"Wednesday's Child" Perhaps Better From a Different POV

 In "Wednesday's Child" by Yiyun Li, a short story in the Jan. 16, 2023, on-line version of the New Yorker, Marcie, the nearly 16-year-old daughter of Rosalie, the story's protagonist, commits suicide by lying down across some railway tracks. This occurred just three weeks after Marcie began attending a "highly selective prep school" to which she had apparently been determined to gain admittance.

Marcie had been a precocious child who read challenging books and otherwise apparently walked to her own drum, such as in the manner in which she ate melon. That's about all readers are told about her.

The bulk of the story consists of Rosalie pondering her daughter's death as she travels toward a famous WWI battlefield where as many as one million soldiers died. An analogy for the apparently senseless nature of Marcie's demise?

What's odd about this story is that while her daughter's death is quite naturally a major preoccupation for Rosalie -- recalled here through associations with current events -- Rosalie apparently made no inquiries as to what may have transpired during Marcie's first three weeks in what was probably a pressured school environment. Or if she did, her findings were apparently of insufficient interest to recall or relate. 

Rather Rosalie thinks about what may or may not make a good mother and whether she mistakenly allowed her daughter -- and in one instance encouraged her -- to read age-inappropriate books. A version of the familiar female refrain: "It's all my fault." 

Perhaps Rosalie's self-absorption lies behind the untimely death of her daughter to even a greater extent than either she herself or the author of her story realizes. “Any time a child chooses that way out, you have to wonder what the parents did,” Rosalie’s mother at one time told Rosalie. One thinks the word "readers" could easily be substituted for the word "you" in that statement.

Rosalie considers the comment cruel and in line with her mother's streak of such behavior. But at the same time, "Rosalie and Dan (her husband) had received their verdict," or so the narrator would have readers believe, In view of the contents of the story, it's a classic case of tell, don't show. Readers are left with no depiction of the child's upbringing.

After finishing Ms Li's piece, it occurred to me that a story about Marcie, from her point of view, would have been far more interesting than the one I had just finished about Rosalie. Perhaps Ms Li will oblige, or maybe she already has. 

Chekhov's "The Darling:" Controlled Variation Says Saunders

 A "darling" is a beloved person who can do no wrong. One thinks of Peter Pan's friend Wendy. 

Wendy was quite literally a Darling -- that was her last name. The implication, of course, was that she was also a darling in the definitional sense and, as depicted by J.M. Barrie in his stories about Peter Pan, that seems to have been the case. She was indeed a beloved person and except that her difficult father at one point objected to her telling "silly stories" to her younger brothers, she was apparently about as perfect as a girl, and later a woman, can get.

But unlike Chekhof's darling, a woman named Olga Semyonova, or Olenka as she is known to family and friends, Wendy had to make a difficult choice: whether to stay in Neverland with Peter and remain a child forever, or return home and face adulthood with all of its challenges. Olenka, about whose background readers are told little, just drifts through life, falling in love with one male after another and then conforming her life to theirs -- sharing not only their activities but their opinions.

"The Darling" is one of three Chekhov short stories that American author and creative writing instructor Geoge Saunders elucidates in his recent book "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain." The book's look at seven Russian short stories is based on workshop sessions Saunders has conducted with students at Syracuse University over a period of about 20 years.

Olenka, "the daughter of a retired collegiate assessor," is presumably not uneducated. But her fundamental characteristic is that "she was always enamored with someone and could not live otherwise." Physically warm and comfortable, she's otherwise an empty vessel that needs to be filled from some external source and remains over the years unchanged in that respect. 

After first focusing on a French teacher, then on her now-dying father and then an aunt, Olenka as young woman first falls in love with a rather unattractive theater impresario because she feels sorry for him. When he somewhat mysteriously dies on a business trip shortly thereafter, she marries a lumberyard owner and lives happily with him for six years although they are unable to have children. Next comes as an army veterinarian (armies had a lot of horses back then), but he's married so her infatuation is removed and mostly one-sided. Finally, as a mother figure, she loves the now-retired vet's young son, who finds her annoying. 

End of the story.

For Saunders, "The Darling" is a "pattern story" -- a tale in which a basic theme recurs, but each time with slight changes that both give readers pleasure and appear to infer new meaning.  In his book about Russian short stories, he spends a lot of time explaining just how Chekhov went about constructing it.

Readers who like music will probably immediately recognize this technique as theme and variation. It's ever-present, such as when jazz musicians pass around various riffs on a particular melody, but I most enjoy it Handel's vocal music where theme and variation is ever present and with great imagination. Easily approachable in that respect is "Every Valley," the second aria from "Messiah." 

The technique is probably a lot less used in literature, and especially as blatantly as in "The Darling." And not without reason: as the tale proceeded, Olenka seemed came across for me as more caricature than character and, indeed, at one point Saunders admits she can appear to be somewhat robotic.

No matter how good a melody is, it can become boring if it is simply repeated in unchanged form. Likewise, Saunders warns against stories are too static in nature. One or more expectations need to be set at the beginning and resolution comes through a series of what he calls "escalations." In other words, the stakes have to get higher.   

At the end of the day, and in view of the fact that "The Darling" ends without a striking development that proclaims "Resolution!" one can't help wondering what the theme that was subjected to variation was all about.

In Saunders view, Chekov was writing about love, and how it can become a complete absorption for one person as opposed to a form of communication between two. Others, such as Leo Tolstoy ("War and Peace," "Anna Karenina") have tried, Saunders said, to make tale about the nature, or natures, of women. There is, of course, the age-old question: "what do women want?" In Olenka's case, the answer would seem to be "to be a caregiver." 

Well, fine, but it still seems to be told as caricature, or too simplistic. Olenka lacks complexity and as such, it's tough to find her of any great interest as an individual. 

At the end of the day, Saunders said that he teaches "The Darling" as "a brisk little primer on just how much organization the story form can bear and will reward," adding that in this instance, he finds Chekov's tale "a beautiful system for presenting a tale of controlled variation."

Now let's see, where did I put my cd of "Messiah" arias and choruses? Talk about a beautify system of controlled variation!

   

An Alternative To Saunder's Sense of Chekhov's "In the Cart"

 Since I am about to take a continuing education course on Anton Chekhov's short stories and plays, I thought I would get a copy of George Saunder's recent book "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" and see what he had to say about three of them.

Saunders, an award-winning American author, is also a professor of creative writing at Syracuse University where he has taught a course on Russian short stories, in translation, for about 20 years. "A Swim in a Pond ... " is essentially a collection of seven of his workshop sessions and it begins with Chekhov's "In the Cart," published in 1897, one of seven stories that Saunders says are clear, simple and moving, but also meant to challenge, antagonize and outrage -- "and in a complicated way, to console."

He also says that while the stories are for the most part "quiet, domestic and apolitical," they are also resistance literature written at a time when writers could face censorship, or even exile, imprisonment and execution, for anything considered transgressively political. 

In general, the key to success in story writing, Saunders says, is an emotionally moving tale that a reader feels compelled to finish.

While at one point Saunders says he considers terms such as "theme," "plot," "character development" and "structure" not very useful, as he takes readers page by page through "In the Cart," character development is what he mostly talks about.  

We initially encounter the chief protagonist of the story, a woman named Marya Vasilyevna, and discover that she is "unhappy because of the monotony of her life" -- and as a result, "the story has become restless." So says Saunders.

Eleven pages later, after various interactions with her cart driver, with a wealthy, but useless local landowner and with some peasants in a tea-shop, things are going downhill. But a momentary vision of a woman on a passing train reminds Marya of her mother and her much better life as a child, leaving her at least momentarily elated.

The result of all this, says Saunders, is that readers have been taken through the depths of Marya's loneliness to the point where one feels her loneliness as if it is one's own.  

"Over the course of these eleven pages, the blank mind with which you began has been filled with a new friend, Marya, who, if my experience is any indication, will stay with you forever," the professor says. End of the workshop.

In other words, this story is an example of successful character development. The bottom line for Saunders is that Marya, as an individual person, is timeless.

While I can't take issue with anything Saunders has to say, I came away with a completely different reading of what the story was all about. To me, Marya is of no great importance, or particularly memorable as an individual. Rather, her life helps to elucidate the state of Russia at a particular time.

"In a Cart" (that title pretty much says it all) takes place about eight years before the tumultuous if  ultimately unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905 and the country, other than wealthy cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, is gradually falling to pieces. The cart in which Marya, a schoolmistress, is riding and the terrible roads over which it is traveling exemplify the state of most of the country. The express train that temporarily halts the cart and the sophisticated woman she notices riding on it speak of profound income and opportunity inequalities. A few Russians can ride such trains; most of the rest are stuck in carts -- and stuck in other ways, too.

As the cart bumps along on a damp day in early Spring, some snow still on the ground, readers learn:

-- Marya, originally from a middle-class Moscow family, "could imagine no other future than the school, the road to town and back, and again the school and again the road." [Russia is a country without upward mobility.]

--The mayor of Moscow has just been killed. [An actual event at the time of the story.] 

--The wealthy landowner in his four-horse carriage who encounters the cart drinks heavily and when servicing as an examiner of students at the school, gives nothing but the highest grades because he knows nothing. He could easily have improved the roads, but doesn't. He gives the school globes, which Marya considers of no need. [These students aren't going anywhere.]

Saunders makes much of Marya's thoughts about the wealthy landowner as being handsome despite all his flaws and perhaps a way out of her situation -- and how that helps readers understand her. My sense is that Chekhov added this to the story to help disguise its true nature: a critique of the state of Russian society and thus of the country's rulers. The Marya-landowner relationship, or potential relationship, turns out to be just a bit of wheel spinning by Chekhov. Nothing comes of it -- but it helps cloak the underlying nature of the tale.

--Marya wants to get the school janitor, who does nothing but cuff the boys, discharged, "but no one paid any attention to her." The person with such authority can rarely be found and when he is, claims to have no time for whatever needs to be addressed. An inspector has only visited the school once in three years and has no understanding of anything connected with it -- and got his job not because he was qualified, but because of who he knew. The School Board rarely met and no one knew where. Someone with the title of Trustee of the school is half-illiterate, stupid and a friend of the janitor. [So much for the education of rural Russian children.]

--"Marya continues to think of the school and its corrupt administration, and the fact there is no one for her to turn to."

At one point, Sauders talks about how Chekhov keeps describing the road the cart is traveling as getting worse and worse, indicating "a steady degrading situation." That, in my view, is an allegory for the state of Russia in general at the time of the story. 

--Marya had begun to teach school from necessity (her parents died when she was young) and she has little interest in the students themselves -- just getting them past the examinations. "What kind of Russia is this that compels a person to work a job to which she has no calling, and so be reduced by it?" Saunders asks in his commentary. My view: that is exactly what this story is all about; not Marya the individual woman, but Marya the representative of the state of Russia.

-- "Teachers, impecunious physicians, doctor's assistants, for all their terribly hard work, do not even have the comfort of thinking that they are serving an ideal or the people, because their heads are always filled with thoughts of their daily bread, of firewood, of bad roads, of sickness. It is a hard, humdrum existence, and only stolid cart horses like Marya Vasilyena can bear it for long; lively, alert, impressionable people who talk about their calling and about serving the ideal are soon weary of it and give up the work." [With that passage, Chekhov interrupts his narrative for the sake of more critical social commentary. Russia is in such bad shape its best people simply give up.]

--The cart driver claims that when a local school was being built, graft was rampant. Marya tries to dismiss it as nonsense, but Chekhov says no one believed her and thought she was both paid too much and guilty of graft herself. [This is a society where those on the bottom trust no one higher up the social ladder.]

Well that's pretty much it. For me, Chekhov may well have painted a compelling picture of a lonely woman deserving our sympathy -- "an emotionally moving tale," as Saunders put it -- but only to serve a greater purpose: a scathing critique of the prevailing state of Russia at the arrival of the 20th century. Marya, like the cart, is a vehicle upon which the critique rides.

  

"Notions of the Sacred" by Ayşegül Savaş Seems Mistitled

 "Values" is a word frequently tossed about.  Although there can be an overlap, one's values are not the same as one's morals. Values are what one thinks are more important as opposed to less important, or not important at all.

For instance, while it is far from immoral to pull out a cell phone and answer a message at dinner, an important family value might be no electronic devices at the dinner table. 

I bring this up because values seem to loom large in "Notions of the Sacred," a short story by Ayşegül Savaş in the Dec. 26, 2022 electronic edition of The New Yorker.

The story begins with an unnamed protagonist relating how she had entered a new dimension upon learning that she had become pregnant -- almost as though she had become like the Virgin Mary in scenes of the Annunciation. 

She's unmarried and the pregnancy was unintended, the product of a brief affair with a man she would prefer not learn what happened and become upset. "I just wanted to enjoy my new state."

Thus far, it seems what is important to this woman -- what she values -- is her pregnancy and presumably the welfare of the child since she isn't inclined to get an abortion. 

But as time goes by, it becomes increasingly clear that what she actually values most is her lost friendship with a college friend named Zoe -- lost because they had "grown apart over the years," in part as a result of a careless comment one had made. But then one day, after Zoe and her husband had moved to a nearby town, it was Zoe who had gotten back in touch, in part to disclose her own pregnancy.

Eventually, a certain development occurs (I won't totally spoil the story) and it turns out what is most important to Savaş' protagonist is whether Zoe will still like her or not after what has happened. I found it a curious sense of values. Somehow, this woman doesn't appear to have her priorities straight.  

A question along those lines does come up in the usual New Yorker author interview, but Savaş' answer fails to explain why the protagonist considers one thing more important than another. Rather, she ends a somewhat rambling response with a complaint about "the way that the sacred and the body have been commodified in New Age discourse" -- which seems to relate more to the title of the story than to what the tale comes across as being all about.  It's about values in my humble estimation. 

Matthew Klam's Hectic Depiction of a Slice of Society

 Matthew Klam's "The Other Party" in the Dec. 12, 2022, online version of The New Yorker is another example of short fiction as a snapshot in time as opposed to a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end. It's also fiction for our time in that it offers a convincing depiction of a contemporary inter-generational relationship, in this case a father and his teenage daughter in a very white middle-class neighborhood of Washington DC, as evidenced by a reference to Wisconsin Ave. 

Having lived there for 20 years, I know it well.

The wife and mother of the family is present too, but she doesn't loom particular large in the sequence of events. That's because in the pandemic, she has moved her practice into the basement of their house and is depicted as dealing onscreen with an endless stream of patients "in states of dislocation and despair." Having recently lost a job, dad, the chief protagonist, is managing quotidian affairs, 

Publication of the piece is well-timed in that it depicts a hectic pace of events connected with the Christmas season -- a neighborhood party centered on a traditional decorated cookie swap lubricated by a bowl of punch for the older generation and something far less structured, and, given the state of the world, a lot more dangerous for the teenagers.

Dad's method of coping seems to be "go with flow" because there is really no alternative.

Klam's prose style is almost stream of conscious in nature, mostly from the father's point of view.  It's as though readers are seeing and hearing the smallest of developments, as they take place, in exquisite and often colorful detail. The mix becomes increasingly cacophonous as the chief protagonist attempts to deal with the cookies, think about his wife, cope with rapidly changing developments involving his daughter and her friends, and try to absorb and properly relate to a piece of very bad news about a long-time neighbor and friend of his own.

The amount of detail is so rich and the flow of events so fast-paced I personally felt rather exhausted by the time I reached the end of the piece -- and very impressed with Klam's ability to convincingly assemble and depict so much information. 

What the point of all of this?  Hard to say. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is fundamentally a snapshot in time of a certain strata of contemporary society. There is a stab at a conclusion with a somewhat sappy message (although one with which I can identify) -- but the main point seems to be that life is increasingly messy: don't fight it. 

Danielle Dutton's "Wonderful Description" -- of Vulnerability

 A lot of contemporary short fiction seems to take the form of a snapshot in time as opposed to a story -- the latter traditionally having a beginning, middle and end, the end being something that brings all the threads together and ties them up in a neat, satisfying bow. Well, of course there have always been exceptions and especially after Modernism arrived, but I think it is safe to say readers generally expect to know what has happened and why when they reach the end of a piece.

But one might also consider abstract art where the notion often is: "What it means is whatever it means to you." 

Or as I have written previously, the appeal of fiction for an average reader (if there is such a person) may be whether the reader can identify with a character in the piece of writing in question. 

Such thoughts came to mind when I read "My Wonderful Description of Flowers," by Danielle Dutton, in the Nov. 28, 2022 electronic version of The New Yorker. It's basically a snapshot in time in the life of a middle-aged, intellectual woman who seems to find some sort of danger lurking in every corner of her otherwise ordinary life -- ordinary in today's world, Dutton quickly makes clear, by providing her protagonist with a videogame loving, gender non-conforming child who uses the pronoun "their" as opposed to his or her. The subsequent prose is carefully constructed so as to never identify the child by name. 

Well, that's one of several mysteries. The woman's husband, who readers are told never has dreams of any consequence, suddenly dreams his wife has left him. A man the woman may have known in the past persistently seeks to meet her. The woman's husband and child aren't home when they are expected to be and don't respond to calls and texts. All this seemingly happens in a short space of time, although the passage of time is rather vaguely depicted. 

This is a woman whose life appears to be sliding off the rails. Her response: stay on the rails and ride a commuter train past her stop to the end of the line where only one other passenger gets off and, well, there is a bit of a mystery to that person as well. What's out there?  The once-endless prairie, one is told in the usual New Yorker interview. Now more just an idea than a reality. The reassurance of nature, bringing to mind perhaps the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

What will happen to the woman out there as darkness settles in? Not reassurance, but more danger? 

While Dutton says in her interview the story is littered with references to "other texts and media," it basically relies on an age-old literary gimmick to keep readers going: "Something is about to happen: what can it be?"

My guess is that readers who like this story best will be those who can identify with the apparent fragility of Ms. Dutton's protagonist, The attribute that arguably most distinguishes a woman from a man is a sense of vulnerability. That's ever-present in this story.

One last observation: in littering her fiction with references to other works and then, in her books (as opposed to in this short piece of fiction), spelling out the connections in "pages of notes," Dutton is channeling the approach taken by T.S. Eliot in "The Waste Land" -- although initially in his case not by design (the pages of notes that is; not the references themselves.) 

Pacific Northwest Ballet Faces Financial Challenges Ahead

 The other day, my wife and I took our lives in our hands and went to a live performance of the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) for the first time in a couple of years. In times past we had been subscribers and I had been a contributor.

Well, that's an exaggeration of course: we wore masks, had seats where we were unlikely to be breathing much of anyone else's air (there was a decent crowd present, but the large auditorium was far from full) and avoided doing things we used to enjoy -- drinks and some food in the foyer, a post-show Q&A with one of the dancers. 

As live performances of one sort or another have returned, there have been no reports in Seattle of Covid outbreaks at such venues. While we were at the ballet, the Dave Matthews Band was playing in a sold-out arena nearby with no reports of any problems.  But, as a couple of our fully vaccinated family members can attest, Covid remains a significant threat and one senses it is still wise to carefully ration occasions when one is not going to be socially distant, keeping one's priorities straight (family and close friends first) in the process.

The good news: the quality level of PNB's performances remains very high despite a couple of very difficult years including a lengthy stretch of no live performances because of Covid. PNB is one of the few ballet companies in the U.S. with a full orchestra (plus a highly rated school). If the live music ever goes, also-ran status could lie ahead. 

We saw a mixed rep called "The Seasons' Canon" that was a bit of a smorgasbord as mixed reps frequently are: an opening number that served to advertise the company's commitment -- first and foremost it seems these days -- to diversity; then a classic Balanchine offering for the traditionalists, and finally an extravaganza (54 dancers on stage -- how many U.S. ballet companies can do that?) for those who enjoy spectacle -- and "something new" -- first and foremost. The last was a big hit with audiences according to a couple of home-town reviews, neither of which had a single critical word to say about anything.

In my humble opinion, while visually compelling and attractively danced to a version of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," what the final piece had to do with "ballet" was far less noticeable than what it didn't. 

I mention all of this because as a contributor in past years, I became curious about how the company was doing financially, prompted in part because of an email I received from PNB's director of development (fund raising) after I purchased my tickets. The email contained a letter from PNB's Artistic Director, Peter Boal, a distinguished former dancer with the New York City Ballet who has now headed PNB for almost a couple of decades -- generally to great critical acclaim.

The letter began: "We have a very exciting rep in store for you. This is one you will want to see more than once and one you’ll want to recommend to friends, acquaintances, strangers ... everyone!"

Well -- I did see it more than once, the second time digitally for a modest $35. (Because of union-related issues, the digital version was available for only five days after a week or so of live performances ended, which is unfortunate because PNB's digital-only offerings during the height of the Covid lockdowns attracted viewers from around the U.S. and various foreign countries.)

In any event, I'm sure you got the message from Mr. Boal's letter: PNB badly needs more ticket sales.

To understand what's happening, one has to go back to the last time PNB released an annual report (separate from its annual, required financial statement as a tax-exempt entity). That was before the pandemic, for the company's fiscal year ending June 2019.

"This past year was challenging financially. All of us know art can only exist in concert with wise
financial stewardship. We understand the need to present excellence in all we do, but only with
the practicality of our limited resources. When necessary, we make the hard decisions,
evaluating numbers of staff or dancers, adjusting programs, and seeking your help to build
revenue and enthusiasm."  So said Mr. Boal, observing that his role was more than just that of an artistic director. "At times, I'm the best person to find a strategic expense reduction," he said.

More in the way of explanation was provided by Ellen Walker, who had just finished her fifth year as PNB's Executive Director -- in essence, the company's business manager. 

Looking back over the past year, she noted that various external economic and political events had thrown "a disruptive, negative halo over The Nutcracker sales." (More on the critical importance of The Nutcracker later.)  "Sleeping Beauty" sales were on track to earn back a significant measure of that loss when Seattle's February snowstorms brought the region to a halt."  While that elaborate, expensive, somewhat out-of-date, three-act production (thereafter retired from PNB's repertoire) went on as scheduled, "our expected upside upside from ticket sales evaporated with the weather."

About six months after that fiscal year ended, the Covid pandemic arrived. 

In fiscal 2019, PNB Nutcracker ticket sales were just short of $5.7 million, down about 11% from $6.4 million the previous year.  Why is that such a blow?  Total ticket sales for the year (including Sleeping Beauty) were $11.58 million, meaning The Nutcracker alone accounted for just short of 50% of the total. In the preceding year, they had been slightly over 50%.

In the most recent fiscal year, ended June 2022 (the first year in which the company got back to live performances), Nutcracker ticket sales totaled just under $4.9 million (thanks in part by my two granddaughters attending for the first time, in their cute dresses and face masks), or about 49% of total sales.

While PNB and other ballet companies talk a lot about new productions -- and rightly so (what would choreographers and dancers do without them even if they are often not as memorable as one would hope), PNB might be more accurately called The Pacific Northwest Nutcracker Company. Same goes for many other ballet companies, I am sure. 

In contrast to $11.58 million in total ticker sales in the year ended June 2019, expenses for the company and its performances totaled just under $18.4 million. In other words, ticket sales covered just 63%. If administrative expenses of $2.2 million and fund-raising costs of $1.2 million were thrown in, ticker sales covered only 53% of costs.

Now, let's be fair: by the time fiscal 2019 had rolled around, the company had been in operation for about 48 years, and I suspect the ratios for many of those years were even more challenging. Contributions, by far the most important of which (before government support during the pandemic -- more on that soon) were from individuals. Corporate support -- despite the presence of corporate names everywhere -- have been pathetic, and especially so given Seattle's significant number of hugely profitable companies.

Well, if the last fiscal year before the pandemic appeared to be signaling the need for belt tightening, audience building (PNB with the aid of a significant grant has been trying, but it is clearly and uphill effort [thank goodness for all those little girls with ballerina dreams dancing in their heads]) and a search for additional contributions, the current outlook is perhaps even more dauting. 

Where is Makenzie Scott (the former wife of Jeff Bezos, of Amazon fame) when PNB needs her?  Hopefully waiting in the wings as she continues to rapidly dispose of her divorce-settlement billions. In quasi-Marxian terms, "her" billions are simply the surplus profits Amazon scooped up from American consumers, in large part, one can argue, by eliminating much of its competition through predatory pricing in its early years. Not so much now: the company routinely advises customers products on its website can often be obtained at lower cost elsewhere, but then there is often Amazon's "free" shipping. In other words, customers have been getting "taken" (to use a polite term) both coming and going.

Why does the appearance of an "angel" donor matter more for PNB now than in the past?

Let's take a look at the most recent fiscal year.

PNB got a whopping (relative to its size) $12 million in support from the federal government, little if any of which is likely to be repeated absent new government initiatives. Of the total $8 million constituted an award from the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) fund, a federal Covid relief effort that ceased accepting new applications in Aug. 2021. 

Fortunately, thanks in part to other federal aid, PNB needed only about $3 million of that to help cover fiscal 2022 expenses and the remainder was set aside to help cover expected shortfalls during the next three years or so. 

The other aid was just over $3 million in Paycheck Protection (another Covid relief program) loan forgiveness and just over $1 million in federal tax credits. Tax credits for an entity that pays no federal tax? It's explained somewhere in the financial report, available online, if anyone is really interested.

All of which leaves one wondering -- at a time when Covid still calls for caution. There are huge billboard ads for The Nutcracker in Seattle at present and hopefully the weather and the pandemic will cooperate. In the first half of 2023, the company is again scheduled to perform it's excellent version of "Gisele" and I'm looking forward to seeing it and especially if I can catch my current favorite ballerina -- Angelica Generosa -- in the title role. 

That's it for now, but I may have one or more posts on the company's recent mixed rep, mentioned above.