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22
Apr 16

Sitting stage left

American holly, Ilex opaca, in Auburn, Alabama.

That’s outside Telfair Peet, the theatre building. We were there for a show tonight. If you’re in or near Auburn you need to come see this show this weekend.

Dr. Tessa Carr, who wrote and directed the show, is a friend of ours. We’ve been talking about this performance for months. It sounded great and played even better. Go see “The Integration of Tuskegee High School.”

What Tessa wrote about this show gets right to the point of the performance:

All of the players are college students. And in every show I’ve seen they always do a great job, especially when you consider the demands on their time. And even moreso in this case, some of the actors and actresses aren’t theater majors or have never been on stage before.

Also, I know some of the people being portrayed in the play, and know most of the names of the rest. A few of them were in the audience. That must be wild, to see yourself portrayed on stage.

They’re doing a Q&A after the show, and that’s worth hearing, particularly when the people who lived in those moments are there to take part. But the show itself, the show is powerful and terrific.

UPDATE: They’ve uploaded the full show. It is full of important history lesson that we should remember, lest we forget:


20
Apr 16

Go outside a while

Just your standard maple and oak trees at play in the backyard. Dreamy sort of stuff, really:

The weather is just right.


19
Apr 16

Come for the photos, stay for the links

Hole punch cloud!

And the guys are hanging out with Aubie. Clint and Autumn find this funny. Chandler looks bemused. Thomas is just cool enough for this. Those are the four stages of Aubie, really:

This seems silly:

But … Some medical issue not withstanding, this is just about the dumbest thing you’ll see any day ending in Y:

KTRK Houston’s news reporter Steve Campion was live on the scene covering flooding going on in the area, when he saw two cars drive straight into the rising waters.

Yeesh. The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans:

Since 2013, the federal reserve board has conducted a survey to “monitor the financial and economic status of American consumers.” Most of the data in the latest survey, frankly, are less than earth-shattering: 49 percent of part-time workers would prefer to work more hours at their current wage; 29 percent of Americans expect to earn a higher income in the coming year; 43 percent of homeowners who have owned their home for at least a year believe its value has increased. But the answer to one question was astonishing. The Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who knew?

When you start to seek out the portents …


18
Apr 16

A smattering of pictures

What is a smattering, anyway? The word means “a small amount,” but isn’t that relative? Anyway, here are six — but I didn’t put a lot more here, so comparatively it was a small amount. Anyway.

At a baseball game this weekend I caught a foul ball. As protocol demands, I gave it to a kid.

Baseball fan for life now.

The sky was incredible on Saturday, so I took a few pictures, just to remember it:

Hanging out with Allie, who was enjoying a nice sun bath:

A view from part of my ride today. This is on the time trial route. I love this little roller. You come down from the smallest little right-hand descent and as soon as you bottom out your cockpit is pointed up again. It is fun any time of day, but, in the evening, you hear everything come to life. On one side are crickets and from the other side you hear bullfrogs:

And an odd-looking shadow portrait:


15
Apr 16

A pretty Friday

Just another flower showing off the beauty of spring. There seems to be an awful lot of it this year. There’s an awful lot of beauty this year.

Believe it or not that’s just a rose that grows at our house. We don’t even tend to them. It just happens.

Here’s a neat video. I am a fan of all of the Great Big Story projects:

And we are now into the series of events that marks the beginning of the end:

You’re only wrapping up 21 years, half of your life. I hate it.