on or about the fourth

Three more things done.

1. Attended (part of) the Tolkien Society's web-seminar on "Adapting Tolkien." Putting it at a civilised hour for the UK meant it started here at 4:30 AM, but I'm often up at that hour, so I watched it until I fell asleep again and then resumed when I re-woke. It's on YouTube, so I could catch the rest, but I need the time for it. Regardless, I did get to witness discussion of two musical adaptations of Tolkien, both of which were interesting as adaptations but which I found musically problematic for various reasons; one on artwork which claimed inspiration from earlier art in a way I couldn't detect at all; and two heavy-duty theoretical papers on the perception of Tolkien's work through adaptation which I found very provocative and level-headed.

2. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has put up, briefly, a reference videorecording of one of the two plays they actually managed to put on in February before the season was shut down. A new play called The Copper Children by Karen Zacarias, it depicts a strange incident c. 1904 when an NYC Catholic orphanage, faced with a surplus of (mostly Irish) foundlings, sent them out west to the largest collection of solid Catholic childless families they could find, the Mexican workers at a copper mine in Arizona. The Anglo mineowners, though prejudiced against Irish, were even more prejudiced against Mexicans, and were appalled by white children being raised by (fill in epithet here). So they kidnapped the kids at gunpoint and adopted them themselves, and got a judge to approve their action. (They weren't Catholic, by the way.) The play is very sympathetic towards the Mexicans, but the story is told more through narration than dialogue, which makes it sound pompous; the children are played by one large wooden doll (straight out of the Uncanny Valley) and a lot of miming, which is both creepy and awkward; and an epilogue reveals that most of the children grew up to lead productive lives, so what exactly is the point it's trying to make?

3. Pop-up free virus testing, intended for the nonsymptomatic, in a local park's rec building last week. Thought I should get myself tested. The line of patient masked people stretched all the way around the two-block park, and slowly progressed at a speed which got us to the destination in about 2.5 hours. I spent it reading about Reagan (see an earlier post). I'd heard that testing involves sticking a swab way up your nose, but this didn't happen. They swirled the swab around the lower bulb of each nostril and it was done. Nothing in the throat either. I got the negative result by e-mail a few days later. Should I rely on this?