Author: David Gorsline

A meditation for November

Whenever a person’s lack of shame offends you, you should immediately ask yourself: “So is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?” It isn’t, and you should therefore stop demanding the impossible. He’s just one of those shameless people who must necessarily exist in the world. You should keep the same thought readily available also for when you’re faced with devious and untrustworthy people, and people who are flawed in any way. As soon as you remind yourself that it’s impossible for such people not to exist, you’ll be kinder toward each and every one of them. It’s also helpful immediately to consider what virtue nature has granted us human beings to deal with any offense—gentleness, for instance, to counter discourteous people, and other ways to counter others. Generally speaking, you can get someone who’s gone astray to mend his ways—and whatever his wrong, a wrongdoer is missing his mark and has gone astray. Besides, have you been harmed in any way? You’ll find that none of the people who make you lose your temper has done anything that might affect your mind for the worse; and outside of the mind there’s nothing that is truly detrimental or harmful for you. Moreover, what is unusual or surprising about an uneducated man doing uneducated things? It’s worth considering whether you ought rather to blame yourself for failing to foresee that he would transgress in this way.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.42, trans. Robin Waterfield

Babbitt

Matthew Broderick leads a successful, if not always faithful, adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s Jazz age satire. The framing device of ensemble members reading The Very Book in a public library of today, backed up by the dramaturg’s note, encourages audiences to engage with this hundred-year-old masterpiece, and that’s to the good.

While George Babbitt’s journey—from Republican conformity to soft-core rebellion, returning to the arms of the Good Citizens League (strong hints of It Can’t Happen Here in this adaptation)—is preserved, the dialogue is modernized, stripping out nearly all of the jargon and colloquialisms of the 1920s. This sweetening is probably also a good idea, as some of Lewis’s passages would be incomprehensible as spoken word today.1 Babbitt does retain an occasional “Zowie!” or “That’s the stuff!”

Any adaptation must condense, consolidate, and excise, but I do miss the excursion to the realtors’ (S.A.R.E.B.) convention in Monarch. The unmitigated, vacant boosterism of George Babbitt and his clan is what makes him so endearing, or insufferable, as you will.

In the final break with Tanis, the roles are reversed from the book to the stage, for some reason.

Broderick brings a nice physicality to the role. In the first act, his George is so buttoned-up that his wildest gestures wouldn’t collide with the walls of a telephone booth.2 Encouraged to sit on a floor cushion in Tanis’s flat, George makes heavy weather of getting down. Don’t worry, George loosens up and even cuts a rug in the second act. Vocally, Broderick has chosen a dweeby squeak somewhere in the neighborhood of Wally Cox. It’s funny, but blustering George needs a rumbly baritone.

First among the ensemble of seven is Matt McGrath, handling the equally odious Charley McKelvey and his antagonist Seneca Doane.

1Check out the parody (?) Prince Albert Tobacco ad from Chapter VIII, spoken of with reverence by poetaster Chum Frink.

2Remember those?

  • Babbitt, by Joe DiPietro, adapted from the novel by Sinclair Lewis, directed by Christopher Ashley, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Harman Hall, Washington

File this note under ICYMI, as the show closed last weekend.

Machicomoco follow-up

Per a presentation by Karl Kratzer at yesterday’s Virginia Herpetological Society meeting, I understand more about what the deal is with Machicomoco State Park. The property was a working farm as late as 2008. When residential development failed to materialize, Dominion Energy bought it and proffered it to the commonwealth this decade. The park does not yet have a master plan. (It doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, either.) Hence, the soybean fields in the middle of the ring road.

But, to unbury the lede, Machicomoco is an active breeding site for Northern Diamond-backed Terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin ssp. terrapin). By Kratzer’s reasoning, due to their site fidelity, the turtles and farmers have been coexisting for quite some time.

On deck: 27

another on deck picThe shelf was getting a little unbalanced toward fiction, so I ordered some new titles and now it looks like back-to-school time. Still not keeping up with Kate Atkinson.

During 45’s term, I reread Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy. I wonder what would be a good palliative read this time around.

Postcards from Ohio: October 2024: Addendum

I stopped in Columbus at the Wexner Center for the Arts on my way west, and found numerous six-wheeled robots tootling around the OSU campus. A robot seemed to manage crossing a driveway (into a parking deck, for instance) just fine, but I had the uncanny feeling that it waited for me to start to cross, that being a signal that it was safe to move. The robot’s cargo bay was about the size of a backpack, but shaped more like a little bathtub.

What were these automata delivering? Library books, mayhaps? Nope, it’s food. It’s always food.

Postcards from Ohio: October 2024

I made another road trip to Dayton and environs, primarily to inspect new memorials for Mom, and secondarily to see… stuff.

the bench in its settingthe plaqueMom’s new bench in Stillwater Prairie Reserve is looking quite sharp, although it appears that the plaque has already acquired a bit of scratchiti.

Also spotted at Stillwater were several Eastern Fox Squirrels (Sciurus niger).

where am I?In Greene County, I walked Sibenthaler Fen and Russ Nature Reserve. I do like a well-executed trail post. The lat-long is a nice touch.

I'll get the next oneheading downtownSome transit geekery: I rode the Cincinnati streetcar up to Findlay Market for a spot of lunch.

As for Cincinnati’s two connector expressways linking I-75 and I-71, the short Norwood Lateral (Ohio 562) might be the only freeway in the country whose control cities on the big green signs are the same at each end, namely, Norwood, because that’s the only place the freeway goes. On the other hand, Ohio 126 is only signed Ronald Reagan Highway—because it won’t take you anywhere useful, mayhaps? Ohio 126 smooshed property values on Mom’s condo when the road was built to Reading Road.

my ride's herenext busAnd I rode Dayton’s 4 bus downtown, with a return on the 7. The 4 was running trolleys and diesels, while the 2 and 7 were only diesels. I rode bus #1958, pictured at left; in the photo at right of bus #2064, the trolley poles are easier to see. There are no trolley wires at the end the the 7’s run, but the new hybrid equipment allows the driver to “drop the poles” for a stretch. Downtown I saw buses on the 8 doing that.

worth a shotI tried this place for dinner, and it was pretty good. I broke my vegetarianism to sample goetta.

The Cradle Will Rock

INSeries’s captures some of the gist of the original, improvised presentation of Marc Bltizstein’s juicy, polemical The Cradle Will Rock, with a solo upright piano on stage and actors singing from the aisles of the house for a couple of numbers. Headgear is important here: the eight members of the liberty committee chorus are achieved with four singers, each wearing a hat on their hands; Mr. Mister (Rob McGinness, doubling Reverend Salvation) has a tiny silver top hat attached to the side of his head—maybe it was liberated from a Monopoly set?

Lighting in the Baltimore Theatre Project on Thursday’s opening night was dodgy, with dark spots and flickers that were unlikely to be expressionist choices.

  • The Cradle Will Rock, text and music by Marc Blitzstein, directed by Shanara Gabrielle, music direction by Emily Baltzer, INSeries, Baltimore Theatre Project, Baltimore

Some news can be made to order. —Mr. Mister

Some links: 104

Clearwater Nature Center mushrooms

Saturday, Megan Romberg and Georgie Hardesty led a collecting foray for mycologists of various experience levels at Cosca Regional Park’s Clearwater Nature Center. The building itself, perched on a rise, has an attractive series of walk-ups/ramps leading to it, with a water feature. Most interesting finds (to me) were a nifty bolete, Retiboletus ornatipes (pending iNat confirmation) and a wee scatter of Fenugreek Stalkball (Phleogena faginea).