Cut and Run

We hear much from the Adminstration and its surrogates these days about how those opposed to the war in Iraq want to 'cut and run.' Those surrogates include my representative, Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (Ohio 15th distict), the 4th ranking Republican in the House and a staunch supporter of Secretar Rumsfeld. As she said recently, he's doing a good job, and he should be allowed to do his job. (She also said she'd visited Iraq and all the people there were delighted we'd liberated them. Guess she hasn't seen much news coverage in the last year or so.)

I thought I'd check out the phrase. Turns out it means rather the opposite of what the Adminstration thinks it means. 'Cut and run' is a nautical term. Say you're the Captain of a ship, tied up at a dock in a harbor--as here, the Clipper City is docked in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

And a storm starts brewing.

photo by STG1 Kathryn Woods Prentice, USN

What do you do? If you stay docked, turbulent waters are apt rock your ship back and forth, smashing it against the dock. So you cut the line that secures you to the dock, and run before the storm into open water, staying clear of docks (and other ships) until the storm passes.

Seems to me that cutting and running makes a lot of sense. That's what we should be doing in Iraq: cutting away from our losses and running ahead of the storm, rather than doggedly staying lashed to a bad policy and getting battered against the docks. That's why I'm supporting Mary Jo Kilroy for Congress in the 15th District.

Travels and readings

Much travel of late; here are my colleagues Nena Couch and Beth Kattelman and me with Janet Waldo Lee at her home in Encino, California, in September; Janet's the widow of playwright Robert E. Lee, herself a wellknown voiceover actress (Judy Jetson, most famously; also Morticia Addams in the animated Addams Family, Penelope and the Pussycats, and many, many more).

In Los Angeles in late September; here I am with fellow Fellows of the College of the American Theatre John Cauble of U.C.L.A. and screenwriter/playwright Fay Kanin; we were at the presentation of the Margo Jones Medal posthumously to Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, both of whom were also Fellows of the organization based at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.


and with Columbus friend Carol Shelton at the Theatre and Aging seminar in July