It really comes in handy

I was at the quarterly meeting of my investment club today and our hostess is Orthodox Jewish.  The topic of carrying during the Sabbath ("what about your children?  Can you carry them?") came up and so my friend was explaining that some Jewish communities create what she described as a sort of fence to enclose, say a neighborhood, and make carrying acceptable within that space.

"Oh," I said, "an eruv?"

My friend's jaw dropped and she said "You know that?!"

Her equally stunned husband said "How do you know that?"

"Public radio." 

"Huh," said the husband, "maybe they shouldn't be defunded."

Lucky Wil, Lucky Leta

Wil Wheaton captures pretty much exactly how I feel when I get to work on a good show which happens to me more often than is truly fair.  

I would get out of my car and nearly run in the door for rehearsals for August: Osage County this past spring and I am counting down the hours minutes until I can get back in "the room" for Farragut North.

"And I know I keep saying it, but I’ll say it again: this is awesome. I get to work with people I love making a show that I’m proud of ..."

A sign

... that perhaps I've been spending too much time in pubs with my theater pals:  I got an email and the screen name was Bill W.

My new role model

Herman Cain is largely incoherent and self-aggrandizing which makes him to great fun to read.  Okay, to very rarely read.  Like this one interview, which is all I've seen in a while.  For which I am grateful.

But anyway ...

Have you and Romney had contact since you suspended your campaign?We have chatted about, No. 1, what my interests are going forward [in terms of being part of his Administration]. And I said, “Governor Romney, with all due respect, I’m not lookin’ for a job. I don’t want to be your VP pick, and I don’t want to be a Cabinet member. Because I’ve got other things in my career that I’m interested in doing.”

Did he ask you about those posts in particular?No. I just volunteered that information. I don’t know what he was thinking … No 2., I gave him some advice on sharpening his message. And he has taken a lot of that advice. Last week he rolled out his energy policy. I loved it. It was a five-point plan. And he even said to me, “Notice, I’m starting to use a number-point plan.”

I love that Mr. Cain "answered" a question he hadn't been asked and then used that answer to self-promote. This is definitely something to try in the future and I suppose the answers have to be addressed to people to whom one could plausibly have spoken.

F'rinstance:

No:

"And I said, 'Johnny Depp, although I am very flattered, I'm not running off to Geneva, Switzerland with you.  I have other things in my life that I'm interested in doing.' "

Yes:

"And I said, '[name of director I like working with], although it is very tempting, I cannot let you give me first refusal on the best roles in all your future shows.  My calendar is pretty crowded as it is and we should allow others to think that they have a chance."

Note that the idea doesn't have to be plausible, just the supposed offerer.  

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/27/qa-herman-cain-isnt-looking-for-a-job-from-romney-but-he-has-a-few-pointers/#ixzz24lUnvjTl

For we are members of one another

We find in the Bible what we look for, I believe.  This week, because it was second lesson and because it's what I look for, I found this:  

²⁵So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

(The Epistle to the Ephesians 4:25 - 32)

In Paul's text to the Ephesians, he shortened it to "try 2 get along, k?  Love and hugs!"

A change to the menu

I took Pekoe into the shop because you're supposed to do that every so often.  And because he'll be 13 in January, thus making him officially an Old Guy Cat.  And because (hmmm ... how to put this delicately ...) I was seeing something in the litter box that looked not as solid as would be considered optimal.

He is generally good tempered, has a good appetite.  He's energetic and uses his litter box.  So I really had nothing to worry about, per se, but again, he's an senior cat* and I would hate to find out that he had something we could fix had I only brought him in in time.


So I got his fabulous cat carrier out of the closet and let him play with it** and took him in to see The Vet.

It turns out that Mr. Elderly Feline has -- depending on who you ask -- either Kidney Failure or Chronic Kidney Disease.  This is not uncommon for geezer cats.  (Which made it not one tiny bit less disconcerting for me to hear.  This guy has been my pal and companion for 12 years and I love him a lot.)  And no matter what you chose to call it, the short answer is that Pekoe has a medical situation that is serious but not acute and will need to be managed.

That's the bad news.  The good news is that "managing" his health situation will not require that I give him a pill every day.  He ... doesn't like pills.

We put him on a "bland diet," which means that instead of the crunchy dry cereal that he is so fond of, I now feed him baby food.  Pureed chicken or beef or turkey with broth.***  I wasn't sure how he'd feel about that because he does love his crunchy dry cereal and usually ignores most meat-based human food, but he loved it. Loved.  It.  You'd have thought I was feeding him chocolate covered donuts.  He greets me at the door, usually with a "Yay, you're home!  I missed you!" kind of attitude.  Now he greets me with "Yay, you're home!  Let's open another of those jars!"

The Vet gave (read = sold) me some new crunchy dry cereal that is made by Hills and is specially formulated for cats with kidney issues (K/D).  I mix some of that into the baby food which slightly reduces his laser-like focus on the baby food because with the cereal mixed in, he fills up faster and doesn't gulp it down like a 7-year old at a birthday party.  So it's more like plain donuts ...

I'll soon be buying K/D wet food from the internet.  (The internet delivers.  The vet does not.)  Soon Pekoe will get something like wet food for breakfast and dry food for dinner or some such and I don't anticipate any transition issues because his approach as a former stray has always been "You're feeding me?  Again today? How cool is that!"

However ... the subcutaneous hydration?  Not sure he's going to be such a fan. Stay tuned for Leta and Pekoe's adventures with needles.


*One chart I saw broke cat ages into four levels:  up to 1 year = kitten; 1 year + = adult; 7 years + = mature; and 11 years + = senior.

** He loves that carrier and treats it like his own personal clubhouse.  I may have to just put him in there every so often and walk him around just for fun so that he doesn't start to think of it as the Theme Park Ride That Only Goes to the Vet.

***Strong recommendation:  Beechnut.  It's the only baby food I found that was, in fact, meat and meat broth instead of meat and corn starch.  Because the vet, for some reason, didn't suggest that I give Pekoe a daily serving or two of corn starch.  He didn't say not to, but even so ...

Just doing my bit to lower the product cost

Or, as I think of it, being filled with virtue.  And absinthe.




Over the past few years I've developed a fondness for cocktails, like, f'instance, the Wild Irish Rose that I had at Arena Stage when I went to see Ah, Wilderness! which is Irish whiskey and grenadine with a splash of lime juice and topped off with club soda.  And very, very yummy.*


My friends are patient with me and generally treat my fondness for antique beverages the way they do my fondness for referring to the clothes under my clothes as "underpinnings."***


But an article in the March 26 edition of Time magazine**** about mixing Victorian-era cocktails with molecular gastronomy caught my eye with this:

For all the suspenders-wearing, Bettie Page worshipping, retro-countercultural aspects of these bars, the cocktail renaissance was started not by a whiskered young idealist but by cost-conscious industry tycoons:  the late Joseph Baum and his partner Michael Whiteman, who created some of the world’s top-grossing restaurants (including Windows on the World) and took fast food courts to Europe and Japan. In 1985, when they were mulling the relaunch of the legendary Rainbow Room, they started looking into 19th and early 20th century drinks, in part because they knew the modern value of a good cocktaiL “It makes a festive beginning for the guest and for the owner carries a product cost of between 15% and 18% [of the menu price] with close to zippo labor cost,” Whiteman says. “This compares with food that typically has a product cost of around 27% to 33% and labor cost of another 30% to 35%." While you may need only one bartender, the kitchen has to have an army of dishwashers, busboys servers and cooks. “A really good cocktail,” Whiteman says, “will marry well with a restaurant’s first courses so people will order a second rather than automatically shifting to lower-margin wines.”  Those kinds of calculations help explain why most good restaurants have a bar—and why many of them work up a bar menu just to feed drinkers and dawdlers. 

I certainly realized that all the fun libations were not suddenly all over menus just to please me (they could please me more simply by not adding flour to dishes I could otherwise order...) and I certainly knew that the mark up on booze is never far from the owner's thoughts, but I didn't realize exactly how much I was helping the bottom line by asking for a Side Car.  




* Of course, when I'm part of a group and want to order something that requires no explanation, my go-to drinks remain Scotch (or whiskey) up with rocks on the side; gin & tonic; a Tom Collins; a Martini; or a Shirley Temple.**


** No, not all in the same evening.  Of course not.  Don't be silly.


****I would link to the article, especially as it has a video of a rather steampunk device (a "balancier") that makes "teeter-totter tea," but their website is a pain and a half, so no.


**** And I was rather touched to see that Eddie Bauer had named their new line of sheer tops "underpinnings."*****


**** Yes, of course, I bought some.  Darn cute they are.

Amen

Charlie's before-the-dinner blessing in Act II of August: Osage County always warms my heart.  There are a couple of points where I look up at Randall, who is playing Charlie and just smile.

But then I have a bit of a crush on Uncle Charlie.  So does Ivy.

(Uncle Charlie reminds me of my Uncle Bill.  I had a crush on him, too.)


Charlie:  Dear Lord ...

We ask that you watch over this family in this sad time, O Lord ... that you bless this good woman and keep her in your, in your ... grace.

We ask that you watch over Beverly, too, as he, as he ... as he, as he, as he makes his journey.*

We thank thee, O Lord, that we are able to join together to pay tribute to this fine man, in his house, with his beautiful family, his three beautiful daughters.  We are truly blessed in our, our fellowship, our togetherness, our ... fellowship.

Thank thee for the food, O Lord, that we can share this food and replenish our bodies with ... with nourishment. We ask that you help us ... get better.  Be better.  Be better people.  We recognize, now more than ever, the power, the, the ... joy of family.  And we ask that you bless and watch over this family.  Amen.



*Yes, he really says "as he" five times.  I've got him beat, though.  Ivy says "Charles and I" six times in a row in my last scene in Act III.

Tasty, tasty virtue

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata*) is an aggressive non-native herbaceous plant that was originally brought to the US as a culinary herb.   Now, sort of like Norwegian grey squirrels and ... well, my ancestors ... it's relatively attractive stuff that elbows out the natives and hogs resources.  

So garlic mustard is fair game for the urban/backyard conservationist.  Or forager.  I spent a day with the Friends of Sligo Creek a year or so ago pulling and bagging the stuff.  You have to bag it up, rather than let it compost in place because as soon as you turn your back on it, it drops seeds or sends out new shoots and is back in residence faster than a graduating senior with no solid job prospects.

The goal of the FOSC RIP ("Remove Invasive Plants") that day was to get as much of the garlic mustard out of the park as possible, so all we did was pull it out of the ground completely, stuff it in the bag, and move on.

It was afterwards that I found recipes using garlic mustard.**  Somehow knowing that I can turn an invasive plant into a yummy sauce to drizzle on pasta makes pulling weeds much more fun.  And yet, still so very virtuous.  I will save my beloved Maryland from this alien herb *and* adding a locally grown ingredient in my dinner!


There is garlic mustard growing on the hillside behind my apartment building.  So after I walk home tonight, I'll go collect enough to give me "3 cups Garlic Mustard leaves, washed, patted dry, and packed in a measuring cup."  I would collect it from Sligo Creek Park, except that I understand that one needs permission to do remove plants from the Park and I'd lose a fair bit of my sense of virtue if I get busted for poaching during the harvest.


And, just to save you that one one more click, here's the recipe I'll be using:

Garlic Mustard Pesto

• 3 cups Garlic Mustard leaves, washed, patted dry, and packed in a measuring cup
• 2 large garlic cloves, peeled & chopped
• 1 cup Walnuts
• 1 cup Olive Oil
• 1 cup grated Parmesan Cheese
• 1/4 cup grated Romano Cheese (or more Parmesan)
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Combine Garlic Mustard leaves, garlic and walnuts in food processor and chop. Or divide recipe in half and use a blender. With motor running, add olive oil slowly. Shut off motor. Add cheeses, salt & pepper. Process briefly to combine.

Serve warm over pasta or spread on crackers as a appetizer. It also makes a great topping for baked fish.


http://www.monchesfarm.com/PESTO.htm

* Okay, that's really for David.  He loves proper scientific names.


** Oh.  You'd like them, too? Is this what you're looking for?  I thought it might be ...


*** Ancient Harvest quinoa pasta, natch!  It's my favorite gluten-free pasta.

Make a Wish!

Let me start this by saying that I don't think I have ever prayed for a physical object.

I've wished for plenty of them ...*


When I was in college, my friend Erika would notice if the catch on my necklace had worked its way down to the bottom and she would move it back behind my neck and say "Make a wish!"

Over the years, I wished for various things but always only made positive wishes.  Wishing misfortune on another person is just bad karma.  How can I ask the universe to be kind to me if I ask it to be cruel to others? So I won't wish that people who trouble me come to a bad end but I might wish that they'd change their minds about doing what troubles me. 

But over the past several years when it felt as though I was living too hand-to-mouth, my wishes settled on one word:  money.**  Because pretty much everything I didn't like about my life related to two numbers:  my weight and my bank balance.  Because I have a lovely boyfriend, a great and loving family, a good job, wonderful friends, the Finest Kind cat, and a hobby that is truly my happy place.

I lost about 30 pounds a few years ago so that number bothered me less.***  But my bank balance was always scary, so whenever I was prompted for any reason to "Make a wish!" I'd wish for money.  Just that abstract concept:  money. 

After Mom left me a bunch of money, I paid my debts, better funded my retirement, and replaced my old car.  I pick up the check or donate to good causes more often because I can.

Which means that I no longer wish for money.  It would just seem churlish and ungrateful.

But that left me in wish void. Wishing for money was such a habit that I really had no idea what to wish for.  And I guess that I could have just not wished for anything but, I dunno, that just seems like a waste.

I tried wishing for World Peace but I guess I'm too cynical.  I couldn't believe in that wish.  The lyric is not "when you wish upon a star, it don't matter who you are, 'cause when you wish upon a star ... your brain whispers 'yeah, right, that's gonna happen.' "

Hmmmmm.  What to do ....

So I thought.  And thought.

And now I have a new wish.  I wish for "the best."  Literally "the best."  As I pull the clasp back up to the top, or sight the first star of the evening, or what-have-you, I close my eyes and think "The best.  I wish for the best."

Human beings to not always long-sighted enough to see the full-play out of every action but sometimes things that seem bad to begin with turn out better than the original plan.  For example, if an old friend had gotten pregnant rather than going though the heartbreak of not being able to conceive and then deciding to adopt and having to jump through a bunch of foreign adoption hoop medical tests, the usually undetectable until it's too late cancer would not have been found in time to save her life. 

Wishing for "the best" seems like a vote for the positive.  It means hoping that the result of the things my friends and I struggle with will make us happy and keep us safe in the long run; it means understanding that not every dream deferred is a dream denied; it means trying to listen to a voice other than my own.

I wish for the best.

Make a wish!


* Because prayers are for things you are truly asking for.  Prayers are "please."  Wishes are "wouldn't it be nice if ..."

** Although I did stop wishing that I'd find money in the street some time ago when it occurred to me that for me to find it, someone else would have to lose it. 


*** Bothered me less, not "doesn't bother me."  But that's partly because the number that I regard as the magical, perfect weight is -- according to my doctor -- inappropriate for me.  So I will never, ever weigh the magical, perfect number again.****


**** I was too skinny until college and too heavy after.  I weighed the magical, perfect number for about three years.  And it's too low of a number.  Really.

Not green

I once mentioned that as far as I could tell, red is the only color that doesn't have a pastel partner.  One hears people talk about "pale blue" or "soft yellow" or such, but I've never heard anyone talk about "pastel red" because "pastel red" has it's own identity:  pink.

Sure, in some ways that's more a quirk of language, rather than spectrum, but I dunno.  When you make red darker it looks blacker.  When you make pink look darker, it looks ... bluer.

I was, of course, mocked for this and generally kept down by The Man.  And as I'm neither a lighting designer nor a painter,* I don't have the background to make a better argument, so I let it drop.

But ...

But ...

Thanks to Alice, Facebook, and NPR, this little tidbit has fallen into my lap.

I'm probably still wrong, but somehow I feel --- less wrong.

There is no blue food.  There is no pink light.

*Because colors in light and colors in pigment are two separate things.  The former is additive color and the later is subtractive color.**


**A fact I'll be able to retain until just after I post this, of course.

Leta's Rule of Purses

"If one's purse is capable of carrying the weight of a small child, one will."

Time for something smaller.

Don't Throw the Past Away

I have an audition for another Irish play, Brian Friel's* Dancing at Lughnasa.  If I am cast, I will need an Irish accent for the weeks of rehearsals as well as the weekends of performance.  The chances of it not leaking into my every day conversation I leave as an exercise for the reader.


*If I say I have an audition for an Irish play, one can assume that I mean one by Brian Friel.  I am one of the few theater geeks I know who finds Martin McDonagh hard to take.  I'd much rather watch the crew do the clean up and reset all the blood squibs than actually watch The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

Quoted

New Hampshire Public Radio covered NPR listeners response to their 9/11 coverage.

Now I'm wondering if I should write and tell them that when I hear "you'll reap the rewards" in their fundraising ad, my brain automatically fills in "of your pluck, my boy, in the Bailey and Middlesex sessions."

I can't take it anymore

Sometimes public radio does what I call over covering a story and rather than just bitch to David about it, I wrote to the Ombudsman* and outlined my concerns.  I didn't use any of the bad words that I've been using to the radio recently, so I consider that a win.  (If this siphons off some of my annoyance and David doesn't have to listen to me be irritated, he may consider it a win as well.)


I suspect that this will accomplish nothing but I feel better for having written it.  During the last president election caller after caller to the Diane Rehm show begged the panel on the Friday News Round Up to scale back the discussion of the "horse race"**.  The panelists, every time, said that they had to talk it to death because that's what people are interested in.


The New York Times ran a piece back in 2007 that neat sums up my dismay with horse race coverage:  "The campaign coverage has been sharply at odds with what the public says it wants, the study found, with voters eager to know more about the candidates’ positions on issues and their personal backgrounds, more about lesser-known candidates and more about the debates. 


But the media is even more obsessed this time around with questions of tactics and strategy, despite what the study described as a “generational struggle” in both parties. Horse-race stories accounted for 63 percent of the stories this year compared with what the study said was about 55 percent in 2000 and 2004."


If you are the sort of malcontent that I am  -- or if you are dismayed that there is not enough coverage of 9/11 this week or won't be enough of election -- the Ombudsman (see job description, below) can be reached via the Contact Us button on NPR.org.

Dear Ombudsman,
An effective way to make me no longer care about a subject - or to get angry every time it's raised - is for public radio to over cover it.  When public radio becomes One Thing Considered -- as it has with the 9/11 anniversary --and has story after story on the subject, each one with a more tenuous connection, it just burns out any ability to hear any more about it.

The events of 9/11 were a defining tragedy for this generation and it makes me truly sad that I can't listen to Morning Edition or ATC right now without thinking "Oh good grief, another one?"  and changing the station.  I won't be listening to public radio this weekend because I can't stand to have truly important things turned into noise.

I understand that anniversaries make a convenient hook for stories that might otherwise lack one.  But the hook is overfull.

The same thing will happen during over coverage of the 2012 election.  By the time the 2008 election was over I believe that public radio had spoken to every person living in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.  I grew to hate all of them, let alone the people running for office who I had grown to detest long before through overexposure.  I remember at one point thinking "Another election story?  Another?  Is nothing happening anywhere else in the world?  Sweden maybe?"

Please consider scaling back.  I would appreciate it and I don't think I'm the only one.

*Ombudsman is a Latin term that means "the person corporate has assigned to actually have to listen to the random whining and complaining of the malcontents."  What a great job to have ...


** The horse race is political handicapping and on the FNRU it's usually about the fundraising.

Another reason I like my job

I am in charge in planning the annual meeting of our managers and Board of Directors, a very fine group of people with whom I greatly enjoy spending time.*

Today I sent out the e-mail confirming the date and location of the meeting, to wit:

As mentioned previously, the managers meeting will be held [date]. We had originally hoped to have the meetings here in the DC area but a city-wide meeting** is taking place that week, so we will meet at the [location]. [Further details, blah, blah, blah]

Within a few minutes I got a reply from one of our Operations Managers: Wow – a city wide meeting. Do all residents have to attend? That must be one heck of a gathering!

And I answered back: Yes! That’s exactly it. Plays hell with restaurant reservations with 600,000 all trying to get a table.

This is why when people ask me what I do I say that I work with smart people who can take a joke.


* I would probably enjoy it more if my brain weren't running a constant hum through my head of "What have I forgotten to do?  What have I done wrong?"


** A city-wide meeting has lots of stuff going on in the Washington Convention Center and fills every hotel.

I like to look

Tess Vigeland* hosts my favorite radio show about personal finance** and over the past couple of years if there is one thing that she has said more than once it's that during volatile times like these we should just throw the investment statements in a drawer, unopened.  "Don't look!"

(Hmmm.  Maybe there should be more exclamation marks in that because Tess always sounds very emphatic when giving this particular piece of advice.)

I respect Tess immensely and enjoy her reporting but I have to say:  I like to look.

In fact, I look every week.  On Monday morning, as a matter of fact.  I've kept a series of Excel spreadsheets (one per year) for the past ten years.  The data?  The balance of my 401(k).  The purpose?  I do better with feedback.  When watching my weight, I get on the scale.  When I was digging my way out of debt, I paid lots of attention to my bank balance and those debts with my lists and graphs and calculations***.  If I could figure out how to as quickly and easily quantify how many lines of dialogue I know versus how many I need to know, I'd do that, too.  And probably learn the darn lines faster.****

I know that sometimes the news will be good and sometimes it will be ... less good ... but locking in losses when the numbers are down remains a poor idea.  So I look.  And I chart.  And I leave my 401(k) alone.  Every few years I rebalance but not during a volatile period.  And I look.  And I chart. And I make jokes about which brand of cat food Pekoe and I will be sharing during my golden years.

Oddly enough, I started doing this charting three months before 9/11 so if you look to the left you can see the  10 percent drop in my balance after that awful day.  It was a scary drop at the time but the balance recovered in a few weeks and compared to 2008 it can't even be seen.  From May of '08 to March of '09 I lost 40 percent of the then current balance.  Right now I'm down 8 percent from just before the whole Debt Deal mess.  But the numbers on the right are still higher than the numbers on the left. Up and down, up and down, but generally up.  Looking has taught me to take the long view.  I'm saving for the future, not for this morning's balance.

As I like to say, if I look out of the window during the winter and see that it is snowing, I don't throw away my summer clothes.  So I look.  And I graph.

I like to look.


*It's pronounced Vigg-land even though it looks like Vie-gland.  Sort of like it's pronounced Lee-tah even though it looks like Lett-uh.  Those who can pronounce us can't spell us and vice versa ...


** Okay, there's not a large sample, I realize.  Not the point. The show is awesome, as is Tess.


*** And lines and circles and a few paragraphs on the back.  


**** When a friend was in labor and said that she wanted to go to the midwife's office to find out how dilated she was because she "needed to know the numbers" it made perfect sense to me.  Of course, if it hadn't made perfect sense to us, then her husband, mother, and I might have recognized this for the class transition phase thinking it actually was.  S'okay.  We got to the hospital with several minutes to spare. What?

Rhyme of Rhymes

Savoynet has been discussing poetic rhymes lately, especially how the word "wind" is to be pronounced in a given phrase and one of our members posted this poem.  




Andrew Lang (Scots poet 1844–1912), in Longman's Magazine:

RHYME OF RHYMES.

Wild on the mountain peak the wind
Repeats its old refrain,
Like ghosts of mortals who have sinned,
And fain would sin again.

For "wind" I do not rhyme to "mind,"
Like many mortal men.
Again" (when one reflects) 'twere kind
To rhyme as if "agen."

I never met a single soul
Who spoke of "wind" as "wined," And yet we use it, on the whole.
To rhyme to " find" and "blind."

We say, "Now don't do that agen,"
When people give us pain;
In poetry, nine times in ten,
In rhymes to "Spain" or "Dane."

Oh, which is wrong or which is right?
Oh, which is right or wrong!
The sounds in prose familiar, quite,
Or those we meet in song?

To hold that "love" can rhyme to "prove"
Requires some force of will,
Yet in the ancient lyric groove
We meet them rhyming still.

This was our learned fathers' wont
In prehistoric times.
We follow it, or if we don't,
We oft run short of rhymes.

If we'd met when we were teenagers. And Irish.

Mag:  Oh, you're so clever!  Well, I'll tell you something:  there are occasions in my life when I know how G-d feels.

Joe:  Good for you.

Mag:  And one of those occasions is now.  (Puffing her cigarette regally.)  At this moment G-d feels ... expansive ... and beneficent ... and philanthropy.

Joe:  Philanthropic.

Mag:  (after momentary setback).  And we will not be put into bad humor by grubby little pedants.

Joe:  Look, Mag:  we came up here to study.  What are you going to do first?

Mag:  French.  And then maths.  And then Spanish.  And then English language and literature.  And after lunch geography and the history of the world.  I have planned a program for myself.  The important thing about revising for an examination is to have a method.  What are you starting with?

Joe:  Maths.

Mag:  Then what?

Joe:  That's all.

Mag:  Only maths?

Joe:  Huh-huh.

(She considers this absurd idea for a second.  Then, because Joe is wiser in these than she, she readily agrees with him.)

Mag:  Then that's what I"ll do, too.  (Really worries.)  My G-d, if the volume of a cone doesn't come up, I'm scootrified!  Not that I care -- I can afford to go down in one subject.  (Pause.)  Joe ...

Joe:  What?

Mag:  What's the real difference between language and literature?

Joe:  You're not serious, Maggie!

Mag:  Don't -- don't -- don't tell me ... I remember now ... One is taking and the other is ... books!

Joe:  Talking? ...

Mag:  That's it.

Joe:  That's no definition!  Language is ----

Mag:  Don't say another word.  I have it in my head.  But if you start lecturing, I'll lose it again.  I have my own way of remembering things.

Thank you, Fin Dwyer!

I was recently asked to sub for another actress in a one-act at Silver Spring Stage.  A week's notice, okay, but really that just makes it exciting, right?  And besides, I'm playing a narrator, so I can consult my script while I sit in a chair.  Easy peasy!!  I can read! I can sit!  I can read and sit at the same time!

However.

The play in question is the first act of Brian Friel's Lovers.  Brian Friel is Irish.  So are his characters.  That means that they have ... Irish accents.  And preferably not "Irish Spring" or "Lucky Charms" accents.*  I have long said that I had an Irish accent that would pass auditions but I'd never had to put that to the test before.

So I collected the script a few days ago and have rehearsed with the cast a few times. And the other night at home I re-loaded all of the Irish History podcasts that I had previously listened to back onto Smudge.  And I have been wandering around in my free time listening to the host, Fin Dwyer, tell stories that can be summarized as "As then things went very badly for the Irish"** and repeating what he says more or less phrase by phrase.***

No would seriously mistake me for a resident of the Auld Sod but I think I'm at least ... not jarring.

And I was, of course, no end of pleased when our director was giving notes one night and suggested to another cast member that their accent was wandering.  "Maybe you could listen to some Irish History podcasts," she said nodding at me.

Possibly more difficult will be to stop speaking that way when not in performance.

So this is my tiny effort to repay Fin for the assist.  If you have any interest in Irish history, I highly recommend his podcast and website. 


*Telling an actress that she has a Lucky Charms accent is the sort of thing that makes people go all slitty-eyed and resentful, though outwardly still smiling and charming.


**See, for example, the Vikings.  


***In the episode about the Spanish Armada, I got really good at saying the word "gun" with the proper accent.  Such a pity that word doesn't occur in the play.  Well, unless I work it in every so often.  "He carried his school-books *and a gun* in a leather satchel."  Like that.