Books I’m Reading

Am reading this. 

Just finished reading this.

Fifteen Years

I was a bit surprised to realize I started this blog fifteen years ago today: 18 December 2005. I did 19 posts that first year, and a total of 1201 in all these years combined. When this blog began, Facebook was limited to schools and universities; and Twitter and other social media forms did not yet exist.

Over the years, people lost interest in blogs, replacing them in their lives with social media. I think that’s kinda sad as I prefer the longer form platform where I can share a story or a thought. The newer platforms seem best for people with short attention spans, who only want to converse in 140 characters (since expanded to 280 – which seems too short for some politicians).

In the end, what is the point of this post? Nothing much, really; just a desire to observe that I’ve been writing this blog sporadically for one-quarter of my life.

The Kissing Bug

I was in scouting most of my childhood. We did a lot of activities, including spending weekends in Northern Arizona on nature outings for which my father was sometimes chaperone. During the winter, our troop would sell mistletoe for the season. To do this, our troop and some dads would go up into the Northern Arizona forests and find outcrops of parasitic mistletoe growing on trees. I have no photographs of my involvement in this, but I have lots of memories.

We had long pruning sticks that we would use to cut off bunches of mistletoe (no one was allowed to climb into the towering trees), gather them into bundles and then go home. This took a good part of the day. Next step was getting together to put small bunches of mistletoe into plastic bags. After that, we would pick a series of dates to sit outside grocery stores and sell these bags. I think they were priced at 25-cents each. We donated the proceeds to different charities over the years.

I remember being very enthusiastic about this project. It was fun harvesting the mistletoe, bagging it and selling it. My strongest memory of the project was how sticky my hands would get from the juice of the squished berries.

Books I’m Reading

Am reading this. 

Just finished reading this. 

Books I’m Reading

Am reading this. 

Just finished reading this.

Books I’m Reading

Am reading this. 

Just finished reading this.

The Onion Dance

You know how you go into a fast-food restaurant, order and walk away with your custom-made food in about a minute? It wasn’t always like that. Case in point: in the late 1960s, when I was a kid, we would go to McDonald’s on rare occasions as a very special treat. You might remember, back then, burgers were made, wrapped and slipped down a slot – all day, all night, non-stop. The cashier would grab the first burger in line and give it to the customer – but not when it was a “custom order.”

I have never been able to digest onions; it’s something like an allergy. So, when my mom would order my cheeseburger, she had to ask for it without onions. That seems really simple doesn’t it? It’s easy now; but when my mother uttered those words, “No onions on the cheeseburger,” you could almost hear the food-production line come to a screeching halt.

She paid, and we were directed to stand at the side of the counter. We would wait, and wait, for what must have been five minutes for them to go slaughter a cow, butcher it, grind up some part of it, form it into a patty and then grill it without onions.

My mother stood in the corner, fuming. She wasn’t angry at the delay; she was angry at me for being the only person in the family with food allergies. Gee, sorry mom!

For a long time into adulthood, I resisted going to a fast-food restaurant knowing I would have to do the onion dance. I preferred places like Kentucky Fried Chicken (no onions) Taco Bell (lots of their menu items don’t have onions). Now, however, it seems like a new law has been passed that says every food item has to be made with onions. So, I ask every food-server, every time, if a certain something does or not have onions. It’s very annoying, but I have to do it or risk getting sick.

Just imagine how fun it is when I order it without onions, and it comes with onions, and I ask to have it made over. The production line comes to a screeching halt again while the cook goes out to find a fresh cow.

Books I’m Reading

Am reading this. 

Just finished reading this.

Rushing to Judgement

Everyone thinks the life of a theater critic is mostly a bowl of cherries. Generally, it is; but here are two examples (excerpts from my personal journal) where I had to go above and beyond to make sure to get to the theater on time. At the time of these incidents, I was working for "The Phoenix Gazette" afternoon newspaper, which has since been closed. 

25 November 1991 – Monday

Just talked with press woman at Phoenix Little Theatre. We talked about how I arrived nearly late [for “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill”]. She told me that the stage manager contacted her at about 7:58 p.m. telling her "We're ready to go," and that she replied "Christopher McPherson's not here yet! We can't start until he gets here! Something's happened to him! He's not here yet!" In telling me this, she then laughed and said, "What other critic has had the curtain held for him?" Also, she told me that on Friday, when my review of the show came out, "the phones rang off the hook like ape-shit. People say no one reads the Gazette, and then something like this happens. I don't know."

And again, eight months later.

29 July 1992 – Wednesday

Yesterday, I got a flat tire en route to the theater (it was a nail) which is normally not a bad thing; however, as I was attempting to change the tire, and the winds and rain of our usual freak summer storms began, I got to the part when you take the lug nuts off the tire and, guess what?!, NO LUG NUT WRENCH! So, I called the auto service which sent this very nice man who changed the tire for me (the rain was coming down in buckets, by the way) and I zoomed downtown, parked just down the street from the theater, grabbed my folder, vaulted the oleander hedge on the side of the lot, raced to the theater, zipped up to the box office, grabbed my ticket -- and got there JUST before the show, Donna McKechnie in “I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road,” started. (I had called the theater to tell them I might be late. I suspect they held the curtain for me. I don't know, but it has happened before.…)

In the nearly ten years I reviewed theater in Phoenix, these are the only two examples where I was almost late.

Books I’m Reading

Am reading this. 

Just finished reading this.