hosaa's blog

Tall Men Never Slouch

2012-02-01T22:38:00.003-05:00

So I kept checking the Kennedy Center schedule to find out when Daniil Simkin would be dancing and finally got a ticket for tonight. Because it's Daniil, and of course I want to see his cute face, I went ahead and got orchestra, as close to the front as I could still get, having delayed ticket buying.

Bum gouge.

So row H turned out to be the second row (the orchestra having called dibs on rows A-F). Yay for being close to Daniil! But oopsie: Row G had an occupant in front of me. A tall one. A very tall one with big curly hair.

I considered hopping over the aisle to the front row in the center section, as those two people didn't show up for the first act. But lo, they ambled in for the second act (the one with Daniil). So I settled in to squirm back and forth around tall bushy guy for Act II and Daniil's performance in the pas de deux from Swan Lake.

But wait a second. Who the hell is that? It wasn't Daniil. It was Marcelo Gomes. Who's a perfectly handsome and wonderful dancer and all that, but I wanted Daniil. Now I need to go find out what happened to him. He is too well trained to just not feel like dancing.

As for the rest of the program, I will say I thoroughly enjoyed the 80% of the first and third acts that I could actually see: "Black Tuesday" by Paul Taylor (with recorded songs of the Great Depression including "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" performed by Simone Messmer and "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" performed by Jared Matthews) and "Thirteen Diversions" by Christopher Wheeldon (to Benjamin Britten's "Diversions for Piano and Orchestra").

These two pieces were fresh additions to the "typical" ABT mixed rep of twirling glitterpops. The Wednesday night audience was tepid, though. The only standing-ovationers were along the sides and back of the house. Not even tall bushy-haired man stood--which enabled me to actually see the company when I did.

Mark Morris and the Joy of Dance

2012-01-29T12:30:00.006-05:00

I'm going to be lazy like a true blogger and just "ditto" WaPo dance writer Sarah Kaufman's heartfelt and eloquent review of the Mark Morris Dance Company's recent run at the Kennedy Center.

link: Under Mark Morris, Handel oratorio becomes a visual feast

She writes:

Agreed: Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

The chorus sings these words at the exultant finish of Mark Morris’s “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato,” which transforms the Handel oratorio into a visual feast with the happiest dancing you could hope to see. And as you watch the dancers join hands and circle the Kennedy Center Opera House stage, the whole cast whirling in a spin-cycle of physical joy, living by that sentiment feels entirely possible.

Was it raining yesterday? Hardly noticed. “L’Allegro” was still turning in my mind.

Here is the official Mark Morris featurette about the production:

My own response to the production last Thursday night was not as learned as Kaufman's; I just knew that I'd wanted to see a Mark Morris production for the longest time and was very happy that one finally came to the Kennedy Center (a bit more accessible to me on a weeknight than the venue at George Mason out in Virginia).

My first exposure to Morris was his gender-bending take on that old chestnut Nutcracker, The Hard Nut. Male snowflakes? Yikes! But what fun.

And "L'Allegro" had equal numbers of boys and girls, and equal opportunity pairings (and trio-ings) that ensured that joy was accessible to all.

As an audience member, I will say that I enjoyed the second half a bit more than the first half, simply because the group in the front row of the balcony with two very fidgety young girls did not return after intermission.

During intermission I also chatted amiably with the two men next to me who, like me, were very anxious to see the Mark Morris work. We all agreed that the Rothko-esque set design was very effective in framing the planes of the scenes of the dance. And personally, I think the world would be a better place if everybody dressed like dancers.

I know that in such a gifted ensemble it may not be fair to single any one dancer out, but my favorite boy was the guy in blue who had one of the bird solos. Just loved him, and my eye then went to him in every group. Going by the pictures in the program, I'll guess this was Dallas McMurray (if I got the casting wrong, please forgive my distance in the second tier and my notoriously unreliable facial recognition capabilities).

The final scene, as Kaufman describes:

Then: Brightness. Order springs from disorder, and it’s wonderfully simple. A chain of hands, dancers wheeling in circles within circles. They lean into the music, and fast as they’re spinning, you can’t miss the delight on their faces. It’s sweet surrender. And victory for all.

... brought the entire house to its feet for one of the longest sustained standing ovations I've experienced at the Kennedy Center, and particularly energetic for a Thursday night. A happy time was had by all!

Ungentlemanly in Verona

2012-01-17T12:26:00.005-05:00

If you're heading out to see the Shakespeare Theatre's latest production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, first of all, lucky you! This modern-day adaptation (retaining the language) of Shakespeare's early romantic comedy is breathtakingly energetic.

A warning, though, it is violent. Not quite Stacy Keach King Lear violent, but heads are hit and blood is shed. So much so that my friend and I both were wishing the two gentlemen would wipe their faces before taking their bows at the end.

I confess that, during Sunday's IDR, I took great pleasure in watching these two really great-looking gentlemen: Andrew Veenstra as Valentine (who also served as the fight captain) and Nick Dillenburg as Proteus. Another familiar face was that of Euan Morton as the servant/dog lover Launce.

I last saw the handsome Veenstra in Shakespeare Theatre's production of The Heir Apparent, and the versatile Morton in Ford Theatre's production of Parade last fall.

Note, don't be confused by the rock opera version of Two Gentlemen, which is also scheduled for later this month at Sidney Harman Hall. The gentlemen of whom I write now are appearing at the Lansburgh.

Two Gentlemen of Verona (aka Two Gents) cast picture, courtesy of The Shakespeare Theatre

The Two Gentlemen of Verona
directed by P. J. Paparelli
set design by Walt Sangler
Costume design by Paul Spadone

Cast
Valentine: Andrew Veenstra
Speed: Adam Green
Proteus: Nick Dillenburg
Launce: Euan Morton
Crab (his dog): Olliver
Antonio: Christopher McHale
Panthino: Stephen Patrick Martin
Julia: Miriam Silverman
Lucetta: Inga Ballard
Duke of Milan: Brent Harris
Silvia: Natalie Mitchell
Thurio: Gene Gillette
Eglamour: Todd Scofield

View this post on the Shakespeare Readers blog.

Itzhak Perlman, conductor and violin

2012-01-14T23:38:00.003-05:00

Back from seeing (and hearing) Itzhak Perlman at Strathmore, along with a completely packed full house. My friend Suzanne, who knows much more about music than I do and is more particular about where to sit, could only score the second to last row of the orchestra, which is saying something about what it meant to see the master: Bring binoculars.

Well, Suzanne forgot her binoculars, which isn't surprising, because she'd nearly forgotten the tickets. Or at least the one extra ticket that I'd already paid her for; somehow it got separated from her own ticket. She did find it, but accidentally tore it; she's a season subscriber to the Strathmore, though, so they were willing to replace the torn ticket at the box office.

My point in relaying this adventure is to demonstrate that, though she knows more about classical music than I do, and is as committed to her season subscription at Strathmore as I am to my Round House and Shakespeare and American Ballet Theater (when they come to town), there wasn't much enlightenment from her on what I was to expect tonight. Did I want to see Itzhak Perlman? Sure.

But it didn't occur to me that he wouldn't be playing the violin for the entire evening. After the two Vivaldi Seasons (Winter and Summer), which Mr. Perlman conducted as he bowed, he returned exclusively to conduct the Mozart (Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, K. 183) and the Brahms (Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Opus 98).

The conducting was impeccable, but I wanted to watch more than Mr. Perlman's back. So I resorted to my usual approach to enjoying a symphony: visualizing it as dance. This was especially fruitful in the Brahms, whose opening calls of horns took me to the hunt; in the melancholy second movement, we are dragging our weary horses and hounds back home; the bright third movement, with its undertones of turmoil, is a celebratory ball; and the powerful fourth movement is a confrontation between the young revolutionary and his betrothed's father, stalwartly defending the old order.

But Suzanne, who knows more about classical music than I do (but who had to be nudged from her nodding drowsiness a couple of times. Ahem), didn't especially care for the Brahms. Different strokes, I guess.

And interestingly, she kept trying to point out someone in the orchestra who would be of interest to me:

Suzanne: "The guy sitting right on the other side of Itzhak. He looks like Clay Aiken."

Me (peering through my binoculars): "You mean the one who looks like [a young] Lyle Lovett?"

Suzanne (borrowing my binoculars): "Oh. Heh."

Catch-up and Updates

2011-12-31T09:23:00.006-05:00

Gee, whatever happened to December? Below the fold is my Holiday/Christmas letter to the family.

Somehow I missed posting my recap of Round House Theatre's Pride and Prejudice. It was great fun, despite the Washington Post's predictably negative review. It was set in a whimsical toy box whose trim cabinets reveal changes of scenery that, except for the decor in the interiors, weren't all that different. The ladies also wore strikingly similar gowns (my friend thought they looked too much like nightgowns), making some of the characters hard to distinguish. (Not all sisters are that interchangeable.)

What I really enjoyed was the swift pacing through the domestic and romantic joyrides and the genuine catch of tears brought on by self-awareness when Elizabeth realizes her prejudice against Darcy was unfounded.

I also took another visit to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, with my same Pride and Prejudice friend. It was fun to finally show off some of my favorite venues (RHT and NMWA) with someone else besides my dear readers here!

I got a second chance to snap some of my favorite pieces in the collection:

...
Four Seated Figures, 2002, by Magdalena Abakanowicz (Polish, b. 1930)

...
Carrie Pease Graham, 1895, by Elisabet Ney (German, 1833-1907), with Mary Cassatt's Portrait of Katherine Cassatt, 1905, in the background)

Photographs by Louise Dahl-Wolfe (American, 1895-1989)

But in the exhibit of Asian-inspired art, where I fell in love with a new artist, no photography was allowed. Fortunately, there was a book! But unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of scanning the picture. Anyway, I share with you the lovely work of Lilian May Miller, and her Monet haystacks-inspired Fujiyama:

Moonlight and Sunrise (respectively) at Fujiyama, Japan (both 1928), lovingly photographed from the book Between Two Worlds: The Life and Art of Lilian May Miller by Kendall H. Brown (exhibition catalog published by Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, 1998). Note, I bought the book at the NMWA gift shop. It's not available via Amazon, but I found it at Alibris.

Part of the joy of the outing back to NMWA, which happened the day after Thanksgiving, was continuing my chase of the ginkgo. I had been seeing ginkgo leaves throughout Bethesda this fall, but as far as I could find, there were no ginkgo trees in my neighborhood. I knew there were ginkgoes downtown, and sure enough, there they were around Metro Center, their bright yellow fans aglow in the autumn noon.

... ...

And finally, just because I like it, the Art Deco (former) bus station on New York Avenue:

All photos by C. G. Wagner. Fair use principles apply: please give credit!

FOLD (below which, my annual holiday letter to the family)

DECEMBER 2011

GREETINGS from the beginning of a cold and damp holiday season! I hope you are warm, snug, and filled with good cheer.

This year found me wandering very little beyond my own neighborhood, and the 10-block walk between apartment and office was my principal means of exercise. Work kept me pretty busy in my new role as editor of THE FUTURIST. In January, I got to meet with the former Haitian ambassador, who brought a small contingent of supporters to our office on the anniversary of the devastating earthquake. They had come to the World Future Society seeking support for rebuilding their nation, which was at that time nervously awaiting a presidential-election runoff. It was humbling to be asked for such support and it helped us to be able to articulate our own mission as an organization.

Another interesting byproduct of my new position was that I was invited to be interviewed for the Grinnell alumni magazine--again, an opportunity to clarify what futurists do and why. (And why I, who am so risk-averse and change-resistant, am somehow the voice of futurism! Hee!)

And if this wasn’t enough “greatness” thrust upon me, I was also asked to take over the leadership of my Shakespeare Readers group! In an effort to increase membership, I’ve reached out to other Shakespeare fans on a MeetUp group and created an official Shakespeare Readers blog: shakespearereaders.blogspot.com.

The only traveling I did this year was—as usual—either work or Clay related. The annual WFS conference was in Vancouver in July, and fortunately I was able to get out and see the neighborhood around our hotel a little bit. It’s a beautiful city, which I hadn’t seen since the World’s Fair in 1986.

The Clay Aiken trip of the year was out to Texas in March, where I got to visit with friends Chris, Debbie, Sheila, Jill, Mary, and Gary, along with an assortment of other ladies I’ve met at other concerts over the years. Much fun!

And yes, I finally did get to meet the man himself, fleetingly, at the meet-and-greet event in Towson, Maryland! With more than 40 fans there, herded along brusquely to get our pictures snapped with Clay, the event was more aptly described as a meet-and-moo. But Clay was in beautiful voice that night and turned the technical mishaps (lighting miscues and strange audio set-up) into high comedy.

Speaking of meet-and-greets, I got to see my favorite jazz singer, Nnenna Freelon, twice this year (well, the first time was New Year’s Eve last year), and also American Ballet Theater featured dancer Daniil Simkin, who had a slightly smaller crowd competing for his attention than Clay did.

I’ve continued to enjoy the productions at Round House and Ford’s theaters and the Strathmore Music Center. A very special outing to Ford’s in April was the rollicking musical Liberty Smith, which was all the more fun for sharing the experience with my brother Mike and sister-in-law Wanda and my cousin Bob and his wife Mary. During their visit we also got to do some “typical tourist” stuff, enjoying the cherry blossoms, museums, memorials, and monuments. And, of course, the D.C. parking challenge.

I spent Thanksgiving with good friends Suzanne and David Waters, who have treated me to so many Sunday dinners that I decided to splurge and take them to one of my favorite “family” restaurants, Ruth’s Chris. Yummo!

My New Year’s resolution is to finally get my apartment into visitor-friendly condition. So ya’ll come on down! (But hey, please call first!)

[End of letter]

I haven't monetized this blog yet, and I receive no royalties, commissions, or kickbacks from anything I mention here. But since I am particularly proud of the photography calendar I made for 2012, I'll include a link to it on Snapfish. You need to have an account at Snapfish to view, but you'll be able to customize and order it if you like:

2012 Calendar: Photography by C. G. Wagner

Maybe next year I'll figure out how to monetize. Till then, enjoy!

Autumn in Bethesda

2011-11-03T19:04:00.005-04:00

Just a few pix. Click to enlarge.

Credit all: C. G. Wagner

After a storm:

Setting sun on autumn leaves:

Morning illumination:

and the new public art installation at Union Hardware:

ReEntering Unreality

2011-10-21T07:44:00.009-04:00

Back from Round House's production last night of ReEntry by Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez, a powerful piece on the trauma of returning "home" from war. And "home" is a tricky term; to a Marine, "home" is the Corps, whereas family and the complacency of people bitching about who's on Dancing with the Stars is the surreal unreality.

The staging of interwoven monologues is not my favorite dramaturgical choice (see also The Carpetbagger's Children, for instance). The characters--a mom, a sister, their two sons/brothers, a C.O., and others portrayed by the five actors--were built from interviews, so the reality was embedded. But the lack of interaction between the characters is a step away from the reality (or simulation of reality) in witnessing human relationships in real time. Add the actory voices, and it seems too unreal.

Even the chin-mikes to allow the actors to be heard by the audience without straining their voices was a check on reality to me. And because there's the phenomenon known in science--that the act of observing alters the experiment--I didn't get a sense of what the real reality would be for these characters after they stopped talking to the interviewers recording their stories.

Still, there was a lot to this very strong production. I could relate to the idea of children going to war when the C.O. talked about what he tells parents who are sending their children into this real danger just after they've graduated from high school. I thought of myself at 18 dealing with something like the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I wouldn't have had a clue what that reality would do to me.

[SPOILER ALERT]

And despite the lack of interaction between the characters, there was real poignance to the stories they told about each other. The sister, of course, I could relate to. She speaks at the end of how her brother told her to stay put in her apartment if "shit comes down" again like 9/11, and he would beat a path of destruction to her door to evac her. Any sister of any brother would want to hear just that, and probably has heard it more than she even can remember.

Cast:
Liz (sister)/Suzanne: Jessi Blue Gormezano
John (older son/brother)/Pete: Brandon Jones
Mom/Maria: Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris
C.O.: Larry Mitchell
Charlie (younger son/brother)/Tommy: Ben Rosenblatt

Directed by KJ Sanchez.
Plays at the Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland, through October 30.

Musical of Our Discontent

2011-10-16T17:44:00.004-04:00

credit: Deen Van Meer, Kennedy Center

Back from Les Miz 2.0, the 25th anniversary full-scale re-thinking of the 1985 amazingness. I wasn't really sure I wanted to see this, since the 1985 KenCen pre-Broadway run was so indelible, but they promised this one would be good, and it certainly erased the memory of the tacky road-show version that carried on at the National a few years ago.

It is critical that I be induced to weep during the First Act Finale ("One Day More"), and the fact is, with this show, I began weeping when the priest brings Jean Valjean into his home--"have a seat, have some wine"--the first act of human kindness extended to the villainous bread thief Valjean after 19 years of captivity. This is even before the priest pays it forward by not turning him in to Javert for stealing the silver. Why didn't I bring tissues? Anyway, the cathartic requirement of theater was amply met.

I'm a little dim on French history, but I believe this takes place after the big Revolution. People are still jobless and desperate, discontented with the wealthy.

Which is pretty much where we are today. It's hard not to notice the similarities between Marius and his compatriots and the Occupiers of Wall Streets around the world just now. What they also have in common, in my mind, is the lack of a clear goal and strategy for achieving it. So far in the twenty-first-century version, at least the disobedience and protests have been largely civil.

Back to the show.... The other similarity I was struck by was to West Side Story (aka Romeo and Juliet), even so far as the staging of the lovers' first rendezvous o'er garden walls and under balconies. And of course the grand Act One Finale that weaves the threads of character and melodic themes into one magical tapestry of urgency, to get through the line at the restroom and back in your seat to see how it all turns out in Act Two.

Dissimilarities to the original production in 1985: Well, you don't have Colm Wilkinson, Frances Ruffelle, or Patti LuPone. The 2011 Valjean, J. Mark McVey, is an indomitable presence, but his delivery was more theatrical than Wilkinson's; that is, the lines were acted as much as sung. I'm trying to say this without judgment; different is just different. Wilkinson's voice had as much power as tenderness and created a purer characterization of Valjean.

The biggest dissimilarity among the actors was in Eponine, portrayed in the original by the heartbreakingly waifish Ruffelle and in the 2011 version by Chasten Harmon, far too sultry and womanly to be a waif (the character references Anybodys from West Side Story). She's more of a Spamalot Lady of the Lake, wondering what ever happened to her part.

The bottom line: I and my fellow standing-ovation-givers give the production an A. But I didn't get the cast recording. I have the cast recording.

A side note: the bio in the program for Cameron MacIntosh, the show's producer, made me smile. It reads, in its entirety:

Cameron MacIntosh (Producer) produces musicals.

Pattern Recognition

2011-10-04T13:16:00.002-04:00

It took a while, but I finally came up with a theme for this blog. (See subtitle, above!)

Of course, it is ironic that I place myself in the role of "Audience" and yet blog publicly, as though anticipating an audience myself....

love, hosaa
somewhere around the second-to-last row of the balcony

Social Injustice, The Musical!

2011-10-02T19:13:00.010-04:00

The other day when I told my friends I was going to Ford's Theatre to see a musical about a Jewish man wrongly accused of assaulting a young girl, one among my fellow dinner companions laughed out loud.

"IIII didn't raaaape you,
Sweeeeet-hearrrrrt!"

(This, mind you, was on Rosh Hashanah. Oy.)

Musicals are supposed to be madcap romps, I guess, like anything with Mary Martin or Ethel Merman in it.

Or, you know, West Side Story or Cabaret. Both dealt with prejudice, as does Parade by Alfred Uhry (book), Jason Robert Brown (composer), and Harold Prince (co-conceiver) and directed by Stephen Rayne.

The fact-based story involves Atlanta pencil-factory supervisor Leo Frank (played by Euan Morton), a transplanted Brooklyn Jew, who becomes a scapegoat when 13-year-old factory worker Mary Phagan (Lauren Williams) is found murdered in the factory's basement.

In the course of the trial and its aftermath, Leo comes to understand and appreciate his Southern (and Jewish) wife Lucille (Jenny Fellner), steelier than any of the other Atlanta magnolias and equal to the challenge of forcing the governor (Stephen F. Schmidt) to reopen the case.

On a Sunday afternoon, the theater crowd is typically touristy, but in my little area there seemed to be a large number of theater afficianados and not just Lincoln buffs. I overheard a word or two before the show and during intermission referring to the Broadway version; others remarked on the accuracy of the events (I didn't quite catch what one person said Uhry supposedly admitted to changing, factually, for the drama).

I, on the other hand, went in pretty ignorant. That's why I couldn't tell my friends why they shouldn't laugh at my going to a musical about an assault case.

Anyway, just as the actors began the performance by casually wandering up the aisles from the back of the house and strolling into position on stage, at least one couple in the audience got up and not-so-casually fled just a few minutes before the end. What they were anticipating, I knew not, exactly. (The young theater-buff sitting next to me had been weeping for the last few scenes.)

The powerful image of an onstage lynching has to be one of the most chilling pieces of stagecraft I've ever seen. It is not one I will soon forget.

love, hosaa
chilled

ETA (Oct. 3): The ending that I described above isn't the end ending, which I missed because of my sight-line on the left side of the orchestra. At the end, Lucille wanders among her fellow Atlantans, not joining in their rousing chorus about how much they love being Southerners and all that. Her attitude is silent judgment.

But when she stands upstage center, I couldn't see her face at all. Did she join in the chorus or remain in silent judgment? Spoilers welcome, please!

Two Singers: Nnenna Freelon and Elliott Yamin

2011-09-21T18:07:00.004-04:00

Two singers I catch around town as often as I can just happened to be in the neighborhood (or close enough) in the last couple of weeks: Jazz artist Nnenna Freelon and American Idol alum (season five) Elliott Yamin. They don't have terribly much in common, except I like them both for their unique voices. You don't mistake them for anyone else.

(And you know that's why I like Clay Aiken, too, but while he is working on his surprise for my birthday next month--which I am guessing is going to be his plan to collaborate with David Foster on adapting my screenplay into a Broadway musical--I have to spend this time pursuing my other interesting interests. Pardon my daydream...)

Both Nnenna and Elliott played to less than packed houses at the Strathmore and the Birchmere, respectively. This is unfortunate, but it didn't affect their performances.

Nnenna goes into her own world in her dreamy interpretations, bringing the audience along into the experience. "Skylark" gave me chills, performed with simple bass accompaniment.

One difference between a Nnenna/Strathmore experience and an Elliott/Birchmere one is my level of inhibition in clack-gathering. It's just taboo in a concert hall like Strathmore, and an artist of Nnenna's elegance, well, it would just seem like a violation to try to video her performance. At the Birch, with a guy like Elliott joshing with his E-Train riders in the audience, the pictures and videos are almost expected.

So to give you Nnenna's "Skylark," I borrow from someone else's lack of inhibition. This is from a year ago:

And "God Bless the Child," which made me feel as though I never heard or understood it before:

Now, Elliott, on the other hand, I had no problems mustering courage to video, so these are mine. My only problem was the tall fellow directly in my line of sight. (Situation normal.)

Here he is previewing some new songs, and delivering a heartfelt version of an earlier hit.

Love, hosaa
hearing (really great) voices

Fahrenheit 21C

2011-09-08T23:11:00.012-04:00

Back from Round House Theater's production of Ray Bradbury's futuristic classic, Fahrenheit 451, with special multimedia effects that really do make that future feel now.

The credit for that stunning stagecraft, as well as the directing (Sharon Ott) and two of the principal actors--David Bonham ("Montag") and Aurora Heimbach ("Clarisse")--goes to the Savannah College of Art and Design.

The story is well known enough: Firemen burn books because books contain ideas, which just confuse and upset people. In a culture that fears dissent, ideas are weapons of mass destruction. (H. G. Wells also foresaw a book- and thought-free future in The Time Machine.)

What makes this production so contemporary is not just the cool multimedia elements, but also its reflection of our relationship to multimedia itself. Look around at how many people are connected to their devices, hooked on media walls that aren't just on the walls anymore--they never leave our hands. And yes, in many ways, this does detract from our ability to focus, reflect, think, and question.

But for me the real foresight of Bradbury comes through in Montag and Clarisse's escape to the woods and in the preservation of books through oral storytelling.

Futurist William Crossman has long been forecasting the rise of voice-based computing and the lessening need for text. See VIVO [Voice In/Voice Out]: The Coming Age of Talking Computers.

Frankly, as much as I love Moby Dick, I can't imagine memorizing it. Nor do I necessarily buy into the idea of rote memorization as valuable for critical thinking. But Bradbury's point about conveying cultural knowledge through the medium of storytelling is valid, and Crossman's point about advanced societies relying less on text to do the conveying is becoming increasingly validated.

Bradbury's prescription for his hero, escaping to nature and away from the oppressively conforming and soul numbing city, is the same prescription we hear today from Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle. Louv writes about his prescription for children hooked on technologies and suffering from nature-deficit order in the next issue of THE FUTURIST.

The Voice of a Master Twit

2011-09-05T12:07:00.006-04:00

For my fellow Edward Duke fans, I've been trying to locate digital versions of the audiobooks he recorded for Buckingham Classics, which no longer seems to exist.

Best we can do commercially is the audiocassette compilation All About Jeeves, which repackaged Edward's two original Buckingham cassettes.

The stories are:

"Jeeves Takes Charge" and "Bertie Changes His Mind," which were Acts I and II, respectively, of Edward's stage production, plus "The Chump Cyril" and "Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg," originally packaged as "Jeeves Comes to America."

(Incidentally, Act III of the Jeeves Takes Charge stage production--"Wooster in Wonderland"--was Edward's invention, pulling together all of the best characters and plot devices of the Wodehouse universe--including aunts, country fairs, newts, fiances, and the world's worst tap dance, performed by Bertie while singing "Look for the Silver Lining.")

Sadly, I had ordered my copy of "Jeeves Comes to America" right about the same time dear Edward died, in 1994. It was recorded in 1993, and I fear he was likely quite ill at the time. I tried only once to listen to this recording and just couldn't get through it. My heart couldn't bear it. It's about time I tried again, now, isn't it!

There is one more piece of Edward Duke audio in my collection (also on tape. It was a sad decade, the technologically transitional 1990s). It is the interview that he conducted with WETA TV and radio personality Robert Aubry Davis, for his show Desert Island Discs. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Davis in Edward's dressing room--and the audacity to ask for a copy of the interview.

I'll see what I can do about converting some of these tapes into digital audio, and will try to share as much as I can within the limits of fair use. I miss Edward's laugh, his wit, his mastery of the art of the twit.

Love, hosaa

looking for the silver lining (and tap dancing, very badly indeed)

Errant Heirs, Apparently

2011-09-04T08:34:00.006-04:00

Back from last night's invited dress rehearsal for The Heir Apparent at Shakespeare Theatre's lovely Lansburgh venue on 7th Street.

The early 18th-century French farce by Jean-Francois Regnard (1655-1709) retained period costuming, while the text (all verse) had a complete 21st-century American makeover. Incongruous at first, but delivered with such energy and daffy deftness that it kept the audience roaring for just over two hours.

The brains of the operation (which was to extract a will from miserly Uncle Geronte that favored the Bertie Woosterish nephew Eraste) was the quick-thinking (and self-serving) valet Crispin, played with winking naughtiness by Carson Elrod.

The set design by Alexander Dodge was a character in itself. I hope it isn't too much of a spoiler to say that the big ugly clock--as noisy and elaborate in its machinery as it was fascinating in its ornate face design (Deco? Nouveau? Rococo-koo-koo?)--had personality that demanded its own plot point.

The play officially opens September 12 and runs through October 23. See it.

Credits as follows:

The Heir Apparent
Adapted by David Ives from the comedy by Jean-Francois Regnard
Directed by Michael Kahn

Crispin: Carson Elrod
Geronte: Floyd King
Eraste: Andrew Veenstra
Lisette: Kelly Hutchinson
Isabelle: Meg Chambers Steedle
Madame Argante: Nancy Robinette
Scruple: Clark Middleton

Set Designer: Alexander Dodge
Costume Designer: Murell Horton
Lighting Designer: Philip Rosenberg
Sound Designer: Christopher Blaine
Composer: Adam Wernick

Meet the cast event at Shakespeare Theatre: (left to right)
Playwright David Ives with the cast: Andrew Veenstra, Nancy Robinette, Carson Elrod, Meg Chambers Steedle, Floyd King, Kelly Hutchinson and Clark Middleton.

credit: Shakespeare Theatre

New Blog: Shakespeare Readers

2011-09-01T12:43:00.005-04:00

I've started a new blog for the Shakespeare Readers group (formerly the Washington Shakespeare Reading Group), which meets one Sunday a month at American University Library.

Check out the new blog and the 2011-2012 reading schedule here.

"In Bard We Trust!"

Better to Be Lucky Than Smart

2011-08-28T09:16:00.003-04:00

My brother always says it's better to be lucky than smart. So my neighborhood dodged Irene's bullet last night. My building never lost power or water, which is good for me because the bathtub-full-of-water trick didn't work. I should have checked the plug, which apparently was designed only to stop the water from draining long enough to let someone take a bath. The tub was bone dry this morning.

Anyway, I took my copy of Barron's to the Tastee Diner this morning. (I had a pocket full of quarters in case the Washington Post's delivery person made it to my building; no surprises, she/he didn't.)

Barron's isn't something I normally read on my own, but I got a gift subscription from a friend with points of some kind. Anyway, I normally can't decipher my way past the front editorial, but this week's Streetwise piece by Jacqueline Doherty, "Prospering in a Weak Economy," contained some interesting perspective.

Citing analyst Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research and the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, Doherty notes that unemployment is only 4% for Americans with college degrees and 14% for those with only high-school diplomas. Moffett concludes that 40% of Americans have no discretionary income.

What does this mean to Barron's readers? I.e., well-educated people with money to invest? There is growth in companies that provide services to below-poverty consumers.

"One area that's growing: those servicing cellphone subscribers below the poverty line who receive government subsidies," writes Doherty. "Moffett recommends MetroPCS Communications (PCS), which saw its shares tumble from north of 18 to a recent 10.67."

I interpret this as advising rich people how to further exploit the poor. Well, the poor don't have a lot of leverage, but they can learn the same lessons (even if they don't read Barron's.)

Not that anybody should take advice from me, especially when it comes to choosing between satellite TV service and "a third meal." But maybe there could be a way to turn the tables on the exploiters: save for shares in Disney instead of saving for a Disney vacation, or give up Happy Meals for a year to open an education Roth IRA with McDonald's shares (reinvesting the dividends, of course). In other words, invest in what you'd normally buy. The rich guys are.

(Disclosure: I own Ford's shares; and I've been a Ford-vehicle owner since 1982. Okay, so it's only three vehicles in 30 years, and it's only 200 shares. In me, Ford's may not have a frequent buyer, but it has long-term customer loyalty.)

I've known for awhile that my capital was worth more than my labor, even in a down economy (and a down market). The jobs that are gone are not coming back; employers have outsourced or automated them.

Back in the early 1980s, one of THE FUTURIST's authors wrote that we should all own robots not so they'll do our work for us, but so we can live off the income they generate when we sell or license them to do other people's work. Applying that same principle generally, I figured the only way to beat the rising costs of gasoline and health-insurance premiums was to own stock in energy and health companies (and since I'm not smart enough to pick those companies, I let the mutual-funds managers do that work).

This might be my most blindly ignorant blog ever. I am entirely too uninformed, lazy, and risk averse to write on this subject. I have no mortgage or college tuition to worry about, as most people do. Anyway, it just rankled me to see how already-rich people are being advised how to profit from the already-exploited.

Last piece of ignorant advice for anyone who can't start saving or investing. The trick my mom gave me before I had enough to even open an IRA was to pretend to save. She subtracted $20 from her checking account (every week? every month?) and recorded the amount in the back of her checkbook. The money was still in her account, but if she didn't see it she didn't spend it. Eventually she saved enough for whatever she needed it for.

I did the same and managed to get enough for an IRA. My arbitrary goal was to match my rent in monthly savings. I did it for about two years, and it got me enough to actually begin investing for real.

Not all the water is in the same bathtub. Thanks to inheriting my Dad's credit union account, some of my water is in a different, less-leaky tub than the stock market. So hopefully I'll never run completely dry--or get completely soaked.

Love, hosaa
A little smart, a little lucky.

Good morning, Apocalypse!

2011-08-27T09:27:00.003-04:00

There's the old joke among survivalists in the woods: You don't need to outrun the bear. You just need to outrun your buddy.

I'm a little too late to outrun the hurricane heading our way in about 12 hours or so. I know I can get as far as Kalamazoo in a day with clear roads, but people who had the same idea would already be on the roads by now.

I've read the sites telling you what you should have on hand, what should be in your emergency kit. How to survive with no modern conveniences or public services for at least five days. My biggest problem will probably be water, not because I can't fill up some bottles and jugs in advance, but because I don't have bottles or jugs.

You see, I've been de-cluttering lately, and among the first things to get cleaned out were the two very dusty "go" bags of emergency provisions that I prepared in 2001. That wasn't because of 9/11 but because of the anthrax scare here that immediately followed. I thought I was preparing myself to flee through the woods.

Anyway, the batteries and protein bars all expired in 2002. The blue jeans don't fit anymore. The toiletries, well, truth be known, I no longer require all those packs of feminine hygiene products. (Yay, me!)

The containers of water wouldn't have been fresh even if they hadn't cracked open and leaked. I'm not sure what I did with the Brita bottle. I never read the instructions anyway.

The transistor radio doesn't work. It wasn't just because the 9v batteries I tried to use were dead, but there was a wire loose.

I was trying to remember why I needed a radio anyway. Am I going to sit up all night with news announcers telling me I'm in a hurricane and I should take all necessary precautions? I live in an apartment building that is usually pretty security-conscious, so if they need to evacuate us, they'll notify us in the form of a very loud alarm bell. So I plan to sleep in my clothes, and maybe in my closet (away from my one big north-facing window). I think I'll be fine.

Since I was up early this morning and still wanted to scout around for at least a can opener (hee! The non-electric can opener disappeared several years ago when a neighbor wanted to borrow it; I said to keep it, I have an electric one). The Giant was open, of course, when I got there at 7:30 a.m. I got some fruit that wouldn't need refrigeration. I already have peanut butter.

I really don't plan to cook a Thanksgiving meal on votive candles, but I got an extra candle anyway for the light. All that they sold were those smelly ones, so I got a green one, fir-tree scented, which will no doubt send me out into the streets in search of fresh air as soon as the aroma clouds my thinking in this tiny apartment.

My neighbors are out jogging as usual, the earnest middle-aged ladies and their former-Marine drill sergeant coaches. Dogs are being walked. The hardware store was the only sign of panic, and the good men and women of Strosniders took it all in stride. Plenty of D cells, which I picked up for my old boom box. I couldn't find any new transistor radios to replace my broken one, so I snatched one of the Red Cross emergency crank-ups. Has lights and sirens, too, oh boy! I didn't know it was over a hundred bucks till I got to the cash register. Sigh.

It's sultry out, and the wind is picking up. The restaurants have not secured their outdoor tables and chairs, I suppose because they're expecting business as usual before the storm. It's Saturday. It's business.

I give the disaster-preparation award on our street to the Apple Store, boarded up but open for business.

As for the bear of the storm, well, I doubt I'd be able to outrun it, pudgy couch potato that I am. When Mom and I went to Alaska and were advised to make a lot of noise if we encountered a bear, I joked that I could go into the Gershwin songbook. Without water, I may have to sing for a sip.

There's a somebody I'm longing to see,
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me....

Love, hosaa,
anticipating apocalypse

Artificial Reality

2011-08-05T07:35:00.003-04:00

The 10-block walk from home to office leaves my head open to many random ideas and reflections, which I sometimes think (probably erroneously) would make good blog posts. One reason that I don't bore people with too many of these trivial thoughts is that I don't remember them.

Anyway, I did think briefly about the two paintings in the lobby of my apartment building. In their last round of redecoration, our building's owners made the lobby look like a bank, with plush settees and marble (maybe)-topped little tables underneath big oil (maybe) paintings of the sort you find advertised on late night TV, with starving artists' work at wholesale prices to meet your decorating needs.

The painting on the left is a still life of flowers, and it hangs above a faux (probably)-marble table with a bouquet of artificial flowers. The painting on the right is a similar still life, with flowers but featuring two large urns or vases; it hangs over a table with two large urns or vases.

So I left my lobby observing fake art of real flowers accompanied by fake flowers, along with fake art of real vases accompanied by real vases of questionable value (though reflecting a banker's taste for high-class stuff).

I think I would have felt more comfortable with this arrangement if the real fake vases were parked under the fake real flowers painting and the real fake flowers were parked under the fake real vases painting.

But then I would have had nothing to confuse myself with for the (real) 10-block walk to work.

love, hosaa
really real

eta, I would have taken pictures, but I forgot. ;-)

Rocked Ages

2011-07-24T17:47:00.002-04:00

Back from Rock of Ages at the National Theatre, and what turns out to have been the second to last show of the current U.S. tour, starring Constantine Maroulis.

Footnote: Constantine from Season Four of American Idol was one I'd predicted would win and, that very week, was eliminated at number six. That was the year Carrie Underwood conquered the world.

I'm not going to try to review a show that is so outside of my genre, especially one that is closing in a few hours anyway, but as is my custom, I like to give my singular perspective as a member of the audience. (Hello from the balcony!)

Rock of Ages is loud, energetic, and entertaining. The fact that I came home with a headache I blame more on Metro, whose hot weekend delays left me without the opportunity to grab a burger before the show. But the rest of the audience was appropriately responsive, even if it was a Sunday matinee. (Edward Duke told me they were always the worst houses.)

Right off, one thing about the plot (and yes, it was cartoonish and breaking the fourth wall-ish like Spamalot) bugged the hell out of me, but through no fault of the show itself. It just so happens that I saw this show about reveling in the rocker lifestyle on the same weekend that singer Amy Winehouse was found dead at the age of 27. The addictions and seedy dissipation were comical in the show, but as a matter of fact it's just not something I can laugh at.

The music is of my generation, my age, though it's not my music. Set in the Reagan era, ROA seemed more like the 1960s nostalgia version of Rock, with scruffy hippy stylings for most of the rockers. Glitter made its way into the rock aesthetic, as did boy-band sell-out. In the eighties, what did I listen to? After a year of grad school and NPR, I mainly switched to all jazz and classical. I knew who Madonna and Michael Jackson were, but that was about it.

What surprised me about this show was that even I recognized a few of the tunes: I thought using "covers" was taboo for Broadway musicals, even if they are about rock of a certain vintage. The one that of course stuck out the most for me was "I Want to Know What Love Is," which was a duet on Clay Aiken's 2006 album, A Thousand Different Ways.

So we're left with a Broadway show about rock, and how is rock used in this context? When rock was born, it was used as a medium of protest. In the ROA plot, protest is used to save the rock lifestyle on seedy Sunset Boulevard from a fate worse than stripper clubs: strip mall development.

Well, whatever dude. I didn't buy it. This isn't John Lennon's protest or Dylan's.

Still, the good natured plot brought happy endings to the ridiculous but lovable characters. What the protests really were protecting were the right to keep dreaming your dreams: "Don't Stop Believing." I just wish that message were enough. Unfortunately, as attested by Amy Winehouse's death (and name any other horrific tragedy of our time, manmade and otherwise) we need something worth believing in, too.

love, hosaa
rocking out in her own contrarian way

The Plot(s) at Ford's

2011-07-19T21:45:00.003-04:00

Back from a very interesting mini-symposium at Ford's Theatre, "Lincoln Assassination Conspiracies." Tonight's event was apparently part of a series sponsored by the Spy Museum.

The three speakers were:

Michael W. Kauffman, author of American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies.

H. Donald Winkler, author of Lincoln and Booth: More Light on the Conspiracy.

Frank J. Williams, retired chief justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island and author of several books on Lincoln, including an anthology of essays, Judging Lincoln.

Since I am not well versed in this subject--Civil War espionage generally and the life of John Wilkes Booth specifically--all of it was new and interesting. I thought Winkler in particular made a compelling case for the role of the Confederate government in setting the mechanisms in motion that led to April 14, 1865, assassination of Lincoln.

He also said that the revelations leading to some of his conclusions are of relatively recent origins, emerging from groundbreaking scholarship in the 1980s. The point was that we will always keep learning new things, though we may never attain all the answers to our questions. (Why did Booth only have a single-shot pistol and a dagger that night? How did he know Lincoln would be virtually unguarded? And why was Lincoln virtually unguarded?)

What was interesting to me was that the theater was about 85% full (at least the orchestra section) for a weeknight lecture. The knowledgeable and appreciative audience of history buffs flashed pictures all evening, and at the end several stood to ask questions. And they sometimes even left the guest experts stumped for an answer.

I don't know, it's a bit comforting I guess. The present is confusing. The future is confusing. The past is still confusing, too. Our ongoing need for answers drives the quest for questions. Asking is therefore more important than answering.

Love, hosaa
wondering

Leadership, Legacies, and Shakespeare

2011-06-30T07:50:00.010-04:00

The books on leadership will tell you that the best time to think about your legacy is at the beginning of your tenure at the top. Another good time is right before you squander it with misbehavior, but that's not my subject today.

I was recently asked to take the reins of a small, venerable little organization, whose dedicated membership had dwindled to a handful of enthusiasts: The Shakespeare Readers.

Begun in the 1980s by a pastor as an activity for his intellectually hungry congregation, the group met twice a month in the church basement to read one entire Shakespeare play aloud. As this very informal group evolved and changed leadership in the 1990s, the "rules" and "privileges" of membership clarified.

When the pastor handed the leadership over to the next volunteers, the group named itself "The Washington Shakespeare Reading Group" (WSRG), a schedule of readings was circulated, a formula was created for assigning parts to give equal numbers of lines to all who chose to attend, and ads were placed in the local newspapers to boost membership. (That's about when I joined the group. I made the T-shirts.)

For about a dozen years, that's how things were done. Membership grew, peaked, and began dwindling. Life happens, as does death. Leadership passed to the next volunteer, but the legacy of the incumbent could not be conveyed. For whatever reason, the church could no longer provide the free, comfortable basement classroom as a space for the Shakespeare fans, most of whom now were not also members of the congregation. There was no longer a relationship to build on.

The new leader also wanted to introduce changes to the formula: Rather than being assigned parts in each scene, readers would take lines in turn as the play moved around the table. She was then advised by the incumbent, who wanted to protect her own legacy, to come up with another name for the group.

"Shakespeare Readers" was born, and the process of finding free, comfortable space and a universally agreeable monthly day and time for the readings became a challenge. Montgomery County libraries wanted money for their spaces, but D.C. libraries welcomed the group for free on Sundays until municipal funding ran dry. Then the American University library offered space, and the Readers could read again.

I tell this tale because this spring, as the youngest still-somewhat-actively participating Reader, I was handed an envelope of contact information (i.e., mailing addresses and telephone numbers) for all individuals who had attended the Shakespeare readings since the days of the pastor and his basement congregations. The resigning leader wanted to spend more time with her grandchildren.

It is a coincidence that this "greatness" was thrust upon me at about the same time I became the editor of THE FUTURIST. So I needed to apply some of the lessons of leadership I'd already begun absorbing.

The leader's legacy matters to the members as much as to the individual who is stepping aside. What matters most to this group are the relationships it established with each other and with hosting organizations, such as the churches and libraries. And one of the most important relationships was with our local royalty, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, which grew from a personal connection established early on by the WSRG leader and allowed our group to attend invited dress rehearsals. This would be our most significant (but unadvertised) membership benefit.

Another lesson is to embrace new ways of doing things, even if they're a bit outside of one's comfort zone. Advertising in local newspapers or library bulletin boards just wasn't going to cut it. I found MeetUp and quite a few local Shakespeare fans who were as eager for intellectual stimulation and the opportunity to use their voices as the pastor's congregation was a quarter-century ago. I was told by several of these "Shakespeare Explorers" that they would have joined our group many years ago if they knew we existed, but we couldn't be found on the Internet. So that will have to change.

While I was congratulating myself on finding a new source of members (and new opportunities for Shakespeare-related activities), the WSRG leader gave me a call to express concern for our group's integrity. I knew she meant her legacy. Did what she had built up and leave behind matter to anyone but herself? Of course it did. I reassured her that I was not leaving our Readers behind, and that I was not preparing a merger with this new group.

With the support of two previous Reader leaders, and the influx of new ideas and energy from the Explorers, I think I have a pretty good head-start on a legacy. Shakespeare inspires us both to use our voices and to listen to each other. Leaders need to do both--often at the same time.

Wishing Us Love

2011-06-19T04:37:00.005-04:00

Back from I Wish You Love at the Kennedy Center, which plays for just one more night. I find I dislike Saturday night crowds, but I enjoyed participating in the rousing and well-deserved standing ovation for the small but gifted ensemble portraying Nat King Cole, two of his bandsmen--his "people"--and the characters behind the scenes of Cole's late 1950s television series.

Dennis W. Spears portrayed Cole, and if there were a dictionary entry for the term "shit-eating grin," you would find an image of Spears as Nat "King" Cole preparing his face and demeanor for the viewers out there in TV-land. An array of studio monitors orbiting the set depicted the show in a remembered black-and-white reality distinctly different from the live, full-bodied presence on the stage. In the breaks during the show, the monitors silently offered the program sponsors' black-and-white (rather, all-white) view of the American consumer.

For the honor of being rich in white America, Cole had to be the package of an acceptable black man, and this meant jumping through a series of fiery hoops, including playing a tour date in Alabama in 1957. He and his people were attacked not just by the KKK but also by the police. Upon returning to the studio and encountering the demand of the sponsors to segregate his own band, Cole finally refused. On his last aired program (in this fictional account, which I can only speculate is based on truth), Cole displays a sign he picked up from his travel South: "We Serve Coloreds ... Take Out Only."

Battles fought decades ago are still being fought, not just by one group of people robbed of its dignity, but also by others. The day after the anniversary of Edward Duke's birthday, he is much on my mind. He died in 1994 when it was almost impossible for an openly gay actor to get work as a leading man.

Before he came out of the closet, Rupert Everett got a lot of the roles that Edward would have been up for, I think. (The role that made him famous was the one most stereotypically gay, as Julia Roberts's confidante in My Best Friend's Wedding.)

Most of the bullying and hatred aimed at people like Clay Aiken may be because he wasn't open and (in my opinion) didn't conform to the stereotypes that straight America wanted. If you're queer, you should act queer, like those gays on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Entertain us with your swishy nonchalance, and don't confuse us by acting--you know--normal.

I always hated that show, and now I sort of understand why. Not for any "shit-eating-grin" behaviors depicted by the individuals participating in it, but for the attitude of my friends who loved the show so much. Why would they love those gays and not Clay? And why would my family love seeing Edward do his "Jeeves" tales but not want to hear one word about his "unhealthy lifestyle"?

I want everyone to be happy. I want the world to be beautiful. I want to wish it love, too.

love, hosaa
wishing for love

Another Year, Missed

2011-06-17T08:55:00.003-04:00

To Edward Duke, who would have been a distinguished 58.

I'm always remembering some small tidbit or other. Edward inspired me to write a story, then a play, with characters based on him (or at least my idea of him).

Once when I met him in his dressing room, I mentioned that I'd written another screenplay, but that it wasn't inspired by him.

He looked at me, at first registering hurt. And then he smiled that Edward Duke smile of his and said:

"It's good you've outgrown that!"

Love, hosaa
looking for the silver lining

Sing Casual

2011-06-09T22:41:00.003-04:00

Back from Strathmore for the first of a two-night gig by Mandy Patinkin, with pianist and occasional duet partner Paul Ford, on the "Dress Casual" tour.

When I saw that Harry Chapin was among the songwriters that Mandy intended to cover in this tour, I was a bit disappointed because "Cat's in the Cradle" was on the setlist the last time I saw Mandy (New Year's Eve at the Kennedy Center a number of years ago). But even though the material was familiar, the execution was remarkable (and in the case of the Chapin piece, quite touching, for reasons that I won't spoil).

The 1-hour, 45-minute set was full of lyrically complex and dramatically challenging songs from the best of Broadway, ranging from Les Miz ("Bring Him Home" opened the show) to Secret Garden, and of course Sunday in the Park with George. Mandy's tone was richer than ever, and his range is nothing short of astonishing.

Flaws? As I mentioned, there were some very challenging lyrics, like the "Trouble in River City" and "He Doesn't Know the Territory" numbers from Music Man. He lost his place several times, but handled it as part of the show. At one point he called out to the audience, "what's the line?" and sure enough a chorus of half a dozen guys in the back provided the correct lyric. The power of the voice more than made up for the lyric issues.

The two Music Man numbers got a couple of fun twists - "do certain words start creeping into his vocabulary--words like 'Twitter'?" and the crooked salesman who sold boys' bands was not Harold Hill but Bernie Madoff!

It's all entertainment. Mandy cracked on the group of latecomers down front (the ushers erroneously led them in as Mandy was sliding into his next song. He hit "abort" and started interrogating the latecomers on what took them so long to get here). Other than that, there wasn't much in the way of interaction with the audience, but he reached up into the upper tiers to draw everyone in.

There is nothing casual about that kind of star quality.

love, hosaa

being alive

Building Futures

2011-06-05T16:01:00.004-04:00

Elektro, by Westinghouse, courtesy of NBM

Yesterday I got to see Designing Tomorrow: America's World's Fairs of the 1930s exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., conveniently located across from the Judiciary Square Metro stop.

(Left, entrance to National Building Museum. Right, sculptures at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, adjacent to Judiciary Square Metro stop. Photos by C. G. Wagner)

It's another one of those not-Air-and-Space-Museum museums I'd always been meaning to explore, and I heard about this World's Fair exhibition thanks to a flyer from the Art Deco Society of Washington, which was promoting some related lectures and tours.

Unfortunately, ADSW's events were off-site, somewhere in Virginia, but the exhibit was worth an afternoon downtown. Also, unfortunately, the Building Museum had a bunch of other events scheduled that I didn't know about. Anybody attending the Intelligent Cities Forum tomorrow (June 6), I'd love a report. I didn't know about it. I'm not omniscient. (Shocker.)

In addition to the World's Fairs exhibit, the museum also was showing the work of Art Deco muralist Hildreth Meière, but this work was in a separate gallery, on a different floor, rather than considered alongside the aesthetic works of the World's Fairs. Curious. There was also something to do with LEGOs, which cost $5 and didn't seem worth it to me, so I didn't go to that.

I liked the big open atrium of the Building Museum, but didn't know why there were tables set up with numbers, like they were expecting to host the Taste of DC or some big reception. Had I just missed something? Was I hours early for an evening event I didn't know about? Dang that lack of omniscience.

So the "Designing Tomorrow" exhibit was what I focused on. I tried to take my time with the huge collages of pictures and the captions that were too small and placed too low for me to read - if I could even find which caption went with which image. The Web site said they included 200 artifacts from the various World's Fairs that took place across the U.S. during the Great Depression, but they were overwhelmed by the big posters.

The artifact I was most interested in was the big robot, called Elektro: Moto-Man. But what was on display (according to the teensy-weensy caption) was a replica. The plastic model looked imposing but cheap. The grainy video showing Elektro in action was much more interesting. You can find it on YouTube.

I did learn that there was more than one World's Fair in the 1930s. The two I usually only hear about are Chicago's Century of Progress and the great New York World's Fair of 1939/1940, the one with the Trylon and Perisphere. I didn't learn all that much about Elektro and robots and the role of automation. Even the exhibition book only mentions it in a passing reference on page 10.

I wanted to learn more about Art Deco, but the long captions about the designers of the Fairs were impossible to absorb while standing and leaning over the display cases. So I'm glad I got the book, even if it doesn't include the Hildreth Meière stuff. I guess I could have bought her exhibition book too.

I got a good picture of how much influence industry now had on shaping the nation. By the 1930s, I don't know whether they were just trying to stimulate consumption by promising grander futures or just generally distracting the American public from the war in Europe. Probably both.

The future we were building then was one of comfort and convenience. But even the robots were taught to smoke. No wonder futurists get blamed for so much.

More press pictures from NBM for "Designing Tomorrow: America's World's Fairs of the 1930s"

"Ama-Deus"

2011-05-14T08:47:00.009-04:00

Edward Gero (Salieri), courtesy of Round House Theatre

Blogger's been down since I got to see the Round House Theatre production of Amadeus on Thursday, so my reflections are no longer fresh.

Long play, short recap: Excellent. (Which is ironic, since the story is about the torment of knowing one's own mediocrity and being the only one to recognize pure genius.)

I practically know the movie version by heart, and as tempted as I was to dig out my Milos Forman video before seeing this production, I refrained in order to let the stage version inform me anew, and it did.

The most mind opening moments, for me, were when Edward Gero as Salieri repeatedly pronounced Mozart's middle name to emphasize the "god" half (deus). I don't know Latin, but I know "amo, amas" etc. are conjugations of "to love." So I got that what Salieri was saying here was that Mozart was God's beloved. I never picked up on that in repeated viewings of the movie, and I never understood why the Peter Shaffer play was called "Amadeus" and not "Wolfgang" or "Wolfie" or even just "Mozart."

Duh.

Upon further reflection of the story line, I found the theme compared very well with two previous RHT productions, The Talented Mr. Ripley and A Picture of Dorian Gray: the tragedies of envy, vanity, and artistic hubris (though I guess Mr. Ripley had no artistic ambitions per se). Salieri's aspiration to become the voice of a god he loved turned toxic and menacing; as with Ripley, his envy turned homicidal.

This does not say much for those who wish to be artists or for the impulse to communicate one's soul to the masses. I think we can still do that without denying the genius of others when we recognize it.

Sometime ago, well before hitting ponderously reflective middle age, I recognized that my artistic talents were close to nonexistent: unpublished novelist, unproduced playwright. I sketch because I enjoy stopping to observe my environment and move my hand in feeble traces of the world's marvelous contours. I put pieces of video together to capture different angles of a moment in a singer's performance.

I sing, but softly, so no one has to hear. I dream, and occasionally turn daydreams into plot developments, amusing myself with the idea that one day they will compile themselves into stories and even books.

I take the same approach in my career, to recognize and support the talents of others on my team and make it my occupation to bring them due recognition (and glory to our organization).

If God or nature or the happenstance of cosmic forces granted others (but not me) the talents I admire, why should I make myself miserable with envy? It serves my own happiness better to be both Salieri, the recognizer of genius, and the Emperor, the ignorant patron.

love, hosaa
moving up from the second to last row of the balcony, cheering madly

The Real Him

2011-05-03T12:06:00.005-04:00

This post is both an excuse to show yet another Clay Aiken montage =D and write a little bit about my approach to montage making.

Yeah, I made the embed really small here - just click on the YouTube logo to go to the larger version.

The scene here is a one-time-only performance of "The Real Me" during Clay's Tried & True tour a few months ago. It was at Cincinnati on March 1. There was a lot going on that night, and a lot of the Clay Nation's best videographers were there to capture what I call a "Great Moment in Clay."

But I didn't use all of it for the montage. The "great moment" actually wasn't just what happened on stage, but a medical emergency that happened right in front of Clay mere moments before he was to sing something he hadn't performed more than once since recording it in 2008. Clay knew something was up, murmuring quietly, "The show must go on?" He reported to the audience that he was stalling a little because "a lady in the front row dropped her camera."

On the audio of one of the videos I used for this montage, you could hear the commotion going on, including the walky-talkies of the emergency crew who wanted to take the victim out of the theater to check her out.

For this montage, which I wanted to focus more on Clay's performance and less on the audience interaction, I chose the audio from a videographer, "GDG," who was farther away from the big ER drama. She also included more of the before-and-after footage, so the video doesn't just come to an abrupt stop when Clay stops singing. I liked that.

Ideally for editing a concert video, you want some "blank" space on which to overlay an alternate angle; since GDG herself is a montage-maker, she knew that the way she composed her scenes with Clay would be very useful in the editing process. Yay team!

The next trick is to balance close-ups and long shots, as well as left and right angles. There weren't too many views of the full stage or of full-body Clay, but there was enough three-quarter length Clays to add to the mix and make the overall image more interesting.

Because the videographers were working with different equipment, another trick was to adjust the brightness and contrast a little so that the images from one shot to the next would match better. I wasn't as successful with that as I would have liked.

Another issue for video editing is with the way some videographers add their names onto the images. Yes, everyone deserves credit for their work; I even added a credit on a video that otherwise wasn't tagged. I also include the names of the clack gatherers on the end credit. But if the videographer's tag is big and obnoxious and goes across live image, I can't use it.

The hardest part was synchronizing the various videos that I overlaid on top of the audio track from GDG's original video. The draft preview in my video editing program (Sony Vegas Platinum Studio 9) can be a little misleading. It would have been better to do a series of test renderings of a few seconds' worth of these overlays before outputting the whole finished product. I originally uploaded my first attempt to YouTube before I really sat and judged the quality, so there were some portions that were annoyingly out of synch.

Of course Clay talks so gosh-darn fast, it's really a challenge to get the video and audio matched up just right!!

Anyway, after I worked a bit more on that problem, I loaded the version you see above up to YouTube and took down the earlier one.

As Clay Aiken once said, "Perfection takes time, honey!"

love, hosaa
synching, for love alone

Women in the Arts

2011-04-30T17:29:00.008-04:00

It was a good day to get out of Bethesda ...

(click to enlarge; all photos by C. G. Wagner unless otherwise noted)

... so I finally got myself downtown to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. I signed up for membership about a year ago or so, and even donated them some extra money recently. Figured it was about time I saw what they were all about. And I even remembered to bring my membership card! I couldn't find my Philips Collection card, so that decided things.

NMWA is an easy subway ride: exit at Metro Center via 13th Street, and it's just a couple of blocks up to New York Avenue. You'll know you're in the right neighborhood when you see this:

which is the New York Avenue Sculpture Project featuring the whimsical figures by Niki de Saint Phalle.

Since I hadn't done any homework before going, I planned to just take the exhibitions, permanent and otherwise, as they came (or as I came to them). And the first thing was a neat display of the jewelry of Paloma Picasso, with a video featurette wherein she describes her experience choosing stones to work with at Tiffany's. I loved how she talks about the warmth of the gold and the joy of the colors that all come from the earth, explaining that the craftsmanship of working with the stones and metal is what connects us to them and gives them warmth.

As objects meant to be worn, these pieces of jewelry are functional. Viewing these reminded me of the objects over at the Freer Gallery that I visited a few weeks ago (and haven't gotten around to writing about or posting photos - sorry), in that you can trace the history of civilizations through how we feel about the objects in our lives and how they make us feel. What is jewelry for, exactly? Its beauty brings joy, and we borrow its beauty to enhance our own joy.

What I really liked about this museum was its graceful spaciousness (and also the fact that it wasn't jam-packed with tourists. They are still in line at the restrooms at the Air and Space Museum, as far as I know). I also appreciated the great diversity of the collections.

Here are just a few of the highlights of the main collection. I'll get to the photography exhibit in a minute.

Vivienne (1998, mixed media) and detail, by Shonagh Adelman (Canadian, born 1961)

(Left) White Column (1959, painted wood) by Louise Nevelson (American, 1899-1988)
(Right) Untitled #781 (1994; wax, plastic, cloth, and steel) by Petah Coyne (American, born 1953)

I liked that the galleries were curated/organized around subject matter and not just by medium or style: still lifes, streetscapes, abstracts, landscapes, etc. Stepping into portraiture, I wondered if I would see anything by Alice Neel, whose work I got to see with my mom at an exhibit in Minneapolis a few years ago. What distinctive style! And sure enough, I recognized the artist immediately:

T.B. Harlem (1940, oil on canvas) by Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984)

Any prejudgment about women's art being homey, sweet, and sentimental should be gone. Like Neel's unflinching portait of the impact of poverty, Frida Kahlo (clearly the celebrity of the Museum) paints with political inspiration.

Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky (1937, oil on masonite), and detail, by Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907-1954).

Interestingly, the abstracts had a softer touch from the female hand than I'm used to ...

(Left) Bacchus #3 (1978, acrylic and charcoal on canvas) by Elaine de Kooning (American, 1920-1989)
(Right) Orion (1973, oil on canvas) and Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses (1969, acrylic on canvas) by Alma Woodsey Thomas (American, 1891-1978)

... so even the Lee Krasner piece that clearly aligns with the Jackson Pollack style is somehow less disturbing.

The Springs (1964, oil on canvas) by Lee Krasner (American, 1908-1984)

Okay, I'll stop posting my poor photos of great art. The highlight of my excursion was the photography exhibit on the second floor, Eye Wonder: Photography from the Bank of America Collection.

It was great to see a range of visual artists besides the ones you'd expect, like Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange. My big complaint here is that there was no exhibition catalog! The handout available at the entrance to the exhibit doesn't include all of the pieces on display, and is only slightly more useful than the About the Exhibit page linked above. This is such a shame for people like me who just don't have memory for details, like the unfamiliar German and Dutch names in the captions.

And no, I did not take pictures of the pictures; in the other galleries, I photographed the caption information along with the art so I could have a record of what I saw and enjoyed - after the Renwick debacle last year, where the book about the museum was decades out of date, I vowed not to lose the basic information about my experiences. It's the same reason I keep the programs from all the plays I attend.

The best I can do to share the experience is to use the press photos from the museum. So here are just a few of the many wonderful images I got to see today:

Snow Halter, Salina County, Kansas (December 22, 1990, Chromogenic print) by Terry Evans. Credit: Bank of America Collection

Automat, 977 Eighth Avenue (1936, Gelatin Silver Print) by Berenice Abbott. Credit: Bank of America Collection

Magnolia Blossom (1925, Gelatin silver print) by Imogen Cunningham. Credit: Bank of America Collection

Backlit Radishes, Iwate-ken, Japan (1986, Gelatin silver print) by Linda Butler. Credit: Bank of America Collection

Revenge of the Goldfish (1981, Cibachrome print) by Sandy Skoglund. Credit: Bank of America Collection

If I had an exhibit catalog (or if I'd been able to take a picture of the caption information), I could tell you how she got that picture. Sigh.

eta, sorry for the messed-up spacing; Photobucket went wack-o on the last two pix and I had to switch to the blogger uploader - which I've never been able to position correctly. Not my day for technology...

Crime Scene

2011-04-25T06:11:00.001-04:00

Google Video Transfer

2011-04-23T17:47:00.002-04:00

Speaking of Clay :) > Google Video decided not to delete their archives but to transfer them over to YouTube. Just finished reviewing the transfer... This one still makes me smile:

All I Know about Marketing I Learned Watching RCA and American Idol F*ck Up Clay Aiken's Career

2011-04-22T07:41:00.005-04:00

Let me caveat this by saying I have no background in either music or marketing. But I have a lot of opinions and a little parable.

When RCA (unwillingly, I suppose) signed up Clay Aiken, he had just wowed the world and won American Idol (almost) in May 2003. I give the marketers credit for knowing they had to release a single from him almost immediately in order to leverage the buzz.

So, rather than forcing Clay to hold off recording until after the winner, Ruben Studdard, had recorded something, AI and/or RCA took both performers' "wow" songs and released them to the music-buying public (ignoring the fact that their real audience was TV viewers, not music lovers - prelude to the F*ck ups to come).

In Clay's case, the AI-mandated "winner's anthem" was "This Is the Night" (an original), but the wow song was "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (a standard that he made his own).

The wow song should have been the single released to radio, but it wasn't. F*ck up number one.

To make matters worse, the recorded version of BOTW tried to improve on Clay's perfect live performance by making it more grandiose. The engineers seem to have added more layers of the background choir on top of Clay's brilliant glorious power note, which had left everyone gasping for breath. On the recording, that note was buried. F*ck up number two.

By the time RCA had to work a full-length album out of Clay, they probably had an idea that they were not dealing with the next Justin Timberlake, but that didn't stop them from trying to make him into one. The marketing department got him lots of Tiger Beat and 16-Magazine type photoshoots, bleaching out his nerdy, small-town smart-ass charm and playfulness into something kind of artificial and creepy. F*ck up number three.

Short-term success of that approach got Clay millions of album sales for Measure of a Man, but the product was packaged in layers of over-engineered boy-band pop and largely disposable tunes that, a few years later, Clay himself would forget even recording. F*ck up number four.

All this time, RCA let Clay's true audience be marginalized and even ridiculed. The enthusiasm and fervor came from a demographic that RCA frankly didn't want: older women who are not perceived as cool. RCA wanted Justin Timberlake fans to buy Clay Aiken music, but it let Clay's natural audience bear the ridicule of being branded as "crazy blue-haired Claymates." F*ck up number five.

Actually, another natural audience for Clay was also discounted: Children. In 2003-04, the perception of being gay (Clay did not come out publicly until 2008, though he was "out" to the industry) was still unjustly associated with being a child molester. It didn't help when late-night comedians like Conan were telling exactly those kinds of insensitive jokes and inviting their own audiences to revile a good man. RCA should have stepped up to the plate and protected its product. F*ck up number six.

I remember standing in the electronics department of Walmart one evening when a promotion for Clay's 2006 album, A Thousand Different Ways, came on the flat screens of a dozen shiny TVs: I watched two tiny hyperactive tots come to a serene stop, mezmerized by Clay's soothing voice. If RCA had chosen to leverage Clay's appeal to the toddler demographic, he could have had his own children's show like his hero Mister Rogers or even an uplifting animated series like Fat Albert. F*ck up number seven.

I'm only counting the ones I remember off the top of my head; there are many many more, including the way Clay's Christmas TV special in 2004 was produced, which again engineered all of the personality and charm out of Clay Aiken's performances.

RCA wasn't the only f*ck up here. Decca tried to mold Clay to the PBS crowd, which it too thought it had a handle on with models like Michael Buble to apply. But in editing the TV special, which was even filmed in Clay's own hometown, they stripped the snark, the teasing, the twinkle out of their product. And they couldn't overcome the "Clay Aiken's a joke and so are his fans" tarnish that had built up from RCA's mismanagement--even in their own marketing staff, who tweeted that they couldn't believe they had to promote this guy.

I did say this was a parable and that I learned something about marketing from what I observed.

Marcus Aurelius told us to understand the thing in itself. What is "its" nature? Marketers have to understand both their product and its audience. You may be gaga over Lady Gaga, but if you've got Clay Aiken to sell, don't expect to attract the little monsters. (I'm generalizing, of course; there are a great many Gaga fans among Claymates. So why not the reverse?)

I bring this up now because my organization is trying to revamp its marketing strategy. I was told yesterday that our older members don't count. They're the "chicken and greenbeans" people. They are not cool, and they are not the "future" of our organization.

I totally disagree. From one perspective, yes, young people are the future. But younger people, while they are young, typically have no loyalty, no time, no perspective, no attention span, and no money. Our membership base skews older because they have matured and grown into our market. They have loyalty, time, an attention span, and perspective; before they retire, they have money, too.

The problem with going after what's cool is that it changes, and often very quickly. You chase it, catch it for a moment, and it evaporates. I prefer warmth, sincerity, integrity. Our organization can offer that. We can be the steady light in a stormy sea. We may be viewed as nerds by the general public, just as Clay and his Claymates are, but we've got something real and valuable and well worth offering.

Another metaphor, and then I'll let it go. Marketers see a hot trend in gold prices, so they go panning for gold. I will just tell you not to throw out the emeralds, diamonds, and other gems in your pan just because you don't know how to market them.

The last caveat: The opinions I express are my own.

Little karma topples over

2011-04-21T09:44:00.003-04:00

Last year I mentioned my little karma's delicate balance with lost and found money. Well, it seems karma has toppled, and I'm in the hole again.

I had enough cash (I think) in my pocket for a cab ride last night if it were raining, but fortunately it was clear, so decided to walk to the subway and use the cash to pick up dinner (who knew a "meet-up" at a bar scheduled for 6 to 9 pm would not include buffalo wings?).

Alas, by the time I checked my pocket on the subway platform, the cash was gone. Karma down.

But one of my colleagues this morning told me that our other co-worker had found my money after I left!! Karma rises!

But the finder of my lost money wasn't sure it was mine (even though she found it on the couch I'd been sitting on most of the evening). So she left it with the bartender. Karma swoons.

I suppose I could go back to the bar and try to claim the cash - a $20 and some ones and maybe a $5, or was that a $10. Sigh. Never mind.

Oh well. I'd gotten a free orange juice, and the young crowd there probably didn't know to leave tips. Thanks, barkeep.

Love, hosaa
back to hiding in my room, where karma can't find me.

Fragments of Beckett and Brook

2011-04-16T15:47:00.012-04:00

Back from the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater, for a matinee performance of Fragments, a collection of short pieces by Samuel Beckett and directed by the legendary Peter Brook.

Entrance to the Eisenhower Theater, bust of Dwight Eisenhower. Photos by C. G. Wagner. Click to enlarge

I start out telling you Peter Brook is legendary without telling you why, but it's a name I recall studying 30-odd years ago at college in a class called Modern European Drama. That will have to do, I guess. I just knew I wanted to see this, and the good reviews supported my pre-existing enthusiasm.

This is what theater is supposed to be, actors on a stage conveying a writer's dreams (or nightmares) to a room of strangers, with the assistance of a visionary director.

Wait, maybe that's what life is supposed to be. I get them confused, staying in the audience all the time.

Since it had been that long since I studied drama (my "reviews" are actually recaps of experiences and do not pretend to expand anyone's understanding of theater making), I thought I would have liked a text to follow along, or help me afterwards to know "what it meant." But it really wasn't necessary.

In the first piece, "Rough for Theater, I," Yoshi Oïda plays a blind musician, and Bruce Myers, an amputee, two homeless men who are "fragments" that make an attempt to connect, to become whole. The result is ultimately mistrust and violent failure.

The centerpiece, "Act Without Words, II," reunited the hobos in a comic mime, wherein Oïda emerges from his sack in the morning to curse the day while Myers emerges raring to go, checking his watch every few seconds as though trying to make every moment count.

In only the fourth of the five pieces would I like to have had a text to refer to - the second monologue, "Neither," by the lone female of the troupe, Hayley Carmichael. It simply came and left before it could really engage me.

The final piece, "Come and Go," brought all three performers back as old women, gossips on a bench, pairing off to tell each other a filthy secret as soon as each in turn has turned her back. The funniest moment for me was when they affectionately held hands as they did when they were girls, the two on the ends clutching each other's hands across the one in the middle, as in the pas des quatres from Swan Lake. To think these hens once were swans! (No, Carmichael, Myers, and Oïda did not dance.)

The most melancholy and thought-provoking piece was Carmichael's first monologue, "Rockaby," the second piece of the program. The looping monologue showed how absurdists of the era deconstructed text to create new meaning, which is something that can only be done in the theater (well, I'll give you film, too).

A woman sits in the chair and repeats a soliloquy on loneliness and despair: "I said to myself (whom else?)" at first means "Of course I said it to myself, do you see me talking to anybody else?" but toward the third or four iteration, it has become, "Is there anyone else out there I can talk to?"

Her character seems to see her own reflection in the windows she faces on other buildings, other people with the blinds now up, now down, and wondering "whom else?"

A happy coincidence for me during that piece was that I was sitting in the section where the pair of sign-language interpreters were seated to give the show to the hearing impaired. Happy, because the young woman signing Carmichael's lonely monologue perfectly reflected her reflections. They were like narrative dancers in two mediums, telling the same story. It was an unexpected dimension that added to my experience.

That's why I go to the theater.

I do wonder whether all of us fragments really do add up to a complete whole, or should we try to be complete within ourselves, as the blind musician in the opening piece said: "I am as I always was." Too much of society turns out to be violators and the gossips that make life miserable.

Didn't mean to depress anyone, but it's what the play made me think about. The theatrical experience somehow brings me more rewards, and for me, that's okay.

Love, hosaa

reflecting

ETA, I'm a little confused on the titles of the last two pieces; they are listed in the program as "Come and Go" fourth and "Neither" last, but in both the Washington Post and the Washingtonian reviews these titles are reversed. So I need text after all. Accurate text. I made my recap above consistent with the two professional (HAHA) reviewers, but I'm not sure of that. "Come and Go" seems more like what that short poem was about, but as I mentioned, I kind of missed it.

ETAA, "Come and Go" was the final piece performed, not "Neither," per the description in Wikipedia.

Liberty Wit

2011-04-08T10:05:00.004-04:00

Saw the new production at Ford's Theatre last night, Liberty Smith, a lively musical romp through the Revolutionary War.

< Geoff Packard as Liberty Smith and Kelly Karbacz as Emily Andrews in the Ford’s Theatre world premiere musical Liberty Smith, directed by Matt August. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

When I asked my family members attending the show with me what it was "about," they hesitated a little, saying "It was about the Revolutionary War...."

buzzz

My answer is, it was about learning how to communicate your message. The Forrest Gump/Zelig character of Liberty Smith, on a mission to free the American colonies from British oppression (in exchange for Martha's devotion... haha), finds himself apprenticed to the brilliant boiler-down-of-ideas-into-pithy-slogans, Ben Franklin.

As Forrest Gump learned, bumper sticker, T-shirt, and Twitter-worthy reductions of revolutionary concepts is how you make them marketable.

So Liberty Gump goes to Boston to unite all the guys behind the idea of rejecting "Taxation Without Representation"; then to help Jefferson compose the Declaration of Independence ("We hold these truths to be sooooo obvious...." or let's try "Self-Evident"); and even to France to explain to the Spamalot-worthy French monarchy why they should lift a manicured finger to help the Americans against the British ("the enemy of our enemy is our friend").

So that's my take on what it was about. Communication is the key to everything, from marketing your invention to selling your revolution.

As for the show, it had just about everything a great musical production needs: a charming hero who just needs an occasional slap in the head to see the virtues of the adorable self-evidently his soulmate-heroine (as opposed to the vainpot sub-heroine)... goofy villains (the pompously pompadoured Benedict Arnold)... It even had a silly kickline.

I enjoyed the songs while they were singing them (though I personally think these actors' voices weren't that great - better voices are getting kicked off of American Idol just now), but there wasn't that one "hummer" to leave the theater with.

Of course, I thought the same thing about Wicked, so what do I know. "Defying Gravity" is now one of my favorite songs from recent Broadway-as-performed-on-Glee.

Anyway, good luck if you want to see the show. With the U.S. government likely to close down, the show will not go on. Since Congress will still pay itself its salary, I suggest they pay for a special performance of Liberty Smith - they could learn what this country is about.

love, hosaa

promising-to-stop-compounding-adjectives-and-simply-state-opinions-with-Liberty-like-wit....

Editorial Mission of THE FUTURIST

2011-04-06T11:31:00.003-04:00

As someone who’s spent her entire career and the majority of her life at THE FUTURIST, I smile when I think of myself as the “new” editor. So let me first thank Edward Cornish, our Founding Editor, for his mentorship and for having confidence in me.

Longtime readers will see few significant changes in the approach that this magazine takes in dealing with important issues. We aim for diversity of subject matter and neutrality in coverage. We rely on contributors who volunteer their expertise and work closely with our staff editors to present ideas to our readers in a way that is engaging and thought-provoking.

Our goal will be to ensure that each issue of the magazine covers the following four general areas:

Regions, with a focus on a place, be it Haiti (page 46) or the Moon (pages 34 and 39).

Resources, examining any of a number of critical physical resources, such as food (page 43), water, or energy.

Sectors of the economy, such as health care, education, or technology (page 16)

Methodologies for studying the future, which very often will include conversations with or profiles of foresight pioneers such as the late Daniel Bell (page 63).

Toward that end, we have enhanced the Future Active section (see page 66), edited by Aaron M. Cohen, to cover news for the futurist community. More such stories about news and events are also featured on our Web site. Additionally, Rick Docksai covers the latest future-oriented literature in his Books in Brief column (page 56).

We are also dedicated to delivering more content to members electronically via our free monthly e-mail newsletter, Futurist Update and via our Web site. World Future Society members may now read the text of all articles online and download a PDF reproduction of the magazine.

I hope THE FUTURIST will continue to be a welcome guest in your home, office, school, or wherever else you may be when you are inspired to journey to the future with us.

-----

Cynthia G. Wagner is Editor of THE FUTURIST.

Burying Fukushima?

2011-03-19T09:04:00.002-04:00

On solutions to the nuclear crisis in Japan: If the decision is made to entomb the entire Fukushima complex, as has been most recently recommended by physicist Michio Kaku, at least one constituency needs to be informed: The future.

In the 1990s, the concern among American nuclear physicists was over nuclear waste and how to warn future generations of its existence. What signage would be required? What barbed-wire fence would last for 10,000 years?

From "The 10,000-Year Warning: Alerting Future Civilizations about Our Nuclear Waste" by Gary Kliewer, in the September-October 1992 issue of THE FUTURIST:

"How could you label Pandora's box so that on one would mess with it for 10,000 years?

"The U.S. Department of Energy recently asked a panel of experts to design a marking system that would warn people against digging into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico, where radioactive materials from U.S. nuclear defense operations will be permanently entombed. The markers need to last as long as the danger, and this waste will pose a threat to human health for 300 generations.

...

"The panel confronted a number of challenging questions: How do yoo make a sign that will never fade away? What languages do you use? What surface do you write the message on? How do you relay a clear message to an audience so distant in time that you cannot know its culture, politics, level of technology, or religion?"

One of the answers to those questions drew from ancient wisdom: using symbols like the hieroglyphics carved in Eygptian pyramids, so the messages would convey our warnings pictorially.

Kliewer wrote:

"By setting down in granite symbols the contradictory messages of the creative and destructive powers of our technology, perhaps we are leaving a far better message in the desert than we intend. Our descendants will see that we, a civilization lost in their distant past, cared for their safety. Perhaps they will also see that we understood both the natural world and our place in it. Our warning will imply the hope that they too will look ahead for the well-being of their descendants."

-----

Cynthia G. Wagner is editor of THE FUTURIST.

Bountiful Heart

2011-03-17T22:42:00.005-04:00

Back from The Trip to Bountiful at Round House, and the pleasure of participating in a standing ovation for lead actress Lizan Mitchell as Carrie Watts, the geriatric runaway who's more than a Helen Hayesish caricature of a spunky little old lady. I love when standing ovations happen, especially on a Thursday night with a theater roughly half full, mostly comprising invalids like me--a not-so-spunky little old lady.

Photo of Lizan Mitchell and Howard W. Overshown by Roger Mastroianni

Interesting that this is the second Horton Foote play for me this year, the other being The Carpetbagger's Children at Ford's. The two are set in roughly the same geo-temporal and emotional space, using similar stagecraft (kudos to Tony Cisek, scenic designer, and Christopher Studley lighting designer, for the gorgeous quilt patterns on the stage walls and, in the Bountiful scene, on the stage itself, conveying the home-ness of the landscape: "We are all a part of this," Carrie says wistfully).

"Bountiful" did what I kept expecting "Carpetbaggers" to do, which was to draw me into a slice of life that I could witness for myself as the actors acted with each other, rather than have to listen attentively to like a radio show. So on that basis I give "Bountiful" the theatrical edge. Just a matter of taste, I guess.

A happy surprise was the use of a glorious piece of background music to provide the aural expression of Carrie's emotional climax: it was "Amazing Grace" as interpreted by Hubert Laws on jazzy flute, one of my all-time favorite pieces of music (I once imagined I would wed with that music playing). It was just perfect for the moment in the play when Carrie's wish is, as much as it could be, fulfilled. It made me smile.

love, hosaa
with a bountiful heart

(P.S., I'm more than a week late reporting on the second of my two Clay Aiken concerts from the Tried and True tour, but I did post my videos on YouTube (here) if anyone is interested. Clay Aiken is in a whole different category of my artistical blogging, IYKWIMAITTYD.)

Clay Aiken Tried and Truly

2011-03-01T19:16:00.012-05:00

Back from Clay Aiken's concert (a week ago; I've been busy and gobsmacked) on Feb. 22 at Kraushaar Auditorium (Goucher College in Towson, Maryland).

I can give no better description of the concert experience than by posting the videos I was able to take, though mine are not the sweet close-ups that so many others are getting. Enjoy the show, and I'll talk below the embeds...

Stage banter, "Chosen Blondes," in which Clay deals with a spotlight problem:

"There's a Kind of Hush":

"It's Impossible":

Jazzy medley of Clay's hits:

"A Foggy Day" performed by Quiana Parler:

There's one more, but YouTube screwed up the formatting and cropped my 4:3 video into a 16:9 screen. Grr.

The highlight of this concert tour, Tried & True in support of Clay's album of that name, was the interactivity promised by PBS's participation in promoting the event. But since this promise was handled by the individual stations in each city, the experience has varied widely from city to city. In Towson, we got what is now called the Meet & Moo experience: a cattle call, only not nearly as organized.

At other Meet & Greets, guests were able to chat with Clay in small groups, so there was pressure to come up with interesting questions that would either make Clay laugh or elicit an interesting tidbit. Most of us know that questions about Clay's son are off limits, as are direct questions about his immediate career plans. The last thing one wants to do is make Clay mad.

Also at other Meet & Greets, guests were able to have an item autographed by Clay and have their picture taken with him. This created pressure to find just the right item to get signed, something meaningful but not ridiculous or unsignable. You also had to carry it with you during the concert, so lightweight would be good.

The problem at Towson wasn't the crowde of people waiting for the M&Moo; we had about 40 in our group, whereas Charlotte had (reportedly) 150-200. The problem for us was the lack of organization on the part of our PBS affiliate; they couldn't even get concert tickets mailed out to some people, who'd sent in their pledges for these tickets back in August. The person who was supposed to get things going at the venue was an hour late, leaving us standing around uncomfortably (though it was fun to chat with others).

So our Meet and Moo was a rush job. I happened to be near the front of the line to Moo at Clay, and I handed tour manager Mary the gift I wanted to give Clay. It required an explanation, but I never got the opportunity to explain it. Clay was a sweetheart, though, and he signed my item and cuddled up with me for the quicky photo by the PBS station's supplied photographer. Then I got "Jeromed" by Jerome the bodyguard while trying to explain my gift.

Clay saw that I had something to say about the gift, so he did turn away from his next mooer long enough to ask me where the gift was placed and to assure me that he will get it. So that made me happy.

On Team Clay, if there have to be bad cops and good cops, it's essential that Clay be the good cop. They got that right at least.

Now the problem with the PBS affiliate's incompetence is that they made no arrangements for sending me the photo with Clay. They made no attempt to match up the individual being photographed with contact information. E-mails go unanswered; the voicemail box was full; there is no "send message" option on Facebook. What am I supposed to do, write a letter?

Anyway, it probably doesn't matter. I realized that I was wearing the exact same outfit that I had on when I got Daniil Simkin's autograph and photo at the Kennedy Center stage door. So I could just use the same picture, darken it and add one of our famous captions,

"Clay Aiken, not seen in photo...."

Heh. The gift I gave him is none of your business for now. But here is what I had him sign for me: The article I wrote about one of his Foundation's projects in 2004.

I had a great time and even got to call out one of the genres selected for that night's "Variations on 'Who's Sorry Now'" bit: Ragtime! Hee!

If I get a chance to later, I'll list some of the questions I would have mooed if I'd had the opportunity. I will say that almost all of the legal questions (the ones that would not necessarily elicit an icy stare) were really unsolicited career advice phrased in the form of a question. So it's just as well I didn't ask.

But I wish I could have asked this: "What are you planning to do to stay in touch with your fans after this tour is over?"

At least I have one more show to see - next Tuesday in Grand Prairie, Texas, with my S.A.S.S.!!!

Love, hosaa
Tried and mooed

* Sisterhood for the Adoration of his Serene Sweetness. No, really.

"Breaking Up Is Hard to Do":

ETA, 3 March 2011: At last! I did receive my M&Moo pic from MPT (by request, I asked that they not post it on Facebook. Someone e-mailed it to me instead. It pays to be a squeaky wheel once in a while - I got the high-res original!)

Mom and Mubarak

2011-02-11T19:16:00.007-05:00

My mother, who died two and a half years ago, probably would have had some sympathy for Hosni Mubarak this week, for no other reason than that she once shook his hand.

Egypt has always been special to my family. While in the Navy in the 1950s, my dad was sent to Cairo to help set up a medical lab as part of Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. His pregnant wife and toddler son, Mike, went along; before long, my second brother, Tom, was born there.

Mom spent most of her time dealing with sick babies and mastering the art of haggling in the markets. She also did the tourist thing with her little box camera. And shortly before the young American family finally left Cairo, they learned that a little daughter and sister would be on the way.

After returning home, Mom would often show her Egypt slides, accompanied by histories and creative stories, as our evening entertainment. She honed the narrative to such a perfection that she was often asked to give her Egypt slides at PTA meetings and other public gatherings.

In 1994, Mike, my oldest brother--a Navy man like Dad--was stationed in the Middle East and invited Mom to meet him in Cairo for a special nostalgic trip to her favorite sites, like the temples of Karnac and Luxor. There was also a very splashy (and very cold) outdoor production of Aida, the first grand opera for both Mom and Mike.

It was on the way back from one of these excursions that Mom met Mubarak. From her diary:

We were resting near King Tut's tomb when a motorcade suddenly appeared--out jumped security guards--young, lean, in dark suits with white shirts and ties. In moments they were positioned all round--and President Maburak [sic] appeared. I asked the guard in front of me if I could take pictures--at first he said 'no'--but then the President gave different orders. Before I quite realized what was happening, I was shaking his hand and chatting with him about the opera and my appreciation of all that had been done for that event--and my enjoyment of Egypt. When we got back to the hotel, I discovered that I was an instant (though temporary) celebrity. I was on the 6 o'clock TV news and people started recognizing me everywhere.

Few things pleased my mother as much as being the center of attention; being singled out by the President of Egypt meant a great deal to her. And I'm certain that her unsolicited statements on national television reassuring the president of how safe she, as an American lady, felt in Egypt (at a time when violence against Western tourists was a growing problem) also meant a great deal to Mubarak--or at least to his public image.

Mom was far more interested in the history of Egypt, its ancient beauties and mysteries, than the turmoil of contemporary geopolitics. Shaking the man's hand was enough to charm her. Politics isn't just local; it's personal.

I think about Mom and Mubarak when I look back on how differently I feel about people after I have met them. I was as charmed by Newt Gingrich as by Al Gore when I met them at World Future Society conferences.

But of course I would not want either gentleman running my country for 30 years.

Please click here to read this blog at the World Future Society.

Carpetbagger's Triptych

2011-02-06T16:47:00.003-05:00

Back from The Carpetbagger's Children at Ford's Theatre, a Texas based 1930s memory piece by Horton Foote.

Ford's brings back special memories for me and an anniversary of sorts (though not the day exactly). It was a bright, crisp Sunday afternoon in a February far far away that brought me the bright, crisp off-key dancing and braying laugh of Edward Duke in Jeeves Takes Charge, the "one-man, two-act, 12-character, award-winning comedy tour de force," if he does say so himself.

So sitting in the balcony before the beginning of a play I knew nothing about, I was re-imagining my Edward and his many voices and faces, merry costumes and clever scene changes and all, enchanting me for a couple of hours and embodying the storytelling genius of Wodehouse.

So why did the format of Carpetbagger make me so impatient? The scene was static, with three actresses portraying sisters, each in her own panel of the triptych of a Texas cotton farm homestead, each taking a turn telling the story of their family to the audience but almost never interacting with each other. Yet each took on the voice and personality of the characters whose stories they were telling.

Storytelling with impersonations is exactly what Edward did for Jeeves; it is not a particularly original format. But with the Carpetbagger's girls, I was having a few of those "Why are you telling me all this?" moments and shifting in my seat a bit waiting for the plot to begin.

When I relaxed into the format a bit (thanks for reminding me, Edward), I let the power of the personalities on stage persuade me their story was worth the telling, even if I didn't get it at first.

One sister was constantly pressed to sing "The Clanging Bell of Time," or whatever the dashed name of the song was, which became an anthem for the passage of the family members' lives.

And, like Charming Billy over at Round House, the play seemed to say we are surrounded by our memories as we live through them, even if we cannot directly interact with the actors in our dramas.

love, hosaa
Story listening

Staging Billy

2011-02-03T22:05:00.004-05:00

It's hard to be a liar and a believer at the same time.

Back from Round House Theatre's production of Charming Billy, adapted and directed by RHT's producing artistic director, Blake Robison, from Alice McDermott's novel. A gathering of family and friends pieces together the life and heartbreak of Billy Lynch (portrayed by David Whalen) during a post-funeral gathering at a New York-Irish bar.

The conversation opens on one end of the long banquet table, the side away from the grieving widow, focusing on how long Billy had been known to drink, each recollection taking us back farther into Billy's life and to the key episode where he first met "the Irish girl."

The flashback scenes glided in from the wings onto the front of the stage, upstaging the party scene but leaving them visible to represent the present. Another flashback begins at the bar behind the party table. In this way, memory surrounds the present, asserting its legitimate place at the table.

Billy was a drunk; should we have helped him? Could we have helped him? Was it a disease, or was he at fault? The answers aren't really there, though I kept hoping for them. It wasn't about Billy, but about our own heartbreaks and guilts.

And so I turn these questions inward. Throughout the play I thought about my charming mother and her battles with depression and alcohol. Unlike Billy, she died sober, because she'd been in rehab those last several months. In the end, she still wanted to die--she'd outlived her life--but at least she no longer wanted to kill herself. At least I don't think so.

Not much of a review, but that's my approach to art. I let it surround me and assert its legitimate place at my table.

Love, hosaa
charmed, but a little haunted

Bright Foolery

2011-01-22T21:23:00.004-05:00

As I predicted, today's trip down to the Kennedy Center was quite a bit less adventurous than Thursday.

Today was to see American Ballet Theatre's matinee of The Bright Stream, a comic ballet set on a Russian collective farm. A troupe of dancers and musicians visits the collective, husbands flirt with ladies they're not supposed to, and revenge and tomfoolery ensue.

The tricks are the classic comic fodder you find in Shakespeare, with cross-dressing, mistaken identities, and a bit with a dog.

I don't mean to dismiss the production at all. It was utterly charming. But I really just wanted to watch Daniil Simkin dance! I had thought he was originally rehearsing to perform as the Accordionist, so I'm glad he was recast. The Accordionist is the one who dresses as a dog in Act 2. Instead, Daniil performed as the visiting Ballet Dancer. Good casting! Except in Act 2 he performs largely in drag as a "Sylphide" to trick the elderly dacha dweller. It was very silly and very fun.

The nice thing about a Saturday matinee is that it's not so late when it's over and I'm not in a rush to get home. So I hung around the stage door to wait for Daniil. He was one of the last ones out.

There is a scene in The Bright Stream where the Ballet Dancer signs the autograph book for the foolish elderly woman, identified in the program as "Anxious-to-be-younger-than-she-is Dacha Dweller." Daniil sweetly did an encoure of that scene with me.

(click to enlarge)

love, hosaa
a little foolish, but brightly so

Fancy That

2011-01-20T23:09:00.009-05:00

Back from the Kennedy Center--no, not the gala for the JFK inauguration anniversary. I went to the ballet next door (American Ballet Theatre).

If it weren't for the dancing, it would have been a pretty miserable night. I wanted to see Daniil Simkin dance, of course, and had waited and waited for ABT and Kennedy Center to announce the cast list for this tour. When they finally did, and I saw Daniil was supposed to dance in "Fancy Free" on the 20th, I grabbed my ticket.

"Cast subject to change." So they did. I saw on the KenCen Web site a couple of weeks ago that Daniil was taken off the performance I had a ticket for. Boo. But I still love ABT. And I knew Daniil was also rehearsing "The Bright Stream," so I got another ticket, for the Saturday matinee.

As for tonight, well, let's just say I'm clueless and didn't know about the gala. We got e-mails from KenCen letting us know that, due to "unusual circumstances," access to the parking garage would be closed on one side. (I didn't want to take Metro because I'm getting old, ya'll, and the Foggy Bottom station's escalators are out.)

So I wind my way around to enter through the usual exit at KenCen, then idle in a line to have my trunk and hood inspected by security. There is a bomb-sniffing German shepherd looking very authoritative and all. And when I finally get inside, there's a big well-dressed mob, all being herded into the grand foyer and toward a row of metal detectors.

Oh great. Obviously the President is in the building. I look around for celebrity political people, but I don't know any. When I get close enough to the check-in place to look around a little, I see that I'm being herded toward the Concert Hall (gala) and not toward the Opera House (ballet). So I work my way through the tuxedos and their dates (something about the well-heeled that doesn't like stepping aside).

I had missed dinner and was annoyed, but at least I could get a snack in the foyer--and some cookies and lemonade in the Members Lounge.

The pieces of the mixed rep program were "Theme and Variations" (Balanchine), "Jardin Aux Lilas" (Tudor), "Duo Concertant" (Balanchine), and "Fancy Free" (Robbins).

The first piece was marred by an incident in the audience; even up in the first tier we could hear loud talking, and I thought it was probably the security guys' walkie talkies. I mentioned it to the usher at intermission, and he told me someone had collapsed and they had to call an ambulance.

Though it was pretty distracting to the audience, it didn't seem to faze the dancers at all (principals were Michele Wiles and Cory Stearns, and the commotion went on mainly during their spotlight duet).

"T&V" is the sort of Pretty Princesses piece you expect in the ABT mixed-rep program. The only thing that distracted me a little (besides the walkie-talkie incident) was the fact that the gentlemen's military-themed wardrobe came in different colors. If they're in the same Army, wouldn't they wear the same color? (Stupid audience observation.)

"Jardin" was a somber Tudor morality play, but I couldn't really figure out who or what the characters represented. I guess I should have downloaded the plot synopsis, like I did for Cymbeline for our Shakespeare Readers last week. Anyway, Julie Kent was lovely as the main lady torn between lovers (I guess) and leaving with the dancer that brung her.

"Concertant" was simply charming. Two dancers listen to the pianist and violinist, then dance a bit.

There was a change of casting for "Fancy Free" due to injury; instead of Cornejo, Stiefel, and Carreno, we got Salstein, Radetsky, and Gomes. Anyway, even if I couldn't see my fave, these gentlemen were fancy enough indeed. Love me some Marcelo Gomes. Hope I didn't make any distracting noises. (Slurp!)

Much easier getting home than getting there. It should be less complicated on Saturday--let's hope for no more galas and German shepherds and tuxedo mobs. Just my Little Prince and the new production of "Bright Stream" everyone's buzzing about.

love, hosaa
wishing I could be a little more footloose in all this ...

(1-21-11, edited to add a little detail about the dances themselves.)

Futuring for Haiti: Tools, Not Rules

2011-01-17T15:26:00.005-05:00

At our small office in downtown Bethesda, Maryland, the World Future Society welcomed the former Haitian ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph. He was accompanied by his son, Paul Joseph (a futurist and activist who arranged the meeting), and Emmanuel Henry, a former vice president for Panasonic. The goal of the meeting was to explore ways that the tools of futuring can help rebuild their nation.

(click to enlarge)

(From left) Raymond Joseph, Timothy C. Mack, Emmanuel Henry, Cynthia G. Wagner, Paul Joseph
World Future Society photograph by Lisa Mathias

Raymond Joseph is an ambitious man. Not only does he want to save his own country, but he wants Haiti to become a role model for other countries written off as “failed states” with no futures.

As one of many would-be candidates in the recent presidential election whose eligibility was revoked (allegedly because he had abandoned his duties as ambassador in order to make a bid for the presidency), Joseph conceded that his ambitions are political. The first thing his country needs, he said, is leadership, but one that is based on trust.

The Josephs and their compatriot Henry, who helped manage the Friends of Raymond Joseph for President campaign in 2010, spoke with Society President Timothy Mack and myself (FUTURIST magazine editor Cindy Wagner) on January 13, one day after the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake that brought international attention to Haiti.

Four days later, exiled dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier returned to Haiti accompanied by heavy security, leaving Joseph’s hopes for the future—his country’s and his own—even more uncertain.

Below are excerpts from our dialogue.

Raymond Joseph: [Speaking of the immediate aftermath of the earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, at which time he was in Washington, D.C., serving as ambassador.] The leadership was absent, they were not to be seen anywhere, so all of a sudden I became the face of Haiti for the world. And also I had to take the first decisions in the first 48 hours, to get help to the country.

It’s based on that, quite a few of my friends, both Haitian and foreign, came to me and said, “You know what, we need new leadership in Haiti. You should consider the president’s candidacy,” which I did. And for no reason at all, they disqualified me.

Mack: Let me speak frankly to you. I think that they felt they had lots of reasons, because you posed a threat. You were too well known and too popular.

Raymond Joseph: Yes because of that I was a threat. Yesterday I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal, and in there I say what needs to be done if we’re going to get Haiti back on track. And what I said should be done is for the president who’s there now, whose term ends February 7th, to exit on February 7th with his team and not try to hang on as he wants to until May 14th. Because in three more months, he will not be able to accomplish what he could not do in five years.

Now, what I seek in government for Haiti is a large coalition, and that’s what I’m working for, that’s why I stayed in the country after they disqualified me. They thought I was going to go back abroad. I did not do that.

I feel that we need to look at ways of changing Haiti. And to do that, we have to change the leadership. That’s what I’m working on.

But besides changing the leadership of Haiti, people know that I have some ideas for the future. One of the ideas I have is about energy, what are we going to do about energy, and another major idea for us is reforestation, and what we’re going to do about that.

And to get these things moving on, I feel that we have to entice a percentage of Haitian intellectuals and professionals living abroad … and according to the IDB, the Inter-American Development Bank, that’s 83% of our intellectuals and professionals living abroad. I feel we have to entice a percentage of them to come back.

Wagner: To reverse the brain drain.

Raymond Joseph: To reverse the brain drain.

...

Wagner: Part of the enticement, of bringing the intellectuals back into Haiti, has to be from Haiti itself.

Raymond Joseph: Right.

...

Wagner: But what you face is a collection of problems, and the decision has to be made, what do you tackle first?

Mack: And of course the biggest problem you face is leadership.

Raymond Joseph: That’s it, that’s it.

Mack: And how do you get the strong leadership that is necessary to make this change even be considered. ... What are your next steps? What are you hoping to accomplish in the next few weeks?

Raymond Joseph: My next steps. That’s what I’ve been working on. Since I was bumped off the ballot, I have stayed in Haiti and worked with various candidates that even some who were running, and some who were not running, and looking towards having a large coalition for future change. That’s my goal.

...

So, the idea that I have tried to do in the past of building a coalition of ethical leaderships have been successful. Since they have bumped me off the ballot as for the presidency, I’ve come back. Now we have quite a few candidates for presidency. I want to tell them you cannot all be president of Haiti, but you can all work for change.

Mack: Yes. You can all be friends of Haiti.

Raymond Joseph: Exactly. So, let’s work together to do this. Immediately, the next thing I’m doing is to help annul the elections that took place, which was not an election. Now, that’s what I’m working on right now.

Mack: Are you also working on observers for the coming elections too, or is that something that will happen no matter what?

Raymond Joseph: We haven’t gotten there yet. However, the first democratic elections in Haiti, which the press talked about, in 1990, December 16th, I was the one that signed the agreement with the OAS back then. I was the representative of the country to OAS, and the UN took that agreement and expanded on it, and we had 3,000 observers in Haiti the week of the elections. So I’m used to doing that. And I will want to, [in] the elections coming up, after we get through this harrow here, to have the best observer teams. I brought President Carter to Haiti in 1990, and others. I want to get to that point in the next elections coming up. Which will probably be in a year, because this thing here that they’re trying to patch up, they cannot patch it up. They’re trying to patch it up at the level of the presidential elections, however, the fraud was widespread. It was at the legislative [level] also.

Mack: And that may be very self-defeating in the sense that a weak government does not last, especially if that government is clearly founded on fraud.

Raymond Joseph: Exactly. ...

To be frank with you, since the earthquake, Haiti has had too many NGOs, so much so that now they’re calling Haiti “The Republic of NGOs.” They’re saying ten thousand. ... There’s no coordination, ... and you don’t see what they accomplish.

Wagner: There’s duplication and gaps.

Mack: Right, right, the gaps are very important, but also they are there to accomplish what they are built for, which is their own, their own …

Paul Joseph: … agendas.

Mack: Not just agendas, their own pride. You’ve seen that. You know, NGOs are very proud. And they are very moral, but not always in a good way. “Maybe you should change the way you live your life because I say so.” Too much of that in NGOs. [chuckling in agreement] I think that what we bring is tools for the people of Haiti to use, as opposed to rules for the people of Haiti to follow.

Henry: That’s well said.

Raymond Joseph: Good. That’s well said. I will take that. [chuckling] I want to take that sentence.

Henry: And when you have ten thousand NGOs, everybody wants to pull you in different directions. “My direction is better, yours is better” and nothing is accomplished, nothing is achieved.

Mack: But we’re very, very pleased that you would come here and talk to us about this, and we want to be as helpful as we can. That’s my answer.

Raymond Joseph: And I’m going to tell you, also, Paul has tried to get me to talk to various people, and you know …

Mack: Some you say Yes, some you say No.

Raymond Joseph: When he talked about you, I said I want to come. Not because I know you’re going to help me solve the problem right away, but that you can help me think about the future.

(click to enlarge)

Raymond Joseph
World Future Society photograph by C. G. Wagner

"Futcha"!

2011-01-03T08:48:00.003-05:00

I just wanted to share these pictures from my New Year's Eve treat at the Kennedy Center - a chance to go backstage after seeing our "futurist" songwriter Nnenna Freelon perform with the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra of New York.

Nnenna, as you know, wrote "Future News Blues" and other songs with an inspiring message for futurists, and inspired the creation of our Futurist Playlist.

(click to enlarge)
Nnenna Freelon, backstage, Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, December 31, 2010

Nnenna Freelon with Cindy Wagner, THE FUTURIST magazine

A memento! Nnenna signs a copy of her latest CD, Homefree

love, "Futcha" girl...

"Ladies and Gentlemen... er ... ummm"

2010-12-17T07:45:00.010-05:00

Last night I dreamed (and don't blame me for my dreams) that I was about to address a diverse audience. I wasn't nervous at all (hey, it was a dream), but I was anxious about how to address the group.

"Ladies and gentlemen" seemed wrong. What if there were people in the audience who were gay? "L" and "G" are are still "ladies and gentlemen," but what about "B," "T," and "Q" (bisexual, transgender, and questioning or queer)?

So in my dream I tried a more inclusive salutation: "Ladies, Gentlemen, and Honored Others."

I thought myself quite clever. But when I woke up I wondered why we make these distinctions at all. We don't address an audience of "Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and None-of-the-Aboves." Nor an audience of "Whites, Blacks, Browns, and Rainbows."

At the Oscars, they still have categories dividing actors and actresses, even though women who act have been identifying themselves as actors for quite these many years. I doubt they would want to compete for acting honors with men. So rather than nominate equal numbers of male and female actors, regardless of the quality of their work, and rather than force males and females to compete with one another, why not get rid of the competition element and just honor outstanding acting?

So, back to addressing the crowd. I thought of course that's why presidents and other politicians aim for inclusion by starting out, "My Fellow Americans" or what-not. But "fellow" still has maleness attached to it, so it still has some exclusionary properties. "Hey, Everybody" lacks appropriate dignity.

And then there's the problem we'll have in the Post-Singularity future, when we'll have cadres of technologically enhanced individuals clamoring to our speeches. I can't very well address my audience as "My Collegial Humans" without offending the honored cyborgs and transhumans at our meetings.

Last January I had the honor of attending a workshop of young people whose goal was to create a public awareness campaign for schools and other groups to support inclusion. The "inclusion" in the campaign project specifically was about including individuals with special needs, but really, inclusion is more inclusive than that.

The resulting I Am Norm project teaches us that, because we are all different, we are all "normal."

"Different" is not the same as "abnormal," so accepting people with differences normalizes differences. It doesn't make the differences go away, but it eliminates the values that are often subconsciously attached to those differences.

Back to my speech: I do think one of the best welcomes ever is the one the gang at Cheers gave their buddy when he arrived at the bar each night:

"NORM!!"

Right. I don't think I'll address my audiences that way (maybe in a dream). But how about a simple:

"Honored Guests: Welcome!"

A King's Christmas

2010-12-02T00:21:00.004-05:00

Back from seeing The King's Singers perform their Joy to the World concert at Strathmore. All I can say is, I'll never listen to schlocky radio "Christmas" music again.

The program was based on their latest Christmas CD, a highlight of which for me was Stille Nacht (Silent Night). The song was preceded by a reading of a letter from a World War I British soldier marveling over the brotherhood of the German and British combatants during a too-brief Christmas Eve cease-fire. When the Singers began singing "Silent Night" in German, I couldn't hold back the tears.

My only complaint was that the final portion of the program featured non-Christmas songs (e.g., a new arrangement of Straighten Up and Fly Right and a cover of Michael Buble's Home). It just seemed weird to me and spoiled the Christmas feeling.

But then they brought it all back with the encore. There's a special tradition in D.C. that the King's Singers always give us New Day as their encore. Well, maybe they do that everywhere, but it feels special in D.C. because of WETA DJ Bill Cerri, who played it every morning as his theme song. After he passed away, the King's Singers paid tribute to him by singing it at their next concert here. The audience was so moved by it, I think we've come to expect it; so far, they have always delivered.

So tonight, as the concert ended and the audience drew the Singers back to the stage for an encore, the lady sitting next to me muttered, "I wish they'd sing New Day." I almost told her "They will" (but as you know, I don't like to make predictions. Heh). Then they did.

What I didn't know was that they had written special new lyrics for the Christmas version of "New Day," emphasizing that the birth of Jesus was the New Day that gave mankind hope. It was perfect for the concert, perfect for the audience.

And I am completely awestruck that these six men can blend their voices so perfectly together, their tenure with the company ranging from 18 years to six months. It must be magic.

love, hosaa
not rockin' around no Christmas trees, thank you very much

The Futurist Playlist

2010-11-27T07:18:00.011-05:00

Music can express ideas and feelings both through the rhythms, melodies, and harmonies that evoke passions and through the words that distill complex thought into poetry.

The future has been the subject of awe, fear, hope, cynicism, and inspiration, reflecting our changing relationship with what may be ahead.

So here I humbly submit the Futurist Playlist, a collection of 20 tunes (available for download from Amazon.com), and a few thoughts on why these songs were selected.

View the Futurist Playlist at Amazon.com, Permalink: http://amzn.com/l/RAFLG976G73DS

01 Also Sprach Zarathustra (aka, the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey)

Composed by Richard Strauss in 1896, this theme gave the idea of the future a sense of grandeur in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the dawn of the space age, it was time for humanity to look back upon its history and ahead to its potential with equal parts of humility and hope.

02 The Times They Are a-Changin’ (written and performed by Bob Dylan)

Bob Dylan’s 1964 release gave voice to the civil rights and war protest movements of the early 1960s, inspiring all who questioned authority and defied the status quo. The driving force for the changes Dylan described was the younger generation, and the song advises the adults not to stand in their way:

Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

03 A Change Is Gonna Come (written and performed by Sam Cooke)

More specifically focused on the changes in race relations, Sam Cooke’s 1963 piece is more personal than Dylan’s.

It's been a long
Long time comin'
But I know a change gonna come
Oh yes it will

But compare Cooke’s mournful optimism with the self-actualizing anger in Curtis Mayfield’s Future Shock.

04 Future Shock (written and performed by Curtis Mayfield)

(Warning, some language may be deemed objectionable by some listeners.)

In 1973, an addition to concerns about civil rights and war came from the “future shock” of environmental degradation. Curtis Mayfield urged us not to “dance” but to take active control:

We got to stop all men
From messing up the land
When won't we understand
This is our last and only chance

05 In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus) (written by Rick Evans and performed by Denny Zager and Rick Evans)

Written in 1964 but not released until 1968, this song judges the very long-term prospects for humankind, as technological tampering begins to assert itself in the cultural landscape. “In the year 6565,” they warn:

You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

06 Imagine (written and performed by John Lennon)

Throughout history, culture feels the pulse of trends and countertrends, so this playlist reflects both pessimism and optimism. Of the latter sentiment, perhaps the most inspiring example I can imagine is John Lennon's Imagine, from 1971:

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world …

07 Space Oddity (written and performed by David Bowie)

We return to the theme of space exploration as the emblematic destination of the human future. David Bowie’s recording coincided with the U.S. lunar landing in 1969, but gave it a personal touch with “Major Tom." Bowie also gave a wink to the celebrity culture surrounding the astronauts of the era:

This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear

For better or worse, the future now belonged to popular culture; compare the de-glamorization of the astronaut life in Elton John’s follow-up to Bowie, Rocket Man.

08 Rocket Man (written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, performed by Elton John)

Though I tend to think this song is more about drug use than anything else (“Zero hour nine a.m., and I'm gonna be high as a kite by then”), the song was allegedly inspired by Bernie Taupin’s sighting of a shooting star. However, the 1971 song illustrates how quickly the future’s heroes became mundane to the general public:

And all this science I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week

09 Tomorrow (from the musical Annie, music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin; performed by Andrea McArdle)

An anthem for the hopelessly hopeful, the congenitally uncynical, this scrappy little bit of American inspiration from 1977 was an oasis in the encroaching deserts of globalizing competition.

Just thinkin’ about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
’Til there’s none!

10 In the Future (written by Ron Mael and performed by Sparks)

For, despite Little Orphan Annie’s cheerful confidence in Tomorrow, society was growing increasingly skeptical of what futurists had been perceived as promising. In this 1975 song, one can almost hear the writer adding, “Yeah, right” after:

The sweep and the grandeur
The scope and the laughter
The future, the future
The future's got it covered
With what will be discovered

11 Road to Nowhere (written by David Byrne, performed by Talking Heads)

A decade later, the cynicism was considerably more overt:

They can tell you what to do
But they'll make a fool of you …
We're on a road to nowhere

12 The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades (written by Pat MacDonald, performed by Timbuk 3)

Like many people hearing this song, I mistook its upbeat flavor for a bright outlook expressed by a young scientist. Superficial research (i.e., Wikipedia) reveals the writer’s view of a more-sinister future during the height of the Cold War: the brightness of nuclear holocaust being the inducement for wearing shades.

Well I'm heavenly blessed and worldly wise
I'm a peeping-tom techie with x-ray eyes

13 Don’t Worry, Be Happy (written and performed by Bobby McFerrin)

Another tick of the countertrend metronome back toward optimism--or numbing complacency, some may argue. The 1988 song is said (by Wikipedia) to have been inspired by late Indian sage Meher Baba, and its laid-back, breezy Caribbean vibe offers a soothing balm against the stresses of the time.

In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double

14 Year 3000 (written by James Bourne and performed by Busted)

By 2002, pop culture seems to have shrugged off the futurists’ “promises” but embraced the fantasy and fun of such films as Back to the Future, which inspired these lyrics.

I took a trip to the year 3000
This song had gone multi-platinum
Everybody bought our seventh album
It had outsold Michael Jackson

A few years later, popular boy band the Jonas Brothers covered Year 3000, substituting Kelly Clarkson (of American Idol) for the Michael Jackson reference in the lyric.

15 The Futurist (written by Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Hudson and performed by Robert Downey Jr.)

Okay, this is just my opinion, but I suspect Robert Downey Jr. titled this song and his album The Futurist to get my attention. :) It worked. I just don’t see what the song really has to do with the future. But he has a lot of fans, and I hope our including The Futurist on the Futurist Playlist will get their attention. After all, the future is now about social networking, right?

That said, I will give RDJ credit for keeping a personal perspective on the future, as the song is about commitment and fidelity:

It'll be like lovers
For the rest of our lives
No run around
Think twice... Twice

16 Falling (written by Martin Hansen, Magnus Kaxe, and Fred Alexander; performed by Clay Aiken)

This 2008 pop-rock song (egregiously overlooked by radio) explores an aspect of futurism that is not often considered, which is the uncertainty and confusion of living in times of rapid change. Unlike Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’, the narrative here is a more specifically personal one, but it is no less poignant and urgent:

And I'm falling, I am falling
From the world I used to know
Been trying to hold on
To something for so long
Now this never-ending dream won't let go

17 100 Years (written and performed by John Ondrasik, Five for Fighting)

Here is a reflection on a personal future and the expression of awareness for how short our time really is (though not using the brevity of life as an excuse for self-indulgence).

Half time goes by
Suddenly you're wise
Another blink of an eye
67 is gone

18 Kids of the Future (performed by the Jonas Brothers; originally “Kids in America,” written by Ricky Wilde and Marty Wilde)

This 2007 remake produced for the film Meet the Robinsons embraces the exuberant spirit of youth, perhaps an “Annie” for the twenty-first century:

There's no time for looking down
You will not believe where we're going now

19 One Child At a Time (written and performed by Nnenna Freelon)

The Nnenna Freelon song that inspired the Futurist Playlist in the first place, the witty Future News Blues (1992), is unfortunately not available as an mp3 download. But I recalled from my interview with her at the time that a sense of the future was very much embedded in her writing. As a mother and an educator, Nnenna knows how much the future matters.

These ideas are even more vivid in the earnest One Child At a Time, written in 2000, urging all of us to take responsibility for the future:

We all have a part to play
Teacher, friend, or mentor
We’ll make it a brighter day
With children at the center

20 Over the Rainbow (written by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg, performed by Eva Cassidy)

There’s so much I love about this particular version of the song made famous by Judy Garland for the 1939 film, Wizard of Oz. This 1998 arrangement illustrates that what is old can be made new again with a new voice, newly inspired. Tragically, Eva Cassidy died of cancer before this recording was released to British radio and became a mega-hit.

The lyrics, of course, speak to the daydream that inspires us to pursue a better world, even if the journey ultimately brings us back home again, as it did in the movie:

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

Our musical journey to the future takes us through fear, anger, inspiration, cynicism, idealism, and courage. The essential truth is this: There is always hope.

View the Futurist Playlist at Amazon.com.

Lyrics quoted and album art posted for illustrative purposes only; ownership belongs to the respective copyright holders.

The Futurist Playlist was compiled by Cynthia G. Wagner, with the input of @WorldFutureSoc Twitter followers: Richard Yonck, Anthony Michel, and John Cashman. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Future Society or, to be honest, those of most real music experts. *g*

Feets of Clay

2010-11-20T12:46:00.004-05:00

a little story(board), for your entertainment.

Once upon a time, Clay had a little problem. Well, a big problem, to be exact. So he turned to his good friend, the Reverend Doctor Ruben Studdard, for advice and some healin’.

Reverend Studdard kindly accepted a generous fee from Clay’s worried mother, and proceeded to investigate Clay’s little problem. Well, big problem, to be exact.

Your Feet’s Too Big
Written by Fats Waller
Performed by Ruben Studdard
Inspired by Clay Aiken

What’s that runnin’ ‘round here?
Oh. Hm.

Up in Harlem
At a table for two
Well there were four of us, baby,
Me, your big feet, and you.

From your ankles up
I’ll say you sure are sweet
But, uh, from there down, baby,
You’re just too much feet.

Oh, your feet’s too big
Don’t want you
‘Cause your feet’s too big
Mad at ya
‘Cause your feet’s too big
I really hate you
‘Cause your feet’s too big.

Nah na na na, Na na na na
Where’d you get ‘em?
Na na na na

Your girl she likes you
Says she thinks you’re nice,
Says you’ve got what it takes
To take her to paradise

Well she likes your face
Says she loves your rig,
But, uh, look at ‘em, look at ‘em -
Your feet’s too big!

Aw, your feet’s too big
Don’t want you
‘Cause your feet’s too big
Mad at you
‘Cause your feet’s too big
I really hate you
‘Cause your feet’s too big!

Oh,
Your pedal extremities are colossal
To me you look just like a fossil.
You got me walkin,’ talkin’, and squawkin’
‘Cause your feet’s too big!

Can’t go nowhere wit’ you
‘Cause your feet’s too big
Can’t get in the bed next to you
‘Cause your feet’s too big

Look at ‘em, look at ‘em
Spread all across the floor.

When you go and die,
Ain’t nobody goin’ to sob
The undertaker’s going to have quite a job
You goin’ to look real funny
When they lay you in the casket -

Look at them big feet
Stickin’ up out the basket!

Aw
Your feet’s too big,
Don’t want you
‘Cause your feet’s too big
Mad at you
‘Cause your feet’s too big
I really hate you
‘Cause your feet’s too big.

Oh,
Your feet’s too big
Don’t want you
‘Cause your feet’s too big
Can’t use you
‘Cause your feet’s too big
I really hate you
‘Cause your feet’s too big!

Your pedal extremities are
Ob-NOX-ious!
Yeah!

... Unfortunately Reverend Studdard was not able to heal Clay of his affliction. And poor Clay Aiken is hopelessly, incurably adorable, forever more.

Amen.

Screencaps from a montage banned on YouTube, “Feets of Clay (Your Feet’s Too Big”), lovingly compiled by hosaa from the clack of the Timeless Tour, 2010, and the cast recording of Ain’t Misbehavin’. (It was free advertising, ya’ll!)

For those interested, a Sendspace link to download:
Feets of Clay (Your Feet's Too Big)

Buy the album from Amazon:
Ain't Misbehavin (2009 Cast Recording)

Clay's Web site: http://www.clayaiken.com/
Ruben's Web site: http://www.rubenstuddard.com

Love, hosaa
Misbehavin' (lovingly)

"Sorry"

2010-11-10T11:06:00.003-05:00

Sorry really is the hardest word.

I think I figured out why people don't say they're sorry. I kind of do it a lot, even when it's not really my fault. I just don't want people to feel bad. Especially me.

The problem is that saying you're sorry to people gives them permission to feel aggrieved.

"Yeah, you should be sorry! I hope you feel bad!"

Life really is like the fourth grade.

And the other problem is that, if I apologized for losing my temper with someone, my apology gets that person off the hook for the thing that made me lose my temper in the first place. And I will never get a reciprocal apology from that person.

Personally, I would never take back an apology. And I would never demand one. If I choose to forgive someone, whether he or she has apologized, it's to take myself off the hook of feeling victimized.

love, hosaa
apologetically

Ameriville: If We Had a Hammer

2010-10-24T18:37:00.006-04:00

Back from "Ameriville" at Round House Theatre, a moderately populated Sunday matinee.

I can't easily describe this production - it's sung-through, woven with narrative and dance, but you can't exactly call it a light opera. It is built on the voices of Katrina Hurricane victims/rebuilders.

The four performers (members of the Universes Theater Company) open with a chanting/stomping ode to hammering, kicking off the production with the motif of building. This sets the tone of hope for the 100-minute, no-intermission mutli-voiced "rant" on everything that's wrong with America. They weave the many frayed threads of stories told by mothers, fathers, vets, sons and daughters searching for their parents, barbers and beauticians, stand-up comics.

The stories move well beyond the Katrina disaster and its long-term repercussions to address systemic inequities and institutionalized bigotries.

Theatrically, it was much more entertaining than that sounds. Four strong, textured voices, harmonizing through diversity; lighting and projections bringing static imagery to life; and the dance, stomping out the dimensions of conveyed reality in four corners, collapsing and expanding the limited space into new tempest-tossed worlds.

The four performers/creators stayed for an audience Q&A and confessed what wouldn't be hard to guess - that they don't always "preach to the converted" as they had just done in a liberal Montgomery County theater and that on several occasions they have watched their audiences react with open hostility. (I was angry, and I'm a Democrat; but I think I was angry for the reasons the production wanted me to be - I doubt many Republicans would stick it out.) Though it's disconcerting to hear that the actors on stage are observing their audiences, it's human and understandable, especially when the audience behavior can itself be theatrical.

If I'd been brave and raised my hand, I would have complimented the creators for providing the solution to the problems they sang about, though it was subtle and metaphorical. It was the hammer. If there are problems in the world, you don't solve them by moaning about it. You do what all survivors do: build.

Ameriville, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, MD
Directed by Chay Yew
Written, created, and performed by Universes:
Steven Sapp
Mildred Ruiz-Sapp
Gamal A. Chasten
William Ruiz

Down the Up Staircase

2010-10-22T21:25:00.007-04:00

This is another little bit of a catch-up post - I went to see Waiting for Superman a couple of weeks ago, despairing of the U.S. education system. Unqualified, disinterested teachers are kept in the system, while interested students are ignored, abandoned.

What can we do to make education interesting to teachers, accessible to students?

I hate to give credit to Arianna Huffington for much of anything, but many years ago in The Futurist magazine we gave her credit for authoring a singular formula for success: Celebritizing.

This evening I had a yen to watch one of my favorite movies on DVD, Quiz Show. The story involves the corruption of a young, ambitious intellectual, Charlie van Doren, by the glory of fame and fortune. Television just wanted to sell Geritol, but was attempting to do so at a time of a national U.S. crisis in the education system.

The movie opens with the Sputnik crisis of 1957: The Soviet Union was beating the United States into space, and to remedy the situation, America needed a boost to math and science specifically, and Education generally. The role of television as a "national classroom" was driven home time and again in the mind of van Doren - he could serve as a glamorous role model to the nation's youth, generating excitement in learning and general knowledge.

It was the right idea, but with the wrong motivations.

It is a factor of my years, my distance from the real-world education system, that forces me to refer to cultural artifacts like this. My first memory of educational role models were the Sandy Dennis film, Up the Down Staircase, and the Sidney Poitier film To Sir, with Love. Of course, there is no dearth of films and television series featuring inspiring teachers, ranging from Goodbye, Mr. Chips (take your pick, Robert Donat or Peter O'Toole) to Mr. Schue in Glee.

Teachers inspire us; education is dramatic. Why don't we see more of it on TV now? I could envision something on prime-time TV that honors learning and knowledge, but without the numbing superficiality of quiz shows. A professor or teacher who inspires with ideas and connections to real-world problems. I'd watch that show. I'd want to be like that teacher.

I don't necessarily think this is a panacea, but to get young people interested in learning and in teaching. it couldn't hurt to give them more of those role models once again.

But it still seems it's the Geritol sellers of the world in charge of the image-distribution system.

Anyway, there you have it. How to inspire: Celebritize. Not far off from "celebrate." I remain optimistic.

love, hosaa
tripping down an Up staircase

ETA: So I guess there is a celebrity teacher out there now: Tony Danza on A&E's Teach. Watching now...

ETAA: I liked it. It's more about Tony Danza's self-discoveries (at least in the episode I watched last night), but I think this could be good.

The other idea I had was for a behind the scenes look at how a show like "Jeopardy" gets put together. What kind of conversations go into the dumbing down of information, how do they come up with the clues that allow people to answer questions they don't really know? In Quiz Show, they got it right - people just want to follow the money. You don't have to cheat to win, you just have to have easier questions.

Dancing as Fast as I Can

2010-10-17T18:16:00.006-04:00

This is a bit of a catch-up post. Got to see the So You Think You Can Dance Tour come through Baltimore on October 5, along with my friends Dave and Suzanne. Photos follow. (I did take video, but the spotlight ghosted out the dancers quite a bit; my camera isn't sophisticated enough to resolve complicated lighting issues on the fly - nor am I.)

(click to enlarge)

Full cast as appearing in the last photo (left to right): Courtney Galiano, Ade Obayomi, Ashley Galvan, Kent Boyd, Kathryn McCormick, Adechike Torbert, Lauren Froderman, Russell Ferguson, Robert Roldan, Billy Boyd, Allison Holker, Jose Ruiz. Photos by C. G. Wagner

The show was loud and exciting, short on traditional ballroom, long on hip-hop and contemporary. The crowd favorites were clearly Lauren and Kent, the most recent season's number one and number two "favorite dancers." I kept my eye on adorable Robert and incredibly gifted Allison, whom I've now seen perform live three times. (See "Ooo That Kiss," below.)

My friends had treated me to dinner before the show, and it would have been thoroughly delightful if we hadn't had to go through the ritual of dissatisfaction - we were seated in the bar rather than the upstairs dining area; the garlic-free menu was limited (Suzanne's severe allergy is a handicap in happy dining); the service was slow, though to my mind quite friendly; the portion for the dish Dave ordered was ridiculously small for the price, whereas mine was ridiculously large. In short, my hosts were aggravated, but I was delighted.

Then there was the issue with not knowing how to do the pay-on-your-way-out parking machines. It would help if the driver would (a) remember where he parked and (b) read the instructions.

Those were their problems, I figure. I can usually drown their bickering out. But the bummer for me was, again, listening to Suzanne try to itemize the gay versus the non-gay dancers. What was the bloody point? Even Dave couldn't get her to see why it was so offensive to bring up the dancers' sexuality. Suzanne keeps saying she doesn't have anything against gay people, but she keeps bringing it up!

I finally called her a bigot. Not a nice thing to do in the back seat of someone else's car, but I couldn't help it. We didn't continue the conversation, except in my own mind, which is where I silently lecture the world... (until I blog about it, that is!) The next time this happens, I will just ask her to repeat the exact same conversation, but instead of saying "gay," substitute the word "Jew." She might get it then.

For the next couple of days I stewed a bit, then felt bad that I called her a bigot. It wasn't nice. Anyway, we got together just two days later for another concert at Strathmore, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's tribute to dance, where we were joined by another couple.

This time we just focused on the show, which was a little lighter on the actual dancing than we expected - only six of the 16 numbers were accompanied by dancers, ranging from classical ballet to a couple of performances by the Lombard Twins, Facunda and Martin, amazing tango-tappers dancing to Astor Piazzolla. (A total of three Piazzolla pieces were on the program, compared with two Tchaikovsky pieces; the other composers covered included Dietz and Schwartz, Khachaturian, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and Ronan Hardiman).

This afternoon Suzanne and I went together to see "Sabrina Fair" at Ford's Theatre, which has already received a rave review from WaPo, so I won't be redundant. The nontraditional casting (an African American Sabrina) was the twist to this production, and Suzanne questioned whether it would work. I believe she accepted it but felt it ought to have been addressed in the script somehow. Apparently, even the playwright had suggested addressing the race issue if directors chose to cast the show this way, but it didn't happen.

The result of that ignoring the elephant in the room, to me, made the story more focused on the essential issue of class distinction (and incidentally whether money can buy your way into an elevation of class). I think a lot of other things could have been done with nontraditional casting, including making the Larrabees African American and the Fairchilds white. Or make the Larrabee brothers sisters instead, and the chauffeur's daughter a son.

Or you could even go nontraditional in the gender casting too. But it was set in the 1950s, when such a love story was even more unthinkable than cross-racial pairings.

The first comment Suzanne had was that she thought one of the Larrabee characters was miscast. I won't say which one. She just said she thought he was too obviously gay.

Sigh. At least she stifled herself before the second act and didn't bring it up again afterwards.

Social progress still has a long way to go, ya'll.

The show ended with a glorious dance to Nat King Cole singing "LOVE," and you couldn't pry the grin off my face! What joy!

love, hosaa
dancing in my heart

"Commit" Is a Verb

2010-10-04T07:46:00.008-04:00

I'm "stuck" with an extra ticket to see Sabrina Fair at Ford's Theatre in a couple of weeks because an acquaintance who said she wanted to see it with me suddenly remembered a prior commitment with her daughter.

I'm clear on the concept of family coming first, but unclear on the concept of making a commitment you can't keep.

At first she just wanted me to change the date. Sorry, honey, Ticketmaster doesn't do exchanges. That's why being a subscriber and buying from the box office makes a difference. I have to exchange dates at Round House Theatre at least twice a season.

Anyway, in the process of apologizing and proclaiming how much she loves Ford's Theatre, she said (for about the eleventeenth time) that she is going to join Ford's as a member.

Commit to join or not to join. It's a commitment either way. Just saying you're going to do it doesn't count.

As I was walking to work today, I started counting some of the organizations I currently support (mostly arts and culture). In addition to the nonprofit association I work for, World Future Society, there are my alumni associations, Grinnell College and Syracuse University.

In the adventure of being a Clay Aiken fan, I have also supported the Bubel/Aiken Foundation, now known as the National Inclusion Project (NIP), as well as Unicef USA. I've gone along with a lot of Clay's "asks," including donating to Unicef recently for aid to children victimized by the floods in Pakistan.

I also went along with that Cookie company promo last year, wherein you rounded up as many of your e-mail addresses as possible to vote for NIP in a competition among thousands of nonprofit groups. The good news is that NIP won $10,000. The bad news is all the e-mail spam I get from the Cookie company.

I chose not to participate in this year's corporate scheme (Pepsi's) to collect active e-mail addresses, in spite of the fact that NIP and other worthy organizations had the potential to win some money. I also chose not to attend this year's gala "Champions of Change" fundraiser, because when I did so last year, it was a lot of money that I could not divert to the other organizations I've committed to.

Again, these are my choices. Other people have committed to these activities. Good! I'm certainly not saying other people shouldn't do it. I'm just saying I'm not doing it.

Anyway, here's my own little roundup of current commitments (not just Facebook fandoms):

World Future Society (where I've worked for 29 years)
Grinnell College alumni
Syracuse University alumni
USS Emmons Association (my father's shipmates)
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of African American History and Culture
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Theatre Communications Group
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Round House Theatre
Ford's Theatre
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Phillips Collection
WETA (Public Television and FM classical music)
MPT (Maryland Public Television)

love, hosaa
committing

Musical Landscapes (Baltimore Symphony Orchestra)

2010-09-30T23:04:00.004-04:00

Back from the BSO's performance at Strathmore. The pieces under the authority of conductor Marin Alsop's robustly light touch were:

1. "Doctor Atomic Symphony" by John Adams.
2. Violin Concerto in E Minor by Felix Mendelssohn, with guest violinist Stefan Jackiw.
3. Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, "From the New World," by Antonin Dvorak.

It was for the third piece in the program that my friend Suzanne particularly wanted to go out on a schoolnight, in the rain, to hear. I agreed to go because her husband would not, and after all the Sunday "family" dinners she's had me over for, I figured my companionship was the least I could offer.

"New World" is a good draw and a great end to an evening out. It'll keep all us oldsters awake. But more than that, the piece is an exploration of a landscape in musical tones, shades and contours, lights and earthy darks.

It was the second piece that got the biggest applause, though, thanks to the pyrotechnics of the guest hunk. Oh yeah, baby, the 25-year-old Korean-German wunderkind looked about 15, so it seemed to me the enthusiastic standing ovation may have been on the patronizing side. Maybe not. He really was quite fantastic.

For me, the first piece was worth the price of admission, though Suzanne said it was too "modern" for her taste.

Here is where I remind myself not to call this stuff "classical music." When you tell your friends you're going to a concert and it's not Lady Gaga or even Coldplay, you can usually just get away with saying it's classical music. But I guess the correct term is "symphonic" or "orchestral" concert. Anyway, the "Doctor Atomic Symphony" ain't "classical" no-way, no-how.

Having spent the afternoon listening to my CD of Philip Glass symphonies (conducted by above mentioned Alsop, that dinky little force of nature), I was probably in a better mental position to accept the less-melodically inclined Adams piece than my friend was.

Typically when at an orchestral concert, given little else to look at besides the clarinetists cleaning out their instruments every chance they can, I visualize dance, movement, and even a narrative. That was not the case with Adams. Instead, I was visualizing the landscapes of the dread, barren Southwest, and rhythms of dawn and decay. It was both fracturing and refreshing.

Because my friend and I had been yammering away before the program began, I didn't get to read about what I would be hearing this evening. So in the interval before the orchestra and hunky guest launched into the Mendelssohn, I glanced at the program and saw that "Doctor Atomic Symphony" was actually inspired by Robert Oppenheimer, dirctor of the Manhattan Project, which of course was set in the New Mexico desert and, according to the program notes, was "ripe for mythic treatment."

For some reason that made me very happy. That I "got" it. Listening to something I knew nothing about, not exactly prepared for, and feeling what the artist wanted me to (I think).

Love, hosaa,
getting it (I think)

My Invention

2010-09-15T13:18:00.004-04:00

Last week when I went to the Round House Theatre, I noticed that they still hadn't repaired the stall doors in the restroom. Metal fatigue in the doors means that they don't latch securely into the supporting column and they fly open when someone else down the line rattles the structure a little. Like by opening or closing their own door.

I e-mailed the theater about the problem, but they didn't respond. :(

I just wanted someone to invent something to hold the door closed. So I did. :)

The only problem is that the little magnets I used hold 35 pounds each. I may accidentally lock myself in! But at least my privacy will be secure.

Love, hosaa
modestly inventing stuff

Ooo That Kiss!

2010-09-13T09:24:00.005-04:00

A little fun with Clay Aiken and his Timeless Tour back-up singer, Casey Thompson, set to "Eso Beso" as performed during Clay's PBS special, "Tried & True Live"

The dancers are Allison Holker and Italo Elgueta.

Download available: Ooo That Kiss

A Picture of Mr. Ripley

2010-09-09T23:06:00.004-04:00

Back from the Round House Theatre's first show of the 2010-11 season, The Talented Mr. Ripley, adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel by playwright Phyllis Nagy and director Blake Robison.

I'm sorry to say I was disappointed in the production, a faint echo of last season's opener, the similarly themed A Picture of Dorian Gray. Whereas the Oscar Wilde classic had complexity and a cunning charm (not to mention RHT's stunning production, a spiffy Sixties rendering of Warholian decadance), the talents of this Ripley guy eluded me.

Nothing wrong with the acting (Karl Miller in the title role), but the static set and dreary, low-key direction couldn't keep me from drifting off.

Maybe it was just me. Tired, achy, a long day at work, and a good full meal before the show. But maybe it wasn't me. Who knows. Last year the Washington Post hated "A Picture of Dorian Gray," whereas I loved it and thought it one of the bravest productions RHT had ever done. So probably WaPo will love their Mr. Ripley--the couple sitting next to me did.

Anyway, that's my recap. Time for bed.

love, hosaa
wondering if I am officially a little old lady, with endurance only for the Sunday matinees anymore....

Corcoran, Close, Renwick, and Rockwell

2010-09-04T16:47:00.014-04:00

Back from the Corcoran and Renwick galleries, so also catching up on the Norman Rockwell exhibition I saw earlier in the week. Corcoran is an independent institution, while the Renwick is part of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum, which hosted the Rockwell exhibition. I like pairing Corcoran and Renwick because they're only a couple of blocks apart; Renwick is off the mall-beaten path for most Smithsonian goers and so less densely populated with tourists.

Today was Corcoran's last "free Saturday" of the summer, where the doors are open for the public to sketch live models in the lobby. Fortunately for me the Chuck Close exhibit was extended, so I got to participate in art and see the exhibit.

This was my first taste of the open sketching event. I like to doodle wherever I go, but my skills were far behind those who attended today, so I gave up. I enjoyed the view of other participatants much better.

(click to enlarge)

In addition to sketchers, there were singers: a performance by the Washington Revels was going on upstairs, just outside the galleries containing the Close exhibit.

The Chuck Close prints exhibit was interesting to me because I hadn't studied his work since college, which at the time would have stopped with his photorealism work. After that, he began experimenting with materials and techniques, from paper pulp to his own fingerprints.

This work would seem to me to fall more into the realm of craft, which is what the Renwick specializes in.

The Renwick's permanent collection features paintings that most of us would consider art, but also pieces that showcase the skill (craft) of working with materials such as clay, glass, fabric, and wood.

Grand Salon, Renwick Gallery ... Blanket Cylinder Series (1984) Dale Chihuly

The featured exhibition at Renwick was "The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942-1946." The objects in the collection were largely made of found materials--scrap wood, metals, shells, and other pieces.

This demonstrated an impulse to create that transcended the degradation to which humans had been exposed. It would be the same impulse that led Chuck Close to continue to create and experiment and express his vision despite physical disabilities.

Returning to the Norman Rockwell exhibit, "Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell. From the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg," I'm drawn to the "realism" of his technique, much as I was to Chuck Close's earlier works. Whereas Rockwell's realism was more idealized, Close's was more hyper-realistic. Both forced an idea of reality onto the viewer that is actually quite artificial. One did it with whimsy, carefully casting his scenes with real actors and constructing the sets, and the other with a startling focus on that most intimate of subjects, the face, decontextualizing it through sheer scale.

Before I even decided to see the Rockwell exhibit, I'd read a review (rant, actually) that lambasted this art as propaganda for an idealized America that never existed. Rockwell was a commercial illustrator; of course the images were selling something. I've never felt that diminished the work as art. My favorite piece in the collection, showing a writer dreaming of Daniel Boone, was an ad for Underwood Typewriters.

Back over to the Renwick, I loved the objects in the permanent collection, though I have to say I am bitterly disappointed to have bought a book from the gift shop that featured only one of the objects I saw today (Chihuly's glass cylinder; see above). The book, it turns out, was published in 1998. That's like a century ago, right?

Anyway, the most popular piece today was this glass dress by Karen LaMonte.

"Reclining Dress Impression with Drapery" (2009)

I say it was a popular piece because I had to wait about 10 minutes to get a clear shot of it. There were three women who took turns taking photos of each other with their heads sticking up out of the neckline of the glass dress.

Actually, it made me smile to see that. What started over at the Corcoran a couple of hours earlier--a day of people experiencing art at a very personal level--was just being carried over by these ladies enjoying a work of exquisite craft.

It is why we create, is it not?

love, hosaa
observing observers of life and art

Credit: All photos by C. G. Wagner

Great Grottoes

2010-09-02T22:16:00.012-04:00

As most Clay Aiken fans know, after a tour has ended, the Man is inclined to retreat to what we lovingly call his "man-cave." There's something to be said for having a great grotto (though depending on which rumors you believe, he may be in the process of finding a new grotto... who knows? Maybe back to Wake Co., an area of political interest to him).

Grottoes may or may not have added geological appeal to the Man, again depending on which rumors you believe. I can't say that it was geology necessarily that led me to my day trip today. But it was Clay. Or rather, a nice long drive gave me the opportunity to listen to my two-disc custom made CD of the Timeless Tour (Biloxi show) featuring Clay and Ruben Studdard, and an interest of mine was (irrationally) Boonsboro, Maryland (irrational because it should be spelled with an e, having been founded by cousins of Daniel Boone).

A change of scenery is always good for someone who lives in a box--a noisy city box. In searching the Net for Boonsboro, I found a couple of interesting destinations: Washington Monument State Park and Crystal Grottoes Caverns.

So off I went, on a hot day with the a/c and CA blasting. First stop is Washington Monument, which isn't the one you're thinking of. This was actually (according to the brochure) the first monument completed in honor of George Washington, built by the citizens of Boonsboro in 1827.

(click to enlarge)

The monument was used by the Union Army as a signal tower during the Civil War, as it offered an outstanding view of the valley below, including Middletown, Maryland.

Truthfully, I didn't spend a lot of time contemplating history. It was hot, and I am in no way an outdoor cat. I met a sweet kid on the Appalachian Trail, passing through from Maine on her way to Georgia. Now there's someone who won't be grottoed.

Got back in the car and let Clay and Ruben continue toward the end of the first half of their concert... In mileage, I can't tell you how far away from my apartment Boonsboro is, but it is just a little bit more than half the length of the Timeless Tour, which was over two hours.

In Boonsboro, head west on Rte 34 to get to Crystal Grottoes Caverns.

I was glad to see a family from New Jersey waiting for the "next tour," which was apparently whenever there were enough people to take down to the caverns. The young man leading us was not a professional geologist, but learned all he needed on the job, which he'd been doing for about a year. This cavern has (according to the brochure) "more formations per square foot than any Cave known to man and is the most naturally kept Caverns in the world."

Okay, of course there's something Clay related in all this. The formations in their natural state are covered in clay. Heh. Our young guide explained that there is a massive "noncommercial" area of the caverns that are still being excavated, explored, cleaned. I asked what they used to clean the clay off the formations, and he said "toothbrushes and toothpaste." I confess to wondering whether it was cinnamon or mint.

This was a day trip for me, and a pleasant one at that. I had brought my computer and an overnight bag with me in case I wanted to stay over. Boonsboro didn't offer much else to attract me, certainly not the cafe that also offered guns and ammunition. Middletown was a nice stop for lunch, but I really did want to head back home.

To my grotto - and Clay and Ruben along the way.

Love, hosaa
caving

Credit: All photos by C. G. Wagner

Dormant

2010-08-31T19:20:00.003-04:00

Sad to have to take a week off work to catch up on personal business, but so it goes.

Today's task was at long last closing my mom's estate account. There was money in it, but just waiting to pay myself back for a variety of expenses - my share of the funeral expenses, the lawyer's fees, some medical bills.

In looking over the papers before I went to the bank, I saw where I was supposed to have done all this about a year and a half ago. But how could I, when it took this long to make sure all the clerical errors being made by the insurance company and the nursing home got cleared up?

(Example - insurance company sent me a check. I deposited it in the estate account. Then, a few months later, the insurance company said it was a mistake, so send it back. Since I set up the account as a savings account rather than checking, I paid out of my own pocket. Another example - the nursing home mistakenly deposited a check in my mom's resident's account after I'd closed it. I told them to return it to Social Security, but a year later they sent me another update of the funds in the account and the interest earned. I did my best. I ignored them.)

Anyway, more than two years after she died, I'm closing business. But when I tried to have the bank transfer the closed estate account and into my open savings account, there was a problem.

My savings account was "dormant." I hadn't added to or withdrawn from it in a long time. Why should I? It doesn't earn any interest to speak of. Might as well just leave it all in my checking account.

It didn't take much effort for my banker to reactivate the account. But it made me think about all the things in my life that have been left dormant, de-activated by neglect. Example - I passed through my childbearing years without incident, which seemed to have brought menopause to a very early resolution. (Thank goodness, by the way!)

Another thing I've noticed during this "staycation" - my list of minor little "homework" tasks to attend to this week are just as easily interrupted as my work tasks are. Example: needing to go to the hardware store for a new vacuum cleaner and fluorescent tubes for the kitchen instead of doing the second of two banking businesses (having the credit union drop my dad's name from our joint account - he died almost three years ago).

It seems an inescapable truth... life is what happens while you're making other plans. And the rest of it lies dormant.

love, hosaa
dealing with dormancy

Louis and Wynton

2010-08-28T23:03:00.003-04:00

Just back from seeing an extraordinary show at the Strathmore: Silent film LOUIS accompanied by Wynton Marsalis, Cecile Licad, and a smoking jazz ensemble.

The film is a fictionalized rendering of the childhood of Louis Armstrong in corrupt, decadent old New Orleans, but it is also an homage to the redemptive power of music. Aesthetically, think Francis Ford Coppola meets the Keystone Kops. The transformation of the turn-of-the-century villainous politician from Snidely Whiplash into Charlie Chaplin (City Lights, Modern Times, and Great Dictator references) was a fun touch. And the young boy who played Louis, Anthony Coleman, was a wide-eyed charmer, totally convincing as a young Satchmo.

The music had me smiling all night, melding 19th-century Gottschalk with 21st-century Marsalis. At first I didn't recognize Wynton sitting in the band - of course I know what he looks like, but I was pretty far back. He is an icon but didn't march on stage separately from the other musicians, no spotlight. Then he played: The music IS the light. Wow. It's been 25 years since I saw him perform at the Kennedy Center (oh please bring back the Jazz Festival!) and he still blows me away.

It was a sold-out show, according to the signs at the box office, but there were a few scattered empty seats. Three boisterous standing ovations filled in those gaps.

love, hosaa
wishing the gift show had been open

U.S. Immigration Policy

2010-08-18T08:39:00.007-04:00

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

(from "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus)

...oh, and could you also make sure they have a PhD in engineering before they get here? You know, like these guys:

(Big Bang Theory, CBS.com)

Oh, never mind. The key is under the mat.

Love, hosaa

not huddling, a little tempest-tost, breathing free

Bethesda's Shame

2010-06-29T12:20:00.006-04:00

Just minutes from now, the beautiful, historic, Art Deco treasure, the Bethesda Theatre, goes on the auction block. Rumors suggest it could be converted to a retail space.

Shame, shame, shame on so many levels.

First of all, look at this building, a living monument to a culture, an age, when design mattered. Art Deco wasn't just about architecture, it was a style that crossed into fashion, home furnishings, film making

Second, there is no need for additional retail space in downtown Bethesda. Look around at the shuttered windows.

And look at the humanity left behind by the neglect of our less-humane interests:

Photographs by C. G. Wagner

Shame. Damn shame.

Save the building, and save the culture and the community it honored. Turn it into an educational and cultural center, a gallery, a ballroom, a bandstand, theater, cinema, reception hall.

Or turn it into a homeless shelter until our town gets back on its feet again.

Love, hosaa
Lifelong Bethesda resident, ashamed

ETA, later that same day... Bought by the lender for $2 million. Apparently only the bank itself wanted to buy the debt. I'm assured that "they know" Bethesda Theatre is a treasure, but it will be some time before it will glow again. It's the economy. Still.

Little karma's Delicate Balance

2010-06-23T08:21:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time I found a $20 bill on the sidewalk. That's not something that normally happens to me. I was suspicious of my good fortune. I called out to a lady up the street and asked her if she dropped some money. She said no. Honest lady!

I kept the money but put it aside, in an unused pocket in my pocketbook. Why throw away good fortune? To keep from feeling all entitled and what-not, I sent a check for $20 to a charity, for fortune should always be shared with the less fortunate.

I figured I was $20 up in karma, or good luck, or grace of whatever mysterious forces I choose not to name.

A few months (or even years) later, I had a $10 bill in my pocket, the same pocket in which I was carrying a few letters (bills to pay, probably) to drop off at the post office on my way to work. You guessed it, the mailbox accepted the money without question. Stupid mailbox. A letter to my postmaster requesting the money back probably gave the staff a good laugh.

But I figured I was still a good $10 up in karma. Yay, me. I think about the profits and loss whenever I see money on the ground. Yes, I stoop for pennies (but never if they're tails. That's just bad luck, forget about it).

So it should not surprise me that a bit of good luck Monday would turn into bad luck Tuesday. Monday, for some reason, the IRS sent me a check and a letter explaining that they thought I overpaid. Had to do with some retirement money (which was actually my late mother's retirement money, since I'm not retired). Yay me, I'm up $400!

Then, on Tuesday, my credit card was declined at the grocery store and I came home to a message on my answering machine from the credit card company's fraud squad. When I called back they indicated that someone had been trying to use my credit card to buy $600+ of groceries at stores in Chile and Italy.

WHAT??

The good news is that they declined those purchases, but the bad news is that they declined mine too. I'll be getting a new number, a new start. For a few days, though, I'll have to dig into that unused pocket and retrieve my lucky $20 bill.

love, hosaa
respectful, if not reverent, of mysterious karmic/cosmic forces

Only the Best

2010-06-16T23:43:00.004-04:00

Edward Duke
(June 17, 1953 - January 8, 1994)

Happy Birthday, Edward, who would have been 57.

You inspire me. Still.

Love, hosaa,
looking for the silver lining

Signs

2010-06-15T12:37:00.003-04:00

Is it really a "sign" if you don't know what it means?

When you see something unusual, something you've never seen before, and it makes you feel sad (or happy, or curious, or anything), it's supposed to mean something, isn't it?

As I walk to work in the morning, I notice the birds - not that I'm an ornithologist, or even an experienced bird watcher. There was a new voice in the neighborhood this morning, a recognizable call I hadn't heard around here in a while.

Then a few steps away, I saw a trio of birds scuffling on the sidewalk at the foot of a tall building. One bird flew off, up onto the ledge overhead; it ducked into what evidently was "home."

The other two birds continued scuffling - or at least one was. As I drew closer, I realized that one was dead. It apparently had either flown into the building or fallen from the ledge. The other bird - father? mother? mate? medic? - was picking delicately at the fallen bird's neck and head, trying to revive it. The saver tried to pull the fallen off the path, closer to home. The struggle was overwhelming. The saver paused in its effort, nuzzled closer to the fallen, and seemed to try to catch its breath.

I did not expect to wake up this morning and share another creature's frustration, despair, and grief.

If it's a sign of anything, maybe it's that the world is always capable of showing me something I'd never seen before, and make me feel something I hadn't felt in just that way before.

love, hosaa
in sorrow

Information Archaeologists and a Futurist's Desk

2010-05-15T11:15:00.004-04:00

Today in Twitter land...

WorldFutureSoc Archaeologists should study the desk drawer I'm cleaning out: Rolodex cards, plastic file tabs, Post-It fax notes, lots of dead rubber bands

WorldFutureSoc: ...desiccated crumbs of cranberry muffins, reading glasses Elton John would consider OTT... What's a #futurist w/o longitudinal data?

WorldFutureSoc: ...ooo, a Pantone chip: C=0 Y=65 M=90 K=20 ;-) my favorite color!

WorldFutureSoc: ... two sticks of Beemans! SCORE!!

WorldFutureSoc: Sorry, @paleofuture, I had to throw out the extra floppy disk labels I just found. They were nasty. ;-)

WorldFutureSoc: I have no idea what these little keys go to, but I'm afraid to throw them away.

WorldFutureSoc: Paperclips, re-recycled for years RT @fayfeeney My #bizrelic: Redi-reply memos - triple copies w/ carbon paper. What's yours?

WorldFutureSoc: Found another Pantone chip: C=100 Y=0 M=90 K-40 We love our primary colors here at The Futurist magazine!

WorldFutureSoc: Okay, desk drawer cleaned. (Sort of.) Worst crud: the mess from a bottle of Wite-Out that leaked. Yuck.

WorldFutureSoc: Best finds: two 29-cent Elvis stamps, a loupe, T-square, protractor, compass, and one of those little curvy things for drawing curves.

WorldFutureSoc: So concludes the tweet-story of a #futurist cleaning a desk and finding the history of the Information Age. Thank you, thank-you-very-much!

love, hosaa,
dreading cleaning out the filing cabinets next

Around the World without the Balloon

2010-05-06T23:24:00.009-04:00

Danisha Crosby, Round House Theatre

Back from the Round House production of Around the World in 80 Days, which we are urgently warned in the program does not feature a balloon. That was a movie thing. There was no balloon in Jules Verne's book.

What I love about the productions at RH recently has been the musicality of the dramaturgy and the heavy emphasis on dance in the blocking. It isn't a musical, but it's musical. In AW80, actors suggest the motions of trains, boats, and other conveyances through their choreographed leans, shakes, and jolts.

And then of course there is the audience-pleasing coconut-clopping "horses," a nod to Monty Python that brought a smile to my face as I pictured King Arthur and Patsy rather than Passepartout trotting on stage.

Silliness ensues throughout; world cultures are caricatured on an equal opportunity basis, though I do wonder why I should be more uncomfortable with the gross caricatures of Asians than of the Brits and Americans. Because it's acceptable to laugh at ourselves but not at others?

Through the spirited jaunt, Phileas Fogg (performed by Mitchell Hebert) is a stoical pillar of gentlemanly sensibility - mathematical and precise. How does such a man launch himself into such an adventure? It's a mystery; perhaps hubris is a powerful enough force to tempt a man from logic, for along the way he is rewarded with the illogic of falling in love.

Around the World in 80 Days plays at the Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland, through May 30. This concludes the 2009-2010 season for RHT, and it is the first season that I have thoroughly enjoyed every single production (even the one WaPo hated, The Picture of Dorian Gray). I'm not even sure I could pick out my favorite (leaning toward Asher Lev); all were thought-provoking, but AW80 was certainly the most entertaining.

"It's a Wonderful Proof of Life"

2010-04-29T07:51:00.007-04:00

Sometimes I wish we lived in an age where I could commission a poet to describe what I've seen or experienced. (For instance, what about that one songbird that has claimed the uppermost branch of a tree on my street and cheers me every morning? I can't make out what he is, his colors darkened against the morning East.)

But that would be like hiring a stunt double for my soul.

Anyway, I probably don't want anyone, poet or psychoanalyst, peering into the mind behind the visions and the dreams. A screenwriter might be good, though.

The dreams that I remember, though the imagery evaporates quickly into shadows with my morning songbird, are often intensely action-filled, like "24," and strangely magical. It's as though I'd conjured a perfect mashup, with Russell Crowe's character "Terry" in Proof of Life cast as "Clarence" the angel in It's a Wonderful Life.

And my dreams are often populated by strangers. Who was the baby sister that "Terry" and I were trying to protect from the cartel in my dream last night? I don't have a baby sister. Could it have been Angelea from America's Next Top Model or that pill-popping former Miss USA who was on the Oprah show that repeated last night before I finally went to sleep? And could the villainous head of the cartel, operating from a high-tech brothel/carnival funhouse, have been Mr. Trump?

The random visions and ideas we are exposed to during the day try to organize themselves somehow into a narrative at night. It means nothing, really. So I'll just pass the nighttime popcorn and enjoy the "Wonderful Proof of Life."

love, hosaa
dreaming again

Speaking of mashups, for your entertainment... The Right Sh-Stuff:

Lost, or Losing It

2010-04-14T12:35:00.000-04:00

I can get lost in an elevator, but usually I just get lost in thought. So today I simply sip an orange soda in homage to the mighty Waponi Wu.

George Benson, and the Memories Ensue

2010-04-11T21:57:00.001-04:00

What do you want from a career artist? Familiarity and freshness. George Benson is all that and more. He reminds me why I love live music, because he loves it.

At the Kennedy Center's acoustically (if not visually) stunning Concert Hall, GB arrived in support of his latest album, Songs and Stories. He had plenty of songs in the 100-minute set, but not too many stories. One was about one of his first visits to D.C. in the spring of 1976, just a week before he would release his new album, Breezin'. During a radio interview, the DJ persuaded him to give a taste of the new release, so he played a bit of the title number. The phone lines in the studio began to light up, GB recalled. Encouraged by the reception, he played another, a tune called This Masquerade. And all the phones in the building lit up.

I don't remember exactly when I first heard George Benson, but it couldn't have been too long after the release of Breezin'. Did I hear it on the radio? Most likely. I know I wouldn't have heard it from my college classmates' stereos. Do you remember the spring of 1976? That was the year Bruce Springsteen burst onto the scene. And he played Grinnell. How the hell did I hear of George Benson?!

But I did. At least one other person at Grinnell did too. Ah, Scott: the only would-be boyfriend I ever actually had an "our song" for. Too bad the relationship didn't get that far, though. Every time I hear This Masquerade, I think of Scott, just out of habit. Cut to 2010, and old is young again, but wiser. The melancholy, the frustration are still there, but the misconnections talked about in the song are now tinged with the reflection that missed connections may never reconnect.

GB saved On Broadway for the encore. (Movie fans may remember it as the number to which the cattle-call dance auditions are held at the beginning of All That Jazz.) Familiar, but fresh and with a mature grittiness. He gleefully growled out the line, 'cause I can play this here guitar... and the crowd roared its approval. Throw in an epically insane drum solo, and it's like you've never heard the song before. And that's how he handled all the familiar numbers, both his and the covers.

I couldn't help but wonder how a career artist keeps playing this here guitar for 35 or 40 or more years. I think it's that he keeps growing by staying open to influences. Irish? He made his guitar cry like a bagpipe, then launched into a jazzy Danny Boy. French Caribbean accents also penetrated the jazz of the night. He took Moody's Mood to giddy new heights. And from the new CD, he performed a cover by an artist he admires, James Taylor: Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.

But in the end, the sound was always recognizably, reassuringly George Benson. The Benson sound is as distinct in its own way as the Glenn Miller sound was in its time. Familiar, fresh, and new again in the shared experience of a crowd who came to remember and rejoice.

Futuring The Futurist

2010-04-10T08:25:00.000-04:00

A friend asked whether the magazine I work for, The Futurist, would be going all digital soon, as so many publications seem to be doing.

At The Futurist, we've talked about the magazine going digital (I talked about it 10 years ago, but there was no technology for it). Right now, I'm still not satisfied with the technology, though I haven't seen it on the devices they're designed for (Kindle, Nook, iPad, whatever).

The e-magazine displays I've tried to view on my desktop or laptop are just horrible. I have to zoom in to read anything, and then I can't navigate the pages. Just yesterday I tried to read the Washington Examiner's supplement about the Cherry Blossom Festival and couldn't find the event listings. The pages were pretty but unreadable. That would never work for our magazine.

Also, what about readers who like print or can't use the latest technologies? Even our e-mailed newsletter, Futurist Update, is output in text rather than html in order to be accessible to the lowest-common-denominator technology.

So there you have it - why The Futurist isn't very futuristic. We also don't have the money to do a big risky technology switchover while the formats and platforms are still shaking out. Donations are desperately needed right now. (Here's a scoop: Our landlord is gently suggesting we move into a smaller suite. Like, within the next few months.)

Much Futurist content is already available on our Web site; when we switch over to the new (Drupal-powered) site, all content and archives will be available to members. We think this will enhance the value of WFS membership and thus increase membership, which will help support our products and services. That's the plan.

I've said before, and I'll say again: Don't mistake the container for the thing contained. We are a very tiny nonprofit association that specializes in content: information, ideas. It's what we do. It's what our members value. The container, be it a print magazine or a conference or a Web site, has to meet the needs of the largest number content users. Improving the container takes more time and resources than we've been able to devote.

And as I've said, donations (and knowledgeable volunteers) are always welcome. If anyone wants to donate free Kindles (or whatever the technology of choice might turn out to be for future magazines) to ALL of our members, I think I can say we'd be fine with that too! :)

love, hosaa
working on another d**n Saturday morning

P.S., the opinions expressed above are, of course, strictly my own.

Sunday and the 70s O's

2010-04-04T11:29:00.000-04:00

A lovely morning to spend procrastinating with the newspaper. I'll get to taxes this afternoon.

First, there was an excellent article in the Washington Post on the impacts of the recession and other budget cuts on modern dance choreography by their staff dance writer, Sarah Kaufman: "Assessing the Future of Modern Dance" (in connection with which I will simply point out how great it is that the Post still has a resident dance writer).

When society tightens its belt, the arts are often the first "luxury" item removed from from public budgets, the ripple effects can be wide-reaching and long-lasting. But Ms. Kaufman does a better job of outlining these effects. Go read.

There was also a piece by columnist Hank Stuever on the comeback of music videos as media for promoting music: "The Vids Are Right." I will confess, however, that this is an art form that only interests me insofar as the next Clay Aiken CD, "Tried and True," which will be released June 1.

But the story that caught my eye and broke my heart was the obituary for legendary Baltimore Orioles pitcher Mike Cuellar. As I learned from the obit, the southpaw Cuellar, he of the unbelievably torqued windup for his crazy screwball pitches, was the first Latino to win the Cy Young Award, sharing the honor in 1969 with Detroit legend Denny McLain. Cuellar was one of the four titans of Orioles pitching in the '70s, along with Dave McNally, Pat Dobson, and that lanky blue-eyed dreamboat, Jim Palmer.

One of the inconsolably unforgivable things my mother did was toss out my Orioles memorabilia from that era (I'm thinking 1971-1973), among which was a small poster print of the Norman Rockwell painting of Brooks Robinson signing autographs. I might have had that autographed, I'm not sure. I was about 14 at the time and a little unclear on this whole autographing business. I did get the signatures of several O's stars on pages of a simple unlined writing pad that my mom happened to have with her.

Imagine if you will a Sunday afternoon in the bright breezy summer, Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The O's were on top (despite their '69 Series loss to the Miracle Mets - I was the only one in my class who was rooting for the heavily favored O's). After my dad had done his duty by explaining baseball to me while we watched the snowy black-and-white images on the TV in his bedroom, my mom carried on the daughterly indulgence by driving us over to Baltimore for our first game. It was to become one of my favorite mother-daughter traditions for a couple of summers.

There is no feeling like that of peering through the tunnel from the concourse of a cool, concrete, parking lot of a stadium and seeing your first glimpse of a bright green field and pure white pillows of base pads glowing in the high overhead beams of sunshine, and of hearing the cracks of bats during the batting practice and the heavy, musty "poofs" of balls caught in tough but softly seasoned leather gloves.

And then there were men. Men! Grown-up adult men who were not fathers, uncles, teachers, preachers, or even (blech) big brothers. Baseball players in bright white uniforms, stretching their masculinity out for all God's glory. Ah, to the adolescent female heart it was all so perfect and splendidly tempting.

We got great seats at the box office - about a dozen rows up behind the third-base dugout and the home team of shining knights. We saw that several players were leaning up over the dugout and taking items from the fans to sign. So Mom dug around in her purse and retrieved the writing pad and gave it to me with a ball-point pen. I raced down to the MEN!

And somehow I was surprised that they paid attention to me. Mom later said she wasn't surprised a bit, as she watched pitcher Dobson, in particular, hone in on the willowy blonde youth heading down the aisle toward the dugout. Hee!

I remember collecting the autographs of good-hearted first baseman Boog Powell and the mischievously gleaming-eyed hurler Dobson. The one I remembered most was the wiry, quiet shortstop, Mark Belanger, who, as I reported to my mother, had beautiful long black eyelashes.

Ah, Belanger, my first sports crush. Oh what it did to me to watch him warm up at the plate while the pitcher was deciding how to play him. Slim hips stretch to the left, stretch to the right, square off, swirl the bat, tighten the butt, then swing away. And I must say, the third base side offered a very good view of the right-handed hitters.

The afternoon was a good one for Palmer; he not only threw a great game, but also had a homerun. (This episode obviously predates the designated hitter era.) As much as my mom teased me about loving Belanger's hips and eyelashes, I knew Palmer's piercing blue eyes had an equal effect on her.

So I remember and pay tribute to Cuellar as a man among the Men of baseball, whose outings I recall mainly from the snowy black-and-white screen of my dad's put-together-from-parts TV, but also from the treasured senses of a few warm days in the fields of young girl's dreams.

love, hosaa,
daydreaming of the tight, impossibly torqued spine of a bedeviling left-handed screwballer

"From Orchids to Octopi"

2010-03-23T22:17:00.000-04:00

Okay, a play commissioned by NIH and performed before an auditorium of scientists doesn't set one's aesthetic expectations very high, but "From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story" was inspired.

Performed at my beloved, beleaguered Art Deco landmark, The Bethesda Theatre (whose official Web site is apparently down right now), the play is in the late stages of early development (evolution!) before moving on to Boston. I didn't stay for the post-play discussion, though I probably could have benefited from it. I got most of the science content of the play, but not all. (But hey, I noticed I was the only one who laughed at the one line from "The Wizard of Oz" during one of the dream sequences - "People come and go so quickly here....")

Since the play was commissioned to celebrate the bicentennial (last year) of the birth of Charles Darwin, it's logical to include Darwin as a character in the play. What we see are two couples - Charles and Emma Darwin - and their modern parallel, the twenty-first-century Emma and Charlie, illustrating the evolution of relationships and love into a society of career conflicts and the demands and fears of bringing a new baby into the world.

21C Emma (played by Kortney Adams) is a painter commissioned to paint a mural honoring Darwin, so she throws herself into researching Darwinian theory and Darwin's life. Her impulse is first to find a design principle, but she is frustrated and confused by her dreams of the carnival freak-show that shows life and change as a game of chance.

Domestic scenes with the nineteenth-century Darwins (Wesley Savick and Debra Wise) entertwine and echo with those of 21C Charlie (Tom O'Keefe), an entrepreneurial chef, and wife Emma. There are equal parts tension and tenderness, and a surprisingly sweet treatment of the question, Is love an evolutionary imperative for survival because of the helplessness of the human infant?

The dialogue is smart not just in the science content, but in its playfulness. Stand-out for me was O'Keefe's depiction of the nasty, beligerent tuberculosis, an ever-evolving supermicrobe who demanded to be included in the mural tribute to evolution. (It is the vile TB bug who takes the life of 19C Darwins' young daughter Annie, played fetchingly by Kira McElhiney.)

The ideas bound across disciplines - not just the sciences, but also language and the arts, incorporating even what I will generously call "dance," though it is more accurately stage movement (the lithe and lovely Adams emulating the first species to grow a neck and stretch itself out to a form that is adaptable to new environments).

The set pieces comprised seven tall, multi-paneled columns that the actors switched around to create parlors, doctors' offices, freak-show attractions, scientific displays, and - evolving throughout the play - the beautiful mural of which Darwin himself becomes the centerpiece, integrated into the Tree of Life.

In the end, it is neither design nor chance that defines us, but inspiration.

Other Credits
Playwright: Melinda Lopez
Director: Diego Arciniegas
Set/Puppet Designer: David Fichter (Puppets? Didn't I mention the giraffe?!)

For more information about "From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story," visit http://www.undergroundrailwaytheater.org/ or Central Square Theater.

Asher Lev, "Observant Jew"

2010-03-18T23:43:00.000-04:00

Back from seeing the dramatization of Chaim Potok's novel, My Name Is Asher Lev, at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda. [N.B.: spoiler alert]

Round House's productions this season have touched a great deal on artists, the meaning of art, and the role that art and artists play in our lives. Just as in Permanent Collection, their previous production, "Asher Lev" deals with conflicting ideas about art.

"Asher" is the epitome of artistic and personal questioning. What does it mean to declare "My name is..." and to whom are you declaring it? We come to question who we are as we look in the mirror to study our own images, and we wonder what it is that we can express to the world through our own perceptions of ourselves--and the world.

Asher (played by Alexander Strain) stands between two worlds; as an "observant Jew" he must honor his heritage, his mysterious but palpable ancestors, as well as his parents and their ethic of devotion and duty to their people. But as an observant artist, he must reach beyond that experience to find his own truth. That Asher begins to explore the sensibilities and imagery of the Other--particularly the image of crucifixions pervading Christian art--horrifies and offends his parents just as much as his drawings of nudes do.

In one scene between Asher and his father (played by Adam Heller), Asher tries to explain the difference between "naked girls" and "nudes." The discussion pulls up short of comic absurdity, just at the point where Asher's father, hailing his own master's degree in political science, matches Asher intellectually: the son accuses the father of aesthetic blindness, and the father accuses the son of moral blindness.

The bridge I see between those blindnesses is the nude itself, so well presented by the same actress playing Asher's mother (Lise Bruneau). It is through our bodies that we sense the world, feel our emotions, express our feelings. Asher the artist sees the nude and begins to see, to feel, the emotions of woman; likewise, his exposure to Christian imagery of sacrifice (the crucifixions he studies) informs his understanding of his mother's suffering.

The pivotal image in the play is one we do not see except through Asher's vivid narration and the stunningly effective lighting design's (Dan Covey) sculptural renderings of the actors. Asher's masterpiece paintings to be displayed in a Manhattan gallery, unbeknownst to his Brooklyn parents, depict his Jewish mother on a cross; the audience sees only Asher's parents' horrified response to the paintings as the mother raises her arms and twists her body in a silhouetted reflection of what she sees.

Asher Lev narrates the story throughout the play, facing the audience more than his fellow characters; this bothered me at the beginning because of our old creative-writing-class dictum, "show don't tell." Yet, as an adaptation of a novel told in the first person, the play honors the ancient art of story telling. It is Asher's story, after all. And the staging kept the narration moving.

The actor playing Asher's father also plays his mentor, the father's antithesis, paralleling the opposites-casting of the same actress playing Asher's mother and nude model. (The roles are listed in the program simply as "Man" and "Woman.") The actors thus become our bridges of understanding the two moral worlds, illustrating that it is never so simple as good versus evil.

And that is what art does. We feel the world and express it through our bodies and souls. But we cannot afford to simply be observant Jews; we must also be listening Jews (and gentiles and all else).

The Thursday night preview audience, traditionally a sparse and low-key group, gave the performance a standing ovation. My neighboring fellow subscriber said it was the best thing she'd seen at Round House. I would certainly put it up there with "Drawer Boy" and "Lord of the Flies," two of my favorites since the company moved to Bethesda. I thought I might dig out the book again (it's been on my own shelf since I retrieved it from my mom's collection nearly 30 years ago), but I think I want to let this moving rendition live with me awhile longer.

Other credits:
Aaron Posner, playwright
Jeremy Skidmore, director
Tony Cisek, scenic designer
Ren Ladassor, costume designer
Matthew M. Nielson, sound designer
Co-produced by the Delaware Theatre Company

Addendum: 27 March 2010
A little disappointed that the Post couldn't send a staff theater critic and didn't run a review until the weekend. Round House Theater reviews typically come out on Wednesday (Thursday at the latest). This is Saturday, when people have already made their plans for the weekend. Oh well. There's still time. Go see this play!

Washington Post review by a freelancer: Nelson Pressley reviews 'My Name Is Asher Lev' at Round House Theatre

(production photo by Matt Urban)

Video preview (on WaPo - embedding seems not to work for me)

Back-up Plans, aka Alternative Scenarios

2010-03-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the comments recently added to my previous blog, the snow pictures, I realize I didn't quite lose everything when I crashed my laptop's hard drive.

Note the use of the active voice in that statement. Heh. Laptops don't take kindly to being "jostled," I suppose. The friend of a friend who was believed to be capable of recovering files from dead drives proved not so able.

Other than a few new Clay Aiken videos from the Golfing for Inclusion event earlier this year, which are replaceable from the massive vaults of my fellow fans (oh what a cloud they've built!), the most critical files I lost were the videos of our org's president and board chairman, which I was in the process of splicing together for promoting our conference in July.

As my brother would say, gum wouge (bum gouge).

The other files I thought I lost were my personal photos and videos from 2010, including the above-mentioned, below-posted snow pictures. There were also the snaps of the pretty tulips I bought from the grocery store to brighten my spirits earlier in this horrible winter. All my other files, from 2009 back, were either on the external hard drive or on data DVDs (which are unfortunately horribly unorganized, but that's a different problem).

The back-up "clouds" of Photobucket and Blogger and Snapfish and the like are not quite satisfactory, since they automatically resize the images. To make my calendars for next year, I need my high-res originals. But aha! I found that I'd actually uploaded those latest pictures to my office computer, so the originals were safe.

Anyway, since my crashing of the drive, my brain has been in quite a bit of a muddle. A couple of weekends ago, I misplaced a thousand-dollar check and my car. (Both turned up eventually, thank goodness.) I can blame all the distractions I want, but unless I start dealing with the clutter in my life and mind, the Crashing of the Drive could turn ugly. Literally. It makes me a little worried about this upcoming road trip to Raleigh. I don't have a back-up plan for her own self.

love, hosaa,
head in clouds

Bethesda Snow, Feb. 3, 2010

2010-02-03T08:20:00.000-05:00

It was just so pretty this morning....

Beauty Therapy, and other laughable ideas

2010-01-28T23:20:00.000-05:00

One of my New Year's resolutions was to blog more about my encounters with the arts. I did a fairly comprehensive roundup of my arts adventures last year for my Christmas newsletter, but wanted to do better on a more ongoing basis by going back to that "theater diary" assignment from the Georgetown U. class many many years ago....

Well, you know how New Year's resolutions go. (I've already missed recapping New Year's Eve "Young Frankenstein" at the Kennedy Center and the Elliott Yamin concert at the Birchmere.)

This week was especially interesting, arts-wise. First (Monday) was the Ford's Theatre benefit dinner with two guest speakers talking about the new production of "The Rivalry," a dramatization of the Lincoln/Douglas debates.

Wednesday was American Ballet Theatre's second night of a short run at the Kennedy Center, which meant mixed rep and not as many principals (reserved, evidently, for opening night Tuesday and for the full-scale ballet, "Romeo and Juliet," on the weekend). Why did I pick the "B" production and "B" cast? Daniil Simkin, whom I saw perform as a guest with ABT last year. Not just adorable and hard working, he's got a grand jete so explosive that you'd believe a new universe is being created.

And any ballet is just good beauty therapy, from Ashton's twirling candies at a birthday party, to the magical ensemble in the mysterious and dangerous forest (with piano accompaniment), to Tharp's calculus of shapes and shifting partnerships. It's all good.

Then tonight (Thursday) was my subscription play at the Round House Theatre, the second preview performance of "Permanent Collection," and it's here where I start to collect my thoughts.

The play was about art, heritage, vision, inspiration, and racism. Not necessarily in that order. Really it was about empathy, or lack thereof. Each of the two protagonists (one black, one white) asks the audience to see things from his point of view. They do not ask each other this, but rather demand, defend, and deny each other. In the end, their accusations of each other's racism are aired by the reporter seeking balance, and in the court of public opinion, both are brought down.

What struck me was the lack of empathy, the unwillingness to change or to seek compromise. As one of the female characters pointed out, it became a pissing match.

The issue of racism is tough in a suburban theater; I was listening to the audience comments at intermission, and most of the "ladies who lunch" seemed to think the black guy was overreacting. Well, I think they both were.

One thing really hit home for me at the end of Act One: that the white guy had to admit he'd never been downtown to the Museum of African Art. The point in the play was that he didn't feel he needed to understand black art because it wasn't as good as white art. Confession: I've never been there either. It's definitely on the list now.

Prejudice is a tough thing. And you wouldn't know it to look at me, but I deal with the kinds of things the black character was talking about--the sense of always being looked at as inferior. This is a really REALLY feeble comparison, but I've heard one too many dumb blonde jokes to think they're anything but old-fashioned prejudice.

Case in point: Let's go back to Monday night at the Ford's dinner. Guest speakers were a best-selling author and Civil War historian, Jay Winik, and the director of the production of "The Rivalry," Mark Ramont. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk to some interesting people.

Mark was charming over hors d'oeuvres as he described the structure of the three-person play and how he staged it, with the wife of Stephen Douglas as sort of a narrator/go-between between Lincoln and Douglas. I got very excited about that because it reminded me instantly of the structure for Michael Frayn's play of a couple of years ago, "Copenhagen," about Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. So I enthusiastically dropped that comment into the conversation.

Mark did a double take. Literally. He hemmed-hawed a nanosecond, and then said something like, yes, well, except "The Rivalry" won't be quite as "heady" as that.

You know what? That's not exactly the first time a man has done a double-take when I, a tall blonde, demonstrated my mastery of linear thought in the form of a complete sentence or a pertinent reference in conversation. Like, really, you know?

So it should not have surprised me that dry, droll Dr. Winik pretty much laughed at me throughout dinner. Maybe it was because I insulted the intelligence of our most recent former president by saying (or starting to say) that I wouldn't vote for anyone I didn't think was smarter than I am. I'll admit to not being very diplomatic. Oops. But I was making references to books and authors that supported whatever the hell we were talking about, and he (in a very professorial demeanor) challenged me at nearly every turn.

Finally, I was in the middle of making a point about the importance of story telling and started to say "that's what I love about Tolstoy..." when Jay turned to his neighbor and sarcastically remarked, "Did you think you'd be sitting at a dinner where somebody says 'And that's what I love about Tolstoy'?" And to twist the knife, to me: "You'll have to find someone with an IQ of 200 to vote for."

I may not be the brightest penny in the dish, but I know when I'm being laughed at.

But here's where I go back to one New Year's resolution I made a few years ago that I still actually keep fairly well: Laugh.

Someone drops the door in my face? Laugh at that person's clueless rudeness. Insulted? Laugh at the inferiority of manners and self-image. Well, just laugh, because it feels better than being mad.

I don't think that philosophy could have saved the two characters in "Permanent Collection," but it couldn't have hurt.

Like my "beauty therapy" at the ballet, the response of both men to the artists who touched them could have been a place to find common ground. One feels about the Cezannes the way the other feels about the African masks. Start with the beauty and the inspiration, and share that.

Love, hosaa
thinking, feeling, laughing (and way too tired to do links. Google is your friend.)

Private Lives, redux

2009-12-02T08:09:00.001-05:00

Sigh.

Apparently someone wants me to know grizzly "insider" details about one of my heroes. There's a reason they call Private Lives "private," people.

Now, leave Tiger Woods alone!!

love, hosaa
rejecting gossip

Blundering Gracefully

2009-11-17T07:49:00.000-05:00

Dear me, I knew this would happen.

Facebook confuses me with its publicly private world. In the process of trying to follow some of my favorite artists and arts organizations, I accidentally (okay, maybe not very accidentally) clicked on a friend request for a certain dancer.

A week or two passed with the "request pending" still sitting in my Friends list. I thought about deleting it, but would that have seemed rude?

(For the record, there is a friend request of my own sitting in my notifications: the high-school boyfriend who dumped me before prom and took my best friend and who is now a married minister, and a Republican to boot. He only needed three strikes.)

Last night when I got home from the Kaleidoscope skating-for-survivors event with Scott Hamilton, I checked my e-mail and found that I'd had a message from the dancer whose friendship I had blundered into requesting.

It was a very sweet greeting that invited me to join his fan group, which I did right away. This dancer is most certainly a master of the art of the graceful gesture. But I won't get to tell him how much he reminds me of Rudolf Nureyev.

love and big smiles, hosaa
blundering as gracefully as possible

Here's Scottie! [click to enlarge]