Posted by: donfried on: January 2, 2009
I’ve spent the last two weeks in Austin, Texas, helping Rhonda move apartments. We’re not unfamiliar with the drill, having moved 12 times in the first 5 years after we were married. At this point, after 37 years of marriage, our move count is somewhere in the upper 20s. As you can imagine, with [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 27, 2008
A couple of days ago Rhonda and I rented two superhero movies — “Iron Man” and “Hancock.” It got us to thinking about what superpowers we would choose. At first Rhonda said she’d always wanted to be able fly. But then she saw a movie actress who had recently starred in a superhero movie being [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 26, 2008
When I was still in the business world, there was an expression I used frequently when I was counseling people who worked for me. “You’ve got to choose which train you want to stand in front of.” In other words, it’s a big tough world, and there are lots of things in it that you [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 16, 2008
A couple of days ago I went out to take a walk and turned on my Walkman. It was already tuned to my favorite classical music station, and I found myself in the middle of an epic choral piece. It’s often tough to distinguish the lyrics of works like that; lots of them are in [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 15, 2008
Let me begin by stating categorically that, in spite of popular opinion, I am NOT a dirty old man. Yes, I take classes at the University of Colorado Theatre Department. But I can assure you that the fact that 75% of the students in that department are good looking women between the ages of 18 [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 14, 2008
I’ve been puttering around with a small start-up theater group in Boulder for the past couple of months. The vision for this year is that the group will call for previously unproduced, one-act plays from regional playwrights. The “reading committee” will select the best plays and present them in public reading evenings from February through [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 13, 2008
Last night, in spite of my well documented antipathy for all things Christmas, I went with some of my fellow-singers from the Rocky Mountain Chorale to a recital by the phenomenal choral group Kantorei in Denver. The show was in St. John’s Cathedral, which is absolutely gorgeous and has amazing acoustics. It was exclusively Christmas [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 11, 2008
The day before yesterday I went to the theater for a costume fitting for the role of Darwin in my play, “The Debate.” I told the theater’s artistic director about the latest award for Shakespeare Incorporated. I then made a comment to her similar to the one I included at the end of yesterday’s post. [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 9, 2008
It was early December, 2004. I’d had a stressful week of contract negotiations in Peoria with Caterpillar, but now I was headed home. The flight from Chicago to Denver was three-quarters full when I boarded, but I managed to find a window seat with an open middle between me and the man on the aisle. [...]
Posted by: donfried on: December 8, 2008
For nearly all of my working life, I was seriously at the mercy of other people. And what wasn’t at the mercy of other people was, to an absurd degree, subject to luck (fate?). Yes, I taught English as a Foreign Language for a couple of years, and in the classroom I had at least [...]
