here have been two developments in the past month that illustrate clearly what is wrong with the White House’s perception of America’s place in the world. Going far beyond the oft-repeated nonsense that the United States is somehow the “leader of the free world,” the Trump Administration has taken several positions that sustain the bizarre view that such leadership can only be exercised if the United States is completely dominant in all relevant areas. Beyond that, Washington is now also asserting that those who do not go along with the charade and abide by the rules laid down will be subject to punishment to force compliance.

“We offer your love to all of our children . . .” the Episcopal priest said, her eyes closed in prayer. Some 170 people were gathered around her, as she stood in a gazebo in a park in Huntsville, Ala. This was one of the 700-plus protests across the country last weekend, as Americans gathered in unity and outrage over Donald Trump’s cruel treatment of immigrants and their children at the southern border.

“Womp, womp!”

Even before the guy pulled the Glock from his waistband, wow, this was the American recipe: sarcasm and hate and racism stirred into our prayers and deepest values, into the best of who we are.

When we describe the United States in the abstract, the best of who we are prevails. Our ideals loom like mountain peaks on a picture postcard: “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .”

But the real America has always been parsimonious in its allotment of freedom and respect.

Noël Coward meets John Osborne in Enid Bagnold’s mid-1950s The Chalk Garden. This funny yet pointed two-acter set in an upper crust country house in Sussex, England is sort of somewhere between a Victorian era drawing room comedy and those British class conscious “Kitchen Sink” dramas that emerged mid-century in the UK.

To be sure, there is lots of witty repartee between the wannabe grand dame Mrs. St. Maugham (Ellen Geer), her (on- and offstage) daughter Olivia (Willow Geer), granddaughter/daughter Laurel (Carmen Flood), and the other dramatis personae. Although it may not be as enraged as Osborne’s classic Look Back in Anger, there is also a strong undercurrent of class conflict in Bagnold’s not-so-genteel play. (Both works emerged around the same time, although Bagnold, who was 64 when she wrote Chalk and had married into the upper class, had more regard for tradition - if not an unswerving allegiance to it.)

Friday, July 6, 6-11pm, Saturday, July 7, 2-10pm, Sunday, July 8, 2-10pm

Columbus Performing Arts Center, 549 Franklin Ave.

Tickets: $10 to $20; free 13 years old and under.

There will be special group/senior rates and day passes.

mine4godproductions.com

Friday, July 6

Comedian Tasha Neal-Harris. 6pm. Tasha wrote and directed "The Wicked Imagination of a Teenage Kid" which premiered this past June at the Gateway Movie Theatre in Columbus.

The Stoopby Jasmyn Green. Dealing with a group of youth from Brooklyn, NY who have to deal individually with grief and mourning when the youngest of their group dies.

Saturday, July 7

Just You And Mefree theatre workshop for youth 13-18 years old. 11am-1pm. Facilitator Shenise Brown is a Theatre Roundtable award winning actress, Excellence in a Female Lead role 2018, for her role in 12 Angry Women a SoArts Production.

The German Luftwaffe’s Panavia Tornado fighter jet.

WBW’s Pat Elder is encamped with antinuclear resisters just outside the gate of Büchel Airbase in Germany and he sends us this report.