Donuts, Rambles, Gliders, Rapids, Barns and Moose

I flew this weekend. I flew IN THE AIR like a bird. I glided in a plane that looked like a space age toy.

And that wasn't all. After a hectic week of summer camp that left me frazzled and sleepless, I hoped to spend the weekend immobile. No such luck.

FRIDAY

Friday we toured the Roxy projection booth with the kids and then showed their films to a group of 40 or so parents and family members. Then I rushed off to the Roxy for the Simpsons donut eating contest (video up Wednesday).

The winner was a Canadian runner who ate 8.5 donuts in 4 minutes. I ate 3 donuts over the course of the next 2 hours but Tim Kavanaugh and Aram helped. My sister (modeling the donuts above) followed suite and added some Red Bull and vodkas to boot.

Between the two of us, we could have beaten that Canadian, no problem. Merrill, the owner of the Roxy and the generous donut provider, was just pleased no one choked.

SATURDAY

Saturday I Rambled in the Old North End (video up Wednesday) and supported the South in the water balloon toss at The War of the Wards, also known as Field Day. Michael's dog barked up a storm every time anyone cheered and the North brought home the bacon this year.

Casey of the Garden Project made me a nice flower wreath but it was too humid to wear it all day long. Neighborhood kids ate fancy hamburgers and painted their faces. Scott and Will interviewed people with a cardboard camera and microphone. The Old North End was ALIVE and full of rambles.

Saturday night Molly and I had a moonlit swim and did not meet one snapping turtle or leech (that we know of) and had bubbly at my new abode. I ceremoniously unpacked my baubles and tchotchkes as well as my granny's hand embroidered hankies and aprons.

We explored the house inch by inch including the newly christened, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Room." Yep, it is an odd house with many strange holes in the floor!

SUNDAY

Sunday I was late and sped at about 95mph to Warren to go up in a glider at Sugarbush Soaring. It is impossible to put into words how awesome this experience was (video up Wednesday - Mike's article also in paper Wed). It is as close as a mere mortal like me will ever come to flying.

I did not want to come down even after we did some scary acrobatics where we flew straight up into the sky and then fell over backwards all higglety pigglety. We went from 2Gs to weightless. Wow.

Below is a face full of fear...

My grandpa used to fly a Cessna airplane and I have hours of footage he shot on his weekly journeys around the Mid-West. Gliding miles above the earth with my cameras in hand made me think of him and wonder if he was giving me his little wink and saying in his thick German accent, "Good girl."

My friend Tracy was having a film festival as part of her Phantom Theater in the Edgecomb barn later that evening. Rather than drive back home, I had an entire day to kill in the beautiful Mad River Valley where your cell phone not only dies completely but gets sucked of all its battery power. It is a cell phone black hole.


I spent the afternoon lazing around the Warren Falls, reading Bazaar and Harry Potter, cloud watching and sticking my feet in the rapids. The rocks were worn away in spots and I lounged in cold whirlpools while reading and keeping my feet in the rushing water. Hell yeah.

This was the first day I have been able to do nothing in a looooooong time. It felt like heaven, even if I did get a really bad sunburn and a million bug bites.

Then I was off to the barn for films - half of them were mine and half were made by this kid named Woodrow (above with Tracy) who is a local movie making star who now goes to Vassar.

On the way to the barn, Tracy and I saw a moose and her baby. That was my first moose sighting ever despite many viewings of Northern Exposure. They are such strange, prehistoric creatures.


And after this full weekend, I made my way back on the long drive home underneath a sumptuous moon. Now do I get to sleep all week long? Oh right, time to get editing...

Simpsons and Riveters

Local Burlingtonians react to the news that Springfield VT will host the Simpsons movie premiere. You may recognize Herb of The Jazz Guys, Mandy of Home Items and Aram, the manager of the Roxy.

And more with my beloved Rosie's Girls:

World Ending, Lots to Do

We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's, and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small, spinning fragment of solar driftwood which, by chance or design, man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. - Orson Welles' Intro to War of the Worlds

Oooh, you gotta love Orson Welles and you gotta love the fact that this guy was only 22 years old when he rocked the nation with his radio play, War of the Worlds, in 1938. Imagine what a guy like Orson would do with the power of YouTube. He'd have us all cowering in our basements and rushing to churches to be saved from hellfires and damnation.

Of course, using the power of the internet, we'd be able to do some quick google news searches and know he was full of shit in 3 seconds flat but STILL, the fun we would have! Damn it Orson, wish you were alive today to see what a media maelstrom you gave birth to. Top THAT Miss Jackson (cause I am nasty!) and your bare booby scandal!

Newspaper Reactions, Transcript of Broadcast

Probably the most widely known event to be generally considered a mass hysteria occurred on Sunday evening, October 30, 1938. Orson Welles and his CBS Mercury Theater group presented an adaptation of one of H. G. Welles's then lesser-known short stories, "The War of the Worlds," which described a nineteenth-century Martian invasion of England. The Mercury Theater adaptation was set in the present (1938) and took place in the United States.

Perhaps Welles's most consequential decision was to use an "open format" during the first half of the show. Instead of using the conventional dramatic format of background music, narration, and dialogue, the first announcements of the Martian invasion took the form of simulated news bulletins, interrupting a program of dance music. Welles's second most consequential decision was to use the names of actual New Jersey and New York towns, highways, streets, and buildings when describing the movements and attacks of the Martians.

These two decisions, plus the fact that most listeners tuned in eight to twelve minutes late and therefore missed the Mercury Theater theme and introduction, set the stage for what was to follow. Thousands of people across the United States assumed they were listening to real news bulletins and public announcements. A substantial portion of these listeners became very frightened and attempted to call police, the National Guards, hospitals, newspapers, and radio stations for information. In addition, people tried to contact family members, friends, and neighbors. By the time Mercury Theater's first station break came, informing people they were listening to a CBS radio drama, most of the broadcast's damage had been done.

The next day, newspapers across the country carried stories of terrorized people hiding in basements, panic flight from New Jersey and New York, stampedes in theaters, heart attacks, miscarriages, and even suicides. During the months that followed, these stories were shown to have little if any substance, yet today the myth of War of the Worlds stampedes and suicides persists as part of American folklore. One clear and certain result of the broadcast, however, was a number of Federal Communication Commission regulations, issued within weeks of the broadcast, prohibiting the use of the open format in radio drama. [...]

Below are some highlights from the news stories:

NEW YORK (AP). Urgent demands for federal investigation multiplied in the wake of the ultra-realistic radio drama that spread mass hysteria among listeners across the nation with its "news broadcast" fantasy of octopus-like monsters from Mars invading the United States and annihilating cities and populaces with a lethal "heat ray."

While officials at the Harvard astronomical observatory calmed fears of such a conquest by space devouring hordes from another planet with the wry comment that there was no evidence of higher life existing on Mars--some 40,000,000 miles distant--local and federal officials acted to prevent a repetition of such a nightmarish episode.

As for the 22 year old "man from Mars" himself, Orson Welles, youthful actor manager and theatrical prodigy, whose vivid dramatization of H. G. Wells' imaginative "The War of the Worlds" jumped the pulse beat of radio listeners, declared himself "just stunned" by the reaction. "Everything seems like a dream," he said.

* * * *
A message from Providence, R. I., said: "Weeping and hysterical women swamped the switchboard of The Providence Journal for details of the massacre and destruction at New York, and officials of the electric company received scores of calls urging them to turn off all lights so that the city would be safe from the enemy."

In Indianapolis a woman ran into a church screaming: "New York destroyed; it's the end of the world. You might as well go home to die. I just heard it on the radio." Services were dismissed immediately.

A man in Pittsburgh said he returned home in the midst of the broadcast and found his wife in the bathroom, a bottle of poison in her hand, and screaming: "I'd rather die this way than like that."

The New Jersey State Police teletyped the following:

"Note to all receivers--WABC broadcast as drama re this section being attacked by residents of Mars. Imaginary affair."

The switchboard of The New York Times was overwhelmed by the calls. A total of 875 were received. One man who called from Dayton, Ohio, asked, "What time will it be the end of the world?" A caller from the suburbs said he had had a houseful of guests and all had rushed out to the yard for safety.

A garbled version of the reports reached the Dixie Bus terminal, causing officials there to prepare to change their schedule on confirmation of "news" of an accident at Princeton on their New Jersey route. Miss Dorothy Brown at the terminal sought verification, however, when the caller refused to talk with the dispatcher, explaining to here that "the world is coming to an end and I have a lot to do."

And now for some fun with The Simpsons and Orson Welles' classic - note the great Iraqi war references towards the end (and the mud wallowing is genius). The Simpsons are another bit of modern pop culture that I can imagine Orson digging.

Sigh, it kinda sucks he was born so ahead of his time but I guess people in the 30s needed some salacious sleaze to go with their evening cocktails before the auspicious advent of internet porn and Valium.

To think, this radio broadcast is over 60 years old and, if you listen to it today, it is still spine tingling. Especially after 9-11 when martians really did set NYC ablaze. With paranoia so rampant these days, another War of the Worlds incident almost seems plausible. I can understand why people freaked out. After all, it is the end of the world, and I have a lot of things to DO!