The Local Views

Overlooking Kentucky and the Mighty Ohio

Clearly, I am finding it difficult to post regularly now that I am working full time. However, I am dead set on getting something up here at least twice a week.

We celebrated on Sunday night after our first stumble-through of the The Foreigner. It's always a relief, and as our amazing director Ken Albers says, 'These are rehearsals to survive. You don't have to do anything but be standing by the end of the day.' And to tell the truth, while some things are difficult at this early stage ("seeing text on your retina" -- again, Ken) we've been having a ball.

Monday, my day off, I took the pups and we explored Mt. Adams. Here are a few things we saw.



A panorama of the river and across, from near the top of Mt. Adams.



Houses -- these seem to typify the style on Mt. Adams. Many of them are very old, dating to the mid-late 1800s.



On the edge of Eden park, I came upon this crumbling bridge, leading to nowhere. The parking lot and modern road right next to it could be a summation of what you'll see up here. Very very old structures surrounded by super-modern architecture. In the west, I think it's less common to see things like this. Yes, in San Francisco and tucked away in places in Los Angeles, but in Cincinnati, this strange juxtaposition seems to be everywhere. Being a newbie, I'm still fascinated by it. In Manhattan it's certainly present, but everything is so overwhelmingly crammed there, that I'd never really appreciated it.

Best to you all, and thank you for reading,

Nell

On the Absence...

...oh, it's been so long.

Getting myself and two dogs to Cincinnati ended up taking most of my time over the last two weeks. It was an incredible (nerve wracking) adventure, and I am glad that we are here and settling in and won't have to do it again for another couple of months.

Rehearsals began for The Foreigner on Friday the 13th, with an incredibly well-cast bunch in the miraculous hands of Kenneth Albers (who was in the original cast in Milwaukee and was a friend of Larry Shue) and a capable and courteous stage management team. I feel rusty and scared, but I think that I'll pull myself together and have a wonderful time with this. It's such a funny, dear play.

There is no recycling here at the apartment, though! So...I'll have to figure out how to get around that. I've already located a paper bin along a trail that leads to the theater. The plastics and aluminum will prove more difficult. But this might fortify my Reusing abilities.

Cincinnati is a surprisingly striking and beautiful town, for the most part. Its sister city is Rome, I am told, because both are built upon seven hills. I have the fortune to be staying on one of said hills, Mt. Adams, which looks out over the Ohio river and into Kentucky, which is just a bridge-walk away. There are wonderful museums within walking distance for me to explore, and being on the edge of Eden park has made taking the dogs out a breeze.

More later. Glad to be back...

Nell

Theater/Travel

Just got back from Portland and seeing The Seafarer at Artists' Repertory Theatre -- pretty exciting play.

I am gearing up for a two-month trip to Cincinnati Playhouse to do a play of me own: The Foreigner, by Larry Shue. I am GUNNING to get there...luckily, Fleet Fuel Testing has been cool with this prolonged absence from the start. I'll continue to work by computer, phone and snail mail from Cincinnati. I've never been there. Sometimes I'm startled by the sheer size and diversity of this country. Really, how can one entity expect to govern it all? We are so different, our land is so different. When the constitution was written, we hadn't even acquired much of the territory that now makes up the US. We weren't commonly mixing races. We weren't so many. How can those old words still stand? But they do...

Which brings me to the airing-out of some guilt here: I fly on commercial airlines frequently. I wish that I planned better, that I had the fortitude and patience to work a 3-5 day train ride into my schedule. That's another big change I'm going to make. Auto or Train only. And it's funny: I dont' even like flying anymore. I necessarily had to travel through Kennedy airport several times right after 9/11. I fell prey to the hysteria. It was SO tense. And then, on top of that, my father mentioned in some casual conversation that smoke, flames and loud noises are indications of major trouble mid-flight. Which forever destroyed my peace of mind. And now we see just how threatening geese are above the Hudson river. My little body shouldn't be flitting around thousands of miles up in the air anyway. 'Sunnatural, I say, 'sunnatural!

But on to renewable news: I remembered reading about solar paint in one of my grandfather's science magazines awhile back (I can't remember which one). Here's a little article that I found at New Scientist online. It's dated March 2008. At that point, the companies involved were postulating that a commercial version would be available in 2.5 years...which means that in some cases, expensive solar panels may not be necessary (its application would be probably be with very large buildings). I originally thought that conventional photovoltaic cells would somehow be involved in solar paint...this article sets me straight. Googling around, I find that people have been talking about this for several years. This makes me think that the technology is still a quite ways off from being affordable and practical for most companies (the article above even admits that dye-based solar cells are less efficient than their traditional PV counterparts). But if it does happen, and an effective, productive solar cell can be worked into a paintable liquid -- the possibilities seem limitless. And in any case, it's an imaginative, exciting idea.

--Nellamity