Friday's Odds and Ends

I'm so excited. I received my first ever written review for a performance for my role as Big Mama in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." The entire review is by Terry Mathews, the Arts Editor of the Sulphur Springs News-Telegram, has some wonderful things to say about the entire cast, especially the actress who played Maggie the Cat and the man who played Big Daddy.

The headline read: Cast brings life to ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ - Leah Conner and John D’Avignon lead with brilliant performances

And the section about me:  Maryann Miller as “Big Mama” is to be commended, too, as the wife of a rich and powerful man. The play was written in the mid-1950s, so Big Mama is drawn as a woman who ran the house and her family with little concern for the rest of the world. She fusses, stews and frets about Big Daddy's health and fawns over Brick, to the dismay of Gooper and “Sister Woman,” who have their eyes set on the future – when they'll be running things, along with their six children. Miller brought just the right balance of confusion, devotion and denial to the part.

This is the scene in which I get the "news" about Big Daddy

I know I'm supposed to be humble and all that, but I just love reading the last line of the review, especially since Mathews, who rumor has it is very hard to impress, came to last Sunday's performance when I did the last two acts so sick I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the play. 

This  wouldn't be Friday without a bit of a rant, so.... I'm wondering if the rising gas prices are a result of the oil companies pressuring President Obama to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. "Of course not," the spokesman for EXXON Mobil might say, but we all know the power of the oil industry.

Since I am still sick, I will keep this post short and end with a joke, courtesy of Funniest Clean Jokes :

One evening I went to visit my elderly grandparents. When it started getting late I asked my grandfather if he had the time, as I didn’t have my watch with me. “I don’t have a watch or clock around here he tells me.”

“Then how do you tell the time?” I asked.

“You see that trumpet in the corner? That’s how!” He picks it up, and thirty seconds later an angry neighbor shouts, “2:30 in the morning and your playing the trumpet!”

Finally, I'm pleased to announce that Doubletake, the first mystery I wrote years ago with a collaborator, Margaret Sutton, has been updated and re-released. It is now available in paperback and as an e-book. It was first released by a small publisher who did no marketing and the book languished until I got the rights back.

Monday Morning Musings

I won't be doing much celebrating today as I am really sick. A cold that I managed to keep at bay so I could finish the last weekend of our play has burst through the levee, so I am down for the count.

Here is a picture from one of our last performances. I think I was sick in this one, too, as I started getting sick on Friday, but the show must go on. This is from the scene where the doctor is giving Big Mama the real news about the report from the Oshner Clinic about Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." What a terrific run we had, and other than the fact that I can crash for a couple of days and not have to drive 60 miles for rehearsal or performances, I am sad it is over.

I will take care of two important pieces of business this morning, then find my green afghan and crash on the sofa.

Have fun partying everyone.

Monday Morning Musings

Anyone who has ever been involved in theatre, either professionally or in community theatre, knows how that run down to opening weekend can consume every thought and every moment of your day. That is what it was like for me last week as we prepared for the production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Celebrating Big Daddy's Birthday

In addition to learning lines and blocking and figuring out how to portray a character, all of us in the cast were responsible for finding costumes and many of the props. Small community theatre troupes are, well, small. Sometimes there is not someone who can step up to be a stage manager. In professional, and large community theatre groups, a stage manager is the one who handles costumes and props and set dressing, as well as helping cast remember their cues for entrances.

Large theatre groups also have tech crews who do light and sound designs.

So with each production that I do at the the theatre in my small town, or the larger city of Sulphur Springs, Texas,  it is a bit of a gamble whether there will be people to help the cast and the director pull a show together. That we can do it is a testament to how dedicated we are to the stage and how much we love to bring a story to life for the enjoyment of the audience.

The story of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" has many layers, but it is primarily a story of redemption. Redemption between Maggie and Brick and redemption between Big Daddy and Big Momma. I thought of that when I saw this video on Saturday.



On another note. I read an article in The Dallas Morning News by Neil Gershenfeld and JP Vasseur about the Internet of Things. Some of the geek-speak was beyond my comprehension, but the bottom line is that the geeks have made it possible to have a small Web server that can do amazing things.

When embedded in everyday objects, these small computers can send and receive information through the Internet so that a coffeemaker can turn on when a person gets out of bed and turn off when a cup is loaded into a dishwasher, a stoplight can communicate with roads to route cars around traffic, a building can operate more efficiently by knowing where people are and what they’re doing, and even the health of the whole planet can be monitored in real time by aggregating the data from all such devices.

When I read that article, I couldn't help but think of my short story SAHM I Am. When my husband first told me about a computer that could be a Self Activated Household Manager, (SAHM) that was back in the 70's and I couldn't imagine what that would be like.

Did you know there is a real problem with people taking the wrong medications with really dire consequences? Ruth Marcus wrote about that in a column Sunday in The Dallas Morning News. The column was titled Look-Alike Pills Endanger Everyone and was focused on Kerry Kennedy, who was just acquitted of “drugged driving”. You may recall the new reports when Kennedy was charged after she mistook a sleeping pill for her thyroid medication and had an accident. Marcus also mentioned other cases in which people, including Tom Brokow, took the wrong medication because the pill and the container looked so much like the pill the person was supposed to take. A simple fix, according to Marcus, would be for pharmacies to put different colored cap on bottles containing sleep aids.

This step could be required, or smart pharmacies could do it on their own. After all, the manufacturer of my contact-lens cleaner knows enough to put a red top on that bottle so I don’t mistake it for the wetting solution.

 That's a great idea. I hope the pharmacies pick up on it. 

Friday's Odds and Ends

This has been a very busy, hectic week getting ready for the opening of the play I am in at a local community theatre, The Main Street Theatre in Sulphur Springs, Texas. We are doing "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", and I play the role of Big Mama. We opened last night and will perform again tonight, tomorrow night, and next week on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I am working with an amazing cast and the players doing the two lead roles, Maggie and Brick, are terrific. So is Big Daddy. When he goes on his tirade against me, I can feel all his anger and his frustration.

This picture is from one of our rehearsals where Big Daddy is yelling at me to leave him and Brick alone. The scene is from act two where Brick and Big Daddy are having their "come to Jesus" talk. Very intense scene, and it upsets me to hear them shouting at each other.

On opening night, Thursday, the audience could feel all that emotion, too, and it is that connection we always want to make with an audience or with readers.  I love being reminded of that while playing on stage.

 

Maggie "The Cat" played by Leah Conner. Image Courtesy of The Front Porch News where you can read a review and see more cast pictures.You can also get information on tickets, etc, if you happen to be in the East Texas area and would like to see this classic show.

Today I am the Friday's Featured Author at J.M. Kelley's blog and we had fun talking about high school days, favorite books, and the ultimate hamburger. Come on by if you have a chance. Like so many other authors who are generous with their time and their little corner of cyberspace to support other writers, J.M is helping me spread the word about the recent release of Stalking Season as an e-book. 

I just love the cover that artist, Dany Russell did, so I have to share it again. For those of you who may have ever been in Reunion Arena in Dallas, you may recognize the view, minus the police badge of course.

Now just a couple of groaner jokes, thanks to Jokes4Us.com

Q: What did the baby corn say to the mama corn? A: "Where’s Popcorn?"

Q: What do you call sad coffee?" A: Despresso.

Today's Literary Lesson comes from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." In act one Maggie says, "When something is festering your your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work. It's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant."

The play is filled with such wonderful insights, which is part of the reason it has been such a joy to experience. Every rehearsal we found a new nuance of human behavior and philosophy to ponder.

What have you learned from plays or books that made you stop and really think about how it applies to your life?

Friday's Odds and Ends

A recent story in the Dallas Morning News reported that the reservoirs serving the Dallas-area are 10% lower than a year ago and the continuing drought does not indicate that it's going to get any better. The area is more than 30 inches shy of normal rainfall over the last six years, yet nobody has taken really serious action toward a long-term solution to the water problem, other than looking at ways to bring in more water - pulling from East Texas reservoirs for one.

People still pour gallons and gallons of water on landscaping and lawns every year, in many cases trying to maintain greenery that was not meant to grow in this hot climate. Perhaps people should think more about whether their grandchildren or great-grandchildren might have a glass of water in their future instead of wanting the most luxurious green lawn today.

Jonathan Rauch, contributing editor to The Atlantic, wrote an interesting article about health care for the very elderly who too often end up in intensive care units at hospitals for the last weeks or days of their lives. He believes that is an unnecessary and extraordinary use of healthcare facilities and money. He wrote, "Hospitals are fine for people needing acute treatments, like heart surgery, but they are very often terrible place for the frail elderly."

The article was promoting the idea of home-based primary care, and to highlight the benefits of that approach, Rauch mentioned a program called Advanced Illness Management at Sutter Health, a giant network of hospitals and doctors in Northern California. Brad Stuart has worked there for the past 15 years, developing home-based care for frail, elderly patients, and he estimates that using that type of program and keeping patients out of the hospital saves Medicare upwards of $2000 a month on each patient, maybe more. "For years, many people in medicine have understood that late-life care for the chronically sick is not only expensive, but also, much too often, ineffective and inhumane."

Because Medicare is not set up to work with this type of program, that is one of the reasons that home-based medical care is not widely used across the country. The layers and layers of rules and requirements and policies for using Medicare seem to be cast in stone and don't leave room for a doctor or a patient or a hospital to figure out a more cost-effective way to handle a medical issue. For example,   there were people in the extended care unit of a hospital at which I worked who were receiving 6 to 8 weeks of IV antibiotics. I don't recall the exact cost of daily hospital stay, but it certainly was a lot more than had these people been allowed to go home with a visiting nurse coming in every day to administer the antibiotic, check the IV port to make sure it was working properly, and tend to any other medical needs the patient might have.

One time, two gentlemen who were stuck in this extended care unit decided that they would use that time to appeal to the government to rethink policy. They gathered statistics from the medical social worker on cost comparisons and then wrote letters to political leaders, starting at the state level and going all the way to Washington. The letters, with all the statistics and a recommendation to change the policy, were also sent to the people who manage and administrate Medicare. The responses that they receive back were often just a form letter that simply stated "We are sorry that our program does not allow for this type of in-home healthcare that you are requesting."

Nobody seemed to be able to look at this idea and say, "Hmmm, maybe we should figure out a way to implement this cost-saving measure and save the taxpayers a whole lot of money."

I know, I know. Government bureaucrats don't seem to understand simple and efficient. And from all outward appearances, they don't seem eager to figure it out.

Isn't this a better setting than a hospital? Photo courtesy of My Elder Advocate

It's been a while since I've done Literary Lessons, and this is a good one from Tennessee Williams' classic play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." The line belongs to Big Daddy, "Ignorance of mortality is a comfort. Men don't have that comfort, he's the only living thing that conceives of death, that knows what it is, the others go without knowing. A pig squeals, but a man, sometimes you can keep a tight mouth about it."

That's kind of depressing, so let's end on a joke.

"How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?"