Our Harry Potter Story

One of the interesting parts of Harry Potter is, of course, not just that it's a compelling series of books, but that it's become a whole cultural/social phenomenon, with parties, and stories. I think that's part of why the hysteria is so particularly strong for this last book--it's a bit of a social break (and maybe that's why the most recent Star Wars movies stirred up such ire among fans--because the films' suckage (I know that's not a word) spoiled our ability to continue a social phenomenon that would have partially connected us back to our youth).

Our story: my father-in-law purchased book #7 for us, from a bookstore in CT. We live in Boston. This meant that he would have to mail it to us, on Monday or Tuesday, and we'd get it by the end of the week. To be honest, I'm third in line in our house, behind my wife and daughter, so I didn't really care. But Tracy really, really, really couldn't wait until the end of the week, and we didn't want to buy an extra copy. So Saturday morning, she drove down to Connecticut and her father met her half way, and she picked up the book at an exit somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Now we have our copy, and my wife gets to read it before and after work, and my daughter reads it during the day. They're struggling not to talk about it in front of me, and we're all on careful media diets to avoid spoilers.

I'm told that approximately a good chunk of all blogs have mentioned Harry Potter this week, so I guess I'm part of the club now.

Why I Want to Live on a Farm (and why I probably won't)

Well, it doesn't really have to be a farm. Just a nice place in the country with a huge garden, that will let us grow most of our own food. Farming implies actually working to sell food to other people, and I don't know if I really want to go that far.

I've gardened for years, and in Roxbury I helped manage two local community gardens. Last year, we moved to a pleasant condo in Brookline for various (good) reasons. We have no yard, just a tiny bit of flower space out front. No garden. No community garden within a logical distance. Our old garden isn't much more than a mile away, but I'd need to drive there much of the time, and commuting by car to one's garden seems perverse to me.

All this pastoral longing is in part thanks to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I just finished reading. She and her family moved from Arizona to a family farm in Virginia. Once there, they decided to attempt to eat only food grown locally, for an entire year. They grew vegetables in their garden, raised chickens and turkeys, and bought other produce from local farmers (and gave up bananas and citrus). As she describes their year, Kingsolver writes a lot about the many problems with our current industrial food supply, our unhealthy American food culture (or lack thereof), and her deep ties to farming and family.

It's one of those books, where you feel like they're just the perfect family, living in a little eden. Of course, they have money to help pull this off (she's a bestselling writer and he's a professor) and already owned the land. They seem so content, you can't help but want to go buy some whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized) and a few other ingredients, and make some cheese in your kitchen. (I really am going to do this this summer, I swear.)

The stuff about food really hits home for us, because our family has been working hard to eat much healthier over the past nine months or so, going mostly vegan and cutting out most processed foods. We bought a CSA (community supported agriculture) share, for local, organic produce. And it's been working.

Kingsolver's book covers some of the same ground as Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, which was a more compelling book for me. Kingsolver tends to wander, and I started her book with the thought that this year of eating locally would be a fresh adventure for her and her family. But they'd already been on the journey for a while, so it lacks a crisp sense of discovery.

For an outsider's trip to a simple life, it's worth reading Better Off by Erick Brende, about an MIT grad and his wife who give up the modern life and go to live in an Amish-like community. Or if you want an intense connection with the land and a different way of looking at the connection between farming, farms, and nature, I'd suggest Wendell Berry or David Kline's Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal.

We've been known to suddenly pull up stakes and change our lives, but I don't think it'll happen this time. The need for racial diversity and the necessity of the right special needs school program for our son will keep us in place for many years. Plus, Tracy loves her job (and her short commute). Still, I'll always have that tension of wanting to live closer to the land. Maybe someday we'll retire to a small farm somewhere (or a house in the country with a big garden) (near the ocean) (or Paris).

Regardless of where we live, it's essential for us, and for America as a whole, to come to grips with the fact that our industrialized agriculture system is unhealthy for all of us. Small sustainable farms produce better quality food, use less oil, enhance the environment, help bolster our communities, and empower our citizens. With current agricultural policies, our government is actively undermining family farms and enriching large corporate agricultural concerns. The result is an epidemic of obesity and rising environmental hazards from pesticides, fertilizer and topsoil runoff, and irresponsible use of antibiotics and genetically modified organisms. A huge of amount of oil is used to ship all those bananas and off-season produce from countries half a world away to our local Stop and Shop. Buying local (as much as possible, and eating produce that's in season), like Barbara Kingsolver, is a good way to make at least a little bit of a difference.

Good News: Den of Iniquity coming to NYC

I just heard that my short play Den of Iniquity will be included in Emerging Artists Theatre's Fall EATFest. It's a fun little play, and I'm glad it'll have a chance to visit New York (I'm not sure on the dates/details yet).

I made my first submission to EAT back in 2001, then gave up for a few years (thus ensuring my plays couldn't be chosen), started submitting again in 2005, and now I've gotten in. I saw a production of the fall festival last year and thought they did a good job.

This show comes at a good time, because my fall production schedule was looking, well, completely empty. That's never a good feeling. The hardest part about spending more of my time writing books these days is the slow pace of production--it takes me a while to write a novel, and then years to get an agent and publisher and have it reach readers. I'm grateful to theatre for providing me with a sense of immediate feedback and, as long as I keep getting productions of these short plays, a sense of staying in touch with an audience (even though theatres are super slow to respond, the theatre business sucks, blah, blah, blah).

And, it was good news for a numbers guy like me, because it put my 2006 acceptance rate just over 10%. This keeps my streak of double digit acceptance percentage steady since 1999 (take out 1998, and it goes back to 1995). Nobody cares about this, of course, but somehow it makes me feel better.

(The photo is from the 2004 Boston Theatre Marathon Production of Den of Iniquity, where it was an audience favorite. Joseph Zamparelli Jr. and Karen Woodward Massey pictured.)

Buckminster's wise words

I saw this quote over on the TheatreForte site (I'm procrastinating re-installing a window, doing dishes, and washing the kitchen floor). I like it a lot.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
- Buckminster Fuller

Be Like Mike (and what will W be like?)

I saw Mike and Kitty Dukakis last night while I was out walking my dog. They live not far from us, and I sometimes see him going to or coming from Northeastern, where he teaches. He always says hello, and he always picks up any trash that he sees on the ground. I saw him do it tonight. It's not a showy thing, designed to impress an audience, it's just a part of who he is. He walks to work, picks up litter, basically is a good neighbor (in addition to all the other impressive things he's done).

On the rest of my walk, in addition to picking up a few extra pieces of trash off the ground, I got to wondering what our current president will be like in his (not soon enough) retirement. I guess he'll be out mountain biking and trimming brush, on his own expansive ranch.

I like the idea of making sure the people we choose for our leaders are also capable of being good neighbors, who can lead by example, on the simple as well as the complex.

Confessions of a non-Genius

Art Hennessey's Mirror Up To Nature showed me this great post from the Working Group. There's much there that got me thinking, but this quote was terrific:

I think everyone in the theater wants to be a genius. I've never really met a theater artist who thought people were better than them at their particular field. I've met the best director in the world 20-30 times, the best playwright twice as often a and the best actor? I meet him everyday. And even those of us who are humble, deep down have a belief that what we personally do is "true art" it's "real theater" and so in the rehearsal room we believe it should be respected. So, you often end up with a room of people who think they know more than the others around them and are saying "prove it to me, that you're so good" in every note session.

(Confession #1) I used to be this way. I thrived on attention from productions and achievement and desperately wanted to be "important" in some artistic sense. I felt sure that someone would see my stuff and pronounce that they'd found the next playwriting prodigy. Or at least I hoped they would.

(Confession #2) I'm not a genius. Over the years, with experience, I figured out what the rest of the world apparently already knew.

This turns out to be a pretty helpful realization, because it saves a lot of time and energy, which I can then put into making the project of the moment, be it a play or novel or screenplay, better. (Yes, I still practice my Academy Award or Pulitzer Speech while washing the dinner dishes, but not quite so often anymore.) I'm a pretty good writer, I'm a hard worker, and I'm getting better all the time. I make a point of trying to work with other writers who are better than me (I'm definitely not the most talented writer in either of my writing groups).

Would I like my work to reach a broad audience and have a wide-reaching cultural impact? Sure. But it might not. In our culture, we're conditioned to want to play in the Superbowl or the World Series or the Masters. And win. I went to MIT, and there's a certain expectation there, just as part of the culture, that you'll get out of school and go do something earthshattering. Change the world.

In the end, though, the real writers are those who, when they figure out they're not going to win the Pulitzer, don't quit and get a job making a ton of money, but just keep getting up every morning and writing pages. I'm relieved to know that I'm a real writer (even if I'm not a genius).

Do Not Wait & thoughts on Tribalism

Scott Walter has some very interesting thoughts on his site about tribalism (in the theatrical sense). Definitely check it out.

Also, the quote he lists from Ben Cameron's farewell speech to TCG (who was quoting from Anne Bogart's book, A Director Prepares) is well worth reading. In fact, I'll post it below:

* Do not assume that you have to have some prescribed conditions to do your best work.
* Do not wait.
* Do not wait for enough time or money to accomplish what you think you have in mind.
* Work with what you have right now.
* Work with the people around you right now.
* Work with the architecture you see around you right now.
* Do not wait for what you assume is the appropriate, stress-free environment in which to generate expression.
* Do not wait for maturity or insight or wisdom.
* Do not wait till you are sure that you know what you are doing.
* Do not wait until you have enough technique.
* What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavors.

Makes sense to me. I've tried to act this way in the theatrical and artistic life. It's good to be reminded, though. I think it applies to any sort of endeavor, any sort of art. I meet plenty of writers who say they're waiting for the right moment, to have enough time, to have a cleaner desk, more inspiration. Then they'll write their books, their plays, their essays. Bogart has it right. Don't wait.