My response to Mr. De La Fuente's Statement

Recently, I got an email from my District Councilman, Ignacio De La Fuente.

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Dear Residents,

While I agree with the message of the Occupy movement and consider myself, along with all City Employees, including the men and women in our Police Department, to be part of the 99%, I disagree that occupying Frank Ogawa Plaza, shutting down the Port, or calling for a general strike against our City, is going to impact the 1% that this movement is supposed to be targeting.

I do not believe that the 1% was affected by the small businesses that were vandalized earlier this week in our Downtown. Nor were they impacted by the Port truckers or small business employees that were forced to miss work on Wednesday.

The “Occupy Movement” is costing Oakland millions of dollars, dollars that we simply do not have given the economic downturn we find ourselves in. The 1% will not send the City a check to cover the damages suffered by our downtown businesses earlier this week. They're not the ones that are going to pay to replace all the broken windows of City owned buildings nor will they compensate local businesses for the damage they sustained on Wednesday night.

The impacts to residents all over the City, not just in the downtown area, are serious.

There are Oakland families who lost an entire day’s pay on Wednesday. How do we justify the fact that 15 of our 17 Head Start Centers in the City were closed and that those families were forced to make last minute alternative arrangements for child care? This caused a serious financial impact to our lowest income families who ARE part of the 99%.

Residents who rely on public transportation were not able to get to or from work due to Wednesday's disruption to public transportation services. Calls for service to the Police department are going unanswered. As an example, Saturday alone, there were 179 pending calls for service to OPD.
We can not allow this to continue while the residents of our City suffer the consequences. Every additional public works employee who is spending their time in the plaza cleaning up after the occupiers is NOT in our neighborhoods cleaning our parks, emptying our garbage cans and removing graffiti or performing the other services that we as tax payers, pay for.

We still have shootings, robberies and burglaries everyday, the only difference now is that OPD is taking longer to get to those calls. That’s not fair to the residents and small business owners of Oakland.

Just because we might agree with the message we cannot simply allow a group of individuals to outright break our local laws, infringe upon the rights of others, or indefinitely occupy a space that is intended to be used and enjoyed by all Oaklander’s. We also cannot treat this group of individuals any differently than we would any other group. To my colleagues who support the continuing occupation of Frank Ogawa plaza I pose the following question, "would this all be OK if the group outside was the Tea Party or some other right wing extremist group?"

We can not wait until something terrible happens in the Plaza. Nor can we wait for further destruction of businesses. I demand that the Mayor and City Administrator provide the Council with a plan to remove the encampment and bring back the Plaza for everyone’s use.

I hope the residents of Oakland hold the Council and Mayor accountable for their actions or inactions in dealing with this problem.

Ignacio
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My response (which I emailed to him, but am posting here for discussion):



As one of your constituents, I have to take issue with some of your points.

Yes, there are problems with how the Occupy Oakland protests are impacting local business people. This can and should be prevented. Absolutely.

However, the vandalization of small businesses was most likely not the intent or action of the protest organizers or most of those who are participating. You know as well as any of us that Oakland has a history of drawing out a thug contingent, both from inside Oakland and outside our city, whenever a protest is organized. Blaming the larger protest for the actions of a minority does not serve us.

The General Strike, as I understand it, was a direct response to the excessive use of violence against peaceful protesters. Oakland, as a city, decided that rather than act in support of the protesters it would work to shut them down. It did so by bringing in others who were clearly spoiling for a fight and brought incredible shame on our city.

Our Mayor and the council could have chosen to support the goals and ideals of the protests, worked with organizers to cooperate in matters of safety and sanitation and done some real community building. Imagine if one or two police offers were assigned to work WITH the protesters to help them police the fringe elements themselves, and only intervening when situations required an official response. Imagine if Oakland sanitation worked with the organizers and protesters to ensure that they cleaned up after themselves and all Oakland needed to do was cart off full trash bins?

What if, instead of shutting down it's own citizens, Oakland had actually found a way to make this entire situation work for everyone. What if, instead of appearing to the world as a city that can't get its message straight and is quick to resort to force to quiet protesters, it became a beacon to the country of how a city could turn a negative situation into a new start of community involvement and cooperation?

But no, the city chose to expend a lot of money, the money that we can't afford, to make things much much worse than they needed to be.

Should city buildings have had their windows broken? No. Will that end up costing us all money? Yes. But how much did it cost for us to flood the square with out of town cops so they could beat on our citizens? How much are we going to have to pay in lawsuits for the injured? If you want to talk about financial losses the city will suffer, look there.

You ask, "how would we feel if it was right wing protesters occupying the plaza?" I would be fine with it. I might avoid the plaza, but they have as much a right to protest as we do. If they could get enough numbers to fill that plaza, and be dedicated enough to suffer the cold and damp overnight, then let them. That plaza is for everyone, as you point out. If it's for everyone, if it's our tax dollars that pay for it, then the citizens of Oakland have a right to be there. Does the city have a responsibility to ensure safety, and accessibility? Yes it does, but the answers need to lie with community involvement and cooperation, not this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8

Something terrible did happen in the plaza. Shot with a rubber bullet, for filming a line of cops. Not advancing, not screaming, just walking and filming the line and *bang*. You can hear people yelling on that video, but it wasn't the person filming, or anyone right next to him.

I'm not on the front lines, but as a taxpayer and a member of your district, I'd rather see you advocating for ways to make this better rather than for ways to make it all go away.

Respectfully,

Dan Wilson

Perfect storm of relaxation

It's Memorial Day, and I'm blissfully enjoying the vestiges of a fairly perfect weekend. Juliet and I have been up in Mount Shasta, spending time with her mom and her mom's partner, Mark. It's been a mix of eating far too well and too frequently, relaxing with books, taking walks downtown and in Ashland, writing, exploring the local caves, visiting with locals and extended family, and introducing everyone to the card game Citadels.

I feel like I've been soaking in a hot tub since Friday morning.

Granted, the drive back to Oakland may undo all this relaxed inner harmony, but I'm hoping not.

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Here's a few updates for the curious. In two weeks there will be public reading of two of my plays, courtesy of Triple Shot Productions. On Friday, June 10th, we'll be reading my new farce, "Mammals in Collision." I finally got the second draft finished on Friday, up here in Mount Shasta, and I've been collecting and confirming actors since then. On Saturday, Peggy Powell's new one act will be read alongside "All that and a Box of Donuts", with most of the original San Jose cast.

In other writing news, my little five pager for Theatre Pub didn't make the cut for their little fest, but I wrote and submitted a "first scene" for Unscripted Theatre for their next show. The Theatre Pub scene came fairly easy, as it had many restrictions on what could happen, length, how it should end, etc. I may try to catch the show when it goes up, just to see what did get picked. The Unscripted show was more of a challenge, since they want the first scene of a play, but they will improvise the rest of the play as they imagine I might have written it. It was supposed to be a genre piece of my choosing, and could have up to ten characters.

Now, while I may introduce many characters in the first scene (411, Harvesting the Lost, I don't introduce everyone at once, and sometimes the main character won't even show up until the second or third scene (In a Distant Country). That, and I don't usually start a project based on genre. Really, I think of genre more with film and novels than plays. So, I fretted and hemmed and hawed about what to write for a couple of weeks, and finally decided to play a bit with comedy-noir. I wanted to write a female private investigator, but didn't want to draw too heavily on Hal Savage's The Chinese Angle which I directed a few years back. So, I made it contemporary and made the lead heterosexual ... and deaf. As soon as I began to write the opening noirish inner monologue, I also discovered that my detective was also a frustrated meteorologist. Soon, I began to people her world in my mind and in my notes. The first scene would be her and her client, and other characters (but, in my mind, not all the characters) would be mentioned as allies, suspects, and potential leads. I tried to build the requisite sexual tension between client and detective, an existing lover to allow for a triangle, a murder to solve, and a menagerie for the detective to explore and investigate through the plot... while throwing in some jokes to set the tone.

The problem is... I really like these characters now! If Unscripted doesn't pick it up, I may have to write the whole play, or turn it into a webseries. Given that I already need to adapt All That and a Box of Donuts to webseries format, and have a short film with Tom Neely that I'm supposedly working on... I don't know when the story of Carol Stone might get told.

On top of all this, I've got an audition coming up for a tiny part with a large theatre, but one that would never the less eat up a good deal of time.

I honestly don't know how I'm going to do all this and still find time to play Fallout: New Vegas, Dragon Age 2, Arkham City, the new Bioshock. I also need to brush up on my job skills, and just purchased some books on Javascript, Photoshop CS 5, and HTML 5.

So, basically, I'm accepting offers by wealthy patrons, if you're interested.

Update

Just finished Act II. It's going to need more work, but most of the play will, I think, need some workshopping to get the timings right anyway. It's hard to know how much or how little dialogue you need to make the timings of entrances and exits work and how much of a chaotic moment needs to be spelled out.

Reglardless, now I can start writing act III.

Inching forward

I love telling stories, be it as an actor, an improvisor, a director, or a writer. That said, the process of writing is a grueling one... even when it's not. When I sit down to write, my goal tends to be three pages a day. If I really knuckled down and treated it like a job, I could probably do 12-15 a day. Of course, I don't. I spend lots of time thinking about the story, and about the characters, and where they're heading and where they've been, but actually putting fingers to keyboard is an ongoing struggle.

This is hardly news. Ninety five percent of writers would say something very similar.

I recently figured out how Mammals in Collision ends. Like 411, so many years ago, the ending of this play has eluded me for years, and as a result it sat untouched in the recesses of my mind. Now that I have a final moment to work towards, you'd think that I'd be leaping at the chance to get it written down.

But look, I'm doing a blog entry.

Today is a holiday, and I hope to at least finish act II today. Procrastination tools involve books, housework, the dog, personal hygiene, Radiostar, and (of course) the X-Box. Maybe if I write in this space that I'll have act II done by 5pm, I'll actually get it done.

Let's see together, yes?

Auditions from the other side of the table

So, I'm stuck watching progress bars in work, and all the other work I need to do involves the program creating the progress bars, so I might as well do a blog post.

I'm in the midst for auditions right now. Specifically, I'm directing my play "Get it? Got it. Good!" for a one-act festival down in San Jose. The original director had to bow out, so I agreed to step in and direct. It's a shame, because I was curious to see what someone else would do with it. Still, I'm just glad to let a different audience see the show, and to tweak (and hopefully improve it) a bit.

We were supposed to have two nights of auditions and one day of callbacks. Because the company had the first night of auditions on Valentine's Day, so that ended up not happening. One would hope however, that we'd just be jam packed with people on the other evening. One would hope, and as often happens when one hopes, one would be disappointed.

We saw a grand total of six actors. My show alone, and there are four shows in total, has a cast of eight. My show is also male heavy. Five definite men, two women, and one role that can switch as needed. We have people who were seen at the TBA Generals and who have worked with Arclight before coming directly to callbacks. I asked how many of them were men. "One."

As it currently stands, even if everyone at callbacks is fantastic, I am going to need to cast at least half my show outside of the audition process. Fortunately, I know a lot of great actors. Unfortunately, if they are Equity members I can't use them. (I used two Equity members in the original production because I was footing the bill.)

Of the non-equity, still living in this state men from the last production, I know that at least one of them is otherwise booked during this time period and one of them is fully engaged with his own projects and recent offspring. So, I'm going through my list in my head and thinking of matches with characters.

The show will definitely be different. Different stage, different actors, improved staging and pacing, cleaned up some confusing lines, etc. I'm working hard to not let past performances color what the characters could be. It's challenging though, and why I was excited to see someone come to the script fresh as a director.

In the end, I expect that by Saturday I will have all my women cast. I also expect that by Saturday I'll be taking my list of awesome actors who are neither Equity nor otherwise engaged and doing some serious wooing.

Now, how did we get in this situation? Actors are always looking for work, after all. Well, there are a few things working against us.

1. No pay.
This always makes it hard to get actors of any substantial experience. Even a small stipend—enough to cover basic travel expenses—is enough to bring in more experienced actors. With no pay at all, the market dwindles rapidly.

2. The company is also holding auditions for their main production at the same time.
Ok, they're actually a week apart, but most of the actors I might have access to are auditioning for "Much Ado About Nothing", which is their big show of the year and will be rehearsing at the same time as the One-Acts. This includes most of the men.

3. Location.
Getting people down to San Jose is always a challenge. The commute can be brutal. Strangely enough, however, almost everyone who came on Tuesday was from the East Bay or the Peninsula. People who wouldn't have to commute however, didn't show up. I'm guessing they'll be at auditions for Much Ado.

4. Small company
The company has a great deal of potential, and lots of heart, but is still very much finding its feet. I've recently become a company member and am hoping that as labor becomes more divided that the company will be able to improve its output more and more and it will grow from a small to mid-sized company. But for now, people aren't signing up for the prestige factor.

In particular, I'm hoping that we can begin raising funds so that people can get paid (removing factor 1) and that we can look at the season and figure out ways to maximize our resources (point two). If we can do that, factors three and four will become less and less of an issue.

Things don't happen, and some things do

Yesterday felt smashingly productive. I got another three pages done in Mammals in Collision, finished the edits on Radiostar, got a call from Juliet saying that she had gotten out of rehearsal #1 early and wanted to meet in Berkeley for frozen yogurt, and then came home and added the musical transitions and intro to the Radiostar episode. In the midst of all this, I got another call (this time from Christopher DeJong) informing me that Radiostar Improv was going to be in the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September. This will make our fourth ever live performance, and our first series of shows.

This morning felt less productive at first. Our numbers for tonight's recording session went from seven, to six, to five, to four due to conflicts, illness, illness, and more illness. We had cancelled last night's session for similar reasons and once we hit four (with one possible drop out due to ... illness), it became clear that tonight would not be spent on mic.

I was bummed, but consoled myself with the thought that I wouldn't have to haul all the gear out to San Francisco, which meant that I wouldn't have to use City CarShare. Not spending money or hauling heavy and expensive gear is always a good consolation prize.

It didn't help that neither I nor Juliet got much sleep thanks to Benedick, who has the very habit of not letting us get a solid eight hours... ever. You'd think that a queen size bed would be adequate for two humans and an 11 lb dog, but you'd be wrong. He seems to swell in the night. Suddenly you awaken to find that he's stretched and his paws are digging into you, or that there's this large furry lump burrowed into the small of your back.

So, tired and mildly frustrated, I jumped in the shower. It was there that I had an epiphany.

I first had the idea for Mammals in Collision about five years ago. I wrote out the outline, and then it sat for years. I always wanted to work on it, but I was so concerned about how to deal with the third act that it became very easy to leave on the back burner. Ultimately, I knew that the play didn't have an ending. I knew the crux of the third act. I knew the issues. But no matter how it played out, it would turn from a comedy into a tragedy... even if it was a tragedy deferred.

This morning, amidst the steam and soap, it came to me. An ending. A brilliant ending. An ending that maintained the tone I had been setting as I wrote the last few weeks. An ending that worked.

I emerged, electrified.

I still need to finish act two, which I think I can do today. But now I know exactly where I am heading. I have a destination, which I'd had for the ends of the first two acts, but not for the whole play.

It's going to be a very good day.

Nothing here. Move along.

I don't have much to post about today. I'm in the midst of writing the first draft of my long delayed farce "Mammals in Collision" and I need to get the next Radiostar show edited for Monday. Right now it's all about working until 5ish, cooking and then writing and editing. Not too exciting here at Casa Wilson-Heller.

Juliets in rehearsals for Beardo over at Shotgun Players, so most of my evenings are my own. This will change soon, however, as auditions for "Get it? Got it. Good!" are next week and then I'll be casting and rehearsing until the end of March.

I feel like I should say something about Egypt, but I don't know what to write beyond "Yay! Good for them."
I really am happy that the people were able to rise up and have a pretty peaceful revolt. I'm thrilled that the military stood up for the people and didn't act as a force of oppression.

I just wish that it hadn't taken thirty years to happen.

Redevelopment

Governor Jerry Brown is looking for a way to fix California's massive budget shortcomings. Early on, he let it be known that we had two choices: raise taxes or cut programs. Redevelopment agencies were on the chopping block, and Brown stated that he was going after services that would pinch the middle class. It seemed sound reasoning to me. Rather than cut programs that only impact the poor, which is what often happens, threaten things that the middle class actually cares about. Remind them that the taxes they pay serve them.

As the deadlines draw closer, however, I'm hearing more and more about cutting funding for the Redevelopment agencies and very little about extending and raising taxes.

The mania and hatred of taxes is something that I can't fully appreciate. We say we want smaller government and lower taxes (or no taxes), but we also complain about high unemployment. I don't know the numbers for every city, but in Oakland the city, county and state are the biggest employers we have. If you want to decrease the revenue of the government, then you're basically saying that you want less jobs available. Cutting taxes means more unemployment, more blight, more crime, more social ills.

There's a nice article about Oakland's need for redevelopment funding here.

What got my ire up this morning was this article in the Oakland Tribune. In particular, the Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia's comments really hacked me off. As someone who grew up in Pleasant Hill, I can affirm that yes, most of Contra Costa County doesn't need much redevelopment money. It's a great suburban sprawl full of wealthy people. What we have with Mr. Gioia is another example of the wealthy completely failing to take the needs of the poor into account. "If we don't need it, why should anyone else? After all, we've got space and lots and lots of shopping malls!"

So, please, Governor Brown, take Contra Costa County's redevelopment money. They neither need, nor want it. For the urban centers, however, just extend the taxes a bit. We can take it. It's worth the slight pinch.

New Day Dawning

I'm feeling a little bit shamed by the wonderful Becky Haycox, who has committed to writing every day this year, and by Neil Gaiman who is celebrating the ten year anniversary of his blog.

I used to update every day, but that slowed, and with the advent of twitter essentially stopped completely.

So, I'm going to try this again.

Be warned, I make no promises that it will be interesting. When I first started keeping an online journal back in... what was it, 1997? God, I think it was. Anyway, when I first started it then, it was because I wanted a record of my life that wasn't just the emo portions.

I'll be posting about my daily goings on, my thoughts on news of the day, trends, and whatnot. You're welcome to listen in, comment, or ignore. If I feel like I have to perform in this space, I imagine that nothing will get written.

So. That's that, then.

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Truth of the matter is, my life is much more boring than it once was. The curious thing is that I am not in the slightest upset by that. I'm forty years old. I have a house and a mortgage. I'm engaged to a wonderful woman. I have a dog, for crying out loud. If it was possible to be more settled down I'd be a potted plant.

This doesn't mean that I'm not quite active creatively or that I never have any adventures. It does mean that I am much more likely to stay inside. I'm not roaming around, looking for interesting experiences to have and interesting women to meet. Yes, it's true. Upon reflection, a major motivation for me to be out and about all the time was that I was looking to meet women. How very pedestrian. How very human.

To be perfectly fair, it's not quite as simple as I like to make it sounds. Part of it is age, to be sure. But part of it boils down to contentment. I'm not looking outside my home for anything to make me happier, or better, or more interesting. It also has a lot to do with investment. Each apartment I had, I felt a little more at home in. My last place truly felt like it was a part of me. Now, I have the house. I'm happy to be here, and I'm heavily invested in it. The financial commitment is one thing, but there's also the endless tweaks and improvements I'm investing in, as well as the sheer size of it. In a one bedroom apartment, there wasn't much space or need to interact with the environment. It was easy to leave and return to. With a house... it's different. It's a home in a way that an apartment never could have been. Apartments are launching pads. Houses are not.

And then, there's the dog.

I thought about getting a dog for a long time, but ultimately decided that I wouldn't because of my lifestyle. Dogs are social creatures, and I figured that I just wouldn't be around enough. It wouldn't be right to the pooch. Well, now I work from home, and I find it emotionally hard to leave him alone in it. His panic when we leave is only surpassed by his ecstasy when we return. I know that he's fine. But every time I leave with him pushed up against the window, whining as I walk away... it kills me a little. So, I find even more excuses to stay at home.

We've talked about getting a Beatrice for our Benedick, and talked about fostering dogs for a while to see if it makes a difference for him. Time will tell if and when we follow through on that.

Packers

So, New Scientist magazine is having a "flash fiction" competition. A 350 word or less short short story about "a future that never was." I.e. a forgotten vision of the future, a future or present, with promised technology that never arrived, or where debunked scientific theories turned out to be true.

Writing a story in 350 words or less not easy. The first draft was easily 200 words too long, and a lot of good stuff that I hated to lose had to be jettisoned. I may need to write a more fully fleshed out story in this world, and with Dr. Pitts.



Packers

“We’ve got another flyer.”

Dr. Pitts frowned, uttered a quick “excuse me” to the man whose leg he had been prodding. A clutch of nurses and orderlies were already at the body while the paramedic shouted out “Caucasian male, twenty years old. Third degree burns on the buttocks and all down the back of the legs, left tibia appears to be broken, second degree burns along the back, abrasions under the arms, swelling and lacerations on the face arms and chest.”

“Thank you Matt. Why is he naked?”

To his credit, Matt didn’t crack a smile. “Frat party. 1.5 BAC. He’s not feeling too much pain.”

Pitts shone a light into the boy’s eyes. “Stupid bastard. What’d he hit?”

“A tree. Smashed right into it, safety straps released on impact. Obviously, no chute. He’s lucky he only broke one leg. Firefighters got there when we did, but the tree’s a lost cause. The pack got caught in the branches. Fwoosh!”

“All right, get those burns treated and then get him to Radiology.” The orderlies grabbed the hover-gurney and moved the quietly groaning frat boy down the hall.

“Busy night?”

Pitts shook his head. “Not too bad. Just the usual.”

“This is ‘usual’?”

“You’re still new. This is nothing. You know, people are so afraid this or that thing is going to kill them, and then they go and strap on a jetpack without a thought. Every night we get people in here because they didn’t want to wear the helmet, or took out the emergency chute because it was uncomfortable.”

The paramedic nodded. “I forgot to take the heat shields out of my jumper once before washing it. Got a nice burn on my ass the next time I wore it.”

Dr. Pitts sighed. “I was just starting my residency when the first consumer models came out. My very first E.R. patient had been convinced he could make it home without refueling and lost control a quarter mile from his house.”

Matt chuckled. “That was your first? You’re a relic!”

“Yes. And this isn’t the future they promised me.”

love, new directions, and general updates

Wow, I haven't posted here since September. Quite a bit has happened since then.

First off, I feel madly in love with Juliet Heller. I don't often talk about my personal relationships in this space ( a lesson forcibly learned a long time ago), but this is something of such momentous importance that it really needs to be noted.

We met doing The Heidi Chronicles with Custom Made Theatre company. One of the actors in the company, Fred Pitts, had contacted me to ask for suggestions for actors to play "Scoop Rosenbaum" for the company's remount. After I gave a short list of potential actors, he asked if "I" would be interested. My calendar was free, and I thought it'd be fun to work with Fred again, and I'd never worked with Custom Made, despite working *alongside* them for years. So I made my availability known, did a quickie audition and joined the cast.

Juliet wasn't at the first reading due to other commitments, and my scenes were almost exclusively with "Heidi" and "Peter", so I didn't meet her until we had a rehearsal at my home with the whole cast. Our normal rehearsal space was booked for the night, so I offered my living room as a suitable space to do line and character work (although not really enough for full blocking). Juliet showed up, and I learned that she was the one playing my wife in the show (although we only have about 1 minute of stage time together). She definitely caught my eye, but as I had just begun seeing someone, didn't have a history of "showmances" and wasn't looking to complicate life, I didn't do anything about it. Rehearsals moved on, and I saw little of most of the cast, including Juliet.

It wasn't until tech week that I began to get the slightest glimmer of an idea that I had caught her eye as well. It wasn't until our only night off between a solid week of runthroughs and tech-preview-opening that I accepted that there was something there. She was in Oakland for the day and asked if we might hang out that night. Seeing as how it would be our only night apart from each other over two weeks, I was intrigued, but still wary. I most emphatically wasn't looking to, here's that word again, "complicate" things.

We hung out for a few hours, talking, watching videos, just exploring who the other person was outside of the context of doing a play together. After three hours, I kept hearing my friend Chris' voice in my head, telling me that the first time he met his wife Ann that he knew if he dated her, that was going to be it. I knew that if Juliet and I got involved, it was going to be major.

That was two months ago. She officially moved in about a month ago, although we've actually only spent two or three nights apart since that Sunday. I'm happier and more emotionally secure than I've ever felt I had the right to be, and daily amazed at the joy I receive from having her in my life.

She's off at rehearsal for her new show, Jubilee, now. We're both looking forward to having some time off, with no show requirements for a while. Time to simply "be", which is not something I'm known for.

This is largely why I've been so silent on this blog. Lack of time. We still had a show to do, one that ran for five weeks. I've still been doing Radiostar, and we've both been working on the house and savoring our downtime. Life has been full, and very good.

This week, we'll be hosting her father, her brother and his girlfriend, and my mother for Thanksgiving.

I have a lot to be thankful for.

Music to our ears

Sorry for the comparative radio silence, although I've been happily twittering away, so if you miss me lots you can follow me on Twitter.

I'd like to talk about a recent project, but first I want to alert folks to a couple of notable Sweetie Tanya musical releases.

First, Rachel Efron (who penned "Terrible Thing to Dream", "Not as Old as You", and "Mouse Becomes the Cat") just released her second CD, and it is a thing of loveliness.

Second, The Endless (who composed "I Never Wanted This") just released a video for "Hunt for the Heart", off their latest album. The album and the video are both filled with the strange beauty that characterize Adriana and Dave, so go check it out.

Also, I did some singing lately. I cannot claim it was lovely or filled with strange beauty, but people seemed to find it very funny.

Suraya Keating (Vagina Dentata) asked me to fill in for a lost actor on her project Zen Boyfriends. It was only a couple of days of rehearsal and one show, so I happily agreed, despite the fact that I was up for a role (which I also got) in Custom Made Theatre's "Heidi Chronicles". It was a lot of fun and we did our performance at the California Institute for Integral Studies last night.
Zen Boyfriends is essentially a cabaret piece about a woman reflecting on her struggles with men who use their "enlightenment" to dominate others and avoid emotional intimacy and personal responsibility. It was written and co-directed by someone who graduated from CIIS, and the particular form of spirituality and social consciousness being satirized is fervently endorsed by the institution. So depending on your point of view, we were either in the belly of the beast or inviting the larger family to be in on the joke.

I think it was a little from column A and a little from column B.

What I found most interesting about the project was that most of the cast are not semi-professional performers and I was repeatedly "checked in" with by them to be sure that I was enjoying myself and that I was glad to be involved with the program. There was a kind of nervousness that I might find the project unworthy or something. Truth was, the show is a lark, required minimal time, and is clearly enjoyed by the targeted audience (who turns out in droves).

For the most part, the performers have a hard time singing in the same key (myself included), and while the music is quite catchy nobody would buy a CD of *us* singing the songs. The script is perfect for a cabaret style performance with broad, satirical characterizations, but is ultimately 2 dimensional and cartoony. The entire show has a very "let's do a show in the barn" feel to it, and will probably never play in an actual theatre. But there's nothing wrong with any of that. It's a specific piece written for a specific audience and it runs on cleverness, good will, and high energy. People who come to see it have a good time (even if they end up feeling a bit chagrined by the end). It's what Peter Brook would call "Rough Theatre", and in many ways is more special to the audience for happening outside even the rough and tumble world of independent theatre.

We are probably doing it again next month, which will result in me doing Zen Boyfriends on a Sunday afternoon, and then doing Heidi Chronicles that evening. It should be interesting, to say the least.

Of, and for the fearful, I only sing as part of a chorus.

7 questions to ask about health care

I was inspired by an article a friend on Facebook directed me to. It's 10 questions to ask your representatives about health care. While I disagree with the tone of the article (the author, Hugh Hewitt, gives his own answers to the questions and asserts that they are what any representative will tell you if they are honest), I agree that there are some important questions we should all be asking.

With that in mind, I present my own take on the 10 questions. I only have 7 though, as I feel that if these seven are answered the remaining three from Mr. Hewitt's list will be answered. (in particular, "have you read the bill and know it will enough to be interviewed on it". If a representative can answer these questions intelligently, then he or she has clearly read the damn thing and understood it.)

1. What will be done to ensure that my employer will not ditch my current health plan in order to go exclusively for the public option? How can I be ensured that I can keep my employer-provided plan?

This is at the root of the question. It's been very clearly stated that you will not be forced off your current plan, but the question of employer decision is a valid and important one.

2. What are the differences, if any, between the coverage provided in the general public health plan and the current federal employee health plan?

If there are no differences, then we can get a good look at what the public option will offer us. If there are, we should know those up front.

3. How will the new health plan impact Medicare funding? Will funds be pooled between the two programs (i.e. will Medicare be subsumed as a sub-program of the larger health system) or will the two be funded and administered separately?

The question isn't, "will the seniors get screwed?" The question is about the relationship between a current, functioning program and the proposed one. Is it possible that the new system break the old? If it is possible, then what is being done to prevent that possibility from happening?

4. If a doctor decides a procedure is necessary or extremely beneficial, can we be sure that the new plan will cover it? If there is not a cap on care, how does the government plan to deal with costs?

Again, let's not make this about he seniors. If Medicare has worked this long, let's assume that things aren't going to change for them or for the Veterans (unless the answer to question #3 shows a danger). The question of caps on are is important on both sides of the coin. Insurance companies just decided not to pay for things. The Public Plan shouldn't have that option, but what *is* in place to ensure that costs don't skyrocket?

5. How will the influx of new patients, waiting for medical services, impact the time it takes to receive the care that is needed?

If we are expanding the base of people who can take advantage of health care services, but not expanding the number of hospitals or medical professionals, this is a valid concern. It doesn't mean that we have the option of not providing health care to people, but we should have our eyes open to the idea that non-emergency procedures might involve greater delays than we're used to.

6. What incentives or requirements will be in place to ensure that doctors don't prioritize patients from private insurance over patients on public insurance?

I'm not entirely sure how this works currently for non HMO-Doctors. It'd be good to find out. The question of doctor compensation is important for a number of reasons, but I'm less concerned about the arguments that anesthesiologists and pathologists are suddenly going to be dropped from hospital staffs because their jobs are less essential. Again, what is the answer to question #2?

7. While socialized medicine is practiced in many countries, there are many reports of long delays and problems (especially in Canada). What systems are being put into place to avoid the pitfalls revealed by other nation's programs?

I'm sick of everyone talking about wait times in Canada, as if they were the only country in the world to have socialized health care. Many countries are doing this, some better than others. I want to know how we're learning from their successes and mistakes and how that impacts our plan.

new skins on old fears

Everyone has at least one recurring dream. I tend to find myself back in school, being informed that I have to retake a class that I never took, or failed, or else they'll revoke my diploma. In these dreams, I am having a hard time finding my classroom, trying to negotiate the requirement with my work needs, and generally trying to deal with the fact that I'm 25, 30, 35, 39 years old and stuck in a high school class.

The underlying fears are pretty clear. My forward progress in life is halted or retarded by something left undone, a failing never acknowledged or discovered. Something hidden in me threatens everything should it ever be discovered. This failing, this inadequacy will bring me not only inconvenience but shame.

Last night I had a different dream. Same theme, new twist. This dream had friends with tech connections asking me veiled questions about an old computer of mine, and then flat out telling me that due to video files on my old CSLA computer, I was under investigation by the federal government for copyright infringement. (I used to identify short clips in movies to be used to illustrate points in presentations. Everything was fair use, and our process was checked by a lawyer.) In my dream, I knew that what this ultimately meant for me was that they would come for the house.

I woke up reflecting on this. It's ultimately the school dream. But instead of something undone being revealed and threatening my forward progress, something DONE was being revealed. From the sin of omission to the sin of commission. Also, instead of simply causing embarrassment, the danger is to my home. For the first time, I have something concrete that can be threatened.

My life has undergone a major shift, and now my dreams are catching up to that shift. Social stigma is no longer the worst that can be done. I can be financially ruined now, left homeless and deep in debt. I can be a target.

This is probably part of the lassitude I've been feeling lately, the ennui that's settled over my otherwise quite content existence. I shouldn't be surprised that my standard dream is undergoing changes as well.

Feelings

I've been oddly emotional lately.

It's not that I find emotions odd, but that I find the emotions I've been having odd. Odd in their timing, odd in what triggers them.

My last breakup really bothered me, but I kind of retreated into a protective emotional shell when I saw it coming. I think I've seen the signs too many times to be surprised any more, so I sort of unconsciously start to buffer myself. But as I talk to people, months later, the hurt and the frustration come out and friends say "I was wondering about that. You seemed to take it all weirdly well."

I get brief spurts of energy. I'll be interested in the idea of dating for maybe ten minutes, but then lose all my steam. I can't even get through a single online personals ad.

I get weepy, but not at sad things. I get weepy at happy, hopeful things. Movies that show people deeply in love, or long friendships, or childhood dreams that are still alive. When I see these things, I feel my eyeballs begin to float and I wonder ... "why?"

The simple answer is depression. I'm a bit depressed, and have been for a bit. It's a hard word to own, because I often feel quite content, but I guess that content doesn't really cut it. Still, why else would images of loss and sadness leave no mark upon me, while scenes of happiness reduce me to tears? Why else would this respite from project-mania leave me so listless and unwilling to get to the real work that I claim to want to do? Why do I want to nap all the time (even though I never do)?

I keep talking about getting a dog, but I'd probably be a terrible dog owner. I can barely take care of myself, let alone a puppy. I resent restrictions on my freedom, and am not an outdoors person. Again, the answer is fairly straightforward, but hard to face. A dog would be an attempt to fill whatever void I'm trying to ignore. That's a bad position to put people in, and it's not a good position for an animal either.

Not a very upbeat journal entry, but the bit about tearing up over happy moments has been preying on me lately.

I guess I just am hoping that putting it in words, throwing it to the ether, will help a little bit. Name a thing and it loses power over you ... at least to a certain extent. And who knows, this depression may just be the result of disappointment and fatigue, neither of which go away quickly just because you want them to.

With that in mind, I'm off to bed. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

Curious conversation

I head into the back yard to water the garden. From over the fence I hear:

"Hey!"

"Hey," I reply.

Hey!

"Hey," again.

I continue watering and a young man's face appears over the fence. I've met a couple of the guys from that house, but it seems to have a lot of visitors/family/etc. Not someone I'm familiar with.

What're you doing?

"Just doing some watering."

Is that a garden?

I look at the neat and ordered rows of plants, the row of flowers, and the netting on pipes that keeps cats away.

"Yep. It's a garden."

A slight pause here, then

What are you growing?

I give the usual litany. Tomatoes, green beans, zucchini (although it is not growing well), lettuce, etc.

Do you like weed?

Ok, now the conversation just got interesting, although I'm not sure where this is going.

"No, never really been a big fan."

Do you know how to grow it?

While I would have to assume it would involve light and water, I say that I don't.

Oh.

A longer pause, then finally

I have my medical card.

He then proceeds to mutter something about his legs being fucked up, and then drifts away.

I've been offered weed to smoke (or eat) on numerous occasions but not until I became a homeowner was I asked to grow it for someone.

More history

I continue to slowly explore the history deposited in my home. It turns out that I am not descended from an outlaw, as the Jesse James who died was not the historical thug, but a farmer in the Ozarks who ran afoul of Confederate sympathizers. My own ancestor literally had the noose around his neck when word of Union forces arrived and the "bushwhackers" ran away, leaving him to his own devices.

A lot of the interest in the records is what I can glean from inference. Ancestors in Missouri who married at 13 years of age. People having 11 children. Family names that recur in marriage records. These things tell little, but are reminders of what life was like five or six generations back.

Closer to home, time and space wise, is my father's Senior yearbook. Dad was a Castlemont High School, Oakland, graduate of 1960. I've learned a few things from going through the old yearbook, reading the signatures, and looking at the photos. One, Dad's high school looks way more interesting than my high school was. Even the clubs were cooler, or at least had cooler and more enigmatic names. The women's swim team was the "Aquadettes", but many of these club names give no indication of what was going on: Bishops, Block C, Caduceus, Excaliber, Guild of the Lance, Ladies of Avalon and the Ladies of Devon and the Ladies of the Holy Grail, Shamrocks, the Six Footers, Trianion, Ye Castle Hams, and the Undertakers. This doesn't even consider all the groups with greek letters for names.

Dad was on the Varsity Basketball team, but has very few signatures in the Varsity section. He does however have a lot of messages from women throughout the entire book, many of which imply that Dad was ... well favored by the ladies. This jives with something he implied back when I was in High School. I didn't date in High School, and my Dad had an issue with that. I didn't realize at the time that my Dad was a bit of a player.

He also had some interesting classes. In particular, people write about Bookkeeping Class, Yearbook (he was the Sports Editor), Office Practice, and American Problems.

I want to take a class in American Problems.

I wish, now, that we had gone over this yearbook together... away from my Mom... and had him tell me about these people and experiences. My Dad never really talked about the past. Just a few comments here and there, but no real stories. Really, you'd never know that any of these people who hoped that they'd be "friends forever" ever existed. Like a lot of men of pretty much every generation, Dad wasn't a "sharer".

It really is a loss.

I'll keep the yearbook and let my own imagination fill the gaps of my Dad's unknown past. I'll give him some great adventures, and maybe you'll get to read or see them someday.

World's best haircut

This is fantastic. Stephen Colbert doing a USO show in Iraq, and at the end is the best military haircut EVER

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama Orders Stephen's Haircut - Ray Odierno
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

History (part 1)

My mom has been cleaning out her storage space, and in addition to a cabinet, table, chairs, and antique secretary's desk, she's left several boxes of old photos and documents for me to go through.

I expected these to be mostly childhood scribblings of mine. Such detritus seems to proliferate in the back cupboards of parents, and I'd already gone through a few such "thinning" expeditions in the last couple of years.

I'm working through the first batch and have already found some treasures I wasn't expecting. A small vinyl record of the first moon landing was surprising, but it is nothing compared to some documents I found paperclipped together.

Three pages are sketchy genealogical notes, one is a handwritten letter, and one is from the Secretary of the Navy. The handwritten letter is from my paternal grandfather, Martin, to his brother Louis. This took me a moment, since my Dad's name was Louis and he never mentioned an uncle. Then again, he rarely talked about his family at all. The letter is dated November 4th, 1942, and is primarily about the details of a gear that Martin was crafting to fix my grandmother Elsie's washing machine. Parts were unavailable due to the war effort, so he was making one himself at the Caterpillar factory where he worked. Two and a half pages of grammatically questionable description of a gear, after apologizing for not writing more often. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why anyone would save this. At the very end, Mary mentions that Elsie is five months pregnant. "Ah," I thought, "that's the significance. That would be when she was pregnant with my father." Still, I wasn't sure why mom had the letter.

Then I read the attached telegram from the Secretary of the Navy. According to the telegram, on November 15th, 1942, 11 days after Martin wrote the letter, Louis' ship, the Preston was sunk. There were few survivors, and the ship sank rapidly. Louis had been "Missing in Action" for a year, and the telegram was to inform my great grandmother that her son was officially considered deceased.

He was a machinist, first class. That explained why the entire letter was about gears, and why my grandfather quipped near the end that Louis could take the letter to a machinist if he didn't understand any of what was written.

So, now I know why my dad was named Louis. He was named for the brother who never heard about the jury-rigged gear for my grandmother's washing machine. He was named for the one who was lost.

Also of interest is that my Great Grandmother, Una Garfield Wilson, lived on E 14th St, right off of Lake Merritt. I can only assume by the fact that it was addressed to her, that my Great Grandfather (Charles Salem Wilson) had already died. The genealogy notes give no dates for him. Una was born in 1881, though, and appears to have died in 1964. How interesting that, being born in Hayward, raised in Pleasant Hill, educated in Santa Barbara and Chicago, I should end up buying a house 2.7 miles from my Great Grandparent's home.

Update:
In the envelope, unattached, I found a letter from Great Grandma Elise, written the day before. It's full of hope for the new baby, tales of common friends, and the great fear about the war. It is much more what I would have expected. I'm considering starting a genealogy project. Nothing major, but I want a way to digitally organize this information. I may need to invest in a new scanner.

Because it's awesome