Month: October 2009

The Laramie Project epilogue: an update: 3

Our reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later on Monday went off very successfully, albeit with some last minute scrambling. When I walked into the green room at 6 (for a go at 8:30), there were three or so pages of e-mail with minor changes to the version of the script that we’d received the Friday before. Trouble for me was that about half of them affected my text, so I scribbled changes into my book, hoping I’d be able to read them. I groused that, since some of this material was journal entries made by the Tectonics, it was definitely going to look like I was reading my own journal entries.

Shortly after 8:00, the feed from Lincoln Center, projected in-house at RCC’s CenterStage, brought Glenn Close, Judy Shepard, and Moisés Kaufman to Reston in sound and light. Way cool. I am so honored to have been part of this event.

At about half past, we took out the grand drape and began to read for the 200 or so patrons assembled. We had only worked with lights in one prior rehearsal, and with the text changes that entailed characters coming downstage, needing light where there was none before, there were a few moments that recalled the spotlight business in The Actor’s Nightmare. But, as I said, we got through it.

I suspect that my affinity for Matthew Shepard’s story and The Laramie Project is less idealistic than it is for many other actors, designers, and technicians who have worked on various productions. Granted, I deplore what happened to this young man, and I support doing what we can to prevent it from happening to someone else, but I don’t have the visceral feeling that I have to work on the show because of that. Rather—and this is testimony to the fine job of playwriting that Kaufman and crew have done—I am fascinated by, drawn to, all of the personages-characters of Laramie, Wyoming that have been assembled into this text: the guys in the white hats and the guys in the black ones. I was as committed to telling the story of Fred Phelps (a seriously troubled man) as I was to Harry Woods, in my characterization a retiring, gentle man who acquires a measure of dignity. In the new play, I was as interested in pushing some personal boundaries as Jonas Slonaker as I was in the great work that David H. did as Representative Peterson and that Joshua did as Aaron McKinney.

And yet, who knows where this story will lead me next? I now own, by virtue of participation in this project, a copy of Judy Shepard’s The Meaning of Matthew. Once I read the book, I suspect that his meaning for me will have transformed in some way. Is Matthew Shepard my scarab? Perhaps, perhaps. A couple of months ago, I was helping my mother clean out her apartment. Generally, the only old magazines that she squirreled away had something to do with royalty, be it British (the Windsors) or American (the Kennedys). And she had forgotten that I had worked on The Laramie Project a few years back—trust me, I know she doesn’t remember. Yet there I was, crashing through a pile of old papers, and she walks in from the other room with a battered magazine and asks, “Would you be interested in this?” It was the 26 October 1998 issue of Time. Matthew’s fence was the cover image.

As to the text of the Ten Years Later epilogue, I admire the Tectonics for clarifying one of the piece’s themes: the stories we tell ourselves begin to change as soon as we tell them. The change comes from many directions: we don’t remember clearly, the facts are too painful or embarrassing to accept, the plain narrative doesn’t have a clear meaning, the eyewitnesses die or move away. Call it urban myth, call it folklore, call it rumor, but this is what a tragedy’s story becomes in the retelling. And as a result, the simple linear progress that perhaps the playwrights expected to be able to tell has become this murky, twining thing. To me, the core of the play is the moment called “Potluck,” which interleaves an interview with John Dorst, folklorist at the University of Wyoming (and read by yours truly), with an account of some average Joes of Laramie giving their take on what happened. In one draft of the script, Dorst says,

You start with more formed things, the facts of the case or the court proceedings. And the folkloric process is one of winnowing and reduction, the paring away of detail until frequently the actual events—something you might call a story—dissipate.

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This is definitely the issue—maybe the core issue here in Laramie—the desire for control over memory or over history.

Elizabeth Blair’s piece for NPR is quite good, and expresses some of these thoughts more clearly; it excepts an article by JoAnn Wypijewski written shortly after the murder.

Blog Action Day 2009

In recognition of Blog Action Day 2009, herewith readings and resources for learning more about this complicated subject called “climate change,” one that is full of ramifications and interdependencies.

At Climate Interactive, you will find links to several simplified policy simulations: via animated graphics, you can see the effect of increased afforestation, decreased CO2 emissions by developed countries, and so on. Also find there an overview of C-ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision-support Simulator), which is designed to be used by policy-makers (not modellers) and runs on a laptop.

Read Johan Rockström et al.’s recent paper for Nature, “A safe operating space for humanity,” along with expert commentary. The paper’s thesis is that global climate change (as measured by radiative forcing [the rate of energy change per unit area of the globe as measured at the top of the atmosphere] as well as atmospheric carbon dioxide) is just one of ten parameters, all of which must be managed into safe operating levels, that are important for the survival of life on the planet.

We propose that human changes to atmospheric CO2 concentrations should not exceed 350 parts per million by volume, and that radiative forcing should not exceed 1 watt per square metre above pre-industrial levels. Transgressing these boundaries will increase the risk of irreversible climate change, such as the loss of major ice sheets, accelerated sea-level rise and abrupt shifts in forest and agricultural systems. Current CO2 concentration stands at 387 p.p.m.v. and the change in radiative forcing is 1.5 W m-2.

By comparison, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, pre-Industrial Revolution, was 280 ppm by volume, and the rate of radiative forcing at the beginning of what is now being called the Anthropocene Epoch was zero. The other parameters (keep in mind that most of these are rates of change rather than values) are:

  • rate of biodiversity loss;
  • nitrogen and phosphorus cycles;
  • stratospheric ozone depletion;
  • ocean acidification;
  • global freshwater use;
  • change in land use;
  • atmospheric aerosol loading;
  • chemical pollution.

The authors find biodiversity loss (as measured by species extinction rate) and N2 removals from the atmosphere for human use running at the most troubling rates. While the pre-industrial era extinction rate was 0.1-1 species per million species per year, the current rate is something like 100, and order of magnitude more than their proposed redline value of 10. The nitrogen situation may be even worse: pre-industrial man removed no net nitrogen from the air. Rockström et al. propose a limit of 35 million tons per year; the current rate is 121 million tons annually.

A recent leader by The Economist explores the political landscape, and in particular the problem of effective transnational agreements to lower carbon emissions. The U.S. Senate must ratify any international treaty that the President enters into. Arguing that the Kyoto protocol failed because it could not get approval of these 100 Americans, nor did excessive emissions by Kyoto signatories actually lead to sanctions, the editorialist writes:

There is an alternative: moving the negotiations onto a different diplomatic track…. Australia has proposed another route. All countries would come up with a “national schedule” of programmes, such as cap-and-trade and low-carbon regulations. Developed countries would also specify an amount by which they mean to reduce their emissions. These commitments would have the force of domestic law, but would not be subject to international sanctions.

Finally, at the softer end of the spectrum, for inspiration and exhortation, take a look at this anthology assembled by the Union of Concerned Scientists: Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming, 67 pieces of writing and art “drawn from nearly 1,000 submissions about beloved places, animals, plants, people, and activities at risk from a changing climate and the efforts that individuals are making to save what they love,” available both in print and as a handsomely designed Flash-based interactive.

Blog Action Day 2009

My Blog Action Day 2008 post.

Conscientious inconsistency

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, for the Times Magazine annual food issue, Jonathan Safran Foer explains his bumpy practice of vegetarianism. Although most of his qualms run along the lines of not wishing to hurt animals, he also mentions the reason I try to avoid eating terrestrial vertebrates:

According to reports by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. and others, factory farming has made animal agriculture the No. 1 contributor to global warming (it is significantly more destructive than transportation alone), and one of the Top 2 or 3 causes of all of the most serious environmental problems, both global and local: air and water pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity… Eating factory-farmed animals—which is to say virtually every piece of meat sold in supermarkets and prepared in restaurants—is almost certainly the single worst thing that humans do to the environment.

Time to go shopping

Mike Veseth, the Wine Economist, reports on the state of wine retailed in box containers—good value, low environmental impact:

The top box wine, going by the rating numbers, is a white: Wine Cube California Chardonnay, which sells in Target Stores for $17 per 3 liter box, which is $4.25 per standard bottle equivalent. It earned a very respectable 88 points [from Wine Spectator].

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How can decent wine be this cheap? One answer, of course, is that you can choose to make the wine itself less expensive by economizing in the cellar in many ways (less oak or none at all for red wines, for example). But to a considerable degree the box itself is responsible for the savings.

The bag in box container costs less than $1, according to the Wine Spectator article, which automatically saves $4 to $8 compared with a similar quantity of wine in standard glass bottles and the box they come in.

(Via The Morning News.)

Ferber decoded: 3

I have yet to make much of this passage in A Peculiar Treasure:

One of my delights was to have [Grandpa Neumann] take me on his knee and tell me stories of Edelvard and Kunigunda. (p. 25)

I suspect that the personages were Neumann’s own invention.

Tracking down Cutler-Hammer, to which Edna Ferber refers as an important employer in the upper Midwest, is much easier. Although the electrical and electronic products supplier was acquired by Eaton Corp. in 1978, the brand maintains an identity, albeit diminished, to this day.

Hawksbill Mountain circuit

driving upThrough Virginia horse and wine country (every time I come through there’s a new winery offering tastings) to the big Park straddling the Blue Ridge, with a pause for this wonderful combination of wayfinder signs using “Freeway Gothic” and Clearview together.

from Hawksbill summitI devised a bowtie circuit starting from the Hawksbill Gap parking area: up the steadily steep trail to the Hawksbill Mountain summit, down the Salamander Trail to the Appalachian Trail, the AT north to the stables at Skyand, returning via the bridle path, Limberlost Trail, and Crescent Rocks Trail, with a quick side trip to my special place on the Ridge, Betty’s Rock. I’m estimating the mileage at 8.0; I went around in 4:20, and made the 680-foot climb of the mountain in about 25 minutes. Yay me.

on the trail againExcept for the climb, the trails are fairly level, and the AT is not too rocky, at least mostly. Fall colors are still developing: I saw yellows and golds stirred into the pale green, with the occasional maple or sumac or poison ivy to provide a shot of red. Ravens and juncos constituted most of the bird life. One mixed flock of songbirds with a mystery warbler—perhaps a parula. A nuthatch calling very fast, in a ank-ank/ank-ank/ank-ank rhythm. Ground squirrels were very conspicuous, though they tried not to be.

out of the rocksmountain-ash, closerOn the northwest side of the ridge, thriving in the poor soils of the talus fields, I found several stands of Mountain-ash, probably American (Sorbus americana), though the fruits are definitely red, not orange (per Petrides).

Conservation defined

At the heart of the Park idea is this notion: that by virtue of being an American, whether your ancestors came over on the Mayflower or whether they just arrived, whether you’re from a big city or from a rural setting, whether your daddy owns the factory or your mother is a maid: You, you are the owner of some of the best seafront property this nation’s got; you own magnificent waterfalls; you own stunning views of mountains and stunning views of gorgeous canyons. They belong to you. They’re yours. And all that’s asked of you is to put it in your will for your children, so that they can have it, too. Hopefully, you won’t let it be sold off, you won’t let it be despoiled. Hopefully, you’ll provide for proper maintenance of this property that is yours. But that’s all you’ve got to do. Now that’s quite a bargain.

—Dayton Duncan, The National Parks, a film by Ken Burns