Why Do We Hate Success?--Kicking At Hamilton's Sixteen Tonys.

When I was a kid, I was in a play that was written, composed and directed by Theater Gods.

To say this production struggled is a kind way to put it. Audiences hated the main character. Most didn't understand the point of the plot. It stunned me that the Gods couldn't see what was wrong. In my kid brain, it seemed to me that they all three were--how can I say this--crippled humans, missing some ethical arm or leg. And since they saw the main character as themselves, their blindness about their lives blinded them to this character's massive and unappealing flaws.

One day, when I found myself alone with God One,  I actually tried to explain this to him revolving around one particular choice having to do with my character. I was lucky God One didn't get angry with me for this stupidity. Instead, He gave me justifications for his life choices. "No, no, no," God One explained. "It was just that, at that time, I was so young--" (in his mid-thirties ) --"that I didn't Understand what I was Doing, didn't know what I was missing." (What he was still missing, I think, as his comment completely missed the point.

So, okay, God One was blind, as were Gods Two and Three. I get that.

But what also fascinated me was the way people in the community--folk who purportedly adored all three Gods--were so delighted at the play's problems. Passionate fans would pull me aside and in a voice like the elephants of Dumbo, (that superior nasal whine,)  would say, "I heard it's terrible," delight on their faces.

I saw that same comment on the New York Times comments pages about Tony nominations for Hamilton, the musical. Yes, I think it's fricking brilliant, based on the album and the pieces I have managed to see on the internet. Yes, I passionately wish I could see it, many times. Yes, I'd love to meet several cast members and have them over to dinner, or breakfast, talk with them about things that matter in life.

But even if I didn't think it was wonderful, would I, as someone who has never seen the musical, put my trunk to the side of my mouth, narrow my eyes, and whine, "Hate rap music. Won't even bother to see it. The history is all wrong. The Emperor Has No Clothes," or even--get this--"When they put on an All-White production of a play about Martin Luther King, that I will see this." Thus blindly ignoring the marvelous, transformative power of theater, that magic that happens--Look, in the theater, Alexander Hamilton could be played by three different people at the same time, one of them female, one Inuit--heck, we could do an all Inuit production of Hamilton, translate it into Inuit, just as we do with Shakespeare. If the writing is strong enough, if people understand stage magic, it can work.

I wish we had more stage magic in our lives, not less. Maybe then we would remember that things--ideas--people--dreams--goals--can change form, change shape without using their essence. In fact, that life's essence is illuminated more clearly the more we allow the exterior to be plastic, changeable, to flow.

And I wish people could face, head-on, what underlies the great green bottle-fly eyes of envy--that some of us are not working toward the kind of life that we really want to have. Because if you're working, even if you're a Blind Theater God making tragic, painful mistakes, if you're out there in the public, envy is not the place you live.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie--With Cross-Sex Casting

Last night, we saw a sophomore production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. You may know the story--1932 Edinburgh, Scotland, where a charismatic teacher at a girls' school plays bait and switch between two "artistic" lovers, who are also teachers at the same girls' school. One, who teaches art and paints, is married (and Catholic, with five and by the end of the play, six children.). The other is a plain-spoken country music teacher who just wants to marry Jean and live an ordinary life.  Through the course of the play (based on Muriel Spark's novel) Jean flits between these two, while molding "her girls," a small set, each chosen for some special reason and formed to become what Miss Brodie thinks they should be, whether that's Sandy (Miss Brodie's confidant and spy), Jenny, (the painter's mistress-- "above common morals,") Monica (her "histrionics" presaging a life in the theater) or Mary McGregor, a wealthy, orphaned stuttering blank slate who Miss Brodie sends to join her brother fighting for dictator Franco--except said brother is fighting for the other side, so that when teenaged Mary's train car is bombed along the way, she dies fighting for the wrong side. 
(here is the extraordinary Jane Carr as Mary McGregor in the film.)

This, as I said, was a student production. We did not know that the casts would switch--and switch--and switch, mid-play, between several Brodies, Marys, Sandys, Jennys, etc. It was harder, probably, for my child, who had never seen the play before, though the Jeans all wore some part of their hair braided, (this worked less well for those with short-hair,) and they wore the same scarf around their necks, this latter involving some quick scarf throwing behind the back-stage curtains.

The school, an acting school, is short on male students, but all the female roles were eventually played by various races, and often by someone of another sexual orientation. I loved the way that it was matter-of-fact for these students when an African-American boy assayed Miss Jean Brodie (as a woman), or when Sandy switched from white, short and squat one moment to tall, rail-thin and African-American the next.  Nobody put on Edinburgh accents, or even tried though most of the Brodies leaned toward a British announcer's sound. One head-mistress had a West Indies lilt, though I think this belonged to the actress and not the role, and one of the Jennys sounded like an exchange student from China.

Though this is an arts school that does not require an audition--a Juilliard for Everyone--the students were more talented than not. I could see how several of them could bloom into prodigious performers.

And, as always, the piece itself was disturbing. Miss Jean Brodie isn't really the protagonist, is she? That's Sandy, Brodie's erstwhile "dependable" girl, the one who begins to see clearly the danger that Miss Brodie's manipulation of her students represents, as well as the terror that is Brodie's flagrant passion for fascism. Sandy first tries to be Miss Brodie's favorite, then to step into her shoes, becoming the painter's mistress as a teenager.

Sandy realizes the folly of trying to be Miss Brodie at the same time the school learns of Mary McGregor's death, painted in romantic terms by Miss Brodie. That is when Sandy "assassinates" Brodie by giving the headmistress enough dirt to undo even a tenured teacher.

And yet, it is too late for Sandy herself to be saved. She is too badly damaged by Miss Brodie, so badly that Sandy takes refuge in a nunnery, hiding even from herself.



I think that's what I disliked the most about the play when I saw it as a teenager. I always wanted Sandy to be saved. Perhaps that's why I prefer the marvelous film, with a radiant Maggie Smith, and a canny young Pamela Franklin as the well-matched antagonists. The film does away with the proscenium device of Sandy telling the story in an interview from her nunnery. Instead, it plunges us into the tiny, intensely fought-over fiefdom of Marcia Blaine School For Girls.

At the end of the film, I can imagine that, with time, Sandy comes to realize both her courage and her depths and that she grows up to become a woman who does not crouch behind a puppet theater of a girl's school, but strides around out there on the world's stage.

May The Fourth Be With You, First Grade Style

This morning, my child's classroom held May the Fourth Be With You day. Children were encourage to dress in dark or light colors depending on the side they supported. Several came in costume--most as Luke's evil dad-guy, though one was a storm-trooper. 

The masks stayed on through circle time, but those without made do. All through circle's discussions, the little guy on my right kept his hand over his mouth so he could Vader-breathe. 











I counted up. Even if I include the kids who might have forgotten and thus just wore every day bright-kid clothing,  I have to say that in our small classroom, at least, the dark side was winning. 

Fashion Slaves--High Heels, High Skirts, Saggy Pants?

Easter Sunday, I saw an older woman, maybe sixties, leaving a church near our house. She was wearing--I don't know, five inch heels? Longer than these, and staggering along, hanging on her husband's arm.  

As a good mother, I felt I had to point her out to my daughter with appropriate amusement. "A slave to fashion," I said. "Why would anybody wear something they can't walk in?"


Yesterday, I saw a young man of color struggling to walk with his pants around his knees. The young man in this photo seems able to take steps. The guy I saw, like many, could only shuffle before his pants stopped his stride. And God forbid he should have to run. He'd fall flat on his face. 

Not me, not my era, but, yup, I can relate.

But I know that I am superior to neither of these fashion slaves, for I once wore my skirts so short and my hair so long that I could not get a drink at the school fountain without assistance from a friend. 

(Think of it: one hand to hold skirt down, one to hold hair out of face--which one is left to push the fountain's button? At least one reason why girls of that age travel in packs.)

One way or another, one time or another, the desire to be cool catches 
   us all. 

  So, I smile and enjoy a moment's memory of my own silliness. Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Yup. 

If You Hire An Exterminator--Is This Why People Support Donald Trump?

I saw a post on a website explaining why people passionately support Trump. This was just a regular person, posting with passion. Put yourself in her world view and it all makes perfect sense. We're being invaded by--her metaphor is raccoons, though she makes clear that those "rabid, messy, mean raccoons" represent "illegal aliens," and tens of thousands of Muslim Refugees," or as she later says, "every Tom, Ricardo and Hasid." 

I hope I'm not violating her copyright by including some of it here: 

Here is the reason so many Americans have boarded the Trump Train, and why you have lost us :


“You’ve been on vacation for two weeks, you come home, and your basement is infested with raccoons. Hundreds of rabid, messy, mean raccoons have overtaken your basement. You want them gone immediately…You call the city and four different exterminators, but nobody could handle the job. There is this ONE guy however, who guarantees you he will get rid of them, so you hire him. You don’t care if the guy smells, you don’t care if the guy swears, you don’t care how many times he’s been married, you don’t care if he was friends with liberals,….you simply want those raccoons gone! 
You want your problem fixed! He’s the guy. He’s the best. Period.
Here’s why we want Trump: Yes he’s a bit of an ass, yes he’s an egomaniac, but we don’t care." 

She goes on to talk about how "The Republican Party is two-faced & gutless. Illegal aliens have been allowed to invade our nation. We want it all fixed! We don’t care that Trump is crude, we don’t care that he insults people, we don’t care that he had been friendly with Hillary, we don’t care that he has changed positions, we don’t care that he’s been married three times, we don’t care that he fights with Megan Kelly and Rosie O’Donnell, we don’t care that he is not PC. 
This country is weak, bankrupt, our enemies are making fun of us, we are being invaded by illegal aliens and bringing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees to America, while leaving Christians behind to be persecuted and beheaded .
We are becoming a nation of victims where every Tom, Ricardo and Hasid is part of a special group with special rights, to the point where we don’t even recognize the country we were born and raised in; “AND WE JUST WANT IT FIXED” and Trump is the only guy who seems to understand what WE THE PEOPLE WANT.
WEWe
We’re sick of politicians. We’re sick OF THE TWO PARTIES .We just want this thing fixed. Trump may not be a saint, but he isn’t beholden to lobbyist money and he doesn’t have political correctness restraining him." 

She finishes with discussion of Trump's success, etc, and then says, "When he says he’ll fix it, we believe him because he is too much of an egotist to be proven wrong or looked at and called a liar.

 Oh yeah…I forgot…we don’t care if the guy has bad hair either. verifiable
We just want those raccoons gone. Out of your house. NOW !

" 

This woman can write. She expresses herself in a clear and funny way. I'd say it's even witty. And to me, terrifying. 

And you know? I'll say it. I'll use my own metaphor; I'll take that risk: Her rant sounds like what Germans said about Hitler. "We don't care what he represents, he will make us great again. We don't care that he's the exterminator, we don't care that there is really maybe only one basement skinny, non-rabid raccoon in the entire city today, we don't care who else he may poison, or that his business is really a front for something else. We just want those raccoons gone." 

I know raccoons are a real problem. We had one in the crawlspace under our house--no wait, that was a possum, and she stank. The dogs did some barking, chased her into the yard, she played dead, we called them inside, and that was the end of our possum. We all survived. 

And you know? I guess I'm okay with this woman voting the way she chooses, along with several million others.

Just as long as the guy doesn't win. I don't want this exterminator at my house. 

President Obama's Next Job--Stand Up?

The guy is a natural, his timing impeccable, his style laid-back and slightly snarky. I wonder who writes his material? The New York Times says that comics have been bombarding him for weeks. Who wrote the ones he chose, I wonder? 

Oh, Kenya--Nairobi Latest Building Collapse.

Oh, people of Nairobi. I am heartbroken about your building collapse. If you look at the photos of the remaining rubble, there was clearly no or almost no reinforcing steel bars (rebars) used in the construction of these buildings. 

Reinforcing steel provides a cage that the concrete can be layered onto.

If the reinforcing steel had failed, you would see long, twisted metal noodles all over. 



I don't see any metal except what looks like an iron gate in the first photo.
And in this photo, there is nothing but what looks like a balcony on an uncollapsed building. I don't even see any columns at all. If there were any, they simply failed. 

It appears that the builders used only a material that strongly resists the forces of compression (concrete--which you could squeeze all day between your hands and it wouldn't crush) but not the forces of shear, or twist. (That's what the steel is for--you could try to twist steel reinforcing bar all day and get nowhere.) Another important point for engineering is the footing--what actually supports the building. If they are by a river--and Nairobi was originally built on marshland--then the footing and how it is engineered is all important, along with how everything is fastened together. 

What seems to be the cause of this collapse is a classic case of money being put before lives. This latest collapsed building was undermined by flooding at a nearby river. It's hard to find the collapsed building on the map, but I think it's the Nairobi River.  Part of the land underneath must have given way, leading to the sheer forces that collapsed those supporting walls. 

And this is only one of several collapsed buildings in Kenya over the last few years. These are not accidents. This are negligence. It is not hard to build for structural integrity. It just costs more in material and takes a little longer. It requires hiring an experienced engineer and following their directions. Carefully. 

This is not likely to happen in Kenya, which also has an earthquake risk. In 2014, a report was given to the government stating that four out of five buildings in Nairobi would not be safe in a minor earthquake. 

The government dismissed the report. 

Kenya is a gorgeous country. Nairobi is huge--6.5 million in the greater Nairobi area--and facing explosive growth. Where I live, building inspectors are an irritation. They take their sweet time getting to your site. They seem to require detail after detail, and they must be obeyed. 

Still, I'm grateful for them. I hope the people of  Kenya can get their government to provide proper building inspections and enforce safe buildings. 

And I'm praying for the people of Nairobi whose lives have been crushed--both literally and figuratively--by someone saving money through shoddy construction.