Cirque in A.C.

September 4, 2012
· Martin Kelley

This past week­end we saw Cirque du Soleil’s tour­ing show Dralion at Atlantic City’s his­toric Board­walk Hall.

I think this was fourth Cirque per­for­mance I’ve seen (though third show, as I’ve seen Walt Dis­ney World’s twice), and it had all the Cirque trade­marks I’ve come to expect. There’s the hal­lu­cino­genic sto­ry­line, East meets West via acro­bats, giant pup­pets, dream crea­tures and clowns you would­n’t want to meet on the prover­bial dark alley. Per­haps care­ful study of the tour guide and/or repeat­ed view­ings would make this clear­er, but I’m con­tent that the tale is a con­ve­nient inspi­ra­tion for per­for­mances and costumes.

I absolute­ly love Cirque’s instance on hav­ing the music per­formed live, as well as the way they have per­form­ers roll on and off the props. Cirque start­ed off as a street show in Que­bec and there’s a lot of that diy anar­chic spir­it that has held on despite the million-dollar revenues.

The tour­ing shows have sim­ple setups that can fit side­ways into stan­dard bas­ket­ball audi­to­ri­ums. It works, but it’s noth­ing like the cus­tom spaces, like the one in Walt Dis­ney World. Still, out was nice to have a local taste of Cirque that fit the bud­get of a spe­cial date (this show dou­bled as our eleventh wed­ding anniversary).

Leav­ing the show we fol­lowed the temp­ta­tion to walk the board­walk, to utter dis­ap­point­ment. Atlantic City’s ocean­front is dom­i­nat­ed by block-long casi­no entrances that long ago replaced the array of small shops you see else­where. Artistry is com­plete­ly absent, with Cirque’s live music in stark con­trast to the over­pow­ered sound sys­tems throw­ing gener­ic dance music out from the edges of the walk. After a block we turned around and head­ed inland to Absec­on’s Mount Fuji for a post-show din­ner. Poor Atlantic City.

Here’s the trail­er for Cirque’s Dralion:

Birding at the Edwin B Forsythe Natl Wildlife Reserve

August 26, 2012
· Martin Kelley
This morn­ing the fam­i­ly joined a bird­ing group at the wildlife cen­ter near Absec­on, NJ. Birds spot­ted include the clap­per rail, semi-palmated sand­piper, many black skim­mers, snowy and great egrets, great blue herons, glossy ibis, For­rester’s terns, a semi-palmated plover, and a pair of black crowned night herons​.It was great going with a bird­ing group. Some of these birds weren’t even vis­i­ble (much less iden­ti­fi­able) to untrained eyes.

When tolerance loses, on the shooting of Sikhs

August 6, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Anoth­er shoot­ing already? Yes­ter­day’s attack at a Sikh tem­ple in Wis­con­sin is simul­ta­ne­ous less and more scary that the “Jok­er attack” in the Col­orado movie the­ater. The tem­ple is a less uni­ver­sal venue, one where few of us have fre­quent­ed. But the impli­ca­tion of a U.S. Army-trained, known white suprema­cist attack­ing a dis­tinct eth­nic group is less an act of ran­dom crazi­ness than it is a polit­i­cal act. Whether the shoot­er turns out to be deranged or not, he’s a long-term mem­ber of what we might call the right-wing hate com­mu­ni­ty and his actions will be seen in that relationship.

A few links to try to make sense of this. The first is the Sikhism page on my wife’s course web­site. She’s paid to teach world reli­gions at the coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, but in real­i­ty she teach­es respect, under­stand­ing, and tol­er­ance. She called up the Sikh coali­tion this morn­ing to offer an apol­o­gy. I’m proud of her work. Don’t miss the first embed­ded video, a humor­ous set of inter­views with Sikhs about their tur​bans​.My sym­pa­thies go out to all the Sikhs, both the imme­di­ate vic­tims of yes­ter­day’s vio­lence and all those who will now wor­ry when a white male wirh tat­toos and a shaved head approaches.

The sec­ond is a dusted-off link to a 1997 essay that askswhy the U.S seems to train all of the ter­ror­ists?” While not every jihadist or home­grown mass-murdering nutjob has a U.S. mil­i­tary con­nec­tion, it’s a lot more com­mon than a ran­dom dis­tri­b­u­tion would predict.

Final­ly, one could argue that mod­ern Amer­i­ca’s recipe of mil­i­tarism and mass mur­der start­ed sixty-seven years ago today. The world’s first (and so far only) nuclear war began when the U.S. dropped a sin­gle atom­ic bomb on a city, incin­er­at­ing and lethal­ly poi­son­ing over 100,000 cit­i­zens. Many activists have argued (con­vinc­ing­ly in my opin­ion) that the deaths were unnec­ces­sary and that the Tru­man admin­is­tra­tion knew the Japan­ese were near sur­ren­der. What­ev­er the stat­ed or secret motives, the U.S. for­ev­er changed the cal­cu­lus of it’s self image as sim­ple, right­eous nation (unearned after cen­turies of slav­ery and the geno­cide of Amer­i­ca’s first inhab­i­tants, but that’s anoth­er tale). Friends Jour­nal has assem­bled recent archives on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. May we nev­er forget.

Bonus: anoth­er Sikh video:

Of violence and mental snaps

July 20, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Yet anoth­er hor­rif­ic shoot­ing. It’s hard to keep off the news feeds for each bit of new infor­ma­tion we learn of the per­pe­tra­tor and his vic­tims. It’s nat­ur­al to want to under­stand. If we do final­ly learn of a moti­va­tion behind James Holmes’s actions, it will prob­a­bly be more the trig­ger that set him off — the straw that broke the camel’s back, per­haps, or the dan­ger­ous obses­sion that’s informed his world of late.

A few years ago there was a fel­low from a near­by town who declared him­self the grand wiz­ard of his own branch of the Klu Klux Klan. He would announce plans for a march a local town and instant­ly the media would be rac­ing their news vans there to get reac­tions from politi­cians, police chiefs and ran­dom peo­ple on the street. Head­lines would ensue, blog­gers would go to work, counter-protests would be announced, etc. But the grand wiz­ard turned out to be most­ly an Oz-like appari­tion of smoke. No estab­lished KKK orga­ni­za­tion rec­og­nized him. His ral­lies would attract at most two of his bud­dies. He was in his ear­ly for­ties and liv­ing with his moth­er. He was fired after three weeks work­ing at Wawa, the local con­ve­nience store chain. Yes, he could have been a dan­ger if he had got­ten a hold of a cache of guns but he nev­er did. He was a guy who was a los­er at every­thing except get­ting media atten­tion for out­ra­geous pro­pos­al. Last I looked up he’s got reli­gion, recant­ed his racist ide­ol­o­gy, and apol­o­gized for the KKK talk.

Anoth­er sto­ry I could tell is more per­son­al, of a not-so-distant rel­a­tive who went on a middling-murder spree — five dead in the end (I’ll omit details for rea­sons of fam­i­ly diplo­ma­cy). I only met him once but I’ve come to know the set­ting that shaped him. Some of the issues that shaped him go back gen­er­a­tions and are still active. To tell the sto­ry of his snap would take a nov­el on the order of Jef­frey Eugendies’s Mid­dle­sex. I have an autis­tic son and know that this con­di­tion runs in the fam­i­ly. I try to imag­ine throw­ing him into a main­stream school set­ting with no sup­port and no diag­no­sis, and then bring­ing him up in the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion of alcohol-based self-medication; a stint on the armed forces would just add to the explo­sive mix. Forty years from now my pre­cious lit­tle boy might well be the top sto­ry on Action News. And it would be a tragedy.

If I had a time machine, I think I’d do exper­i­ments to under­stand the nexus of ide­ol­o­gy and indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ty. I’d give a 24-year-old Osama bin Laden a desk job in an obscure Sau­di min­istry, and an 18-year-old Adolf Hitler a prize to a pres­ti­gious for­eign art school.

Vio­lent ide­olo­gies are often the per­vert­ed man­i­fes­ta­tion of less-visible per­son­al and fam­i­ly tragedies. I hope we can find a way to step back from the voyeurism of Col­orado details to find ways to extend our­selves in love and care. Tonight, when you feel rage or indig­na­tion, call up a friend or rel­a­tive in pain. Yes, gun con­trol can help les­son the imme­di­ate tragedy. But let’s not for­get the long-term solu­tions. Think about how we lob­by to  widen access to med­ical care (e.g.: uni­ver­sal health­care) and pro­grams for the needy of our youth (hint: fund the schools, expand special-needs pro­grams, bring back after-school pro­grams and enrich­ment oppor­tun­ties). There are three- and six-and eighteen-year-old’s out there tee­ter­ing on cross­roads of alter­nate futures. Let’s hold out our hands and invite them to paths of heal­ing and love.

“Nostromo” by Joseph Conrad

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley

After Heart of Dark­ness I thought I’d try anoth­er book by Con­rad. The choice was made easy by the Wikipedia entry for Nos­tro­mo, which quotes F. Scott Fitzger­ald as say­ing “I’d rather have writ­ten Nos­tro­mo than any oth­er novel.”

Six weeks lat­er, and I’m only a quar­ter of the way through. I’m drop­ping this book. I won’t say that the book’s first quar­ter is com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ing. Its pic­ture of a trou­bled South Amer­i­ca coun­try and the way its internationally-focused upper class tries to act as a reform move­ment drew me in, but only so far. At this point the nov­el is still just a thinly-cloaked his­to­ry les­son with broadly-drawn car­i­ca­tures that have failed to become characters. 

Let me be hon­est: I want some dra­ma. I want some­one to betray the emo­tion­al expec­ta­tions of their assigned role. Can’t some­body (any­body?!) kiss the wrong lips, betray the wrong fight­er, or at least have a cri­sis of faith in their God, life’s work, or politics?

I do believe the action gets sauci­er lat­er on. But I’m too con­fused by the polit­i­cal actors of Costagua­na (“who’s Avel­li­nos again?”) to care. I can check the Wikipedia pages on Venezuela and Colom­bia to see how the polit­cal dra­ma plays out. What­ev­er per­son­al dra­ma there is will have to be Fitzgerald’s.

Have Friends lost their cultural memory?

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley

In Amer­i­ca today our sense of spir­i­tu­al fel­low­ship in Lib­er­al meet­ings, the feel­ing of belong­ing to the same tribe, is dimin­ish­ing. We no longer live in the same com­mu­ni­ties, and we come from diverse faith tra­di­tions. Our cul­tur­al val­ues are no longer entwined at the roots, as were those of our founders. As a body we share less genet­ic and cul­tur­al mem­o­ry of what it means to be Quak­ers. Dif­fer­ent view­points often pre­vent us from look­ing in the same direc­tion to find a point of con­ver­gence. We hold beliefs rang­ing from Bud­dhism to non-theism to Chris­tian­i­ty, or we may sim­ply be eth­i­cal human­ists. Just imag­ine a mix­ture of wild seeds cast into a sin­gle plot of land, pro­duc­ing a pro­fu­sion of col­or. A wide vari­ety of plants all bloom­ing togeth­er sym­bol­ize our present con­di­tion in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Dis­cern­ing which is a wild­flower and which is a weed is not easy. We are liv­ing a great exper­i­ment of reli­gious diversity.

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Photo of the Day: Dawn of the Web

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley


The first pho­to on the web pho­to turns 20 next Wednes­day and its sto­ry is more inter­est­ing that you’d think:

The first pho­to­graph­ic image ever uploaded to the Web was a Pho­to­shop dis­as­ter. It was cre­at­ed to sell some­thing, and fea­tured attrac­tive women in a come-hither pose. In short, photo-uploading was born with some orig­i­nal sins that have nev­er quite washed away.

Bonus Youtube: Les Hor­ri­bles Cer­nettes per­form “Col­lid­er”