Death Watch

It's been all over the internet today.  Fred Phelps is on his death bed.

I suppose there may be some reading this who stare blankly and ask "who?"

Fred Phelps was "discovered" by mainstream media a few years ago, when he started picketing the funerals of American servicemen killed in action, but he's been on my radar for far longer than that.

I became aware of Phelps and his Westboro Baptist church before there was a Facebook or a Twitter.  There was only Compuserve (for me) and I began to hear of this weird pastor of this strange church in Topeka, Kansas.  

At that time Phelps was really only known to the gay community and people around the gay community.  He was the guy who, with his "church" (really his family members) would picket pride parades with their hateful signs.

When I went to Washington, DC for the final full display of the AIDS quilt, a rally at the Lincoln Memorial, and a march to the Capitol building, there was Phelps and his followers out in all their regalia, and their signs.

After reading about Phelps for awhile, I got hold of a piece written by one of his children who had "escaped" the compound and wrote about what it was like to have Phelps for a Dad.  I don't remember it all, but I do remember the part about his beating his sons with a baseball bat for disobedience.

When Matthew Shepherd died, Phelps was there to picket his funeral...

...and he started a counter on his web page counting the number of days that Matthew had been in hell.

But Phelps didn't hit the mainstream media until he went a little bonkers and started picketing the funerals of soldiers, his message that God killed soldiers because the United States did not condemn homosexuality.

Now more people were becoming aware of Phelps and his mission, and he expanded his mission to cover the funerals of just about anybody, it seemed.

His son issued a statement on Facebook yesterday, saying that his father had been excommunicated by the Westboro Baptist Church and that now he is in the hospital and is not expected to live much longer.

Needless to say there has been a flood of messages all over the internet expressing joy at the news.  But I was happy to see that there were also a lot of messages which expressed what I've been feeling at this news.

I feel no joy at the impending death of Fred Phelps.  A man with that much hate in his heart must have had a very difficult upbringing to make him such a cruel person. I can't excuse his actions and I find it difficult to forgive him for the pain he has brought so many families.  But I also can't rejoice at his impending demise.  To feel happiness at whatever pain and suffering he may have at his end is to bring myself down to his level, to feel hate for a person I didn't know.  If there is an afterlife, I suspect he and the Almighty that he has been the self-appointed spokesperson for for decades now are going to have a very interesting chat as they go through his life review.

I hope nobody pickets his funeral and lets those who cared for him mourn in peace. 

Sunday Stealing

From FYeah, Surveys!

Do you have another window or tab open? If so, what are they for?
I always have several tabs open, usually one for Facebook, one for SwapBot, one for Funny the World, and one for whatever else I've just Googled.  I sometimes have another window opened, but rarely, and for nothing specific.

Do you like to cook/bake?
Yes.  I'm a good cook.  I just don't like to plan and shop.

What are you currently listening to?
The sound of the fan inside my computer.  It's early and nobody else is up and I haven't turned the TV on yet.

How long have you lived in the house you live in?
We moved here in August of 1973, so 40-1/2 years.

Are you tired?
No.  I just woke up and I slept seven hours last night, which is something of record for me

Do you pick your words carefully, or just tend to blurt everything out?
Oh I'm a blurter.  I try to speak carefully, but most of time I just say whatever is on my mind.

Are you nice to everyone?
Of course.  Why would I not be?

Have you ever tripped in public?
I'm a klutz, so yes.  My last was that spectacular fall I took at the theater a week ago.

Are you a morning person or a night person?
Yes. 

Is it easier to forgive or forget?
Definitely easier to forgive.  Forgetting is impossible for me.

Is there something that’s recently shocked you?
Oh, it must be something that congress did.  That seems to be so shocking on a daily basis that it doesn't even register any more.

Which is harder: walking away from somebody you love or coming back?
Fortunately, I've never had to do either.  They do it first.  The walking away part.  Nobody has ever come back.

What were you doing at midnight last night?
Sleeping.  We had just come back from a show and I was groggy, so went to sleep before midnight (unusual for me) and went to sleep instantly.

What color are your eyes?
Hazel, though Walt will tell you "green with yellow flecks"

---

We finished our marathon 9 shows last night with a wonderful production of a play called 4000 Miles.  It was not without incident, however, when about 15 minutes into the play, someone in the audience had an emergency.  I don't know what it was, but they stopped the play, called 911, got him out of the theater and then the play started again from where they left off.

Cliffs of Moher

In preparation for St. Patrick's day, I changed my Facebook page to reflect my Irish roots.  I thought about what I could use from Ireland and decided that a photo of the Cliffs of Moher would work perfectly,

 The cliffs are located in County Clare on the west side of Ireland.   They rise 390 feet from the Atlantic Ocean and are magnificent.  If you saw the movie Ryan's Daughter, you saw the cliffs in the opening scenes. Apparently they were used as the "Cliffs of Insanity" in Princess Bride and were seen in one of the Harry Potter movies.

It was definitely one of the things I wanted to see when we traveled to Ireland with the kids in 1988.  

The kids remember that day mostly because it took us 3 hours to get there and something like half an hour to get home.  They were folded up like pretzels in the tiny hatchback that we rented (we had ordered a van and were only told when we got there that there were no vans for rent).  We were sightseeing and so took the scenic route, hence the 3 hours.

When we finally got to the cliffs, I remember that there was a parking lot off away from the ciffs and you walked up to the center of the U-shaped bay around which the cliffs stood.  The cliffs had a low fence with a sign warning people not to go beyond the fence because bits of the cliffs were always falling off.

To the right of the center was a tower, off a short hill.  Walt and I decided to investigate the tower and we left the kids to do their own exploring.

You can see that the road circles off to the right and up to the tower.  It looks a lot more built up today than it was in 1988. As you came down the road you came back to the center again.

You can see how wide the area is.  You can barely see the tower off on the right cliff and then to the left are the really steep cliffs.  Here is a guy looking over the edge.

So Walt and I got all the way to the top of the hill and investigated the tower.  When we emerged and looked waaaay down the hill and off to the magnificent 390 feet tall cliffs with the walls that are always crumbling into the ocean and what did we see?  Our children, who had stepped over the fence and were looking down, much like this guy is.

They were much too far away to yell at them.  I told Walt then and there that if they didn't fall off the edge, I would kill them.  I could hardly breathe as we rushed down the hill and got to the kids who, by the time we got to them, were back on terra firma again.

When I got angry with them, they protested that they really weren't that close to the edge and that it was just an illusion on my part, but when we got home and they got their pictures back, there were the toes on the very edge of the cliff.

Maybe it was the price I paid for making them ride like pretzels for 3 hours, but still today, whenever I look at pictures of the cliffs, my heart begins to pound all over again, even though it has been 25 years since that day.

I would love to go back to the Cliffs of Moher again some day and just enjoy it, and not spend half of the time in fear of my children falling off into the Atlantic Ocean.

Today at Logos

What a beautiful day it was today!  Mid 70s and no wind.   On my walk from the car to Logos, I saw a girl with sea foam colored hair riding her bicycle.  She looked like some sort of sea nymph.

Susan and Peter were both in the store when I got there and we talked a bit about Three Sisters, which they had seen the week before we did. We pretty much agreed on the strong and not so strong things about the play.

It had been a slow morning for Peter and actually the afternoon was even slower.  I had brought back the biography of Charles Schulz that I had bought last week as my book to read today, but I found I spent a lot of time watching the passing parade outside the door.  A woman walking three dogs stopped for one of the dogs to pee.  It was a female and she started peeing against a tree while a male dog lifted his leg on a nearby bush and the smaller dog, deciding to take that moment to sniff the urine stream got his face peed on.  She walked on, heading west.

A young couple stopped by. They had a black lab on a leash and the man started in whie the woman stayed behind.  I told her the dog was welcome and they brought him in, but they were looking for "Game of Thrones," which everyone is looking for.  He asked if I knew much about Anne Rice and I admitted I'd only read part of her first book and it hadn't grabbed me, so I didn't know anything about the rest of them.

As they left, the woman with the 3 dogs returned, this time walking east.  No peeing this time.

A group of 3 women and one man came in and browsed casually.   The guy walked with one of the women, massaging her belly the whole time. They all left, quickly, without buying anything.

A woman in brown came in.  She had a soft dress that looked like it might have been a dancing costume, brown leggings and brown boots.  She started at the art books and then looked through contemporary fiction.  I didn't notice when she left (without buying anything) because of the next customer.

This guy could have been the Kralahome in The King and I.   Husky build with the sides of his hair shaved and a mess of curls on the top of his head.  He had been checking the bargain books and laughed that he found L. Ron Hubbard's book just where it belonged--in the humor section. 

He asked if we had anything by Lovecroft and he didn't find anything.   He talked about Lovecroft and the sad state of some fantasy writers these days.   Talked about how bad the "Twilight" saga was.  But he found six books in the Warcraft series and gobbled them up immediately ($19.88).  He told me the whole story of the books and the game.  Said he's a philosophy major at UCD.   Talked a lot about how authors these days write creatures and what he didn't like about it.  I asked him if he'd ever read David Gerrold.  "Never heard of him," he said. "He wrote The Trouble with Tribbles," I said.   "Never heard of it," he said.  So much for name-dropping. I thought everybody knew Star Trek, but he was pretty young so it's possible that a guy into sci fi and fantasy has never heard of Star Trek.  

Later I saw him and his friend going down the street on skateboards.

A tall guy walked in about 2 feet, looked around, and walked out again.

A couple arrived.  He's from Germany and is looking for a book, in English, to send to his mother, but it has to have simple English vocabulary.  I made a few suggestions, but really couldn't think of anything that might be perfect.   I suggested he come back and talk with Susan, who, as a former ESL teacher, should be able to give him some good suggestions.

A girl bought "Sophie's Choice" and a French lesson book that I wish I had seen before she bought it.

A woman looked for Agatha Christie, but didn't find any of her books and left.

From outside there was the noise of drumming and some "flutish" sounds that may have been a whistle or something like that.   Maybe it was an early St. Patrick's celebration at the pub around the corner.

It had been such a slow afternoon.  Two sales in two hours.   "My friend" showed up at 4:02 and even he didn't buy anything this week.

A grandmother type dressed in purple and drinking something out of a tall cup with a straw came in, went right to the children's book section and bought 3 kids book, including one called "Strega Nona," which she said she loved...loved...loved!

A Dad and teen aged son (wearing 8 thick wrist bands) came in and started looking around, but I don't know if they bought anything because Susan came in shortly after that and Walt right behind her and we left to come home.  I think this was the slowest day I've had at Logos since I've been working there.

 

It was that kind of day...

It's Quarter to 3

I woke up this morning thinking of that old Frank Sinatra song

...it's quarter to 3
there's no one in the place
except you and me...

It made me think about music and general and why it's not a part of my life any more.  Oh, it's part of my life (can't see all those musicals and not have music a part of your life!), but my knowledge of contemporary music died somewhere around the time of Elvis.

I'm an award-show-a-aholic, yet the only award show I never watch is the Grammys because I know so little (read: "nothing") of today's music.

I don't know when or how that happened.  For so many years, from my teens, I was never without music.  The radio was on all the time at home, I always played music in the car, I knew all the current singers.

Part of my problem is that I was raised by a music fanatic, who had every record of everybody from the 30s and 40s.  Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, the Andrews Sisters, Louis Armstrong ... these were the musicians I grew up with, the singers of my parents' (and grandparents') generation.

I don't remember how I was introduced to classical music, but somewhere in high school, I found station KKHI in San Francisco, a 24 hour classical music station.  For all I know it had been going for years, but I took to it like a duck to water.  I remember one time at my grandparents' apartment.  The old guys were talking in the living room and I was bored and went out into the kitchen to turn on the radio and sat there listening to KKHI.  My grandmother came into the kitchen to stir something in a pot on the stove and said "That's nice, but could you really listen to it all day long?"  I wonder why that is such a strong memory.

When rock 'n' roll came on the scene, my father was so adamant that it was the worst music ever written (second only to Gilbert & Sullivan) that I never played it in the house, so somehow just never got hooked.  I stuck with the balladeers and folk music.  I loved the Kingston Trio, Judy Garland and other sing-able individuals and groups.

I also continued my love of classical music, though I couldn't discuss it intellectually.  I just knew what I liked.  There was a piece that was the theme song of an eveing show on KKHI that I loved listening to--just a snippet of it. I was always happy when I was in the car at the start of that show.  I found out later it was the fourth movement of Cesar Franck's Sonata in A Major for violin and piano

)

(amazing how quickly you can find anything on the internet!)

I still usually had music on in the house, sometimes popular, sometimes classical, but I guess I got out of the habit when I started working on the computer.  I know some people have Pandora, that internet radio, on all the time, but I found that having background music made me jittery and I preferred having the TV on which, surprisingly, does not make me jittery.  And then in the car, after years of All Steve Schalchlin All the Time, I discovered audio books and now I listen to books in the car instead of music.   (I had never read Steve's Wikipedia entry before...never realized he sounded so important!)

Of course there were the Lawsuit years, when we attended most of the concerts, loved the music, and shared our kids' love of groups like Talking Heads, though that never became part of what I listened to when by myself.

When Peggy was here, she re-awakened an interest in John Denver in me and for awhile I bought lots of his CDs and listened to him in the car often, but since the whole debacle with Peggy, I find his music depressing and rarely listen to it.

It's strange that I have two children for whom music is their life, Jeri at Berklee School of Music, and Ned at Jack-FM radio.  I occasionally listen to Jack-FM in the car, but mostly to hear Ned's jingles.  Some of the music I like, some I don't, but I don't know any of it.  Not really.  When I watch a talk show on TV and the final act of the show comes on, some musical performer, I will often turn it off.  I don't know why.

So music is not a part of my life any more, not in the way that it once was.  It kind of makes me sad but not in a "I must listen to music again" way.  It's just strange that what was once such an integral part of my life just isn't any more, though I can still sing all the lyrics from all those records that I grew up with, most of the musicals I review, and the entire canon of Gilbert & Sullivan.  When I do listen to music today, it becomes like an old friend I used to spend a lot of time with but rarely see any more -- nice to visit, but something that is no longer part of my present.

The End...for 3 Days

Yes, my theater orgy ended tonight and I have three whole days off (four, if you count all day before the 8 p.m. performance on Saturday).

I shouldn't have taken yesterday off.   I should have found a play so I didn't get out of the swing of things.   Believe me, what with the allergies (which are much better, but not gone), almost no sleep last night because my brain didn't want to shut off, and a whole day free yesteray, the very last  thing I wanted to do tonight was go to see Blue Man Group.  Especially since I've seen it before and I have a "meh" reaction to it.  They're good, they're popular, but they aren't my cup of tea.

I did have the distinct notion, watching them tonight that if he were younger, Ned would make a perfect Blue Man.

On the drive in, I was not happy.  I don't like to dwell on my aches and pains, but it's important to understand the night.  Most of my allergy symptoms are gone.  No runny nose, no sneezing, no fluid in the ear, but what I am left with is kind of a sore face.  It's like all the nerve endings, both ears, across the top of my nose, up through my eyes and into my scalp just ache.  I want one of those cooling gel masks that you can put on your face and just let it make your face feel better.  I kept my eyes closed most of the way into Sacramento and then Walt, bless him, let me off at the door of the theater and went to park the car, instead of leaving me off a block away.

We got into our seats and that pre-show vibe that you get from audiences started.  They closed the doors to the theater.  And we sat.  And sat.  And sat.  Fifteen minutes past start time, the audience started an impatient clapping.  Five minutes later, it was announced they were having technical difficulties and they hoped to have it fixed soon.  (It should be mentioned that the entire show is technical effects and you'd think someone would have checked it out ahead of time!)

At this point about 1/3 of the audience left their seats and went into the audience.  Walt said there were half again as many people standing at the bar as at the bathroom.  A woman in our row came back with a stack of five candy bars...I guess that extra half hour was going to be too difficult to get through without sugar loading. (I should point out that, fat as I am, and compulsive eater that I am, I am actually able to make it through a play and a movie without having a snack.   Some people figure that the astronomical cost of theater snacks is part of the experience of the evening...I don't.)

While everyone was out, I got a message from my friend and former co-worker Crilly asking me if I was in the theater.  He and his wife were sitting in row W (we were in G).  He asked if I was wearing green, which was and he said he could see me.  I looked over my shoulder to the back of the theater and could see him waving.

People finally came back into the theater, they closed the door again and we waited another 5-10 minutes, but finally the show started.

It's going to be interesting to review because you can't really review it.  It's one of those "hadda been there" kinds of things.  You can explain what happens, but (a) that spoils the surprise and (b) you can't write it as entertainingly as they can do it.  But that's a task for tomorrow.

The problem with the show, for me, is that it uses a lot of strobe lights.  A lot.  bright lights shining, blinking twirling, and then spotlights shining out into the audience for the audience participation segments (thank god Row L is too far back for that).  But every time those lights started up, the pain level in my face went up.  I spent a lot of time covering my eyes.  I should have brought sunglasses, but who brings sunglasses to a show?  We were just very lucky that Matt Hessburg, the publicity guy for this theater, gave all the critics (and their spouses) ear plugs. I suspect I would not have liked the show nearly as much without the ear plugs.  I took them out briefly and put them right back in again quickly, grateful to have them.

But I got through it and now I'm going to climb onto my couch and will myself to sleep to make up for what I didn't get last night.  Tomorrow I'm off to buy more hay fever meds, since I have run out of the Allerest, whose expiration date, I just read, is 1991.  Both David and Paul were alive when I bought that box!

Good Drugs

I've been sneezing an awful lot lately.  And I can feel fluid in my ear, the ear itself itching terribly.  My nose has been runny.  And I've been coughing.

I've always been smug that so many in Davis complain about seasonal allergies and I really didn't have many symptoms.  I know people who had never had any signs of allergies whatsoever, who get them within a year of moving here.  

It never occurred to me that my occasional sneezing and sniffles might be because of allergies.

I've been ignoring the symptoms for several days now, not really minding the sneezing, and kind of enjoying it, actually.  But the itchy ear was driving me bonkers.  Fortunately we have no qtips in the house or I would have poked a hole in my ear drum by now.  

But this morning I felt like I had the world's worst cold.  It was one of those "curl into a ball, moan, and tell everybody to go away and leave me alone."  

Allergies?  Could this possibly be allergies?

We don't have a lot of things like cold remedies in the house, but I searched and found an old box of Allerest and, without much hope of it doing anything, I took two.

Within 10 minutes, the fluid in my ear wasn't noticeable, I had stopped sneezing, and I was able to put away the box of tissues because I didn't need them.

The box says to take 2 pills every 4 hours.  I didn't need to watch the clock because in 4 hours, my ear started itching a bit, no fluid yet, but just a slight reminder to take my medicine.  Two pills, 10 minutes, all symptoms were gone again.  The same thing happened 4 hours after that.

So I've decided it is not a cold I have but that after 40+ years here in Davis, I finally am having a full-fledged case of hay fever.

Thanks goodness for good drugs!

---

We are approaching the end of our theater orgy.  Last night we attended a show by a brand new theater group in town, The Art Theater of Davis, which was presenting Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters.  I had not seen a Chekhov play before and was a bit nervous about it, it being the sort of thing that "theater people" know well, but not having studied theater or anything else in college, it was new to me, and could I understand it?

Well, it was as good production, not a great production, but definitely enjoyable.   I had major complaints, not with the production, but with the program which seemed to assume that you knew the play before coming to see it.  While the program gives the names of the characters and the actor who plays which character, Chekhov rarely uses the actual name of the character in his script. Other than the three sisters, their brother and his wife, nobody else is called by his or her program name.

Baki Tezcan, for example, gives an excellent performance as Vershinin, the Lieutenant-colonel commanding the artillery battery in town, who enters into an affair with sister Masha, but it was not until I got home that I realized which character he was because he is only referred to by his military title in the script.

Steve Buchanan plays Tuzenbach, in love with youngest sister Irina, but is only ever called "Baron" in the play. 

The only reason I knew that the servant they call "Nanny" is named Anfisa was because I had met the actress at a book club meeting, when she was passing out cards inviting us to come to see her in the play.

So I took them to task for that, but otherwise gave it good, if not high, marks.   What I loved about this new theater is that they have created a theater space in a big warehouse, where there are shops and the local flea market.  They have set off a corner of the building and created a 40-some seat theater, which is a little gem. Folding chairs for now, which get hard to sit on after a couple of hours, but this is just their first production and I'm sure that as they evolve, the theater itself will evolve as well.

Tonight there is nothing to review and I hardly know what to do with myself.  Tomorrow night we see Blue Man Group in Sacramento, but then my theater orgy is coming to an end and I will go back to the kind of schedule I've had for the past 14 years.