Zoo

I used to be a docent at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City.  I worked mostly in the petting zoo area, taking care of the animals there and explaining exhibits to zoo visitors.

Our first duty in the mornings was to feed the animals in the petting area, which involved everything from cutting up fruit to dispensing monkey chow to fetching frozen mice from the animal commissary for the variety of snakes we had on display.

We had a baby Burmese python named "Monty" (I know, we groaned too) who was kept there due to his father trying to eat him.  When I arrived, you could hold Monty coiled up in one hand.  By the time I left, you had to wrap Monty around one arm, in back of you at your waist and around the other arm, because he had grown from about a foot to six feet long!

The beehive also fascinated young and old alike. There was a plastic case that lead to a tube that went out of the building.  Bees were busily building a hive and producing honey and I was oh, so glad they were behind that plastic!

One Sunday, early in the morning, before the zoo opened, I took my little stroll through the area and when I came to the pen at the end of the animal building, saw some sort of cow critter (the precise species name eludes me because this was more than 30 years ago), who was obviously male stalking around the area.  There were also a number of goats who were doing their level best to stay on the opposite side of the pen.

Well, they don't call it wildlife for nothing.

Peace, out, y'all.  Thanks for joining me (and all of us crazy bloggers) on my (our) A to Z journey this April!

Young Frankenstein

Two of my favorite moments from Young Frankenstein:

1.  Igor saying "Blucher" to the horses to frighten them, and which even now I cannot say without neighing.

2.  Blucher's statement, "Your fiancee is here, I suggest you put on a tie."

What is/are your favorite YF movie moment(s)?

Xenophobia

I am a Christian.

I am an American.

I am a Caucasian.

Those three statements alone are enough for most people to (at least start to) form an opinion on who I am and what I am like.  Taken to an irrational end, it becomes xenophobia, a fear or hatred of someone or something different from oneself.

Race, nationality and religion are but three of the categories into which people try to pigeonhole one another in order to create an "us" and "them" atmosphere.

I remember a festival in Salt Lake City called "Living Traditions".  My mother and brother were part of a Swiss Chorus that performed each year.  After that performance, for 2.5 days we enjoyed the music, dance, crafts and foods of groups from all over the world, many of which we experienced at no other time of year.  That's what made it so great.

But like most things, differences can be used for evil ends as well.  I know this will bring some negative comments but I've got to say it.  The religion professed by the 9-11 terrorists was Islam.  I say 'professed by' because it is my belief that these men used the claim of being Islamic to garner support from people who are xenophobic about things that are not Islamic.  Does this mean that all Muslims are terrorists.  No!

I know a number of people (some in my own family) do not agree with a mosque being built near 'ground zero' in NYC;  I do not understand their objection.  Islam did not commit that horrible event; a group of terrorists claiming to be Muslims were responsible.  Can we in good faith and with justice punish a whole group for the actions of a few?

Yes, I am Christian; I also have friends with a wide array of beliefs.

Yes, I am an American; I also have friends all over the world.

Yes, I am white; I also do not pick my friends and associates by the color of their skin.

Wedding

As my 16th wedding anniversary is quickly approaching (May 9th), it seemed appropriate to write a little about the drama surrounding our wedding.

This would be my second wedding.  Although my first husband had been out of the picture (and out of the state) since about 6 months after my first wedding, I did not have the money for a divorce.  Having met the man who is now my husband shortly after that point over the computer, he came out for a one-week visit to Utah and, well, never really left.

My mother and brother were to be there, of course, and Chris's mother was coming in from San Francisco, where she lived at the time.  Add to them a couple of friends as witnesses and that made up our wedding party - well, along with our son, who was five months old at the time.  The justice of the peace who was to perform the ceremony usually did them in her courtroom.  But as this was the same officiant as in my first wedding, I did not really want to do that.  So she offerred having the ceremony at her home.  I thought that was nice.

The day before the wedding was to take place, we learned that a couple of my soon-to-be-husband's aunts may be coming into town from Texas.  I called the judge to let her know and she said she could not possibly handle that many people at her house.

So - THE DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING - we went shopping for someone new to perform the ceremony.  I think we went alphabetically through the yellow pages and at the Unitarian Church in the area, we finally found a female preacher who agreed to perform the ceremony.  Chris and I hot-footed it down to her church and went through the readings and vows we would like to have used.

All in all, it went rather well, considering the chaos of the preceeding 24 hours.  We had the ceremony in my mother's living room, which was nice especially because there was a painting of my father, who had passed away some years before, on a wall - so it was almost like he was there.  My brother held my son up in front of him so he (at 5 months old, remember) could catch the garter.

Then the entire wedding party went out to supper at a local restaurant, the Della Fontana, which featured 7-course meals and of which I already had fond memories.  According to a newspaper article, it is now a sushi restaurant.  How sad.  The building, and old (I mean, old) church was much better suited to Della Fontana.

Our honeymoon consisted of one night at a local residence inn while my mother-in-law took care of our son. We're still working on the honeymoon part.  But then, we are still working on the marriage, too.  That will never cease to be the case.

Venice

In the summer of 1991 (or was it 1992), I had an opportunity to go to Cedar City, Utah, for a 10-day acting program associated with the Utah Shakespearean Festival.  We arrived on a Friday and left on a Monday.  During the course of the week we got to see each of the six plays presented at the festival, one a night from the first Monday through the following Saturday.  We each also got to perform a monologue and a scene from Shakespeare (coached by two different festival actors) on the outdoor "Globe"-style theatre.

My monologue character was Volumnia, mother of the title character from Coriolanus.  Not a play that gets presented a lot, and not a character many would pick, but the whole imposing female thing had worked for me before...at least on the stage.  My scene was from As you Like It, playing Audrey (a very, v-e-r-y simple country girl to my scene partner's Touchstone).  Again, at my second entrance, the audience erupted in laughter.  Something my monologue coach said has stuck with me ever since, "To be great, you have to give up being good."  That is something I struggle with - attaining a certain level of proficiency and then settling into a comfort zone and hibernating.

Anyway, what does all this have to do with Venice?  Well, one of the plays presented that year was "The Merchant of Venice".   For those unfamiliar with the play, Portia has many suitors, in part owing to her father's enormous wealth, which became hers when her father passed away.  But in order to win her hand, each suitor must pick from amongst a gold, a silver and an iron box.  One of the boxes has a picture of Portia, and if the suitor picks that box, he gets the girl.  Bassanio wants Portia, and Portia is partial to Bassanio, but they are bound by the deceased father's edicts.  

In the meantime, two other suitors, Princes of Morocco and Arragon, make their choices, to former choosing the gold box and the latter choosing the silver.  The provisions of the test stipulate that they may never again choose and they may not tell anyone else their choice.

Well, the director of this production included a device where it was actually Bassanio in costume as both of the princes, in turn.  Aside from the obvious problems in ethics, it was one of the more inventive things I've seen done with a Shakespeare play in a long time, so I liked it.  Not so my associates.  After each play we had a discussion (late at night).  Some of the comments were downright vitriolic (oooh, there's another good "v" word for today).

It put me in mind of another production of Shakespeare I saw at the Pioneer Memorial Theatre on the University of Utah campus, where the setting was in the 1940's era.  At one point, the main character breaks the fourth wall and says, "What, you don' like this?  You prefer the traditional  style of Shakespeare play like they do in Cedar City?"  At which point, he dropped his mobster-trousers, showing that he had on the tights and pantaloons of a more expected Shakespearean performance.  If I had had a drink in my mouth, I would have spewed.  Seriously, it was that funny.

One day I would like to see the real city of Venice, but until then I have my memories of the merchant.

Ukulele Song

We get up in the morning before the sun

Get our breakfast when the  milking is done

Later in the day we make the cheese

While the cows play a song on their ukuleles.

We make the bread, we make the money

We cover the slices with butter and honey

The honey is made by our friendly bees

While they sing a song on their ukuleles.

Later we get ready for the luau

Friends are arriving already now

Birds tweet happily in the trees

Serenading us on their ukuleles.

At the feast I tell my friends

We have the dancing after eating ends

My friends are always good to me

So I make them this song on my ukulele.

Taming Thurber's Top Girls

I have been involved with at least three plays starting with the letter "T", or at least having one of the main words in the title starting with that letter.

The first was "Top Girls", a play by Caryl Churchill, is about a woman who chooses to pursue career success instead of family life.  Due to being produced at Westminster College of SLC, which is a relatively small institution in Utah, and the abundance of characters in this play, most of the actresses portrayed multiple characters, including me.  I played Dull Gret, a character actually from a painting by Pieter Breughil, of a woman dressed in armor and wielding household weapons.  At a 'dinner' featuring the main character and several from throughout some revisionist history, Dull Gret speaks coarsely and steals from other people's plates.  My mother called the actress that played the female Pope "the Pope" each time she saw her afterwards.  The second character I played was Joyce, the main character's sister and the one who raised her sister's illegitimate daughter.  The young woman who played the daughter (who also had played the Pope), took to calling me "Auntie-Mum".  And the last character I played was "Louise", a middle-aged woman returning to the workforce, interviewing for a job with the main character, a woman much younger than she.

My second "T" play was "A Thurber Carnival", by James Thurber.  The play was directed by David Dean, who had also directed the production of Beckett's "Happy Days" in which I played Winnie.  I remember dancing across the stage from stage left to right, running around through the shop to dance across the stage again in the same direction as before.  I got an extra line from another in the ensemble cast because the actor would not alter his "gosh darn" to the other phrase that was actually in the script;  I had no such compunctions those twenty years ago.  The two scenes I actually remember was playing someone's aging mother, who comically misunderstood practically everything her son wrote her in a letter.  The bonus was that you got to see the son's increasingly exasperated reactions in the background.  After leaving the stage in that scene, I was in the next one as well, playing a woman whose husband was trying to get rid of her because he wanted to make some time with a sweet young thing.  My costume change consisted of taking off a cardigan and rolling my shirt sleeves up.  (Suspension of disbelief is a wonderful thing, isn't it?)  All I had to do was step on stage and  the crowd erupted in laughter.  I like to think it is because the persona was so different from the previous character.  What was faltering physical and mental health became physical strength and strength of purpose - with a shovel.

The last "T" play was Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew".  But given the overwhelming ratio of female to male actors at a small college, the director (who was the professor who replaced the original professor who had one too many lapses in her battle with drugs) had an interesting idea:  have women play the male roles and the men play the female roles.  There was also a little "pre-play" added where the men were all drunk, hence the necessity of reversing the gender roles.  So I played Gremio, the older suitor of Kate's younger sister, Bianca.

Sleeping Quiet Six Feet Under

Sleeping quiet six feet under

Makes a body start to wonder

How are my loved ones getting by

Would there be tears in each one's eye

That's not really what I want

Salty drops from nature's font

Though I miss them to be sure

A brief apart we must endure

Until the day we meet again

Circled 'round by kith and ken

Sleeping quiet six feet under

Makes a body start to wonder

La Ronde and Release

"La Ronde" is a play by Arthur Schnitzler about morals in 1890s Vienna.  Written first in German, it found a more accepting audience with the French, due to in each of 10 scenes a succession of couples...well, couple.  The characters in the various scenes are as follows:

1. prostitute/soldier
2. soldier/maid
3. maid/young gentleman
4. young gentleman/young wife
5. young wife/husband
6. husband/young gentlewoman
7. young gentlewoman/poet
8. poet/actress
9. actress/count
10. count/prostitute

This was another play performed by students at Westminster college in the early 1990s.  In our production, the lights went out during the middle of each scene, where the audiences used their imaginations as to what took place in the meantime (*wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*).  I do not remember very much about the production, really.  We used the same set that was used by the TWW (TheatreWorks West) production of "A...My Name is Alice", so some of the staging was rather ... creative.  

I portrayed "the actress" in the play.  In one of the scenes, I had to step behind a screen (on stage) and change into a nightgown while maintaining the dialogue with my scene partner.  It was a jade colored spaghetti strap gown with black lace and beads at the neckline.  I remember it partly because it was one of my own, and not provided by the costume department, and it came from the Avon catalog.

The next paragraph may make some people uncomfortable who do not like open discussions of things "adult" in nature.  If you are such a person, please skip the next paragraph.

Both my scene partners were gay.  Well, the poet hadn't come out yet; in fact, at the time, he had a live-in girlfriend, who had been involved over the internet previously to the man who eventually became my second husband..  The actor who played the poet and his girlfriend lived with a man to whom they introduced me after a performance of "Bell, Book and Candle" for which I had given them comp tickets.  We went out a couple of times until I found out he was married.  How did I find out, you ask?  When his wife came home from vacation toting her 19-year old boyfriend!  And THEN it got weird.  I tell you, I could write a book!

I hope I have not shocked anyone too much.  I am not the person now I was then.  But it happened, and I believe it really is a waste of time to try and hide things, even if they could be embarrassing.  Of course, I have the lens of a 20-year time span between then and now.

Time is not on my side - yet - in the recent fracas with our neighbors.  I would like to release the events of the last week or so that happened between us and them, and written about in my "P" and "Q" posts.  I want to diminish and eventually erase the emotional hold it has had on me and would appreciate any tips of methods that have worked for you, as well as any prayers, good thoughts and wishes, you would care to send my way.  I am ready to be done with it.

Thank you.

Questions

Any of you who have visited in the last few days, know that my husband and I are engaged in a little feud with our next-door neighbors who have a dog kennel/training service.  Not that their dogs are a nuisance.  We are dog people.  Currently, we have seven of our own.  Yes, it makes for a crowded, crazy and chaotic apartment sometimes, but we have been working with the local Humane Society to find a rescue for three of the puppies who need forever homes.

Well, yesterday she took it a step further...and posted pictures into our back yard from a second-story window of her house.  Since she added comments showing her interpretation of the photos and believes they hold up her side of the story, I don't think she'll mind if I link to them here.  I apologize for over-snarkiness in my commentary, but neither will I take her abuse lying down.

But I said questions, didn't I?  Bad writer.  Sit.  Stay.

1.  In the first photo, there is a picture of the raised garden y'all put in last year.  I had been going to compliment you on it because I think it looks very nice.  Now ... well, it does still look nice, but I don't think I'll say anything.  Why did you feel the need to make the angle wide enough to show into my back yard and catch a view of my 10 year old daughter?

2.  The second photo is also purportedly of your garden, commenting on the fence.  It is a decent looking fence.  Two questions here.  Running a dog training service with approximately a dozen dogs boarded there at any given time, and given your penchant for absolute quiet and lack of distraction during training sessions, why did you not have a privacy fence up in the first place?  Why title the photo album "dogs still charging fence"?

3.  Quite frankly, the third picture puzzles me.   If you are close enough to my dogs to judge their motives in running by the fence when someone or some of your dogs are close to it, why can't you see that Brownie is a girl dog?

4.  Photo #4.  Yep, those are a couple of vicious 6-month old puppies charging at your fence intent on doing you and yours harm.  Oh wait, aren't they running parallel to the fence and about 15 feet away from it?  I do object to the comment made by one of your 'friends' which suggests electrifying the fence and injuring my dogs.  Don't all dogs have the same rights in their own yards?  Or, maybe your dogs are 'more equal' than ours, because you apparently own your home (it is on the market) and we are only 'apartment squatters' (those are your exact words).

5.  Photo #5.  Perhaps you need to get your eyes checked.  Yes, that is my husband through the trees.  His arms are not crossed.  They are by his sides.  Why did the picture include a view of my daughter's face?  What is missing from all of the pictures, are any dogs on either side of the fence...charging.

Would it make a difference to your report to know that when you took the above pictures, we had a visitor in the parking lot...who just happened to be associated with the local Humane Society, come to take a look at the pups to help us place them with a rescue?  Would it make a difference to your version of events if she knew the HS knew about the pictures...and the weapon?  Would it make a difference to your report if I said we had proof?

So many questions....so little time.

Nurses

I had excellent nursing care each of the three times I had a baby.  I have also worked with nurses in a residential facility for adults with mental retardation and developmental disabilities.  And, as I have not yet been involved in a play that starts with the letter "N", I could not have come up with a better topic for today.

The first time was in 1996.  I went into the hospital for a stress test on a Friday afternoon.  My blood pressure had been giving me fits and the doctor said it would be best to just keep me there and induce delivery.  Saturday morning at roughly 9:00 a.m., my water broke.  I called a nurse and she said, "Well let's just check."  I'm sure they would have had to check anyway, but I kind of took it as, "You're not a professional ..."  I was a first-time mother-to-be, older than most, and scared as all ... um, get out, yeah, that's the word.  Most of the time I did not even know I was in the same room.  Sunday morning, shortly after 5:00 a.m., our little son was born.  After the main event, my first question was, "WHEN CAN I EAT?" I had spent nearly two days consuming nothing but ice chips and this mama was h-u-n-g-r-y!  A nurse offered to help me get out of bed and walk to the shower and called my husband over to get on the other side.  I was all like "I can do this."  About one second after my feet hit the floor, I found out that I was very, very wrong.  And the nurse didn't even snicker.

The second delivery was in Texas in May of 1998.  By that time there had already been numerous 100 degree plus days.  We lived in Fort Worth and my doctor was in Arlington.  On Memorial Day, I started feeling "puny", as one of my husband's uncles calls it, so we went to the ER of a local hospital.  My blood pressure was 191/109.  They decided to keep me for observation.  Several  hours later, they decided to induce.  I couldn't get an epidural this time, because of a squirrely test  result.  And, since it was Memorial Day, there was no one in my doctor's office.  Those poor nurses.  I know I said a few things that I can't reprint here.  My poor husband.  I dislocated one of his fingers from squeezing his hand so hard, and have absolutely no recollection of it whatsoever.  And I should've bought that post-op nurse a new pair of shoes, because I'm sure she wore holes in the ones she had bringing me juice whenever I was thirsty.

The third and last baby arrived two months early in February 2003.  I went into one hospital; they transferred me to another one with a bigger NICU by ambulance.  Thirty minutes after I arrived, I went into surgery for an emergency c-section.  I was in maternity and my baby was in NICU, two floors below.  I was able to go down the day after (in a wheelchair).  There were big tub-like hand-washing basins at the entrance to NICU.  Our daughter was in "room 3" of four rooms, with the higher numbers being more serious cases.  I could only stick my hand in through a little hole and touch my baby.  One nurse had two babies to look after, so they got excellent, excellent care.  I do cringe however, even now when I think of  the poor nurse that had to clean up after me, as while we were leaving, I tossed every cookie I had ever eaten into one of those big tub wash basins.  When, two days after the delivery, I had such a bad migraine headache that I had to have someone pull the blinds and keep the room dim, a nurse gently reminded me that the morphine drip was at my control and that I could get a dose if I was in pain.  And the angel who came to take out my metal staples kept up a steady stream of soothing words while she worked ... I hardly felt a thing.

I literally cannot say enough about the nurses with whom I worked, women and men both.  They had all the pressures of any nurse, plus some related to the population whom we served.  And the administration?  Don't even get me started.  Come to think of it, these brave people deserve their own post someday, and this one is too long already.

What I've been trying to say is that nurses have extremely demanding and stressful jobs.  If you know one well enough to give them a hug, do it.  If you don't know one that well, give them a "thanks" and a handshake.  Believe me, they deserve it.

Momumvirate

One passion I have discovered relatively recently is making up new words, like "porchervation" - which is an observation made on a porch.  Well, there's another one coming at you today, and it's...
momumvirate
What is a "mom-um-vi-rate" you ask?  Well, it's like a triumvirate with more emphasis on moms than on the number of them.  There was no intention of excluding women who do not have, cannot have, or do not want children, but that was how the word came to me.
I was thinking up ideas on what to write for the A to Z Challenge and wondered what would happen if you got a Christian mom, a Muslim mom, a Jewish mom, a Buddhist mom, etc etc etc (from various religions or lack thereof, etc) together to discuss parenting.  My hope would be such ladies could share their own ideas and experiences and learn from their momumvirate-mates.
And it needn't be exclusively around a spiritual axis.  Any social scale that classifies and separates moms will do - different states/countries, different economic backgrounds, different industries, different social backgrounds, and the like.  
Do you have any momumvirates in your life?  Men could have dadumvirates (because I don't want to discriminate), women in general could have womumvirates;  I suppose British moms could have mumumvirates and so on.
What do you think of the concept in general?
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Lastly, you will see two buttons up there again today, one for the A to  Z Challenge, that takes you to the list of participants.  The second is for my other favorite group of bloggers, those that meet up on Create With Joy!

A...My Name is Alice

This post is serving double duty.  Usually on Mondays I connect with "Inspire Me Monday" at CreateWithJoy.com, but since I am doing the "Blogging From A to Z April Challenge" this year for the first time, I'm hoping this will serve double duty for today.

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"A...My Name is Alice" is a musical revue of about 20 songs, conceived by Julianne Boyd and Joan Micklin Silver, first produced in NYC in 1983.  Since that time, it has spun off two sequels, "A...My Name is Still Alice" and "A...My Name Will Always be Alice".

A complete list of the songs can be found on Wikipedia.  My connection with this play came some 17-20 years ago, when I was in college  the last time.  I do not remember which songs the producing company, TheatreWorks West included, but I do remember that "Bluer and You," was the song that closed Act I.  "Pretty Young Boys" opened Act II.

I would like to say that those particular songs have stayed with me for so many years due to the fabulous acting of the cast...and that is partially true (even though I was not one of them at the time).

This show opened the professional company's run at the new performing arts building on the campus of Westminster College of SLC.  The auditorium was huge compared to what we had been using and the sound and light boards were computerized and had more buttons and switches that I had ever seen before.  The room they were in at the back of the theatre looked like an airplane cockpit or an air traffic control tower to me.  Why do I mention this?  Because I was light board operator for the production.

This should have been a relatively simple job.  All the lights were set at certain levels to change at certain times and all I had to do was hit the "next" button when the stage manager gave me the cue.

Until, in the middle of "Bluer Than Blue", ON OPENING NIGHT, the light board decided to crash.  All the lights in the house went off at once, and the emergency lights came on.  The stage manager made it up the "outside the house" steps in seconds flat, I swear!  Somehow we limped through to intermission.  He was on the phone with the manufacturers of the light board.  We found out a repairman could only come out at the beginning of the week.  (Most plays in Utah at the time opened on a Wednesday or a Friday.)

Thankfully, once it was explained to the cast and the rest of the crew that it was not my fault, I think they stopped adding colorful metaphors to my name.  When the music director made his little speech before the play the next night, he mentioned the "hiccups' in the system and even said some nice things that I didn't go run screaming from the building or something like that.

Last, but not least, Theatreworks West has merged with another SLC theatre company and become Pygmalion Productions.  If you are in the Salt Lake City, Utah, area (living, visiting or just driving through) check out the paper and see if Pygmalion has something going on.  You won't be disappointed!