Little Shop of Horrors

Last night we saw Little Shop of Horrors at the Albuquerque Little Theatre. It was fun! We had four seats in the middle of the first row. That was Destiny, Kirby, Devyn and me. Five behind in the second row: Keith was behind me and then Ashlee, Marty, Noor and Brie. Noor and Brie have been here for nearly a week, checking out New Mexico for a probable move.

When "Somewhere that's Green" started, Devyn said "The music is like Book of Mormon." She is So Right! "Sal-ta-lay-ka-city" (however it's written out begins with the same intro music, and is a bit of a parallel to "Somewhere That's Green." I was so happy that she noticed. :-)

At the end, though, she was really sad that Audrey at Audrey's fate, and was nearly crying. Some cast members were out, and the voice of Audrey II was easily accessible (though he did have a little crowd). I asked if he knew where the one who had done Audrey was and told him Devyn was a little upset and might like to see her. I thought he would just point a direction, but she was still back stage, and he went to get her, but she was just coming out. Emily Melville. She apologized for having her costume off already, but talked to Devyn for a good little while, said "You were in the front row, right? You were really paying attention, too..." so she told her it wasn't real, and that if she wanted to see the movie it had a happier ending. They talked a little more, about how to be in plays, I think—I walked away but Kirby and Destiny heard more. It was cheering and calming for Devyn, and I appreciated it.

The sets were great, the plant-puppets (rented) were especially great, the singing was good (some parts great). Costumes good. Staging good! We all had fun.

"Suddenly Seymour" was especially good. We've seen it twice before, but not lately. I either hadn't heard or didn't remember the song they did with four phones, when the store has become really successful, and that was fun.

Nicholas Handley did the dentist, a store customer, and all three people who came to offer Seymour contracts near the end. Quick costume changes, and fun voices. He did a great job. The program said nothing about his other experience, but I poked around a bit and he plays violin, is in a mariachi band, was Tony in West Side Story (which we saw because Emma played Anybodys).

I didn't take any photos (of course) but here's the preview video:

A Day with Sandra Dodd—18 Sept 2016, Long Ditton, Surrey

Years pass, and people forget, and I don't want to forget this big, wonderful, exhausting day.

I didn't have any notes on this in my blog, so I've brought what Janine, one of the organizers put on facebook. I'm adding it on September 20, 2018 and backdating. When she wrote "we" she tagged to credit:
Julie Daniel
Marta Venturini
Serah Daya
Parvine Shahid
Rippy Saran Dusseldorp
Polly Griffiths would've been tagged but she's not facebooky.

But as you will see in the photos, some of them had male counterparts, also helping. And one of the dads took a batch of kids off and away to do fun things, which was also helpful. Thank you James, Arif, Karl, and Graham. Thank you, Bruno, for making it possible for Marta to be there.

There were people there from Canada (Serah's family), Ireland, UK, Netherlands, Portugal, and other places I can't remember. I'm still tired from that day. Just thinking of it reminds me of exhaustion. :-) I was elated, too, though, because it went well.

---

September 20, 2016 at 7:25 AM · West Molesey, United Kingdom.

We did it!

Julie Daniel and myself, and a team of the loveliest people you could wish for, created 'A DAY WITH SANDRA DODD' and it was a HUGE success!
The biggest shout out of all, is of course to Sandra. Her enthusiasm, energy, strength, humour, intellect, experience and warmth filled the room, and then some!

And I really could keep going, adding more and more words to describe Sandra, and her wonderfully engaging and enlightening words and stories. All from and about her experiences, thoughts and ideas, of living and learning this incredible way with her own 3 children, (now adults).

A very special lady indeed, and it was a privilege to have her speak for us more experienced Unschoolers, and touch on things most of us had never heard or seen written by her before, and that has truly deepened our knowledge and confidence, and was inspiring beyond measure.
She also spoke for a mammoth amount of time! She deserved an Olympic gold for sure!

THANK YOU SO MUCH Sandra ❤️
And to everyone who helped the day run so smoothly and successfully ☺️

(Some random pics from the day)

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Click Memories of speaking in England two years ago for more photos!

Oddities, England

The antlers were in all the mirrors. If anyone wants large mirrors, the antique shop in Ashford, Surry, has Many. It was hard to see the mirrors, for all the odd treasures.

The building used to be a pub. The largest room has two skylights, which enabled Jesus to fit up among the chandeliers (and to have a nice lighting effect on his head, too):


A mystery I'm pondering, rather than looking up.


James says "cabbage" is not a term for the operation of a taxi service, but it does look like a gear-shift knob. And another of them seems to have a door knob as handle. I'll look it up when there's a lull, someday, maybe.

This seemed to be Indian workmanship, on thin metal attached to/around a wooden horse. Pretty wonderful, but impractical to own outside of the local area.


This was interesting:


In the left breast pocket of that Levi jacket were two little bullets. I didn't photograph them, or some of my friends could surely have named them. I did look up the organization on that upper patch, and write to the editor of their magazine, saying that if there's someone near, they might want to go there and get it (with some directions about where in the shop, and where the shop is). Said maybe don't mention the bullets, when purchasing. So he wrote right back and invited me to a round-up in a couple of weeks. I will be RIGHT NEAR THERE, three days before. It's a group of people interested in U.S. history from 1700 on, mostly Western history. It would have been fun to be there, but the round-up is near The Wash (which I had never heard of it until playing "Articulate" with Adam, Meredith and Julie a few nights ago), and I will be in Brighton.
British Westerners' Association
Shops like this one are as good as museums for me. I can take photos, touch things, ask questions, and if something is really wonderful, I could potentially take it home—at least as far as Julie's house, if not to Albuquerque.

Outside was a beautiful old pump, and these are not all the cool things, but they're a representative sample of a thousand things. Carved chests and wooden buckets might get their own post.

The problem with "being supportive"

I'm moving this here so I can find it again, and so it might be read in a more leisurely way than people tend to read on facebook. I wrote it July 4, 2016:

Bad advice.
Sometimes "support" is the same as very bad advice.

Come on people, we are all doing the best that we can.
You—stressed parent—are doing a great job no matter what, and this is why:

1. No one knows your child better than you
. . . .
You are the perfect parent for your child. You are the expert. Trust yourself.
2. Our kids are going to survive.
. . . .
They are going to be okay—and so are you.
3. We’re all supposed to be doing it differently.

That's from a longer blog post called "3 Things all Parents Need to Hear."

But those things aren't helpful, and they're not true in all cases. Let's not share scare stories, but each of you could think of a scare story—just one, don't inventory all the sad things you know—about a child who didn't survive, about a parent who wasn't ANY kind of expert, who should NOT be trusted.

Anyone who soothes an irresponsible, neglectful, or abusive parent is contributing to that neglect and abuse.
ARE all kids eventually okay? No.

Is it okay to soothe the parents of kids who were neglected and abused?
The author of that blog post thinks so. The 144 people who shared it thought so.

I don't think so.

I'm NOT saying everyone should become unschoolers. Many people should not even consider unschooling. Unschooling's not easy.

What I'm saying is that it's better to encourage other parents to be conscious and careful, patient and kind, than to spread nonsense like everything's the same and no one else can say you could possibly do better.

The writing wasn't considering the kids' point of view. If a child thinks a parent could do better, shouldn't that matter? But this was just parents assuring parents that there is no such thing as half-assed, no such thing as bad parenting. All parenting is equal and all children will survive and be fine.

People who would prefer that message to actual ideas that could help should probably leave this group and find "support" for just whatever, because it is definitely out there.

---

End of the quote.
I have a couple of pages on my website about "support." One (the second link below) is a random generator of more and more worthless support. The other has those messages in a different format, with commentary following.

http://sandradodd.com/support.html

http://sandradodd.com/support

Please don't coo and soothe another adult who is harming a child.

With Erika, visiting Holly

Blue Heron Brewery in Rinconada. Those three doors face East, South and West—so not such a large room as the panorama makes it seem. It was nice to see Holly working. Right after this, other people started coming in.

Amanda's cat Simon

Yesterday we were with Holly in Taos and gave her a ride to Pilar, to her friend Amanda's house, where she had left her truck.

I went down the side of the house Amanda is renting, to photograph the wheelbarrow, and when I turned back, I saw the cat, on on a viga. I took several photos, but THIS one was one of those shots that, looked at later, seems more wonderful than I could have expected or planned. It's not cropped, it was just like this:


I like the hills showing in the lower left, and the sun through the clouds through the trees in two places above that. But at the time, I was only looking at Simon and at the end of that viga.


The cat in greater context:

Serendipity and that

These days Joyce Fetteroll has a small group of witnesses and perhaps assistants, for a book she and Danny are working on. She's bringing (alphabetically) a word and we make up definitions, and when she tells us the real one, we use it in a sentence. There's art involved, and humor, too.

Today she had defined "latrinalia"


I wrote:

Just the other day Holly quoted me the traditional "If you sprinkle while you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie."

I asked if she knew of the equivalent one for men's rooms. She did not.

We aim to please.
You aim too, please.

At a roadside candle outlet in North Carolina or Virginia, on a road trip with a friend of mine many years ago, I chose one of several toilet stalls. While sitting, I read "I love Keith Dodd" in someone else's handwriting. Someone else's Keith Dodd, no doubt. Quite a great coincidence.

Including Joyce's deposit of a word meaning bathroom writings just a few days after Holly and I talked about that a bit, I've had three of them this week.

Because I bought some things from China and Holly was here when they arrived, I told her about the government-subsidized postage and China's 20 years or so of moving toward capitalism. She and Keith brought a bottle of mead they bought because a friend's brother owns the company. It was good. I couldn't remember his name and when I did, I googled and found his dad, who was an atomic researcher and I didn't know so much cool stuff about him. In an interview about early atomic research in Los Alamos, he was asked about a co-worker who had moved to China. He said she was disappointed about China's eventual movement away from communism and toward capitalism.

Yesterday at lunch, Keith was asking what I knew about labyrinths in churches. I did know some, and a friend of ours designed and oversaw installation of an outdoors one at a church not far from us. Later that day I turned on the Sherlock Holmes audible book I'm listening to, and the word labyrinth popped up. 　

There's a word for that—words or factoids popping up—but I don't remember it. It's one of the many magically fun things in life.

And I posted that somewhere and someone gave me the word, and then...
I can't remember where it was provided, or who.