Wonderful Bittersweet Wizard

Tonight was the last of my four public performances as The Cowardly Lion in the New London Theatre's production of The Wizard of Oz. Friends who have seen the other shows say that this was the best of all our performances.

It's been great to get to know the cast, crew, and staff of the show and to work together to make something special for an audience. Theatre clearly demonstrates the necessity for teamwork, since it takes techs, set builders, costumers, makeup people, musicians, prop creators, directors, fund-raisers, ticket takers and more to put on a show.

There's something bittersweet and ephemeral about doing amateur theatre. When you finally get good at a show it's typically time to strike the set and move on to another one. I've moved around a lot and have seldom had a chance to do multiple shows with the same theatre group. Maybe now that I've stopped being such a rolling stone I can enjoy the cameraderie of the group and keep the great feeling going by doing more shows together.

In theatre, like life, the cast of characters is always changing. Some are headed off to college. Some move away. Some are caught up in circumstances beyond their control. Some just don't have parts in the next production. You're never sure what's next and every show has its own special chemistry. As the Lion would say, "You've gotta have courage!" You just have to put yourself out there, audition, and see what happens next.

Still, I'm enjoying finding community here in Georgia -- at our congregation, at the New London Theatre company, and more. It will be fun to build on these new connections and see where they lead.

Distilling Life and Making Magic

There was a time when I had nagging doubts about spending time on such frivolous persuits as theatre, acting in shows, writing musicals, and such. I was concerned that performance, which was so much fun, wasn't sufficiently serious an activity.

After a lot of thought I've changed my mind.

The creative arts like painting, poetry, sculpture, and theatre aren't frivolous -- even shows as silly as The Wizard of Oz. I've recently had the joy of playing the part of The Cowardly Lion [photos here ] with the New London Theatre Company and was reminded of the importance of the Arts.

In many ways the Arts distill what's central to the human experience and serve it up with passion and fire. Great art can move people to laughter and tears, provoke the spirit, inspire deep thoughts, and touch people in ways that otherwise can't be reached. Art creates a magic that is somehow more real than everyday life -- something that is profoundly serious even, and some times especially, when it's most comical.

I'm proud to be reminded of the power of Art when I'm on stage making people laugh and believe there's a special spot in all our hearts for the Jester, the Buffoon, the Wise Fool, and all the other variations of wisdom masquerading as absurdity.

In laughter, truth.

Something Special for Gwinnett

Rick Badie, a columnist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, recently wrote a column about Gwinnett County's need to have something comparable to Chattanooga's marvelous Riverfront area with it's charming architecture, aquarium, museums, restaurants, and shops. His next column featured feedback from yours truly, and others, indicating that one option could be that Gwinnett County "...should work to be the best suburb we can be, instead of working to be a city."

I've been thinking about what we could do to create something or someplace special for Gwinnett County and thought I'd share my musings.

First off, there are the major categories of things we could do, such as:

• History
  • Historical Museums
    
  • Living History Centers
    
  • Historical Sites
  
  
• Science & Technology
  • Science & Natural History Museums
    
  • Planetariums
    
  • Industry & Technology Museums
  
  
• Fine Arts & Crafts
  • Art Museums
    
  • Theatres
    
  • Cinemas
    
  • Performing Arts Centers
    
  • Craft Museums
  
  
• Nature
  • Zoos
    
  • Aquariums
    
  • Wildlife Parks
    
  • Aboretums
  
  
• Parks & Recreation
  • Parks for Hiking, Camping, Picnicing
    
  • Water Sports Areas
    
  • Hunting & Fishing Areas
    
  • Amusement Parks
  
  
• Sports
  • Professional & Semi-Pro Sports Teams
    
  • Playing Fields
    
  • Golf Courses
    
  • Sports Amusement Centers
  
  
• Retail & Restaurants
  • Mega-Malls
    
  • Outlet Malls
    
  • Retail Destinations (IKEA, Bass Pro Shop)
    
  • Restaurant Districts
    
  • Bars, Clubs, Nightlife
  
  
• One of a Kind Attractions
  • Natural Attractions (Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Stone Mountain)
    
  • Corporate Attractions (World of Coke, CNN Center Tours)
    
  • Unique Music (Nashville, New Orleans)
    
  • Halls of Fame (Cooperstown, NASCAR)

Looking at what's available within driving distance of Gwinnett County we've got Fernbank, the High Museum, ZooAtlanta, the new aquarium, Stone Mountain, Six Flags, the Gladiators and Bulldogs and much more. It would be great to have a real performing arts center for the county, but I'm confident that will happen in time -- and it's not like we can't get to Chastain Park from here.

In many ways, our greatest strength is that we're between so many great attractions. We're close to the Georgia mountains and Lake Lanier. We're not that far from golf at Augusta or the shore near Savannah. Athens is near at hand and Buckhead is an easy drive except during rush hour. We've got it good here.

I did come up with a decent idea for a one of a kind attraction for Gwinnett, however. It's not something that would give us the same sense of place as Chattanooga's riverfront, but it would be a one-of-a-kind attraction that should give people a reason to stop in Gwinnett County and stay here for at least a day.

Recently my family and I visited Wales, where my mother's grandmother was born. Near Cardiff, the capital, there's a fascinating place called the Museum of Welsh Life. The museum is situated on 100 acres of former farm land and includes buildings from all across Wales representing several hundred years of history. Visitors stroll from building to building and enjoy the difference slices of Welsh life and history represented by the individual homes, meeting halls, farm buildings, shops, and factories.

The Museum of the Family
My suggestion for Gwinnett is that we could adopt a similar approach to create a world-class Museum of the Family on a large site in the county where we could put examples of the homes used by everyday people of various backgrounds from around the world and across thousands of years of history. We could have Native American homes from the time of the Mississippian Moundbuilders through the Cherokees' trail of tears. We could have colonial log cabins and West African-inspired shotgun houses with porches and immigrant tenements and Levittown-style tract homes. We could have 19th century farm houses, sharecropper shacks, Southwest adobe dwellings and Midwestern sod homes, plus houses representing slices of 20th century life in each decade illustrating just how much things changed in that momentous 100 years.

The focus would be on family life -- how people lived, worked, ate, slept, learned, practiced their faith, amused themselves, and more. We could start small with just a few building and grow it year by year. It would be affordable for small groups to sponsor a new home and time period that might fit with their own heritage or history. Over time, as the site filled in, we'd have something quite special -- without the need to spend a lot of money up front. We'd preserve history that might otherwise be lost and could connect the families of today with the families of the past in ways that reading books about the subject couldn't match.

The Museum of the Family would also celebrate what's central to Gwinnett County -- families. I admit I think it would be an education for many of our citizens to see just what family values were different in the past and which ones have stayed the same. Still, I think that this is a project that both liberals and conservatives can support. Kids growing up on Game Boys and the Internet with their own bedrooms and cell phones need to see how children in other cultures and times lived. They could even act as living history guides at the museum in the summer.

Creating a Museum of the Family has some real merit. I think it's a project we should consider to help build something truly special for Gwinnett County.

More Than Just Dirt

We've been exploring a number of historic sites recently, including Stonehenge with it's associated barrow mounds, Roman ruins near Cardiff, various castles in England and Wales, and most recently the Etowah Mounds State Park near Cartersville, Georgia.

The site near Cartersville supported a population of several thousand people 500 years ago and includes three flat-topped mounds -- one of which is 63 feet tall.

Most sites with mounds also feature ditches nearby, since you had to get the dirt for the mounds or fortifications from somewhere. The combination of ditches and mounds, or what know in castle-building circles as the motte and bailey technique, is an ancient one.

Three key things struck me while exploring these sites, especially in light of the recent terrorist attacks in London:

• Human beings have had sophisticated civilizations for a long time
  
  
• Outposts of civilized life have always had to protect themselves from external threats
  
  
• Ditches, mounds, and walls have provided protection for civilized life for millenia

The mounds built to protect groups of people in the past were more than just dirt. They represented symbolic and often actual security. They marked the boundary between Us and Them. They took a lot of work to create and maintain and advancing technology -- like cannons -- eventually made them obsolete.

Another approach to the matter of security was to establish trading networks so that your neighbors had a vested interest in your security and prosperity as well as their own. Trading networks aren't obsolete yet.

Today, conservative talk show hosts are calling for the U.S. to build a wall around the country to curtail illegal emmigration. Many people are also worried about how China, our largest trading partner, will behave when our interests start to diverge.

It will be interesting to see how the balance between building protective mounds and building trading networks plays out over the next few decades.

Slings & Arrows -- The Power of Simplicity

My daughter has been learning target archery for the past year or so and I've had a lot of fun researching the history of archery due to her inspiration. A good starting point for learning more is this link to various archery articles.

Archery, however, is more complex and takes much more sophisticated equipment than an even older sort of missle weapon, the sling. A recent post by Jim Koch on a living history forum introduced me to the following fascinating site about the subject, www.slinging.org. According to the site, projectiles could travel as far as 1,500 feet and reach velocities of up to 250 miles per hour -- all from two pieces of cord, a pouch, and a rock. I'd encourage anyone interested in learning more about the history and modern re-creation of slinging to check out the links on the web site, particularly the Guides & Articles and the Historical and Member Galleries.

Being reminded about slinging helped me remember an important principle for modern technology -- particularly for user interface design -- "Simpler is better." It's hard to get simpler than two cords, a pouch, and a rock. Please note that any technology still requires hard work on the part of the user to get good at it. You have to put in a lot of practice time to gain proficiency at slings, longbows, and even crossbows.

As an editor, author, and speaker I can also appreciate the virtues of simplicity and I try my best to throw out words that don't help get across what I'm trying to say. Slings and arrows are a good reminder that simplicity is truly a virtue.