A collection of the most important, interesting, and/or visited stuff I’ve been writing on this blog recently. This list is based partly on what my blog stats say people are visiting, partly on what is most important or interesting (or fun!) to me. This post will stay on top as a sticky post until my next Stuffsack. Stuffsack #1 explains the nomenclature.
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Ordinance. Anchorage’s equal rights ordinance, AO 2009-64 would which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (including gender identity & expression). The local Christianist antigay contingent is out in force against it.
One in Ten and Identity Reports. Two landmark studies from the 1980s profiling Alaska’s lesbian/gay community & profiling sexual orientation bias in Alaska. I was principal writer of one, coauthor of the other. Follow the tags to other posts about One in Ten and Identity Reports.
Recent lifestuff
Heard Linda McCarriston read: my teacher from the MFA program. Reacclimating myself to the ordinance battle, after being a tad burnt out on it. Had a bout with the grey, came out of it handily. Trying to catch up.
If you’re as interested in the daily trivia of my life as I am, see The Daily Tweets.
Posted inStuffsack|Comments Off on Stuffsack #2: 22 July 2009
Last night while enmired in the seemingly endless (yet it ended, yay!) & repetitively nonsensical “Truth is not Hate” untruthful hate speech testimony of equal rights ordinance opponents (happily broken up by a lot of really good ordinance supporter testimony), I checked my Facebook feed & discovered this delight, posted by my friend Cara. Since I was in the Assembly chambers, I couldn’t watch the video then, but Cara was thoughtful enough to post some of the lyrics, which cheered me greatly. Thanks, Cara!
Sure beats out another recitation of some verse from Leviticus for entertainment value.
Turns out AKMuckraker posted this the other day (but sans lyrics) in a post about the celebration that will be taking place in select locations throughout Alaska in a few short days, Screen Door Sunday. Check it out.
Note 7/22/09: Most of the tweets in this collection are from the Anchorage Assembly meeting, the sixth (& last) meeting at which public testimony was taken on the Anchorage equal rights ordinance which will, if passed, add sexual orientation/gender identity to the list of personal characteristics contained in Anchorage’s human rights code, on the basis of which discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, financial practices, & municipal practices will be prohibited. I’ll be posting photos & other stuff later as I have time.
Feeling better today. Guess I did what I needed to do yesterday to get myself out of the grey. So far, so good. #
The grey is like a great grey landscape of bleakness, just dust & stones. Emotionally dead: I can’t rouse me, nor can anyone else, to laughter or fun, certainly not joy; but nor can I be roused to great negative passions like hatred, anger. Annoyance, maybe. It’s hard to talk in any but the business sense, by which I mean I can conduct the necessary communications to accomplish my job, or buy something at the store, but it’s not good for banter, it’s not good for discussion of politics or my feelings, it’s not good for intimacy. Better off to leave me alone. Better for me to be left alone. No, correct that: it’s can be very good to have company, but company needs to be quiet & nondemanding. I need not to be made to talk.
That’s pretty much how I was feeling yesterday, & to some extent the day before. Coming out of it is something like waking from a bad dream: one looks around, one sighs in relief with the sure knowledge that the bad dream is not, in fact, true: there is color in the world, & life, & it breathes in you.
This was a short bout. Over time I’ve had enough experience with depression that I’ve learned pretty well how to manage it, & get myself out of it sooner rather than later. As of three years ago, the state of my art was —
I get lots & lots of sleep. I make sure I’m still eating well. I don’t have high expectations of myself. I vedge out. I pull back from overcommitments as well as commitments to stuff that prevents me from doing the good stuff (like writing) that feeds my spirit. And when my energy picks up, I do that good stuff that feeds my spirit.
But since then I’ve added something in, a supplement I learned about last year called 5-HTP. I’ve written about that too:
5-HTP is an intermediate between the amino acid tryptophan (oh ye of post-Thanksgiving turkey dinner sleepiness fame) & the neurotransmitter serotonin, whose activity is targeted by a lot of antidepressants. Thus, 5-HTP is alternative to antidepressants — & from my standpoint, a superior one.
Why do I think it’s superior? For one, it’s available over the counter, a natural supplement for something the body produces naturally. For another, it has few if any negative side-effects (or, as they are more honestly known, effects). It’s those negative effects that have always steered me clear of SSRIs & other psychopharmaceuticals that have been often suggested to me. It also seems to work differently than the SSRIs — selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, whose mechanism is to keep the supply of serotonin that one has in the brain in circulation for longer; whereas 5-HTP supplementation provides more of the raw material needed to synthesize more serotonin: increasing its supply, rather than merely keeping a limited supply moving around for longer. The scientifically inclined can correct me if I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.
So: veg out, sleep, eat right, 5-HTP, & I feel lots better. Enough so that I can even contemplate attending yet another round of public hearings on the Anchorage equal rights ordinance at the Anchorage Assembly tonight, complete with however much repetition of the same Christianist “Truth is Not Hate” hate speech that we’ve already heard over & over & over & over (etc.) again.
Not something I cared to contemplate doing when I already felt separated from any joy in the world. Now I can not only contemplate it, but can even consider what it is about the Christianist world-view that seemingly makes joy an even rarer commodity for them.
Lauren Green as Cinderella in Davenport Theatrical's production of "Into the Woods"
This is the first of what’ll probably be two or three posts about my trip last weekend to Spokane. The main reason I went down there was to join my brothers Dave & Mark, sister Mer, nieces & nephew, & extended family in celebrating the lives of my mother, Rauha Elizabeth (neé Siukola) Green (1928—2005) and father, Rial Eugene Green (1919–2009). But while I was down there, I also had a great Saturday visiting a local winery with Dave & his wife Linda, & we got to see members of the extended Green-Brewster family (Mark & my other sister-in-law Linda’s family, & Linda’s brother Steve’s family) and other talented people perform in a production by Davenport Theatrical of Davenport, Washington of the Steven Sondheim musical Into the Woods. I decided to write about Into the Woods first because there are still three performances to go, & just maybe there’s someone reading this who’s down in eastern Washington who might want to see it.
Davenport Theatrical was established in 2008 by Karen & Steve Brewster and Drew Kowalkowski to provide, per its website, “high quality community theater for Lincoln County and the surrounding area of Eastern Washington.” Its performers come from Davenport and the nearby communities of Davenport, Harrington, Spokane, Spokane Valley, Reardan, Wilbur, and Ritzville, with some coming from as Bellingham and — yep — Anchorage.
Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim (music & lyrics) & James Lapine (book) is Davenport Theatrical’s third production. As described in Wikipedia,
the musical intertwines the plots of several Brothers Grimm fairy tales and follows them further to explore the consequences of the characters’ wishes and quests. The main characters are taken from the stories of Little Red Ridinghood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, and Cinderella, tied together by a more original story involving a Baker and his wife and their quest to begin a family, most likely taken from the original story of Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm. It also includes references to several other well-known tales.
This production had lots of family in it.
Lauren as Cinderella in the Act II finale
My niece Lauren Green played the role of Cinderella — the role played by Bernadette Peters in the musical’s original Broadway production in 1987. I’d seen Lauren in UAA Theatre & Dance‘s production of Into the Woods in its 2002–2003 season — the only other time I’ve seen this musical. Lauren played Rapunzel that time; but Cinderella is a much larger role, & that made me very happy because Lauren (besides being my niece) is a wonderfully talented performer with a tremendous soprano voice. She came to this role after an already busy summer: she was in Valdez in mid-June for the 17th Annual Last Frontier Theatre Conference at Prince William Sound Community College, and before that she was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina at the American Singers’ Opera Project (ASOP), where she sang the role of Fiordiligi in ASOP’s workshop production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, a part she had worked pretty darn hard to memorize before traveling down. Earlier in the year, Lauren took first place in the “upper avocation” division in both the Classical Voice and Musical Theater competitions held by the National Association of Teachers of Singing Alaska (NATS), about which I blogged back in April.
So pardon me if my photos of this production focus a lot on Lauren, because I’m pretty damn proud of her, & it’s my privilege to brag her up. Needless to say she was pretty fantastic as Cinderella, too.
Linda Green (center) as Cinderella's mother
But there was plenty of other talent, both family & otherwise, in the production as well. My wonderful friend & sister-in-law Linda Green (Lauren’s mom, sister of company co-founder & technical director Steve Brewster) played Cinderella’s (real) mother as well as the giant widowed when Jack of the Beanstalk fame killed her husband. Besides running the Green Teaching Studio in Anchorage, where she teaches piano & trumpet, Linda is also a working musician with a boatload of experience arranging instrumental & vocal music, & she’s a resident artist with The Character Workshop, an Anchorage community theatre group which amongst other things has toured Gilbert & Sullivan plays around public libraries in Anchorage & the Mat-Su.
Mark Green in the orchestra on flugelhorn
Lauren has also been a longtime Character Workshop participant, as has my brother Mark Green, who was in the “Into the Woods” orchestra on flugelhorn. Mark is of course a working musician too — along with Linda, he’s a member of “Alaska’s Hottest Funky New Horn Band,” Power of Ten, where they both play trumpet. They’ve also played in a number of other groups in the Anchorage area, like their own Swing Dawgs, as well as Conexion Latina, Anchorage Blaskapelle, Sonora Sensacion, Anchorage Jazz Ensemble, etc. I have a talented family, what?
Then there’s the talent in Linda’s brother’s family, including Steve Brewster himself, who is one of the the company’s co-founders as well as its technical director, and hiw wife & company co-founder Karen Brewster, who played the Witch. A few other Brewster family members also in the cast & crew, including Emily Brewster as Little Red Riding Hood and Kellie Halverson as Snow White, not to mention the other incredible talent local to Davenport & the surrounding area. See the full cast list.
Act II finale
Greens & Brewsters in the cast & crew
Because of family connections, this production was opportunity for a family gathering of the extended Brewster & Green families. Audience members on the afternoon of July 11 included me, my brother Dave Green (another talented musician who plays around & about the Flathead Valley of Montana) & his wife Linda — or “Linda 2” as we call her when both Linda Greens are present (due to the order the marriages took place). We got there about 20 minutes late, thanks to some mistaken directions about which way to drive out of Spokane — we’ll never let Mer & Julius forget it! (North Division!!!) Linda 1’s sister Sherrie also drove out from Spokane, & Linda 1’s mother Barbara with her fianceé Gene, who are due to be married this coming Saturday, July 18 — the one date they could squeeze in while the Alaska contingent is still down there, between the last two performances of “Into the Woods”. Afterwards we had an informal Brewster/Green & friends dinner in the hallway of Davenport High School just outside the theater, organized by Sherrie.
At this writing, there are still a few performances on schedule. If you’re in eastern Washington, go see it! Tickets are only $10.00. All performances are held in a lovely little theatre at Davenport High School in Davenport, Washington.
Friday, July 10 • 7:00 PM
Saturday, July 11 • 3:00 PM
Thursday, July 16 • 7:00 PM
Friday, July 17 • 7:00 PM
Sunday, July 19 • 3:00 PM
Here’s a slideshow of my full set of photos from the July 11 performance, courtesy my Flickr photostream, where you can also view this set. You can also expand the slideshow to view it full screen; in full screen, click on “show info” in the upper right corner to get the photo’s caption.
All these photos were taken with a Nikon Coolpix S10, without flash, from my seat in the audience. (Different seats between Act I & Act II.) Very nice to have 10x optical zoom along with some reasonable exposure control. A nice little camera.
