This is the best interaction between two of my favorite writers I’ve ever seen @neil-gaiman and @linmanuel
Ah yes. But why a BEAVER?
That’s not a beaver, that’s a giant vole. You can tell by the tiny nose.
This is a beaver.
Oh hive mind of Tumblr. So much wisdom.
As a rodent biologist, I couldn’t resist putting in my two cents. I have no idea how old this thread is, but here goes. So, it’s hard to see in the original tweet if the rodent of interest is a vole or a muskrat. Now, I think we’ve all adequately described why it isn’t a beaver (though I didn’t see mention of the pronounced lids over a beaver’s eyes, or the high positioning of the eyes on the head, or the almost invisible ears, all of which I find more reliable than the big naked nose).
Sometimes even biologists have a hard time identifying one rodent from another with just a picture to go on. My final verdict for the rodent of interest, though, is muskrat, solely (and I mean solely) because of the size of the water reed in its hand. Now, it could be a really tiny reed (though it’s heavy enough for one end to sink) and if it’s a really tiny reed that could very well be a vole…but I’m going with muskrat. Tough call.
Muskrat faces (not to be confused with the coypu/nutria) look A LOT like vole faces, to the point that I find
myself hard pressed to identify a key factor other than size to
differentiate the two faces. Muskrats do have more of a lid over their
eyes, but when their eyes are wide open the lid is not
visible. So when you do a Google image search of a vole, you’ll sometimes come across a muskrat, and vice versa.
The most consistent way to get correct photos is by using the animal’s scientific name in your Google or Flickr search. Not fool-proof, but better than using the common name.
I just want to point out that a joke on Twitter has caused a tumblr post beginning “As a rodent biologist…” that then goes on to unleash wisdom.
I’ve written before about how theatre can teach trust, empathy, compassion, peaceful conflict resolution, deeper cognitive thinking, delayed gratification, create community and understanding. The men in Rehabilitation Through the Arts have far fewer disciplinary infractions inside the facility and a dramatically lower recidivism rate upon release than the general population.
I often wish I could take the guys to the theatre. You may be able to imagine that a fair number of these men had no access to the arts as children. (That’s a separate post.) We make do with production photos and the occasional “adapted for television.” Until the cast of Hamilton beautifully and powerfully performed their opening number from the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre for the Grammy ceremony, and then performed at the White House. Until Lin-Manuel Miranda free-styled in the Rose Garden with President Obama. Which I promptly burned onto a DVD and waited for clearance to bring into the facility.
Tonight we watched Lin-Manuel perform a piece from his ‘concept album’ at the 2009 White House Poetry Jam, and we talked about how that audience received his work. We talked about what happens when people laugh and you’re serious, about the decision to stand one’s ground and follow one’s purpose, which is a hot topic in our rehearsal room as we get closer to sharing our months of work with the population of the prison. “He gets more confident as he goes.” Some of the men are worried that the population won’t understand Shakespeare; some are worried that they will laugh at the serious parts. Tonight, one of the elders in our circle says, “We have to tell the story.”
We watch a Broadway show in the Big House. Well, four minutes of it. We watch the Grammy performance of “Alexander Hamilton.” Heads nod to the beat; some of the men snap along. “Can we watch it again?” We can.
We talk about how Hamilton is performed on a bare stage, just like we’ll perform Twelfth Night. “No one laughed when he said his name this time.” We talk about how Miranda uses language, leverages rhetoric to find each character’s voice, just as Shakespeare did. We talk about working for six years on something you believe in, and we speculated about the long, uncertain nights somewhere in the middle of year three, year four. The men know more than the rest of us can imagine about long, uncertain nights in the middle of a very long bid to survive. I attempt to describe the beautiful specificity of the physical and vocal choices that Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, and Anthony Ramos make to differentiate Lafayette from Jefferson, Mulligan from Madison, Laurens from Philip Hamilton; we’ve been working on character walks.
We watch the cast perform “My Shot” at the White House; we woop. We joyfully behold the son of Puerto Rican parents and the first African American President freestyle in the Rose Garden. We cheer. (One or two of us might tear up, but we don’t need to discuss that.)
These gorgeous, thoughtful, wounded men rarely see themselves represented in the world. As they fight to become the men they want to be, they still mostly see themselves in the narrative as junkies, dealers, thugs or the latest Black man brutally gunned down in the streets by the police. According to an Opportunity Agenda study, “negative mass media portrayals were strongly linked with lower life expectations among black men.” (Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story?) But tonight, in the midst of our shared creative endeavor, they saw themselves smack in the center of the narrative of creation, possibility, pursuit, and achievement.
Representation unabashedly made me weep tonight as I watched a few of the men lean in.
He once sent New York into a panic by pretending to talk to a ghost.
On occasion, Hamilton gave evidence of a prankish spirit at odds with the image of the sober public man. While on a visit to Newark, Hamiltin’s aide Philip Church met a Polish poet, Julian Niemcewicz, a friend of General Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Niemcewicz insisted that Kosciuszko had entrusted him with a magic secret that permitted him to summon up spirits from the grave. Hamilton, intrigued, invited the Polish poet to a Friday-evening soiree. To give conclusive proof of his black art, Niemcewicz asked Hamilton to step into an adjoining room so that he could not see what was going on. Then one guest wrote down on a card the name of a dead warrior - the baron de Viomenil, who had seen action at Yorktown - and asked the Polish poet to conjure up his shade. Niemcewicz uttered a string of incantations, accompanied by a constantly clanging bell. When it was over, Hamilton strode into the room and “declared that the Baron [de Viomenil] had appeared to him exactly in the dress which he formerly wore and that a conversation had passed between them wh[ich] he was not at liberty to disclose,” related Peter Jay, the governor’s son. That Hamilton had communed with a fallen comrade attracted exceptional attention in New York society, so much so that he had to admit that it was all a hoax he had cooked up with Philip Church and Niemcewicz “to frighten the family for amusement and that it was never intended to be made public.”
He’s constantly confusing confounding the British henchman everyone give it up for America’s favorite fat infringement Lafayette taking his horse butter and bacon red cups filled with blood stains feminist Robin and they can drop by the mascot of the Rings watch be engaged with Kate for her and raising him go to France the most fun they come back with Morgan and so the balance shift
I’ve written a new musical entitled Hamilton; it’s opening on
Broadway this summer. There are lots of characters in the show, but I
want to talk about two of them in particular, Alexander Hamilton and
Aaron Burr. On the surface, these men had a lot in common: They were
both orphaned at a young age, though Burr grew up in wealth and
privilege in New England, Hamilton in poverty in the Caribbean. Both
prodigious students, revered commanders in the Revolutionary War, expert
lawyers, respected politicians, innovative businessmen, until 1804 when
one kills another in a duel. This duel is their most famous act,
linking them together forever.
The engine of my new musical is the fact that Hamilton and Burr both
hear that ticking clock of mortality at a very young age, and the way in
which they choose to live in the FACE of that knowledge puts them in a
collision course from the moment they meet. I’m going to sing a little
bit, so if you made a bet that I’d be rapping during the Commencement
address, your friend owes you money. Or points.
I graduated 3 years ago from a brazilian university. I have almost nothing in common with those people, but Lin’s words are so universal and so true that I’m in tears. Thank you, Lin. You inspire me a lot.
