Sunday, March 28, 2010

Political Efforts in Illinois

Illinois is in such pathetic financial condition, we're almost as bad as California. So I've been working on a small effort to change one thing here, the Illinois Fair Map amendment, which will ask voters to change the way we set redistricting after each census reveals population shifts.

Iowa, to name one eminently fair state, uses a computer to redraw district lines after each census. How sensible!

Illinois allows the ruling party leaders to propose new district lines. If the other side doesn't like the proposal, they can come up with their own version. Each side tries to draw lines that reward incumbents and punish the other party. Some districts look like weird jigsaw puzzle pieces with long peninsulas and strange shapes. If no one can agree - they actually flip a coin. And this has been done. How ridiculous!

So, I'm out trying to find people who are registered voters in Illinois and convince them to sign a petition to put the Fair Map amendment on the ballot in November, but it ain't easy. Getting people to listen to your appeal on the Metra platform is discouraging.

I hate rejection. I can't imagine how people can decide to run for office - getting rejected right and left most of the time. Office-seekers must have to have an elephant's hide. Either these people are heroes or their egos are so huge that they can weather anything. Onward.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

The Lost Boys in Fargo


There's a new play at the Victory Gardens/Biograph Theatre (where John Dillinger was killed in the alley after seeing Manhattan Melodrama) called The Lost Boys of Sudan. As soon as I read that the play follows the war refugees to their new home in Fargo, N.D., where I was born, I knew we had to see it. We immediately signed up to be volunteer ushers for last night's performance.

There was plenty to think about as actors showed the horrific effects of the wars in Sudan on the civilians and on the child soldiers. But we also were looking to see what happened to them in Fargo - and were sadly disappointed. The refugees could have been in Anytown, USA. The actors were really good at African accents, but where was the Fargo accent, or any reference to Fargo "culture?"

Since I grew up in Moorhead - just across the river from Fargo - I can assume that I, too, have an authentic Fargo accent. Or, at least I did. I've been gone from Moorhead since 1964, and from Minnesota since 1969, but when I get on the phone with one of my sisters in the Twin Cities area, my family still says I start to "sound funny." I'm not sure I could even imitate someone from Fargo if I tried. What's an example of a word that Fargoans (Fargo-ites?) say that is unique to them? Readers, over to you...

Friday, March 19, 2010

Victoria and Albert

Last night we saw probably the last showing in town of The Young Victoria, a splendid costume drama about Queen Victoria and how she came to fall in love with her German cousin while declaring her independence from her mother.

We loved the dresses worn by the actresses, but I know they would be horribly uncomfortable to wear. Corsets and wig pieces, horsehair and tight laces - oh my!

I always thought of Victoria as a sour old woman wearing a lace headdress, but it was fun to see a movie with her portrayed as lively and "winsome" in the beginning. Albert seemed sincere, but lackluster. It's hard to understand what she found so compelling about him.

Now I know how much I count on a full house in a theater for the full movie experience. When there are only a handful of people in the seats, the collective gasps, sighs, and laughter are just too weak to count. I'm paying for audience reaction in sound surround - and I missed it!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Dickens, Saint and Sinner

After reading Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold about Charles Dickens' wife, I decided to read a Dickens biography to learn whether he truly was as merciless as he was portrayed in the novel. He was, but..

Dickens was a driven man - he literally worked himself to death by insisting on grueling trips around England at the end of his life to give personal readings of excerpts of his books - even to America - despite very serious health problems. He could be very generous to people who reminded him of himself at a young age - trapped by circumstances into a life of destitution and/or drudgery. A few lucky breaks and a tremendous will to advance himself got him out of the blacking factory, back in school, and on the road to acting and writing. The thought of his father's careless behavior that put the family in misery, and the fear that he, too, might end up a financial failure, dogged him all his life.

Once he was established as a successful author, he found that the pretty, sweet wife he had married when they were young was now the dull mother of 10 who suffered from lengthy post-partum depression and spoiled his dinner parties. His only solution was to insist that Catherine move out of the family home, leaving her children, including a four-year-old son, in the process. She was given a small house and a modest personal allowance, and was excluded from family weddings, holiday and birthday celebrations. This I cannot understand - why didn't he move out?

Aren't we all a strange mix of good and evil, talents and foibles? I still love Dickens the writer, but have no more illusions that he could write a wonderful book like David Copperfield because he was such a compassionate person who understood human nature. What a mystery!