Douglas Whaley

    I am honored to have been recently appointed to the Board of Directors of the Evolution Theatre Company [ETC] here in Columbus, Ohio.   I suspect that my appointment has something to do with my theatrical adventures in acting and directing since I retired from teaching over ten years ago (16 shows in all) and my involvement in gay rights in this city.   The latter is particularly important because ETC has made the decision to change its mission to performing exclusively LGBT plays and musicals starting with the 2015 season.   This is an exciting endeavor, and I’m also pleased that I’ve been selected to direct one of the plays” “The Temeramentals.”   It’s the incredible story of Harry Hay and the Mattachine Society, the gay rights organization that was formed in 1950 (!), an era when gay men could be arrested for simply holding hands in a restaurant.   For more on Harry Hay and the terrors of that era see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattachine_Society .   I’m much looking

[Click To Enlarge Any Photo] It’s been a long time since I was in a musical, but when Little Theatre Off Broadway [LTOB] in Grove City (a suburb of Columbus, Ohio) sent out audition notices for Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine’s “Into the Woods” last summer, my husband, David Vargo, suggested we should audition.   We did so and were promptly cast: he as the Big Bad Wolf (and also Cinderella’s Father) and me as the Mysterious Man.   It was first time for us to be in a show together, and that’s an experience we will always treasure. Most of the very large cast (the Act Two finale had 21 people singing and dancing on stage!) were young people, many in their twenties (four were still in high school, and the cow was played by an eleven year-old), lots of them music majors or experienced singers.   Sondheim’s music and lyrics are very complicated, and we were singing to a pre-recorded orchestral score, so the whole thing was quite a challenge.   Indeed both David and I were o

Alan Turing In writing a blog post about Alan Turing, it’s difficult to know where to start.   His accomplishments were great enough that Time Magazine listed him as one of the 100 most important people of the 20 th century, a nationwide BBC poll in 2002 ranked him 21st of the “100 Greatest Britains,” he is widely considered the father of the modern computer (the computer world’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize is aptly called the “Turing Award”), and his personal story is tragic in the extreme.    His musings about computers began in 1935 when he took a break from his usual run (he was a long distance runner through much of his life) to take a rest in an orchard under an apple tree (shades of Isaac Newton!).   He began musing about whether a mechanical process could be created to think logically, mimicking intelligence.   This thought guided his life. Turing’s activities during World War II resulted in breaking the German’s "unbreakable" code and allowed the

 Justice Ginsberg A few months ago liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was asked what the Court was going to do this year about lower federal court cases striking down gay marriage bans enacted by many states throughout the country.   She gave the cryptic reply that observers should pay attention to what happens in the 6 th Circuit Court of Appeals.   Court watchers knew what she meant: what would Judge Jeffrey Sutton do? Judge Sutton [pictured in the first photo above] is one of the most respected jurists in the country.   Appointed by the last President Bush to the 6 th Circuit he has rapidly become a bellwether for how conservative causes will fare in major cases.   One example was his surprising opinion upholding the key elements of Obamacare (which disappointed his conservative fans), a stance subsequently echoed by the Supreme Court itself [see http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2012/07/obamacare-john-roberts-and-supreme.html ].   Jeff Sutton is a