A strange and wondrous place

The universe, that is.

My play has had the most amazing life for a first play.

Readings at prestigious theatres, nominations, awards.

Participation by fabulous actors, not least of which is Linda Hamilton, whose extraordinary generosity was only exceeded by her stunning performance.

All kinds of miraculous serendipity and synchronicity on the long journey from page to stage.

It has been a long journey, indeed. Geographically, for sure—NYC, New Jersey, Virginia, California, Maine. Professionally as well—so many smart people sharing their expertise and their advice. Personally—maybe personally, most of all, as I’ve had to challenge myself to master new skills, to be more assertive, to stand up for myself and others.

I’ve learned so much along the way. Did a few things right and several things wrong. Had a fabulous adventure, and the play hasn’t even been produced.

Yet.

And that’s the miracle today.

I have signed a contract.

At long last, Angels and Ministers of Grace Defend Us, will be getting a production!

The specific time slot hasn’t been set, yet, but at some point before the end of 2014, you can see my work at New Jersey Rep.

I’m so looking forward to the opportunity to see the play on its feet. Costumes, props, a set! Maybe I’ll get to tinker with the script, make it better.

And what’s even more of a miracle is that maybe I will finally be able to turn my attention to writing another one. (Although, you know, I’ve never been sure how I came to write this one—so we’ll see. No promises.)

I’m just going to take a short break from worrying about all of it and enjoy the newest part of the ongoing miracle.

I’m getting a production!

But, first, I’m getting some cake.

Priorities, you know.

What’s a celebration without cake?

Alexis Smith

The power of longevity.

I have great partiality for the Smiths who are performers—as well as those who achieve longevity in show business. So, today, we recognize Alexis Smith.

Madam Smith—so-called, by me, at least, because she toured for a year as the Madam in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas—Madam Smith began as a Warner Bros. contract player in the forties. She appeared alongside many of the biggest male stars of the day.

In the fifties, it seems she began to make the transition to stage doing a number of touring productions throughout the sixties—including one of my favorites, a big hit at the time, although little known now—Mary, Mary by Jean Kerr.

In the seventies, she made it to Broadway and won a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.

She continued to work in film and television, with a recurring role on Dallas in the eighties and an Emmy nomination for a guest spot on Cheers in the nineties.

She passed away from brain cancer in 1993, still married to her husband of 49 years.

Personal and professional endurance. I admire it.

Here’s a clip, not the best quality video, of one of her numbers from Follies.

NSFW

Totally G-Rated, but Not Safe For Work!

Mostly because it’s silly—and there’s sound.

But, it’s Silly Saturday, you know. And this is in honor of my nephew, Wynn.

What you need to know about this is that my nephew, Wynn, acquired a tricorn hat on a trip to Williamsburg three years ago. He was six. Williamsburg is an educational opportunity, of course, and Wynn’s father told him he was now a Colonial boy.

Wynn’s uncle—the MotH*—had no such educational obligations, and he told Wynn that he, Wynn, was a pirate. The MotH and Wynn had a high old time stomping around, growling “Arrrrr” at all and sundry for the remainder of the week.

Now, surprisingly, this pirate business took an odd educational turn the following year. Wynn’s class was studying pirates, and the teacher mentioned how pirates used to make people walk the plank. The class was then asked to write down something a pirate would say.

Apparently, every other kid but Wynn wrote, “Walk the plank.”

What did Wynn write?

You guessed it!

“Arrrrr!”

The teacher was most impressed.

And the MotH’s shenanigans turn out not to be so uneducational, after all.

Therefore, in honor of Wynn, turn your sound on (but maybe not full blast) and watch this little Flash clip. (But, beware. It loops. And that way madness lies.)

http://cristgaming.com/pirate.swf

* MotH = Man of the House

October Project

Mythic music.

I found October Project in one of those weird episodes of synchronicity that happen in every life.

Once upon a time, I was an early-career director in NYC. I got asked to direct a lot of readiings. It’s a great way to gain experience in some, although not all, aspects of the directors’ craft.

Anyway, I landed a gig directing a reading of a short piece called A Play on Words by Eileen Weiss. Eileen’s play was funny and quirky and full of marvelous writing. We gathered actors and set to work.

One of the actors we gathered was a young woman named Julie Flanders. Julie and her husband Emil Adler had just started a band.

October Project.

And Julie gave me a CD of their self-titled debut album.

So, of course, I listened to it.

And wow!

Intricate vocal harmonies. Clear crystalline voices. Haunting melodies. And beautiful, evocative, even mythic words.

So, here is a link to a music video of October Project’s Return to Me from that album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm9kQdIFObY

And another, Ariel, which I love because of the connection to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. (Flapdoodle!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ga53vmcb2s

And you can find Julie, Emil and Marina here.

Oh, the reading?

We did it at Barnes & Noble. It went great!

OPF

Other People’s Flowers

I love them.

I do not have a green thumb. It’s not even faintly chartreuse.

Plants, typically, do not do well around me. (Except for a brief and inexplicable period in my thirties when I maintained seven house plants for a period of about four years. And then they went the way of all plants and died on me.)

Now, this is one of those things that is a mixed blessing.

When you are hopeless at growing things, you get to save a fair amount of money and muscle fatigue by not even attempting it. However, I do think I might look into a small herb garden—and maybe some radishes.

And I would like to have more flowers than I do.

The canna lilies that were here when we bought the house—they seem fairly indestructible. Likewise, there’s a vinca that’s held on rather well.

The redbud tree and the fringe tree both bloom yearly.

I have some crepe myrtles, too, that were here at the start and a couple that I’ve planted that may have made it through the winter.

On the other hand, my carnations croaked, the begonia may be frostbitten, the poinsettias bit the dust along with a couple of other flowering things I tried to grow.

But, the neighbors!

The neighbors have orange blossoms and azaleas and dogwoods and tulip trees and this hedge that’s full of big pink flowers. There are geraniums across the creek and rain trees in the surrounding developments and a bottle brush tree along the road I take for my (with any luck) daily walk.

And here’s the thing about other people’s flowers.

You can look at them and smell them and enjoy them just as much as if they were in your own yard.

So, today, I am thankful for other people’s flowers.

270!

I win.

Not a presidential election, unfortunately. (Or fortunately! Who would want that job?)

I’m not talking about electoral college votes but consecutive days of blog posts. 270 consecutive days! Three-quarters of a year!

Cake!

I look back, and I wonder how I did it.

I look forward, and I wonder what comes next.

Today, however, I wonder will I make my quota?

One post in front of the other. That’s how it’s done. There are no shortcuts.

If your goal is 30 minutes of exercise a day, you can’t achieve it in 25 minutes.

It’s an interesting point. And something I will remember in future goal-setting endeavors. A goal based on churning out some regular quantity isn’t subject to streamlining. I mean, you can shave minutes off a distance goal. All you can do with a time goal is add distance to it. It still takes the same amount of time.

I foresee a review of my monster To Do List to see which projects are open to efficiency improvements and which just take the time they take. I suspect the latter would be good candidates for outsourcing. You know, if I had a staff—or the money to pay them.

I wonder how such a review would turn out. I think I’ve already gotten things down to where I’m as efficient as I can be—but maybe not. Maybe there are a few more hours for mumblety-peg.*

I also wonder if that really loud sighing noise my air compressor makes is okay, but that’s probably a whole other topic. It does seem to be working very hard on this cold, cold morning, though.

That’s one thing outsourced to technology, however.

I don’t have to cut firewood.

Instead, I can sit here in moderate warmth, plotting my 271st blog entry and wondering when the heater can take a rest.

* mumblety-peg = whatever you want to do. (It comes from Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth—a wonderful book about their family life with Frank B. Gilbreth, Sr., a pioneer of motion study. )

Someone once asked Dad: “But what do you want to save time for? What are you going to do with it?”

“For work, if you love that best,” said Dad. “For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure.” He looked over the top of his pince-nez. “For mumblety-peg, if that’s where your heart lies.”

Opposition research

Work on it.

Opposition research is a term that generally carries a somewhat negative connotation. It’s the research political candidates do on their opponents to look for areas where those opponents might be undermined in an election. Sometimes, they have their staffs conduct the same investigations on their own backgrounds. It’s known then as a “vulnerability study.” What makes a vulnerability study necessary is the same sleazy maneuvering that makes opposition research a political tool.

But today, I’m inventing a new term. Opposition thinking.

When things are going well, it’s a good idea to remember those for whom life may not be so good. It’s a good idea to think about what could go wrong. Not in a spirit of fear and anxiety, but as a way to recognize and acknowledge the goodness that surrounds you and, maybe, to take reasonable steps to preserve it.

When things are going badly, it’s even more important to think of the opposite, to recognize the things that are good. Even in the worst disasters, there are helpers and extraordinary acts of kindness and bravery. And, truly, if you have a life where you can sit at a computer and read this blog, you have it pretty good.

Sure, there are things we all want. Possessions we covet, goals we want to achieve. And there are obstacles and hurdles. Some of them loom large. Perfection is an unattainable goal. We get the “pursuit of happiness,” not necessarily the happiness itself.

Except that part is a choice.

It’s not always easy, and we are conditioned in many ways not to recognize it, but we have a choice. We can do our own vulnerability studies and minimize the risks to our inner peace. In the moments of struggle, we can recognize the places where we are stronger than that which opposes us, or, at the very least, where there are miracles to offset the stumbles and roadblocks.

The very fact that we can choose to do this is one of those miracles.

Choose wisely.

Abundance

Even when you can’t tell.

Here’s an interesting little fact. Interesting to me, anyway. Maybe not so interesting to you. But this whole blogging process is a challenge. (That’s not the interesting part. It’s not even an unexpected part.)

One of the things that has helped me keep it going this long is the little bit of structure I’ve set up. If you follow the blog, you know we have a different general theme for each day of the week: Smith Sundays, Monday Miracles, Tuesday Tips, etc.

I can’t tell you how much easier that makes it to come up with a specific subject for each post! It totally supports the idea that you need to have a few rules and regulations in order to be creative. Inspiration needs a few boundaries, or it just escapes into the ether.

The interesting thing to me has been the discovery that certain themes are harder to keep cranking out than others. I try to keep a little ahead of blog posts. Just in case I want to take a day off. Somebody might want to fly me to Paris for lunch, you know. (Well, you may not know. I do. That’s not gonna happen, and I’d rather go to Rome, anyway.) Or there might be a hurricane that knocks out all power for a week. (That could easily happen.)

So, I’ve got a few posts lined up in advance.

It’s easy to keep ahead of Smith Sundays. Nobody will ever run out of Smiths. There’s always something to wonder about on Wednesdays, and Friday Finds—there’s a lot of good stuff to share. Books, music, interesting websites. Not usually a problem to find something. Tuesday Tips are a little harder, but they usually pop up.

The hardest days, sometimes, are Mondays and Thursdays. The “happy” days. (Saturdays aren’t so easy either, but silliness is a special case.)

In the beginning, the Monday and Thursday posts were relatively easy to turn out. As time has passed, however, it begins to seem harder and harder to find a miracle or something for which to be thankful. Which is odd to me, because I have been and (knock wood) continue to be pretty lucky in my life. Many good things have happened, continue to happen and I am thankful for all of them.

It seems, however, that there is a miracle even in the difficulty. When the miracles start to run into each other, and I have trouble picking one out, it might be that I am unobservant. But I prefer to think that I am living in such abundance that it’s just that the whole thing is a miracle.

The trick is to remember it.

Down with the ship

Try not to do that.

In honor of the MotH,* who although unhurt, was involved in a near maritime disaster yesterday, today’s Smith Sunday will focus on Edward J. Smith.

Of course, the MotH is not a Smith—and his near disaster was nowhere near as disastrous as that of Captain Smith. It’s just that I don’t really know how he, the MotH, escaped injury when the ladder he was on fell off the dock onto the canoe and into the water. So, it got me thinking about other people who went down with the ship.

One of the most famous of these—although you might not know his name—was Captain Edward J. Smith of the White Star Line.

That’s right.

The Titanic.

With all the many Smiths in the world, you have to figure a good portion of them would be involved in some disasters. Hard to think of very many more disastrous disasters, though.

Now, Captain Smith was acquitted, posthumously, of being responsible for the shipwreck. It does seem like there are some remaining questions as to why he never slowed the ship in spite of several warnings about icebergs.

Nobody will ever know, I guess.

A, probably, unrelated fact about Captain Smith is that the ship he piloted before the Titanic also met with bad luck. A British Royal Navy cruiser crashed into the Olympic and damaged her. I think she managed to stay afloat, however.

So, there it is. An object lesson in something. I’m not sure what. Maybe it’s about enjoying the moment to the fullest. I’m sure Captain Smith was delighted to have been put in charge of such a grandly famous ship. I guess we can be happy, at least, that he was at the height of his career when he went down with the ship.

R.I.P.

* MotH = Man of the House

Good grief!

A little communication would kill you, WordPress?

Totally silly, and not in a good way—what I am about to tell you.

I try to schedule blog posts in advance. The main reason for this is I was not enjoying the jolt at 11 pm when I would suddenly think, “OMG! I forgot to do my blog post for tomorrow!” Life—and blogging—has been much more pleasant since I have mastered the “Schedule” function of WordPress. (Always remembering that when I say “mastered,” I really mean “figured out how to make it work more than half the time.”)

But here’s what happened as I tried to schedule yesterday’s post.

I admit it was not my finest hour. (It was actually only a minute, for one thing.) But that minute could have gone so much better if only WordPress had decided to communicate more clearly.

I had been happily galumphing along scheduling posts for February 26th and 27th. I didn’t have an idea yet for the 28th, so I skipped that. There would be time. (I’m ahead! Yay!) Two days after the 27th comes the 29th, right?

Except not, of course, in February—unless it’s Leap Year—which, you know, still confuses me. What, exactly, is the necessity? I can never remember. Something about clocks, and losing seconds every hundred years, so that if we didn’t have Leap Year, along about 2250, it would be dark at 10:30 in the morning and December 25th would be in August. Or something.)

Anyway, there’s no 29th of February this year.

But does WordPress tell me that?

Oh, no.

It just freezes.

(But not in August, at least.)

It freezes, and apparently nothing can be done.

Horror! Dismay! Will I lose the post? (Admittedly, it’s probably not one of my better ones, but still—I spent time on it.)

Fortunately, and to my surprise, the Save Draft button still worked. So, good. I wasn’t going to lose the post. However, the Publish date now read Feb 1st. Already rattled by the freezing of my PC, I tried again to schedule the post for February 29th.

Another round of freezing.

This time, however, I paid attention to the tiny little red border around all the date boxes.

Is that…? Could it mean…? Oh! Of course! There is no February 29th!

Reset to March 1st, and problem solved.

Or so you would think. But, no. Now, it appears the post will be scheduled for March 1st, 1970. Really? 1970?

Did somebody invent a time tunnel and forget to tell me?

So, I fixed it, of course, and the post will appear as intended and scheduled on March 1st of this year. In fact, it already has. (Maybe it’s me who invented the time tunnel?)

But would it have killed you, WordPress, to display an alert that said, I don’t know, something like “Invalid Date?” You know, like almost every other software package in the world.

And maybe I’m being overly demanding, but I think you might just have mentioned that 1970 was a date in the past. I didn’t need you to scream, “That’s forty-two years ago, you dummie!”—but a little nudge would not have come amiss. “This date is in the past. Are you sure?” could have been murmured in a little pop-up box.

I just mention it, you know. Because communication is the key to any successful relationship.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Monthly Archives: March 2013