Theatre Review: Other Desert Cities

Arena Stage concludes this season’s plays with Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities.  This play explores the intersection of the private and public lives of a family from about 1970 to 2005.  Our conversation and contemplation began before the show began, as we viewed the Fitchlander Theatre’s set (Kate Edmunds), which gave us those creamy white carpets and swivel chairs, and sunken conversation fire-pit ring.  “When did you last see one of those?”

Farm Life: Caught With Your Hood Down

Sometimes when friends stay overnight, when they see our vehicles they ask if they should put their hood up.  We just tell them that this depends on their willingness to take risks or not.  What would they be risking by leaving their hood down in th country?  Rodent damage.

Farm Life: Dog Boxes

Marsha recently wrote about her trials with containing her dog, Sadie, whose energy is exuberant. I joked about needing a dog box for Sadie.  I best clarify what I mean by this.  The word “box” might confuse a dog owner to think that I am referring to a crate.  Crate training is a useful tool for dog owners to train their puppies to use at night, inside, and for travel.  A dog box is more like a dog house, but with a country style.  A dog house is a suburban variation of what the owner’s live it.  A dog box is usually assembled from spare materials from around the farm.  Well, maybe that also reflects the owner’s home…

Spring Concert

Spring came later this year
As Winter lingered into April
With snow and frost at dawn.
Snowdrops bloomed alone in March,
Not even greeted by forsithia’s gold.
Then crimson sun thawed the days,
Tempering the dull of night.
Color rushed in as redbud reached
Out from the forest’s edge,
To wake the bare grey twigs.
Awoke, the morning did,
which began to sing with birds,
Sunning themselves on tree crowns,
Which first caught the dawn’s rays.
Color and song, sure signs of Spring,
Were formalized in the Spring Concert
Of the Fresta Valley Christian School.

Farm Life: Building Projects

My blogging friends, Marsha and Barney, have written about their home projects, pondering when the labor will be done.  Sorry to tell you, never.  Well, at least as far as our 20 years of living in this log cabin in the Appalachian Mountains foretells.  My mother has even referred to our dwelling as the Eastern Winchester Mystery House  (those of you from San Jose, CA will get the joke).  We have just finished our most recent, though hardly the last, building project: a new porch.

Theatre Review: The Mountaintop

We have been on a roll of seeing “history” plays recently.  Our third was The Mountaintop at Arena Stage.  Henry VIII and Mary T. and Lizzy K. presents well known characters only a few generations back for their audiences.  The Mountaintop is about Martin Luther King, Jr., someone who lived in my lifetime.  Not only does this portray someone in recent memory, but someone for whom technology allows us to access in audio recordings of his speeches and conversations, and video images.  Narrative accounts and photographic portrayals can be supplemented with sound and movement.  How does a playwright bring something with much contemporary familiarity to the stage?

Book Review: Behind the Scenes, Elizabeth Keckley

As I mentioned in my review of the play Mary T. and Lizzy K., the characters made several reference to a book which Lizzy had written.  This piqued my curiosity and necessitated a stop at the lobby shop to see if such a book existed.  Yes, Elizabeth Keckley had written Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Salve, and Four Years in the White House.  At 160 pages, this was a good read with all of our family visits in the past week.