"Ten Years Later"

Tomorrow is opening night for "Ten Years Later", our spring play.  The cast and crew have been working very hard, especially David, and I think it will be another great show for us.  Putting something like this together is really a herculean task and everyone involved is to be commended.  It runs at the theatre on April 18 at 7 and April 19 at 1 and 7, April 20 at 1 (still seats available for this matinee), and April 21 at 7.  Try to come and see it!  You'll be glad you did.  It's funny and surprising and very touching and I think it has been very creatively and ingeniously directed and of course, the cast is outstanding.

I just finished a book called Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis about a group of dogs who are given human intelligence by Hermes and Apollo.  It is heart-rending, as animal stories always are, and I was a bit afraid to read it because of that reason, but it was lovely as well and I look at my own Daisy now, and love her all the better.  One of the dogs, Prince, becomes a poet and here is one of his poems:

We bound into the prairie
through ages of Winter grass,
taking the path Ina took.
Her name long gone,
though her roads linger.
The ground will not forget.

One thing we can learn from dogs (among the many things animals can teach us) is their joy in the physical world.  We often seem to relish being couch potatoes, but dogs (at least the ones I've known) are always ready to go out and play and smell things and drink lustily and crunch their kibble enthusiastically.  Daisy can't play -- she is too serious and had to grow up and be a mother at a very young age.  But she loves her walk and is always so happy to be taken out and prances along next to you with such glee.

We went to my brother-in-law's art show yesterday -- it was a show for all the artists in his artists' co-op and Doug wasn't selling anything, just showing.  But we bought a couple of pictures -- I chose one called "Freedom to Be Alone" and it is a multi-media work featuring a black canvas with a swatch of elephants progressing across the savannah, framed in by lions, with a jewel playing the moon.  The artist's name is Ann Redith Pare.  A number of the artists were there and of course, they were thrilled that we were interested and that we bought some pictures.  It is tough to be an artist.  The studio was beautiful -- little artists' cubicles with glorious light streaming in.  Light is always important to a visual artist, I think.  Doug is almost completely blind now and can't do his photography any more, he says.  It always seems like that -- people lose the thing they cherish the most.  But then, resilient humans that we are, we sometimes find other things to cherish.  There are so many beautiful and wonderful things in the world to love and take care of and cherish, aren't there?  I think maybe Doug could turn his attention to sculpture.  He said, maybe.