Perhaps 2021 will be a time to build up.

By Roy Hoffman, Creative Nonfiction/Fiction Faculty

[Originally appeared in The Boston Globe, Ideas section, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2020]

In December 1965, the 2,300-year-old words of Ecclesiastes vaulted to the top of the Billboard 100, thanks to a group of mellow rockers, The Byrds, crooning “To every thing there is a season.” That year, marked like this one with strife and division — the Selma march, the Watts riots, the Vietnam War — the clear-eyed pronouncements of a Biblical sage, situated near Proverbs and the Song of Songs, were steadying. On our radios those holiday weeks and well into 1966, with Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” and the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out” also vying for dominance, The Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!” — its title from the 1959 version by Pete Seeger — offered no-nonsense philosophy with a beat: “A time to be born, and a time to die.” There was destruction, “a time to break down,” and restoration, “a time to build up.” I recall, going on 13, a sock hop where teens slow-danced to the ancient wisdom. Each of us, in our personal journeys, experiences “a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Today, more than most years, we also do so collectively.

Eric Schmiedl, Playwriting Faculty

So. I’m a Cleveland kid. Born and raised. Generations of my family – both sides – have straddled the Cuyahoga River. Making soups in the kitchen at Hallie’s Department Store. Stamping out engine parts in the small tool and die shops on the near west side. Cheering when Jim Brown broke another tackle at Municipal Stadium. Trudging through record snow and around burning rivers. We are Clevelanders, through and through.

By Sam Zalutsky, Screenwriting Faculty

I originally wrote this post in 2017, shortly after finishing shooting my feature film Seaside, when I was wading through the long, challenging, and often tedious process of post-production. While the world is struggling to overcome a deadly pandemic, I realize that being stuck in limbo can be a familiar, if challenging, territory for those of us who create. In life and art I often must remind myself that the magic is in the doing and the making; just putting one foot in front of the other each day is essential.