I received a text message on January 8 from Mary, the Director of People’s Kitchen, asking if I could help serve the noon meal at the Homeless Shelter. I’d volunteered to go on December25, looking for something worthwhile to do the day after our Christmas Eve family gift exchange, but it was booked, and I’d ended up venturing to invite a co-worker who said she was alone and a random bunch of friends and neighbors over for a last minute get together which turned out unexpectedly festive.

Early for the appointment at the shelter, I decided to stop for a few minutes at the SLO Cemetery nearby.  Passing gravestones inscribed with allegories of the soul’s ascent, I approached our unmarked green burial plots where  a great blue heron stood motionless on the wrinkled lawn stalking gophers. I watched at a distance, clicking  with my camera phone, and then walked slowly closer to see it arise.

Basic Information

Project Title: Agro-Ecological Land Improvement Project on a 1.5 Acre City owned property newly added to the long-term lease held by the licensed non-profit City Farm SLO.

Location (County and Nearest City): San Luis Obispo County, City of San Luis Obispo

Distance to nearest city or census designated place: City of San Luis Obispo, Incorporated Place 68154, Census Tract 113
Located within a priority population:  ? Y ?x N [Census tract number]

Project Funding

CFCP Request Amount: $75,000

$ Match Amount: $7500 from City of San Luis Obispo

Status of Match: Confirmed by attached letter

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First Redbud

Aunt Gabi at 100

The last poem in Margaret Atwood’s new collection The Paper Boat

Sitting on my new couch, purchased to replace the three year old futon which got too stiff and slanted for my old back, I was reading Margaret Atwood’s recent memoir of this name, hard to put down because of 1) its transparent prose style 2) the out-loud laughs its humor continually elicited 3) my love for  her books as they appeared during the 1970’s when we were newcomers to Canada and 4) its references to people I had met (Bev Howard Gibbon) and places I had been or been involved with (North Bay, Camp White Pine) and later, the Northrop Frye archive at the University of Toronto.

But when I came across her mention of an obscure place not in Canada but in Provence, France, where she’d stayed in 1971, I stopped reading and started remembering:

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Nocturia is defined by the International Continence Society (ICS) as “the complaint that the individual has to wake at night one or more times for voiding (i.e., to urinate)”.^[1] The term is derived from Latin nox – “night”, and Greek – “urine”…Nocturia becomes more common with age. –Wikipedia

I dont remember when I started experiencing this, probably in my early seventies.  The urologist prescribed Flomax, first once then later twice a day.  That reduced waking up to pee to once a night.  A year or so ago, when it got more often she prescribed Myrbetrick and told me to do the onerous job of keeping a urination diary which I refused.  About four months ago I started waking up even more frequently and she told me to stop drinking liquids after 6 p.m. and to cut back coffee and cut out alcohol.  Even more onerous but I did that. It didnt help much.  Then I went to the acupuncturist who applied needles around my bladder every two weeks and told me to gradually stop taking the drugs, which helped more than taking them.  Then I went for physical therapy for knees and shoulders which were preventing me from walking and chainsawing. Doing the exercises, which included 30 squeezes of the glutes, helped more than anything else.  Sometimes now I’m able to go only once, but the average is twice, which I consider tolerable, sometimes it’s still up to three or four.  This makes the formerly unnoticeable activity of an organ, which in another function has taken disproportionate attention, the focus of nightly concern.

Poophoria: The pleasant, full-body sensation after a large bowel movement is a physiological response primarily driven by the vagus and pudendal nerves, along with the release of endorphins and the relief of physical and psychological discomfort” –Google AI

I became fully aware of this around the same time that I started experiencing Nocturia, and over time the intensity of the sensation and my appreciation of it has steadily increased, offsetting the tribulation of the other excretory process. Once more the body has its own agenda, most prominent now with age.

This scholarly article from 1999 quotes and analyses the personal acknowledgements in the Preface of Youth Against Age, the 1985 book version of my dissertation, which was completed 1981, fifteen years after it was started. The relevant passage is found on page 265 of the article.

Abstract

The Droeshut and Chandos portraits, two familiar images, embody two contrasting representations of Shakespeare in Ben Elton’s  biofictions, Upstart Crow and  All is True.

The Droeshut engraving evokes the comic TV sitcom character played by David Mitchell.

The resemblance is short of literal, belied by the presence of a beard absent in the engraving, but richly suggested by the bulbous forehead and receding hairline, topic of a running gag throughout the series.  The actor’s typically bewildered expression conveys what some authorities have found to be a clownish cast in the image.  John Dover Wilson called it “a pudding faced effigy.” Northrop Frye said it makes Shakespeare “look like an idiot.”

The Chandos image renders the melancholy film character played by Kenneth Branagh. The resemblance of images here is unmistakable, confirmed by facial hair and costume, by inclusion of the portrait at the opening of the film, and by Branagh’s statements in interviews that this was his intent and inspiration. Nevertheless, the large prosthetic nose and angry eyes convey a much harder expression than the serene watchfulness of the oil painting. The discrepancy prompts the film viewer to collaborate with its producers in fleshing out a dark view of what Shakespeare’s late years in Stratford might have been like.

This essay explores these correspondences in light of encryption theory, an analytical framework derived from computer science, semantics and evolutionary psychology.

Encryption involves “an oblique method of communication” that entails a relationship between the surface content of an utterance and an unstated “implicature,” or key, which is known by both the sender and the receiver, and without which the intended meaning of the message cannot be understood.

In formal encryption, the key resides in a secret code that translates the surface message to the intended one. Formal encryption functions to restrict access to the meaning of messages requiring confidentiality and validate their truthfulness.

Rhetorical encryption encompasses injokes and allusions. The key resides in unstated information shared by members of an in-group and unknown by others. Rhetorical encryption functions to create intimacy and trust among sender and receivers and sensations of pleasure, self-esteem and bonding attendant upon privileged access to information.

In Upstart Crow, the encryption consists of injokes and allusions with distinct but overlapping keys for lowbrow and highbrow audiences of the show. Elton has appealed to both in a genre-crossing-career as standup comedian, actor, director, lyricist, and novelist, employing both crudeness and sophistication.

Upstart Crow often portrays Elton’s fictional writers and actors encrypting injokes and allusions and his fictional audiences enjoying or disdaining them. On this level, it references Shakespeare’s own habit of metatheatrical representation, including staging plays within a play, role-playing, and disguise.

In All is True, the encryption consists of allusions informed by literary and historical scholarship, sympathetic responsiveness to Shakespeare’s texts and subtexts, and an intention to elicit sympathy and tears rather than ridicule and laughter. Consistent with its focus on the poet’s later life, it employs the tragic-comic narrative arc of the last plays and the ironic demand for suspension of disbelief conveyed in its title.

On Oct 31, 2025, at 6:36?AM, Shormishtha Panja <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Steven

How are you?  I hope this finds you well.  I heard from Arden Shakespeare (Bloomsbury Publishing) yesterday about  the volume Shakespeare/Image for the Arden Shakespeare Intersections Series to which you so generously agreed to contribute an essay.  Unfortunately the editors regret that they cannot go forward with the project.  I quote from the excerpt of the reviewers’ comments sent by Arden: “It does not engage with recent and current debates… about how cognitive diversity, identity politics or digital technologies are changing how Shakespeare signifies, or is re-presented, as ‘image’ and across visual media….”

The reviewers do appreciate the fact that the volume brings together young scholars and senior ones from all across the globe but that is clearly not enough.  I thought that that was the volume’s greatest strength, bringing together academics not just from Spain, Germany, Italy, France, UK and USA but also from China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and India.  I have not come across such a truly global range of academics and theatre practitioners in any other Arden volume.

I know that you share my disappointment at this outcome.  I do hope that you will go ahead and write that fine essay Ben Elton’s Upstart Crow and All is True of which you sent an abstract.  I am sure that it will find a home in a journal and an anthology of repute.  I learned so much about Shakespeare traditions across the world just by reading your abstract and those of other scholars. It has been a pleasure to interact with you as always, and I am sure that our paths will cross again in the future.

Thank you again for your patience, co-operation and friendship.

Warmly,

Shormi

Shormishtha Panja

Former Professor of English

Department of English

University of Delhi

India