Monthly Archives: May 2016
The Vietnam war started before I can remember and lasted until I was nearly grown. Yet this Memorial to the women that served in Vietnam wasn’t completed until after I was having children. Somewhere in between I was told this story by a woman who felt her buddies were left out of Memorial Day. The woman was in Vietnam serving alongside other women near the front, tending to the wounded. She had never intended to be in a war; she…..
This year I was privileged to hear high school graduation speeches and a memorial for a family patriarch within one twenty-four hour period. Graduation and funeral speeches are rarely remembered exactly — we are all too caught up in the moment, moments of them do crystalize across time. A high school valedictorian at an honors academy gave a speech that made me sad. She seemed to think we are meaningless dust in an uncaring universe and she urged the students to…..
With software we continually improve by removing bugs and adding features. Eventually we get to the point we want to do something dramatically different and we call the last release a terminal release. At that point we don’t spend time on it anymore and it is stable. If you want the next set of improvements, a bigger upgrade is required. Oddly, history has a similar rhythm. The nature of people telling stories in print means they stabilize into the accepted…..
I’m sure Lin-Manuel Miranda is onto something big because this musical is seeping into parts of me formerly occupied only by certain songs from The Sound of Music. Hip hop and rap are not my usual cup of tea, but here they are raised to a level beyond generational preferences, and used where their form takes on an uncanny usefulness, and beauty. I was raised on The Sound of Music, as it is my mother’s favorite. It’s in the deep…..