stumbling virtue

Reject

 

Liar. Liar. Liar.

And now, what has made me so miserable this week (don't get confused now, this is a different miserable from that miserable)? Well, it's been two years since I lost my beautiful dog Marigold, and I finally decided it was time to get another one. After all, many dogs need homes, and I can give a dog a nice home.

So I started looking at adoption sites and found one that looked just right for me. Moreover, I seemed to be just right for him--he'd been dropped off at the city shelter with a broken leg and broken jaw and had been through a lot. The rescue group had taken care of him medically, and although his leg is healed, he still hops around on three legs, but that's fine with me. Since he loves people and thrives on a lot of attention, the rescue group wanted to place him with someone who was able to be around him a lot. Enter me, who works at home and happens to enjoy giving dogs a lot of attention (let's be honest, it's not like I have anything or anyone else in my life). They arranged for me to visit the dog in his foster home and it was love at first sight. Everything seemed to be working out fine, until the rescue group started reviewing my application.

One Hundred Pages

 

Class picture.

I often worry that I am getting stupider as I get older. When I was a kid, I used to be able to sit down and read through a two or three hundred page book in an afternoon. Now, though, I often find myself struggling to make it through twenty or thirty pages as my mind wanders off to a million places. You could argue that I read more complicated books now and I have more things on my mind. You could say that. Or you could say that I'm not very clever.

Or you could say that sometimes a book is just not that interesting. Well, to me at least.

Once More Unto the Breach

 

Let's go to Agincourt!

I just finished doing an edit of "Henry V" for a September production. I cut it realllly far down; we'll probably end up adding things back in. I mostly cut things to highlight the theme "being king is hard." I read a lot of criticism of the play that focused on the idea that Henry isn't a great character--he just triumphs over and over. So I trimmed a lot to highlight the moments when he has to do unpleasant things, as in execute friends, for both major and minor offenses, and when he is shown in his own words or those of others to be a rather lonely figure. I also (and this may not go over well with others) cut a lot of the comic bits, mostly because they slowed things down and, to be honest, I don't think this is Shakespeare's best comic work. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. I can't wait to see which part I get. Probably Messenger #4.

Meanwhile, the show that died in May is being revived for the end of July, in a new posh theater. Things are looking good for that, so far. We actually have a stage manager, crew, and people who are doing marketing. Woo hoo. Professional and fancy, all of a sudden.

Obnoxious and Disliked

 

1776: They sing! They dance! They debate the merits of independence from England!

There probably is nothing worse than being stuck anywhere near me when the movie of the musical "1776" is on TV, because I sing every word. Every. Single. Word. Here are some things l love about the movie:

• Made in 1972, it's edited in trendy late '60s/early '70s style, with weirdly timed quick cuts and inexplicable ping-ponging close ups. It's looks like it was edited by an earnest teenager who was going for a cross between French New Wave and "The Graduate."
• Even though the costumes and wigs are supposed to be 18th century, they definitely smack of "1770s as reimagined by 1970s." Sometimes it looks like the costume designer studied Paul Revere and the Raiders' onstage getups more than authentic 18th century pieces. It's great.
• You can learn how to make saltpetre if you pay careful attention to the lyrics.
• Benjamin Franklin is played by Howard Da Silva, an actor who was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s.
• The punchline to one joke is, "There must be some mistake. I have an aunt who lives in New Brunswick!"
• Although it compresses the timeline of events and combines some characters, the script does contain many quotes taken from actual letters and primary source accounts, including this favorite of mine from John Adams:
  "Franklin did this, and Franklin did that, and Franklin did some other damn thing. Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington - fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them, Franklin, Washington and the horse, conducted the entire revolution all by themselves." 

Oh, John. Stop whining and sing.  

Star-Crossed

 

Ellen Terry, the child-bride and muse of G.F. Watts.

It is an unfortunate truth that good people who live circumspect, decent lives, where they make correct choices, and go on comfortably while not doing injury to others, make dull subjects for biographies. But the opposite number, who do wild things, have tempestuous relationships, and make mistakes--while they certainly provide a writer with much more material, they can also become, during the length of a book, well, annoying.

And annoyed I became while reading Michael Holroyd's A Strange Eventful History. This is primarily a joint-biography of the Victorian actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, but it also covers the lives of their many children and associates. Almost everyone involved lives quite a long time (particularly those from the Terry side), which means there is plenty of opportunity to feel exasperated by these people.

I Should Worry

 

Charlie Chaplin and friends in "Sunnyside" (1919).

I don't read fiction much anymore. My reasons for this are embarrassing and somewhat pathetic, but I'll admit them anyway. First, I write my own fiction and I have such a deep fear of plagiarism, that I'm worried that something I read will sink into my spongey brain, I'll put it into what I'm writing and then next thing you know, I'm sued for plagiarism and mortified for life. I've never had this happen to me, but I guess the plagiarism scandals of the past few years have become my equivalent of the tales that keep you up in the middle of the night, buried under the blankets. Ghosteys, monsters, Kaiser Soze, plagiarism lawsuits. This is what terrifies me. The other reason is that I worry that reading successful, accomplished authors--mostly contemporary ones--will discourage me so much I'll just give up. You could certainly argue that reading great fiction will make me a better writer, but I read a lot up until recently and still read the occasional author from the 19th century literary canon. And it's not like you can't find great prose in nonfiction. So instead I shrink away from those who I know have outpaced me. Yes, this does show that I am sadly insecure. Yes, I should be embarrassed. But it's the truth nonetheless.

A few years ago, though, I let my guard down. I love reading about magicians, especially in the 19th and early 20th century (this is all the fault of Jim Steinmeyer's history Hiding the Elephant), so when I saw the novel Carter Beats the Devil, a fictionalized account of a real (though somewhat obscure) magician in the 1900s, I had to give it a try. Well, it turned out to be one of those books that made me miss my train stop, which is pretty high praise indeed. I also developed an enormous crush on the book's main character (note to the world: if you are going to fall in love with someone in a book, make sure it is a fictional person; doing this with a real person can only lead to humiliation and heartbreak). I loved the book, and recommended it to a number of people who also fell for it.

As I've noted before, I'm an incredibly loyal reader. If I like one book by an author, I'll probably read everything else he or she writes. So I was, then, incredibly excited when someone mentioned to me that the author of Carter, Glen David Gold, had a new book coming out (apparently I wasn't the only one waiting--there were 27 people on the NYPL's reservation list before the book was even published). When my copy of Sunnyside became available, I rushed up to the library, took it home and read it as fast as possible. And now, here I am.

Stupid Girl

I am crushed again, so badly I can't even speak (of course I can't speak, that would interfere with me crying). I keep thinking that someday, something has to go right, but then I remember that there is no reason to believe that. I would explain but I am too upset. Really, there is no point in this post. I probably will delete it later.

I turned to Cute Overload for help and came up with this.

Cute indeed, but I still can't stop crying and just feel like I should quit everything.

Marriage Go Round

 

 

Hogarth's Marriage a la Mode prints show a young couple who was happy...with others.

I've never been married, but I suspect that there's a moment early in every marriage where one or both parties suddenly get a cold, dreadful, "I've made a mistake" feeling. In some cases, that feeling evaporates, as you realize you can get used the annoying quirk of personality or tick that prompted that thought, decide the revelation about the past doesn't matter that much, or understand there is more good than bad. In other cases, you're right, and it's already the beginning of the end. People make mistakes, and as judged by divorce statistics, marriage mistakes are unfortunately common.

It wasn't really that long ago, though, that divorce was next to impossible, and if you made a mistake, you were trapped.

Oh my gosh, I am trying to sound all serious and like I have important historical statements to make about marriage, women's rights, and divorce, when there really is no one who has less of a right to discourse on those topics. So let me start over.

Wendy Moore's Wedlock, tells the story of what was if not the world's worst marriage and divorce, then the gold standard for all others before and since.

Chilled

Finally, after six weeks of phone calls, broken promises, lies, threats, complaints to the department of housing, and many room temperature drinks, we have a new refrigerator.

Now let's see what breaks next in our hovel.

The old fridge on a happier day, when it was stuffed full of wedding cake layers waiting to be frosted and assembled.

 

 

 

 

Cultivate Your Own Garden

 

Kalmia seeds were included in some of the boxes John Bartram shipped to England from America.

The only place in my apartment that gets any light is the firescape, and that's just for an hour or two a day. I asked my dad if he could think of any plants that I could grow out there, something that wouldn't require much sun. He suggested moss. This wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but perhaps it's better than nothing, because I don't know how else to satisfy my wistful craving for a little garden of some sort.

I'm not the only one who feels that way, of course. Gardening is one of the most popular activities in the world--especially in England. In the introduction to her book The Brother Gardeners, Andrea Wulf describes her astonishment at the English obsession with their gardens that she found when she moved to London after living in Germany. The poor, the rich, the fashionable, the stolid, all seemed to spend hours discussing their gardens, whether they had a full blown estate filled with multitudes of plants, or a tiny patch of flowers outside a city flat. After falling for her own garden, she began to research the history of the English love of gardens, resulting in this neat little book.

Abandonment Issues

Has it really been two weeks since I wrote something here? My, time flies when you're juggling visiting relatives and a lot of work. But like a bad penny, I have turned up again. To, you know, do that thing that makes pennies bad...whatever that is.

As noted, relatives, namely my sister and nephew have been visiting. The new dog came, too. He quite enjoyed his flight, though he didn't like the airports much. I can sympathize.

  

Dougie thinks things are looking up. Or at least he is. He is blurry because he does not want to pose, he wants to be picked up.

And meanwhile, our broken fridge has not yet been replaced. Our landlord keeps saying, "It will be delivered today" and then it isn't. Threats haven't made much of an impression. That is because the company is too lazy and stupid to understand such things. Ignorance is bliss, indeed. Meanwhile, I have grown accustomed to lukewarm everything.

There is no way to put a positive spin on this. I live in semi-squalor. This is what happens when you're rent-stabilized. Your landlord lets everything rot around you in the hope that you will move. But I love my neighborhood and hate my landlord too much to give in.