WCGreen
WCGreen's JournalI remember going to this County Wide fundraiser that fell on St, Paddy's Day....
Since it was in Cleveland, all the Irish were out and about. The event would take place the day after St. Paddy's day.
This was back in about the middle of the 90's. Can't remember the correct dates because, after a while, these events seem to bunch all together. This was also when the River Dance was coming to Cleveland every year in March.
So there are about 30 people sitting at the front table. I was sitting next to Chairman Demora and that is when the four little kids came out and started to do the Irish Dance where the backs are straight, the arms carefully kept stiffly on the sides while the legs were to let loose, with the aid of some clog like shoes so there was a rytheme that blended together as one beat helped on by and accordian player and a young girl at the piano.
But this was about the 15th variation on a themes and so there efforts were blendng in with all the other Irish dancing I had scene over the last month or so.
Anyway as it was winding up I turned to the Chairman and said I guess this was the Creek Dance and for some reason she started to talk and gasped out a few Creek Dance to those around us and it became a running joke for the next four years...
A place at the Table...
CBS this morning had the two women who created a documentary updating of 1968 CBS documentary on today....
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50142961n
It really is shocking at how hard it is for those of us who can't find a proper range of needed foods. Food Deserts are popping up all over America as mostly the poor, working classes have no meaningful access to fresh fruits and vegetables, only processed foods filed with empty calories.
This film pretty much proves that unfettered Free Enterprise can't provide the needs of the people. There is no viable profit model to serve the needs of those forced to live in these huge pockets of nutritional wastelands. Markets were not designed to provide a just allocation of resources. It's as simple as that.
What "free market" conservatives like Rep. Paul Ryan preach when confronted by stuff like this is to fall back on hoary bromides such as pull "themselves up by their bootstraps and just get to work." Same old crap Reagan promoted back in the 70's and 80's. It didn't help back then and obviously it isn't working now.
What bothers me the most about all of this is the only people on "our" side of the aisle who bring issues such as this are shuffled off to the side out of the way by those DC insiders who don't want to make waves on stunningly ignored social problems such as these food deserts.
How long ago was it that Nickel and Dimed in America was published and yet everything pointed out by Ms. Ehrenrech is still there and getting worse.
Christian Nation my fucking ass...
So, what are your favorite musicals...
This seminal American Art Form binging all that we have dragged to this nation from every bit of the world that wanted something more out of life and splashed it all across the stage.
I can't pick out my favorite, but I would have to narrow it down to Across the Universe, West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof. All three of these are built on traditions smacking into the quickening fast change that was propelling everything and anything right here in the US of A.
But I have more, A Chorus Line, for one, that captures the love of art and what we do for love whether it be personal or with your craft.
And there are so many others that I love almost as much as I love these three that I watch whenever they come on the cable. Cabaret, the first M rated movie I saw. My babysitter took me to see it on a saturday afternoon when I was 12.
Then there is Showboat with it's defining the American Musical welding story to song completely,
Jesus Christ Superstar, the first rock and roll event that I saw way back in 1970 blew me away.
Two years ago I saw In the Heights and just loved it.
Camelot which capture the spirit of the Kennedy Administration and then Man of La Mancha came along.
Cleveland has refurbished a whole block of old theaters that were this close to be demoed. There are four large halls and a couple of small venues that bring six Broadway traveling shows each year and a whole lot of other stuff. It really is a gem.
I am lucky. I was able to see 20-25 Broadway plays as well as 20 of Shakespeare's plays, the last being MacBeth which, I believe, was the first I saw way back in 1968. Tom Hanks got his start in Show Business here in Cleveland when did a summer internship at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Fest and since 1965, the company has performed one tragedy and one of the more whimsical shows.
I grew up loving the theater which is probably why I was drawn to the greatest show of all, politics.
Say what you want about Cleveland but we have so much here that is top notched live entertainment that most other cities of the same side would love to have.
If you are looking for a vacation surrounding the arts, coming to Cleveland would be a great place to start looking. Live theater, World Class Restaurants, Professional Sports including Roller Derby, great museums, one of the best Orchestras in the world, the theater district, a great amusement park just a couple hours up the coast of Lake Erie, the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame and the Polka Hall of Fame.
Well, that's my rant for the day...
Back in the 70's, when I was still tethered to my mother, she made it clear that I was to attend
Catholic catechism.
There were many things that I questioned, being that I had already started to explore alternative faiths, stuff that was different from the rote religious experience that was offered by the churches in the Irish and Eastern European neighborhoods where I was raised. So I was skeptical at the onset.
She wanted me to be confirmed even though my parents had divorced and my mother thought that continuing a spiritual upbringing in spite of her being to suffer a de facto excommunication by the Vatican. She felt sure that I should not be tainted by her blasphemous action against god and church for kicking my alcoholic and abusive father to the curb.
Which, of course, of being sound mind, I thought the actions taken by the church against my mom was more than enough for me to walk away, thank you very much. But she wanted me to be confirmed so that I could be sanctioned into the Army of God in case there was a new Crusade against the heathens who control the Holy Land and I had been a problem child, I agreed.
But I never promised my mother that I would suffer the religious rhetoric gladly. So I girded my loins and attended in full ostentation and made it clear I was in attendance against my intellectual protest with the cock assurance only a 10th grader can have.
Now I had just finished studying Inherent the Wind in my 10th grade Honors English as well as reading the bible not as a spiritual exercise but as part of a literary exploration of where story telling developed which also included The Odyssey and The Iliad.
In the classroom, I challenged and compared in every single way I could. The poor woman trying to teach a class after doing what she did all day to earn her keep did not deserve my puffed up chest and posturing and questioning everything and anything.
Finally, she asked why I was bothering to attend the class if I was so dead against these matters of faith.
I told her about my mothers' situation after class and found out that she was in fact a nun who had left the order. She asked me to have my mother call her and she would talk to her about me.
Turns out the woman met with my mother and brought up annulments that were being given in other cities that had Cardinals that are more liberal. My mother had her first marriage annulled and was able to find peace with her faith.
Me, I never went back to those classes but maybe, just maybe, especially looking back from 40 years on, there was a divine spark that set the action leading up to my mother finding peace with her god
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Gender: MaleCurrent location: Cleveland Ohio
Member since: 2003 before July 6th
Number of posts: 45,558
