Month: December 2018

My year in hikes and field trips, 2018

Much more fun in the field this year—and more learnings! I treated myself to upgraded binoculars.

And several trips to my home park, Huntley Meadows Park.

2017’s list. 2016’s list. 2015’s list. 2014’s list. 2013’s list. 2012’s list. 2011’s list. 2010’s list. 2009’s list. 2008’s list.

My year in cities, 2018

Much more traveling this year than usual! Overnight stays in 2018:

New venues, 2018

To my surprise, I visited many new performance spaces the year.

  • American Museum of American History, Music Hall
  • Washington National Cathedral
  • Smithsonian American Art Museum, Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium
  • The New School of Northern Virginia, black box
  • Colvin Run Dance Hall
  • National Gallery of Art, West Garden Court

2017’s list. 2016’s list. 2015’s list. 2014’s list. 2013’s list. 2012’s list. 2011’s list.

She the People

Woolly’s partnership with The Second City again disappoints. From the opening sketch, presenting white privilege as a board game, She the People is preachy (hey, the choir’s out here) and only intermittently funny. A talk show segment, spiced with a bit of improv; a business meeting led by an executive in an outlandish T. Rex suit; and Maggie Wilder’s “I’m quirky” girl-child bit (one of the few pieces that doesn’t directly rail against the patriarchy) are the high points.

  • She the People, directed by Carly Heffernan, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and the Second City, Washington

My year in contributions, 2018

Did you have a good year this year? Great! Please consider sharing some of that good fortune with one of these organizations. (If you had a bad year, I’m sorry.)

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2018.

Chapman State Park

beefyyugeI joined the group making a solstice celebration walk at Maryland’s Chapman State Park—more of a bushwhack, truth be told, with Rod Simmons at the head of the line. Although I can’t recommend him as a trip leader based on this experience, he did point out some huge individuals of familiar tree species in this old-growth woods. For instance, Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) at left, with a trunk as wide as my hand, and an oak-sized Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) at right.


destinationCherrybark Oak (Quercus pagoda) was a target species, and Rod delivered.

Crooked CA watch: 5

Charles Wang has cashed out.

In 2004, after a four-year investigation that focused on backdated contracts and whether they artificially inflated profits, [Wang’s] Computer Associates reached an agreement with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution, which included paying $225 million in restitution to shareholders.

In 2006, [CEO Sanjay] Kumar was sentenced to 12 years in prison for orchestrating a $2.2 billion accounting fraud, mainly in 1999 and 2000. Mr. Wang was never charged with wrongdoing in the case.

But a year later, a 390-page report by the Computer Associates board, assisted by an outside law firm, found Mr. Wang culpable as well. “No significant decisions were made without his participation and approval,” the report said.

Indecent

Eric Rosen directs an effective production of Paula Vogel’s confidently theatrical, ensemble-driven meta-play, telling us the story of Sholem Asch’s play The God of Vengeance, from its early productions in Yiddish-speaking Europe after the turn of the century to its suppressed Broadway production of 1923. Vogel’s script finds a way to feed us the key snippets of Asch’s play, while keeping the action skipping along. In the cast, Ethan Watermeier stands out, having drawn most of the cards for playing heavies: an Irish policeman assigned to close down the production, a rabbi speaking against the “indecent” material of the play. A scene of the play’s production in a 1943 Warsaw ghetto, using found space and all the actors wearing Jewish stars, is particularly powerful, a testament to the resilience of art in the face of repression.

  • Indecent, by Paula Vogel, directed by Eric Rosen, Arena Stage Kreeger Theater, Washington