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An Offer Like This …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

According to NPR, by 1990 the city of Verona, Italy, was receiving over 6000 letters to Juliet Capulet each year. This fact has been celebrated in a book and a movie, both titled “Letters to Juliet,” so the outline of the story is well-known: Lovers who are in the middle of difficult plights or terrible loneliness write letters, detailed letters, about their storm-tossed affairs to Shakespeare’s fictional heroine.

“Only you,” many letters begin with, only you—the ghost of a character who never breathed a human breath—only Juliet Capulet can possibly understand and empathize.
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Age Is Just a Thing

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One friend, upon hearing me describe a new ache or an old pain, used to reply, “You’ve never been (insert age here) before!”

At first, I found this insulting, then, later, very insulting. But knowing the friend as I did, I eventually realized that he was not being dismissive when he said this, but was instead reminding me to do something I did not have a long history of doing: To pay attention to my body. He has since passed on and will remain forever 65.

He was saying that almost everything we experience is unique to us, yet not at all unique. That sentence is either wise in its simpleness, so simple and wise that “simpleness” is too complicated a word for it, or incredibly banal. All of the above: We are all growing older. I’ve never been 46 before. So it is.
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An Offer Like This Will Just Not Come Again

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

According to NPR, by 1990 the city of Verona, Italy, was receiving over 6,000 letters to Juliet Capulet each year. This fact has been celebrated in a book and movie, both titled “Letters to Juliet,” so the outline of the story is well-known: Lovers who are in the middle of difficult plights or terrible loneliness write letters, detailed letters, about their storm-tossed affairs to Shakespeare’s fictional heroine. Only she, many begin, the ghost of a character who never breathed a human breath, only she can possibly understand and empathize.

Verona has a staff of volunteers who read and sometimes reply to the letters. (“Letters from Juliet” might be a more interesting title.) They call themselves “The Juliet Club,” and it only became an official office around 1990, but people have been writing letters to poor dead (never lived) Juliet for centuries. (Here is the address: Club di Giulietta, via Galilei 3-37133, Verona, ITALY.) Verona enjoys portraying itself as the hometown of Romeo and Juliet and even has a “Romeo and Juliet tour.” (Valentine’s Day is especially important.) Shakespeare certainly did more for Verona’s economy than he did for Denmark’s.
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