Tonight, a candidate wins. Tomorrow, we could all lose.

I’ve made a concerted effort today to avoid all news. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take the non-stop analysis of every nuance of election day. At the end of the day, either Obama or Romney will be elected President. And that’s the end of it.

Or is it?

What happens tomorrow? No matter who wins tonight, the country is still, to use the cliche, bitterly divided. I heard a statistic* that only 3% of all voters in the US were undecided, and the rest of the country was evenly split between the two camps. But that’s not the problem.

Differing view points is democracy in action. It is the manifestation of our most beloved freedoms to be able to think for ourselves and voice our own opinions, regardless of what others believe. And it is in coming at a problem from opposing sides that we find the best solutions, because we fully examine the problem and possible solutions. That is, when we come together to discuss them.

No, the problem is not that we are divided. It’s that we have come to despise each other. We have moved from belittling to vilifying to demonizing. The other side is not to be dealt with! The other side hate America!

The elections tonight will be won. But those victories won’t unite the country. Won’t end the battles. The vitriol. If we allow the rancor that is our current political discourse to continue, we all lose.

If we truly want a change (something both candidates have promised), we have to have a fundamental shift in our personal paradigms. For example, could we all please agree that if someone runs for office in this country, that person probably doesn’t hate America? Could we all please let go of the “My side is ALWAYS in the right” kind of magical thinking? We’ve become the rioting soccer fans of the sport of politics.

Here’s an idea: Let’s anonymously throw all the ideas on the table and vote for what we think is the best one, regardless of which party put forth the idea. Yes, I know that sounds similar to what the Simpson-Bowles Commission attempted to do, and we all know how that turned out. But what if we, the people, let our elected officials know that it’s OK to go with the best ideas, regardless of party affiliation? What if we, the people, in fact demanded that?

I hear people yelling outside, so it may be time to check the news. Or at least Facebook. Politicians have won tonight. Let’s make sure we all win tomorrow.

* I’m usually a stickler for sources (probably the history major in me). Right now I’m too tired to look this up. It was probably on the BBC or NPR. That’s where I get 99% of my news.

Free stuff for you to enjoy, Vol. 1

I keep seeing articles online about how to cut costs during an economic downtown. The tips include suggestions like checking out books from the library instead of buying them, cutting coupons, taking advantage of free events, etc. Every time I see one of these articles, I think, “Is this really news?”

No, I’m not commenting on the amount of fluff that passes for news these days (I’ll get on that soap box in another post), but I find it shocking that these tips would be new ideas to people. I’ve been doing these things for years! But then again, I have an artist’s (some would say “Depression Era”) way of handling money: I never really know how much I’m going to have when, so I better save what I can now.

That having been said, I do fervently believe that no matter how small your budget, you get to have fun. With that in mind, I thought that from time to time I should post some free stuff or cheap stuff you might enjoy. Whether or not it’s fun, you be the judge. But I’ll let you keep your 2 cents to yourself on that one.

FREE: Music video from Raphael Saadiq
iTunes.com
On iTunes – FREE ONLY THIS WEEK
I’m a little in love with Raphael Saadiq. Ok, maybe more than a little. Especially after I downloaded his new music video from iTunes (for free!). The song is great and the video some throwback hipster fun.

FREE: Raphael Saadiq Tiny Desk Concert video
NPR.org and on iTunes
Dreamy. Just dreamy.

FREE: Yale Online Video Lectures
http://oyc.yale.edu/
My blood runs blue. Despite a Master’s degree from another school, I will always be first and foremost a Yalie. As if to help me prove how fabulous Yale is, they now offer online video lectures. Take class with some of the top minds in the country. For free. At home. In your own time. Nerd nirvana!

FREE: Yale University Netcasts
http://opa.yale.edu/netcasts.aspx
Think the video courses are a great idea, but don’t have the time to sit in front of the computer to watch a video? Get it on your MP3 player and listen and learn on the go. These are available on iTunes at iTunesU.

NYers: $80 untimed massage – book by 2/5/10

Hey NYers –

My favorite massage therapist in NYC, Cameron Aiken, is offering an $80 (usually $150), untimed massage for first-time clients referred by current or past clients. You have to book with him by Friday, February 5, 2010. His email address is cjaiken@hotmail.com. Make sure you tell him Kathleen Wallace sent you.

Here are more details from Cameron’s email:
Hope you are having an excellent New Year. I just wanted to pass along a little referral special for the next couple of weeks. I will offer any new client who contacts me by Friday, Feb. 5 an untimed introductory session for $80 at my UWS studio, or $150 for house call or Chinatown location.

For more about Cameron, check out his website:
www.cameronaiken.com

Cameron’s a great guy and a fabulous massage therapist. He’s also an artist himself, and offers a sliding scale for artists, students and non-profit employees. (See what I mean about great guy?) If you fall into one of those categories and $80 is too steep for you, email him and see what you can work out.

If you do contact Cameron for a massage, please let me know. Thanks!

I’m performing Thurs. night in NYC

What does a drunk woman say at her ex-husband’s funeral?

Funny stuff. Really funny stuff.

Find out exactly how funny this Thursday night at aMios Theatre Company’s Shotz of Love, this month’s installment of aMios’ Shotz, when I play Lala, a women who shows up to her ex-husband’s funeral drunk with her new boyfriend/stallion in tow.

What is Shotz, you ask? They are six five-minute long plays that must all use the same theme, the same line of dialogue and the same object/song/whatever-the-artistic-director-feels-like. Part of the fun, aside from enjoying the plays, is seeing how the authors incorporate these requirements into the pieces.

The piece I’m doing was written by Steven Cole Hughes, a fellow NTC grad who has a play commission from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Not too shabby, eh?

Here’s the Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=249188194527

Here are the details:
Thursday, January 21 @8pm
684 Broadway Apt. 5W
$15 cover gets you an evening’s worth of entertainment and free wine and beer

RSVP to aMios.co@gmail.com

Hope to see you there!

The Paper Towel Moment

The brilliant and very funny Susan Leopold introduced me to The Paper Towel Moment. I had been having them all my life, but I never knew they had a name.

So what is a Paper Towel Moment? It’s when you’ve dealt really well with everything that life has thrown at you, but it’s the fact that you’re out of paper towels that sends you careening down a spiral of tears. It’s that normally-inconsequential event that opens the floodgates. For example…

The last six months have been a roller coaster for me. Lots of highs (some dear friends’ weddings, reunions with friends not seen in years), some lows (furloughed from a web start-up job I loved, having the flu for almost a month) and lots and lots of changes (finished grad school, moved across the country). I’ve dealt with it all really well, if I do say so myself. You see, I’m one of those people who believe that we choose where to put our energy and that those choices decide what happens in the future. So, if you choose to react in a positive way to a situation or challenge, then what happens subsequently is bound to be positive as well. Most of the time, anyway.

But this week the challenges just added up to be too much, and one put me over the edge. What could have caused such uncontrollable weeping in my Actors Work Program Career Counselor’s office? What unforeseen disappointment? What catastrophic let down?

My printer broke.

Yes, folks. What opened the dam of tears was nothing more than the technical failure of a 2+ year old piece of refurbished machinery. The proverbial paper towel of the Paper Towel Moment.

Those of you who know me well know that I cry very easily. Like at a strong wind, easily. And that I can cry a lot. (Doing Juliet Stevenson’s catharsis monologue from Truly, Madly, Deeply got me into graduate school.) But really, I am a very positive person and I deal with most things in stride.

I’ve just been coping with a lot. And when the printer broke and I couldn’t find the warrantee in all the boxes I have yet to unpack and I couldn’t print up cover letters for job applications and I couldn’t print up resumes for auditions and I couldn’t just run out and buy a new printer because the check from my freelance work was delayed again… I held it all together. Until I was sitting in that poor woman’s office and she told me to print something. Then it was batten down the hatches time.

So why am I sharing this personal and embarrassing story with you? Because I hope you have a Paper Towel Moment sometime. And if you’ve been coping with a lot, then I hope you have your PTM soon. We can’t go on forever with a stiff upper lip. You have to at some point in time acknowledge and express the stresses in your life and how they make you feel.

So go on. Have a PTM. Let those worries/fears/things-that-keep-you-up-at-night into the light of day. Let them out! And then let them go. Then you can get on with your life. Get back to focusing on the positive. Back to forging ahead.

Just don’t forget to clean up after the dam breaks. Perhaps with paper towels…

Happy New Year!

I’m baaa-aack!

Hello, my faithful fans (Mom, Dana, Aunt Julia)!

I know a couple months ago I promised to post much more frequently, so you must be wondering if this is just a drive-by posting. If I’ll leave you without bon mots again for months. Let me assuage your fears by explaining what I’ve been doing for the last few months.

For starters I haven’t entirely abandoned blogging, I was just blogging for another two blogs under two other names. In an attempt to keep my work life separate from my private life, I kept this blog and the others from being linked. I hear you asking if I couldn’t have kept blogging on here as well. THe answer to that is, yes, of course I could have, but I let time and energy keep me from that. I apologize.

I’ve also been floating for the last several months. Not in an Elphaba kind of way, more of a not-having-a-home-base kind of way. I graduated in May and didn’t move into my own apartment until December. Could I have continued to blog about my floating? Absolutely. But I didn’t. Again, I apologize.

So why didn’t I start blogging after I moved into my new apartment? I have two words for you: The flu. The flu smacked me upside the head just before Thanksgiving, held me down for a good ten days (I still had no voice when I moved into my apartment.) and really didn’t let me out of its grip for another three weeks. I had all the symptoms of swine flu, though I was never tested to see if I actually had it. Whichever flu (or flus) I had, let me be a warning to you: Get a flu shot. Do it now. I lost almost a month’s worth of energy to the process of simply getting better. Did I say you should get a flu shot? Well, you should.

So that’s where I’ve been, dear readers. But now I’m back. And I have a lot to share. I’ve been bookmarking sites to blog about, and I have a huge store of them. Get ready to be informed and entertained!

To start us off, here is a video of Marcus Paul James singing Bobby Cronin’s “Reach the Sky”. Yes, I’ve posted this before, but it’s the perfect song to start the new year off right!

Happy new year! I wish you all joy and peace in 2010 and I look forward to our conversations here.

Fabulous photos and photography tips

Something you probably don’t know about me is that I’m a frustrated photographer. I love good photography. Love it! I kept Stieglitz and Adams magnets on my filing cabinet in college and kept a postcard of a Dorothea Lange image.

I took photography in college. My parents bought me a fabulous camera and everything. But I just wasn’t as good as I wanted to be. Or, what’s more likely the truth, I didn’t have the patience to become better.

But I still have deep appreciation of good photography. I am grateful to those who never leave home without a camera in hand. Those who document the beautiful in the everyday. Those who attend the moments the rest of us miss. 

Here are a few friends and acquaintances whose photography I enjoy:
eric laurits: e’s site is also a fab place to go for an inspirational pick-me-up. After all, he did name it Seek The Joy.
Christopher Michel: Chris is someone I only kind of know through Facebook (ah, the magic of that ol’ interweb!), but he takes pictures everywhere he goes. And they’re worth more than one look.
Barb Duus Sobel: A friend of mine from high school who has recently entered the world of photography. I’m particularly fond of the images she captures of my hometown.
Greg LeBlanc: Greg is new to photography, but has an incredible eye. He doesn’t have a site just of his photography yet, but you can check out some of his shots on Facebook.

And here’s a great article by award-winning photographer Peter Guttman on his favorite photography tips. He illustrates his points with his own photographs.

Enjoy! And let me know about any photos you have floating around that I should see.

Get $50.00 from Twolia.com

Seriously, my friends. This is no joke and I want all of you to take advantage of it right now. I will tell you up front that this is only for the ladies, but if you are a man who knows a woman who could use $50, keep reading and spread the word.

Twolia.com, a new website for female artists, runs a talent contest every month. To boost entries (so far there are only 5, 1 from the company), this month they are offering $50.00 to each entrant who uploads a video to the contest. It costs $.99 to upload a video, but you get $50.00 back, so you end up $49.01 ahead. 

Here’s what you have to do:
1. Create an account with Twolia.com
2. Upload a video to the talent contest

Easy!

The first prize in the talent competition is $1000.00. The second prize is $500.00. And did I mention there are only 5 entries so far?! I want all the talented women in my life, network and universe to benefit from this, so enter now and spread the word.

Once you’ve entered, check out the rest of the site. Musicians can upload and sell their music. Filmmakers can upload and sell their films. And anyone can create an online store to sell whatever strikes their fancy. Stores right now sell everything from homemade soap to vintage clothes, from tchotchkes to high-end furniture.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m doing some online community/social media consulting for this company. (My preferred title is “Community Diva”, but I’ll take Community Manager, too.) So yes, in a way, posting this to my blog is like advertising for a company for which I work. But even before I starting working for this company, I was posting about it on Facebook. I truly believe in the company and in their mission, and I think they can be a positive force for female artists. And that’s something I can get behind, no matter what my affiliation with the company.

Please spread the word on this. Re-post this. Link to this. Retweet. Whatever. Just go forth and help female artists prosper!

Shafrika on Jimmy Fallon

If you don’t know who Anika “Lady Shafrika” Larsen is, do yourself a favor and look her up. Now. She is one of the most exciting and talented performers on Broadway today. Have you looked her up yet? If you have you’ll find she not only is a fine actress with a voice to die for, she’s also an incredible human being. One whom I’m honored to call a friend. 

Last night Anika was on Jimmy Fallon’s show with the cast of Avenue Q. I tried to post the video here, but the code just wasn’t cooperating. You can look it up, but you don’t get a real sense of just how spectacular her voice is from that video, so here’s a video promo for her a show her theater company produced called Shafrika the White Girl:

And definitely check out her theater company, Jaradoa. Mercy, beauty, truth indeed.

Avenue Q Performance (8/13/09)

This is the video of Anika and the cast ofAvenue Q on Jimmy Fallon. Enjoy!

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