Under 30 at Out North

Under 30 is Out North's annual production of local actors (and often people with no acting experience) performing their own work, which has to be under 30 minutes long. What was particularly interesting was the influence of Lisa Kron on two of the pieces. Kron's performance in October which I discuss in the linked post, was a one woman show with three story lines intertwined, including a slide show of the trip she and her father took to Auschwitz. In her case, the slides were imaginary, but she used a pointer to point out all the details to the audience. All three stories were told simultaenously, so she had to move around the stage as she switched from story line to story line. The spot light would go out in one place, the come on to capture her in another spot on the stage picking up that story line.

Pam Cravez' "The Art Show", which she began to develop before Kron's performance here in October, reminded me immediately of Kron. She too talked about her father. Instead of imaginary slides, she had actual paintings of her father on easels on the stage. As Kron used the imaginary slides to help get into her stories, Cravez used the real pictures.

In "Three Continents" Kristina Church, Vicki Russell and Mark Muro each told their own travel story using the same Kron technique of interweaving the stories but here each story had its own actor. In some cases the two other actors would slip into supporting roles for the other two stories.



At the post show discussion, the actors thanked Kron for helping them work on their productions while she was here. It really is a great example of how a tiny regional theater can benefit from importing national talent for short runs of their show AND for workshops with local actors. Her influence was very visible in last night's performances.

The final piece, "Merrow" by drama therapist Joan Cullinane transformed the audience. After slithering in as a mermaid, she used puppets and the audience to run through a damning indictment of modern bureaucratic pychology professionalism. It was deeply moving, funny, and she raised important issues about mental health and mental health care. Her character's persona took over the small theater and the mesmerized (a word used by two audience members in the post-show discussion) audience. When she asked audience members to find the cards with the DSM Code Numbers of different mental illnesses under their seats, and then called to the stage all those who had the 'winning' diagnoses, no one hesitated to join her on stage and act out their symptoms. This piece should be seen by lots and lots of people, particularly those health care professionals.

AAUG - Goodies, Prizes, Auction, and Info

The Alaska Apple User Group met last night. While there are tons of places on line to get information, there is something nice about being able to ask a live person questions. This picture shows the table of books, software, and accessories that you can take and keep if you do a review. Last night I took a Mouse Pad with a gel wrist rest, a book on podcasting, and "internet cleanup" - software to 'Protect Your Privacy on the Mac.' So far, I've tried the mouse pad and I'm not sure there is an improvement. The book looks good because my wife - who has a strong audio background - is looking for a digital recorder, with possibly podcasting in the future. Haven't loaded the software yet.

I also talked with an ichat video conference user whose going to help me work out the connection to my mom. I've got a friend with a pc and we haven't been able to make that connection work. What I downloaded from the web said he needed to disable his firewall and he wasn't willing to do that. But my mother has a Mac and we haven't been able to make that work either. This guy is also exploring Skype as an alternative cross platform video chat forum. We'll see.




This other picture shows the library, where you can check things out for a month. And then there is a raffle and auction. All the goodies are donated by manufacturers who obviously want some exposure for their products. Seems like a good deal all around. Even my skeptical nature sees this all as a good thing. Am I missing some lurking evil here? Again, this is a community, like the automaticwashers.org, that exists pretty much below the radar of most people, but has proved to be a real help. Oh, did I mention their free weekend seminars? Actually, I may have in a previous postabout our first AAUG meeting. And also the post on Naked Conversations, a book on blogging I reviewed.

Next Time Don't Blame the Kids for Taking Stuff From the Back of Your Pickup

.Ravens just like to have fun.
They don't care if it's only 5 degrees Fahrenheit
And sometimes they leave a calling card.

Dianne And The Cookie Dough Prophy Paste

This is Dianne's normal view of me. Just a mouth. I see her two or three times a year when she cleans my teeth. She chides me for not flossing more, she tells me about her family, she makes gently snide comments that always carry a smile. Today she started off by telling me the previous two patients had cancelled and so I was gonna get the lectures she had left over from them as well as my own. And, of course there is little I can say back, and even when I can, I have to be careful since she's holding sharp instruments in my mouth. But the final reward for an hour of guff and poking is Cookie Dough Prophy Paste - the stuff they polish your teeth with at the end. It tastes so good, I don't even rinse it out. Dessert at the dentists.

Having my little Canon with me, means I can take pictures of the people who, over the years, play a small, but important part in my life. Knowing that Dianne is the one who will clean my teeth, makes going to the dentist something to look forward to. Thanks Dianne.

And, coincidentally, we had dinner last night with another Dianne, but I couldn't find my camera, so that will come another day.

Carving a Parking Space or White on White

It's hard to see much here, because the snowplows just keep pushing the snow to the sides of the street. We now have about a ten foot snow berm in front of the house. My car is in the garage because if I parked it in the street it would block the road. But my wife would much rather have hers there than have to go outside to a cold car. So my exercise these days is digging out a parking place between the mailbox and the street. The picture is from the driveway. The mailbox is to the left of the picture. The street is barely visible in all the white. I'll leave a protective wall of snow between my car and the drivers. It appears it will be a while before the city starts clearing the snow.

Slow, but sure, gets the job done. I've already made a lot of progress!

In the name of blogging research only

I started this blog to find out about the blogging world. Now I've run into this particular blog several times and so I have put up a link and filled out their form. The Bestest Blog Ever is another of those blogs set up just to increase blog traffic. I'm really not sure if this is a good thing or not. Visually, it's the used car lot of the blogosphere. It's a guy in the green plaid suit that never fit. Maybe it's the weather affecting me.

By the way, based on the sitemeter referrals, so far the site that has generated the most hits (not counting the new stream coming in from Google) was from my Maytag repair thread on automaticwashers.com.

Google finally kicks in

I started this blog just to see how blogs work. One of my early questions was about how the giant search engines, especially Google, find you and then get you reasonably close to page one. I read some of the Google help information, did get confirmation they knew this blog existed, and even was able to find myself through Google if I used the right combination of very particular search words. But after a week or so even that didn't work. When I learned about the specialized blog search engines, I resigned myself to being found that way.

But as I was looking at the site-meter report yesterday, there were suddenly 'lots' of people getting to the site through Google. Not sure how or why.

About site-meter. I got that up mid-October and anyone can check out the site traffic. Just click on the counter number at the bottom of the right hand side of the blog. You can see all the information that sites get about their visitors.

Infamous versus Capote

We saw Infamous tonight at Bear Tooth. It isn't too often that we get to see two different contemporary takes on the same story. Yes, we have remakes of old films, and copies of successful non-English films by American film makers, but not two crews working on the same story, independently at the same time. And getting both out into theaters. Both these movies follow Truman Capote's trips to Kansas to cover the murders for his book In Cold Blood. I thought the first one to come out - Capote - was a strong movie. But Infamous seemed significantly better. I'm still trying to figure out why. I think it just felt more natural. The photography wasn't as dramatic, and Toby Jones as Capote seemed to become his character and make it believable that this unusual man could win the trust of his informants. In comparison, Philip Seymour Hoffman seemed to be working hard throughout the movie to keep in character.

The story also raises questions about the relationship between the writer and the subject - a relationship I've been keenly aware of while writing a blog and one my daughter raised questions about the other day.

Ultimately I was struck by this opportunity for film students to see the final products of two good crews working on the same story.

Corina and Toby's Baby Shower

So I went to my first baby shower Saturday. (Men were specifically invited.) Kathryn, the soon to be father's sister, formally known as Katy, organized much of it, including a soup she called borscht, but which had so little beet in it, that it wouldn't have qualified as borscht in my family, but also meant I could try it. It was good. And four loaves of no-knead bread.

As they opened the gifts, all sorts of thoughts went through my mind.
-Just the cute bag that gift was in cost more than most Indians make in a day.
-What if they made those clothes for adults? Particularly men. It would be interesting.
-That kid has more clothes than we had for a month in India.
-This isn't as bad as I expected
-This baby is going to have great parents

Just as we were all sitting eating, the snow plows pulled into the cul-de-sac with all these cars parked against the snow berms. Toby ran out with two plates of cake for the drivers, but they'd just eaten. But they said they'd come back in if people would move their cars for five minutes. So their street got plowed.

I think it's great to have a prebaby party and getting presents for their new baby. Everyone was friendly and there were lots of laughts. There were no embarrassing games. In the context of modern day Anchorage, it was probably a fairly understated event. But having recently been in India, and living in a state where many rural Alaskan villages don't have running water and sewer systems, this kid got a lot more than he will need. And Toby and Corina are, I'm sure acutely aware of how 'rich' they are. Corina grew up in Moldova and they help people there all the time. So, I'm not being critical here, I'm just musing.

[These pictures were taken earlier. I forgot my camera at the shower. I trust you can figure out who is who.]

The Reality Isn't

When people say, "The Reality Is" they are really saying, "I'm interrupting this conversation to bring you THE TRUTH." Don't let people get away with that. That is just a mild form of shaping reality, the kind of thing George Orwell warned about in his classic 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" in which he discussed, among other things, how politicians shaped public opinion through the use of metaphors. George Lakoff's work on framing is a modern day version of that.


The Union of Concerned Scientists' recent study "Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics
to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science" gives another glimpse of how people's reality can be shaped:

In an effort to deceive the public about the reality of global warming, ExxonMobil has underwritten the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign since the tobacco industry misled the public about the scientific evidence
linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease. ... Like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil has:
• Manufactured uncertainty by raising doubts about even the most indisputable scientific evidence.
• Adopted a strategy of information laundering by using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further its desired message and thereby confuse the public.
• Promoted scientific spokespeople who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-pick facts in their attempts to persuade the media and the public that there is still serious debate among scientists that burning fossil fuels has contributed to global warming and that human-caused warming will have serious consequences.
• Attempted to shift the focus away from meaningful action on global warming with misleading charges about the need for “sound science.”
• Used its extraordinary access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming.



How people know what they know is clearly something school children should be learning from Kindergarten on. After all, if they are in school to learn, they should be learning about how people learn. But they should also be learning to understand how others attempt to influence what they know and believe. If democracy is to really work, and not inevitably be taken over by large corporations who can pay scientists - as the tobacco companies and Exxon do - to pervert data that is not in their interests, or to raise doubts about things like evolution, then we have to be savvy consumers of data. We need to know how to spot the bullshit and raise appropriate questions. This goes for any sort of dogma whether it be on the left, right, east or west. This starts with recognizing phrases like "The reality is..." and interrupting them immediately.


Of course, as the pictures (top from today's Anchorage Daily News, bottom one I just took of our indoor/outdoor thermometer) in this post prove, the reality is that global warming isn't happening.