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magidThe shipping lanes around the Bay of Fundy have shifted some nautical miles, to avoid the feeding areas of the endangered right whales. And this happened without government fiat or anything. Very cool. Maybe the right whales won't become extinct... More details in this Globe article.
All the summer movies at MIT's LSC are free (and air conditioned).
Also free is the Industrial Theatre's production of The Winter's Tale. There are performances in Taunton, at the Borderland State Park, and one in Harvard Yard (June 18, same night at ArtBeat). The schedule is here,, along with other info.
I tried the new Veggie Patch brand Buffalo Wings this weekend. They're yummy: rather spicy, with good texture, and parve (though not vegan due to egg white).
("No, dude, I don't eat any of that stuff from the ground any more; it's too freaky eating things that grew in dirt! I just wear my veggie patch.")
Yesterday I went to Wellesley College for a play reading. I hadn't realized it was Explo move-in day. It brought back a lot of memories, from the summers after junior and senior years in high school, pretty much all of them good: this was the first away camp I really enjoyed. And even with all the fenced-off areas around this summer (apparently Wellesley is building a whole ton of stuff), I suspect this year's campers will have a wonderful time, too.
I was early (the web site listing was an hour early, which was annoying), so not only did I get in a walk around Lake Waban, but I also got to poke around the building the play was in. There's an amphitheater just ouside, semicircles of stone benches, except for the five stone chairs in the middle of the front row. Somehow the way they were placed made me think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe... I was impressed with the planning that had the shrubberies not only forming a background, but the rows carefully set up to allow many entrances onto the stage.
The Flames of Louvain is a new play by Laura Harrington. It's apparently based on real events, in Belgium in WWI. I hadn't realized the extent of the atrocities in WWI; I think it's always been overshadowed by the even worse things done in WWII. At least, I've read a lot more about the later one than the earlier one.
The play is about a couple of clerics (monks? I wasn't sure; they were 'brothers') who work in a library of ancient manuscripts and valuable first editions. And the war intrudes, when the family of one of them arrives, after the death of the father, and the killing of a German soldier. One of the priests is called to see a prisoner, an English girl who had been photographing and documenting all sorts of horrible things the Germans were doing. She was charged with espionage, and ended up shot. By the end of the play, almost all the characters have been killed, and the town has been completely ravaged, burnt to the ground.
It was an interesting play, even just having it read (it wasn't staged at all; the actors sat in a row on the stage, though the stage manager read the stage directions, so we'd have some clue), and even though one of the actors kept stumbling not only over names, which I understood, but words such as "granary". Not cheery, but with questions about action and inaction in the face of danger, the value of people, and the value of ideas, etc. There was some really beautiful dialogue.
Afterward, there was a feedback session with the actors, stage manager, and playwright. I always find these interesting, seeing how things can change over the course of a play's life. This was the first time the playwright had heard it all aloud, and she started by saying that she thought certain things had not worked as she'd wanted, so she was likely to conflate two characters, etc. That was useful, since then we didn't have to discuss those aspects. I found it interesting that the people who chose to sit towards the front all had things to say, while the people sitting in the back stayed quiet the whole time. I had a bunch of things to say over the course of the session, and was pleased that at least one comment will result in a change (the young Belgian girl not having been raped, "just" having seen her father bludgeoned to death).
Theater note: this was the first time I'd been in the Ruth Nagel Jones Theater at Wellesley; it's new since the last time I spent time in Wellesley buildings. It's not a large space, seating perhaps 60-80 people. The ceiling isn't high, but seemed to have a large complement of lights. The stage is flush with the floor, and on the whole gave the impression of a black box space.
All the summer movies at MIT's LSC are free (and air conditioned).
Also free is the Industrial Theatre's production of The Winter's Tale. There are performances in Taunton, at the Borderland State Park, and one in Harvard Yard (June 18, same night at ArtBeat). The schedule is here,, along with other info.
I tried the new Veggie Patch brand Buffalo Wings this weekend. They're yummy: rather spicy, with good texture, and parve (though not vegan due to egg white).
("No, dude, I don't eat any of that stuff from the ground any more; it's too freaky eating things that grew in dirt! I just wear my veggie patch.")
Yesterday I went to Wellesley College for a play reading. I hadn't realized it was Explo move-in day. It brought back a lot of memories, from the summers after junior and senior years in high school, pretty much all of them good: this was the first away camp I really enjoyed. And even with all the fenced-off areas around this summer (apparently Wellesley is building a whole ton of stuff), I suspect this year's campers will have a wonderful time, too.
I was early (the web site listing was an hour early, which was annoying), so not only did I get in a walk around Lake Waban, but I also got to poke around the building the play was in. There's an amphitheater just ouside, semicircles of stone benches, except for the five stone chairs in the middle of the front row. Somehow the way they were placed made me think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe... I was impressed with the planning that had the shrubberies not only forming a background, but the rows carefully set up to allow many entrances onto the stage.
The Flames of Louvain is a new play by Laura Harrington. It's apparently based on real events, in Belgium in WWI. I hadn't realized the extent of the atrocities in WWI; I think it's always been overshadowed by the even worse things done in WWII. At least, I've read a lot more about the later one than the earlier one.
The play is about a couple of clerics (monks? I wasn't sure; they were 'brothers') who work in a library of ancient manuscripts and valuable first editions. And the war intrudes, when the family of one of them arrives, after the death of the father, and the killing of a German soldier. One of the priests is called to see a prisoner, an English girl who had been photographing and documenting all sorts of horrible things the Germans were doing. She was charged with espionage, and ended up shot. By the end of the play, almost all the characters have been killed, and the town has been completely ravaged, burnt to the ground.
It was an interesting play, even just having it read (it wasn't staged at all; the actors sat in a row on the stage, though the stage manager read the stage directions, so we'd have some clue), and even though one of the actors kept stumbling not only over names, which I understood, but words such as "granary". Not cheery, but with questions about action and inaction in the face of danger, the value of people, and the value of ideas, etc. There was some really beautiful dialogue.
Afterward, there was a feedback session with the actors, stage manager, and playwright. I always find these interesting, seeing how things can change over the course of a play's life. This was the first time the playwright had heard it all aloud, and she started by saying that she thought certain things had not worked as she'd wanted, so she was likely to conflate two characters, etc. That was useful, since then we didn't have to discuss those aspects. I found it interesting that the people who chose to sit towards the front all had things to say, while the people sitting in the back stayed quiet the whole time. I had a bunch of things to say over the course of the session, and was pleased that at least one comment will result in a change (the young Belgian girl not having been raped, "just" having seen her father bludgeoned to death).
Theater note: this was the first time I'd been in the Ruth Nagel Jones Theater at Wellesley; it's new since the last time I spent time in Wellesley buildings. It's not a large space, seating perhaps 60-80 people. The ceiling isn't high, but seemed to have a large complement of lights. The stage is flush with the floor, and on the whole gave the impression of a black box space.