What would you like to be able to DO again? Do better and handle differently?
Remembering specific things, both John and Emily reveal the small regrets that haunt them are not small--are important precious moments they want to hold onto, and never forget.
It's the capitol of Nunavut, a Canadian territory. When I was earning a living as a dancer, I did a lot of performing, master classes, and lectures in Canada, in small towns like Iqaluit.
What intrigued me, reading about this town in The Week Magazine, was its New York City prices. It's a town of about 7,500 people. An efficiency apartment is about $2000 a month; two bedroom house about $3,500.
There are stores, and malls like the one in the photo, but a place to live is hard to find. The government is the major employer through-out that area of Canada. Iqaluit's status as the capitol brought a surge of public sector workers, who have housing subsidized by the government, but with global warming, temperatures are higher and melting the "permafrost." Because the ground is melting, roads buckle, and building foundations crack.
The local government advises removing the snow as soon as possible, so it doesn't seep into the ground. Since houses built on the ground can help thaw the soil with their escaped heat, many homes have been built on wood or metal pilings. The latest new technique --"thermosyphons" -- tubes in the ground that ventilate the ground relatively inexpensively, can also monitor ground temperature. It's what the government is promoting. Actually, throughout Nunavut, there are more than 100 bore holes that have been measuring ground temp since 2000.
The pretty lady in the picture is Colleen Healey, part of the local government. She has been working with the Canadian Space Agency, finding other ways to detect changes in the permafrost and shifts in the ground.
At a recent meeting, Healey declared, "We can now see ground movement within 3 millimeters. We are making maps to help builders. If homes need to be retro-fitted, which homeowner and government pays for, there are possible solutions." Holding up a map, Healey pointed out a spot. "The blue areas are high risk -- it's where the city was planning to build a housing development. That brown area -- that is where to build -- it's solid rock."
Here's a map that shows you the United States, Canada, Nunavut, and Iqaluit. If you were looking for a new kind of life, would you head there?
If we visited, we'd take a tour of the city, visit a museum, and probably watch some guys working on securing a house before it sinks. Though I no longer do classes or lectures, we checked out Iqaluit's Website to see what's happening here and there. My husband, actor John Cullum and I were impressed -- it's a good place for a would-be performer. You could find space in a gym or a large meeting room and do a play reading -- like John said, you might even get a community theater going in Iqaluit.
I bumped into them a few months ago on a night I was restless, looking for a film or a rerun of Friends or Seinfeld.
Wow! What I saw and heard got me laughing. These guys seemed so real, quirky, flawed, smart -- what seemed to be important to each of them interested me. I watched it the next night, and then the next night. For the past few months, just about every evening, after browsing around for news that I haven't heard, I tune in this show.
That there's no TV punch lines, no intonation to setup up a laugh, that scenes start and end unexpectedly, out of sequence, that plot things are never explained -- they just make sense -- and what these people are involved with -- even science stuff that I know very little about -- is intriguing.
Amy often amazes me (her acting's exceptionally inventive). I get annoyed with Penny, (gorgeous, constantly sipping liquor), wishing she showed more affection for the passionately honest, somewhat boring Leonard, (affection she has for the marvelously irritating, brilliant Sheldon) -- Sheldon's sort of the star of the show. And tiny, tinny-sounding Bernadette, sharp, smart, down-to earth and divertingly voluptuous, whose her lover/husband Howard (another remarkably inventive actor) struggles with a domineering (unseen) Jewish Mom, and flirts with Raj, who's from India, in and out of love constantly, surprising us with his realistic views.
Guys, this is NOT a critque -- it's a love letter to the show's creators, Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, wise, intuitive, skilled grownups, who know instinctively, factually, dramatically what was and is affecting everything that's going on in our country.
Will I be watching six months from now? Will how these characters mature -- their conflicts, goals, personal and professional happenstance, still intrigue me?
Maybe. There's nothing else like this show on television. Even if I get somewhat bored, there's the opening theme -- this fantastic vision of the evolution of the world that astounds and delights me every time I see it, that's worth seeing again, and again, and yes -- again.
NEW! ... Emily Frankel and John Cullum offer lively, provocative video commentary on YouTube once a week. Click image above to go.
HOW I GOT HERE
I'm a writer, writing things that haven't brought me fame, but continue to involve me, inspire me to find an audience.
I started out as a modern dancer, contemporary, but balletic. I didn't want to be a swan, or a barefoot dancer. I wanted to dance to the music that thrilled me as a child, and made me want to be a dancer.
I began writing in the truck my first husband, Mark Ryder and I bought, in order to carry our set, props, and costumes for a long one-night-stands tour -- eighty-eighty performances in eighty-eight cities.
We were performing "Romeo and Juliet" nightly, but our marriage was breaking up. Every day while our stage manager drove us two-hundred miles or so to the next booking, I'd type a detailed description of last night -- what we did well, what we argued about, and a travelogue about the town, and comments from the people at the nightly party.
Recovering from the trip and the divorce, I sent my "car book" to a friend who said -- "Em, it's great, but ..." And that became rewrites, and another book. Then, my marriage to actor John Cullum, and then a play that got produced, and another book, big hopes because a famous agent loved it. The title and concept changed five times -- now it's been published, finally, as "Somebody, Woman of the Century." You can buy it, or read about it and my other five novels on Emily Frankel.com
The pretty lady in the picture is Colleen Healey, part of the local government. She has been working with the Canadian Space Agency, finding other ways to detect changes in the permafrost and shifts in the ground.
At a recent meeting, Healey declared, "We can now see ground movement within 3 millimeters. We are making maps to help builders. If homes need to be retro-fitted, which homeowner and government pays for, there are possible solutions." Holding up a map, Healey pointed out a spot. "The blue areas are high risk -- it's where the city was planning to build a housing development. That brown area -- that is where to build -- it's solid rock."
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