"Rediscovering Lone Pine"

A novel by Andrew Popper

(reviewed by C. G. Wagner)

The best stories are those that can be read at many levels, and "Rediscovering Lone Pine" is intriguingly multilayered. Told in the first person, present tense, the story draws the reader in at once as a confidante of the narrator, giving it the cinematic, intimate feel of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and bonding intrigue of "Stand By Me."

We join the narrator, Grant Harper, at the very beginning of a childhood mystery, sharing his internalized experiences and seeing through his mind the wild fears that his fevered imagination conjures when he realizes his friend has disappeared into the lonely wilderness. We then come of age along with Grant and his surviving gang, Hannah and Mickey, sharing their traumas, their loyalty, and the crises that would unite and reunite them, including their many searches for their lost friend Jason.

Approaching the book as a straight mystery story, this reader was trying to anticipate twists and predict the outcome - and was happily proven wrong at almost every turn. For where is the satisfaction in not being surprised by a mystery story? Was the detective investigating the disappearance of Jason merely a faux antagonist who would later become an ally? Was Grant's recollection of the events surrounding Jason's disappearance clouded by an amnesia-inducing trauma? My imaginings were nearly as fevered as protagonist Grant's.

The book's cover proclaims that "Rediscovering Lone Pine" won the Maryland Writers Association Prize for Mainstream Fiction. I'm not sure what level of literature "mainstream fiction" is - perhaps somewhere between a good beach book and high art. It's accessible and engaging; one cares about the characters, worries about them, hopes for the best. Living in their world with them is satisfying. My only complaint is that I would have liked just one more scene with my friends. We'd been through so much together!

Review posted at Amazon.com 8-26-09

***

On September 26, author Andrew Popper discussed and read from his book at a convenience store where we get our coffee every morning.

Part 1

Part 2


Part 3


Part 4

Photo and videos by C. G. Wagner, copyright 2009

Wandering Souls: Winter's Tale Well-Told

I cannot praise Wandering Souls highly enough, a small troupe of players bringing to passionate life both the comedy and drama of Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale." It was a seven-actor, 20-character tour de force by the peripatetic Wandering Souls, performing their "outreach" production in the beautiful art deco Bethesda Theatre in downtown Bethesda, Maryland, for a limited three-show engagement.

Pared down to its 90-minute essence (the play is perhaps best known for having the greatest stage direction of all time: "Exit, pursued by a bear"), "The Winter's Tale" was accessible to the small audience who was privileged to see it. Though the company did its own marketing, the booking at the between-seasons theater was apparently spur-of-the-moment; the first signal of its existence was the change on the marquee on the day of the first performance.

The vibrant young cast (could any of them have yet seen his or her 30th year?) brought conviction and energy to their multiple roles; the awkwardness of female casting in male roles was deftly handled (Kristen Garaflo as Florizel, Karen Novak as larcenous rogue Autolycus, and puckish Kelsey Meikeljohn as sons of a king and a shepherd), all effusing great charm. One could even hold a warm spot for the irrationally jealous Leontes (JJ Area), for his beliefs, though misguided, were so utterly heartfelt.

The soul of Shakespeare's tragicomedy belongs to the gracious queen Hermione, unjustly condemned for that very graciousness, and her outcast daughter Perdita raised as a shepherdess, parts played with equal helpings of irreproachable nobility and pastoral gaiety by Betsy Rosen.

Kudos to director Adam Jonas Segaller's smart adaptation and clever "stripped down" staging. As actors dart behind a curtain to make a costume (and character) change, or sit on folding chairs off to the side to await their next entrance, there is no attempt for realism except through our connection to the emotions portrayed. This was how Shakespeare often introduced audiences to the staging of his works--suspend your need to see the great battlefields or the passage of time--and the beckoning to use our imaginations is a compelling invitation to adventure.

Kudos also to the Bethesda Theatre and facilities director Tom Davis for offering Wandering Souls the run of the place. The use of the professional venue was intended to show the larger theater-going community what this intrepid band of players is committed to doing elsewhere on its tours of churches, homeless shelters, nursing homes, detention facilities, and community centers.

According to the Wandering Souls' mission statement, printed on the back of the single-sheet program, the troupe is driven by "a belief that the arts can fuel our imagination, engage our personal growth and help unite individuals and communities. Yet, the richness of the arts is often considered a luxury. By bringing stripped-down, high quality, energetic performances to those who have little or no access, we hope to break down that misconception and provide opportunities for a broader cultural exchange."

As the company's Artistic Director Becky Peters was giving her introductory speech before the play--explaining how important it was not just to make the arts more accessible but to actually go into the communities who would not otherwise benefit from these experiences--I commented to my companion, "This was what I wanted to do 30 years ago."

The final performance at Bethesda Theatre is tonight (September 19) at 8 p.m.

links
Bethesda Theatre
Wandering Souls

love, hosaa,
soul still wandering

Rx Music

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast....

It's not exactly a "future" story, because it's happening right now, but one of the trends I've been following for a number of years is music therapy.

The idea that music can heal (or at least facilitate healing in some way) is not new, but it still raises the eyebrows of high-brow practitioners.

The latest story to lower that skeptical scorn comes from Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA, thanks to the Music Rx Unit donated by the Children's Cancer Association.

The portable cart has instruments that young patients can play with, and interactive video for demonstrating various instruments. As patients, children participating in music therapy become more relaxed, their pain and anxiety are reduced, and they communicate and bond better with family and hospital staff.

The Music Rx program also includes live performances, filling hospital corridors with stress-reducing sounds. The program planners are also building a recording studio, further extending young patients' involvement in their own music therapy.

I hope adult patients aren't left out of the mix. When my parents were in hospital and nursing home situations, the only sounds they were exposed to were noisy carts and chattering staff, other patients' TV's turned on to Headline News (with the same headlines repeated all day long, repeatedly!), and nothing in the way of soothing sounds.

One day a volunteer musician visited the nursing home where my father was and went from room to room to play guitar and sing just one song for patients who couldn't get out to the great room. I saw my dad that afternoon, and the expression on his face was so light and childlike in its joy. He said I missed all the fun, and he started singing! That became one of the best memories I have of my dad in his declining years.

Music didn't heal him, but it certainly helped him.

love, hosaa
humming

Lost in the Neighborhood

I'm mortified to know I've sent people the wrong way, but can I help it if I'm the kind of person whom people stop in the street to ask directions?

Oy. A man wandering around in front of the Apple store wanted to know how to get to a certain Japanese restaurant. The only Japanese restaurant that popped into my mind was the one about 10 blocks away, so that's where I sent him. It was the wrong one. I hope he saw the one he wanted when he passed by it. Same thing happened a few years ago when someone wanted directions to Austin Grill. I sent him to Rio Grande. Oops.

What is it about me? I either look like I know where I am and where I'm going, or like I won't stab strangers with a stiletto if they ask me questions. Probably a combination. But I get asked directions at least once a week, and sometimes once a day. Even when I'm the stranger in town.

A few years ago, in London, a lady in the Tube station kept asking me, "Way out? Way out?" I looked for the exit signs. They said "Way Out." Heh.

A couple of weeks ago I was wandering around the wilds of Colorado, in the canyons south of Boulder. The B&B I was staying at had a kind of hidden entrance, and I drove by it every single time I tried. Fortunately there was one landmark, a restaurant with a brightly lit sign, nearby, so that helped me find my way "home."

I was out for a stroll there one evening, and a man wandering down the street asked me directions! Fortunately he wanted directions to that restaurant with the brightly lit sign, so I could easily tell him - keep walking, it's on that side of the road, about an eighth of a mile.

The thing is, I would never try to meet friends for dinner someplace without the address, or go to a strange place without maps and printouts of directions. I just don't do that. The two-and-a-half-day jaunt to the canyon forests of Colorado for a family wedding required a notebook's worth of Google Map printouts that would have rivaled my European History folder from freshman year at Grinnell.

So maybe I look like I know where I am and where I'm going because I actually do. I research it. But I don't know all the Japanese and Tex-Mex restaurants in my own neighborhood because I just don't eat out that much.

Maybe I should eat out more. Good rationalizing, huh!?

Love, hosaa
Finding her own way, her own self and all

On Re-Reading "Catcher in the Rye"

It was almost 40 years ago that I actually "studied" this book in high school, so forgive the lack of scholarly insight. I picked up Catcher in the Rye at Barnes & Noble shortly after finishing another novel written in the first person with a young male narrator (which I'll write about later, soon, I hope).

I'm sure I re-read the book several times in my late teens, even without (eleventh-grade English teacher) Marek-lady's oversight, because several vivid images came back to me before I read them. At the first mention of Ackley, for instance, I remembered him as the guy with the "mossy" teeth. (Ugh!) The other thing I remembered was, of course the use of what Marek-lady called "the ultimate profanity," which is probably why the book kept getting banned.

Yeah, "Catcher" being banned makes as much sense as "Huck Finn" being banned, which is None. You take two of the best young men in fiction and ban them because - why exactly? They cuss? They defy authority?

Without rereading the Cliff Notes or whatever they're using now to understand "what it all means," I'll just say I still loved the book and Holden's deep yearning to protect innocence. In the end, it was innocence (Phoebe) that protected him. The idea that Holden didn't change his attitude or mature at all throughout the book is ridiculous. He was running away from his problems, but in the end he faced them.

Holden ran away from Mr. Antolini's "flitty" gesture ("petting" Holden's forehead while he slept on the Antolinis' couch) but in the end realized it was more tender and caring. I loved that realization, though Holden was too far gone in his breakdown to have recovered that friendship just then. I wonder what happened after Holden got out of the mental institution.

The innocence of "old Jane" was the critical thread in the story, I think. It was the idea of his childhood friend losing her innocence to his womanizing roommate that Holden couldn't face. He kept meaning to give "old Jane" a buzz, but never did. And again, I wonder what happened later.

The story that this began to make me think about was "Rebel without a Cause," where James Dean is frustrated trying to explain to his dad, Jim Backus, that grown-ups just don't understand. Holden is the gray-haired teenager, between youth and adulthood, where nobody really understands anything. He can't communicate with his parents, but he knows he can't rely on Phoebe to understand him either.

I don't wonder why people have long wanted to dramatize this story. It is very visual, and the immediacy of first-person narratives always put the audience in the scene. But I'm fine with the pictures in my own head that the book gave me. And like Huck, I don't think Holden needs me to analyze him. Just listen.

love, hosaa
reading the catcher's mitt

The Right Sh- Stuff

or, A Clay Aiken Mashup!



The search for an American Idol was not unlike the search for astronauts a generation ago. A "mashup" featuring Clay Aiken and the casts of "The Right Stuff" and American Idol Season 2.

Academy Award winning music by Bill Conti; original film written for the screen and directed by Philip Kaufman. Montage by hosaa. Download more polished version from Megaupload.

love, hosaa
stargazing

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

Or, A Series of Misfortunate Events

Yesterday I was inadvertently insulted at the convenience store where I buy my coffee on the way to work. I was chatting with a couple of people, and the woman noticed that I was wearing the same skirt as the cashier. She interrupted what I was saying to make that observation. The gentleman turned to look. Then, as though to save herself from her inadvertent rudeness, she added, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

It was a minor and very forgivable offense. But the phrase "Not that there's anything wrong with that" stuck to the underbelly of my mind, like a barnacle. We go really easy on ourselves, don't we?

The first e-mail I opened at the office was labled "Grave mistake in article...." It pointed out a factual error ("grave" is a matter of opinion), which originated with the author but passed through several readings by several editors, including myself. I notified the publicist who submitted the article and asked for a word or two from the author that we could publish in our correction.

To his credit, the publicist was eager to remedy the situation. But he added that, as a "former Pulitzer Prize winning editor," he demands accuracy in all that he does, but we shouldn't beat ourselves up so much over this because, hey, editing is a complex process. (First of all, what is a "former" Pulitzer Prize winner? Did they take the prize back?)

This again clung to the bottom of my brain. Maybe not wanting to beat oneself up over factual errors is how one decides to remove oneself from the Pulitzer Prize categories and switch over to publicity:

"We made a mistake ... not that there's anything wrong with that."

Now I turn back to the unfortunate events that left our conference staff without a reporter and photographer for the opening keynote session last weekend. I know travel was a bear in Chicago on Friday, and I know the reason I sent myself to the conference was to be a backup resource. So I did the work that the others were supposed to do. The next day we had our photographer, but not the reporter. There were more unfortunate events going on, but mostly they were his responsibility.

The reckoning came yesterday when I asked him to explain himself and told him what the consequences of his mistakes would be. The phrase "Not that there's anything wrong with that" was on the other side of some parallel universe, not here. But the incident is now over, and the reporter (I hope) has learned a valuable lesson.

Mistakes should have consequences. There IS something wrong with that. But there is also a time for forgiveness and moving on. I don't believe in making people feel bad for their mistakes - just in making them remedy them. They should actually care about it.

On a lighter note, here's how I saved civilization on Monday... (HAHA!)

I was sitting at my gate at O'Hare on the end of a row of seats, and some guy set his carryon luggage right next to me. Nice looking business type. We didn't make eye contact, but he left quickly with a smug look on his face, strutted across the way to the Starbucks opposite us, and got in a long line. He kept looking left and right, left and right, up and down the concourse as he stood in line.

Okay, the smug look might have been, "This old lady looks sweet and innocent enough, she won't steal my stuff." MY interpretation of the smug look at that point became, "Die, damn infidel! Die a bloody shredded body parts MESS! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"

The thing is, I never saw the guy come back out of Starbucks. I went to the ladies room (lugging all of MY carryon crap, by the way), and when I came back, his stuff was still there, unattended. This is roughly now 20 minutes since he dropped it off beside me.

Now I'm hearing all the announcements about not leaving your stuff unattended, and telling you to report any unattended bags. And I start getting nervous.

Do I keep my mouth shut because it's all probably perfectly innocent? I had no idea what happens when people report suspicious packages in airports. Do they sound alarms? Bring in bomb-sniffing dogs? Clear out the terminal, causing thousands of people problems?

At 30 minutes into the abandoned luggage debacle, I finally reported it to the airline worker at the gate. She quietly got on the phone, and an employee quietly came and fetched the luggage away. No panic and (more to the point) no bloody shredded body parts.

So now I'm wondering if the bad guys all have me on their surveillance cameras as the terrorist-thwarter, and now they're going to come get ME!! (Yes, I know I watch too much 24.)

It was at least another 15 minutes before the smug looking man came back to look for his luggage. He asked up at the desk about his bags and pointed to where he'd left them. The airline worker then made a quiet call, and his bags were quietly returned to him. I have no idea whether the smug suitcase abandoner got a stern lecture for abandoning his bags and causing (at least for one moron) a panic.

I know I did the right thing, and I feel no guilt about inconveniencing a smug person who thinks it's okay to ignore the rules.

Moral of the story: If someone looks honorable enough NOT to steal your stuff, they're probably also honorable enough NOT to let the airport blow up.

Love, hosaa
A little on the self-righteous side, I guess. And there probably IS a little bit of something wrong with that. :)