Matthew Arnold Stern's Blog, page 42
May 31, 2017
The cycle of outrage
Do you feel like you’re stuck in a hamster wheel of never-ending political news? No matter what bad or outrageous thing happens, something comes along to top it. There is no respite and no place to avoid it. It occupies your mind, hijacks your conversations, and shades your relationships. We are stuck in a cycle of …
May 30, 2017
How (and why) I finally got Freiburg, Germany into a novel
It has been three years since I last went to Freiburg, Germany. Since then, I’ve been trying to find a way to get that southwestern German city into a novel. After some trial and error, I finally did. Freiburg is in Amiga. Here’s how and why (with some minor spoilers ahead). Actually, I wrote about Freiburg, West …
May 24, 2017
Presidents don’t come from God
I’ve tried to follow my own advice and listen to what Trump supporters have to say. There is no shortage of them on Facebook and Twitter. I have found one issue that needs to be addressed. This issue resides at the core of American government and society. It is an area where we need to come to an agreement …
May 20, 2017
“You gotta play hurt”
I came down with a cold. It’s a disease that isn’t really considered a disease (even though complications from it kill about 4,500 people per year in the US). But our response is to gulp down some medicine and go about our business. That’s what I tried to do the other day. At work, I had some …
May 15, 2017
Hamilton: What comes next?
This is the fifth and final installment of a series, Lessons from Musicals. Why am I bothering to talk about musicals I performed in 40 years ago? Aren’t there more pressing things to deal with in the present? I’ll answer by looking at a musical created by someone who hadn’t even been born yet when I …
May 10, 2017
Pippin: How to grow up
This is the fourth installment of a series, Learning from Musicals. I learned other important teenage lessons from Pippin. The first is not to listen to songs from musicals out of context. We performed a few songs from Pippin as one of the opening acts before Dames at Sea in 1978. We couldn’t do the musical …
May 8, 2017
Plain and Fancy: Talent really is a thing
This is the third installment of a series, Lessons from Musicals. It wonders me how I was able to land a spot in Reseda High School’s prestigious Vocal Ensemble. Although I could read music, stay in tune (well, most of the time), and hold my own in harmonies, I clearly wasn’t a star. You could pick me …
May 1, 2017
Tell me your heroes, and you tell me who you are
Let’s take a break from talking about musicals I performed in the 1970s and talk about a president from the 1830s. What caught my attention about President Trump’s recent interview isn’t his comments about what President Andrew Jackson could have done about the Civil War. (We already know, which I’ll cover in a moment.) It’s that …
Dames at Sea: The heartbreak behind camp
This is the second installment of a series, Lessons from Musicals. Of my performances in high school, my role as Hennesey in Dames at Sea was the most memorable. Even though I was sheltered and naïve in high school, I sensed there was something somewhat off about Dames. A musical we performed in the 1970s that …
April 27, 2017
Lessons from Musicals: Overture
This is the first installment of a series, Lessons from Musicals. Forty years ago, I performed in my first high school musical. Actually, we did excerpts from several musicals including Oliver and Plain and Fancy. I went from Mr. Bumble to Papa Yoder and experienced stage makeup for the first time (and the massive amounts …
