SSR

That would be September story reading, not one of the jumble of countries in northern Asia and around the Baltic. Right.

Last night there were ten of us, reading and listening.
Ruth read a short story about the Hope diamond stolen while on Gibraltar by a trained monkey, and how a shark can be fated, perhaps.
Pheromone read the introduction to Stephen King's collection of short stories, Skeleton Crew, about the need to write, and the rewards thereof, which should not be primarily financial.
Majes read the next chapter (fourth, I think) from his novel; this one was much more disturbing than the others; I tend to have a hard time with violence, I think.
Scholargipsy read a short story he'd thought of and written that day (I am so impressed), Tell and Kiss, which you can read the beginning of here, if you wish.
Geeyodi read a poem written during college (yay, Brandeis!), and a piece from Writing Down the Bones about writing, which was interesting (I wish I'd not been so close to crashing by then; perhaps I'll try to find a copy to read the rest).
MissDimple read a part from the beginning of Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow, a wonderful book, one of the few I know that is science fiction with a serious use of religion.
Oh, and I read a very short piece from Bailey White's Sleeping at the Starlight Motel, about plumbing disasters as an indicator of social class.

Other short bits:
This was the first use of the partly-emptied cloud pillow I snagged from Pheromone. I need to find more foam to fill it back up. I was glad it was useful.
More garlic croutons. People were less hungry, though, since not as many were eaten. Or perhaps it was the evil fruit gels...
I still dislike using the overheat light in the living room for story reading; it's just too flat, a bit too bright, not as mellow. I hope everyone had enough light with the lamps and candles. I did.
Hearing about a proposed trip from Tennessee to buy a car.
Dang. I forgot to put out the apple juice I'd stuck in the fridge to chill.
Talk about writing, about the creative process, inspired both by reading pieces about writing and people's writings being read. I had moments of feeling like a literary salon would be a good idea...
I enjoyed listening, and wish I'd been well-rested, rather than exhausted from being out late the night before (a post about the play upcoming).
It somehow felt too awkward to crochet through story reading, a function of feeling I had to be available to do whatever hostly things, not of potential rudeness to anyone reading. I should get over that; it would've been the perfect time to crochet, which keeps my hands but not my mind busy.

Memes, etc

Based on recent public posts:

• I am apparently 59% male. Vertical or horizontal split? Diagonal, possibly? Or am I just a puree?
  Perhaps all that spam wasn't so misdirected?
  (Yeah, yeah, it's confidence intervals. But.)
  
• I write about on a ninth grade level.

I don't know how I'd answer the crush meme going around. When I was younger, I had intense crushes that usually lasted a year or more. I don't categorize "some attraction to X" in the same category at all. On the other end of things, a crush for me is something lopsided: once it's clearly reciprocated, it falls into some other category as well.

"Ruth's Chris Steakhouse" has always been a bizarre-sounding name: who is Ruth, and who/what is her Chris? As it turns out, it's somewhat stupid. Ruth bought a steakhouse already named Chris Steak House, and tacked her name on the front. It still is a silly-sounding name, though.

I used the huge tomato last night. I cut into a mostly golden, almost orange tomato that had touches of red at the bottom, and found that it had red blushes throughout. Just gorgeous.

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992

Tuesday night I went to the first Brandeis play of the season. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 reminds me of The Laramie Project: the playwright went around talking to people about the situation in L.A. around the time of the Rodney King incident, with the riots that followed, and the play portrays many different views of what happened, and why it happened, and what it meant, though not much about solutions: the playwright says at the beginning that it's too early to work on that, before looking at what the problem is. It also includes the playwright as a character, the active listener to all these different voices.

I have to admit that I didn't remember much about what had happened; the timeline in the program helped a lot. There was no mention of when the interviews happened, nor when the play was written, though, and I thought that was an unfortunate omission.

The play is excellent. It's hard to deal with, at some points, but fascinating. It became clear that Rodney King was a flashpoint, not the whole point, for the riots. (OK, Scholargipsy, I don't know if you had Tark for history, but this was a powderkeg, waiting to explode, needing only a spark to ignite it. And Rodney King was that spark.)

The pieces were interesting. There were politicians, and police at various levels. There were black people, white people, Mexican people, Korean people (many of whose businesses were targeted in the rioting), men and women. I was astonished to hear about a pregnant woman shot in the side: the baby caught the bullet in her arm, saving both their lives. There was a sculptor, working on pieces as he spoke, the pieces being other actors, who slowly moved to fit the mood of his words, which was well done, dressed in 'marble' body suits, whitened faces and hair... A Washington politician spoke in a local AME church, and described crashing a meeting with the President. A Korean businessman spoke through a translator. Rodney King's aunt described who he had been. Some people were funny, some thoughtful, some seeing one side of what happened only. Really, too much to sum up here. The play started and ended with a black teenager, named Twilight, who saw that there is much potential in the change from light to dark, dark to light (I was reminded of this when hearing a story last night. This week has been sponsored by the word twilight, I guess.), and that it is necessary to understand people outside your own group.

On the more technical side, the stage had a stepped platform in the shape of a T, with upper levels on either side, which were reached by built-in ladders. Behind this there was a gauzy bunched curtain, which had signs behind, which were illuminated at different times, depending on the character. In addition to the usual spotlights, there were a couple of cool light effects, one spelling out 'acquitted', the other 'Black Panther Party' along with the outlines of a feline. There was a lot of sound used to set the scenes, including helicopter noises, gospel singing, crowds yelling, and two drummers accenting the words of a Korean immigrant woman who understood that blacks wanted equality, but didn't understand why Koreans had to be stepped on to get there. There was one sound glitch, when someone started talking but the music that had been on in between, during the time when the previous person left the stage and the next came on, did not get softer. I was able to hear him, and soon the sound was adjusted.

I think that was the only criticism I can come up with, actually. It was an amazing performance (running through Sunday, if anyone is interested in going).

There was one bad part to the evening: as I was coming around a sharp turn in the street in Waltham, I couldn't avoid the raccoon in the middle of my lane. I tried to swerve some, but I'm pretty sure I killed it. I don't think I've ever done that before... Not a happy way to start the evening.