Every Friday night, I spend a couple of hours teaching, coaching, cheerleading, bribing — essentially doing whatever it takes to inspire young men in detention to write something for the newsletter, which circulates to other juvenile halls in the area. We — I and the other workshop leaders — assure the writers: Spelling doesn’t count. Poetry doesn’t have to have “thou” or “’tis” to be real poetry. Use your own voice. Write your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your memories, your hates, your truths. Write what’s on your mind.

The young men in the hall write free verse about their mothers, their children (at 17, many of them already are fathers) and family — exalting in the good times with June-moon-spoon types of rhymes. Often, they write laugh-out-loud raps. They tackle a current political situation with the most thoughtful street analysis. They give heartfelt advice to others who are incarcerated, give voice to their dreams of a better life and make poignant vows to leave the vida loca.

Look thru my eyes and see the want; The want to change, but not knowing how to do so. The want to be something other than a statistic, a number, a felon. The want to become a better decision maker for myself, my family, my race Yet somehow I feel trapped in the hands of time, Replaying the same tune like an old record that skips. Trapped.

They can be meticulous in their descriptions of past crimes, enlarging and romanticizing themselves. They are the Robin Hoods of their ‘hoods. Their poetry, in particular, can run its cold finger down my spine. It goes unflinchingly into the void:

It’s not the thought of dying. It’s the thought of being dead. That’s the fatal thought I dread. The thought of living underground for eternity. The thought of living underground. With no one to remember me.

“Are you really feeling this way?” I asked Jason, the boy who wrote the poem.

“Sure,” he said.

“Really really?”

“Naw,” he said. “I’m doing all right.”

I wonder. I worry. These young men seem to change week by week, sometimes minute by minute. I am often left questioning what’s real and what they put down for shock value. I don’t know sometimes if these young men know the difference between the two. They can follow a poem about death with a love letter so gushy and hopeful that I almost blush reading it.

As I look at you from head to toe,

I can tell there’s something about you that people don’t know.

As I dream of your body next to mine

I still can tell there’s something about you that people don’t know.

As I dream of rubbing your body down with the sweetest oil

I still can tell there’s something about you that people don’t know.

As I dream of you kissing me and me kissing you

I still can tell there’s something about you that I don’t know.

Over time, I have gotten used to their contradictions. They have the remarkable ability to hold fast to two opposing realities with equal passion. The Latino kids write proudly of their commitment to brown pride. They make serious political points about how difficult it is to be a person of color in white America. Then, they end their idealistic pleas for solidarity with vows to “kill every Norteqo.” When I point out that the last time I checked, Norteqos also had brown skin, they look at me as if I am nuts. But maybe, just maybe, it makes a dent.

I remember one boy, blue-eyed and quick with the one-liners. On occasion, he wrote a line or two about white power, which made me squirm with discomfort. Still, I couldn’t help but enjoy being around him each week. He was so smart and crackled with energy. One night, I saw him looking at me, carefully studying my frizzy brown hair and the map of the shtetl on my face. “You Jewish?” he asked. I took a chance — You have to choose your “teaching moments” carefully around here — and told him. “Yes, full-blooded as far back as anyone can remember.” I prepared myself for the reaction: taunts, jeers, a cold silence?

I wasn’t prepared for a cheer. “My mother is Jewish!” he announced proudly to the entire group. Then he raised a fist into the air: “Dreydl power!”

I figured he was putting me on. He wasn’t putting me on. The following week when I brought him a dreydl, he taught his Latino buddies to play “this cool Jewish gambling game.”

And just when I think I’ve heard every possible, convoluted prejudice, someone like Jeremy, a 17-year-old who has been in and out of the hall for years, gets creative. Jeremy is one of the really fine, write-from-the-gut poets in the group. When things are slow and no one else is writing, I can always count on him to whip up a rhyming couplet or two. Last week, he handed me his latest epic:

I want to express how I feel about people changing the English language. People who say “Wolfin” [slang for lying] and other stupid words like that really piss me off. It’s the stupidest word I ever heard. People that can’t talk right really piss me off.

Harris, too, seemed to have a thing against people who misused English, like those who said “pacific” for “specific.” It’s almost bizarre how intolerance falls into predictable, and mundane, categories.

“So what do you think of my article?” Jeremy asked.

“I think I understand how you feel,” I tried. “You’re a writer. Writers respect the language. But you know, not everyone here writes as well as you. They need to feel free to write in the way they feel comfortable.”

I decided to stick with only one teaching moment and not point out his own grammatical desecrations. He thought a minute. “Yeah, but they really piss me off.” He did, however, seem just a little less pissed off than before.

When I first started coming to the hall, I had readied myself for a steady dose of gloom and doom. I don’t have what anyone would call a light and sunny personality. If there’s a reason to feel down, I’m usually down with it, claiming it as my own. An evening with mouthy, depressed, powerless, over-empowered, abused and abusive delinquents sounded like a prescription for a weekly crying jag to me.

But Friday nights are often one of the high points of my week. We laugh, we share moments. I typically leave in better spirits than when I arrived. It’s not that I’m fooling myself with some save-the-world fantasy. In the big picture of alleviating social ills, I know that I am about as effective as a gnat against the hide of an elephant.

Yet every week, there’s something to hold on to. Jeremy tosses off a great metaphor. Someone who has shown no previous signs of life writes a life story that makes me inhale sharply. A young man who has done nothing but blame others, writes: “I can’t believe I had forgotten all the things I worked for and all the people who love and care for me.” An angry boy who has always filled his paper with violent rants suddenly writes: “I feel sad.”

I like setting goals for myself. I often target the boy who is the most resistant to writing, the one who snorts at the mention of writing, the one who makes life miserable for anyone else who is trying to write.

I homed in on Miguel because he is so large and silent, the kind of leader who can change the entire atmosphere of the room just by cracking a smile. He never caused trouble in the workshop; he was more of a passive protester. He just sat there staring down at a blank piece of paper. One week, it dawned on me that maybe he didn’t know how to write or he was embarrassed by his spelling. So, I offered to be his personal literary assistant. Nothing. But after three weeks of offering my secretarial services, he finally said, “OK, you write what I say.”

I was ready, pencil poised.

“You said get real, so write, ‘bitch.’”

I wrote, “bitch.” He nodded his approval. The other guys at the table became very interested.

“Write, ‘whore.’”

I felt them watching me to see if I would blush or launch into some schoolmarmish snit. I wrote, “whore.”

“Write, ‘rich cunts.’”

When he was done, we had, I believe, the complete edition of terms for female genitalia in several languages.

“So what am I supposed to do with this?” I asked him.

“Publish it in that newspaper,” he said.

I don’t know what made me say it, but I did. “Miguel, did you just break up with your girlfriend or something?”

He looked down. He didn’t have to say a word. The following week, I sat with Miguel and he dictated a lovely, melancholy homage to his hometown, a place he had not seen since his father abandoned him.

Week after week, the young men come and go. Sometimes, they are released to their families and I never see them again. That’s the good news. Others write essays about how they are getting out soon, how they will never, ever be back. Their words are so strong and sincere. We all want to believe them. But for many, juvenile hall is part of the revolving door they call home — the streets, a group home, the streets, back to the hall and I am reading their words once again.

At first, my part in this pattern used to depress me. Until I realized that this workshop was respite. Here, for a few hours, they can let go of other identities — gangster, fuck-up, loser, delinquent — and become writers. Just writers.

Usually, I don’t make a point of learning too much about why these guys are in the hall. But six months ago, when a boy named Frank arrived, it was impossible not to know his crime. Every detail of it — the unbridled anger behind it, the mind-boggling heinousness of it — was all over the front page of the local paper. Before I even saw him, I knew what he was capable of. I also knew about the crimes that had been perpetrated on him: by his family, by the systems, by living on the streets.

At first, he was a bright-eyed young man who seemed right at home. Two weeks in a row, Frank didn’t write anything, but he seemed to enjoy listening to the others.

Then, suddenly, he stopped coming to the workshops. I saw him in the dayroom playing ping-pong and when I approached, he snarled at me. Then, more and more, I saw him sitting off alone by the TV. He seemed to shed every façade, every illusion of hope.

“Don’t ask me to write again,” he snapped at me one night. “I don’t write. It’s a mistake I’m in here. My lawyer is going to get me out. Next week, I won’t be here. It’s a mistake.”

The day before, there had been another newspaper article about Frank. The evidence against him was solid. The prosecutor had gotten his way. Frank would be spending at least a year in the hall before his trial. Then, he would be tried and sentenced as an adult.

For several sessions after that, I didn’t see him at all. Staff had their reasons for locking him down in his room: He wasn’t following the rules, wasn’t getting along with the other kids. He mad-dogged everyone, went off at the slightest provocation. He drained the already weary staff of energy and humor. The details of his crime and of his life had leaked out and the other young men were using them against him.

Whenever Frank was out of his room, they taunted him. They began writing poems with thinly veiled references to his shocking life. Of course, I refused to publish them. In Frank, the white, black and brown kids had found an equal opportunity scapegoat.

“I feel bad and everything, but it’s chaos when he’s around,” one staffer, a particularly caring and patient woman, told me. “But he brings a lot of this on himself. I’ve never met one like him. The other kids, I always see hope. There’s a sweetness in them. Frank’s different. He’s a really scary kid.”

A couple of weeks ago, as I was walking across the basketball court into the workshop room, I heard a voice calling me: “Hey, you. Writer lady.” I followed the voice to a barred window. I couldn’t see him, could only hear him. “I wrote a poem. Read it. Tell me if it’ll get in the paper.”

Staff allowed Frank to slip the poem under his door and I felt his eyes through the small window as I was reading it. It was jarring, raw, even by juvenile hall standards. “Do you understand?” he asked. “Do you know what I’m writing about?”

I didn’t and I did. Taken as a whole, the poem didn’t make a lot of sense, but individual phrases — “luxurious darkness,” “untrusting fear,” “suffering into emptiness” — held so much pain that I felt my eyes brim with tears.

Last week when I got to the hall, I was eager to show Frank that his poem had made it to print. Staff wasn’t sure I should be allowed to talk to him. For the past few hours, he had been screaming and pounding at the door. The medical staff had placed him on suicide watch. It was a really bad week, a staffer told me. “He’s really melting down.”

They finally agreed to let me see him because he knew it was Friday night and he had been asking for me. When they unlocked his door, I felt myself recoil involuntarily. Frank was shirtless and folded into a fetal position, his tattoo of a dagger bold on his arm. He was sobbing uncontrollably like only little kids can sob. He was rubbing his eyes with hands that were black and blue, swollen from trying to punch his way out of his room. “Take them! Take all of them!”

Sheets of paper were scattered everywhere.

“Poems! I can write poems all day!”

I felt limp and useless in the face of such misery. I sat on the cement floor of his small room and silently gathered up the papers. It was something to do. I noticed I was holding them gently, as if they would fall apart or explode at the slightest breeze. There were a dozen of them, many decorated with montages of photos clipped from magazines. Pictures of wounded children, a menagerie of skulls, missiles and bombs exploding.

Next to a picture of a man being shot, Frank had written: “This is my thought. A guy getting shot. He must be happy. No more worries.” On another paper: “Today, I hope I don’t hurt the staff. All I want to do is make them laugh.” Next to a picture of a mushroom cloud: “This is my mind in a riot. With all my anger, I shut out the quiet. Why?”

“Why do you do this?” he blurted at me.

“Do what?”

“Write. Why do you tell me to write? I write and it’s still there. The pain is still there. Fear! It doesn’t go away. What good does writing do?”

That is the question, isn’t it? I thought of all the answers that I have given to other kids who have asked this same question, the answer to why I am here on Friday nights. I thought of the answers that I give myself when I wonder why I am spending a good part of my life in front of a keyboard.

I could have told Frank that writing can help sort through the chaos of your own mind. It can bring order to a world that so often feels like it is whirling out of control. I could have told him that in writing, you can be as angry as you want, full of hatred that goes inward and outward. It’s better not to hate so much, but if you have to hate, go ahead and hate on paper. Paper doesn’t bleed.

I could have told him that writing is a way to say to the world: I exist. And everything I feel, you have felt to some degree at some time in your life. I could have said writing makes you not so alone.

But none of these were the answer that Frank was so desperate to hear. He wanted his writing to save him, to release him immediately. I know that it is possible, but there are no guarantees. He would need to make the leap from ranting to truly writing, from blasting outward to looking inward. It was not time to tell him that he would need more time and that he would feel more pain and more fear.

I didn’t know what to say. So that’s what I said. “I don’t know why you should keep writing. I just know it’s what you have right now. So keep writing.”

He didn’t say anything. He watched me make his papers into a neat pile. “You’ll read them?” he asked.

“I’ll read them,” I said. “And I’ll see you next week.”

The only thing I want is a choice. In my state of Texas, my child will
not be allowed to attend public school (unless we join some crackpot
religion that the state deems “established” that forbids us to vaccinate our children) A philosophical reason just ain’t good enough. A parent shouldn’t have to be forced by the state to make
his child a retard in order to give her an education.

– J.D. Dwinell

Austin, Texas

Isn’t this an ugly irony: “Family values” conservatives, who condemn
abortion as the killing of children, are now on a crusade to dismantle
a system that prevents children from being killed by germs the conservatives can’t
hope to evangelize. I guess their nostalgia for the “good old days”
extends to such elements of those days as scarlet fever.

– Keith Ammann

Can vaccines be made safer? Certainly. Should we conduct research to
find out the risk of complications? Of course! However, I disagree
completely with those who would abandon vaccination entirely. Those of
us who are fortunate enough to grow up in the last half of the 20th
century do not understand how dangerous so-called “childhood” diseases
are. In my own family, three of my grandparents’ siblings and one of my
aunts died from diseases that are now prevented by vaccination. My
parents vividly recall the terror of polio epidemics while they were
growing up, and can name schoolmates who were stricken with the disease.
I’ll take the relatively small risk of vaccination over the huge risk
of disease any time.

– Nancy Ott

Pittsburgh

If people don’t want to immunize their children, the United States probably shouldn’t
make them. As soon the unprotected kids start getting sick and the insurance
companies raise their premiums, I’m sure these parents will come around.

– Bryan Johnson

What about all the lives vaccines have hurt? Arthur Allen didn’t think to investigate all
the facts. Dan Burton is going against the propaganda the vaccine companies have given
us, and is making most people think.

– Kelly Larsen

Phoenix

Yes, sir, that’s my cannibal
BY NIKKI FINKE

(08/06/99)

Having recently read “Hannibal,” as well as “Red Dragon” and “Silence of
the Lambs,” I can say without reservation that the latest book should not
be made into a film. Even a talented director like Ridley Scott can’t take
sub-par material and turn it into a watchable movie without drastically
altering the plot. Michael Mann, director of the superb “Manhunter,” and
Jonathan Demme, helmsman of “Silence of the Lambs,” both had an advantage
over Ridley Scott: They had terrific, believable stories to work with.
Such is not the case with “Hannibal.”

Yes, “Hannibal” is a page-turner. Dr. Lecter is one of the most
interesting villains ever written. However, putting Lecter and Clarice
Starling through the ridiculous machinations of Mason Verger is a
disservice to the characters and to the wonderful actors who portrayed
them. And the ending is an obvious setup to bring the disfigured Will
Graham out of retirement. Let us hope that Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins take a pass on this multimillion-dollar turkey.

– Todd Prepsky

Northridge, Calif.

Do picture makers really have talent, or do they
depend on gory special effects to carry them through?
Excellent movies have been made without leaning on the nauseating
visuals. Good story lines with good acting and directing are what we
need today. Not simply all the “realism” that today’s directors lean on.

I remember when a man could get shot onscreen without showing every detail of his inner anatomy. Too much “blood and guts” has ruined creative moviemaking.

– Marvin West

Homosassa, Fla.

Nothing Personal
BY AMY REITER
(08/06/99)

I appreciate Amy Reiter’s desire to end her column on a witty bon mot.
However, being a gay male does not equal experiencing being called a
“man” as an insult. None of the reportage of the hetero-altered ballads
has intimated that Robin Hood disdained being a man — on the contrary, it
would appear he enjoyed his (and others’) manhood very much.

– M. Daniel

New ethics for the new economy?
BY JANELLE BROWN

(08/06/99)

I‘m in the “no investments, no mixing of consulting and
journalism, period” camp. My only financial interest in any
technology company is a small stock option granted by
Andover.net, the online publisher for which I work. If I
want to start my own consulting company, write PR material
or corporate “white paper” reports or trade technology
stocks, I must quit writing and editing for Andover. This is
not an edict from my boss. It is my own, personal ethical
position.

A freelancer writing a story from “inside” a given field is
not an unbiased journalist, and should not be regarded as
one. As long as the insider piece is clearly identified as
what it is, either from copy it contains or in a separate
editorial disclaimer, I see no problem with it. Rebecca L.
Eisenberg, for example, writes a column that is clearly
opinion-based, rather than fact-based, and she has never
been shy about openly promoting the “RLE” brand.

My self-imposed set of rock-hard journalistic ethics will
probably keep me from ever becoming wealthy as a nonfiction writer. I have no problem with
this. I got into journalism because I like the work, and
gradually drifted into computer reporting because I like to
play with computers. No one forced Chris Nolan or anyone else go into journalism
full time. Those who have done so, but now feel they aren’t earning
enough money at it, should take one of three courses: Either
find a better-paying job within the field, leave it
entirely or find an unrelated source of “side” income.

– Robin Miller

The story should be titled, “New economy, no ethics.”
If your reporting is biased by financial, or other gain, it is
inaccurate disinformation.

This is not to say journalists should never be compensated for
their writing — but it should be very clear what the sponsorship
aspect to any article is, so as to avoid misleading a trusting
public. It’s a difficult task, but an important one. In an age when the news media is becoming the commercial between the commercials, journalists should promote and adhere to full disclosure.

– Harry Brown

Dissecting the Barbie debate
BY JANELLE BROWN

(08/06/99)

John Dvorak has a long history of missing the biggest trends yet somehow profiting from those mistakes. Not only has he derided the mouse as a useful input device, he’s also derided the GUI and other technological innovations.

The ironic thing is, just recently, Dvorak wrote a column on how depressing the state of industrial design in the computing world was. I quote:

In the 50s, they used to paint cars with two colors.
There was even a three-tone era, and the colors included
pink and chartreuse. Only Mary Kay Cosmetics paints cars
pink any more. Look at the parking lot today, and see what
you see: muted gray, muted brown, muted green, and white.
It’s almost impossible to find your car among the sameness.

Let’s see, it’s OK to paint cars in two or three tones, but on computers, it’s “girly.” It’s OK to praise a cosmetics company for painting cars pink because it’s simply different, but the “effeminate” iBook is doomed to failure for the exact same reason. Huh??

Even if Dvorak claims he’s not really sexist, his column putting down the iBook does indeed promote and foster the sexual stereotypes still embedded in the industry. He gives voice to all those unenlightened and unimaginative poor souls who think square corners, exposed hinges, mismatched colors, ungainly ports, and clunky mechanical mechanism is actually good design.

– Paul Lee

I appreciate that Janelle Brown came onto “Silicon Spin” in person to talk about
the iBook debate. She helped elevate the discussion, as we
thought she would. But I found her post-show column a little strange, in that Janelle said
afterward that it had been a “good discussion.” It’s unfortunate she received
hate mail, but that’s what happens when you push buttons. (You should see
what they wrote to Dvorak.)

As for the TV show, we’ve never tolerated personal attacks on guests. When
Dvorak introduced the special as “the Jerry Springer version” he meant that
as a joke. The only person attacked on Spin is Dvorak himself, who can
take the heat.

– Robin McCall

Producer, “Silicon Spin”

I give Dvorak very little serious consideration. He is often so
inflammatory (and wrong) about the market, social forces and technology in general that it is laughable. The iMac was and is still dismissed as being too cutesy, yet
continues to rake in cash for Apple. He doesn’t understand that more and more students and families have gender-neutral aesthetics, and that there is a significant postmodern population
disgusted with facile gender stereotypes, traditional marketing strategies and
conventional wisdom.

Our culture is constantly changing. I applaud Janelle Brown for having the insight to
notice that fact, and for having the courage to express views that are based on
critical reasoning instead of unconscious prejudice.

– Dave Barnhart

Life or death software
BY ANDREW LEONARD
(08/05/99)

If individual programmers could be found liable for
failures in software they wrote, it would have a chilling effect on
the development of open source medical software.

I think the likely answer comes from the models for the
deployment of Linux. Those health care organizations for whom
theoretical liability is less important than low cost and high
reliability will take advantage of free software distributions. Such
organizations might include many in the developing world.

The other deployment model follows the example of Red Hat Software. Red Hat packages a distribution of Linux and sells it for a nominal fee. They add value in several ways. By testing all
components of the operating system at selected levels, they assure that
the distribution is stable. They provide some technical support as part
of the package. The bulk of their revenue comes from the sale of
additional technical support and services.

A medical version of Red Hat could provide extensively tested software
distributions and support services. In addition, it could submit its
distributions for FDA certification as appropriate and could assume
liability for the quality of the distributions. It could charge
accordingly for these additional services. As you point out, the degree
of liability to be assumed by any software company for its products is
still being determined; this model merely suggests that it will possible
to play by the same rules for open source software in the medical arena.

– Steve Doubleday

The best known film versions of “Robin Hood” — the hugely entertaining 1925 silent starring Douglas Fairbanks and the deluxe storybook version of 1939 starring Errol Flynn — have reveled in visual sumptuousness and rousing high spirits. (The Fairbanks movie features enormous sets that serve no purpose except to provide Doug with places to leap and climb, and the Flynn movie is shot in the lushest Technicolor.) This “Robin Hood” resembles “Excalibur,” John Boorman’s retelling of the Arthurian legend. Irvin, a solid, craftsmanlike director who rarely gets his due, can’t match Boorman’s visual sheen or obsessiveness. But like “Excalibur,” this is an adult version of a familiar legend dedicated to capturing the feel of its period.

The reason you may not know about Irvin’s “Robin Hood” is because it was produced at the same time as the pallid Kevin Costner version. 20th Century Fox, not wanting to compete, released it theatrically in Europe. In this country, it was shown once on the Fox network before going to video. The studio may have felt that audiences would be put off by the darkness of this version. It takes a little while to realize that, despite its look, this “Robin Hood” isn’t gloomy.

Irvin’s Robin becomes a hero almost by accident, When we first meet him, he’s Robert Hode, the Earl of Huntington (Patrick Bergin). Coming upon the evil Norman Sir Miles Falconay (Jurgen Prochnow, sounding like a cross between Bela Lugosi and Inspector Clouseau, in the Sheriff of Nottingham role), who’s about to put out the eyes of a poacher, Hode refuses to let Norman “justice” take its course. For that offense, he’s brought up before his friend, Baron Daguerre (Jeroen Krabbé), the Norman overseer, who attempts to both do his duty and let his friend off lightly. But Hode’s pride butts up against Falconay’s insistence on a harsh sentence, and Hode is declared beyond the law and exiled to the forests.

It’s in the scenes that follow, when the exiled Hode meets up with the outcasts who become his merry men and takes the name Robin Hood, that the movie finds its tone. The Robin Hood legend isn’t as much anti-authority as it is anti-unjust-authority; in the various versions, things are usually put right when King Richard returns. But it’s not the lion-hearted monarch who saves the day in Irvin’s version, which has about as much use for authority as the old Chaplin two-reelers where every cop means trouble. Irvin’s is a “Robin Hood” that’s very nearly pagan. His merry men aren’t the downtrodden yet noble poor, Marxists under the jerkin. They’re a ragtag bunch of cranks and grumblers and ne’er-do-wells. You get the feeling that even if they weren’t hiding out from the law or pushed into poverty by the taxes Prince John demands they might prefer this life. Living in caves, they seem to have sprung from the ground, coarse and raucous and perhaps a bit more at home in the rough than they care to admit. On some level, the tyranny of the Normans suits them: it justifies their suspicion of everyone who holds power over them. They’re happy to steal from the rich; it takes some persuading from Robin to convince them to give to the poor.

Irvin takes a special pleasure in their blasphemies: Robin disguised as a monk holding his sword to a priest’s genitals while his cohorts strip the church of gold; Friar Tuck fulfilling a dying Norman soldier’s request for the last rites while sending the poor bastard on his way to meet his maker. “Robin Hood” is the damnedest mix — a serious retelling of a medieval legend flavored with the disreputability of low comedy. That spirit pervades the movie. Bergin, who has seemed the stiffest of actors in such roles as the evil husband in “Sleeping With the Enemy,” plays Robin as a man rediscovering his sense of fun. Even Marian (Uma Thurman, whose swan’s neck here seems somehow integral to Marian’s rebelliousness; it appears to end somewhere around her arched eyebrows) has none of the prissiness of some Marians. Promised in marriage to Falconay, she fits herself out in drag and heads into the forest to join Robin’s band.

And finally, of course, together they all liberate England. The finale comes on the day Marian is supposed to wed Falconay, which also happens to be All Fools’ Day, when the common people dress in costume and are admitted to the castle to conduct their revels. All the visual and narrative threads of paganism that run through the movie come together and burst forth in this scene. The merry men get themselves up in branches of green or hoods fashioned from stag’s heads. Their entry into the castle has the spirit of D.H. Lawrence’s poem “A Sane Revolution,” something done because “It would be fun to upset the apple cart/And see which way the apples would go a-rolling.” By the time these “jolly escaped asses” start picking off the Norman soldiers with longbows, it seems like the natural outcome of their celebration. In the magical final scene, as Robin and Marian come together, Irvin lifts the gray mist of the movie to transform England, before our eyes, into the fabled green and pleasant land.