art – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Biker heroes, cheese thieves, and stupidity checklists

Sunday Morning Reading time with stories and good writing about crime, incompetence, technology, shifts and changes, and cheese. There’s also hope in and amongst the chaos. Add a slice of cheese to your morning repast and give a read.

A rustic indoor display features a wide variety of artisanal cheese wheels and blocks stacked tightly on wooden shelving. On the left, smooth, rectangular orange-brown blocks are piled horizontally. On the right and center, large round wheels of varying sizes are stacked vertically, displaying diverse rinds—ranging from textured dark brown and dusty gray to smooth ochre and patterned beige. Photo by Azzedine rouichi YW_5rJvAdKw unsplash.

Starting this week’s edition with a surprising feel good story that reminds us we shouldn’t judge books by covers. Marlon G. Baxter tells the tale of young hearing impaired child who was saved from being trafficked in a Walmart by what appeared to most as an unlikely hero. You need to read “Heroes Wear Leather Too”: How A Deaf Child And A Biker Stopped A Trafficking Plot.

UPDATE: This pisses me off. Apparently the feel good story linked above is fake. I and several others have looked into it and it’s not holding up. Pardon my swearing, but this is so goddamned frustrating. I’m leaving the link and my description in for two reasons. Pointing out that we can’t trust a damn thing on the Internet anymore. Secondly, that really sucks given we’re all in a posture of looking for hope whenever we can find it.

In the wake of what’s happening at the ICE Delaney Hall ~~detention center~~ internment camp in New Jersey, Josh Kovensky recounts the story of what happened in the courts after similar battles over humanity happened earlier in Chicago. Check out How The Broadview Six Fought The Trump DOJ—And Found Massive Wrongdoing In The Process. Tough to see hope in these horrible moments as they occur, and it’s hard to believe we have to rely on the incompetence of evil doers after the fact, but here we are.

Speaking of incompetence, there are stories and there are stories. Andrew Kersley’s The Body In The Wheelchair: How Did A Troubled Family Get Lost By the State? This a tough read to digest on a Sunday or any day, but definitely worth your time.

On the arts and politics front, a court has ruled Trump has to take his name off of the Kennedy Center and not close it down for renovations. Sounds like a victory. In the long term it may be, but Janay Kingsbury tells us that in the immediate future the damage may already have been done in Trump Hasn’t Left Much Kennedy Center To Stay Open. So much of what’s happening these days hurts my heart, but this misadventure hits me where I live.

Everything is changing, like it or not. Sonny Bunch thinks Hollywood is standing on the doorstep of yet another pivotal moment. Check out Hollywood’s About To Change (Again).

As far as pivotal moments go, there are quite a few happening all around us. Especially regarding searching the Internet. Google is reinventing itself and the Internet, leaving an opening for companies like DuckDuckGo and Kagi. Doc Searls writes How DuckDuckGo Can Be A Hero. Let’s hope these search companies seize the moment that’s before them.

And while we’re on the topic of tech, John Siracusa has published The EV Stupidity Checklist, suggesting ways the EV industry might get back on track. John could and should publish one of these for so many things in the tech sector. Perhaps also for so many other sectors of our lives.

I’m a cheese fan, and I’ve been known to nick a slice or two off of the hors d’oeuvres tray before the guests arrive. Olivia Potts tells us how organized crime fell in love with cheese in The Grate Cheese Robbery. Who knew cheese was the most stolen food in the world?

(Image from Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

What Goes Around Is Always Coming Back Around

Life can be painful. Live theatre can be as well.

Now that we’re into rehearsals for the stage reading of Puta Wijaya’s play OH, it’s both gratifying and terrifying to discover that my initial thoughts about the piece being timely and universal are correct.

That of course what’s makes a good play, a good story. It also makes for a constant reminder of how little attention we pay to the stories we tell and repeat.

Wijaya’s work began as a short story that was originally published in 2003, and was then adapted by him in 2018 into what he calls a monodrama, meaning a one character monologue. It’s set in Indonesia. But the words spilling out his thoughts could easily have been written about the U.S lately.

Here’s an example:

I’m stepping into the struggle for justice in this impotent toothless tiger of a country which, instead of using what’s left of its strength to fight, lazes around enjoying itself. Oh! This is insanely embarrassing. It just doesn’t make sense. But this is reality. Our reality! The older generation slacks off, the younger generation jacks off. People are racing to dig their own graves.

And another:

Not like those other lawyers these days who are mostly about making deals, or those elites and intellectuals who shine when they are powerless, but who, from their new seats of power, become more…(Louder) violent, greedy, materialistic, merciless, and despicable once they get the opportunity to trample on justice and truth they once idolized.

Working with IVP is one of the gigs I return to eagerly. Working with plays from far away places and different cultures, always, in the end, proves over and over again that at the core, we’re all the same. Though our life experiences may differ, they really aren’t.

I used the word terrifying in the opening of this post because you’d never know that this play wasn’t written about what we in the U.S. are living through currently. I also say that because regardless of where we’re from, or the horrors we endure, we never seem to learn how the wheel always turns and comes round again.

Life can be painful. Live theatre can be as well.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Artists Show The Way With Guerrilla Art In DC

Tell the stories

I’ve been attempting to hightlight artists that are standing and speaking up against the trauma being visited on us by the Trump regime, so this piece is worth pointing out even if it is in The Washington Post.

Image 4-22-26 at 16.21.png

Phillip Kennicott writes that Guerrilla Art Is Flourishing In Trump’s Washington. He highlights several artists and their efforts.

One day artists will tell the story of what we’re living through,including the artists standing up and using their art to speak out in the moment.

For those upset at The Washington Post’s complicity in these traumatic times, the link above is from the web archive.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

They Mystery of Magdalene, My Skepticism, and AI

A journey with with public art and AI

I love a good mystery. Especially when it is in public view, like the statue pictured below. (Click to enlarge.)

While in downtown Chicago yesterday I had some time on my hands and took a stroll along Michigan Avenue south of the Chicago River. As I said here, I felt like a tourist in my own town. I stumbled across a statue that seemed new to me.

I was so taken by the statue and its placement between, and prominently in front of, two iconic statues from the 1920’s called The Bowman and The Spearman, that I wanted to know more about what I thought was newer artwork. Given that there was no identification plaque anywhere near the statue, I decided to do what most of us do these days and look up information on the Internet.

I plopped a copy of the photo I took into a Google search box and the result yielded the name of the statue as Magdalene by Dessa Kirk. That’s a link to a Facebook profile. Intriguingly Kirk doesn’t seem to have a website I can find, and examining her photos, I saw only one reference to the statue in question. As a spoiler, it appears Dessa Kirk is indeed the sculptor of this statue called Magdalene. But it took me a while to confirm that.

Magdalene can be found at the intersection of the Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and was installed in 2005. Sculpted with a combination of woven wood, branches, and found materials (recycled hoods and fenders of old cars,) combined with weathered metal. The “skirt” of the statue is filled with live flowers and climbing vines, which change the statue’s appearance with the seasons. On my visit I could see a few green sprouts starting to spring up.

Here is a link about the statue on the Chicago Park’s District website that lists her as the artist with a brief bio. I did not find that until after I had gone down the few rabbit holes I mention below.

In this age of dis- and mis- information, AI hallucinations, and AI everywhere — including Google’s search results — I’ve grown increasingly skeptical of just about everything.

Given my age, I’ve also grown increasingly less trusting of my own memory and powers of observation. Something rattling around in my brain didn’t quite sit right about the 2005 installation date. I’ve driven by and through that intersection many times since my return to Chicago in 2013 and I don’t recall seeing the statue.

Before turning into bed for the night, I decided to do another search, this time instead of using Google’s regular old search box, I used Google’s Gemini. It turned up a completely different result, saying the statue was named Terra Nuestra by Hector Gomez and was a part of the Chicago Park District and Chicago Department of Cultural Arts Monument Response Project which just recently launched April 8th of this year.

CleanShot 2026-04-18 at 12.17. Checking out the link to the Monument Response Project I found no mention of this particular statue at this particular site, although there was information about Gonzalez and Tierra Nuestra at another site.

So, at this moment I had two conflicting pieces of information from Google using different access to seek more information. Though Google’s search results presented the Dessa Kirk info in its AI summary at the top of the search results, I was still skeptical.

My initial thought was that if this was a part of an art installation project that had just begun 10 days ago, perhaps local news media, which yielded no results, and Google’s crawlers were just behind the curve. As was the Park District’s website.

The AI generated description along with the project’s narrative that these pieces of artwork were meant to counter existing narratives made perfect sense. Descriptions of this statue, very feminine, nurturing, and a rising from the earth’s posture made, in my mind, a perfect contrast to the often criticized go west young man mythology of the two behind it.

I queried Google’s Gemini further, saying that I didn’t think Gomez’s sculpture was correct and it yielded this correction.

CleanShot 2026-04-18 at 12.30.

Another artist, another statue, correct location, same city-wide initiative. I queried Gemini further and got another correction.

CleanShot 2026-04-18 at 12.32.

Different results. Then, another attempt.

CleanShot 2026-04-18 at 12.34.

And again with different results.

CleanShot 2026-04-18 at 12.35.

And then again.

CleanShot 2026-04-18 at 12.36.

I then preceded to query ChatGPT and Claude. Here’s the first Claude response. Another artist enters the picture.

CleanShot 2026-04-18 at 12.38.

And again later.

CleanShot 2026-04-18 at 12.38.

ChatGPT did no better, no worse, and like the others proved of no use.

The bottom line is that my skepticism and distrust are more than well founded. What triggered me to go down these AI rabbit holes was that there was something logical about a statue I thought was new, that I kept getting conflicting results about, that pointed to a brand new city-wide art project. It made some sense in my growing skepticism. I wasn’t the only one going down rabbit holes.

What disappoints me, and I think should disappoint and be a warning to us all, is that a photo of something — in this case a public artwork that has existed since 2005 — should come up in any of these AI searches with relevant information. There’s an entire industry being built with smartphones, smart glasses and pins, on a feature that tells us to point at anything and the robots will tell you what it is.

I should have trusted the first plain old Google search box even with the AI generated search summary at the top of the page. But long before this little search mystery I’d given up on that, given many of the previous errors that have yielded in the past. Tech companies relying on AI can throw up all the caveats about possible inaccuracies they want to. I’d venture that it’s almost too late, because their initial promises, having been so broken that they now require those caveats, have already sculpted such a deeper narrative of mistrust in most minds, that they’ll live on as long as stone statues.

As to Magdalene and Dessa Kirk, I’m still very taken with the artwork. Another thing this episode tells me is that artists are going to need to be extremely diligent in crafting websites and publicity about their efforts going forward. They only have themselves to trust.

Lobsters, Steaks, and Grand Pianos Oh, My!

Excess always rises to the top

No one ever accused the bunch running the U.S into the ground of being smart. There’s proof enough every day to belay that notion. Yet we somehow pretend we’re surprised and outraged when these dumb grifters continually expose themselves as the dumbest collection of dumb grifters that ever took over a country and threatens the world.

Mauro mari kMwr4Z4i67E unsplash.

One (there are so many) of the latest outrages has to do with reports that the Department of War Mongering has been dropping large chunks of change on things like lobster tail, Alaskan King Crab legs, and steaks to chow down on, a Steinway baby grand piano, and lots of tech toys. Of course this report comes at a time when we’re at war, and after all of the tired talking points of ridding us of waste, fraud, and abuse that was DOGE. That seems so long ago.

Is it outrageous? Yes. Surprising? Not at all.

Excess always rises to the top. Always has, always will. I don’t care if it’s in government or business. There’s a sense of privilege and being owed that removes the shame shield once you’re making big bucks.

A few decades ago when I was working a temp job at a law firm I got to witness, and admittedly take advantage of it first hand. I, along with a small gang of theatre folk, was hired by a friend of one of that gang who happened to be a paralegal in charge of a document coding process in a large litigation case.

This was in the age before computers were on desktops. Paper was still king. We were set up on a large, unfinished floor of the building housing the law firm. Our job was to read thousands of documents, looking for references on certain subjects, names, transactions, etc… Each time we identified one that had a code we’d enter the document number and the code on a gridded sheet. At the end of the day those sheets went to data processing to be entered into a computer.

The point was to allow the attorney’s working on the case to request a printout of all documents relating to code xxx or yyy, and then send a file clerk to pull those documents. It seems archaic compared to today’s technology. It was actually just over the edge of ground breaking at the time.

The paralegal team in charge of overseeing us would also make up new codes if someone found something new that might relate, and then we’d go back over the already coded documents to see if any needed the new code.

This obviously involved lots of man hours. Like I said, there was a small army of theatre folk on the team. I was in the process of starting my first theatre company at the time, and this gig was flexible enough for me to work as many hours as I needed or as few as I could get by with. Actors would come and go for auditions or other work. We were required to code 500 documents in a regular work day. I could do that pace in a couple of hours.

This temp gig paid very well. $10 bucks an hour. (Like I said it was a few decades ago.) If we worked overtime on a weekday it was time and a half. If we worked weekends it was double time. If we worked past 6:30 pm, dinner was on the client. Dinners weren’t fast food or pizza. We had plenty of surf and turf along with other good food from some of Chicago’s nicest restaurants. If we worked past 8pm the client paid for a taxi home.

I don’t recall anyone ordering a grand piano, but I’m sure the billing hours covered enough to put a few of the attorneys’ kids through school. The gig lasted about 15 months before the case was settled for millions of dollars.

I freely admit I made bank during those 15 months. I also found out later that the markup on the $10 bucks and hour I and others were making was marked up to $15 for each of us with a corresponding markup on overtime.

Excess at the top where amounts of money boggle the mind make it easy to justify the pampering and pilfering of clients, funders, and taxpayers. On the business side of the ledger it’s somewhat expected. On the public side we always seem surprised. We shouldn’t.

The only surprise should be that the folks taking advantage of the system are never smart enough not to get caught. But this current bunch might even take that bit of shock and awe off the table, the way they’re going.

(Image from mauro mari on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

“The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” -David Hume

On the weekend when some parts of the world think they can alter time by simply changing the clocks, I’m reminded of the biggest lesson most learn in life: we’re each not the center of the universe. Most learn it. Some never do, or if they do, they continue to operate under that delusion. We pretty good at setting up systems and structures that reinforce and rely on that delusional thinking. Somehow that seems to be the theme running through the articles and writing I collected this week for this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

Bronze statue of a child sitting on an outdoor stone bench with legs crossed, reading an open book that rests on their lap, a small bird perched on the top edge of the book, and a stack of books beside them, with a paved walkway, grass lawn, and buildings in the background. Kicking things off is the story of how Humanity Altered an Asteroid’s Orbit Around The Sun by Becky Ferreira. The article links to the ScienceAdvances abstract on the nudge that might be as good as a wink.

Last week the war in the Middle East had just kicked off as I was publishing this column. This week it continues. And, yes, it’s a war, regardless of the stupid debate. Jonathan Taplin looks at The Terrifying New Era of American Imperialism, and Jay Caspian Kang examines The No-Explanation War.

“Society grows great when old men plant trees who shade they’ll never sit under” and the opposite of that wisdom is how Scott Galloway kicks off his piece on Role Models.

Ali Breland takes a looks at those yearning for a return to McCarthyism in ‘We Need To Do McCarthyism to the Tenth Power.’ Turning back time only works as a song lyric.

JA Westenberg offers up a A Soft-Landing Manual For The Return To The Second Gilded Age. It’s tough to avoid the usual hard crashes.

The Dodgy Code examines The Great AI Arbitrage: Making A Killing Before Your Client Wises Up. The inevitable turnaround on this is going to be something to see.

Before we get to that turnaround, Mathew Ingram says The Danger Posed By AI Just Got A Lot More Real All Of A Sudden. Going to be interesting to watch AI bots fighting each other to be the center of the universe. If we’re around to see it.

David Todd McCarty is Searching For Originality In A Sea of Slop. Even on dry land that’s tough.

I’ve been revisiting a lot of Shakespeare of late, so this piece by Alice Cunningham caught my eye. Check out Author To Revive Shakespeare Club After 300 Years. We could all do with revisiting the his works.

And to conclude this week, James Verini brings us the wild tale of The Man Who Broke Into Jail.

(Photo taken by the author.)

Sunday Morning Reading

Inquire and think for yourself

Whew. Regular readers here will know that since the middle of December we’ve been spending time helping my daughter and her family move into a new house, with an interim stop to an Airbnb over the holidays until the new place was ready. It’s been as chaotic as any move could be, multiplied by the antics of our two grandchildren who had their small worlds turned upside down. The chaos didn’t allow for much Sunday Morning Reading, but here we are again, playing a little catch up as well as looking ahead. As much as anybody can look ahead these days.

What Just Happened? That title for Andrea Pitzer’s piece sort of explains the look I see on most people’s faces during the events of this January. If it seems like too much to think about. That’s because it is. Think on it.

Brian Merchant’s Abolish The Senses plays on the same themes and the dismay we’re all feeling.

“Do math. Check your facts.” That’s the message from Neil Steinberg in Wrapping Our Heads Around A Trillion, Now That The Alphabet is Worth $4,000,000,000,000. Don’t let others think for you.

Dealing with much smaller numbers, NatashaMH’s Five Dollars For Catastrophe explains how a $5 book about genocide can offer much more value, should you actually inquire and think for yourself. Words have meaning folks.

And while I’m linking to posts on the numbers, let’s talk gambling. Apparently it’s reaching epidemic proportions and you can bet on when the USA is going to invade other countries, among other catastrophic outcomes these days. Especially if you’re in the know. Saahil Desai says America Is Slow-Walking Into A Polymarket Disaster. I’m not so sure about the slow-walking part.

If gambling is betting on predictions, Artificial Intelligence, with its ability to predict the next word ought to be able to figure out most outcomes ahead of time. It’s all math, right? Remember that earlier admonition to think for yourself? While doing so, check out Steven Adler’s AI Isn’t “Just Predicting The Next Word” Anymore.

Are Tech Companies Allies Or A Threat To Press Freedom? I’m not spoiling Emily Bell’s conclusions with the obvious answer, because the piece is about more than that.

Jill Lepore explores How Originalism Killed The Constitution. It’s an earlier piece that contains context that most have no idea about. I’d suggest finding out.

Speaking of killing things, Russel Berman and Elaine Godfrey ask the simple question, Does Congress Even Exist Anymore? Applying the Ian Betteridge law of headlines, that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no, you don’t have to guess at my answer. Berman and Godrey call it a fast fade. I call it a slow self-suicide.

Closing out this week, I’m pointing to a venture from a raconteur I feature here often, David Todd McCarty. He’s gathering up his words and images from over the years on a new website. David is quite a storyteller. If you think for yourself, I suggest you pay attention. For a taste check out David Dreams Of Everything.

Go Bears!

(Image from Rey Seven on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Art matters. If you listen.

It’s another Sunday in this insane world, so it’s time for some Sunday Morning Reading. It won’t cure what ails you, or the world. But there are those who are listening. Listen as you read.

Aren’t You Tired Of Feeling Insane All The Time? Marie Le Conte asks that question. I’m not sure anyone can plug the hole in that boat, but acknowledging that we’re sinking is the first step.

David Todd McCarty tackles The Lost Art of Listening.

NatashaMH recently launched an exhibition of her art. Launching anything can take life out of you, launching any display of art exacts even more of the soul than it does the physical being. But as she says in The Social Life of Art, “art demands resilience, and resilience demands a sense of humor.”

I wrote a bit this week about what Mark Leydorf has to say about The Rise of Resistance Cinema In The Era of Trump. It’s worth highlighting his piece again here.

I’ve been watching the Apple TV series Pluribus with great curiosity. If nothing else, the show echoes Mr. McCarty’s opening to his piece linked above. (Warning. Don’t watch the show with my wife.) Dani Di Placido thinks he’s got it all figured out in What Is ‘Pluribus’ Really About? Perhaps he does. I’m not so sure. I’m also not sure the show’s success or failure relies on figuring it out in the end.

I’ve been linking to some of the goings on at The Kennedy Center under this corrupt administration. Trust me when I say what’s happening there is causing shock waves across board rooms in arts institutions across the country as everyone looks to uncertain and unknown futures with no script to follow. It’s affecting the art. It’s affecting the business of art. It will affect the art in ways we can’t begin to imagine. Janay Kingsberry examines how Senate Democrats Are Investigating Kennedy Center’s Deals And Spending.

Most of the links this week touch on the arts in one way or the other. In a way this tech topic does as well, given that so many want to turn emoji’s into some form of art. Benji Edwards examines the origins of this move back to hieroglyphics with the piece, In 1982, A Physics Gone Wrong Sparked The Invention Of The Emoticon. Art by accident often is the art that sticks.

(Image by Roman Kraft on Unsplash)

Scene Painting a History of Hamlets at The National Theatre

Hamlets watching Hamlet

I’ve done some scene painting in my day, but nothing like this. Actually nothing even approaching anything like this.

In Robert Hatcher’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at Britain’s National Theatre Ben Stones’ scenery features a gigantic mural that surrounds the set that includes the faces of actors who have played Hamlet through the ages. The picture above doesn’t do that description or the concept justice.

The faces woven into the Danish artwork are the ultimate theatrical Easter egg. While Stones keeps the full cast list close to his chest, he confirms that they are all there – a complete history of the role.

“They’re all hidden in there. Everybody who’s been in it… even Tinuke Craig’s schools Hamlets, the three boys who played on that tour. We were very clear that if we include, we are including everyone who’s ever spoken those words in any version of this kind of play.”

As a statement on the play and its theatricality that’s cool in and of itself. The ghost visages of previous Hamlets watching what can be described as a ghost story has a meta appeal.

What also attracted my attention to this article — and why I’m sharing it — is that it puts the spotlight on scenic painting, somewhat of a lost art in this day of projected backgrounds and digital printing. This theatrical work of art required 920 hours to complete.

There’s a terrific little video that gives you an idea of the scale and scope of the painting requirement. Unfortunately it’s filmed in vertical mode so you don’t get the grand finale the same way on a computer webpage that you might on a smartphone. Even on smaller screens it has an impact.

It made me recall my days directing theatre in Omsk, Russia when the scene painting loft was at the top of the building. There, drops would be stretched on a frame that would rise and descend through an opening in the floor allowing the scenic artists to stand on the floor as they painted. There were some amazing scenic painters in that loft.

The article also gives credit to the scenic artists who did the work for Hamlet at the National. Well deserved.

Find Beauty When and Where You Can

Stop and smell the roses

A Mastodon user sent me a direct message the other day asking why I felt so comfortable doing what I do every morning, which is posting a “Good Morning” toot featuring photos I’ve taken of flowers, tree leaves changing color, other shots of nature, holiday ornaments, etc….

The context of the query was criticizing how I could continue to do that every morning given all of the terrible things going on in the United States, things I also rightfully describe on social media as horrors.

I get it. Believe me I get it. I’m overwhelmed at times as well. But my response was and is simple.

Stop and smell the roses.

While there are indeed horrors happening in the world there is always beauty. If we don’t take a moment to see and acknowledge the beauty around us and the spontaneity of discovering it, whether it be in nature, in very human moments, in a museum, a gallery, a stage, a movie theater, a concert hall, a photograph, a child’s laugh, or in a story, then what the hell are we fighting for?

I’m convinced those we are fighting against don’t see or even care to see the beauty around and within us, unless it involves increasing their bank account balances.

Sometimes you need to stop and smell the roses. I prefer doing so in the mornings, before I put on my armor to meet the challenges of the day.