Catching Fire

Suzanne Collins has done it again. I didn’t think I could possibly like the second book in her trilogy as much as I liked The Hunger Games, but from the first page of Catching Fire, I was immediately transported into the world of Katniss, Gale, Peeta, and all the other entrancing characters from the first book. If you’ve put off reading the series because it’s categorized as “young adult,” you’re missing a powerful allegory that promises to become a classic. One word of warning: don’t start reading this book late in the day like I did. I opened it at 8:00 pm, and finished it at 1:00 am. Then I lay staring into the darkness thinking about the story and the characters for another hour. And because I didn’t want to let it go, I picked it up again in the morning and re-read the last chapter so I would have it seared into my brain while I wait a year for the third book in the series. Only a superb writer can hold my interest like that. Suzanne Collins is definitely one of the best writers of the day.

Mac Upgrades

Ah, the joys of modern technology! I love my Mac. I especially love the way Mac sends spies or elves into my computer to let me know when upgrades are available. I think it’s thoughtful of them to let me know how to stay up to date. The only downside to all that thoughtfulness is that new upgrades seem to become available almost every day. The invisible prompters don’t exactly say that I must download them, but they hint that awful things may happen if I don’t. So I dutifully hit the download link and wait while some better version of whatever I’ve been using loads. Half the time, I then get another notice that to use that new version, I really need to also upgrade something else that works with it. So I hit another download link and wait.

Today I have downloaded an upgrade to iTunes, Adobe flash player, and a beta upgrade to my beloved Nisus Writer Express. The beta upgrade was necessary because the most recent upgrade to Snow Leopard caused some kinks in the old Nisus Express. Snow Leopard itself was a recent upgrade to regular Leopard, but the upgrade has already had an upgrade.

All these upgrades are cool, and as soon as I have time I’m going to download a Yale class in literature from iTunes. But I don’t know when I’ll have time to listen to it because I’ve spent so much time downloading things instead of writing. When my editor demands the manuscript I’m working on now, I may have to tell her it’ll be late because I’ve spent so much time upgrading my computer programs.

Book Reviews

Among the books I’ve read recently, two kept me turning pages past bedtime every night.

THE BIG RICH:THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREATEST TEXAS OIL FORTUNES by Bryan Burrough traces the lives of four men directly responsible for much of the chicanery and greed that has come to characterize American capitalism. H. L. Hunt, Roy Cullen, Clint Murchison and Sid Richardson began as wildcatters looking for oil in Texas and became living examples of barely literate billionaires who consorted with European royals and middle eastern sultans. They were admirable, contemptible, lovable, and terrible in their power over lending institutions and law makers. They bought politicians, created Presidents, and fused fundamentalism and right-wing politics as it is today. Burrough covers them fairly and compassionately, always drawing back from making the story too lurid. Nevertheless, one closes the book acutely aware of how little we ordinary people ever know about how our own lives are controlled by people driven by greed and a lust for power.

SING THEM HOME by Stephanie Kallos is an engrossing sequel to her first book, Broken for You. I wish I had read Broken for You first because both books are about the same family and are set in the same small town in Nebraska. Even without the background, though, the story stands alone. I hate book reviews that give the plot of a novel, so I will only tell you that Sing Them Home picks up twenty-five years after Broken For You. The children of the first story have come home for a funeral. They have all grown up with the insecurities, fears, hopes, and personal eccentricities occasioned by the events of the first book when their mother was swept away by a tornado. Forced to face some unpleasant facts as well as some past secrets, they find the best of themselves in the rituals and inconsistances of their home town. It’s a lovely story. I liked it so much that I immediately went back to the store and bought Broken For You.

Ant Farm Philosophy

I once put an ant farm in my play therapy room where child clients and I hid out from adults and had fun. The container was made of clear plastic so we could look in at the ants as they went about their business. We watched them eat and drink, watched them gather in groups and wave their antennae as if they were having conversations, watched them grieve over dead friends, watched them create tunnels for traveling. To the ants, the world existed within the confines of that sand-filled enclosure. They had no concept of life forms other than their own. While we could see them, the ants couldn’t see us. We were too huge to be apprehended by their ant-senses.

Older children, especially the brighter ones, inevitably asked the obvious question: what if human beings were like ants? What if we were being observed by some life form too huge for us to notice? I was always pleased when the question came up, not because I had an answer, but because the kids had the imagination to consider it.
I don’t know whether we’re being observed by some cosmic eye, but I do know that most of the self-important busyness of human life is no more significant than the daily life of an ant community. Ants fight vicious wars, they destroy the unhatched eggs of vanquished queens and carry the queen off as spoil. They go about all that violence with the solemn determination of human warriors. And like humans, when they kill their enemies they believe with all their little hearts they’ve done a good thing. But no matter how much killing goes on, ants continue to produce new life to continue the cycle.

I suppose the ultimate lesson to learn from ant farms and from human experience is that truth isn’t based on the dimension of a world, but on the persistence of life.

Viral, the Play

If you live in or around New York City, you probably know about the New York International Fringe Festival going on right now. The largest multi-arts festival in North America, it runs from August 14 to August 30.

One of the most highly acclaimed plays being presented is Viral, a dark comedy written by Mac Rogers, a two-time FringeNYC award winner. Patrick Lee, reviewing in Show Showdown, calls Viral “the first must-see of this year’s Fringe Festival. In lesser hands the story – of a suicidal woman who consents to let three fetishists videotape her death – could make for nothing more than lurid, soulless shock, but the playwright uses it as a high-stakes example of the potential for dehumanization in both fetish and in Internet culture. The cast effectively form a tonally cohesive unit but Amy Lynn Stewart, compelling as the suicidal Meredith, and Rebecca Comtois, vibrant as one of the fetishists, stand out in the show’s most pivotal roles.

Mark Peikert of Back Stage called Viral “blessed with an unflinching script and a quartet of very funny performers…the play begins as the blackest of comedies before transforming into an uncompromising look at how we choose to live.” He goes on to say, “…as funny as Viral is, it’s [Amy Lynn] Stewart’s harrowing monologue about the courage it takes to recognize one’s weaknesses that will haunt you for days afterward.”

TheaterMania Review said that Viral explores not only the ways people can exercise control in their lives, but also the ways in which human existence — in its widest sense — has become a commodity in the Internet age… Viral satisfies and its story lingers well after its final moments.”

Critic Nathaniel Kressen describes Viral as “one of the most cohesive productions I have seen come out of FringeNYC. The cast proves adept at both the comedy and the dramatic moments; each has his or her niche and plays it to perfection. Amy Lynn Stewart as Meredith (the subject) embodies a haunting sadness that gives rise to an explosion late in the play. Even during long stretches with no dialogue, she is magnetic.”

I’m no theater critic, but I also heartily recommend Viral. Of course I may be a tad prejudiced. Amy Lynn Stewart is my granddaughter.

Sandra Petrovich

My good friend Sandra Petrovich died last week, and her family, friends and students are still reeling from the shock. Sandra was an ardent pet lover, a brilliant historian, and a gifted writer. She knew so much about seventeenth century history that I always thought she must have brought some cellular memory with her when she came into this life. She laughed at the idea, but everybody who knew her realized she was an old soul with a wisdom far beyond her years. Perhaps that’s why she left us at such a young age. She will be greatly missed.

Confessions of an Ishtar Lover

Are we defined by the movies we like? I think maybe we are. If I were going to start a service to put like-minded people together, I’d have them list their favorite movies of all time, and also the movies they most hated.

If I filled out a questionnaire like that, I’d end up with somebody weird enough to think Ishtar was hilarious, and that Johnny Dangerously was brilliant. Whenever I meet somebody who agrees that those two movies had the cleverest dialogue ever written, I’m sure they are highly intelligent beings. If they can’t let a year go by without re-watching Defending Your Life, and cry every time they watch it, we’re bound to be soul mates. If they love Juno, Magnolia, Jesus’ Son, Harold and Maude, Gran Torino, and anything with Robert Duvall or William Seymour Hoffman, that’s just icing on the cake. Ditto if they loved movies directed by Almodovar. And they would absolutely have to be crazy about all the Peter Sellers movies, especially Being There.

On the other hand, I could never live compatibly with anybody who liked Dances With Wolves or Forest Gump. We might be able to co-exist if they were crazy about Knocked Up, or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but just barely. If they loved James Bond movies, that would be okay. I could also live with an anime aficionado, or one who watched a lot of Kurosawa movies, but they’d have to use ear phones.

Next time somebody asks me why I live alone, I’ll give them my lists of movie favorites and hates. That’ll explain everything.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Eunice Kennedy Shriver died this week, and while her family and friends mourn her loss, countless people who never met her face-to-face are also taking a moment to pay tribute to her. Mrs. Shriver probably did more to improve the lives of people with intellectual disabilities than any other person in history. Because one of her sisters was profoundly retarded, she had a keen compassion for the challenges of the disabled and their families.

She was instrumental in forming President Kennedy’s Panel on Mental Retardation, and for the development of the National Institute of Child and Human Development. She was primarily responsible for a network of research centers at major medical schools across the U.S. and for the study of medical ethics at Harvard and Georgetown Universities. But she will be best remembered for the Special Olympics, which has grown from a modest beginning in the summer of 1968 to almost three million athletes in more than 180 countries.

Disability is not partisan. It hits conservatives, liberals, and independents with equal devastation. Eunice Kennedy Shriver gave an extra measure of dignity to every disabled person. She was a hero for the entire world.

National Resentment Day

With all the grim financial news, a lot of people seem to have given in to rampant paranoia and rabid resentment. Some of them have good reason to be angry, and some just seem to enjoy ranting. In either case, listening to their grievances reminds me of a therapeutic assignment I used to give clients who were trapped in fear and anger and grief. They were to set aside an hour a day for resentment. The rest of the time, they tried to be as productive and creative and positive as they could. If fear or shame or rage crept into their minds, they pushed it out until its assigned hour. When the hour came, they ran a hot bath and cried in it, or stood naked in front of a full length mirror and grieved their scars and stretch marks, or howled at all the ways they’d been betrayed. Most people found that an hour became too long and boring, or they ended up laughing at their own extremism, but the resentment hour was theirs to use any way they chose.

I propose a national Resentment Day. Instead of letting our resentments suck our strength on a daily basis, we could save them for one day a year. We could observe Resentment Day the way we observe our other national holidays. Families and friends would get together over a big meal and take turns voicing all their resentments. Nobody would be allowed to tell anybody else to just suck it up, either, they would all have to listen and be respectful. The meals would feature foods that were sour or bitter. If wines were served, they’d have to be some that had turned vinegary. Bitter green salads would probably be popular, and green persimmon pie served with chicory coffee might become a traditional Resentment Day dessert. For the rest of the year, we’d concentrate on being productive and creative and positive. And if a group observing Resentment Day ended up laughing at how they were all trying to top one another’s stories, nobody would think the observation had been in vain. I’m not sure what the date might be. Anybody have an idea?

Miss Otis Doesn’t Regret

Miss Otis’s black satin bloomers were drooping, and the lace on her cami was looking worn. Little wonder, since Miss Otis hasn’t changed her costume in over thirty years. Miss Otis is a stuffed cloth doll with bright orange hair and big ta-tas. Named for the woman Ella Fitzgerald immortalized in “Miss Otis Regrets,” she used to ride atop a carousel horse mounted on a brass pole in my dining room. She and I were younger then, and her black satin was lustrous. Then she and I moved to the south of France, where she sat in a bedroom chair and looked out the window. From there we went to Philadelphia. She was not dressed for the cold winters there, so we finally settled in Florida, where she watches me write from the top of a bookcase in my office.

To tell the truth, after the elastic on her bloomers lost its snappiness, that was about the only place she could modestly perch, and she deserved better. When a friend has stayed as loyal as Miss Otis — even if she has cotton stuffing in her head — the least I can do is keep her well dressed. So I bought a bunch of black satin, yards of black lace, and some thin black elastic, and took Miss Otis for a fitting with Aiko, a dressmaker par excellence in Sarasota. Aiko duplicated her original costume, and today Miss Otis is back to her old brassy self. She lolled around in the living room for photos for a few minutes, and then went back to her position on the bookcase. Just having her tarted up like new makes me feel sort of like my old self again too.