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Have you seen the Skittles commercial where there's a multi-colored spot on the ceiling of some scruffy dude's apartment, and a man who could be a plumber or a landlord (you can tell he's a plumber or a landlord because he has a belly: that's called a "stereotype") catches something, eats it, and says, "Oh yeah, you've got a Skittles leak." The scruffy dude looks all worried and says, "What can you do?" and the landlord or plumber puts two hooks on the ceiling and hangs a little man who catches the Skittles in his mouth?

I wouldn't call a plumber or my landlord. I'd be like, "Dude! Free Skittles!" I WANT A SKITTLES LEAK.

Klutzy

Klutzy
Originally uploaded by AdiaMichelle.

I totally took a picture, y'all.

Presenting...

A bullet point list of my life:

• attended a party launching the new theatre company, Pendulum


• let my room get hideously messy again


• wrote a tour for Black History Month for my day job


• reveled in the warm weather (compared to -10, 40 degrees is warm!)


• got wet coffee grounds all over the floor and deep into the drawer under the counter - again


• participated in a reading with the potential to CHANGE LIVES


• panicked a little over my first residency as a solo teaching artist


• got not enough sleep, got too much sleep, got just the right amount of sleep


• possibly over-used my ankles in pointe class and possibly developed tendonitis in the left one


• decided to sit out of dance class for the foreseeable future


• cried over having to sit out of dance classes


• ran into my old neighbor from my first Minneapolis apartment: they're married now and having a baby and I don't even know if I ever knew their names!


• felt that I was really being prodded to make teaching a larger part of my life


• wrote a screenplay


• did the accelerated Pilates DVD for the first time in years and just about died


• had a minor tantrum over the fact that Minneapolis places no value on its public library system


• realized that I'd better get a move on and leave this coffee shop

Heavy stuff, man.

Well. That "photos every day!" thing didn't last very long, did it? No, it didn't. It isn't that I don't have photos that I'd like to take. I have several in mind. The problem is in the execution. As in, I don't get around to it, and then another day has passed and I haven't updated my website in five days.

Well, of late I've been busy doing a reading with the Guthrie. Every year about this time, the Guthrie partners with the University of Minnesota Medical School to present a reading of the play Miss Evers Boys. The play was written by David Feldshuh, a dramaturg turned M.D., and it concerns the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. The focus for the med students is on ethics in research and patient care. (Y'all are going to have to click that link to know more. I don't feel like summarizing.)

I was a reader for this event last year, and I've forgotten over the course of the last year how horrific the idea of research without informed consent can be, and how sticky a situation it was for the black physicians and nurses involved. They wanted to help their people, but in order to do so they felt they needed government money, and there wouldn't be any government money unless they complied and allowed the study to continue. Forty years later someone held up a hand and said, "Whoa there," but that was forty years. (The study began in 1932 and ended in 1972.)

And the issue of not treating patients as rational, intelligent human beings hasn't ended in 2007. Studies have shown that women who are obese or undereducated or in at a lower socioeconomic level are more likely to receive a lower quality of care than women who are thinner or in a higher socioeconomic strata. These doctors mean well, but they have a hard time seeing something of themselves or their loved ones in these women, and that difference leads to an ethical dilemma. These doctors assume that the patient won't follow through with repeat visits, or their bodies can't handle higher doses of radiation, and in assuming they take choice away from their patients.

I'm not saying that our society is as racist as it was in the 30s when the Tuskegee study began, but the discrimination that arises is so much more subtle. So subtle that many would claim it doesn't exist. The facts say otherwise.

I hate February.

I should be writing more. I should be writing more because it's February and February is a dreary month in the north. So I should be writing more and entertaining you with clever witticisms, right? I should be writing more so you can forget the fact that the temperature always seems to have a minus sign in front of it and that you haven't been able to go outside in less than arctic gear for three weeks, right? I should be writing more so you can be transported to better days through my energetic and flowing prose, right? Right?

Well, too bad. I hate February, too, and I don't want to write. I don't want to take pictures. I want to stay in my pajamas and eat cookies and play King's Quest.

Eh, I give in. I'll post a photo because I'm so nice. Heh.

This is an oldie but a goodie: we were up in Alexandria doing a show. After almost every performance, somewhere around midnight, we'd all eat Fruit Loops cereal. I caught Cori and her bowl of Fruit Loops by surprise.

Why do I still live in Minnesota?

No picture today. It's the kind of day on which I'd like to be on the couch with a hot cup of coffee and an engrossing book. Instead I'm sitting in Dunn Bros. with a bunch of giggly college-age girls. After listening to the radio this morning, though, I should cut them some slack.

Today's guest on MPR's Midmorning was Stephen Morse, a professor of law and psychology at UPenn. The discussion revolved around neuroscience and the criminal mind, whether criminal behavior stems from defects in the composition of the brain, and the implications for legal prosecution of said criminals in the future. Mr. Morse's point was that no matter how many factors contributed to a person's brain composition, if one can prove that they are a rational being, i.e. capable of looking at a situation and making a choice based on thought and not merely emotion, that person can and should be held responsible for their actions. They talked briefly about the fact that adolescents are not completely rational beings yet, that their choices are impulsive, rash, and based on emotion, and that we now know that adolescence continues well into one's twenties. Therefore, I can't blame those girls for being idiots. They're just irrational.