle and bustle of the Manor Mill — which features painters, musicians, metal sculptors, basket weavers, and textile artists, teaching and learning from each other — subsides on Monday evening, and the mill is surrendered to the open mic and poets.
The Manor Mill is a remarkable place, far from urban environments. It draws people who have often never met before. It takes incredible courage to stand up in front of strangers and speak, but it takes even more courage to stand behind your voice and deliver a vision in the form of a poem to strangers.
It is exciting to witness this courage, and walk into a world of so many new articulate voices. They speak differently. They think differently. They approach poetry in so many original ways.
Poetry is the most flexible art form available in language because of line breaks, intentional rhythms and rhymes, and the limitless themes available, because ideas and expression can be shaped in ways that are less constrained than sentences, paragraphs and chapters.
It is astounding how wild and creative these people are, and how much I have learned from them in such a short time as I find my new voice and learn to listen to others in this beautiful new welcoming environment.
