With all the anger and resentment being expressed toward illegal immigrants by Donald Trump and other candidates in this political season, it's worth risking a cliché or two to remind ourselves that we ARE, after all, a nation of immigrants.
Thomas Friedman of the NY Times has written, “Trump's ugly nativism undermines the civic ideals that make our melting pot work in ways no European or Asian country can match."
And recently, I had a dramatic encounter with that melting pot in a performance by the Lost Nation Theater troupe at the newly created Barre Granite Museum. It was a revival of the play "Stone" by Kim Bent, first produced in 2006, based on oral histories collected more than 70 years ago from granite workers and citizens in the Barre area. Seven actors play more than 50 roles, weaving together the stories of stone cutter and shed worker, carver and peddler, widow and bartender, grocer and farm girl.
The play juxtaposes dangerous work that can kill or maim a man suddenly or slowly, with the lifelong poverty of their widows, who struggle to survive by sewing, running a boarding house or even selling boot-leg liquor.
But there are light moments as well, with ethnic jokes of the period and a lusty sardonic chorus singing "In Barre, we all get along."
Adding to the normal willing suspension of disbelief was the setting in the newly created Vermont Granite Museum. It’s located in the old Jones Brothers granite shed in North Barre, where there’s also a Stone Arts School to teach stone carving.
The play was staged in a cavernous shed beneath a crane, surrounded by statues, carving, cutting and polishing machinery, and large photos of granite work in all types of weather. Among the statues are two of the Virgin Mary, perhaps destined for nearby Hope Cemetery.
I was reminded of Edgar Lee Masters' famous Spoon River anthology in which 212 separate characters demystify country life, and excavate the sub-surface of humanity.
After two and a half hours, the actors felt like "family," and during intermission even taught willing audience members a simple Italian folk dance. The play was accompanied by an ensemble of piano, accordion, guitar and fiddle playing Italian, Scots, Quebecois, and Irish folk-songs. Said one stonecutter in the play, "When I carve a name on a memorial, I make a memory of that life."
So much for today's political battle over illegal immigration - these immigrants literally made American history out of stone quarried from Vermont hills.
