Attend the lords of France and Burgundy

We struck King Lear yesterday evening. All in all, a good run, one that met my expectations.

The scanty houses middle weekend (16 Sunday, 11 stalwarts on Friday) built to some better numbers for our closing weekend, including a declared sell-out Saturday (CLS ordinarily sets up two rows of chairs, seating about 50).

We continued to make costume and blocking adjustments through Saturday. Too bad that we never found a safer place for the wheelchair (for IV.iv) that every night I had to wrangle out of a fire exit stairwell.

A few days ago I was noted the passing remark that a typical shift in the NHL is 45 seconds. That’s about the amount of time that it takes to deliver 15 lines of Shakespeare. So I skated my two shifts, plus a bit. I’m actually most satisfied with my tiny bit as the Messenger in Act IV who brings word of the advancing British army.

It turned out that the daylight streaming through the Sunday afternoon windows was not as distracting as the exterior building security lights shining through the evenings. It just never gets dark in that space.

In my long layover between I.i (the division of the kingdom and the betrothal) and III.vii (the blinding of Gloucester) each night I would help Chris by making up his back for when Edgar goes underground as Poor Tom. We went through a few containers of brown and black character color in the nine-show run. Chris tried dark street makeup foundation, but was dissatisfied with the results: too blendy.

I noted before that the church is a multipurpose facility, and that’s really apparent on Friday nights when the AA/NA meetings are held downstairs. I tried to convince myself that the gabble of voices rising through the ventilation system suggested unseen denizens of the palace, but my resolve faltered when I smelled coffee onstage.

Fortunately we had a lot of hands for strike, and we were on our way to food, drink, and celebration in under an hour.

At the park: 16

nestlings
Sometimes our boxes are visited by members of families other than Anatidae. A Tufted Titmouse has taken over box #5, located down lower Barnyard Run. At least five nestlings are visible in the photo at left; you can also see the considerable amount of unused box space surrounding the tiny nest.

Box #8 on the main wetland also has a songbird nest in it—probably Carolina Wren.

As for our intended guests, two Hooded Merganser nests have hatched out, as well as two Wood Duck clutches. We’re still expecting hatches of two hoodie families, three woodie families, and perhaps one more.

Also heard, seen, or both: American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus), Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla), Great Crested Flycatcher (Myiarchus crinitus), Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus), Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus), and Prothonotary Warbler (Pronotaria citrea)(vocalizing!).

At the park: 15

greening upOn Sunday’s trip, we saw the results of hatching in three boxes. Myra and Chris were rewarded with views of chicks in two of them! The foliage has really greened up in the past couple of weeks, after what feels like ten days of rain. The patch and glue job on my right boot did not hold up, but fortunately I have another right (from my previous pair, which is lacking a left). New birds spotted or heard in the park: Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes), Solitary Sandpiper (Tringa solitaria), Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica), Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina), White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus), Yellow Warbler (Dendroica petechia), and lifer #358 for me, Northern Waterthrush (Seiurus noveboracensis). Good ears, Paul!

Some links links: 2

Via things magazine: a thought-provoking post by Jeffrey Zeldman on the “outsourcing” of personal web page content:

[Imagine] a 1990s site whose splash page links to sub-pages. Structurally, its site map is indistinguishable from an org chart, with the CEO at the top, and everyone else below. …to re-use the org chart analogy, a site like Jody’s is akin to a single-owner company with only virtual (freelance) employees. There is nothing below the CEO. All arrows point outward.

I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m outsourcing my content, but it’s certainly the case that I’m managing a growing number of multiple online personalities. And I really like the simplicity of my TypeKey profile: that’s the URL that I include in my professional resume.

Briefly noted

…in last week’s Economist:

  • “Nauruan” is probably the only proper adjective that is also a palindrome.
  • Dubai is selling the naming rights to some of its metro stations and its two lines.

    Dubai Metro Naming Rights offers you unmatched impact and visibility to take your brand to new levels of saliency and success. What’s more, it is an immersive marketing opportunity that allows you to communicate and interact with your consumers at various touch points spread across the station/Metro network.

  • A panmictic population is one in which all individuals are potential partners.

Bad, bad, ghastly, and bad

Via ArtsJournal: a Rochester, N.Y. artists’ group is giving staged readings of the notorious stinker, Moose Murders, reports Campbell Robertson. The play closed after its opening performance on Broadway in 1983.

The number of people who claim to have seen the [Broadway] show, at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, seems to have multiplied beyond physical possibility, like those who claim to have seen the Beatles at Shea Stadium or Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.

Not so green

Willie D. Jones reports on research (preliminary, apparently not yet published) by the Virginia Water Resources Research Center that compares various energy sources and means of power generation in their efficiency of water consumption. That certain high-tech darlings of alternative energy, like ethanol, are relative water hogs is less surprising than the wide spread of computed values, spanning four orders of magnitude. While natural gas requires only 38 liters of water per 1000 kilowatt-hours generated, biodiesel was measured at 180.9 to 969 kiloliters of water per 1000 kW-h. On the generation side, the range is from 260 l/kW-h for hydroelectricity to 31000 to 74900 l/kW-h.