theatrical sabbatical

January 9, 2016

I took a break from garden building for the first week of the new year. Rob engaged me for one week as a laborer with the House Theater where he is currently the technical director. In show business, jobs are called calls, so when you are confirmed to work, you are ‘on the call.’ I was on the call for the world premiere production of The Last Defender. It is an interactive experience where participants enter a subterranean command bunker and must solve a series of puzzles in order to avert a catastrophic attack. My week’s work was to help fabricate the consoles that house the computer elements of the experience. The consoles are made of sheets of fiberboard with underlying frames of wood. The production design reminds me of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

Five of us were on the crew, with various backgrounds in stagecraft. I was somewhere in the middle in terms of skills. My regular gig calls for precise cutting of lumber and timber, but I am less experienced custom cutting sheets of material and with framing things squarely to the standards of cabinetmakers. I felt like I was getting schooled, which is uncomfortable but always a good place to be.

The production is housed in the Chopin Theatre in Noble Square, Chicago. This venue is a byzantine labyrinth painted in shades of red and decked out with Victorian-eclectic kitsch. The proprietor is Zygmund, a philosophical impresario with populist political views. There are two performance spaces, an upstairs mainstage and a sort of blackbox space below. We installing in the lower space. Our breakroom was the adjacent bar where theatergoers buy their drinks at intermission. We would lounge on the upholstered divans and snack, reading our phones and chatting.  

Twice during the week our work was stopped so that producers and scouts from the TV show Empire could inspect the facilities. The show features musical numbers, and it was surprising to learn that they and they are thinking of shooting one of them exactly where we are building all of this scenery. “Any possibility of a buyout?” their honcho asked Rob. Of course it is a possibility, if the price is right. In jest I bragged that I had reached out to Terrence Howard personally on Twitter and that the 

 deal was assured.

I had a lot of fun working with a new crew and building these strange looking video arcade cabinets. The main downside to the job was the foul miasma of dust that infected the air. The resins in fiberboard are known to various state and medical authorities to be cancer-causing, and we were actively turning sheets of it into airborne dust with tablesaw, skillsaw, jigsaw, and router. My regular work puts me in regular contact with cedar dust, not itself particularly beneficial to the cardiopulmonary system, but I think this more toxic. Jeremy told us a horror story about an infection caused by breathing OSB dust that moved up his sinuses and encroached on his brain before a doctor prescribed antibiotics. “That stuff is gonna turn out to be the next asbestos,” he said. I wore my respirator continuously.

The other bad part about the week was the morning commute. I have deliberately situated my domicile less than a mile from my regular place of business. This puts me out in the doldrums of the suburbs, yes, but I escape the trap of daily immersion in a swath of soul sucking autos. Making the track into the city for a 9am start is about an hour commute. I checked out some audiobooks in the library before the week started. The first one I listened to was We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a gothic tale of family dysfunction by mid century American master Shirley Jackson. I hung on every word. For whatever reason the next one I tried, a cultural history of rabies, was not as satisfying.

Long commute and poisonous dust aside, I am very pleased that I got to take part in this special project. The opportunity to visit a bohemian milieu, to meet and work with dedicated and skilled craftspeople, and to learn new skills all made for a pleasant change of scenery.

#HouseTheatre #ChopinTheatre #TheLastDefender

March 20, 2014 Vernal Equinox

From the studios of Radio Station WBEZ, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL

Jeanne Nolan is here today to be interviewed on the Morning Shift with Tony Sarabia, in honor of the first day of Spring. Jeanne is chatting about growing vegetables with the host and taking a variety of calls from the listening public. A food grower for decades and the founder of The Organic Gardener, she can advise at length on the roots and shoots that make up a garden patch. But some of the callers have some oddball questions. "My rose bush looks like something out of a science fiction movie," declares a woman from Elmwood Park. "What can I do?"

My view of the studio is from the foyer where studio guests can lounge before going on air. I am here as Jeanne's driver. She is a busy woman, the entrepreneurial driving force behind our company, and as such can benefit from extra work time while cruising the roads and expressways of Chicagoland. That's why I, a landscape construction laborer, have been drafted into the role of chauffeur. I am sporting my navy wool blazer and my Donegal flatcap, doing my best to look like Tom Branson, the earnest motorcoachman who won the heart of the master's daughter on Downton Abbey.

I'm looking at Jeanne and Tony through soundproof glass and their voices reach me via the airwaves through a little speakerbox on the foyer coffee table. Jeanne is friendly, upbeat and confidently shares knowledge about soil and sunlight gained from her seasons of experience. There is real information here. I write myself the following email:

well aerated nutrient dense soil is the foundation. outdoor composting systems go fairly dormant in the deep of winter. pumpkins need full sun, which is 8 plus hours per day. How many hours for garlic? jonathan messinger asks how to acidify his soil for growing blueberries. hot pepper or garlic spray to deter squirrels

A homeowner in Lake Forest calls about tent caterpillars attacking his tree limbs. "We usually take a manual approach to insects," Jeanne says. "If they're not doing to much damage you can just pull them off. There is something available, a little heavier duty, Bacillus thuringiensis. BT. It's a certified organic pesticide. So you can try that."

WBEZ staff pass through the corridor as the spot moves along. I am not a true NPR junkie but I listen enough to be curious and a bit starstruck by the people that work in this office. A young woman in a beige skirt and matching sweater vest walks through the door with some acquaintances. Her voluminous blond hair is striking, hanging in waves past her shoulders. She says something to her friend. I know the voice from informative features on local politicos, delivered with the perfect dash of skeptical irony. It's Lauren Chooljian. I always pictured her with dark hair.

Jeanne's spot wraps and shortly she emerges from the studio. As we prepare to leave Monica Eng appears. Monica is a dedicated food writer and advocate, and I am pleased to be introduced. She and Jeanne express mutual admiration and chat about gardening. Somehow the conversation turns to Bacillus thuriniensis, BT. Monica asks what pests were bad enough to pull out the big guns for last year and Jeanne replies that it was the cabbage worms. "I know!," says Monica. "I looked up one day and those cabbage loopers had destroyed my kale!"

We return our badges at reception and make our way to the parking lot. We step out of the lampglow of the local media. Today is the vernal equinox, the first day of spring, but on the way here there was a shortlived snowfall. Now the air is getting definitely pleasant. We head north on the expressway and return to our ordinary work.

Prairie Reading List

February 22, 2014 

           Working on the Landmark wildlife crew, our days are rigorous. Documenting the animals of the Great Plains is not for the faint of heart. Hikes of up to 14 miles per day over the plains and then down and up flood-cut troughs are de rigeur. As conscientious scientists, we don't fail to record glimpses of fleeing animals, even when they come at the end of a long and trying transect. On the other hand, we always look forward to some cozy down time at the Lazy J Lodge after the workday is done. Relaxing in the glow of the heatstove, a variety of leisure pursuits pass the time. Crochet, jigsaw puzzles, and guitar strumming are among the ways we pass the time. The other day the local ranchers even gave three of us a calf-roping lesson. But the most frequent option for our down time is reading. Send a bunch of well educated millennials (and a few token misfits from generation Y) into a media starved cellular deadzone, and noses tend to get buried in books.

            I have read three very inspiring books since I have been here; namely, Buffalo for the Broken Heart by Dan O'Brien, American Bison by Dale F. Lott, and Built for Speed, on the subject of pronghorn antelope, by Dave Byers. Together these three form an edifying triplet for learning about conservation and wildlife on the Great Plains. I recommend all three to someone planning to visit the American prairie, and to those with a general interest in the native animals of our country.

            Each of these writers is either a biologist with a literary tendency or an English major that leans toward zoology. Lott writes imaginatively about the mass dying of the North American megafauna, saying that bison and grey wolves "walked together through a cloud of extinction," and emerged, respectively the smallest of the Great Plains herbivores and carnivores, the only survivors. Pronghorn were also there with them. Byers, a pronghorn specialist, shares the grind of collecting wildlife data year in and year out, and the satisfaction of riddling about the evolutionary strategies of grazing ungulates. And he shares a hilarious account of apartment hunting as a young researcher, with a sense of irony worthy of  David Sedaris. O'Brien is a novelist and professor of English whose love of the Great Plains landscape flourished immediately as he travelled through South Dakota in the backseat of a station wagon as an adolescent on vacation with his family. Since then his passion for land stewardship and conservation biology have led him to ranch for cattle, and then for bison once he realized that native North American grazers were the more ecologically harmonious livestock choice.

            All three of these books were published between 1999 and 2003, the dawn of the new millennium. Perhaps because of the time of writing and the thematic links among them, each author concludes in the same way: with a plea for the creation of a large Great Plains reserve to accommodate bison, pronghorn, and the many species that thrived on the American Serengeti. Ideologically all three are indebted to Frank and Deborah Popper of Rutgers University who suggested that much of the Great Plains be ceded back to native fauna. Some of the events of the intervening years might not satisfy the authors. For example, bison prices in Montana have crashed, and rancher O'Brien may well have fallen back on his literary trade to pay the mortgage on his spread. But one development in recent years would satisfy all three. The creation of a grasslands park on the Northern Plains is under way. The American Prairie Reserve is working to collect 3.5 million contiguous acres in Montana where the grazers and the carnivores can thrive. A creative merging of private capital, conservation science, and public policy, the project has the potential to fulfill the aspirations of these three insightful writers and many others who have dreamed of a revitalized buffalo commons.

prairie blog

check out this project I'm working on in Eastern Montana:

http://www.adventureandscience.org/2/post/2014/02/landmark-journal-tomas-ward.html

Public Transit Prophet

I'm a agent of the CIA 28 year

When I was younger I was a bad blackstone ranger

You see that guy walk up to me?

He see me a broke down homeless man

He don't know who I really am

I'm from Haiti. Where they make the dead bodies walk

You gone three days just and i wake you back up

Less than ten hours you will have to recover

Something is wrong in your mind mental stutter

But after a while you'll come back all the way

Dead less than 3 hours and you be the same person

You hear him cursin?

With the cross around his neck and the quran in the pocket of his coat

He messed up he got problems no joke

Its not a joke to say it takes 3 to make one

Holy trinity has 3 the father ghost and sun

I bang the drum for the holy ones

Long Day's Paddle - Coclusion

          

              I was in the middle of a mile wide wind tunnel on the frigid waters of Southeast Alaska, paddling into a steady 15 knots plus gusts. My teammates were out of earshot and had limited rescue skills even if we could reach each other in time if one of us capsized. My psyche was low. I still felt pretty strong bodily but I knew how much work lay ahead. My survival kit was less than sufficient. Could I make a one-night shelter out of the space blanket in the bottom of my pack if I had to pull out solo onto one of these rocky bear inhabited beaches?

            The afternoon wore on. I worked to stay relatively close to the shore. There wasn't much relief from the wind there, but I felt safer with and rocks and trees to cling to in case of a bailout. Arriving at coves and inlets, though, I had to steal myself the go across the mouths and into more open water.

            The ultimate goal of basecamp remained discouragingly far away, so I started breaking the task into miniscule chunks of progress that I could accomplish one at a time. I used features of the landscape whose shapes reminded me of something familiar to mark waypoints. "Here I come," I said to no one, "pulling up even with phone poll tree! Can't stop me now, no sir." A list of landscape shapes was enumerated - slimy rock, spider web rock, frog tree. Inevitably, bosom rocks. Between covering these tiny distances and wildly saying prayers - now a shout, now a murmur into the wind - I made slow progress in spite of fear and tiring muscles.

            After a long time I saw Jaime and Mike far ahead of me angle around some rocks and into what I thought was Waterfall Cove. It turned out to be an illusory misperception, like a false summit on an alpine hike. Nevertheless we were almost home. When I finally paddled in I found Gregg fishing for bass on his familiar promontory, and we grunted a greeting to one another. I dragged my kayak up into the grass and tied it off. Then I went to the tent to warm my bones and transition my mind from its grim survivalist outlook and into a state more conducive to cooking the evening meal and firepit socializing.

            Resting now, I looked at my watch and did some quick calculations. The return trip had covered six miles in three and a half hours time. That's about one third of the speed that I would walk down a hiking trail or a city boulevard at a casual pace.

            Over the course of ten days or so, we finished up and efficient and successful trip. Our digital data loggers were collected from every site except one (a cause for speculation - did a curious squirrel scramble off with it? Did the moist earth just swallow it up?). No one had a blaze orange flight suit to don for the occasion, but we were ready to say "mission accomplished."

            Days after that I was in the public library in Sitka, passing the time reading magazines. In the pages of Sea Kayaker there was a narrative account of an adventure racer who had paddled solo across Lake Michigan in a recreational boat using homemade outriggers and other random gear. The guy survived his trip, but the article was presented as a caution against launching a kayak without full understanding of conditions and a solid background of experience for the task at hand. The editors added in their commentary,

"If you've ever had to resort to your mental fitness to extend your physical limits on open water or a hostile coast, it's quite likely that you've made some serious errors in judgement."

            I thought about those words and about the experience of having conjured up a variety of mind tricks to endure a difficult physical challenge. How did our experience compare and relate to the one described, and had we in fact made serious errors in judgment? Was I just a pilgrim and a rube that had contributed to endangering my team by acting with incomplete information? Or had I simply explored my limits in a way familiar to adventurers throughout time? The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Long Day's Paddle - Part III

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men."

                                                                                                            Joseph Conrad

            The counterintuitive reality in this country is that a fair morning bodes the most treacherous weather of all later in the day. Clear and sunny skies mean high pressure of shore, and while the sea is calm at 8 or 9 am, by afternoon that high pressure system is sure to be blowing from the West. The members of our crew, hailing from various parts continental - Great Lakes region, Montana, etc - neglected this basic fact. Later on Mike would say that he considered the clear skies to be less than auspicious, but no one had a strong inclination to discourage our decision to launch.

            We left as six, in two singles and two tandems. We split into two teams of three near Island Cove. One of the crew on the other squad had a stomach ache and was paddling with pain, so I thought it was best to lead my team to the further survey point. We would have an extra mile and a half or of paddling, but I didn't care. I felt strong and wanted to do what I could to help the day go well. I was out in front of Jaime and Mike paddling down to the very bottom of Slocum arm. We landed with tide on the high side and navigated on foot to our two data collection points without any problem.

            The wind started ripping sometime when we were out hiking. Return departure was delayed for about half an hour while we fussed with the elastic cord in Mike's sprayskirt. The gear adjusted, we put our noses toward base camp and launched. When we crept out of a pool at the north end of Island Cove, the wind hit us in the face. The straight wall of forested rock offered little protection as the wind cruised down the wide channel. All we could do was hunker down and grind out strokes from the core muscles. Progress was very slow and this along with bodily fatigue as the bright afternoon wore on created hazardous mental straits. Despair, sadness, fear, and anger were among the emotions swelling in the sea of my psyche. I regretted my misdeeds in this life and was repulsed by the shortcomings of my human relationships. And after excoriating myself for these failings I was ready to lash out at the my fellow paddlers.

            "Why are Mike and Jaime being so goddamn stubborn?" I asked. "Don't they know I can't keep up with them if they stay out there in the middle of the channel? They should be looking out for me better." And my trip leader, in a group further ahead with Jennifer and McCain, was another target. "What the fuck was Gregg thinking dragging me out here like this? This shit is dangerous!" The unnerving thing was how quickly my mind fumed with anger and aggression with my body under duress.

            Divine help was what I needed. I composed a mantra asking for help on the trip, and repeated it over and over into the wind. Could my prayer reach anyone's ears but my own in this roaring jetstream of air all around me?

            The situation reminded me of another time that I had sought spiritual guidance in a kayak. It was with Andis, on one of my first days in the Tongass Forest two years previous. We were in cross seas where the tidal swell and the wind opposed each other and created odd pyramid shaped wave maxima that were tricky to navigate. We were banged on the sides of the boat to make our presence known to the humpback whales that were breaching within a few hundred yards of us. I felt that I was at the sea's mercy. Seeking comfort, I tried to conjure in my mind's eye a boddhisattva that I had seen in a museum and had recently been meditating on at the cattle ranch down in Oregon. In the open sky above the Pacific, my visualization of the angel grew to a massive size, and seemed to offer its serenity to counterbalance my fear of the raucous elements around me.

            But now I needed more than just a calming factor amidst the random unsettling waves and a few pesky yet magnificent leviathans. I knew from the beginning that my strength and endurance of body and mind would be tested. Conditions were perilous, and whether I or any of us had what was needed to pull off a safe return was in question.