Brushes with playwriting greatness ...

FYI: Full-color brochure for the 15th Perinatal Bereavement Conference.

In the mess hall this afternoon I made eye-contact with Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics) but alas, I do not get to hear him speak. I am the spouse, not the writer.

Oh, and this morning we had breakfast at the Red River Restaurant, a joint they say is frequented by near-Plainfield resident David Mamet (Shut Your $%&*@, You Lousy @$#%&).

Mister Mom

One great advantage of going somewhere new is that everything you find there is new. This, at first blush, seems obvious. But as it is usually Toni who drafts our itinerary when we travel, and it is also Toni who traditionally has to find satisfying diversions for the children on a daily basis - Toni or Kelly - I have found myself, over the past few days, simplifying what was at first a mad attempt to have something wildly entertaining to do every single moment of the day.

Such mania led me, on Tuesday, to drive over an hour with the kids to South Burlington for some childrens' theater. This wasn't a waste of time (though I could, like Sedaris did in Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol rather trollishly critique the young actors' work) but I did find myself, in the interests of time, settling for a rather sad pizza joint for lunch, and then drag the sleeping children to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, where Orson remained asleep and Zelda was terrorized by the sight (and loud sound) of stuffing being injected into a bear carcass.

We've been staying closer to home since. This is just fine, as the Monpelier/Plainfield area offer a number of swell sights. After discovering the Kellogg-Hubbard Children's Library yesterday, today we returned for what is possibly the best storytime anywhere. Not only did it last an hour, Zelda lasted an hour enjoying the back and forth engagement of books and songs, and it concluded with a craft. Thanks, Megan!

Only Orson was bored, because lately he simply wants whatever looks interesting which is out of his reach. A fish hanging from the ceiling? Well, nothing else will do, then.

Yesterday it was the Cabot Creamery. Tell me, when exactly did sites of in terest begin their presentation by offering a thuddingly boring video? People used to tell us the history of a place as we went along (which was great) now we get an A&E style documentary about cooperatively owned Vermont dairies and darnit, I got out of the house so they kids wouldn't be watching tee vee.

Of course, for the two minutes they sat for it, it was the only tee vee my kids have seen all week. So that's been a plus. Also a handicap, at least when I have the desire to go to the bathroom alone or something.

The tour of the creamery, by the way, was a hit - though, again, we had an issue with big, scary machines. That crate cheese.

My off-time has been rigorously enjoyed. I have been rising at 5 or 6 to take in a run, today the woman from the help desk and I ran together, and she led me through an old trail I never would have found myself. The evenings have been spent desecrating Shakespeare or, as was the case last night, I had been asked to participate in one of the informal readings that happen every evening, just a hodge-podge of whatever everyone else is working on. It was different to feel involved.

It has been odd, being the guy with the kids. I have no idea how my presence has been received by the other young women in this dorm. I have been the only man living in the building, and that's been kind of weird, frankly. And if you were a young Grad student working in a high-intensity writing environment, you might resent having to deal with little kids running around or having tantrums in the middle of the night. But the women in their 30s or older treat me like some kind of saint when they learn who I am and what I'm doing here.

Writers' Camp

If I have any followers of this blog left, you might be wondering just where in the hell I have been. Sorry. It's been a difficult two weeks, and by difficult I mean heavy-lifting, annoying illness, preparing for two weeks out of town, dressing up like Shakespeare difficult.

The garage sale would have been a complete bust if it weren't for this one young woman and her new house. She took the Nortons' bed, the Turners' big-ass chair, our neighbors' armoire, futon and grill, and our three-piece set of cabinets. I also got rid of all the Bad Epitaph chairs and other odd set pieces that had accumulated in my basement and sat there for seven years. (And yes, I pocketed the money, call it storage fees.) Other than that virtually no one showed up.

And where the hell were you, anyway?

So after schlepping tables and chairs up and down three flights (and even down the street) with only the big, strong arms of David Hansen to help me, I was a little whipped. Then came the cough and the cold (which I still have) three tons of laundry and generally trying to predict what we may or may not need here in Vermont.

Yes, I am in Vermont. Plainfield, Vermont, home of Goddard College. It's funny, the way they use the word "college" because it's really a summer camp for total geeks over the age of thirty-five.

Toni is persuing her MFA in creative writing, and I am Mr. Mom for ten days, which is more than fair. At the moment it is raining like hell, which is has done since the middle of the night last night, and will continue to do for the rest of the time we are here.

Which is where? Toni was right, Plainfield is like Friendship, ME, only without the ocean. Which means, there's just a lot of trees here. Trees and rain. And unshaven men in their forties in shorts and Tivas who make me feel good about my sex appeal. And women who are predisposed not to notice if I even have any. It's VERMONT.

So. What to do? Yes. What to do ...

Well, while I am trying to figure that out (I do have a script of Hamlet here I am working furiously to f*ck up) here's a little news:

2006 Ohio Society for Professional Journalists Awards
Best Radio Documentary

First Place: I Hate This WCPN Cleveland

This prize is awarded to the best radio documentary produced. The documentary must be devoted to a single topic and be at least one-half hour in length.

Very nice. Thank you. For everyone's information, there are no "best radio drama" categories for these things, because no one makes those. So they put it up for Best Doc, which is weird, but hey, we won.