Goose posted this piece about his dog Jill who died last Friday.

Mike,

I’ve been out of town the past week.  Mrs rakkity, I and KT went to see New Yolk, Disnie Woild, The Grande Canaloni, and Gay Paree in a whirlwind tour. And it only cost us $1.00 in quarters.

Free photo tour.
–rakkity

“I went to the video store and asked if they had the movie with Nicolas Cage and Hayley Mills. It was shot in black and white on color film. It was the one where they lost the war because they made all of the submarines out of styrofoam. Then I realized that wasn’t a movie, it was a dream I had. Then I thought how cool it would be to rent your dreams. The guy says, ‘that’s not a movie, that was a dream you had.’ I said, ‘how did you know that?’ He said, ‘you tried to rent it last week. ‘ I said,  ‘well, let me know when you get it in.’ ”
- Steven Wright

Matt drives to Marlborough with Daryl in Diane’s blue Subaru to pick up my truck. On the return trip Daryl drives my truck and Matt drives the Subaru. At 5:01 Matt calls Daryl to chit chat. They then stop, briefly, at Hil Koeller’s house. Matt jumps out of the car, but doesn’t move far from it, and then he gets back in and drives home. He gets out of the car and walks up the porch steps, in through the kitchen door and makes a peeline to the toilet. On the way back he waves to his mom who’s at her computer, looks in the fridge, and then walks out of the door and gets back in the Subaru. I wave to him, he gets out, I tell him whatever it was I needed to, and he gets back in and drives to Daryl’s. He’s at Daryl’s for an hour when he reaches into his pocket to call someone and finds his phone is missing.

I’ve raked the snow in our driveway near where Matt exited and entered the car. I’ve done the same at Hil’s house. Matt has looked in both places and has shoveled the snow near Daryl’s house. We’ve both looked multiple times in both the truck and the car. Matt has scoured Daryl’s house, I’ve looked everywhere within a ten foot radius of his trail in our house. Yes, I’ve looked in the fridge. Matt was wearing a sweatshirt with one of those center connecting pockets. He may have set the phone down on his lap in the car. He doesn’t know if the phone was on ring or vibrate but I called it 20 to 30 times before it died about a day and a half after it disappeared. The last recorded call, AT&T tells us, was Matt’s to Daryl.

Dear Friends,

As you all know, the Acton Jazz Café has closed its doors.  Currently, the Café’s Liquor License has been revoked and all funds associated with the Café have been frozen by the Department of Revenue.

Many of you are asking what can I do to help.  Gwenn just emailed me, “The response that I have received has been so overwhelming that I now believe that we have the strength to win this one.  An awful lot of people care an awful lot about me, this beautiful place, and the music. There is an army.  We can mobilize.”    To me the Cafe is almost like a church (too bad it doesn’t have the same tax exempt status….) because of the wonderful sense of community and love that flowers there.   I think I see more hugging there than anywhere.    And then of course there’s the incredible music thanks to the richness of the greater Boston community — placing the club in Downbeat Magazine’s “100 great jazz clubs in the world” selection.   And there’s the amazing Gwenn who works around the clock to make it happen.  The place is a treasure.

So, Phil Argyris and I have established a trust fund for Gwenn and the Acton Jazz Café, called the Gwenn Vivian Support Trust created at the Middlesex Savings Bank in Littleton, MA:

Middlesex Savings Bank
ATTN:   Gwenn Vivian Support Trust
P.O. Box 954
Littleton, MA   01460

Checks can be made out to the Gwenn Vivian Support Trust and can be sent to the above noted address.

In order to achieve our shared goal of helping Gwenn close out all her debts and reopen the Café, we must collectively raise approximately $50,000.  However, a mere $4000 will enable her to get her liquor license and be open for business.   After that, paying the taxes is the next priority and purchasing a cash register (about $6000)  that will enable her to keep track of accounts for future tax filings.

If we can each put in $200 that would be a great start.     That’s just $20 a year for the ten years many of us have enjoyed the Cafe.    And maybe just doing this will enable us to have 10 more years. Just think, if 250 people did that we’d meet our goal.  But, no contribution is too large or too small.  $500 would be fantastic and $1000 would be even more fantastic, but any and all contributions no matter the size will help move us towards our shared goal.

If enough of us contribute, we can attain our goal, close out Gwenn’s debts and reopen the Café.  If we are unable to raise our targeted $50,000, then 100% of all collected funds will be directed to Gwenn to help get her out of debt so that further legal action is not taken against her.    Phil Argyris and I are the trustees of the fund and will be managing it.

Also, many people are starting to organize fundraisers which will hopefully happen at the Cafe Jan. 25, 26 and 27.   Please watch your email for these and bring all your friends!!   $25 suggested donation per person, 100% of which will go directly to the Café and Gwenn.

Important Note:  Although Fund Raisers are being scheduled, this should not in any way replace a contribution to the Trust Fund, and we strongly encourage participation and support to both the Trust Fund and the Fundraiser Events.

Thank you so very much for anything you’re able to give in support of Gwenn and the Acton Jazz Café.

love, peace, and music,

Molly

From today’s Boston Globe. Molly is Mark and Ginger’s daughter. We’re going to the matinee on February 2nd.

STAGE REVIEW

‘Henry V’ is spare but richly told
By Louise Kennedy

Globe Staff / January 17, 2008

CAMBRIDGE – As it matures, the Actors’ Shakespeare Project is revealing a persistent knack for setting itself tricky challenges and then, usually, meeting them. The latest: staging “Henry V,” with its vast battles and its epic sweep from England to France and back, in a cramped basement – with just five actors.

It works. And how.

Well, how? That is the interesting question. Partly it works because Shakespeare knew that no stage could ever hold all the scenes he conjures here, and so he repeatedly uses the character of the Chorus to remind us that we are watching a play, that the world is far bigger than this wooden platform, and that the actors must therefore implore the audience to “piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.” And so we do – and, paradoxically, the less a production of “Henry V” gives us to look at onstage, the more we see in our mind’s eye.

Director Normi Noel, who has experienced the power of visually spare but linguistically rich stagings at Shakespeare & Company, clearly shares the ASP’s belief in deep simplicity (a belief that may owe something to the size of the company’s budget). She keeps the five actors moving and talking with vigor and without fuss; they shift among wildly different characters not by exaggerated changes of mannerism, voice, or costume, but by giving each one a full, clear, and unimpeded voice. Noel knows what more directors should: If you just stay out of Shakespeare’s way, he does most of the work himself.

That’s not to say the actors here don’t have to work hard. Just take visiting artist Seth Powers, who must shift in a wink from regal Henry to roguish Bardolph, or company member Paula Langton, who’s both a heartbreaking Mistress Quickly and a heart-stirring Fluellen. (And that’s only counting their major roles.) But their work, like Noel’s, focuses on thinking through every aspect of the performance, from the simple logistics of quick changes to the more profound questions of character and tone, rather than on showy delivery or grand gestures. No one here has time to overdo anything, and that pressure gives all the acting a clean, athletic grace.

Powers, a fine New York actor who has worked with Shakespeare & Company but is a newcomer here, embodies both the bluff heroism and the reckless ambition we expect from Henry in this post-heroic, ambition-weary age. Noel has said that she wants her “Henry V” to encompass both the glory and the horror of war, especially now. And Powers does: Though he occasionally overdoes the tremulous note of passion, he’s inspiring, especially in such classic moments as the St. Crispin’s Day exhortation to his troops, but he also conveys Henry’s weariness and imperfection. It’s that kind of nuance that makes this “Henry” a more thought-provoking response to the Iraq war than more heavy-handed attempts have been.

Having Powers double as Bardolph also underscores both the contrasts and the parallels between the low-comic scenes and the high eloquence of the English and French courts. We flash from noble arguments to base quarrels, and we see the human self-interest and needs that underlie both: The royals may sound more virtuous than the rogues, but they’re all just trying to get what they can.

Thus Ken Cheeseman creates an unctuously self-serving Archbishop of Canterbury, an equally focused French King Charles, and a rougher but no less self-absorbed Pistol, king of the commoners. Doug Lockwood, a highborn minion as the Bishop of Ely and a sweet loser of a sidekick as Nym, nicely completes the knavish trio. Molly Schreiber gets fewer chances to shine in smaller roles (the Earl of Cambridge et al.), but her Katherine is both sweet and sly, a worthy target of rough Henry’s wooing. And all the actors, in turn, give evocative voice to the vivid scene-painting and driven poetry of the Chorus.

The design team deepens the story with small but telling details. A seagull’s cry or a martial drum from sound designer Dewey Dellay carries us to Southampton or Agincourt; Steven Rosen’s crackly orange light gives Henry’s soldiers a campfire on Skip Curtiss’s otherwise bare, planked stage – a “wooden O,” just as specified. And, best of all, Seth Bodie’s costumes transform king to commoner, herald to princess, with nothing more than a scattering of sashes, caps, cloaks, and capes in meticulously chosen fabrics: the English in red, the French in blue, and the whole wide world springing forth between.

Good posts over at goosemigrations.com. The latest details how he broke his back and the previous post has photos of rakkity’s backyard.

I tailed this guy around Acton until he pulled into the store’s parking lot and I could grab this photo. 

Japanese Game Show

Mike,

This 400-meter runner, Pretorius, has two amputated legs, with attachments that allow him to bound down the track like a goosed kangaroo (see movie). The Olympic committee says the prostheses give him an unfair advantage, so they won’t let him compete in the next Olympics. Appatrently his artificial feet do give him an advantage, but if he weren’t so fast, would the Olympic Committee permit him to compete on the grounds that the prostheses didn’t give him an advantage?

–rakkity

Before meeting Dan, Mark and Adam for breakfast this morning I looked at shirts at K-Mart and then drove around Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord. Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaneil Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau are buried there along with quite a few others. Like Mt Auburn Cemetery, with its host of famous people, Sleepy Hollow is an active cemetery.

Not a real flattering photo of Dan at La Provence, but a damn fine one taken by Adam with my cell phone.

Mike,

This is the first I’ve read of actual lung damage and threat to private parts for members of the 300-deg club.

<quote>

You can’t feel the difference between -25F and -44F. I learned this on my last trip, but this trip I’ve internalized the lesson that cold is cold. You can’t tell the difference between 600F and 800F, either. Hot is hot. The human receptors operate in a specific range. Exceed that range and you only perceive the extreme. You can only get so hot or cold.
The difference between the -25F I experienced when I arrived at pole last week, and the -44F I experienced when I was outside nearly all day today is this: -44F seeps into your clothing faster than -25. The more intense cold effectively finds the gap between your gloves and your coat sleeve. It burns your cheeks beneath the goggles.

In the dead of winter they play a game called the 300 club. When the temps go down to -100F outside, they strip naked and stand in the sauna at 200F for as long as they can stand it. Then, wearing only their extreme-cold-weather boots, they bolt down the stairs in the “beer can”, up the birm and over to the pole to have their picture taken, thus subjecting their bodies to a 300 degree swing in temperature while naked.

The reason they wear boots is their feet would stick to the metal staircases otherwise.

I understand from veterans that the most important thing for a male to do when running the 300 club gauntlet is to protect the obvious exposed features with the hands. Otherwise severe frostbite results.

After running the 300 club, members cough and hack for a week or so while the lungs repair the frost damage done to them. Also, all fine body hair falls out, as the follicles are killed by the cold.

I am told the sensation of running the 300 club is of panic and dying. The feeling that life is running out of your body is palpable. The last hundred yards or so you are literally running for your life.

I bring this up because today and every day at pole I walk the 300 club pathway. I do it wearing a full compliment of ECW gear. I do it at this unescapable altitude. The coldest it has been when I have walked that path is -60F. Today it was -44F. Each time I do it I imagine running out stark naked. Down all those stairs, up the birm, to the pole, and back.

The interesting thing about life is that when you do something that seems impossible your entire perspective on life changes. Right now, running the 300 club seems entirely impossible to me. Even in ECW gear, with a 25kt wind, the atmosphere burns the skin quickly and we’re 56 degrees warmer.

Yet people do it, year after year. I don’t think we’re on the same planet anymore.

</quote>

Ed/rakkity