"Bad Books" at Round House Theatre

Content warning: brief gun usage, off stage death of a child, off stage injury, reference to abortion.

"Bad Books" is a timely play about a mom who comes to visit the librarian about a book that she recommended to the mom's teen son. 

The play is done in the round, with the stage slowly rotating. The set had books around the edges of the stage, and in a circular overhang. All of those books have been banned or challenged. 

The book the mom objects to is fictitious, but the title and cover, since the mom admits she didn't finish reading it are - juicy - enough to make it clear why a parent might have concerns. 

The show is done without intermission, and has several book references, including "Charlotte's Web". Hilariously a spider dangled from the ceiling in front of my and my friend's seat during part of the show. 

The show is done with two actresses, one who plays the Mother throughout, and one who plays the librarian, the boss, and a fellow parent. 

Some of the big things happen off stage, the mob spear headed by other concerned parents whipped up by the mom's social media posts, attacks the library, but much of that is recapped later. I still teared up at one point, but it does rely on the audience's investment in the two performances to get to where they've gotten emotionally. 

It's easy to nitpick, but as someone who has librarian friends, I thought there wasn't enough mention of the schooling and training that librarians go through. Though in my possibly biased opinion the librarian does prove her bona fides in other ways. 

I've talked before about conversation plays, plays designed to provoke conversation after, and I think this show has a very clear conclusion it isn't afraid to make. But it might also spark some great conversation in the ways any great story would. 

Three Interesting Things

1. I happened upon this fascinating look into the woman who invented at home pregnancy tests.

2. The UK cartoonist who was placed in an ICE prison has given an interview about the process. 

3. James Roday gave a wonderful account of how Val Kilmer's character Chris Knight inspired his portrayal of Shawn Spencer.

Orientation

I went to university in Scotland, and at the time they did an overseas student orientation. I mention this for two reasons. One, foreign students in the US right now are being treated badly. For me, as a DC resident, with no state school option, going to the UK was actually one of my cheaper options. (DC residents have a few more options these days.) 

One thing that's worth noting is that foreign students pay not only full tuition, the foreign student rate is between two and three times the regular student rate. (For those of you wondering how that was cheaper for me, well, the UK student rates have gone up a bit post Brexit, but also, have you seen US tuition rates?) 

So universities often rely on some foreign students, both for diversity of thought, and also the higher rate they pay. 

But one of the targets of this anti-diversity pro-segregation movement is orientations that single people out based on who they are. 

So, in my orientation, I met other new students, including one who turned out to be from near me. I got a tour of the town, got some info on some of the students' traditions, and got to hang out and eat some food. 

I got kicked out bright and early on dorm move in day, so ended up hanging out with the RAs as they checked everyone in because what else was I going to do. Which means I met most people in my dorm as they rolled in.  

So when my roommate, who had grown up just an hour away arrived, who had several classmates she'd gone to high school with at the university and in the dorm arrived, I was already there. She later told me it seemed like I already knew so many people and so much stuff. 

Did those two days give me a huge advantage? Not really. My roommate learned her way around pretty quickly. And we all found our people for the most part. The friends from university that I still keep in touch with are all Scottish. 

But, those days helped me settle. Gave me some faces that when I ran into them later I could say hi, and chat. Two of the Americans I started with the same year ended up leaving. One of them skipped orientation and ended up leaving because he was lonely and didn't feel like he fit in. One hit some academic snags. 

The orientation wasn't the whole reason I succeeded. But it helped give me a start. Helping people find others who have similar backgrounds isn't just so they can only hang out with those people. But goodness, some days after you've been told the third patently untrue thing about the States, knowing where to find someone who will roll their eyes on your behalf is useful. 

The idea of the melting pot assumes that everyone wants to end up tasting like everyone else. (Okay, that metaphor got a little weird, but work with me here.) Sometimes people are somewhere, a job, a university, to do their thing the best that they can, emphasis on their thing. They can learn without melding or changing into some other thing. So finding places they can find others who appreciate some culturally specific things helps them succeed. And helps the institution hang on to the knowledge, and let's face it the money, it needs to keep going. 

The Labeling of Things

One of my favorite things about people is the way we feel personally victimized by the weather. (Why yes, there is rain in today's forecast.) Humans have created years, and then subdivided years into quarters, and assigned each quarter a season. Are there any studies that say that seasons last three months in every single part of the globe, or even any? Not that I'm aware of. But once we assigned these things, we then are consistently affronted when the weather does not cooperate. We track highs and lows. Create charts and data visualizations, and judge whether the weather has fallen into our expectations. 

It is spring where I am. We have had warm days and cool days. The cool day that follows a warm day always feels so much cooler. On one such day a gentleman on a street corner yelled, "The weatherman lied," at the sky. 

Everyone seems sure the weather where they live is more unpredictable, more changeable than the weather everywhere else. Climate change has, of course, affected when and how weather changes. 

But given there's a Mark Twain quote about weather changing unpredictably, it seems weather has been befuddling us all for at least a century or two.  

Hope the weather is within expectations for you today. 

What game are you playing?

There is a family story that goes along with today's but of overthinking about the phrase playing chess not checkers. 

Many summers we would go visit my grandparents in southeastern Connecticut. That stretch of Connecticut required fancy antennas and/or cable to get more than two TV stations unless the wind was blowing a certain way. One of the two channels that came in pretty well was PBS, which meant my grandparents were happy enough since they could watch their nightly news show. 

For us children used to a larger diet of TV, this led to a lot of boredom. So, in an attempt to stave this off, there were a lot of evening games. We played Taboo, gun, gin rummy, double solitaire, crazy eights, and once or twice hearts. (One of my cousin's relatives tried to teach us bridge. I called it reverse hearts and she was not pleased. We did not play enough for me to have retained much.) 

So one night we are playing crazy eights. And my mother lays all her cards down and yells, "Gin!"

We all stared stunned, hoping this was a not very funny joke. And then realizing our mother is basically sleepwalking at this point, so we just kept playing around her. 

So when people say someone is playing chess not checkers, I understand that the point is chess requires generally more long term strategy than checkers. But I also wonder. It hardly matters what chess strategy you are using, if the game you are actually playing is checkers, you are going to lose. 

7 Things I Learned From "Real Genius"

Two notes before we start. One, this was inspired by the news that Val Kilmer passed away this week. His loved ones are in my thoughts. 

Two, "Real Genius", while progressive in some ways, has some problematic sexual consent situations. 

1. Being smart is kind of like power. 

2. Smart does not equal cool. It can.

3. Burnout is bad. Sometimes learning how to have fun and relax is just as important as knowing how to study. 

4. It is not nice to prank your fellow students. But it might be funny. 

5. When people admire your brain, they may only care as long as they can use it for their purposes.

6. Figuring out the utility of the problems you've been asked to solve is important. Because it would suck to discover they had you making part of a weapon. 

7. Breaking into a military site to make a giant popcorn house may not be nice, or wise, but it will be funny. 

Tara Kennedy

Note: If you are reading this outside of your normal work hours, feel free to hold off response until your work hours.  

~To the world we dream about, and the one we live in now. 

"Hadestown", book and lyrics by Anais Mitchell

The End of an Era

I've talked about NaNoWriMo a lot over the years.  The good.  The bad.  And now NaNo has announced that they are shutting down.  I am sad.  I found the ways they chose to address the issues they had more problematic than helpful.  But I want to say something that doesn't just apply to NaNo.  Anything that you learned how to do, with NaNo, you were the one that did the work.  The framework, the doodads, the camaraderie, all of that helps, but you did the work.  We often fail to honor our elders, our teachers, our ancestors in this society.  But I think we also often over attribute some organizations with helping us become something when we did the work.  Now I think my English teachers in the acknowledgements of each of my books even though I wrote those books with my hands, my brain.  I had some great English teachers, truly great.  And well, I had some not so great ones.  I can acknowledge that all of them helped me, but also recognize that they helped me be a thing I was going to be if I put in the work. 

I read a news story about some pro-athletes that are doing a thing that is basically fancy pilates.  It isn't called pilates of course.  Because the people who run the program want to have a different brand, and have their own I'm guessing well trademarked machine.  And it doesn't matter if the bend and stretch program you are in is called yoga, or pilates, or bend and snap, if it works for you, cool.  If it doesn't, also cool.  (And also, I know there are differences between yoga and pilates.  I am not saying there are not.)  But in the end if you move carefully, well, and regularly, you will see changes in your body.  You will develop flexibility or strength or both.  But only if you put in the work.  It doesn't matter how many classes you sign up for if you don't go. 

And yes, I know people who published their NaNo.  I have published some on my NaNos.  I have also not published some of my NaNos. 

So in the end, I am thrilled for all the people that were able to find their writing groove.  Sad for everyone NaNo failed to properly care for.  

And now, I need to get back to my writing.