Indian Summer

I just finished 2 1/2 hours of screaming, kicking, whining, banging and crying otherwise known as Jade's Social Studies homework. April told me it was my turn to experience the joy of Jade's homework since I didn't have to work tonight. Thank you April for the lovely gift. Jade has two tests to study for this weekend and a science project. I'm guessing since I'm home all weekend I'll get that joy as well. I found that my patience was wearing thin until I realized that I could outlast her. No matter what she said or did I wasn't going to let her win. Of course April handed me this gift and then proceeded to have her own issues with information that she needed from me for an article she was writing for work. Ahh such a peaceful weekend...

I got irritated with AT&T on Thursday when I got my bill. I had tried 2 months ago to cancel my land line phone service. The nice customer service person told me that I had been paying lots of things at an old price that I could get a much better deal now. She said that if I kept my basic line with no frills it would only cost me $3 a month more than my DSL. I got the bill, and yes it was only $3 more than my old DSL price. However the taxes and additional fees for each minute that was used when someone called me was the final straw. I called Friday and cancelled the line. Now I have to figure out who calls me that is important that only has my old telephone number. The plus side is that I won't be getting anymore of those telemarketing calls anymore. The downs side is that after I took the phone off the wall in our kitchen I was left with an ugly face plate in which my DSL connection is plugged into. April hated the look and demanded I put a phone back on the wall to cover the plate. I found an old black wall phone and put it on the wall. It seems odd to me to have a wall phone that doesn't work just for looks. I'm a real function first kind of person. April looked at it and then wanted a white phone to match the decor. I'm trying to come up with a slim white phone that doesn't work to hang on the wall to cover a silver phone plate outlet.

I called my folks on my cell phone this afternoon. Talked with my father for awhile. My mother has been encouraging him to go and rake the neighbors yard. The neighbor across the street is in his 70's and just had knee surgery. My father who rakes his yard daily now and often the neighbors on either side of him finally was convinced to go and help the neighbor. He bagged and raked all the leaves up. The neighbor was very grateful. My father is 78 and has become the neighbor who is now the yard police. If someone doesn't rake their leaves or the grass isn't cut in a timely manner he can't stand it. He will keep making comments until he will walk down the street with his lawn mower and mow their yard or rake their leaves. He is the guy who rakes the gutters in the street to make sure the water doesn't back up on its way to the storm drain. When I was growing up the neighborhood kids used to make fun of an older man who was just like that. Now I tell my mother that as long as the neighbors don't mind let him do it. If it makes him happy. I told her they can come visit me anytime and do my yard. Now that my father can no longer drive because of his Alzheimer's he prowls around the house constantly looking for things to do. Occasionally my mother will make up and excuse to go to Lowes or Menards just so he can prowl the hardware aisles. I keep trying to think of a way he could volunteer someplace. But his deafness and his disease means that he needs consistent supervision or he will get distracted and confused. He is as strong as an ox and is outside every day that the weather will allow. My grandmother, his mother, lived to be 97. My father and I talked about veterans day and his time in the national guard as tank driver. He regaled me with his shooting ability as a gunner. Then I asked him about his jobs after he left the Alabama national guard. I got him to laughing and talking. He sits quiet a lot of the time. I've made it a point to talk to him about things in his youth and early adulthood. Not about what happened yesterday. He was always a big sports fan but now he can't remember who the players are and what the standings are.

Thinking is such a major part of my life. Reading, discerning, trying to reason things out. I often worry about the disease in my future and wonder if I will be able to cope with if it is in my dna. Sometimes I wonder if I knew that the disease was going to affect me and I only had so many years left of clarity would I do something different. It is that old riddle. If you knew the day you were going to die would you change the way you live your life. My first play I wrote was about a man who wished that he could just walk away from all his troubles. In the play he got his wish or so he thought. As soon as he was free he went racing back to set everything back to the way it was. In the end it was only an illusion that a stranger had given him to see that even though he said he wanted to walk away he really didn't.

Each fall I think back over the years. Fall is always my favorite season. I'm always carried back to my college days. Crisp fall weekends in my freshman year of college. Walking across the campus on cool Wisconsin nights and warm days. Indian summer had arrived. A movie I remember watching was about a machine that could record your brain waves and recreate experiences. As the person was dying they connected the machine and it recorded all of their life moments as they passed before them. I know that one of my moments will be that Indian Summer of 1975 walking across the campus and looking at the leaves. It's hard to believe that was almost 35 years ago. If I close my eyes I can almost touch it once again.

This afternoon as I sat on my patio looking at trees and talking with my father about his youth I was touched by my own. I believe that it is possible to travel through time if we could only shift our brain waves just a little bit and step through the hole that is created. I wouldn't mind living that first year of college again. That was the year I began my career in theatre, I met April, I moved out on my own, my only transportation was a motorcycle, and I played guitar in band, I would stay up all night drinking wine and discussing love, politics and religion. That was a good year. Thanks Dad for helping me remember.

Disappointment

I have been going over lots of details lately about mission statements. The theatre had a short discussion about ours at the last board meeting. The church board meeting had a change to its mission statement proposed as well. It seems like lots of groups are looking at their missions. One of the articles I read in Fast Company magazine was about creating a mission statement that wasn't just a bunch of big words without any concrete meaning. It used an example of a big goal. I've been cursed with a brain that continues to work on things like mission statements in the background while I work on other projects.

I saw a video yesterday from Peoria arts groups that really moved me and then a video that was linked on the theatre communications group site about stage lighting technicians at the Santa Fe Opera. Both videos really caught my attention as they spoke to what's going on with the arts all over the country.

April and I got into a discussion yesterday about the insanity of the political parties in this country. April would like to throw them all out and start over. Throw out the Democrats and the Republicans. I wonder what the mission statement for a new political party would be. I've pretty much stopped watching cable news shows, which is a major feat for me because I was a political junkie. I craved all the news I could get. Now the need to fill 24 hours a day with analysis of 2 sentences of something someone said that wouldn't have even been considered news 15 years ago really drives me crazy. I'm just afraid that the more political parties that come into power will become more of a fractured government like they have in Jerusalem. Three or four conservative parties and three or four liberal parties who all have to broker deals to get a majority to make a ruling coalition. The mission statement for those parties is to block everything that the opposition wants.

My other pet peeve today- I seem to be on a pet peeve rant today- is the latest stuff about Holiday Trees and Christmas Trees. When did Christians get so narrow minded that everything has to be called Christian. The latest nonsense is about the state tree. I say lets have Christmas Trees, and Menorah's, and Muslim Crescents and every kind of religious symbol all represented in our schools and our government buildings and in the celebration of every season. I'm willing to be that if everything were allowed the group that is complaining the loudest about the word holiday would complain about something else. Of course the atheists will be offended if any religious symbols are used. Fox News and CNN will send out crews to cover the controversy hoping that it will stir up people to watch their newscasts and then all the radio talk shows and TV commentators will go nuts and then the politicians will get involved, etc... My mission statement for the year is to block out all the noise and nonsense and pay attention to important things.... like NFL football... Maybe my attitude just comes from being a Chicago Cubs fan. We're used to disappointment. There's always next season.

Question

I saw parts of several films on television this weekend. It could be just me but, has our culture moved to a place where mankind can no longer solve the problems we face. Almost every movie had some kind of supernatural force, super hero with incredible powers or a destiny that was written from God. Only those things can save the world. Have we really reached that point?

The modern plague

I caught the last part of a movie on TV this morning. It was the movie I am Legend with Will Smith. This was a movie I saw at Cinemark a couple of years ago. The images in it are powerful. I sat thinking about this film after I turned off the television and I began to wonder about the stories that become part of us.

With so much craziness in the world I can't help but ask the question about what types of stories we are incorporating into our lives. The film and video gaming world are full of stories about death and destruction. We look for superheros to come and save us from ourselves. Everywhere you turn there is some television program with horrific violence as part of the norm. The television news shows are full of people who abduct children and indiscriminate violence by young teenagers against other teenagers, drug cartels killing on a daily basis in Mexico, suicide bombers, war being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The news programs are full of families all wanting to get their 15 minutes of fame television time on the Today Show, Good Morning America or Larry King. The news channels have become news commentary channels with people of various backgrounds all telling us how the liberals or conservatives are all destroying our country. The newspapers now don't even bother trying to be balanced with their editorials and often the news sources they use to tell stories. Politicians and business people don't want anything done that might take away the profits from business. Even if their business is slowly killing the people or the environment of our planet.

As I watch all this I can't help but think about the stories that we are filling our hearts and souls with. Every television program we watch, every movie, every book, every play or piece of music that we take in becomes part of us in some way. I have been moved to action by reading stories in books which have inspired me to become a better person. I have watched films and plays of stories that make me stop and think about what I'm doing with my life and recognize the presence of God in other human beings.

So much of what I see today seems to be stories about how we kill each other. How we have to fight against everyone else to make sure that they don't take a single crumb from our table. We are creating stories that are destroying ourselves from the inside out. I know that you can play a violent video game and then not go out into the street to shoot someone. But if you incorporate that violence into your core then you become immune to stopping the violence that is around you. If you watch television shows or listen to radio programs that tear down your political opponents every day then you stop being willing to listen to people with other points of view. In the latest play on Broadway two couples get together to talk about their children fighting. It soon is revealed that one of the parents believes that you have to fight for everything in life. If you don't fight others they will walk all over you and you will have nothing. Our culture considers it a failure if someone else wins and you don't.

It is painful to stand idly by and watch us destroy ourselves. In I am Legend what was supposed to be a miracle drug to cure cancer turned into a plague that destroyed mankind. I sometimes wonder if our 24 hour news cycles, and violent video games, and films glorifying violence and destruction, and political commentary, and YouTube, and aren't doing the same thing to us. We will fight to the death, anyone who tries to take away, the right we have to destroy ourselves.

I'm just grateful I'm working on a comedy at the moment about a couple adopting a baby or I would go insane..

An emotional experience

I haven't written in a while because of the heavy workload I've had this past month and the fact that I try not to write when I don't have anything to say. Sometimes I get worked up about something but I always remember the advice of Anne Lamont that said never write an email after 10pm. Most of the time I don't get in from work until after 10 pm and I've taken that advice to heart.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on the script for the Ghost Tour and struggling with casting shows and trying to work through some of the arts marketing books I've been reading. Last night I went to the wedding of a young man I watched grow up in the theatre. The setting was a beautiful lakeside spot with a green vine arbor and over 200 people who all attended to celebrate the beginning of two people who were coming together to face the future. April couldn't make it and I went by myself. I didn't know most of the people there and was fortunate to find a friend from the theatre who also didn't know a lot of people there, and we looked on as this young man that we had watched grow up, began a new life journey. I left feeling a lot of emotions. A sense of joy at the marriage of this young man, a sense that my presence there was important to him and his family, and a sense of friendship with the person I enjoyed the event with.

I came home and tired to finish the arts marketing book I was reading. I've been struggling with how to make the theatre a place that is successful and has value to the people who perform on stage and the people who sit in the audience I find similar questions in relation to the church service I attended this morning.

I'm on the vestry (the board of directors) of Grace Episcopal Church and this morning I really didn't want to go to church. It's been a long week. The thought of just kicking back this morning was really appealing. I had to work this afternoon with the tech rehearsal for the Secret Life of Girls which opens Thursday. I really craved some time to do nothing. To have no responsibilities. Then the responsible voice in my head said "you are on the vestry. If you don't make the effort why should anyone else." April didn't quite have the same nagging thought that I did so she did take the morning off. However I made Jade go with me since Sunday School started last week and I felt it was important that Jade go because she was my daughter.

We arrived at church this morning for a breakfast put on by the men of the church to celebrate the start of Sunday School. I looked around and there were only a handful of children. Jade whined as I made her go with me this morning, that she was going to be the only kid in her Sunday School class. As we sat there eating breakfast she looked around and said "I told you dad I was going to be the only one." Fortunately for me, a new family came to church this morning with a young boy who went to class with Jade so she wasn't the only one.

I sat there during the service and looked around and saw quite a few empty pews. It really got me to thinking about some of the challenges facing the organizations and churches today.

People are so busy today that they are more likely to look for reasons to not go to something than to find a reason to go. I had a lot of reasons why I could have skipped he wedding last night but in the end I was really glad I went. Why are some churches thriving and others slowly withering. Why are some arts organizations flourishing and others on the verge of collapse. One of the arts books I've read recently says that the only way to success is to boldly set out a course that makes people get excited about your programming. You have to do something that excites people and do it at a high level of quality. It has to engage people and they feel that there presence at the events is something that leaves them feeling invigorated when they leave and glad that they came.

As I sat in church this morning I knew that the teacher who prepared the class for my daughter Jade did so not knowing if she would have none or several children. The choir prepared a beautiful anthem to be sung during the offertory. The deacon did a rousing sermon that challenged me to think. The priest did a good job of creating a service that offered points of reflection and points of action for each person attending. The readers read the scripture well. The teachers who taught the Adult Sunday school classes prepared and did a good job with the material they presented.

But I couldn't help thinking... does it make a difference if I'm here or not? Am I excited and looking forward to returning next week. Or do I do this out of a sense of responsibility? Episcopalians have a tendency to be very intellectual in their worship. The music is pretty to listen to. The readings and sermons are thought provoking.

But what is my part in this process. Is it to sit passively and reflect as an individual and then go my merry way. Except for the exchanging the peace this morning I could have left with really no interaction with others in the church service. I find myself a passive observer to the service. With so many things going on in life, things have to make me passionate about them to keep me interested and involved.

It is this sense of sharing an emotional experience with those around me that makes seeing a great play an experience that I find riveting. There is a sense of something truly exciting happening in live theatre that we experience right along with the characters of a play. When they are devastated we are devastated. When they are vindicated we feel vindication. When they reach out from a state of vulnerability we are right there with them. When I stand at the wedding of a friend I feel their happiness and I feel their joy. I feel a friendship with others who are witnessing with me this special moment.

In some ways I think those churches that seem to succeed today understand this need to have an emotional experience. As I walked out of church this morning I reflected on my emotional experience this morning... To be honest the emotion I most felt was feeling bad for the people who put in so much effort for such a small turnout. If the church doesn't start finding ways to create an emotional experience within the people who attend I'm afraid that it will slowly wither and become a place of only older members who attend out of a sense of responsibility.

Animal plotting

Okay so I put the cat out last week and haven't let her back in. Our cat Maggie has been part of our family for over 15 years. One day she walked up to our house when she was only a year old and decided to make it her home. We had just had to put to sleep our Lhasa apsa (sp?) dog who was 16 years old and Maggie (named after Cat on a Hot Tin roof) filled an emptiness for us. Having had previous cats who lived outside and contracted all sorts of awful diseases we decided that Maggie would be an indoor cat. She remained that for probably 8 years. Until we sold our old house and move to our new home. Unfortunately April didn't want the cat to come with us. I tried to find a new home for the cat but when I couldn't Maggie came along with us. April decided that the cat would no longer have free roam over our home and she was to reside in my study. This lasted for a short time until I grew weary of my study always smelling like a cat and cat hair on all of my papers and books. Maggie's favorite spot to sleep was on the papers on my desk. It was at that point that I put her out during the day times and let her back in at night. A year ago we adopted a yellow lab from a shelter. With Goldie's addition things became a little more tense. But I thought all the animals had settled down.

Last week I came home 3 nights in a row to find that the cat had ignored her litter box consistently and was using various corners in my study. At this point it was time for her to become a total outdoor cat. I put her food and water outside in a location easy to access and began the difficult ordeal of not allowing the cat back in. For the past week Maggie has been appearing on the ledge of every window and door at ground level. Reminding me of what an awfully mean person I am to put her out. Of course April who didn't want the cat is suddenly concerned about the cat and wanting to know what I'm going to do about it. I'm reminded of a monologue in Smoke on the Mountain where the wife tells the husband he's going to kill himself and he's a dammed fool for trying to walk to town during an ice storm and then in the next breath tells him to "hurry up and get going!"

On Saturday night I let the dog out about 10:30 in the back yard and discovered that a large owl was making a nest in the big tree right behind our patio. This was discovered when the owl, about 20 feet from me, screeched at me nearly causing heart failure while I was standing in the dark of the back yard thinking about the cat. I suddenly had visions of the cat being snatched by the owl for lunch and my wife and daughter blaming me for Maggie's demise!

Our dog of course has added to my animal stress by barking from her crate starting between 5 -6 am each morning. Although I get up at 6 am I really do like that last hour of sleep before 6 am.

I'm beginning to think the animals are plotting behind my back. First the cat plotting how to get back in, then the owl plotting to swoop down on me, and now the dog denying me my sleep! One of our friends has started raising chickens in his backyard in the city. I was informed that he has been reading back yard poultry magazine for sometime before he bought a dozen baby chicks that he plans on raising. (Who knew there was such a thing as Back Yard Poultry!) Jade has been begging for weeks to get a duck! I don't think right now I could take another animal on. I still remember the Chaos theory as expressed in Jurassic Park- "Nature always finds a way to overcome any plans made by humans." I just know there is a wild bunny out there plotting my demise at this very moment!

writing

I've been trying to write for a couple of weeks now. I write most mornings in my journal about the things in life that seem to pop up and command my attention. The effort to sit down and start to write something like a play or a piece of poetry or fiction seems to escape me for the moment. This afternoon I sat down and read through about a dozen legends and stories from the Paducah area to try to fashion them into a Ghost Tour as a fundraiser for the theatre. As I read the many accounts I couldn't help think about all of the people who have lived and died in the very buildings that I work in and walk by everyday. People who spent their whole lives getting up in the morning and going to work or raising a family and being part of the community. Some were famous around the world because they cured diseases and others wrote books or performed on Broadway or in film. However most of the people who are the subject of ghost stories are everyday people. They ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some locked themselves away from the rest of the community and became recluses. The kind of people that kids would run up and knock on the door and then run away because they were dared by someone else.

I walk the bookstores (Hi, my name is Michael and I'm a bookaholic.) Thousands and thousands of books line the walls that people have spent years writing and most will be put on the discount table within a year. I walked through a video store the other day and saw row upon row of movies that were all discounted. I'm reminded of the story of Jim Henson and the production team that made the movie the Dark Crystal. After spending almost four years of their life on the film they went to the premiere and afterwards they all sighed and then someone said "Well what shall we do for dinner?" Producing a play is kind of like that. You spend weeks and weeks working on something and then it opens and life is at its peak and then it closes and the next show goes into rehearsal.

I talked with my mother today and she told me that my father is talking less and less. His illness is slowly turning him inward. The question that came to mind, was about who a person is. If you don't remember your family and your friends, you don't know the people around you and you live in a world that seems strange and frightening who are you? My wife told me about a book she just read that a woman who was losing her memory had a list of questions that she had to answer each day, who her children were? Who she was married to? Etc... The day she didn't know the answer to the questions she was instructed to open an envelope and to follow the instructions written on the paper. The instructions told her take all of the pills in a certain bottle. She had made her own suicide plan. However she couldn't remember to follow the instructions after she put the paper down. This person was still capable of feeling and being loved by others but was incapable of knowing who she was. With people with memory lose, who will remember their stories years from now?

I worked on a will this weekend with one of these computer programs that you buy. It talks about leaving assets and estate planning. I have a trunk full of my journals that I have written over my life time. There are lots of things in those journals that I would like my daughter to know- The first time I fell in love. The first time I held my daughter in my arms. The things that scared me most as I went out into the world. The things that I dreamed about doing with my life. Yes, even the mistakes I made along the way that I would like for her to avoid. There are several things that she probably shouldn't know about her father. Who I am has been collected in the pages of those journals. I can't help but wish that my father had written his life down. Not to publish as a book for the world to read, but as a book for me to read. To know who he is when he can't tell me himself. For some of these stories that I've been reading today, the only reason that I know anything about these people is because someone remembered it by writing it down.

A friend of mine once joked that all good stories start out with -There once was a man who had two sons... My father had two sons. I was the oldest and left home as soon as I turned 18. Yesterday was my younger brothers birthday. He still lives in my hometown and works for the same company that my father retired from after 40 years of service. My parents were going over to his house to celebrate with his family. As usual I am hundreds of miles away. My father probably won't remember the occasion, and even though I wasn't there to celebrate with my brothers family and my parents, writing it down has helped me to remember it for him.

In sense maybe I am writing a book with my journals, a book that is important to me. If someday I happen to suffer from the same disease as my father, well maybe I'll have an interesting story to read about a father who had two sons, one of which moved away and had a daughter...