I know. . it's been a couple of months. No excuses.
"Streaming" is a technology word. And you know I love technology. I just had a technological miracle happen about 10 minutes ago. Here's what happened:
A couple of weeks ago I discovered that when I plugged the power cord into my MacBook Air, the light did not go on. Hmmm. . . only a little over a year old and something is wrong? Seriously? Eventually I discovered that the cord was bad,leaving me with no way to charge my computer or to be connected to power once the charge had run out. YIKES! My computer is a daily companion. Kind of like a spouse that never talks back. Now, apparently, it was talking back! Unacceptable.
Unable to divorce my computer, I hustled off to Best Buy, a mere 30 miles away, to get a new cord. Came home with said cord, and discovered that in the year and 2 months since I bought my computer, Apple has redesigned the cord, and it did not fit my computer. Again. . . .seriously? A call to Best Buy confirmed that they did not sell the "older" cord. A call to Apple resulted in them sending me a new one in the mail. . . for a mere $80. It should arrive on Monday. So for the last week I have been driving my computer to Sandy's to use her cord to charge it up. I'm leaving this afternoon for two days at the beach with Dave, so I decided just to use up the power and hope the cord arrived on Monday. Today I sat down and the charge was 24%. On a whim I decided to plug the defective cord in and just pray that it would work. And the light came on! It's charging right now! So. . . is it really broken? Did I need the new $80 cord and the two trips to Best Buy (second trip to return the cord that didn't fit!). Time will tell. But now that the juices are surging through the computer, I can blog about STREAMING.
To be honest, I can't stream here at my house. My silly little MIFI card which is my internet connection is not powerful enough to stream anything for more than 4 seconds without then stopping to reload. And with my plan only allowing for so much downloading , streaming just becomes too expensive. So technology-wise, I can't live in the country and stream anything.
But I am streaming. Not Apple's definition, but my own. I'm in the middle of an exciting stream right now. I love it when this happens. Technology aside, I have been streaming off and on my entire adult life. I never know when it is going to happen, but once in the streaming mode, it can last for months and months. Technology does play a part in my current episode. I shall explain.
For whatever reason, I am a person who becomes obsessed with a person or topic and then have to find out eveything I can about it. I'm never quite sure what sets it off.. . maybe a movie, or a newspaper article, or a book. But once my interest is piqued, I have to go after the topic full throttle. In the early days this involved going to the nearest library and finding every single book ever written about the topic. I have stumbled through the door, my arms brimming with books more times than I can name. Here are some of the topics I have poured over: Cherokee Indians (this got started when I used to vacation with my kids in the Smokey Mountains), Apartheid in South Africa (I think the movie Cry Freedom did this one to me. . . .I read and read about Apartheid, wept when Mandela was released and eventually played hookey from teaching to go into DC and stand on a street corner outside the hotel where he and Winnie were staying so that I could catch a glimpse of him. . . which I did), Eleanor Roosevelt (which resulted in my visiting the FDR home in the Hudson Valley and Val-Kill which was ER's home close by, and Warm Springs, Georgia. Yet to see but am determined to go: Campobello in Canada where FDR contracted polio), Lewis and Clark (culminating in the horseback riding adventure across the Lolo Trail in Idaho where my brother Chip and I rode the exact trails L&C rode over the Bitteroot Mountains).
To name a few. I become obsessive and voracious and then one day I'm sated and stop. And wait for the next topic to hit me. Haven't had a topic hit me in awhile, but while I'm in the middle of a topic I'm a happy girl.
Well. . . . . I'm happy to report that I'm in the middle of another deluge and technology has helped me in wonderful ways. Here's how it's going down:
Last spring I had found out that Julie Andrews was going to be one of the speakers at Chautauqua last summer. I've always been a Julie Andrews fan beginning in my childhood when my dad brought home the original Broadway cast albums of My Fair Lady and Camelot. I listened to those records dozens of times. I could sing every lyric. I have always been a theater junkie. I love plays and movies more than I can say. I could very well have been a theater major in college, but I didn't have the confidence to try.
So anyway, back in the spring I was in our local thrift shop and low and behold there was Julie's memoir. I bought it and took it to Chautauqua with me thinking I would get around to reading it before I saw her. That never happened. I have too many other reading obligations at Chautauqua! But she was a delightful speaker, and I brought the book home.
A month or so ago I was between book club selections and looking to "read up" one of the books I owned so as to be able to get rid of it. I grabbed Julie's book, Home, A Memoir of my Early Years. The book begins with her childhood and stops right after she does the show Camelot on Broadway. I was riveted, especially to the sections about her time in My Fair Lady and Camelot. I was hearing behind the scenes stories about those albums I used to listen to! Did you know that she found Richard Burton nearly irresistible? No surprise actually, but apparently she did not succumb to his charms.
In the book she mentions her admiration for her director, Moss Hart. Okay, gang, the stream is about to start!
I remember that Moss Hart had written a very well-known biography called Act 1 which I never read. So based on Julie's book, I quickly ordered the Moss Hart autobiography and while I was at it, the Dick Van Dyke autobiography. Dick Van Dyke, Julie's co-star in Mary Poppins, came from Danville, Illinois where I grew up, so he has always been a hero of mine. Then I remembered that one of the books I had owned but donated to the thrift shop without reading was the autobiography of Alan Jay Lerner, lyricist for My Fair Lady and
Camelot, called On the Street Where I Live. Geez. . . I had to get in the car and go over to the thrift shop and BUY IT BACK!!!!! This is the nature of my streaming obsessions.
So I read ACT 1, by Moss Hart and it was RIVETING! I couldn't put it down. His life was just so interesting and he is a gifted writer (duh. .. . he wrote plays) and it was just a complete delight from the first page to the last... . especially for a theaterphile like me! I honestly did not want that book to end. It was especially thrilling when he told his side of a stories that I had read in Julie's book!
From there I had to order the autobiography of Kitty Carlisle, Moss Hart's famous wife who I only knew from being on the panel of I've Got a Secret, or To Tell the Truth. . . one of those. I needed to hear her side since his book stopped before they were married. And I also needed to buy a copy of a book of plays by Moss Hart and George Kaufman. Because Moss Hart's stories about their collaboration were so vivid that I needed to read the actual words they wrote. So I got a book that has: Once in a Lifetime (the creation of this first play by Moss Hart was a major gut-wrenching section of his book), You Can't Take it With You, and The Man Who Came to Dinner.
Here's where technology is kicking in: I just have to go to Amazon.com to get all these books delivered to my door!!! Not only that, but I have ordered You Can't Take it With You from Netflix!!!
IT'S A MULTI-MEDIA STREAM!!!!!
So following the reading of ACT 1, I read Alan Jay Lerner's biography. Which tells many stories of Moss Hart and Julie Andrews. And the step-by-step process of staging the musicals and the movie Gigi. And the fact that, during Camelot, Robert Goulet commiserated with Richard Burton about not being able to start an affair with Julie Andrews! She was one strong woman!!! All this is nirvana for me! And in a burst of further serendipity: Dave and I had tickets which we ordered last spring for the DC Arena Stage production of My Fair Lady! I love it when it all fits together!
From there I ordered the DVD of Pygmalion, the play on which My Fair Lady is based. It should arrive today!
Yesterday I hiked the Devils Knob golf course listening to the Camelot CD and delighting in every lyric Alan Jay Lerner wrote, and knowing the story behind the struggle for those lyrics. It was a whole new album!
So to date I have read Julie's book, Moss's book, Alan's book. I've watched My Fair Lady live within the past month, listened to Camelot on my IPhone. I am awaiting Pygmalion and You Can't Take It With You on DVD within the week. I'm three chapters into Kitty's book, and I've read the first act of Once in a Lifetime.
Waiting for me is Dick Van Dyke's book. Who knows where that will lead?
I'm on a roll, one interesting and enlightening thing after another. In one of my favorite fields: Theater. It's like taking a college major without leaving home.
All of it branching out like a huge spiderweb from a notice last spring from Chautauqua that Julie Andrews was going to appear. This is learning at its best!
Seriously. . . who needs TV?
