Thankful Numbers

1. For all the challenges living in small spaces close to others create, especially in pandemic times, the ability to walk to so many of the things I need be they essentials, or just sunny spots with flowers, has been one I am particularly grateful for this year.  

2. My cat has always been great at figuring out when to nap, when to demand attention, and when to eat, and when to tell the human that she has misunderstood the schedule.  This example of clear boundaries has been a useful reminder.  

3. Friends who pivoted quickly to online gatherings so that my social life, while obviously changed, is full in ways that matter.  And friends who said, nope, we'll move to other forms of communication in the interim.  

4. Yarn dyers and pattern designers who rose to the challenge of people who had greater couch time this year.  

5. Those who have continued to show up to jobs in apartment buildings, in transit, in delivery, on farms, in small businesses, and in restaurants.  My ability to socially distance is entirely reliant on this, and I am eternally grateful.  

6.  Health care workers, up to and including the often unsung medical coders, medical researchers, janitorial staff, and others who have continued showing up in a situation that grew both dangerous and tiring. 

7. Authors.  I am grateful to count myself among your number, but the kidlit and the romance community continue to show that folks who believe in hopeful futures can provide worlds to escape in, can pivot to virtual book events, and can organize together raising funds for typhoons, voting, and other such things. 

8. Everyone who took time to engage more fully with anti-racism and other social justice movements this year.  

9.  Parents and child care workers.  I am not a parent, but am well aware that this has been a tough year for everyone raising up tiny humans.  Not a year that makes a lot of sense for many tiny humans either.  

10. Gardeners and landscapers. I have been relying on pictures of the gardens I normally would have visited many more times this year.  And this reduced access to the fancier botanicals meant I have hunted a little harder through my own neighborhood this year.  I have a brown thumb, but greatly appreciate those who take the time to put color onto their lawn or in other shared spaces where I can enjoy it too.   

"The Burdens" through Play-PerView

Content note: discussions of abusive language, discussions of elder murder, offstage death of an elder.  

"The Burdens" is a two person play.  The two siblings communicate primarily by text, email, voicemail, and the occasional talking directly to the audience.  The siblings are Jewish, on opposite coasts, and clearly are close but also disconnected in the way that adult siblings often are, especially when one is still on the same coast as the relatives, and one isn't.  

Also because they are texting there are timing things, autocorrects, and also emotional disconnects.  

Their grandfather is one hundred, requires a lot of special care, and is draining their mother's finances, and also the grandfather is not super nice.  The brother is an aspiring musician who works in a pharmacy.  The sister is a lawyer, and is married with kids, to a husband who is not sure that she should be so involved in all the day to day of her family's life and certainly not be providing the level of financial assistance she is.  And well, it starts to seem like things would be better if their grandfather was dead. 

The play is set in a specific time, with autocorrect and old AOL accounts.  The sibs seem like they are gen X, having experienced a specific moment in time in technology.  

It seems like it would be odd to watch a couple play siblings,  But - well they are very good actors, so I hesitate to attribute this to something other than skill, but it seems like folks who are close would make similar expressions and do things that actually look like people who grew up together.  It could also be that they are very skilled. 

This play was very well suited to both Zoom format and to a week when folks generally gather with family.  

I did miss a live audience a bit, because there is nothing like the collective gasp of an audience when characters fight and we all know they crossed a line, even if they might also be a little bit right.   

The recording of the reading remains available for the next few days.  

Three Interesting Things

1. Nicole Chung wrote beautifully about how grieving in pandemic times doesn't lack closure, since grief is not a thing that neatly ends, but can feel without some of the markers we are used to having and we begin or progress through the grief process. 

2. It continues to be a year for restaurants.  I enjoyed this list from Esquire not just because it featured some local food, but also this peek into how restaurants are trying to navigate this situation. 

3. Amber Riley and Angelica Ross had a wonderful conversation about Riley's post-Glee life and her new album.  

Also you may have heard that there is a Romancing the Runoff auction occurring through next week.  The monies are being split between Fair Fight, Black Voters Matter, and the New Georgia Project.  You can also donate directly if auctions stress you out, or search for some of the buy now items.  

Thoughts on Other's Thoughts about "The Scottsboro Boys"

I wanted to take a longer time to ruminate a little on this oral history of "The Scottsboro Boys".  First, this history is amazing, both for the peek into the creator's visions, the original casts feelings about the production, and some coverage of the response and reaction.  

I liked the production when I had a chance to see it staged locally.  And certainly at this point the show exists and no one is putting that back into the bottle. The only thing to be discussed is should it continue to be performed. And again, since I have seen it, my thoughts are clear.  But the thing I found interesting, is that the creative team feels very strongly that they were misunderstood in their intentions and well, I'm not sure that they were.  

The show attempts a really tricky thing - it takes a specific form of entertainment that was originally used to create the ultimate in punching down comedy.  Minstrel shows made fun of black people, Jewish people, and probably many more that the performers knew could get a laugh from the audience.  The show is trying to reclaim this. To take a case most people did not learn about in their history class, even though it created changes to the justice system that exist today, and let the minstrels be the folks who really never got to tell their own stories.  And having Black actors play the white police, the white lawyers, and the white women who are accusing the boys.  

But there's an interesting layer of having a mostly white creative team shepherd a reclaiming of something that traditionally harmed Black people.  Am I saying white people can't tell stories about Black people?  No.  But the idea - as one of the creators says in the history that well, I wonder if they would have protested us if we were Black - well, that's not a neutral question, right?  Because let's face it, we have all seen and heard stories that were told by people who meant very well, and who fumbled in part because they did not have the cultural know how needed to tell a story.  And it is not unfair for people to decide that they can't trust a mostly white team to tell a particular story with the care and nuance needed.  And it is not unfair for folks to be upset that a mostly white creative team got an opportunity to put on a show with only one white character when that is something Black creators have not had access and opportunity to do.  

One of the things I did not talk about in my post about the performance I saw was the incredible awkwardness of watching that show.  Not because of the cast - who were wonderful.  But because the show is trying to essentially lull you with typical musical rhythms into jokes about injustice.  And so many of the things that occur that are joke shaped, if you will, are quite awful.  But of course, humans also laugh when things are too awkward, too scary, and even sometimes just too much.  So as an audience member the places you decide to laugh and the places the person next to you, or rows away from you may be very different.  And you have no way to press pause and be like - are you laughing because it's funny or because it's awful. 

I think this is also why it had great success at small theaters.  The audiences for small theaters are often more aware that some shows are fun and some shows are to make you think and some shows do both.  And small theaters often utilize lobby space for coordinated exhibits and other think pieces.  They use the program to provide context.  In the oral history they talked about showing a documentary to kids and parents before they agreed to the show in their school. That's a lot of pre-work.  

Media often has to signal to the audience what they are in for, and I think perhaps small theaters are better suited to that level of work.  Of course, part of it could be that telling chat with the promoters who were like, yeah, we didn't know how to pitch a show about kids on trial.   

Three Interesting Things

1. I caught up to L. D. Lewis' post about Fiyahcon.  It provides some great blueprints for other cons and workshops and events to draw from.  

2. Jemele Hill wrote about how Vice President elect Harris' historic position as the first Black, first Asian American, and first woman in the role would not elide how tough it was for her to get there. Also, if you've noticed the specificity of those firsts, in addition to specificity being prefered by folks finally getting representation, it is also because the first Native American Vice President was Charles Curtis, who was of Kaw, Osage, and Potawatomi descent.  Yep, another thing I certainly didn't learn in my history class.  

3.Dan Feinberg wrote a lovely appreciation for the tricky balance of smart and kind that Alex Trebek achieved in his long hosting of "Jeopardy".  Cancer is a jerk.