My first tryst with the bargain books at the dollar store was a novel co-authored by Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan, who just happened to be a classmate of mine at Guilford College.  Curiosity prompted my first daring dollar purchase; however, the novel, Justice For None, proved to be very entertaining and well written so I resolved to frequent the dollar store and its small inventory of discounted books.
A few weeks ago I added three more dollar hardbacks–all novels–to my summer reading regime:  The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow; The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra; The Interpretation Of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld.  The novel I am currently reading, The Last Witchfinder, is a worthy followup to Hackman and Lenihan’s work and with the addition of its quirky approach–the book itself is the primary creative initiator and dictates itself to the author it chooses–appeals to the natural philosopher in me.  Check out your local dollar store where you may find bargains that don’t involve wrapping paper and off-brand batteries.

The stage design at Triad Stage has been unflaggingly impeccable and Tartuffe was no exception.  The entire cast is to be commended for its fine performance; it was a treat to attend a performance which included a number of different roles instead of the sparse characterizations that  recent economic conditions dictated.  The integration of so many roles was effortless although I must say that Rosie McGuire as Dorine stole the show in all the best ways one might construe such a theft without robbing fellow actors of their own considerable emoluments.

Tartuffe would have been good enough to persuade me to purchase season tickets for next year’s performances if I hadn’t already done so.

I opted not to call Terminix again.  It was clear to me that the ants would win hands down short of poisoning every living thing within a 50 yard radius of our house.  We use as few chemicals as is reasonably possible around the house and garden organically so nuking the environment with a cocktail of pesticides is not something we take lightly.  While talking to one of my neighbors I related my tale of woe regarding our ant infestation and he said there was a simple, inexpensive solution to my problem:  Terro.  Frankly, I thought his prescription sounded too good to be true, but it wasn’t.  Provided the problematic ants are the sweet eating type, Terro works like a charm.  Battalions of ants formed two lines: one marching to the feeding station that consisted of a piece of cardboard on which a few drops of clear Terro was placed and one returning to the nest carrying food.  Depending on the size of the ant colony, in a few days to a week, the ants will simply vanish.

With the ants in retreat, Murphy’s Law was immediately in play: the shower that had recently been repaired began leaking almost as mysteriously as it’s repair had easily be effected.  My wife had showered before me without a problem; however, when I finished showering, turning the knob to the off position did not stop the flow of water but allowed instead a steady, albeit, diminished stream of water to continue.  None of my attempts to stop the water flow were successful so I spent the morning and actually part of the afternoon contacting the plumber who had repaired the shower just a few months earlier.  When I was finally able to speak to a real person–the plumber’s voice mail was not working–I was told that the plumber was not in and he would return my call as soon as he was available, a scenario which, includes certain other skilled service professions, has become the norm.  By the time my wife returned from work in the evening the shower had stopped leaking as abruptly as it had begun several hours earlier.  When the plumber returned my call late in the afternoon of the following day I told him that the shower had simply repaired itself and was no longer leaking.  Since he was familiar with my shower and the type of hardware he said I should give him a heads-up if the leak reappeared so that he could get a replacement cartridge for my aging shower.

Recently I’ve been reading a systematic analysis of Nietzsche as a philosopher and the coincidence of anecdotal calamities involving home ownership suggested a less serious theme of recurrence; perhaps, not quite eternal in nature but at least possessing some extended cycle of periodicity.  If anything, Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence seems to provide a sardonic footnote to the mayhem which has resulted in the unrestrained pursuit of the great American ideal of becoming a home owner and the consequential underpinnings of his nihilism.  Depending on one’s perspective–an integral point of reference for Nietzsche through which we impose grammatical order on the phenomenal flux of wills provisioned by our language and its unique structure–every iota of our physical and psychical existence, yea every tick of time down to the last detail (except there is no last detail to speak of) has come before and will come again exactly as it has before and will be again may or may not offer us comfort in the present or the incipient repetition of our lives.  I have and will call again that same plumber and he has and will reply again at the same time and same way and with the same advice.  If Nietzsche’s claim that any statement about “reality” is false then his own philosophical system is subject to the same test and is equally fallacious as it stands whereas its verity is hardly a candle of hope as it offers no improvement and would do little more than imprison whatever is–the phenomenal flux of will-to-power in a primal dance of force–in an absolute unending cycle of return.  While the yea-saying, life embracing approach of Nietzsche distinguishes him from Schopenhauer’s pessimism, it seems small consolation when one is actively embracing what has already been and will recur countless times thereafter:  one is reminded of the alchemical symbol of the snake devouring its tail or its modern visual analog, Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.  Hmmmm, is that the shower dripping? Again?

Keeping up with friends who are currently online is one feature that Facebook offers that is probably familiar to almost all of its users, particularly the younger ones who are already veterans of chat rooms.  The other day I noticed that my cousin from Italy was online so I dusted off my scant smattering of Italian and greeted her.  After a few brief exchanges my aspiration of becoming a polyglot was forfeit.  Fortunately, my cousin is able to speak English far better than I can utter my few phrases of Italian so that we were able to have a pleasant conversation.  A few days later we chanced to resolve the six hour time difference and chatted once again.  The encounters encouraged me to renew the promise that I had made to myself to learn to read Italian.  At my age mastery of the spoken word lies just beyond my reach therefore it is more sensible for me to focus my efforts on reading comprehension.  Without a robust community of Italian speakers with which to engage, mastering the nuances of conversation is very unlikely, if not impossible.  As daunting as it is to venture into the uncertain terrain of learning a foreign language, there is a certain allure in having the opportunity to practice with a native speaker who is inclined to be more supportive than critical.  My cousin, after all, è una della famiglia!

Facebook may be touted as a social network but it comes off a bit more tinny, gimicky than it is connective.  There are groups, games, applications, etc. which appear to be a kind of ruse instead of activities or areas that actually encourage or facilitate real communication or the exchange of ideas.  I may be way off base or even more confused than ignorant but a poke seems woefully deficient as a means for information transfer.  I will own up to the existence of a certain amount of cleverness; however, a quick inventory of posts yields very little word play and an abundance of glaringly mundane insertions of the status quo; and, I can attest to this because guilt taints my clumsy fingertips for authoring equally appalling one-liners regarding my own whereabouts or activities.  Nevertheless, I persisted.  In time I received friend invitations; it was difficult for my wife not to recognize me and, of course, my children gradually looked askance at the potential for embarrassment with my being present as a friend among their peers but they relented, threw caution to the electrons, and in the spirit of unrelenting self exposure, sent me invitations to join them in their circle of friends.

I decided to move slowly in this new environment, observing, exploring so my list of friends grew more along the lines of a stalagmitic accretion than a volcanic eruption.  After a week of genuine Holmesian sleuthing I managed to discover the identity of the person behind a rather baffling friend request.  It seems an high school classmate of mine sent me a friend request; however, she did not list the high school we attended in her profile nor did she include her photo.  The mystery was finally solved when I recognized her from the photo with which she later updated her profile.  Since she had been married and divorced three times it would have been less confusing and more efficient to use her maiden name, after all that was her name when we were in high school together!

About the same time I was engaged in my seven percent solution, another friend request arrived.  The request  was sent by a guy who was in my class at college and who I actually knew so I accepted.  I checked out the web site he listed for himself which turned out to be a blog on Blogger.  We weren’t close friends but we did know each other; it was hard not to be acquainted, at least, with nearly everyone on campus at such a small school.  In the spirit of tit-for-tat, I sent my re-acquired friend a link to my blog so that he could catch up.

Meanwhile my friend list remained skeletal; I was having very little success locating people I knew from high school and college.  I found myself in the opposite situation from those that I had read about in a recent web article where members of Facebook were re-evaluating their burgeoning friends lists and concluded for a variety of reasons that some drastic pruning was in order.  The process, in social networking parlance, is known as “unfriending“.  While eliminating one name or many from a register of hundreds or even thousands appears to be a rather simple task, these arborists soon discovered that their trimming resulted in truncated limbs, hurt feelings rather than restoring vigor to an unruly plant.  Being “unfriended” apparently devastated many folks, even those who admittedly had virtually no active connection with the “unfriender”.  Some who had been “unfriended” were so distraught that their appeals to their former friends was so plaintive that they were reinstated even though their status returned to its former inactivity.

Imagine my surprise when I reviewed my single digit list of friends and was unable to find the college mate whom I had just accepted as a friend.  Perhaps, there had been an error involving the particular college network group to which we belonged.  I continued my inquiry to locate the friend who had mysteriously disappeared.  And then it happened.  I was checking out the friends of a mutual friend when the friend who had vanished from my list remained on the list of a mutual friend.  It was too staggering for a novice like me to fathom such an act:  I had been “unfriended“.  I reeled from this revelation just as Shakespeare’s mortal Caesar wheeled to face his assassins, and uttered to the thankless wretch who set the trap:  This  was the most unkindest cut of all.

The dark side’s callin’ now, nothing is real…
Ain’t nothin’ gonna save you from a love that’s blind
When you slip to the dark side you cross that line
On the dark side, oh yeah
On the dark side, oh yeah

Now that I’m on the dark side, over here doesn’t look very different from over there, although I’ve been pondering what would have become of poor old Keats if he had had such a distraction, not that tuberculosis and the popular method of treatment–regular blood letting, diets of nearing starvation–and unrequited love helped him focus any better.  The strobing titillation of information at the speed of light–theoretically, at least–probably wouldn’t have diminished his genius although his tragically brief light might not have burned as incandescently as it did if it were so self-absorbed and quixotic in documenting every breath and pulse and mood and fleeting thought and the empty contents of boredom.  Of course there are those who would state that is exactly what Keats did with his poetry, and while I might acquiesce to this characterization of the process the reality is quite again something else.  A word that comes to mind is magnificent, for example or the sonnet, When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be, might offer a clue.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

True genius accommodates its environment.  But it is certainly arguable that Keats might not have crafted that captivating end couplet in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know, if he were hooked on Facebook diluting stanzas with pokes or answering life’s nagging question, What are you doing?  Oops, that was a Budweiser commercial!

The silver lining in this dark cloud may be that those of us who are less informed may have a chance to improve ourselves, if we don’t overexpose ourselves first.  On the bright side of the dark side, Sarah Palin could finally get to read all of the newspapers online and she wouldn’t have to worry about remembering their names–RSS!

Rural eastern North Carolina is rife with its own brand of fervent religious fundamentalism; its old time preaching radiates from small community churches and conjures up flushed images of an angry God and a bloody cross that permeate the style of worship as well as the lyrics and melodies of the hymns that are sung.  As the power of songs rattles the rough-hewn walls and vibrates their tinned exterior propelled by the magnificent voice of one of the cousins, the night air becomes superheated; the pronouncements of mankind’s essential sinfulness resound as harshly as they are palpable to those uninitiated in the cultural traditions of this regional esotericism; and yet, to some, the surgical surety of Ockham’s razor offers them solace and provides an escape from the turmoil and tragedy of daily life.

After hymns and hot dogs, photographs and laughter, hugs and goodbyes, the crowd of folks drifted off one by one like the glowing embers in the bonfire outside aged slowly, growing graying beards of ash.  My father-in-law had prearranged for us to spend the night at his brother’s home so when the gathering dissipated we followed our host in our car to his house.  Although it was dark as pitch when we left the pack house there was still plenty of time for us to chat and reminisce before turning in.  During our conversation I noticed how my wife’s uncle talked about his children, grand children, great grand children, and his siblings.  Whenever either of us inquired into the whereabouts of a member of his family he used the verb “stay” instead of the verb “live“.  One of his daughters stayed at the old home place or his sister stayed about 11 miles from here.  Or he stayed with sister until she died before he came to stay here.  Wherever they were they stayed there; never did they live there even if they owned the place where they stayed–a transitoriness seemed to lay hidden beneath the surface as if the solidity of the family might suddenly crumble.  I’m not certain if this usage was a characteristic of the family in this region or merely an idiosyncratic betrayal of the hardships my wife’s uncle had endured in his own life.  We all have our demons.  What distinguishes us is how we confront them.

As I tried to find a comfortable niche in a strange bed and an unfamiliar place, the vernacular used by the denizens of the south Jersey town where I was born invaded my attempts at sleep.  Like counted sheep a peculiar assortment of words announced themselves with the familiar but forgotten twang of pronunciations bleating for recognition as I tossed earnestly searching for a comfortable spot.

Time often blurs distinctions, softens the hardships we encountered, dulls the senses to things which in the moment were most acute.  So the fantasy of accents, phrases, interjections leaping into words can reconstruct elements of the past, touch off flashes of memory, even associate sounds with events; however, the unadulterated color of living images remains only as vivid as any reproduction satisfies the artist’s original creative impulse.

As a kid, I used to chuckle at the way many adults around me pronounced certain words.  Inexplicably vowels would vanish from some words: the “i” in tire got stuck in tar and far was where one wished to be when sirens sounded the fire alarm.  An added syllable mutated into a most oriental curiosity as soy emerged as suey–soy beans were a staple crop on the truck farms of south Jersey.   The refrain from the old cowboy song, Cool Water, water, water, cool clear water, was often rendered less poetically as wooder, wooder, cool, clear wooder and our fascination with the cowboy and the west would have had an uncerimonious ending.  One persistent regionalistic quirk or malapropism of which  I am still occasionally guilty howls its windy protestation each time hairricane season commences in September and the national weather service announces its baptismal list of new born hurricanes.  My birthplace, the tiny town of Salem, NJ is nearly surrounded by water.  During my childhood many people made a living hunting, trapping, and feeshing.  The fish that inhabited the estuaries of south Jersey apparently had a peculiar fascination for long vowels sounds whenever it involved them.  Every place has its placeholder word or phrase for use in common parlance.  As I recall, “right” is invoked as a form of punctuation, instead of a value judgment or acknowledgment:  I told her just what I thought.  Right!  Then I asked her what business it was of hers.  Right!  You get the picture?  Right! One might get a crick in one’s neck by being exposed to a cold draft from an open window or pitching a baseball on lazy summer days for hours on end; however, we south Jersey-ites more often than not went down to the crick to do some feeshing; perhaps, one’s success at angling was directly related to the way one held one’s head.  One of my all time favorites was the word “ignorant“.  Although its common usage drew upon its ascribed definition in some degree, it had evolved into a pejorative term signifying a certain tactlessness or a valuation of one’s character, which may have originally stemmed from a lack of knowledge, though I cannot recall its usage in such a context.  A variety of situations evoked the interjection of “That’s just ignorant!” or “She’s ignorant!”   There was generally no clarification of what particular knowledge was lacking or upon what basis a behavior became silly or foolish.  Upon reflection, I suppose I was just plain ignorant a lot of the time I lived in Salem.  I had earned the answers the hard way but only later did I learn to ask the right questions.  Right.

Sir Alan of Greenback was the model of perplexed contrition:  he had erred but simply could not understand how he or any chevalier who had been knighted by Queen Ayn of Rand could have foreseen the evil calamity that unregulated greed can cause.  Knights of the Market Table are honor bound to yield profit to their masters in whose service they wage chivalrously for modest returns so that the prosperity of the realm may be bestowed from lord to serf like a bucolic brook ever-flowing transforms arid land to verdant countryside.  Alas, poor Sir Alan was so befuddled by the gauche barbarian hordes who tore the chivalric veil of industry with their indiscriminate pillaging that he stuttered less densely than usual, except when he qualified his quilt and quantified his importance, which was no small thing for one with so large a head full of, well, how should one put this, not gray matter.  Sir Knight was rudely treated at court, something he was unaccustomed to.  And so his armor was badly dented although indeed he wore none and actually never did; his ponderous word-shields were ineffective against the calumnies hurled by the angry politico-wraiths before whom he stood, and who most often were as equally ignorant of their own ignorance as was the mortified knight and were therefore foolishly complicit minions of heraldic turpitude.
Dumbfounded rather than ashamed, ideologically recalcitrant instead of pragmatically adaptive, dogmatically disinterested rather than intellectually curious, the old knight almost recanted the misbegotten whimsy that a glutton understands moderation.

Eight years ago if our young had been more naïve and statesmen more socratic, perhaps a voice from the crowd might have shouted out the truth and spared us the mixed metaphors of Camelot and Crawford:  The cowboy isn’t wearing any chaps!

We finished off our evening at the Blue Ridge Music Center on Parkway Mile Post 213.  This wasn’t our first time picniking in the open air of the Blue Ridge and enjoying the music provided through out the summer.  The first group came from nearby Galax (BRMC is actually in Virginia) while the second act, Linda and Robin Williams had to travel a bit farther from near Staunton (that’s pronounced STANTON for those who are wise in the way of Virginia phonetics).  The Williams’ are frequent guest musicians on A Prairie Home Companion and were actually in the movie too, and performed one of their original songs.  I would have expected a bigger crowd considering the quality of the performers.  The sky threatened rain earlier in the day but not a drop fell to dampen the spirits of those in attendance.

Mile Post 213 represents a completely different view of the National Park System, and, one worth experiencing.

Last Saturday night we caught the final performance of Godspell at the Open Space Cafe Theater in Greensboro.  A good friend had recommended this particular production to us with glowing terms; she found the musical very entertaining even though she admitted that she was a bit weak on the finer points of the New Testament and the Gospel of Matthew–she’s Jewish.  She also sings and is a musician.  Her enthusiasm for the show was justified.

The performance was indeed entertaining, which I felt owed its greatest debt to the actors who engaged the audience in just the way the original stage direction seemed to indicate was necessary for the play to be successful–if the play appears too polished or too slick, its message runs the risk of being considered glib or even trite.  I vaguely recall when Godspell was first introduced in 1970 or 1971.  At the time, I remember that I considered it a kind of fundamentalist retort to Jesus Christ Superstar, which I much preferred to Godspell and liked well enough to purchase a recording of the soundtrack–I think I still have that old vinyl around here somewhere.  Sifting through the few memories I could recall from that time period, Day By Day, seemed to be the only notable song from Godspell whereas almost every song from Jesus Christ Superstar was instantly recognizable.  Day by Day lilted wistfully, and, in some ways, predictably while most of the songs featured in JCSS contained the elemental tension people face in lives that are challenged through matters of faith (I Don’t Know How To Love Him,for example), they are also more memorable since their foundation is rock music and not a church hymnal as was the case with Godspell.

Sometimes too much information can be as limiting as too little; consequently, I often do more in depth research on a play after I’ve seen it performed rather than before.  My method is probably counter intuitive to most; however, my penchant for over thinking is less likely to impede my ability to view the performance without preconceptions or unrealistic expectations if I come prepared more as a noble savage than as, well, a member of the pontificating array of philosophers/thinkers with which Godspell begins.  Post performance research reinforced my general attitude toward the actors, the staging, and the dynamics of the former and latter within the context of the play itself.  My investigations also reinforced my initial reservations formed decades ago about Godspell as a vehicle for the cargo it meant to transport.  I think the play itself fails in that regard; however, that is a matter of my own personal preference rather than a commentary on the skill and talent of the actors who labor in the variously articulated roles.  I just did not see how the concept of community was defined and solidified through the principal character, Jesus, the people, and his disciples as the original director’s notes indicate should be the case.  I have difficulty believing that this can be accomplished regardless of the actors selected for the various roles.  While the archaic spelling of Gospel suggests novelty and, perhaps, intimates that a revision or reinterpretation of the gospel’s meaning in light of current events will follow, it falls short despite references to foreclosures and sky-rocketing fuel prices.  OSCT’s performance of Godspell didn’t devolve into a vaudevillian band of merry pranksters bent on one-upmanship; however, the nature of play tends to teeter toward that precipice, nonetheless.

On balance Joe Nierle, the actors, and all of the OSCT crew did a commendable job and we were rewarded with an evening of great entertainment.  OSCT offers a different kind of live theater experience without sacrificing quality in either material or actors.  The informal nature of the venue promotes a more  communal atmosphere and helps to remove the barriers which tend to isolate the actors from the audience:  in a very real sense, and certainly with regard to Godspell, the audience becomes part of the performance.

The remainder of OSCT’s 2008 season promises a rich range of plays: Crowns; Blood Brothers; Blithe Spirit; Sander’s Family Christmas.  Based on past experience, there isn’t a bad choice in the lot, so why not make a point to see all of them?