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Friday, February 29, 2008

Lower Ninth

Photo/Joan Marcus

Right from the start, you can tell Gaius Charles is a TV actor. As Malcolm (a fierce but too often overcooked James McDaniel) cries out evangelically over a trash-bag wrapped corpse, Mr. Charles (who plays Malcolm's malcontent son, E-Z, aka Ezekiel) chews up the stage with big rolling eyes, a tilted head of disapproval, and a clenched lip -- not at all to the benefit of the man he's standing atop a dilapidated roof with, but so that we, the audience can see that he's not happy to be there. As if things weren't obvious enough in Beau Willimon's uneven new play, Lower Ninth.

Ignoring the problems with the set (the roof is set at floor level, the lights are smooth, and the room is quietly air-conditioned, none of which allow us to imagine the wake of Hurricane Katrina), and the issues with Mr. Charles's physicality, the first half of Lower Ninth is a pretty good play. Malcolm, who is attempting to atone for his reckless abandonment of E-Z, has come back at just the right time, and with the two of them stuck on a roof with nothing but a corpse, they've got plenty of time to catch up. The script flows easily through biblical interpretations (Noah's ark offers an explanation for where white people came from), anecdotes about hardness (E-Z becoming the accidental king of an island), and character-revealing games of 20 questions, and both Mr. McDaniel and Mr. Charles have a fine way of bristling at one another, the former holding on to a newfound sainthood, the latter holding on to his survival-instinct anger.

But then, after a quiet moment in the darkness, the lights come on to reveal the corpse, Lowboy (Gbenga Akinnagbe), playing with a lighter. He admits that he's "worm food," and it's obvious that the scene is half-hallucination and half-E-Z's guilt, but the entire scene must've been cooked up by a Beau Willimon spending too much time out in the sun: everything that passes between them is either reductive of the present circumstances -- as when Lowboy predicts E-Z's future death -- or redundant, as when Lowboy reminds E-Z of the difference in their street cred, and how all that means absolutely nothing if you can't swim. There's some funny lines ("My granma could've held that corner in her walker"), but it's not real, and Lower Ninth, dealing with such tragedy, needs to be real.

And speaking of real, that's where Daniel Goldstein faces some critique as a director. It's not just Donyale Werle's set that looks fake and -- worse still -- safe; it's the staging, too. In one scene, actors are complaining of the worst effects of dehydration, in the next, they're bouncing around, climbing up onto the chimney, or stripping of their shirts in the baking heat, preparing to dive into poisonous water. If as much time is passing as the shifting sun of Ben Stanton's lighting would have us believe, then these characters should be getting less energetic and more serious as the play continues, and instead, the opposite happens. Hell, what should be the peak of drama -- a father hydrating his son by force-feeding him blood -- comes across as the stuff of soaps, only with fewer repercussions, seeing as the play has only eighty minutes to wrap itself up.

It's hard to make sense of why it took so long for disaster relief to reach New Orleans, and I admire that, for the most part, Lower Ninth focuses on faith and family rather than on blame. But the only feeling of circumstance comes from the script, not its characters or its design, which makes going to see Lower Ninth akin to heading off to New Orleans only to keep one's head buried in a book the whole time. I saw this play, but it sure doesn't feel like I was really there.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Cat's Cradle

Photo/Edward Einhorn

Just as making a cat's cradle is deceptively deeper than it looks, so it goes with adapting Kurt Vonnegut's less-than-sunny novel, Cat's Cradle. Edward Einhorn takes a pretty good crack at it, but his condensations of plot come at the expense of the characters, and his definitions of Bokononism's terms come across as anti-foma, that is, truth that hurts the narrative of the play. Worse still, while the calypso lyrics are mostly ripped from the pages, they're roughly delivered by a chorus of musicians who, quite frankly, aren't very good. And worst of all, the direction often forces the play -- most particularly the explanation of ice-9, a central conceit -- to compete with the music: to accurately quote a Bokononist, it's all busy, busy, busy.

A rowdy, loose atmosphere is perhaps not the best way to approach an adaptation of the already meandering Vonnegut's satirical work, but all that chaos does produce some nice effects. The hero, John (Timothy McCown Reynolds), is a solid block of rationality, and when he's in focus -- talking to the naive American capitalists, Hazel and H Lowe Crosby (Sandy York and Michael Bertolini) or dealing with the well-traveled and calm US Ambassador Minton and wife, Claire (John Blaylock and Jenny McClintock) -- the show is delightfully tongue-in-cheek. And both Darius Stone (as Papa Monzano, a dictator so jovial that death by 'the hook' seems pleasant) and Jerome Brooks (as a happily ignorant bellhop) are successfully kooky. But this revolving cast of characters on John's tour as a reporter also include Dr. Breed (a generic Daryl Brown), Philip Castle (a very insecure and insincere Martin J. Mitchell), and Newton Hoenniker (a sleepy Sean Allison), and that's when the sloppiness shows. The problem isn't just with the actors -- Horace V. Rogers, who plays a Cheshire-like Bokonon, has a beautiful bass voice -- but that these personalities clash so severely: though most of them wear the same cultish white-cotton outfits (they don tops or bottoms to play other roles), the whole play is dissonant, which makes the black-lit climax rather mundane, i.e., more of the same.

The one wholly original device is the playful model set designed by Evolve Company (Tanya Khordoc and Barry Weil), a much needed bit of color and life among the drab curtains and plain costumes. It's also totally in sync with the text -- Mr. Weil, who spends most of the play manipulating a miniature camera along tiny streets, doubles as the elusive Frank Hoenniker, an excitable man-child who enjoys models. The crisp, clean translation of this stylistic element is what's so missing in the music -- Henry Akona's compositions, which should, given the anthem, be "Nice, Nice, Very Nice," are rough, rough, very rough.

Mr. Einhorn is on to something with his adaptation of Cat's Cradle, but at close to three hours, he needs to distill it to a greater extent, to rearrange those molecules from simply being a play (one filled with silly and superfluous scenes in graveyards or with sugar mill owners) into the sort of play-nine that forever alters the audience with the simple seeding power of a thought. If science is magic that works, then it's time for this company to look toward science, for the random hocus-pocus they've got right now isn't working.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Happy Endings

First, and most importantly: yes, there is a happy ending. It's probably not the one you'd expect from a one-act play festival that commissioned nine playwrights to share their take on the sex worker industry, but it's a pretty satisfying evening all the same. There are a few rough spots that -- pardon me -- could've used more lube, by which I mean hard (or soft -- I can't stop!) revisions, the kind that I could have used to prevent this sentence from growing . . . out of control. Luckily, the evening balances between the poetic bookends (Beauty and Yes Yes Yes), absurd slapstick (Pulling Teeth), casual comedy (Switch), and calm drama (Whenever You're Ready). Whether dealing with first-timers (Peep Show), old pros (The Guest), or the dysfunctionally kinky (The White Swallow), there's something for everyone. And given the smart directorial choices regarding ambiance and musical transitions, the whole night's quite engaging.

We open with Blair Fell's Beauty, a voyeur's (David Johnston's) monologued fantasy about the dancer (Joe Curnutte) he watches, a fantasy that, like true beauty, can only live in his mind and at a distance: "Don't risk passion by closeness," he says, and then later, "Beauty is not in actual life, but in memory. Memory you can repair." As the voyeur pours his heart out, we're left to wonder how the dancer -- swerve, swerve, head, head, jiggle, jiggle, pause -- actually sees himself: the answer comes as a rude awakening.

In David Foley's Switch, two plays collide -- a comedy about the ancient art of male prostitution, which the hysterically Italian Massimo (Phillip Taratula) takes very seriously ("I would never be no woman's plaything"), and then more awkwardly a rumination on the scientific work being done on mice to "switch" their genes from homo- to heterosexuality. Problem is, Earl (Adam Rihacek) really just wants to get laid, and so the play, while generating laughs from the former ("What is it like to have men's peepee in your bum?") goes nowhere with the latter.

Christine Whitley's Peep Show takes a quieter approach, using a lot of silence to give us the feeling of true voyeurism. Woman (Laura Desmond) pays Man (Robert Buckwalter), presumably a "talent scout" for a peep show outfit, or possibly just an honest pair of eyes, to look at her, a simple task that becomes an outpouring of need and emotion: "Admire me. Touch me. See me," she pleads, and though she's in a maid's outfit by this point, standing on a block, it's one of the most honest (and highest) points of the night.

Whenever You're Ready, by John Yearley, takes a similar approach, as Man (Carter Jackson) pays a Woman (Tracey Gilbert) for the privilege of sketching her nude. As the woman narrates, speaking interstitially to the audience as the man attempts to draw, we get the first glimpse of the bitterness some of the people in the industry have for their career: this woman is 35 years old, and only now becoming aware of her emotion, finding herself more naked in an ankle or beautiful shoulder than in the body that she has made so easily available, just to shut people up.

Finally, in the last piece of Act I, Matthew Freeman's The White Swallow, audiences get to delight in Matthew Trumbull's brilliantly over-the-top portrayal of a man, Nick, with a very curious fetish. Like another of Freeman's one-acts (Trayf, which largely used the same cast), it's a skit that has been thoroughly grounded by strong lines (that make completely fractured sense) and by his core actors: David DelGrosso, as the innocent, bewildered call-boy, is a great foil for Trumbull, and Laura Desmond, as Nick's wife, is a jagged point that manages not to puncture, but to sharpen the fine edges in this piece. Yes, it's silly: but given the production value, not at all implausible, and that's what makes its ridiculousness work.

The same can't be said of Brian Fuqua's The Guest, but this one's going for playing up familiar tropes in an endearing way, and therefore succeeds whenever it stays in check. The shock value of Link Sailor's (Alexis Suarez's) gear is as superfluous as the dildo he brings; the play works best when it's simply lovers Colin (F. Dash Vata) and Curtis (Brian Fuqua) quibbling over the small things, or drooling over the big thing. At any rate, I've never seen such a amicable three-way; I'd never considered that there could be real love -- or torte -- involved.

Speaking of fresh insight, David Johnston's closer, Yes Yes Yes, returns to the same dancer (or at least the same actor and outfit) as in the first play, only this time to find eroticism in the intellectual, as Man (Jim Ireland) accidentally piques the dancer's interest in his recondite reading: Finnegan's Wake. And why shouldn't a go-go dancer be able to soliloquize about Joyce? It's a great note to leave the theater on.

The few bad notes: Stan Richardson's AIDS Reveal (about what you'd expect from the title, and not much more elegantly done) and Boo Killebrew's Pulling Teeth, both of which seem to suffer from going off topic. In AIDS Reveal, three unrelated groups of people receive the dreaded "I've got HIV, and so might you" phone call, and then go into their heads to discuss it with the audience -- and more awkwardly, each other. Little happens in actuality, as with Pulling Teeth, which is just a bad joke stretched out too far, from the Easter Bunny (Taratula) trying to set a hooking Tooth Fairy (R. Jane Casserly) straight to Mrs. Claus's (Tracey Gilbert's) attempts to live vicariously through the sex lives of those on the "naughty" list. I longed to be surprised by something other than campy cleverness (her group CollaborationTown has that down cold), only to be left with a toothless frown.

I think the moral of Happy Endings is clear: writing about the sex industry got these playwrights trying new positions and getting creative juices flowing, and the refusal to play by the book (I'm not talking about the Kama Sutra) is what makes most of the night so surprisingly real, so honestly funny. Who needs a massage? Go straight for the Happy Endings.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road)

Photo/Kenneth Collins

It's interesting to note that Kenneth Collins doesn't call Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) a play -- he opts for "performance" instead. Well, that's true, what with the tightly framed "stage" (a pair of transparent changing-room mirrors), the languid language (mostly delivered in breathy whispers), and William Cusick's Lynchian dream projecting onto a widescreen banner above the set. I'd go with the word "experience" instead, as the whole production is so uniquely compelling -- controlled to the point of ultimate enthrallment -- that you won't soon forget this show.

The plot operates loosely around the fugue of Wyatt (Brian Greer), a drifter with blood on the dashboard, and the memories of Hunter (Ben Beckley), who may have murdered a hitchhiker. Women (Stacey Collins, Lorraine Mattox, and Jessica Pagan) filter in and out of the boxed set, eerily resembling one another in the dark, and the two men stoically wend their way around and through them. Shot as a photo-realistic noir (Cusick uses still photos as a digital background that he places behind the actors), the film plays out as a fantasia for the ghost-like actors below, who say cryptic things like "I ain't here to perpetuate your delusions" and "You're like one of them rides at Disneyland. You make me dizzy."

The set-up -- mirrors, the interplay between what's live and what's recorded, and vocal style -- all works to perpetuate the idea of the double. Even the film has symmetrical sections: scenes run backward and forward, always steadily panning to or from something; there's even a musical interlude ("Everybody's Got Their Demons") that injects a Tarantino-sized dose of adrenaline. On one level, the play is about coping with those energetic demons from the past, but that comes across from the duality of Man: Hunter sits at a campfire, forcing Wyatt to repeat his axioms about the necessity (and therefore unapologetic nature) of sin; in other scenes, Hunter and Rose (Mattox) echo the sweet-and-sour nothings of a voice track, or simply lip-sync the words, as if there were two entirely different characters there.

In terms of pacing, Welcome to Nowhere is slow, but utterly sustained, a narrative device that's justified by the endless drifting of its twinned protagonists. There are lengthy shots of highway sprawl, broken up by the ebb of superimposed memories and the occasional act of surprisingly raw violence, and these scenes -- especially paired with the lighting -- all work to maintain an ominous and moody atmosphere. If it's one that is confusing, so be it; you certainly can't blame anyone in this fantastic cast for your own perceptions.

Welcome to Nowhere is like brazenly sticking your head out the window of a car speeding through the night; it's sometimes hard to make out what's happening, but the wind slapping across your face feels so good, you don't care. Don't try to unpack the bags; just hop in the passenger seat and let Collins take you for a ride.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Emerging Artists Theatre Festival: "Claymont" and "The Play About the Naked Guy"

- Claymont

Are there really places like Claymont, Delaware, where even the name is just another metaphor for the soul-sucking town? (Sounds like a mountainous place, but it's geographically flat.) Or times like 1969? which aside from references to Funny Girl and Bewitched, seems here to be an ironically repressed period, at least if you're a gay artist, trying to sculpt something out of your formative teenage years. Even if there weren't, Kevin Brofsky's written a play so plausible that it manages to defy the cliches one normally finds in this genre. Even his overly comic devices, like Dolores (Wynne Anders), find real heart in their human concerns, while others, like Sharon Letts (Aimee Howard), succeed by playing against type.

We first meet the lead, Neil, as he caroms through the living room, happily vacuuming for a fourth time (this allows him to loudly sing Broadway show tunes). Jason Hare wisely plays him as an excitable boy whose repressed sexuality has makes him uncomfortable in his own skin, which also leaves a lot of room for cooler, subtle moments where Neil, in the presence of Dallas Hitchens (an easy-going Stephen Sherman), is so busy unabashedly relaxing -- not just with a crush, or a father-figure, or simply a friend -- that he reads like an open book. Furthermore, by adding so many layers to the relationship between Neil and Dallas, Brofksy widens the scope of the play: it's not about being closeted so much as it is about feeling alone. That's something that Neil's mom, Shayna (Glory Gallo) shows glimpses of as she talks about caring for her paralyzed husband, or that's obvious from the way Grandma (Rebecca Hoodwin) spends all of her time dreaming of Hollywood Squares, as much a prisoner of the sofa as anything else.

The problem with Claymont, however, is the same as the one in the town: it's flat. It's fine to be casual, but Brofksy should take Dallas's advice to Neil and add a cave of blood to the center of his project, because right now there's not much to get people talking. (As long as we're comparing the play to its art, it also resembles the set's walls: a series of rectangular patches that are more often empty frames than spots of color.) Natural as the circumstances may be, and genuine as Jason Hare is, the play moves rather slowly, something that's not helped by Mrs. Hoodwin's lifeless recitations or by Mr. Sherman's passionless aggression. Neil, who is trying to win a scholarship out of Delaware, works like he has something to lose (or something to gain, as when he "goes to the moon"), but Dallas, who, despite facing the draft and the very bureaucracy he protested -- Mr. Ramsey, the art teacher, well-played by Ron Bopst -- hardly seems there at all.

I know, at least from the script, that '69 was a time in which people didn't have a cow, but the play needs to focus more on the clash between Neil's silent struggle and Dallas's rebellion: it doesn't matter how high the stakes are if no-one acknowledges that they're there.

- The Play About the Naked Guy

Taking into account my potential bias (Full Disclosure: I write a blog with this playwright), I'd say the only flaw with David Bell's insider satire, The Play About the Naked Guy is that if Charles Isherwood really had raved about The Integrity Players' latest play, they wouldn't have had to team up with the gleefully reprehensible producers of "Naked Boys Running Around Naked" to bring in the audiences. Then again, I hear that My First Time and Awesome 80's Prom just recouped their investments even as shows like Is He Dead? struggle to fill the houses, so there's some hard truth to the question of integrity at the heart of Bell's soft comedy. If acting is considered therapy, consider what playwriting is, especially with stone-cold lines like, "We made $90!" "Throw in $21.50 and you'll have enough for The Little Mermaid."

Aside from such mordant turnabout (worry not, there's very little fair play), the play goes above and beyond with its characters, all cranked up to 11 by director Tom Wojtunik. The Integrity Players themselves are: Harold (Wayne Henry), who, from his hilarious British lilt is obviously the actor of the group; Dan (Jason Schuchman), the upright moralist and director (sometimes his clipboard disappears, could it perhaps be up his ass?); and Amanda (Stacy Mayer), his pretty (pregnant) wife and all-around endearing ditz. In other words -- the fodder, or contrast, for the truly over-the-top characters: a trio of villainous gay men straight out of Ugly Betty by way of Will and Grace (Christopher Borg, Christopher Sloan, and Chad Austin), Amanda's deliciously DeVille-like mother (Ellen Reilly), and a cocky porn star named Kit (Dan Amboyer).

As Bell flips from disillusionment to desperation to debauchery, the jokes keep coming, staying well above the depressing underbelly of theater ("No one goes to Cymbeline because they want to") as he exposes the truth of production photos, the life of rich and carefree producers, and the secret of method acting. All this while simultaneously fleshing out Harold as a "new gay" coming to terms with himself, Kit as a wannabe actor who finds salvation in a "man" named Uta Hagen, the difficulties of working with your spouse day in and day out, not to mention all the behind-the-scenes work of "Jesus Christ, He's Hot!"

There isn't much that Mr. Bell doesn't throw at the audience, and if he has to repeat himself a couple of times while transitioning, so be it: his jokes are funny, and the cast is recklessly hysterical. He's also well-partnered with Mr. Wojtunik, who not only keeps the play building to a mercilessly funny conclusion, but even throws in a key montage or too: just enough to poke a little bit of fun at Hollywood. And if you can't laugh at that . . . .

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Thicker Than Water 2008

I see a lot of one-act festivals as part of my work with New Theater Corps -- I find that they're a great way to catch up-and-coming artists, to see boundaries being pushed in experimental short pieces, or simply to showcase artistic and directorial talents. So I'm disappointed with the output of the under-35 Youngblood group, which, if Thicker Than Water 2008 is any indication, is happier treading water, getting their feet wet, and playing in the kiddie pool, than diving into anything serious (or funny). At best, the seven plays here put the cute in dysfuncutetion (as with Amy Herzog's 508); at worst, they sing -- badly (Delaney Britt Brewer's hippie folk musical about familial reconciliation It'll Soon Be Here).

The two exceptions are Courtney Brooke Lauria and Matt Schatz's musical, Co-Op, which is at quirky enough musically to get away with a stale tale of shy strangers, and Justin Deabler's excellent Red, Blue, and Purple, which dares the audience to watch as Dylan (Miguel Govea) meets for an uncomfortably revealing coffee with his former best friend, Nina (Kelli Lynn Harrison), whose shaky mental condition and conversion to religion -- "I Heard God speaking to me at the hot buffet -- are all just a bit too much for him, especially when she tries to help him switch back to heterosexuality.

The directing is efficiently done, but that's the last thing you want to hear in a review focusing on new one-act plays. It's also not enough, as the actors so often fall back on overemoting when they run out of things to actually say. Michael Sendrow's For Candy: A Dead Letter Written has an interesting concept -- a son gets a long-lost (and forgotten) letter from his now-dead mother -- but the suspense is literally throttled to death by the father's (Grant Shaud) patented Looks of Portent. Daria Polatin's La Fete (The Holiday) is full of caustic snaps from a teenage daughter dragged along on her mother and stepfather's honeymoon, only to settle for a hastily resolved happy ending. And while I'd love to say that Thicker Than Water simply suffers from not having enough time, Emily Chadick Weiss's Both wastes the entire 50-minute second act cracking similarly embarrassing jokes until they're neither embarrassing nor funny.

I've seen great stuff from Youngblood artists before, so maybe this is just their way of getting it out of their system, pissing, if you will, into a wide ocean of thick, middling water. But hey, would it be too much to ask for some waves?

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Politics: "Sand" and "Betrayed"

- Sand

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Watching Trista Baldwin's play Sand, which in turn features actors staring, Godot-like, at more sand, brings to mind the words of everysoldier Justin (Alec Beard): "It's like I'm thirteen, at summer camp." Aside from Anita Fuchs's blasted clay set and Traci Klainer's mirage-like transitions in light, the plight of these three US soldiers, guarding a gas station, seems like nothing so much as a camping trip in hostile territory. The so-young veteran, Armando (Pedro Pascal), watches his warnings scatter into the wind, especially off the backs of Justin, a breezy kid from Springfield, and Keisha (Angela Lewis), a quiet girl born of the Wal-Mart generation. The strength of Baldwin's play comes from their casual conversations, utterly natural and unassuming bits of grit that seem both dirty and new, all at once. The show also benefits from the expert direction of Daniella Topol, who has made the dusty desert into a dreamscape that dances through gauzy backdrops and spins in and out of time to create an echoing effect -- like that of an hourglass -- in which minute scenes each fall, into a meticulous pile, until suddenly, there's an explosive result. But Baldwin's finale, which doubles Pascal as a fleshed-out Iraqi named Ahmed (who gives lines to the invisible border and voices to the unspoken truth), is so stuck in this halfway world that neither it nor the Glass-like music of Broken Chord Collective are half as effective as the quiet before the storm.

- Betrayed

Photo/Carol Rosegg

That George Packer succeeds as a journalist-turned-first-time-playwright is a tribute to how rich and powerful the source material for Betrayed is. The number of Iraqi dead is always glossed over, especially as we try to avoid mentioning how many US troops have actually died, but that's not even considering how badly we've screwed some of the Iraqis who would help us. What Packer's play manages to do is show the ridiculous dichotomy of the Red Zone/Green Zone division of Iraq and the lack of real information that brings the government, and it does so through the idealism of Bill Prescott (Mike Doyle), a young US agent, and his three Iraqi co-workers: polite, Metallica-loving Laith (Sevan Greene); pessimistic, necessity-driven Adnan (Waleed F. Zuaiter); and the liberal, intelligent woman, Intisar (Aadya Bedi). The tragedies in this play are true, and therefore even harsher, and given the excellent acting, these human faces are even harder to ignore than when they were inked in The New Yorker. Pippin Parker's direction for the Culture Project is clear and crisp -- if it is a little too methodical, that's forgiven, along with Packer's lazy exposition, in the attempt to bring a powerful message back home.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island (or, The Friends of Dr. Rushower)

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Is it any surprise that a cartoonist's alternative musical plays out similarly to his art? In Ben Katchor's The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or The Friends of Dr. Rushower (or, Is Indie Opera a Good Thing?), his assertively uneven lines and thin watercolor layers of thick color beam out onto flexible walls that do well to set the tone and mood of his festive anti-capitalist paean. Often sandwiched between two scrims are the actors, trilling their silly lyrics, but doing a marvelously fine job of fitting in, and behind them, the musicians, all four of whom switch handily from calypso ("GinGin's Song") to jittery jazz ("The Birth of Immanuel Lubang") to a throbbing backbeat akin to something you might hear channeled by The Postal Service ("Your Coat Will Be Ready At 9"). All told, the effect is dizzying and refreshingly new, but ultimately not all that satisfying of a production. It's as satisfying as I imagine the codeine-laced Kayrol Cola that's used to drug the stevedore population of slug bearers would be: stuporterrific in the theater, while under constant dosage, and bemusedly benign afterward. (And by "slug bearers," I mean the exploited workers [paid in date nut leaves] who load slugs of metal onto an America-bound ship, so that these ingots can hold down the nominally light electronic goods [like phones or toaster ovens] that would otherwise blow away. Seriously.)

As written by Katchor, this is all explained with a straight face, first by Dr. Rushower (Peter Friedman), and then exaggeratedly so by his daughter GinGin's (Jody Flader) depressive funk (girls and their empathy for the media's victims-of-the-moment). As the wealthy doctor casts about for a white knight to rescue his daughter (by means of some gamely sprinkled strawberry ice cream from the 33rd floor), he meets Immanuel Lubang (Bobby Steggert), an idealist who is drawn to consumer fiction -- that everyday prose poetry of the instruction manual. Steggert's the right choice for the role, laying on the same naive but determined charm that he used in 110 in the Shade, and his commitment to technical arias (not the arias themselves, but what they're about) re-enforces the limited ability of language. (This is perhaps the unspoken theme for the '07/'08 Vineyard season: The Piano Teacher avoided saying certain things, and the upcoming God's Ear speaks in Hallmark generalities.) As GinGin and Immanuel set out to liberate the minds of the slug bearers, they receive dire warnings from unibrowed George Klatter (a devilishly good Stephen Lee Anderson) and cryptic phone calls of love from Samson (Matt Pearson), who turns out (in this topsy-turvy world) to be a slug bearer himself.

For all the physical manipulations of the walls that make up Jim Findlay & Jeff Sugg's set, there's very little attempt made by director Bob McGrath to unpack anything, which is what saves the musical. The heft of the play is meant to be ridiculous, to be a specific sort of gravity (not gravitas) that allows us to simply bask in the satire of our society's ruthless manipulation of foreigners for labor ("They're not like you and I," sings Mr. Klatter, a benevolent rictus giving truth to the lie). And yet, I can't stop drawing comparisons to Urinetown -- the anti-musical twists, the abandoned idealism, the contrasts between social worlds -- and thinking that Slug Bearers is almost a little too out there to stick with audiences. The lyrics are mostly mundane, the music -- while excellent, and varied -- not at all catchy or memorable, and there's almost nothing in the way of character development.

It's a bold new world, and thankfully, the presentation is assertive enough to guide us through the uneven strokes. But The Slug Bearers comes down to being an extreme exercise in style that is entertaining largely in the face of being so defiantly different, not for being extraordinarily engaging.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Killing the Boss

Photo/Martin Snyder

Eve, the activist cum educator cum playwright at the center of Catherine Filloux's new play Killing the Boss, goes missing in an unnamed Southeast Asian country after trying to assassinate its dictator and then appears in a dream long enough to tell her mother that her vision's been poisoned: she keeps seeing what others don't have. This is akin to the empath's woe: she feels too much, but in this case, without her MS-ridden husband Doug around to check her math (and check her), she's taken matters into her own hands. It's an admirable concept, and it allows Filloux to refract elements of her own life (she's French, politically active, has fought for more rights in Cambodia, and is a playwright) into the play.

Unfortunately, that effect isn't just figuratively nightmarish, it's also literally so. Director Jean Randich seems imprisoned by a text that's stretching for dark humor (the ambassador, explaining to Doug that he is now "on the ground," has her words punctuated by Doug falling out of his chair onto the floor, and his wry retort, "I guess so"), and whereas her last collaboration with Filloux, Lemkin's House, brought out their best, Killing the Boss just drags across the stage. Little is done with Sandra Goldmark's tantalizing set (goldfish bags of water are suspended in an arc across center stage, transparent tarpaulins hang like grim scrims), and Matthew E. Adelson's lights are so often used that they detract from what's happening.

The effect Filloux seems to be after is what Doug labels "a strange existential kind of hilarity," one in which the author inserts specific objects (the song "Lady in Red," a red monkey mask, or a singing Superman lunch box) to try to disassociate us from what's really happening while at the same time grounding us through cultural landmarks. And in a void, these choices might work, helping us to distinguish the dross ("In this country there are ways . . . and means." "Is this a committee?") from the gold ("Do you know what's so special about evil? . . . The way people get away with it"). Instead, the shifts in and out of narrative viewpoints and between dream and reality (far too cleanly done to make us feel much of anything) become the emphasis of the show, and not the powerful sarcasms of an exchange like this:
AMBASSADOR: The leg has caused more than a certain kind of instability . . .
DOUG: Wouldn't you call the whole country "unstable"? What's a leg . . . ?
AMBASSADOR: No, we called it calm. Comparatively. (To herself.) Abject poverty does have a calming effect.
Another problem with Killing the Boss is the lack of substance -- Eve's parents, Pierre and Monique (Edward Hajj and Dale Soules) are remarkable only in that they are French and irate at Bush, but otherwise rendered irrelevant by Doug's presence; the same goes for Sal and the Boss's bodyguard (played at bipolar ends by Alexis Camins), who are more ideas and plot points than actual flesh and blood. Sue Cremin plays the role of Eve evenly, which keeps her from making any strong choices, and John Daggett is all too entrenched in the aimless petulance of Doug. It's not altogether surprising that the strongest characters are actually the shadier ones: the entertainingly evil dictator, The Boss (Orville Mendoza, quietly channels the menace he held in Blind Mouth Singing), and the graspingly neutral Ambassador (Mercedes Herrero).

It's worth mentioning, too, that the strongest moment of Killing the Boss comes during the play within the play, the one which Sal has written for his teacher, and which Eve describes as "a brutal play [coming] from such a sweet person." The brutality both of this vignette, and the way in which Eve is forced to reenact it for The Boss, are the only moments where something actually seems to be on the line, and is accordingly the only point at which the audience is truly listening. The rest of the play, passive and uninvolved (there's no sense of the unnamed country's plight or culture -- the red monkey myth could be from anywhere), is simply killing time.

Friday, February 08, 2008

The Lifeblood

Photo/Gerry Goodstein

For a moment, there's a brief lilt of classical music, a spotlight on an elegant tapestry, and the glimmer of hope -- and then the crushing sound of a cell door slamming shut. It's an abrupt introduction to Mary Stuart's world, a place where wire fences incongruously mesh with Elizabethan costuming. It's also a good way for the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble to kick off their new season with Glyn Maxwell's The Lifeblood, for it allows them to show both the beauty in this British poet's dialogue and the dark intrigue of his drama. It's also a chance to mix the broad strokes of the plot -- the delicious machinations of spymaster Francis Walsingham (Craig Smith) to find an excuse to execute former Queen Mary (Elise Stone) -- with their subtle exchanges.

The play starts deep into the eighteenth year of Mary's imprisonment/banishment in a modest mansion in Staffordshire (a place where "even the name is a form of punishment"). Though she keeps up her own appearance, her tapestries are damp and in disrepair, and Sir Amyas Paulet (Mark Waterman), her bitter jailer (as much a prisoner as she), has just sent away all of her staff, save for her loyal (although also bitter) aide, Claude Arno (Joseph J. Menino). Unable to physically prevent the deterioration around her, Mary turns to her hopes and dreams, seizing on a cypher provided by Thomas Gorge (Jason O'Connell) to help her communicate an escape. She becomes a woman of letters and subterfuge, and her every insult and thought is parsed and hidden beneath her broad smile, a tact that Elise Stone well embodies in the role. Though she stands diminutively, she cuts her enemies down ruthlessly, as when she remarks to Paulet, who has been reading her letters, "The ink is acid, so read them closely, dear." How comically caustic. Unfortunately, Sir Gorge actually works as a double-agent for Walsingham, and though he repents his betrayal later, after falling for the beautiful queen -- "Did you fuck her?" roars the delightful Walsingham, a crude yet absolutely methodical villain -- Mary's fate is sealed.

Robert Hupp's staging goes a long way to make all these betrayals work: he uses the shadows of the background to present ominous figures listening in during the happier moments of the first few acts, has them creep to the foreground, flittering from under the stairs and behind the wire fence. The space never changes, but Hupp's use of it keeps changing the way in which we perceive Mary's circumstances: as with the classical music that opens the show, there's the hint of beauty, a beauty which is stripped away more and more until Mary is left standing alone on the stage, desperation snaking its way into her voice, as she pleads with us -- the audience -- to exonerate her. (This neat trick is done by seating Walsingham and his fellow jurors behind the audience.)

The play rests on Mary's shoulders, and Stone's mix of sarcasm, sadness, and stubbornness carry that weight rather well. It should come as no surprise, though, that after her eventual beheading, the play falls apart: the final scene magnifies some of the inconsistencies in acting that are glossed over by Maxwell's clever writing. This brief moral of an ending doesn't ruin the show, but it does weaken The Lifeblood, and that's a shame, for it otherwise runs so clearly.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Offending the Audience

Photo/Max Ruby

The bad news is that after forty years, Peter Handke's play, Offending the Audience, no longer does so. The good news is that after forty years, Peter Handke's play, Offending the Audience, no longer does so: instead, it's an lively bit of non-theater that's been stripped down to negations and contradictions, and then dressed back up in turtlenecks and flawless dictions. In fact, it's so elegant that it's rarely shocking, unless you're surprised to find what could very well be a mixed-gender group of Deal or No Deal models speaking lucidly about the world of the stage that they are deconstructing: "We have no need of illusions to disillusion you."

But for a mob of 21 young actors -- playing themselves as they play with Handke's words -- they don't do much to smash through our staid conventions. They stand in place a lot, or sit, parallel to us, on a long bench across the wide-screen space of the Flea's underground theater. When they come up to the knee-high divider between us and them, they only occasionally cross it, and though they make eye contact, most of the crowd responded in kind, enough to the point where it actually seemed to unsettle some of the actors -- a few refused to acknowledge us at all, throwing their insults away on empty chairs instead. (Not that they weren't ever successful; I think I did fairly well matching Ronald Washington's gaze considering he was inches from my front-row face, but I eventually flinched.) Perhaps director Jim Simpson meant for this to happen: perhaps this unoffensive bit of play (that is not, they repeat, not a play) is meant to break down our barriers by not breaking them down. It is, after all, a play of contradictions.

The biggest and most delightful reversal is that all this talk of inaction is brought to life in a wonderfully active way: the actors trill their lines, merge powerfully together as a Greek chorus, and all look extremely attractive while doing so. Out of respect to the hard-working cast (and as practice for the few cast members who seem flat), I recommend that you stick around for Act II. If you can get past their intimidating wall of silence, you'll realize at last that once all the fun and games are over, the essential truth of the show -- that audience and actor are intrinsically no different -- shines through. That is, we may be "Merovingian dark agers," or "bimbos and bimbets," hell, even "killer pigs," but then again, so are they. So are we.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Hunting and Gathering

Photo/James Leynse

Brooke Berman's new play, Hunting and Gathering has the personal connection -- the playwright's been in and out of homes since the '90s (she writes about it on her blog) -- the hipster street cred of a YouTube tie-in, and a ticket initiative at the occasionally musty Primary Stages ($20 tickets through 2/2 with code PS35 if you're under 35). It features the teenage wonder of a LED stripe that announces the title of each scene, the young adult release found in playing the arcade game Buck Hunter, and the sad truths of life in New York City, painstakingly accounted for from couch surfing to housesitting, from brokers fees to subletting, from Craig's List to the Classifieds, and it does so pretty wittily. It's even got some dynamic personalities, from the transient "gatherer" Ruth (Kiera Naughton) to the young, in-the-moment "hunter" Bess (Mamie Gummer), both of whom are or have been involved with the man-child Jesse (Jeremy Shamos), a literary professor who doesn't know how to live on his own. And there's a breakout performance from Michael Chernus as Jesse's brother, Astor, a free-loving self-proclaimed Buddhist who's looking forward to his new career as "Man With a Van." (Who wants the "corporate sponsorship of a salary"?) So why does Hunting and Gathering seem so shallow?

The answer lies in all these brand-name woes: from Ikea to Park Slope ("a place where everyone pretends its Woodstock") to MapQuest, it's all just glittery surface. I mean, we're introduced to Ruth not as a character, but as a slide-show presentation of the former apartments where she's lived (this play got its start as a ten-minute one-act for MCC in which Berman did just that), and although she speaks of how she's been affected by the various places where she lives -- settling into the culture of each resident's book collections, their taste in movies, &c. -- there isn't an ounce of that in the way she stubbornly interacts with her best friend, Astor (who has such a big thing for her that he's willing to sleep on an air mattress for her -- an air mattress!). A lot of this play follows that same disconnect between what's said -- or rather, referenced -- and what's experienced.

This works rather well for the slick director, Leigh Silverman, and the nifty set designer, David Korins, as they're able to conjure up just about any prop they need from a giant wall of cardboard boxes. The script's about as deep as a hundred square foot studio, but Silverman makes it work, realizing, more than the characters in the play, the concept of Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." Since there are no walls, just wide open space, she allows the actors to make their own walls and limitations, which heightens the truth of Berman's play: home is what you make it.

By definition then, the play's also what the actors make it, and here, they're on good terms. Even though Bess has little purpose in the play beyond being Ruth's opposite, and Jesse's girlfriend, Mamie Gummer plays her with real gumption -- when Jesse points out that she's his student, she reminds him, "I'm only auditing," and then, with a twinkle in her eye, "Want to make out?" Ultimately, it's not much of a surprise that the best moments are those that stand back from Berman's glib writing and hyper modernity -- in a scene called "The Middle of the Night," the focus shifts from Ruth's side of the stage, weird noises and dead, headless birds on the roof, to Jesse's side, where he gobbles down Swedish Fish, trying to get over his loneliness. Both move for the phone, both put it down, and it's only now, with the house cleared of all that distracting clutter, that we actually see them as people. Only Michael Chernus manages to channel that same feeling into his lines, decorating each one with a Christmas-lighting of subtext.

Perhaps the shallowness of the play is necessary to express the sorts of characters that Berman is dealing with. And maybe I'm naive in thinking that Ruth and Jesse are a little too old to be so passive and adrift (the 30s are the new 20s). But I wish there were less packing peanuts in this big-box play, because underneath all the Styrofoam wit, these lonely characters are aching to make a connection.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Photo/Nordland Visual Theatre

At times reminiscent of the best in both Cabaret and Maus, Wakka Wakka's puppet-driven drama, Fabrik, is no less heartbreaking on its miniature scale. The play begins innocently enough, with a lighthearted song from the proud Jewish businessman Moritz Rabinowitz (David Arkema), and an introduction to some of his forty rules for success, and slowly grows darker. The first glimpse of something amiss is when socialite Mrs. Hansen (Gwendolyn Warnock, who plays all the female parts) deliberately snubs him -- in his own suit-making shop -- choosing instead to talk with Moritz's soft-spoken, Beaker-like assistant, Mr. Askeland (Kirjan Waage, who also created the puppets and masks). For a puppet, the expression on his face is quite complex -- almost as if he's eating his lower lip -- and then with only a pause of resignation, he gets back to his work.

We meet his daughter, Edith, as she pirouettes through the air (a dazzling effect achieved by having one black-suited actor manipulate the hand-and-rod puppet, as another delicately adjusts the feet), and soon after, his wife, Johanna, a gentle soul driven to depression because of how ostracized they are in the community. These small details help to humanize the puppets, as does the visual presence of the actor as a shadow, a ghost-like presence that brings, for a moment, the past to life.

The puppets also bring a high level of visual creativity to the show: Moritz is a visionary, and he predicts early on what the rise of the Nazi part will mean for the Jews living in Norway. In one dream, he flies through the air, being chased by strafing fighter planes, and he is saved -- after some initial confusion -- by a red-capped Norwegian; in another, he plummets to the bottom of the sea, and even there he isn't safe. Furthermore, Waage's puppets have some real menace to them behind, a darkness you won't find on Sesame Street. Hitler speaks comically, but glowers with more than plastic, and Winston Churchill, who appears like a phantom from a radio tube, seems all the more real despite his intense cigar-chewing caricature. In the best scene, a masked actor, appearing as a menacing, inhuman SS soldier, holds two rods above a prisoner puppet and forces, in a sequence of meta-marionette action, that character, Fritjolf Koehler, to crack jokes ("Take my wife, please. Oh, wait . . ."). It may just be a puppet, but the tears he chokes back in a veil of bitter, forced laughter are real.

Save for a repetitious song by an old man with an accordion (the antisemitism is already in plain view), Fabrik pulls every single string with real brio that I can hardly express on paper. The show comes full circle, recasting the opening number in the much harsher light of a camp in Sachsenhausen, and explodes in a moment that is both cathartic and traumatic. But more importantly, it nails one of the most tragic elements of this story: Moritz is not a Jewish businessman; he's a businessman. No, not a businessman: a man.


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Gunta Stolzl | the artist

The artist Gunta Stolzl
Born March 5 1897, Munich, Germany.
Died April 22 1983, Zurich, Switzerland.
Style and technique of the artist: Design, Bauhaus,

Gunta Stolzl artworks on eBay
Original artworks, prints, exhibition posters, monographs, books, collectibles.

Biography and art, auction, artworks, interview, statement, website:

The Bauhaus Weaving Workshop has only lately been given its due acclaim. It is true that it was represented in all the major Bauhaus shows - as far back as 1938, the year the exhibition Bauhaus 1919-1928 was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York . Not until 1976, and again in 1987 did the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin organize exhibitions, devoted foremost to the work of the textile artist Gunta Stölzl, while comprising an overview of other Bauhaus weavers, students and their work...

1919: Begins her studies at the Bauhaus Weimar. Attends Johannes Ittens classes and in 1921 the first class given by Paul Klee. 1922: attends course in dyeing techniques in Krefeld and establishes dyeing facilities at the Bauhaus. Her abstract works on paper show the influence of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. They anticipate the boldly colourful abstract wall hangings and blankets produced from 1923 onwards. 1923: passes journeymans examination as a weaver. 1924: assists Johannes Itten to establish the Ontos Weaving Workshops near Zurich. Attends weave and fiber technology courses in Krefeld...

Schlitzgobelin Rot-Grün

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text:
Community record

Community Record notices must be received in writing at The Daily Record no later than 10 a.m. two days prior to publication. Notices for weekend editions must be received on or before Thursday. They will run only once.

Tuesday, Feb. 5

Orrville Jelly City Seniors, 9 a.m., Buehler's Community Room, Orrville.

Wednesday, Feb. 6

Wayne Holmes Mental Health Coalition, 12:30-2 p.m., peer support group, MOCA House, 637 College Ave., Wooster. 330-264-1590 for more information.

Spaghetti dinner, 5-8 p.m., Shreve American Legion. Cost is $6.95 for spaghetti, salad bar, garlic bread and fruit. The public is welcome to attend.

Wayne County Salon No. 372 of 8 et 40, 1 p.m., Doylestown American Legion. Dorothy Downs is hostess.

Government meeting

Wednesday, Feb. 6

Fredericksburg Board of Public Affairs, 7 p.m., Village Hall.

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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

36 - 24 - 36 ! Hot ?!

Read that in degrees Celsius... and drag your mind out of a beauty pageant or the gutter, as the case may be. That's the temperature swing in Mumbai nowadays.
For those who don't want to do the maths, that's about 96- 75 -96* F !

Men look for reasons (other than the nudge-wink ones!) to stay back in their air-conditioned offices, women keep checking inside their freezers every half an hour and kids, well, kids always have a zillion reasons why they should eat ice-cream ... even in winter!

And in the midst of all this, are my Phalaenopsis orchids. They've been in spike since Jan. and now the initial nubs have lengthened into long, elegant stalks with buds on them. I think the green buds are going to be either white or yellow flowers.

For the first time, I managed to bring three of these phals in bud over to the apartment. They're normally kept outdoors in my other garden but I couldn't bear missing out on the fun of watching the buds grow every day. So I carried them on my lap all the way here and kept hissing at my husband everytime he drove into a pot-hole.
Considering the condition of roads in Mumbai, there was a lot of hissing done as each slim spike wobbled around dangerously like a drunken giraffe running the 100 m.

Now that they're here, my main job is to make sure that the window on whose sill I've lodged them, is opened just that much, enough to let in fresh air but not enough to make those greedy sparrows comfortable enough to flit in and snack on phalaenopsis sushi. Sparrows are weapons of mass destruction, I'm convinced of this.

This couple was busy building a nest right next to the air-conditioner unit. There was a tiny gap between it and the wall into which only a sparrow could fit. And in true-Mumbai style, the space for one sparrow soon became enough for Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow and a whole nest of little ones on the way. So far, so good. Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow made quick trips to the coconut tree conveniently close to their new home and got all the basics for their home.

Then, Mr.Sparrow started getting ideas. He thought of feathering his nest ... with my asparagus fern! I had been diligently training it over the grill outside my window, hoping to look out at green, delicate foliage instead of ugly buildings when along came the Sparrows and that was the end of that!

No way am I allowing them to feast on my precious Phals too. So in spite of the increasing heat , this window is closed to flying traffic.

I think the heat is getting to me ... I dont know why I'm feeling so aggressive and hostile.

  1. Leave it to those enterprising sparrows to find a way. They are a bird of opportunity throughout the world. Stay safe little orchids.

  2. 36°C sounds warm. Over here it is just about 30°C nice and pleasant.
    My (dragonfly) pond is getting plenty of avian traffic especially during hottest times. In fact now, there is almost a regular membership.

  3. Ahhhaaa ,
    I am normal ... I've been hissing at just about everyone ... its the heat I knew it ... over at our end of mainland too... conditions are as grim ... and lady... you think sparrows are weapons of mass destruction... have you been introduced to biological warfare by the name ,pigeons ... aaaaahhhh .... they give you all ...worms... poop... odour... and if thats not enough...ooodles of trash with love...
    Hey Sunita ... I love the thought of blooming phalaenopsis ... are they going to be white or pink ...
    Hey how about another suspense thriller... how long have Sunitas' phalaenopsis buds grown ... countdown to bloom day ...
    love the images ...

  4. Hi Sunita,
    Lovely to chance upon your blog, followed you from the comments left on Archana's blog. And its lovely to see someone passionate about gardening in the city - All i manage to grow in my balcony are some herbs for the kitchen, some Chinese bamboo and a fast growing mango sapling. Am bookmarking your blog!

  5. You know, Tina, its only in an apartment that one realises just how much of a nuisance sparrows can be. Its almost as if with the other birds moving out of the way, sparrows take over the world!

  6. Warm? Amila, its tongue-haning-out hot here. Adding to the miseries of the high temperatures are the heat traps that all our concrete buildings and roads create. And there are hardly a handful of trees to act as a buffer.
    I envy you your pleasant climate. And of course, your pond resort !

  7. Rajee, a bit of hissing is to be expected in these trying times! Its a fact of life.
    Pigeons? Ugh! Why do these birds who're so nice at a distance, turn nasty in close proximity ?
    I just got my A/C back from repairs after they stuffed it full of twigs and nesting material. But so far they've left my plants alone. Which makes them okay in my books :)
    About the phals ... the one with reddish buds are a pink-purple flower. I think the green buds will turn out to be white or yellow, maybe with a bit of pink dots. I think.
    I'll post when the buds bloom open, okay?

  8. Hi Nandita! Hey, its great seeing you over here. I've stopped by your blog quite often and drooled over the yummy photos and even yummier food !
    What you've got growing is great for a balcony garden. Are you really sure about that mango sapling though? Just checking ;) Maybe you can turn it into a bonsai. Or plant it outside your building and watch it grow up to your balcony.
    What herbs do you grow?

  9. How lucky, Sunita, to have sparrows around your home. We have none here :( I've spotted them in other places of Chennai but not a single one here. Besides it was gonna become an endangered species few years ago. Thanks to people like you that they're saved!

  10. Matter of opinion, Chandramouli! When they're raiding and tearing apart my plants to do up their nest, they're NOT a bird whose continuation of species I'm too bothered about ! Otherwise, yes, their little antics amuse me and I keep drawing parallels to the common man on the streets of Mumbai.

  11. It is always exiting when one of the Orchids start to flower. I love the Phals they are like huge Butterflies. Their stems are so long and the buds so vulnerable, it does not take much to break it. It has happened to me. Are you sure you do not want to share just one bud with the sparrow family?? Would I? No way! In our area we do not have sparrows. We have native, noisy miner birds, we also call them Micky birds because they mime other birds calls. They are similar in their behaviour to sparrows, chase away all the other birds. Your story is cute about the sparrow family. A hurray for survivers. Here the temps slip a little as we go into autumn, around 27-28C to 22C at night just nice like this. Please show your orchid when it is in flower. Always enjoy reading your posts.

  12. I thought you were describing the coke bottle with those measurements LOL. Sunita your husband was probably the happiest man to get home after all that hissing ROFL . I thought that I was bad when my husband is driving, he always seems to drop into the pot holes on the passenger side of the car whenever am carrying something in my lap! Sparrows are such bossy pesky little things and afraid of no one. They have ruined many orchid buds for me. I am now trying to keep the wood doves out of the bedrooms, they have crapped and built nests in the spare room that I now have to close the shutters. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that your orchid will bloom in peace. LOL

  13. I grow mint, sweet basil, thai basil, tulsi and a variety of bay leaf, that my nursery sold to me as all spice. The mango 'tree' has been growing in a small pot since two years, and it stands at around 2 feet height now - and I don't think my building will permit me to plant it (haven't asked) - I'm just happy to see it in my balcony for now! We'll be moving to Bglr in some months where we'll have a spot of land around the house to grow stuff, may be I'll set it up in a huge container there! Getting inspiration for that garden from you.
    Where in Mumbai do you have a garden big enough for teak and coconut trees- visited by exotic butterflies and such - I wonder!
    Will be around often!

  14. Oh! Chill dear Sunita. I know Mumbai's heat saps the energy out of you, but let the color of the lovely orchids - which make me Green with envy - and the air-conditioning keep you cool this summer.
    That Giraffe thing doing a 100m had my imagination running have a way with analogies:-)

  15. You are so much fun to read about. I had no clue you could train an asparagus fern. They don't survive in my part of NC long enough to train. We had your temps last summer and I wanted to run naked all day long. Of course I did not. I don't have those good body measurements to make it worth anyones effort to look.

  16. Trudi, I'm partial to Phals too. Its strange, I have hundreds of dendrobiums but only about 10 phals and yet when a phal is in bud I'm so excited about it.
    Share a bud with Mr.Greedy? No way! If I'm not careful, he may peck off my hair next to line his stupid nest .
    Enjoy your cooler climate, Trudi. I really envy you that. And yes,I'll definitely be posting when they flower:)

  17. Helen, surprisingly the sparrows leave my orchid buds alone in my other garden where they are kept outdoors all day. There I only have to worry about crows who pull the potted orchids out of their pots. Not to eat them, but searching for bugs hiding among the roots.
    Aaah! pest control gone haywire!
    Wood doves in your bedroom? They must really feel at home at your place to be trying to move in with you :)

  18. Thats a good blend of herbs, Nandita. did you grow them from seed? All Spice is a big tree isnt it? Anyway, you seem to have a very fragrant balcony!
    Mumbai seems to have space to accomodate everything, except play grounds for kids. It even has leopards in it so what are a few teak trees ? ;D

  19. I know, Green Thumb... but rising temperatures always make me flare up too. Its possibly some metabolic thing but I wilt in the heat :P
    Has summer caught up with you in Saharanpur too ?

  20. Anna, what a daring beat-the-heat idea! Come to think of it, you may just be raising the temperature for everyone else around. Let me know if you ever try it out :D
    About the asparagus, this is the Asparagus racemosus I think (not sure). It looks exactly like Asparagus densiflorus 'Sprengerii'. The only difference is that it is a climber. (It's highly valued in India, for the medicinal qualities of its rhizomes.) I really wanted a thick curtain of this asparagus screening my view of the building opposite us. Its been undergoing renovation for so long that its become a real eye-sore!

  21. poor bird - it had high hopes..

    but i was intrigued by the nudge-wink ones mention. i thought the wink had gone out of favor many years ago, except of course with bollywood and sarah palin..

    the nudge i understand..I thought Bombay is better off on that!

  22. strongly disagree with the "me stay back in a/c" bit ... most people i know wont stay back even for the a/c :) especially when there are better options like swimming pools or vaccation on top of tall hills :) worst case, men always have the option of walking around in just a pair of shots!

  23. forgot to mention - pretty good shots of the bud :) and congrats

  24. Maddy, I'm assured by my 16-year old son that winks are still trendy. I dont think it'll ever go off the 'in vogue' list as long as there are 16 - year old boys around. And 35+ men who think they're still 16!
    And don't get me started on the nudges ... it is literally a sore point for me.
    Better off? Mumbai can be as la-di-dah or as rural-hick as you could ever expect !

  25. Thanks about the photos, Sandeep.
    About the a/c, when the option is that you leave the chilled confines of your office to slug it out on a long-distance train, riding jam-pressed against half the sweaty population of this sweltering city for an hour or more ... which would you choose?
    Aargh! You just have to mention swimming pools and hills, dont you ? Mumbai doesnt have hills within easy reach. Oh, they are there but to get to them you'd probably have to sit in a traffic jam for 3 hours first, with the sun mercilessly beating down on your car-roof, while you slowly broil inside.
    Your worst case option makes me picture Mr. P from the flat opposite us, with his recession-challenging paunch ... truly the worst option, Sandeep ! :)

  26. They do seem to want to take over the world Sunita! Sparrows are the most common birds where I live, and they're here twelve months a year. I'm glad our sparrows are not so bold and leave my plants alone.

    I suppose they have fewer materials and good places to nest in an urban area and can become more bold and pesty.

    I love your post title - very attention-getting!

  27. I'll look forward to seeing blooms on your coveted orchid, Sunita. Those temps sound quite wonderful to me at the moment :) We had bright sunshine today for the vernal equinox, but the wind was still frigid.
    That's one enterprising sparrow you have there. It's too bad your fern lost the fight :(
    Happy spring Sunita! :)

  28. Hi Linda! Its almost like something out of a sci-fi movie, isnt it? Imagine hordes of sparrows taking over the world!
    I think they were emboldened by my relative inactivity against them.
    But I'm curious, how do they survive winters in Chicago?

  29. Hi Kerri! Imagine that, I'm dying for a cool breeze here and you're longing for sunshine .
    My asparagus was stripped leaf by leaf by those nasty sparrows but already a new spear has come up for the next shoot, so there's hope yet! :)
    er... here we're already in the middle of summer, Kerri (and I'm not saying that to tease you). I hope Spring catches up fast with you.

  30. Hi Sunita, I was googling to find out how to grow phal orchid at home, mainly in Bangalore where I stay, I found ur truly inspiring blog.I m must say ur orchid, grown in Mumbai has given me a lot of confidence :). I have got few phal keiki recently , yes they r as tiny as 2 inch leafspan. All this while I was thinking if B'lore is suitable for growing phal( temp 30 to 20c ) , I have kept them in my south balcony(no green house) , no direct sunight. I have only charcoal and small brick pieces as growing media, is it good enough? I m nt getting bark anywhere here. can u suggest how can i grow the keiki till boolm.
    ...and thanks for ur blog, it truly raises my hope...

  31. Hi Rupa, I'm glad you liked my blog.
    Here's the good news ... you dont need a greenhouse to grow orchids in peninsular India (unless you're living up in the mountains).
    Nor do you need bark. Coco peat is a good option when the plants are small and when they grow bigger you can repot into a mixture of charcoal and broken terracotta tiles (unglazed roof tiles) rather than broken bricks. Just make sure that the roots don't remain soggy wet for long and that water doesn't accumulate in the crown of the plant. Both lead to nasty diseases which you dont want happening to your precious plant.
    Keikis with 2" leafspan will take a bit of growing before they reach blooming stage so right now I think you should concentrate on getting them to grow healthily. Fertilise them regularly, at least once a week with nitrogen-rich fertiliser (not urea please) will give them the necessary spurt. "Weakly, weekly" is the advice given in all orchid books regarding the fertilising of orchid plants.
    By the way, I dont really follow what most books advise... they were written mostly for growers in colder, drier climates. In the tropics, we can afford to water orchids every day and in the evening if so inclined (which is considered sure death according to all the books and all the members in various online orchid forums).
    Incidentally, since Bangalore is not as humid as Mumbai, your plants will appreciate a spritz of water once in a while . You could place them near a water feature if you have one, or keep a small bowl of water near them.
    There is a lot of good advice (as well as ridiculous myths)on the Net. Read it all but try to adapt that advice to your own local conditions :)
    Hope this has helped a bit and not confused you more. You can mail me (you'll find my address on my Profile Page) if you need more info.

  32. Hi Sunita

    U r soooo right abt all the websites!! they indeed say something that is not so right in our country, specially in our condition. for example they wll say water every 10 to 15 days, but here i found my charcoal media gets dried every alternate day!!!
    I m happy that u r syaing all good things abt the conditions that I have provided and guess what, though they have only 3 tiny leaves each but I can c new roots growing..:)
    Yes humidity is a porblem here , hence i have kept them on try with a thin layer of water in it, NO, the botton of the pots r nt in touch with water.
    Thanks again and I wll get back to u if I need any more help...:)
    Can I post u my orchids photo? actually they r my 1st orchids and an "expaert veiw & comment" will b just gr8...:)

  33. Rupa, congratulations! If you see new roots its a sure sign that you've got a happy plant :)
    By the way, you may want to check the medium before you water. Sometimes the medium will look dry on the surface but if you insert a wooden skewer or pencil into the pot (gently, try to avoid damaging roots) sometimes you'll find that it is soaking wet inside.
    Do you use a clay or plastic pot ? That influences the need for watering to a great degree. Plastic keeps the medium moist for a much longer time.
    About the photo, can you send me a link to it in a photo storage site like Flickr instead? As a precaution, I dont open mail with attachments. I hope you'll understand ...
    And Rupa, I'm no expert on growing phals, you know. But I'll definitely pass on whatever tips I can :)

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But please note ... if there's a link in the comment, it will not be approved for publishing (sorry, but I'm getting way too much spam with links).


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Friday, September 7, 2012

My Grandma, the Boy's Great Grandma

Traits of my Grandma (in no particular order):

She made us pink kitty sweaters and silky blankets. We carried the blankets all over the house.

She tended her own garden. I was amazed as to how fast she could cut the steams off of fresh green beans!

She fixed us wonderful home cooked meals.

She made us popcorn for a nighttime snack.

She always had the cookie jar full of small homemade sugar cookies. Maybe it was just for when we came, but I thought it was always full.

She was the best shanghai rummy teacher and player. She was pretty good at playing Rummy Cube and Chicken Scratch (a game with Dominoes).

She loved going to garage sales. She picked up a lot of great finds. Mostly she went for fun.

She loved babies and little children. They loved her.

She was Mica's best friend when he was a few years old. He even said so.

She had the best bubbles in her hair. Mica thought her tight, white curls were bubbles.

She had a lot of titles: Mom, Grandma, Great Grandma, Dorothy and my Grandpa called her "Dot." I misspelled her name most of my life. I thought it was Dorthy. It's ok because I called her, "Grandma."

She was a good nurse. All of her daughters must have looked up to her because all four became nurses to.

She kept her house clean. She had a blue room and a pink room, where we slept when we stayed with her.

She kept a baby buggy, and a metal doll house for us to play with.

She kept all our letters and notes.

She paid for us to go to a movie when we visited. That was when movie prices weren't so expensive.

She made me an angel food cake for all of my birthdays; if we were visiting. I didn't have the heart to tell her I disliked angel food cake. It reminded me of eating a sponge. It was nothing against her cooking; I just don't like angel food cake. I always felt like it was the thought that counted.

She had the ability to raise one eyebrow, which said a lot. We knew when she disapproved of something. We also laughed about that raised eyebrow. Guess who else says a lot with his eyebrows? Isaak does! I think we might of made too much fun of her because she started plucking her eyebrows.

She came to our house, and my sisters and I waited at the window until her and my Grandpa arrived.

She watched Days of Our Lives, Johnny Carson and Dallas.

She was up before everyone else to make breakfast.

She always had hard candy for us in the car. Her favorites were rootbeer, butterscotch and coffee candies.

She helped us dye Easter eggs.

She bought us sweet tart candy for Easter time.

She was selfless.

Imagine how we felt when we found out she had Alzheimer's disease. The last ten years have been tough. She's at peace now. I love you Grandma!

Just before I learned of her passing today I saw these sweaters, which reminded me of something she would make:

I wish the boys would have known Grandma the way I knew her. At least Mica called her his best friend. For a little while they were at the same level. She grew down, while he grew up. Such a beautiful person she was!

~ Noelle said...

my Nana was my best friend...
not a day goes by that I don't wish she was here to play with Broxton...

My Journey With Candida said...

I am not sure how I missed this post.
What beautiful memories you have of your Grandmother. I never knew mine because I was very young when they died.

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Ten reasons why the UN must be abolished 23

Daniel Greenfield’s 10 Reasons to Abolish the UN is a must-read. Find it here.

These are the 10 reasons summed up in headings:

1. The United Nations Obstructs America’s Defense of the Free World

2. The United Nations is a Force of Global Injustice

3. The UN Obstructs the Prevention of Genocide

4. The UN Distorts Women’s Rights to Promote Violence against Women

5. The UN Cannot Prevent Nuclear Proliferation

6. The UN is an Undemocratic Perversion of Democracy

7. The United Nations is Hopelessly Corrupt

8. The UN is an Economic Drain on America

9. The United Nations Endangers American Civil Liberties

10. The UN Holds Human Rights Hostage to its Double Standards

The booklet is short, but every accusation is fully proved.

In his Conclusion, Greenfield writes:

The UN is a vast global employment agency with no purpose except the perpetuation of its own power and authority. Its lofty buildings and the bustle of its vast armies of employees conceal its underlying corruption and uselessness.

American participation in the United Nations supports the deception that it is an international body capable of fair-minded governance. That deception cruelly betrays the hopes of the weak and the vulnerable and abets genocide, mass rape and terror.

The United Nations has become an organizational assault on its own founding principles. And all the while it undermines the sovereignty and rights of the free member nations who still believe that all men are created equal and that governments derive their authority from the people.

The only way to redeem those principles is to exit its corridors and walk a new path toward an alternative alliance that does more than pay lip service to freedom, democracy and human rights. Only America can be the nucleus of such an alliance. And only when the nation that gave the world freedom leaves the international order that impedes it can a global alliance of free nations truly be born.

In an article titled America: The Chief Subsidizer of UN Rapists and Traffickers, chiefly concerned with what happens to whistle-blowers on the UN role in crimes of rape and the trafficking of sex slaves, Phyllis Chesler expresses her disgust with that appalling institution:

The Wilsonian-influenced ideals of the UN are not realistic or realizable.

We agree emphatically. And whenever unrealistic ideals are set, nastiness ensues. (Vide Christianity.)

The UN is predicated on the myth — nay, the lie — that UN diplomats and civil servants are morally upright, fair, decent, rational — and, not the vicious tyrants, bullies, thugs, liars, egomaniacs, cowards, and grifters that they truly are. Nor does the UN have a transparent system in place that would hold their mightily flawed personnel accountable for the crimes they commit. …

Who keeps it going, this Tower of Iniquity, this World Headquarters of Evil? More than any other country, the United States of America!

If it is clear that the United Nations allows its peacekeeping troops to commit major human rights atrocities, why would we allow such an institution to render decisions that are meant to affect the entire world? Why would we abide by such decisions? More important: Why should the United States fund an international criminal operation? The United States pays the lion’s share of the Secretariat costs at the United Nations. Don’t worry, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has assured stressed American taxpayers that the two-year headquarters budget (2010-11) will only amount to a meager $4.92 billion.

According to the UN peacekeeping website, the budget for the fiscal year 1 July 2011-30 June 2012 is approximately seven billion dollars. The United States is responsible for 27 percent of this cost, or about two billion. This is far more than what Japan (1 billion), the UK (591 million), China (285 million), Spain (230 million), or Korea (164 million) pays for peacekeepers. Interestingly, under President Barack Obama’s administration, the United States overpaid its share of the UN peacekeeping budget. In fact, our overpayment of 287 million dollars is more than what most of the world’s supporters — including China — pay for “peacekeeping.”

Why is the United States funding rapists, criminals, pimps, brothels, and sex traffickers? Why are we funding orgies? Why are we funding the most heinous betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable civilians in war zones? Why are we overpaying for UN peacekeeping?

Why is the US paying anything at all to sustain the rotten institution?

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  • Chimini

    The UN is nothing but a milking cow for the corrupt third world governments who would rather keep their tax money to their pockets while pleading the UN to donate more. And when they don’t get much as they want, they accuse the better off nations of being hypocrites.

    • RGS

      do you think only third country, do you think there isnt human traffic in USA, france, Spain and so on? DO you think there is not corruption in those big counteries?…kind of naive. the point is UN failed his purposed and it is just a smoke screen for big organization and BIG countries to do their dirty work. It is a FAIL and it is getting worst every year. Even without replacement will do more good than bad…

  • Chimini

    The UN is not doing anything about China intruding and UNLAWFULLY claiming the coastal territories of its neighbors. There are tensions right now between China and Vietnam. the Philippines and Japan and the UN ain’t doing nothing, The funny thing, the UN does not enforce the 200 NM EEZ which China is a signatory of! The Asia-Pacific is in a brink of hostilities due to China’s absurd claims and arrogance (They are claiming the whole of the South China Sea and are starting to enforce it).

    In issues that can be settled peacefully like this that the UN does not care about, what more with bigger issues regarding universal human rights, etc

  • http://www.facebook.com/steve.m.cardon Steve M Cardon

    What doesn’t get discussed much in the media about the UN is what goes on in the back rooms. I’ll give you an example: Lets say the US wants backing from other members of the security council to increase sanctions on Iran. They need this to step them closer to being able to take military action in the future. Both of these require the consent of Russia and China, as well as other countries who comprise the security council, or nations whose Airspace we or Israel must use etc. They all will have a price, whether quid pro quo of one sort or another, trade concessions, whatever. With Russia and China you know the pricetag will be pretty steep. Lots of groundwork negotiation, and working out of details must take place at lower levels before the deal works its way up the chain. It is a lot more convenient to do this in various meeting rooms at the UN because all the players already have representatives there. Otherwise you would burn an awful lot time and fuel , and coordination would be a nightmare. In addition, it is easier to have private discussions with a country that you don’t want the press privy to, as they would be if you actually flew to that country.
    Easier communication between countries helps avoid misunderstandings, and mistakes being made. What the press covers: Security council meetings, and the general assembly are just formal shows for the public;where each country publicly states its position. They give lofty political reasons, but what they are really saying is whether a deal was made or not.. .

    • Jillian Becker

      Steve – your description of what goes on in the small rooms of the UN is fascinating and plausible. But with all our new means of communication, is any face-to-face talk ever necessary?

      • http://www.facebook.com/steve.m.cardon Steve M Cardon

        On the surface it might seem that the advent of video conferencing would render it obsolete, If you could be absolutely assured that transmissions were well enough encrypted, I don’t know if heavy video encryption of that sort wouldn’t still bog down the transmission. I think there is also something about the face to face. My guess is that a lot of older diplomats probably still prefer this. They are poker players set in their ways. I don’t pretend to be an expert, just relaying anecdotally from reading I’ve done over the years, being curious about the UN myself.
        If nothing else, I think the UN is a show for the world, intended to put forward the image of nations trying to work things out. In that context I think it may have some value.

  • Joe

    Harold, NATO is another option for a global cooperation. The funds from the UN could be diverted there instead.

    • Jillian Becker

      Trouble is, Joe, that NATO is compromised by the membership of Turkey. It would be good if NATO would free itself of that, and beef up its strength – which the diverted funds you speak of could help it do. Also, the European powers would need to contribute much more to the organization. But they are hampered by failing economies and growing Muslim electorates.

      • http://www.facebook.com/steve.m.cardon Steve M Cardon

        That is a good point Jillian, however I would point out that Turkey has genuinely tried hard to remain secular in its government, and it really has more to gain by maintaining good relations with the west. They might go either way push come to shove, but don’t discount the possibility of them calling bullshit on the muslim extremists, and telling their people the truth, which is that it is merely a religious power grab. The muslim protests in Turkey have apparently been very small.

      • http://www.facebook.com/steve.m.cardon Steve M Cardon

        As a post script: Tomorrow we should get a roll count on which muslim nations have their people under control, and which don’t… As they all come rolling out of mosques after friday prayers..uggghhh

  • Harold

    The UN is indeed a very flawed organisation, and many of the criticisms are justified.  However, the abolition in my mind would be going too far unless there is some alternative.  Yes, the UN is crap, but without it we have NO forum for global cooperation.   And surely some of the UN agencies are good – UNICEF and WHO seem to me to be positive agencies.  Also it is very easy to pick the worst parts, but this stragtegy can be use to make the USA look bad too.

    For example, on point 10:
    “Only the United States and other free nations that respect the rights of their own people and of all people can be trusted to do so. “Yet the USA detains people without trial indefinitely – is this not a double standard?  If you want to hold the UN to very high standards, surely you must maintain them yourself?  By acting in this way the USA demonstrates that it cannot be trusted to respect the rights of *all* people.  If the USA unilaterally classes you as a illegal combatant, you have no more rights than a soviet dissident in the gulags.Admittedly, we are tallking of a very small number of people at the moment, but the rest of the word has a right to ask if without the UN the USA might start to exert its version of rights more widely.  On point 9, the UN asks the USA to “investigate deaths in immigrant detention facilities”  Is this really “endagering US civil liberties?”  The other points are unlikely to have any impact on US civil liberties at all.On point 5, yes, probably correct, but who could prevent nuclear proliferation?  You can’t shove the genie back in the bottle.   I acknowledge that this is a failed goal, but there are still only few nuclear nations, and there may have been more without the UN.Point 3, yes, there are problems, but the Yugoslavia trials have sentenced 48 war criminals, it would have been difficult to secure these convictions without the UN.Probaly the UN should be abolished, but what would take its place?

    • George

      Good question  ! I think people actually intentionally let it get out of hand Harold.  If the UN were to dissapear right now , as you say –they don’t have a substitute organization ready on the “back burner ” to put in it’s place even though I detest the UN –mainly because of it’s corruption ,  accepting terrorist nations and engaging in policies that are a threat to American security  and of  our allies.  It’s a good idea to have a unified fraternal body of nations around the world who strive for unity , cooperation and world peace if that is the goal.  The UN is a fraud.   Personally ( just my opinion ) I think the various civilized nations around te world should  just pull out of the UN , cease funding the UN  , give them the “boot” and send them into a third world nation for their headquarters and eventually they will just wither away and dissapear into infinity.  It’s like leaving a corrupt fraternity and joining a new one that is respectable  and positive.    Let ALL the good and civilized nations pull out , form their own independent national organization   ( independent of the UN ) and then the UN will fade into obscurity and have no influence and power. We are the major funders and reactionaries of that group.  Without the US and other super-power nation support , the UN is DEAD .   What do you think ?

  • C.Gee

    11. The UN’s IPPC  is the instigator of the great global warming scam which will impoverish the world.

    • George

      The sad part C.Gee is that so many gullible people around the world are still falling for it. Do people ever think and use their minds anymore ? It makes you wonder.

    • JJF

      Here’s hoping your children/grandchildren/great-great…. are thankful to you when living in a hothouse world of resource-and-water wars.

      Or maybe you don’t give a shit cos you are childless??

      • http://www.theatheistconservative.com Jillian Becker

        C.Gee – co-editor of The Atheist Conservative – is far from childless. But we try not to argue ad hominem.

        There is and will be no shortage of “resources”. The best resource mankind has is its brains. As long as the State keeps its deadening hand off, human enterprise will always innovate. New generations will solve their own problems. Why are they more worthy of the oil under our soil and sea than we are?

        The world could do with being warmer, but at present – and for the last 15 years or so – there hasn’t been any warming. We hope it will resume soon.

        Do you really believe that buying “carbon off-sets” from Al Gore is going to affect the climate of this vast planet?

        What threatens the earth is (in descending order of magnitude), Islam, the over-mighty State, the United Nations and its accumulation of power through the climate change myth, and the gullibility of so many people.

        • JJF

          So, like classical economists you believe resources to be infinite? Plain common sense says it’s not so.
          ‘Global warming myth’ is your comfort blanket; there HAS been warming in the last 15 yrs, absorbed by the Pacific ocean. I don’t care what you denialists say, we NEED clean energy; had we done so 30 years ago we would not now be in thrall to repulsive M.E. oil states, would we?
          I agree with all your other points. Climate change is real, it’s here now and we will suffer, in ways we can’t predict.

          • http://www.theatheistconservative.com Jillian Becker

            Climate change is a condition of this planet. Humankind is highly adaptable, always has adapted to climate and always will.

            The US has the most oil and natural gas reserves of any country in the world, and can dispense with imports from Middle East oil states when a sensible administration takes over from this disastrous one.

            The resource of the human mind is infinite. Did our ancestors ration themselves candle wax in fear that future generations might run out of candles? Let’s use all the oil and gas we need. Generations of the far future will find other sources of energy. Fission, fusion, and who-knows-what that we cannot predict any more than our ancestors could predict electric power.

            • JJF

              Candle wax- nice example of the Strawman argument. Incidentally, had we not moved away from whale oil it is unarguable some whale species would be hunted to extinction!

              Climate change is accepted to mean anthropogenic climate change, NOT the normal long-term climate variation you refer to. It is the extreme rate of change that differentiates it from ‘normal’.

              U.S. reserves? Wildly overstated-

            • http://www.theatheistconservative.com Jillian Becker

              Your link is to a site that tells us that ONE shale deposit – Monterey Shale – has been overestimated. You are a true believer, aren’t you? Any scrap that seems to defend your fragile position is hurled liked a missile. This one’s a dud.

              AGW is a “strawman” argument if ever there was one.

              You will not change our minds. Why are you such an eager proselytizer? Why do you feel the need to convince us of something we have read and thought about for years to come to an opinion? You have no clinching argument. Give as much of your money to the government or Al Gore to stop climate change as you like. We don’t believe that governments can make an ounce of difference to the vast cosmic forces that play upon this planet.

              And we have no wish to augment an already over-powerful government’s control of our lives.

  • Frank

    I agree 110%

    • George

      I’ll double that Frank —————-I agree 220%  !!!!     People are so brainwashed Frank.  Here we have the UN that allows terrorist nations into their ranks and yet they proclaim  to represent a union of civilized soverign nations————–  what utter bullcrap !!!!!!

    • George

      I’ll double that Frank —————-I agree 220%  !!!!     People are so brainwashed Frank.  Here we have the UN that allows terrorist nations into their ranks and yet they proclaim  to represent a union of civilized soverign nations————–  what utter bullcrap !!!!!!