First of The Final 3 DN's!!!
Memories and Tributes
and a salute
to
The Cast and Crew of
Silents.
The Daily News
1 Oh, Warriors...
2 That was painful. Not gonna lie.
3 The only good thing about it was the gleam of a rally.
4 Ah, we got 'em right where we want 'em.
5 SMH.
6 Sports, I tell ya.
7 Bleh. Love the team. Just disappointed.
8 Moving On, Part One: I always enjoy when I sit down after walking short distances. I walked a few miles last night while enjoying A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court on TCM.
9 Afterwards, I rewarded myself with a bit of ice cream and another old movie, H.G. Wells' The Man Who Could Work Miracles.
10 It begins with a couple of beings from the beyond arbitrarily choosing one guy on the planet, and then giving him the power to do or have anything he wants. The very next scene finds a huge finger from the stars pointing directly at the top of his head as he moves inside a local pub. Ironically, the discussion in the pub revolves around miracles, and what they are. He decides to attempt a miracle.
11 He decides to turn an oil lamp upside down, using only his mind. To everyone's amazement, he manages this perfectly. Even the flame burns upside down.
12 My mind quickly turned back in time to when I used to move the umbrella hanging in the Piano Lab at Yerba Buena High School using only my mind. No, I DID. I swear to you! Listen, in all seriousness. Listen:
13 I've written about it over the years, and how I read about and even attempted telekinesis on many occasions. For the life of me, immediately after having read of this phenomenon, I couldn't move a Kleenex tissue, a backyard fairy, nor even a colored pencil, even if I blew on it. I could move nothing with my newly-developed mind.
14 Except that dusty old umbrella. Heres the story: I was bored one day, saw it lying around backstage, and after a month, I assumed nobody was going to claim it.
15 I decided to paint it some light pastel offshoots of pink and grey, and then hang it from a pipe in the classroom. I had hung a pipe in the room so that we could hang lights and practice scenes in a theatrical setting without putting a lot of wear and tear on the main Theatre. Using extension cords, I connected a wall dimmer to the pipe so we had more versatility in lighting. The umbrella not only looked artistic, it also served a purpose.
16 It blocked some of the bounce from the lights, and it looked dandy, giving the room a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland flair.
17 I can't remember the year I put it up there exactly; sometime in the past. How's that work for you?
18 I can say this: the first time I tried moving it was sometime around Halloween, which was always the time of year that the psychic world would come alive around there.
19 To an outsider, it was nothing. To people who moved and lived in that place, it was always fun and adventurous.
20 Lights always popped on and off, especially in the Theatre, but the lights we hung in that classroom also had a mind of their own, more than once dimming at precise moments. One time while giving a talk about the lights dimming, I was near completion of my story when the light that was on me did a slow fade. The dimmer was clearly in sight, and nobody was operating it. Stuff like that happened all the time. I'm pretty sure it was due more to lousy District electrical than to any ghosts or spirits, but it was sure fun anyway. And ghosts are much more fanciful.
21 The upside-down umbrella was its own entity. I would often be left in the room alone, and glance up at it. I would concentrate lightly, relax my mind, and say in my head, "Move left."
22 Each time, if memory serves, it would do just about the same thing. It would slightly move, as in the click-shoulder of a mime, and then it would s-l-o-w-l-y turn to the left. I would then say, "Stop." It was fairly easy to time that once it would move, and then I would say, "Move right." I would often do this during break or lunch, with students around.
23 And of COURSE it would move; it was hanging from twine. Cheap magician's trick, right?
24 But there were times that thing would stop, move, stop, move on command. It was always slow, and it always needed it quiet. Some of our more scientific sorts claim it was the ventilation system.
25 Perhaps. All motion has causal beginnings. Things don't just move. There must be cause. Simple science.
26 Acausal phenomena was out of the question, of course.
27 Except that there was always a bit of a psychic feeling to many areas of that wonderful building. I felt it often enough. Many of the more open-minded students did as well.
28 Ah, the Theatre. Always one story or haunting going on, or another. Came with the place. After I retire the Daily News this Friday, I will likely share some of those stories anyway.
29 There are LOTS of them. Some can be told, others simply can't. People did have strange things happen to them, particularly around Halloween time, and a few of them don't particularly want to share. I will honor that.
30 I have, on several occasions, attempted to write what I called over the years The Heidi Chronicles, a title boldly swiped from the 1988 award-winning play by Wendy Wasserstein.
31 It is the main story of the Heidi legend, Heidi being the purported ghost in the Y.B. Theatre.
32 Each time I've taken it that deep, each time I would take on the task of writing The Heidi Chronz, weird things would happen. I did successfully get around seven or eight chapters to a blog somewhere around 2002, but I had it on some early bloggy deal called Geocities. It was difficult to work, but I not only learned how to use it, I was one of the first teachers to put together an interactive website at a district school. The District offered some cheap cartoon-style websites and all, but building a real website took time and effort, both of which I didn't mind spending.
I even worked on it during the summer months, which to many teachers, is beyond madness. It takes a full summer to recuperate from the 24/7 pummeling that happens to teachers. You have to start each school year strong, because planning never stops, not even when sleeping. I'm no longer complaining, just reporting as a guy who lived many years of it. But that one summer...I had fun building a web page. And it turned out awesome.
33 I don't recall too many others who did that, but there were a few. John Mora, our art teacher, for example, did amazing things with websites in the early days. I knew at the time that an interactive website made available to students would be awesome. John's work inspired me a lot. I would ask him for hints and tricks. The guy was and remains an artist, as well as a good friend.
34 Many people who read this will remember when that website was up and running. It had lots of buttons, a wonderful sepia feel to it, and even a comment stream.
35 It was on that website that I first tried posting the Heidi stories. I had reached I think six or seven chapters when it all stopped. I don't recall precisely why it stopped. I recall putting pictures up, pictures of Abraham Lincoln, and of Sylvia Browne and her Nirvana Society, who investigated Bay Area haunts.
I recall pictures getting huge, and then blocking the toolbar. Lots of those sorts of things. Each time I would try to write the Chronz, something bizarre would happen with the screen. It happened enough that it scared me a bit. So stopped at six or seven chapters and never was able to add more, or even to update, really. It isn't a story that was. It was a story that was ongoing. That made it difficult to update when fonts didn't work and when toolbars got covered up.
36 Still, I managed almost to complete one website for the YB Drama Workshop, and then I was starting another for the Performing Arts Department when Geocities went up in smoke. It was a Yahoo site, and one day it was there, and the next day it wasn't. Some of my DN readers fell victim to Geocities' demise. So somewhere out there in the real clouds floats that wonderful little website, an early blogspot, and a fun one.
37 It contained a bunch of Daily News' archives on one page. It was a ton of work trying to line them all up and make sure all the links worked. It was the sloppiest of all the pages, and the toughest to construct, but everything else was meticulously arranged, and a lot of fun. I even provided a link to this brilliant website called Strong Bad, or Homestar Runner, a site my daughters showed me. It was ridiculously funny and timely. Here is a bit of info about the immortal Strong Bad:
38 Somewhere there are remnants of it still floating about.
The cover page had a link to the inimitable Strong Bad, an underground cartoon popular at the time.
39 The cover page also had this picture of Chaplin. Many of you will remember this:
I used that pic as a tribute to the very first show I ever directed at YB. It was called Silents, and it was a salute to the art of silent acting. The show was to be a series of silent scenes written and created by the students.
40 The first character in any of my YB shows, and the first to appear in Silents was Charlie Chaplin, played wonderfully by a student named David Rodriguez. We had a set that consisted of black tormentors (side curtains), a blue-lighted cyc (back wall), an old chair, and a theatrical trunk. Simple set design. Lovely. Here is how my first Show at YB opened:
41 Chaplin entered the stage, hat, cane, and with a red rose on his lapel. He looked around, looked into the trunk, shrugged, and walked off. Paradise Theater by Styx played quietly as the other performers entered, took different theatrical costume pieces from the trunk, put them on: masks, gloves, hats, and all things theatrical. They each found a spot on the stage, stood on it, and went into a freeze, looking straight out at the audience.
42 I had painted several proscenium flats in the front of the stage black. The one at house right had a tiny light blur on it, barely noticeable. It was a slide of that picture, all out of focus so as not to be seen.
43 With the cast posed motionless, Chaplin re-appeared, took his cane, and directed them, as a conductor would an orchestra. The cast responded like puppets, on command. If he lifted his arms, they lifted theirs, almost as marionettes. At the same time, I had the projected slide of Chaplin brought slowly into focus, and used smoke and strobe lights when the music exploded.
44 The Chaplin character ran offstage and all the members walked swiftly down center, towards the audience and, then darted off in all directions. Chaplin would pop out from behind black flats, stare around, and then run elsewhere, hidden from the audience.
45 The "marionettes" quick-changed to Keystone Cops, complete with police hats and billy clubs, and chased Chaplin all over the stage. At one point, the rose fell from Chaplin's lapel, and came to rest down left center.
46 Chaplin eventually emerged, ran straight down center with cops in pursuit, and lay horizontally, his feet at down-left, his arm supporting his head, like a kid watching TV. The "cops" descended on him, lifted him belt high, and carried him off left. As they passed the red rose, he swiped it up, put it to his nose, and then all disappeared.
47 Blackout.
48 And so was born the YB Drama Workshop. I'm still in touch with most of that cast, to this very minute. I remember that scene on Opening Night, and hearing an audience member yell, "All right, Harrington!" It felt wonderful, because I knew it was the beginning of what would become years of fun shows, serious shows, and such epics as See How They Run (which I had done in high school, and later in college), M*A*S*H*, Godspell, Guys and Dolls, Hair, Arsenic and Old Lace, Little Shop, Midsummer, Much Ado, Biscuits, Ship of Fools, The Wizard of Oz (with Caitlin and Nicole playing Toto on alternate nights), Reckless, The Show, The Miracle Worker, Shadow and Light, Fools, Songs We've Heard, The Creature Creeps, and Moon Dreams, to name but a few.
49 The Show was a collection of songs we had performed over the years, pieces from different shows. It was the last time I got to work with Ken Ponticelli and Shawna Fleming, two amazingly talented and wonderful friends, both of whom managed patience and humor when they probably wanted to annihilate me half the time. Or maybe the entire time. They gave that building and all the nonsense constantly swirling around a personality that fostered a massive love for the performing arts. We had many, many laughs, many, many times.
49 Many of these shows had pieces written and directed by students, which made the Workshop more special. Unfortunately, I haven't all the programs to use in order to give credit where it is needed, and I am currently experiencing slight memory loss due to a good diet and massive exercising, two things about which my body knows precious little.
50 Interestingly, I can't remember the name of my very last play as director of the Workshop. I do remember that it was a bunch of different scenes, but that it began with the Chaplin character, this time played by Luis Ruiz, or Sunshine as he is known by his friends, and ended with Chaplin, the last character to exit my last Show.
51 I knew it was the last, and I decided to end it with Chaplin. It seemed only fitting.
52 Before I even try to write the final two of these, I would like to thank publicly my beautiful wife, Helene for standing by me through all of this idiocy. I would also like to thank my two daughters, Caitlin and Nicoley, for abiding my moronic obsession with Theatre. In the process, we all learned to sing and enjoy lots of songs through the years, so it did offer a few residuals. How many kids can tell their friends they got to play Slip 'n' Slide in a school hallway soaked in black paint? Epic. And that wasn't a misplaced modifier. The hallway WAS soaked in black paint, and so were my daughters!
53 That's about it. I'm sure I've left a bazillion people out of this. Naming names of people who contributed over the years would take from now to the end of time.
54 What is particularly enjoyable though, is watching on social media the amount of alumni who are still performing and passing that joy on to their children.
55 I think it is time to bow out for today. Two more DN's coming up. Tomorrow is the last day of school in the ESUHSD. It will be the last day for students. I miss all my students from over the years, but I really miss the students I had to say good-bye to last year at Evergreen.
56 I miss all my colleagues from over the years as well. That includes teachers and staff. You all give so much, and work so hard, I wish to give YOU all a personal standing ovation.
57 Getting sloppy and emotional over here. I'd better bow out.
58 Been fun.
59 Gottago.
60 See you again. Enjoy the classic DN pics that follow. You'll instantly remember many. They will never go away. Promise.
61 Now have a GREAT day. At last.
62 Peace.
8 Moving On, Part One: I always enjoy when I sit down after walking short distances. I walked a few miles last night while enjoying A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court on TCM.
9 Afterwards, I rewarded myself with a bit of ice cream and another old movie, H.G. Wells' The Man Who Could Work Miracles.
10 It begins with a couple of beings from the beyond arbitrarily choosing one guy on the planet, and then giving him the power to do or have anything he wants. The very next scene finds a huge finger from the stars pointing directly at the top of his head as he moves inside a local pub. Ironically, the discussion in the pub revolves around miracles, and what they are. He decides to attempt a miracle.
12 My mind quickly turned back in time to when I used to move the umbrella hanging in the Piano Lab at Yerba Buena High School using only my mind. No, I DID. I swear to you! Listen, in all seriousness. Listen:
13 I've written about it over the years, and how I read about and even attempted telekinesis on many occasions. For the life of me, immediately after having read of this phenomenon, I couldn't move a Kleenex tissue, a backyard fairy, nor even a colored pencil, even if I blew on it. I could move nothing with my newly-developed mind.
14 Except that dusty old umbrella. Heres the story: I was bored one day, saw it lying around backstage, and after a month, I assumed nobody was going to claim it.
15 I decided to paint it some light pastel offshoots of pink and grey, and then hang it from a pipe in the classroom. I had hung a pipe in the room so that we could hang lights and practice scenes in a theatrical setting without putting a lot of wear and tear on the main Theatre. Using extension cords, I connected a wall dimmer to the pipe so we had more versatility in lighting. The umbrella not only looked artistic, it also served a purpose.
16 It blocked some of the bounce from the lights, and it looked dandy, giving the room a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland flair.
18 I can say this: the first time I tried moving it was sometime around Halloween, which was always the time of year that the psychic world would come alive around there.
19 To an outsider, it was nothing. To people who moved and lived in that place, it was always fun and adventurous.
20 Lights always popped on and off, especially in the Theatre, but the lights we hung in that classroom also had a mind of their own, more than once dimming at precise moments. One time while giving a talk about the lights dimming, I was near completion of my story when the light that was on me did a slow fade. The dimmer was clearly in sight, and nobody was operating it. Stuff like that happened all the time. I'm pretty sure it was due more to lousy District electrical than to any ghosts or spirits, but it was sure fun anyway. And ghosts are much more fanciful.
21 The upside-down umbrella was its own entity. I would often be left in the room alone, and glance up at it. I would concentrate lightly, relax my mind, and say in my head, "Move left."
22 Each time, if memory serves, it would do just about the same thing. It would slightly move, as in the click-shoulder of a mime, and then it would s-l-o-w-l-y turn to the left. I would then say, "Stop." It was fairly easy to time that once it would move, and then I would say, "Move right." I would often do this during break or lunch, with students around.
23 And of COURSE it would move; it was hanging from twine. Cheap magician's trick, right?
24 But there were times that thing would stop, move, stop, move on command. It was always slow, and it always needed it quiet. Some of our more scientific sorts claim it was the ventilation system.
25 Perhaps. All motion has causal beginnings. Things don't just move. There must be cause. Simple science.
26 Acausal phenomena was out of the question, of course.
27 Except that there was always a bit of a psychic feeling to many areas of that wonderful building. I felt it often enough. Many of the more open-minded students did as well.
28 Ah, the Theatre. Always one story or haunting going on, or another. Came with the place. After I retire the Daily News this Friday, I will likely share some of those stories anyway.
29 There are LOTS of them. Some can be told, others simply can't. People did have strange things happen to them, particularly around Halloween time, and a few of them don't particularly want to share. I will honor that.
30 I have, on several occasions, attempted to write what I called over the years The Heidi Chronicles, a title boldly swiped from the 1988 award-winning play by Wendy Wasserstein.
31 It is the main story of the Heidi legend, Heidi being the purported ghost in the Y.B. Theatre.
32 Each time I've taken it that deep, each time I would take on the task of writing The Heidi Chronz, weird things would happen. I did successfully get around seven or eight chapters to a blog somewhere around 2002, but I had it on some early bloggy deal called Geocities. It was difficult to work, but I not only learned how to use it, I was one of the first teachers to put together an interactive website at a district school. The District offered some cheap cartoon-style websites and all, but building a real website took time and effort, both of which I didn't mind spending.
I even worked on it during the summer months, which to many teachers, is beyond madness. It takes a full summer to recuperate from the 24/7 pummeling that happens to teachers. You have to start each school year strong, because planning never stops, not even when sleeping. I'm no longer complaining, just reporting as a guy who lived many years of it. But that one summer...I had fun building a web page. And it turned out awesome.
33 I don't recall too many others who did that, but there were a few. John Mora, our art teacher, for example, did amazing things with websites in the early days. I knew at the time that an interactive website made available to students would be awesome. John's work inspired me a lot. I would ask him for hints and tricks. The guy was and remains an artist, as well as a good friend.
34 Many people who read this will remember when that website was up and running. It had lots of buttons, a wonderful sepia feel to it, and even a comment stream.
35 It was on that website that I first tried posting the Heidi stories. I had reached I think six or seven chapters when it all stopped. I don't recall precisely why it stopped. I recall putting pictures up, pictures of Abraham Lincoln, and of Sylvia Browne and her Nirvana Society, who investigated Bay Area haunts.
I recall pictures getting huge, and then blocking the toolbar. Lots of those sorts of things. Each time I would try to write the Chronz, something bizarre would happen with the screen. It happened enough that it scared me a bit. So stopped at six or seven chapters and never was able to add more, or even to update, really. It isn't a story that was. It was a story that was ongoing. That made it difficult to update when fonts didn't work and when toolbars got covered up.
36 Still, I managed almost to complete one website for the YB Drama Workshop, and then I was starting another for the Performing Arts Department when Geocities went up in smoke. It was a Yahoo site, and one day it was there, and the next day it wasn't. Some of my DN readers fell victim to Geocities' demise. So somewhere out there in the real clouds floats that wonderful little website, an early blogspot, and a fun one.
37 It contained a bunch of Daily News' archives on one page. It was a ton of work trying to line them all up and make sure all the links worked. It was the sloppiest of all the pages, and the toughest to construct, but everything else was meticulously arranged, and a lot of fun. I even provided a link to this brilliant website called Strong Bad, or Homestar Runner, a site my daughters showed me. It was ridiculously funny and timely. Here is a bit of info about the immortal Strong Bad:
38 Somewhere there are remnants of it still floating about.
The cover page had a link to the inimitable Strong Bad, an underground cartoon popular at the time.
39 The cover page also had this picture of Chaplin. Many of you will remember this:
The Chaplin of Silents.
I used that pic as a tribute to the very first show I ever directed at YB. It was called Silents, and it was a salute to the art of silent acting. The show was to be a series of silent scenes written and created by the students.
40 The first character in any of my YB shows, and the first to appear in Silents was Charlie Chaplin, played wonderfully by a student named David Rodriguez. We had a set that consisted of black tormentors (side curtains), a blue-lighted cyc (back wall), an old chair, and a theatrical trunk. Simple set design. Lovely. Here is how my first Show at YB opened:
42 I had painted several proscenium flats in the front of the stage black. The one at house right had a tiny light blur on it, barely noticeable. It was a slide of that picture, all out of focus so as not to be seen.
43 With the cast posed motionless, Chaplin re-appeared, took his cane, and directed them, as a conductor would an orchestra. The cast responded like puppets, on command. If he lifted his arms, they lifted theirs, almost as marionettes. At the same time, I had the projected slide of Chaplin brought slowly into focus, and used smoke and strobe lights when the music exploded.
44 The Chaplin character ran offstage and all the members walked swiftly down center, towards the audience and, then darted off in all directions. Chaplin would pop out from behind black flats, stare around, and then run elsewhere, hidden from the audience.
45 The "marionettes" quick-changed to Keystone Cops, complete with police hats and billy clubs, and chased Chaplin all over the stage. At one point, the rose fell from Chaplin's lapel, and came to rest down left center.
46 Chaplin eventually emerged, ran straight down center with cops in pursuit, and lay horizontally, his feet at down-left, his arm supporting his head, like a kid watching TV. The "cops" descended on him, lifted him belt high, and carried him off left. As they passed the red rose, he swiped it up, put it to his nose, and then all disappeared.
47 Blackout.
48 And so was born the YB Drama Workshop. I'm still in touch with most of that cast, to this very minute. I remember that scene on Opening Night, and hearing an audience member yell, "All right, Harrington!" It felt wonderful, because I knew it was the beginning of what would become years of fun shows, serious shows, and such epics as See How They Run (which I had done in high school, and later in college), M*A*S*H*, Godspell, Guys and Dolls, Hair, Arsenic and Old Lace, Little Shop, Midsummer, Much Ado, Biscuits, Ship of Fools, The Wizard of Oz (with Caitlin and Nicole playing Toto on alternate nights), Reckless, The Show, The Miracle Worker, Shadow and Light, Fools, Songs We've Heard, The Creature Creeps, and Moon Dreams, to name but a few.
49 The Show was a collection of songs we had performed over the years, pieces from different shows. It was the last time I got to work with Ken Ponticelli and Shawna Fleming, two amazingly talented and wonderful friends, both of whom managed patience and humor when they probably wanted to annihilate me half the time. Or maybe the entire time. They gave that building and all the nonsense constantly swirling around a personality that fostered a massive love for the performing arts. We had many, many laughs, many, many times.
49 Many of these shows had pieces written and directed by students, which made the Workshop more special. Unfortunately, I haven't all the programs to use in order to give credit where it is needed, and I am currently experiencing slight memory loss due to a good diet and massive exercising, two things about which my body knows precious little.
50 Interestingly, I can't remember the name of my very last play as director of the Workshop. I do remember that it was a bunch of different scenes, but that it began with the Chaplin character, this time played by Luis Ruiz, or Sunshine as he is known by his friends, and ended with Chaplin, the last character to exit my last Show.
51 I knew it was the last, and I decided to end it with Chaplin. It seemed only fitting.
52 Before I even try to write the final two of these, I would like to thank publicly my beautiful wife, Helene for standing by me through all of this idiocy. I would also like to thank my two daughters, Caitlin and Nicoley, for abiding my moronic obsession with Theatre. In the process, we all learned to sing and enjoy lots of songs through the years, so it did offer a few residuals. How many kids can tell their friends they got to play Slip 'n' Slide in a school hallway soaked in black paint? Epic. And that wasn't a misplaced modifier. The hallway WAS soaked in black paint, and so were my daughters!
53 That's about it. I'm sure I've left a bazillion people out of this. Naming names of people who contributed over the years would take from now to the end of time.
54 What is particularly enjoyable though, is watching on social media the amount of alumni who are still performing and passing that joy on to their children.
55 I think it is time to bow out for today. Two more DN's coming up. Tomorrow is the last day of school in the ESUHSD. It will be the last day for students. I miss all my students from over the years, but I really miss the students I had to say good-bye to last year at Evergreen.
56 I miss all my colleagues from over the years as well. That includes teachers and staff. You all give so much, and work so hard, I wish to give YOU all a personal standing ovation.
57 Getting sloppy and emotional over here. I'd better bow out.
58 Been fun.
59 Gottago.
60 See you again. Enjoy the classic DN pics that follow. You'll instantly remember many. They will never go away. Promise.
61 Now have a GREAT day. At last.
62 Peace.
~H~
fin.
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