Author: David Gorsline

Thanks, Mr. Schaper

The monthly newspaper of a certain advocacy organization for which I only recently became eligible for membership is generally forgettable (at best), especially when it comes to “Do you remember this?” roundups. But the staff box callouts for a web site feature brought back to mind a game that I’d forgotten that I remembered: Cootie. I had a set when I was a wee one, and the reason that I don’t remember the rules is that they’re so simple they hardly exist: roll a die until you collect all the plastic body parts for your cootie bug. Sort of like playing Hangman with less skill required. I recall putting the critter together, Mr. Potato Head without any possibility of phenotypic variation, but I don’t think my parents or anybody else ever played with me. There were limits, even in 1961, to an adult’s capacity for boredom just to entertain a child.

In wolf’s clothing

Nick Davies and Justin Welbergen report a novel form of Batesian mimicry: in this case the breast barring that is shared by Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) and Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus). Rather than an harmless species mimicking a harmful one, here the indirectly harmful species (the brood parasite cuckoo) gains easier access to host Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) nests by resembling the more direct threat, the predatory raptor.

(Summary by The Economist.)

Fragments

Using a cast of three, Brook and Estinenne present four of Beckett’s short dramatic pieces, plus a bit of prose serving as transition, in a production that takes the Angl0-French-Irish master’s limited theatrical requirements and strips them down still further. Perhaps not surprisingly, generally this works, as in Rough for Theater I, where B’s wheelchair is nothing more than a black rehearsal box fitted with wheels. As B poles himself along, he takes on the grandeur of a quondam samurai. And Rockaby is improved by eliminating the recorded voice and giving all of those lines to Hayley Carmichael, who delivers a clear, multi-colored, wrenching reading. But we do miss the rocking chair.

In Act without Words II, Yoshi Oïda as A is completely overmatched by Bruce Myers as B in the physical comedy departments; Oïda is reduced to mugging. In his spoken pieces, Oïda’s command of language also introduces an unwanted barrier.

The suite closes with a truly peculiar and graceless version of Beckett’s Noh piece for three aging schoolgirls, Come and Go, with two-thirds of the cast in drag.

  • Fragments, texts by Samuel Beckett, directed by Peter Brook and Marie Hélène Estienne, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

On deck: 7

on deck: 7A small armload of books from last week’s Stone Ridge Used Book Sale plumps the shelf. The Dylan Thomas has a title that has long intrigued me, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, and for two beans, how could I say no? TriQuarterly #137 is, alas, the last print volume for this alma mater literary publication. The Rachel Carson is a loaner from Leta, residual from last October’s project.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

Stately, deskbound storyteller Mike Daisey brings to D.C. his most recent polemic, both a celebration of this century’s magical technology (especially as designed by Apple Computer) and an amateur’s powerful exposé of toxic working conditions at the Chinese factories responsible for final manufacture of that magic. The piece is even more powerful than last season’s The Last Cargo Cult, showing as it does the unspannable divide between the poorly paid laborers who hand-assemble exotic electronics and the Western consumers who enjoy those gadgets.

Daisey’s physical gifts of narrative are again on display. If he sometimes chooses soft targets (we all enjoyed a rant about PowerPoint in which he bellows [accurately] that Microsoft is great at making “tools to do shit we can already do”), his language has deepened: his allusions range from highbrow to pop, from Walt Whitman and the Gospels to a telling description of downtown Shenzhen “like Blade Runner threw up on itself.”

Just as Apple’s revolution in personal computing changed the metaphor of what it meant to interact with a small computer, Daisey urges us to reconsider the metaphorical lens through which we view technology: his is one of the few theatrical pieces I know of that ends with a call to action in the lobby, with pointers to China Labor Watch and Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehaviour.

A self-described Columbo in a Hawaiian shirt, Daisey delivers a moving piece—but with a light touch. As he admits, he has suppressed the most gruesome stories that he collected from South China’s Satanic mills, lest his listeners tune out. The work sparks reactions that move beyond head-nodding in the auditorium to genuine conversations on the way home.

  • The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, created and performed by Mike Daisey, directed by Jean-Michelle Gregory, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Waiting for a train

Michael Schaub points to Linton Weeks’ preview of Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 and launches a zinger:

(Nothing against Ayn Rand, of course. Without her, bitter nerds who like feeling superior to everyone despite the fact that their taste in prose is less advanced than most border collies would have no favorite author.)

But it is Jennifer Burns of the University of Virginia, quoted by Weeks, who lands the solider blow:

On the one hand, Rand’s popularity points to the vigor and growth of the American right, particularly as seen in the Tea Party. On the other hand, it points to a certain intellectual weakness amid the conservative movement, given that their leading intellectual is a novelist who has been dead for almost 30 years.

Turkey Run Park

Our first class field trip, led by Karyn Molines, was much more fruitful. We looked at more than twenty species, and keyed out most of them, as lots was in flower.

good for a toothacheAfter a look around the C-1 parking lot, with a warm-up with the inevitable Garlic Mustard, we started down the hill through a patch of Cut-leaved Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata). The Bloodroots were done blooming, but we were able to key a single fallen flower. Both Dicentra species were to be found, large drifts of Dutchman’s Breeches (D. cucullaria) and a little bit of Squirrel Corn (D. canadensis).

welcome springNear the bottom, along the river, most of the abundant Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) was not yet in flower, but we found a few blooms.

gotta know where to lookThe crowd-pleaser for a walk at this time of the year is the patches of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica)—curiously, one of the few species with a common name in the plural. We found them in several places along the river trail.

Wildflowers along the Glade

done bloominIt’s been a wet, cold March, so I didn’t find too much in bloom during this afternoon’s walk along the Glade, part of my homework for Karyn Molines’ Spring Flower ID class—a violet, a non-native speedwell, and I made the acquaintance of Cardamine pennsylvanica. But I did find a spot close to home for Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetida). Maybe next January I can find its flowers.

Some links: 53

Leta sends two pieces my way: First, this darling Onion item, “White House To Hold Second Auditions This Week For Nationwide Production Of Guys And Dolls“. It nabbed me with the image of Steven Chu playing rehearsal piano. (We should all be so lucky to have a grand in the practice space.) Next is Dave Itzkoff’s behind-the-scenes look at rehearsals for Lonny Price’s production of Company with the New York Philharmonic and a bunch of people you’ve heard of. Is this going to be concert staging, or something else? According to Drew Grant, the production will be recorded for DVD, so we’ll all get to find out in June.

In spring

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year.

—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), ch. III, p. 62

I’ve narrowed it down to five

Dave Pell helps me understand why it is taking months, may take years, for me to replace my old phone and PDA.

Stop. Do not send me your pick for best note-taking app.

I can’t take any more options. I’ve already spent weeks comparing sets of features I’m pretty sure I’ll never need. I tried out at least fifteen applications on my desktop, phone and on the web. I was completely overwhelmed by choices. The process began to take over my life. I spent hours in front of my laptop, I’d demo various features for my wife and kids…

I thought I could pick one web-based tool for notes and diaries. Right now my bookmarks bar has an entire folder of tools, each for its own special purpose.

Reading list

‘Tis Poetry Month once again, and Patrick Cooper points to Jay Parini’s list of ten American poems then “have left the deepest mark on US literature – and me.” Robert Lowell is more or less unknown to me, and Parini’s selection, “Memories of West Street and Lepke,” reminds me pleasantly of Marianne Moore. I haven’t read much Whitman for a long while—time to rectify that.