Went for a walk today with the SF grandkids. Here ae some things we saw along the way.
Demon Copperhead won a Pulitzer Prize and has had lots of publicity so I won't add much to what's out there, only to note some similarities to If I Survive You.
First I read Demon Copperhead for my bookclub. A deep dive into being poor in Appalachia. The hero in this David Copperfield inspired novel struggles to survive in a world shaped by addiction. Author Barbara Kingsolver makes it clear that the addiction is the fault of the pharmaceutical companies whose owners and operators profit off of getting as many people addicted to opioids as possible. Anyone who comes in contact with the health field and has some insurance of agency to subsidize their habit - foster kids, vets, the elderly, those employed with health insurance in any level job is fair game. But Damon (Demon) has David’s (Copperfield) pluck and resilience as he bobs up and down in rural western Virginia, mostly. (Thought I'd blogged about this one already, but I only mentioned it in passing.)
[As I move to If I Survive You, I'd say the main characters share struggling to make ends meet, being part of groups that are discriminated against (in Copperhead it's being from rural Appalachia) though Demon knows well who his cultural people are, just not his birth family. Both are trying to overcome their own self doubts, though Demon seems more successful. In some ways not having family may have given him an advantage over Trelawny who is in a constant fight with his father and brother.]
[I started this yesterday, but I'm adding a few notes today (Oct 3) but I'll leave what I wrote yesterday in the present tense.]
It started out being about a youth, Trelawny, trying to figure out who he was. Not personally, though, of course, that’s always there, but who did he belong to/with. His parents and brother were born in Jamaica, but he was born in Miami and people keep reminding him that he speaks white which alienates him from the family and pretty much everyone else. The Hispanics take him in at school, thinking he’s one of them and they pity him because his parents don’t speak Spanish. When they find out he’s Jamaican, they drop him. “Am I black?” is a question he gets varying answers to until he gets to a midwestern college where everyone assumes, yes, he is.
But then the book veers into many other directions. The father/son and sibling relationships are painful to him and the reader. It’s not clear to me to whom the “YOU” in the title refers - his father? His brother? The family? Himself? The world?
The book took me around south Florida and introduced me to a lot of folks struggling with different ways to keep a roof overhead - musicians, an arborist, a boat captain for rent, school teachers, a nursing home flunky, and in the end a very wealthy couple with their own devils to overcome.
It feels like this is more a collection of stories than a novel; the same characters run through most of the stories. The one that haunts me most is “Splashdown.” In it we see Trelawny's cousin finally meeting the father who he's never met. But the nursing home chapter ("Independent Living") is a mini expose of that industry. and the final chapter ("If I Survive You") is equally gripping and kinkier. They all explore how the need for money causes people to do things they probably wouldn't and definitely shouldn't. The last one adds a more direct example of privilege folks using a poor man for their own (apparent) gratification and that cause him conflicts between his moral standards, personal dignity, and money. It essentially asks, how much money will it take to get you to do X? When the money is small change to the offering party but significant to Trelawny.
I don’t regret reading this book, but at the end I am haunted by the characters and their struggles.
This is the United States we live in today, where there are a few people who have managed to vacuum obscene amounts of wealth out of everyone else. Then there are others who would appear to live quite comfortably. But over the last three or four decades, the rules of engagement have changed enough that more and more people are sliding out of the comfortable faction into the world of economic (not to mention psychic) struggle the characters in this book deal with daily.
Thinking about this book as I reread what I've written - first on the plane when I finished the book and now as I add and edit - I know this is a book that I won't forget. The scenes are so real that I almost feel like I was there.
This is basically going to be photos of the last couple days in Oak Park and surroundings.
This only makes sense if you know that Frank Lloyd Wright lived in Oak Park and there are lots of his buildings (mainly houses) in town. I think some of my Anchorage friends are trying to make this point as the Assembly is taking on redoing the zoning codes. Right-sizing isn't necessarily NIMBY.
Today, October 1, we went to Evanston - just north of Chicago - for a birthday party and walked along Lake Michigan by Northwestern University. It was a warm day!
"A steroid chemist and an entrepreneur, Percy Julian ingeniously figured out how to synthesize important medicinal compounds from abundant plant sources, making them more affordable to mass produce.In the 1930s chemists recognized the structural similarity of a large group of natural substances—the steroids. These include the sex hormones and the cortical hormones of the adrenal glands. The medicinal potential of these compounds was clear, but extracting sufficient quantities of them from animal tissue and fluids was prohibitively expensive. As with other scarce or difficult-to-isolate natural products, chemists were called upon to mimic nature by creating these steroids in the lab and later by modifying them to make them safer and more effective as drugs. . .
"Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the son of a railway mail clerk and the grandson of enslaved people. In an era when African Americans faced prejudice in virtually all aspects of life, not least in the scientific world, he succeeded against the odds. Inadequately prepared by his high school, he was accepted at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, as a sub-freshman, meaning that he had to take high-school courses concurrently with his freshman courses.Majoring in chemistry, he graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1920. After graduation he taught chemistry at Fisk University for two years before winning an Austin Fellowship to Harvard University, where he completed a master’s degree in organic chemistry. After Harvard he returned to teaching at West Virginia State College and Howard University.
Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the house. But there are lots of pictures of Julian and of the house in Oak Park.
The point of this being, that the family may lose the house because his daughter is having trouble paying the taxes. From Chemical and Engineering News:
"The family home of Percy Lavon Julian sits on a corner lot in the Oak Park suburb of Chicago. Julian was already a renowned organic chemist when he bought the two-story stone house in 1950. His daughter, Faith Julian, remembers a time when the home was not just the center of their family life, but also a place where her father thrived as a scientist and entrepreneur until his death in 1975. Despite multiple racist attacks to push them out of the neighborhood, Percy Julian would not leave his home, she says. “My dad never wanted to move. He loved this house,” she says.Now Faith is fighting to stay in the Oak Park home, where she still lives. Taxes, home repairs, and medical expenses have left Faith struggling to maintain ownership."
You can read more of the details at the link.
Frank Lloyd Wright is, rightfully, an icon in Oak Park, Illinois. His house and the many buildings he designed and were built in Oak Park attract a lot of tourists.
Like many important, but unsung Black American scientists, Julian's house and legacy are not as celebrated in Oak Park or other places One would think that the city leaders of Oak Park could work with the Chemical community and Black organizations to work out a way to preserve the house and let his daughter live there as long as she wishes. Certainly there are pharmaceutical corporations that have earned tens of millions of dollars if not much more, from his discoveries.
This is precisely the sort of thing that people like Ron DeSantis are trying to make sure the students of Florida never know about.
Here's an August 2023 Editorial at OakPark.com that offers some hope things will be positively resolved.
We're in Chicago with old, old friends. Actually they aren't older than we are, but we've known them for a long time.
We thought it would be easy getting here on a non-stop flight out of Anchorage. For the non-stop route, we were willing to fly overnight. In the end, after lots of to-ing and fro-ing (one hour delay, get on plane, taxi from gate, sit on tarmac, return to gate, need to fix some mechanical issue, some people want to get off because they've already missed their Chicago connections, then everyone told to get off, then several new estimated departure times, then four hours from original flight time, the flight is cancelled) we were quickly put on a 5am flight to Seattle with a tight connection to a Chicago flight, which we made. And later we got an email with a $200 credit for each of us on future Alaska Airlines flights. For people who were soured by Alaska Airlines because of these delays, it's a bittersweet reward. But for people dependent on Alaska Airlines like we are, it's a decent apology gift.
We shared sticky rice and mango for dessert.
Thursday they took us to Hidden Lake. It's in DuPage County and abuts the Arboretum.
They were trying to get us somewhere that got us into woods without too many urban distractions.
And they did a pretty good job. The trees are so different from Anchorage trees. No spruce, no birch, no cottonwood. Not sure what they all were, but it felt exotic to this Alaskan. It seemed there were some maples. Probably in the arboretum there would have been labels, but we just wanted to walk around and enjoy. A few trees are just beginning to turn, but barely. Temps in the low 70s. And lots of birds, but for the most part not easy to catch with the camera. I think the one below is a flicker, but I'm not completely sure.
But there is a villain in this story.
[Video excerpted from speech to National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983. Full speech available here.]
While Reagan was distinguishing between the United States and the Soviet Union, he was warning people not to step back and treat both sides as equal. He was saying the US was on the side of good and the Soviet Union was on the side of evil and you can't just offer both sides as equally worthy.
Today we have a Democratic Party, with all its inconsistencies and flaws, basically standing for the United States and the freedoms and the democracy that were established in the US Constitution. Opposing it are the Republican Party, essentially a cult ruled by a leader who has ties to Reagan's evil empire*, who lies, who makes false accusation, who foments violence, who favors white nationalism and fascism, and who is attempting to tear down the US Constitution and the US Government.
United States journalists have long argued for 'objective' reporting of the news. It's part of the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics.
"Support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant."
Generally, this has meant both major political parties are given equal time, and 'responsible' spokespersons for different sides of an issue are cited.
The media still try to 'objectively' present opposing arguments. Even when one side favors the basic principles and freedoms in our Constitution and the other side would ignore the Constitution when it conflicts with their goals.
I think I'm being a bit generous here, ascribing this presenting of both sides equally as an attempt to be 'objective.'
Despite indisputable evidence that the Republican party has become an anti-democracy cult, many mainstream media treat both parties as though the were equally valid points of view.
This is like giving the pro-slavery side equal time with the equal rights side. "Well, now let's consider the upsides of slavery." Oh, yeah, I forgot.t Republicans have actually done that. Or like giving the child pornography proponents equal time and respect to the anti-child pornography side.
Many Evangelical Christians are among those who are supporting this anti-American, pro-Trump voice.
So I just wanted to offer this warning from one of their heroes - Ronald Reagan - against both-sidesing issues. The video above comes from a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983. [And it appears that those loyal to Reagan are losing favor in Trump's GOP.]
Here's more of Reagan's comments from the transcript of that speech.
"So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride–the temptation of blithely..uh..declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil."
There is more that is not in the clip I have at the top, but in the full speech. Reagan (below) is supporting the rights of 'minority citizens,' he's arguing against racism and anti-semitism, something else the Republicans today no longer agree with.
There is sin and evil in the world, and we’re enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might. Our nation, too, has a legacy of evil with which it must deal. The glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past. For example, the long struggle of minority citizens…for equal rights, once a source of disunity and civil war is now a point of pride for all Americans. We must never go back. There is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country. [Long Applause]
I know that you’ve been horrified, as have I, by the resurgence of some hate groups preaching bigotry and prejudice. Use the mighty voice of your pulpits and the powerful standing of your churches to denounce and isolate these hate groups in our midst. The commandment given us is clear and simple: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” [Applause]
Reagan is not a president I admire, for many reasons. I don't endorse mucht of this speech. And it's tricky to quote parts that appear to support the point you are making.
But Reagan is clearly telling this Evangelical audience that when there is a clear choice between good and evil, treating both sides with equal respect, as though they are equally valid, is wrong.
We're there now, yet media are giving Trump prime time interviews. And often using Right Wing lies as counterbalance to stories on President Biden.
I think they understand these are not normal times and the old rules don't work, because one side doesn't follow any rules, other than obeisance to Trump. They are trying to figure out how to report in these perilous times.
I think they are also carefully looking at their bottom line and calculating the number of eyeballs and clicks the GOP crime scene will generate for them.
*I'd note that Reagan was talking about the Soviet Union which has been replaced by Russia. But much of the evil still exists. Putin was spawned by the Soviet KGB. And just watching the destruction of Ukraine by Russia makes it clear that Russia is ruled by an inhumane war criminal.
I'd also like to acknowledge that I discovered the Reagan clip while watching the Netflix series SpyOps, Episode 3, Operation Pimlico.
Despite three different topics in the title, this isn't going to be a long post.
1. It's ok for firefighters, but not for the hungry
Lake Otis and Tudor is one of the busiest intersections in the city. I also have to get across it on a couple of my regular bike rides.
That's an admirable activity. But they were doing it standing in the intersection. Some in the middle, others between the right turn lanes and the through traffic lanes.
 |
| Photo by ADN photographer Marc Lester |
The ADN article tells us:
"The municipality spent more than $8,000 to post anti-panhandling signs at dozens of Anchorage’s busiest intersections in December — but the city law cited on the sign was found unconstitutional by a state court years ago."
"Corey Young, a spokesman for Mayor Dave Bronson, said the signs are meant to 'keep pedestrians away from dangerous situations in the roadway.'”
It appears from the article that this was done by the mayor's office without consulting affected departments like the Police Department. I don't think anyone disputes the idea that there's an element of danger involved in walking the lines of cars at busy intersections, but the courts had said it couldn't be prohibited.
If the mayor's office thinks this is dangerous, why are they letting the Fire Department do this? Did the mayor's office even know the Fire Department was doing this?
Or maybe we should ask if the original signs were an attempt to make those experiencing homelessness less visible to the general public, and danger wasn't the real issue.
2. Who's responsible for inflation
I like seaweed. I don't eat it everyday, but I do now and then. Last week I went to the Korean grocery story on Fireweed and Eagle to get some more seaweed. Here's last year's empty package.
The weight and number of servings are both the same. It's at least a year since I bought the first package of seaweed there. But the price of both is still the same!
While national chain groceries have been rapidly raising their prices, this local Korean grocery is charging the same amount as they did a year ago - $9.99. A similar product at Carr's, for instance, is advertised:
This is a total of .92 ounces for $8.99. The Korean store seaweed is 65 servings at .07 ounces per serving, or 4.55 ounces! One is $9.77 per ounce and the other is $2.20 per ounce.
3. Clouds
Anchorage has been having weather this month. By that I mean wind and rain and sun all fighting it out. I put up some cloud pictures two weeks ago. Here are from one this week's bike rides.
.jpeg)
4. Biking. And since I've mentioned bike rides, I reached my 1000 km goal for the summer (since April) and then got to 1100. Getting most of my rides done on the local bike trails and getting regular views of places like Taku Lake make the riding a pleasure. For lots of folks 600 miles is not that much, but it's kept me out exercising regularly all summer.
I got this email yesterday morning:
Dr. A:
It's been many years since we last connected. My last memory was the day in your office (Spring 2002 perhaps) when you suggested I apply for the Presidential Management Internship program. You took time that day to complete the faculty portion of the application as it had to be postmarked by midnight. It's amazing how a seemingly small moment can have such a dramatic impact on one's life. I have worked for the Federal Government for much the time since and have had a successful career that has allowed me to grow in ways I would have never imagined.
Thank you.
Teaching is such an important job, whether it's primary school or graduate school. You have the chance to change people's lives. Whether it's helping them believe in themselves, giving them the tools to think critically, helping them understand how some aspect of the world works, or supporting them to take the next steps of their lives.
And while a good teacher works hard to prepare a lesson and how to present it, you never know what random comment or action will have the most impact. A number of times students have told me how something I said really made a difference. And usually it was something off the cuff, not a part of the prepared lesson that clicked for that student.
This email comes 20 years later! I've often argued that student teacher evals should be done five or more years after the class, when the student has had time to process what actually took place and can more objectively assess a class and teacher. I've had several cases where students have told me that the first few classes they thought I was too demanding, expecting too much of them, and that it was only after a year or more that they finally realized what I was up to and suddenly it all made sense.
Teachers' pay in money these days is paltry compared to the education required for the job, the time and effort good teachers put in. Teachers' real pay is psychic, the knowledge they've made a difference. So pay up and let your teachers know.
Think about a teacher who made a positive difference in your life. I know that all of you can think of at least one or two such people without any effort. Look them up, find their contact info and tell them. Do it now.
And support schools and teachers who are under attack from the anti-Woke mob who are afraid of letting students search for truth, who are afraid of anyone who believes things that expose their own hypocrisy.
It's important to know that the Right has been crusading to move public tax money from public schools to private school for a long time. All the attacks on school budgets, curriculum, teachers, LGBTQ+ content and kids, they're all aimed at making public schools so bad that voters agree to fund private schools with public money. If you haven't read this Washington Post story, you should.
And it's why letting teachers know that you value their work is critical, so they don't simply quit, but rather hang in there until we get past these attacks and reestablish the importance of public education. If the teachers are driven away, we'll lose this fight.
It rained Thursday morning and I assumed that I'd be driving to Grow North Farm for the weekly vegetable pickup, but the sun came out about 2pm. So did the wind. Here are the trees in the backyard in the wind.
But the sky looked blue enough, the clouds not too threatening, that I biked to get the veggies. It wasn't bad most of the time. Lots of tree debris on the trails, but basically little stuff.
On the way back, as I was about to cross the Glenn Highway, it looked like there was rain coming down to the west (I didn't quite catch gray curtain in the photo),
This is a tale about a journalist who writes an article based on what a friend with a new high level job in DC told her. She pretty much writes what he says. But it turns out his story is wishful thinking. I just offer this as an example of bad reporting in case anyone is collecting such stories.
[Aug 31, 2023 - I've made some minor edits that, at most clarify, but don't change anything substantive.]
And, in fact, he was told early on that Kelly and allies had already kept Trump from doing some crazy shit. [Sorry, that's not my style, but it seems like the most appropriate way to say it. "Prevented him from taking dangerous actions" just seems too tame.]
So barely a month on the job Taylor meets with a journalist friend.*
"Not long after starting, I caught up with a reporter friend. We sat outside drinking cocktails not far from the White House, enjoying unseasonably warm April weather. I confidently told her there was an "Axis of Adults" emerging inside the Trump administration - comprised of Kelly, Mattis, Tillerson, and others - who were keeping it on track. She pushed back gently.
"They know what they're up against?" she asked.
"They realize this is a tumultuous White House," I explained, "and they were serving as a leveling influence over fractious personalities . . .protecting the country from enemies both foreign and domestic." (pp.53-54)
Let's be clear here. Taylor's been there a month or less in April 2017.
"The reporter ran a story in the Daily Beast --"New Power in Trumpland: The Axis of Adults" - and asked to use the quote. I agreed, hoping others would take comfort in knowing it wasn't all chaos in Trumpland." (p. 54)
Let me also say that Taylor has turned out to be one of the most consistent Republican voices against Trump. He was the guy behind the Anonymous letter to the New York Times, while he was still in the government. The letter that alerted the world to how bad things were in the Oval Office. I give him credit for sharing his early-on-the-job naïveté. He goes on:
"In hindsight, I was probably sending the message to a few particular people - like the mentor who'd reached out to warn me against going into the administration. And maybe, I was still trying to convince myself." (p. 54)
He closes that section with:
"I fell asleep easily in the early days knowing I'd made the right decision. The Trump administration was starting to function, thanks to capable deputies who knew how to run the government.
Like most bedtime stories, this turned out to be fiction." (p. 54)
So I googled Daily Beast "New Power in Trumpland: The Axis of Adults" and there it was. As a blogger I have some sense of the dynamics of getting stories. But since my blog is a hobby, not a job, I don't have the pressure to impress anyone or to get lots of hits. The times that's happened it was simply because I managed to get an idea or story that took off.
But I've read criticisms of reporters getting cozy with sources and then being used as conduits to publish an administration's story the way the administration wants it told. Or covering the strategy of the elections instead of the issues. (See for example Jay Rosen's "The savvy turn in political journalism.") I'm guessing this story would fit into savvy, but wrong. So here's part of that Daily Beast story.
"There’s a new band in town that’s guiding national security by quietly tutoring the most powerful man in America. Never-Trump Republicans who’d been apprehensive about President Donald Trump are celebrating the trio’s influence, calling Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Homeland Secretary John Kelly the “Axis of Adults.”
Through near daily contact with the trio, as well as Trump’s National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and CIA director Mike Pompeo, Trump’s world view appears to be morphing more closely to match hawkish conservatives of the Bush administration.
They point to the men’s influence in the Tomahawk strike in Syria—in contrast to Trump’s isolationist slogans on the campaign trail; the outreach to China, compared to Trump’s threats to launch a trade war; a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan; and Trump’s hardening stance toward Russia.
None of these key national security chiefs were part of the Trump campaign, or movement. They are seen by those who work most closely with them as loyal to the office of the president but still getting to know the man himself, said a senior administration official, speaking anonymously to describe the interactions just 11 weeks into the fledgling presidency."
That's Miles Taylor, the "senior administrative official speaking anonymously."
So, the reporter meets a friend for drinks (she didn't mention that part) and he relates his early impressions of the new administration. Things he's been told. And which he tells us, a few years later in his book. he soon realized were fiction.
But she got her story for the Daily Beast, a story that simply reported Taylor's fantasy about how the adults were taming Trump. She accepted her friend's (an anonymous senior administrative official) story as true. And the Daily Beast ran with it as true. And it was true in the sense that a senior administrative official said it.
I guess I'd also call into question a story that outs those adults - it likely put them on a Trump watchlist as people who thought they were smarter than he was.
How did this "Axis of Adults" fare?
Wikipedia says that as head of Homeland Security Kelly
According to the New Yorker,
Kelly left the DHS with a reputation as one of the most aggressive enforcers of immigration law in recent American history. His record belies the short length of his tenure. In six months, Kelly eliminated guidelines that governed federal immigration agents' work; vastly expanded the categories of immigrants being targeted for deportation; threatened to abandon the Obama-era program that grants legal status to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children; and has even broached the idea of splitting up mothers and children at the border to "deter" people from coming to the U.S.[39]The DHS under Kelly "became one of the few branches of the federal government that has been both willing and able to execute Trump's policy priorities."[39] Unlike other agency heads, Kelly did not clash with Trump.[38]
Who bent whom to his ways? Seems he was bent enough to be asked to be Trump's Chief of Staff, but that's when things went south..
"On December 7, 2018, CNN and others reported that Kelly and Trump were no longer on speaking terms and that Kelly was expected to resign in the coming days.[55] On December 8, Trump announced that Kelly would be leaving at the end of the year.[56]"
Tillerson and Mattis tried hard to be the adults, but it didn't work out. From the Atlantic
"Now [December 2018] Mattis was becoming more and more isolated in the administration, especially since the defenestration of his closest Cabinet ally, the former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, several months earlier. Mattis and Tillerson had together smothered some of Trump’s more extreme and imprudent ideas. But now Mattis was operating without cover. Trump was turning on him publicly; two months earlier, he had speculated that Mattis might be a Democrat and said, in reference to NATO, “I think I know more about it than he does.” (Mattis, as a Marine general, once served as the supreme allied commander in charge of NATO transformation.)"
But then a lot of people thought they could be the adult who could check Trump's impulses.
That's all. I just wanted to highlight this one example of an anonymous source who didn't really know what he was talking about getting reported as truth, with apparently no further fact checking.
*He calls her a 'reporter friend.' Reporter is probably the better word. But it's also a bit ambiguous whether she is a friend who is a reporter or a reporter who became a friend. I'm guessing that she was a friend first, but that's not clear.
This week, for instance, my Peace Corps training roommate from 1966 in DeKalb, Illinois and his wife visitor and we're kept them busy understanding why we still live in Anchorage. But it's not like we haven't seen each other since 1966. We've been in each others lives as much as people separated by a six hour plane ride can be. But it's been a while since they've been in Anchorage. Their kids were just a bit older than their grandkids are now when they were last here.
Hamilton was the first time we've been to a big entertainment event since COVID restrictions. We've been to a few movies, but at times when we were the only ones, or almost the only ones, in the theater. We were all masked Tuesday as were some of the ushers and a small number of other patrons. But we learned a family member (out of town) just had COVID and a 50th wedding event in Anchorage was cancelled because two people had COVID. While I realize that for fully vaccinated people it's not likely to be fatal, a mask is still much less disruptive than being sick for a week.
I'd found the soundtrack of Hamilton at the Internet Archive and listened casually for the previous week on the assumption that musicals are more enjoyable if you know the music. And that rap is easier to understand if you hear it more than once and can read the lyrics.
The ADN had a letter this week noting that a number of Hamilton viewers said they sat next to someone who had memorized the Hamilton sound track and sang along with each song. One member of our group at one end sat next to such a person. As the ADN letter writer wrote, "We didn't pay to listen to you." Maybe they should have a sound proof section for those who want a sing-along experience. You know, like the churches that have glassed off space for people with crying babies.
But we did have a good time and enjoyed the spectacle. While there were four empty seats near us, the place was packed on a Tuesday night. (And I suspect the four empty seats were sold, but the people weren't able to attend.)
The Atwood holds 2056 people. Our seats were not the most expensive at a bit over $100 each. So, just to make the math easier, let's assume an average of
$100 per ticket X 2000 seats X 17 performances = $3,400,000.
So, 34,000 people will have spent $3.4 million for a couple of hours of entertainment in Anchorage. Most of that money, I assume, will go to the actors, stage people, and the touring company, and various ticket sales agencies. Not much of it will stay in Anchorage. Some of the people attending will go more than once. And some will be tourists, like our friends who were here from Chicago.
This was a bit disorienting because Cyrano's has moved from its long time downtown location to the old Out North location which also presented performing artists almost always with an LGBTQ link. I still think I'm at Out North, even though all the plays listed on the wall are Cyrano productions that were presented at the downtown location. It was sort of like being at a friend's house, except they've moved and another friend has moved in with all their furniture.
The play was a little silly - a British murder mystery romp with two actors playing six, maybe seven parts, including a werewolf and a mummy. The Dramaturg's* note in the program said, among other things:
"The script of The Mystery of Irma Web - A Penny Dreadful requires that both actors who are cast be the same sex and is a licensure requirement. Insead of two men, Director Krista M. Schwarting believed that two women could successfully accomplish the same goal."
She also mentioned that the play involves those two actors to make 35 costume changes.
The opening scene takes place in an English manor. For the second scene, the stage was transformed with folding doors into an Egyptian tomb.
While the play itself didn't hold much deep meaning for me, the two actors were excellent, deftly staying in accented character through all those costume changes.
*I didn't really know what a dramaturg was either. The program says she was professionally trained in Dramaturgy. Merriam Webster online says a Dramaturg is a specialist in Dramaturgy. And that Dramaturgy is:
"the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation"
"A dramaturge or dramaturg (from Ancient Greek δραματουργός dramatourgós) is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults authors, and does public relations work.[1][2][3] Its modern-day function was originated by the innovations of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an 18th-century German playwright, philosopher, and theatre theorist.[4]"
OK, so that's one post through the canal.
They 
