Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends, Once More

     I started my directing textbook with the simple words: "I am a play director." So I was for twenty-five years, in college, in graduate school, and as a theatre professor. In the early years, when I was young, I directed three productions a year; later, when teaching at larger universities with larger theatre departments, I directed two or even only one. In the end, when I had determined to leave academic life to become an attorney, I ceased directing altogether. But still, if asked, I would have responded, "I am a play director."  It is what you are; it is not what you do.
     Until very recently, then, the last play I directed was at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where I served as Department Chair and Producer of the semi-professional McLeod Summer Playhouse. During the summer of 1988 I was set to direct The Sound of Music, an audience favorite. But I had just stepped down as Chair, and another faculty member took pity on me and stepped in to direct the musical. That freed me to direct a play that spoke to me in a way The Sound of Music did not: Children of a Lesser God. It was an unusual choice for a summer playhouse that usually did musicals, Neil Simon-type comedies, and mysteries, but I was still the producer and we made that choice.
     I had a history of success with modern serious drama, although if I told the truth my favorite type of play to direct was period comedy. I had particularly enjoyed the experiences of directing Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Miser, but the list of my most successful productions included The Glass Menagerie, Equus, Old Times, The Zoo Story, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, The Member of the Wedding, and Amadeus. So Children of a Lesser God was right in my wheelhouse. I was able to cast it successfully, using one of our own students who, while hearing herself, had been raised by deaf parents and was thus a native "speaker" of American Sign Language. Additionally, I was able to hire a consultant in ASL to teach the rest of the cast. We rehearsed for two weeks, while the actors simultaneously rehearsed The Sound of Music, and opened the season most successfully. I received notice that the local deaf community was going to picket our performances because I had not cast a deaf woman in the major female role, but I invited the leadership to a dress rehearsal and when they met with the actress they got on board. The production sold out. Until the past two months I counted this production as my most successful product and the process that I enjoyed more than any other. I felt that it was a great way to end my directing career. Although I continued to teach full time at SIUC for another five years, I knew that simultaneously I would be going to law school part time and that there would be no time for directing. And so it proved.
     Twenty years later I had retired from SIUC, become an attorney, and was looking forward to permanent retirement. Carol retired in 2008 and I followed six months later. While still working I had begun acting again, taking one small role and one large role at the Charleston Community Theatre. They invited me to serve on the Board of Directors and I agreed, although I only served one year because of conflicts with the then President. I broadened my local acting experience, taking medium-to-large roles with Charleston's other community theatre and small-to-medium roles with the Eastern Illinois University theatre group. The director I worked with twice at EIU had received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University, the same place I did my undergraduate work. As it happens we were trained in directing by the same people, so naturally enough her directing style was very similar to mine. The other director I worked with at EIU was a guest artist who had been my student at SIUC while earning his M.F.A. in directing, and who had later been on the faculty there. Later still he had become a faculty member and head of the acting and directing program at Western Illinois University. Needless to say I was as comfortable with him as my director as I had been with the previous EIU director. I was not, however, comfortable with any of the directors in either of the community theatres I had worked in, and in one of them the situation was so bad that I resolved never to work there again. Since I felt I had "aged out" of working as an actor alongside college kids, that limited my options somewhat. I acted in a couple of historical dramas written and directed by a professional who had trained at EIU some years ago and had returned to the area after a lengthy sojourn to Florida, but it looked like my primary option going forward would be the Charleston Community Theatre. So I continued to take small-to medium roles with the group.
     Along the way I had organized my notes from various directing classes I had taught (and taken) over the years, and I put together a series of blogs on another platform entitled, "Notes Toward a Textbook in Play Directing". If interested you can find them in my book, A Retirement Blog (https://www.amazon.com/Retirement-Blog-February-2012-August-ebook/dp/B00QQRJI9K/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8). These were collected and edited into my directing textbook, The Art and Craft of Play Directing (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Craft-Play-Directing/dp/1300888482/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8), which has been adopted as a primary or supplemental textbook for the beginning directing course at several colleges and universities. In an Introduction and five main chapters (Theatre and Art; The Interpretation of the Script; Composition and Movement; Working With Actors; and Matters of Style) I laid out what I considered to be an effective way to teach play directing. I assumed that the teacher of the course and I would collaborate, with me providing a theory and him or her providing practical examples and exercises. The first course would culminate with each student directing a one-act play.
     The book has been a steady earner, funding trips to New York and Chicago to see plays and musicals, most recently Hamilton. But more than bringing in money the book awakened dormant memories and yearning: I wanted to direct again! By that time it had been 28 years since I had last directed, but I was convinced it was like riding a bike: once you learn how you never forget. So I went to the Board of Directors of the Charleston Community Theatre and told them I wanted to direct. I think they were at least somewhat skeptical, but they agreed. Then I told them the title I wanted to do: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. As I had worked with them several times before I had a good idea which actors might be available, and I was convinced that I could cast the production successfully. I didn't tell them this, but like most directors I would not take on a project like Salesman unless I knew I had an actor who could play the main role. In this case I had two, one of whom was on the Board and the other of whom was the professional actor, director, and playwright with whom I had worked as an actor on historical dramas earlier. Either one of them could have played the role, although they would have given vastly different performances despite my vision of the play and direction. A director cannot bend actors to his or her will, or even vision of the production; a director must collaborate with actors, working within their physical, vocal, and emotional limits to create a production within the range of possible productions that serves the play and engages the audience. The Board was skeptical again, but in the end they acquiesced. I was to direct Death of a Salesman as the first production in the Charleston Community Theatre's new space, the basement of the local Elks' Club.
     CCT had been mounting its productions at the University's small art center on campus, but that facility had an ambitious new director who was installing a new exhibit in the space that would remain in place for eighteen months. So CCT had to find a new home for the final production of the 2016-17 season (Salesman) and all three productions of the 2017-2018 season. Of the possible locations, the basement of the Elks' Club was the best option, and Salesman would initiate CCT's use of the space.
     Essentially the basement was a large empty space, with a small raised platform (laughingly called a stage) at one end and with steel and concrete posts scattered throughout. The ceiling was about 10 feet high, but with steel beams spanning the area between the walls and steel joists between beams. At least the ceiling was open so there would be hanging positions for lighting instruments, but there were not enough electrical circuits to power the number of instruments we would need. I had designed a thrust stage for the production, but the steel and concrete posts made that impossible. My remaining options were an arena stage configuration or an alley stage configuration, and I quickly decided on the alley option.
     A brief word about design. I am not a scene designer, although at one time I was an accomplished lighting designer and technician. Like all directors, though, I was trained in scene design, and in a pinch I can design a simple set if I have to. Over the years I have designed scenery for productions I have directed when necessary. That was mostly when I taught at small colleges or universities where I didn't have a skilled designer. My favorite productions that I designed include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Old Times, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, The Threepenny Opera, and The Miser. So while preparing to direct Salesman I assumed I would not have a scene designer and prepared to do the job myself.
     The basic design I decided on looked like this:
                                      
I'm rather old-fashioned, coming from the school of design that believes a scene design should be a visual metaphor for the play, and my metaphor was "two houses". Willy and Linda's bedroom was on one side, raised 24", and Biff and Happy's bedroom was on the other side, also raised 24". In between were three spaces that could be anywhere, raised 16", 8", and 16". I included audience seating in the design because I was obligated to provide at least 50 seats for patrons (CCT has a very small audience base in a very small college town located in the middle of a cornfield).  The design as executed was actually somewhat larger and with more seats because the space we were working with was larger than I expected. That made the blocking somewhat less restrictive when I began working with the actors, always a good thing. The existing stage area I ignored completely, ultimately using it as a backstage area.
     The floor plan being established left the question of stage properties. The usual and easy way to go would have been to use realistic set props: real beds, real tables and chairs, a real refrigerator, a real hot water heater, a real desk, and so on. Many of these would have had to have been carried on and off stage by the actors. Salesman, though, is not a realistic play; it was first performed in 1949, a time of great experimentation in the American theatre, and the play is a combination of the realistic and the non-realistic (to be precise, the expressionistic, but why quibble?). So I determined to use realistic hand props combined with non-realistic set props. To create all of the set props I ordered about 45 black plastic milk crates in 12" and 18" sizes which, in various combinations, formed the beds, the tables, the chairs, the refrigerator, the hot water heater, and the desk. The actors could carry them in and out as needed easily, and they had the extra virtue of being perforated so the audience could see through them. The set thus not only represented a visual metaphor for the play but also expressed its style.
     In addition to the set, I also needed designers (or at least coordinators) for costumes and lights. I immediately contacted an 81-year-old friend of mine who used to work for the university theatre program in Charleston to take care of the lighting. This would amount to building an entire lighting system from scratch, which I could do but would require more time than I would have. As LD/TD (lighting designer/technical director) of a summer stock theatre in the mountains of Colorado in 1968 I had done exactly that. But my friend had both the time and the contacts which would enable him to borrow the equipment that we would need. He was also a very pleasant guy to work with, and I foresaw a future in which we would work together on this show a great deal. Costumes were a different problem. What we would need was not time so much as money; I decided that the best way to get the results I wanted (realistic 1949 and 1932 costumes) would be to rent them, and rentals, although effective, are not cheap.
     So I inquired as to the budget and found that it was lacking. The usual budget for the technical elements for a CCT show was $3300. I had budgeted $1500 for the set, $1500 for costumes, $1000 for lighting, and $300 for props, assuming I would have to rent platforms, costumes, and lighting equipment. That came to more than I was allotted, so I made a donation to CCT to make up the rest. CCT is an IRS 501(c)(3) charitable organization, so donations to it are tax-deductible. That meant that every dollar I donated only cost me seventy-five cents or so; it was a pretty good deal. I also waived the usual stipend that went to the director; they couldn't afford my usual fee and I didn't need the money anyway. CCT was happy and I was happy; I was prepared to move forward. In the end we spent significantly less than my budget because we were able to borrow all the platforms we needed and all of the lighting equipment, and the woman who served as costume coordinator found lots of costume items at local thrift stores. We also brought in more money at the box office that CCT had planned for, so the show was a double success financially.
     That brought me to the subject of incidental music. I am a firm believer in music as underscoring, to help set the mood and to mark changes for the audience. Fortunately I didn't have to worry about that this time because the music from the original New York production, by composer Jay North, was available for a modest fee. CCT paid the fee and we had the original haunting flute score for the entire show. Ironically I cut Uncle Ben's speech about his and Willy's father, an itinerant flute maker in the 1880s.
     Nor was that the only speech I cut. The original production lasted about three hours, and in my opinion that is about an hour too long for a Charleston audience. So I diligently searched the text for about an hour's worth of dialogue to cut. In the end I was able to find about forty minutes' worth, but the first act still ran an hour and the second act, an hour and twenty minutes. I could find nothing else to eliminate that would not harm the play. So my only hope was that the actors would make it so interesting that the audience wouldn't mind the time they spent in those hard metal folding chairs.
     That depended, of course, on finding actors who could play the roles. Fortunately I had two actors who could play Willy (not to mention, I suppose, several others who thought they could have); three women who could have played Linda, two men who could play Biff and Happy, two who could play Uncle Ben, two who could play Charley, two or three who could play Howard, and two or three women who could play The Woman. The rest just needed young, attractive people of both genders. It is my policy to cast where possible without regard to race (except for plays like Othello and A Raisin in the Sun), and where possible without regard to gender (as when I cast two women in Waiting for Godot). In a period piece like this one, where gender roles are foregrounded, I didn't feel that I had much room for cross-gender casting, but race played little part. It turned out almost to be a good thing, since one of the men I had thought about for Uncle Ben did not audition and my only option turned out to be a black actor of mature years who would have been just about perfect. If anybody in the audience had questioned why a European-American Willy would have had an African-American brother, I would have just smiled. In the end, though, after I cast him he had to decline the role because of health reasons, and I was forced into finding another actor or playing the role myself. Fortunately, a quick phone call found an actor of the appropriate age who had an announcer's voice. Problem solved.
     Not that playing the role myself would have been all that taxing. I had been in a production of Salesman in a professional summer stock company in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1967, and I knew the role and remembered all the lines. Interestingly, I had also played Bernard in the same production, with the help of some really quick costume changes and a bald wig, but I was far too old fifty years later to play Bernard again.
     After two nights of auditions in February I had a cast I was immensely pleased with. The professional actor-director-playwright would play Willy, and the other possibility would play Charley. One of the three women I had thought about would play Linda; one of the others would play The Woman, and the third I cast as Jenny, a small role, but she declined the role and I cast another woman with whom I had worked previously in several shows. The actor I cast as Biff walked in the door unannounced, but with a professional-looking resume and lots of experience. He blew me away at auditions and ultimately in performance as well. One of the other two men I had envisioned in the role of Biff I cast as Happy, and the other as Howard. It would have been a difficult choice, but the actor I cast as Howard had some rehearsal conflicts and I didn't think it would have been fair to the other actors to put him in a major role.
     And speaking of rehearsal conflicts! The inexperienced actor I cast as Bernard was an EIU student who had classes and labs on Tuesday and Thursday nights, making him unavailable for rehearsals. Plus, he would be in Japan for about 10 days over EIU's spring break. It turned out everyone (including me; we used the tickets for Hamilton in Chicago I had purchased months before setting the rehearsal schedule) had rehearsal conflicts of one kind or another. Two actors were in Las Vegas at different times on vacation; one was an EIU faculty member who was in Chicago for a few days for a conference and some recruiting; two were ministers with scheduled services; a couple got sick; and on and on. I had never had to deal with such things before, but such is one of the problems with directing in a community theatre; people have lives. So we coped.
     When I established the tentative rehearsal schedule I tried to accommodate all of these conflicts, and for the most part I succeeded. As I always did when I directed regularly I tried to avoid wasting people's time as much as possible. So I divided the play into about 25 French scenes (scenes of any length in which the characters on stage do not change) and sorted those scenes into five groups according to characters involved, each group of approximately the same number of pages. That way certain actors were only called for rehearsal once a week; others were called two or three times; and only what I came to call The Family (Willy, Linda, Biff, Happy) were called five times. Every couple of weeks I scheduled a run through, for which everyone was called. During the first five weeks of rehearsal, then, we rehearsed the play out of order, scene by scene, with each scene rehearsed the same number of times per week.
     Each week there were different types of rehearsal. There were reading rehearsals, at which the cast read the play; blocking rehearsals, at which I gave them their positions on stage at any given time and the movement to get them from one position to another; working rehearsals, at which we fixed any problems that developed during blocking rehearsals; and characterization rehearsals, at which I worked with the actors to find reasons for their movements ("motivation") and to discover a workable subtext for the text they were speaking. As I explained to the actors, the audience does not come to the theatre for the text; they can read the text at home. They come for what the actors provide: the subtext, or what the characters mean emotionally and intellectually as they speak the text. Each rehearsal lasted between two and two and a half hours, and my goal was to have thirty hours of rehearsal time before the beginning of technical rehearsals for each hour of stage time in performance. For a show lasting two hours and twenty minutes, then, I wanted some seventy hours of rehearsal prior to tech. Why prior to tech? It is my firm belief, based on eight years of intensive training as a director and twenty-five years of practical experience, that the acting in a production must be as good as it is ever going to be at the final run through before tech. The reason is that my focus as a director will be on things besides the actors: light cues, sound cues, music cues (music and sound are not the same things), props, costumes, costume changes, etc. Things tend to fall apart at tech rehearsals and must be carefully rebuilt to achieve the level the actors reached before tech. With Salesman I achieved the seventy hours of rehearsal that I wanted, but not all actors had as much as I wanted them to have, because of the unavoidable rehearsal conflicts.
     After lines were learned in the fifth week I changed the types of rehearsals I conducted. During early rehearsals we stopped and started, making on-the-spot corrections as they were needed. This has obvious advantages, but it has one terrific disadvantage: it gets the actors used to stopping whenever anything goes wrong in order to fix it. At some point that mindset has to change, or else out of habit (in the worst case) an actor might stop in the middle of a performance and go back and try to fix something. So in my rehearsal schedules I set up "polishing" (that's  polish, not Polish) rehearsals, in which the French scenes are still rehearsed, but without stopping to fix errors; and running rehearsals where, for the first time, entire acts are run without stopping. At these rehearsals I take detailed notes, which I give to the actors individually rather than waste time reading all of my notes to everyone. When there is time, I like to run a polishing or running rehearsal, give the actors notes, then run it again to fix any problems, then give them notes again. These rehearsals are followed by one or more run throughs before technical rehearsals start.
     Not everyone runs rehearsals this way, but most actors are flexible enough to adapt to whatever rehearsal scheme is adopted by their director, and some are, frankly, so inexperienced they want help in whatever way it happens to come. Some actors, though, are so experienced, or so inflexible, or both, that they are uncomfortable with any rehearsal process that does not conform to their ideas of what rehearsals should be. When this discomfort is combined with the pressure or stress that comes from playing a huge and iconic role (such as Hamlet, for example, or Willy Loman), a certain amount of conflict is inevitable. So it was with Salesman.
     The fully professional actor playing Willy and I came into open, loud, and frightening (to me) conflict twice during the rehearsal period. The first time was over a single word in the text. He wanted to change it to the way he had seen it published elsewhere, and I wanted to keep it the way it was in our production script. I had reasons, and he had reasons, and we tried to explain ourselves to each other. My problem was that I did this at the end of a rehearsal in the presence of other cast members. Out of what seemed to me to he nowhere, he was yelling at me at the top of his voice, calling me repeatedly "a fucking jerk". Now I have been called a lot of things by a lot of people, but never that. Fortunately, I have been called enough other things often enough by enough other people that I recognized this for the stress-induced trauma it most certainly was. I was secretly very proud of myself for how I handled it. I gave him a few minutes to calm down, then asked in a calm voice if I could speak to him privately. We spoke for a few minutes, at the end of which he apologized (without me asking him to) to the cast members who were present. He explained that he was under a lot of pressure, and assured us all that it would not happen again. I must say I was relieved; had he walked out my choices would have been to play Willy myself (not a good solution) or have the actor playing Charley play Willy while I played Charley (also not a good solution). Fortunately I didn't have to choose the Lady or the Tiger.
     And he was true to his word; the next time outright hostilities broke out between us, I was the one who yelled my head off. We were in the middle of a running rehearsal, the purpose of which was to create continuity. I had told the cast, repeatedly, that I wanted no stops, for any reason, except if they needed to ask for a line (we were not in technical rehearsals yet and prompting was still available). When, inevitably, something went wrong, he unilaterally stopped, broke the scene, and explained that he wanted to go back and fix it. I explained that I didn't want him to do that and asked him to please go on (and I'm sure I said please; I was inordinately proud of using that work when I really did not want to). He declined, and began to explain why it was better to go back and fix it then. I then rather shortly ordered him just to go on, raising my voice a little but retaining control. When he then openly refused to do so, continuing to argue with me, I lost it. I remained seated, but I screamed at him to go on, now. There was what seemed like half an hour's silence (although I imagine it was only a few seconds) while he stared at me, and then I calmly gave him his next line as if he had asked for it and things proceeded. Following the completion of the Act I apologized to the cast, citing the same pressure he had earlier, although pointedly not apologizing to him. During that silence I was once again weighing the likelihood of playing Willy myself, and I was very glad I did not have to. We had no further conflicts after that (at least in part because I treated him with kid gloves and gave in on virtually every minor point where we disagreed). Fortunately I felt his performance was brilliant, and the audience and the reviewers agreed. I also felt he might have been a somewhat idiosyncratic Willy (for example, incorporating spins on his feet and floaty hand gestures into his performance), but he clearly knew what he was doing and his performance was well within the range that was acceptable to me. So I gave him his head for the most part (which translates into him ignoring notes on line readings I gave him a dozen times until I just gave up [I wanted "There are a dozen men in the city of New York who would stake him: and he insisted on "There are a dozen men in the city of New York who would stake him"; he wouldn't even try it my way]). and he was a pleasure to watch perform. I noticed, by the way, that he later used that moment of silent staring very effectively in the performance, in the second act just prior to his line, "Mention my name to Bill Oliver; he may remember me." So in the end it was all good.
     Brilliant though he may have been, though, the performance was very nearly stolen from him (the obvious star) by the actress playing Linda and the actor playing Biff. Of course the play is written that way, which makes it easier for actors who know what they are doing. Of those two, one did and the other may not have.
     The actor playing Biff knew what he was doing and how he was going to do it from the first day. He had the intellectual tools to understand the role as well as the physical, vocal, and emotional tools to play it. It turns out that he got started at the community college in Champaign with our friend Tom Schnarre, and Tom's training is solid. In any case, the actor came to rehearsals, worked hard, learned his lines when asked, made corrections as requested, and turned in a gut-wrenching performance. While Salesman is undoubtedly Willy's play, this Biff will be remembered by audience members for a long time. The two highlights of the production for most audience members were when Willy slapped Biff on the face (with the retort echoing through the theatre) and when the muscular and taller Biff shook Willy like a rag doll and then fell to his knees crying to his father.
     On the other hand the actress playing Linda may have been a little young for the role, but she more than made up for any lack of age with compensating experience. The problem was that she has been doing important roles without the discipline that she needs. For one obvious example, her diction and vocal rate were both out of control when she started. Apparently no one had bothered to point that out to her, or perhaps none of her prior directors had the ear to tell the difference. She also had trouble differentiating between line readings. After a while she agreed to concentrate on diction and rate, even though it felt artificial, and as I predicted it soon became second nature. I felt this was particularly important playing opposite the consummate professional who played Willy, whose diction and vocal variety were an absolute joy to hear. As one simple example, in the requiem, at Willy's funeral, she has the line, "I never had the chance to say goodbye." A southern Illinois girl to the core, she kept saying, "I never had the chance to say g'bye." The difference is significant, but for the longest time she could not hear it. Similar things occurred throughout the play. But after a few weeks she could hear it, and once she could hear it she changed her vocal pattern like magic. And amazingly enough, when her diction improved so did her emotional intensity. I told her after one dress rehearsal that she was my hero; what she accomplished in a few short weeks was little short of miraculous. Nobody in the audience will ever forget the "Attention must be paid!" speech.
     These were not the only wonderful performances. The actor who played Happy was energetic and inventive. The actor who played Charley was warm, friendly, thoughtful. The actress who played The Woman was sexy and grim, picking up hints from me and raising them to heights I had not imagined. The wonderful actor who played the small role of Howard (who came to the first rehearsal with all of his lines learned!) was fascinating to watch, highly inventive, and sympathetic and hateful at the same time. The reviewer in the town paper called his one scene "heart-wrenching". The actor who played Uncle Ben had a foghorn voice which he used to tremendous advantage, and when his timing was right appeared and disappeared from the stage like a ghost. He studiously ran his lines before the show every night to make sure he got them right. The inexperienced and underrehearsed actor who played Bernard finally got it all together and provided the needed foil to Biff and Happy.
     Even the actors in the smallest roles played them to near perfection. The actor who played the first waiter got the laughs he was entitled to, plus one that was not in the script. Even the actor who played the lineless second waiter got a laugh. The actresses playing the two women in the restaurant hit all the right notes in their brief appearances. The fine comic actress playing Charley's secretary Jenny brought a lift to the somber proceedings.
     In short the acting in this Salesman was outstanding from top to bottom. There were no weak links. I could not have been more pleased and proud. Such a statement, of course, begs the question: Who gets the credit for that? The answer is obvious: the actors do. Whatever I may have done for and with them, they are the ones out there doing it. In my heart of hearts, though, I take a little of the credit. Happy's line, "He had a good dream; the only dream you can have: to come out number one man," was undoubtedly better when he changed the emphasis in response to my suggestion. Linda's great speech, "Attention must be paid!" became more heart-wrenching when I suggested she increase the intensity as far as she could and that if she went too far I would pull her back (I never did; it is almost impossible to take that speech too far). The basic blocking I gave the actors during the first three weeks of rehearsal freed them to worry about line interpretation and characterization rather than where they were on the stage. I could go on; there were literally hundreds of moments in the production that had my fingerprints all over them, including many of Willy's despite our conflicts. This is what the director does, but it is the actors who bring it all to life. As I said in my directing textbook, anything good that happens on stage is a credit to the actors, and anything bad that happens, including bad acting, is the director's fault.
     Salesman is the first production I have directed in 29 years. It was among the best productions I have ever done, if not the best. It is likely to be the last production I direct for the next 29 years; I can't think of another play that it would be worth coming out of retirement for. I've think I've shown folks around here what a well-trained and experienced director can do, and I hope I've set a standard for CCT. I, at least, am satisfied with what I did.

Deaf But Not Dumb

     I am in the third day of wearing hearing aids. My wife Carol has been suggesting that I needed them for years, but I actually had my hearing tested by an audiologist some ten years ago and found out that while I had some hearing loss in the higher frequencies in both ears, the right worse than the left, my hearing was in the normal range and hearing aids were not indicated. This time around, though,when I had another test by another audiologist (not associated with any hearing aid company but employed by the local hospital) the results showed significant hearing loss in both ears, the right again worse than the left. Hearing aids were indicated, and I ordered a pair and arranged to have them fitted and adjusted to be of maximum help.
     These are made by Unicon, and the style name is "Moxi Fit Pro". The electronics in these little things are amazing, but they are very light and sit unseen behind the ear with only a tiny wire covered in clear plastic connecting them to a speaker that sits snugly in the ear canal, close to the ear drum. The whole thing is a tiny microphone amplification system. Each has a battery that will last a week to ten days, and each has a button. The button on the right ear piece turns up the volume, while the button on the left ear piece turns it down. After a few tries I've gotten to where I can hit the buttons on the first or second try. They make a tone in the ear as the volume goes up or down, with a distinguishable tone when the highest or lowest level is reached after repeated pressings. There is a magnetic device that gives excellent hearing in either ear on the telephone, although I have to attach a magnet to my cellphone to use it since there is no magnet in the cell phone as there is in the land line handset. It also will sync with my cell or other electronic device via Bluetooth, so I foresee a future of listening to my computer, iPod, or the radio or television via my hearing aid. Supposedly they will focus on conversations anywhere in a crowded room and will enhance music listening as well. We'll see.
     These things are not cheap, although I admit I could have ordered less expensive models. My insurance will pay only $600, and the balance is up to me. It is a significant balance. I wonder how retired people with hearing loss who depend only on Medicare manage; Medicare pays nothing toward the cost of hearing aids. I guess being nearly deaf isn't as serious as other forms of disability, the treatments of which are covered by Medicare. The batteries will run about $100 per year. I wonder what my oldest nephew, who was born with a serious condition that will inevitably lead to total deafness in a few years, will do.
     And hearing aids don't last forever. It's likely I will need to replace them in five years or so, and that will likely continue for the rest of my life. That means I can count on spending more than $30,000 on hearing aids if I last another twenty years. That amount of money could renovate our kitchen, or pay for several cruises. It certainly got my attention. My nephew, who is not yet forty, will have to pay a lot more than that.
     Unlike the diabetes, though, the hearing aids don't cause any major change in lifestyle, other than remembering to take them off before I shower. The two minor things I have to get used to are itching in the ear canal and a slight echo in hearing my own voice. Both of those things involve my brain becoming used to what is now the new reality. And neither effects my ability to play bridge, so that's okay. I guess I can get used to hearing Carol when she talks.

Happy Holidays?

     As are many if not most of us, I am ambivalent about the holiday season. At various times I have celebrated Chanukah, Christmas, and Winter Solstice, but none of them speaks to me. Nor will Kwanzaa do the trick, for the obvious reason that I am not African American. I admire Kwanzaa as a made-to-order holiday, though; it is far less offensive that most of the other holidays celebrated this time of year. It doesn't pretend to be what it is not.

     And yet at the same time I enjoy at least some of the trappings of the season. The decorations are festive; I enjoy getting and giving gifts; the holiday songs are fun; and even the cheesy holiday movies on The Hallmark Channel have a certain weird charm. Not that there are not classy holiday movies as well--I look forward to It's A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Bishop's Wife every year. My wife Carol enjoys lighting the candles every December, and although I unfailingly chide her for it (she's not Jewish, after all, although I was born that way) I rather enjoy the repetitive ceremony. It doesn't go as far as potato latkes, unfortunately, but those I can get in our favorite Russian restaurant in Chicago, complete with sour cream and apple sauce.

     Carol is deeply involved in the local Unitarian Universalist chapter, but I can't bring myself to engage in even this least offensive type of non-religious religion. I profess myself an atheist, and I guess I am about as hard-core as it gets, as I have nothing but scorn for those who profess a belief in some god or other. I honestly cannot understand how an educated adult in the twenty-first century can truly believe such hogwash. I mostly keep this to myself, since some good old boy with a gun might take it into his empty little head to teach me a lesson and send me to the hell that does not exist. Or worse, that I might become the target for conversion by some Mormon or Catholic or Seventh Day Adventist or whatever.

     Which brings me to the subject of the Church of Scientology. It is well known the its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, was a failed science fiction writer. What is less well known is that he made the entire thing up out of whole cloth in order to win a bet. Here's the story, which I heard from another, more successful, science fiction writer of the same vintage (Frederik Pohl), who was married to a friend of ours.

     In the late forties or early fifties, a bunch of would-be writers, including Pohl and Hubbard, were living in Toronto and barely making ends meet. Hubbard told the others that he bet that he could make up a religion that people would swallow. He then proceeded to invent Scientology, and the rest is history. It is no coincidence that he wrote a number of very bad novels in support of his religious revelation. Nor is it a coincidence that he made a fortune from it. Fred Pohl was a better writer, and he eventually did okay, but he had way too much integrity to take Hubbard's way out.

     Incidentally, although I have no personal insight, I presume something along the same lines happened when some nut invented the Mormon faith as well. Magic glasses, indeed! Although I must admit, if you're going to believe six impossible things before breakfast, like for example a guy being executed and then rising from the dead three days later; or a burning bush talking to another guy, who then shows up with a couple of magic tablets giving the people commandments, then I guess believing in magic glasses is no great stretch. The great thing about the Mormons, though, is that whenever he wants to the head guy can have a revelation and change church doctrine for all time. That's what he did maybe 40 years ago to allow people of African descent to be full members of the church, and presumably what he will do to allow gays and lesbians and the transgendered the same privileges in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future.

     None of which has much to do with the holiday season, which stimulated this blog entry in the first place. Some days I just have to vent, and this turned out to be one of those days. A friend of mine, who blogs much better than I do (probably because she writes much better than I do), sees the holiday season as a time of change and transformation. Letitia Moffitt posted today: "So much of what happens in life is beyond our control, it’s nice that at least for a little while, we can change things, or hold on to them, or both, as necessary." I couldn't agree more.

     I am, however, much more ambivalent, not to say pessimistic, than that. I really enjoy giving gifts, the more lavish the better. But while I enjoy receiving gifts, I prefer things like books and DVDs; the bigger stuff I get for myself. And I prefer staying home and watching a movie to going to parties or, heavens forfend, traveling to visit relatives. The gift thing I sort of understand; we never had much when I was a kid, and I am simultaneously delighted I can afford more now and trained to expect less for myself. 

     That goes along with giving to charity. Since I can afford more now, I try my best to give about 10% after taxes; I sometimes make it and I sometimes don't. I am very picky about where I will give my money, though. Generally speaking I want no religious affiliation. That includes things like the national Habitat for Humanity, although I will give $100 from time to time to the local chapter, upon the Board of which I once sat for three years. Before I will give to a charity I check on how much of their money is actually given to the cause they support. Far too many spend way too much on fundraising, and pay their CEOs way too much, including several you might think were good if you didn't look it up. Much of my giving goes to local and regional food banks, and Doctors Without Borders. This year Planned Parenthood gets a nod, for obvious reasons, although I prefer to make a more political statement with a contribution to NARAL. I'm also involved with a local effort to save an historic Art Deco movie theater, and I plan to continue to give to them until the place is fully restored and once again up and running. The key word in most of these is local.

     I have slowed down considerably in the rate at which I post blog entries. I presume this is just part of the natural aging process (I'm pushing 70 fairly hard); I don't have as much I want to say. I've more or less given up on three book projects, which for me is unusual. I keep saying I won't be in any more plays, but so far I always find an excuse to audition just one more time. At the moment I'm in Kurt Vonnegut's Who Am I This Time for the Charleston Community Theatre, and the local university is doing Romeo and Juliet in the Spring. I've started thinking I could do Capulet rather well, and those students need a role model, right? Carol thinks I might do better as Juliet's grandfather, but she doesn't seem to realize I can still play 40 convincingly. Well, 50. Okay, 60. But he could be that old, right? Any maybe the actor playing Mercutio will really break a leg and . . . . 

     Sorry; got a little carried away there. Happy holidays, or in the words of the character I was born to play, "Bah, Humbug!"

The Bronx Is Up And The Battery's Down

New York, New York --
A hell of a town,
The Bronx is up and the Battery's down.
The People ride in a hole in the ground.
New York, New York --
It's a hell of a town. 

--Comden and Green, "New York, New York" from On the Town

Carol and I returned last night from a long weekend (Friday-Tuesday) visit to New York City.  The ostensible purpose for our visit was so I could be a contestant on a National Public Radio quiz show, "Ask Me Another," about which more later.  While we were there, though, we visited with some old friends, went to a couple of museums, saw a couple of Broadway musicals, went to Rockefeller Center, ate some good meals, rode the subway, took some taxi rides, took the train from New Jersey to Penn Station and back (twice), and were solicited so many times by so many people wanting us to buy so many things that we lost track of where we were going.

Despite my use of its lyrics above, we did not see the current revival of On the Town.  Instead we saw the Tony Award winners for Best New Musical for 2013 and 2014, Kinky Boots and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder.  What we really wanted to see was the new Royal Shakespeare Company's two-part production of Wolf Hall, but previews didn't start until three days after we left.  I also wanted to see The Interview, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and two or three others, but although I would have been happy seeing two shows a day for a week my companions would not have been so we compromised on two major musicals.  Both were wonderful, and I can't recommend them highly enough.  I don't intend to do a full-scale review here, just a few random observations.  Some things have changed since my first trip to see Broadway shows in the sixties, and some things have remained exactly the same.  I'm not sure if all the changes are for the better.

I'll start with production quality and production values.  The acting, singing, and dancing remain at world-class levels.  After all, jazz and the Broadway musical are the only two original American art forms, and we still do both better than anyone else in the world.  And nobody does Broadway musicals better than Broadway.  The sets, costumes, and especially the lighting set the standard for the rest of the world.  I single out the lighting for special praise because of the revolution the computer brought to the industry.  When I learned lighting design in the sixties we simply could not have imagined what is not only possible but commonplace today.  As early as the seventies computerized dimmer control changed everything.

On the other hand I think the orchestra pit has suffered in the intervening years.  There are fewer musicians and consequently a less full sound.  It is apparently common if not expected for the conductor to play the electronic keyboard as well.  The musicians double and triple on instruments, as often as not electronic in nature.  Everything is amplified, including the singers.  Something has been lost, although no doubt something else has been gained.

The thing I love about seeing a Broadway show is the precision and the timing.  There is real discipline on that stage, and nobody ever lets the audience know there has been a mistake.  For example, in the performance of Kinky Boots that we saw one of the chorus members half fell down a very steep flight of stairs during a production number.  She recovered herself without changing her facial expression, and the other chorus members treated her exactly as if nothing had happened despite the fact that she came close to breaking her leg.  Similarly, in the matinee of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder that we saw the understudy, or standby, performed the leading role.  I was somewhat disappointed since I had heard how magnificent the actor normally playing the role (or rather roles; he plays about eight members of a family, both men and women) is.  The understudy, however, was very nearly perfect, only having problems with one or two hats and wigs.  I doubt if any member of the audience felt cheated in any way; I certainly didn't.  And his performance, which drew a sincere standing ovation, included a number of songs in greatly divergent characters.

I wish the physical buildings in which these magnificent theatre pieces are performed were completely up to the task.  Broadway theatres are mostly very old, and some have been adapted to the demands of modern production better than others.  This is primarily due to economics, given the cost of real estate in New York and the necessity for long runs at full or near capacity just to break even. Given that most Broadway shows, including musicals, lose money, it's a wonder any more are ever staged.  It used to be the case that a musical had to run for two years at full capacity to break even; these days it is more like four years.  Production costs, both initial and ongoing, have skyrocketed, causing ticket prices to increase tenfold or more.  I remember seeing Fiddler on the Roof and Man of La Mancha for $10.00; nowadays the same seats cost $92.00 and up.  Broadway is pricing itself out of reach of the middle class.

The museums of New York are also world-class, and there are many more of them than anyone could see in a week.  Our friends from New Jersey are members (read donors) at about a dozen, and they have a hard time keeping up with just those.  We chose the easy way out since we get to the city so infrequently and this time just went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).  I would have liked to have gone to the Guggenheim and perhaps the Cloisters as well, but there just wasn't time.  And even at these we had to choose between seeing our favorite bits of the permanent collection and one or more of the special exhibitions being staged.  We ended up going to see the Impressionists, Cubists, Expressionists, and the like, and going to a lecture for donors about science in the collections.  We also had a very nice lunch at MoMA (it surprises many people that there are usually very good cafes or cafeterias at good art museums) before going on to see a show.

Our friends, not yet retired, had to go to work on Monday, so Carol and I checked into our Times Square hotel on Sunday and did the tourist thing on Monday, wandering up to Rockefeller Center.  I wanted to have lunch at the Rainbow Room, but the line was too long so we ate at the hotel instead.  I also decided to forego my trip to the Observatory at the Top of the Rock and went shopping with Carol instead.  Unfortunately she found neither the new gloves (having left one in a taxi) nor the new handbag she wanted.

After our late lunch/early dinner we found the subway to Brooklyn (the R train, for the record) and rode it for about 45 minutes to the Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street stop.  From there it was about four blocks to the Bell House, a bar with a found-space theatre) where my show was taping.  I met the producer and the host and settled in until it was my turn.  As it turned out that was about an hour and a half later, when I was finally called to the stage for my quiz.  The topic was perfect for me--a combination of word game and name of television shows.  I was primed and ready.

A brief word on how I got there.  I've been listening to this show for a couple of years, playing along with the quizzes and usually doing pretty well.  When they told how to apply to be a contestant I happened to be listening on my computer so I opened another window and did what they said.  A few days later I got an email from the producer along with a quiz to fill out and send in.  The quiz had sections that were word games, television games, number games, fiction games, music games, and people in the news games.  Generally I did very well, and when I didn't know an answer I tried to say something funny.  A few weeks later I got another email telling my I was a finalist and would get a telephone interview.  That went very well, and I got another email inviting me to be a contestant. This was NPR and not CBS, so the prizes were not large and travel expenses would be my own responsibility.  I'm happy to go to New York whenever I can, so I was happy to accept.  Somewhat to my surprise Carol wanted to go along, so we planned our trip.

Back to the show.  There was a little pre-quiz banter among the host, the house musician, my opponent, and me, and it went very well and drew some big audience laughter.  Then the quiz started, and I slowly died.  Of the six questions I answered one; some of the others I didn't know, and some of the others that I did know my opponent buzzed in first.  In a few minutes it was over; she had won and would move on to the final round.  I would not.  My entirely silent revenge, though, was that I knew all of the answers to final round questions, and she did not.  Even though she is an academic dean.  But by then, of course, it was too late.

We took the subway back to Times Square (the F train this time; apparently the R train is a shuttle after 7:00) and came home the next day.  I was in a deep funk, but have since pulled out of it.  The whole trip was fun, and made me remember why I love New York.  The shows, the museums, the shopping, the food, the subways.  New York, New York; it's a helluva town.

I Was A Card-Carrying Member of the N.R.A.

NOVEMBER 23, 2014 11:32AM

I Was A Card-Carrying Member of the N.R.A.

I learned to hunt before I was ten years old.  We lived in Phoenix, and my Dad went deer hunting every year and rabbit hunting every month.  We ate so much game from one end of the year to the next that I imagine we would have gone hungry if he hadn't hunted.  Not that hunting was particularly cheap; rifles and shotguns were expensive, and ammunition wasn't cheap.  Not to mention that hunting required camping supplies, heavier clothing than we normally wore even in the winter, and sometimes significant travel.  But we were a hunting and fishing family, and even my mother joined in.

I'll never forget the first rabbit I killed, the summer I turned ten.  I had a small over-and-under .22 caliber rifle and .410 gauge shotgun, and we had gone hunting in the desert near Horshoe Dam, about 50 miles north of Phoenix.  The area was thick with cholla cactus, which could be quite dangerous, and we were a mile or so from the road.  We were hunting cotton-tail rabbits as opposed to jackrabbits, which according to my Dad were fit only for dog food. Cotton-tails are significantly smaller than jackrabbits, and consequently significantly more difficult to shoot.  A skinned and gutted cotton-tail is roughly the size of a small chicken, and when cooked tastes remarkably the same.  We would normally bring home four to six of them, and my Mom would cook one and freeze the rest.  I had been hunting for several weekends without getting one, and had only seen two or three during that entire time.  This time one jumped up right in front of me, ran about thirty feet, and then stopped under a cholla.  I guess she thought she was hiding, but she didn't move a muscle.  I took a shot at her with the .22 and missed, and she still didn't move.  Rather than reload the .22 I took careful aim with the .410 and fired.  The good thing about a shotgun is that it sends out a wide spread of shot, and if you are anywhere in the neighborhood you will hit what you aim at.  On this day that poor rabbit's number was up, and I proudly carried it back to the truck attached to my belt with a hook through its hind leg after I field dressed it.  We ate it for dinner.

I had joined the Cub Scouts when I was eight (my Mom was the Den Mother and my Dad was the Scoutmaster, so I didn't really have a lot of choice) and moved up to the Boy Scouts when I turned eleven.  As a Boy Scout you start as a Tenderfoot, earn your Second Class badge in about three months, and then your First Class badge in another six months ot so.  After First Class you earn higher ranks by earning Merit Badges in various disciplines, such as Camping, Hiking, Swimming, and Personal Fitness.  Several of the disciplines are required if you wish to become an Eagle Scout, but there are several elective disciplines as well.   I had earned my First Class badge by the time I turned twelve, and began accumulating Merit Badges.

One of the elective disciplines was Marksmanship.  At summer camp each year I began spending time at the shooting range.  We used .22 caliber rifles, which by then I had been shooting for years.  In fact I had graduated from my over-and-under .22/.410 to a Mossberg bolt action .22 with a seven-cartridge clip.  I was not able to bring my own rifle to the range, of course, but I was extremely familiar with shooting a .22.  So from the beginning I did very well.

In shooting targets a perfect score is 50, which is earned by placing five shots out of five in the bull's eye.  In order to earn the Marksmanship Merit Badge I had to shoot 10 targets at 45 or better in the prone position, 10 targets at 40 or better in the kneeling position, and 10 targets at 35 or better in the standing position.  Obviously, shooting high scores is easier in the prone position and harder in the standing position. The reason should be obvious: in the prone position you can support the rifle more easily than in the kneeling position or the standing position. There were also other requirements, such as passing a gun safety course, but I was able to earn the Marksmanship Merit Badge in one week during my first summer of Boy Scout Camp.  

But I also learned there were other awards available.  The National Rifle Association gave medals for scoring 10 targets at 30 or higher in each postion, with additional medals for 10 targets at five points higher in each position.  So my goal became to earn the 3o, 35, 40, 45, and 50 medals in each position.  But first I had to join the N.R.A.  So I did.

In doing so I wasn't making any kind of political statement.  I didn't even understand that there was any kind of a political statement to be made.  I was just a kid who liked to shoot rifles and wanted the medals that they gave out.  I paid my very reasonable dues and began to earn medals.

When I got to high school (after having earned my Eagle Scout badge, by the way), this came in handy in a couple of ways.  At that time I had to take either P.E. or R.O.T.C., and I chose R.O.T.C.  I was looking for a way to pay for college, and did not yet realize that scholarships would be available that would pay the whole bill (this was the early 1960s, when such scholarships were still available).  One of the things I was condsidering was trying for an appointment to one of the service academies, and I thought that R.O.T.C. might help with that. Alternatively, I knew that if I took R.O.T.C. in college it would come with a scholarhip and end with a commission.  I actually did end up with an appointment to West Point, and when I turned it down my mother very nearly disowned me.  But that's another story.

Anyway, I discovered that I was allowed to wear some of my N.R.A. shooting medals on my R.O.T.C. uniform, automatically making me the most-decorated cadet in the corps. I moved up the ranks fairly quickly, earning Cadet of the Month honors during my first year and commanding a platoon during my second year.  I was on track for a company in my third year and batallion staff in my fourth (not batalliom commander; everybody knew who was the best cadet in line for that slot, and it wasn't me), but along the way I quit the R.O.T.C.  That, too, is another story. While I remained on the R.O.T.C., however, I was entitled to wear my Cadet of the Month medal as well as my 50-score prone medal, my 50-score kneeling medal, but only a 45-score standing medal.  I guess I would have done better with a .410 gauge shotgun.  I never did get that 50-score standing medal.

The other thing that my N.R.A. medals did for me was get me on the high school rifle team.  The R.O.T.C. instructor invited me to try out, and based on my first ten targets he invited me to join the team.  Technically any student in the high school could have been on the team, but in actual practice only boys in R.O.T.C. were allowed to compete.  We had competitions with other rifle teams from around the State on weekends, with qualification for the State tournament based on performance throughout the season.  A score of 50 on a target was standard, so in addition to hitting a target in the bull's eye, you had to hit in the sweet spot of the bull's eye.  It was almost like Olympic shooting in that regard. I did very well prone, moderately well kneeling, but only average standing. I helped the team win a number of meets, but did not qualify for State my first year.  When I quit the R.O.T.C. during my second year I was, of course, dropped from the rifle team.

 Rabbit hunting wasn't my only hunting experience during my adolescence.  We also hunted, and shot, javelina, turkeys, doves, deer, antelope, and elk.  I never personally got an elk, although I was present when my Dad got one.  While deer and antelope weigh in the vicinity of 100-200 pounds field dressed, an elk will run 600-800 pounds field dressed.  Although we had always butchered our own game, this was too much for us to butcher at home, so we sought professional help.  This raised the per-pound cost, of course, but it gave us enough meat for a long time. 

We hunted turkey with shotguns rather than rifles.  I had graduated from my .410 to a 12 gauge with a pump action, and was lucky just once on a turkey hunt.  I did very well with doves, though, going out on opening day four years in a row.  This led to one of my brushes with fame, meeting and eating breakfast with baseball star and broadcaster Dizzy Dean.  My other early brush with fame was being Barry Goldwater's paper boy (he tipped well), but that's another story.

For deer, antelope. and elk we used .30 caliber rifles.  At various times I owned and shot a .308 Winchester, a classic .30-30 Winchester, and a .357 Magnum.  The latter was too much rifle for me, so I mostly used my .308.  My Dad taught me to shoot these, and I got some practice on the range as well.  Each of these rifles had a scope, and so had to be sighted in each year at least once.  While hunting, of course, we fired them very little.

Opening day was always on a Friday in November, and I took the Thursday and Friday off from high school every year.  These were excused absences, as the high school administrators understood the need to hunt. We traveled north to Prescott or Flagstaff or Payson, where we set up camp with our tent and prepared for the hunt the next day.  The hunt itself was mobile, with us hiking for miles looking for game.  I myself preferred to find a place to hunker down on a ridge and scan the ground on either side with binoculars.  In this way I was able to track deer running from other hunters, and was successful in my last two years. Although whitetail deer were available in Arizona, we always hunted mule deer, which were somewhat larger.  My first buck was only about ninety pounds, but my second one dressed out to over a hundred and fifty.

At that time, anyone who wanted a deer license could get one, although we were limited to one buck per year.  Does were not hunted. In order to hunt antelope, elk, bison, or wild sheep, a hunter had to enter into a lottery.  I was drawn for antelope once (and was successful) and elk three times (unsuccessful each time).  I also tried for deer twice with bow and arrow, but never even saw one.  I suspect that even if I had I would have missed, or even worse I would have merely wounded an animal, since I was never very good with a bow.  I saw my Dad get one once, though, and know it can be done.  For years he kept the neckbone on our mantle, with the razor head of the arrow buried in it so deeply that it would not come out even with pliers.

Incidentally, in Illinois where I now live hunting deer with .30 caliber rifles is illegal; shotguns must be used.  We were able to use rifles because of the lack of population density, and would have considered using shotguns to be absurd.

After I left the R.O.T.C. I gave up my membership in the N.R.A. It was simply np longer worth it to me.  I haven't hunted or even shot a rifle or shotgun since 1965.  While I think the N.R.A. does some good things, like providing hunter safety courses, it has evolved into a political organization the main purpose of which is lobbying against gun control.  As such it is on the wrong side of an important issue, and I could never support it.

But for two years I was a card-carrying member.  And I don't regret it one bit.

Blog Migration

Today I got word that my previous blog site was being taken down.  No reason was given, just a terse announcement.  This is hardly a life-changing event, but it is somewhat disconcerting.  I had spent a fair amount of time placing my blog in the first place, and much more time drafting, editing, and publishing blog entries.  These blogs led directly to the publication of two books, and some thoughtful exchanges with people I knew before and people I met online only because of the blog. Not being able to continue to publish my blog would have been inconvenient and disappointing.

Fortunately there are many other sites out there that host blogs, and after some minimal research I have chosen this one.  It feels a little incestuous, since I also maintain an email account and some cloud storage with the company that runs it.  The main reason I am migrating here is that it was a seamless transition, and that I didn't have to do any exotic formatting.

So while this blog is much shorter than my usual, it is all that I need to say at this point.  I will, as usual, announce any new blog entries on Facebook and Twitter, and there will certainly be some in the fairly near future.  We're going to NYC later this week, where we will see a couple of Broadway musicals and I'll appear on an NPR quiz show.  Tomorrow is oral argument in the Illinois Supreme Court in the pension theft case, and a decision is expected by this summer.  We are scheduled for trips to Oregon in July and Phoenix in October.  I'll be in a production of Our American Cousin, the play Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated, in April  There will be lots of things to blog about.

Stay tuned; it could be a wild ride.