theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
One follow-up to my New York trip that I overlooked: Metro North names some of their passenger cars to recognize people, places, and things. On my trip back from Beacon, I had the honor of riding in car #6163, Thelonious Monk.
Where can I find a list of all the cars’ names?
I recently came across an article in the archives of Aperture by Julia Scully” “Mike Disfarmer, Heber Springs, Arkansas.” I’ve been following Disfarmer, if that’s the right word, since seeing Dan Hurlin’s puppetry piece back in 2009.
I made a second trip to New York this year! The impetus was seeing the Vivian Maier show at Fotografiska before that venue closes its doors. Also on the gallery/museum visit checklist was
I rolled out in the direction of the Rockaways on the A to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (an NPS property, despite its name). Birding was slow in the late morning, but a Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) flitted about and a trio of Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) perched up. I found a few new plants that I did not recognize, a couple of non-native invasives (Rosa rugosa and Saponaria officinalis) and a startling mint, Monarda punctata. I watched a Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) steal a cicada from an Eastern Cicada-killer Wasp (Sphecius speciosus): after the wasp lost its meal, it spiraled in angry circles around the scene of the robbery. I killed my first Spotted Lanternfly. And my second. Any my third. Walking the coarse gravel path around the West Pond in my hiking sneakers began to wear out my feet.
The A runs underground until 80th Street, so I had ample time to admire some brilliant innovative tech: as the train approaches a station, doors on the exit side are framed in green light, and the strip map above each door changes to a map of the platform with the train berthed, with your car marked with a “You are here.” Arrows direct you to stairs, elevators, connecting trains and (in the outlying stations) major buses, and street intersections. Wayfinding right when you need it, before you step on to the platform. Let’s hope that this tech makes its way on to the other lines. The gold and cobalt blue accents in the livery are quite handsome.
For all of the New York subway’s crashed message boards,
funky stinks, cramped escalators (looking at you, E and M at Lexington Avenue-53rd Street), squonky noises, confusing service changes for maintenance (for a trip back from Columbus Circle, it would have been faster to walk, even accounting for the fact that I jumped on the wrong 7 train), and random rust stains, once in a while you find a bit that has been restored to glory. Here’s a station marker on the Lexington line that’s just superb.
I visited three jazz clubs new to me:
Some views from my jewel box hotel on East 55th Street: an old school shoe repair shop.
From the 7th floor terrace, buildings at the corner of Lexington, and in the distance down at Madison, a partial view of what I still think of as Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building, now just known as 650 Madison.
On my way back to the subway from the Joyce Theater, I was feeling peckish for dessert. Poof! appeared an Oddfellows ice cream shop at the corner of 17th Street. A generous scoop of vegan chocolate-chocolate chunk was very good.
Playwright David Adjmi takes another plunge into less-visited subcultures, in this case top-tier pop-rock music production in the 1970s with the double album-sized, polished Stereophonic. Music recording in this decade was in a transition period from the era when all musicians played together at the same time, in the same room, looking at and listening to each other. The five-member unnamed band (we may as well call them Bleetwood Mac) of Adjmi’s work do play through a song or two as an ensemble in the first half, but as relationships unravel like a bad macrame plant hanger, all of the subsequent taping sessions entail only one or a few band members, listening to playback and staring straight ahead.
Although the band and chief engineer Grover do have access to a gigantic mixing board the size of a corporate boardroom conference table, sound capture and mixing at the time was analog and linear, in the parlance. Nevertheless, Grover and drummer Simon (Chris Stack) consume an inordinate amount of energy pursuing a glitchy resonance in Simon’s drum kit, something inaudible to us and perhaps chimerical. As Grover learns the ropes of fake-it-till-you-make-it, in the latter stages of the play he overpowers Simon to play to a click track (again, a relatively novel technology) because Simon’s beat is wavering. Or so Grover says.
It was a silver age, with so much money and time available, chasing infinitesimal improvements in quality.
Adjmi’s approach to dialogue, matched by the direction of Daniel Aukin, follows a similar arc: early expository scenes are full of jumbled, overlapping, super fast passages (particularly from Sarah Pidgeon’s Diana), while at the end, characters’ decisions are underscored by searing pauses. With all involved looking dead downstage.
It’s not for nothing that perfectionist Peter (Tom Pecinka), as done up with aviator shades and drooping mustache, is a ringer for Walter Becker.
A gold record on the wall for understudy Cornelius McMoyler, who stepped in seamlessly as Grover at Tuesday’s performance.
David Henry Hwang’s effective new musical Soft Power suggests a triangulation of the patriotism of Hamilton and the east-meets-west of Pacific Overtures, recently produced by Signature Theatre. However, it’s set in the here and now of strained USA-China relations and the two most recent election cycles. The text of the play explicitly acknowledges that it is a response to another well-loved musical, The King and I, Hwang working in a familiar groove.
“Welcome to America” explodes in your face, with the least sinister figure being a silent Times Square Elmo puppet. It sets up the arrival two songs later of Hillary Clinton (the electrifying Grace Yoo), an Asian American in a blonde wig. Clinton’s music and movement is a pastiche of Meredith Wilson,* Reno Sweeney, Evita Peron, Michael Bennett, John Kander, and Stephen Sondheim. Her 11:00 number (actually a 9:15, in this 90-minute play) is “Democracy,” which opens with a tremendous preach and closes with a scrim drop from the flies that will have most Americans losing their shit, in a good way.
“Happy Enough” (my notes say “tone song,” which perhaps better captures the spirit) is a lovely duet for Clinton and ex-pat Xūe Xíng (Daniel May), intimately exploring the nuances of Chinese pronunciation, with a slightly forced joke involving an English vulgarism.
*Clinton’s repetition of the lyric “Problems” also brings to mind Laurie Anderson’s “Only an Expert,” but that’s just me.
Wrapping up reporting for the 2024 nesting season.
OK, for a rainy-day project, I can total up results for our nesting season. It was a much better year for our Wood Ducks. It’s likely that some of our Hooded Mergansers managed with natural cavities.
For our Wood Ducks, 10 nests started, 1 nest lost to predation, 9 nests fledged; 146 eggs laid, 117 ducklings fledged. For our Hooded Mergansers, 2 nests started, 2 nests fledged; 22 eggs laid, 19 ducklings fledged. About the same fledging rate (80% for WODU, 86% for HOME)….
Once again, thank you, monitors!
I returned to Shepherdstown for a repeat viewing of Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting, in an attempt to collect all the allusions to films, filmmakers, and characters that CB drops, geek that I am. I missed a couple, but here is what I could capture in my notes, in addition to those called out in my earlier blog post.
Hmm, now that I’ve seen Akerman’s News from Home, I see that certain liberties were taken when CB describes the film: there is only one door, and there are no brownstones.
I finally connected up with the Events DC folks to join one of the public tours of the art in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. We saw some good stuff, but I was really there for the wall drawing.
The docent and I bonded over Mass MOCA.
The action was a little slow: we suspect that butterfly numbers are down due to the drought. But I did secure good images of Little Glassywing (Vernia verna) and Common Checkered-Skipper (Burnsius communis), the latter a new butterfly for me.
TIL that Merv Griffin got his start singing on the radio.
Bradley Simpson and Judy Fulton led a walk in Prince George’s County’s Jug Bay Natural Area.
Something something I think I had been here before, maybe in a boat? but when I saw the gigantic observation tower with lift, I was sure. Of course, it was eleven years ago. The Baldcypress trees are still there.
There were many stems of Crane-fly Orchid (Tipularia discolor) in bloom, so I was able to secure a good photograph; the Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica) was also blooming; an Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) was delivering lunch (a dragonfly having a bad day).
We struggled with the ID of a sedge-y looking plant that turned out to be not even a graminoid: it’s Arrow-leaved Tearthumb (Persicaria sagittata). Update 24 July 2024: Margaret Chatham convinced me that it was a sedge after all: Georgia Bulrush (Scirpus georgianus).
And in other iNaturalist-assisted IDs, I noted an almost lookalike of Water Pennywort, but it was a completely new genus for me: Kidney-leaf Mud Plantain (Heteranthera reniformis), in the Pontederiaceae.
Driving South Lakes Drive, I saw a plain white box truck on the street, with the designation Solid Gold Trade Co. and I imagined that it was full of the Solid Gold dancers. Did a clumsy 1-change-2-change-3-4 shoulder roll in celebration.
Genevieve Wall with Nature Forward led a naturalists’ shuffle from Swain’s Lock on the C&O Canal. I have visited several sites in this long skinny park, but as far as I can tell, I have not dropped into Swain’s Lock before. Not too long a drive out River Road, short access road, smallish parking lot, good fit.
Many of us were hoping for more bird activity (we did pick up a distant Yellow-billed Cuckoo [Coccyzus americanus]), and I was looking for butterflies in preparation for Saturday’s count. Not much in the way of butterflies, but I did find what turned out to be a new dragonfly genus for me, a Black-shouldered Spinyleg (Dromogomphus spinosus), with some ID assistance from Lisa Shannon.
Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting is a little much to take in at first viewing, which is part of the point. The narrative skitters fractally back and forth along a time line in the life of Chantal (a/k/a CB, for Chantal Akerman and Luis Buñuel) from ages 11 to 19, living on a small farm in the Great Plains with a loving, imperfect mother and father. Chantal (laser-focused Jean Christian Barry) checks several of the boxes in the catalog of neurodiversity, among them autism spectrum, ADHD, and synesthesia; CB is also nonbinary, or perhaps “abinary,” preferring to eschew pronouns altogether.
Chantal is learning to become a film-maker like CB’s namesakes. Most of the second half of the play consists of capturing/retelling/reassembling life-changing events when Chantal was much younger. There’s more than a suggestion that Chantal believes that coming out to CB’s parents as nonbinary caused the tornado that destroyed the family home.
Harmon dot aut wisely leans into CB’s synesthesia, as well as CB’s obsession with movies. Both of these aspects of neurodiversity are easy for us to make a connection with Chantal. There’s nothing threatening about synesthesia, unlike the culture dustups about pronouns1 and public washrooms. Likewise, who doesn’t go a little too deep into movies?
Jasminn Johnson holds her own as Mom, a kindergarten teacher with a flair for little verses that end with an Edward Gorey twist. And Roderick Hill as Dad shows some chops remembering a horrible killing when he was deployed to Kabul, as well as a tasty comic run of movie star impersonations (as directed by Chantal).
A scattering of films referred to in the text:
Not alluded to, but always under the surface when we talk about Buñuel: Un chien Andalou, 1929. Somehow those ants scurrying about reflect how/what Chantal is processing.
An ground-breaking piece, masterfully done. Bravo to CATF for bringing it to the festival. And cheers to the running crew scooting in to reset the wreckage of CB’s house.
1Between you and me, I look forward to a time, decades or centuries away, when English’s current gender marking seems as quaint as adjectives that decline and the ablative case.