Working with Minuteman Media Network on a Webseries

Honestly, I think there is an addiction when you begin to study history.  Once you start digging, you just want to keep going. And while doing research all by yourself is fun and fine, it's better when you find other people who can exist in the same mindset and time-set that you are in.

I generally prefer Concord in the 1840s, and luckily, I had a lot of friends who like that time too.

So a few of us, including my Concord friends, have been wanting to start some kind of online series, not sure if it would be a podcast or a webseries or both.  We filmed something cool today. Super easy and super fun. I want it to be a way for us to hang out in the past, learn stuff and keep the conversation going. 

Stay tuned for more info about how this develops!

#BLM Art and Former Statues

#BLM Art and Former Statues

Not only have there been gorgeous murals going up around the world in support of Black Lives Matter, but they are also painting the streets themselves. Black Lives Matter in huge letters, visible from space, or at least from small aircraft.

And the statues, ALL the statues seem to be coming down, all the ones which lack compassion.  And even the ones of old men, who might be on the good side of history.  In these days, it is better to rethink everything.  Even those who fought, did they not fight hard enough?  Did they do everything and we are still stuck in this world? Would their ghosts be fighting for change, along with the protesters? 

I imagine the ghosts on the better, more equitable side of history, cheering on the living.  All the energy (both living and dead) are contributing to the new world.  And even the ghosts with regretful pasts, are changing their minds.  Even they can change their minds, even they can fix things for the better from the grave.  

All the souls in the world want mercy for the future.

Even in Portugal,there is a sense of reckoning.  The idea that "Portugal is not a racist country" has been brought up again-how can the country which started the slave trade and commissioned histories to define the hierarchy of races- Prince Henry the Navigator has lots of statues-but we must now understand who he really is.

https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2020/06/06/black-lives-matter-movement-to-hold-more-rallies-across-portugal/

https://lithub.com/ibram-x-kendi-how-racism-relies-on-arbitrary-hierarchies/

America is on Fire!

Plenty of virtual ink has been spilled about the horrendous treatment of African Americans at the hands of the American police.  Those who are supposed to protect and serve will easily kill anyone with non-white skin.  This also applies to immigrants, those with accents and those with mental health issues. But African Americans were brought to this country illegally, forced to work, and have never been freed of the social idea that they can never have respect, especially from "authorities".

This has been an issue for the past 400 years, but after 2 months of being locked up, America is bursting at the seams in trying to get the attention of the non-leaders, calling for justice for a man who was choked to death on video over a long period of 8 minutes. Earlier in the week was a black man who was birding in Central Park who videotaped a white woman who called 911 on him.  She knew to call out race, to say that an African American man was threatening her life-even though she was the one who had her dog off leash in one of the few areas in the Park that requires a leash at all times.  She was committing a crime, and knew that if she called the cops-he would be the one to face consequences.  Her name was Amy Cooper, his name was Christian Cooper-at some distant point in the past it is likely that her family OWNED his family.  She lost her job and her dog and her reputation.  NYC was proud that it turned into a non-issue. But in Minnesota, everything else went wrong.

So the peaceful protests started.  And the out-of-state white supremacists began to incite violence.  Agent Provocateurs set fires, egged everyone on.  It is again an excuse for white expression during continued black oppression. NYC is being destroyed, the police are being supported by the military and very soon we will be living in a police state. All to create chaos in a country, in a world that is beset by a pandemic.  To keep the idiot in chief in power. And who knows what else?

Saving Jericho Hill Forest

Saving Jericho Hill Forest

A few weeks ago, just before this crazy pandemic got started, the mayor of Waltham put forth a resolution to take some land to add to a new development for a high school. 6 acres, to add onto another 46 acres already purchased, so that they can build a parking lot.

The whole project will also include a tremendous amount of blasting, to create a giant stone wall which will cause the costs to increase to $400 million, in the best case scenario.  It will be the 2nd most expensive high school in the history of the US, just behind LA.  And all this for half of the number of kids in the graduating class than the numbers they had 30 years ago.  Very little of this overall budget will actually be for resources for the students.

Additionally, the construction and attitudes in this whole process demonstrate a tremendous lack of respect for the open spaces in the town.

Ironically, the forest has never been more beloved and visited as it has in the past few weeks, thanks to the quarantine. All the Waltham Parks and Playgrounds have been closed since the middle of March and everyone has been out exploring this forest, one of the last pieces of open land left to us in the city.

A Brave New World Inside Our Houses-Coronavirus

So, everything stopped this month, maybe around Friday the 13th.

Broadway closed the day before. Schools closed, businesses. Museums, tours, everything non-essential has stopped. Going to the store is WEIRD, you have to be wrapped up in protection. And there's no toilet paper.

In Concord, we are now pushed/incentivized to DO something online. Facebook Live, or meeting on Zoom. Creating things of value, online content.

Some people have been doing this online already, because they could. But now we have to get inventive.

We will survive!!!!

Songs for a New World at the Umbrella

As a one night only special, the Umbrella Arts Center brought a group from the Front Porch theater in Cambridge to perform Jason Robert Brown's Songs for a New World. The group did a tremendous job bringing this show to Concord, and I hope we see more of them more regularly. The mission of the group is to highlight people of color, especially performers-and this piece benefited heavily from having a fresh take on its standard love song material.

This is one of those shows that can really show off your Broadway/cabaret cred. Audra Mcdonald has recorded Stars and the Moon, and another song from the cycle, I'm Not Afraid, has become an audition song in some circles.

The cast of 5 singers (down from 6, one had gotten sick just this morning) were each incredible and there are enough amazing character songs to go around.  The ensemble pieces are a kaleidoscope of sound; the singers did especially amazing work with the songs-to the point where the audience felt lost in the emotion of the music, beyond what JRB initially imagined. 

As with most song cycles, there is the narrative thread missing that truly links each of the songs together. JRB made a valiant effort, but the more I hear the whole piece together, the less I am brought in by the connective tissue that is meant to link the songs together.  The thing that stood out to me this time were the strong songs sung by women-because they were about men. All the character songs (the 2 above, plus Surabaya Santa and Murray) are about women creating their characters in response to the men-so the men are present as the major reflection of the song. Hmm. 

Future Media

I'm currently making plans for my summer play for the Thoreau Society. I think it will be centered around the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society. But I'm doing research in other new media platforms as well. I'd love to literally take my storytelling to the next level.

I attended the MIT Hackathon about XR, actually called a Reality Hack.  I crafted and scripted the narrative about Desegregation in Miami in 1957-specifically a story about Frank LeGree and how his family had picketers outside his house, threw rocks and eventually erected a cross on his front lawn-all in order to get him out of a neighborhood.

The video of the AR experience we created is here: https://youtu.be/C6w3e4wqwfk

Our team would love to do more with AR and explore this and other stories of America's growing pains further. Desegregation of schools, different neighborhoods in large cities i the 1950's. Life for a growing country and how that time period brought forth change that is still unresolved today. 

Connect that period with When They See Us-and #OscarsStillSoWhite and you will see how America still exists in black and white for so many people. The best part of the Hackathon was the idea that so many different people could come together to build a new reality. One in which the only judgments issued are on a lack of imagination.