So....Sick

This is one of those times when death seems so much better...

I've had a constant fever since Thursday afternoon. The fever starts to break, I sweat like crazy, and nope it goes right back up. Pair the fevers with a nasty cough, a horrible sore throat, and general weakness and you have a very sick girl. So sick they had to cancel Sat. and Sun performances. Yeah that adds to me feeling good, but what can you do. I can't talk.

The only time I feel I'm in a semi normal state is in the shower, which I have to do two to three times a day to wash the sweat off/keep warm. I'm hoping the meds I have are going to help because despite what the doctor says 4+ days of constant fever can't be good.

I'm going back to sleep...

Proof Review

Unicorn opens theater season with attention-grabbing play
By NATHALIE PLOTKIN

Herald Correspondent

To open the 2007 drama season, the Unicorn Theatre really scored a winner with their production of "Proof," David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play in the Carl Cherry Center in Carmel.

Thought-provoking and audience attention-grabbing, this contemporary and lively script captures interest and holds it as it proceeds along a rather convoluted path in telling its emotionally meaty story.

There are several flashbacks and they are carefully listed in the program to help the audience keep track of events which would have a puzzling lack of continuity otherwise.

"Proof" tells the story of a young woman (Catherine) who has taken on the task of being the caregiver for her mentally ill father (Robert).

She has dropped out of college to do so and since her father was a mathematical genius, she is afraid that not only has she inherited his genius, but also his insanity.

The play opens with a dialogue between father and daughter on the eve of his funeral.

She sees him, as does the audience, and she speaks to him, but the question is raised about the reality of the scene and whether or not she is hallucinating. Yet there is a real bottle of warm champagne in the scene.

There is another, older, daughter (Claire) who walked away from the situation, but who took over the responsibility of the financial support of her father and sister.

She is a self-contained, emotionally detached person who is interested in doing right for her possibly dysfunctional sibling.

Then there is Hal, a former graduate student of the father who is attracted to the younger sister, but who wants to find some mathematical inspiration and career enrichment by going through the 130 notebooks the professor scribbled in during his illness.

Skip Kadish as the mentally ill father must create an almost chameleon-like emotional persona which he handles very skillfully.

In a heartrending scene when his illness reasserts itself after he has been in remission for a year, he is masterful.

Jennifer Muniz (Catherine) has the role of the willingly self-sacrificing daughter who must not only care tenderly for a difficult sick man, but must also face her fears about herself.

Stony faced, rigidly postured and coldly resistant to offers of help, she portrays the tortured inner depths of personality that make her riveting as she emphatically refuses to accept well-meant advice.

She captures sympathy as she struggles with her internal doubts and demons.

Lynette Graves is the older sister who wants to "do right" by Catherine. Her strong sense of duty is very well projected and she bears up under the coldly vituperative rejection she is the target of.

She shows how her patience is sorely tried, yet her underlying hidden warmth and caring strength are apparent.

When, in two major face-to-face, almost knock-down and drag-out confrontations, Muniz and Graves reveal the full force of the differences and resentments they have toward each other, there was crackling and powerful electricity coming from the stage.

Omar Hussain as Hal, the graduate student who cares for Catherine, also shows strength and purpose in facing up to the intractible reactions of Catherine.

He too, is warm and understanding and there is a well-projected maturity of character which adds humanity to the problems he is faced with. Still, his motivation is questionable as to its true reasons.

Director Carey Crockett guided his fine cast through an intelligently conceived and very well-integrated performance except for some seemingly overlong scene changes.

These were four special people bringing life to the author's ideas in realistic, yet emotionally colored performances, which at times included adult language.

Crockett's sense of theatrical proportion made this a fine beginning for the year and a memorable play that should not be missed.

Oh Please, Oh Please, Oh Please, Oh Please!

Obama launches 2008 White House bid

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
49 minutes ago

Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) launched a presidential campaign Tuesday that would make him the first black to occupy the White House, and immediately tried to turn his political inexperience into an asset with voters seeking change.

The freshman Illinois senator — and top contender for the Democratic nomination — said the past six years have left the country in a precarious place and he promoted himself as the standard-bearer for a new kind of politics.

"Our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, commonsense way," Obama said in a video posted on his Web site. "Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions. And that's what we have to change first."

Obama filed paperwork forming a presidential exploratory committee that allows him to raise money and put together a campaign structure. He is expected to announce a full-fledged candidacy on Feb. 10 in Springfield, Ill., where he can tout his experience in the state legislature and tap into the legacy of hometown hero Abraham Lincoln.

In a brief interview on Capitol Hill, Obama said the reaction has been positive and added, "we wouldn't have gone forward this far if it hadn't been this positive."

Obama's soft-spoken appeal on the stump, his unique background, his opposition to the Iraq war and his fresh face set him apart in a competitive race that also is expected to include front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Obama has uncommon political talents, drawing adoring crowds even among the studious voters in New Hampshire during a much-hyped visit there last month. His star has risen on the force of his personality and message of hope — helped along by celebrity endorsements from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and actors Matt Damon and Edward Norton.

"I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," said Obama, who added that as he talked to Americans about a possible presidential campaign, "I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics."

The 45-year-old has few accomplishments on the national stage after serving little more than two years in the Senate. But at a time when many voters say they are unhappy with the direction of the country, a lack of experience in the nation's capital may not be a liability.

"The decisions that have been made in Washington these past six years, and the problems that have been ignored, have put our country in a precarious place," Obama said.

He said people are struggling financially, dependence on foreign oil threatens the environment and national security and "we're still mired in a tragic and costly war that should have never been waged."

Clinton is expected to announce her presidential campaign within days, but her spokesman said there would be no comment on Obama's decision from the Clinton camp. Back from Iraq, she abruptly canceled a Capitol Hill news conference minutes after word of Obama's announcement, citing the unavailability of a New York congressman to participate.

Other Democrats who have announced a campaign or exploratory committee are 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Biden of Delaware and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also are considering a run.

Obama's decision was relatively low-key after months of hype, with no speech or media appearance to accompany his online announcement. He said he will discuss a presidential campaign with people around the country before his Feb. 10 event, and he wasted no time calling key activists Tuesday.

New Hampshire lobbyist Jim Demers talked with Obama for about five minutes. "He is extremely pumped and excited that this campaign is coming together," said Demers, who accompanied Obama on his visit to the state last month.

Obama's quick rise to national prominence began with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and his election to the Senate that year. He's written two best-selling autobiographies — "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" and "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance."

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his parents met while studying at the University of Hawaii. His father was black and from Kenya; his mother, white and from Wichita, Kan.

Obama's parents divorced when he was two and his father returned to Kenya. His mother later married an Indonesian student and the family moved to Jakarta. Obama returned to Hawaii when he was 10 to live with his maternal grandparents.

He graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African-American elected editor of the Harvard Law Review. Obama settled in Chicago, where he joined a law firm, helped local churches establish job training programs and met his future wife, Michelle Robinson. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois state Senate, where he earned a reputation as a consensus-building Democrat who was strongly liberal on social and economic issues, backing gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, universal health care and tax breaks for the poor.

The retirement of Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois in 2004 drew a raft of candidates to the Democratic primary, but Obama easily outdistanced his competitors. He was virtually assured of victory in the general election when the designated Republican candidate was forced from the race by scandal late in the election.

Obama insisted during the 2004 campaign and through his first year in the Senate that he had no intention of running for president, but by late 2006 his public statements had begun to leave open that possibility.

In Honor...

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam.
I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak
for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I
speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the
leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction
of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

I Have a Dream

Today my students watched The Children's March about the black children of Montgomery Alabama who marched in order to get arrested. It was hard for some of them. A couple of the girls cried. At the end they realized just a little bit more than before how important it is for kids to be activists and to change the negatives they see around them. They are already fired up after watching An Inconvenient Truth so tomorrow we will be writting letters to our government officials (the kids idea) and hoping their voices are heard.

Math Geek and the Countdown

Three months from today I'll be a hitched lady again. I think about all I have to do in the next few months and it makes my head spin. It doesn't help that I am neck deep in a show and immersed in fifth grade (I'm all about the activism and colonial studies these days).

Proof has opened with possibly the shortest rehearsal period I have experienced and the largest line load I have ever had. I thought Communicating Doors was bad with the one five minute scene being the only one I wasn't in. I think the one scene in Proof is about three minutes. At least I don't feel emotionally wasted afterwards like Our Town though should I with this one?

It's been great to work with my "dad" again. I think I need to start having contracts that dictate that my dad has to be Skip and my mom has to be Theresa. It's nice to feel close to people like that. We've gotten some nice feedback from people who liked our show better than the movie (not hard) and the London production (say what?) so we'll see what happens.

Ack it's late, what the hell am I doing up?