Polar Bear Witness Performs: "Good" Natives vs "Bad" Weeds; Virtue vs Vice

Friday, October 26th

It was the first time I had ever performed indoors. Previously it was on the Capitol lawn, under green treetops and blue sky. My role with the troupe had been, alas, limited. As my maker Ted has said before, I was created to do two things: dance and drown.

Traveling around with Monona and her friends has been a whole new gig. Last night we got up in front of a friendly audience: Friends of Starkweather Creek, that is.

Larry went along with playing the part of the "good" native plants and so did John, except he was the "bad" weeds. We got Larry to wear one of those gold, sparking sequin, little Cinderella "princess" crowns. It was so him. He held a bouquet of blue asters and a shaft of late-blooming goldenrod with appropriate dignity and righteousness. John held a copy of The New Yorker magazine - which had just arrived, conveniently, in the afternoon mail - in front of his face, and he held a big, nasty stalk of ragweed in his other hand.

Larry and John batted each other with their plants to represent the conflict between good "natives" and the the dark force of the "weeds." Of course, the good natives won.

We told our appreciative audience - they laughed and took photos of our skit - that they too could participate in this exciting drama to defend our local watershed by volunteering to join us on for a "rain garden weeding party" on Saturday.

When we left the meeting, Dan commented about the cover of The New Yorker magazine that we had just retrieved after almost leaving it behind.

It showed a large, orange, jack o' lantern head with a really mean expression carved on: glasses perched on eyes that glowed like a burning furnace and an open mouth that curled in a kind of half-snarl, with broken lower teeth lined up like a dark city skyline silhouetted against a radiating inferno's abyss.

"That," said Dan, nodding towards the cover of the magazine, as he adjusted the strap on this bike helmet and put his riding gloves on, "looks a lot like the Vice President to me."

Truly yours, Polar Bear Witness