While on his way home from visiting his youngest son in South Dakota, the author stopped in Oak Grove State Park, Iowa and was surprised by a rainbow over the Big Sioux River. This leads him to muse on how a few years earlier he would have naively interpreted the rainbow “as a sign from God that everything was going to be okay” with his middle son’s prolonged clinical depression. Now, with his youngest son in Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) to deal with clinical depression, Kesha’s lyrics about just putting on the rainbow’s colors seem more appropriate. “Perhaps,” he concludes, “God surprises us occasionally with rainbows so that we may better endure the implacable storm of life’s unavoidable and disproportionate sufferings.”
About the Author
Before coming to Northwestern, Dr. Robert Hubbard worked extensively in both academic and professional theatre as a director, actor, teaching artist, and playwright/adaptor. Among the shows he’s directed are an award-winning production of The Comedy of Errors and an original stage adaptation of Larry Woiwode’s novel Beyond the Bedroom Wall. Hubbard debuted his original, one-person show, Dancing with Jimmy, at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference in New York City in August 2003 and has since performed it in a number of venues. In 2005 he received a fellowship to participate in the O’Neill Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center. He also publishes articles and reviews in numerous academic books and journals.
Recommended Citation
Hubbard, Robert
(2020)
"On ECT and Rainbows,"
Northwestern Review: Vol. 5
:
Iss.
1
, Article 4.
Available at:
https://nwcommons.nwciowa.edu/northwesternreview/vol5/iss1/4