THE WORLD IS CHARGED . . .

I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's OUTLIERS yesterday and it has been on my mind.  I thought the first part, Opportunity, was fascinating.  It was life affirming in a way, the idea that there are very good reasons for personal success and they can be researched and explained. In addition to being a genius, Bill Gates was born the same year that something like 80% of tech wizard/entrepreneur's were born, the same year Steve Jobs was born.  The time was right, just like it was right when an equally high percentage of industrial tycoons were born within three or four years of each other.  The explanation for all this is compelling and impossible to ignore.

The vast majority of professional hockey players are born in January, February, or March because January 1 is the cut-off date for determining age group in Canadian youth hockey.  A twelve year old born January 2 is eleven months ahead developmentally of a twelve year old born on Christmas Eve. As a result, they get more attention, get asked to camps where they play with other stars, etc.  The same is true of other sports.

So the first part of the book does a great job of talking about individuals, but it also leaves a few important conclusions about the importance of Opportunity.

-HARD WORK.  Even though Gladwell is pointing out how the "stars align" somehow to provide opportunity, the bottom line is still an individual with a fanatical devotion to work, an individual with passion.

-OPPORTUNITY ONLY KNOCKS ONCE (or twice?).  The thing is, Bill Gates was in the right place at the right time (See book for explanation).  The Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Mellons, et. al. were similarly well situated, opportunity wise.  There were probably other Bill Gates and Steve Jobs out there who were born eight years too early, or too late.  More on that later.

-THE TEN THOUSAND HOUR RULE.  I love this.  All of the "geniuses/entrepreneurs" Gladwell has chronicled have one thing in common.  They all put in at least 10,000 hours of practice, time on task, rehearsal, whatever you want to call it.  John Lennon and Paul McCartney spent that much time playing eight hours a day, seven days a week for two years in Germany, polishing their craft.  The Beatles came out of that.  Bill Gates spent 10,000 staring at a computer screen before he got out of high school.  Invariably, all people who are great at something put in that time.

-WELL CHOSEN PARENTS.  I read something about musical talent a few years ago that I've always kept with me.  If you look at a musical prodigy, one of those 12 year old wizards you see on television who plays some amazing thing on the piano and then gets up and gives the audience a big "aw shucks" smile, bows awkwardly, and then waits to be congratulated by the host.  Sure, the kid has talent, but he also had parents who nagged him about practice, who perhaps borrowed money to pay for lessons and a suitable piano, who drove him to practice, waited around, and then drove him home, who made it to every boring recital where the beginning guitars led the program, who advocated for him at every opportunity, who cried every time they heard him play, who probably ended up driving the poor kid crazy.

The second part, Legacy, I found less satisfying.  It is basically making the same points listed above, but this time through the spectrum of heritage.  Why is it that asian people grasp math more easily than others?  What is it about the European origins of folks in the South that make them more likely to have feuds than folks from the North?  Why do you suppose European Jews were more apt to be shop owners and merchants than land owners when they migrated to America?  Etc. Etc.

The big idea I take away from the second part of this wonderful book is that if we would just be more mindful of Legacy, restructure, or refit, our institutions to take advantage of those differences, our world would become a fecund wonderland of innovation and entrepreneurship.  Imagine, Gladwell asks, how many other Bill Gates, or Lennon and McCartneys, or Cornelius Vanderbilts there are who have for whatever reason missed out on Opportunity?

Here is where this whole thing becomes fascinating.  Would the world really want to have more Bill Gates and Cornelius Vanderbilts running around looking for something to define, some niche to make, some market to conquer, some intriguing problem to solve?  Do you think there are enough big ideas to go around?  If we have the equivalent of the tech boom in California every five years, what happens to the previous tech boom, and the one before that?  I'm not sure our national blood pressure would stay at acceptable levels.

It is a cool idea though.  First of all, exactly how many Bill Gates are there out there unaccounted for?  Is there a new one born every year?  Five years?  Ten years?  Once a generation?  And second, are we living in a world whose atmosphere is charged with untapped breakthroughs?  Gerard Manley Hopkins where are you when we need you?

Becoming Thankful & Why I Love Lizbeth Salandar

Katherine today.

For the last 38 years I've been making stuffing this time on Thanksgiving morning.   For a lot of those years I've been listening for Franny noises that have been intentionally timed, by me, to lure her with the smells of sausage browning for that stuffing (always her favorite Thanksgiving food) so she would come to the kitchen and cook with me in between the yearly attempts Jim made to keep the kitchen clean during this process.  In recent years there were Bloody Marys and Ken too.  Nate is never here on Thanksgiving and Chris's family has so many families to take care of, we see them when the stars align and the stars have been pretty generous until this year.

We usually feed anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five folks.  We like it.  It's our best holiday because it highlights what we love to do.  Zack, grandson, told me while I was driving him to high school last week (I keep aging before my very eyes) that he would miss our food this year.  He really likes our food.  He knows how to get Granny's attention.  He will get a turkey dinner for his birthday in February.

This year everyone went elsewhere for wonderful reasons.  So there's us and there's my mom.

There were other complications.  Our twenty year old stove was beginning to behave like the old tiger in We Bought A Zoo--it was time to put it out of its misery.  The convection function of the oven died at Thanksgiving last year and baking anything longer than 30 minutes was a crapshoot.  We finally got our act together and actually looked at and purchased a new stove.  Cool.  The model we wanted had to be specially ordered, of course, and they would shoot for delivery before Thanksgiving.  Not so cool.

The freezer part of the fridge failed next.  It was thirty years old.  We bought it when we got this house.  I had an exciting afternoon dreaming of ice makers and those cool insets in the doors of other people's refrigerators where water and ice cubes and crushed ice can be dispensed without the inconvenience of opening doors.  The anticipated existential crisis over choosing a  drinking water approach several times a day was almost tingly to me. Then we went appliance shopping and realized we could downsize our size thinking when it came to a fridge and get one that would not require lots of cabinet remodeling along with the purchase of a new fridge.  We found ourselves an old fashioned fridge with a plain freezer on the top.  It's stainless like the rest of the stuff, but its small and it fits in the space we have.  It was, however, not available and had to be ordered.  They would shoot for delivery before Thanksgiving.  Counting on appliances for Thanksgiving was not a happening thing.

The gods had sent their message.  Take the year off.  Take your mom to a restaurant.  She likes restaurants.  We're going to The Fort.  I just hope it doesn't feel like the Christmas morning we were in the San Diego airport.  That was bad.  Right now this is pretty strange, but there's a lot of good right now and it's time to settle into becoming thankful.

As always, a list:

1.  Jim.  For Everything.  For making an old lady like me feel like a girl, for baking me a pumpkin pie later today, for introducing me to opera (La Traviata is playing in the background), for starting the new Van Gogh jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table downstairs reviving an old tradition when the kids were here, for just everything.

2.  For the kids and grandkids.  For the good friends we have.

3.  For the French Dip sandwich at Lou's Food Bar, the steamed pork belly buns at Bones, and Park Burgers.

4.  For Saturday mornings at Snooze.

5.  For the porch of our cabin up in the Tetons, my bliss station.

6.  For my Teton friends all over the country who are called to that part of the world and Jenny Lake Lodge and have some sort of esprit de corps about the place.  I want to remember that no matter what, it's those mountains and bathing in the woods that make me whole each year.  The goal is to get there more, not less.

7.  For the delivery of the stove and fridge last Thursday.

8.  For Jim and Bud getting the sink in on Tuesday.  It took all day and quite the bluster of swearing, but it's in.  It doesn't leak.  The garbage disposal works.  It looks cool.  The water pressure is amazing.  I love the sink.

9.  Oddly, for Lizbeth Salandar.  I've been through two bouts of the flu since my flu shot.  Jim and I both missed getting outside our hotel room in Chicago with a flu.  We went through it again, or something horribly similar, a week after we got home at the end of our week with Chris's kids.  Lizbeth Salandar got me through the second bout.

They've been replaying The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on cable a lot recently and as I've tried to sleep (it's really hard to do when running to bathroom), I've had the movie on.  I loved the books with Lizbeth, but I've had some real time to think about her in my flu-ridden state.

Lizbeth represents many things I abhor and yet I love her.  She is guided by justice and revenge and I've spent my life trying to move myself over to the mercy side of the duality.  She takes care of lot of buried vengeance about my own loss of innocence.

She is brilliant and can glance at things and know them.  She loves research and I don't.  I have a lot to say about education, but the kind of research needed to say it stops me easily.  Jim loves it.  I am a fictional girl.

Lizbeth breaks little and big rules.  She kills people on the big side of things and she ignores no smoking requests even from Mikael on the smaller side of things.  She doesn't worry about these choices.  She thinks it's absurd to feel guilty about smoking--it is a need to her.  It's interesting that she asks Mikael permission to kill Martin Vanger.  Why does she ask this time?

Enough.  I shouldn't like her.  I do.  I'm grateful there's a fictional girl out there killing my boogiemen.

10.  I am thankful for the upcoming trip to the New York City in April to see Nate and Ashley, to go Metropolitan Opera, to go on one of Nate's food tours, to meet up with Franny's family there too.

11.  For my country and its people.  For being in Chicago, and healthy that one day, this election day and in the hotel where the President was living through it all.  I rode down the elevator for 27 floors with David Axelrod and he remembered Franny and I had such a wonderful Mom moment.  We took Willa for a sushi lunch (our first real outing--we made it to the hotel lobby) and met Franny's White House cohorts.  Wonderful.

12.  For Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  Lots of wonderful tidbits that I don't seem to let go of--a fun and interesting and scientific read.

12.  For Daniel Martin by John Fowles.  My fifth reading and third copy.  The first was a problematic paperback.  The print was too small and the last fifteen pages were missing.  I bought a used hardback and left it in Chicago.  I found another hardback in the basement that we thought we'd given away years ago.  I may finish this reading by May.  I love this book though.  It's the Huck Finn of my old age I guess.

13.  For knitting.  For my own bed.  For my TV and all the stupid stuff I watch.

14.  For being here.  For being alive.  I put up with a lot of physical stuff because of radiation.  I complain too much.  It's good to be here.  I'm so incredibly lucky and thankful.

Everybody have a good day.  Have a whole lot of good days.

An Interesting Notion

Albeit Unsettling

Here is another idea that I ripped off from something I read yesterday:  Most of the successes of two term presidents is the result of the unpopular initiatives of one term presidents.

I know this sounds like I am conceding the upcoming election to Romney.  I'm not.  I still think Obama will eke out a victory, although it looks increasingly possible that that victory will be decided in the electoral morass that Colorado's idiot and partisan Secretary of State has created.  I don't know if we Coloradans should be proud or ashamed to be the next Florida.

Anyway, back to the interesting idea.  Jimmy Carter was a one term president because he made the fatal mistake of suggesting that we cut back, be more austere, conserve resources.  These are not popular positions today.  In the late 70's they were anathema.  The hostage crisis didn't help his reelection chances, but he would have lost in any event.  Ronald Reagan swept in and got the adoration of conservatives everywhere for rolling back regulations and overseeing a short lived economic boom that quickly turned to unmanageable deficit and scandal (Iran-Contra) by the time his 8 years were mercifully up.  But the deregulation and the booming economy were the results of policies started by Carter.  Carter was the first to start deregulating (Airlines) on a systematic scale.  The economy rebounded under Reagan because of the fiscal good sense instituted by Carter.  Carter was vilified for the very things he did to make Reagan such a success.

The same thing is true of Bush I.  He had to clean up the mess Reagan left him, the same job Carter had following Nixon/Ford.  To his credit he realized his "No New Taxes" pledge was impossible to keep unless he was willing to usher in a major recession, so he raised taxes.  He also conducted a prudent campaign in Iran, without over reaching like his son would do a decade later.  I'm not sure what I think about the "war" in Iran, but I am convinced that Bush's tax increase was a major contributor to the unprecedented growth of the Clinton years.  Bush was voted out of office for doing exactly the right thing (when it came to taxes).  And like Reagan before him, Clinton squandered away that strong start by over reaching and not just in the personal realm.

The same thing could potentially happen again.  Romney and Ryan say they will create 12 million new jobs during their reign.  EVERY "expert" says the economy will grow 12 million jobs in that time no matter who the president is.

Presidents, it turns out, are like the rest of us.  Little people swept up in the tide of great big events.

I've got to close this now.  I'm on my way down to City Park for Obama's rally.  It's gonna make all the difference.

Miscellany

Here is a bunch of stuff highlighting the difficulty of remaining sane.

I

This month was The Atlantic's special report on education issue.  Usually I make a point of ignoring anything having to do with education, but an article on pg. 96 entitled "The Writing Revolution" got the better of me.

This is an article that suggests the teaching of expository essay writing improves student performance in all areas.  This is the reason why I avoid education articles, but I kept reading.  It seems the principal at New Dorp High School on Staten Island, when confronted by study after study showing the effectiveness of writing instruction, decided to make essay writing in EVERY CLASS except math the focus of the school.  Non-English teachers freaked.  There were already doing a bang up job, they insisted, all evidence to the contrary.  The problem with New Dorp students (other than the name of the school itself) was that they just weren't bright enough to do the kind of writing the principal wanted.  Regular English teachers freaked as well because ever since the 90's writing "instruction" revolved around things like first person memoirs, short pieces of fiction, and peer editing.  That fluffy approach, conventional knowledge said, was the way to get students to invest in their education.

The New Dorp experience exposes that warm and fuzzy approach for the chimera it is.  Since instituting a new approach through the teaching of grammar, sentence structure, and expository writing, test scores have shot up, the number of kids eligible for college admission has more than doubled.  Life is good.

Well, hello!  Kathie and I could have told you that would have been the result.  Toward the end of our career, some of the newer and younger teachers in our department started rebelling against the kind of formulaic writing we championed.  The newer teachers (Todd Reynolds, he of the red hair, homunculus physique, and asshole personality, comes immediately to mind) thought that controlling statements were works of the devil, squelching poor kids' creative instincts.  They thought giving kids explicit instruction on things like transitions, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, five paragraph essays, and the like were all stupid wastes of time.  Instead, we should allow kids the freedom to explore their talents and gifts and interests.  Hey, I'm as much for following creative instincts and interests as the next guy, but I also know that one must start with a formula for beginning writers.  Of course, there are exceptions.  I had plenty of them and guess what, they all grew in spite of my squelching of their instincts.  If a kid really can write and think and read, no amount of teacher bumbling is going to get in the way, but those kids in the sophomore year are few and far between.

Anyway,  teachers at New Dorp are doing exactly what Kathie and I and Janet and Sue and Peter and all the rest did all those years ago.  They are teaching grammar.  They are teaching coordination and subordination.  They are counting paragraphs.  Mostly, they are making kids write till their arms fall  off.  That has always been the key. They are doing all those things kids need and they are starting a "revolution" in teaching.

My only problem is, like all teaching "revolutions",  it is just revisiting those old methods that have always worked before some hotshot reformer bound on saving education from moribund teachers like me decided to discredit them.  It makes me crazy.

II

Tom Friedman wrote a great piece in The New York Times yesterday ("Obama's Best-Kept Secrets"). Friedman is at a loss to understand why the President doesn't more vigorously and specifically defend his successes, instead of just warning everybody about how it will be a disaster if Romney wins.  For instance, Romney is getting a lot of traction among women voters by spinning the number of jobs women have lost under Obama and by assuring them he will get jobs for their husbands.  He will also see to it that any woman he hires personally will have a schedule flexible enough for her to rush home and make dinner for her hubby (or partner?, probably not), and help the kids with homework and the like.  I'm sure Romney has never considered the possibility that a husband might make the dinner.  That sounds a lot like European socialism, doesn't it?  Instead of arguing back that Romney will outlaw abortions and make it more difficult and costly to get contraception, why doesn't the President fight back on the economy instead of conceding it.  There is NO evidence that Romney has even a clue about creating jobs.  NONE.

Anyway, Obama's secrets are Race-To-The-Top and raising the mileage standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025.  Romney vows to stop both of these programs.  He offers no reason why except that since they are initiatives by Obama they must be bad.  But they are actually the among the biggest drivers of our (admittedly slow) economic growth.  The fact is there are numbers of jobs out there that are unfilled because we lack the kind of single minded training we need in our schools to fill them.  Race-To-The-Top is designed to ameliorate that and it is being surprisingly successful across the country.  Believe me, it is hard for me to admit that, but the evidence is persuasive.  And the new fuel economy standards, instead of sounding a death knell to the auto industry, have spurred more innovation and jobs based around that innovation.  Engineers are going back to work again.

Romney, a businessman who rejects the value of research and development, would scrap the new standards even as he tries to build his pipeline from Canada.  This guy knows the value of symbols.  Too bad he doesn't understand the value of fact and logic and science.  But the average voter, the ones who will hear Romney speak for maybe the third time, will never be able to sit still for such an argument.  They will either vote for Romney because he is a more accomplished liar, or they will vote for Obama because his family is so beautiful.

III

A study was conducted by The Department of Agriculture in conjunction with Iowa State University and The University of Iowa on crop rotation and the use of chemicals.  Quick background:  the typical farmer in our country uses a two year rotation of crops with corn one year and soybeans the next.  The study wanted to see the effect of longer rotation periods with more crops.  To make a long story short, they discovered that a four year rotation using corn, soybeans, oats, and alfalfa gave a yield almost twice the size and didn't have to rely on chemicals to keep the crops free of weeds and pests because with the longer rotation the farmers could use the manure their cows were producing as a fertilizer more easily than in a two year rotation (I don't completely understand how, but the guys in the Ag Dept. did).  The labor costs go up, but the money saved on fewer chemicals makes up for it.

The problem is that the results of the test seem to be counter intuitive because they fly in the face of the way things  are CURRENTLY DONE and so major publications are refusing to publish the results.  Also you can bet the Monsanto Corporation would like to see the information suppressed.

It is a lot like killing the electric car campaign waged by the oil companies a few years ago.  More and more this is a country about nothing more than the bottom line.

IV

I'm going to watch football instead of the debate tonight.  I encourage you to join me.  I just can't stand Romney's willingness to pander at any cost and I can't stand Obama's maddening refusal to speak specifically about anything that matters.  And I really can't stand the thought of listening to the punditocracy pontificate about who won, who had the best body language, who was more likable, what the polls REALLY mean.  I've already voted.  I voted for the President.  He is a good man and he is smarter than anybody in the other party.  I don't see how any other vote is possible.  Besides, the Bears are playing tonight and I want to watch Jay Cutler screw up.

By the way, for all those hordes of people reading this, I'm not looking for an argument about this.  I'm sick of arguments.  That's why I listen to MSNBC instead of Fox.  I love to hear from people who agree with me, but as someone in his mid-60's, if someone disagrees with me I don't give a shit.  It's a nice place to be.

With and Without Boobs

Katherine here.

I hate October.  It's breast cancer month.  I've done breast cancer twice and the most recent round was a mastectomy and the beginning of life sans boobs.

October means cancer and pink everywhere.  People run, walk, play football in pink accessories, eat out, sleep in,  and go on motorcycle cruises to raise money.  People buy all sorts of pink shit to raise money.  This is really good.  This is really important.  This helps prevent cancer and helps people get better.  This is, however, a truly constant reminder that I've been really sick and I could well be really sick again and I'm running out of weapons to battle my sickness because a girl's body can only handle so much surgery and radiation and chemicals and their long range effects.  The mirror is a daily and regular reminder of my survival status.  October just means there is no escaping that definition.

It's the boobless thing on my mind now.  Like most girls, part of my personal history has a booby tale or two.  I was a chesty teenager raised by a Mom so embarrassed by body stuff that menstrual periods were a shock and my introduction to bras was a sack from the Denver Dry Goods with two Playtex bras that showed up on my bed after school one day.  They were white cotton and had a pattern in stitches that looked like a Target with a bullseye at the nipple.  Since Mom wouldn't talk to me about the bras, I had to figure out the straps myself and at age eleven (I had an early start) it was tricky.  Anyway--you get the idea.

Until I went off to college, there was only one small time in high school when I thought I might have a good figure or I might look good in some clothes if I ever got to wear something my mother hadn't made for me.  This is when Mom thought I could be Miss America and found me a sponsor and entered me in the contest without talking to me about my total lack of talent and my horror about the possibility of such a degrading experience.  If Dad hadn't reined her in, I might have had to compete in the pageant with the unique "talent" of changing Mom-made outfits behind a screen while giving a talk about fashion.  The positive I can remember about this is somehow Mom also thought I could make it through the swimsuit competition.

I went from a totally restrictive environment when it came to bodies and what they were capable of to college in the late 60's when bodies became a constant source of discussion.  Clothes changed.  Mom didn't believe in jeans and I never owned a pair until I bought some on my own up in Fort Collins the first week I arrived at CSU.  Mom thought college was still like the June Allyson/Peter Lawford college movies she loved and she sent me off with two piece suits.  Let me tell you that I was the only girl in the dorm with five matching wool suits.  Anyway--I bought jeans and sweaters on the sly.  I still love jeans and sweaters more than any other form of clothing.  The jeans and sweaters didn't really show off my figure anymore than the wool suits did, but I was comfy.  I was too inhibited for showing off what I had so it wasn't a problem.

My favorite college boob memory was at a women's lib rally my freshman year.  It was an infamous bra burning and the hardest part for me was figuring out which of my Playtex numbers I could sacrifice.    The choice made,  I knew there was no way I could publicly remove it and then burn it.  I stuck it in my purse and valiantly burned the stashed bra.  I was always one for making almost statements.

The boobs moved on to leotard type tops and sports bras during most of my teaching and parenting career.  I lived in my jeans and t-shirts and layered up a storm.  I'm guessing that Jim's the only one around who realized I had a nifty chest underneath all the various layers.  These were the mindless boob years.  Boobs for nursing.  Boobs for pleasure.  That's pretty much it.  Boobs for showing hadn't even crossed my mind.

After the kids were out of the house and Jim and I were alone, there was a new boob development.  I'd done the first round of cancer which left me mostly in tact and the radiation effects hadn't begun yet.  I was living in that frame of mind when I believed my body would never start "cancering" again (read THE END OF SICKNESS to understand why I now see the disease as a verb rather than a noun).  This was the last part of my life when I didn't think daily about cancer.  It was nice.

I rarely watched Oprah, but I did one day during that stretch of time and it was about bra fittings and amazingly beautiful bras.  I'd been getting Nike sports bras and tanks at Abercrombie and really hadn't looked at a lingerie department in years.  The Oprah show was cool and it made bra shopping seem like a good time.  I watched all sorts of women in all sorts of shapes put on new bras and they looked a whole lot more like girls after the change.  With my usual whim of iron, I made a bra appointment the next day.

It was awesome.  I went to Nordstrom's and came home with four $80 bras and the sexiest matching panties.  I put sweaters on over the new bras and I got embarrassed.  I was sure somebody was going to think I'd had surgery.  I really had something to flaunt here, but no flaunting experience.  I was almost 50 at this point and it all seemed like a kind of delightful way to battle menopause.  Also, I'd been lucky--all the years in sports bras had kept me from having horrible weiner boobs.  I liked my boobs--even with the bullet-hole in the right one from the lumpectomy.

For about one year I had really nice boob time with pretty underwear and an inner playfulness about my battle against the hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms that appeared.  Then came the second round of cancer.

Each time you have cancer, your choices are fewer and the stats you look at to make decisions are grimmer.  I couldn't do reconstructive surgery because of the radiation treatments during my first cancer battle.  I could remove my lat muscles and wrap them up in balls and attach them to my chest, but my life as an active person would have to change (kayaking and playing tennis require lats).  It would also require a year of my life and three surgeries at best.  I chose to have a mastectomy.

Like most in my position, I did the bra fitting for the prosthetics.  I have two nice bras and two fake boobs collecting dust in my closet.  They are heavy and uncomfortable and they shift around and they just don't feel good physically.  That leaves me as I am and back to tanks from Abercrombie.

I see myself as a Disney cartoon character.  Like Aladdin.  There are no nipples-just some horizontal lines.   Aladdin has more symmetry than I do though.  I have scars and gnars.

I have large parts of my chest and left arm and back that have no sensation.  When Jim lovingly kisses my right shoulder as I cook dinner, I know he is there and doing it, but I don't feel it.  His love of me and my body AS IT IS keeps me afloat and helps me be the girl I am.  Shortly after my surgery a guy at the gym told me he would leave his wife before he'd let her cut her boobs off.  Whatever it is that is me, Jim loves it all and caresses it all and cherishes it all.

My vanity struggles with my situation, but not my soul.  I've learned to dress sans boobs and feel like I look good.  I'm good with distraction and most folks notice the hair, the boots, some odd piece of clothing more than the body that goes with the distractions.  I'm not complaining.  It is good to be alive.

I wrote this because when we saw Chris's production of The Little Shop of Horrors Friday night, the women at the theater were so amazingly well endowed it was almost blinding.  Another result of my boobless state is that I tend to notice boobs wherever I go.  The Parker PACE theater made it impossible to think of much else when the play wasn't happening.  I kept trying to think of the kind of engineering it had taken to keep such masses floating.   It's been a real relief that the rest of the world has looked realistic since that evening.

I'm about to head up to start watching football and there will be football pundits in pink ties and players wearing pink shoes and we will all be aware that breast cancer is a battle that needs fighting.  I support the cause and I contribute to the cause and all of that.  I just want November to come so only my walk from the shower to my closet each morning reminds me that I'm a survivor and not just a girl.

Little Shop of Horrors

I'm a proud father this morning.  Of course, most mornings I'm a proud father.  I'm lucky that way.  Anyway, Chris of Starkey Productions and now Starkey Theatrix has started producing plays and musicals, something he has always wanted to do, the past couple of years.  He has an exciting arrangement with both PACE (Parker's beautiful arts center) and Lone Tree's large mainstage theater.  It's a gutsy move, but that's what Chris is about.  He commented that this production thing has become his "hobby business."  In other words, he seems to be doing alright, even in the face of Obama's fabricated attack on small business.  But enough politics.

Last night Kathie and I saw the opening performance of Little Shop of Horrors.  It was a great evening.  The former director at Country Dinner Playhouse did the show and the same things that characterized Country Dinner characterized this production.  Surprisingly effective sets that could be changed, thanks to the rotating stage, at the drop of a hat.  A pace that never let up.  Well, it let up some in the second act, but I think all shows do that.  Plus, let's face it, the second act of this show isn't in the same ball park as the first.  The numbers aren't as big.  The key seems to change to something eerier.  Only "Suddenly Seymour" brings the house down.  The first act, even though there isn't a BIG curtain dropper, is filled with one great number after another.  "Skid Row" was so perfect it brought tears to my eyes.  Of course, I cry at particularly effective television commercials.

I've seen lots of theater in my time.  I used to review for CERVI'S JOURNAL in a previous life.  Little Shop at Parker held its own with the best productions in town.  Mostly the nine person cast and the four piece rock band wailing away up on the catwalk filled that huge room with sound.  I thought it was one of the best vocal ensembles I've seen and heard in a long time.

Postpone all further activities and get yourself some tickets to Little Shop of Horrors.  You won't be disappointed and you can have the heady feeling of supporting the arts.

Congratulations Chris.  My heart soars like a hawk.