mglassman

[mglassman]

The Rarified TV Pitch

“Apple orders Emily Dickinson series described as ‘a comedic look into Dickinson’s world:’”

“The Soul Selects her own Society—Then-- shuts the Door”—right onto Lavinia’s cat! Can Emily’s cat-crazy sister ever forgive her? This side-splitting series pilot is sure to grab viewers by the lace collar and never let go.

Because she could not stop for Death, Death stops for Emily. When they’re unexpectedly joined by Immortality, the carriage grows comically over-crowded, and a raucous argument ensues over who should get out and ask Eternity for directions.

It’s comedy gold when Emily’s shawl and favorite death metaphor both go missing, and she retreats to her room for the next thirty years. The poet’s social anxiety has never been funnier!

“Hope” is the thing with feathers”—but so is Emily’s overbearing Grandma Gunn who comes to visit when young Emily comes down with influenza! A giggle-inducing flashback to the poet’s precarious childhood dodging a multitude of wasting diseases.

When Emily’s pretty sister Lavinia is suddenly courted by a string of suiters, the “belle of Amherst” suddenly worries that she’s now “the only kangaroo among the beauty.” A powerful episode that celebrates reclusive poet positivity.

To the shock of her puritanical father, Emily tastes “a liquor never brewed--.” Will Emily lose writing privileges after Squire Dickinson finds his “little Tippler/Leaning against the—Sun--?” A rib-tickling, heartwarming episode that digs deep into the poet’s daddy issues.

It’s laugh-out loud mayhem when Maggie the housekeeper mistakes poems scribbled on the backs of envelopes for trash. Outraged Emily feels “A Plank in Reason” break and the iambic tetrameter combined with searing, fresh metaphysical imagery really flies in this unforgettable episode!   

After years of corresponding with Atlantic Monthly editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Emily is excited to finally meet her “Preceptor.” But when Emily only speaks in dashes their meeting goes off the rails in this hilarious clash of poetic sensibilities.

Despite Emily’s unpopular decision to “keep the Sabbath staying at Home—" when her famous black cake recipe falls into the wrong hands, the entire congregation pitches in to recreate the poet’s heavenly confection. But is it one ounce of brandy or two? The uproarious results will have viewers in stitches.  

Emily shocks her family--and both cats--when she decides to wear white, even when toiling in her garden. This is must-see TV.

When Emily and her sister conspire to help their brother, Austin consummate his affair with new neighbor, Mabel Loomis Todd (“Hot Toddy”), their attempt to hide the randy couple in the dining room till both have spent builds to a frenetic farce in this rollicking Season Finale.

[mglassman]

How You’ll Get Through Thanksgiving, 2017

1.      Visualize being alone with a fork and bowl of leftover stuffing.

2.      Go to grocery store and buy obscene amount of food.

3.      Return to store six more times, swearing each time is your last trip.

4.      Make final trip to store for single ingredient, preferably limp parsley.

5.      Fantasize about alien abduction in store parking lot.

6.      Wonder if watching Macy’s parade this year will make you feel better about things, or leave you weeping on the kitchen floor.

7.      Feel deeply disturbed that the Rockettes now make you think of Leni Riefenstahl.

8.      Decide that if Snoopy or Underdog balloon is still in parade, all is not lost.

9.      Pick up relatives at train station.

10.  Gently request one night of no depressing politics.

11.  Contemplate the cruelty of a holiday that requires you to simultaneously roast a large turkey and five side dishes in 9 x 13-sized pans.

12.  Decide that Thanksgiving is somehow linked to misogyny.

13.   Feel slightly bad that despite being a woman, you still have to look up the correct spelling of “misogyny.”

14.  Lie down and do deep breathing exercises when relatives ask what’s for lunch.  

15.  Vow that after today you won’t peel root vegetables for another eight months.

16.  Greet guests.

17.  Profusely thank person who brings station wagon-sized pan of mashed potatoes.

18.  Be overly polite to person who brings any dish containing quinoa, tofu, or lettuce.

19.  Fantasize about absconding to bedroom alone with fork and entire pan of mashed potatoes.

20.  Send telepathic message to mother and mother-in-law of no talking politics.

21.  Resent cultural expectations of hors d’oeuvres shortly before obscenely large meal.

22.  Power through the disappointment that once again, you were not invited to Ina’s.  

23.  Feel set up to fail in trying to simultaneously heat up twenty-seven different foods.

24.   Decide that really, when you get down to it, only the gravy needs to be hot.

25.  Go around the table and give thanks.  

26.  Be dismayed that once again, you’ve made too many green beans.

27.  Realize that despite your varied offerings, all people really want is more stuffing.

28.  Raise eyebrows at mother and mother-in-law as reminder of no politics.

29.  Realize this means you also can’t discuss John Oliver, SNL, the N.F.L., most of the world and men, in general.

30.  Conclude that even the weather is too depressing.

31.  Wonder what the hell to talk about.

32.  Ascertain that more than half the table has never watched Rick and Morty.

33.  Decide you don’t care and talk about it, anyway.  

34.  Feel stoked that dessert has been served, and no one has mentioned the Supreme Court.

35.  Fantasize about absconding to bedroom with fork and entire pumpkin pie.

36.  Commandeer anyone under age 50 into cleaning up.

37.  Pack up leftovers for guests.

38.  Feel miffed no one took home any green beans.

39.  Wait for family to go to bed, then head to refrigerator with fork.

40.  Push aside giant container of leftover green beans.

41.  Find tiny bowl of leftover stuffing.

42.  Dig in.

43.  Feel deeply grateful.

[mglassman]

Break-Up Letter to my Handbag

Dear Baggalini handbag,

This is so hard for me to write, but I’m afraid the time has come for us to part ways.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve long adored your hip, adventurous look, your lightweight nylon fabric in cactus with portobello lining, and myriad styles from compact crossbody to hobo tote.  

But your exhausting storage capabilities have turned my life into a never-ending Baggalini nightmare and so, dear bag, our relationship must end. Who would have guessed that those qualities that first drew me to you--your infinite zippers, hidden pouches, slots, and pockets--would ultimately drive me away?

Yet, they have. For how can I shoulder a bag that induces daily panic attacks by gaslighting me into believing I’ve lost my keys, wallet, phone, and thumb drive somewhere among your forty-three inner zip pouches?

And that’s not all. I’ve been cited by police for screaming like a banshee in parking lots while rummaging frantically through your countless repositories for my keys. And I can barely talk about the emotional devastation of not getting Alan Rickman’s autograph because of the twelve-and-a-half minutes it took trying to locate my pen in one of your fifty-five concealed compartments. By the way, he’s dead now.

Thanks, Bags.

Despite that, believe me when I tell you, Baggalicious, this was a wrenching decision. I can’t help but think back to the first time I met you, and how instantly drawn I was to your cool “Harriet the Spy” vibe and cute covert charms. You whispered into my ear: “I know you have many secrets and way more than one lip balm. Why not carry it all in one sporty, fig-colored water-resistant bag?”  

Oh, those early days, when I couldn’t keep my hands off you! The giddy fun of unbuckling, unzipping, and ripping open all sixty-four Velcro enclosures! Who could imagine such baddassery in a single handbag?

But Baggaleens, somewhere along the way, this relationship turned toxic, and you should know that I am currently being treated at a reputable psychiatric hospital, having lost my mind in the seventy-ninth inner pocket of your Horizon Cross-body bag (poppy with charcoal lining).

This traumatic state was preceded by my shock at discovering an old college boyfriend at the bottom of the exterior pouch with magnetic snap-close, along with sordid family secrets in the hidden credit card slots and coin purse.

I hope you will respect my decision, and won’t try to woo me back with your snazzy new colors and easy-access exterior phone pocket. I wish you all the best, Baggo, and know you will make many fashion-forward people happy. Just not me.

No longer my bag,

Miriam

   \

[mglassman]

Saying Yes to the Belle’s Dress

 “I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. --Emily Dickinson

Strange as it may sound, one of the most sublime moments of my own seventeenth year was having the belle of Amherst’s dress pressed against my body. That I would find such a moment thrilling was not something I could have predicted back then. I’d gone through most of school only vaguely aware of who Emily Dickinson even was, and thought the belle of Amherst was an actual bell.  

But in my junior year, I took a class in American poetry with a truly great teacher, and by end of the term, I’d gleaned some sense of what Dickinson meant when she described poetry, thus: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. Is there any other way?”

From then on, the only lunch table I wanted to sit at was Emily’s. Those dashes--like acoustic marks; her startling word choices, the sense of a voice that wouldn’t be silenced. All of it grabbed me, confounded me, and wouldn’t let go.

And so, dipping into my babysitting funds, I arranged to sleep on the dorm room floor of a friend, and a bought a bus ticket to Amherst, Massachusetts.

Tours of the poet’s house were small, informal happenings back then, usually led by Dickinson scholars from the nearby schools. Unlike the thousands who visit there today, in the late Seventies, it was understood that the steady trickle of folks showing up at the stately brick house were hardcore Emily groupies. And this was our Graceland.

As our guide, David Porter of UMass, led us through the modest first floor, we imagined the poet baking her famous black cake in the kitchen, or entering the parlour to meet The Atlantic Monthly editor whom Dickinson had entreated to say whether her “verse is alive.” Upstairs, we followed our guide in and around the staid bedrooms of Emily’s parents and her sister, Lavinia. 

But traipsing through all these rooms just felt like a calculated tease meant to intensify our already hopped-up anticipation of entering the nerve-center of the Dickinson home where nearly 1,800 poems were created: Emily’s bedroom.

Her room was small, sunny, and simply furnished with reproductions of her sleigh bed, Franklin stove, bureau, and surprisingly diminutive writing table. As our group took it all in, however, I sensed a collective yearning, tinged with dismay. How could this space, so devoid of personality, be the creative refuge where Dickinson exploded her brilliant force? 

Our group drifted towards the windows. Maybe the signal there was stronger, and we’d pick up some sense of the remarkable woman who’d lived here, some vibrations of the poet’s ghost.

The ghost, it turned out, resided in a small closet. And when Mr. Porter gently shook Emily’s white dress to life on its hanger, we all gasped. We’d found her!

Dickinson’s iconic white cotton dress with mother-of-pearl buttons is actually an everyday garment known as a wrapper, or house dress. In the 19th century, women commonly wore them when doing chores and activities inside the home. Basically, the T-shirt and sweatpants of its time.

 “How tall was she?” someone asked, and Mr. Porter beckoned me forward, and held the dress against my torso. Feeling self-conscious, I looked down and instantly swallowed the fangirl squee! zinging through me: the hem rested neatly against my ankles, just the right distance from the tops of my Wallabees. Clutching the dress, I broke from our guide and turned to the mirror over the bureau to see that the waist and sleeves also matched my form.

“A perfect fit,” said Mr. Porter, and I caught the gaze of the others trying hard—or so it seemed--to superimpose Emily’s face onto mine, hoping--as I hoped--that the poet might now magically feel more there.

“Oh, come on, people!” Emily would probably say. “Get real.” But she phrased it more gently: “The Poets light but Lamps—Themselves—go out.” I handed the dress to Mr. Porter, and the ghost slipped away.

The surviving white dress now resides at the Amherst History Museum. A perfect replica stands beneath a Plexiglas box in Emily’s bedroom, which was recently restored to the authentic and beautifully vibrant space she once occupied.

Part of me wishes the dress still haunted her closet, ready to toss on for baking and contemplating immortality. Not that holding Emily’s wrapper had brought me any closer to finding her. It was through her poetry—and a great teacher (Thanks, Alan Shapiro)—that I’d found her. 

And others will continue to find her. This April, “A Quiet Passion,” the first film about Emily Dickinson opens in theaters. I feel like Schroeder hearing of a miniseries on Beethoven: I’m cautiously euphoric. Regardless, I hope the film inspires people to seek out Dickinson’s dazzling verse which thankfully, doesn’t reside under Plexiglas, but waits for us to slip into anytime we yearn to “dwell in possibility,” and feel physically as if the tops of our heads were taken off. 

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[mglassman]

Third Rhoda From the Right

The woman was a stranger to me, an attentive parent in the front row of a book talk I was giving as a visiting author at an elementary school in Dover, Massachusetts. When the talk was over, she came up to me and standing closer than strangers usually do, said in a hushed, urgent voice: “I’m having a Mary and Rhoda party at my house tonight. We’re watching the reunion TV movie together. Everyone’s coming dressed as their favorite character. You have to be there.”

Her startling summons hit me like the wedding guest approached by an ancient mariner, and my heart began to pound. Why had she chosen me? Did I look like someone seeking a group experience of the much-anticipated Mary & Rhoda TV movie? Or was it something else she sensed that compelled her to ask me to THE PARTY OF MY FREAKIN’ DREAMS?!

Smiling demurely, I replied, “Sure. I’d love to come.”

Little did she know, I was a Mary Tyler Moore Show groupie.

Mary and Rhoda came into my life in 1971. I was eleven, and right away, their comic yin-yang wrapped itself around my heart and funny bone with a hold so strong, only Rosie O’Donnell would claim a more obsessive attachment.

After a couple of years of ardent viewing, I sought to close the three-thousand-mile gap between my fantasy life at WJM-TV and the miserable reality of my suburban middle school existence, which included my parent’s messy divorce and a secret bully at school. I submitted an idea for an episode which conveniently, involved a thirteen-year-old girl. Even more conveniently, I was super available!

I sent my treatment to the show's producer, Ed. Weinberger, who, to my happy surprise, sent me a personal letter in a cream-colored envelope with an embossed MTM letterhead that I secretly ran my finger over and over in a dreamy state of fangirl rapture. I was getting closer.

Our correspondence continued for a year. His notes to me were brief but once, when I confided that I’d changed my professional aspiration from actress to anthropologist, he heartily endorsed my career change by enclosing a long article from The Saturday Review on Jane Goodall and her chimps.

Fast-forward thirty years to February, 2000. Whipping through my closet and drawers, I throw on a vest, some beads, and tie on a headscarf, transforming myself into a makeshift Rhoda with alarming ease. Although my actual personality is more Mary Richards than Rhoda Morgenstern, as I slip in the large hoop earrings and smudge rouge on my cheeks to mimic the Valerie Harper cheekbones I don’t possess, I wonder if over the years, I’ve been subconsciously preparing for just this moment.

Before grabbing my purple suede bag, I dig out a large, dusty scrapbook. Pressed between its pages, thirty-year-old TV Guides and newspaper clippings profile the stars and mark the turning points for both shows—Rhoda’s wedding, followed all too quickly by her divorce, and the emotional final episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. With archival care, I slip the clippings into baggies along with one of the letters from Mr. Weinberger, dated 1973.  

Sue Ann Nivens comes to collect me and we’re on our way. A light snow flurry brushes the windshield and in my mind, I hear Ted Baxter’s sonorous voice asking, “How perfect is that, Mr. And Mrs. Twin Cities?” We pick up a friend of Sue Ann’s and though we’ve never met before, I feel a sense of instant sorority as Chuckles the Clown slides into the back seat.

Arriving at the party, our hostess, in a plain brown dress, greets us with all the warmth and exuberance of Ida Morgenstern, and leads us to a table that would make Judy Chicago shiver with insecurity.

Thematically divided in half, the tablecloth on Rhoda’s side is a funky tribal print laid with the fundamental comfort foods: A frozen cheesecake pierced by a ring of plastic forks, two pints of Godiva chocolate ice cream, a foil pan of Sara Lee Brownies, a bowl of potato chips (to dump into your lap as Rhoda did in Season One, Episode Two?) onion dip, and a plate of Oreos.

In contrast, Mary Richard’s side of the table is draped with a pale window pane pattern in hushed blues. The cutlery is strictly silver, and the more self-assured comestibles include fresh strawberries, heart-shaped egg salad sandwiches, crudities, truffles, and tiny éclairs.

As the house fills with Rhodas, Sue Anns and the occasional Mr. Grant, I note that only one woman has dared to come as Mary. And apparently, no one is up to the baffling complexity of Phyllis. I turn to face a woman in brown wig and shlumpy clothes—Hello, Brenda! Another woman with a blonde wig askew, rushes in, apologizing in a high wispy voice for being late. Everyone smiles, for who can begrudge the good-hearted Georgette?

The crowd is thick at Rhoda’s side of the table when a Xerox box with a door knob attached to it enters as Carlton the Doorman. A few minutes later, a second Carlton shows up.

As we assemble for the TV movie, I stand wondering at how I’ve wound up in stranger’s living room, among this lively collection of cheap polyester, bad jewelry, and horrible wigs. It’s all too good to be true.

But it got better.

During the commercials, our hostess, Ida Morgenstern, hauls out a large Jeopardy board with questions covering a wide range of MTM trivia. At last, the chance to strut my stuff! But the questions are too easy, and this diehard fan is left champing at the bit for a real challenge.

I want to see, for example, the word, Ixmersis appear on the board so I can prove my worth, and give the correct interrogative answer: What word did Rhoda make up to stump Phyllis in a game of Scrabble? I try to contain my enthusiasm but before long, I am identified as a ringer, destined to tearfully accept my prize of fuzzy pink scuffs. Just the sort of slippers Rhoda would wear to shuffle down to Mary’s apartment.  

As for the TV movie, itself, even before the first commercial, it’s clear that the memory of Mary and Rhoda’s friendship doesn’t need any updating in our minds. As an actress, Mary Tyler Moore had the ability to make you instantly want her for a friend. And that night, in a Massachusetts living room, her spirit of instant connection embraced us, and we were all Mary and Rhoda, sharing food and laughter.

At the end of the evening, our hostess and I parted, no longer strangers, and both of us marveling at how fate could take a cold February night and suddenly turn it on with a smile.