Friday, October 05, 2001

Either I refuse to rest on my laurels or I don't know when to leave well enough alone. You be the judge.

Three-quarters of the way through the well-received run of The Fantasticks I've been part of at the McLean Theatre Alliance, I began rehearsals for Potomac Theatre Company's production of the same show this week.

It may turn out that my biggest challenge in this new production is remembering how to act like a nineteen-year-old. This time I play Matt (The Boy), returning to a roll I first did twelve years ago. I've almost always had to play my own age or older, as is often the case in community theater. Now I'll have to go back to a time when getting into college and figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up were the foremost subjects on my mind.

Hmm... now that I think of it, I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. Maybe I won't have half as much trouble relating to this kid as I thought.

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A little over six weeks ago (or, as it feels in post-attack time, back in the mid-eighties), my buddy OtherTim posted a list of favorite current singles. Normally, I look at such things with only passing interest. My CD purchases nowadays are usually old stalwarts, a certain Northern Virginia-based band that deserves much more attention, and musicals. On the radio, I gravitate toward news and talk.

So while it'd been a long time since I'd really listened to anything resembling a chart-topper, for some reason I got a wild hair and decided to give young Tim's list a listen. Over the next couple of days, I sought out all the songs he'd recommended and gave them a try.

Much to my surprise, I liked seven of the ten songs on his list. I've still got five of them in heavy rotation, a rather long shelf-life for me.

I'm forced to concede that the noise those kids listen to today isn't so bad after all. Guess I've still got a few years left until I can really become a curmudgeon.

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My friend Elise passes along this excellent article by the author Barbara Kingsolver. In just a few hundred words, Kingsolver adroitly illustrates why, in this time of national crisis, it is more important than ever that our flag be the symbol of unity and inclusion it was always meant to be.
9:37 AM  < To return to this entry, save this link

Sunday, September 30, 2001

My friend Steve has just alerted me to what could well become a new addiction: the City of Heroes online role-playing game. I'm not a huge gamer, but this one offers two things I enjoy immensely, role-playing and superheroes, in a convenient Web delivery system.

Luckily, I've got about nine months before the game launches in which to prepare for the massive investment in time and money this will cost me. That should be long enough to stockpile the required funds and say good-bye to my loved ones.

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In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks, our attention and energies will be, quite rightfully and of necessity, directed inward on our own country for some time to come. As we recover, we will need to focus our efforts on ourselves: our loved ones, our neighbors, our communities. Yet, in the midst of our recovery, it would be good to find time to help the world at large in some way. We are still the most powerful and prosperous nation on Earth, and even as we mourn and heal it behooves us to share the many blessings we continue to enjoy with those abroad who have little or nothing. This is important not only to those we can help, but for our own sense of well-being. There is no more effective way to feel strong than to help others.

A nearly effortless method of feeding the world has returned to the Web to provide us with just such an outlet for our compassion. Several months ago, The Hunger Site shut down due to lack of funding. Now it's back under new ownership, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

To donate requires nothing more than one mouse click and a few seconds of your time each day. Visit the site and hit the "GIVE FREE FOOD" button. A response page comes up with a few small sponsor buttons and a message showing how much you donated that day, month and year.

It takes about five seconds to make this donation. Looking at this in the long view, it'll cost you 30 of the 525,600 minutes you get each year to provide 365 cups of food. Do it from work each weekday and you can donate another 250 cups or so. And once you've done that, you can visit the Hunger Site's sister effort, The Breast Cancer Site, and use the same procedure to help provide mammograms for underprivileged women.

Clearly, visiting these sites doesn't need to be the be-all and end-all of one's charitable donations. But it is so very simple and painless that it would be a shame not to add these actions to our efforts.
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