living small

Not long ago, as I pondered where I would go or what I would do if I was laid off from my job, and contemplating yet another move (depending on how you count it, I could say that I’ve moved anywhere from 4 to 11 times in the past four years), I began to research RVs. 

I thought perhaps that it could be a solution for my life:  having mobility, paring down my stuff even further (which I’ve written about a few times), yet having a sense of my own home.  If I needed to go to another new place, maybe I could just take an organized, familiar home along with me. 

Six months or so later, I know that I have a job for the coming year and am trying to convince myself to stay put.  But I still think a lot about the nature of housing, my environmental footprint, and how I hope to live in the future. 

After researching RV and trailer living (I now know the difference between A, B, and C Class RVs, travel trailers, fifth wheel trailers, etc), I started looking at all the other alternative types of housing.  Here are some of my favorites.

1.  A modern vardo, or updated gypsy van…some are beautifully crafted.

2.  My favorite wheel-less options are some of the gorgeous pre-fab yurts.  For more than five years now (yes, since moving to CA), I’ve fantasized about building a little compound of yurts.  Don’t laugh.  It could be awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. And finally, check out this ethereal earthsheltered home.   It is environmentally kind, and if anyone has a thing for Hobbit living…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related Gleanings:  Tiny House Blog, which describes a lot of fun designs for living smaller.

 

to be remembered…

Last August, writer and theater critic Terry Teachout wrote a beautiful blog post about life, loss, and literature.  It is a lovely, meandering exploration of remembrance that connects Willa Cather (one of my favorite authors) and Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, via the New Hampshire cemetery where Cather is buried.   I especially appreciated Teachout’s closing sentence: 

For those of us still on earth, straining to make something of ourselves, it seems there is no weaning away from the people we love and lose: they are always there, dissolved into the completeness of eternity, waiting patiently–and, I suspect, indifferently–for the little resurrection that is memory.

Lately I have thought a lot about how to honor the memory of people and places we’ve lost (from family members, to interesting strangers, to arts organizations).  And I have taken to reading Obit Magazine, which isn’t as macabre as most folks would suspect.  It may be the historian in me, or my interest in how we remember and if we remember, but either way I am fascinated by how cultures celebrate life and death.  From Obit’s website: 

Death gives life its immediacy. Because we know it will end, we savor and value life all the more. Whether it’s the loss of a person, a place, an object or an idea, life’s constant change presents an opportunity for examination, discussion and even celebration.  By examining the transformations we face, we can understand how the past influences our time and our future.

And so, I write tonight in memory of two first cousins who’ve passed away in the past eight months.  Josh Aiken was 34, and was so kind, gentle, and brave.  Rob Kimpel was 44, and had an infectious laugh and generous spirit; I cannot imagine how much his wife and children must miss him. 

Peace to you both…our families will never be the same…and I will always remember you.

 

 

 

keeping creative types alive

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designed and sewn

ArtsJournal’s video of the day today is “Soundsuits” by Nick Cave.  He makes wearable sculptures, and is what I would call an extreme costumer!  I am excited that an exhibition of his work, along with collaborative dance performances by choreographer Ronald K. Brown, is coming to San Francisco this spring.

Some of these sculptural costumes remind me of a very vivid dream that I had a few years ago.  After watching the Isaac Mizrahi documentary Unzipped, that night I dreamt that Mizrahi and my father collaborated on a theatrical production of a fairy tale.  It was magical – the stage was filled with multiple levels and textures, ethereal lights and music, and an elaborately, elegantly costumed cast.  The costumes were all white and glittering silver, with elaborate headpieces and flowing, floral gowns (it sounds like it could come off looking like Christmas in Vegas, but it was tasteful, really).

In the dream, I was completely humbled by the talent of these two men, and felt envious of their ability to design and create something so beautiful.  It took a few days of mulling over the dream and its residual feelings of inadequacy before I realized that the design was all mine! 

Dreams are great.  (I was working with my father at the Youngstown Playhouse as his costumer at that time; not too difficult to analyze this one!)

 

want and need

Upon re-reading my post from Christmas day, I considered deleting or editing parts of it, but decided to keep it intact.  The reason:  I am entertained by how my writing was affected by reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road the weekend before Christmas.  (I highly recommend the book, but wouldn’t suggest it to many people as a “holiday read” by any means!)

For those who haven’t read the book, it is the story of a man and his young son struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world; there is no reliable source of food, permanent shelter, or much comfort to be found.  The only things that sustain them are their survival skills, their love for one another, and an intrinsic belief that there are kernels of good remaining in a world of evil.  The story is simple but profound, and is told through a narrative that consists of stream-of-consciousness and spare and poetic description, often utilizing sentence fragments.  As a result, the book seems more like a prose-poem than a novel, and its haunting, stark beauty stems from that structure.  One of my favorite passages is this one, as the father cradles his son as they sleep, as he does every night in the cold and darkness:

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.

Upon viewing Christmas through the filter of The Road, my already heightened awareness of modern over-consumption (food, material goods) was definitely enhanced.  I struggled (successfully) against my impulse to buy my niece more “things to open” when I knew she already had more than enough.  And I definitely looked at gift giving with harsher judgment than usual as “wants” versus “needs.”

I am not rejecting beauty and plenty:  I think that that is too extreme.  However, I was reminded to embrace more gratitude for the love of my family and my friends, for joy where I find it, for a belief in goodness, and for all my needs being met in abundance.

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Related gleanings:  I can’t overlook the obvious tie-in of these thoughts to themes in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.  As a theater person, I’ve worked on that show so many times that I had become oblivious to it.  At the urging of a friend, I re-read the original story last year; it was a gift to re-discover the beauty and intention of the original text.  In a non-holiday-related book, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (also a post-apocalyptic vision of the future), I could see The Road as a precurser to the dark but more humorous future world created by Miller.

 

Hard to top that one…

I don’t attend enough performances of classical choral music.

I’ve been fortunate to witness some amazing concerts; the two most memorable were almost 20 years ago when I was in England as an undergrad.  And probably what made those so memorable was that I was high on the architecture; I am certain that the performance sites deeply influenced my perception of the music.  The first was a boys’ choir festival in King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, which is an icon of Gothic architecture.  The other was a performance of The Messiah in London at St. Bartholomew (c. 1100), which is one of the city’s oldest churches.  Being in a 1000-year-old church and hearing that music performed live is basically like flying.

This past Sunday, I saw Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony (also known as “Symphony of a Thousand”) performed by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.  I had bought tickets to the concert as a birthday present for my friend M., who is a huge Mahler fan.  I’ve never warmed up to Mahler, but, in this instance, was blown away by the beauty of the work and how skillfully it was performed.  It had little to do with its setting – it was just stunning musicianship. 

This particular symphony is a major production; it involves a massive orchestra, a brass section situated in the balcony, seven vocal soloists, the symphony choir, a girls’ choir, and a boys’ choir.  And even with all that vocal and instrumental power, it was the during some of the “quietest” passages that I found there were tears streaming down my face (which is unsual – I don’t cry easily). 

It was an experience of a lifetime.

 

a child’s view

I read an article about Roald Dahl today, and was struck by what I prize most in creative people like him:  his ability to find a sense of joy and silliness in even the most bleak times, or even in the mundane.  The same is true for the work of Maurice Sendak (read an excellent New York Times article about him here); these two authors are able to tap into elemental fears and joys that all ages can relate to.  I find this ability even more poignant because both men had difficult, even painful, personal lives.

For years, I worked alongside my father as he wrote, produced, and directed children’s theater shows.  He–akin to authors like Dahl and Sendak–could access a child-like vision of the world, and could see the phenomenal in the ordinary.  We also talked often about his belief that it was important to not “water down” the villains.  It was fascinating to see children thrilled by being scared, but, through those stories, were shown how courage, bravery, and love could be a panacea to those fears.

In a time when news of the economy is worse every day, I think it is a good time to keep in mind the views of authors like Dahl, and to stay in touch with our child-like impulses:  to embrace the silly, to find joy in jell-o (read the Dahl article), to surprise friends and strangers with random acts of kindness and generosity, and yes, to even allow ourselves to believe that a bit of bravery will banish the “monsters” at our door.

 

the event must go on

I do believe in the adage “the show must go on.” I haven’t researched how or when that saying came into existence, but my guess is that it stems from the complete chaos that goes into getting a show on stage: so many things can (and do) go wrong that if we were to stop completely for any of them, nothing would ever happen.

I grew up backstage, and learned early on to recognize when directors, actors, stage managers and production staff possessed a certain wonderful talent: the ability to keep things moving while minimizing or fixing a problem, all the while having the performance appear seamless and professional to an audience. Problem solvers are “in,” perfectionists are “out” (well, not “out” exactly, but certainly can be maddening when flexibility is called upon).

(Aside: I’ll save a non-theater friend’s recent question of “Why must the show go on?” for a future blog. Short answer: it’s a commitment.)

I’ve been thinking about all of this since Saturday, after a little accident resulted in me sprawled in a parking lot wondering if my feet were broken…

Growing up in theater was excellent training for event management, which has been a component of my career since I was in college. This past Saturday, I was coordinating a book release party for my organization. The outdoor event involved setting up pop-up tents, rolling carts of tables and chairs from the building across the street and setting them up on a lawn, and numerous other tasks, all of which I’d plotted out and assigned to my volunteer team.

A member of the Junior ROTC was there early (they were leading the Pledge of Allegiance to open the event), and he kindly offered to help even though he was in uniform. I accepted, since my volunteer corps was struggling a bit with the pop-up tents (they are mostly retirees-one gentleman was even using his cane to help raise a tent canopy). The ROTC kid and I placed five 8-foot tables onto a cart and rolled it across the street, with him pushing and me guiding it from the front. As we rolled the cart into the parking lot, my shoe lace caught the edge of the cart, I lost my footing, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with both my feet pinned under the cart. I don’t remember how, or how fast, I extricated myself, but I remember incredible pain and I may have been swearing.

The next thing I knew, I was standing there in a daze with the immediately attentive ROTC kid at my elbow. “Are you OK?” I couldn’t respond. “Ma’am, do you want me to call 911?” I shook my head no. “What can we do for you?” (A day later, I realized that he was asking if he and his friend could go for an ice bag or something, but my ingrained “show must go on” impulse took over; all I could think about was getting the event up and running before I went to the emergency room.)

I tenuously took a step forward, and almost passed out from the pain, but slowly hobbled to my car and leaned against it. I told him that the tables had to go to the center of the lawn, and then I opened my car door to get out the sandwich boards that were to be placed at roadside. I started to pull the top one out, but was struggling (because I shouldn’t even have been standing). As I pulled at one of them, there was a strange hissing noise and a cloud came out from under them. I realized what it was and yelled at the Jr. ROTC kid, who was still trying to help me, “Back up, back up! It’s spray glue – it will get on your uniform!” He did back away, and just kind of looked at me with his head half cocked, and I burst out laughing. “Oh my god, you must think that I am a complete crazy person.” He kind of smiled, and then made a move to take the sandwich board out of my hands, but it was sticky from the glue. He jumped back in a protective measure to spare his uniform, and I almost started laughing again. It was absurd – this kid was just trying to help – he saw me fall and get run over by a cart, then I wouldn’t even sit down after getting injured, and now I was getting spray glue all over his uniform.

I didn’t ever tell any of my volunteers that I’d been injured: I just made it through the event as best as I could, got everything put away, and then went for x-rays (nothing broken, just sprains and technicolor bruises). I’m proud that I could push through the pain and still be there to make sure the event went well, and greet city council members, and hear people’s stories related to our book, and make plans for the Girl Scouts to be more involved with our organization, and be interviewed for a video podcast. Some friends have said that it was kind of irresponsible not to go to the hospital right away, but I still feel that it was valuable for me to stay.

Before the Jr. ROTC kid left, though, he asked one more time if I was OK. I said yes, but that I was in pain. He just looked at me, and said “Yes, but you kept working.” I laughed and said “I had to.” He just nodded in agreement.

 

Micro reviews

Last week, I attended five nights in a row of arts events. Here are some of my impressions and micro-reviews of these events and performances.

Wednesday, August 26 & Thursday, August 27 – Musicals (mostly)

Wednesday night was a benefit and farewell party for an actor friend, A., who has been accepted into a musical theater training program in NYC. The event, the major portion of which consisted of songs performed by A. and guests, along with some scenes, was held at The Rep in Sebastopol (the theater where I’ve stage managed most frequently over the past four years). I have always loved these kinds of events because it is an opportunity to see actors do the songs and scenes that they consider their best (or to perform requested encores). And this did not disappoint – it was highly entertaining, and a wonderful tribute to A.’s work onstage and off at the theater over the past four years.

Thursday, I saw Music Man at 6^th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa. The leads, David Yen and Heather Lane (along with special notice for Gene Abravaya and the barbershop quartet), were very good.  The director and choreographer did an impressive job of staging and choreographing a huge cast including the requisite company of children for this show. And the audience had a great time.

Therefore, I would love to be able to give the show a big thumbs up…but there was a distracting issue that kept me from truly enjoying the production (and this is highly biased, I confess). Unfortunately the costumes, mainly for the women, were not good. The show is to take place in 1912; some women were wearing dresses that were obviously originally constructed to represent eras from the 1860s to the 1880s to 1900, and a modern-day square dance dress made an appearance in Act II. I know that not a lot of people would pay attention to the level of detail that I do for costumes and overall design. But I believe that when a theater goes to the trouble to attract talented actors, and would like to market its shows as quality entertainment, that it is a disservice to both the actors and patrons to present such a glaring inconsistency. In addition, if there had been a unifying design (color scheme, dress length, year, and the uniform presence of petticoats, among other issues), it would have strengthened the choreography, and helped to give focus when the stage was filled with such a large cast.

Friday, August 29 – Visual Arts Break

A friend of mine, Kate Burgess, is one of the exhibiting artists in the current photography exhibit Flash! A Photography Show at Plaza Arts Center in Healdsburg. I attended the show opening on Friday night and was looking forward to seeing her photos “live”; I’d only seen her work via her website prior to this particular show. For Plaza Arts, she chose four pieces of nature photography. My favorite could pass for commercial art, but upon closer inspection, one of the white blooms has a white spider ingeniously “lurking” in plain sight.

On Kate’s website, her portfolio includes sections on West Point (her alma mater) and Arlington Cemetery. Knowing her military background–and the fact that her husband is currently on active duty and headed to Iraq–makes the excellent Arlington photos even more poignant.

Saturday, August 30 & Sunday, August 31 – Two Nights of Shakespeare

On Saturday night, I saw Taming of the Shrew, which was the summer Shakespeare offering from The Rep’s Sebastopol Shakespeare Festival. Director Jennifer King chose to stage a “pirate version” of Shrew, and although the idea sounded like it could work (especially for such a blatantly sexist play), I am always wary of any themed “versions” of Shakespeare. However, this did work well, thanks to a pervading sense of fun from the production staff and cast, and the audience’s embracing of the concept (by the end, the 300-member audience was yelling “yaaar” to express approval and disapproval of plot points in the show). The competent cast, direction, set design, and costuming were all consistent and well done, but as Hortensio, Miyaka Cochrane nearly stole the show due to his superb physical acting abilities (he was all-pirate, all-the-time), and Mary Gannon Graham stood out as Kate, especially in her closing monologue.

Sunday night, I saw North Bay Shakespeare’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed at Hamilton Field Amphitheater in Novato. It was a treat to see a show performed at the historic Amphitheater  (it is the black and white photo that I use for the header of this blog) – and acoustics there are excellent. The show was fairly good, and the actors were generally strong (especially Beth Deitchman as Hermia and Ben Knoll as Bottom). However, director Hector Correa’s decision to portray Titania as a Madonna-like pop star with the fairies as attendant drag queens (with their every entrance made to Madonna songs; they even broke into a “Vogue” number at one point), made me want to bolt. But I have to give the cast credit for committing to it, and I stopped squirming in discomfort by their final appearance.

 

 

studio city weekend & pushing friends’ cds/books

Although I have lived in Northern California for over five years now, I had never been to L.A. until last year. One of my best friends, S., lives in Studio City which finally provided the impetus to visit. For this, my third visit to S.’s home, I decided to make the 6-hour drive, versus flying. Family members fretted from afar about my safety – drive to L.A.?! But it was fine. (I’ve driven in a lot of major U.S. cities, and Chicago is worse in my opinion.)

The purpose of the visit was to celebrate the fabulous Baby Z.’s first birthday. S. had rented a tent to provide shade in the back yard, and I helped S. and her mom set-up, decorate, and bake for the party. The party looked great and I think everyone had a great time, especially Baby Z., who, by the end of the party, fervently toddled about and greedily-yet-joyously sampled all her playmates’ juiceboxes.

And here’s the shameless product plug bit. I’m so proud of the accomplishments of my friend Sherry (Luchette), whom I’ve known since we were joined-at-the-hip band & theater geeks in high school. She is an accomplished jazz bassist, music educator, and has written a book titled The Flying Jazz Kittens. The book is about how music teachers can integrate jazz components and appreciation into elemenary music education, and she presents clinics and workshops throughout the U.S. on the topic. Sherry is married to well-known jazz pianist, Tamir Hendelman, who is a member of the Jeff Hamilton Trio and records and performs with some of the greatest jazz performers of our time. Tamir has just released his debut cd as the head of his own trio; the cd is titled Playground. Cd sales in Japan have been great and it will be released in the U.S. in September.

I drove home on Sunday afternoon and was kind of dreading the potentially monotonous drive back through the central valley. But I decided to embrace the afternoon heat and rolled down my windows and turned up my radio. It ended up being a gorgeous drive because it was perfectly timed to watch the approach of twilight and then a stunning sunset. After tiring of listening to things like Cowboy Junkies and Rusted Root, I grabbed a random cd and inserted it. It turned out to be Slip Dunlap’s Times Like This, which was great bluesy-rock-driving-music, but also provides me with an opportunity to push another friend’s cd here. My friend Brien Lilja was the drummer on the album and played with Slim for many years. It was an appropriate close to a weekend spent among talented musicians.