theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
Two more clutches of Wood Duck have started since last week, so we’ll be checking boxes well into June.
New arrivals of the season seen or heard on Sunday: Green Heron (Butorides virescens), Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) (spotted by Paul), Acadian Flycatcher (Empidonax virescens) (heard by me), Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea), and Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea) (found by Myra).
The surprise star of this production, set to a supremely danceable score by Sergei Prokofiev, is the role of the Jester, who stirs up the merrymarking at the Prince’s ball. At Saturday’s performance, Chauncey Parsons danced the role with aerial brio. James Kronzer’s set also deserves mention: silvery birches frame all of the scenes, even the palace, setting an other-worldly feel; the effect of a dozen clock faces descending from the flies on the foretold stroke of midnight is also very impressive.
Not that it will make a difference, but let me state a wish that the Warner would rethink its food policy (it’s acceptable in the house). The noise of crackling snack wrappers in the balcony was, at times, a noticeable distraction.
Via kottke.org, David Remnick lists his top 100 jazz albums.
Assemblage artist Robert Rauschenberg has left us at the age of 82.
“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly,” he once said, “because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”
(Link via Boing Boing.)
We struck King Lear yesterday evening. All in all, a good run, one that met my expectations.
The scanty houses middle weekend (16 Sunday, 11 stalwarts on Friday) built to some better numbers for our closing weekend, including a declared sell-out Saturday (CLS ordinarily sets up two rows of chairs, seating about 50).
We continued to make costume and blocking adjustments through Saturday. Too bad that we never found a safer place for the wheelchair (for IV.iv) that every night I had to wrangle out of a fire exit stairwell.
A few days ago I was noted the passing remark that a typical shift in the NHL is 45 seconds. That’s about the amount of time that it takes to deliver 15 lines of Shakespeare. So I skated my two shifts, plus a bit. I’m actually most satisfied with my tiny bit as the Messenger in Act IV who brings word of the advancing British army.
It turned out that the daylight streaming through the Sunday afternoon windows was not as distracting as the exterior building security lights shining through the evenings. It just never gets dark in that space.
In my long layover between I.i (the division of the kingdom and the betrothal) and III.vii (the blinding of Gloucester) each night I would help Chris by making up his back for when Edgar goes underground as Poor Tom. We went through a few containers of brown and black character color in the nine-show run. Chris tried dark street makeup foundation, but was dissatisfied with the results: too blendy.
I noted before that the church is a multipurpose facility, and that’s really apparent on Friday nights when the AA/NA meetings are held downstairs. I tried to convince myself that the gabble of voices rising through the ventilation system suggested unseen denizens of the palace, but my resolve faltered when I smelled coffee onstage.
Fortunately we had a lot of hands for strike, and we were on our way to food, drink, and celebration in under an hour.
My WordPress dashboard says that this is my 500th post, and I’m in no position to say otherwise.
Sometimes our boxes are visited by members of families other than Anatidae. A Tufted Titmouse has taken over box #5, located down lower Barnyard Run. At least five nestlings are visible in the photo at left; you can also see the considerable amount of unused box space surrounding the tiny nest.
Box #8 on the main wetland also has a songbird nest in it—probably Carolina Wren.
As for our intended guests, two Hooded Merganser nests have hatched out, as well as two Wood Duck clutches. We’re still expecting hatches of two hoodie families, three woodie families, and perhaps one more.
Also heard, seen, or both: American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus), Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla), Great Crested Flycatcher (Myiarchus crinitus), Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus), Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus), and Prothonotary Warbler (Pronotaria citrea)(vocalizing!).
Welcome to readers directed here by Bas Bleu, who has recently cracked the mic.
Try out a new movie download service. Right now the status line reads: “Downloading movie (1.94%); 25.1 MB of 1.25 GB at 9 KB/sec; Ready to play in 1d 6h.”
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Sweet marjoram, the FTA has okayed Metro to Reston, Dulles, and beyond. Maybe I’ll be able to take the day off to see the groundbreaking, after all. But the feds haven’t written the $900 million check yet. Stay tuned.
I scored 25 out of 34 in The Rather Difficult Font Game. Not good enough to make it on to the leader board.
On Sunday’s trip, we saw the results of hatching in three boxes. Myra and Chris were rewarded with views of chicks in two of them! The foliage has really greened up in the past couple of weeks, after what feels like ten days of rain. The patch and glue job on my right boot did not hold up, but fortunately I have another right (from my previous pair, which is lacking a left). New birds spotted or heard in the park: Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes), Solitary Sandpiper (Tringa solitaria), Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica), Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina), White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus), Yellow Warbler (Dendroica petechia), and lifer #358 for me, Northern Waterthrush (Seiurus noveboracensis). Good ears, Paul!
Via things magazine: a thought-provoking post by Jeffrey Zeldman on the “outsourcing” of personal web page content:
[Imagine] a 1990s site whose splash page links to sub-pages. Structurally, its site map is indistinguishable from an org chart, with the CEO at the top, and everyone else below. …to re-use the org chart analogy, a site like Jody’s is akin to a single-owner company with only virtual (freelance) employees. There is nothing below the CEO. All arrows point outward.
I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m outsourcing my content, but it’s certainly the case that I’m managing a growing number of multiple online personalities. And I really like the simplicity of my TypeKey profile: that’s the URL that I include in my professional resume.
…in last week’s Economist:
Dubai Metro Naming Rights offers you unmatched impact and visibility to take your brand to new levels of saliency and success. What’s more, it is an immersive marketing opportunity that allows you to communicate and interact with your consumers at various touch points spread across the station/Metro network.
Via ArtsJournal: a Rochester, N.Y. artists’ group is giving staged readings of the notorious stinker, Moose Murders, reports Campbell Robertson. The play closed after its opening performance on Broadway in 1983.
The number of people who claim to have seen the [Broadway] show, at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, seems to have multiplied beyond physical possibility, like those who claim to have seen the Beatles at Shea Stadium or Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.