My bag weighs 15.8 kilos. I don't really know what that is in pounds. I know that because I checked it at the airport to send it (and me) to London.
Leaving Ireland . . . I'm excited to go, but I've had a great time. I've made many friends: Stephanie - the German, Tamara and Marco - the Italians, Frank - the Spaniard - Gil and Claire from France, and Lauren from Holland. I will keep in touch with all of them I hope for quite a while.
Some reflections and memories: A new 60 meter building in the docklands will house e new U2 recording studio. O'Sheas on the corner of Marlborough and " the hostel street" where I met a very drunk Martin and saw several bands, including the one the last night who sold me a CD.
"slaunche a fast" Good luck, good health, and may all of your children have red hair and freckles.
The Dublin spire, also known as the stuffy on the Liffey. James Joyce, or the prick with a stick, and the ever-elusive floozie in a jacuzzi.
Some Dutch: "dank ya/uw vel" "moi ghut, vie nouiken in da kouiken"
Some French: "je chant sur la pluie"
Tomato plants growing in old coolers, herb gardens outside of kitchen windows, and pies made from fruit found around town. This is the world of urban agriculture: a counter-intuitive paring of words with the potential to bring a connection to the land, to the heart of the city.
Cambridge, MA is one city where urban agriculture is catching on. The work of many of these spare time farmers was on display in Harvard Square at the Cambridge Urban Agricultural Fair. From contests to find the best (and ugliest) produce in the city, to pickling and canning demonstrations, to delicious local fare and local music, hundreds of people came out learn, celebrate, and enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of the labor of their friends and neighbors.
Urban agriculture is a growing part of the movement for people to get back in touch with the origins of their food. While I couldn't find much hard data on how many people actually participate in urban agriculture, anecdotally, the numbers are surprising.
Having a fair or other public celebration for the efforts of urban agriculturalists can help to reinforce and expand the practice within a community. If you are interested starting an event in your city to celebrate and promote the practice of urban agriculture, it is surprisingly easy to get started.
In talking with the founder of the Cambridge Urban Agriculture Fair, I learned that there were essentially three elements that need to be in place:
Get approval from your city or town. This can be achieved through getting a few friends together and talking with someone on the city council to see if they will help you. Most elected representatives will at least point you in the right direction, if not jump at the opportunity to help their constituents.
Get some local businesses on board. If there is a local chamber of commerce (even a green chamber of commerce) they will be interested in having a festival that will bring people out, and get exposure for their businesses. Get them on board and they can help to get businesses interested and involved.
Make it fun! At the Cambridge fair, a local restaurant called Grendel's Den sponsors a beer garden. Add live music, and a lot of interactive booths and displays and people will come because you are giving them something fun to do.
So if you want something like the Cambridge Urban Agriculture Fair in your town, there is a reason you are reading this blog. Get to work! If you need help, I'll be watching to comments, and I'll be happy to put you in touch with the organizers in Cambridge.
"Time ain't gonna heal your wounds. But it is about the only thing we got can measure how deep ya been hurt."
As a student of theatre in my undergraduate, my professors would wax poetic about the bygone glory days of Broadway. What is was like when Arthur Miller's Plays would debut. They would lament the fact that no new 'real theatre' was coming out of Broadway.
Whether you agree with this criticism or not, is certainly seems that in an age when ticket prices are soaring, and the cost of putting on a show are impossibly high, theatre owners who are willing to take a chance on a new play are few and far between. The result has not been an end of the era of great theatre, you simply have to look a little harder, and a little further from Broadway to find it.
had the pleasure of seeing "Noah's Arkansas," the latest play from Wide Eyed Productions at the Wings theatre. I left convinced that the next generation of great American theatre is about to take center stage.
Enter Wide Eyed Productions. One of a number of scrappy new theatre companies in New York producing some edgy, fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable new theater. Resident playwright Jarrod Bogard, a talented crew of actors, and a superb technical and artistic crew make Wide Eyed Productions a group to keep an eye on.
Jarrod Bogard has delivered a wonderful script in Noah's Arkansas that deftly pulls in its audience and takes them on a journey to a trailer park in small town Arkansas where he leads his audience to take a good hard look at his characters as people. Their grudges, hopes, disappointments, and struggles are at once their own, and portraits of the human experience.
See, you don’t set that hook- and I
mean set her good, fish can swallow that sucker right down in
it’s belly. People do that too, know it? Whatever barbed point
their facin' they just assume swallow whole 'n forget about it.
That way they pretend they aint been caught.
The characters in "Noah's Arkansas" are deftly brought to life under the superb direction of Neil Fennell. His cast of actors give nuanced, natural performances that wrap the audience in from the first line. The coy, lighting-fast, banter between Lizzy (the charming and very funny Kristin Hoffman) and Wayne (the powerful Justin Ness) sets the pace for the rest of the evening.
The set (Joshua David Bishop), costumes (Antonia Ford Roberts), Lighting (Ryan Metzler), and sound (Trevor Dallier) are first rate, and believably create the world of "Noah's Arkansas". Add to this an original score (Michael Sorrentino) and you have an Arkansas trailer park on Christopher Street.
"Noah's Arkansas" is an honest look at dysfunction. We all went to high school with characters like slimy, dimwitted, power hungry Tom (Bennett W. Harrell's excellent performance triumphs over the easy caricature and added an element of a little boy playing dress up that made Tom sympathetically human). The awkwardness of growing up different is on full display with Michael Komala's stewardship of the character Micheal from a skiddish, rueful, victim, to a young man at peace with the tempest of life.
Perhaps my favorite scene in "Noah's Arkansas" is the last one. Bogard has written one of the most challenging scenes I have seen on stage. It is the straight theatre version of the musical theatre device of laying multiple melodies - each with their own lyrics on top of each other for the audience to sort out (or buy the CD to decipher). The scene is the dramatic climax of the show and it is so densely packed it creates the chaos of a family fight. Bogard brilliantly uses this scene to deliver some of his best lines (including the two I have included here). The effect is to have the audience combat the urge to disengage from the shouting, instead straining to make sense of it all as Lester (played by the expert Erik Frandsen) softly delivers a speech heavy with the weight of his life's experience.
"Noah's Arkansas" ends with Tammy's assertion (Judy Merrick surprises the audience with her power and depth after appearing to be a mostly non-speaking role up to that point) that ". . . everything is in order here". The astute viewer will note that the opening line of the play was "There is no order here".
Bogard believes in simplicity in his story lines and in essence, Noah's Arkansas has all the significance and complexity of the transition from no order to order. Yet, his characters bring great significance, and emotion to what is on the surface, simple. In that, Bogard, the cast and crew, and everyone involved with Wide Eyed Productions have achieved what theater is meant to achieve. "Noah's Arkansas" provides us with a mirror for examining the great significance and emotion we bring to the simple story we call being human.
A quick digest of the week's social media news with a side of fun? You're welcome.
Introducing CRUSH, the weekly web-show that takes the news on the social media newsladder and crushes it down to reveal the gems.
In this weeks' edition, we discuss the coincidence of Google releasing Buzz at about the same time they struck a deal with the NSA to share info. No relationship - just like Glenn Beck getting a show on Fox the day before Obama was inaugurated.
Facebook, meanwhile made changes to its privacy settings allowing users more control of what info is shared. That won't help people who choose to share their info though. With the growth of location sharing, there is a new website that points out a nagging issue with letting people know where you are all the time.
On the political side of thigs, this past week marked the one year anniversary of the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Organizing for America released this video to mark the occasion, and the House Committee on Education and Labor realeased a great video as well. This is not the first time the Ed and Labor committee has turned to creative webvideos to spread a message, and we hope it will not be the last.
Sarah Palin was asked what she thought the biggest threat to America is, and when her supporters shouted 'Obama' she felt the need to clarify that they had said it, not she. She didn't correct them though. If Mrs. Palin cared about 'those little facty things' she and her supporters might want to thumb through the Quadrennial Defense Review, which catalougues the various security threats to the nation as determined by, well, the people who spend their careers assessing threats to our nation.
Finally, this is from Ben Whitehair on Facebook, and it is hilarious:
5 steps to an AWESOME day: Step 1: Go to google maps... www.google.com/maps Step 2: Search for 39 Rugdeveien, Bergen, Hordaland, Norge Step 3: Zoom in until you get to street view Step 4: Look to the left of the truck and see two men in scooba gear Step 5: Click to make the truck go down the road and watch the men chase the truck....
