Lunch Cookie (annotated)

Lunch Cookie (annotated)

Meg Bashwiner

At pick up, her teacher walked over to me

As she approached, I was worried something was wrong

(there was but not what she thought it was)

She said “Don’t send the cookie”

I said “What?”

(you did not just fucking say that to me)

She said “In her lunch box, it’s what she eats first and sometimes it’s all she eats”

I said “That’s fine, she can just eat the cookie”

(but but but)

“No, really it’s fine” I said and we left

(no one ever taught the teacher that her body belongs to her)

In the car I said

“Your teacher was wrong”

(the pleasure I took from getting to say that)

“You can eat whatever Daddy packs in your lunch, in any order you want, as little or as much as you want, ok?”

(the pleasure I took from getting to say that)

You can just eat the cookie

(whatever that means to you)

Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise

(they are wrong about themselves and not about you)

Pantoum for Palestine

Pantoum for Palestine

Meg Bashwiner

My little girl is sick again today

I check the box that says Mom on the Doctor’s forms

Over and over again

Yes, she’s mine, please help her, I don’t care what it takes

I check the box that says Mom on the Doctor’s forms

I see another baby hurting much worse than mine on my phone screen

Yes, she’s mine, please help her, I don’t care what it takes

When you check Mom on the form it means that no matter where it hits, the bomb goes off in your chest too

I see another baby hurting much worse than mine on my phone screen

Over and over again

When you check Mom on the form it means that no matter where it hits, the bomb goes off in your chest too

My little girl is sick again today

The Show Must Go On

©2020 Meg Bashwiner

I’ve performed on a freshly broken ankle, a badly twisted knee, with laryngitis, with stitches, with diarrhea, while having suicidal thoughts, with colds, flus and allergies. Every year my theater company does a big group show, where the entire ensemble gets together and every year, without fail, most of us get sick. The cold December weather of New York coupled with late nights and close quarters gives us all coughs and fevers. We do the shows anyway, miserable but fortified by our sacrifice for the show. My case is not unique, it’s even mild compared to what i’ve seen others endure. I’ve performed with people actively enduring food poisoning, miscarriages, with pneumonia, with serious infections, with people who had lost their parent the day before. And we’ve all missed weddings, birthdays and funerals. All because of one toxic adage: The Show Must Go On.

There have been times when that adage, The Show Must Go On has healed me, has strengthened me, has emboldened me to rise beyond myself for the greater good of an ensemble, or of an audience. There have been times where it has made me sicker, damaged my joints and vocal chords, hurt my family, hurt the show. This is never a fair trade but it is what is asked of you in the theater. 

It is celebrated and revered. “How tough can you be?” Becomes the fodder for the legends told to us in greenrooms when we are feeling a little off or tired. “Yeah she broke her leg during the show and kept going.”” “He had a heart attack and died onstage.” “They were puking in a bucket offstage.” “She went into labor during the show.” These are stories we tell each other to prove how tough we are, how essential we are, how outright fucking diluted we are about what is important in life. 

But this delusion has it’s roots in reality. In order for it to be a show, there is an audience, usually a paying audience and we need their money to live. No show. No Money. Simple as that. We work so we can afford the cough syrup, the dr. bills, the therapy bills, the flowers sent in our absence to hospital rooms and funeral homes. Saying “I can’t do it” is also saying I choose to lose my wage. And because there is no such thing a solo show, I am making that decision for everyone else who would draw a paycheck that night. 

Imagine your livelihood precariously balanced on the back of another. Imagine your back balancing the livelihoods of others along with your own. It’s dangerous right? 

When we learn to make theater, we are taught to believe the show is more important than us and it is. Yes, the show is more important than your bullshit— being late, being unprepared, being disrespectful for reasons of selfishness or disorganization is bullshit.  You let the show down and everyone who watches it or works on it when you behave in this way. We become so focused on this aspect that we cannot see where to draw the line. The line where it starts to hurt and damage. We are taught to believe the show is more important us, than the very breath in our lungs and it isn’t.

When the Corona Virus hit the show did not go on and largely it won’t until there is a vaccine. Thousands of venues across the world have shuttered and cancelled their seasons, some by government mandate and some by morality. We cannot cause mass death even if it means smashing our toxic adage of empowerment. The show can’t go on. No one needs to die for this art form and we will close our entire industry down to protect and ensure that, because we know that there is a bigger show that must go on.

This act of selflessness from a group of people conditioned to act for a greater a good of a show is commendable. Although this time it’s not the show we risk ourselves for but for the health of the world. The same people who performed on broken limbs and broken hearts are the same people who gave up all of their income, who set back their futures, who stopped making their art all so that lives would go on. It was a tough but obvious sacrifice. We put ourselves aside for the greater good, just as we had been taught by five word foundation of our industry: the show must go on. Humanity must go on.

All of the shows are still dark but all of the bars and restaurants and beaches are now open. I feel like i’m living in a different country than everyone else. Am I? How is a Cheesecake Factory filled to capacity any different than a 500 seat theater? It’s not. I’m not saying that if restaurants are open than theaters should be open. What I’m saying is they all should be closed so people don't fucking die. I do not want myself or my family to die because the CEO of Pepsi decides that our lives are worth their profits. Nothing has changed since March, there’s more virus out there now than there was then and we are no more equipped to handle it.

When people see restaurants and bars open they think we are back to normal, that we are safe. It signals that there is no more danger, so people relax, stop masking and distancing. Because why would our government let us do something that’s not safe? Isn’t there a specific plan? I hate to be the one to have to remind you that the same government that is in charge of reopening is the same government that has made guns easier to get and mental health care harder to get since sandy hook. It’s the same government that hasn’t replaced the water pipes in Flint Michigan that are actively poisoning it’s citizens. It’s the same government that is trying to dismantle our already extremely ill-equipped healthcare system during a pandemic. We are not safe. They will not keep us safe. We have to keep ourselves safe. Nothing is back to normal. Nothing will go back to normal until we stop the spread of the virus by stopping spreading it with our own damn bodies. 

They are doing shows in New Zealand. The shows have gone on because they have completely eradicated the virus. Not with a vaccine. Not with a magic treatment. But by locking the fuck down, testing and tracing and not letting up until it was gone, putting scientists in charge instead of ceos, making a good plan and executing it. The only way to stop this virus is to lockdown and wait. It took New Zealand two months. This could all be over for us if we locked down. I could be back at work. We could be hugging our families. But we are not tough like the dancers dancing on broken legs, musicians singing on shredded vocal chords, actors perfectly portraying someone who is not in a great deal of pain when that is the opposite of their situation.

It’s too late and we’ve lost. The American made nails of freedom over consideration for others are too deeply driven into our nation’s foundation. We are a country of Diva’s, of people who put themselves before the show at every turn. People who put their own bullshit ahead of other’s lives, ahead of the lives of us all. I’m sorry that I have no hope to offer you this week. I can only offer you honesty instead. Many people will continue to die, and the industry of live entertainment in the US is going to die right along with them. We are killing people because people are bored. We are killing people because we are entrenched in a toxic capitalist society that values money over life. We can’t keep putting our bullshit in front of the greater good. Stop participating in the dangerous re-opening if you are privileged enough to do so. It’s not worth your lives and it’s not your responsibility to line the pockets of Restaurant industry CEOS. You have food at home. Wear a mask. Stay as far away from other people as possible. If you can get tested, get tested. Give us all a chance for the show to go on. 

There’s an adage that I prefer to the show must go on that I think is healthier. It allows you to set your own boundaries and encourages group-care over individualism while maintaining a distrust in authority.  It’s a saying by the band the Mountain Goats about touring. They put it on a patch and I'm lucky enough to have one of those patches that I display prominently in my living room. The patch is an outline of a tour van and it says “We have no friends, no one not in the van can be trusted, we ourselves are our only allies, trust ends at the windshield.” I want you all to follow that adage. Do not trust anyone to take care of you, “no one not in the van can be trusted.” Take care of as many people as you can, “we ourselves are our only allies.” Your life is more important than the show.

Ghost Light

©2020 Meg Bashwiner

In my old job, in my old life, in the before times, I would spend most of my nights at a theater until very late. After the glamorous part of the night, our two hours in the sun of the stage lights, I would take off my evening gown, my double layer of spanx and put back on my jeans and boots. I would knock the bouffant out of my hair and put it in a ponytail. I would pluck out my contact lenses and put back on my glasses. I would transform back into Clark Kent, but in my life, Clark Kent is the one with all of the super power. Clark Kent is the one who gets us paid. 

After the theater had been through its full day of artists and audiences coming and going, after all the energy of the crowd had cleared and the hustle of the crew had coiled up the last mic cable and the last piece of popcorn swept into the trash, I would still be there— in the eerie emptiness of a very recently boisterous room waiting for final tallies and paperwork, the unglamorous business end of the night, collecting our check.

Finally when all the math had been done, final settlements were agreed on, checks were placed in locked cash boxes and hands were shaken—I would walk out onto the empty stage and the theater would be dark… for all but one light bulb on a 5 foot tall metal stand placed at the foot of the stage: the ghost light.

The ghost light is there for my safety, I wouldn’t know where the edge of that stage is without it and could tumble off of it. Even after performing on that stage all night, the edge of it  has become a mystery to me in the dark, without the energy of a crowd bouncing back at me and making the border between stage and crowd palpable through the simple presence of humanity. I am unmoored without an audience and at risk of floating off the edge. Theaters are very dangerous places without an audience.

Most theaters use a ghost light so that the theater is never fully dark. Theaters are dangerous places in the the dark. They are often windowless with no available natural visible metric of night or day. The ghost light burns on, so that the next person on the shift who opens up the theater in the morning doesn’t have to fumble in the dark for the master light switch. It’s a little torch passed from the night crew to the day crew, an eternal flame of consideration.  It’s also there in case someone who doesn’t know where the light switch is, stumbles into the theater for some reason, they could be a firefighter or a vagrant but regardless of their status, their safety is considered and their path illuminated by the solemn solitary ghost light.

It’s called a ghost light because there is a superstition that every theater has at least one ghost and we leave that light on for them. Often a load in to a theater is accompanied by a ghost story. The production manager will show me and my crew, to the stage, to the dressing rooms and to the front of house and they will proudly tell us about their theater’s ghost. In San Antonio there’s “Smokey” who likes it when people smoke the greenroom and is alleged to make an appearance if you light up. In Albuquerque there’s a young boy ghost who we were instructed to make a physical offering to before our performance for safety and good luck. I left him a Night Vale Scout Badge at an alter filled with ephemera deposited from artists past—pointe shoes, tubes of lipstick and programs all gathering dust in an alcove in the basement ensuring safety and protection from a tiny boy ghost. In New Castle a theater is said to be haunted a man killed in the basement by a rolling cannon ball that came loose from a track which was used to make a thunder sound effect. We are told about him when I ask to use the washer/dryer. I’ve been told of ghosts seated in balconies, lurking under stages and balancing on catwalks. Some died in the theaters themselves, after all theaters are very dangerous places. Some didn’t. Some died at home or in hospitals but worked at the theater or loved the theater so much that their souls are believed to rest or unrest within their hallowed walls.

I’ve never seen a ghost at a theater and I have spent hundreds of late nights in hundreds of theaters around the world all but alone in them. Sometimes I feel like i’m not alone or that off tense feeling of being afraid when you’re not sure why but no ghosts have ever materialized on my watch. They must wait for the living to leave so that they can play in the pool of the ghost light, reliving their glory and performing for an audience of ghosts. 

It’s hard for me to imagine the theaters as empty with their ghost lights burning for no one right now. The sheer duration of it seams unfathomable. Years. Years where rooms that once burst with people are empty and deafeningly silent. Stages that welcomed acts from around the world are now caves of eerie shadows. Set pieces, rigging and stage craft that transformed those spaces into entirely new worlds over the course of a few hours are packed away. And we are left now with just vacuous and lonely dark rooms, illuminated by a single burning bulb.

Are the ghosts performing endlessly for an audience of ghosts without the normal break for the living to trade their place? Are Amy Winehouse and Elvis duetting ad nauseam? Are Little Richard and John Prine relentlessly jamming together in the strangest band that only could be imagined in some other haunted world? Are long forgotten vaudeville stars now nightly entertaining audiences of thousands who died this year by drowning in the their own lungs? Or am I there? Still in my evening gown repeating the same jokes caught in a parallel time loop. My voice being the last one to echo through the PA speakers for years to come. Or am I still waiting under the stage in my jeans and boots for our check? The haunted becomes the haunter. 

Who plays upon those empty stages when we are gone for the night or when we are gone for an uncertain ever? Likely it’s just the rats. Rats across the globe scurrying into the light searching for the last bits of catering crumbs left behind. How prophetic a performance given how theaters and venues are being left behind in America. All that’s left is the unglamorous business end of the night, the empty theaters, the tallies and math, the rents and the utilities due with no way to pay them.

It’s time for you all to be Clark Kent and help get these theaters paid. Please go to saveourstages.com to find out more about how you can help save our independent venues around the country by contacting your representatives and letting them know it is our civic obligation to help independent theaters survive. 

A theater without and audience is a very dangerous place. A Theater in the dark is a very dangerous place. We need to keep these ghost lights burning, so that the theater’s themselves do not become the ghosts, haunting our main streets, former bastions of joy and shared humanity, boarded up and mouldering forever. Consider our safety and keep the light on for us for when we open in the morning. 

You Can't Have a Party

You Can’t Have a Party

©2020 Meg Bashwiner

It’s Saturday April 18th 2020 and we are in Los Angeles, California. It’s a perfect LA spring day. The bougainvillea in my driveway are popping off, really going for it, putting everything they have into be being just a delight for pollinators and soon for my party guests. I didn’t have to spend much on decorations because the flowers and plants in my yard are lush and perfect this time of year. But I did buy a few stands of string lights and some gold mylar letters that I taped the garage door that spell out “Fuck a Bitch!”

You can’t have a party without decorations. 

I’m in my backyard, I’m still my pajamas and I’m setting up folding chairs and tables that I picked up from the party rental the night before. I stop paying attention to the podcast I was listening to because I catch a glimpse of my new favorite thing gleaming in the sun.

I bought myself a charcoal grill for the party and stare at it with both fear and pride as I unfold the last chair. I had avoided an outdoor grill for years but now it finally feels right. This will be the summer I get good at grilling. I’ve been planning this party for awhile and always imagined charred meats playing a key role. There’s 10lbs of pork marinating in my fridge waiting patiently for its moment on the grill for the combination build your own bo sam/ taco bar. 

You can’t have a party without tons of food.

I head back inside and quickly wash the dust of my hands with cold water and start assembling the cake that I made the day before. We will also have ice cream sandwiches and a root beer float bar because why the fuck not.

You can’t have a party without cake.

My fridge is slam packed and I struggle to jenga puzzle the cake back in amongst the pounds of meat and guacamole and jello shots that have firmed up overnight. 

You can’t have a party without shots. 

I spend the rest of the morning completing my prep and set up. There have been shopping lists, prep lists and guest lists for weeks now. I must have taken 5 trips to various grocery stores all over the east side just to get everything we need. I’ve made so much dip. God I love dip. 

You can’t have a party without dip. 

I send Joseph to the store for ice and I hop in the shower. I went the Americana last week and spent the morning browsing racks and trying on dresses until I found the right one for today. To commemorate a successful shopping trip to the Americana,  I waited in line for a table at Din Tai Fun for bao buns. The dress I got is great- it has three crucial qualities- it is stretchy, leopard print and It was on sale.

You can’t have a party without a party dress.

I blow dry my hair which I had cut and colored at the salon up the block a few days ago. The color is super fresh, so fresh that i’m still dripping pink water all over my bathroom when I get out of the shower. I put make up on and marvel at how my eyebrows are- carved out to perfection by a boss ass Armenian lady in Glendale who charges $30 for threading but goddamn are they a truly Michelangelo level of sculpture, one that cannot be achieved by the hand of a common person. 

Joseph meets the delivery guy from Frogtown Brewery in the driveway on his way back from getting ice. Perfect timing! They roll the the keg to the backyard and set it in its tub with lots of ice. I tip the delivery guy cash and offer him an ice cream sandwich, he accepts both in his hands and tells us to have fun before getting back into his truck. 

You can’t have a party without a keg.

My Mom just texted and her and my Dad are on their way over after they stop at the dispensary to grab a handful of pre-rolls. They flew in from Jersey to visit this week and are staying around the corner at an air bnb. 

Joseph and I run into each other in the living room and he looks so great in his fun party dress shirt with ice cream cones printed on it. He’s been working a special birthday cocktail the party with lots of bourbon and ginger.  He pulls me in close, we share a kiss and take a minute to enjoy the calm of being together alone in our house before tons of people turn it into a circus for the next ten hours.

My parents arrive and I give them both a big hug and then put them to work setting out the plates and cups. My dad gets the keg tapped and starts pouring out the cups of foam off the top.

I get my charcoal chimney started and we put out all of the snacks and food and drinks. I’ve made too much food. It’s apparent when its all laid out in front of me. Joseph says “Babe you’ve made way too much food” and I say “I know” while grinning and knowing that even though I have made tons of food I will still call in a pick up order from Hail Mary Pizza when the party starts to get real late and rowdy.

You can’t have a party without a little pizza.

I never really make a big deal about my birthday. I’m usually working and I don't mind it. We just have a drink or two after the show and go on with business as usual and that’s enough to feel good about another trip around the sun. But this year I have off and I thought we could have a big ass house party for all of our friends. Why not right?

I am so ready to let loose, eat and drink too much. It’s been a busy time. I spent all of March on tour and it was a hard one. They always are, so many cities, great crowds and lots of driving. It was a big success and although it was pretty grueling, i’m really proud of our work. I’m almost recovered from it and this party will help before I have to strap in for our 2020 Europe tour in two weeks. 

You can’t have a party without something to celebrate.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone, people I haven't seen in years and people I see all the time. I’m looking forward to catching up with them, hearing all about their new gigs and meeting their new boyfriends, finding out about what vacations they are planning and recent plays they have seen, as I fix them drinks and introduce them around. I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces when I make them take jello shots. I love all of these people and I can’t wait to squeeze them as they walk through my front door. 

You can’t have a party without people.

The doorbell rings and I am back on earth. It’s Saturday April 18th 2020 and I am alone in my bedroom in New York, there’s 3 inches of freshly fallen snow melting into my daffodils, and I am alive. My two year old nephew takes a break from watching the Wizard of Oz to sing happy birthday to me over FaceTime. He does a very good job. It turns out you can have a party after all.

Featured on the Our Plague Year Podcast

Puzzle Piece

Puzzle Piece

©2020 Meg Bashwiner

When I was kid we would spend a week or two each summer at the jersey shore. This shore trip came with lots of traditions: our annual trip to the surf shop, to the mini golf course, to the hobby shop where I was allowed to purchase 1 Breyer horse and as a family we would purchase a jigsaw puzzle. The goal of the puzzle was simple, collectively finish it within the week before we had to leave our rental house and go back to our real lives. 

I would spend all day at the beach and then come home in the late afternoon to find a Mets game on the TV and my mom or one of my uncles huddled over the puzzle. I wasn’t very good at it but occasionally I would get a piece here or there. Mostly I just seemed to be bothering the adults as they riffled through pieces in the cardboard puzzle box. I was eventually shoed away, as their frustration grew from not being able to find the piece they needed while being stared at by a sunburned eight year old.

I’m thirty four now and am in no danger of getting sunburned for the foreseeable future. When quarantine started I had the strong impulse to do a jigsaw puzzle. Something about the nostalgia of those beach trips, of leisure time passed while on vacation felt somehow fitting for our current situation which is definitively neither leisure time nor vacation. This quarantine time has the pieces of vacation; free time, no work, but those pieces don’t quite fit together with the other bits — I am in my house and haven't left its immediate radius in over a month, I am unemployed, I am in an almost constant state of anxiety and I have no idea when or how this will end.

I am now on puzzle three of my plague jigsaw puzzling. The first one was entitled Land Mammals of North America and it was a blast to complete—1000 pieces of pure satisfaction. I felt like I was really doing something. I was passing the time in a way that didn't involve me staring into the glowing rectangle panic box in my hand for 18 hours a day. I had something to show for my time. I had Land Mammals of North America. 

  The second puzzle was Backyard Birds of North America. I excitedly clawed open the box (after it sat in the packages and mail holding pen in my foyer for three days of course). I couldn’t wait for this one. I craved the satisfaction that Land Mammals had provided me. I wanted to put these birds back together. This puzzle proved to be terribly difficult. It took me twice and long and I felt defeated almost the entire time I worked on it, which was many many hours. I wanted to give up a number of times and so did my husband. He would shout “That puzzle is no son of mine!” and walk away in frustration. I would yell back “We have to finish this one before the new one comes or the new puzzle will know we are failures! IT WILL KNOW.”

I had ordered another a new puzzle right after the bird one had arrived because i needed to keep the feelings of fulfillment rolling and now its arrival was looming over me as I rubbed my tired eyes, that could no longer tell the subtle differences of the varieties of green leaves that the backyard birds perched upon. The birds staring back at me, like a sunburned eight year old, taunting me with their freedom, their ability to fly anywhere on a whim, I hated those smug fucking birds. But I persevered. I completed Backyard Birds of North America.  I felt dejected but the new puzzle arrived to see that it landed in a home where it will be taken care of. 

I am now embarking on the new one: Desert Cacti of the Southwest. It’s just OK so far. I have  begun what I like to call the big sort where I pull out the edge pieces. You need to edges so you can map out where the puzzle ends and the rest of the world begins, a line that has gotten a bit blurry for me. As I enter week 5 or 6 of quarantine, I don’t have the same fervor for this puzzle that I had for Land Mammals and I don't have the same consternation that I had for Backyard Birds. I am a bit numb to it.  Maybe the way I’m feeling lately isn’t about the puzzle at all, you guessed that though, right?

What is jigsaw puzzle anyway but the promise of a solvable problem. It promises that you have all of the pieces you need to yield an answer. It promises that all you have to do is work hard and work smart and you will be able to assemble a thousand pieces into one thing. One thing that you will feel proud of. One thing feel a sense of accomplishment about. One thing that you are equipped to handle. You know what the beginning looks like- It’s 1000 jumbled pieces and you know what the end will look like 1000 ordered pieces, perfectly fitted together into one by the grace of your own hand.

I had to wait 10 days for my first puzzle to come in the mail. They were backordered. I’m not the only one drawn to the puzzles right now. I’m not the only one who misses solving problems, misses working hard, missing being productive and great at something. Wishing this was all just a long vacation with a definitive end date, a goal post, a deadline for puzzle completion before the long ride back up the Garden State Parkway. We are begging to know what the end of this will look like.  We are searching for the promise of solvable problem but no matter how many times we sort through the box, we just don’t have all of pieces we need. 

Featured on the Our Plague Year Podcast

Next Year Together

©2020 Meg Bashwiner

Next Year Together

I’m not Jewish. I am married to a Jewish person. When we joined our lives together I gained a whole slew of new holidays. Passover is my favorite. Mainly because of these three factors.

Number one being the food. As an Italian American, I am hardwired to always be concerned about the food in any given situation, especially with gatherings. I crave the comfort of the sweet fatty flavors of jewish cooking and I have loved learning how to cook passover mainstay dishes. Rendering chicken fat with onions brings me a joy that is unmatched by much in this life. Passover has some strict rules concerning food but with limitations comes great ingenuity and creativity. On our passover table there are usually none fewer than three dishes prepared with matzo and or chicken fat. The passover palate has truly steered into the skid of matzo—matzo ball soup, matzo kugel, chocolate covered matzo. I’ve even made meatballs with matzo like a true shiksa paisan.

Number two being the story. I am a theater maker. I love a good story and I really love a good story that finds an interesting way to be told. The concept of a seder is a genius method of storytelling. It is interactive theater at its best. It assigns roles, there’s props, snacks, drinks, rituals, and songs. A seder is a play that understands and acknowledges its audience, it engages them to ask questions, it feeds them, it calls them to action.  It is full to the brim with symbolism and metaphor, turning painful memories of oppression into invigorating dinner conversation. A seder also understands a captive audience, we are hungry and ready to grip it and rip it into some chicken fat laden foods, so it goes out of its way to keep you involved and progressively more drunk. Children are engaged as well without the booze, they are encouraged to be active participants. And just when they would get bored and restless at the end of the meal they are sent on a mission to find, you guessed it, a hidden piece of matzo. A great use of working with the props you already have on hand, I will say.

Number three is being together. This one really combines the first two for me. I love cooking and sharing a meal with people I love. I also really love creating a play with a theater company. Both of these things get to happen when we join together to celebrate passover with friends and family. It is encouraged to invite an outsider to your family table. Opening our door to Elijah is a parable to encourage us to welcome outsiders in. I have been that outsider and have benefited greatly from the radical hospitality of passover. Before I started dating my husband, I didn’t know much about the practices and rituals of Judaism, other than what I absorbed from being raised in North Jersey, where as comedian Chris Gethard says, everyone from Jersey is somehow a little bit Jewish. I went to my first seder in 2012 and I learned so much. I was encouraged to learn and not made to feel weird for not knowing why there was a bowl of salt water on the table. I was welcomed. I was gifted with inclusion in a beautiful and ancient tradition. I treasure that gift and grow it  by sharing in the tradition with new people every year. This year you are the new people.

This year is, of course, different. I did my best with our grocery store limitations to put together a proper seder meal. They didn't have the kind of matzo I like best. Shout out to Yehuda! I’ll see ya next year. But all and all, the food came together and the preparation was a welcome change to the monotony of my normal quarantine day. Although it was weird to make a whole seder dinner just for two people, but because i’m Italian and making too much food is a requirement, it ended up being enough for about six people. 

There were 11 plagues this year, more so if you count capitalism and the fall of democracy. God is punishing us to get us to change. I don’t believe in God in a traditional way. For me there is no man in the sky. I believe that God is our collective, the choices and actions humanity makes as a whole, what we build and what we destroy, that to me is god. Our choices and actions are punishing us and instead of lambs blood above our door we keep our door shut and anoint its handle with lysol.

Our seder was just my husband and I, sitting in our kitchen, with me asking him to tell me the story of passover. We ending up telling it to each other, me asking questions and him answering and then him quizzing me: “Why did the Jews have to leave Egypt in such a hurry?” “Because Pharaoh changed his mind about letting the Jews go because he’s a messy bitch who loves drama.” 

We talked about how we are connected to the jews throughout history who held seders in worse times, more dangerous times, and in better times, much better times. It was important that we have a seder even if it was just the two of us because we have to keep this tradition going, we have to remember even if we have to use the slightly less good matzo to do so. 

I asked my husband why we say “Next Year in Jerusalem” at passover. He said because this year we are in Egypt but next year, next year we will be in Jerusalem. I don’t know where we will be next year. But I hope I am making too much food for more than two people. I hope our ad hoc theater company of family and friends are all there to ask the questions as they drunkenly await a meal of far too much matzo. I hope that we keep the tradition going, that we keep remembering, keep remembering that we are god and we have to work together to stop the plagues. Today I say to all of you happy passover, next year in Jerusalem, and next year together. Please God, next year together.

Featured on the Our Plague Year Podcast

Nobody Gets Hurt Everybody Gets Paid

©2020 Meg Bashwiner

I am a tour manager. I manage the live tour of The Welcome to Night Vale podcast. We do around 60 shows a year in 17 countries and 37 states. The work is incredibly rewarding and incredibly tough. The oath I swore when I took on this role was: Nobody gets hurt. Everybody gets paid. It is that oath that has keep me going on the toughest of days and it is that oath that has led to our most incredible days.

Those six simple words make me get up from my budget hotel bed in the morning to drive a 12 passenger van for 7 hours. They make me agonize for months on end to find the most efficient tour routing that will make us the most money without exhausting us to the breaking point. They make me scrounge google maps to find the one vegan restaurant in a rural midpoint drive through town. They give me the will to keep going when I don't think I can anymore. I have a mission.

Nobody gets hurt.  It is my responsibility to take care of everyone on my tour. I make sure they have a clean bed to sleep in each night, a sober, experienced, alert driver to ferry them from stop to stop, healthy food in their greenrooms, and a safe stage to play on every night. We check in every morning. We make birthdays special. We go out for family meals. We take days off. I make emergency dental appointments. I buy cold medicine. I always have a bandaid, an Advil, an Imodium, and an extra granola bar at the ready. 

Everybody gets paid. My performers are paid a competitive rate, they get a cash per diem and cash for dinner every night we have a show, my assistant gets a day rate for every day we are on the road regardless of whether we have a show and a get a per diem and dinner money on show nights too. Our shows employ local workers, from ticket takers and popcorn poppers to lighting and sound engineers, runners and promoters, security guards and cleaning crews, merch sellers and parking lot attendants. The artists who design our merch are paid a royalty on every item sold. The valet guy at the hotel gets $5 every time he hands me my keys. Then there’s the hotel desk clerks and the flight attendants, the housekeeping staff who I leave a few bucks for next to the card where they have handwritten their name so I know there’s a person behind the clean sheets. Then there’s gas stations and the airline gate agents who give me shit about our oversized bags. The local restaurants that fill up with our fans before the show and the waitresses who roll their eyes when my tour van full of half dressed tattooed weirdos unloads in front of their rural restaurant at lunch rush, I tip them like a Rockafeller. And there’s, our booking agents who always earn their 10% by sending hundred of emails to line up my dream routings. There’s our merch printer who turns my money into more money by converting it to t-shirts and posters drop shipped all around the country, deftly wielding the alchemy of fed-ex. And the fed-ex driver who handles our poster boxes with care- sometimes. They all get paid. 

I’ve worked in the arts for long enough to know that everyone deserves to get paid, how rare adequate compensation is and how lucky I am to be able to make something that can pay them for a portion of their worth. I know that my work is helping people make their way in this world which makes being away from my family sting just a little bit less. Knowing that my people will have a place to live, that they can save for weddings and vacations, pay off debts and work on other projects for fun without financial pressure makes 6am van calls and having to shit at rest stop everyday worth it. 

Last week at the start of our 19 stop spring tour I had to decide between nobody gets hurt and everybody gets paid. I picked nobody gets hurt. Although, I know that without getting paid my people will most certainly be hurt. We will be able to pay them a little bit, but not enough. I also know that its too late and that some people will still get hurt. 

For now I am home from the road, staring at a non refundable empty tour van in my driveway, the theaters are dark, the popcorn remains un-popped and I wake up every morning to my failure in my own damn bed. I have failed to uphold my oath and I will have to live with that as I work to rebuild. I plead to audiences around the world as you clamor for refunds and express disappointment, please be kind to your local theaters, they are doing their best and a lot of them will not make it through this.  All I can offer is a plea to those in power to think more like a tour manager, to take responsibility like a tour manager—to wake up every morning with the simple mission of nobody gets hurt and everybody gets paid.

Featured on the Our Plague Year Podcast