To Insure or not to Insure (in Mexico)?

We were recently in Cabo San Lucas for Victor's stepbrother's wedding. We rented a car because rates were so cheap, but after we arrived we were obliged to pay for liability insurance that doubled the cost of our rental.  We are returning to Mexico for our winter vacation, so I set out to discover whether we really should have paid for that liability insurance or if we were already covered.

Short answer: we were smart to pay.  Long answer: the collision damage waiver (CDW) coverage offered by many credit cards is not the same as liability insurance.  But even if you knew that (we did), it turns out that liability insurance you already have (bundled with your car insurance or--as in our case--homeowner's insurance) may not be of much help in Mexico.  I called our insurance agent and she confirmed that, Yes, we were covered, but she still advised us to buy the rental company's liability coverage. "They make their own rules over there," she said.  She explained that they tend to go after you in court rather than deal with a U.S. insurance company.

Or something like that.  If you Google the issue, there's quite a bit of chatter, but it comes down to this: buy the Mexican liability insurance.

Life without Refined Grains

A few months ago, Victor came home from a business trip committed to a higher-protein, lower- carbohydrate diet.  Partly this was because he'd noticed a colleague of his had become significantly trimmer in the past year, and his colleague attributed his long-term weight loss to a higher-protein diet.

We did not want to omit vegetables of any kind, but we have found Michael Pollan's arguments against processed foods and over-consumption of grains persuasive (see In Defense of Food, for example) and so we decided to avoid refined grains, and try not to automatically "replace" with whole-grain versions, but really to change our eating habits (sashimi instead of brown rice maki). We used to eat all the bread in the breadbasket at restaurants--now we ask them not to bring the bread, even if the rolls are "whole-grain."  This means we deny ourselves some of our favorite foods, so once a week we allow an "exception." But practically speaking, we avoid bread, pasta, and rice.

It's a challenge, especially on-the-go, since sandwiches are out.  Nuts and fruit are a frequent fallback.  This morning I was at a big meeting, catered with "continental breakfast" that was mainly pastries and fruit.  So I ate the fruit. At mid-morning the food table was refreshed with cookies and--happily--granola bars. Oats--rarely if ever refined--are permitted. 

While we have been limiting refined grains, we have been increasing protein, in the form of animal products (eggs, milk, cheese) as well as meat, at the same time trying to maintain or increase the amount of vegetables that we consume. We eat saucy Asian dishes (stir-fries or curries) without accompaniment or over simple vegetables like steamed cabbage.

And we learn new things.  Today's lesson: buckwheat is not a grain.  Grain is only associated with cereals, which are grasses.  Grain is "botanically, a type of fruit" composed of endosperm, germ, and bran. Buckwheat, on the other hand, is the seed of a broadleaf plant related to rhubarb. It's called a pseudocereal because it's used as a cereal grain  but the name is as close as it gets to being grain. 

Why does it matter? It means we can eat buckwheat crepes!  And soba noodles! Yay!

What everyone wants to know is if we've lost weight.  Only a tiny bit.  But we seem to have at least halted the upward-sloping trajectory. And we've eliminated much of the "filler" from our diet--the useless stuff--which feels good.

Woyczek on the Highveld by Handspring Puppet Company and artist William Kentridge

While I'm not a fan of Georg Buchner's unfinished Woyczek, I was anxious to see this production a couple of Sundays ago at MCA Chicago when I learned that the South African artist William Kentridge was associated with it. I first encountered Kentridge's work at an MCA Chicago exhibit in 2008-2009, and was enthralled by it.

This production was a remounting of a show that Kentridge first directed in 1992. The artist's dreamlike animations are the backdrop for the Handspring Puppet Company's remarkable constructions. The story, about a poor German soldier oppressed by the military and medical establishments to the extent that he loses his sanity and murders his common-law wife, is transformed in this South African retelling. Woyczek is now a black migrant worker.

Buchner's play doesn't need to be changed much to make Woyczek at home in South Africa.  Handspring's puppets and Kentridge's drawing make the story's new location seem so fitting that it's hard to imagine the play taking place anywhere else.  The performers carrying and speaking for the puppets are astonishingly good--their movements complement the puppets beautifully.  And Kentridge's animations are utterly haunting.

While I'm still not a big fan of Woyczek, Woyczek on the Highveld convinced me that Buchner set his play in the wrong country. And I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to see this production.

Note: While this show has come and gone at the MCA, you can find snippets of Woyczek on the Highveld on Youtube.

The Iron Stag King at the House Theatre of Chicago

Victor and I went to see this show a couple of Saturdays ago and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  To us it felt like a return to what we like most about The House Theatre: inventive staging of plays that are unapologetically couched in genres that you don't usually find in the theater. Specifically, science fiction/fantasy plays.  The Iron Stag King is straight fantasy: a hero's journey in a re-imagined universe, envisioned as the first part of a trilogy.

While the story is solid, it is not strikingly original. It would be pretty straightforward to trace aspects of the tale to other hero's journey stories we all know.  What's particularly striking about this production are the beautiful visuals--puppets, costumes, and props--and the conviction the strong cast invests in their multiple roles.

We're eagerly looking forward to the subsequent installments of this new trilogy.

My Library, My Kindle, My Library

Most people would say I have a lot of books, though I have seen larger personal libraries.  One living room wall--about 18 feet--is book-lined, and our guest room is also lined with bookshelves. About 3,000 volumes, last estimate.

The sight of these books almost always prompts visitors to ask whether we have read them all.  The answer is No, not all.  Probably a majority, but not all.

Many people are not sure how to take this.  Isn't the purpose of books to be read?  To have so many books that are unread--what does that mean?

Regardless of how much I read--there is always more I wish to have read.  I may have read War and Peace and Team of Rivals, but I still haven't read Freud's Totem and Taboo or Frank Sulloway's tome on birth order, Born to Rebel (a New York Times Notable Book in 1997). When a book sounds or looks interesting--if I can imagine myself enjoying it or learning something from it--I have generally bought it (especially if it was on sale or remaindered). Gazing at such books on my shelf is satisfying because I can see I still have plenty to read (not having anything to read is a big fear).  Gazing at  the books I have  read is also satisfying--there's a special feeling of connection to these.

A library of my own has been a goal since my 10th grade social studies teacher casually referred to his.  Mr. Marienhoff probably said something like, "I looked through my library upstairs and found..."  This appealed to me because bookshelves at home were overflowing, even at the age of 15.  It was hard for me to get rid of anything.  Books I had read became my friends--impossible to betray them by giving them away. Books I had not read were like promises I had yet to keep. I was already having trouble with public libraries.  I loved being in them, but returning books was difficult.I fantasized about a room completely filled with books that were all mine.  Multiple rooms, maybe. An infinity of books to read and refer to...at home.

My books have long been my pride and my burden. When I left school, my collection was large and my housing budget was small. My books spent months in storage while I sought living space for both me and my library at a reasonable price.  Finally I moved into a loft with three housemates and a giant wall--the deal was sealed when one of the housemates offered to build me a bookcase along that wall. 

I moved from that apartment into another with the man who is now my husband. Then, and every time we have moved since, we have had to include my library in our considerations: is there enough wall space for the books? We tried to make sure there was even more room for books than there had been in the last place, because--after all--there were more books now.There were always more.

In 2010, I bought my first Kindle. I was especially excited about using the Kindle on vacation--I'd been accustomed to carrying an extra bag for my holiday reading--but I started using the Kindle for reading at home also.  People ask if I don't miss books.  A strange question.  I am still reading books. 

But I no longer find myself purchasing books I wish to have read.  Instead, I download samples of those books.  This satisfies my persistent fear of running out of things to read while avoiding purchases of books I'll never get through (there are many such volumes on my physical shelves).

Over time, I expect the size of my physical library to decline (via periodic pruning) while my virtual library grows.  The growth, though, will almost entirely be in books I have read.

My relationship to physical books is starting to feel anachronistic.

Bonuses for Poor Performance

Like a lot of people, my reading of political news gets increasingly voracious as Election Day nears.  This morning I was struck by this article from the New York Times, which discusses the surprising fact that the Romney campaign is hurting for money.

This is surprising because for a long time we've been hearing about how Republican supporters have been pouring money into this campaign, particularly the very rich.  But PAC money is not campaign money, and the fact that most of Romney's money comes from the wealthy turns out to be a bit of a problem--only a fraction of their contributions become campaign funds; the rest goes to the Republican National Committee.

What particularly struck me, though, was where some of Romney's campaign money has gone: bonuses.

The day after accepting the Republican nomination, Mr. Romney gave what appeared to be $192,440 in bonuses to senior campaign staff members. At least nine aides received payments...

I am not sure whether such bonuses are common practice for campaigns, but I suspect not, since the reporter notes that they are "likely to draw grumbles from Mr. Romney’s allies."  Even if bonuses for outstanding performance are common, what performance is being rewarded in this case?  Making it through a terrific convention? Really?  Does anybody remember anything about it except the Clint Eastwood weirdness?

No.  So these folks are getting bonuses in spite of poor performance, and in an organization that's hurting for cash.


Really? That's what the "businessman candidate" does?

I can't say I'm surprised; that's how a lot of financial companies do it, as we all learned during the last crash. We also learned how well that worked: rewarding risk-takers for losing bets, even rewarding them for winning some bets when most of the organization's bets are being lost--it's not a strategy for stability, growth, or even survival.

It's a strategy for fail.

Istanbul Passage by Joseph Kanon

It has been a long time since I've read such a satisfying espionage novel--which is saying a lot because I read Alan Furst's latest not too long ago. Along with the usual trope of dropping an ordinary guy in a spy scenario and watching him run, this novel zeroes in on ethics and morality. All protagonist Leon Bauer wants is to be one of the good guys, but he's finding that increasingly complicated.The second world war is over so the sharp black and white of things is gone: our enemies today were our friends yesterday, and today's friends are yesterday's fiends.

Nothing is what it seems, Bauer finds, which is no surprise to an experienced reader of spy thrillers, but still, Istanbul Passage was full of suspense and a pleasure to read.

Equivocation, at the Victory Gardens Theatre

Equivocation, by Bill Cain, is nothing if not intellectually meaty: it wrestles with Shakespeare, Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, torture, ethics, politics, art, religion, and--as if that weren't enough--the typical stuff of drama: personal relationships. A struggling playwright named Shagspeare is commissioned by the King to write a "true history" of the Gunpowder Plot--a propaganda play. In spite of his misgivings ("we don't do current events"), Shagspeare is strongarmed into it by the King's aide, Robert Cecil, and his own troupe, who see dollar (or pound) signs, and besides--they're sick of rehearsing King Lear.

Bill Cain's often witty script makes us laugh at how contemporaries might have viewed Shakespeare's plays, but its more serious subject matter is how we can be true to ourselves while subject to a power that does not want us to be ourselves. The play's title refers to a pamphlet by a Jesuit priest, Henry Garnet, arguing that you can save your life and not lose your soul (through lying) by determining the real question you are being asked and answering that.

For example: someone comes to the door who clearly wants to kill the king, who is hiding upstairs.  He asks, Is the king here?  If you say yes, the king dies.  If you say no, you're lying and you could go to hell.  Or are you?  Garnet suggests that you're really being asked to give your tacit permission for the king's murder; so if you say no, you are simply refusing permission, not lying. Equivocating.



The play takes us through Shagspeare's research into the plot, his rehearsals and arguments with Cecil and his troupe, and his interviews with alleged conspirators. The play he's writing evolves as he learns more until it becomes something that would get the whole troupe arrested were it performed.  In the end, Shagspeare's daughter suggests that perhaps a reworking of the discarded "Scottish play" would fit the bill, in effect an equivocation satisfies the Scottish king while allowing the Shagspeare to keep his integrity (and his skin).

Director Sean Graney, at the Victory Gardens Theatre, shapes this dense material into a compelling production, and the cast does a great job in multiple roles (and roles within roles), but the play could have used an editor. There's a wonderful sense of profusion in the first hour or so, as multiple threads of plot unwind, but in the last fifteen minutes so many loose ends are tied up that it's hard to keep track.  One of the weakest threads is that of Shagspeare's relationship with his daughter, and unfortunately that is the one with which Cain chooses to frame the story, rendering the end not quite satisfying.

Still, it's a thought-provoking play with many fine moments. 

The Fall of the House of Usher, at The Hypocrites

I'm not an Edgar Allan Poe fan, so--although I am a fan of The Hypocrites--I was not expecting to be excited by this production. I quickly reread the source story before going to see the play: the narrator visits an old friend, Roderick Usher, the scion of a gloomy house (in both the literal and figurative sense); much the (physically and spiritually) worse since the narrator last saw him, and caring for a sister who is apparently dying. The narrator spends his time trying to cheer Roderick up, with poor results.  Gloom, gloom, gloom.  Roderick surprises the narrator with a request to help inter his sister, who has died.  Narrator notes that the sister's mysterious illness has left a bloom in her cheek.  Days pass, with the narrator continuing to try to cheer Roderick, now by reading Arthurian tales aloud. Strange sounds are heard. Terror.  The sister appears, escaped from her tomb (having been buried prematurely). She attacks Roderick, and somehow simultaneously kills Roderick, dies, and brings down the (literal) house of Usher, which crumbles. (The narrator, improbably, gets away unscathed.)

Sean Graney's adaptation entertainingly sends up this campy nonsense.  He takes Poe's overheated prose and puts it into the mouths of three major characters: the erstwhile narrator, here a formerly intimate female friend of Usher, Usher himself, and a maid, who serves as a narrative foil for the female friend when Usher is out of the room. Poe's prose as dialogue is typically ridiculous, and Graney amps up the absurdity by casting three female actors in the play's four roles (Usher's rarely seen sister is the fourth), and having the actors switch roles, sometimes at an astonishing rate.The "horror" atmosphere invoked by Poe's prose is continuously mocked--the word terror is winkingly repeated in stage-whispered asides. When a new character enters the set, everyone screams. And every time someone says the phrase "The House of Usher," howling is heard and the characters cower.  Toward the end of the play, the house starts to leak, another effect played for laughs.

There is plenty to make this show funny, and yet Graney's The Fall of the House of Usher is plenty creepy, too. The set is ingenious and gorgeous: an enclosed dark wood space with multiple doorways and scattered piles of old books that effectively conveys a decaying and deeply uncomfortable mansion.  There's something very creepy about the narrator's persistent attraction to Usher even after she sees his obviously pregnant sister float by (no question, really, about who the father is). There's also something creepy about her persistent cough, though its purported treatment, gin and lemons, is a source of repeated laughs. And everything about Usher is creepy, regardless of the actor who plays him.

Maybe all mysteries are creepy. By the end of the play, things we previously laughed at (the actors' quick changes, the dripping ceiling) are part and parcel of the horror Poe (and Graney) want us to feel--Madeline appears in a bloody nightgown (at this point all of the characters are wearing white nightgowns, and it's a credit to the production that you see nothing odd about Roderick Usher in a nightgown) and water is streaming down over the whole stage.

And nobody's laughing. Actors Tien Doman, Halena Kays, and Christine Stulik do a tremendous job bringing conviction to their multiple roles while balancing humor and horror to create astonished pleasure.

Idomeneus, by Sideshow Theatre

This world-premiere production of German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig's drama about what happened to the Cretan king who joined his forces with Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus in the Trojan War, is a surprisingly engaging meditation on what-might-have-been.

Homer has nothing too remarkable to say about Idomeneus. He was a doughty warrior, and even held his own against Hector, but the Iliad ends before he gets home. Later writers, including the fourth century Italian Maurus Servius Honoratus and the French 17th century writer François Fénelon took up the tale: Idomeneus, returning from Troy with 80 ships, is caught in a violent storm that destroys 79 of them, and threatens to destroy his own.  Desperate to save his life, he promises Poseidon, the sea god, to sacrifice the first creature he encounters when he reaches land.

Are warning bells going off?  A middling familiarity with mythology teaches us, Never make bargains with gods. Having never learned that lesson, Idomeneus arrives home, and the first creature he encounters is his own son, grown to manhood in his father's 10-year-absence.  Oath-bound to kill his son, he does so, avoiding the wrath of Poseidon, but incurring the wrath of the other gods. His country suffers from a mysterious plague, which the populace eventually connects with the king's return, and banishes him. 

Or he does not kill his son.  In another version of the story, Poseidon excuses him from this murder in exchange for abdication. A related story has Idomeneus' wife, Meda, seduced and murdered by Leucus, who takes the throne and chases Idomeneus away when he arrives. (In this story, Leucus seduced Meda on behalf of Nauplius, who bore a grudge against Idomeneus, Agamemnon, and Odysseus over the death of his son; Nauplius' revenge was to arrange for the three kings' wives to betray their husbands).

In any case, that something very, very bad happened to Idomeneus after he came home from the Trojan war feels very true and very Greek.

Why is that?  As my husband put it (and as Schimmelpfennig makes Idomeneus whine in his play), "It's not fair." The poor man spent 10 years at war, finally won (almost miraculously keeping his army and its followers intact), and--days from home or even nearer--is nearly overcome by a storm.  But since when are Greek gods fair?  Throughout the Trojan war, the gods also battled, under the banners of Aphrodite or Athena. We know, from Homer's Odyssey, how Odysseus suffered after the war. And we know, both from the Odyssey, and, vividly, from Aeschylus' Oresteia, how the gods on the Trojan side avenged themselves on Agamemnon. It would be surprising if Idomeneus came to a good end.

But the diversity of stories and sources, and their relative lack of authority (after all, Homer is silent on Idomeneus' return home) provide a terrific opportunity for Schimmelpfennig to offer his own vision. Rather than dramatize a single narrative, his Idomeneus uses the incantations of a Greek chorus to spin out multiple permutations of the Cretan king's story.  Individual and dual performers weave in and out of the chorus as they represent individual characters, who play, and replay, scenes from different perspectives. The production manages to strike a balance between emotional distance and commitment.  Contributing to distance are the refusal to stick with a particular version of the story, the mostly third-person storytelling, and occasional humor. Contributing to commitment are simple yet spectacular set (featuring a tidal wave made of wood that forms the backdrop of the production, and a sandbox in the foreground, representing the beach where Idomeneus lands), generally excellent acting, provocative and often moving gestures, and the emotional impact of the writing/translation itself.

The Sideshow Theatre has mounted an excellent production of an intriguing play.

What's So Great about Google Art Project?

Google Art Project is one of my favorite things. You can virtually visit more than 150 museums around the world, although you are just looking at a subset of each museum's artworks. All together, though, there are more than 30,000 works of art to discover, and many of them are in super-high-def (gigapixel) format.  In other words, they are really beautiful. Also, via Google Street View technology, you can virtually "walk" through many of the galleries, so you can get a feeling for the setting of the artworks.  Of course some of the museums, like the Palace of Versailles, are arguably more interesting for their architecture and interior design than for the artworks they contain.

Endeavors like this put us on the path to an idealized future, where all the world's knowledge and cultural capital is freely available and accessible online.  We can't all travel everywhere we would like to visit. Google Art Project offers the opportunity for really rich encounters with art and the institutions that house it.

Jason Salavon, Computational Artist

At the University of Chicago yesterday, Victor and I attended an interview with Jason Salavon as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival day in Hyde Park. This artist's work is amazing. He transforms digital information into aesthetically pleasing and often fascinating works. One piece, Field Guide, is a copy of "the entire 2007 IKEA catalogue, leaving only color and structure." Another piece turns shoe manufacturing data into a hypnotic, psychedelic animation. Golem is a generator/printer of very convincing abstract paintings reminiscent of Hans Hoffman and Richard Diebenkorn.

This is art with brains and beauty, satisfying on multiple levels.

Adventures in Caffeine

I never liked coffee. It was my father's drink. My mother drank tea, so I thought coffee was for men, with that logic children are born with. The fact that my grandmother drank coffee was confusing, but like any good theoretician I didn't let the facts get in the way of my conclusions.

Because I never particularly noticed that tea had a taste (tea from teabags rarely does), I drank plain hot water for years. Then I somehow got introduced to real tea--from loose leaves. And learned that tea could be delicious.

Working at home, I had the flexibility to drink a pot of tea in the morning, but on days I went out without drinking the pot, I found I felt awful.: caffeine withdrawal.

So I started getting mochas-to-go, or cappuccinos. A far more efficient caffeine-delivery mechanism (one serving got me what I needed), and perfectly palatable as long as I added a packet of sugar.

For the past several months we have had an espresso machine at home, so the ritual has changed once more: the morning begins with a cup of cappuccino, whether I'm in or out. If I'm in, I follow this with a pot of tea; if not, not. Thus, the caffeine-urge is satisfied, the tastebuds are satisfied, and I go about my day (relatively) alert.

My child-self would be utterly confused at this union of (she believed) opposites. But she was wrong about an awful lot of things. 

Going Digital

I have never been as attracted to books as objects so much as for what they contain. Those who know me might raise their eyebrows at this--I have an awful lot of books. But I have rarely minded cheap editions or used ones; as long as a book was readable, I'd be happy enough to own it.

Of course, some books are attractive primarily because of their physical aspect: my Abrams art book on collage, with its tipped-in pictures and two-color letterpress printing; the book about the Peacock Room that I am reading now. And some books are really more convenient and useful in their analog state--like travel guidebooks and field guides, so you can flip through when you don't know what you're looking for.

Sitting in my living room lately, with its wall of books, I've been fantasizing about empty space. The advantage of books on the shelf is the visual sweep--there's a randomness factor: running your thumb along the spines you might choose to read a book you didn't intend to at first. There's a similar loss in the exchange (years ago accomplished) of digital music for CDs, but that loss is compensated somewhat by software "shuffle" features. Browsing is also still possible in digital book collections; it just becomes a conscious choice rather than a default activity. Web services like Library Thing can display book collections in multiple formats.

Slogans against digital books point out "books don't need batteries" but the physical space required by books is not trivial (says one who has lined the walls of two rooms with them). And this far-from-trivial space has very limited value beyond what it contains. It does provide a kind of eccentric eye candy and a visual reminder of what one has read and has yet to read. For the most part, though, the books are bound and printed cheaply, not made to last, and the spines fade on the shelf. The loyalty to what one has read and what one wants (or wanted at one time) to have read...sometimes it seems silly.

So find myself wishing that much of my library were digitized. As I read Wolf Hall on my Kindle last week, I had absolutely no nostalgia for turning paper pages, or lugging around a big fat tome. I was enthralled by the novel, and didn't need yellowing paper to enhance that enchantment.

It's quite impossible to contemplate buying digital copies of all my books. It would cost something around $30K (assuming ,$9.99 a book for 3,000 books). Of course, some I wouldn't want digitized, and some are not available.

It turns out that there are devices to transform real books to e-book files, and I even found a service. The devices are either really expensive or require you to turn the pages (and sometimes both)--imagine doing this for 3,000 books! Ugh. The service might be worthwhile, at least for some books not available on Kindle (they won't do a Kindle conversion for books already commercially available on ereaders, though you could get PDFs).

For now I am lightly thinning the shelves by replacing hard copies with digital versions of free or cheaply available classics by the likes of Dickens and Wharton. I have established a moratorium on buying new paper books unless they are unavailable for Kindle, or they really are better in paper (cookbooks are another example).

My library's digital conversion will happen in fits and starts, and will not be complete, but it is happening.

The British Library's Virtual Books

Victor and I have been to London a number of times, and one of our favorite places to visit is the British Library. Like our Library of Congress, it is a national library; unlike the Library of Congress, it sees its mission as global rather than national (its slogan: Explore the world's knowledge). A personal visit to either can be a little disappointing for a lay book lover--the shelves are typically not open to just anyone; you have to present yourself as a researcher of some kind, fill out a request slip, and wait for the librarian to deliver what you desire.

Even so, our first visit to the British Library took hours. Open to the public is a large exhibit room containing a varying assortment of remarkable documents under glass: a Gutenberg Bible, a copy of the Magna Carta, a handwritten draft of a Beatles lyric by Paul, pages from Jane Austen's first novel. In an alcove, you can sit at a terminal and virtually turn the pages of (for example) an early illuminated Hebrew bible.

It is really the coolest thing ever.

And I just learned you don't have to go to London to use it. The British Library's website provides access to "virtual books." You can download a Shockwave plugin and leaf through one of William Blake's notebooks or Mercator's first atlas of Europe.

Unbelievably awesome. Just when you're thinking that all the Internet has to offer is faster, grimmer news and LOLcats, something like this makes you remember that technology can still do amazing things.

Sunday in the Park with George

Yesterday afternoon, we went to see the Porchlight Music Theatre's production of Sunday in the Park with George, the Stephen Sondheim musical about Georges Seurat and the making of his masterpiece A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. 

It's a beautifully done show, extremely moving, with some sharp insights about artists and the art-making process and business. The whole cast does justice to the remarkable score, and the simple set is lovely.

Recommended.

Thieves Like Us

We started subscribing to the House Theatre of Chicago last year, with some trepidation.  There is so much great theater around town that it seems limiting to commit to a particular troupe, and we travel so much that there is a real concern about whether we can make every show.  On the other hand, House subscriptions are about as cheap as they could be, and go to support some of our favorite Chicago artists and performers.

This season's inaugural show is Thieves Like Us, based on a 1930s-era novel by Richard Anderson and adapted by local playwright Damon Kiely. Like most House Theatre shows, it features creative scene-setting and staging; for example, when main characters hop into their (invisible) getaway car, other cast members parade along the stage holding up newsprint drawings of the scenery the automobile passes on its journey.

Imaginative touches like these, and an enigmatic (and magnetic) torch singer who appears and disappears, like a phantom of protagonist Bowie Bowers' mind, elevate the show beyond its pulpy, noir material (nice guy falls in with the wrong crowd, gets in trouble, lands in jail, gets in more trouble, falls in love with nice girl, tries to get out of trouble, fails).  So do an array of fine performances from the cast who are--as typical at the House--terrifically energetic.

In spite of a sad ending, it's an invigorating show.

Another Day, Another Gadget

Our new flat-screen TV is Internet-enabled, which means we can stream Netflix movies, and access Amazon Video on Demand, which is almost embarrassingly exciting.  But yesterday I realized we can't easily access video content from iTunes (which was embarrassingly disappointing).  Our Blu-Ray player has an iPod dock, but that only facilitates music play; it doesn't transmit video.  We have a cable to connect my iPhone directly to the TV, but that transmits only visuals without sound.

So after scouring the Web for hours, looking at cables, docks, and other devices, I've concluded that the easiest and most cost-effective option is an Apple TV.  It offers some redundant services (for example, Netflix streaming), but also offers the prospect of a better remote interface (using my iPhone via the Remote app), access to iTunes content, and ultimately (in November or so), the ability to wirelessly stream content from any of my devices to my TV.

So is the PC-user becoming Apple-fied?   Somewhat.  But after I had to replace my Airport Extreme because it couldn't sustain a VPN connection, I'm inclined to persist with a mixed environment.

Origin

Did not want to put down this mystery. The protagonist, Lena, is a fingerprint expert confronted with a crime that might just be a statistical blip--a surprising number of crib deaths (SIDS) within a couple of months.  Because of her unexpected success resolving a previous child murder, Lena, almost pathologically private, is the target of enormous attention and expectation from the public as well as her colleagues.

While Lena is not at all sure there is a crime, to start, something about the case troubles her, and leads her to explore her own past more persistently (she was raised by foster parents).  As the investigation progresses, certain details and even pieces of evidence seem to point back to the mystery of her own origin. 

Beautifully written with a compellingly diverse cast of characters; convincingly set in depressed Syracuse, New York; a really terrific read.

Crescent

This is a beautiful, moving novel. The book is ostensibly a romance--a love affair between an Iraqi-American chef and an Iraqi emigre academic--but it is also about loss, and the power of rituals, like cooking, eating, and storytelling, to heal.