Nielsen's ra(n)tings

Politics, guns, homeschooling for the gifted, scuba, hunting, farming and somewhat coherent occasional ranting from your average Buckeye State journalist/dad/farmer/actor.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Go Tribe!

Another thing that's changed since our return to Northeast Ohio - The Cleveland Indians are good!

And they're hot...which is very important heading into the pennant race. The Daddy Warbucks Yankees are trying to keep up and the White Sox are folding like a house of cards.

Remember the movie "Major League?" Those misfit hasbeens were the Indians during the years of my youth - albeit without the fairytale ending. The Brian Sipe-led Browns and the Nate Thurmond-era Cavaliers were the only pro sports bright spots during those times.

So I've just gotta say "Go Tribe!" Thanks for the welcome back!

Back on the stage

My wife and I have rediscovered a common bond missing from our lives since we were newlyweds: the theater.

We met in 1985 in Ashtabula, Ohio during auditions for the incredible show, "Catch 22." The audition called for a stage kiss and the rest, as they say, was history. I was cast as the male lead, Yossarian, and Melissa was cast as Nately's Whore (the script's description, not mine.) Anyway, that summer saw me in "Catch 22," "Pippin" and the ballet "Cinderella." In Cinderella, my dancer sister prevailed upon me to be one of the ugly stepsisters (paired, naturally, with a short, round black man) as the comic relief. My wife took her friend to the show, indicated me in my basketball hightops, gingham bloomers and green strapless bra, and said "that's the man I'm gonna marry." I'd have called psychiatric emergency services!

Prior to that, we had both been extensively involved in theater at the school and community levels (25+ shows for me, more than a dozen for Melissa.)

We married in 1987 and started our progression through various cities as my wife pursued her undergraduate and, eventually, medical degrees and I worked at various newspapers. Theater fell by the wayside. Children showed up in the final year of medical school and in residency. Dogs and horses showed up after that and we found that our love for the rural West Virginia landscape could not balance the scales with the substandard education our children were receiving.

We returned to our roots in Northeast Ohio.

We also returned to our theater roots and found that our own little acorns had not fallen far from the trees...both children begged to audition for the community theater's production of the musical "Honk!" and both were cast. I also auditioned for the play "Who's On First" (no relation to Abbott and Costello) and was cast as the male lead. Melissa was too busy with work to audition, but filled in backstage and won a season-ending award for her labor. This summer, everyone tried out for "The Music Man," but did not make the cut. I also auditioned for "Driving Miss Daisy" and was cast as the son, Boolie, in the three-person show. It was perhaps the best show I've ever done.

Now, we're all in rehearsals for "Dark of the Moon," to be performed in October at a local theater in which we've not yet appeared. It's the play version of the song "The Ballad of Barbara Allen," in which a "morally flexible" young woman marries a witch boy, which ignites the community's superstitious fears and eventually results in tragedy. I appeared in this play 28 years ago as the bad-guy strongman and romantic rival...this time, I'm the hellfire-and-damnation preacher who leads the charge against the doomed romance. Melissa is the uber-superstitious woman who burns Barbara's eventual witch child in the fire and our children are cast as Appalachian youngsters (not too far a stretch.)

It's great to have everyone working on the same show. It's doubly great to watch the children growing as actors and people through their interaction with the play and the really fun cast.

The theater void has again been filled and will, hopefully, continue to enrich our lives for years to come.

Isn't it ironic...

I checked my email this morning and found I'd gotten a request from my wife's adopted brother, a 19-year-old community college student, to look over his English paper. The paper was apparently a class assignment to defend the statement that high school prepares you for college.

Whoooo boy! An excerpt:

Highschool does adequetly prepare students for college. One of the things that helps is teachers. They advise you to do several things: two hours of study time per one hour of college classes; sleep well before a big test. They often give verbal reminders on how tough college really is. They say that is even more reason why everyone should attend colege and strive to do their very best. Teachers also stress to students to develope their own version of shorthand for quicker, more efficient note taking.
Highschool adequetly prepares students for college. One of the ways that students get their preparation from is the College Prep classes. CP are usally a little toughr than regular classes. They also cover more material and go into greater detail. Freshman Focus is a college prepatory class that teaches you what college is going to be like. They review study habits and sttudy skills. They also encourage you to allow study time to fit into your evervday activities.

I had a good laugh at the above...shared the irony with my wife...and then thought what a sad commentary on our schools it is that this boy, who got good grades in a college prep course track, produced this paper. At the very least, spellcheck would have eliminated some glaring mistakes.

I'll send it back fixed, to the best of my ability, but correct grammar and spelling cannot make up for fuzzy thinking, and a pretty presentation doesn't make up for a thin premise and scanty evidence.