Thieves in the Night

This a.m., I looked out and noticed my dark green Diamondback bike with the longhorn handlebars was not where I parked last night.

The basket had been jettisoned around the corner by the pool. Since I ride it so much nobody with their wits intact would steal it to use, so it was stolen to sell.

I called the police, but Fred’s on vacation, which he certainly deserves. Americans get far less vacation than Europeans, and many don’t take what they are entitled to.  

My favorite presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, estimates that what with underemployment and discouraged workers no longer job hunting real unemployment in this country is upwards of 11 percent.

You would think the city could hire a couple 11-percenters to cover vacations, because when you need a city service, if it is not there then, it feels like it is never there.

Pat Stories in the Street

Joe Strang and I were both stopped at the gas station the other evening and the subject of Pat came up. Joe shared this True Pat Story: He was having lunch in Onslow or Wyoming with a couple of Cascade cronies. As they were about to leave the restaurant, he went up to a table of 4 blue-haired ladies also lunching together and said, "Ladies, I am a Mormon and have 6 wives and I am looking for a seventh. It's a great deal: 6 days off and 1 on!"  Abased looks all around, as Pat exits to catch up with the cronies.

Regrettably that much-missed sense of humor now exists only in the mind's eye.

Critical Eye on Golf Course

Can’t help but thinking of Pat in the wake of Zach Johnson’s Master’s win. He would have gloried in it. I do believe the only reason Pat Kurt paid for cable was access to Zach on the golf course.

I never knew Pat when he was a golfer, but judging by his memorabilia (a monkey in plaid knickers intently t-ing up, etc.), firm insistence that he had more than once made a hole-in-one, and the testimony of friends I concluded he was a good one.
Myself, I never hit a golf ball. Once I went to Hawaii with 2 friends who brought their clubs and accompanied them to the links. I tried, but gave it up as a bad job after uprooting a lot of sod.

Of course, I most miss him most Sunday mornings, when we made spicy Bloody Marys and I recounted the evening at the Club, and we’d laugh and I’d swear at some of it. Now he’s gone and so is the Club—at least for me; I’ve been sacked for mouthing off, articulating the truth. And that’s what a critical eye connected to a critical mouth will get you every time! Oh Well!!!

After a 2-month Hiatus

I don't know if anybody even registered the absence of my regular rants on this blog, but anybody who came to the The True Story of John Yates Beall probably knows why I have been apparently unaccounted for the past 2 months. However, the task of adequately thanking everyone is not only daunting but an object lesson in the “cost” of theater. 

Yes, Julia Kaye Rohlf (Margaret Chew) is being paid, but the amount is inadequate to the spectacular demands of the part.  Most audience members were genuinely amazed and freely acknowledged the obvious difficulty. As director, I am more impressed with the subtler aspects.

But even the youngest members of the cast had plenty to remember, spent lots of time in rehearsal and were exhausted by late Saturday.

The real cost of theater is the minutia. I do not believe the set would have had the impact it did without the donation of the use of three valuable antique pieces: a desk (the McGuires), a chair (Mary Green) and a Victorian table (Bob & Bernadette Staner). The authenticity they lent is incalculable.

How much Sister LaDonna Manternach’s superb song choices and the musicians’ renditions of that part of our cultural legacy is likewise immeasurable. Ditto, Connie Simon (Maggie’s dress), Jackie Trumm (Ada’s) and the other seamstresses.

Perhaps the only people being paid what they are worth are tech folks who brought the equipment to project the images ($300+) up from Davenport.

Back in the depths of winter, Steve Otting donated the first draft of pix from the archives of Tri-Museum Nora Brown and husband Rob, who have both the equipment and sophistication, created the final power point. My New Mexico computer geek nephew is even as I write refining the film to submit to Galena.

We hope to have another performance Labor Day weekend, which will aid in paying this deserving group.

Of course, this doesn't even mention generous donations that will allow us  to pay the above-mentioned, not what they deserve. Theater isn't a profit-making proposition. 

And you don't need even half a critical eye to see that!

S. Keyron McDermott