My Ever-Ending Hiatus

It’s Time

My decision has been five momentous years in the making. Or maybe 64 years in the making—from when I was just 1 year old—because the words that ultimately moved me to click the mouse and upload this page onto Shakespeareances.com were spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960.

Five years ago this month, I had just concluded the Shakespeare Canon Project: 42 Plays, 42 Theaters, One Year (2018). I still had a lot of work ahead of me writing the bulk of the project's reviews and getting the 310 interviews and a year's worth of journal entries into book form. Those tasks have yet to be completed.

Instead, my life boarded a haunted roller coaster ride mixing chills into thrills.

• My wife, Sarah, was in bad shape: the seizures that started during the Canon Project and her cognitive decline predating 2018 were both getting worse.
  
  
• We were under financial strain: Sarah wasn’t working because she couldn’t, and as a contractor she didn't get sick leave; we launched the Canon Project before the seizures began, and she wouldn't let me quit after they started; and I wasn’t working because I was devoting my time to caring for her while focusing on the Canon Project book and Shakespeareances.com, which always has been a not-for-income venture.

By the end of January 2019, we saw what we thought was relief. Sarah had attained a referral to a neurologist at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, and I was tapped to serve as editor of the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety. However, not until May of that year did the Department of Defense complete my hire for the commission, a notice I received at the very time Sarah finally was undergoing her weeklong electroencephalograph (EEG) exam at Johns Hopkins.

More thrills and a big chill.

• My job came with extensive travel and multiple tight deadlines on top of the physical and administrative care of Sarah.
  
  
• The EEG diagnosed her seizures as a mild form of epilepsy; medication would control that.
  
  
• The EEG did not diagnose her cognitive decline. That diagnosis came after further testing in July, when we learned she has Alzheimer’s. There’s no way to control that.

I determined to put Shakespeareances.com on a three-month hiatus.

Ah, spoke too soon. At the end of those three months I determined to continue the hiatus another three months. I finally resumed posting to the site at the end of that six-month absence.

Ah, spoke too soon. The end of those six months turned out to be the beginning of the Covid pandemic. With the intensity of Shakespeareances pandemic coverage coinciding with increasing intensity of my Commission job, I returned this website to hiatus status in April 2020 and determined to return to Shakespearancing after the Commission's December 2020 deadline for delivering its report to Congress and the President of the United States. On January 13, 2021, I announced the resumption of Shakespeareances.

Ah, spoke too soon. Because on August 8, 2021, I again announced the resumption of Shakespeareances. In that interim, I didn't post anything; instead, I had begun working on a total rebuild and redesign of Shakespeareances.com, which I thought I would unveil with my return from hiatus. That task has yet to be completed.

Meanwhile,

• Sarah and I endeavored to take a series of trips to visit family, friends, landmarks, and baseball games across the country. That endeavor was cut short.
  
  
• Sarah’s condition got so bad we had two police interventions on the first of those trips. One of those interventions was due to her physically assaulting me.
  
  
• We canceled the remaining planned trips.

As for that August 8 resumption of Shakespeareances, you guessed it, I spoke too soon.

• Sarah's state worsened that autumn, and I made the not-too-difficult decision to move her to a memory care center in February 2022; her safety and mine depended on it.
  
  
• Two months later, I went to work for the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration, a Department of Defense office established by Congress to mark the war's 50th anniversaries to, at long last, properly honor and thank Vietnam veterans and their families for their service and sacrifice. The Commemoration was planning to stage an event on the National Mall in May 2023 (a little over a year from when I was hired) called “Welcome Home: A Nation Honors Vietnam Veterans and their Families.” I was hired as a writer and editor to promote that event and build partnerships among veterans services organizations.
  
  
• One of my published Vietnam veterans articles would win a Folio Award for writing, the magazine industry’s most prestigious award. Winning a Folio had been my top career goal since I was a junior in college. (Details at https://ericminton.com/Writer/Writer.html).
  
  
• Ironically, that was pretty much the only promotion effort I accomplished because, eight months before the event on the National Mall, I was reassigned along with the Commemoration's chief of public engagement, Navy Commander Brian Wierzbicki, to plan and operate the event’s exhibit/performance space, which I christened “Camp Legacy.” Note: neither Brian nor I had ever been large-scale event planners, let alone the scale of an event carrying national resonance in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. Camp Legacy ended up hosting 98 exhibitors and 26 performers and education programs, and I ended up being assigned Mayor: that wasn't a ceremonial title but an official duty managing operations for the entire enteriprise. Pulling off Camp Legacy against incredible odds in time, scope, and experience resulted in attaining a tremendous moment of honor for me seeing the Vietnam veterans' gratitude. I also consider it the greatest triumph of my professional career (details at https://ericminton.com/Projects/projects.html). Through it all, I was managing Sarah's increasing care needs, too.

Diane Carlson Evans speaks at the ceremony marking the 30th Anniversary of the Vietnam Women's Memorial (background) on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., November 11, 2023. Evans, who served as a combat nurse in the Vietnam War, founded the memorial after a 10-year campaign. Photo by Eric Minton.

One of the people I worked with on Camp Legacy programming was the indomitable Diane Carlson Evans, an Army combat nurse who served in Vietnam and founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. She spent 10 years of her private life overcoming obstacle after obstacle to establish the first monument on the National Mall that specifically honors American women’s service in war. Even after I left the Commemoration last July to focus on Sarah's care, I continued doing pro bono work for Diane publicizing the Vietnam Women's Memorial's 30th Anniversary this past Veterans Day. Working with her has been one of the most inspiring privileges of my life, especially her keynote speech at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall) on Veterans Day in which she related why she never gave up during those 10 years, recounting the response and buy-in she received from fellow Vietnam veterans and non-veterans, too. That speech would be one of two influences she has had on this Shakespeareances.com tale.

Back in May, days before we kicked off the "Welcome Home" event, Diane, intrigued by Shakespeareances, wondered if Shakespeare had anything to say about the Vietnam veterans' experience we were addressing with Camp Legacy. I'm sure he did, I replied: Shakespeare has something to say about every aspect of our lives. Out of our discussion came my essay, "Henry V's Vietnam War: A True Band of Brothers and Sisters," that I posted May 27 on Shakespeareances.com for America’s Memorial Day weekend. It was my first update to the website—not counting those premature returning-from-hiatus notices—since January 20, 2021. It led to an intermittent succession of posted reviews and a Q&A interview through the end of last year. I also attended 22 of the 23 events that comprised Washington D.C.’s “Shakespeare Everywhere” Festival from October through December, and I'm actively writing my reviews and reports of those productions and programs (two already are posted, The Folger's Winter's Tale and Shakespeare Theatre Company's As You Like It).

So, the worst year of my life personally was the greatest year of my life professionally. Already, within its first week, 2024 is on track to succeed ’23 as the worst year of my life.

• 
  Sarah holds a goodies box gift from Roni, her best friend from college and Air Force ROTC, during this past Christmas season in her memory care center room, where many people—staff, other residents, and their family members—melt under the spell of her smile. Photo by Eric Minton.
  Sarah's rapid decline over the past six months includes the loss of much of her motor skills: she can’t walk, she can barely use her arms and hands which are given to spasms and tremors, and she’s beginning to have trouble swallowing.
  
  
• Though in the final stages of the disease physically and generally absent her ability to communicate, her intellectual capacity remains intact. She's still an amazing woman, and incredibly brave, too, as so many people even today melt under the spell of her smile (especially me).
  
  
• I’m with her some seven hours a day for, on average, six days a week.
  
  
• Meanwhile, buzz has been building about the “Sarah’s Chronicles” I began writing for Shakespeareances.com in 2020. It is now a book in progress and may have a further life in other media (working title: Perseverance: The Tragicomedy of an Alzheimer’s Love Story).
  
  
• It also has inspired a nascent effort by a few of us Alzheimer's family caregivers to launch an advocacy effort to improve standards of care for people with dementia.

2024 could well succeed '23 in professional success, as well.

With all that going on, I have to decide once and for all if I should resume Shakespeareances.com. If not now, then when? Or, if ever?

I’ve written "Shakespeareances.com is back" prematurely too many times over the past five years, but this site has proven a necessary respite in my caretaker lifestyle. Furthermore, Sarah insists that I keep it going, just as she insisted I finish the Canon Project after she began having her seizures and our lives boarded the haunted roller coaster ride.

So, on Christmas Eve I announced to my subscribers my intention to end my hiatus. I've since drawn up an operational plan for rebuilding and maintaining Shakespeareances.com. Beginning this week I’ll start posting new material regularly (weekly, if possible). Much of it includes yet-to-be-written reviews and interviews from the past two years in addition to the "Shakespeare Everywhere" material, but I’m also attending a half dozen productions in D.C, Virginia, New York City, and Cincinnati over the next two months. I’ve begun rebuilding the Bard on the Boards list, adding “What’s Playing When,” to go with “What’s Playing Where” and “Where’s Playing What.” I’ll also be resuming the Shakespeareances Play Popularity Index. I’ve begun working on the site’s redesign and reorganization. One new section will be “On Line” to go with On Stage, On Screen, On the Air, and In Print. Another new section will be dedicated to covering the range of stage work in the Capital Region, one of the world’s great theater destinations.This will widen Shakespeareances.com's subject matter to include works across a wide spectrum of genres, ethnicities, and eras, including world premieres. My timeline is to unveil the new site in the spring.

Ah, spoke too soon. Common sense rushes in, my hand pauses, my fingers disengage from my mouse.

The fact is, I live on Alzheimer’s time, which means no day goes according to plan, let alone no week, month, season, or year. Over the past year, I’ve learned to live moment to moment and focus on each moment in that moment. I’ve also come to cope with the need—not just the desire—to look beyond Alzheimer’s vise grip on my life, a struggle I am detailing in the Perseverance book. Yet, my priority remains my devotion to Sarah and my dedication to her care, comfort, and security. True, that devotion includes her inspiring influence on my life’s outlook and my respect for her dedication to service. Both have been telling me it’s time to start living not just on Alzheimer’s time but Shakespeareances time, too.

But do I realistically have enough time of any label to do all of that? Paralyzed in indecision having finished editing this essay a day after I wrote it, I take a walk to consult God and the cosmos. What comes to me is Martin Luther King Jr.'s April 10, 1960, speech to students at Spelman College in which he laid out his blueprint for a successful life. His speech ended with this:

Life for none of us has been a crystal stair, but there is something we can learn … that we must keep moving. If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.

It may be at a crawl's pace, but Shakespeareances.com is back. It's time to move my mouse to the icon that will upload this manifesto.

Eric Minton
January 13, 2024