In preparation for Conversations Across the Generations and the Centuries in the Spring,
I have decided to create an online journal to keep track of my reactions to various cultural events
in which I have partaken.
Enjoy.

Children of a Lesser God

What exactly can I say about a play about the inability to speak? An evening at the University Theater brought Mark Medoff’s terrific play, Children of a Lesser God to life in a spectacular way. Never before have I seen such a touching performance.

The story of deaf-school teacher, James Leads, sweeps every corner of life when he meets a new student, Sarah Norman, a beautiful woman who has been deaf since birth. At twenty-six ears old, she functions as a maid in the dormitories because “where else can you perform your job… in total silence?” Although she is this old, she has never learned to speak or to read lips, skills taught to the students at the school to help them function as “normal” human beings.

The ideas of this play show with great accuracy how the world can sometimes be. Through the play, I could not help but feel the helplessness which Sarah felt throughout her entire life, even though she would never admit that she was helpless. I also felt Jim’s urge to help and to try and change Sarah’s world and make it more rich by introducing her to something new. Although they both mean well, eventually their love for each other forces them apart.

No other play that I can remember touches me as much as this. I live my life as Jim lived his, trying always to help show people a new way to see and hear and experience things. That is the greatest display of love, to try and make the ones we love feel every emotion they can. If you try and shelter someone from life, then you a depriving them of an inalienable right.

I am saying that it is not alright to just “be who you are”. I know myself the trials and tribulations of being an individual. No one has the right to create someone else “in their own image”. However, you should never refrain from giving your experiences to others, if only because you want to share part of yourself to the world.

All My Sons

My Fair Lady

January 16, 2002

My video game systems, my computer, and my stuffed animals. The video games systems that I have owned and played with over the course of my life have played a major part in what has happened to me. I have had a Nintendo Entertainment System, a four different Game Boys, a Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 and, just recently, a Nintendo GameCube. IÕm a product loyalist. When I was in the first grade, my grandmother bought the kids in our family an NES. My family was happy about at first, including my dad, who got a chance to relive his Q*Bert days of glory. He told us about how he could spend hours on end playing the game in the arcades and soda shops, then let my sister play for about a half-hour, and she wouldn't run out of lives.

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