In praise of Stanko Milov

We in our family have become big fans of Stanko Milov, one of the principal dancers with the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

We saw him dance the Prince with the great Patricia Barker as adult Clara in "Nutcracker" in December, and were instantly smitten with his grace, power, storytelling, and elegance. And he is one of the few male dancers who can competently and equally partner Patricia Barker.

On Saturday night, we went to see Patricia Barker dance Odette/Odile in "Swan Lake" with Stanko Milov as her Prince Siegfried. What tipped the scales for us was that Stanko is partnering her in this, her final full-length ballet before retirement.

Last Sunday we met Stanko at the annual Pacific Northwest Ballet School's annual Winter Wonderland Ball. He taught the "folk" dance class, and we found him charming and congenial. He is also 6 ft. 5 in. tall, the same height as my dh. He and dh seemed to bond over this fact, and Stanko said, "You must come see me in "Swan Lake!"

We hemmed and hawed all week, and ran the risk of not getting tickets (Patricia Barker is only set to dance two performances, and we cannot, practically, attend her final performance next weekend), but when I called on Friday morning, when only singles were left, we were able to snag two sets of two seats in the best seats in the Hall -- Orchestra, director's preferred (and in the dead center of the section -- 14 rows from the stage), and the Dress Circle, second row center.

At this point, I have a confession to make. The one other time I saw "Swan Lake" I was bored and annoyed by it. I didn't consider a story about a failed love romantic, I had no sympathy for Prince Siegfried who I thought was selfish, and I thought most of the ballet was dan

cers showing how long they could hold difficult poses. I missed the storytelling completely. Thankfully, PNB's production is not in the least boring.

Patricia Barker was perfection, bringing to her dual roles an emotional, technical and interpretive maturity that in almost unmatched. This ballet is all about the women, and

at the center of it all is the prima ballerina; Patricia Barker surpasses the requirements of the role.

But into this ballet of women bursts Stanko Milov; tall, ripped, virile and desireable. From the moment he walks on stage in Act One, he is the focus. He "gets" his character, and gives the audience a young,

passionate young man who is not willing to settle for less than true love. He establishes and develops his character through the first act, so by the time he meets Odette in the second act, and falls in love, we feel like we know and understand him. Not a mere prop for the diva, but a partner in storytelling. When we walked out of the performance hall, we heard more people commenting on Stanko Milov than Patricia Barker. And that is saying something!

But his greatest charm is as a partner. He thoroughly understands that the male dancer must framework the female to her best advantage for the maximum impact, while still managing to be his character fully engaged in the moment. And he always deferred graciously and respectfully to Patricia Barker at the end of each pas de deux, allowing the audience to accolade her. Only when the applause was prolonged would he do a slight bow before acknowledging her again.

So while Seattle fans acclaim one of their favorite athletes, let us give praise to Stanko Milov, whose power, athleticism, grace, and talent have kept him out of the shadow of his most frequent partner, and at her side to equally accept the accolades and love.

The State of the Union

I am still mulling over President Bush's State of the Union Address delivered last night.



Predictably, it was a slightly more centrist approach, with concessions to global warming (termed "global climate change" by the president because of course he wants to avoid the term commonly used by reasonable scientists for the past 30 years), and ideas for health care, etc.

Predictably, he pushed his Iraq policy, and said the state of the union was strong.

In the final analysis, though, regardless of the accolades of concessions and a spirit of cooperation by the conservative pundits, the president appeared to not to have gotten the message that the last election sent.

President Bush is enjoying the lowest approval rating ever, close only to Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon during the Watergate hearings. Now, low approval ratings and unpopular decisions aren't necessarily a reason to change policy. Lincoln, for instance, made some pretty unpopular-at-the-time decisions, but stuck by his plan.

However, this is different in a big way -- that was a civil war at home, which the government didn't begin; just defended against. The Iraq War may be a civil war, but not between Americans, and it was started by us. And not only was it started by us, but it was botched frm the beginning, when Bush, even then, chose to ignore the advice of the experts. Lincoln listened to his experts. And the Union Army was fighting an enemy it understood, and outnumbered. The Iraq War is the first war since the Revolution that the States initiated.

With the surprising strategy of Scooter Libby's lawyers to portray him as a fall guy for Karl Rove, and claim that Rove and Cheney knew all about it and engineered the leak, things are not looking good for the president. This man digs his heels in and refuses to budge, in the name of his convictions. But if he is going to save his political behind, perhaps he needs to pay attention to his "empire" crumbling around him.

Last night was a start, but I remain skeptical. Skeptical that the president will compromise. Skeptical that the Democrats will take the high road and avoid the temptation to take revenge like the Republicans did against Clinton. It certainly would be nice if, after six years of little besides self-reward and corruption, this was a group of people who worked hard and did some good for the country.

The state of the union may be strong, but it will only stay strong as long as democracy is able to exercise.

It's the right time for Hillary

I awoke this morning to dh saying, "Hillary Clinton is running for president."

It is about time. We need Hillary Clinton in the White House.

Not because she is Bill Clinton's wife. But because she is an intelligent, articulate statesman with international credibility who has the unique, intimate perspective of what life is like as president. That is critical if we are going to re-establish our nation's international credibility.

And not because she is a woman, although it is exciting that we have a woman candidate who has such strong qualifications. And because, in many ways, she is much more the real face of America than we have seen in a long time.

She is a woman from a Midwestern, middle class family who went to one of the top schools in the country because she wanted to be a lawyer. She was a Goldwater Republican who became a southern Democrat. With the centrist sensibility present in our society today, she is all that.

She has already survived the intense scrutiny of federal prosecutors and unprecendented attacks to her character by a partisan Congress while First Lady. She has had her private life played out in the press, and has faced down political skepticism about her suitability as a Senate candidate. Not many of us have faced that, but how would our lives look if they were played out in the press?

She has been a working mother who has worked hard to balance work and family. While the myth of the one-income household with the father earning the money and the mother staying home to care for the household and the school-age children, that is not the reality. The face of the American woman is more likely single, often a single parent, and a lower-class to middle-class income. We think we want Cinderella for the First Lady, but we are really more like Belle.

Hillary Clinton has what it takes to be president.

Surviving The Storm

Yes, it has been a long time since I posted, and partly because I was too busy to do more than check email occasionally.

But more than that, because we were caught right in the heart of The Big Storm on December 14, which left us without power for a week, and internet access for two weeks.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, the occasional high winds, and steady rains, are expected. But we generally avoid winds higher than 50 mph. However, on the 14th, a lot of things converged, as the meteorologists say, and caused some of the most dramatic weather we have had in recent memory.

It really started back in November with flooding that closed school for two days. We were lucky -- no flooding where we live, up a large hill, and no power outages.

But then on the 13th we had the second incidence of high winds in five days, with predictions of higher winds and heavy rains for Thursday, the 14th. One of my offspring was performing in "Nutcracker" in Seattle. #1 had a performance that night, and we had tickets to watch the amazing Patricia Barker dance Clara in one of the three final performances before she retires at the end of the season. Partnered with the incredible Stanko Milov, it was a must-see. And having a child in the production on the same evening was irresistible.

So we set off at 3:30pm so our member of the infantry would be there by 6:30. Oh, I think I forgot to mention: There was a Seattle Seahawks game that evening, as well. And any time there is a Seahawks game downtown Seattle on a weeknight, traffic is horrific. We stopped at McDonalds' for an early dinner, I had packed a cooler with sandwiches and other food for what we anticipated might be a long drive home, and in the trunk was an overnight bag just in case we didn't make it home.

So we headed off downtown, ready to sit in heavy traffic for much of the trip. And heavy the traffic was, compounded by some flooding on the road. But we eventually made it, and early, even. Our cast member safely delivered to the Stage Door, we headed up to McCaw Hall to wait for the performance to start (and late, at that, to allow all the people caught in traffic to make it in), and watch the wind and rain blow outside.

The performance, of course, was wonderful. At the end, as the houselights came up, the announcer thanked everyone for coming and announced that Mercer Street was closed. We found out later that it was underwater in places. We pulled out the snack "lunch" I had packed, and the kids munched while we inched our way out of the parking garage.

The DOT had already announced that the 520 bridge between Seattle and "the Eastside" would be closed by 11:00pm because of the predicted high winds. When we came out of the parking garage, we realized that the heavy traffic would mean that the bridge, if not already closed, would close either before we were on it or while we were on it. Not wanting to deal with that possibility, we used the Tom Tom to give us a route to the I-90 bridge, the other way across, although not as direct home for us. And thank goodness for the Tom Tom. It took us through a deserted downtown to an entrance to I-5 (which connects with 90) that was barely being used, and we were quickly on the bridge across Lake Washington.

And what a tense drive it was. Although the bridge remained stable in spite of being a floating bridge, our windshield was regularly slapped by waves that washed up over the side of the bridge. But we made it across, and headed for home.

When we arrived home, the power was out, and many branches were already on the ground. The wind was howling and roaring, and you could hear trees cracking, although none of ours. We dressed for bed by flashlight, and tucked #1 and #2 in bed. Fortunately, they slept. We didn't, too concerned that a tree would fall on the house. By about 5am, the winds had begun to die down, so we did doze.

The next morning, our yard looked like there had never been a storm at all. But all around us, it looked kind of like a war zone. We knew not even to ask when power would be restored. Dh went out to get gas for the small, efficient generator, and cancelled every other errand becuase it was too dangerous. Just to get to the main highway, he had to drive under three huge trees suspended from power lines.

We were lucky. We had a generator that provided television and power to keep batteries charged. We have gas hot water and a gas range, so I was able to cook, and we had hot water. But even with all that, we were still unhappy -- we had no internet access to compensate for last-minute Christmas shopping, and it started to get cold in the house, even with the fireplace burning.

Early Saturday morning, I heard my husband get up and start the fire in the fireplace. I must have dozed off, because what seemed only a few minutes later, but was more like 45 minutes, he crawled shivering back into bed and announced, "I don't think the fire makes enough difference. I took a cable from my workbench in the garage and something something something to run the furnace." At that moment I realized -- the furnace was running. What a clever man I married! So from that day we had heat.

Later that day I threw out almost everything in the refrigerator, and had a cooler on the back porch for a small amount of fresh food. I confess I grew weary of cooking on the stovetop, but we ate pretty well. Everyone was happy with grilled cheese sandwiches, so we had a lot of them.

On Sunday our member of the infantry had a 5:30 pm performance. We all piled into the car and headed into Seattle, where there was light and heat. We went to the local coffee shop and dh used the wireless available, although it was pretty sporadic. #2 and I finally went back to the Stage Door at McCaw Hall, to the waiting room where we could watch the performance on a monitor with the sound from the auditorium piped in. When #1 came up at intermission, ready to leave, we went to a Seattle Red Robin with an amazingly treacherous parking lot, and had a hot meal. I am not a big fan of Red Robin, but I have a new favorite -- the California Chicken Burger without bacon and pickle. It was right on Elliot Bay, and a cozy place. When we got home, of course, the house was dark, but it was warm. Even without power on for those few hours, the house stayed warm enough.

However, Brinks seemed surprised that we were still without power, and had tried several times to call us because of a low battery alert. Dh patiently 'slpained that we had no idea when we would have power restored, so to wait at least until Friday before the called about low battery again.

By Thursday I was ready to beg dh to take us to a hotel for the duration (at least he and #1 got out of the house for "Nutcracker" performances), when late in the morning the septic alarm started buzzing. Looking up I cried, "We have power!"

It was amazing how quickly I forgot the struggle of living in a house made for power without power. I went to the grocery store for a few lunch items, then went back in the late afternoon to stock up and replenish the frozen and fresh foods. Ironically, the heat was off -- dh was at work, and I turned off the generator when it came back on. Eventually the furnace was returned to the house circuit, and it was like we never lost power.

Except for internet access. Which didn't get restored until the following week. Given that I do so much of my family communication through email, it was frustrating, to say the least. Plus dh had a difficult time working from home, since he used his Blackberry for access. He was very happy when he could finally once again play Battlefield II online interactive.

We put the Christmas tree lights on the tree on the 22nd, the ornaments on the 23rd, and hung the stockings on the 24th. Santa came as scheduled, and all was well.