Heavy

He sighed heavily, and as if in sympathy the smoldering log also sighed. And immediately Okonkwo’s eyes were opened and he saw the whole matter clearly. Living fire begets cold, impotent ash. He sighed again, deeply.

—Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, ch. 17

Four Mile Run

drop it, RileyWith much schedule shuffling as a result of the recent snow disruption, we finally got out for our second field trip for winter tree ID, to a couple of spots along Four Mile Run. Proving that you don’t need a pristine natural area to learn about the world, Elizabeth started us at the dog park at Shirlington Park, a long strip of ground along the north side of the stream pinched in by the light industrial area located just to the north.

my way, birchesfast growerWe looked at natives and invasives: we keyed out an American Basswood (Tilia americana) still showing some shreds of the bracts and stalks of its fruits; we worked with a large River Birch (Betula nigra) with its scaly bark; and we found beyond the west end of the park a massive Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides).

Among other trees, Elizabeth used a Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) with its “burnt cornflakes” bark for a field quiz. Her field quizzes are very effective teaching tools. We’re asked to identify a tree, by key or whatever means, to species by common and scientific name—but most importantly, we’re asked to mark three observed characteristics that led to the identification. So we’re led to a structured way of collecting information about a tree that may not yield its secrets readily. And if one of the trees is an easy ID, like an ailanthus with its brutishly heavy twigs, the rule of three keeps us looking. It might be that I go to the field guide with a known tree and then look back at it to find a bud or scar feature.

county championWe moved on a little upstream to a smallish habitat that supports a magnolia association: American Fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus), Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix), and Sweetbay ( Magnolia virginiana), with Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia) in an oak-heath community just up the slopes. The smooth-barked multistemmed Sweetbay in these parts retains a handful of green leaves over the winter. Farther northwest, at about mile marker 4.5 on the Four Mile Run Trail, Elizabeth showed us the Arlington County champion Green Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica).

Hotel Cassiopeia

Fourth wall-breaking opens this production of Charles Mee’s one act on the life and works of assemblage artist Joseph Cornell, a man who found both sides of the picture post card equally interesting. Preceding Wilderesque self-introductions, the cast solicits donations from the audience of found objects to be arranged into a box construction in the course of the play. (Can it be called a fourth wall when the stage in the black box Kogod is configured galley style?) In any event, it’s a nice touch to open this 70-minute fantasia, a co-production of the University of Maryland theater department and Round House Theatre. Scheduled for presentation at Round House’s space later in the year, let us hope that certain aspects of the production settle into more of a performance groove by then.

Mee’s intriguing, deceptively challenging, script effectively conjures the dream-like world of Cornell, one of infatuations with shop girls, devotional consumption of sweet treats, obsessions with movie stars, and tender caring for his infirm brother Robert. It’s a universe where a ballerina can drop by with a chocolate cake, or a lonely artist working in a basement can burst into song. The text enters Cornell (Equity member Scott Sedar, who approaches the role with bemused gravitas) into dialogues with his contemporary artists (Gorky, Duchamp, Matta) as well as a chorus of three men (coached by Leslie Felbain) who flounce like twittering birds—and in each case. we’re not sure how much of each dialogue is projection by Mee’s Cornell onto the other speakers. There are longish passages where Cornell watches Hedy Lamarr and Lauren Bacall in Algiers and To Have and Have Not, and he recites the dialogue along with—but to Sedar’s credit, not mechanically like a Rocky Horror Show fan, but rather a beat before or after the sound track, as one who is remembering in real time.

The standout among the ensemble cast of student actors is James Waters, as a member of the flittering birds chorus and as a character called the Astronomer: he delivers his monologues with a cool economy of means.

  • Hotel Cassiopeia, by Charles L. Mee, directed by Blake Robison, University of Maryland Department of Theatre and Round House Theatre, Smith Center Kogod Theatre, College Park, Maryland

Mee himself constructs plays as a collagist. He writes:

…I try in my work to get past traditional forms of psychological realism, to bring into the frame of the plays material from history, philosophy, insanity, inattention, distractedness, judicial theory, sudden violent passion, lyricism, the National Enquirer, nostalgia, longing, aspiration, literary criticism, anguish, confusion, inability.

I like plays that are not too neat, too finished, too presentable.

On deck: 4

on deck: 4Yes, this is what I’m doing instead of a more constructive use of my leisure time, like preparing for next week’s auditions: snapping pix of my bookshelves. I’m saving the Jonathan Kern as a memento until my onsite gig wraps up. The Thoreau is perhaps ambitious. I’ve been through Walden and I’m curious about the other books in the LOA edition. John Adams and the Therberge and Therberge via the free book shelves at work; Morton via Mattie; Sir Gawain via the Strand. The John Brunner is one of the few sf titles from high school that I’ve held onto; since it’s set in 2010, I thought it would be good to find out how well he predicted. The Chinua Achebe is there because it just feels good to say “Chinua Achebe.”

A simple ramp

In an excellent post, Matt Johnson explains what happened after Friday’s White Flint-bound Red Line train found itself on the pocket track just beyond Farragut North, how the electromechanical safety systems did the job they were designed to do, and how a derailer works.

… not only did the derailer prevent a collision or damage to misaligned switches, it also prevented the train from fouling either main track. However, while this event saw the safety system avert potential disaster, it is not clear why a potentially dangerous situation was allowed to progress so far.

But the parkways are clear of trucks

Via Arts & Letters Daily, delicious curmudgeonliness from Charles Petersen: Mark Zuckerberg as the Robert Moses of the internet:

As Facebook expanded from colleges to the rest of the public, always retaining tight control over how every page appeared, the site’s aesthetics thus began to seem less comparable to the dorm room design principle of in loco parentis and more akin to the authoritarian building codes of a planned community.

How would Elizabeth take this?

A well-packed path leads past the partly iced-over lake to the shops. The Safeway and CVS are open, the Subway and Dinner Zen are not. No New York Times to be found at any location. South Lakes Drive is showing one lane each way of wet pavement, and one lane’s worth of slush and pack.

the championthe challengerLots of downed limbs from small trees; the shrubs in the little frisbee field where Leta took my headshot are pretty much clobbered. The most spectacular is this two-tree pileup involving a pine and a Norway Maple. Between the snowstorms and Isabel, there’ll hardly be any Norways left in the cluster.