A Child Of Atom

This could very well be the best picture I have taken in this series. Or at least the most incongruous.

The stuff from that Broadway show that we have been raiding has been sitting in a dusty, filthy warehouse for three years or so, and it is covered in... muck. It all needs a good scrub down before we can use it usually, including the soft goods. This cloud drop painted sky drop is currently the backdrop for my Showboat that is now running. (After I sewed it together and blendedthe panels of course.)

Sorry to be absent for a few days. As you know I'm working summerstock upstate and I have a much more limited access to the internet than usual. The internet at the theatre is satellite based and if the tiniest cloud drifts by it goes out. The only other access is if I drive 5 miles to actor housing, but that was curtailed this week because the shop truck was down, which meant I had very limited means to leave "campus" to go and do anything. But I'm in NYC for the weekend, so lets play catch up.
Deep breath now...

Ready?

My theatre is doing a show that needs a large black ensemble, and they just lost two of the locals who had planned to be in the show. To make up for the loss they are shifting two Hispanic actors from the resident company into the roles. I joked with one of them, and the director, that they can just consider that they are playing octoroons. They both stared at me, not understanding at all. A quick survey of the nearby people, which included several of the black cast, proved that besides me, one person knew the term, and he was also Southern. Seems to me that any Southern schoolchild is taught enough history to know what that means, but apparently not here. Or is it just that we are so much more race conscious in the South that I still know the term even though it has long since passed out of the lexicon?

Welcome back for the traditional 12 of 12. 12 of 12 is a project started by Chad Darnell, 12 photos each 12th day to document your day. See the rest of the participants here.

Even though I am "away" at summerstock right now I happened to be back in the city for the weekend, so rather than theatrical exploits you get the regular city stuff this time. I decided with this photo to theme myself with "clocks" this months. Kid Flash and I were headed out to run some errands, so this is where my day began. It was a slightly late start but considering that we were out to 2am last night at the derby game, not bad.

This one is actually a stopped clock, so I focused on the detail rather than the clock face. Right outside the 14t street subway exit, a former bank, and most recently a former grocery store, the building is currently empty.

Down the street a few blocks, to give you an idea of the time since the last clock was stopped. We grabbed breakfast at a diner first, apple pancakes for me, and a veggie omelet for KF.

After that the shopping begins. A new pair of shoes for me, some clothes for KF something to keep the cat away from the furniture... there was a long list of things we needed to accomplish. This phone was at the shoe store.

One of the more enigmatic clocks in NYC, it counts both up and down at the same time. The first 7 digits display the time. The last 7, in reverse order, count down to midnight. So at the time this was taken it was 13:33:11.3 and there was 10:26:48.6 to midnight.

After that we stopped by a local flea market and I grabbed this one, another stopped clock, but in stylish company.

More stopped clocks at one of the shops we visited. Interestingly (to me at least) all the clocks were set to 10:10. That led me to some researching, and indeed 10:10 is considered to be the optimum hand placement to showcase a clock! Though, some would ascribe more metaphysical reasoning to it.

Home again home again.

Time to start cooking dinner, tonight we are fixing a summer squash pizza. KF is in the kitchen prepping the dough.

KF's phone checking how long the dough has been rising. The picture is Ted on the day we adopted him.

Counting down the cooking time! Almost time to eat. It ended up being quite a tasty pizza, though our grocery store ws out of fresh basil so we didn't have it quite the most optimal fashion, it would only have been better.

The end of the day. Time to get these posted and get to bed. Tomorrow it is a long busride back up to the woods and back to my summer work. See you next month!

It's been a while since I shared a recipe so I'll give you the one pictured in 105. It is pretty much an open ended recipe, you and increase or decrease the ingredients as necessary.

It is named for a mining camp legend. A woman keeping a boarding house near a mining camp was running short on ingredients one day, so she ground up and tossed her husband's red flannel union suit into her potato hash to extend it a bit. The bright red hash proved so popular with the miners that she had to find a way to make it every day, and beets proved cheaper that red flannel union suits, so she substituted those, and a recipe was born!

Red Flannel Hash
1 cup beets, in small cubes
1 cup sweet potato or yams, in small cubes
1 cup white or red potato, in small cubes
1/2 cup yellow onion, in small cubes
1/2 cup corned beef, in small cubes (optional)
4 Eggs
Fresh rosemary
Olive Oil

Combine all ingredients except eggs in a large skillet and saute until the vegetables have cooked through and are tender. Salt and pepper to taste. Fry or poach eggs and serve atop the vegetable mixture.

Well, that's it. I've survived the first big push. The first show is open. That one was actually not mine, I was simply a painter on it, which is why I felt comfortable taking a second gig (The Full Monty) that overlapped so much. From here on out the shows are all me from floor to ceiling and two of the three of them are monster sized shows. I'm looking forward to doing my own work. I love painting, and that magical moment of making wood look like... well... another kind of wood, usually... but I am am SO ready to start tackling my own stuff.

First however I am taking a few days off. Schedules being the way they are, with matinees, and childrens shows, and days off, and blah blah the carpentry staff will not even be touching my show until Saturday, so I am going back to the city for a few days of cuddles and roller derby before coming back to really get started.

Things I'm thankful for: a whole 24 hours with no rain. Fireworks at the dam (See 98). The first show is almost open.

I may be misunderstanding this holiday...

There's nothing like blogging daily (or trying to anyway) to show exactly how boring your life becomes when you don't leave the couple acres of property that you occupy for days at a time. My most exciting event in the past two days has been discovering a new room of stuff in the materials from that Broadway show that I have been pilfering from. It contained (among other things) a 25'x75' blackout curtain! That's enough fabric to wrap nearly all three sides of my stage, which is great when I have two shows designed that don't include any portals or teasers. I was wondering how I was going to hide the side walls of the theatre in those shows...

My traveling is over. My overlapping shows in CT and NY have settled down, the CT show is open and running as of 1:45 ago, and I did my first work on the first of the NY shows today, so the summer is in full swing. One show down 5 to go.

This is my first summerstock experience coming in when the season is already underway. They have 3 shows under their belts already at this point, and I am a newcomer in the eyes of most of the actors and the crew that I don't know from before. It is an interesting experience. The thing that seems most different is that the younger actors, the non-Equity resident company seems to respect me a bit more, as an outsider I guess, rather than viewing me as "one of the guys" the people that they have already become accustomed to seeing.