I'm Not Running for President

In college my housemates and I spent a disproportionate amount of time personifying objects, which is part of why I find this ad, about the wind and for wind turbines, awesome.

Miracle Berries

I cannot eat sour foods. I pucker uncontrollably, turn red, cry, and my throat closes up. It is truly horrible. Unfortunately, my sour receptors are also very keen- oranges, for example, are a bit too sour for me to really enjoy. Limes, Granny Smith apples, kumquat and grapefruit- out of the question.

For Valentine's day, Adam came up with a gift to address this issue. A magical gift by the name of "miracle berries" or "miracle fruit."

Miracle berries are just that; berries from West Africa that, for about 20-40 minutes after you eat them, make sour foods taste sweet. It is hard to imagine or believe, but it is true, and amazing! The proof I offer you, besides personal testimony, is in the form of pictures. The one at the top is a before (horrific face caused by lime) and the ones on the left are befores, on the rights afters (kumquat-induced):

I love the last lines of poems.

Navigating in the Dark
by Erik Campbell

Papua, Indonesia

In this mining town in Papua the electricity
Has a habit of giving up at night, and this

Is a miracle of modern stasis, a secular Shabbat,
Reminding us of what is expendable, of how so few

Of us ever truly experience the dark. We are amazed,
My wife and I, with the heavy darkness

Of the no moon jungle, insect sounds lacerating
All illusions of silent places. "It's so absolute,"

My wife says, and I like to think she means
More than the darkness; the naked places

Of ourselves we dress in sunlight, lamps,
And recorded music like antithetical

Blanche DeBois's fearing a different sort
Of scrutiny. "We could pretend it's 1940,"

I say, "put a Jack Benny tape on the short wave
And drink coffee, light candles." She suggests

A walk outside instead, where there are dozens
Of others already out on paths bounded by jungle,

Stepping small and laughing loudly through various
Uncertainties; flashlights as eyes, ears like animals'.

Soon we are trying only to remember not to disappear
Altogether; everything is so absolutely, so darkly possible.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Vote

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote."
Nathan, George Jean American editor and drama critic (1882-1958)

from Toothpaste for Dinner-

All Hallow Dreaming

I had the worst dream last night. It wasn't a nightmare, but I am going to argue it was worse than a nightmare, because there was no sense of relief when I awoke. I dreamt I needed to get an oil change, and then I woke up and realized I did, in fact, need to get an oil change. Practical dreaming! Horrid!

Neglect

Awesome- Interview with Sharyn-the-playwright, righting all our wrongs!

3Graces presents a GraceNotes workshop production of NEGLECT in repertory with NICKEL AND DIMED.
NEGLECT is written by Sharyn Rothstein, winner of this year's Samuel French Original Short Play Festival, and is directed by Catherine Ward. Based on the 1995 Chicago heat wave that claimed the lives of over seven hundred elderly residents, mostly African-Americans who lived in social isolation, NEGLECT is the story of an elderly woman, Rose, and her young neighbor, Joseph, who come together on the first day of the heat wave to escape the unbearable heat and their own feelings of loneliness. A story of social responsibility, NEGLECT is an often funny, deeply moving play about what holds us together and what keeps us apart.
Directed by Catherine Ward
Dramaturgy by J. Holtham
with Geany Masai* and William Jackson Harper*featuring Ange Berneau*
GraceNotes is 3Graces' forum for studio theater and experimental works, including solo shows, one-acts, and works-in-progress. Co-artistic directors Elizabeth Bunnell and Annie McGovern call it an "artistic playground," where company members, guest artists and audiences share in the delight of developing and performing new works.
NEGLECT will run October 10 - 25 at the Bank Street Theater, located at 155 Bank Street.
Performances: Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday at 7pm.
Tickets for NEGLECT are $15 and are on sale through Ticket Central at http://3graces.pmailus.com/pmailweb/ct?d=CHLeqwCHAAEAAAgXAADM2w or 212-279-4200.
For more information, visit http://3graces.pmailus.com/pmailweb/ct?d=CHLeqwCIAAEAAABpAADM2w.

* Appearing courtesy of Actors Equity Association

Too Hot to Handle

This is the kind of thing that freaks me out about becoming a teacher:

"...Ms. McGee, 51, a popular art teacher with 28 years in the classroom, is out of a job after leading her fifth-grade classes last April through the Dallas Museum of Art. One of her students saw nude art in the museum, and after the child’s parent complained, the teacher was suspended." (from New York Times).

An art teacher getting suspended because there happens to be some nude art at the museum? The child whose parent complained is going to grow up with some unfortunate complexes about nudity. The statue at left is one of four of the "offending" sculptures. Of course, now that this case has made the news the pictures of these nude sculptures are being shown on the news (with the anatomy blacked out- thank God), so even the schoolchildren that didn't go on the field trip can get offended. Considering the lives American children lead nowadays, with their internet access, video games with scantily clad women spurting blood, and the music videos shown on tv, getting upset about some classic art may be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

(Sculpture pictured- Shade, Auguste Rodin)

haha

Failed t-shirt idea from Toothpaste for Dinner:

Hot day, Summer in the city

I went to a coffeeshop the other day. As I was waiting impatiently for some iced coffee concoction, I listened to the sort of nervous-looking middle-aged guy in front of me request his order, a frozen coffee drink. The woman behind the counter nodded and turned to make it, then asked, "do you want whipped cream?"
The man, all awkwardness, quickly replied, "Not for the coffee-" paused for a while, then added, "or anything really."

Domesticated Apes

A wacky quote from the New York Times article, "Nice Rats, Nasty Rats: Maybe It's All in the Genes";

His strategy is to cross the tame rats with the ferocious rats and then score the progeny for how much of each trait they inherit. He hopes to identify 200 sites along the genome at which the tame and ferocious rats differ. If one or more of the sites correlate with tameness or fierceness in the progeny, they will probably lie near important genes that underlie one of the two traits.

The genes, if Mr. Albert finds them, would be of great interest because they are presumably the same in all species of domesticated mammal. That may even include humans. Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard, has proposed that people are a domesticated form of ape, the domestication having been self-administered as human societies penalized or ostracized individuals who were too aggressive.

Case Work

I encourage you to check out this article on New York Times online. The article, entitled "The Case of Marie and Her Sons," was the lead in the Sunday magazine this past weekend. I happened upon it today online and it "gave me the heebie-jeebies" as my mom put it, as it was exactly the job I was doing the year before last, child protective casework, in the nearest office to where I was doing it, and the case worker they focus on started around the same time I did. I wrote about it before here. It's a job I quit, but still think about frequently, wondering how my clients are doing- how their stories played out, if they're okay. The work forever changed my perspective on how lives are lived in America, and how people are affected by their family. It's a job I'm incredibly glad I don't have anymore, for my emotional well-being, but part of me wants to go back and do it over again, perfectly. Which, as the article shows, is not possible.

School Project Time

Anyone feeling magnanimous can head over to this site and follow the directions...
Thanks!
(if you're not feeling magnanimous, I understand. It is Wednesday, after all)

Epalpebrates!

Where Words Go To Die

I guess I was in a morbid (morose, gloomy, melancholic, sinister, macabre, gruesome) mood today, as I have spent significant time pondering death- the demise of words, that is--

You too can delve into this otherworld of words (The Phrontistery), and ponder what has become of:

alabandical
adj
1656 -1775
barbarous; stupefied from drink
His behaviour after the party was positively alabandical.

And

foppotee
n
1663 -1663
simpleton
What a pitiful foppotee he was, always oblivious to our jeers!

Did we outgrow them? Grad school is going to lead me to need the word “alabandical” (RIP 1775) and “foppotee” (RIP 1663). Why would these gems fade out and others like “inebriated” and “moron” remain? Perhaps answers to all our philosophical queries can be found in these lost words… especially words like epalpebrate and stiricide:

(I include this one because I liked the sentence):
cacatory
adj
1684 -1753
accompanied by loose bowels
For the diners, the effects of the chicken cacciatore, alas, were cacatory.

epalpebrate
adj
1884 -1884
lacking eyebrows
If you don't stop plucking, soon you'll be epalpabrate!

jobler
n
1662 -1662
one who does small jobs
We've found a great jobler who takes care of our repairs quickly and cheaply.

murklins
adv
1568 -1674
in the dark
She stumbled murklins about the house until she found the light switch.

pigritude
n
1623 -1656
slothfulness
Despite the college student's pigritude, he continued to maintain a 'B' average.

stiricide
n
1656 -1656
falling of icicles from a house
The untended tenement was very dangerous in winter due to stiricide.

uglyography
n
1804 -1834
bad handwriting; poor spelling
Your uglyography conceals the cogency and brilliance of your ideas.

Subaru Time

(picture from Natalie Dee)

As it turns out, Subarus are the official car of the Hudson Valley, so my car and I are fitting right in from the getgo with this return to country living. Ways I am not fitting in includes expecting something, ANYTHING, to be open past eight o'clock at night.

Strange aspects include the bleating pygmy goat that has suddenly appeared in my backyard ("Not in my backyard!" I cried, when it chewed on my bicycle), and the fact that all I have to do with myself is sit around reading on the porch.

Stephen Colbert Interview on the 10 Commandments

I know more commandments than this dude, and that is certainly not saying much.

David Hasselhoff - Hooked on a Feeling

The pop bubblegum favorite... performed by David Hasselhoff for some German video.

Poignant Blues in India

1. According to wikipedia, the Ramayana is an epic which tells the story of a prince whose wife is abducted by a demon. The story "contains the teachings of the ancient Hindu sages and presents them through allegory in narrative and the interspersion of philosophic and devotional."

2. In other wikipedia info, Annette Hanshaw was a flapper and a blues singer of the 1920s.

3. Lastly, Nina Paley is an animation filmmaker living in New York.

The amazing thing is that combining these three things has created something wonderful. Nina Paley is in the process of creating a 72 minute animation film of the Ramayana from Sita's perspective. It's called Sitayana, or Sita Sings the Blues. Paley is using Annette Hanshaw's stunning blues songs as the background for each beautifully crafted scene. It's like a graphic novel come to life, with a great soundtrack. You can and should watch completed parts of it here: http://www.ninapaley.com/Sitayana/

Nina Paley came to combine these two disparate cultural icons through personal upset, as she was dumped by her husband over email after their marriage fell apart in India. She identified with Sita from the Ramayana and listened to Annette Hanshaw to overcome this, and it lead to this art.

An' the livin' is easy...

"Summer afternoon- summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." -Henry James

Winter barges in with a snowstorm, then leaves for a bit, then returns and overstays its welcome. Spring wavers in and out with nice days and rainy days and the refusal to make the world green soon enough. But summer- summer just glides in, right on time for Memorial Day barbeques.

I've been spending my time honoring its arrival, with walks, fruits, beers, canoeing, and just hanging out. It's an intense combination of activities, specifically designed to maximize appreciation for the heat and greenness of the outside world.

As much as I love New York, I am also soaking in being in the country. My friend's mom told me she was surprised I was living in the city, and as I went to respond, I realized I was too. We were talking outside after just having walked up from the lake, and the air smelled fresh, and for a second I wondered what the hell I was thinking dwelling amidst all those buildings. But, as she and I concluded, everything is a trade-off. So now I trade for six months in the country... we shall see.