Independence Day

The All Star Game is in what look to be its final moments, and I really need to go to bed, but since I'm trying to keep at this a little better in spite of craziness in my life and dayjob (oh my, you have no idea) I'm going to throw in a few photos from the 4th of July a couple weekends ago.

We went to New Hope again this year, to hang with Carl and Kevin. But this year we were also joined by Carl and Eevin. Eevin rhymes with Kevin.

That's right folks, we were with Carl and Eevin and Carl and Kevin. Carl and Carl and Kevin and Eevin. No shortage of fun there!

We did have lots o' fun, including the Erwinna Fireworks (complete with local orchestra) and some fierce games of Killer Bunnies (have you heard of this?) We also went to some friends' pool, and got to hang out with some wicked awesome puppies.

Sam and Sadie love the pool.

Sadie prefers it from the outside, in general.


Carl and Eevin shared some of their weekly Sunday Times traditions.

And I like this shot of paws and prints by the pool.

Ok, there you have it. Plus the National League won the All Star Game for the first time since 1996. Holy Moly!

I'll try to be back sooner than that.

I <3 NY

I really do. Most of the time. But then once in a while, they decide to do something really annoying, probably unconstitutional, and just plain wrong. And it makes me just. go. berserk. Just like Billy Jack.

Lotta rhetoric flying around the idea of gay marriage, in New York and across the country. Six New York Democrats voted against it. Well, seven, if you count Ruben "It's Treason" Diaz, but I honestly don't know if anyone is thinking of him as a Democrat anymore in anything but name.

On the other hand, maybe the Dems deserve the name he's giving them. You saw what I posted yesterday about the Afghan War. And a little while ago, 64 of them in the U.S. House voted to dial back women's access to safe and legal abortions, as I've discussed here too. You know: Safe. Legal. Like you'd want if someone you love needed one. Like women in this country have been able to count on for a couple generations. Like Democrats used to insist on as a base level for the discussion. Here's Barbara Ehrenreich with a really good article on the defanging of feminism. (The gist - while once American women took stands and took to the streets en masse, now you get to call yourself 'aware' of 'women's health concerns' by wearing a little pink pin.) And while we're on Democratic selldowns, where is the New Deal for this generation's economic crisis? Where are the jobs? Where is the aggressive handling of the outsized robber barons of Wall Street?

Ok, ok - I still like Obama better than Bush. I guess I like the Democrats better than the Republicans. (I guess.) But hoooo boy, I'm tired of paying them and getting out the vote for them and not getting what I paid and voted for.

Keep writing those letters and emails and making those phone calls, people. Make it clear that your wallets are closed to officials that don't effect the policies you support and demand.

What would Billy Jack do?





Hehehe.

But as I imagine going all Billy Jack on them, I'm thinking of a quote I saw earlier today and now can't remember where it was. I'll try to track it down, but it went something like: "...then you realize that there is no 'Them,' there's only 'Us,' and We fucked up."

4th of July, Just South of Asbury Park

In New Hope, Pennsylvania, as it happened.

It was pretty much a good old fashioned Fourth of July: barbecue in the back yard, tubing on the river (the Delaware river, very near where Washington made his fabled crossing during the Revolution), concert in a big field, followed by fireworks.  Small town fireworks, at that: not nearly as spectacular as the big city variety, but just as much fun in their own way, in among the balloons and the smell of bug spray and the folding picnic tables with stars and stripes paper tablecloths, and the annoying family nearby who kept moving the garbage can closer to us.

We entered the scene as Carl was making some jam.  He had a question about the process, so before I'd even been properly introduced, I was on the phone to mom for some guidance.  She steered us in the direction of a paraffin seal (which saved us a bunch of time and trouble) and not too much later we had us a batch of blueberry jam.

We had brought a case of beer and a bottle of spiced rum (drink of choice of our hosts) and continued to give good help in the kitchen, and it's good that we did, because Carl and Kevin outdid themselves with the hospitality.  SO much fun, and at the perfect time, right between Hamlet and the crazy dayjob Voyage to Boca.

They also have a couple of fun cats to liven up the joint.  Yes, yes, I'm allergic to cats, but it was a big place, and I took drugs to help me through it.  And they were some photogenic felines too, so we had that going for us.  Which is nice.

Here's Oliver, who's a little camera-shy:


And here's Rudy, who came right up to say hi:

And the backyard even had some nice hydrangeas. 

Throw in a late brunch at a Mexican place in Lambertville, NJ with Jen and Charles (love those guys!) and a good drive in both directions with my best gal in the passenger seat and it made for a damn fine holiday.

So, alright, this is an awfully conventional blog entry, but what can I say?  It was Independence Day.  How 'bout if I throw in an appeal to exercise your patriotic duty and contact the President to let him know that indefinite detention is unacceptable (and Unconstitutional.)  

And yes, we listened to The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle on the morning of the 4th.

Genius? Or merely Brilliant?

Probably merely brilliant. Geniuses are really really Rare. Have we been down this road before?


And I'll want to write more about this man before long, but I'm very very short on time right now. However, I alluded to him last week, and I don't want to let another day go by before I devote a post to Mike Daisey.

He is a fascinating writer, performer, my new favorite blogger (do click on the link above, please) and one of the best monologists of our time, in my opinion. His new show If You See Something Say Something opens tonight at Joe's Pub, directed by his perennial partner Jean-Michele Gregory. I caught a preview a couple weekends ago, and I hope that this show gets the accolades it deserves. That would be nigh-unalloyed praise from the New York Times and Variety all rolled into one.

Ok, ok, I'm maybe getting a little overheated here. And I do have to run. But guys, for real: Go. See. This. Show.

Antidote

Wouldn't you know, less than an hour after I posted that last semi-rant, along came a little remedy:

'A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.' --Thomas Jefferson

This was sent to me by Cory, who was sent it by her friend Tepper.

Without wanting to go off on another kind of rant, let me say that this also touches on another little pet peeve of mine: the idea that Liberals, Radicals, any dissenters to the current State of Affairs are somehow not Patriotic.

Nonsense.

I am actually very Patriotic, but the type of Patriotic revealed in that quotation: the Thomas Jefferson patience and reason and integrity kind, not the do-whatever-the-president-happens-to-say kind.

For instance, it gives me national pride (in a states rights kind of way) to know that the Connecticut Supreme Court just approved the legal right of gay couples to marry. Want to read the ruling? Here's the ruling.

Happy Patriots' Day

It's a pretty New England-specific thing (and really seems to mean a lot more in Boston than anywhere else) but I think that Patriots' Day deserves a shoutout.



It's most renowned for being the day that the Boston Marathon happens - congratulations to Robert Cheruiot (four's a charm!) and Dire Tune! And it's exciting to Red Sox fans because they play a game that starts in the morning. I'm tapping this out at 1:23, and the Sox are already leading the Rangers 8-0 in the 6th. (You almost have to feel sorry for those poor Rangers. This may be long-term repercussions from when George W. Bush ran the club.) But I think it's also a good reminder that patriotism does NOT mean blind acceptance or following of the government; that America's foundation was built on dissent and rebellion, religious freedom (emphatically not fundamentalism) and independent thought.



At least, that's how I see it.



So, given that, here's a brief excerpt from a pretty rad interview with F. Murray Abraham in today's Gothamist (I encourage you to read the whole thing):



Speaking of casting, weren’t you supposed to be in the current revival of The American Dream and The Sandbox?



I was scheduled to do it with Edward [Albee] but I just simply couldn’t do one more play without making some money. You know, I’m only making about $425 a week here and I have some big expenses. Very big. And I have to make some movie money. I had done three plays in a row and I had to beg off so I could do a movie. He was very understanding and we’re friends but I simply couldn’t. I’m leaving shortly to do another movie; I have to do these movies to support this theater habit.


So you’re an actor with this incredible reputation and a body of work that speaks for itself, here you are in an Off Broadway play with a famous writer and incredible cast, and you’re being paid peanuts. Has the pay scale just gotten worse and worse over the years?



Yeah, it has. It’s just one of those things. But working people across America have been paid less and less over the years. And while that’s happening we have these heads of corporations who are destroying corporations while making billions of dollars. What’s going on? Is this democracy? Something’s wrong here. It’s bullshit, man. It’s got to stop. It’s got to change. I don’t know who or what that change is but we have to do something. I mean, the idea that you believe – as the God I play believes – that you are the only source of truth and integrity and reality, then that gives you the right to torture people and do any damn thing you want because you’re above the law. That’s what the Nazis did; they said it was there divine right. And we’re behaving like Nazis. That’s not America, that’s not the America my two brothers died for in defense of their country. It’s bullshit.



Ain't it, though?

4th of july weekend in the cradle of american democracy

My Independence Day weekend was fantastic, if exhausting.

The thumbnails (edited from an email sent to sherin):

• anniversary party for molly & rudy in boston on the 4th; bitchen barbeque and fireworks on the hill

• spent the 5th with sue & a not-too-hungover steve, lazing about and catching up; watched the video of 'wordplay'
  
  that night went to fenway for the big blowout with sue, steve, molly, rudy and beth; good to be back in baseball's holiest cathedral - wicked awesome
  

• next day brunch with steve & beckett; MFA for edward hopper exhibition; drove to western massachusetts (much to the chagrin of the boston people) for concert/film of dutch quartet 'electra,' at MASS MoCA, and the customary beers-on-the-dock afterward

• next day breakfast with sue (williamstown sue, not to be confused with boston sue) and solo errands/wandering around williamstown/north adams while she prepared for the Ralph Stanley concert that night, followed by beers on dock, drinks at bar and nightcap at home - sheesh! Don't worry, we paced ourselves nicely.

• next day slept in (finally) a bit, then bkfst w/sue, then drove to saratoga for charlie and erin's wedding, then drove back to hoboken, giving one of the ballet folks a ride involving a long conversation about spirituality/meditation; in bed at about a quarter to 2

So let me leave you with a bumper-sticker-style reminder: Dissent is not just what makes America Great, it's what made America in the first place.