Character

December 6, 2025

What’s the difference between virtue and virtue signaling?

This was the question that occurred to me today as I read a delightful article, “A Sign of Virtue,” by Laura Hagar Rush in my hometown newspaper, The Sebastopol Times.

Sebastopol is a pretty little town (population 7,800) in Sonoma County, California, with “Black Lives Matter” painted in huge letters on the town plaza and a sign inside the public library promoting transgender rights. Many well-intentioned folks have preachy lawn signs informing passerby that, in effect, the occupants are not embarrassed by their moral grandstanding. Sometimes referred to as humblebragging, I call our local version Sebastopol-ier than thou.

But at least our small town groupthink is better than the vice signaling coming out of the White House, or what’s left of that building after a large part of it was torn down, soon to be replaced by a monument to a little man’s big ego. The ostentatious greed, corruption, and cruelty currently on display in Washington make the smugness of my trendy little burg seem saintly by comparison.

So I was charmed to read Laura’s article https://www.sebastopoltimes.com/p/a-sign-of-virtue about a local Sebastopol couple who have found a way to promote thoughtfulness and character building without talking down to their neighbors. Their idea is simple: twice a month, on the new moon and the full moon, they put a sign in front of their home with one word on it. That one word is a positive character trait, such as appreciation, courage, forgiveness, grace, honor, hope, integrity, and reverence. They have posted a different word 100 times over the last four years.

In my haste to run errands I have failed to notice their one-word signs as I have driven by their house. Maybe if I had practiced more patience and mindfulness, two of their posted virtues, I might have been more observant.

I like being inspired rather than lectured to, so their consciousness raising is the kind of high ground that I can aspire to. I’m not woke and don’t want to be, but I’m working on a different kind of awakening.

Thank you neighbors, for your kind and sincere character reminders.

Belonging

October 17, 2025

A couple of days ago Laurie, our rural postal carrier, saw me in my driveway and drove out of her way to welcome me back to the neighborhood after my six year absence. Many neighbors have stopped to chat and tell me how glad they are that I have returned to my home of 34 years. It feels good to be welcomed back to a place where I belong.

Coincidentally several classmates have “friended” me on Facebook in the past week, thereby reminding me that I belong to the extended family of Acalanes High School.

All of this has got me thinking: what is/are my community(ies)?

My siblings and cousins are my biological family. My Wednesday hiking group is an exercise and social community, and my weekly meditation group on Zoom is a spiritual support group. But I don’t feel any sense of community with other 49er football fans or fellow graduates of UC Berkeley. And I don’t feel much loyalty these days to the Democratic party, although I do appreciate Franklin Roosevelt’s creation of Social Security and Lyndon Johnson’s establishment of Medicare.

Part of my issue with the Democratic party (and the Republicans too, for that matter) is their emphasis on divisive identity politics. The motto of the United States is E Pluribus Unum, or “out of many, one.” In other words, unity, togetherness. But the Democrats, with their well-intentioned desire to champion the underdogs, have all too often emphasized our differences – racial, gender, sexual orientation – rather than our common heritage as Americans. And on the far left of the political spectrum, especially at some universities, we are told simplistically that white people are oppressors and everyone else are the oppressed victims of the Eurocentric culture.

The far right is even worse, with its promotion of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

So I prefer Mark Twain’s definition of patriotism: “Supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

The America I belong to is a great nation that has every right to be proud of its impressive social progress and freedoms, even though that progress and those freedoms are under attack today. But I believe that the land of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln is resilient and will survive and thrive in the long run.

I also believe that there is something bigger than my country to which I owe my allegiance and my appreciation: our planet. We do not all belong to the same country, and I don’t advocate open borders in this or any other nation, but we do belong to the same human race that lives on Gaia, or Mother Earth. That common home deserves our loyalty and our protection.

I’ll go one step further: I believe that we all belong to what the writer Eckhart Tolle and others have called the New Earth, or an awakened consciousness of oneness with each other, with nature, and with the Great Spirit, also known as The Force, Source Energy, God, Christ consciousness, Buddha’s enlightenment, or whatever name you want to give to the cosmic Love energy.

So even though I’m a short term pessimist, I remain a long term optimist because I believe that it is the destiny of the human race to evolve to an awareness of our shared divinity.

For now, I’m just grateful to be back home among my human, oak, redwood, and animal neighbors, where I belong.

Reaching for the Stars

September 2, 2025

Sometimes, in the midst of positive developments in one’s life, an unpleasant reality check occurs to remind one that disappointment and success can be two sides of the same coin. Yin and Yang, anyone?

A few days ago I was in the midst of a stressful weeklong move from my apartment of six years back to this cottage in rural Sonoma County where I had lived previously for 34 years. I was excited to come back to my little house in the country, not only because I love the beautiful neighborhood, but also because in my absence my landlady had significantly renovated the home into an elegant, light and airy refuge from the workaday world.

I rented a U-Haul truck and drove myself and two local laborers between the old apartment and the new/old home. Marcelo and Adolfo were strong, hard workers with almost no English, so I enjoyed using my Spanish for eight hours. I treated them well, praising their skill and appreciating their labor. They had neglected to bring their lunch, so with them still on the clock I drove them several miles to a store where they could get some food. And I paid them more than we had agreed upon.

After dropping them off at their local labor center I returned to my new home to begin unpacking. That’s when I noticed that my two iPads were gone.

I couldn’t prove that one or both guys took the devices. All I knew was that I had left them plugged into outlets at my old apartment, and I never unplugged and retrieved them. In the chaos of the move I had not noticed their absence. And now I realized my loss.

At first I blamed myself for being so trusting and naive. Then, after that self recrimination, I turned my anger toward Marcelo and Adolfo, though I wasn’t sure which one to resent.

What upset me more than the loss of a $500 iPad (the second one was old and of little value) was a sense of violation of my space and my trust in my fellow human beings. I had been respectful and verbally grateful to them, and now one of them had stabbed me in the back. But which one? In my head I debated the likelihood of each one as the potential criminal.

But after 24 hours of guilt and censure, I realized that in the grand scheme of things my loss wasn’t that great. Other people have suffered from serious health problems, the death of people close to them, messy divorces, or loss of their homes, and I’m bitter about a thief stealing an electronic device? So I said to myself, “Lighten up, Dave. You have excellent health, a lovely home, and enough money, and other than this incident, your move went quite well. These guys have far less than you do, and even though there was no excuse for what one (both?) of them did, let go of your outrage, forgive him/them, and reach for (what Nichiren Buddhists call) a higher life condition.” So eventually, after much grumbling and self pity, I did.

And for the next three nights I walked a short distance from my front door and gazed in wonder at the Milky Way, with the stars framed by redwoods, oaks, and apple trees, as I listened to the music of the crickets and marveled at my incredible good fortune.

Today, after writing all of the above, on a whim I called my next door neighbor at my former residence and asked him to check my empty old apartment to see if by any chance I had left my iPads there.

I had. Marcelo and Adolfo had not ripped me off. I had imagined the most negative scenario, and in my mind had falsely accused two innocent men.

Oops.

Maybe reaching for the stars sometimes means reaching within to forgive oneself for assuming the worst about others.

Superman

July 14, 2025

“We all want to be Superman.”

So says James Gunn, director of the latest Superman movie that came out three days ago and which I saw today.

And because we all want to be Superman (or at least most men and boys have wanted to be superheroes; I don’t know what role models inspire women and girls), we project our beliefs and biases onto him. So in this film, Superman, originally an extraterrestrial from the planet Krypton, is not so subtly portrayed as an undocumented alien being persecuted by U.S. government immigration agents. And on the other side of the political spectrum, some supporters of the current American president have created a poster showing his face attached to the body of Superman.

But I’m not interested in the political interpretations of left wing and right wing spin doctors. And I didn’t watch the movie to see all the action sequences, explosions, special effects, and bad guys, though this story has all of those in spades. Nor was I drawn to the love story between Superman and Lois Lane, the journalist co-worker of his alter ego and alias, Clark Kent, though the chemistry between them was touching.

What has always attracted me to the Superman story ever since I read his comic books as a boy was his heroic character. Yes, I enjoyed his adventures, his superpowers, and his fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way.” But unlike the darker mystery of Batman, Superman was more wholesome, a clean-cut all American boy, sometimes dismissed as the Big Blue Boy Scout.

Adopted as a baby by Kansas farmers Ma and Pa Kent, Clark Kent absorbed the decency and morality of his salt of the earth parents. So as he grew up and realized his special extraterrestrial abilities, he became known as the Man of Steel, but remained humble and was not corrupted by his miraculous powers.

And in this latest feel-good iteration of the saga, the handsome muscular hero, played by David Corenswet, is courageous yet vulnerable, compassionate and flawed, charming and goofy. The child from outer space became a down to earth human being on a mission to love and protect the human race.

His nobility reminds me of valiant characters in some of the classic Westerns such as Shane, High Noon, and The Magnificent Seven. I’m grateful that I grew up at a time of positive role models in books, movies, and TV, because nowadays it seems that many men and boys are lost in a modern malaise of drugs, technology, and a lack of purpose and soulful identity.

In this heartfelt film, Superman, for all his good looks, charisma, and strength, is most notable for his kindness and idealism. He truly wants to help people, wherever in the world he finds them.

Is Superman a naive Pollyanna? Maybe. Is the movie corny? Sure – to some people. But not to me.

At a time of ugly headlines and divisive rhetoric, of wars and the greedy short sighted destruction of our Earth home, I find any portrayal of integrity, selflessness, and decency inspiring. And this man, this super man, is a reminder of what it really means to be an American, to be a human being. Not the chasing of wealth and power and fame, but the pursuit of what Abraham Lincoln described as “the better angels of our nature.”

Splendor and Shadow in the Range of Light

May 19, 2025

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike. John Muir

When I headed to Yosemite National Park a couple of weeks ago, I expected spectacular scenery and strenuous hiking. I found both. But I also encountered something else that I did not anticipate: small-minded Sierra Club virtue signaling.

During my weeklong sojourn in the land of sheer granite cliffs, gushing waterfalls, and massive sequoia redwoods, my body was challenged by steep mountain trails and my spirit was lifted by roaring river rapids and plunging cascades of frothing white water drama. But my patience was tested by crowds of fellow visitors and by my own judgmental condemnation of judgmental environmentalists.

Yosemite is, unofficially, the first national park in the world, set aside for preservation in 1864 by the U.S. Congress and President Abraham Lincoln. Many others have contributed to its protection, including President Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and a friend of Muir’s named Joseph LeConte. John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892 and Joseph LeConte was an early director of it, so in 1903 the Sierra Club named its Yosemite Valley lodge after LeConte.

But in 2016 the Sierra Club discovered that Joseph LeConte and John Muir were human. LeConte had promoted white racial superiority, and in his youth Muir had said some unkind things about black people and American Indians. So the morally superior Sierra Club leadership decided that LeConte and Muir could not pass its ideological purity test, and it cancelled LeConte and removed his name from its lodge in the valley, as I learned when I went there. The Sierra Club zealots have not yet cancelled founder John Muir, but they have considered doing so.

To my knowledge Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt have not been condemned by the Sierra Club – yet. But in 2021 the San Francisco Board of Education attempted to rename schools named after both of those men and John Muir, as well as schools named for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others, for whatever transgressions offended the school board. So the Sierra Club is hardly alone in its politically correct pandering to current sensibilities.

But if we continue to insist upon judging historical figures by the latest standards of social conduct and etiquette, we will eventually realize that all of the heroes of the past – and present – are defective. And not just the heroes. I bet that if you could put the lives of the Sierra Club leadership and the Board of Education under a microscope, you’d find that every single man and woman of them is flawed in one way or another. Probably in several ways. Just like the rest of us.

So I decided that every day during my stay in the Sierras, the mountains that John Muir called the Range of Light, I would rise above the pettiness of the leftwing groupthink dogma and celebrate the magnificence of Yosemite that has been bequeathed to us by Muir, LeConte, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and other imperfect beings.

Every day in Yosemite I said prayers of appreciation to the sequoias or oaks and to the aforementioned defenders of its mountains and river and forests. Every day I gave back healing energy to Half Dome and El Capitan and the Merced River, as well as to Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil Falls, Vernal Falls, and Nevada Falls. Every day I touched some part of nature with my hands and said “Holy, holy, holy” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Every day I gave thanks to Gaia for its healing energy, and gave thanks to what Muir called “the grandeur of the Yosemite temple.”

And here and now I leave you with three quotes from John Muir’s book My First Summer in the Sierra:

Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.

Nature’s inexhaustible abundance…is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and soon we cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.

I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built; and rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

Stone Tablets

April 7, 2025

If you could be God for a day and make up ten commandments, what would they be?

That question occurred to me a couple days ago after I went for a hike with friends in the lush green oak woodlands that grace the foothills of the Mayacamas mountains. As we walked past orange poppies and purple irises and little white flowers, the conversation turned to the political and economic chaos emanating out of Washington these days. After listening to my companions complaining about the U.S. president and their agreeing with the anger of various resistance figures, I thought to myself, “I know what you’re against, but what are you for?”

So when I got home I decided to see what I could come up with as a modern day Moses bringing God’s words down from the Sonoma County mountains. It’s taken me a couple days to translate the stone tablets, but here’s what God gave me:

1. Thou shalt respect the trees, the animals, and the oceans of Mother Gaia.

2. Thou shalt be fruitful in creativity, not in multiplying your population.

3. Thou shalt worship love and kindness, not the false gods of the almighty dollar and the almighty gun.

4. Thou shalt recognize the oneness and interdependence of all life forms, while tolerating the diversity of spiritual practices and beliefs.

5. Thou shalt achieve a balance between free enterprise and social well being.

6. Thou shalt create social harmony by encouraging equality – not equality of educational outcomes or musical talent or bank accounts or ethnic/gender quotas, but by honoring the dignity of each individual and family and nurturing their growth, prosperity, and personal responsibility.

7. Thou shalt allow for a variety of gender and sexual orientations, while respecting the different levels of cultural acceptance for such identities and behaviors.

8. Thou shalt meditate, breathe slowly, choose positive intentions and thoughts, raise your vibrational frequency, and listen to your inner guidance or intuition.

9. Thou shalt sing, dance, and appreciate.

10. Thou shalt have fun.

And what, dear reader, do you imagine would be inscribed on the stone tablets that you would bring down from the mountain?

A Dialogue of Self and Soul

March 6, 2025

I don’t normally choose to reveal too much in these blog pages about my rich inner life, in part because I’m a private man, and in part because I’m not sure how much my readers want to know about my spiritual pursuits.

But there are great changes underway in this country and on this planet, so perhaps in response to these events it’s time for me to give you a glimpse into my inner world.

For several years now I’ve been writing a daily journal, inspired by the book Writing Down Your Soul by Janet Conner. These morning pages as I call them are an opportunity for me to vent my frustrations, record my successes and failures, express my appreciation, and ask questions of my higher self.

I’m not always relaxed enough or open enough to receive answers to my questions. Or maybe I just need to learn to listen better to my intuition when it speaks to me. But sometimes, something – soul, buddha nature, God, whatever – is able to get past my defenses, past my opinions, past my mind chatter, to touch my heart. Sometimes these messages come through dreams, sometimes through meditation or chanting, and sometimes through my morning pages.

This week I came across what I wrote the morning of May 9, 2022:

Dear Soul,

What‘s on your mind? I wonder if you and I have anything significant to contribute to others, to society, to the planet during these crazy political and ecological times, or whether we will just mark time until I die? I’d prefer the former, but I’m willing to accept the latter if that is our soul’s destiny/choice/karma. It’s hard to be a bystander in this time of upheaval, but maybe our job is to work on ourself and be an example, rather than preach to people in my writings. So here I am, Soul – thy will be done. What’s on your mind? Do you have any preferences, any words of wisdom, any guidance?

Dear David,

Of course we have preferences. We prefer that you and I and we work together in whatever course of action or inaction that we choose… Yes, I hear your doubts, Dave – you just thought that I was being wishy washy and non committal. But what would you have me do – make predictions about the future? Or tell you what to do next? All you and I can ever really do is be aligned with each other and with the god Force in each moment, and then make choices based upon our alignment and our intuition.

There are many larger forces at work here and now on this planet, and Putin is just one manifestation of a dying order, as is Trump. Something greater is emerging on Planet Earth, and Trump and Putin and Xi and their countries will have to adapt to changing realities in the evolving collective human consciousness. Yes, the coming months and years will get ugly at times, but your job Dave is to remain aligned with the Greater Good and not let yourself be swayed by the cheap dramas being perpetrated by ignorant fools. Just keep being centered on your [Buddhist practice and your soul] and you will play a constructive role in your remaining time on the physical plane. We love and appreciate you, Dave, and we haven’t forgotten you. Keep up the good work – we see what you’re “up” to, and we approve with heart – heartily approve.

Love, Jacob

In reviewing that writing session, it now seems to me that the first paragraph directed to me was from my soul, and then the second paragraph shifted to a message from Jacob, one of my spirit guides with whom I have been consciously communicating off and on since 1988.

I don’t know if Jacob is my guardian angel or an ascended master or a buddha from another dimension, but whoever he is, he’s a wise and loving consciousness who offers kindness and encouragement when I need it. Such wisdom is available to each of us, but first we have to ask, and then we need to listen to the answers in whatever form they come to us.

In these times of turmoil I like to recall an excerpt from A Dialogue of Self and Soul by my favorite poet, W.B. Yeats:

When such as I cast out remorse,

So great a sweetness flows into the breast.

We must laugh and we must sing,

We are blessed by everything,

And everything we look upon is blessed.

Fly Higher

January 24, 2025

Sometimes it takes a dream to make someone wake up.

I’m being hunted by a killer, pursued down a street and then chased into the killer’s home. The would-be assassin has superpowers or magic, and I have none, but try as he might he can’t kill me. Even though I have no weapons, I’m resourceful and agile. We keep fighting to a draw, and I keep resisting and then escaping, but neither of us can kill the other. Our battles are stressful, intense, and endless. Then I hear, or sense, or know, a message: “Don’t feed the beast. Step out of the story, and fly higher.”

As I awakened yesterday morning with those words, I realized that on one level I could follow that advice by simply getting out of bed, thus ending the dream. But as I did so, I intuitively grasped the deeper meaning of the message.

Like many of you, I have been disturbed by some of the harsh rhetoric, threats, and chaos emanating from Washington this inauguration week. As a lifelong consumer of current events journalism, I often get temporarily sucked into the dramas and conflicts of politics, wars, and social issues. And I intend to continue being well informed on many of those developments.

But it’s one thing to educate myself about concerns such as climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or having a convicted felon in the White House. It’s quite another matter if I allow myself to be triggered enough to participate in the culture of contempt, or what some sociologists have called the outrage industrial complex, that is being exacerbated by greedy social media companies, malevolent Russian hatemongers, and self-serving politicians.

When my dream voice told me “Don’t feed the beast,” I understood as I woke up that it was advising me to cease feeding the primitive human instincts of anger, resentment, and revenge, and instead to replace that resistance with something more positive.

I can, eventually, learn to let go of my story of who I think I am – my ego – and let go of the tribalism, nationalism, and delusional stories of who the human race thinks we are. I need to get my spiritual pilot’s license, and fly higher.

How do I do that? How do we do that?

I’m attempting to raise my vibrational frequency, my attitude, my consciousness, through singing, prayers, breathing meditation, positive intentions, and reading inspirational materials. And elevating my awareness of divinity through an appreciation of nature. Oak trees are my saints, redwood forests are my cathedrals, and the crashing waves of the nearby Pacific Ocean are my heaven.

But an interesting question remains: who, or what, was that dream voice, the author of that profound message?

Onward Christian Soldier

December 30, 2024

In a nation that worships money and guns, Jimmy Carter was that rarest of breeds – a real Christian.

When I learned yesterday that our 39th president had just died at the age of 100, I had mixed feelings. He’s the only president I’ve ever seen in person, when he was in a limo near the Oakland airport in 1979. I voted for him in 1976, but in 1980 I cast a protest vote for a third party candidate since Carter had no chance of defeating Ronald Reagan.

As president, Carter did several things that alienated me. At the time I felt that he was weak and incompetent in dealing with the Iran hostage crisis, although with the passage of time I must admit that he did succeed in bringing the hostages home safely while avoiding war with Iran. I also didn’t like his naive acceptance of massive numbers of refugees, including about 135,000 Cubans in the Mariel boatlift, many of whom committed criminal acts of violence after they arrived here. Like many religious people, he could be sanctimonious, and like almost all politicians, he had a big ego.

But in a complicated, dangerous, imperfect world, Carter was a visionary. His hard work and idealism paid off with the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel that has endured to this day. His wisdom and generosity in returning sovereignty of the Panama Canal to that country was an act of justice that created goodwill throughout Latin America. His championing of human rights worldwide led to the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners in Indonesia, Argentina, and elsewhere, many of whom had been tortured.

President Carter promoted environmental conservation all over the world, and he helped prevent deforestation in Nepal, Costa Rica, and other countries. And he protected over 100 million acres of wilderness in Alaska. He was way ahead of his time as an advocate for clean and renewable energy, and to set an example he put solar panels on the roof of the White House. His successor, Ronald Reagan, chose to make the country reliant on fossil fuels, and took down those solar panels.

It was after his presidency that Jimmy Carter was arguably even more admirable. Unlike several past presidents he didn’t try to get rich on the speaking circuit. Instead he lived a life of humble service to humanity as a private citizen. He volunteered as a construction worker for Habitat For Humanity, helping to build homes well into his 90’s. He was active and influential in nearly eliminating tropical diseases such as river blindness and Guinea worm in poor countries. He promoted democracy around the world by leading election monitoring and mediation efforts. He “waged peace,” as he put it, all over the planet.

I don’t share Carter’s religious views, but as our country prepares for a new president who is the antithesis of Carter’s morality, I think it’s important to remember and honor a true Christian man of decency, honesty, and integrity.

Wicked

November 30, 2024

As a lifelong Oz fan (I have 41 of the books in the series, and a miniature Oz flag on my desk), I wasn’t sure if I’d like the new movie Wicked when I went to see it yesterday.

I had seen the Broadway version in New York in 2009, and found the play entertaining but not memorable. The movie and the play tell a story of the rivalry and eventual friendship between two Ozian witches, Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West. While both characters were featured in L. Frank Baum’s first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Glinda continued to be a wise and loving presence in all the subsequent Oz books, the movie and the play Wicked invented a relationship between the two women that did not exist in Baum’s books.

As an Oz purist, I found myself initially resisting the revisionism of the Wicked theatrical production and the current film. After all, in Baum’s books, none of the witches were green, the Wizard wasn’t evil, and the primary female friendship was between Dorothy (who returned many times to visit and eventually live in Oz) and Princess Ozma, the fairy ruler of that magical kingdom.

Unlike the Wicked play and movie, the 1939 classic film starring Judy Garland as Dorothy captured the innocence and sweetness of the original Oz stories as written by Baum and his successor as Royal Historian of Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson. As Baum wrote in 1900 in his introduction to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: “(This book) aspires to be a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out.”

Yet even the 1939 film deviated at times from Baum’s formula for innocence, as over the years some children have found Margaret Hamilton’s performance as the Wicked Witch of the West to be terrifying. Still, I think Baum would have loved that MGM musical, especially Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

I’m not so sure that Baum would have approved of the “modernized fairy tale” of Wicked. He might have felt, as I did at first, that his story was hijacked in order to tell a completely different tale. But in spite of my mixed feelings about Wicked (my comments about Wicked from now on will be about the movie, not the play), I have to admit that overall the high energy, great dance choreography, and excellent acting made for a fun, dynamic show that overcame the darkness of some of the themes.

Was the Wicked Witch of the West really wicked? In Baum’s book, yes, but not in the Wicked movie. In this cinematic version she is given the name Elphaba and a green complexion, and she is bullied by her classmates and rejected by her father because of the color of her skin. Cynthia Erivo, a black actress turned green for this story, does a fine job portraying the misunderstood and mistreated Elphaba. Her opposite is Glinda, played with humor by Ariana Grande as a perky dumb blonde, the Oz version of Barbie. They hate each other until they love each other. Both actresses are terrific singers.

The one truly wicked character is the Wizard of Oz, for reasons that I won’t reveal here. But he unintentionally helps Elphaba to convert her anger into power, and that is a psychological lesson that I appreciate: changing poison into medicine. Our shadow side can serve us if we acknowledge it and harness its energy. Or so I hope, anyway.

Wicked is about 2.5 hours long, and this version is only Part 1; Part 2 comes out a year from now. For some people, five hours of Wicked might constitute one of the “heart-aches and nightmares” that Baum referred to.

Not for this Oz nerd. I’ll come back in a year to experience more of the “wonderment and joy” of this “modernized fairy tale.”