Lemon Bread

• 1/2 cup butter or 1/2 cup margarine or 1/2 cup shortening (We prefer butter)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk , 2% is fine
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 lemon , rind of

Glaze

• 1 lemon, juice of
• 1/4 cup sugar

Directions:

1. 1
   In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar.
2. 2
   Add eggs, one at a time, beating until creamy.
3. 3
   Blend in milk.
4. 4
   In another bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt and lemon rind.
5. 5
   Pour into batter.
6. 6
   Stir to moisten.
7. 7
   Scrape into greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.
8. 8
   Bake in 350f degree oven for 55 to 60 minutes.
9. 9
   Cool in pan for 5 minutes.
10. 10
    Remove to rack and while still hot, with a toothpick poke holes all over the top of the loaf, and spoon glaze evenly over.
11. 11
    Cool.
12. 12
    Glaze: Combine lemon juice and sugar in saucepan.
13. 13
    Stir and heat till sugar is dissolved.
14. 14
    Spoon evenly over top of hot loaf.

Read more: http://www.food.com/recipe/our-favourite-lemon-loaf-38953#ixzz1qjbElwJZ

Just another day at the homestead...

This started out as a stick from my sis-in-law's yard.

At the time, she told me it was English Dogwood. It comes back every spring.  I love it!

But, now she tells me she doesn't know what it is.

Do you?

Hopper Henry, you can run but

you cannot hide. Not with THAT tail!

Day lilies beginning to bloom.

Have a wonderful day!

:)

Hoping for the conclusion

Thank you everyone for waiting with me.  I appreciated caring company.

My brother finally made it home yesterday after all of this time.  Seems there was a dangerous BP drop on standing along with one other thing that kept him there past the several days ago when he was supposed to be mustered out of the hospital.  His daughter said he's home and doing OK so that is just what my best day is made from.  :-)

XOX

Theatre Communications Group - American Theatre – April 2012

“Agony and Ecstasy” Version 2.0 - American Theatre – April 2012:

Courtney MacLean, whose Hacktor’s Collective will stage a similarly revised and remixed six-actor reading on April 13 at the Hack Factory in Minneapolis, put it this way to the Huffington Post: “The bottom line is that we should all consider the entire life-span of our purchases, from the hands that put the gadget together to the moment we unwrap it in our homes.”

For his part, Louisana’s Daigle marveled at Daisey’s “open source” tactics. “The way he’s released the script for other people to perform, but also tell their own stories around it, is very serendipitous. It ensures that this piece won’t disappear. Now you can make it the beginning of a conversation rather than the end result.”

MacLean agreed. “Daisey is asking us to think about where our devices come from, and now we, as audience and producers and fans, are being asked to think about where our theatrical pieces are coming from.”

What Is and Is Not News

The report on Foxconn from the Fair Labor Association came out late yesterday, reporting numerous labor violations at Foxconn.

Despite the front-page coverage of these revelations, the content of this report is not a surprise to anyone paying attention. Apple’s own supplier responsibility reports have routinely shown that there are severe, ongoing issues that they chose not to address--those reports go all the way back to 2006.

Here is Apple in 2006, from their own reports:

“Employees worked longer hours than permitted by our Code of Conduct, which limits normal workweeks to 60 hours and requires at least one day off each week…[Foxconn] has enacted a policy change to enforce the weekly overtime limits set by our Code of Conduct. The policy change has been communicated to supervisors and employees and a management system has been implemented to track compliance… Supervisors must receive approval from upper level management for any deviation.”

“We’ve engaged the services of Verité, an internationally recognized leader in workplace standards dedicated to ensuring that people around the world work under safe, fair and legal conditions. We are committed to ensuring compliance with our Code of Conduct and will complete audits of all final assembly suppliers in 2006… In cases where a supplier’s efforts in this area do not meet our expectations, their contracts will be terminated.”

Here is Apple in 2012, again from their own reports:

“We continue to address excessive work hours, and this has been a challenge throughout the history of our program…Apple limits factory working hours to a maximum of 60 work hours per week and requires at least one day of rest per seven days of work — except in emergencies or unusual circumstances…Reducing excessive overtime is a top priority for our Supplier Responsibility program in 2012…

“Apple is the first technology company to be admitted to the Fair Labor Association (FLA). The FLA has made incredible progress over the past decade to improve working conditions and protect workers… We will open our supply chain to an FLA auditing team. This team will measure our performance against the FLA’s own Workplace Code of Conduct…If a supplier is unwilling to change, we terminate our relationship.”

That’s six years with no change, other than that Verite was used as an outside monitor in 2006 to quell discussion, and now it is the Fair Labor Association's turn. It's useful to have someone to slap your hand when the world is looking.

This isn’t news. It isn't news that unions have faced overwhelming opposition at Foxconn, that management has intimidated workers into falsifying answers to investigators, that workers feel they are in an unsafe environment where half-constructed factories sometimes explode as they are pressed into overtime production making iPads. And that then, after a round of PR and warm assurances, a second factory explodes hours after Apple inspects it...an inspection that lasts ten minutes.

The fact is that no survey was needed by the FLA to tell Apple that the rights of workers were being violated at Foxconn. Apple could have read its own reports, as well as the reports of SACOM, China Labor Watch, SOMO, and the accounts of many journalists who have written on the subject.

Today Apple and Foxconn are making bold promises. But this has happened before—they made similar promises in 2006, after Verite performed its auditing, and they promised that excessive overtime and abusive conditions would soon be a thing of the past.

What happened? Nothing happened.

The world turned its shoulder and went back to sleep. And as soon as the world wasn't looking, Apple and Foxconn kept doing nothing.

Apple's gestures today are good steps, if they are actually implemented. If Apple and Foxconn are held to account. If they have given up their old ways, embraced working with their workers, and this is their version of making amends and rectifying what they've done.

The wage increases tied to moving to legal working hours are vital, though it's appalling that Apple and Foxconn give themselves fifteen months to come into compliance with existing Chinese law, laws they know they've been willfully violating for years.

But here's something that is news.

If we knew all this—if the white papers and articles existing on these labor situations have been out for years and years—why is something happening now?

The answer is as clear as it is brutal: we didn't care.

Nothing is possible until people care.

We would do anything we can not to think about how all our things are made, not to think about the true cost of our world, not to admit that we are locked into an intimate embrace with an authoritarian government so that our way of life depends on millions of people never truly being free.

Until we jump that empathy gap, nothing is possible. Until we find a way to actually commit to that leap of imagination and feel that we are connected, we will do everything we can to deny it.

This story has always been larger than anyone—larger than my work, than Apple, than Foxconn. It belongs to all of us.

Well?

Are you ready for the weekend?

I'm waiting for someone

to tell me what I'm doing.

:)

In the meantime, see this photo:

I have no earthly idea who these

people are. They just showed up

in my computer.  Does that ever

happen to you?

Have a great weekend whatever you're

doing.  Rejoice and be glad, this

is the day the Lord hath made.

:)

Chief Of Staff At DC V.A. Hospital Commutes To NYC To Be In GATZ With His Son: Gothamist

Chief Of Staff At DC V.A. Hospital Commutes To NYC To Be In GATZ With His Son: Gothamist:

GATZ, the inspired stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby created by groundbreaking theater company Elevator Repair Service, is back for a limited run at The Public Theater. As you may recall, not a single word of F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece was cut for this adaptation, which lasts nearly seven hours, plus multiple intermissions and a leisurely dinner break. This radical approach to the text presents a rare opportunity to surf Fitzgerald's masterpiece in one continuous rolling wave, and it's enthralling.

Actor Scott Shepherd, who by now knows all 49,000 words of the novel by heart, has gotten most of the press for his uncanny mental acumen, but GATZ is an ensemble piece through and through, with precise and funny performances given by everyone on the team. The title role, for instance, is played by downtown theater regular Jim Fletcher (perhaps you saw him recently in The Early Plays), who brings an unconventional mix of menace and daffiness to the iconic part. As it happens, the role of Gatsby's father is played by Fletcher's real-life father Dr. Ross Fletcher, a non-actor who happens to be the Chief of Staff at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, DC. Not exactly a lightweight.

Apple Supplier in China Pledges Big Labor Changes - NYTimes.com

Apple Supplier in China Pledges Big Labor Changes - NYTimes.com:

The shift comes after a far-ranging inspection by the Fair Labor Association, a monitoring group, found widespread problems — including numerous instances where Foxconn violated Chinese law and industry codes of conduct by having employees work more than 60 hours a week, sometimes for 11 or more days in a row.

The monitoring group, which in recent weeks surveyed more than 35,000 Foxconn employees and inspected three large facilities where Apple products are manufactured, also found that 43 percent of workers surveyed had experienced or witnessed accidents, and almost two-thirds said their compensation “does not meet their basic needs.” Many said that the unions available to them did “not provide true worker representation.”

Mike Check: A Few More Words on L'Affaire Daisey | The Nation

Mike Check: A Few More Words on L'Affaire Daisey | The Nation:

I didn’t learn much in that straight sense from Agony—I’d read NGO and news reports about Foxconn before—and never thought that was the show’s main point, anyway. Not having seen the note in the program labeling the show nonfiction (though if I had, it might not have mattered), I also didn’t take it to be unvarnished. Daisey’s honed prose and his fine-tuned performance—the well-placed sudden shouts, the comic slow takes, the repeated, careful small gestures—all pointed to admirable artifice, which at the very least always frames the factual. Nonetheless, Daisey was trying to strike a bargain with the audience that he could not keep, as if he could deliver the veracity of Lawrence Wright’s The Human Scale and My Trip to Al Qaeda—elegantly wrought, staged lectures by a seasoned journalist with a personable presence, but little acting skill and not a sliver of Daisey’s kinesthetic command onstage. Daisey belongs more to the varied tradition of Wally Shawn’s The Fever, Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia and Holly Hughes’s Preaching to the Perverted, works that twine personal narratives around journeys of political discovery or entanglement.

There’s a longstanding joke about performance artists doing psychotherapy onstage, and it’s true of myriad bad cases. But the best performers—like Daisey—put the audience in the shrink’s chair in a different manner: they prime us to listen for emotional honesty above all. And that is the truth I responded to and admired in his show: Daisey’s own ecstasy and agony, his abiding romance with his gorgeous iStuff and his disgust with the injustice of its production, his—and our—urgent and frustrated desire to reconcile those feelings with action. Like many of his shows I’ve seen, Agony traces an experience of seduction and betrayal. This time, in more ways than one.

Doubting the Impossible: Mike Daisey, the Pragmatists, and Networked Ways of Knowing « Social Media Collective

Doubting the Impossible: Mike Daisey, the Pragmatists, and Networked Ways of Knowing « Social Media Collective:

There’s a lot here to untangle, but what I want to focus on is this knotty question of “truth”. This is a huge simplification, but pragmatist philosophers (people like John Dewey, Charles Peirce, William James) essentially believed that truth—social truths, not stuff like 2+2=4—cannot live in the head of any one individual or system of knowledge. Essentially, the very idea of truth (what people understand to be a fact) is tightly linked to epistemology (how people come to know). Truth is what we find it impossible not to believe. It’s what our minds, hearts, friends, families, classes, races, ethics, ideologies, histories, and imagined futures demand that must believe, if we are to be functioning people in society. Truth is what makes us act, makes us do things in the world to achieve change. Truth isn’t a mirror of reality, it’s what we can’t doubt.

The pragmatists help us see three levels of truth in the whole Daisey debacle. The first—a mundane kind of level—is about the details of Daisey’s narrative. Did he talk to 3 people or 10 people? Did he talk with someone who had used n-hexane or not? Was the girl he talked to 12- or 13-years old? These details matter for sure. The second type is focused on what different genres have to say about truth. Is a theatre story that makes us feel something “true” because the emotions are real, regardless of their origin? Is a journalistic story “true” because we trust news organizations to follow fact-checking conventions that we might not understand first-hand, but that tradition, professional scrutiny and investigative reporting outcomes have convinced us are the gold standard of fact-based public storytelling? Do we trust Daisey more or less to influence our beliefs if we know which genres and traditions he’s using?

The third type of truth, though, is where pragmatists are the most helpful and where internet-based learning is trickiest: what do we want to do because of the story? What is it about the mix of emotion, evidence, argument, and narrative compels us to action – to believe something or do something? What do we want to be true? What do our social worlds make it hard for us to doubt? What makes us act because of—or in spite of—the story? Would we let ourselves believe that Daisey is telling us about a problem that does or doesn’t exist?

…My heart’s in Accra » The Passion of Mike Daisey: Journalism, Storytelling and the Ethics of Attention

…My heart’s in Accra » The Passion of Mike Daisey: Journalism, Storytelling and the Ethics of Attention:

The “fact-check” turns into a discussion about whether it’s fair for the US to outsource labor to other countries without sending western labor standards abroad as well. This leads to the odd experience of Nicholas Kristof discussing an essay he wrote with his wife, Sherryl WuDunn – who’s from a part of China near Foxconn’s factory – that offers “Two Cheers for Sweatshops“. Kristof and WuDunn argue that the sweatshop era is a relatively brief one in a country’s economic development, and that the working conditions are significantly better than the alternative – rural poverty.

For me, this postscript was the most helpful part of the show. Mike’s story puts productively uncomfortable questions on the table: How much should we care about the people who make the devices we use? When we export jobs, do we have a responsibility to export our labor protections as well? What’s the balance between development and considerations of worker safety? Daisey’s story from Shenzen falls well short of journalistic standards for reporting. But in terms of provoking an interesting conversation on rich topics, it’s massively successful. Unfortunately, those rich conversations get eclipsed once the conversation turns into a question of whether Daisey falsified a story.

Rocks and Light

A Whole Lot of Nothin’

This has been quite a week.  Frankly a difficult one that leaves me with little I really want to go into detail about.  I went out and walked as usual but there was really nothing picture worthy and the gloom persisted for much of the day.  It went from forties to nearly the seventies seemingly all at once.  I don’t feel much room to brag about the seventies when it takes all day to get there and then is quickly gone as the day passes its zenith.  I’m still waiting for enough money to get the car timing belt and water pump changed out…I will be much relieved to have that out of my hair.  My daughter will need to use that car to take her test for her driver’s license…oh boy.  I will need to make adjustments on the insurance at that point.  She graduates next year…I think I’m still in shock over that one. 

I thought I’d better head out for some pictures but first I had to show this pathetic shot of our salamander.  Don’t let that smile fool you…he’s waiting for his morning cricket…he’s every inch a predator.  Sometimes I think he’s a “salagator” more than a salamander!  The morning sunshine broke through today and left intricate patterns of shadow as it passed through our little bench in the backyard.  I see some buds are exploding out there at this point yet some do nothing at all just yet.  Still no blossoms for us for the most part so these signs of spring really comfort me and give me hope…it causes such a new green haze when looking out over the neighborhood…I just love that.  One thing that is nice right now is the songs of the Redwing Blackbirds that love to sing back and forth to one another.  The Western Meadowlarks haven’t arrived yet but still this is a nice thing to hear

Red Wing Black Bird Duet

.  The trees in our backyard are quite slow to finally spring to life each year however I still love the textures of the bark.  The contrast of the black and white really is nice and unique.  These are close enough to the deck where we have to keep them trimmed.  Right now I feel a little like that tree.  Life can have its moments where it feels one thing after another is being cut off and pruned left and right.  The good news is that without this pruning I know I wouldn’t grow the way I’m supposed to.  There’s nothing worse than an untamed tree that is left to go wild until it does damage to everything around it now is there?  Bless you my friends.

Poet Adrienne Rich, 82, has died - latimes.com

Poet Adrienne Rich, 82, has died - latimes.com:

Selected for the National Medal for the Arts in 1997, the highest award given to artists, Rich refused it.

“The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate,” she wrote in a letter addressed to then-President Clinton. “A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.”

Hustling the cloud: McDonald's hot spots and the internet jackals of the Apple Store | Capital New York

Hustling the cloud: McDonald's hot spots and the internet jackals of the Apple Store | Capital New York:

This was the future a lot of dystopian sci-fi authors warned us about, where a private, profit-hungry corporation could make itself feel like Mom's house. I loved it. For the ridiculous amount of money Apple had raked in during its stellar iPod/iPhone decade, it was willing to let a few stragglers abuse their sample products, maintaining an aura of Californian liberality. All that was missing was a counter for dispensing sandals near the entrance, bowling alley-style.

On these weird late nights, actual Apple customers sat on bar stools near the Genius Bar, waiting like worried pet owners for their sick machines to come out from the back, fully restored. We, the internet jackals, never mingled with those credit card-wielding V.I.P.'s, but I figured any sensible abuser felt just as grateful toward the Apple true believers as I did. It was their insatiable lust for each new iThis or iThat which provided for us all. Both Steve Jobs and the booty-shake dude would be out in the cold without them.

In this one store, Jobs had given us a shimmering, utopian welfare state, where even those of us who would have had to sell blood to keep up with the iJoneses at least got to sample the glory.

rotation

Meet Zipper....

Love at first sight.

Hunter and her new horse, Zipper.

Infatuation with horses through the years....

This is Monk, her paternal grandmother's (MayMay)horse. I just about keeled over when I saw this photo.  She was one year old!  :)

Look at that face. LOL

Recently.

I'm very happy for Hunter, and I'm especially glad that she's been going to horse camp.  In fact, she's going all next week on her spring break from school.

YES, I've been replaced by a horse!

:)

Backyard Friends

 

 

 

 

Male Northern Cardinal

 

 

Last week it was like summer here, but on a March day. Usually we still have snow and lots of it. This winter we hardly had snow at all and when we did it didn’t stay very long. I got off work early and decided to grab my e-book, my camera and something cold to drink, heading to sit and relax on my back deck.

It wasn’t long until I heard that sweet sweet sound of a singing Cardinal. I looked around and finally spotted him in a Spruce tree in my backyard. I slowly picked up my camera and took this picture. I waited all winter but didn’t see or hear a Cardinal in my yard until a few weeks ago. I was so excited and it has been coming back ever since. A few times he has brought his female partner with him. It has only been recently that I have been able to capture him with my camera. If I hadn’t been sitting there waiting for nature to come to me, I would have missed this opportunity. It was a perfect afternoon, and I really did need to just sit and relax for awhile. Just to be Still … Something that is so often taken for granted. For me it was something wonderful, just to sit and be still with a good book, my camera, a cold drink, and oh ya ; my little dog Jesse by my side keeping me company. :)

 

 

 

He decided to stop long enough to pose for me, and have a bite to eat at my Backyard Café.

 

 

Hope to find you all well and wishing you a wonderful rest of the week.

Love and Care

Dianne :)

And I can’t thank you enough for all your thoughts and prayers for my mom , my family and I. God Bless each and every one of you, and I know He does.

 

Dianne © dsphotocats

 

Now You Can Die Happy, Stephen Hando - Seattle Theater - The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper

Now You Can Die Happy, Stephen Hando:

Mr. Hando has been being brilliant since Rm 608's early-'90s soap opera Shuddering Pines. He was brilliant again as the lead in Greek Active's mid-'90s King John and Printer's Devil Theater's late-'90s Free Will and Wanton Lust, and he is known in the biz as a uniquely gifted comic actor. What wasn't fully obvious before Torso is that he's an actor of unbelievable subtlety and range. He makes characters you could stare at forever.

Wordless Wednesday....

"The soul is healed by being with children."

English proverb

Author unknown

Have a wonderful day!

:)

Many Thanks

Thank you so much for the thoughts, the prayers especially and the care you gave my brother.

He had the surgery late yesterday afternoon and is in ICU.  Heart surgery is serious of course and the next several days will be crucial as to his recovery.  As I went to bed last evening, all was as well as it can be.

It means so much when there can be and is a prayer circle or caring thoughts when needed for family and our friends here on Blogger.  We are a family too I have always maintained.  Thank you each and all for the support to my brother.

XOX

Getting Back To Work

In the otherwise forgettable David Mamet movie STATE AND MAIN there’s a scene that has always stuck with me. It’s when Alec Baldwin’s character crashes a station wagon in the middle of the night in the center of the New England town where they are shooting their ill-fated film. He emerges from the wreck unscathed, and says,

“So. That happened.”

I think about this moment all the time, and it seems especially appropriate as this is the week Alec Baldwin told me to fuck myself on Twitter.

In some ways it isn’t appropriate at all—I don’t feel unscathed, and I’m very aware of the damage my actions have caused. But now that the media firestorm has passed, and I have made my apologies, both public and private, it’s time to get back to work.

Being humble before the work doesn’t mean running away, and it doesn’t mean folding when the chips are down. In fact, it means the opposite. It means opening your eyes, admitting your mistakes, and doing your job.

When THE AGONY AND ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS is performed again in just a few days, it will have changed. It will have none of the material called into question on This American Life, and nothing in the piece will break the rules I have developed over years with my audiences.

I’m still refining and developing these changes, but I can tell you it involves cutting about six minutes from a two hour show. There will also be other changes. I’m probing every part of the show, making sure it reflects the complexities and human stories, while shining a light on the labor situation confirmed by numerous news organizations and human rights groups.

It’s a very different world now than it was when this piece was born. In 2010 almost no one in my audiences had ever heard of Foxconn, and most had never considered in a deep way where their devices came from or the circumstances of their creation. The fact that we are awake to these issues now is a massive change that can not be rolled back, and the show must respond to that as well.

Stories are living things. Every time the context of this show has changed—from the wake of Steve Jobs’ passing, to the New York Times’ devastating expose on Apple’s supply chain—it has required changes, and it has made the work stronger.

These have been some of the hardest weeks of my life, and I don’t know what the future holds. But I look forward to digging back in and using everything I’ve learned to do right by my audiences and my work.

Music to our ears......

at the park yesterday after school;

I received the call that baby sister

was FINE!

Me:  "Hunter, Rylan is FINE!"

Hunter:  "She is?"

Me:  "yes!"

Hunter:  "Does that mean she's smart?"

Me: "Oh, yes she is!"

Hunter threw her arms around my waist and said:

"Thank you, God!"

"Thank you, Jesus!"

It doesn't get any better than this.

:)

And, thank you friends!

Have a beautiful day.

Some Thoughts After The Storm

Here is an excerpt from an interview I gave to Seattle radio host Luke Burbank about a year ago:

Burbank: “How do you reconcile telling a good story with also trying to get the facts right and when do you decide what is the more important goal?”

Daisey: “Oh, well you know what I’ve found over the years is that the facts are your friends, like if there’s ever a case where I’m telling the story and I find the facts are inconvenient, 9 times out of 10 it means I haven’t thought about the story deeply enough. I really believe in this because the world is more complex and more interesting than my imagination. So the world is full of really fascinating things. You have so many tools on stage as a storyteller. Like, any time you want something to happen, you don’t have to pretend it happened and lie, you can use a flight of fancy, you can say, ‘I imagine what this must look like.’ You can say anything and you can go in whatever direction you need to go, but be clear with the audience, but be clear with the audience that at one moment you’re reporting the truth as literally it happened, and another case you’re using hyperbole, and you just have to be really clear about when you’re using each tool. No, for me it’s not actually that hard if—and this is a big if—if you’re pretty scrupulous about not believing you know the story before you see it.”

Thanks to Chris Hayes for finding this exchange. I’m putting it out here because I think it very succinctly sums up the rules I have for myself about how I create my monologues, and in so doing, I think it also makes clear where I fell short in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

When I said onstage that I had personally experienced things I in fact did not, I failed to honor the contract I’d established with my audiences over many years and many shows. In doing so, I not only violated their trust, I also made worse art.

This is not the place for me to try and explain my good intentions. We all know where the road paved with good intentions leads. In fact, I think it might lead to where I’m sitting right now.

I had an acting teacher, years ago, who always taught that the calling of an artist is to be humble before the work. He knew, I think, how easy it can be to lose one’s way.

I listened to a podcast of the discussion some of my colleagues had a few nights ago discussing “Truth in Theater”—and what a thing it was not to be there, to have been asked not to come, and what a strange feeling to know that it was my trespasses that had made the conversation necessary in the first place.

But also, what a gift: to just be able to sit and listen, and to hear these people I so respect discuss these issues with intelligence and humor, and to hear the civility they extended my way even when they took serious issue with some of the choices I have made.

It made me reflect upon how lucky I have been to call the theater my home all these years, the only place I can imagine this kind of discourse happening. It made me grateful for the great privilege it has been to be able to call myself a storyteller and to have audiences come and listen to what I have to say, to extend their trust to me. I am sorry I was careless with that trust. For this, I would like to apologize to my audiences.

And I would like to apologize to my colleagues in the theater, especially those who work in non-fiction and documentary fields. What you do is essential to our civic discourse. If I have made your path more difficult, or the truth of your work harder for audiences to discern, I am sorry.

I would also like to apologize to the journalists I gave interviews to in which I exaggerated my own experiences. In my drive to tell this story and have it be heard, I lost my grounding. Things came out of my mouth that just weren’t true, and over time, I couldn’t even hear the difference myself.

To human rights advocates and those who have been doing the hard work of bringing attention to these kinds of labor issues for years, if my failures have made your jobs harder, I apologize. If I had done my job properly, with the skills I have honed for years, I could have avoided this. Instead, I blinded myself, and lost sight of the people I wanted most to help.

I use the word “truth” a lot in my work. These words from the opening scene of How Theater Failed America come to mind:

Some of you are hoping tonight that the rarest of things will happen: that someone is actually going to tell the truth.

That’s rare. That’s hen’s teeth.

You should know better.

And so should I. Because that’s what I’m looking for—every time I come back to this place, and all the places like it. Looking for the truth: that rare, random descent, like a feather across the back of your hand.

I speak about truth because it is what I aspire to. All my stories, even when I’ve fallen short, have been attempts to experience the truth with my audiences.

I am sorry for where I have failed. I will look closer, be more patient, and listen more clearly.

I will be humble before the work.


***

(You can read some thoughts on what's next for AGONY/ECSTASY here.)

Could Use Some Good Thoughts and Prayers

My remaining brother is in serious guarded condition.  I only learned of it late last night when I got a text.

Hope you'll join me in prayers or purrs for him.  He's all I have left of immediate family outside of my children.  He may have surgery today or possibly tomorrow.  Waiting to hear from his daughter, son or my sister in law.

Thanks.

Sunday smiles....

Rylan and Cameron (a family friend)

Rylan's neurologist appt is tomorrow afternoon.

I know we can count on prayers from you guys
and, as always THANK YOU!

Have a blessed Sunday!

:)

Little bits of my world.....

I'm late for the party, Ms Brenda's photo challenge!

A little bit of my world:

This is one of my treasures.  Painted

by a cousin of my mom's of the house

where my grandparents lived and raised

their 8 children.  I never knew my grandfather

as he passed away when Mom was 5 years

old; she was the youngest child.  When

she was born two of her brothers were in

their 20's.  I loved this house, and it broke

my heart when it was torn down.  But,

I feel so blessed to have this treasure.

Where we play when Hunter is here

unless we're in the kitchen making

cupcakes; one of her favorite things to do.

(My computer is acting up, so this is all I can offer today!

:)

Have a blessed, wonderful day!

Saturday and I'm still standing

No mousies around here.  Hope it stays that way.  Now that the weather is significantly warmer, likely I won't see any more until Fall chill.

Absolutely nothing to say.  Just wanted to get rid of the hanta viris post so I am posting today.  I never have anything to say..so that's nothing new.

My oldest is here from last evening after work.  he and Katie Bella have bonded so she was delighted to see him.  She even got up from her napping place and greeted him when he emerged from his room this morning.  And they laid on the floor together snuggling still the lure of coffee got one of them up and in to breakfast.  I'll leave it to you to imagine which one.  Hint:  it wasn't Katie.

I made home made Egg McMuffins again for breakfast.  Next time it will be the traditional eggs and bacon and biscuits.  The cat doesn't ask for bacon the way Admiral did.  Must have had that bacon gene pass her right on by when she was made. :-)

Horrible thunderstorms last night about 2 in the morning but we're still here and no trees fell on us.  Some of you have seen the picture I have posted several times of the house surrounded by trees 75 or more feet high.

Here is something I found that I decided to post regardless of its content.  It reminds me of someone I used to think was a friend...overlooking all the things that were glaring at me.  However, that person is gone and banished from my sight and generally, my thought.  Bye was the best word ever.  :-)

Mom’s Is Home :)

 

I just want to give a quick update on my mom to let you all know that she was discharged from the hospital yesterday, and is feeling much better than she was 3 weeks ago tonight. I want to thank those of you who keep mom in your thoughts and prayers. She has an onward battle with kidney disease , but has won this battle, and thanks to the Lord who answered our prayers.
God Bless you all and have a wonderful weekend. Much appreciation, Dianne :)

Water Day... Learn How to Help Out!

That's right guys. Today, March 22, 2012 is water day! It may seem like a regular day for you, but there is roughly a billion people without access to clean water. And around 55 million people die each year because they don't have drinkable water to drink. These numbers are staggering considering 70% of the Earth's surface is covered in water, yet only 3% is drinkable. However, most of the 3% is trapped in glaciers and as they melt, water will mix with the salty ocean water leaving us with even less water to drink.
Things don't have to be the way they are right now, plenty of organizations across the glove are trying to bring pure drinkable water to those who need it. Organizations such as Water.org and Wateraid have built dozens of wells all across Africa in an attempt to reduce those numbers.
You can help make a difference as well and I'm going to show you how! I know most of us want to help out but let's admit it, we have no money, we're broke. Therefore, I'm about to show you a couple of things you can do to help out with spending a cent!

How To Help Out

Save Water : Saving water can be a fun, easy thing.
1) Turn off the water while brushing, shaving and soaping up.
2) Immediately report water leaks and running toilets to maintenance.
3) Wash and dry full loads of laundry.
4) Some refrigerators, air conditioners and ice-makers are cooled with wasted flows of water. Consider upgrading with air-cooled appliances for significant water savings.
5) Adjust sprinklers so only your lawn is watered and not the house, sidewalk, or street.
Tab For A Cause: Tab for a cause is an awesome way to cooperate with different types of charity organizations. All you have to do is install the Add-on to your browser. All the advertising revenue is donated to different charity causes around the world. Go to Tabforacause.com or Click Here
Volunteer: The best way to get involved and not spend a single cent is by volunteering, you can visit this website http://www.volunteermatch.org/ to find a charity organization near you and volunteer.
Raise Awareness: You can help big time by raising awareness of this issue. You can start by sharing this article by Clicking Here, or posting "Happy Water Day" as your status in any social network. Go up to your friends and family members and say Happy Water Day everyone!

Friday frivolities....

this one reminds me of the time

I tried to place an order at a

McD's trash can.

I'm goin' back to bed!

Have a great day.

:)

Super Mario World 2

Rate:

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How To Play:

The player navigates through the game via two game screens: an overworld map and a level playfield. The overworld map displays an overhead representation of the current world and has several paths leading from the world's entrance to a castle. Paths connect to action panels, fortresses, ghost houses and other map icons, and allow players to take different routes to reach the world's goal. Moving the on-screen character to an action panel or fortress will allow access to that level's playfield. The majority of the game takes place in these levels, populated with obstacles and enemies, with the player traversing the stage by running, jumping, and dodging or defeating enemies. Completing stages allows the player to progress through the overworld map and to succeeding worlds. Each world features a final stage with a boss to defeat; each of the seven worlds feature fortresses controlled by one of the Koopalings, and the player also battles Bowser in his castle in the seventh world. In addition to special items from previous games like the "Super Mushroom" and "Fire Flower", new power-ups are introduced that provide the player with new gameplay options. The new suit in the game is the cape feather, which gives Mario a cape and allows him to fly. This suit is also similar to the Racoon Suit from Super Mario Bros. 3 in terms of gameplay mechanics but with a few alterations. Super Mario World includes a multiplayer option which allows two players to cooperatively play the game by taking turns at navigating the overworld map and accessing stage levels; the first player controls Mario, while the other controls Luigi. The game introduces Yoshi, a dinosaur companion whom Mario can ride and is able to eat most enemies.