It's not Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," with nearly 25 million views. It's not even Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River," with just over 12 million views, or Andy Samberg's 15-million-visit video about spontaneous ejaculation, but for me it's a minor milestone.
It has taken more than two years, since October 28, 2006, yet one of the first videos I uploaded to YouTube has passed the 10,000-viewer mark. The 10,000th visit occurred within the past couple of days, but I don't know precisely when. (The same video is the third-most discussed on my YouTube channel, with 20 text comments from hither and yon.)
Even if 10,000 visits on YouTube seems paltry, consider the product: a grainy, silent, discolored, 19-second video of teen movie star William Moseley (Peter Pevensie of the Chronicles of Narnia franchise). I caught the flaxen-haired British actor on camera, surrounded by dozens of swooning fans at the Virginia Film Festival in 2006:
As it happens, Moseley is also the star of my second-most-popular video, appearing with film critic David Edelstein and producer Mark Johnson in a Virginia Film Festival panel discussion. Alas, this one (which has had only 8,289 views) is also soundless. It would be so nice to hear what the panelists are talking about.
To date, I have posted 242 videos to YouTube. Most edge near the 10-minute length limit, and most have sound. But silent, 19-second-long William Moseley continues to be the most consistent draw to my YouTube channel.
Who would suspect that youth and celebrity would be more popular than political speeches and quirky travelogues?
On three previous occasions (usually toward the middle of the year), I have posted reminiscences of my summers with St. Bernard's Studio Theatre in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.
The first two posts offered video and photographs from the summer of 1977, when we mounted a twentieth anniversary production of Meredith Willson's The Music Man.
This time around I am posting something about a show that was produced before I became a participant in St. Bernard's Studio Theatre -- the company's inaugural production of Hello, Dolly!, which went up in the summer of 1975.
The coincidence that brought this material to my attention was a very old, very wrinkled, and very yellowed copy of the Wauwatosa News-Times from July 24, 1975, which had on its cover two photographs taken when my family's house was nearly destroyed by fire. (It goes without saying why I kept the newspaper in my archives.) I just happened to leaf through the paper and discovered inside a photograph and article about Hello, Dolly! that I had never seen before.
My guess is few people have seen this material in the past 33.5 years, either. So, while my inclination was to wait until July to post these clippings, I had to ask: Why wait?
The article mentions several people I remember fondly from my few years with the Studio Theatre company, which was as much a family as it was a performance troupe. The article gives a sense of why this was:
The rousing musical has a cast of 90 amateur performers all from Wauwatosa and surrounding areas, ranging in age from five to 52 years old....
Edward Leahy ..., father of 10 children and one of two men taking the leading role of Horace Vandergelder, will ease through an intricate soft shoe dance with Dolly and some 20 men, representing two generations, in another highlight of the show.
Some of Leahy's family also will be actively engaged in the two weekend productions. Brian, 20, is producer of the show and a member of the chorus. Mrs. Leahy, Danny, Kathleen, and Gerald also are in the chorus and Maureen and Ned are members of the stage crew.
Other families who will participate in the show are Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Rise (he is the other Horace Vandergelder) and Sharon and Scott...; James Jacobs and daughter Patty...; William Staudenmaier and daughter Ann Marie...; Mrs. Irene Alberte, one of two who will do the role of Dolly, and children Lisa, Nancy, and Paul...; and Charles White and daughters Vicki and Peggy....
"Hello Dolly" is being directed and choreographed by Rozeann Campbell..., a teacher of dance at Divine Savior-Holy Angels High School and well-known in Wauwatosa theater. Her oldest daughter, Marla, has done the art work on the set while 15-year-old Suzann is costume mistress and Kimberly, 8, will sing in the chorus.
That pattern of family participation repeated itself in subsequent years: Ed Leahy played Mayor Shinn in The Music Man, Gordon Rise was one of two Tevyes in Fiddler on the Roof, and Irene Alberte played my mother in The Boy Friend, to give just three examples -- and each year also saw their own family members in cast and crew.
Click on the images below to embiggen and read the full article for yourself.
I promise more community theatre memories will be posted this summer.
January issues tend to be thin even in good years, and most magazines posted a decline in ad pages. But the average decline across all monthly magazines was only 17 percent, and most Condé Nast magazines fared much worse, according to analysis of Media Industry Newsletter data.
Wired, which is usually thick with consumer electronics ads, was the worst hit, down 47 percent from a year ago to 43.6 ad pages. Architectural Digest fell 46 percent, to 63.2, from 116.8. Vogue and Lucky were both down about 44 percent.
Of the 10 monthlies with the worst declines in January, four were Condé Nast magazines: Wired, Architectural Digest, Vogue and Lucky. It was the only publisher with more than one title in the top 10. The other hardest-hit magazines were Boating, published by Hachette Filipacchi Media; Power & Motoryacht, published by Source Interlink Media; Everyday Food, published by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia; Salt Water Sportsman, published by Bonnier Corporation; Texas Monthly, published by Emmis Communications; and Boys' Life, published by the Boy Scouts of America.
The story sounded vaguely familiar, and then I remembered: I was reading almost the same story last night, in the early chapters of a book called George Gallup in Hollywood, by Notre Dame communications professor Susan Ohmer.
In a chapter on Gallup's early days with advertising firm Young & Rubicam, Ohmer writes:
Like many other parts of the economy, advertising suffered from the massive economic slowdown of the early 1930s. Many businesses did not have enough money to advertise their products and this, combined with growing doubts about advertising's effectiveness, caused a dramatic decline in the number of ads published. The amount of money spent on advertising in national magazines dropped by 50 percent between 1929 and 1933, with the largest year-to-year decline occurring in 1931-32, when money spent on magazine ads dropped 30 percent. Not only did magazines publish fewer ads, they published fewer pages altogether. The Saturday Evening Postprovides a vivid example. What is considered to be the high-water mark of national advertising occurred on December 6, 1929, when the Post published a 272-page issue that included 168 pages of ads. By contrast, its issue for July 2, 1932, contained only 25 pages of advertising out of a total of 76 pages. Even allowing for the seasonal differences between a Christmas issue and one aimed at summer readers, the decline in both editorial and advertising space is dramatic. Some newspapers could not attract enough advertising to stay in business: Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York American stopped publishing partly for this reason [p. 33; footnotes omitted].
Everything old is new again.
Update:MinOnline, a magazine-industry web site, has an interesting chart showing ad revenues for monthly magazines over the past five years.
If you've blazed trails as a governor and mayor, what do you do for an encore?
If you're L. Douglas Wilder, you start a blog.
Wilder concluded his four-year term as Richmond's mayor yesterday, announcing in an e-mail newsletter that he's started a blog, http://www.WilderVisions.com. The site, which will cover local and national topics, uses the masthead created for his mayoral e-mail newsletter, Visions.
"I will continue to live in the city I love, and will maintain an active voice," said Wilder, who was Virginia's first and only African-American governor and Richmond's first elected mayor under its new form of government.
Wilder, who is returning to full-time teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University, said he's confident that the city is headed in the right direction and cited a recent poll indicating that most residents agree.
"The people are always ahead of politicians," Wilder wrote. "Citizens provide the support for the vision and impetus for government -- fighting crime, protecting the river, improving schools, and so on."
I met then-ex-Governor Wilder several times in the 1990s, including a couple of occasions during his short-lived independent candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 1994 when there were serious conversations with his top staff about carrying the Libertarian Party banner in the general election, conversations that came to a halt when Wilder dropped out of the race and endorsed incumbent Senator Chuck Robb, the Democratic candidate.
That was a wild year for Virginia politics, with Oliver North winning the GOP nomination over Jim Miller in a raucous and crowded (15,000 delegates) convention and former state attorney general Marshall Coleman running as an independent with the tacit support of incumbent Republican Senator John Warner. (Coleman received just over 10 percent of the vote, which he transferred to the Reform Party of Virginia to grant that upstart party ballot status; the Reform Party squandered the privilege and never fielded another statewide candidate, so they lost their ballot status after two election cycles.)
After that election, Wilder briefly became a radio talk-show host in Richmond, and I appeared as a guest on his program a few times. He always struck me as friendly, intelligent, and politically savvy. (Those qualities would explain, at least in part, his success as a candidate and officeholder.)
To this day, Wilder is the only Democrat who was the recipient of a campaign contribution from me. (Technically, however, he was running as an independent at the time. Perhaps it would be better to say he's the only non-Republican/non-Libertarian candidate to whom I have contributed.) The occasion was a summer 1994 fundraiser held at the home of Cato Institute president Ed Crane. It was perhaps, the largest-ever gathering of libertarians whose purpose was to support a Democratic political candidate.
Mayor Wilder's blog currently has only one post, but I look forward to seeing more in the future.
During the seemingly endless 2008 presidential campaign, supporters of Texas Congressman Ron Paul (who was seeking the Republican Party's nomination against rivals John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee, among others) created and popularized the concept of the "money bomb."
A "money bomb" is a concerted effort to corral donations to a candidate's campaign within a narrowly defined period of time, usually 24 hours. It was through the money bomb process that Ron Paul's presidential campaign set records for on-line fundraising.
In one 24-hour effort in November 2007, Paul supporters acting independently of the campaign apparatus raised $4.2 million, while a month later, with more participation by the official campaign, that earlier record was broken when $6 million was raised in one day. Those efforts and others contributed to Paul exceeding his fourth quarter (2007) fundraising goals by more than 50 percent.
While political newcomer Joe Murray may not have the stature or name recognition of Ron Paul, his supporters in his bid to succeed Delegate Brian Moran (D-Alexandria) in a special election next week are enthusiastically sponsoring a money bomb effort on Monday, January 5. (Murray has set a goal of raising $10,000 in new contributions by January 7. That date is due to the urgency of the need, since the election is Tuesday, January 13 -- one day before the General Assembly's 2009 session opens.) RedStormPAC, an organization created to raise money for Republican candidates for state and local office in Virginia, is collecting money on Murray's behalf. Contributions can be made using this easy-to-navigate on-line form.
If you would like to learn more about candidate Joe Murray and his campaign to become the new member of the Virginia House of Delegates from the 46th district, check out the Friends of Joe Murray web site.
Although the show has been in previews since December 15, the official press opening of the new revival of West Side Story is Wednesday, January 7. A review will follow shortly after that. In the meantime, here is an article I prepared for The Metro Herald, based upon an interview I conducted with actor/dancer Cody Green, who plays Riff in the production at the National Theatre, which is scheduled to transfer to Broadway on March 19.
‘West Side Story’ Rides on History at National Theatre An Interview with Dancer Cody Green Rick Sincere Metro Herald Entertainment Editor
The current revival of West Side Story at the National Theatre in Washington is getting unusual, and well-deserved, attention.
For example, when, in recent years, can you remember a report about a musical play – new or revival – being featured on the front page of the Washington Post? (West Side Story was featured there on January 3.) While front-page Style section stories about the theatre are both common and expected, to see such coverage on the front of the A-section is virtually unprecedented.
That this production is directed by its nonagenarian librettist, Arthur Laurents, is certainly one reason. That the musical has been revised so that the Puerto Rican characters’ dialogue and lyrics are now in Spanish, rather than in English, is another. (That the translation is by Tony Award®-winning Lin-Manuel Miranda, and approved by lyricist Stephen Sondheim, is a third.)
There is a history to this revival that is peculiar to Washington. The original 1957 production of West Side Story had its pre-Broadway tryout at the National Theatre. During that run, the show was revised, strengthened, and toned in preparation for its Big Stem debut.
Still flawed when it hit New York (flaws admitted to by Sondheim and Laurents, the two survivors of the quartet of creators that also included Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins), West Side Story went on to become a classic of the American musical stage, but the show has been revived just twice before on Broadway – for less than a month in 1964 at City Center, and for ten months in 1980 at the Minskoff. This current production aims to open on March 19 at the Palace Theatre in New York.
The Metro Herald had an opportunity to speak with one of the principal cast members of the current revival, Cody Green, who plays Riff, the leader of the Jets. (West Side Story, based loosely on William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, pits two rival gangs against each other in a changing, working-class Manhattan neighborhood. The American gang – the Jets – is roughly equivalent to Shakespeare’s Montague family, while the Puerto Rican gang – the Sharks – is roughly equivalent to the Capulets. Riff, then, is a rendering of Mercutio, while his best friend, Tony, is the musical’s Romeo.)
Green grew up outside Vancouver, British Columbia, and his first dance teacher was his mother. “I started dancing when I was 3 years old,” he told us, and the youth dance company led by his mother performed internationally at such venues as the world’s fairs in Vancouver (1986), New Zealand (1988), and Seville, Spain (1992). He also traveled with the troupe to the former Soviet Union before the Iron Curtain fell and to Beijing, China.
That first Russian visit remains vivid in Green’s memory.
“I was really lucky,” he said. “I was 10 years old living with a family in Novosibirsk, learning little bits of Russian. We were there for about a week and the tour was a month long.” It included stops in Finnish Lapland and in Prague.
“It was a big tour,” Green added. “There must have been 20 people, and I was the youngest. My mom was the director, while my dad handled technical stuff. Most of the company was between 15 and 18 years old. We appeared at embassies and, being 10 years old, that was such a cool experience.”
Green visited the post-Soviet Russia years later, and he noticed the contrasts. “When I think about it now,” he said, “I know how lucky I was to see Russia in that state, and to see the differences between then and now. It was funny because it was so poor and there was nothing in a grocery store. When we went back, all this stuff was there but nobody could afford it.”
That first visit had its own set of contrasts, he noted: “We went from living in camps to staying at the vice president’s hotel and performing with the Kirov. That was an incredible experience. I was in the company but I wasn’t in everything [the company performed]. That was one of my first experiences in the company.”
In 1995, Green traveled with his mother’s dance company to the United Nations Women’s Conference in Beijing.
“That was more of an eye-opening experience because I was older” he explained. “It was intense. They blocked us off and they didn’t want us interacting with anyone else in the city. There were police cars on every block lining up where we were staying and where the conference was. When we went into the city they followed us around.”
After his apprenticeship with his mother’s dance company, Green went on to study at the Juilliard School in New York. “I left Juilliard to do the tour of Mamma Mia,” he said, and he opened that show (featuring the music of ABBA) in D.C.
Since that time, he has been on the road and appeared in London’s West End and on Broadway.
“I left Mamma Mia to do Movin' Out,” the Billy Joel-Twyla Tharp dance musical. “Movin’ Out lasted a while. I originated the tour and joined Broadway and danced the lead role of Eddie in the London production in 2006. I did the matinees on Broadway, three performances in a week. We were in London for four months.” The production was “filler” while the theatre was waiting for the West End premiere of Wicked to open in the same venue.
After the London experience, Green continued to play the lead in Movin’ Out on tour, and then returned to New York to play Kenickie in the revival of Grease that is slated to close later this month.
When the stagehands’ strike hit the New York theatre, Green turned to television. His manager told him about a reality show on Bravo called Step It Up and Dance, produced by the same team that created Project Runway and Top Chef. As Green describes it, “They took a group of dancers and they narrowed it down with eliminations every week. I won the show and $100,000.”
Right after that 10-episode series ended, Green auditioned for West Side Story and almost immediately went into rehearsals.
“It’s incredible working under Arthur Laurents,” he says. “There hasn’t been a revival in almost 30 years. It’s the first one Arthur Laurents has been involved with since the original.” (It should be added Laurents was not involved with the Oscar®-winning movie version, either, and he holds a poor opinion of it.)
The audition included both librettist Laurents and lyricist Sondheim. As one can imagine, the experience was exhilarating for Green and the rest of the potential cast members.
Sondheim, he said, has been part of the pre-production process, since so much of the Shark music is in Spanish, which has required consultation and approval from the original lyricist. Miranda, the translator, explained to the Washington Post that “What Sondheim ‘said to me was, you know, “I don't speak Spanish. All I can tell you is that, as an English-speaking person familiar with the music, my ear will expect it to rhyme at these places”.’”
“It’s huge that we’re able to connect to the original production,” said Green. “This production is so different from any other West Side Story that people have seen. It feels brand new. If it feels brand new for Arthur, it’s really special.”
A year ago, Arthur Laurents directed a revival of Gypsy, which he created with Sondheim and composer Jule Styne in 1959. That revival, starring Patti Lupone, went on to win three Tony Awards® out of seven nominations, as well as three Drama Desk awards. Expectations are high for this revival of West Side Story, and dancers like Cody Green have a lot riding on the production.
Rehearsal photo of West Side Story by Joan Marcus; courtesy of the National Theatre
Update: My review of the new production of West Side Storycan be found here.
Helen Suzman, who for thirteen years was the only opposition member of the South African parliament and for her entire career was a tireless advocate for individual liberty and personal responsibility, passed away on New Year's Day at the age of 91.
Best known as a fierce opponent of apartheid, the system of state socialism and racial separatism that characterized South Africa from 1949 until 1994, Suzman was a humane, intelligent, and courageous political activist.
Although I worked closely on South African issues for almost 20 years beginning in the late 1970s, my only personal encounter with Mrs. Suzman came at a 1989 lecture she delivered for the Cato Institute in Washington. (A photograph from that occasion is printed on page 55 of this 2001 annual report of the Cato Institute; I wish I had one of my own of the two of us together.) That lecture is included in Toward Liberty: The Idea That Is Changing the World, published by Cato in 2002.
Suzman's Cato lecture took place in October 1989, mere months before President F.W. De Klerk freed Nelson Mandela from Robben Island and began the process of deracializing South African law and government.
She spoke, in part, about the counterproductive effects of economic sanctions against South Africa, a topic of special interest to me since I had written a book about it just a few years earlier. In her lecture, Suzman noted that some (but not all) of the more onerous laws that undergirded apartheid had begun to be repealed in the 1980s, often as the result of internal upward economic forces rather than because of external political or economic pressures:
I should mention that the laws that have been changed have been changed because of both economic factors and the steady escalation of black resistance within South Africa. The changes in the laws were not the consequences of sanctions, as some people claim. The changes took place between 1979 and June 1986. The U.S. Comprehensive Antiapartheid Act was enacted in November 1986, after those laws had been abolished. I'm not trying to say that international pressures do not play a part. Of course they do. They have an effect on the thinking of white politicians, and certainly they've had an effect on the integration of sports and in other areas where the political power structure itself is not affected.
Nevertheless, I must emphasize that economic factors within South Africa have been the main forces behind the changes that have already taken place. Job reservation disappeared because there just were not enough whites to do the skilled work. The pass laws and influx control disappeared because they could no longer be implemented, given the massive urbanization that resulted from poverty in rural areas and job opportunities in urban areas.
De facto residential integration, despite the Group Areas Act, has taken place in some white suburbs because of the acute shortage of housing in the black urban areas, and the passage of the Free Settlement Areas Act in 1988 gave de jure recognition to some of the racially mixed areas. The shortage of housing has also given rise to vast squatter camps at the outskirts of metropolitan areas all over the country.
Later in her remarks, Suzman tried to predict what might happen in the near future (that is, the early 1990s). While not precisely on target, the hopes she expressed were nearer to what would become fact than perhaps even she would suggest at the time:
The government has said that it may introduce a bill of rights -- something desperately needed in South Africa -- and that it favors holding a conference, a great indaba at which representatives of all the racial groups would be present, to negotiate the political accommodation of black people within the parliamentary structure. Such an assembly is absolutely essential if we are to have a new South Africa with a new goal and without oppression or domination. But whether de Klerk will include the African National Congress and other banned organizations in the indaba, whether he will soon release Nelson Mandela and the other political prisoners, whether he will lift the state of emergency -- all of which black leaders have cited as preconditions for their coming to the negotiating table -- we do not yet know. My crystal ball is cloudy, but I think it's obvious that both sides will have to make concessions if negotiations are to have any hope of success; otherwise the indaba is going to be stillborn.
I think de Klerk intends to try to restore South Africa's credibility in the Western world. I hope he'll get a move on, for I have no doubt that the patience of the Western nations is wearing thin. But I am convinced that sanctions and the threat of further punitive actions notwithstanding, de Klerk will not hand over power to the black majority. He was not elected to do so. However, he will explore every means of bringing blacks into the parliamentary system that falls short of threatening white domination, and he will make incremental changes. I believe he will allow many laws simply to erode by nonprosecution; possibly the Group Areas Act will go that way. Certainly the Separate Amenities Act is already going, and the Johannesburg City Council, which is controlled by the National party, has desegregated all public facilities.
Another important postelection development is that the government is now negotiating with the people's representatives in the urban townships, the leaders of civic associations, whom it had always refused to recognize. It is no longer insisting on negotiating with the people elected under local government ordinances.
I firmly believe that sanctions and disinvestment are ultimately counter-productive. They may result in different political thinking and changes in the political structure, but if they also wreck the economy of South Africa, every South African, white or black, will be hurt. There is no point in inheriting a wasteland. If disinvestment continues and comprehensive sanctions are imposed, South Africa will lose its export markets, and there will be widespread unemployment, mainly among the black population.
The political revolution that followed was much broader than what Suzman imagined, but her attribution of its stimulus to domestic political and economic factors rather than to foreign sanctions and disinvestment was largely correct.
In South Africa they knew the difference between liberals and leftists. Plenty of leftists and communists opposed the National Party and its apartheid system. But so did liberals like Suzman, people committed to human rights, freedom of thought, and a market economy. She did not forget her liberalism when apartheid finally fell and the African National Congress came to power. She continued to speak out against repressive policies and the Thabo Mbeki government’s continuing support for Robert Mugabe.
I loved reading about her quick wit in parliamentary debates. She sent the minister of law and order a postcard from the Soviet Union, saying, “You would like it here. Lots of law and order.” Once she told a government minister to go into the black townships and see their appalling conditions for himself. He would be quite safe, she said, if he went “heavily disguised as a human being.” In a famous exchange a certain minister shouted: “You put these questions just to embarrass South Africa overseas.” To which she coolly replied: “It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa – it is your answers.” When an Afrikaner in Parliament sneered at her Jewish roots and asked what her ancestors were doing when his were bringing the Bible to the “savages,” she snapped, ”They were writing the Bible.”
It took someone of exceptional fortitude to live Helen Suzman's life. Lesser individuals would have given up -- perhaps even emigrated -- when faced by the sort of challenges she endured.
The fact that she was the lone opposition MP for so many years is remarkable enough; that she was able to persuade others to join her and engage in politics for the purpose of liberalizing South Africa's laws and regulations, despite little evidence of potential success, is inspirational. She may have been "one voice" but it was her voice, not that of her opponents, that prevailed.
Thanks to my many readers -- from Iran to California, from Russia to Malaysia -- who have made writing and editing this blog worthwhile during 2008.
Many thanks, too, to those celebrities who enticed visitors here, including (but not limited to) Hunter Parrish, Tyler Whitney, Daniel Radcliffe, Josh Hutcherson, Aaron Carter, Jeremy Sumpter, the late Ricky Nelson, Robert Redford, Lou Taylor Pucci, Frankie Muniz, Warren Coats, Shakiem Evans, Sarah Palin, Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Moffatt, and Stewart Stern, among many others. If you came to find out about one of these people, I hope you stayed and returned to learn more about arts, culture, politics, and current affairs.
May 2009 bring good times, good health, prosperity (despite the Great Recession), peace, and stability to you and your loved ones.
I have been remiss in failing to post the video of this year's Bill of Rights Day commemoration by the Jefferson Area Libertarians at the First Amendment Monument across from Charlottesville's City Hall on Monday, December 15.
This annual event has taken place, in one form or another, for more than a decade. This year there was a featured speaker from out-of-state, Duke University political science professor Mike Munger, who was the Libertarian Party's candidate for governor of North Carolina in 2008. Professor Munger won a sufficient number of votes to gain the LP ballot status in the Tarheel State for the next four years.
In this first segment, JAL's John Munchmeyer introduces the ceremony, and he and James Curtis lead the participants a formal reading of the text of the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution), including its seldom-heard preamble.
In the second segment, Dr. James Lark, a former national chairman of the Libertarian Party who teaches at the University of Virginia, delivers brief (2 minutes 40 seconds) remarks.
In part three, John Munchmeyer discusses the Second Amendment and Mike Munger addresses the participants.
Finally, in the fourth of the four parts, Munchmeyer discusses the much-neglected Tenth Amendment and other, related topics as he closes the ceremony.
The eve of a new year is an appropriate time to reflect on our rights and liberties, which must be vigorously defended so they are not lost to violence or attrition. With a new administration taking the reins of government in only three weeks, now is a good time to reflect on the need to be vigilant in the defense of liberty. Enthusiasm and good intentions are liberty's greatest -- and stealthiest -- enemies.
My twinned posts get a place of honor (thanks, Kat!) in a section called "Christmas Traditions and Memories." (The first of several such sections, followed by "Christmas Meditations," "Christmas Recipes," "Christmas Songs, Pictures, Video, and Poetry," "Christmas Advent Series," "Christmas Humor," "Christmas Miscellany," and "Christmas Delays" -- quite a list, and quite readable, at that.) Take a look:
Our Carnival Daddy,Adam Graham, starts us off in this category withThe Christmas Advantage. Don’t forget, in these uncertain times, “a lean Christmas doesn’t have to be a poor one.” Amen, Adam. Amen!
Jenn H. presentsHis Christmas Legacyover at Mixed Metaphor.net. It is a beautiful and touching tale about the simple faithfulness of the season, and how rich a simple, loving life can be.
Rick Sincere, one of my Virginia blog-brothers, has sent in two delightful posts – one about his memories ofhow his family celebrated Christmas in Milwaukee(and he’s got pictures AND a video – gosh, you were a cute kid, Rick!). I love seeing how other families have traditions springing out of their former cultures… His second entry is no less worthy, and speaks aboutnew traditions being made, this time in Arlington, VA. I will definitely have to try and get up there next year for some good music and theater – maybe Rick can get me the tickets! LOL *wink*
Have you ever wondered whether wrapping presents is worth it? Well, according to a study thatGrrlScientistdug up,it certainly is!
SuldogrepostsPointy the Poinsettiathis year, and all Pointy’s fans will be delighted to know he’s doing very well!
TF Sternsent in hisGingerbread Cookie Tradition– which ought to go in the recipes section, except it’s not a recipe. It’s a story about sacrifice in lean times, and how the true value of any gift is how much of yourself you put into it.
Oh, I remember cutting our own Christmas tree – andthis storyabout a family’s first experience with cutting their own tree is both funny and heartwarming… Thanks toPhilaazophyfor this contribution!
Laura Lee Donohotells us a beautiful tale of howshe learned to give the gift someonewanted. That’s a very difficult lesson to learn – we often want to give what we think someone ought to want – but Laura relates the story with a simple honesty that is truly touching. There’s a lot more, so you really really need to go read! Thank you, Laura; I’m so glad you found the Carnival this year! (And Jo was always my favorite, too!)
My dear blog-brother – and new grandapa! –GM Roperwrites about Daddy Bah and hisGift of Love. The GMan writes so well, and the story of enduring and selfless love will really bless your heart!
Obi’s Sistersends in two entries of Christmas memories:the Best Santa Ever!and one about singing withRobert Shaw’s youth chorusone year *happy shivers* I love hearing big, well-trained choirs sing!
Finally for this section,Big Dog(yeppers,anotherblog-brother!) reminds us that aSimple Gift for Christmasis what it’s all about.
Not only does Kat deserve thanks and kudos for putting together an extensive and entertaining Carnival of Christmas, she also is due some congratulations for having the carnival linked by Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit. (Watch that holiday traffic go through the roof!)
This past weekend on public radio's A Prairie Home Companion, Broadway director and actor Walter Bobbie reminisced about celebrating Christmas in a Polish-American family in Scranton, Pennsylvania (when Scranton was known more for coal mining than for Dunder-Mifflin paper products) during the 1950s and '60s.
Bobbie's memories described something remarkably close to the Christmas traditions practiced by my own Polish-American family in Milwaukee in the 1960s and '70s.
For instance, Bobbie told the radio audience about the sharing of opłatki (singular: opłatek), a flat wafer similar to the host served at Communion. He noted that his family members would send opłatki in Christmas cards (as did members of my family who would be far away at Christmas time), and that on Christmas Eve, family members would break off a piece and give it to each other, along with a greeting of "Christ's peace." They might, he said, dip it in honey. (We did not include honey in our ritual.)
Little or no food had been eaten during the day. All waited for the most significant moment of the entire Wigilia [vigil] supper, the breaking and sharing of the opłatek. The host and hostess enacted the ancient rite of the opłatek, facing one another each holding an opłatek, each breaking and sharing a part of the other's. They embraced warmly and expressed their love by wishing for each other, a fulfillment of their deepest yearnings. Then they broke and shared the opłatek with each one present, with messages of love (sometimes in rhyme) of good health, happiness, and an untroubled life, for one to be as sweet as the springtime and to live do dosiego roku, to live as long as "Dosia" lived. She was reputed to be many years over a hundred when she died, jolly and alert to the end, but no one could be found who knew her. The hostess performed a special task when she shared her opłatek with all those present. Besides the good wishes and love, she expressed without words that she would share her bread with those present here, should they be in need, just as she herself sould be willing to take from them, should her position be reversed.
The opłatek, frail, perishable, has for all Poles a mystical meaning which cannot be explained logically. At Christmas time it is sent to absent members and close friends in strange lands, who in their loneliness, partake of it, as of communion with their loved ones at home.
The opłatek, of little monatery value, is the treasured link that brings warm memories of Poland to her children settled in different parts of the world. Losing reality for the moment, they once again dream that they are seated with the family at the Wilia table, enjoying the blessing, forgiveness and warmth of those under the parental roof. At the time of this writing, it can be obtained from the nuns in the convents of America where a large number are of Polish ancestry.
Bobbie also said that dinner on Christmas Eve in his home was austere: fried herring, cabbage soup, and prunes for dessert. (This elicited groans from the audience at Town Hall in New York.) I am happy to say that this was not the tradition in my family by the time I was born (my dad usually brought home a bucket of chicken from Dutchland Dairy to spare my mother the task of cooking), but it is similar to the Christmas meal prepared by my great-grandfather and described to me years later by my mother: scrambled eggs, fish, and -- yes! -- prunes for dessert.
Finally, Bobbie said, after the early evening rituals, he and his family crowded into a car and traveled from house to house, starting with the youngest uncle until they ended up at his Uncle Johnny's place in Jersey City.
I thought I was listening to a recitation of my own childhood Christmas memories.
When I was growing up, Christmas Eve was the big affair and Christmas Day, as pleasant as it was, was almost an anticlimactic afterthought. Perhaps Christmas Eve memories remain more vivid to me today because the anxious anticipation of that night made it so embeddable in the mind and soul of a seven-year-old.
Here is how our family celebrated on Christmas Eve.
Each year a different aunt or uncle (siblings of my mother's mother) would host a party for exchange of opłatki and of gifts. Eventually my mother and her sister would, as adults with children, share in the hosting duties. No meal was served -- each individual family would take care of dinner ahead of time -- but dessert was available, and Christmas cookies, and herring and crackers and other delicacies, and plenty of beer and liquor. (This was Milwaukee, after all, and we were Polish.)
Before heading off to the family gathering, my parents would drive over to the convent attached to my school (St. Agnes in Butler) and deliver two gallon jugs of wine and a box of Christmas cookies to the sisters who taught me. It was during one of those deliveries when, at age 7 and sitting in the back seat, I read an article in The Milwaukee Journal that explained the origins of Santa Claus. It opened my eyes but I didn't let on for a while, perhaps thinking that if I revealed a disbelief in Santa, there may not be gifts under the tree for me on Christmas morning.
So one year the party might be at the Michalak residence, the next at the Czutas, the next at the Jaegers, the Geilenfeldts, and eventually at the Benkerts and Sinceres. But the pattern always remained the same: share opłatki and wish everyone, individually, a Merry Christmas, followed by an exchange of presents, with the youngest cousin opening his or hers first, and circling around the room by age until the floor was strewn with wrapping paper and toys and games were piled high in front of each recipient. (The last year I remember hosting at our house was my senior year of high school, 1976, and some classmates of mine from Marquette University High School arrived "unexpectedly," costumed as Santa Claus and his elves. That was a treat for the young ones, of course, and a minor break in the pattern.)
After that party broke up, usually around 10:00 o'clock, we began to make the rounds of homes in the Sincere family. We would start at my father's parents' house, then move on to my Uncle Bill's and Uncle Carl's and sometimes other homes, as well. At each stop there was lots of smoke (cigarette and cigar) and lots of booze.
I am astounded, given the snowy and icy weather that accompanied Christmas Eve in Milwaukee, and given all the heavy drinking going on, that we made it home without crashing into a snowbank or telephone pole. But we did.
As a child, Christmas Eve meant sitting in the back seat of the car, staring out the window at the sky and wondering if I would catch a glimpse of Santa's sleigh. Before leaving our house, we would listen to the Santa trackers from NORAD in periodic broadcasts on radio station WEMP, which played wall-to-wall Christmas music all day and all night. (And not that monotonous dreck played by "all-Christmas" stations these days -- radio stations in the 1960s had a much longer, much more varied playlist than they do in 2008.)
We would finally get home around 3:00 a.m., which is very late for a 7- or 8-year-old. Worn out by all the activities, my dad would carry me into the house, lay me in my bed, and, before I knew it, the sun was shining through my window and I discovered that Santa had, indeed, arrived with a load of presents.
My Christmas-childhood ended, in a manner of speaking, when I was 15 years old. That year, I joined my parents in laying out the gifts underneath the Christmas tree in the late-night hours of Christmas Eve after my younger sister had gone to bed. That transformed me into an adult for the holidays. (The next year, of course, when I was old enough to drive, was even more of a transformation -- I became the designated driver for the evening, which meant my mom and dad could imbibe even more freely than in all previous years. And I'm not talking wassail, either.) With age comes responsibility.
When my parents moved, with my sister, to Las Vegas while I was in college (in 1979), we did our best to continue the traditions with which we had grown up in Milwaukee. Even if it was just the four of us together on Christmas Eve, we would share an opłatek wafer and then attend a Polish-language Mass at St. Anne's Catholic Church on South Maryland Parkway. It was a little bit of snowy home brought to life in the arid desert.
While looking through some old home movies that had been converted to VHS and DVD, I recently came upon a sequence from Christmas in 1959. (Luckily for me, my grandfather -- who took most of the film -- included the date clearly in one shot.) That turns out to be my first Christmas, and you can see me opening presents on Christmas morning -- at the age of eight months!
The family posed and singing in this video seems to be from my mother's father's side of the family: Michalaks and Labinskis and Sasses and Ambrowiaks. In later years, we would celebrate with those branches of the family on a date closer to Epiphany rather than on Christmas Eve, on a Saturday evening in which we went from one house to another in a "progressive" dinner, each home serving a different course in a full meal. (The first two houses would be drinks and hors d'oeuvres, the third house would be drinks and salad, the fourth house would be drinks and the main course, and the last house would serve after-dinner drinks and dessert.)
The musical soundtrack I have added to this video consists of traditional Polish carols -- known as kolendy and pastoralki -- some of which were sung by Walter Bobbie last weekend on A Prairie Home Companion. And so the circle is complete.
I missed the opening night performance of The American Century Theater's new production, An American Century Christmas, but I did catch a matinee last Sunday. I wish I had seen it earlier so that I could get the word out that this is a show worth seeing. (The run ends on January 4.)
The show is a musical revue done very much in the style of a TV variety show of the 1950s or '60s. (A format that has declined and disappeared, as noted by TACT's artistic director Jack Marshall in an audience guide for the show.)
I am hoping that, despite the midweek holiday, my review will appear in this week's edition of The Metro Herald. (If not, it will certainly be in the January 2 issue.) Here is a preview:
‘American Century Christmas’ Launches New Holiday Tradition
Rick Sincere Metro Herald Entertainment Editor
Behold, we bring you tidings of great joy: This month, in the County of Arlington, a new Christmas tradition is born.
The American Century Theater (TACT), which since 1994 has been reviving great and obscure plays of the 20th century in a black-box theatre within Gunston Middle School, now brings us a delightful compilation of song and dialogue that traces the celebration of Christmas in America.
Conceived and compiled by TACT’s artistic director Jack Marshall, musical director Tom Fuller, and assistant director Kathryn Fuller, An American Century Christmas could – if the company wills it – become a Washington-area holiday tradition that can rival A Christmas Carol at Ford’s Theatre. (That story, by the way, is reduced to 90 seconds in TACT’s telling.)
Largely a musical revue, like those that peppered Broadway in mid-century, An American Century Christmas is family-friendly and audience-interactive. (Come prepared to answer Christmas trivia questions and be rewarded with a Tootsie Pop, with even more substantial prizes for children.)
A warm and welcoming set (designed by Trena Weiss-Null) looks much like the studio sets that hosted annual Christmas specials of the 1950s and ‘60s that featured Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Andy Williams, and many other singers and comedians who often brought out their families to join in the celebration. (One irony, of course, is that many of these “Christmas” specials, with principals and ensemble bundled up in sweaters and parkas, were taped far in advance, often in August in Los Angeles. The last of the Bing Crosby Christmas specials – the one where he performed a haunting duet with David Bowie – was produced in the summer and broadcast months after Crosby’s death in 1977.) Colorful costumes – with an emphasis on shades of red and green, of course -- by Rip Claassen add flavor and a note of nostalgia to the production.
The cast even recreates, on stage, the radio satire “Green Chri$tma$” by Stan Freberg. In introducing the piece, however, they repeat the factoid that, while “Green Chri$tma$” was produced and released in 1958, because it was disliked by advertisers, the skit was never played on commercial radio until 1983. I can attest that this is untrue, because I heard it on WEMP-AM in Milwaukee no later than 1972; I even quoted it in a paper I wrote for my eighth-grade English class that year. That quibble aside, it was a pleasure to see Freberg’s biting and continuingly relevant send-up of holiday advertising reproduced today.
The magic of An American Century Christmas is that it holds the potential of being re-staged every year with minor changes so that it remains fresh for each new audience.
This is because the revue is written in a modular fashion. Scenes can be rearranged, removed, and inserted almost at will without harming the flow of the piece.
For example, the Gene Autry medley – which moves from “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” through “Up on the Housetop” to “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” – could be replaced with a medley of songs by Alfred Burt, who is represented later in the show with one of his “Christmas cards,” “Some Children See Him” and a brief sample of “Caroling, Caroling.”
No doubt the team of Marshall, Fuller, and Fuller hundreds of possible clips and musical manuscripts to come up with the show in its current form. No doubt many usable and entertaining items were filed away, regretfully, simply because adding them would make the show too long. (I think they gave short shrift to the Christmas songs that emerged from Broadway musicals, for instance, and could bring a few more forward in future productions.) No doubt these “leftovers” will fill a hundred nights over many Christmas seasons.
The ensemble cast does a terrific job in presenting the songs, often with a humorous twist. They relate to each other so smoothly that one might think they are members of the same family, gathered on Christmas morning to celebrate together. It would be unfair to single one out of the nine on stage (and one booming through the sound system), so here they are, as listed in the program: Ann DeMichelle, McCall Noelle Doyle, Kathryn Fuller, Bill Gordon, Adam Juran, Scott Kenison, Steve Lebens, Mick Tinder, Patricia Tinder, and Glenn L. White.
An American Century Christmas plays only through January 4 (when it will be replaced by Life with Father, whose run was interrupted for the holidays), so hurry to American Century Theater to celebrate Christmas with the cast and crew. Ticket information and showtimes can be obtained at www.americancentury.org.
Of course, if my prediction is true, you will be able to enjoy the tradition of An American Century Christmas for many, many years to come.
An American Century Christmas opened Wednesday, December 10, 2008, and runs through Sunday, January 4, 2009, at Theatre II, Gunston Arts Center, 2700 S. Lang Street, Arlington, Virginia 22206. Performances most weeks are Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m., with Saturday and/or Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m., and with additional weeknight shows during the weeks of Christmas and New years. More information is available at www.AmericanCentury.org or by calling the theatre at 703-998-4555 to order tickets.
The audience guide that was compiled by Jack Marshall includes an amusing item called "The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time," by John Scalzi, which includes such titles as "An Algonquin Round Table Christmas," "The Mercury Theater of the Air Presents the Assassination of Saint Nicholas," and "A Muppet Christmas with Zbigniew Brzezinski." My personal favorite is this:
Ayn Rand’s A Selfish Christmas (1951)
In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts — and therefore Christmas — possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as “anti-life.”
When you see the show, be sure to pick up a copy of the audience guide. It has information that adds depth and texture to the production; it is educational without being didactic, entertaining without being flip.
"One of the smarter blogs is the libertarian-leaning collection of Charlottesville posts put up by Rick Sincere..." -- Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 8, 2005
It's not Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," with nearly 25 million views. It's not even Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River," with just over 12 million views, or Andy Samberg's 15-million-visit video about spontaneous ejaculation, but for me it's a minor milestone.
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just a few years earlier. In her lecture, Suzman noted that some (but not all) of the more onerous laws that undergirded apartheid had begun to be repealed in the 1980s, often as the result of internal upward economic forces rather than because of external political or economic pressures:
, published in 1972 by the Polanie Publishing Co. of Minneapolis, gives some background on 
, a musical number from 
. In introducing the piece, however, they repeat the factoid that, while “Green Chri$tma$” was produced and released in 1958, because it was disliked by advertisers, the skit was never played on commercial radio until 1983. 
medley – which moves from “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” through “Up on the Housetop” to “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” – could be replaced with a medley of songs by 
." My personal favorite is this:
