As a post-script to yesterday's entry. Scott Eckern resigned his post as Artistic Director for California Musical Theatre. In his resignation statement, he confesses that he has a lesbian sister who is in a relationship and he assumed that her "domestic partnership" status granted her all the same rights of marriage.
I am sad to see Scott leave because I think he has done much to enhance the Sacramento theatre community. I think there has been an (admittedly understandable) overreaction to his public support of Prop 8. I feel he would learn more, and there would be a better dialog, if he were to stay in the job and talk to those people who have been hurt by his support of Prop 8. (This editorial by Kel Munger, of Sacramento News and Review, says it more eloquently than I could.)
But then I also feel life in prison is a far greater punishment than the death penalty.
It was after midnight before I remembered that I hadn't finished this journal entry yet. Walt came home from Santa Rosa, where reports are that his brother is making progress, but v-e-r-y slowly. He's still on a respirator, still mostly under sedation, unable to communicate, or even to open his eyes, so they aren't sure how much he understands. But the CAT scan they did tonight didn't show anything badly amiss, so they continue to be hopeful...and to wait. Walt came home to get clean clothes and will drive back again tomorrow.
Anyway, when he arrived home, he asked if I had been out of the house in the past two days because the newspapers were still in the driveway, and I realized that, other than to get the mail out of the mailbox, no, I hadn't been out of the house since I returned from Cousins Day.
My next feature article is due tomorrow. It is on an upcoming production of A Tuna Christmas and, quite frankly, I had forgotten that we had decided I was going to do an article.
But my editor reminded me in plenty of time and I got the two interviews I needed to do done over the telephone (I do like telephone interviews because I can listen and type at the same time and don't have to transcribe at some later date...oh the beauty of being able to type so fast!)
But the two interviews didn't give me enough material for the article, so I did research on the whole Tuna phenomenon. Thank the artistic gods for the Internet and Google!
Greater Tuna, for those who have never heard of it, is an hilarious comedy, a slice of life of the third smallest town in Texas (Tuna).
[As I've been writing this article, I've been thinking about my friend Steve, who grew up in BUNA, Texas and I decided to look it up on the Internet. The description says, "Buna is at the junction of Farm roads 253 and 1004, U.S. Highway 96, and State Highway 62, thirty-six miles north of Beaumont in south central Jasper County." I wonder if the authors of Greater Tuna had Buna in mind when they wrote their show!]
The thing that makes it funny is first that it pokes fun of all the stereotypical conservative good ol' boy things that you'd expect in Texas...there's Didi Snavely, for example, the crusty old broad who owns Didi's Used Weapons Emporium (weapons guaranteed to kill, and if they won't bring 'em back and we'll give you one which will), and Bertha Bumilller, the zaftig, big-haired mother who is also a member of "Smut Snatchers of the New Order" which wants to ban books like "Roots" (because it only presents one side of slavery) from the library. My personal favorite was her son Petey, who is "addicted to puppies" (which is why they have eight dogs).
You get the idea.
There are four plays in the Tuna series: Greater Tuna, A Tuna Christmas, Red, White and Blue Tuna and Tuna Does Vegas and I learned a whole lot about the history of the show.
I also rented Greater Tuna from Netflix so I could refresh my memory, since I hadn't seen the show since about 1985, and I put off starting to write the article until the DVD came.
And then, of course, I went through my all day routine of NOT writing most of the time, but pacing, eating, watching the video, playing with the puppy and checking Facebook for new stuff. I don't know why this is the way I have to write everything I write. I don't know why I can't just sit down and do it.
But then that's why I never get all the dishes unloaded from the dishwasher, all the clothes folded on the dryer, all the house cleaned. It's why Peggy had to pack my suitcase for me when I left Australia because the whole project just seemed so overwhelming that I found all sorts of excuses not to do it.
In fact, as I write this (1 a.m. on November 13), I have the article almost all finished. It's just about the right length. It needs one more paragraph to tie everything together and then a closing paragraph. But I"m writing this entry instead of writing that and I will probably go to sleep and finish it when I get up in the morning.
It's such a weird way of working but this has been my pattern throughout my whole life and it's unlikely that at age 65 I'm going to change now.
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