Week In Review

I can’t do it any more. I’ve been supporting the writer’s strike by not posting this week, but I’ve become disenchanted with the Guild’s advocacy vis a vis this blog, and I’m going scab.

Plenty happened this week. We had kind of a strange election in Seattle on Tuesday. The biggest deal was a massive transportation plan that coupled a wish list of highway construction with an ambitious mass transit construction project. You couldn’t choose one without the other, and the gamble was that commuters were so fed up with the status quo that they’d calibrate or arbitrage their fear of the unknown (mass transit) in order to ameliorate their immediate pain (highway gridlock). That gamble failed, as the haters of both roads and the haters of mass transit formed an unholy alliance to scuttle the whole thing.

Otherwise, I don’t think this election, in Washington at least, was much of a bellwether for where we’re going in 2008. I really think that, with the economy in flux and with the payback to Democratic voters from the 2006 election in serious doubt, it’s really hard to predict what’s coming up for 2008.

In other news, our member presale for the Ashland Shakespeare Festival started on Monday, and I rushed to buy our tickets for the last week in June. We’re in the front row for every performance, and we’re going to see:

  • Our Town by Thornton Wilder. The last time I visited this play was when I was a senior and it was performed at our high school. I think it might have more resonance for me as an adult
  • Midsummer’s Night Dream - seen this a lot, but never tire of it.
  • Coriolanus - we saw this in Ashland about 10 years ago. It was a swashbuckling, all-out extravaganza in the outdoor theater. This production is going to be in the minimalist New Theater, and I’m not sure how well it will scale, or whether I’ll like it nearly as well. The delight will be in figuring it out.
  • Fences - by August Wilson, another in his Pittsburgh Cycle. Looks to be 10 or 20 years after Gem of the Ocean, which we saw last year.
  • The Clay Cart - a 2000-year-old Indian play that they claim is “utterly Shakespearean in spirit”. “Jewels are stolen. A Brahmin faces execution. A beautiful courtesan is at the mercy of the King’s bad-boy brother. Journey through a world where gamblers, holy men, political fugitives and royal scoundrels intersect and good people triumph.” Enough to elicit my ticket.
  • Othello - we saw a performance of this play at Ashland several years ago. It’s hard to disassociate from the Olivier black-and-white film where Iago was by far the most riveting character. Gonna give it another try.
  • The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler - Hedda Gabler (from the Ibsen play, which OSF staged a few years ago) and various other dramatic characters, including Medea, and Mammy from Gone With The Wind, populate a fitful post-last-act purgatory. Sounds like it might be fun, if a bit fluffy. From a review ,
    • Tragic heroine par excellence Medea (Kate A. Mulligan), who at one point shows up blood-soaked from murdering her children for the umpteenth time. “I did it again,” she says, “and I feel rotten about it.”

So, we’ve got that to look forward to. I actually get really jazzed by just buying the tickets and making the reservations for lodging. It’s almost better than Christmas.

And Thursday night, once again, I was invited to my Jordanian/Palestinian project partner for an Arabic dinner, this time featuring two lamb dishes. One was kibbeh, a sort-of lamb meatball served with tabouleh. Another was made from chunks of lamb cooked in a yogurt sauce. I believe it’s called mansaf, and was served with white rice and pine nuts. Dinner was again followed by Turkish coffee. We again made it through the whole evening without somehow mentioning work, although it was a lot harder than last time, when we were getting acquainted.