YOUR SEAT'S SO BAD...

I had just about given up any hope of see Hamilton live on stage. Tickets are just too expensive and hard to get. You really have to buy season tickets just to get a chance to see the production here and two seasonal theater passes never seem to make it into our budget. Probably a month ago, Talaura sent me a message to remind me to enter for lottery tickets to Hamilton, which was good because I had completely forgotten that the Hamilton productions set aside a number of tickets for a lottery. In fact, I no longer even had the Hamilton app on my phone (Gasp!). I downloaded the app and then entered the lottery for every show date it would allow.

Then I forgot about it.

Last week, I received notice that I had won the lottery. This alone is thrilling. I don’t understand why confetti never just spontaneously falls from the sky any time any one hears that they have won a lottery. Now, Hamilton lottery tickets are not free. You still have to pay for your two tickets, but the tickets are $10 a piece. TEN FREAKIN’ DOLLARS TO SEE HAMILTON. I am the daughter of a man who never forgot to ask about his AARP or Senior Citizen discounts. Seeing a hugely popular Broadway production and only spending $20 for tickets has my inner penny pincher dad jumping for joy. The down side is that I had no idea where we would be sitting. The email you print to redeem the tickets says something about possibly sitting with an obstructed view and maybe not being able to sit together.

Tuesday morning, Michael walked into the bathroom to finish getting ready while I was in the shower. He said “I heard that are seats are in the first or second row.” I replied “Well, I heard that we may have a partially obstructed view and may not be sitting together.” This started the ball rolling. “I heard the seats are way at the top.” “And I heard they make you work as an usher for the first half.” “I heard the seats are backstage.” “I heard the seats are in the alley behind the theater and you have to view it through a peep hole.” This has been our back and forth for two days. On the day of the show, Michael texted me to say that our seats really were in the first or second row. He provided a link to a blog post from another lottery winner. I said “I heard our seats were on a SpaceX rocket and we’d have to watch from the space station.” I just could not wrap my brain around getting front row seats for $20.

Is there anyone out there that remembers Chris’s bit about seeing Robert Goulet in Camelot? When he first started telling the story, he got distracted because he said something about how he had a really good seat. Then someone in the group asked “How good?” To this day I don’t think any one knows what Chris thought of Camelot or Robert Goulet’s performance because he went off on a tangent about his seat. “The seat was so close, I could have shined Goulet’s shoes. It was so close that half way through the show, Robert Gulley asked me to carry him around piggy-back style to finish the show.” He went on and on and each incident was more ridiculous and hilarious than the last. Of course, I could not help but think of Chris and Robert Goulet while Michael and I volleyed back and forth with how bad our seats might be.

Michael and I were still joking about our seats while we ate tacos in the car before the show. He said “I bet our seats are in the second row.” I looked up at the white painted wall we’d parked in front of in a parking garage and said “These are our seats.” I don’t know why, but this was the funniest one. As it turned out, our seats were in the second row, almost center. I don’t think I’ve sat so close to a stage since Mom took me to see A Chorus Line when I was thirteen. Not a single member of that cast was of a color other than white. All white. All skinny. All making the idea of ever being a person who was not skinny, not white could be on a stage impossible. The fourteen year old girl sitting next to me last night said “This is way better than Disney+” and I think that reaction alone is the reason why I greatly respect Lin-Manual Miranda. He created something that inspires and excites all ages, genders and ethnicities. Last night we watched the most diverse cast give a spectacular performance that made us chuckle and cry.

Our seats were so close, at one point they asked me to pick up slack in the percussion pit.

CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO GET TO SESAME STREET?

No two alike

12 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "No two alike"

A few weeks ago I caught the tale end of the 50th Anniversary celebration of Sesame Street on PBS. Watching it made my heart swell up with joy and then hearing all the guests tell stories of their favorite Sesame Street moments, killed me dead. I don’t think I could choose just one favorite moment. My favorite moments was every time Kermit or Grover sat on the brick wall, talking to a little kid. At the end of their conversation Kermit or Grover would hug the child. This is where I learned jealousy. I wanted to be that little kid so badly and I wanted to be hugged by Kermit and Grover. I just knew by looking at the kid’s face that getting that hug was the best feeling in the whole wide world.

I’m not sure that I learned my ABCs or numbers from watching Sesame Street. Actually, I don’t remember learning my ABCs as much as it just seems like I always knew them. I was reading before I started kindergarten. The lessons that I did learn from Sesame street are far more important than the ABCs or learning to count in Spanish. Sesame Street taught me that the world outside of my white rural bubble was filled with all kinds of people. Different colors. Different beliefs. Different needs. So much difference yet we all need, crave and offer love. For a long time I thought that maybe Sesame Street was making it all up. I would walk around the grocery store with my Mom and look at the people around me. You could not walk into the grocery store without saying hello to someone you knew. We all knew each other. We were all the same color, same religion. I would look around and wonder “where are those families that I see on Sesame Street?” Sesame Street showed me that my life was missing diversity.

I learned more about diversity and loving kindness from Sesame Street than I did from my own church.

Last night, I watched Joan Ganz Cooney and Dr. Lloyd Morrisett accept Kennedy Center Honors for Sesame Street. Big Bird and Elmo and Grover and few others all took the stage to celebrate. I still stare at Big Bird with the same awe and joy as I did as a small child. Sesame Street still brings joy to my heart and when the whole audience stood up and started singing along to Sing A Song, I knew that this joy is contagious and true for all of us.

So, what about you? What’s your favorite Sesame Street memory?

DANDELIONS

Dandy

3 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Dandy"

Remember when you were a kid and thought dandelions where the most beautiful flower and you picked all of them in your yard and then proudly held them up in your clutched sweaty little hand as a gift to your mom? At some point in adulthood, probably when we first started caring for a lawn of our very own, those bright yellow blooms became the bane of our existence. That dime sized blister on my thumb is the result of digging those invasive plants out of the vegetable garden. I've seen Josephine eat them. In fact she dragged half of the ones I pulled from the garden off into the yard to chew on while I worked. As I tugged and pulled each dandelion plant free, I thought "I used to love these. I used to think these bright yellow flowers where stunning." 

It is a wonder how perceptions change with age. When the Cabbage was in pre-school, Michael asked her if she had any black kids in her class. He wanted to make sure that she was in a class of diversity. The Cabbage looked at him oddly and said "Black kids?!? Kids aren't black!" She didn't know about the terms we adults have created to describe skin that is not white. Michael, not wanting to mess up anything, just said "OK" and left it at that. He realized that kids don't see color the way adults do. They recognize that there are different skin colors but they haven't been told about ethnicities or about stereotypes. They learn those things. From grownups. Eventually the Cabbage will notice that the color of her skin will afford her a certain sort of privilege. I would have hoped that we would have fixed the privilege of skin color before that happened, but it doesn't look like that's the case. 

iBiology recently posted a video series on Mentor Training to Improve Diversity in Science. I watched it because I thought it would be important and educational for me to watch. I thought I might learn how to talk about diversity and race with confidence or without the worry of offending someone. I also wanted to hear if they addressed the lack of young African American women in science. I see this here and I wonder how to fix it. They don't really address that, but they do talk about how important diversity is to making scientific discoveries. This is not a message I needed to learn, but it was one I was happy to hear because I don't think it is said often enough. It's the reason why I shared the video to Facebook. The messages presented by Dr. Angela Byars-Winston and Dr. Sandra Crouse Quinn are messages that applies universally, not just in the field of science. 

Let's say there's a committee of people put together to solve a specific problem regarding the whole country. The committee consists of ten people. All of them are men. All of them are very very wealthy. All of them are white. How effective do you think they will be in solving a problem that affects all of us (white, black, hispanic, middle class, female, LGBQT, farmer, working class) in a way that is helpful to all of us? Wait...that's pretty much the situation we have now. Bad example. I'm saying that having a diverse group allows that group to approach questions to a problem in a more effective way because we all add something unique to the table. 

It's not about not seeing color. Not at all. It's about embracing color and recognizing the beauty and strengths in having a diverse society. It's about being respectful without expectations. Treating others the way you would want to be treated.