The Sound of Summer

(Author's Note: Yes, I have been a negligent blogger, but Nebraska Notion is back! Here is a post that is a year late, but to a Brood IV Cicada, a year is nothing. Enjoy!

Hang on!

They say that smell is the most evocative of the senses. The mere whiff of a scent closely associated with our past can, if only for a moment, speed us back in time and space faster than any invention H.G. Wells could have conceived. For me, sound is also such a time hopping vehicle, often as fast and efficient as smell. An old song comes on the car radio and I am on summer break from college, driving down a different highway in a different state, and the song is new and climbing the charts. The cacophony of children playing during recess at the elementary school on the corner carries me further back in time, to a blacktop far away, full of children who are now on the final lap of their careers, playing with their grandchildren, caring for elderly parents. Some may no longer be alive, a sobering thought. This past June, I took such a sound-powered journey back to the summers of my childhood courtesy of the very loud and rather large insect known as the Cicada.

It all started when I opened the Lincoln Journal Star on May 25^th 2015 and read an article entitled “Cicadas emerge after 17-year sleep.” The article said that Brood IV, commonly referred to as the Kansan brood, was about to emerge for the first time since 1998. I moved to Nebraska from California in late summer of 1998, which is why I was completely oblivious to Brood IV. The article explained that some species emerge every seven, thirteen, and seventeen years. They mate and die in about three weeks. The females inject their eggs into tree branches, and the baby Cicadas crawl down into the tree roots where they molt and complete their development. So this brood will hang out underground until 2032. It is amazing what a species will do to survive!

A bridge in Platte River State Park. Yes, this is Nebraska!

We missed the actual emergence, but saw much evidence of it. That was fine with me. I was there for the sound. I grew up on the East Coast in New Jersey and Connecticut. We must have had a lot of yearly emerging cicadas, because that huge chorus of rapid ticking seems to be the base track of the soundtrack of my summers. But I wonder if I had witnessed one of these broods that emerge only once in a while. One of my most vivid memories of growing up in Madison, Connecticut is of walking down Horse Pond Road passing a dense thicket of trees and bushes. Apparently, in order to not go completely insane, I had learned to tune out the cicadas. But suddenly, I became aware of this wall of sound and turned to stare in wonder into a large bush by the side of the road. The sound was overwhelming, deafening, like standing under a jet airplane right before it takes off. How was it that I had tuned out this sound before?

"Hey Mister, is it time to go underground yet?"

So on a warm muggy evening in June, by husband and I set out for Platte River State Park in Louisville, Nebraska for a “cicada hike.” Even with the windows closed and the air conditioner on, I could hear them whenever we passed a clump of trees at the edge of the fields along the road to the park. And when we parked the car and opened the door, I was back in a childhood summer, daydreaming to that cicada symphony.

I don’t know where I’ll be in 2032, so I don’t know if I’ll hear Brood IV again. At the end of our visit, my husband and I decided that once in a while, we’ll pack a picnic dinner and go hiking at Platte River State Park, and when we do, it will be nice to know that Brood IV is there, safe underground.

At the end of our visit to Platte River State Park, enjoying an ice cream cone by the lake.

A Playwright's Out of Body Experience

There is magic in the process of taking a play from the page to the stage; for a playwright, this process can feel like an out of body experience.

Timothy Scholl directs actors Cecilia Burkhart and John Burkhart in my ten-minute play Kitchen Garden. 

Back in 2011, my play Kitchen Garden began as a vague idea in my head, which became a conversation with my husband Bob during a long evening walk, and then morphed into a hastily scribbled first draft over a cappuccino in the Mill in College View. It went through various lengths and versions and then lay dormant for four years as nothing more than a computer file. I took a playwriting class, wrote more plays and saw them performed, but always wondered if there was a future for that first play. Then came Angels Playwriting Collective and the First Flight Festival, so I dusted off Kitchen Garden, tightened it into a ten-minute play with the astute feedback from my fellow Collective playwrights, and now am experiencing the magic of watching it make that leap from page to stage.

Cecilia Burkhart and John Burkhart rehearse my ten-minute play Kitchen Garden.

The out of body experience hits me during rehearsals as I watch my amazing director Timothy Scholl find subtext, character traits, motivations, and conflict that enrich the play so much beyond the written word. In succinct direction to the actors, he can communicate ideas that for me are so internalized that I can only get at them indirectly through dialogue. The actors, Cecilia and John Burkhart, inhabit my characters with a stunning familiarity, as if they were inside the characters’ heads, which translates to inside my head, a bit unnerving when you think about it. So watching a rehearsal of my own play is like watching the contents of my head take shape outside myself. Hopefully, I’ll get used to this strange phenomenon by opening night and be able to enjoy seeing my play on stage just like any other audience member, though I seriously doubt it. If you suspect that someone in the audience is having an out of body experience, that would be me.

More information about the Angels Theatre Company First Flight Festival at angelscompany.org.
Contact Brigid through her website at brigidamos.com.

Live Theatre in Nebraska City!

Getting ready to take a bow. Left to Right: Bob Hall, Brigid Amos, Paula Ray, Robin Buckallew, and Bob Graybosch.

"It's live theatre!"

The waiting audience burst out laughing as the staff continued to fiddle with the lights in the conference room, at one point plunging it into utter darkness. The observation came not from an actor but rather from an ebullient audience member. The live theatre had not, in fact started just yet.

Let me back up a bit and explain how we got to that point.

About a week before my husband and I were to leave for a family Christmas/ski vacation in Montana, I received an email from fellow Angels Playwriting Collective member Robin Buckallew saying that she was still looking to fill some roles in a reading of her one act play "Until They Forget". She also had some exciting news about the play: it had been chosen as one of three regional finalists in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre one-act competition. But that reading was to be in Minneapolis toward the end of January. The reading she needed to cast was to take place at the Lied Lodge & Conference Center in Nebraska City, Nebraska on Sunday January 4.

Robin is completing her MFA in Playwriting at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "Until They Forget" is one of the plays that make up her thesis, and one of the graduation requirements of the program is a reading of an excerpt of a play. Hence the concern about finding actors. When my husband Bob Graybosch got home, I approached him about the idea of the two of us taking the roles. I assured him that it would just be a reading, i.e., sitting at a long table with our scripts open in front of us. At the most, perhaps standing at podiums. What was I thinking?

The reading was scheduled for 5:15 pm, and there was to opportunity to rehearse before convening at 1:30 pm in the timbered lobby of Lied Lodge. The other two actors arrived: Paula Ray, playwright, actress, and psychologist (also an Angels Playwriting Collective member) and her husband Bob Hall, playwright, actor, director, founder and artistic director of Flatwater Shakespeare Company, comic book creator, and artist. We were in great company, and that was reassuring. Robin introduced us to our director Michael Oatman, Playwright-in-Residence of Karamu House in Cleveland, Ohio. We followed him into the conference room where we would rehearse, and after the first read through, Michael cordially dismissed the stage direction reader and announced that we would perform the play as a staged reading (i.e. still reading from the script, but up on our feet, moving around and carrying out the physical action of the play).

Michael is what I would call an "actor's director," and it was such an exciting experience to work with him. He is the type of director who can intuitively sense the potential in actors, and knows how to draw that potential out. My husband Bob has no stage experience (although he and I did once take an acting class with Sarah Imes Borden, and I thought he did quite well.) In a very direct, demanding, but kind way, Michael challenged Bob to find the character within himself, to loosen up, and to deliver some of his lines with confidence to the audience.

I should also say that we were very grateful to have theater veteran Bob Hall in the cast. It is always nice to have a really solid actor that leads the way and whose performance everyone else can latch onto! 

We moved into the big conference hall for one last run through, which brings us to the last minute light checks and other technical scuffling about. After very moving speeches by Charlene A. Donaghy, Robin's playwriting mentor, and by Robin herself, we launched into the performance. Although the play examines serious themes of life and death, there is a great deal of comedy in it, and the very engaged and appreciative audience laughed throughout. We received wonderful comments afterwards, as did Robin for her writing, and we all retired to the Timber Dining Room for a well-

deserved meal. (By the way, I also had a chocolate martini and my husband had a Guinness.)

An epilogue:

A few days after the staged reading, I was hanging up the slacks I wore that day. (In order to tell this story, I have to reveal a bit about my housekeeping habits.) Out of the pocket of the slacks fell a '63 Corvette. OK, that sounds weird, so let me back up again with a spoiler alert. At some point during the play, Bob Hall's character, Larry, pulls a toy '63 Corvette out of his pocket. My character, Andi, takes the car and plays with it for a while. I needed to get the car out of my hands, and it seemed natural to put it in my own pocket. Each time we ran through the play, I handed the car to Bob Hall to put into his pocket, but of course, after the performance, we ate dinner instead. I sent the car to Robin, and she will take it to Minneapolis for the reading there. That little '63 Corvette sure gets around!

Reading through the script. Left to Right: Bob Hall, Paula Ray, Brigid Amos, and Bob Graybosch.

  

Stealing from the Dead in North Platte, Nebraska

A few weeks ago, I opened up the Lincoln Journal Star and stumbled upon a short article that made me immediately go for the scissors. It wasn't the title that struck me: "Thefts at cemetery becoming blatant." What really caught my attention was the location: North Platte. It turns out that those thefts occurred at a cemetery I had visited only two weeks before. I won't repeat the contents of the article. You can read it online by clicking on the following link:

Lincoln Journal Star

On May 19th, I accompanied my husband Bob Graybosch, USDA-ARS wheat geneticist as he checked his wheat plots at three sites across the state. (See blog post of May 19, 2014.) Our final stop that day was the North Platte Research Farm.

As we pulled onto the dirt road leading to the wheat field, I looked to the north where an expanse of closely cropped grass lay in stark contrast to the heading wheat. An open space in the windbreak framed an imposing statue of Christ Carrying the Cross, as if He were struggling away from me toward Calvary. There were no tombstones visible since all markers at Floral Gardens are flush with the soil surface, so it was not clear to me what I glimpsed through the windbreak. Bob told me that it was a cemetery, and although we were running very late and our dinner way overdue, he readily agreed to make a short visit to Floral Gardens after finishing with the wheat plots.

Floral Gardens is small, quiet, and unassuming. It is set adjacent to farmland, seeming to grow from the agricultural roots of the people who claim patches of its soil as their final homes. Only two statues break up the flat green space: the Christ Carrying the Cross and a statue of Mary standing at a distance.

On that day, Floral Gardens was nearly devoid of memorials left by loved ones with one notable and attention-grabbing exception. Standing guard over a lone gravesite in the middle of the lawn was a statue of a yellow dog and a small angel figurine in an attitude of prayer. Bob immediately wanted to go over to this whimsical display to take a closer look, but I hesitated, as the memory of a cemetery visit many years ago rushed back with all the accompanying sadness.

It was Eastertime 1987, and I had just moved from Alabama to Brielle, New Jersey with my parents. After unpacking, my father and I decided to take a walk and explore our new neighborhood. Soon we encountered a beautiful little cemetery set on a hill and shaded by mature white oaks and flowering dogwoods. This was the type of cemetery with headstones of all sizes and shapes standing in rows upon the young grass. Among the traditional arrangements of lilies and other spring foliage, a bright yellow Easter bunny attached to a metal stand held out his basket of treats in a welcoming gesture.

Without thinking, we hurried to that grave to take a closer look. My father and I stood there in silence as we read the very short story of a much too short life in the name and dates carved into the granite tombstone. It was the grave of a little boy who had died at three years of age. The date of his death was around seven years earlier, and as I thought of the young couple who came to this cemetery to make sure their little one would still have a Happy Easter, my eyes burned with unexpected tears. I turned to look at my father, still staring down at the grave. It was the only time I have ever seen my father cry.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached the yellow dog and angel at Floral Gardens in North Platte. I was greatly relieved to find that it was not at all a child's grave. It was, instead, the final resting place of an older and long-married couple. They were born in the same year, and for that reason, I like to imagine that they were high school sweethearts. In bringing these tokens to their grave, their family continues to celebrate this couple's love of dogs as well as acknowledge that they now live in the company of angels. I thought that since this was the only memorial we saw at Floral Gardens, the management had some sort of rule forbidding them, and that the family of this couple was defying it. Little did I know that the reason the cemetery was nearly devoid of memorials was that people have been stealing them. The reason the yellow dog and angel were left behind was because they had no resale value.

After reading the Lincoln Journal Star article, I tried to muster what I sensed was the requisite indignation, but all I could feel was pity. Pity for people whose grief is lightened momentarily as they leave little tokens of remembrance at gravesites. Pity for those same people who return to find those tokens gone, the petty theft adding loss upon loss. I thought of that young New Jersey couple long ago, and my heart ached to imagine them returning to their little boy's grave to find that someone had absconded with the Easter Bunny. And finally, I could not help pitying the thieves themselves. Perhaps hanging out even for a brief time with the departed can help put these things into perspective. The economic desperation that would drive a person to steal memorials from a cemetery is rampant in rural Nebraska where many lack job opportunities. In the world of crime, this is a small one, and perhaps for some, a necessary one. I'd like to think that the dead would be the first to understand and forgive.  

It's 6:31 p.m. Do you know where your wheat geneticist is?

If corn is king of Nebraska and soybeans in rotation is his queen, then wheat is the clever princess, waiting to ascend the throne when the groundwater runs out. And at this time of year, when corn and soybean fields are brown expanses of prickly stubble, a wheat field rolls out lush and green like the biggest lawn you've ever seen. It's all you can do to keep from wading in barefoot, flopping down, and wriggling back and forth like a dog off its leash. But I wouldn't recommend this, unless you're the farmer who planted it. In that case, knock yourself out!

I found it hard to resist running through this lush wheat field near Wilbur, Nebraska.

This past Monday, I trailed after my husband Bob Graybosch as he traveled the state "looking at wheat." As a wheat geneticist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, this business of "looking at wheat" is a part of his job, which involves improving quality through selective breeding. He looks for and selects for traits that make wheat disease resistant and bread tastier and more nutritious, both here and in countries around the world.

But no matter how amazing these traits are, if the wheat variety can't hack it in the field, farmers won't grow it. So this past Monday, he was out looking for the winners and losers in locations near Wilbur, Clay Center, and North Platte.

Taking notes on winners and losers in wheat plots near Clay Center Nebraska.

By the way, if you're puzzling over how in May a wheat field is so far ahead of corn and soybeans, this is hard winter wheat, that clever princess that establishes herself over the harsh Nebraska winter while these other fields lie fallow. Then in midsummer, when corn and soybeans are desperately waiting to get a drink from the center pivot, winter wheat has already matured and is ready for harvest!

Only at North Platte did we see wheat heading. Look closely and you will see the wheat flowers peeking out!

It's 10:36 p.m. Do you know where your cafe is?

This morning I headed to the Mill in College View, ordered a slice of Beaver Crossing asparagus quiche, a mug of Brazilian coffee, and installed myself  at a little table along the brick wall in the narrow western room. I opened my journal, and then stared out the window at Conroy's Bakery across the street (ah Conroy's donuts, I hardly knew ye before my cholesterol rose) and savored that killer quiche and perfectly brewed coffee.

Almost every time my husband Bob and I sit together in a cafe like this, he poses the following question: What did people do before the proliferation of cafes? I know he doesn't mean  those greasy spoons that call themselves something like "The Roadside Cafe." (I suppose no one would eat at a place called the "Roadside Greasy Spoon" except maybe dishwasher salesmen.) I also don't mean those upscale restaurants that call themselves cafes, like the now defunct French Cafe in the Omaha Old Market. No, I mean the cozy cousins of Starbucks, the locally owned, espresso compressing, milk steaming, all generational watering holes like the College View Mill (yes, yes, I know the Haymarket Mill, but this one is my Mill.)

Here in this narrow space, the wheezing of the cappuccinos being born and the unidentifiable heavy metal music are thankfully muted. I see four young people on laptops, a middle aged guy in the back with headphones on, as glued to his laptop as the kids are, and a senior citizen couple right in front of me absorbed in a card game. (The card playing woman just said to her husband, "I  didn't mean for it to be easy for you." Wow, she wants to mop the floor with him.)

We could all be doing this stuff at home. But it's not the same, is it? So what is it about sitting here in this place that is other than home, where the music and chatter and card shuffling and laughter make us feel more productive, more creative, more social, more introspective, and for the lady at the next table, more competitive?

I still don't have an answer, so I'll throw the question  out to you. Time to put my plate, mug, and fork into the plastic bin and move on. Now if I can just get back to my car without crossing the street to Conroy's...

It's 10:05 p.m. Do you know where your plumber is?

     Until last Wednesday, I did not know there was such a thing as an uncloggable clog. After a good two hours of snaking from both the kitchen sink and the basement utility sink, the plumber from Green's gave up. He and I then planned out the route of the new pipes he would install running from the kitchen sink to the main outlet, a route that thankfully did not involve digging up the basement floor. When he came back on Friday, he cut the existing pipes and constructed a rather stylish bypass out of PVC pipe, tucking it neatly into the the wooden and steel supports on the basement ceiling.
     How often are we told that when we run into an obstacle (or a clog), we should keep on pushing (or snaking) against it until it budges (or flushes). What if it never does? What if it never will? What if all that slamming ourselves against an unmovable obstacle just sends us to either the chiropractor or the therapist? I am not arguing against perseverance. Perseverance is my middle name. (Actually, I don't have a middle name. If I did, Perseverance would be a good one. In that case, I might call myself Persey.) I am just suggesting that sometimes, a bypass is the way to go. I know my plumber would agree.