woman in 50s dress and heeled sandals whose calves read .and. .then.

Ain't No Holiday

Yesterday was any other day. Nothing special about it. The last working day of the fiscal year. Went to the ballet.

The point is: it wasn't a holiday. We didn't wait until July 4th. It amuses me when J misses me and when he doesn't. "Misses" may not be the right word - but when he wants to see me.

We have discussed that we can't "date" - and he's right. I'm right, too. But it makes everything very complicated because there is a genuine love between us. And did I mention chemistry? I genuinely wonder, if and when I meet someone else, if it will go away.

So B and I went to the Ballet. Got drinks before, drinks after. J kept trying to get me to go to a party, even though I told him 3 different times I had other plans. So he finally called at the end of the night - and I invited him to come meet us at the bar. And that was perfect. B and I both needed him there, at that perfect moment. We both needed to laugh. And B was driving me, so at the end of the night when we were all ready and J read the air and said "Time to go" - we all walked out together. And I lingered, gave J a kiss on the cheek - and B drove me to my car.

And against my better judgment, perhaps, and against what I have said was "smart" of J to do - turning off the tap - I went over there. I did call him on my way, but didn't need him to answer. I parked on his street, and he had just gotten home, and was standing the yard.

He smiled, and walked over the way he does - falling into every step, a lazy walk - and let his head bob around and as I walked to him I said "I wasn't tired," although we both knew what I had come for.

During our whole relationship I have waited for him to kiss me - for him to "come get it" - and I do love that about him. I trust him, too, to know better than I when the time is right, or what is appropriate, or what is good for me. Although he doesn't know me that well, oddly enough.

But last night, at 1:30 in the morning, I walked right over to him, pinned him against A's truck, and kissed him. And kissed him. I dropped what was in my hands so I could touch him - and he was sweaty from the summer bike ride and that was divine. He was moist, glistening I suppose.

"Inside, truck, or cemetery?"

Cemetery, he said.

So we crossed the street and went into the gate and..

Cemetaries in New Orleans are called cities of the dead. When they were first built hundreds of years ago, the locals knew about the flooding, and they were very worried about disease (as Yellow Fever killed thousands in the 1800s), so the dead were buried above ground, in tombs.



And it's 2 in the morning, and this is one of the neighborhood cemeteries in New Orleans, and no one's there but J and I, nude and trying not to get concrete scrapes on our most delicate parts.

In the end, after a wonderful lovely time and some bizarre acrobatics on my part, fear of getting grave-burn overruled finishing. He and I lay, half-dressed, on a flat tomb finished with cold white cement and the typical "Perpetual Care" brass plaque, and stared up at the sky for quite a while. And there were more stars than there usually are in a city sky.

Lawmakers approve almost all of Blanco's agenda - Breaking News Updates New Orleans - Times-Picayune - NOLA.com

Lawmakers approve almost all of Blanco's agenda - Breaking News Updates New Orleans - Times-Picayune - NOLA.com

This is the most important part of this article (to me): Broadway South made it through the legislature. Modeled after the tax cuts made for film and tv production, the state of Louisiana is going to pay people to renovate theaters, hire locals, and produce live theatre and performance. Seems like a no-brainer to a state that's built an economy on tourism and culture, right?

I have a meeting with Roger Wilson when he gets back in town.

Oh, and I'm 100% behind the payraise for teachers. Just as a sidenote. Arts and Education. As I was driving to work yesterday, I thought "Thank god we elected a democratic woman 4 years ago, despite all the failures she's had since the storm - because we all know Jindal would never have let these pass."

Automated Attendant

Why is it when we talk to those automated systems that are supposed to read our voices we turn into robots?

Dana Gioia's Commencement Speech

Following is the prepared text of the speech delivered by Dana Gioia at Standford's Commencement on June 17, 2007

L.A. Cicero Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts

//
Good morning.

Thank you, President Hennessy.

It is a great honor to be asked to give the Commencement address at my alma mater. Although I have two degrees from Stanford, I still feel a bit like an interloper on this exquisitely beautiful campus. A person never really escapes his or her childhood.

At heart I'm still a working-class kid—half Italian, half Mexican—from L.A., or more precisely from Hawthorne, a city that most of this audience knows only as the setting of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown—two films that capture the ineffable charm of my hometown.

Today is Father's Day, so I hope you will indulge me for beginning on a personal note. I am the first person in my family ever to attend college, and I owe my education to my father, who sacrificed nearly everything to give his four children the best education possible.

My dad had a fairly hard life. He never spoke English until he went to school. He barely survived a plane crash in World War II. He worked hard, but never had much success, except with his family.

When I was about 12, my dad told me that he hoped I would go to Stanford, a place I had never heard of. For him, Stanford represented every success he had missed yet wanted for his children. He would be proud of me today—no matter how dull my speech.

On the other hand, I may be fortunate that my mother isn't here. It isn't Mother's Day, so I can be honest. I loved her dearly, but she could be a challenge. For example, when she learned I had been nominated to be chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, she phoned and said, "Don't think I'm impressed."

I know that there was a bit of controversy when my name was announced as the graduation speaker. A few students were especially concerned that I lacked celebrity status. It seemed I wasn't famous enough. I couldn't agree more. As I have often told my wife and children, "I'm simply not famous enough."

And that—in a more general and less personal sense—is the subject I want to address today, the fact that we live in a culture that barely acknowledges and rarely celebrates the arts or artists.

There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can name.

Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name.

I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name.

Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

I don't think that Americans were smarter then, but American culture was. Even the mass media placed a greater emphasis on presenting a broad range of human achievement.

I grew up mostly among immigrants, many of whom never learned to speak English. But at night watching TV variety programs like the Ed Sullivan Show or the Perry Como Music Hall, I saw—along with comedians, popular singers, and movie stars—classical musicians like Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Rubinstein, opera singers like Robert Merrill and Anna Moffo, and jazz greats like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong captivate an audience of millions with their art.

The same was even true of literature. I first encountered Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, and James Baldwin on general interest TV shows. All of these people were famous to the average American—because the culture considered them important.

Today no working-class or immigrant kid would encounter that range of arts and ideas in the popular culture. Almost everything in our national culture, even the news, has been reduced to entertainment, or altogether eliminated.

The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers, and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young.

There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination to the marketplace.

Of course, I'm not forgetting that politicians can also be famous, but it is interesting how our political process grows more like the entertainment industry each year. When a successful guest appearance on the Colbert Report becomes more important than passing legislation, democracy gets scary. No wonder Hollywood considers politics "show business for ugly people."

Everything now is entertainment. And the purpose of this omnipresent commercial entertainment is to sell us something. American culture has mostly become one vast infomercial.

I have a reccurring nightmare. I am in Rome visiting the Sistine Chapel. I look up at Michelangelo's incomparable fresco of the "Creation of Man." I see God stretching out his arm to touch the reclining Adam's finger. And then I notice in the other hand Adam is holding a Diet Pepsi.

When was the last time you have seen a featured guest on David Letterman or Jay Leno who isn't trying to sell you something? A new movie, a new TV show, a new book, or a new vote?

Don't get me wrong. I love entertainment, and I love the free market. I have a Stanford MBA and spent 15 years in the food industry. I adore my big-screen TV. The productivity and efficiency of the free market is beyond dispute. It has created a society of unprecedented prosperity.

But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing—it puts a price on everything.

The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us.

There is only one social force in America potentially large and strong enough to counterbalance this profit-driven commercialization of cultural values, our educational system, especially public education. Traditionally, education has been one thing that our nation has agreed cannot be left entirely to the marketplace—but made mandatory and freely available to everyone.

At 56, I am just old enough to remember a time when every public high school in this country had a music program with choir and band, usually a jazz band, too, sometimes even orchestra. And every high school offered a drama program, sometimes with dance instruction. And there were writing opportunities in the school paper and literary magazine, as well as studio art training.

I am sorry to say that these programs are no longer widely available to the new generation of Americans. This once visionary and democratic system has been almost entirely dismantled by well-meaning but myopic school boards, county commissioners, and state officials, with the federal government largely indifferent to the issue. Art became an expendable luxury, and 50 million students have paid the price. Today a child's access to arts education is largely a function of his or her parents' income.

In a time of social progress and economic prosperity, why have we experienced this colossal cultural and political decline? There are several reasons, but I must risk offending many friends and colleagues by saying that surely artists and intellectuals are partly to blame. Most American artists, intellectuals, and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

This mutual estrangement has had enormous cultural, social, and political consequences. America needs its artists and intellectuals, and they need to reestablish their rightful place in the general culture. If we could reopen the conversation between our best minds and the broader public, the results would not only transform society but also artistic and intellectual life.

There is no better place to start this rapprochement than in arts education. How do we explain to the larger society the benefits of this civic investment when they have been convinced that the purpose of arts education is mostly to produce more artists—hardly a compelling argument to either the average taxpayer or financially strapped school board?

We need to create a new national consensus. The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.

This is not happening now in American schools. Even if you forget the larger catastrophe that only 70 percent of American kids now graduate from high school, what are we to make of a public education system whose highest goal seems to be producing minimally competent entry-level workers?

The situation is a cultural and educational disaster, but it also has huge and alarming economic consequences. If the United States is to compete effectively with the rest of the world in the new global marketplace, it is not going to succeed through cheap labor or cheap raw materials, nor even the free flow of capital or a streamlined industrial base. To compete successfully, this country needs continued creativity, ingenuity, and innovation.

It is hard to see those qualities thriving in a nation whose educational system ranks at the bottom of the developed world and has mostly eliminated the arts from the curriculum.

I have seen firsthand the enormous transformative power of the arts—in the lives of individuals, in communities, and even society at large.

Marcus Aurelius believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones. I worry about a culture that bit by bit trades off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy comforts of entertainment. And that is exactly what is happening—not just in the media, but in our schools and civic life.

Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure—humor, thrills, emotional titillation, or even the odd delight of being vicariously terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than challenges us with a vision of who we might become. A child who spends a month mastering Halo or NBA Live on Xbox has not been awakened and transformed the way that child would be spending the time rehearsing a play or learning to draw.

If you don't believe me, you should read the statistical studies that are now coming out about American civic participation. Our country is dividing into two distinct behavioral groups. One group spends most of its free time sitting at home as passive consumers of electronic entertainment. Even family communication is breaking down as members increasingly spend their time alone, staring at their individual screens.

The other group also uses and enjoys the new technology, but these individuals balance it with a broader range of activities. They go out—to exercise, play sports, volunteer and do charity work at about three times the level of the first group. By every measure they are vastly more active and socially engaged than the first group.

What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography, or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility.

Why do these issues matter to you? This is the culture you are about to enter. For the last few years you have had the privilege of being at one of the world's greatest universities—not only studying, but being a part of a community that takes arts and ideas seriously. Even if you spent most of your free time watching Grey's Anatomy, playing Guitar Hero, or Facebooking your friends, those important endeavors were balanced by courses and conversations about literature, politics, technology, and ideas.

Distinguished graduates, your support system is about to end. And you now face the choice of whether you want to be a passive consumer or an active citizen. Do you want to watch the world on a screen or live in it so meaningfully that you change it?

That's no easy task, so don't forget what the arts provide.

Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world—equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being—simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images.

Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it remembers. As Robert Frost once said about poetry, "It is a way of remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget." Art awakens, enlarges, refines, and restores our humanity. You don't outgrow art. The same work can mean something different at each stage of your life. A good book changes as you change.

My own art is poetry, though my current daily life sometimes makes me forget that. So let me end my remarks with a short poem appropriate to the occasion.

[PRAISE TO THE RITUALS THAT CELEBRATE CHANGE]

Praise to the rituals that celebrate change,
old robes worn for new beginnings,
solemn protocol where the mutable soul,
surrounded by ancient experience, grows
young in the imagination's white dress.

Because it is not the rituals we honor
but our trust in what they signify, these rites
that honor us as witnesses—whether to watch
lovers swear loyalty in a careless world
or a newborn washed with water and oil.

So praise to innocence—impulsive and evergreen—
and let the old be touched by youth's
wayward astonishment at learning something new,
and dream of a future so fitting and so just
that our desire will bring it into being.

Congratulations to the Class of 2007.
//

Young Love

Summer Memory: P's daughter's face when she "pissed herself" and the shame he has already laid on her. She was climbing a wall in the P-ville house, a brick support that looks like stairs to three year olds. All afternoon she followed around Pierre, the sweet three-year old nephew of B-... asking to hold his hand, walking next to him, doing what he did. I tried to get her to go to the bathroom about 20 minutes earlier, but once we got to the w/c, she simply looked at me and said "I don't want to."

So she's playing with Pierre, and I'm standing there with her father and his mother, just watching kids play. Suddenly, she stops short, and stares out - horrified, embarrassed, aware she's done something wrong but with no control at all. She's stupefied. Her father says "Jesus Christ," in a shamed voice, grabs her and whisks her out of the room. When our friends asks later why she's wearing a different cute little pink dress, he says "She pissed herself." He says it over and over, and each time it hurts my feeling a little more.

I can see her, in many years time, with a deep seated anxiety and shame of self. She won't know why, or where it comes from - and its really only the tone of daddy's voice: annoyed, humiliated, his patience lost.

And yet, it's amazing what a girl will do for love, even at age 3.

Boys of Summer II

Did I mention yet another J, the older brother of one of my dearest friends? In response to invite to the dinner party he wrote:

J :"...as long as it's not just an excuse for a booty call."
V: ha! Surrender the fantasy. ;).
Although, on second thought, I have managed to slowly eliminate all my "quick and easies." You'd probably have to fight everybody else there for it, however.
J: I'm good at fighting...and there's a fine, fine line between violence and... ; )"

Shiver. Oh dear. I might just get into trouble.

My good friend A, his sister in law, is quite excited. It was only a few weeks ago, at a bar, when she realized we both had baby crushes on the other, but both reacted the same way: "Oh, (s)he would never go for me." He added, "I'm too old for her," while I said "I'm not his type, and he's S's brother!"

But there is a fantasy in the back of my head about being the sister-in-law of my first boyfriend and best friends. Like a guarantee I'll always be a part of that family, and be aunts to their kids - and to the three already terrific kids in that generation.

Oh, and did I mention he's a body builder? He's almost too big for me, honestly, but there's still something about a man who's arms are as big around as my head and could lift me over his head in a heartbeat that gets my juices flowing. Maybe it's pre-historic instinct, maybe it's socialization. Maybe I just like to be pushed around a little.

The thought still goes through my mind however: I'm not little enough. I still assume after all these years that all men want to date a size 4. And since I'll never be a size 4, I might as well admit that I'm going to be single the rest of my life.

All that said, of course, I'm back on the WW wagon, keeping track of everything that goes in my mouth. Frustrating to be ill the first few days - but c'est la vie!

Boys of Summer

Well, I asked to meet new people: success! Maybe now I need to ask to meet available men who are interested in me. With any luck, just putting the energy out there will help, yes? In summary:

P, a late-30something friend-of-friends who works for the local paper. Has a 3 year old love child, who I met at the sugarplantation. He's attractive, if shortish. Clever and funny. And what can I say, I'm a sucker for a 3 year old girl. First guy I've met in a while that I was really interested in - not just "considering."

Then at B&B I met:
G - A (very) handsome guy I've been talking to for work for months and months. He's always been very charming, and he pals around with a group of folks I've always wanted to meet in this town, but have never quite worked it out. After Saturday, I was vaguely convinced he was gay (and yes, he's that hot), until he said "I have to leave in a minute, but I really want to hang out with you. We should go out, or get fucked up or get coffee or something." Sounds interested to me, right? He rsvp'd to the house's b-day party for 2. *sigh*

J- So cute, southern accent, long-haired carpenter. He was drunk, but took to me, and we chatted a bit. Then he won one of the best raffle prizes... Gave him my card, and nothing. Again, a carpenter, and his accent makes me think he's stupid. But he was cute, damnit!

Dr.H - Charming, above all else. And knows M&K, who are also Drs, and were his residents. Went to a bar after the event to "run into him" - to no avail. Not meant to be?

That doesn't even cover the ER resident who thought I was still hung up on him (sweetheart, what an ego!), or the very attractive, smart funny (taken!) guy I met through friends last week.

It's like everywhere I turn I'm beating my head against the wall! But at least I'm meeting them, and over half these boys are invited to the party this weekend, so.... let's just see what kind of trouble we can into then!

Summer II

I promised S I would take a bike ride to the park with her, then run/walk, then bike home. But when I called her at 615am, I just wasn't feeling it. J texted, asking if I had "written my play" last night... and when I called to tell him I had simply gone home and started rehearsing other people's plays, he said that didn't count. Once again, he managed to anger me into inspiration.

Went for a run on the bayou. Saw at least three different species of ducks, including a couple ducklings. Running, and especially running outside, feeling the embrace of humidity, is one of the best ways to get your body going. Your mind rolling. My "little kittycat brain" can bounce around from one topic to another, all of them falling in the wake of my steady left-right-left-right. Some days the breathing is right on, today it wasn't.

I have been listless for a while. Ambulatory in life, really. Wandering from one idea to another, none of them satisfying. From starting a B&B with S, to quitting my job and traveling the world with one boyfriend and the next like N, to now starting a vaudeville theatrette in my kitchen.

And then came Henry V. Not the king, really, but the play; the Shakespearean masterpiece, crudely butchered by well meaning ensemble "process." The ongoing problem with Ensemble work, I find, is that the lack of one central vision often leaves it like a chicken with its head cut off. The action kind of runs around, with no apparent direction, until it eventually falls flat.

Needless to say this is disappointing.

So I promptly went home and started tearing through my bookshelves, and settled (for now) on Claire from Delicate Balance, Albee; Antigone OR Medea; and I'm still cuing in on some Shakespeare. Maybe I'll just pick themes, rights? Claire is about drunk vs. alcoholic... so maybe we'll pull in some Williams, and there's gotta be something about drunkenness and debauchery in WS.

More to come....

Vacation I

I'm beginning to think I want to be a travel writer. I've watched my stepmother as a freelance writer, and that does NOT look like a fun career, but the prospect of traveling and being paid to write about it sounds like heaven on earth. So you, my fateful readers, are to be guinea pigs.

I got back from 10 days of vacation on Sunday: a weekend on the Michigan Coast for my aunt's weekend, a week in the birthplace of the Cajuns, and a weekend at a sugar plantation.

I flew Direct into O'hare, and rented a car with my mom. The great thing about renting cars is that they can totally blow your fantasy about owning one - I have loved Rams all of sort ever since Dodge came out with the Durango with the gnarly front end. So I've had a secret crush on the Dodge Magnum until we rented one. Yuck. So after 3 hours in ridiculous suburban sprawl traffic, we made it to sunny Union Pier, MI. Just outside of New Buffalo (because old Buffalo is so great?) Honestly, it really was gorgeous, and good to see my family.

(Note to self on future blog posts: Darr Girls.) My aunt was perhaps the most beautiful bride I've ever seen - and her first wedding at 58! I can only hope to be as lovely one day.

Great ceremony, decent food, great company, and dance dance dancing! Flew out on Sunday, just before I got really tired of all the people I'm related to.

I got word while I was still in the sunny north that Patoutville had been changed to Friday night... so I called my B&B and changed my reserversation, so I could arrive on Monday. Ended up driving to J's, and sitting onthe couch with him for hours instead of leaving. But as I said, "I'm on vacation. I can do whatever I want!" The drive down Highway 90 was beautiful, and I left just in time to not be blinded by Sunset as I drove west.

Summer I

J forgets how pretty I am when he doesn't see me. As if when he looks away I disappear. Every time I see him again, he gets this surprised look on his face, as if he has just seen me for the first time. Most of the time, I find it charming and sweet. But often I want to just slap him upside the head and say: "When will you remember I'm pretty?"