When I went off to the CUNY Graduate Center to get my doctorate in theater history/criticism/literature, I wrote to Bonnie Marranca, the co-founder and editor of Performing Arts Journal offering to volunteer to help out in any way was needed. I had been reading back issues in the library at Illinois State University, where I was working on my masters degree, and I was inspired by the vision for the theater that Marranca and her husband, Gautam Dasgupta, put forward issue after issue.

“Disobedience, then, in the sense in which we use it here, is an act of the affirmation of reason and will. It is not primarily an attitude directed against something, but for something: for man’s capacity to see, to say what he sees, and to refuse to say what he does not see. To do so he does not need to be aggressive or rebellious; he needs to have his eyes open, to be fully awake, and willing to take the responsibility to open the eyes of those who are in danger of perishing because they are half asleep.

WTAF

Total market manipulation. I have put all of my retirement savings into cash and CDs. I will not support this dishonest use of the federal government. Disgusting.

Science tells us that nearly every cell in our body is replaced every 7 to 10 years. I have a former student who has been incarcerated for 41 years, since he was 17. So, for at least the past 31 years, we have been imprisoning someone who had nothing to do with the crime. And if you find this argument specious, you should read some of the arguments for keeping him there by so-called criminologists and tell if they are any better.

I just deactivated my Threads account as the first step to erasing the account completely. I had 99 followers, so not a major loss. It was OK as long as I stayed in the “Following” column, but the “For You” column made me feel like we are a nation of people who simply repeat variations on the uninspired talking point of the day.

I find literary critic Edmund Wilson’s writing style invigorating. I wish I’d come across his overall approach to his writing career much earlier!

More Jaron Lanier: “Oy, AI.” It is a good supplement, or dare I say replacement, for his interview on Sean Illing’s podcast “The Gray Area” (which I linked to in a previous post) mainly because someone like Lanier seems to be boxed in by the assumptions baked into the interviewer’s questions, no matter how well-meaning the interviewer is. “Have you not listened to anything I’ve said at all?” Lanier almost shouts at Illing at one point, and I sympathize with his frustration.

This morning, I listened to Sean Illing interview Jaron Lanier, a tech insider known for his work with Virtual Reality, and also a humanist thinker about things tech. This interview is about AI, and Lanier’s thoughtful humanism was refreshing.

BREAKING: Only 12% of the 1903 general public believed that the flight at Kitty Hawk would affect their lives, and 75% thought it would affect them negatively.

So here’s the problem: American-made cars aren’t made with American-made parts. So prices on those cars will also go up. What a maroon.

For some reason, I decided to post something about AI on Threads. 2 stars. Would not recommend.

“One study (Leveraging Investments in Creativity 2003) found that 79 percent of all grants to individual artists were under $10,000, 66 percent were under $5,000, and sadly, 50 percent of all grants to artists in this country were under $2,000.” Because Art John R. Killacky But by all means let’s stay locked into the non-profit model for the arts. It’s really working!

I reflect on Derek Thompson’s interview of composer Mark Henry Phillips about his use of AI as part of the composition process and the effects AI might have on his own employment, and I also respond to business professor Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI as he explores the latest advances in AI image generation. Is it all doom and gloom?

Someone once said that I write in declarative sentences, and that’s true. I really dislike all the bobbing and weaving of “this is just my opinion” and “maybe I’m wrong, but” and all the other ways people try to avoid offense. Of course it’s “my opinion,” I wrote the damn thing–who else’s opinion would it be? Of course I might be wrong–is anybody infallible? It’s such a waste of time. Get in, say the thing as directly as possible, and get out.

“Recently, I read this essay by Robert Porterfield, an aspiring actor who founded a theatre company in Abingdon, Virginia. The company called Barter Theatre is apparently the nation’s longest-running professional theater, except I’ve never heard about this theater until now.” This was written by a 20-something theater person. It’s not their fault that they haven’t heard of it–nobody mentioned the Barter Theatre to me, either, when I was their age.

There continues to be a lot of “discussion” concerning AI. I have not taken a stand on this blog, preferring to follow around @apoorplayer and make counter-arguments, which is just sort of trollish. So let me write here and give him a chance to follow me around for once. Let me start with a personal story. On St Patrick’s Day 1978, my mother, who had just turned 42, died of liver cancer.

Ireland Frank Delaney The one joy that has kept me going through life has been the fact that stories unite us. To see you as you listen to me now, as you have always listened to me, is to know this: what I can believe, you can believe. And the way we all see our story—not just as Irish people but as flesh-and-blood individuals and not the way people tell us to see it—that’s what we own, no matter who we are and where we come from.

Using AI as a **partner **in a research team.

I have had it with US politics. It’s not because–or not ONLY because–the Trump Administration’s policies (I use the term extremely loosely) are uninformed, haphazard, and abusive, it’s because the entire process has become superficial and narrow. And while the Republicans seem to have cornered the market on superficial, narrow stupidity, the Democrats aren’t that far behind them. The political system has been entirely taken over by marketing people. Political discourse is like one 30-second commercial after another, no vision, no depth, just slogans.

There is so much BS in this article from American Theatre Magazine about what theater students should be taught about “the biz” thatit made my head explode.

If a university wanted to create an innovative theater program, I would come out of retirement to create a BA in Sustainable Theater. It would focus on environmentally sustainable design, playwriting, directing, and acting. There would also be a large component devoted to starting and running a company, and seniors would run their own company out of a storefront.

Wait, what??? I was one of the people whose Social Security benefit was lowered due to the Windfall Elimination Provision, which was eliminated by the Social Security Fairness Act that was signed by Biden in early January. Today, I received a letter from the SSA spelling out how that will affect my monthly benefit, and MY BENEFIT IS BEING REDUCED BY $138 A MONTH??? WHAT?

I confess I am fascinated by this Scottish theater company, who does a new play every week and performs in a pub. Last year, they celebrated their 20th anniversary. Here is an article about their 20 years in business. And below is a song with pictures written for the celebration. I have never seen a production, and I can’t even say whether I’d like what they do, but what I do like is the way they seem to have thought about theater from the ground up.

(This post is the result of writing I’ve been doing on my personal project.] I’ve been reading Ivan Illich’s 1970 classic Deschooling Society and John McKnight’s The Careless Society. I’ve admired the ideas of these two people over the years, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that they actually knew each other and that McKnight was greatly influenced by the time he spent with Illich. Reading the two books side by side (not literally!