Columnists

When thinking of Morgan Hill’s Friday Night Music Series, the images that come to mind are skilled bands with professional lighting, in front of a sea of dancers with picnicking families seated behind them and dozens of vendors sharing their goods and services while...

Cruising through downtown on the way to the Times’ office, I had to wonder what visitors or newbies thought when they saw the chairs lined up in the middle of Monterey Street. “What kind of a crazy town is this?,” they must ask themselves. Well, it’s a crazy good hometown, tradition-laden-Fourth-of-July-parade-every-year town – and people come from all over to enjoy the nostalgic and patriotic feeling that comes with it. Uncle Sam would be proud of Morgan Hill.

The theatre department of Foothill College with director Bruce McLeod at the helm has taken on Thornton Wilder’s second Pulitzer prize play, Our Town, a sweet simple story of life as it really is in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners in the early 1900s. Using a plain set with just a table and some chairs and a ladder, the story covers childhood, courtship, marriage and death in three acts. The story brings the folly, foibles, happiness and tragedy of everyday life to the top of the rim of existence and touches the imagination.

This is the story of poor, neglected Thanksgiving. You remember Thanksgiving, right? It's the holiday that comes between Halloween and Christmas. There's turkey. And pumpkin pie. And your Aunt Helen sticking olives on all of her fingers even though she's a 107, if she's a day and far too old to be doing that. (Please don't get me wrong - when I'm 107, I'm so going to act like Aunt Helen, because she rocks.)