Wanderings of a Literary Snob

NYTimes: Divine Recruits: In America for Job, a Kenyan Priest Finds a Home

2008-12-29T10:54:00.000-08:00

I found this article really interesting... I have italicized the lines that particularly struck me.

OAK GROVE, Ky. — The Rev. Chrispin Oneko, hanging up his vestments after leading one of his first Sunday Masses at his new American parish, was feeling content until he discovered several small notes left by his parishioners.

The notes, all anonymous, conveyed the same message: Father, please make your homilies shorter. One said that even five minutes was too long for a mother with children.

At home in Kenya, Father Oneko had preached to rural Africans who walked for hours to get to church and would have been disappointed if the sermons were brief.

“Here the whole Mass is one hour,” he said, a broad smile on his round face. “That was a homework for me, to learn to summarize everything and make the homily 10 minutes, maybe 15. Here, people are on the move very fast.”

Father Oneko is part of a wave of Roman Catholic priests from Africa, Asia and Latin America who have been recruited to fill empty pulpits in parishes across America. They arrive knowing how to celebrate Mass, anoint the sick and baptize babies. But few are prepared for the challenges of being a pastor in America.

Father Oneko, 46, had never counseled parishioners like those he found here at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church. Many are active-duty or retired military families coping with debt, racial prejudice, multiple deployments to war zones and post-traumatic stress disorder. Nor did he have any idea how to lead the multimillion-dollar fund-raising campaign the parishioners had embarked on, hoping to build an octagonal church with a steeple to replace their red brick parish hall.

Cutting his sermons short was, in some ways, the least of Father Oneko’s worries when he arrived here in 2004. He did not understand the African-American experience. He had never dealt with lay people so involved in running their church. And yet, in the end, the families of his church would come to feel an affinity with their gentle new pastor, reaching out to him in his hour of need, just as he had tended to them in theirs.

To the volunteers at St. Michael’s, it was clear that Father Oneko was out of his element in many ways. Marie Lake, the church’s volunteer administrator, and her husband, Fred, often invited him for dinner.

“My husband was driving him down 41A and there was a big old statue of Uncle Sam,” said Mrs. Lake, who owns an accounting business and keeps the church’s books. “He thought it was Sam from Sam’s Club wholesale.”

To help him along, the Lakes gave Father Oneko a high school textbook on American history and government.

“Many years ago we sent our missionaries to Africa, and now they’re sending missionaries here,” Mrs. Lake said. “It’s strange how that goes.”

In this largely rural, largely white area of Western Kentucky, the Rev. Darrell Venters, who is in charge of recruiting priests for the Diocese of Owensboro, knew that some of his parishes would never accept Father Oneko, who is short, stout and very dark-skinned.

But Father Venters thought that Father Oneko and St. Michael’s, a parish on the outskirts of a big military base, with its racial mix and many families who had lived abroad, was a good bet.

“We knew if any parish would accept him, it would be this one,” Father Venters said.

Inspired to Serve

When Father Oneko was growing up, the priest in his Roman Catholic parish was an American who spoke the native Luo language and was beloved by the villagers. He showed the children home movies of his parents and his seminary back in America.

“He inspired me,” Father Oneko said. “He was able to speak my language better than anybody I have known. It really interested me, the way I saw him praying the rosary every day. I just admired to be like him.”

In Kenya, Father Oneko became the sole pastor for 12 satellite parishes in an 80-mile stretch. He served more than 3,000 people communion on a typical weekend and ran a girls high school.

It was a hardship post. His car, the only one in the vicinity, was used as a school bus, an ambulance and, if the local officers caught a thief, a police car — with Father Oneko the driver.

When his bishop asked for volunteers to serve in a diocese in Jamaica that badly needed priests, Father Oneko put up his hand. He wanted a new challenge, and being a missionary suited his vision of serving the church.

He found conditions in Jamaica even more desperate than in Kenya. Violence was so common that thugs had killed a priest at the altar.

“The rats in the rectory ate my clothes,” he said. “I got a baby kitten to hunt the rats, but the kitten was eaten by hungry dogs.”

Father Oneko lasted nearly five years as pastor of five churches in Jamaica. But after so much time in hardship posts, he wanted to taste life in a developed country. He sent letters of introduction to dioceses in the United States.

He received offers from two American dioceses. He knew nothing about the Diocese of Owensboro, but picked it because he felt some affinity with its name.

“Our names start with O,” he explained. “So I was so much interested in this place that starts with O.”

Priests must have permission to leave their own dioceses, and some bishops are reluctant to let their priests go, especially if their parishes are understaffed.

In fact, the flow of priests from the developing world to Europe and the United States amounts to a brain drain: most of those developing countries have far fewer priests in proportion to Roman Catholics than the United States does. Father Oneko’s situation in Kenya, serving 12 parishes simultaneously, was not unusual.

But Father Oneko’s bishop at the time, Archbishop John Njenga of Mombasa, said he was receptive to the pleas of the bishops in Jamaica and the United States. He had traveled to Germany and seen parishes closed for lack of priests.

“The Lord will reward us for our generosity, for letting men go out there,” said Archbishop Njenga, who is now retired.

Father Oneko arrived at St. Michael’s on the heels of a Nigerian priest who had been helping out temporarily. Father Oneko said he was unnerved to hear that the Nigerian had not been a resounding success. Parishioners complained that they could not understand his accent. An American pastor said the Nigerian had seemed overly interested in material goods. When an ophthalmologist offered to fit him for glasses at no charge, he asked for three pairs.

But parishioners soon noticed that Father Oneko was different. He listened and won people over with his humility. Where the Nigerian priest had taught the choir to sing African hymns, Father Oneko did not try to impose his worship style. And he learned to keep his sermons to no more than 15 minutes and the Masses to one hour.

One Sunday, after he opened his homily with a joke that fell flat, he said, “I know some of you are looking at your watches, so I’ll make it brief.”

He preached slowly, in his Kenyan accent: “Late us prrray.” Sometimes he spelled out words when he saw the congregation looking puzzled. “B-I-R-D, not B-E-D,” he said.

He did not tell the parishioners that in Kenya and Jamaica, he had been a charismatic Catholic, participating in faith healings and leading Masses with spirited singing and clapping that lasted for hours.

In Kentucky, he stuck to the music the congregation was used to. At the Saturday evening Mass, that meant a faint choir of three voices; at the 11:30 a.m. Sunday Mass, an extended family of Filipinos played guitar and piano.

Some afternoons, the church’s deacon, Jack Cheasty, would see Father Oneko sitting alone at the piano in a corner of the church, quietly playing the upbeat charismatic hymns he loved. “He’s cautious to do anything that might be divisive,” Deacon Cheasty said, “and that’s one of his strengths.”

Tending the Flock

Father Oneko drove slowly out of the church parking lot one day in his Ford Taurus with a bumper sticker that said, “The Holy Priesthood: Called, Consecrated, Sent.” He was making house calls, giving communion to three parishioners too ill to come to church.

At the first house, he was offered a seat in an armchair, but instead he chose to sit on a rumpled couch next to his ailing parishioner, SunI Robbins, so frail from lung cancer she could barely sit up. She opened trembling hands to receive the eucharist.

“Don’t lose hope,” Father Oneko said gently, “because we all love you. Mr. Robbins loves you. The whole church, we are all praying for you. Just trust in God’s mercy and love.” (Mrs. Robbins has since died.)

Driving well under the speed limit, as is his habit, he said that Africans were far more accustomed to death — and premature death — than Americans. In Kenya, he said, so many parents were used to having children die. In Africa, he said, “We just accept it.”

He drove into the countryside to the home of one of the church’s founding members, Shirley Korman. In the yard, Mrs. Korman’s son was stalking small game with a rifle. Inside, the house was decorated with large framed prints of Civil War battle scenes.

Mrs. Korman, a retired nurse who has congestive heart failure, sat in a glider rocker, a red wig setting off her pale skin. She said that when her husband died, Father Oneko had comforted her and led a moving funeral.

“Father Chrispin,” she said, “if you’re still here in Kentucky, I want you to come and do my funeral.”

His answer was gentle: “I hope to still see more of you, but if it happens, I will fulfill your request.”

On the way out, after passing a portrait of Robert E. Lee, Father Oneko spied a statue of a guardian angel on the kitchen table. The angel was a beautiful woman in flowing robes, and she was black.

“I haven’t seen one like that before!” Father Oneko exclaimed, delighted.

That night, he settled at a table at a Mexican restaurant filled with soldiers in uniform and their families, where he discovered to his satisfaction that sizzling fajitas tasted a lot like the grilled meat he missed from Kenya. He said that although he saw himself as a missionary, he did not think he was actually spreading the faith in Kentucky.

“People already know their faith,” he said. “Mine is only to help them. I’m not planting any new faith here. Mine is only to water it.”

He confessed that he had an easier time relating to white Americans than African-Americans because he did not understand why blacks carried such resentments toward the United States.

“Their ancestors are long gone,” he said. “They are bitter for I don’t know what.”

He has little tolerance for what he sees as unnecessary self-pity. When an unemployed Vietnam veteran told him he blamed his war experience for his poverty, Father Oneko said he told him: “I blame you, because military people have so many opportunities. You are getting some pension from the government, so you should not complain.

“There are some poor people, poorer than you, somewhere, in Africa, in Jamaica,” Father Oneko said. “But you, at least you have freedom. You have somewhere to sleep.”

‘Part of the Family’

One morning in January, Father Oneko received a phone call from his family in Kenya, where a disputed presidential election had just set off a wave of intertribal anger and violence.

A mob had set fire to his parents’ house because they had given shelter to a family of a rival tribe the mob was chasing. Father Oneko’s 32-year-old brother, Vincent Oloo, arrived in time to help their elderly parents escape the burning house. But the mob turned on Father Oneko’s brother, shooting him dead. He left a wife and three children.

“My parents were just crying and crying,” Father Oneko said. “My father is crying and saying, ‘Now I’m losing all the children, who will bury me?’ ”

Father Oneko phoned his friend the Rev. John Thomas and then Mrs. Lake, his faithful volunteer administrator. She was stunned at the news, and for half an hour listened to and consoled her priest — a sudden role reversal. Father Oneko was troubled to hear his mother wailing on the phone and to know that he could not go to Kenya to perform the funeral. His parents insisted it was too dangerous for him to come.

Mrs. Lake called three of the church’s Silver Angels, a club of elders. They phoned more church members, and in two hours 60 people had assembled at a special noon Mass in memory of Father Oneko’s brother.

At the end of the Mass, they lined up in the center aisle as if for communion, and Father Oneko stood at the front receiving their embraces one by one.

He was overwhelmed by the outpouring of sympathy. Children in the parish school in Hopkinsville made him cards; one showed his brother with a halo, in the clouds. The bishop and priests of the diocese e-mailed and phoned their condolences. St. Michael’s and the parish in Hopkinsville took up a special collection for his family that totaled $5,600.

“It seems the whole church is praying with me,” Father Oneko said a few days later, as he read through the children’s cards. “You feel like you’re not a foreigner, just a part of the family. It makes me know how much I am to them.”

Bidding Farewell

In June, after four years at St. Michael’s, Father Oneko was transferred as part of a routine reshuffling of priests in the diocese. When he told the worshipers at the 11:30 Sunday Mass about the transfer, some cried. Several told him they would leave the church.

He said: “Don’t come to the church because of me. Come because of God.”

He insisted he did not want a big goodbye party because he was afraid he would cry. Still, he was showered with gifts: calling cards; a white chasuble from the Silver Angels, hemmed for his short frame; a $1,500 check from the parish for his coming trip to see his family in Kenya; and from Mrs. Korman, a replica of the black angel he had seen on her kitchen table.

He was leaving the parish no more and no less healthy than he had found it. Attendance still fluctuated from 300 to 450 on a weekend — lower in summer and during troop mobilizations.

The campaign to raise money for the new church was still under way. But as a temporary measure, the parishioners had replaced the stacking chairs with wooden pews and built an arched altar, so the old recreation hall looked more like a real church.

At his last set of three weekend Masses, Father Oneko began his homily with a rambling African story about a hyena, a monkey and a tortoise. At the punch lines, no one in the first two Masses laughed. By the third, he had the timing down better and some chuckled. The story was about being grateful, and he spent the next 20 minutes thanking everyone he could think of by name. The homily lasted 35 minutes.

In one of his last acts, he baptized an 11-month-old baby. With the sun streaming in, the baby, Hope Charity Banse, looked like a porcelain doll in her white christening gown.

The baby’s mother, Jennifer Banse, had been waiting for this moment for months. Her husband had just returned from Iraq, in time for Father Oneko to perform the baptism before he transferred. In her husband’s absence, Father Oneko had been a comfort.

Hope rested her head on her mother’s shoulder, then stretched her hand toward the African priest, more familiar to her than her own father. “Hope Charity,” Father Oneko said, “the Christian community welcomes you with great joy.”

Overheard (skeefed from DCist)

2008-12-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

Overheard of the Week:

At Brookland Metro station, two college age kids from Catholic University:

Guy 1: "My dealer is hiking up prices because he says that all the gas he wastes on deliveries is hurting him."
Guy 2: "Damn…well, I guess now I can get behind off-shore drilling."

------

It's like a biathlon.

On 14th Street NW:

A man and woman are walking with a stroller and talking about breast feeding. The woman takes an infant out of stroller.

Man to woman: "Can't you just feed him while you walk?"

------

This could be funny or gross, depending.

On the Red line:

Two 40-something ladies are trying to maintain their balance.

Lady 1: “I feel like I should be naked and upside down on this pole right now.”

------

Is the Columbia Heights Target the new Columbia Heights Giant?

At Target on Saturday:

A late 20s or 30s woman is leaving Target with a small boy.

The boy is walking relatively calmly.
Woman: "Y'all better calm down!" (then under her breath) "Or I'ma kick yo ass." (laughs)
Boy jumps around a little.
Woman: "What the fuck I just say! Calm down."

------

No, do tell!

At the Tabard Inn a few Sundays ago:

"She had sex with a guy in a trash can -- have I told you this story?"

------

Somehwere, Jared is smiling

Entering a gourmet grocery store in AU Park on Sunday:

A five-year-old boy to his parents: "Is five dollars for a foot-long a lot of money or a little money?"

------

They should hang out with the Metro ladies

Two old guys at the Union Station food court, cracking jokes the whole time:

Guy #1: "There was a book fair at work, and I wanted to donate books but they told me it was over!"
Guy #2: "So what?"
Guy #1: "WELL....I wanted to donate all my 'Sex After 60' books!"
Guy #2: "That's a pretty slim volume... trust me!"
Guy #1: "I mean, I wanted to donate all my 'elder porn' but I guess they didn't want it. That's ageism!"

------

Target, volume two.

A woman walking with a boy at Target a few weeks ago:

Woman: "Gimme yo hand 'fo i beat yo' ass!"

How bizarre - Police seek key clues in piano mystery

2008-11-25T08:50:00.000-08:00

By CAPE COD TIMES
November 22, 2008
HARWICH – Police are seeking key evidence to solve the mystery of a piano discovered in the Bells Neck woods on Saturday.
At 3 p.m., a woman walking on trails inside the conservation area discovered a piano in the middle of the woods. The Baldwin piano, which had a matching bench, is in perfect working condition, police said.
The piano is extremely heavy, and it took more than a half-dozen men to load it onto a truck, according to police.
Because of its superb condition, the piano was not simply pushed out of a vehicle in the woods, police said.
Police said they have no idea how the piano came to rest in the middle of musical nowhere. A general notice has gone out to area police departments in an attempt to figure out whether the piano was stolen or lost.

Recently Overheard

2008-11-21T09:20:00.001-08:00

I'm going to start doing this - writing down funny things I overhear - but in the meantime, here's the DCist's version:

Often you only need one side of a phone conversation to give you context: a person ordering pizza, talking to their parents, or work stuff. Sometimes, you can tell it's not good.

Overheard of the Week:

Walking home from the King Street Metro station:
Guy on cell phone: "You may not know who gave it to you, but you know who you f#%ked, you know what I mean?"
------
The correct response
At Union Station Metro to Glenmont at 5:30 a.m., as everyone is leaving the train:
Tourist: (frantically) "Should I get on this train? I think I need the Orange line!"
Older guy: "Well, where are you going?"
Tourist: "Baltimore."
The old guy just walks away, silently.
------
Next time, try Doritos
On 16th street on a Sunday afternoon:
Guy #1: "Did I tell you I broke it off with that guy I slapped?"
Guy #2: "Oh... really?"
Guy #1: "Yeah... He was witty, but his hair smelled like Cheez-Its, and that is a total turn-off for me."
Guy #2: "Cheez-Its???"
Guy #1: "Seriously. It gives new meaning to the phrase 'tranny mess.'"
------
What's next, girls against ponies?
Two teen girls walking into the Natural History Museum a week or so ago:
Girl 1: "What should we go see? I know, let's go see the Butterfly exhibit!"
Girl 2: (Look of terror crosses her face) "No!"
Girl 1: "Why?"
Girl 2: "Butterflies are scary and they freak me out! They might land on me!"
------
What did we do before cameraphones?
On the Red line headed toward Glenmont:
Three girls are sitting near each other.
Girl #1: "I hate it when people look through my phone."
Girl #2: "Me too. Especially when they look through my pictures. If you look through my pictures, you're going to see dicks."
Girl #3: "Word."
------
Surprised this didn't happen in Columbia Heights
In Starbucks at Connecticut and R in Dupont:
Toddler: (points to large, bright Starbucks logo in the window) "What's that?"
Father: "It's a big, green beacon of hope."
------
Surely this is what Obama was talking about
At the Verizon Wireless Store at Metro Center:
Girl in her mid 20s walks in and goes to counter: "I broke up with my boyfriend, I need a new phone and a new plan. Time for CHANGE!"
------
Your weekly opportunity to crack jokes about GW's tuition
In Foggy Bottom at 9 a.m.:
College-age girl: "Why are you so tired this morning?"
College-age guy: "I couldn't sleep without any weed in my system!"
------
Stereotypes, confirmed
Outside the D.C. police precinct at 5th & D SE:
Officer: "Man, I've got to get me some doughnuts!"

Obamarxism

2008-11-03T11:27:00.000-08:00

This stencil was spotted near Cupid's Span (Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, 2003).

We feel that Senator Obama’s surname is a boon for stenciling sloganeers, who are no doubt tired of the limited range of genital puns offered by the name of our current President. The astonishing combinability of “Obama” has only just begun to be explored--the already-tired “Obamarama” is just the beginning.

Yet this enigmatic stencil offers more than just a mellifluous neologism: it points to Red-State nightmare, a spectre haunting the heartland. The ten stenciled letters spell out an astonishing political message: it is actually impossible to tell where OBAMA ends and MARXISM begins.

As a scientific test of this ghastly/wonderful assertion (depending on your political position), we've reproduced here the actual words of Barack Obama and Karl Marx. Can you tell the difference?

Mystery Quotation #1:

We cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise--that American promise--and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Mystery Quotation #2:

It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms. Material force can only be overthrown by material force but theory itself becomes a material force when it has been seized by the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To become radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the root is man himself.

Which is which?

According to the official website of Vegans for McCain, the first selection is from Barack Obama’s speech to the Democratic Party’s National Convention on August 28, 2008, a passage clearly plagiarized (alleges VfM) from the second passage, an excerpt from the young Karl Marx’s 1844 essay “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction." The

"Contribution," by the way, is strangely not listed in a web-based archive of Marx's work.

Possibly a conspiracy is afoot.

article skeefed from SFist

"Google me, you dumb f**k," quoth the daughter of ex-Yahoo CEO

2008-10-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

Let's take spoiled bitches for 500.

Here's the answer: My dad used to run Yahoo, I'm a really mean chick and I now will beat the crap out of you.

The question: Who is Courtenay Semel?

A security guard at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas is suing the daughter of former Yahoo honcho Terry Semel for allegedly pummeling him in a drunken stupor.

In a lawsuit filed yesterday in L.A. County Superior Court, Jaroslaw Jarczok claims he was working security last August at 4:00 AM at PURE Nightclub when Courtenay was "quite intoxicated due to alcohol and/or chemical or other substances." He claims she got all foul-mouthed on him. One thing led to another and he eventually handcuffed Semel, the GF of Tila Tequila. That's when she allegedly struck Jarczok in the face and uttered these soon-to-be immortal words, which deserve a separate line in bold type:

"Do you even know who I am, f**king idiot?...Google me, you dumb f**k."

Jarczok says he's been humiliated and "anxious about receiving harassing comments by friends..." He wants unspecified damages.

In case you missed what she said:

"Do you even know who I am, f**king idiot?...Google me, you dumb f**k."

story skeefed from TMZ

Build your own Muppet!

2008-10-23T13:55:00.001-07:00

http://www.fao.com/custsvc/custsvc.jsp?sectionId=599

A Deity Grows in Queens

2008-10-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

Usually these stories involve the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast, but The Daily News is reporting that the Hindu god Ganesh has now appeared in a flower in Queens! They report that a 60-year-old "New York City man is convinced the elephant-headed god" has grown from his amaranth plant, blessing and healing him. Crazy right? But the Queens Botanical Garden is also mystified by the unusual appearance of the plant, saying they have "never seen an amaranth take an elephant-like shape ... the trunk-like formation is not a natural thing.''

skeefed from The Gothamist who skeefed it from WCBS 880

"Gee... how did that get in there? Oops..."

2008-10-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

Speaking to Newsday from behind bars at a "private federal prison" in Queens, 20-year-old Steven Nobles says he "made a huge mistake" when, in a rush to catch his flight at MacArthur airport on Long Island last Thursday, he shoved a pipe bomb in his carry-on luggage. He must also be smacking his forehead for packing those fireworks, the 7-inch knife, the electrical circuit boards, and a dozen .22-caliber rounds used in a nailgun to drive nails into concrete. Nobles says we wants to write a letter to "all of New York" saying he's "sorry for what happened." Nevertheless, a judge denied bail and called Nobles "a danger to the community." He faces up to 20 years in prison, but his uncle Frank Henderson, who gave Nobles a job, says, "A terrorist would try to hide it. He didn't hide anything. He put it on the scanner. He hasn't grown up yet. I tried to keep him on the straight and narrow by giving him a trade. A kid is going to be a kid."

story skeefed from The Gothamist

Thoughts of the Day

2008-10-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

Customer used the word 'supposably' five times in a 2 minute phone call. SUPPOSABLY is NOT a word.

Thinking about using SlimQuick but feeling a little uncomfortable about the reports of the side effects... have no desire to feel nauseous in order to keep from feeling hungry.

Really struggling with any kind of motivation for anything... meals, work, sex, cleaning, driving, reading... anything. Very frustrating and don't understand why. Thinking about going to doctor but worried that Mom will express disgust at behavior similar to her sister's. Not that it's any of her business.

Forget the meaning of life, the real question is - do dogs go to heaven?

2008-10-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

These two churches - one Catholic, one Presbyterian - are across the street from each other...

The Chicagoist - "Limo Driver Thwarts Drunken Homecoming"

2008-10-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

[LitSnob's comment: It is parents like these that are the reason behind why America is so f'd up now! There is no "safe haven" for misbehavior... teach your kids to behave, to accept the consequences of their actions and maybe our civilization won't completely go down the drain!]

A limo driver is feeling the ire of a group of Highland Park parents after he called the cops on their teenagers two weekends ago. Leonel Cesar, a driver for Any Time Limo based out of Addison, was hired by a group of 20 teens to drive a "party bus" to downtown Chicago for dinner after their homecoming dance at Highland Park High School. One of the teens asked Cesar to make a stop at his house, and when the boy got back on he was holding a brown bag. When Cesar inquired as to what was in the bag, the boy replied it was none of his business and "Don't worry, you'll be tipped." Cesar decided it was his business, and tried to call the kid's parents. (Life lesson of the day: actual cash works better than promises.) When contacting them failed, he decided to take the extra step and get the police involved.

Thirteen of the teens were busted for underage drinking, and have also been temporarily suspended from any school activities, including athletics. Perpetuating the spoiled rich kid stereotype, this enraged some parents who think their kids shouldn't take responsibility for their actions, the limo should be a "safe haven," and are even threatening lawsuits -- which is ridiculous. Cesar was merely enforcing the companies "no drinking, no smoking, no sex" rule, and when you're responsible for the safety of almost two dozen underage kids, erring on the side of caution isn't a bad thing. Besides, if something had happened to one of those drunk kids, you can guarantee that we would then be talking a lawsuit with some actual merit, as well as possible criminal charges.

Article by Prescott Carlson

The Chicagoist - "McCain Drinks The Adler Haterade"

2008-10-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

[LitSnob's comment: Well, this is enough to make me not vote for McCain...]

During last night's debate, our ears perked up when Sen. John McCain dropped this little nugget:
[Sen. Obama] voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money?

We did a bit of searching and found this Obama press release from last June that includes the following:

Adler Planetarium, to support replacement of its projector and related equipment, $3,000,000
One of its most popular attractions and teaching tools at the Adler Planetarium is the Sky Theater. The projection equipment in this theater is 40 years old, and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer. It has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience.

The Trib takes it one step further in explaining:

McCain's phrase suggests Obama spent $3 million on an old-fashioned piece of office equipment that projects charts and text on a wall screen. In fact, the money was for an overhaul of the theater system that projects images of stars and planets for educational shows.

The kicker? The project was never funded.

According to a press conference held by the Adler Planetarium today, the projector is 38-years-old and the Planetarium is now pursuing funding that would renovate not just the projector, but the entire Sky Theater. Said Paul Knappenberger, Jr., President of the Planetarium, at a press conference this afternoon:

The projection system in the sky theater is nearly 40 years old. The projector breaks down with growing frequency. The ceiling is stained from an old leak. The seats and carpeting are worn. The Sky Theater as it is today, cannot offer an immersive, high tech museum experience contemporary audiences expect...Given the cost of renovating the theater, the Adler asked the Illinois Congressional delegation for its help, and Sen. Obama submitted an earmark request on the museum's behalf. As you can see, the projector [pictured above] is more complex than what was described last night at the presidential debate. Additionally, I want to stress again this theater is the Alder Planetarium's primary educational facility.

Photo courtesy of the Adler Planetarium

Article by Marcus Gilmer

After 137 years of guilt, Mrs. O'Leary's cow - Acquitted.

2008-10-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

John R. Chapin's famous sketch originally printed in Harper's Weekly

Today marks the 137th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a conflagration with few peers in world history. The fire cost some 300 lives, destroyed 17,450 buildings, and caused $200 million in damage—$200 million in 1871 dollars, that is to say, about a third of the city’s estimated value.*

The Encyclopaedia Britannica article on the fire is careful to note that, over the course of history, many causes have been proposed for the great blaze, and that none has been settled on once and for all. In her day and far beyond, though, popular culture laid the blame on a woman named Catherine O’Leary, commemorated in a ditty:

Late one night, when we were all in bed,
Mrs. O’Leary lit a lantern in the shed.
Her cow kicked it over
Then winked her eye and said,
“There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!”

Mrs. O’Leary died on July 3, 1895. Her obituary noted that she went to her grave embittered that what the New York Times called her “fractious cow” had brought her infamy for the loss of so many lives and so much property.

Eleven years ago, a Chicago insurance investigator named Richard Bales did a wonderful job of historical forensics, sifting through maps, plats, legal titles, and a thousand-page report that the Chicago Fire Department issued in the aftermath of the inferno. He acquits Mrs. O’Leary and her poor cow. Instead, Bales’s research points to a commonplace of fires: a smoker who carelessly discarded a match.

The smoker in question, by Bales’s account, was a fellow named Daniel Sullivan, called “Peg Leg” by one and all for being one too few in the leg department. Sullivan, a neighbor of Mrs. O’Leary’s, seems to have been smoking a pipe in her barn—why hers and not his, history does not say—and set it on fire. From DeKoven Street, the epicenter of the blaze, the fire quickly spread from wooden building to wooden building, helped along by stiff breezes and the fierce winds that fires themselves generate.

Peg Leg Sullivan turns up often in the inquest, claiming to have seen the fire sprout from Mrs. O’Leary’s barn from his own home—which would have involved seeing through a couple of buildings and over an eight-foot-tall fence. He added that he hopped the 200-odd feet from his place to Mrs. O’Leary’s barn to rescue her five cows—Mrs. O’Leary having been a small-scale dairy farmer, providing milk to the surrounding Irish working-class neighborhood. Given his wooden leg, the distance involved, and the speed of the spreading fire, the feat seems questionable, though, in fairness, Mrs. O’Leary’s little herd did indeed escape being charbroiled.

Why did no one at the time question Sullivan’s account? One possibility, a later report suggests, is that many of the firefighters who were supposed to respond to the blaze never turned up but were instead out drinking. The city wanted the case settled quickly, with no questions asked, to avoid making that embarrassing fact public. Less sensational is the simple fact that the forensics and investigative techniques of the time were less exacting than in our own.

Whatever the case, Mrs. O’Leary allowed that she had been late in going to milk her cows that fateful evening, and a writer for a Chicago paper who happened to be first on the scene supposed that one of the cows retaliated—his word—by kicking over a lighted lantern placed inconveniently close to her hind legs. The rest is history, of a sort—for Mrs. O’Leary never spoke of the event again. “She would say neither yea nor nay even to her friends,” the obituary concludes. She even refused to tell her tale for money, which puts her in candidacy not for number-one arsonist of her century but for a certain kind of sainthood.

We’ll never know, but one thing seems clear: Without Peg Leg, or a peeved cow, or whatever caused the blaze, Chicago might not now be one of the world’s most beautiful cities, rebuilt of stone and steel to survive the fire next time.
___
*The numbers for 1871 are inexact, so that one-third mark is an estimate. In 1902, three decades after the fire, the Cook County Board of Review set Chicago’s valuation at $1,488,749,810.

skeefed from Britannica Blog

What is going on in our world?!

2008-10-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

I'm not one who puts much faith in the idea of the end of the world, apocalypse, etc...
But, has anyone noticed recent headlines?

6 die in murder-suicide in Los Angeles

Ky. woman killed daughters, self

Charges filed in attack on publisher's home

Hundreds injured in Thai protests

Homeless man has wheelchair stolen

Upper St. Clair teen admits to assaults at school in sex case

City school instructor charged with child porn

S. Fayette teen accused of putting bombs in family's beds

Man found dead in car; 16-year-old arrested Sunday

...this is why I never read the news.

Celebrate the Freedom to Read - Banned Books Week Sept. 27 - Oct. 4

2008-10-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. The challenges have occurred in every state and in hundreds of communities. People challenge books that they say are too sexual or too violent. They object to profanity and slang, and protest against offensive portrayals of racial or religious groups--or positive portrayals of homosexuals. Their targets range from books that explore the latest problems to classic and beloved works of American literature.

According to the American Library Association, more than 400 books were challenged in 2007.

The 10 most challenged books of 2007 reflect a range of themes, and are:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language

4. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: Religious Viewpoint

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Reasons: Racism

6. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7. TTYL, by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Reasons: Sexually Explicit

9. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10. The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Off the list this year are two books by author Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye and Beloved, both challenged for sexual content and offensive language.

During the last week of September every year, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The 2008 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 27 through October 4.

The easiest way is join the celebration is to visit a participating library or bookstore. There is a list of Events, to help you find one in your community. (If you want to post information about an event in your community, please click here.) There is also a list of suggestions of other activities that will help remind people of the importance of free speech, What You Can Do. If you want further information about BannedBooksWeek.org, contact us at info@abffe.com or bbw@ala.org.

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. Banned Books Week is also endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.

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List of the Top 50 Banned/Challenged Books from 2000-2007
1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
4. Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck
5. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
6. Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz
7. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
8. It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
9. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
10. Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey
11. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
12. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
13. Forever by Judy Blume
14. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
15. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
16. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
17. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
18. King & King by Linda de Haan
19. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
20. Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson
21. The Giver by Lois Lowry
22. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
23. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
24. Beloved by Toni Morrison
25. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
26. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
27. My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier
28. In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
29. His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
30. Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar
31. What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones
32. Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
33. It's So Amazing by Robie Harris
34. Arming America by Michael Bellasiles
35. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
36. Blubber by Judy Blume
37. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
38. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
39. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
40. Life is Funny by E.R. Frank
41. Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan
42. Crazy Lady by Jane Leslie Conly
43. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
44. You Hear Me by Betsy Franco
45. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
46. Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher
47. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by Dav Pilkey
48. The Facts Speak For Themselves by Brock Cole
49. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
50. Mick Harte was Here by Barbara Park

Other books on the rest of the list include some of my favorites, like Summer of my German Soldier by Bette Green, The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Are You There God? It's Me Margaret by Judy Blume, the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine, Then Again Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume...

The list was complied out of 3,869 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom does not claim comprehensiveness in recording challenges. Research suggests that for each challenge reported, there are as many as four of five which go unreported.

Palin Recaptures Her Image

2008-10-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

(New York Times TV Watch by Alessandra Stanley, October 3, 2008)

“Oh, man, it’s so obvious I’m a Washington outsider, and someone just not used to the way you guys operate,” she said after her opponent explained, somewhat awkwardly, why he had voted in favor of the Iraq war.

And that was how Sarah Palin got the better of Sarah Palin. The debate wasn’t so much between Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Palin as it was between the dueling images of the Alaska governor: the fuzzy-minded amateur parodied — with her own words — by Tina Fey on “Saturday Night Live” or the gun-toting hockey mom who blazed into history at the Republican convention.

There was a little of both on stage Thursday night, though Ms. Palin spoke far more fluidly and confidently than she had in her devastating interviews with Katie Couric of CBS. Ms. Palin did stumble into a few loop-the-loop non sequiturs, but mostly she stuck to practiced talking points. She didn’t answer questions directly, but she spoke out with self-assurance and even cockiness, correcting Mr. Biden when he tried to repeat the Republicans’ slogan about oil exploration in Alaska. “The chant is ‘drill, baby, drill,’ ” she said.

And Ms. Palin was the one who set the tone, making Mr. Biden sound stuffy before he had a chance to make her look unsteady. She bounded onto the stage, shook hands with her opponent and said brightly, “Hey, can I call you Joe?”

He said yes, then addressed her as “Governor Palin.”

She twinkled, cocked her head, and spoke as plainly as she could. “Darn right it was predator lenders,” she told the moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS, when asked who was to blame for the mortgage meltdown. Her sentences had lots of pep and patriotism, and few g’s at the end of her words — “You betcha” and “Get down to gettin’ business done” and “doggone it.”

Expectations for both candidates were low, but the expectations for the debate were almost absurdly high — cable news commentators led up to the event like children on a Halloween sugar bender, deliriously excited by what The Washington Times described as a “Thrilla in Manila” showdown.

Mr. Biden made few mistakes; he appeared more measured and thoughtful on substance, and made forceful points that contrasted with Ms. Palin’s slogans. But she provided the more vivacious, visceral television performance: it was a 90-minute sprint to reclaim her identity as a feisty, folksy frontierswoman ready to storm Washington. And she did it like a reality show contestant — broadly, with stagey asides to the camera, including an assurance to some third-grade students, in what she called a “shout-out,” that they would get extra credit for tuning in.

She was friendly and respectful to Mr. Biden. Then, every now and then, she cocked her head, winked, and nudged him hard — like a little sister who knows her older brother cannot hit back.

And while her showmanship may have exhilarated her fans, it also helped Mr. Biden, who is normally known as something of a know-it-all showoff; in contrast to her, he seemed reserved and sincere.

Ms. Palin attacked her opponent’s positions on taxes and on the war with gusto, at one point accusing Mr. Biden of “waving the white flag of surrender” in Iraq. But mostly, she tried to recoup from past blunders on foreign policy. She twice dropped the name of Kim Jong Il of North Korea, made a point of referring to Iran’s president and described the Cuban leadership as “the Castro brothers.” She also recast her television interviews as traps set by liberals, not unforced errors of her own.

At the end of the debate, before she was surrounded by her husband and children, and burped her newborn, she thanked the moderator for the chance to talk to the American people “without the filter, even of the mainstream media, kind of telling viewers what they’ve just heard.”

It was a pre-emptive strike against commentators poised to critique her performance and a retroactive strike against the other Sarah Palin.

I have NOT had a perfect pomegranate yet this season...

2008-10-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

I am highly disappointed.

That's all.

The Mother-In-Law

2008-09-30T13:28:00.001-07:00

There's a woman at work who reminds me of my mother-in-law.

I think this age-old wife/mother-in-law battle is interesting. I have nothing at all against Pat. Having been best friends with my husband's sister since 7th grade, Pat has practically been a second mother to me. I don't think she likes me very much, and I'm not sure why. Well, I can probably guess why... or make up irrational reasons why, that may or may not be valid... but for the most part, the logical part of my brain does not understand why she doesn't like me.

I just wonder at the origins. I mean, the origins of all spouse/mother-in-law antipathy. It's a stereotype that thoroughly permeates our society - books, movies, tv, jokes - but I have known people that get along perfectly well with their in-laws.

Even so, we say things like "You're marrying him, not his family" and if you type in mother-in-law in a search engine, not only do you pull up group after group of "anonymous ranting rooms" and a boatload of advice on how to deal with your mother-in-law, how to make amends with your mother-in-law, how to distance yourself from your mother in-law, and a group called M.I.L.D.E.W. ("Mother-In-Laws Do Everything Wrong"), but you also get asked by the search engine "did you mean 'mother-in-law problems' 'mother-in-law advice' 'mother-in-law horror stories'?"

It just all seems a bit bizarre. Like a scary fairy tale. Or an old wive's tale. I wonder how it started.

"But you'll still need the darkness to show you the stars..."

2008-09-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

Times are tough. Not to mention, a little bit scary. My parents tend to be paranoid alarmists... although they call themselves survivalists. But when my dad gets worried because, in his words, "a financial crisis was the last thing I had planned for, bird flu I've got covered, worldwide computer meltdowns, terrorists... but a stock market crash and depression?", then I start to worry.

I'm glad to be married, but it's a terrible time to be starting a new life together, especially since I would like to have a baby before my uterus dries up (ha). And I love Cameron very much, but a smart spender, he is not. And that has rubbed off on me.

It worries me that we don't have any significant amount of money put away and I DETEST living paycheck to paycheck. I admit, I was spoiled as a child and for the most part, if I wanted something (reasonable), it didn't take too terribly long before I got it. I have certainly realized that is not the case in grown-up real life.

I'm trying to be optimistic, thinking that learning to save our money now will make us value it more later, but damnit! - I want to go out and buy the complete series of Buffy! I want to go join the gym! I want to go out to dinner! I want to be able to afford to go see shows at Stevens Point and in Chicago! I would have really liked to have been the one to win the $200 million Powerball on Saturday. Some single guy won it. Now he's going to build his mancave, and I will have to just scramble to pay my bills. I don't even need the $200 million... just $100,000 would be nice. Hell, $1,000 would be nice.

I detest money.

New Jennifer Hudson CD is no 'Dreamgirls'

2008-09-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't listened to it yet... but I will soon. However, I think this review is interesting, so here you go.

New Jennifer Hudson CD is no 'Dreamgirls'
from Daily News-Music
by Jim Farber

Did Jennifer Hudson upstage her recording career before it even began?

Certainly she set the bar perilously high by making her studio debut with the scenery-chewing, Oscar-grabbing "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from "Dreamgirls."

It's the show-stopper to end all show-stoppers: R&B's answer to "Climb Every Mountain" and "Rose's Turn" combined. And Hudson nailed it, communicating every layer of anger, hurt and desperation in constantly escalating, yet finely calibrated, outbursts. It's amazing how much nuance she conveyed, all while shouting at the top of her lungs.

The sole problem: What to do for an encore?

Hudson has to answer that question decisively on her self-titled solo debut CD, which arrives today. Unsurprisingly, she has trouble doing so. As a kind of admission, Hudson brought along a security blanket: She included "And I Am Telling You ..." here as well. Hudson also tried to work her signature song into a sustained motif, by featuring other cuts that operate like little plays, complete with story lines and characters.

Yet she also felt the need to hedge, both to suit her age and to broaden her appeal. As popular, and brilliant, as her role in "Dreamgirls" may have been, it cast her as older than she actually is. (Hudson is 26. Her character was mid-30s.) To counter that, her handlers stuck in several songs on the new CD that skew younger, one recorded with Ludacris, the other with T-Pain. As expected, the radio-mongering songs sound forced, especially the one with Pain, who uses his vocoder audio gimmick so often that it makes him sound like a singing electric eel.

A finer balance can be heard in the first single, "Spotlight," whose trendy, staccato backup vocals give the song spine. Better, the character presented by the lyrics - a put-upon woman who's finally stepping out - fits Hudson's persona as the angry queen of payback.

The same goes for a duet with fellow "A.I." alum Fantasia ("I'm His Only Woman"). They stage a girl fight over a two-timing man they share.

Hudson's meaty voice dovetails well with the tough or mature songs. She's one of R&B's few young singers whose voice has resisted the influence of modern mall culture to retain a sense of place - specifically the South, with its hold on soul. That explains why she also soars on the CD's sole gospel number, "Jesus Promised Me a Home Over There."

Clearly, Hudson needed the younger stuff to get on radio. Unfortunately, it violates her gift as a twentysomething woman whose voice sounds like it has been there and back. When she calls on that, Hudson comes closest to nailing the dream.

Things We Still Need

2008-09-24T09:33:00.001-07:00

We got a lot of amazing wedding gifts... and then we realized all the things we still need to buy for the apartment. :(

-entryway rug
xkitchen rug
-KitchenAid mixer
-hand mixer
-blender
-food processor
-a comforter made from something other than polyester!
xanother dish service for 4, so we have service for 8
-the blue half of our towels from Pottery Barn (we got the green half already)
-new pillows
xvacuum
-new fan
-over-the-door iron & board organizer
xcheese slicer
-can opener
-rolling pin
-digital picture frame
-Mikasa mugs
-Mikasa margarita glasses
-decanter
-ring holders
-mortar & pestle

Not to mention the entire set of Waterford Ballet Ribbon china, except for the one place setting we got... I will be buying china the rest of my life.

Happy Autumn!

2008-09-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

I have always loved autumn... it is definately my favorite season. I got engaged in autumn, I just got married (last week!) in autumn, I love autumn! So today's blog is a photo-blog of several wonderful things I love about autumn.

Micromanaging.... again

2008-09-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

Today:
Check with priest about pew bows and bare shoulders; also, inform of change in reader for PoF.
Get music to Travis!

Friday:
Oshkosh 8 a.m. license paperwork
Ask Russ about adding veg. meal
Tell Russ to cut back on hors d'oeuvres
Call church office to determine fee due to church
Reserve hotel rooms!
Get directions for honeymoon

Saturday:
Style test at Salon Aura 10:45 a.m.
Finish centerpieces
Drag Cameron shopping for gifts
CLOSING NIGHT OF SUBURB - THANK GOD!

Sunday:
Shoe shopping ?a.m.
Work on place cards and programs
Bachlorette party 1 p.m.
White Heron rehearsal 5 p.m.
Make sure everyone has been contacted for rehearsal
Make itinerary for the day-of.
Inform communion presenters & distributors to meet with Fr. Larry 1/2 hour before ceremony
Inform Larissa and Chris to rehearse with pianist 1/2 hour before ceremony

Monday:
Get final numbers to Russ
Buy shoes!
Finish centerpieces
Start place cards and table numbers
Work on seating chart
Make-up test?

Tuesday:
Put PTO on Timecard
Program Out of Office message
Finish place cards and table numbers
Finish seating chart
Make-up test?
Get rings cleaned

Wednesday:
Make programs
Get programs copied
Make copies of readings for rehearsal; give copies to priest for ceremony
Put music in binders - in ORDER - for singers

Thursday:
Eyebrows
Mani/Pedi
Plan receiving line
Plan grand march
Make fancy copy of seating chart
Practice dancing

Friday:
Drop off cake topper & mirror at Pat's
Let Pat know what time to drop off cake at Vineyard
Get check for pianist
Get check for church
Figure out unity candle procedure with Moms

Saturday:
Hair appt. 9 a.m.
Flower drop-off at home 11 a.m.
Make-up at home 11 a.m.
Flower drop-off at church 11:30 a.m.
Photos at home 11:30 a.m.
Flower drop-off at Vineyard 12 p.m.
Photos at church 12:30 p.m.
All assembled at church by 1 p.m. (preferably earlier)
Give rings to Jay & Larissa (eek!)

More wedding to-do

2008-09-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ask Russ about adding veg. meal
Tell Russ to cut back on hors d'oeuvres
Get final numbers to Russ by 9/8
Drop off cake topper & mirror at Pat's on 9/11

Life of Her Party (NYT op-ed Maureen Dowd)

2008-09-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

For many years, reality was out of vogue with Republicans. They ignored the reality of Iraq and Katrina, of Pakistan and Osama bin Laden.

When confronted with their colossal carelessness around the globe and here at home, their mantra was, as Rummy put it, “Stuff happens.”

Now reality, in all its messy, crazy, funky glory, has flooded the party, in the comely, crackling form of Sarah Palin.

Unable to stop the onslaught of wild soap opera storylines erupting from the Palin family and the Alaska wilderness, McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt offered caterwauling reporters a new mantra: “Life happens.”

Indeed, it does. Only four days into her reign as John McCain’s “soul mate,” or “Trophy Vice,” as some bloggers are calling her, on the ticket known as “Maverick Squared,” Palin, the governor of Alaska, has already accrued two gates (Troopergate and Broken-watergate), a lawyer (for Troopergate), a future son-in-law named Levi (a high school ice hockey player, described by New York magazine as “sex on skates”), and a National Enquirer headline about the “Teen Prego Crisis” with 17-year-old daughter Bristol.

It seems like a long time since Vice President Dan Quayle denounced Murphy Brown for having a baby out of wedlock, bemoaning a “poverty of values.” It also seems like a long time — and another McCain ago — that Republicans supporting W. smeared the old John McCain by spreading rumors that he had fathered an illegitimate black child.

This week, the anti-abortion forces celebrated the news of Bristol’s pregnancy, using it as further proof that their beloved Governor Palin — who will no more support sex education than polar bears — was committed to the cause.

Since John McCain played craps first and sent the vetters to Alaska afterward, Republicans have been defending Governor Palin by saying that, while she has no foreign policy experience — except, as Cindy McCain pointed out, that “Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia” — she has a lot of domestic policy experience as a supercharged P.T.A. and hockey mom.

As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd’s old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah’s messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans — unlike the lofty Obamas.

“If this doesn’t resonate with every woman in America, I’ll eat my hat,” Bill Noll, an Alaska delegate whose daughter got pregnant at a young age and kept the baby, told The Times’s Ashley Parker.

Even as they push Sarah Barracuda as the glamorous but tough hunting and fishing mom who can juggle it all — she’s the only nominee, as Fred Thompson bragged in his convention speech, “who knows how to properly field dress a moose” — they rant at reporters who wonder how she will juggle it all and question some of her judgments.

At a Washington, Pa., rally on Saturday, as her two other daughters stood with her, Ms. Palin left Bristol baby-sitting Trig, who has Down syndrome. “Then we have our daughter Bristol,” the new conservative Republican star said. “She’s on the bus with the newborn. ... It’s his naptime, so he is with his big sister on the bus. But we thank them for being here.”

And this while Bristol was still absorbing the shocking news that she was about to turn into tabloid roadkill — and oh, yeah, she’s getting married sooner rather than later.
When you make a gimmicky pick of an unknown, without proper vetting, there’s bound to be a sticky press conference sooner or later. I watched it happen with Ferraro and Quayle, and I watched Mondale and Poppy Bush curdle with embarrassment but plow through.
The political unknowns, of course, want that tantalizing brass ring, so they’re not always completely forthcoming about their skeletons, if they’re lucky enough to be ineptly vetted. This is ironic, since the nominee who gets blindsided with these crises — Did McCain really know that this Palin reality show was about to pop and swallow his convention — is presenting them to voters as the most trustworthy people to inherit the nuclear codes.

Because Ferraro grabbed at the chance, without revealing to Mondale’s incompetent vetting team how damaging some of her husband’s financial imbroglios could be, she went from being a female icon to part of the reason it’s taken a quarter-century for another party to take a chance on a woman.

When McCain gets in trouble, he pulls out the P.O.W. card. Now Republicans are pulling out the sexist card.

Hillary cried sexism to cover up her incompetent management of her campaign, and now Republicans have picked up that trick. But when you use sexism as an across-the-board shield for any legitimate question, you only hurt women. And that’s just another splash of reality.

Degas’s Ballet Students Teach the Lessons of Their Art (NYT - Alastair Macauley)

2008-09-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

In 1955 the art historian Kenneth Clark was visiting a museum in Copenhagen with Ninette de Valois, the artistic director of the Royal Ballet in Britain and the main architect of its style in the classroom. “How beautiful, “ Clark remarked as they were looking at paintings and statues of dancers by Degas. Soon he became aware of a severe expression on de Valois’s face. Then she said, disapprovingly, “Line!”

That story returned to mind as I recently viewed the endlessly absorbing Degas ballet paintings and sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A year ago the Met closed its rooms of 19th-century European painting and sculpture for renovation; I had not revisited them since they reopened in December and had forgotten quite how large their ballet quotient is.
Elsewhere in New York — at the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick Collection and the Brooklyn Museum — there are other famous Degas ballet pictures. One, “Mademoiselle Fiocre in the Ballet ‘La Source’ ” (at the Brooklyn Museum), is the basis for the new Off Broadway play “The Seduction of Edgar Degas” at the 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan through Sunday.

At the Met, though, Degas is the sole occupant of two rooms (one of painting, one of sculpture), the main occupant of two more and is found in two others. Of these six rooms, five include his dancers.

Showing the world of ballet with new kinds of truthfulness, they helped to make his fame during his lifetime. They have never lost their renown, and some grow only more complex with analysis. The relatively simple statuettes, about which Degas liked to speak as if they were not serious, repay multiple viewings. He shows ballet as a world of both idealism and facts.

Even if you’ve been looking at Degas ballet pictures for decades, it remains astonishing how few of his dancers are actually dancing. The rest are stretching, adjusting ribbons and costumes, waiting in the wings, resting, gossiping or watching what performing there is.

By contrast, in Degas’s 1890s paintings of Russian folk dancers, you can’t miss that these women are all dancing. Their long sleeves and boots (Degas called this series “orgies of color”) are another world from the Paris Opera ballet he had been depicting since 1870. (The Met has just one Russian dancer, from 1899.)

The ballet pictures feature remarkably little pointwork. Even when it occurs, Degas sometimes obscures it. In “The Dance Class” (1874), a single dancer is stepping onto point in attitude. Yet we can’t quite see the clinching detail of her toe, for the tulle of another performer’s skirt blocks our view.

The proportion of dance content is higher in the room of Degas statues, which contains 25 bronzes of dancers. Most, interestingly, show models in the nude. And three depict women doing the same arabesque penchée; each might have caused de Valois to exclaim, “Line!”

In this position — traditionally the ultimate test of a dancer’s line — the dancer, balancing on one leg, leans forward and downward while extending the other leg behind her so that her foot becomes the highest point of her entire body. At first, these three look almost identical, and what’s fascinating is that Degas is meticulously recording a kind of penchée that is seldom seen today.

The crucial point is the angle of the torso. Although today’s dancers, if raising the leg at that angle, would show the front arm continuing the same downward line, they would hold their torsos at a higher angle (unless supported by a male dancer). These Degas women, however, all conceive penchée — evidently it was the style of the day — as one sloping line that descends from raised foot to front arm.

Another interesting detail is that arm’s hand: this doesn’t continue the line but is held parallel to the floor, as if drawing the line to its conclusion and saying, “No farther.” Today’s dancers would almost all show the line pointing downward through their very fingertips.

There are many comparable details of bygone ballet style that Degas catches very precisely, especially in the statuettes. How differently today’s dancers use knees (straighter) and hands (more open).

Go on looking at the women in this arabesque penchée and you soon see that Degas is showing the different ways in which three women demonstrate the same line. Of the three, it is the one who is most thick-set (currently positioned to the upper right of the Met’s display) whose line seems most attractive. Whereas one of the others can’t even quite show us a bodily coherence like a single sure stroke of draftsmanship that flows through torso and arm, she can. And yet it’s only she, very visibly, who lets her stomach drop; any teacher would correct her.

In this feature this mature woman resembles the subject of Degas’s most famous ballet statue, “The Little 14-Year-Old Dancer,” who appears twice at the Met, once small and nude, once almost life-size in costume. Touching though we may find her, Degas is under no illusions concerning how much she has to learn, even about basic stance. Otherwise slim, she lets her stomach protrude. She leans way back in her turned-out fourth position. She’s not a dancer yet. Will she ever be? “Line!”

In the three arabesques penchées, Degas seems to be fascinated by the individual flaws of each woman and by the purity of the dance itself. They show us both the principle of absolute beauty and the difficulties of achieving it to perfection. This ideal-reality paradox connects to his paintings, especially those depicting ballet. He seems to have been as interested as his contemporary Ibsen in the tension between the actuality of women’s lives and society’s expectations. And Degas’s women, unlike most of Ibsen’s, are almost all workers, even if they are by no means working in his paintings.

Degas remarked, as the choreographer Merce Cunningham has in our own time, that he was drawn to complexity, and several of these ballet pictures show a greater number of different things going on simultaneously than even Mr. Cunningham has been able to manage. In the 1874 “Dance Class” only one woman is dancing. And amid a roomful of mothers and dancers (most as highly individualized as she), nobody save the ballet master is watching her with serious concentration.

In the foreground a rosebud lies on the floor beside a dancer’s foot; it seems to have fallen from her hair, and she may even be treading on its stem. A score is open on a music stand, but no musician is present. In the mirror (at which nobody is looking) the painting reaches its most bewilderingly intricate, and, as it shows the sky outside, its brightest.

The 1870 “Dancing Class” includes a perplexing maze of mirror views. The foreground shows blunt reality: a watering can (water was used to strengthen the floors, like rosin) standing beside an aged violinist’s top hat, in which he has placed his folded newspaper, and, next to it, his violin case.

More staggering yet as a composition is the 1884-85 “Dancers in the Rehearsal Room With a Double Bass.” We’re in the corridor leading into the classroom. The whole left half of the painting is taken up by the double bass, on its side (with the top of another), and the empty wall behind it. The room beyond shows at least eight dancers, yet only one is working on her steps, and part of her is blocked from our view by the wall.

In these paintings Degas takes a “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” view of ballet, seeing it askew, from a distance, at an angle from which it was never intended to be viewed. He probably changed the specifics of any ballet room he visited to fit his idea. The result, paradoxically, is that he gives us a vision we believe wholeheartedly, a truth in which he addresses many layers of being.

Correction Appended (NYT - Ben Brantley)

2008-09-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

“Cymbeline,” directed by Terrence O’Brien for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, makes use of its setting: the Boscobel Restoration in Putnam County.

Nature takes its course in high style in the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s inspiriting production of “Cymbeline.” I’m talking about a lofty, orderly and beneficent Nature, the sort that warrants an ivy-twined capital N and weaves providential patterns from chaos. That’s the force that shapes the late Shakespearean romances and, it might be argued, the grounds of Boscobel, the restored Federalist-era estate on which “Cymbeline” is being performed through Saturday.

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is in its third decade of camping out in Putnam County and recently acquired a newfangled baronial tent — to succeed the smaller, scrappier one — on the grounds of the impeccably landscaped Boscobel Restoration. But surely there has never been a more felicitous marriage of setting and Shakespeare here than that provided by this “Cymbeline.”

For no matter how maliciously, illogically and self-destructively characters behave in this high-hedged labyrinth of a play from the twilight of Shakespeare’s career, such antics seem so, well, small when enacted before the breathtaking Hudson River view afforded by the open-sided tent. When the air is as soft and clean, as it was when I saw this “Cymbeline,” the summer night seems indeed to smile, wryly but compassionately, on those idiots we call human beings.
Terrence O’Brien, the festival’s longtime artistic director, knows not to overdaub a perfect canvas. In past productions he has not been above crowd-pleasing postmodern trickery, interpolating doo-wop groups, surfer dudes, cowboys or Mafiosi. For “Cymbeline,” a notoriously jumbled mix of styles and historical periods, a director would seem to have carte blanche to pile on the anachronisms.

Instead Mr. O’Brien has kept things as basic as possible. Amanda Bujak’s wrapped and tied costumes are all of a piece in evoking Britain in the age of the Caesars. (For the scenes bizarrely set in Renaissance Italy, she has come up with “Pirates of the Caribbean”-style festive wear.) And only a few props are bigger than a breadbox, including a bed, a trunk large enough to hide a man and a headless dummy.

Otherwise it’s all a matter of performers, a dirt circle of a stage and some strategic lighting (by Dan Scully) that extends beyond the tent’s boundaries. The characters who run, jog and stroll in from the darkness have the aspect of wanderers in a fairy-tale forest where anything might happen. When the thick convolutions of plot start to sort themselves out, they seem as surprised as we are.

This paring down to a mythic simplicity (an effect achieved in a different vein by the fine Cheek by Jowl production that played last year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) makes it easier for us to swallow the improbabilities of a story that is surfeited with improbability. “Cymbeline” can at times feel like the whole Shakespearean canon, from “The Comedy of Errors” and “As You Like It” to “King Lear” and “Othello,” fed into a blender.

The warping power of irrational jealousy induced by an Iago-like Italian, cross-dressing for survival, a separated set of siblings, an unjustly banished courtier turned noble woodland hermit: all these elements feed the tale of the ill-advised King Cymbeline (Stephen Paul Johnson), who is ruled by his evil queen (Gabra Zackman) and her fatuous son, Cloten (Michael Borrelli), to the detriment of his virtuous daughter, Imogen (Katie Hartke), who dares to marry the poor but noble Posthumus Leonatus (Christopher V. Edwards).

The seeming incongruities in tone of “Cymbeline,” along with its haphazard recycling of Shakespearean staples and sketchily drawn character, have led some scholars to see it as self-conscious parody, cynical writing-for-hire or the product of a tired old playwright who was, as Lytton Strachey put it, “half bored to death.” But Mr. O’Brien, in a program note, prefers to think of it as a rule-transcending masterpiece, quoting J. M. Nosworthy, who compares “Cymbeline” to the late works of Beethoven as “a comprehensive piece of impressionism.”
This attitude would seem to license a hazy, arty approach. But Mr. O’Brien is, as always, painstaking in his clarity. If the performers in a Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production rarely provide intricate psychological nuance, they almost always deliver confident, clean-lined portraits that exactly serve the plot and illuminate the theme. You never leave a show thinking, “What was that about?”

This straightforward acting style works especially well for “Cymbeline.” As entertainingly embodied here, the play’s villains, who also include the pocket-Iago type Iachimo (Noel Vélez), aren’t psychosexual basket cases; they’re just superjerks, magnified versions of the greedy, self-impressed, power-hungry people you probably encounter in the office daily.

And yes, the feelings of the priggish Posthumus do seem to spin on a ducat, but young people — make that all people — are given to behaving in ways incomprehensible even to themselves. This is especially true when they’re trapped in a hothouse atmosphere like a royal court. And everyone seems to grow up once they go a-wanderin’ in the woods, especially Ms. Hartke’s Imogen, who acquires eloquence, humility and beauty once she sheds royal attire for a male page’s clothes with the assistance of the trusty servant Pisanio (the delightfully droll Wesley Mann).

To underscore the redemptive powers of the sylvan, Mr. O’Brien has focused with fresh and witty emphasis on the play’s noble savages: Belarus (a pitch-perfect Richard Ercole), a nobleman who fled Cymbeline’s court for the great outdoors after being falsely accused of treason, taking with him Cymbeline’s two small sons. Now young men, those boys (charmingly played by Christian Jacobs and Rolando Martinez) have the look of feral children but the manners of nature’s gentlemen.

Watching these three characters gamboling across the grass and through the trees, calling to one another with lupine yips, you feel such vicarious pleasure that it’s a bit of a bummer when they are reintegrated into civilization. Not that this diminishes the absurdly moving chain of revelations and acts of forgiveness that concludes “Cymbeline.”

As each successive coincidence, one more ridiculous than the other, announced itself, the audience laughed loudly. But I could see tears in the eyes around me as well. And when Cymbeline, victorious in battle, announced the dawn of a glorious, all-pardoning peace in his concluding lines, it was hard not to melt altogether. The tone of Mr. Johnson’s Cymbeline is exultant, of course, but also a shade disbelieving, a reminder that a harsher world, where wars never stop and forgiveness comes hard, awaits in the night beyond.

CYMBELINE

By William Shakespeare; directed by Terrence O’Brien; lighting by Dan Scully; costumes by Amanda Bujak; sound by Matt Sherwin; properties design by Brett Travis. Presented by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Mr. O’Brien, artistic director; Susan Landstreet, executive director. At Boscobel, Route 9D, Garrison, N.Y.; (845) 265-9575. Through Saturday. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.

WITH: Gabra Zackman (Queen), Christopher V. Edwards (Posthumus Leonatus), Katie Hartke (Imogen), Wesley Mann (Pisanio), Stephen Paul Johnson (Cymbeline), Michael Borrelli (Cloten), Noel Vélez (Iachimo), Richard Ercole (Belarius), Christian Jacobs (Guiderius) and Rolando Martinez (Arviragus).

Wedding Still-To-Do List

2008-09-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

Date Specific:
Go do paperwork for license 9/5 at 8 a.m.
Test hairstyle appointment Saturday 9/6 at 10:45 a.m.
Pick up dress 9/9 at Tonya's.
Enter PTO on timecard before leaving 9/9.
Program voicemail and email auto-response for vacation from 9/10-9/22.
Finish centerpieces 9/3 or 9/4.
Make place cards and table numbers 9/6.
Make seating chart 9/6 or 9/7.
Get approximate count to Russ before 9/8.
Get final count to Russ 9/10.
Finish left-over everything 9/10 and 9/11.
Get rings cleaned 9/10.

Ceremony:
Make programs - bring copies to rehearsal.
Organize rehearsal (9/12 - 5 p.m. at St. Johns) and contact all involved.
Purchase gifts for wedding party, attendants, readers, singers, parents to distribute at rehearsal. x Tell Tierney what time for day-of make-up and where (probably 11 a.m. at Petersens').
x Tell Dawn what time to deliver flowers and where.
Inform wedding party, attendants, readers, musicans and family where to be when.
Inform communion presenters & distributors, and photographer to meet with Fr. Larry 1/2 hour before ceremony.
x Inform Chris about solo-splitting for In Whatever Time....
Inform Larissa and Chris to rehearse with pianist 1/2 hour before ceremony.
Call church office to determine fee due to church.
Get check for pianist.
Get check for church.
Check with priest about pew bows and bare shoulders; also, inform of change in reader for PoF.
Make copies of readings for rehearsal; give copies to priest for ceremony.
Put music in binders - in ORDER - for singers.
Give rings to Larissa and Jay.
Explain unity candle procedure to Moms.

Reception:
Tell Pat what time to deliver cake.
x Find out where Dawn will deliver toss bouquet.
Plan receiving line.
Plan grand march.
Check with Russ about hors d'oeuvres.
x Choose what beer will be on tab.
Get Russ a copy of the seating chart.
Make a fancy copy of the seating chart for the table.
x Assign someone to man the guestbook/place card table (possibly Tierney & Chris? and/or the ushers?).
Finish organizing decor for guestbook table, gift table, cake table, etc.
Buy writing implements for the guestbook.
Disposable cameras for tables?
Give guestbook table people a Polaroid camera?
x Find out entree choices for Jenni, Ryan and Keith.
Practice dancing.
Check on the 'first dance' song with Keith.

Next Day:
Plan brunch & gift opening.

Honeymoon:
Reserve rooms.
Choose two more shows (don't forget Wicked tickets!).
Get lots of directions from hotel to museums, restaurants, shopping, theatres.
Give Larissa apartment keys and money for cat food & litter.

Why I love classics like Jane Eyre

2008-08-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

Authors have a hard time, nowadays, getting away with paragraphs like the following:

I sat down quite disembarrassed. A reception of finish politeness would probably have confused me: I could not have returned or repaid it by answering grace and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me under no obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the freak of manner, gave me the advantage. Besides, the eccentricity of the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go on.

I mean, even just the second to last sentence... I feel like most readers today would have to break out the dictionary - if they even bothered to do so - to understand what it means. Perhaps that's unecessarily snobby, but I think it's true.

That's all for today.

Chicago Shakespeare's Amadeus

2008-07-17T18:50:00.001-07:00

I am going to go see this on my honeymoon, with or without my husband!

clipped from news.yahoo.com

Sella Will Be Salieri in Chicago Shakespeare's 'Amadeus' This Fall

Sella played Prior in the national tour of Angels in America, directed by Michael Mayer, who also directed the actor as narrator Clifford in Broadway's Side Man. He won the Clarence Derwent Award and a Drama League Citation for it. Also on Broadway, Sella appeared in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (as Boris), My Fair Lady (as Freddie) and Cabaret (Emcee). In 1998 he won a Helen Hayes Award as Outstanding Supporting Actor, Resident Play for his work in The Shakespeare Theatre's Mourning Becomes Electra in Washington, DC. In 2007, he starred with Maggie Smith in the West End production of Edward Albee's The Lady From Dubuque.

Amadeus will play CST's Courtyard Theater, Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Avenue in Chicago.

For more information visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

Jennifer Hudson's Slim Chance

2008-07-11T15:48:00.000-07:00

If this is really a valid photograph, then good for her for losing weight -- but still a little disappointing, because she always seemed to advocate being curvy but healthy.

If this is photo-shopped, as most people seem to suspect it is, then I hope to God that it was her agents or managers who made that decision, because if it was her, then I - and, I expect, the vast majority of her fans - will be incredibly disappointed in her lack of judgement.

Jennifer Hudson's Slim Chance

Posted Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:32pm PDT by Lyndsey Parker in Reality Rocks

Is it just me, or does Jennifer Hudson look, um, DIFFERENT on her debut album's cover?

So, this looks like one extreme Photoshop makeover. But why? Jennifer looks great the way she is. Do the suits at RCA Records really think she'll shift more units with her head digitally decapitated and then Franksteined onto some skinny mystery body? And do they really think her fans are unobservant enough to overlook such a radical renovation of her famously full figure?

You know, Effie would not stand for this, and neither should Jennifer. Neither should her fans.

And if this really is Jennifer's actual body, then someone please email me the name of her personal trainer, pronto.

And that's the skinny, for now.

A Plague on Their House Brought On by a Black Bird

2008-06-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

[the entry courtesy of the New York Times and my theatre geekery, in honor of Jeffrey Stephens]

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa E.T.C.) is an American not-for-profit cultural organization located in the East Village section of lower Manhattan. It is one of the first and primary locations in off-off-Broadway theater.
Founded by Ellen Stewart in 1961, its purpose is to support and present multi-cultural and multi-national original performance work by emerging artists.

Originating in a small basement on East 9th Street, the theatre now consists of three main stages and an art gallery at 74A East 4th Street and a six-story rehearsal and workshop space on Great Jones Street.
----------------------------------------------------------

All the characters in “The Raven” wear traditional Chinese costumes. All the characters in “The Raven” have Italian names.

That seems odd at first, but there’s a good reason. And this production proves that La MaMa, almost 47 years after Ellen Stewart founded it, is still taking creative chances.

“The Raven” began as an 18th-century fairy tale by Carlo Gozzi, who also wrote the original commedia dell’arte “Turandot.” Ms. Stewart, who adapted, composed and directed this musical version (with additional music by others), decided to relocate the story to China because, she has said, she just had a feeling about it.
The production is graceful and inventive but can’t be judged as traditional theater, only as a combination of operatic music, dance, puppetry and video. I had some trouble keeping track of the plot, although the show is sung in both English and Mandarin. There’s a synopsis in the program, but it gets a little complicated.

The story is about curses. King Millo (Sinan Kajtazi) kills a raven, and its owner puts a curse on him. The curse can be lifted only if Millo marries a woman with white skin, red lips and raven-black hair. (In China, probably not a tough assignment.) Such a woman, Princess Armilla (Allison Hiroto), is found.

Just as things are looking up, Prince Jennaro (Rob Laqui), the king’s brother, discovers that the horse and the falcon he has just bought are cursed, too. There’s no easy solution. If he gives them to the king, a horrible thing will happen; if he doesn’t, a different horrible thing will happen; if Millo marries Armilla, yet another horrible fate lies in store.

These possible outcomes are death (in general), death (being eaten by a dragon) and death (turning into a marble statue). King Norando (Michael Lynch), Armilla’s father, got them into this trouble, so maybe he can get them out. Self-sacrifice is the theme.

The puppets are grand and dramatic, and the show looks lovely — especially the costumes, in rich-looking fabrics and vibrant colors, with elegant headgear.

“The Raven” continues through June 29 at La MaMa Annex, 66 East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 475-7710, lamama.org.

iconoclasm/evil eye

2008-06-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

Today, my parents and I somehow randomly got onto the topic of iconoclasm while discussing the decor, or lack thereof, of a certain Protestant Church we recently visited for a wedding.

Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major domestic political or religious changes.

It is generally distinguished from the destruction by one culture of the images of another, for example by the Spanish in their American conquests. The term does not generally encompass the specific destruction of images of a ruler after his death or overthrow.

Iconoclasm may be carried out by people of a different religion, but is often the result of sectarian disputes between factions of the same religion. In Christianity, iconoclasm has generally been motivated by a literal interpretation of the Ten Commandments which forbid the making and worshiping of "graven images".

A visit to Wikipedia always leads to other arbitrary searches, which led me to the 'evil eye' entry, which interestingly enough proved to be something other than what I thought it was.

The evil eye is a folk belief that the envy elicited by the good luck of fortunate people may result in their misfortune, whether it is envy of material possessions. The perception of the nature of the phenomenon, its causes, and possible protective measures, varies between different cultures.

In some forms, it is the belief that some people can bestow a curse on victims by the malevolent gaze of their magical eye. The most common form, however, attributes the cause to envy, with the envious person casting the evil eye doing so unintentionally.

In many forms of the evil eye belief, a person — otherwise not malefic in any way — can harm adults, children, livestock or a possession, simply by looking at them with envy. The word "evil" can be seen as somewhat misleading in this context, because it suggests that someone has intentionally "cursed" the victim. A better understanding of the term "evil eye" can be gained from the old English word for casting the evil eye, namely "overlooking," implying that the gaze has remained focused on the coveted object, person, or animal for too long.

While some cultures hold that the evil eye is an involuntary jinx cast unintentionally by people unlucky enough to be cursed with the power to bestow it by their gaze, others hold that, while perhaps not strictly voluntary, the power is called forth by the sin of envy. In Jewish religious thought, it is sometimes asserted that the one who looks upon another with envy is not always at fault, but that the envy may be perceived by God, who then may redress the balance between two people by bringing the higher one low. It has been suggested that the term covet (to eye enviously) in the tenth Commandment refers to casting the evil eye, rather than to simply desire or envy.

This has been today's useless information. :)

"Brava, diva!" - Melissa Hart, Tony award winning actress

2007-12-18T15:51:00.000-08:00

I learned a lot today. This semester, actually.

I learned that I don't have to be afraid of not being a stick. I learned to accept my physicality as it is any given day. I learned to start trying to use my physicality as an asset, rather than a deficiency. I learned that I may not be a lyric soprano, but I am a solid mezzo with a good range who will soon be comfortable singing a high B. I learned the difference between swallowing my tears (which equals stifling) and singing through my tears. I learned that our duty as performers is to give the gift of our talent to our audiences and to thank them for the opportunity to do so. I learned that the most poignant performance is the one that delivers the truth, simple and honest. I learned that I am enough. I am enough.

I may need that one tattooed on the inside of my wrist to remember, but someday it will sink it.

I sang "The Man That Got Away" at a master class this morning, taught by Melissa Hart, who won the 1970 Tony award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She gave me the incredible compliment, after we worked and I sang for her, of "Brava, diva!" (You don't just toss compliments like that around... at least, you shouldn't.) I was really touched, and really moved by the work she did with me and the things she said at the master class. I wish I could always work with someone like that. It was incredible.

She said a lot of interesting, intuitive things:
- Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. (I think this was originally said by Frida.)
- At a certain point, there is a marriage between soul and instrument and your brain shuts off.
- A song lyric is a monologue. You must know who you're talking to and what you want.
- You must deliver the truth. It can be as small as a mustard seed, but you must deliver it.
- You have the equipment, you're getting the training - TRUST IT!
- Whenever you can, park & bark.
- "I always smile during sad songs." - Rosemary Clooney. You have to let the audience identify with you, let them know, "I'm a chump, I know, but I got through it and so will you."
- Sing all the way through sentences, as an exercise, so that you find the full meaning of each sentence.
- The text gives you everything you need.
- Do not try to perform when you work. It's work, not performance!
- The actor's challenge is to be real real, not fake real.
- Everytime you repeat a word or phrase, it must be different.
- Less is more.
- If you're singing through the line of text and you are open, you will encounter fewer vocal issues.
- Music and lyrics move horizontally, not vertically.
- Our gift is the ability to give the truth.
- You are enough. With nothing added and nothing taken away. Give your gift to the audience.

The Work

2007-12-03T13:11:00.000-08:00

Finally finished my Independent Writing class.

This post contains the work I did most recently...
------------------------------
bare limbs scrape blue skies
orange sunset silhouettes
leaves all dead and dry

white winds whisk dead leaves
snow sneaks in cracks and crannies
winter creeps in slow

Freya, Skadi, come
join Beira and Rozhnitsa
queens of ice and snow

soon swift storms shall strike
flinging frigid frozen frost
do not give up hope

the green grows again
Maia brings new life to earth
the cycle spins on
------------------------------
I don’t understand his need to fit a mold.
His childish behavior fills me with doubt.
Stereotypes are something I’ll do without.
But, on him, it seems to have a hold.

He decided to change and then: Ta-da!
Blonde, thin and tan is his mission.
His glasses cost more than tuition.
He now wears Armani and Prada.

I know that he just wants to fit in.
But he’s lost everything that he is.
Gone is that smile so uniquely his.
I miss the friend that he might have been.
------------------------------
As she walks off alone into the night,
She flees from the insults of her peers
And her injured soul searches for love and light.

He leaves his love with her new “Mr. Right.”
Finally, he allows the release of his tears,
As he walks off alone into the night.

She stumbles, falls but finds herself put aright
When the man lends his hand as he nears.
And his lonely soul warms her with love and light.

She rises, the reborn phoenix taking flight.
She decides to stop giving into her tears
As she walks off alone into the night.

The man turns and calls, “God bless and good night!”
Her smile in return relieves all of his fears
And their mending souls warm with love and light.

She calls back a “Thank you!” and “Have a good night!”
A stranger’s kindness helps pain to disappear,
As they walk off alone, united by the night,
And their healed souls glow with love and light.
------------------------------
As raindrops strike the windowpane,
And the sun sinks in the west,
I dump our dinner down the drain
And feed the cat the rest.

The dates you accidentally break,
The plans somehow squashed flat...
You finally showed up for steak:
It was eaten by the cat.

The time we planned for weeks and weeks
To go and see that show,
But you were with your Warcraft freaks
And so, we couldn't go.

You manage to remember things
Involving sex or food,
Long as it's someone else who brings
The turkey... or the mood.

We've tried everything from datebooks
To annoying cell phone calls.
Planners end up shoved in dusty nooks
And the cell phone's thrown at walls!

But, I put up with delayed dates,
And love you, no matter what.
I sit patiently through endless waits
And scribble down this smut.

If the only burden I must bear
As long as we're alive,
Is that you can't read the watch you wear,
I think we will survive.

The Choice

2007-11-12T12:25:00.000-08:00

There comes a time in your life
When you must choose
Between the storm and strife of forging your own path
Or the unknown wonders of releasing yourself into destiny's hands.

The dangers of destiny lie in what you must leave behind.
You must release your soul into the hands of the unknown.
No strings, no ties, no pre-planned designs.
It requires the willingness to let life lead you where it wants you to go.

The dangers of designing your own path are many as well.
You may cling to your desires and all your ideals.
Your family, your friends, your religion, your dreams.
But how far can you reach for the future when your hands are full of your past?

Your life becomes a crucial game of chess.
Do you risk your pawns in order to capture the Queen and King?
Do you guard all your pieces against the future, still unseen?
Do you risk yourself to find out what you might be?

The choice is never easy, and each option involves sacrifice.
It is a choice you must make.
And you must make it for yourself.
You will know the time when you must choose.
And choose you must, or the time will pass.

Then, your choice will be taken away from you.
Those who love you,
Who have the best intentions...
They may snatch the choice away from you,
Choosing what your life will be.

Those who fear you,
Who long for your downfall...
They may also steal away this crucial choice,
Designing your life to their will.

If this occurs, the struggle to regain control is great.
Second chances are never given freely.
And if they are given, they must be respected.

In this choice,
Whether it is your first chance or your last,
You must decide...

Can you become your future without your past?
Can you grow into who you will be without who you were?
Can you leave behind your family, your friends, your childhood hopes?
Can you discard the drawers full of memories and dreams?

I choose to accept my past and permit its influence on my life.
I choose to grasp my future and allow it to form who I will become.
I choose to embrace my loved ones and make them part of my future.
I choose to renew my heart and rebuild it once more to accept new loves.

The choice is yours.

A poem by one of my friends on Experience Project

2007-11-05T12:29:00.000-08:00

Alas, alas. Alas, poor Pluto.
Once a mighty planet,
Now just cosmic proscuitto.
From dessert to after-dinner mint
Thanks to astronomer's judo.
Barycentric waltzes unpopular,
Eris had more mass than you do;
So your proud planetary status
Is now simply pseudo.

by TardyDodo

Work in Progress

2007-11-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

(1. This is completely fictional and NOT about me!
2. The lines in brackets are the ones I'm having problems with and want to fix... any suggestions are appreciated!)

She's lost in a nightmare where all dreams come true.
He's everything she ever wanted here.
He’s everything that ever haunted her.
She’s a jumble of feelings: confusion and love.
She stares at the ceiling as his arms hold her close.
[Her head on his chest as she prays for any help; ]
His hand on her breast as he pushes her buttons.
Her heart’s screaming “Yes!” as her lips form “No.”
In his eyes, she can see the past is repeating.
In his fists, she can see the forthcoming beating.
In his words, she can see that their love will be fleeting.
In his stance, she can see his interest retreating.
But she's not sorry.
She made a promise to love and obey;
[He did as well, but has lost his way.]
She’s had enough now that she’s seen the truth.
He plays it tough as he lies through his teeth.
She waits for him to give himself away.
Answering that “Unknown” number once again,
He leaves her alone in bed once again.
He lowers his voice and his tone once again.
He says he’s going out on his own once again.
As he rises and dresses, leaving her behind,
She sits up in bed and she makes up her mind.
Though she's waited so long for this moment to pass,
She tries one more time to make their love last.
[In her slinky nightgown, she presses him to the wall,
“You know, you don’t have to leave after all…”]
He pushes her away with a less than gentle shove,
And she knows that it’s finally the end of their love.
She almost can’t breathe, her heart’s wound so tight.
[Her eyes shut and envision floating towards the light.
Her pride will blaze forth though she tries to hide.
Her dignity refuses to give in without a fight.]
She deliberately walks once more into his sight,
He demands to know what she wants tonight.
At last, she is honest and slaps him across the face.
“Get out and don’t come back, if I’m so easy to replace.”

Poem in Progress

2007-09-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

I give to you the book of my soul:
Its pages dark and smudged with tears.

It once was full and bound and whole
With stories of my younger years.

But now the pages fall apart,
The glue cannot withstand the pain.

The black ink runs and corners fray.
The covers crumble; no words remain.

I beg you now: take up the pen
And fill my book with your heart's lore.

With your love make me whole again
And cause my tears to fall no more.