That's the deal

Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.

--C.S. "Jack" Lewis, from the film Shadowlands

As you're probably well aware if you've been reading this blog for a while, my father died in a car accident about a month after I turned 12. That may seem like a young age to lose a parent, and it was -- but I was the oldest of six siblings, the youngest of whom had just turned three at the time. Of all my siblings, I spent the longest time with my father and have the most and clearest memories of him, some happier than others.

I have memories of listening to Dad make up silly stories and parody songs on the fly; memories of being picked up, run down the hall and tossed onto the queen-sized bed with a huge bounce; memories of Dad hanging onto the back of my bike, running along behind me as I tried to get the hang of balancing on two wheels; memories of flying kites and foraging for crops gone wild in the field that had once been a farm across from our house; memories of Dad making a puppet show theater or drawing a Christmas scene with soap on our front window, then painting it with tempera paints; memories of Dad, after days and days of sleepless worry, having a loud and scary nervous breakdown in the middle of the night; memories of Dad quietly swimming up to Aunt Linda, basking on her raft in the middle of Lake Alpine, and evilly upending her into the icy water; memories of Dad having no faith in himself, blaming himself for his perceived imperfections almost every day; memories of Dad sleepwalking into Julie's and my bedroom at 1 a.m. and telling us to brush our teeth (an episode he didn't remember in the morning); memories of Dad asking me with tender concern if xxxxxxx had done something to hurt me, and when I said yes, the way his haunted, defeated expression hurt even more than the abuse had, so I just stopped admitting when those incidents happened; memories of Dad and my uncle taking their sons on early morning paper routes and forming a little club called the "Paper Daddies of America"; memories of Dad pushing me high on the swings until I almost kicked the moon; memories of Dad helping me water the cucumber plants growing outside his workroom; memories of Dad losing his cool over the boys listening to the Beatles' Rubber Soul album over and over, finally taking it off the record player and flinging it out the front door into the field; memories of Dad at the drawing board, working on a layout for a client; memories of Dad driving the orange VW bus across the country while Mom handed out sandwiches and soda from the Coleman cooler; memories of Dad sticking drawing pencils into his ears and nose and having Mom take a Polaroid of him; memories of Dad jumping into my grandparents' pool fully clothed, then dragging Mom in after him -- the list goes on and on.

These memories -- strong, vivid, sometimes goofy, always emotionally charged -- are why I miss my dad. He was a creative, sensitive, funny, impatient, imperfect, vibrant, real person. There were things I loved about him as well as things I really didn't like. In short, I have enough memories about him to hunger for more.

It's different for my other siblings. My brothers remember Dad quite a bit; my sisters remember very little. And my youngest sister, Michele, has no memories of Dad at all. It's bothered her for a long time. She was a "Daddy's girl" growing up, always gravitating more to Dad than to Mom, and after he died, she -- barely three, you remember -- couldn't understand what had happened to him. "Where's Daddy?" she asked, over and over again, and when we told her yet again that he had died, her plaintive response was always the same: "But I want him."

When I was younger I thought, naïvely, that my siblings were lucky not to remember Dad. Memories of the dead are keen sharp things, and the closer you hold them to your heart, the more you cut yourself. Wouldn't it be better not to have them, not to carry a source of pain around with you? I don't remember my great-grandfather or my Aunt Bonnie, both of whom died before I was born; my interest in them as people is mere curiosity, with no accompanying ache of loss. I didn't really understand why my little sister could feel such a hole in her center from a man she couldn't even remember.

You know what it took to help me finally figure it out? The death of a man I never met.

I've wanted to meet Robin Williams from the time I was eight years old. Yes, really. I watched him on Mork & Mindy and found him not just funny as an actor, but fascinating as a person. I tried (and failed) to get permission to participate in the Bay Area March of Dimes walk that year, because I knew he would be participating and just maybe I'd get a chance to walk next to him and talk to him for a minute or two. (Oh, shut up -- you expect realistic dreams from an eight-year-old kid?) For some reason as I got older, I still harbored the quiet but unshakable belief that at some point I'd get a chance to meet him in person. I didn't want to be overbearing or annoying or gushy about it -- he struck me as the kind of person who'd be deeply uncomfortable with that kind of attention. I just wanted a chance to walk up to him, shake his hand and say something goofy like, "Thank you, sir, ya done good."

Let's just say that didn't happen.

And now, I think I understand a little more what it must be like for my sister. Yes, there's a particular kind of knifelike pain that comes from having clear memories of the dead. But there's another kind of pain -- a dull crunch, like a heavy weight that comes out of the dark in slow motion to crack hard against your ribcage -- that comes from having no memories when you desperately want them. It's a different kind of pain. But that doesn't make it any less painful.

I'm so sorry, Shelly. I wish I could share what I have with you. I wish you could know your dad the way you want to. Because of what I remember, I know he'd bug you and worry about you and frequently annoy you, but he'd also be proud of you in so many ways. You're his daughter, and you carry inside you many things that are made from him. That's one way of being close to him, of getting to know him better -- to find the things in you that were also part of your dad. I think he'd appreciate that.

On human utility and individual worth

Unless you happen to follow the Australian news media, you may not have heard of the Baby Gammy controversy. Here's the digested version: an infertile Australian couple engages a Thai woman to be their surrogate mother. The surrogate becomes pregnant with fraternal twins, one of whom -- a boy later named Gammy -- has Down syndrome. (According to the surrogate, the Australian parents told her to selectively abort the boy, but she would not do so, believing that ending an innocent life in such a manner would be wrong. For their part, the parents claim they never directed the surrogate mother to abort the child.) When the twins are born, the Australian parents visit Thailand, but only to retrieve their daughter; they abandon their unwanted biological son with his surrogate mother, leaving her to sort out what to do next and how to pay for the boy's necessary medical care (like many children with Down syndrome, Gammy has numerous medical issues, including congenital heart defects, and his health is delicate). The couple, who have been practically in hiding since their actions were brought to light, defend their choice on Australian television by saying they "don't think any parent wants a [child] with a disability" and further complain that they expected to receive a partial refund of the surrogacy fee, presumably because one of the children produced was defective.

The Baby Gammy case represents one surprisingly pervasive school of thought about human beings.

Here's a different one.

A couple I know well recently gave birth to a sweet little daughter. They could tell right away that she had some physical abnormalities, but it wasn't until her blood work came back that they found out their little girl was born with an extremely rare chromosome disorder -- one so rare, in fact, that I will not mention it by name in order to retain the family's privacy. Individuals with this particular disorder have severe to profound mental retardation, do not learn to talk, rarely learn to walk, have hearing and vision problems, low muscle tone, seizures and heart problems. They have extremely fragile health and often do not live past childhood. Here is what the mother of this little girl has to say about her:

"We know God gave us this perfect little human to teach us many things. She is beautiful and when she looks into your eyes her sweet spirit peers into your soul, pouring her love into your heart. We are so blessed to have her! We may not have known anything was wrong with her until she was born but it would not have changed a thing to know it sooner. We love her and our lives will be blessed forever no matter how long she is with us .... [Our daughter's purpose] is to teach those she comes in contact with about unconditional love."

What is the key difference between these two stories?

While you're thinking on that, here's another controversial idea: do you think human euthanasia should be legal? After all, when beloved pets become too old or too ill, we often do the merciful thing and have them put to sleep; shouldn't we be equally merciful to the human beings in our care? To be clear, we're not just talking about infants with moderate to severe physical and/or mental disabilities. Consider people like Christopher Reeve, one of my favorite actors; after a riding accident he was paralyzed from the neck down, no longer even able to breathe unassisted, lingering on for years as a completely helpless quadriplegic. Would it have been better for the doctors to have granted him his original wish, just after he'd wakened from the accident, and let him go gentle into that good night? Or what about Terri Schiavo, the woman who entered a "persistent vegetative state" after an incident of cardiac arrest and subsequent coma? Was it morally correct for her parents to fight to keep her alive, to continue to feed her, to keep her husband Michael from moving on with his own life indefinitely -- or did the courts make the fitting and proper decision to withhold food and water from her until she passed away? What of the many very old people who linger on for months or years, blind, deaf, senile, incontinent, incapable of enjoying anything resembling "quality of life" but just as incapable of bringing their lives to an end? Would it not be better to keep the beauty of their lives from sliding into jangling discord by choosing to impose a simple coda?

If you think of it, the practice of euthanizing individuals with low quality of life issues could be much more widely applied. Our prisons are vastly overcrowded, and there are a whole lot of serial predators in jail who could make the world a better place simply by never waking up again. People in mental institutions who had no hope of improvement would no longer be tortured by living with severe mental disorders. We could do away with the homeless problem in a single night by going under bridges and overpasses and through tent cities, spreading gentle death in our wake. Illegal immigration would slow to a trickle if we were to find and euthanize all those who had entered our country illegally. I hope you can see where I'm going with this; legalized euthanasia is a rabbit hole that yawns open all the way to China, because once a culture makes it permissible to end lives that are in some way inconvenient or imperfect, how does that culture halt the progression toward euthanizing people with polydactyly, albinism, vitiligo, elliptocytosis, cleft palates, depression, diabetes, even the wrong color of eyes?

As I see it, the key difference between Baby Gammy's parents and the couple I know, or between those who are in favor of legalizing euthanasia and those who find the idea abhorrent, is a specific difference in the way they view human beings. One group primarily views other humans in terms of their utility, and the other values human beings as people with unique individual worth.

It's quite common to see the "human utility" school of thought in the Western world. You see it in social behavior, in the way people cocoon themselves in comfort in their homes and never get to know their neighbors, because they don't need anything from them. You see it in politics, when a first world nation merely watches a third world country go through the hell and devastation of war or plague, declining to intervene because doing so would be costly and that country has no resources it wants. You see it in medicine, where abortion as a form of birth control has become commonplace. You see it in business practices ("human resources," anyone?), in education, and in law. You definitely see it in Hollywood, where attractive and accomplished people are constantly used as though they were talent vending machines, and the unwritten motto seems to be "What have you done for me lately?"

You could even make the argument that Hollywood's view of human utility sometimes contributes to the death of its talent pool. In fact, I think I will.

Let's take a recent example. A well-known, well-loved actor and comedian, the recipient of multiple awards for entertainment excellence, enters a dark period of his life. His physical health has not been ideal for several years and he has financial obligations from surgeries and treatment, he has been working on film after film to make money, the new television show he headed -- the closest thing to a steady paycheck in acting -- was cancelled after a single season, he's been struggling to maintain his sobriety, and recently he's discovered that the source of his deepening depression is a brain disease from which he will never recover. And as he sits still and lets the depression whisper poisonously disordered thoughts and ideas into his ear, he begins to think as Hollywood people think, in terms of human utility. He thinks of his current and former wives, his children, and other family members who depend on him for their support. He feels the weight of all the people whom he employs -- publicists, lawyers, personal assistants, housekeepers, security details -- as well as those who are indirectly employed because of his performances -- other actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, foley artists, caterers, etc. He thinks of the specific talent he has honed, on which all this hinges -- a lightning-quick, flexible mind, highly observant and able to put together odd connections at a moment's notice -- and how his doctors have recently informed him that his mind and body are destined to slow, to tremble and break down, until eventually he reaches a point of senility. He thinks of how he will progress from a highly successful, contributing member of elite society to a patient barely able to walk, from a man who can provide for others to a man who will impose a burden on his family's finances as his health becomes worse and worse. In terms of his simple utility to others, he perceives he will become a net negative. And one particular evening, when he is alone with these thoughts, the depression whispers to him, "You know what you have to do, and you have to do it now, while you still can. It doesn't have to be a complex plan. Just do what you do best. Improvise."

Thus it is that a man who so obviously saw the individual worth of other people -- who brought humor and hope to sick children and quadriplegics and active-duty members of the military, who regularly gave away huge sums of money from his performances to help the poor, homeless and distressed -- was incapable, in the end, of seeing the singularly bright glow of his own individual worth. All he saw was that, in the eyes of the world, he would eventually become useless to other people. And rather than allowing the people who loved him to show him another viewpoint, to let him see how much he was valued, he took his own life.

What is individual worth? It is the recognition that every human life, regardless of its "quality" or its utility to others, is precious and irreplaceable. It is the understanding that we give our kindness and support to others, not because they can do something for us, but because we love and cherish them, because it is an honor and a privilege to serve another human being. It is echoed in the words of the traditional Christian marriage vow, that each spouse takes the other not just for the good times, but "for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." It is the knowledge that if the worth of every soul is great in the sight of God, how should it be any different in the sight of man?

As a Mormon, I believe that human beings -- all human beings -- are spirit children of God who once lived in His presence, and who therefore have within them the seeds of deity. Our lives here on earth are imperfect and messy, and our minds and bodies have various problems, but that is largely because we are being subjected to individual tests, tailored to our specific strengths and weaknesses and designed to help us fulfill our potential to become like God. This way of thinking about oneself, about other people, allows very little admittance for the concept of human utility, and no admittance for the concept of brooming people aside when they become a burden. Whether or not we see it, even the most wretched human life on this planet has infinite worth and glorious potential, and the only lasting tragedy is to see that potential wasted and destroyed.

In his book The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis famously wrote, "It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship .... You have never talked to a mere mortal." One wonders if the biological parents of Baby Gammy might perceive their discarded son a bit differently if they could see past his disability, past the inevitable imperfections that are part of being human, and grasp his individual worth -- if, even for a moment, they could catch a glimpse of the sort of being he is destined to become. But that level of perception of other people is hard to achieve when you're occupied with thoughts of ways to use them.

The mighty Geocaching Block Party of 2014

Well, having had a few days to recover, I have to say this was an eventful Block Party... though some of it not the kind of "eventful" I'd care to repeat.

First, the good stuff: we met some spiffy new people and completed the lab cache challenge for this year (I especially liked the one with the box that had multiple combination locks, all of which had to be successfully opened to reveal the passcode.)

Also good stuff: in addition to the merry party of Fen, Mitch and Mike, our friends Linda and son came to the Block Party this year, and by all accounts they had a blast!

Shown here: our doughty adventurer, undaunted by the ick factor, scrabbles about in slimy goop in order to find the next passcode.

Additional good stuff: I gots me some pretties.

The large Celtic-themed coin I purchased; the rest were given away as swag or as rewards for finishing challenges. (Yay, steampunk-related geotags for the win!)

You may notice a dearth of pictures of me or of Captain Midnight this year. There's a reason for that. I was preoccupied to the point that I took very few pictures, because...

Not-so-good stuff: I got sick.
Those of you who know me may already be aware that I am a Tough Swede and I can handle it! Well, Tough Swedes can take on the cold all day long; heat is a different story. It was hot and slightly humid in Seattle, I hadn't eaten breakfast or taken the time to put plenty of water into me beforehand, and I'm already at high risk to become easily overheated (yes, diabetes and family history of dehydration, I'm lookin' at you). About two hours into the day's festivities, I began to develop a pounding headache of Zeus-gives-birth-to-Athena proportions. Then I got flushed and dizzy, and suddenly stopped sweating -- and didn't start up again, even after I began belatedly guzzling water. After that came the nausea and, um, related emesis. Yup, heat stroke. At least it was a relatively mild case, but I haven't been quite right all this weekend.

It was the kind of fun that isn't. I don't think I'll choose to do that part again. (Next year, remind me to drink lots of water in advance so as to stave off further forays into dehydration-related ick.)

Oh, yeah, one more thing. Just because it seemed like a good idea at the time, I picked up another geocoin, gave it a name and a purpose and released it into the wild this weekend. The Marty Fromage Memorial Coin is my small, goofy tribute, a way of focusing on the positive nature of one man's life rather than on the particulars of his death. I hope it will go on to have many happy adventures around the world.

There's not much I want to say about this...

Remember when I bought the Daruma doll for good luck?

Remember that I said I'd reveal my goal when I colored in the other eye?

Yeah, I might as well tell you now: that goal fell apart yesterday.

I wanted to meet Robin Williams.

Love and condolences to the Williams family, close friends, business associates and all who had the good fortune to know Mr. Williams personally. The world just became a whole lot less fun.

I need to find a good place to burn this.

The Continuing Misadventures of Short Fat Woman!

It's a beautiful midwinter day -- crisp and cold, but also sunny and clear, with the kind of cloud-flecked blue skies we almost never see around Seattle this time of year.

And I had to go and ruin it by shopping for clothes. Ugh.

Clothes Shopping for Short Fat Women
(a cautionary tale)

I have never enjoyed clothes shopping. Even when I was young and skinny, it was a thankless task. But since the onset of puberty and some significant weight gain, it's grown to be a chore I detest with white-hot intensity.

Why? Well, mostly because with my body type -- short, fat and middle-aged -- it's nearly impossible for me to find inexpensive, well-fitting clothing off the rack. Emphasis on "rack." Finding clothing that fits everywhere is, shall we say, a special challenge when your cups runneth over and you have the kind of butt Sir Mix-a-lot would celebrate in rhyme.

For example, let's take button-up shirts, blouses and cardigans. AND STUFF THEM IN THE TRASH. If a top fits at the waist and hips, it gaps open at the chest like I'm transforming into She-Hulk. If I find a size big enough to fit my bustline, it hangs straight off my bust and turns the upper half of my body into an amorphous blob. And because I'm short in the arms and legs, long-sleeved tops are always, always too long-sleeved. I can cuff them or roll them up, but the resulting bulk doesn't usually compliment an already-shapeless, too-big top.

T-shirts should be simple. SHOULD BE, but they are not. Men's sizes fit in the bust, but nowhere else, making me look like I'm wearing a paper bag. Girly-cut shirts are nipped and tucked to follow my curves, but are usually not in stock in larger sizes unless you go to a specialty store like Lane Giant. Crew necks strangle me, and even conservatively-cut V-necks show embarrassing amounts of cleavage. Short sleeves are almost always cut too short, revealing the flabbiest parts of my arms, and long sleeves are cut too long, as mentioned earlier. Further, nobody -- NOBODY -- cuts their shirts to the proper torso length; they're all too short or they shrink after one wash, showcasing the least attractive part of my stomach. And tissue-weight Ts are the bane of my existence. Remember that Robin Williams joke about ballet? "Men wearing pants so tight you can tell what religion they are," I think it was? Yeah, that. Shirt fabric so thin that you don't have to speculate about my cup size; you can just read it right off my bra band. Not. Acceptable.

Dresses? It is to laugh. You can find beautiful, fantastically-cut dresses in complimentary fabrics if you're anything less than a size 16. If you're a size 18 or above, those dresses disappear, mysteriously replaced by muu-muus in puke-green double-knit polyester.

But all these annoyances pale before the exercise in futility that is shopping for jeans.

Yeah, I know, no woman likes to shop for jeans. There's a reason for that.

I am 5'4", have short legs, big hips, big butt and a fat stomach. Jeans that successfully fit over one area rarely look good anywhere else. Plus, even though the average Western woman is exactly my height, garment makers have created an existential dilemma when it comes to pants that fit correctly:

• 5'3" and below: Petite.
• 5'5" to 5'8": Average.
• 5'4": As far as garment manufacturers are concerned, YOU DO NOT EXIST.

I can either buy women's petite pants and look like I've survived a flood, or buy women's regular pants and resemble Charlie Chaplin. It's enough to make a girl load up and head for the nearest clock tower.

Dude. I feel your pain.

Oh, and mail-order/online shopping? Pffft. Yeah, there are more options online, but they come with a cost. Paying a premium to have clothing shipped to me only to discover that -- surprise! -- it doesn't fit properly, then paying even more to ship it back? Now I'm out shipping costs and I'm still naked. Pass. No matter how carefully I take my measurements and compare them to online size charts, mail-ordered clothing never fits. Lesson learned: if I can't try it on for free, I won't buy it.

The good news is that all these fit problems can be ameliorated... if you can find a competent tailor and pay him/her $20541083.69 to alter all your clothes.

I don't hate my body any more. Yeah, it's not perfect, but that can also be said of a multitude of things I enjoy. I just wish clothing manufacturers would spend a bit more time listening to frustrated women like me and adjusting their products to fit actual human bodies.

As I said, ruination of a perfectly good day. Next time I'm going geocaching instead.

Stupid hackers. Eat hot flaming death for breakfast.

Some of you might already know that I help maintain a fansite for Robin Williams. (Heavy emphasis on HELP -- it's wholly Linda's site; she coded it all and does the lion's share of the heavy lifting. I'm just the janitor, fixing minor spelling issues and so forth.) Anyway, don't go there now, because you won't find anything. At some point in the last 24 hours, the site got hacked. A person or persons unknown swept through the host server like a Japanese tsunami and destroyed everything -- even the backup files. Yes, we probably should have had off-site backup. Thank you for noticing that now.

Creation takes time.  Even the simplest scene finger-painted by a preschooler required time to come up with an idea, to find the paper and paints, to paint exuberantly and stick it to the wall.  And the more complex the act of creation, the more time it takes to complete.  But it only takes 30 seconds to start a fire that destroys every painting in the building. Destruction is the slacker's way of making a mark. Since he doesn't have the wit, the talent or the drive to work at making something useful or beautiful, his only contribution is to piss on everything.

You might not think of coding on a website as a creative act, but let me assure you, it requires serious activity from both sides of the brain. It took literally years for Linda to collect and display the information for that site -- news, interviews, screenshots, exhaustive information on movies and television appearances -- but it's all gone now. Because some unwashed little punk somewhere gets his kicks from destroying stuff.

Damn right I'm upset.

Fortunately Linda and I have some files backed up on individual computers, so we ought to be able to put the site back together (or at least most of it) when we have a space dedicated to recreating it. Meanwhile, I'ma go out and punch a wall for a while.

All hail Norton I!

Just recently I've been reading (again) about the life and times of Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, a genial loony who lordly roamed the streets of Victorian-era San Francisco. He was intelligent, well-educated and well-spoken, but life had disappointed and broken him in many ways, and at some point he took refuge from reality in the harmless but untenable belief that he was descended from the French Bourbon line of kings.

I have to think that these days, what people love most about the story of Emperor Norton is not the quirky personality of the man himself, but the character of the city that protected and humored him. Most cities let their crazy homeless characters fend for themselves. Not San Francisco. Joshua Norton sent imperial proclamations and missives to the local newspapers -- and the papers printed them. He wrote and issued promissory notes -- and people accepted them as legal tender or paid cash for them as San Francisco souvenirs. He visited local pubs and restaurants -- and the proprietors fed him for free, in exchange for the right to advertise "By Appointment to Norton I" in their windows. A box seat in the theater was regularly reserved for him on opening night. The Presidio gave him old uniforms to wear. When the police once arrested Norton for lunacy, there was such a public hue and cry that he was released and received a formal apology, and thereafter the city police saluted him as he passed.

(Norton I promissory note courtesy of Whitman.com)

Norton convinced a local printing operation to print his promissory notes free of charge. All the original notes were to be due and payable, with interest, in 1880. In a freakish coincidence, Joshua Norton dropped dead -- presumably of a heart attack or stroke -- in early January 1880, never having paid off a single note (although no one bought them with the expectation that he would). The extant promissory notes themselves have, however, become highly-sought-after collectors' items, and each one is now worth a sum that probably would have made the Emperor blush.

The city's collective behavior toward a character who was essentially a delusional homeless man may seem strange to anyone who doesn't know the nature of the Bay Area. But San Franciscans have a long tradition of recognizing -- nay, championing -- eccentricity and displaying a willingness to indulge the personal fantasies of individuals as though they were reality. This is unsurprising when you consider that San Francisco, as a whole, has always behaved as though it were a reality-optional zone. After all, this is a city founded practically on the back of a major faultline (Robin Williams calls it "God's Etch-a-Sketch"), a place where a drag nun called "Sister Boom Boom" ran for a seat on the city Board of Supervisors, where the often freakishly cold and foggy summers cannot dissuade people from blithely running naked through the streets for fun, where a ventriloquist's dummy can serve as a city policeman, where a professional baseball player proudly answers to the nickname "Freak," where both the Cacophony Society and Burning Man got their start, and the epicenter of many other acts of random weirdness in the American West. Considering how tolerant San Franciscans can be of personal oddities, their red-carpet treatment of Emperor Norton is hardly surprising. He might have been born somewhere else, but he was a San Franciscan by temperament and by choice, and they enthusiastically adopted him as one of their own. That makes me proud.

[On a related note: I wonder if anyone has written a science fiction story depicting Joshua Norton as a dimensional traveler -- say, someone who actually was Emperor of the United States in an alternate timeline, and who unwittingly stumbled into our reality by mistake? What would he do in order to get back? What kinds of adjustments would he have to make to living in another reality? And how could one tell the difference between a dimensional traveler stuck in the wrong version of reality and your garden-variety street loony with delusions of grandeur? Hmmm.]

My own van Gogh list

OK, as promised, here's my first crack at a van Gogh list. I've winnowed it down to 20 people, mostly to keep from trying your patience -- it could have been much longer. This list contains all manner of folk: teachers, writers, actors, artists, comedians, kindred spirits. Some of them you may recognize; others you probably won't. All are, to my way of thinking, amazing in some way -- and sometimes in several ways.

If you feel inclined, you are certainly encouraged to make your own van Gogh list -- but first, a few rules of engagement:

1) No family members. If your folks don't already know how awesome you think they are, quit being a dirtbag and go tell 'em so. (Right now, if necessary. I'll wait.)
2) No dead people. Do your best to make sure the people on your list are still kicking, at least at time of publication; the point of this exercise is to show appreciation for the living.
3) No deities, please. I'm religious myself and have no problems with worship, but that's what prayer is for. This list is for mere mortals.
4) No fictional characters. Even if Frodo Baggins does seem more real to you than your co-workers, he doesn't really care what you have to say about him. Sorry.

That's about all the caveats I can think of... so now, on to




Soozcat's van Gogh List

(in alphabetical order by surname because, hey, blessed rage for order, pale Ramón!)

Ray Bradbury
(photo credit: Alan Light, Creative Commons)

There are many reasons to idolize Ray Bradbury. Of course, there's his fiction -- he is principally a master of the short story, and his Martian tales, Elliott family stories, and idealized youth experiences bound together as Dandelion Wine are like delicious live coals in the brain, glowing with life and full of burning poetry. On a personal note, I'm indebted to Ray Bradbury for revealing that authors actually get paid to write; after this epiphany, which came around age 11, my fate was pretty much sealed. At the time of this writing Mr. Bradbury is coming up on 92 years, but I fully expect him to live forever, just as Mr. Electrico once promised.
ETA: Mr. Bradbury passed away on 5 June 2012, some 4 months after this list was composed.

Wesley B. Carter
(photo credit: Mark Snyder)

Wes is one of my longest-running friends. We met in high school, where we did a lot of walking and talking, hanging out, goofing off, stealing flowers from public places in the middle of the night, swapping books and wondering aloud about various mental mysteries. Wes is talented at nearly everything he sets his mind to doing, whether it's painting, drawing, costuming, ornamental horticulture, gourmet cooking or crochet. He has that mellifluous talent, rare among friends, of being able to pick up more or less where we left off; no matter how long it's been since we last spoke, within five minutes it seems like it's been no time at all. He has not forgotten the dying art of the handwritten letter. In addition to being thoughtful, he's also extremely loyal and forgiving of past injuries, including one that would have destroyed a lesser friendship. (Plus he is secretly Harry Potter.)

Tara Larsen Chang
(photo credit: Tara Larsen Chang)

First and foremost, Tara was a good friend and kindred spirit. Over time I discovered, through the many little handmade gifts and notes she tends to share so generously, that she was also a talented artist and illustrator. She is constantly seeking to improve her talents, has a gift for growing things, a knack for finding the most magical hidden nooks and crannies in a city or town, and (as can be observed in the photo above) shares my enthusiasm for all things steampunk.

Annie Dillard
(photo credit: Phyllis Rose)

If you don't think the essay format can match or beat fiction for intensity, read A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard neatly demonstrates that the power of a specific genre is subservient to an individual author's talent for storytelling. I admire her writing not just for its attention to detail, but for her ability to choose precisely the right detail for the story, and she proves that writing about everyday life observation can be mind-blowing.

Fen Eatough
(photo credit: Mitch Eatough)

I've known Fen longer than I've known my husband; it was, in fact, thanks to Fen's BBS that I met Captain Midnight in the first place. She's a talented writer, a voracious reader, fun-loving, thoughtful, generous of spirit, fond of pointing out the surreal in everyday life, unabashedly passionate about the things she loves, and one of my most loyal friends. My family considers her and her hubby to be extended family (Miss V regularly refers to Mitch as "my favorite uncle"), which almost knocks her off this list thanks to Rule #1.

David Lance Goines
(photo credit: David Lance Goines)

The legitimate successor to Alphonse Mucha, William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Japanese woodblock printers (not to mention the owner and maintainer of an epic 'stache), David Goines demolishes the notion that there is or should be a definable line between fine art and illustration; his work proves by example that good illustration IS art. If you haven't looked up his poster work yet, best get crackin'.

Joel Grey
(publicity photo; photographer unknown)

Mr. Grey is a tremendously charismatic actor, singer and dancer. Just recently I discovered he's also a skilled photographer. (Next I expect to find out that he speaks fluent Swahili, paints in oils and plays the clarinet. What can this man NOT do?) He has successfully pulled off a wide range of characterizations from charming to chilling -- sometimes both charming and chilling at once. In my opinion, tragically underutilized by Hollywood since his creepily unforgettable performance in Cabaret won him an Oscar.

Jeffrey R. Holland
(photo credit: lds.org)

You probably won't know who this man is unless you happen to be a Mormon, but he deserves wider renown for his thoughtful writing, subtle humor and well-spoken commentary on religious topics. When he appears during LDS General Conference or as a speaker in other meetings, I tend to cheer aloud; his particular thought processes and his felicitous method of expressing them are second to none. Plus he and his wife Patricia used to put on a great set of tag-team talks known as "The Pat and Jeff Show" back when he was president of BYU.

James Lileks
(photo credit: unknown)

In top form, Mr. Lileks is hi-frickin'-larious; he has a gift for zeroing in on the odd, the random and the inexplicable in 20th century American pop culture and merrily toasting it from orbit. His weekday blog, The Bleat (which he denigrates as "dashed-off tripe"), is filled with nuggets of pop-culture trivia that infomaniacs like me eat up with a spoon, and his writing runs the gamut from hysterical to remarkably touching. Why this man isn't nationally known, when humorists far less funny than he have achieved household recognition, is frankly a modern mystery.

Carrie Ormsby
(photo credit: Carrie Ormsby)

Carrie and I met in college, before she started dating her Mr. Wonderful. We quickly discovered we were kindred spirits. Carrie shares a love for good movies and good books, is a fantastic cook, has a beautiful singing voice, and has the generosity of spirit to share her gifts with others. In the past few years she has returned to school and is preparing to astound the world as a speech language pathologist. Like Fen, she also runs the ragged edge of being disqualified from the van Gogh list thanks to Rule #1, since Captain Midnight and I were deemed worthy to be adopted into the Ormsby family many years ago.

Gretel Parker
(photo credit: Andy Macauley)

This blog is titled "Confessions of a Laundry Faerie" because I needed a public blog to join the Society of Secret Fairies, a short-lived but wonderful experiment in mysterious gift-giving, back in 2006. One of my first SOSF parcel exchanges was with Gretel, an English artist living in the Cotswolds. In addition to her evocative, melancholy paintings of well-loved and forgotten toys, Gretel creates beautiful paper-cut cards and limited-edition prints, takes wonderful photos of her neck of the woods, and maintains a couple of great slice-of-life blogs. She's also become known for her handmade needle-felted toys, one of which appears in the photo above. Gretel kindly encouraged this blog when it was new. We got to chatting back and forth in email, and when Captain Midnight and I finally went to England we took a day trip to visit her and Andy. It was easily the highlight of our stay. I'm so pleased to have discovered her work, and I'm proud to call her a friend.

J.K. Rowling
(photo credit: Steven J. Hill, Creative Commons)

Do you really need me to explain why I think this woman is amazing? Have you been living in a cave since 1997?

Jenny Ruhl
(photo credit: Jenny Ruhl)

We don't know each other, but this woman has quite possibly saved my life.
Diabetes is our family curse. Complications from type 2 diabetes killed my maternal aunt at age 53, and have done serious damage to my mother's health. Last year the disease finally caught up to me. Days after I was diagnosed, I discovered Ms. Ruhl's website, Blood Sugar 101: What They Don't Tell You About Diabetes. Her analysis of numerous diabetic research studies, ability to point out the difference between studies with good and bad methodology, and patient work accreting the experiences of hundreds of diabetics online have helped many people stay as healthy as possible with a chronic, incurable disease. (After reading the site, and on the advice of my doctor, I took a diabetic nutrition class; when the nurse handed out bad information about "healthy" blood sugar numbers, I immediately called her on it. To her credit, she admitted I was correct.) Thanks wholly to Ms. Ruhl's advice about eating to one's blood monitor, I've kept my A1Cs in non-diabetic ranges since shortly after I was diagnosed. If you are diabetic, go ye and do likewise.

Michael Rutter
(photo credit: Michael Rutter)

I tend to quote randomly from poems (including Wallace Stevens' "The Idea of Order at Key West") thanks to Mr. Rutter, the creative writing teacher at Provo High School -- though his class really should have been titled Poetry Appreciation. He had a reputation among the students for being crazily intense, so that on my first day of class I was a little cowed by him -- but that passed. Through example he fostered a love for T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens, a greater appreciation for Emily Dickinson, and he thoroughly cemented in our heads the notion that you must divorce your writing from your ego if you ever want to rise above mediocrity as a writer. And during a time when I needed encouragement in most areas of life, he told me he believed I had a future career in writing. Thanks, Rutter.

Jon Schmidt
(photo credit: The Piano Guys)

As I've written before, there are many piano performers -- but this man is the only one I know of who truly plays the piano. I can't say that he makes it look easy; rather, his obvious enthusiasm makes the effort required to play at this level look worth it. (The image above is a still taken from a video where he's in the middle of performing a piece; that is the face of a man doing what he was born to do.) He and his cello-playing cohort Steven Sharp Nelson, along with the other members of The Piano Guys, are doing some amazing things on YouTube these days -- not least among which is proving the concept that an independent musician can make a decent living online without signing away distribution rights to his own work. You should go there. You should go there NOW.

Ms. Shore
(photo credit: school district photographer)

I wish I could give you more information about Ms. Shore, second grade teacher at El Monte Elementary in Concord, California circa 1976. She was the right teacher at the right time, probably for many of her students, but especially for me. I was a precocious, awkward six-year-old who had learned to read before I entered kindergarten and my teachers didn't really know what to do with me; during reading time, they usually punted me to the library, where I discovered plenty of great books but wasn't learning the social skills I so desperately needed. Ms. Shore, by contrast, took advantage of my early-reader status by getting me to peer-tutor other kids, excusing me from class to read aloud to the kindergartners ("...but Drummer Hoff fired it off!"), introducing me to the Chronicles of Narnia and encouraging me to write. I remember few specifics of the things I was taught in second grade, but I will always remember and appreciate the teacher who cared about me as a person and wanted me to succeed. Sadly, she's the only person on this list I haven't been able to find online; I imagine her surname has probably changed since the Bicentennial.

Linda Stuurman
(photo credit: unknown tourists)

You know Linda pretty much had to be on the van Gogh list, as she is Dutch by birth. (And as we know, you ain't much if you ain't Dutch.) I've only known Linda a few years, but in that time I've been continually impressed by her application of talent, her zest for challenges and her incredible drive to succeed. Linda can do hard things, and do them well. She has managed to keep more balls in the air than I would have thought possible, running a major fansite, holding down a job and earning a second bachelor's degree on a highly compressed schedule all at once. She's also an ardent cyclist who will some day move to San Francisco to ride her bike all up and down its hills. I'm convinced she can do pretty much anything she sets her mind to doing.

Mack Wilberg
(photo credit: Pete Wright, Creative Commons)

If you've heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform any time in the last few years, you've witnessed the handiwork of Mack Wilberg. His original compositions, inspiring arrangements of familiar hymns and songs, and powerful direction make the Choir what it is today. I've been a fan of his work since the late 1980s, when I used to sit way in the back of the class and listen to the BYU Men's Chorus practice, and he just keeps getting better. Plus, he seems to be on a one-man crusade to ensure that "Come, Thou Fount of Ev'ry Blessing" makes it back into the LDS Hymnal, based on his joyous arrangement (and the Choir's frequent performance) of this hymn.

Robin Williams
(publicity photo; photographer unknown)

Yeah, I've written about him before. If you think he only does wacky comedy, go see One Hour Photo. You will be thoroughly creeped out, yet unable to look away (and left wondering why this movie didn't get at least an Oscar nomination).
ETA: Robin Williams passed away August 11, 2014.

James L. Wright, Jr.
(photo credit: Marie Case Wright)

Jim is a man of many abilities, not the least of which is something I could never do in a million years: stand-up comedy. He's successfully done family-friendly routines before a clean and sober crowd -- one of the hardest groups to please in comedy -- and made them laugh. If anything he's even funnier in person, with a wit that tends to manifest unexpectedly and send everyone into paroxysms of involuntary beverage snorting. His appreciation for Korean cuisine made me curious to try the food he once described as "not user friendly" (but soooooo gooooood, omnomnom). He's also a talented author, and I wish he had more time and inclination to write short stories; the reading public is missing out. And, of course, he's a good friend.

[IMAGE COPYRIGHT NOTE: Before posting this list, I made a good faith effort to obtain permission to use all photos strictly for illustrative purposes, or have used Creative Commons-licensed images; if you would like to create and illustrate your own van Gogh list, please do the right thing and get appropriate permission to use any copyrighted images. Also, I have no desire to violate anyone else's copyright -- so if I've inadvertently used your copyrighted photo above and you would like to be credited for it, or if you'd prefer to have it removed, please let me know.]

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo: my review

BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO
by Rajiv Joseph
Directed by Moisés Kaufman
Playing through July 3, 2011 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre
Rating: * * * (out of 5)

"You'd think that being killed would be the last bad thing to happen," grouses the ghost of a Bengal tiger, recently shot to death by a U.S. Marine. But the tiger (Robin Williams), an unabashed atheist, quickly discovers that death is not at all "the last bad thing," at least not in wartime Baghdad. Finding himself dead and yet still prowling the streets of the ruined city, he is unsettled by his continuing existence; death frees him from captivity, yet he is still trapped in an unexpected afterlife. In Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, the eponymous big cat (wisely, not played in tiger costume) serves as a kind of feline Virgil to the audience, whom he addresses directly, discussing his observations and revelations in the afterlife as well as providing the thread that connects the disparate stories of Baghdad's denizens, both the living and the dead.

Playwright Rajiv Joseph based the story of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo on a 2003 Reuters news headline, in which a U.S. soldier guarding a tiger at the war-ravaged Baghdad Zoo made the foolish mistake of trying to feed the creature through the bars, and predictably got his hand mauled. This journalistic connection somehow seems appropriate, as journalists and playwrights alike have long nurtured certain assumptions about the Iraq war and America's role in it. They tend to shoehorn the average American serviceman in Iraq into one of two unfortunate stock-character templates: the stupid grunt or the greedy grunt. This play hews to conventional wisdom in portraying its two Marines: Kev (Brad Fleischer), a trigger-happy rube with a room-temperature IQ, and Tom (Glenn Davis), a smart but avaricious bounty hunter whose seething anger is barely contained. Joseph doesn't do much with these stock characters at first, allowing them to fall into the well-worn ruts such characters seem to inhabit. The low-wattage Kev even struggles to convey the shades of meaning in the slang terms "bitch" and "pussy" to a curious Musa (Arian Moayed), the unit's Iraqi translator.

Musa is an unhappy man pinioned between two incompatible cultures. His fellow Iraqis see him as a traitor because he works for the Americans, and the Marines repeatedly call him a terrorist when he does things they don't understand. Before the war, Musa was a gardener who created an exquisite topiary garden for the Hussein family, and he continues to be haunted by horrific events from his past. Musa thus responds in a markedly peculiar fashion when one of the Marines shows him a gold gun looted from the presidential palace. There are three very different responses to this weapon, based on the experiences of each character. All Kev sees is a "sweet-ass" firearm. Tom, on the other hand (pun intended), believes he deserves to keep the gun since he was disabled by the tiger's mauling -- conveniently ignoring his own culpability in the event -- and money from the sale of the gun will guarantee he's set for life back in America. Musa, however, responds to the gun with dread, since he alone knows the history of this weapon and its owner. The gold gun -- clearly meant to be a symbol of modern-day Iraq: beautiful, deadly, highly valuable, with a long history of which Americans are largely ignorant -- is the former (if not current) property of Saddam Hussein's son Uday (Hrach Titizian).

The past is constantly present in Joseph's version of Iraq. Far from being insubstantial shades of the departed, the ghosts of this story do not fade away, but display as much evidence of life as the living characters -- if not more so, since they now have little to lose. They walk the streets, follow (and sometimes physically threaten) the living, have epiphanies, pray, hunt, eat, bleed, smoke. ("Even a dead man loves a Cuban," claims the voluble Uday.) In contrast, Musa, though portrayed as one of the living, might as well be one of the dead; he speaks freely with ghosts, allows them to play him like a puppet, and makes the same mistakes over and over again, forever serving "the tyrants" who rule his nation despite his heartfelt conviction that he has the soul of an artist. His memories of his little sister Hadia (Sheila Vand) and the guilt he carries with regard to her gruesome death are slowly consuming him from within until at last he is little more than a shell, to be filled with the vengeful motivations of other ghosts.

A warning to sensitive theatergoers: if you haven't already gotten the memo, war ain't pretty. There are realistic simulations of blood and gore, of characters being shot, of characters going insane, and casually grisly descriptions of a dead child with half her head missing. The ghost of Uday Hussein carries around his brother Qusay's severed head in a bag, and talks to it. There is a simulated hand-job, with the john's back to the audience, and a reference to a rape and murder. The Marines consistently speak in what author Tom Wolfe calls "fuck patois" -- the richness of the English language dwindling away, in their mouths, to a desolation of limited vocabulary laced with strings of vulgarity -- and the tiger is habitually, casually profane. But there are also moments of unexpected beauty, as when the devastated city is filled with the sound of calls to prayer, or when Musa recalls talking tenderly with Hadia.

One of the most profound ideas put forth in the play is that knowledge, in and of itself, does not grant wisdom. The dead of Baghdad are transformed as the knowledge of the universe begins to flow into them; the tiger begins to have disturbing insights and revelations, and poor Kev goes from having a leak in the think-tank to being "a brainiac in the afterlife." But this knowledge comes to them bit by bit, in fragmented pieces; it is still up to each individual to work patiently toward synthesizing these pieces into a cohesive whole, like the slow completion of a million-piece jigsaw puzzle. The process is, like Iraq itself, complicated. Like the original definition of the word algebra, it calls for a reuniting of fragmented parts. Some characters simply do not have the patience to figure it all out, repeatedly asking God to explain it all, or turning their backs on Him altogether when He fails to appear. "Calling out to God in this mess!" scoffs the tiger, not understanding that times of extremity tend to be exactly when human beings try calling on their Maker for help making sense of it all.

Perhaps because they are busy demanding answers from a God who never seems to respond, the characters usually fail to show each other basic human kindness; subsequently, many of the characters fail to garner sympathy from the audience. For example, at one point Tom visits the mentally distraught Kev in the hospital, but he demonstrates little patience for his suffering comrade; he has only come in search of the missing golden gun that Kev used to shoot the tiger. Kev, under surveillance because he is constantly haunted by the shade of the tiger, regards Tom as his best friend, to the extent that he wrote Tom a letter -- for the barely-literate Kev, this must have been a major undertaking -- but it means nothing to Tom, who would just as well forget the incident that caused him to lose his right hand. Later Tom seeks a hand-job from an Iraqi teenager -- a girl who strongly reminds Musa of his dead sister -- and compels a visibly flustered Musa to explain to her exactly what Tom wants her to do to him. True compassion arrives only very late in the story, when an old Iraqi leper woman (Necar Zadegan) shows kindness and hospitality to a stranger because she possesses a deep, lifelong understanding of the nature of suffering. Indeed, if anyone has good reason to be bitter, she does -- but her experiences have led her to wisdom and given her a genuine concern for others. The scene is like an oasis of cold, sweet water after several hours in a desert of casual cruelty.

Bengal Tiger has its problems. Effective play writing, at least in this writer's opinion, isn't that far removed from poetry composition; in both cases, the goal is to create maximum punch through precise word use, deliberately leaving some blanks for the audience to fill in. But Bengal Tiger, at least in its current incarnation, is plagued by excessive wordiness. The entire ensemble cast does its best with the material it has been given, but one senses the script could benefit from undergoing one more draft to cut any remaining fat from the character monologues; even the title seems to need sharpening up. Joseph, still a young playwright, seems to feel compelled to tell everything he knows through his characters, rather than trusting these talented actors to show only what is needful and let the audience discover the rest. This flaw is especially noticeable in the character of Uday, who could be truly horrifying if he would only shut up once in a while.

Uday's flaws, in fact, mirror a problem that is endemic to the structure of the play. He is a monster specifically because he lacks the thing that makes us human; he is well-educated and intelligent, he has strong and brutal appetites, but he has no heart -- no compassion or empathy to mitigate his worst impulses or harness his intellect. He is far worse than the tiger, who only kills for food -- "It wasn't cruel. It was lunch," the tiger says matter-of-factly about attacking a human -- whereas Uday kills for sport. Bengal Tiger's problem is similar: it is wordy and it is bloody, but it often lacks the heart that would give these elements greater meaning.

The play ends on an unresolved note; there is no satisfying coda. Perhaps this is a deliberate choice on Joseph's part, as the Iraq war is likewise unresolved. But art is not merely a cold reflection of life; the artist must also impose meaning and context. Otherwise, like the fragmented knowledge of the ghosts of Baghdad, the tale remains a striking but ultimately empty collection of broken pieces, conveying no true wisdom to its audience.

[Previously posted in the forum of the Robin Williams Fansite]

Start spreading the news...

So the first four days I was back east with my sister, I spent in New York City goofing off. Quick trip highlights: Lincoln Center, the MoMA, shopping around Canal Street, meeting people in person that I've only known online, watching a Broadway-bound musical in previews, visiting the Statue of Liberty, and taking three different subway trains across town to find a place where I could watch General Conference. Whew.

Oh yeah, and also a rare film and a live performance both featuring Robin Williams on stage, on which I shall have more to say presently.

In addition to the MoMA, my sister and I went to visit the American Folk Art Museum, which is right next door. For a small space it has a lot to exhibit.

I'm kind of a geek for patchwork, so I gravitated toward the quilt displays -- everything from a traditional album quilt to Gees Bend-style primitive quilts to modern free-form quilt pieces.

On April 1, I had one of the signature peculiar experiences of the Internet age: meeting in person a group of people I've known only from online contact. First up was Linda, who runs the Robin Williams Fansite. I'm writing an article on the history of producing Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the USA, and it was research time, so we met at Lincoln Center to watch a rare video of Robin Williams and Steve Martin in a 1988 production of Godot. (It was well worth seeing, even with the last part of the first act apparently gone missing. It's a shame it's never been commercially released.) I never quite know what to say when I meet people for the first time, but Linda is very easy to get along with -- and it also certainly doesn't hurt that we have a similar sense of humor. So that went well. (Yay!)

Killed time shopping for most of the afternoon, until the time rolled around to meet the others from the fansite who would be going to see Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo that evening. We all repaired to an Irish pub for dinner, introduced ourselves, sat around yakking convivially and occasionally posing for photos. (Meh. Photos.)

When the time came we ambled back toward the Richard Rodgers Theatre, plunked ourselves down in various seats and watched the show. I think I'll save a full discussion of Bengal Tiger for another post, but suffice to say it was a vivid and thought-provoking if not entirely perfect play.

After the show Linda slipped backstage for a bit to talk to Mr. Williams, and I went out front to wait for everyone else to re-congregate. Hordes of people were clustered around the stage door, all waiting to get a glimpse of Big Famous Guy, so I stood back and waited. It was pretty easy to tell when Robin Williams emerged, even though I was too short to see what was going on, because the whole crowd erupted in noise, cameras came out and so forth.

I will freely admit that I don't understand the cult of celebrity. Yes, I am a member of a fansite, but I really don't see what people get out of the experience of biting and clawing their way to the front of the pack just so they can get someone's autograph. He's just a guy, people. Talented, certainly, but one assumes he puts his pants on one leg at a time. You couldn't prove it by that crowd, though. So I just stood back laughing at the mob antics until Mr. Williams had left the scene, and the crowd more or less instantly dispersed. Frankly, I felt sorry for the rest of the cast members who had all done excellent work, and who at most had half a dozen people come up to them and congratulate them.

Anyway, when Linda and the others arrived, we walked down to a 24-hour food court, mainly so we could sit and talk about the show. The other ladies were patient as I ran my mouth for something on the order of half an hour. (It's an unfortunate habit born of 1) nervousness and 2) the constitutional inability to keep an opinion to myself, I guess.) After a while we parted ways at Times Square and I rode the subway back to Julie's place.

Early the next morning, at the crack of dark, I got up and stumbled around blearily in the gloaming. Managed to shower and dress in that order (fortunately), then took the subway down to Battery Park, where I met up with Linda and Colleen to take the ferry out to Liberty Island. There was a considerable line and it took longer than we'd thought to get onto the boat...

...but as always, it was worth it. Call me a huge cornball, but I love this lady. She never ceases to inspire me. One of these days I'll have to finagle some tickets to go up to the crown.

We did not stop at Ellis Island this time, though I was delighted to discover that Colleen also had an ancestor who immigrated to the U.S. and was processed through Ellis. It's a surprisingly common aspect of American life -- having at least one relative who came through Ellis Island.

Back at Battery Park I had to bid the ladies adieu, so there were hugs all 'round and I set off to find my sister. We spent entirely too much time shopping for pants for me (cue Mission: Impossible theme song), had dinner, and I then dragged Julie to a preview performance of Catch Me If You Can, which probably will have opened on Broadway by the time you read this.

I'd seen the workshop version of Catch Me in Seattle in 2009 and was curious to see how the show had changed since then, and I have to say that with very few exceptions, the changes they made were for the better. They jettisoned the worst songs and replaced most of them with more upbeat numbers, restructured some scenes, switched around some lyrics, and did a better job of streamlining the show all the way through -- although, thanks to some changes in the libretto, the big show-stopping 11 o'clock number is now almost pointless. For the record, I really enjoyed it, though Julie did not.

Sunday was the LDS General Conference broadcast, and I wasn't entirely sure whether the local ward building would be broadcasting it, so I went looking for the stake center in the Upper East Side instead. Three subway trains and a few blocks walked on brand new high heels (ow) later, I was successful in my quest. It was awesome... well worth seeking out. I returned late that evening, having neglected to eat the whole day, and evilly stole a few homemade tacos from Julie's roommate Darcie (nom. Thanks, Darcie!). Then showered and fell into bed.

Next up: road trip!

Getting through the jungle

When I was about eight years old, I caught my mother, her sisters and my grandmother talking and laughing over some nutty thing that my great-grandmother had done a few days earlier. Great-Grandma was in her eighties then, and was slowly beginning to lose the edge off her wits. Sometimes she'd walk into church limping, as she'd absently slipped her feet into two completely different shoes (one black flat, one brown heel); sometimes she'd accidentally wash the walls of her apartment with sugar solution instead of salt water, and later come home to a kitchen crawling with ants.

Everyone was laughing uproariously, but I was incensed. "Why are you making fun of Grandma?" I demanded. "She's an old lady and she can't remember stuff any more! You shouldn't say mean things about her!"

My mother looked at me then, and there was a softness to her eyes. "Suzie," she said gently, "sometimes we laugh to keep from crying."

It was the first time I'd ever heard that expression, and I didn't understand it. To my eight-year-old mind, things were either funny or serious. I didn't yet see any connection between laughter and tears, let alone just how close that connection could be; that lightbulb would take a decade or two to snap on.

One of the other things I remember about the year I was eight was watching a new show on TV called "Mork and Mindy." It wasn't like anything else on television at the time. Most sitcoms of the '70s had a certain plodding predictability; even as an eight-year-old I could usually guess the next punchline before it left a character's mouth. But I never knew what was going to come out of Mork's mouth next; the only thing I could correctly predict was that whatever he said was going to set me giggling.

Thirty-two years later, the same guy still does a good job of making me giggle. But in the interim I've come to realize that, as funny as he can be, I don't appreciate Robin Williams chiefly for his comedic talents. I've grown to appreciate the man's range as an actor, and to relish the particular little moments in his films that sum up a character simply and beautifully: Sy the photo guy, traumatized and weeping in a back room as he realizes his obsession with his dream family is coming apart; Teddy Roosevelt on horseback, looking down at a security guard and admitting, "I'm made of wax, Larry. What are you made of?"; the disembodied spirit of Chris Nielsen, desperately whispering into his soulmate's ear, "This is Chris--I still exist--"; Peter Banning joyously telling his son, "I finally found my happy thought... do you know what it was? It was you"; homeless and mentally off-center Parry pouring out his heart to the woman he has so long worshipped from afar; Vladimir Ivanoff, at first dazed, then progressively coming unglued at America's decadent abundance of "Coffee--coffee--coffee--coffee--COFFEE!"; Andrew Martin gently checkmating Portia, his whole face glowing with unconcealed love for her; Sean Maguire deliberately keeping his voice even and soft as he matter-of-factly discusses life with an abusive, drunken father; even the Genie telling Aladdin, "No matter what anybody says, you'll always be a prince to me." And of course, Adrian Cronauer, smiling and waving at the GIs who are all about to be ground up into hamburger in a gory battle, his eyes a secret well of pain.

Somewhere along the way, watching these and other performances by Mr. Williams, I began to understand what my mother had been trying to tell me. Humor and sorrow are the opposite sides of the same coin. Life is short, sometimes mind-bogglingly so, and it hands everyone a slice of nasty; even in the best circumstances it's difficult to make your way through the jungle, and if you can't find the laugh in some of life's absurdities, you'll spend too much of your short time on earth in unabated misery. But if you can't find the laugh by yourself, you can always look to others who can provide you with the lifeline you need. Some actors and comedians seem to know instinctively the way through the thickets and briars of daily life into a clearing where the light has a chance to shine in. During the two hours of an evening's entertainment, you get the chance to rest, maybe to set down your problems long enough to be able to see them in another light, and if you're lucky you'll realize: it may not be all right now, but it's going to be all right eventually. There's both a catharsis and a strength to be derived from that realization -- that though life often makes us shed tears of bitterness and sorrow, it also sometimes surprises us with a gift of tears shed with laughter and joy.

Anyway, since today is Robin Williams' 59th birthday, I figured it would be as good a time as any to say thank you. He's been a good guide through the jungle.