She show did, in fact, go on!

The good news about the readers theater show is that both performances went well, the cast had a great time (they reported), the audiences were smallish (50 for each), and Kathleen was super as one of the podcasters. 

The show wrapped up the 26th seson for the Wesley Players, and the 27th season schedule includes no readers theater... so, that may mean several things. Could be that readers theater is of low interest to the artistic director and board, though they always go out of their way to thank me and tell me how important my efforts are. Could be that they have a vague idea of scheduling a "next" show in the fall or winter of 2027. Could be that small audiences eventually lead to trying things that will draw larger ones, certainly beyond 50. 

In fact, those could all be true to some extent. 

But my gut feeling is that I need to find a different "tent" to fit under -- perhaps back under the Music & Arts ministry of the church. 

I am already sketching out the vaguest outlines of a one-hour show to be presented in the church's backyard... on a small stage there, maybe in September. Having some fun with Old Testament figures and plots that could be given a modern spin (like if Moses had a podcast, with sidekick Aaron and Pharoah as special guest) might connect with youth programs at St. Luke's... without offending everyone. 

Of course, I haven't even shared the barest glimmer of that idea with the ministers yet.

New Testament parodies are more fraught, certainly.

I also have another "early" thought about creating a readers theater troupe, with a roster of those who MIGHT be interested in performing readers theater shows, as their schedules permit.

I also am well aware that I cannot be the only person capable of writing a readers theater show, so maybe the secret is to find ways to present 2-3 shows per year, with various writers. The last show roped in two guys for tech -- a sound director and a lighting director -- and they were there for both technical rehearsals and both performances. That's a lot to expect from volunteers.

Doing that three times per year? Hmmmm...

I could probably find ways to recycle shows, create a "greatest hits" of skits of some sort, or just come up with some new plot and characters... and that might be enough to provide the material. It's all TBD, I guess.

But next week, after the four-week summer course wraps up this Sunday, is for finalizing the St. Luke's history that I have been fiddling with for over two years. 

Thanks for allowing me to fiddle with readers theater ideas for a bit. 

 

Doing my part to keep live theater, well, alive

I have been writing readers theater scripts since 2021, and this weekend will see the world premier of my latest: "Not Dead Yet in Mountainville," a cozy mystery-adjacent rom com with 14 players, including Kathleen.

I had acted in two readers theater productions a few years earlier: "The Princess Bride," playing Miracle Max and the Officious Bishop, and as Andy in the two-person "Love Letters." Why I chose to do some deep research on "Young Frankenstein" in the summer of 2021 must have been due to boredom as we were coming out of the pandemic. The nice thing about adpating a script is that most of the good lines are waiting for you... all you need to do is work out how to minimize all the visual scenes that give movies their richness. Turns out to not be so easy.

I found the movie script online but also found the original stage play that Gene Wilder wrote which led to the screenplay. And then I found the script to a music version of the film, which turned out to be a bit raunchy. Certainly not "church appropriate," and the St. Luke's Fellowship Hall was the space I secured for our one performance, on Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021. 

Nine brave souls showed up for the audition night a week prior, and then I recruited two more (including Kathleen, who had never been on stage before), so we had elevent players for that show. And 75 people attended, all wearing masks, while the players were allowed to NOT wear masks. At some point, all the somewhat haphazard mask wearing will become the stuff we tell disbelieving classrooms of fourth graders...

That show's success led me to think about doing some other adaptations, and I settled on a melding of a Hallmark Holiday movies parody interspersed with famous scenes from holiday movies and TV shows. When we held the auditions for this holiday show, lo and behold but 60 people showed up. 

I recall quickly meeting with Jim and Leigh Ramsey, who had founded the Wesley Players in 2000, and with whom I had worked in numerous Wesley Players musicals, up in the front of the Sanctuary as the masses talked and joked before us. Honestly, this was one of those times when sheer panic led to a flawed but "doable" solution. 

We had the church booked for one Saturday night. There's no way all 60 could be in one show... there would be so many characters that each player would be investing four evenings (we have traditionally had three rehearsals and then just do the show) for just a few lines.

Our makeshift solution was to split the group into two casts and to present the show twice... in one night. We had an early show and a late show and I asked the cast NOT performing to add to each audience. It was crazy and wonderful and funny and (sometimes) moving. The pandemic had pretty much knocked out traditional musicals and main stage productions, so people were eager for a chance to both get together with others and have some fun acting.

That was a November show and the next year I was asked if I could come up with something for September, early in the school year. That led to "Much Ado," which was based on "Much Ado About Nothing," but with our Ben and Beatrice being teachers at the Mountainville High School. I again "stole" scenes from TV shows and movies that featured high schools.

Then came "A Mountainville Christmas Carol," with Ellie Scrooge as our mendacious character who experiences a miraculous change, and last year another holiday show, "Mr. Kringle Goes to Town," based on "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," a 1938 Frank Capra movie that I first knew through the Adam Sandler movie version. 

The Wesley Players moved me to early June and I found out about three months ago, and June is not a great time for holiday shows. So, I opted to try a cozy mystery. They are quite popular and visible right now. The big difference this time was that I had no script to adapt. I just started. And tomorrow night, an audience will be there to see what our three days of rehearsal have produced. 

My hope is to provide this blog part two of my readers theater history next Tuesday. 

I also hope we get a few laughs. Kathleen is one of two podcasters who do a true crime podcast. It's been fun to work with her on crafting a lot of the script... in fact, we spent a very pleasant hour or so this afternoon editing some of her lines and just practicing. 

We are driving over to the church for the final tech rehearsal in 15 minutes. 

Ignoring what is right in front of us

What would happen if an American president "lost his or her mind"? 

We thought we had an answer in the 25th Amendment, but it turns out that the logical mechanisms to make activating that amendment happen depend on, well, logic. No one really anticipated a chief executive leading a cult of personality, propped up by a combination of greed and fear. 

Of course, defining what "losing your mind" looks like is what pays the bills for pundits and politicians and much of the media. And you can't ignore the clear fact that even discussing another person's mental state is both impolite and inexact. There are endless supplies of hairs to be split and "what abouts" to be suggested. 

So, the government continues to spiral into dysfunction and illogic and anger and meanness. 

But is there any doubt that, at some point in the future, the Current Occupant will be judged as not only the worst president in history but actually insane? Yes, he may be suffering from some mental illness (his narcissism and constant need for revenge) and he may be showing some dementia. 

It occurs to me that those diagnoses are both true and irrelevant. They amount to the same end: he should not be trusted with the nuclear codes or the economy or the armed forces or his social media account. 

Yet we try to remain calm as the insanity continues.

I know I tend to oversimplify, but there is only one clear reason that nothing has been done to remove our Demented Leader from office and that is the fact that the extremely rich continue to grow their riches and power. Those things may not be because of Trump but they are happening under his watch... so why rock the boat?

So sorry to advocate for class warfare, but mechanisms must be found to reduce the wealth and power of the 0.1 percent. Focused tax increases and reduced exemptions and accounting tricks would be involved, of course. And the legal fiction of money possessing free speech needs to be corrected.

There's not going to be a revolution in America. Everyone has too much money for that. I, for one, am not willing to risk my personal finances, much less my health in a revolution. You have to be either desperately poor or fanatically committed to plunge into the chaos of revolution.

Perhaps I'm too old and tired to rush to the "front lines." Perhaps I am just too timid to embrace the unknown and unknowable (until it's too late). 

And, hey, the stock market has hit record highs amidst all the chaos. 

As Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman would say, "What? Me worry?"

Modern problems often stem from not caring

Had lunch with some fellow geezers yesterday - two couples who have attended St. Luke's for far longer than we have been members - and one guy mentioned apropos of nothing in particular: "Isn't it funny that Trump is running for every local office, from governor to representative to dog catcher?" I assume he is a Trump voter, though that hardly seems to affect his or my everyday life.

He didn't defend our Fearless Leader but I did take his point: every ad we see on TV focuses on how the candidate will take on Trump or otherwise resist the corrupt regime currently running the country. He is likely correct in his implying that most of those candidates will not have much effect on national politics once in office. And I certainly would like to know more about what policies and philosophies they avow. 

I also heard on some talk show that a recent poll revealed that 57 percent of registered voters plan to vote in the coming midterm elections. That number seems woeful... but then I read that the normal turnout for off-year elections is 40 percent. 

A couple days ago I read that the Texas run-off on May 26 featured a 36 percent drop-off in participation for the Republican senate nomination, and that, in the end, under 10 percent of the estimated eligible Republican-leaning voters bothered to participate. 

Add in the fact that only 57 percent of eligible voters across the country are actually registered to vote, and a guy could start thinking that our democracy is not all that important to about four in ten people around us. 

I want to blame this complacency on something: poor civics education, lack of patriotism, ineffective government, or just social media, in general... but Americans have voted in low numbers for many years, through wars and depressions and recessions and long before the internet dominated everything. 

This may be a stretch, but all this reminds me that there is some "common wisdom" that about 20 percent of high school students are involved in 80 percent of school activities, from sports to clubs to performing groups. Lots of schools love to brag about their co-curricular offerings and most spend quite a large chunk of money on supporting all those offerings.

Often, parents will make decisions about where to send little Billy or Suzie based on those somewhat public activities, along with the overall academic rankings. 

So, comprehensive high schools are often gauged by how a rather small percentage of the student body does in those public situations. Is that all that different from how someone from, say, Spain, might assess the quality of the American government or society in general? 

Every day I am reminded that the Trump administration is indistinguishable from an organized crime family, blatantly fleecing us all with no immediate consequences beyond late night talk show jokes and often unhinged social media posts. 

That motivates me to cast my lonely ballot, of course, but for many Americans, nothing could convince them to exercise their fundamental right to vote. 

That is how we get a current president elected with less than half of even those who bothered to vote, and with about 236 million eligible voters and Trump receiving 77 million votes... well, that means about 33 percent of Americans elected our wannabe King. 

Just typing that makes my spirits sink. 

As Woody Allen once said, "80 percent of success in life is showing up." 

Americans, whether in high school or more generally, often choose to not show up.

Memory, and history, can be a bit vague

Kathleen was looking for a project to get into and, for whatever reason, settled on reading and digitizing the materials we have from my mother and father. These include a scrapbook compiled by Kathleen for my parents' 40th wedding anniversay (1989). along with various legal documents and printed letters.

But the most intriguing document is a diary written by 9-year-old John W. Kennedy, detailing one year in his life. That year was 1937. I don't like to get in Kathleen's way when she is immersed in such projects, though she is generous in sharing little tidbits that amuse, fascinate, or puzzle her. A future post may relate some highlights.

But once I can wrap up my St. Luke's UMC history project for the time being - I am pausing after taking readers from the late '70s through 2004 - my goal is to begin writing some sort of history of at least part of my family. My current model is a good one: Kathleen's book that she wrote on her mother and father, complete with their descendants. She quite logically argues that the sheer number of people involved in going further back would be overwhelming.

So, right now, focusing on John and Barbara Kennedy is the specific goal. Kathleen has digitized so many images over the years (long before her current efforts) and she has the subscription to Ancestry, which I can borrow from and maybe use for even more arcane research. 

Neither of us remembers how we came to possess so many documents from my parents, though I suppose Mike must also have quite a few. Particularly legal ones, of course, as he functioned as the family attorney for many years. Just the other day, I sent him a plea for some details on the history of Walnut Ridge, the housing development just south of West High School in Iowa City, developed along with Mace Braverman, a business partner of dad's.  

Just to show how life goes, today Kathleen shared a copy of something I wrote on June 14, 2023... two days prior to Barbara's birthday... #96 were she still alive. When she asked me about it, I had no recollection. But seeing it reminded me that I wrote it as part of this very blog. Brother Tim has asked for the siblings to write down some memories of our mother and send them to him to compile in time to share prior to this coming June 16. Mom would be 99.

One of the points of that post, clearly, was to point out the irony of our elder granddaughter going off to Iowa that coming fall to attend college. I also speculated a bit on how Grace might have been affected by her great grandmother, even though they never met. 

I guess we can reasonably speculate on how we are products in some diffuse way of our ancestors, most of whom we never met and many of whom we know nothing. We do know they lived and reproduced, of course. We are living proof.

My interest in the history of my family, or my church, or community or long-time home is in trying to better understand HOW people lived and how some of their journey led to the always compelling story of... ME. 

I still haven't come up with the specific anecdotes I will contribute to the family project. But having some primary source documents should help me. 

And later today we will drive up to DIA to pick up granddaughter Anna, flying back due to receiving a jury summons and without recourse to defer. She is flying back from Iowa, a second great granddaughter now living where Barb spent so many years making a life. 

To brag a tiny bit: Anna earned four A's and one A+ this past semester. That is the sort of thing my mom would have shared widely, perhaps at bridge or at the Elks pool. 

But now I am straying into memories of Barbara Fern Guffey Kennedy. 

Resisting the urge to feel smug

Here is today's brief post from Seth Godin (who blogs every day and has done so for over a dozen years):

"It’s useful and satisfying to have people go along with your wishes and your taste.

"But hoping that they’ll be delighted to do so and thank you for pointing out their previous errors might be asking for too much.

"It’s one thing for people to act as if you’re right. It’s a whole other thing for them to acknowledge that they are wrong. It might not be worth what it costs to achieve."

He rarely comments directly on politics or a specific event, preferring larger points that a reader can adapt as desired to their lives. 

So, I had two immediate reactions:

1. If one of my writing students submitted this as a draft, I would respond with "these are compelling claims but where is your support?" In other words, one of my themes in teaching any sort of writing is that no matter how "true" our claims may be, they are not as convincing as they could be without specific examples taken from personal experience, observation, or research. It's not up to the readers to supply their own examples.
2. I immediately plugged in the chaos of Republican senators arguing with Trump's stooge Blance about the proposed "settlement" with the IRS. Everything about this stinks of corruption, not to mention hubris. The hubris grows from the sin of pride, where Trump and his minions believe there is nothing they can't get away with at this point. Evidently, some sort of line was crossed with many among the 53 Trump toadies who, until now, have just nodded and avoided blame and generally refused to even offer a timid question about their Dear Leader's insanity. 

And THAT led me to imagining some future where many Americans (even cowardly politicians) will feel regret over allowing a wannabe king undermine our nation. I know. Science fiction stuff.

And THEN I thought that Seth's advice will come in handy. At some point, despite having been "right" for so long and despite enduring endless humiliations both great and small, anyone who might be termed "anti-Trump" or anti-oligarchy or anti-fascist would do well to simply offer quiet thanks. They must resist the urge to force public repentence.

Even in my youth, when I went to confession regularly as a good Catholic boy should, the reality was that my pitiful little "sins" were expressed through a screen in a darkened box to an anonymous priest. There was no command to later exit the little box and proclaim my latest "I had impure thoughts five times" admission. 

By the way, some of my male friends advised me that "impure thoughts" was the perfect sin to confess. Vague but clearly, well, not right. But also so common that the priest would hardly notice. Most of the time my penance would be ten Hail Marys and an act of contrition... recited silently in a pew in the back of the church. 

And then I could exit the building and go in search of my next impure thought.

I see a parallel with all the deluded Trumpers who will at some point develop amnesia about some of the worst of their behaviors. 

It would be nice if they all could have some quick and painless process to "confess," quietly and superficially, and then move on with their lives. 

I don't need their apologies. I want to see different behaviors. 

But I will confess that I will privately feel inordinate joy.

Once again... it didn't quite work out as I planned

Another semester in the books. Another set of mixed results.

I honestly don't know why I ever expect anything other than mixed results... my hopes and expectations only occasionally match what students produce and it's been that way since 1976. Fifty years should be enough to make it clear.

This spring I tried a new strategy with my CSU online Strategic Writing & Communication class, where I created a methodical "scaffolding," forcing each student to complete key steps in the process of researching and writing a recommendation report. The theory was that successfully completing those several steps (from a topic proposal to an annotated bibliography to an "executive summary" and more) would make finalizing the report relatively painless. 

I also added a final memo assignment, where students were asked to reflect on the process and how it all worked. There was a section asking about AI being used as a tool in the course, as well.

Interestingly, nearly everyone in the course commented on how they liked the "scaffolding" and discovered so much about the complexities of writing a report. They almost all liked the fact that I did not categorically ban AI but instead asked for it to be used in specific ways, always with transparency.

So, that should mean that the final reports were better than they have been in the past, right?

Ha! Not right. 

Many of the reports ended up basically having very little "there" there. It's a researched recommendation report, focused on a "client" that each student could choose... with my hope being that even pretending to have a client would help sharpen the arguments and the advice. 

I am still analyzing how so many ended up earning 65-75 percent on what amounted to the final exam for the course... and still were able to earn an A-. 

But my first theory is that I created so many steps, each earning x points along the way, that even a dismal score of 60/100 didn't really tank their grades. Good for them, I suppose, but disappointing to me. My goal was for the final recommendation report to be the culmination and the clear evidence about what was learned in the course. 

Right now, I plan to spend some time before fall semester crafting one MORE assignment that builds to the final report, one that asks students to share a few paragraphs that include in-text citations gleaned from their research. If I had any revelation, it was that they simply did not realize that they can't just plop findings and writing from a source directly into an academic document. 

It's not that their writing made no sense. It's that it made sense without any clear support.

I suspect that AI is partly to blame, as students must have dumped at least some of their research into the chats and received logical but unsupported conclusions from the robots. And that led to lots of bullet point lists of positives and negatives and conclusions. Most of those, however, did not connect with the "client" they had chosen but remained frustratingly general.

So, I know the task.

A big question is whether I can keep this particular course ahead of the rapid improvements in generative AI... and whether it matter all that much.