I spent yesterday on various chores and had every intent of spending the evening at the Birmingham Pride Parade but I started to feel unwell by late afternoon and decided my wisest choice was to stay home and sleep. Sorry to have missed the parade but after some time in bed and a good long sleep, I am feeling better today. I have more chores today but nothing that cannot wait. I’m working my way through all of the boxes of crap that came out of my academic office, tidied up my terrace, and am slowly restoring my nest to some semblance of order after a period of chaos and excess stuff arriving and needing to be processed. I have 54 weeks until full retirement. The goal is for me to have my life in order at that time so that I can work on putting together new life patterns in an environment which will support them.
As the days dwindle down, I find that I am having a harder and harder time just absorbing the administrative nonsense that permeates modern medicine. Usually I let the endless paperwork, the need to fill out the same request three times due to a misplaced comma, the refusals of insurance to pay for what I deem clinically necessary care, the calls and messages from patients about some new snake oil they heard about on social media or late night television, the lack of budget to improve the infrastructure of clinical services, and the poor performance of other parts of the health care system roll off of me but now I’m doing a bit more talking back and calling out stupid as stupid. I’m in a position where I’m no longer angling for any future forward career movement so I can truth tell. Actually, I’ve always told the truth. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t progress farther in my career. I tell those above me what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear.
I’ve had my nose in my script for The Tempest and am starting to work out solutions to specific challenges Shakespeare presents. How do you stage a shipwreck on stage with minimal budget and technical capabilities? How do we handle songs for which no music exists? How do I make the arcane language into something that connects with a modern audience? How do I get my cast of twenty-one working together as an ensemble? Every year when I’ve tackled Shakespeare as a director I kick myself as I feel that I’m really not up to the challenge. And every year what ends up on the stage is pretty good and I get asked to come back and do it again so I guess I’m doing something right. First read through is a week from Monday. I’m ready to launch into what I consider the easy stuff (the court scenes, the love story, the clowning) and hope all my ideas for the hard stuff (the magic, appearing and disappearing banquets, the masque, the shipwreck) order themselves in my brain in such a way that I can communicate them to those who have to help me execute them.
There’s been one bright spot among the barrage of bad news that we’ve all been enduring for what seems like forever. It’s an indirect result of The World Cup. Last week’s news was all about how the State Department and Border Control were abusing their powers and keeping refs and team entourages out of the country and revoking visas of fans who were hoping to see their team play. This week’s news is about the fans who have made it and who are discovering what a great big loveable diverse messy country this actually is behind the headlines and media images. I, like millions of others, have been captivated by the social media posts of Freddy from Germany, Shaun from Scotland, and Nobunaga from Japan amongst others who while road tripping have discovered Buc-ees, Waffle House, the Grand Canyon, and Bourbon Street. How ordinary Americans are throwing visitors backyard barbecues, driving them to the stadia, making sure their order at Chipotle is correct. The media warfare which stokes the red/blue divide for clicks and ratings, and which is exploited in a cynical fashion by politicians for money and power is not the real America. The real America is a thousand kindnesses, and welcoming the visitor, and absorbing new ideas and customs into our melting pot. Take that Stephen Miller.
The administration’s attempts to remake the capital aren’t faring so well. The reflecting pool has been finished and is now full of algae due to their dismantling of the filtration system put in under Obama which brought water in from the Potomac so it wouldn’t become too stagnant. The Lincoln Memorial, which I prefer to see as a backdrop for Marian Anderson and Martin Luther King Jr., became the staging area for an exercise in crass. We got to see Motocross doing stunts in front of the White House. I’m all for extreme sports if that’s your thing but there is a time and a place and the South Lawn ain’t it. Trumps loss of his name on The Kennedy Center has been met with a piece of spiteful malicious compliance with scaffolding and canvas covering the portico and the name of the building. Can’t wait until they start building that monstrous arch. If it is built, I’m hoping we have a nationwide naming contest for it and that the name not have the letters T R U M or P in it. Although, given the internet, it will likely end up as Archie McArchface.
OK I’ve lolled long enough. Time to get up and be constructive.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 