Jun 12 2011
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Community, Interviews, Writing

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. IX: Wanderlust playwrights Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran


Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran, playwrights of Wanderlust. You'll just have to pretend this cutline is funny. Try harder. Yeah. There you are. Photo by John Doucette.

This edition of Belligerent Q&A, to a point, deals with the new play Wanderlust, premiering Friday as part of the Dog Days Festival at the Generic Theater Down Under Chrysler Hall.

Wanderlust is the first play written by the team of Jeremiah Albers of AltDaily and Brad McMurran of The Pushers comedy group. Albers, too, did his time with The Pushers. No surprise then that it’s billed as funny. Word is it’s a bit sexy, too.

Before we get going here, please know that there are some adult exchanges to follow. This Belligerent Q&A is the first sit-down interview I’ve done for this feature. It has been edited for length, clarity and, in spots that should be apparent, language.

Additionally, there is a reference below to a Hampton Roads theater production that was given a negative review by Albers at AltDaily last year. The director of the play rebuts Albers review in the comments section at that link, if you are interested in such things.

Anyway, on with the show …

THE PLAYERS

JEREMIAH ALBERS: A playwright, 33, of Virginia Beach.

BRAD MCMURRAN: Also a playwright, 35, of Portsmouth.

Q: A hapless belligerent interviewer, 37, of Portsmouth, who hoped to author a concise blog post before things went a bit off the rails, let’s say, after the second question.

SCENE ONE

(The Colley Cantina, an eatery and watering hole in Norfolk, jewel of Commonwealth of Virginia’s crown. Q, ALBERS, and MCMURRAN sit down for a Belligerent Q&A, a very disreputable sort of interview. Q aims to supply the Qs. ALBERS and MCMURRAN aim to provide the As.)

Q: Just who do you think you are? Please use three examples in your response.

MCMURRAN: I’m the King of Portsmouth. I have close-knit ties with hipsters on Granby Street. And I think it’s safe to say that I am a lovemaker.

ALBERS: I guess that makes me the Archduke of Virginia Beach.  I am somebody who really doesn’t like tourists very much. And I am an excellent ballet dancer.

Q: You have written something called a play. Is that the one where it’s just like TV, but you have to put on clothes, go somewhere, and once it starts you can’t pause it?

ALBERS: Yes, but you don’t have to wear any clothes.

MCMURRAN: And actually this play, you can pause it. We added a TiVo feature. Only during the naked scenes, like when you were 13. It’s kind of like Trading Places, when Jamie Lee Curtis took off her shirt.

ALBERS: It’s like the old VHS tape where you even put in that part where the movie looks worn from having been paused so many times.

Q: How difficult was it for you to bring to the boards a star-crossed tale of a Christian broadcaster who, through charitable activities, faith, and an association with the 22nd president of Liberia, falls in love with mining African diamonds?

ALBERS: I’m going to say it was pretty easy. That play writes itself.

Q: The venue is the Generic Theatre Down Under Chrysler Hall. Is it on the same level as the (Norfolk Mayor) Paul Fraim clones?

MCMURRAN: Yes. I saw them yesterday, and I made out with one of them. … And I’ll be quite honest with you, Paul Fraim is a big part of this show because, if it weren’t for Paul Fraim, we wouldn’t have really good jokes that are mentioned, I think, one time in the show. … Well, we having dancing Paul Fraims that come out.

ALBERS: That’s true.

MCMURRAN: He comes out and is like, “I’ll take your money and spend it on useless (stuff).” One of my favorite parts of the show. Please come out and see that.

ALBERS: I would just like to add that does turn in to a pas de deux with a mermaid.

Q: (Wanderlust is inspired by “La Ronde” by Arthur Schnitzler.) Presumably using scenes in which a revolving combination of characters interact, with one character’s placement in the following scene creating the thread with which you stitch a circular mosaic of love, longing and humor, you explore the secrets of humanity through the local lens of Hampton Roads. What does that thing I just told you mean?

MCMURRAN: I think it’s better than what we wrote. It’s definitely more well thought out.

ALBERS: I think it means somebody read their CliffsNotes, and maybe actually pasted them verbatim into that question.

Q: How does Portsmouth come off in this thing? We’ve been hurt before.

MCMURRAN: I will speak to this, knowing that I am the King of Portsmouth. It comes off swimmingly. There’s never a punch line about crime. There’s never a punch line about being stuck in Portsmouth. I think Portsmouth has always painted itself in a light it should be painted in. It’s pretty much the King of Hampton Roads, don’t you think?

ALBERS: Yeah. They’re number one.

MCMURRAN: I am from Portsmouth. I am going to say that. So if anybody comes in here and jokes Portsmouth besides us, I’m probably going to put a cap in their (caboose).

ALBERS: But Portsmouth is crime free.

MCMURRAN: Watch yourself.

Q: Did the Chamber of Commerce have any notes?

ALBERS: Well, they did blockade us out of the theater that one time.

MCMURRAN: They know we’re going to be a big money maker for them. … I feel we’ve really gotten a little more support than you’re giving them credit for. Wanderlust is pretty much like the new Elizabeth River Ferry. You know, something you ride back and forth.

Q: I saw the publicity photo of the sailor character. Did you know the Navy gives you a whole bunch of shirts?

ALBERS: Yes. Yes we did. But, you know. Who needs it?

Q: Wanderlust promises theatre patrons “a voyeuristic peek inside the bedroom of your neighbors.” Some kind of furniture thing, I assume. Who has the most tasteful nightstand. Look at the storage capacity of that armoire. That sort of thing?

ALBERS: Yes. Pretty much. The whole thing is being sponsored by Haynes. We’re really excited.

MCMURRAN: And Posturepedic.

ALBERS: Yes. Sealy Posturepedic. It’s been really great for us. Every room is like a showroom at Haynes. And at the end of the show we’re having a silent auction, so you can bid on the furniture.

MCMURRAN: You can bid on the used bed.

ALBERS: Yeah. But it is a Craftmatic. Old people will be comfortable.

Q: Regarding a “voyeuristic peek inside the bedroom of your neighbors,” the scene on my street is a little played out. Could you please help me get a peek inside the bedroom of someone else’s neighbors?

MCMURRAN: It depends on what neighborhood you’re in. Say if you’re down in Virginia Beach it’s going to be a … more heavy neighborhood. I don’t know if you’ve seen how spread out in that area it is, but the only thing there is to do is to go to Wendy’s and go to the beach in a Speedo. If you go to Portsmouth, you’ll probably have to duck from the bullets whizzing overhead. And as far as Norfolk, well you’ve just to get some of those big glasses and fit in with the hipster scene I guess.

Q: What I like is that you’re not trading in stereotypes.

MCMURRAN: Come see this play. There are none in it.

Q: Anything to add?

ALBERS: No. I think he hit it. I don’t want to see my neighbors, either.

MCMURRAN: Plus I think there is a law against being a peeping tom.

Q: That’s good. We’ve learned something.

ALBERS: Knowledge is power.

Q: In a cast photo, two members of the company are locked in a passionate embrace outside the Scope, while a quartet of fellow thespians looks on. What did the four spectators do wrong? And what did the other two do right?

MCMURRAN: That’s pretty presumptuous of you to think that two people did something right to be making love right in the middle of Scope. So I think the four that were in the back did something right to not have to make love in front of the fountain – in front of that wonderful architecture called Scope.

ALBERS: Which is aging so well.

MCMURRAN: To answer your question, they probably – I’m not going to say that. I was going to say they could probably lose a few pounds. They’d be fine with that.

Q: And you kind of, in a back-handed way, did.

MCMURRAN: Yes. Of course, I’m very skinny so I can get away with it.

ALBERS: What they did right, I would say, is that they took a pretty decent picture. What they did wrong is that they auditioned for this play.

Q: Brad, you’ve been teaching improv classes for teens through The Muse. How do you get impressionable young people on the right path? By that I mean, how do you get them to avoid mime and popular musicals?

MCMURRAN: I teach them the essentials of life – to live hard, and party fast. I find that that’s sort of the pathway to religious freedom.

Q: The Muse is going to love that.

MCMURRAN: They’ll be fine with that. I’d love to see if I get fired over this interview.

Q: Jeremiah, you’ve done some fine theater criticism for AltDaily. How much better is your play than the dreck you usually have to review around here?

MCMURRAN: This is my favorite question. This is where we get the bad review.

ALBERS: Yes, well, it’s worse, actually, and we did that on purpose. But the sex in our show isn’t done by two dudes playing horses.

MCMURRAN: Although there’s one scene we’re thinking about adding that. We’re having some issues with one scene. That might be the ending we’re looking for. Who knew this … would give us the ending. Equus II: The Return of Love. We’re going to be popular folks. “Come see Wanderlust; they’re haters.”

Q: You both are known for your work with The Pushers. Will Donald Trump’s decision not to run for president put comics and improvisational troupes out of work in 2012?

MCMURRAN: That’s an easy improvisation. Yes. And that is the end.

Q: Anything to add?

ALBERS: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Although I think that some wig companies might be a little sad.

Q: We’ve covered so much ground here. What else would you like to say?

MCMURRAN: Before Wanderlust, I wasn’t a man. This is sort of my turning into a – It’s sort of like Perseus, when he had to go and find his fate. This was that time.

Q: Is that what he did? Found his fate?

MCMURRAN: It depends which way you look at it. Fate sort of found him I guess. Wanderlust sort of found me, too. Although I’m still digging this Equus idea.

ALBERS: Sandy Duncan for president, 2012. Her glass eye will rule them all.

(According to IMBD, Sandy Duncan does not really have a glass eye.)

END SCENE

A (somewhat) more serious craft talk will follow in the near future.

Wanderlust premiers on Friday, June 17, at the Generic, 215 St. Pauls Blvd., Norfolk downtown. The run is from June 17-19, 23-26, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $10. For more information call (757) 441-2160 or visit the Generic’s online reservation Interbot thingy. Patrons under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a “responsible” adult.

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Jun 10 2011
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Journalism, Uncategorized, Writing

Twelve journalism truths by William Ruehlmann


William Ruehlmann retired this year after 18 years teaching journalism and communications at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Va., and I recently wrote about his work here.

Ruehlmann is the author of Saint With a Gun: The Unlawful American Private Eye, The Feature Story Strikes Back (written for the Society for Collegiate Journalists), and Stalking the Feature Story. The latter is a terrific book about writing and reporting for a newspaper. It has a keen eye toward finding and executing the stories that become great features. It has a spot of honor on my office bookshelf.

I’m not the only fan. A fellow VWC alum recently noted that upon arriving at an internship, an editor handed her a copy of the book. And a reader left a neat comment and a question in the comments of my last post. Addressing Ruehlmann, David Wilson wrote:

Stalking the Feature Story is a book that gripped me way back in 1981, when I was a journalism major at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark. After all these years, I keep it on my shelf as one of my favorites on writing. It is definitely among the best. I have a doctorate in educational leadership and work as one of the assistant principals at Jefferson City High School in Jefferson City, Mo. One of the duties I enjoy the most is writing and editing staff newsletters. Your work has helped me tremendously and is much appreciated. Any chance you will be writing another book on journalism?

I put the question to Dr. R. His reply:

(I) appreciate your friend’s approval of Stalking, but no other journalism books planned, though writing will go on in various venues.

You can track down copies of Stalking the Feature Story through sites such as Amazon and Bookfinder, among others. I highly recommend it for those in the business of newspapering or simply writing better stories of any kind. It’s useful. Great read, too.

I recently revisited Stalking the Feature Story, as I have from time to time, and pulled out some cool lines Ruehlmann wrote that are as great and true as anything you’ll find in any other book on writing. These quotes are just a hint of the great professor I was lucky enough to have at VWC.

1. On inspiration:

Read everything. Observe everything. Become earth’s well-travelled eavesdropper. The stories aren’t scarse – they’re too plentiful.

2. On hard work:

The engine started daily runs the most reliably.

3. On reading pretty much everything as research:

That is to say, from now on you are never off duty. Your mind never runs on automatic pilot. In everything you see and read, you are subtly digging.

4. On keeping your eyes open:

What’s worth seeing on the way to work? Simply everything. A world is waiting for those with the eyes to see it; the writer knows that the miraculous happens routinely, the extraordinary is commonplace. … All of this is material. It’s around you, too. You are no longer a pedestrian – you are a witness.

5. On the difference between a writer and a reporter:

If you remain merely a writer – that is, one more consistently at home in the library than on the street – you are not going to get the kinds of stories that matter in this business. You must take the native curiosity of the scholar out into the field and approach the pauper and politico with equal persistence. There will be those who won’t want to talk to you. You’re going to have to go through them to get the story.

6. On accuracy for and honesty with the reader:

If you like to improve on reality and dress up quotes to make a better story, perhaps you’d better get back to that Gothic romance you were thinking of writing.

7. On healthy skepticism:

Trust nobody.

The copy you turn out is your best testimony to the truth, so you have to be very careful what you believe. Even if your sources are honest – and some of them won’t be – they have a way of getting matters mixed up. You’re going to need corroboration to protect yourself not so much from mendacity as from human error.

Legend are the eyewitnesses at the scene of any situation. One will tell you the mugger was a fat man in an Afro who left in an emerald green sedan; another will insist he was a skinny bald guy who escaped on foot. Both are absolutely convinced they are right. Chances are fair the mugger was a woman who took off in a taxi. This is the kind of thing that keeps detectives and reporters amused.

8. On focused, but still expressive writing:

Albert Einstein once explained his theory of relativity to someone on a moving train by asking, “When does the next town get here?”

If it can’t be stated clearly and simply, an idea is not profound. It is merely uninformed.

9. On showing rather than telling:

A writer is a performer who must never ask for the reader’s emotion. He or she must earn it.

10. On economy:

Delete excess.

11. On starting strong:

(W)riting an effective story is like facing a mean drunk twice your size. You’d better get in the first punch, and it had better be a damned good one, or he’ll chew you up. And he won’t even remember in the morning.

12. On finishing strong:

If you want to maximize the force of your piece, the knockout must come at the end.

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Jun 04 2011
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Journalism, Writing

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. VIII: Earl Swift, author of The Big Roads


You are a saucy one, Earl Swift, Norfolk, Va., journalist and author of The Big Roads. Even when I crop out your tiny brass-studded leather novelty fez. Photo by John Doucette.

I pulled up to Crumbling Swift Manor in Norfolk, Va., in the warm evening air, my pad in pocket, pen in trembling hand. When I knocked, a petite dog announced my visit. Her master approached.

Earl Swift, former journalist and feature writer at The Virginian-Pilot, author of The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways. A book with words, many words, words in a certain order of his own design so as to form a story about a topic that people can read after they buy it when it is released on Thursday.

Swift opened the door slowly, yet assuredly. He wore writerly intensity as plainly as a dancer in the All-Cowboy Revue might wear chaps and a red bandana mask. Briskly, we toured the manor house, a parade of wonders – a library containing what could only be called books, a dining room in which meals are eaten atop a table, a kitchen in which food is stored and prepared prior to the very meals that are eaten by people in the house.

Silkily, as he led me through his spacious home, I imagined an imaginary stable boy imaginarily saddling horses that did not exist in the pretend stables. No. Not horses. War-painted camels. Yes.

Those.

And then we were in his office. Where calls are made, a keyboard fingered, electrons spun into nonfiction gold. Overhead, above this hub of composition and concoction, was a handsome chandelier. No doubt his firmest demand of the landlord, made while the imaginary stable boy, awaiting the landlord’s pretend response, trembled, as had my hand, holding my pen in anticipation of this very moment. I demand, he must have said, this Earl Swift fellow, a chandelier above my writing space.

He signed a copy of The Big Roads, blowing gently upon the fiery ink that bore his cursive mark, this signed book so blessed, a prize to be won in the upcoming 2011 Fortune Cookie Fortune Writing Contest, which continues until June 15 at this very swanky online foolishness disseminator.

Or you could buy your own copy. Again, it goes on sale Thursday.

I took in his garb. Rugged. Manly. As though the conjoined lovechildren of L.L.Bean and American Eagle conspired to outfit Hemingway for his last great safari to a public park in Key West. Of course. Swift, who ventured along a mighty Virginia river for Journey on the James and tromped through faraway lands to report Where They Lay, deserved no less. His shorts were khaki, his polo cobalt blue. I announced this finding, much as Jonas Salk must have exclaimed, “I think we got this polio deal licked!”

Swift replied:

This is not cobalt blue. Maybe Columbia blue.

Columbia blue it was. I tried to note the rest of his clothes, but as I bent low to read the words on the back of his adventure sneakers, he spun away, as magically as someone pivoting using a combination of their legs and torso in the holy congress of simple movement. Alas, in determining the needed detail of his wardrobe, my welcome had expired like overindulgent rock star upon regurgitated Jack Daniels.

Point being, this Belligerent Q&A was conducted via email later.

Q: Just who do you think you are? Please use three examples in your response.

You know, if you added ‘young man’ to the end of that question, you could be my mom just after my eighth-grade science project went bad in the kitchen and those things got loose.

Or Sister Mary Michael, the headmistress of St. James Primary School in Twickenham, a suburb of London, where I attended the third through fifth grades and was regularly beaten on the back of my thighs with metal-edged rulers, and yanked to my tiptoes by my proto-sideburns, and where Sister Mary Michael (who had so lavish a mustache that it would arrest the blade of my 6.5-horse Honda self-propelled mower) once thrashed me with the sneaker of a four-year-old.

Or Dennis Tenney, graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan, self-described “song series poet,” and author of The Song of Eisenhower (New York: Whittier Books, 1956), whom I’m confident used the phrase often—though, it must be said, not to me personally.

Q: Your new book is called The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways. That’s quite a subtitle. Were there any words left for the rest of the book?

A few. Though I didn’t use them. I’m pretty strict when it comes to the thematic programming of a story. I pick a few notes, and play them over and over. Like in Close Encounters. Only more realistic: I wouldn’t have some French guy running NASA.

Q: You pull the “myth” of Eisenhower as father of the Interstate system apart a bit with your reporting. So didn’t Ike do anything? Like hire a cousin for a paving contract?

I doubt he resorted to cousins. He had an extremely large immediate family, including a number of siblings with interesting nicknames, among which were Bike, and Fike, and Pike, and Wendy.

Ike was busy while president. He made bald sexy as hell; that took time. So did convalescing.

Q: If they make this one into a movie, who would you like to play I-70?

Gene Hackman. He has the reach. I can see him snaking through Glenwood Canyon. Rolling with the Missouri pastureland. And no one else could deliver Wheeling so full-force to the screen.

Q: Since I’ve known you through The Pilot, I’ve admired the way you handle complex subjects and can incorporate a number of sources/characters into such stories in ways that serve the overarching narrative. What does that sentence I just typed mean?

Is ‘overarching narrative’ the same as ‘narrative arc’? Using one of those phrases will get one’s ass kicked in South Norfolk, though I can’t remember which. In case you wondered, that’s why I’ve been avoiding the Campostella Bridge.

Q: Tell me about this Thomas MacDonald fellow. Is he why I can’t get off I-264 at Independence during rush hour? Or was that Herbert Fairbank? Were they the guys who made I-95 suck, especially in Connecticut?

Those men stayed out of Connecticut. Moreover, they forged a pact, early in their working lives, to avoid Rhode Island, as well one might; to get to Boston, they had to drive around. Did you notice my use of ‘moreover’? That’s how you can tell I’m a journalist.

Q: You contend that “we’ll be pumping more money, a lot more money, into the (interstate) network in the years to come” for maintenance alone. Why not ignore it? That seems to be working out great on Social Security.

You raise an excellent point. And remarkably, you raise it in 13-point Lucida Grande. I know of few others who would be so bold.

Q: What was it like collaborating with Ted Danson?

We spent a lot of time on his boat, The Decimator. It had five or six staterooms and a full disco staffed by snug-shirted eastern Europeans. I’m pretty sure most were Hungarian. Plus, of course, the boat’s rigged to pull a purse seine, so the food was great. Ted’s an excellent actor and a fine influence on young people. And when it comes to Pilates – I mean, he could turn professional.

Q: How do you like being interviewed by people who have not read the book?

What did you think of that one part where Ike eats the lemon meringue with his hands? It continues to surprise me that the incident had such a lasting effect on our infrastructure.

Q: Why should we read your book, which all its facts, research, perspective, and storytelling, when there are other books that won’t challenge my assumptions that everything is totally cool, that the landscape hasn’t been that radically changed by the de-centering of communities into suburban sprawl, and everybody just chill don’t worry about it we got a Chipotle coming in near the Wal-Mart?

Are you sure? Is the Chipotle really coming? I’d heard rumors. Man. You’re positive? Hold on a minute. I have to make some calls.

Q: We’ve covered so much ground here. What else would you like to say?

It’s always a pleasure to talk craft with you.

I’ll follow up with a real craft talk with Swift in the near future.

Some early reviews are in for The Big Roads, including this one by Jonathan Yardley for The Washington Post and this one by Patrick Cooke for The Wall Street Journal. Locally, the book is in stock at Prince Books in downtown Norfolk and will be available at other fine local bookstores.

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May 30 2011
1 Comment
Community, Photography, Uncategorized

Davmo’s memorial to John Kohn


This Memorial Day, I visited an art installation for a shipmate.

Not a cemetery, not something carved in polished granite or something glass with flags flying above it, one for the commonwealth and one for the country. This was in downtown Norfolk, Va., beneath the old sign for a Granby Street barbecue joint that left the premises some time back, in its old glass doorway and two flanking windows, and about a block from the very police administrative building in which some decisions were made about what to tell the taxpayers about a man’s death.

John Kohn was the police recruit in Norfolk who died after a series of training incidents in December. Kohn had served us with the military, and was trying to serve the city of Norfolk. I’ve written about him here before, and the press has written a fair bit about it, too. I won’t revisit it, but the circumstances of his death following a series of regrettable training incidents might have been prevented. What followed his death was a second tragedy. Transparency was needed, yet somehow avoided.

So the photo of the memorial is above. It’s simple, and striking because of its simplicity. It’s part of a larger effort called Art Everywhere, presented by, among others, AltDaily and the Downtown Norfolk Council. The memorial in question, “Remember John Kohn” by the artist called davmo, is at 250 Granby St. Here’s davmo’s dedication:

I visited this morning because I ran into Jesse Scaccia of AltDaily last night, and mentioned to him how much I liked that piece, among others, especially the (recently stolen!) pink bicycle near a streetlamp, which struck me as something an angel had leaned there while she ran into MacArthur Center. It got me thinking about Kohn again, and about davmo’s art – the mixture of words and the face, repeating images in different sizes, as well as the repetition in different windows.

Here’s what davmo told AltDaily’s Julie Alvarado about the work:

It is my way of saying I am so terribly sorry for John, his family, and all of his friends. I have had many of John’s friends see what I put together for this installation and all of them are glad that I did this for him. John has a lot of friends that want to remember.

And it’s in the perfect place. Downtown, the heart of the old Navy town John Kohn wanted to serve. Close enough to remind not just friends, but some of those in the government who need some reminding. As well as anyone who happens to be on Granby Street on a beautiful day such as this one.

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May 29 2011
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Americana, Community, Photography

Pungo Weekend


Members of the 11th Transportation Battalion, 7th Sustainment Brigade, from Ft. Story, marched in the parade at the Pungo Strawberry Festival in Virginia Beach, Va., on Saturday. Photo by John Doucette.

A strawberry field was quiet.

A picked-over field of strawberries.

Rick Clabbers of the Venture Scouts, Crew 502, of Virginia Beach, helps folks park in a field not too far from the fairgrounds.

Winner: best hat.

Runner up: best hat.

A rooster says hello. Or something.

One of the Beach's new traffic cams, Pungo style. Or a crow. It's hard to say.

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May 27 2011
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Community, Interviews, Journalism, Uncategorized

Brightening up a special place for kids


Artist Angelina Maureen shows her mural, then in progress, at The Dwelling Place, a family shelter in Norfolk, Va.. Photo by John Doucette.

Volunteers painted the rooms this past weekend at one location of The Dwelling Place, a family shelter program in the Norfolk, Va., area.

Eunice Harps, the house manager, stopped out back to see how the painting was going. Several volunteers were painting trees and books and a cityscape. She said:

I thought you were just painting. You’re doing art work.

The volunteers made murals at the shelter location, one of two run by The Dwelling Place.

Dana J. Braxton, volunteer coordinator for the shelter, said:

They’re painting murals for our child center annex.

She said it would be a safe haven for the children – and added that the shelter could use donations of books, especially those for teens and preteeens.

The Dwelling Place also needs other kinds of donations, and they won’t say no to money, either.

Donate via this website or reach them by calling (757) 624-9879.

Angelina Maureen, a visual artist who I recently met through Kerouac Cafe, where she is the artistic director, was among the volunteers working at the shelter.

Her mural was still in progress, but it showed a young girl reading a book.

The girl in the mural seemed to rise above a city street like a tower.

In-progress murals at The Dwelling Place.

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May 27 2011
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Journalism, Uncategorized, Writing

Language, lines and listening


The following post isn't really about Ted Danson, but it is kind of/sort of, and people seem to like looking at the man, so here is a picture of him. Photo by John Doucette.

This post is about priorities, if you bear with it.

As both who read this blog know, the actor and activist Ted Danson and Norfolk, Va., author Mike D’Orso recently spoke and signed books at Prince Books. The talk was moved across the street from Prince to the Selden Arcade in downtown Norfolk due to anticipate demand. Good thing. Nice turnout.

Danson and D’Orso are authors of Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them. I’ve written about the book and D’Orso before, and previous posts can be found here. The book’s website is here, and you can find links to some nice interviews with Danson there.

I’m not really going to get into the talk here, but I want to share two experiences – one I had, and one someone else had – the day Danson and D’Orso spoke.

In one case, a guy did not understand the concept of a line for the book signing.

By the line, I mean a formation of human being as a mutually agreed-to organizing principle amid a common activity. This is the third most important thing that distinguishes us from the beasts. The first two most important things are (1) language and (2) counting. And let me just list them with a couple other priorities for perspective:

  1. Language
  2. Counting
  3. The line
  4. Thumbs
  5. Isabella Rossellini

This is not to say language and counting are all that superior than the line. An argument could be made that we have language and counting mostly to tell people what number they are in the line. A sad, sad argument.

But say a line jumper gets snippy, you give them the thumbs as a way of demonstrating where they should be in the line. That’s a benefit of thumbs. I’m not about to get into doorknobs here, but certainly thumbs matter there. Also getting a pickle out of a jar. And so you have something to sit on during business meetings. Thumbs: another topic for another day.

The Isabella Rossellini thing is just and oh-by-the-way. Maybe you show them a picture of her to try to calm them down. I don’t know how the lady works, but she works.

So back to the guy and the line.

Lucy Couch, who works at Prince Books and is married to my fellow Old Dominion University Creative Writing MFA-er Ian Couch, apparently had to deal with a disgruntled gentleman with an implied past military affiliation, and an aversion to waiting his turn.

As I understand it, Lucy used language and indicated counting, but the guy wouldn’t have it. Dude just wanted a moment with Ted Danson. Right then. So if this disgruntled guy really had a past military affiliation, I’m amazed he couldn’t out-wait a little line or, say, buy a book maybe on account of it being a book signing at what is a book store, not some subsidized program to bring a bit more Danson to the masses.

This line simply was not some soul-crushing thing. When I was in the service, I’m pretty sure I waited in longer lines to eat chow more than once. And if I tried to jump the chow line? Out came language and thumbs.

Overall, this was a really cool line, with more folks seemingly interested in the environment than they were in how Danson used to be on a TV show called Cheers. Even the guy who asked about a Cheers reunion didn’t belabor it. Much. And some of us were there for D’Orso. This is Norfolk. He’s our guy.

So some guy was a jerk, and Lucy had to deal with it. Lucy held her ground, and he split.

Yay Lucy.

Boo some guy.

That’s the part that happened to someone else. Next is what happened to me.

Earlier, I’d ducked into a business. Through the mutual application of language, two seasoned gents learned where I was going and promptly busted Ted Danson’s chops for a prediction or statement he made many years ago about the oceans’ future – one Danson addresses in the book, by the way. And the men, as though channeling the talk radio drones that ripped into Danson at the time, had a nice laugh.

Though, to be fair, they liked him on Cheers. And Damages.

This reminded me that when I’d read Will Harris’ piece for The Virginian-Pilot on the D’Orso-Danson event at Prince, a couple of online commenters had raised the same points that spoke nothing of the merits of the science Danson is trying to put forward for our consideration.

Now, look: if you’re from Hampton Roads, you know that encountering the reader comments at Pilotonline.com should only be done in a cautionary way, to remind one to drive defensively.

Some of those people own cars.

But it also reminded me that there are a lot of people who seem to exist only to belittle ideas.

To some people, your words are useless and they don’t want to see the math. They don’t give a damn about lines, whether they exist for a reason, right or wrong. They want what they want when they want it, and they don’t care where it comes from, how it was gotten, and what it costs in the long term for short-term gain. You can point them to reality and they’ll say you don’t have the right to give them the thumbs.

What’s left? Help us, Isabella Rossellini – you’re our only hope?

I don’t know that a book changes how some folks are, no more than a silly blog post. I’ll read what Danson and D’Orso wrote, and so will some others, but I already make decisions about my seafood and where I shop and so forth. Maybe I’ll make better ones. Maybe not.

But I’ll try to keep an open mind. I wish more people would try. Ignorance, as it has been said, is not a sustainable position.

Some won’t consider that there’s any value to regulating overfishing by commercial fleets and protecting coastal environments and what have you because, well, they just won’t. At that point, they’re not in a conversation but in a bunker.

I’m kidding around when I say some actress is one of the key things that separates us from the beasts, and my list above, admittedly, is 99 percent bunk. But I’m convinced that language is the key to our humanity, both the written and spoken words. How we add to the pile of existing language defines us.

Part of that is listening. We need to understand the disagreement and the common ground before we speak and write. If we aren’t willing to listen to others, if we always put ourselves first, we can’t communicate. That means we’re incapable of collaboration and compromise for the common good.

That’s inhuman, and it’s scary that any of us find that condition acceptable. It’s even scarier that we sometimes don’t even realize we are actively refusing to hear truths that challenge our own.

P.S. Why can’t we count on Isabella Rossellini alone? She’s busy with um, specific topics, and the following video is (a) nutty and (b) probably not safe for work.

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May 21 2011
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Photography, Uncategorized

Photo: The Virginia Zoo in Norfolk


Victoria crowned pigeon.

We visited the Virginia Zoological Park in Norfolk, Va., on Friday with our girls.

We love the zoo, and are very fortunate to have it Hampton Roads region. If you have kids, especially young ones, the family membership is better than gold.

Here are some of the animals we visited.

Male white-cheeked gibbon.

A mama goose, escorting her young, gave us the eye.

The siamang reminded us of a sculpture.

A fountain seen from the train and through the trees.

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May 19 2011
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Poetry, Pop Culture, Uncategorized, Writing

Fortune writing contest party, exhibition July 1 at Kerouac Cafe


Winners for the ongoing 1st Annual Fortune Cookie of the Damned Fortune Writing Contest will be named Friday, July 1, here on the blog.

Additionally, the winners who can make it will get their prizes during an informal gathering at Kerouac Cafe in Norfolk, Va., at 8 p.m. that night. There will be a mini-exhibit of the winners. Most – if not all – of the entrants will be on display.

And I will give a 30 minute interpretive dance performance entitled “Deny Me Not My Shasta.” Oh, wait. I will not do that.

We will have a little party, though, and it will be driven by a perfectly legal psychoactive stimulant called caffeine. We’ve got a chunk of wall reserved, so keep those entries coming.

Well after our communal kidneys deal with all that coffee, this breathtaking exhibition of writing and visual art genius will remain up for a whole week, so you’re covered if you just want to run by Kerouac Cafe to hoist a cup of joe and gaze upon a chunk of wall until the tears of eternal wonder come and go and come again.

Again, the gathering is at 8 p.m., Friday, July 1, at Kerouac Cafe, 617 W. 35th St., Norfolk. Free admission. Coffee, tea, lattes, iced drinks, and some eats will be available for purchase.

Festivities will last no later that 10 p.m., largely because I am not as young as I used to be. But feel free to come earlier and stay later. Kerouac Cafe appreciates your business.

Several entries are already in. They come from as far off as Chesapeake, Va. Can Suffolk be far behind? I think not. Can I hear you Williamsburg? You bet I can. Gates County, N.C.? Will you bring it like the postman, Gates County? Hello? Oh, nuts.

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May 18 2011
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Interviews, Journalism, Writing

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. VII: Vivian Paige of All Politics is Local


Vivian J. Paige, left center, and members of the Virginia Democratic Intramural Coed Soccer Team form a wall to block a free kick by Commonwealth Republicans United. Boy, these guys get happy when it comes to blocking free kicks. Courtesy photo.

Vivian J. Paige started her blog, now called All Politics is Local, five years ago with an eye toward Norfolk, Va., politics. She’s got experience in the matter, having run for local office. Paige is also a co-founder of Norfolk United Facing Race, a non-profit that hosts honest dialogues on race, and has been in leadership and advisory roles in many organizations, including the Hampton Roads Center for Civic Engagement.

Plus, a day job – president of the accounting firm, founded in 1986, that bears her name.

Point being, she’s busy.

Her blog covers a lot of ground, due to Paige’s interest in a wide variety of social and political issues, and also due to the inclusion of a relatively new stable of contributors – The Virginia Gazette’s Steve Vaughan, Norfolk City Councilman Tommy Smigiel of the 5th Ward, and Navy vet and retired land surveyor Mark Brooks.

Paige is among a small handful of bloggers who set the standard in these parts, and her thoughtful and passionate prose can also be found in The Virginian-Pilot’s op-ed pages. So I’m thrilled she agreed to lower herself to my level for a few silly (and a few not so silly) questions.

Before I launch into our email exchange, I’ll quote from a blog post from 2006, when she wrote about a “debate” on the so-called “marriage” amendment that ultimately passed in Virginia. She pulled no punches. An excerpt from “Bigotry ” follows:

It was like a KKK rally, only the folks under the hoods were black.

Blinded by bigotry, these folks used the Bible as justification for their position. I see absolutely no differences between the claims made by these black bigots and similar claims made by white bigots to justify discrimination against blacks. Of all the groups who should just get this, it should be blacks. After all, it is not as if gays are unknown to the black church. In my home church – the one where my father was ordained in 1946, the one that I grew up in, the one that my family still attends, where my brother-in-law is a deacon and my sister a deaconness and a member of the choir – every prominent family had at least one gay member.

Blinded by bigotry, these people are unwilling to acknowledge the effects of this amendment on their own families, on their friends, on their co-workers. Blinded by bigotry, these people would rather focus on running gays out the state than worrying about things such as the breakdown of the black family, the crime in black neighborhoods, and the high unemployment.

‘Protect marriage,’ they say. From what?

Powerful stuff. On to the Q&A:

Q: Just who do you think you are? Please use three examples in your response.

  1. A lifetime constituent of President Bartlett
  2. A washed up Julie London wannabe, and
  3. Mom to Tommy and Fluffy (and Kelly, Rupert, Sweetness, Samatha, Junior, and Lucy, of blessed memory)

Q: Did you have “found guilty of extortion and bribery + will appeal according to lawyer” in the former state Del. Phil Hamilton Federal Trial pool? I had “jurors and alternates hit by comet + reanimated dinosaur eats incriminating emails resulting in mistrial,” which would have paid out at 1.3 billion to 1. You know, I liked my odds until the other thing happened. Discuss.

Actually, I did have the “guilty + appeal” in the pool. It really was a no-brainer once the emails became public and Old Dominion University officials were granted immunity to testify against him. I suspect Hamilton will get a long sentence  – with most of it suspended. The Justice Department seems to be looking to make an example of him. And I predict he’ll lose his appeal, but that’s a long way off.

Q: You’ve offered up prime real estate your All Politics is Local blog to other contributors, including a member of Norfolk City Council. Are you worried the council will try to build a virtual pro hockey stadium there now that they have an in? A bit more seriously, will you make any considerations, such as offering “equal time/space,” to anyone who runs against Smigiel?

Pro hockey? Um, no. But if they offered a virtual pro football stadium, I’d probably give them all passwords.

As for equal time for a challenger to Tommy – no. While Tommy and I don’t agree on everything, he has my support. And I can’t imagine that a challenger would ever earn that.

Besides, for the low, low cost of $0, anybody can start a blog at WordPress.com.

Q: Why would anyone want to be vice mayor of Norfolk?

To preside over events – like ribbon cuttings – when the mayor can’t? That’s about the only reason I can think of.

Q: You’ve written extensively about how citizens can track campaign finance and the redistricting process and other issues, including gay rights matters such as the so-called “marriage” amendment/legislative efforts. The vast majority of people, however, just don’t seem to get involved with (a) local government or (b) critical thinking on how certain processes work and/or affect others? Why do you bother?

Because it is important. We can’t get better government at the top until we get better government at the bottom. And we have such tremendous influence at the local level, far exceeding any we will ever have at the national level. Besides, a lot of those folks we see in Washington started out in their local offices. The chance to get to know them – and help them develop into better elected officials – is much greater at the local level.

Q: So what you’re saying is you’re in it for all the sweet blogging money, yes?

Ha! Blogging costs me money, not the other way around. Thank goodness for the day job.

Q: Will you run for office again?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Q: I’ve been interested in the evolutions of outlets such as AltDaily and Veer, as well as established local blogs such as All Politics is Local and Bearing Drift. What news sources do you follow in addition to the local newspapers? And who do you avoid reading?

I’m a Twitter addict. More than three or four hours away from it and I’m going through withdrawal. I follow about 400 Twitterers, a lot of them news outlets, both local and nationwide. If I avoid any, it’s Fox News and the Huffington Post.

Q: We’ve covered so much ground. Is there anything you’d like to add?

Just one thing: when are you going to grace us over at All Politics is Local with one of your awesome articles?

Uh, I’ll get back to you.

Right now I’m tied up with the hack stuff.

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