October 21, 2009
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Tales from Back in the Day!!!
The Heidi Doll from the classic ATFNL Haunted House, 2005.The Daily News
1 The last time I complained about a slow news day was on 9/10/01.
2 Absolutely true.
3 I remember distinctly wondering why I cared about Chandra Levy and Gary Condit, and the entire mystery surrounding the murder of Levy.
4 It occurred to me at the time that we had become a nation of chowderheads. I complained in the DN about it.
5 Unfortunately, I don’t have the archive with me. My online archives begin in 2002, even though the DN dates back to 1996. I have hard copies dating back to 1997, but they remain in storage. I still insist that the DN is the world’s first blog, though it was in paper and posted on the wall in the Performing Arts Building beginning in the Spring of 1996. Personal claim to fame. ‘Course nobody cares but me, but that’s how life rolls.
6 Anyway, enough of that. That leads everywhere. ; ) <——-little sideways winky guy
7 Let’s Move Forward: Back to slow news days: I just remember distinctly having been overwhelmed with how shallow we had all become that this odd sad murder case became the thing of drooling scandal.
8 Condit admitted an affair, but not to the murder. If you think about it, even if he HAD murdered her, he still would probably have denied it. To me, it sure LOOKED as though he was guilty, what with his swagger and with his coat thrown over his shoulder.
9 The following morning, that story disappeared virtually forever when the World Trade Center towers were hit.
10 Ever since then, I’ve been excessively nervous about slow news days.
11 I’m now a firm believer that no news is good news, and that good news is grand news.
12 Amazing how we all made it this far, innit?
13 Moving on: I received my first Heidi Chronz update from me old friend and confidante Yvonne Carrera, who was one of the first ever to use a Ouija board to try to reach “the other side”. Interestingly, she talked of how she borrowed a Ouija board from Luis “Beto” Banuelos (sorry, no teeeeelda man) and how a group of kids would hide in the boys’ dressing room and play with the board.
14 Yvonne reported how weird the entire place felt, a feeling that passed its way down through the years. There was always a sort of heightened awareness when much of these things would happen, something I was to learn a few years later. At that point, even though I was pretty young, I patrolled the use of the board, mainly because I didn’t want it to travel through the school that I was allowing “conjuring”, or really, allowing any sort of “rituals” to go on.
15 New teacher. You wanna make points, and I knew how news can get distorted. I figured if I didn’t lay the hammer down, I would have some sort of fluky reputation that might border on a devil worship and boiling cauldrons.
16 Yep.
17 Even back then.
18 I always wanted Halloween to be a fun day where we would tell a few ghost stories, talk about legends and oral tradition, scare a few people, and walk outside to the bright November days knowing we had a great session.
19 I’m setting that up right now at EV.
20 It’s always AWESOME, no matter how many times I’ve done it.
21 But I always had the presence of mind to keep it as “storytelling” as possible. Any time someone would want to “reach” the other side, I would back off, which was pretty wise, if I may be so bold.It was about stories, oral tradition, legends, and really, pure fun, like ghost stories around a campfire.
22 I’ve a million stories of those sessions, many of which I’ll never remember, but always an amazing afternoon, when weird things would always happen. I also recall in the Fall of 2005 our construction of a Haunted House in the Theatre proper, and of the great tribute room which we called simply The Heidi Room. We made the Haunted House for Anti-Tobacco Friday Night Live (ATFNL) club, and it really was a lot of fun. I especially loved the Heidi room, which consisted of spider webs, a fireplace, red lighting, and dolls, with a Heidi doll looking over the entire room.
23 It wasn’t creepy, even though it was designed to have been. It was a silent salute to the mysterious entity that has been a part of the YB Theatre for years and years.
24 She did, incidentally, follow me up to Evergreen, I’m quite convinced!
25 I’ve told this one also, but like so many other things, it bears repeating: the very first time I went to work at Evergreen in August of 2006, I was excited to be moving away from the emotional aftermath of ’05 and into a new dawn, a new day, and all of that.
26 I drove up Quimby Road right up to Ruby, the corner that begins the entrance to the EV world.
27 Right before I hit the stop sign, a car cut me off, flying right in front of me. I was mad, but not too, because it was indeed a bright, beautiful day. I smiled, and then glanced at the car in front of me.
28 I looked at the license plate of the car, which we all do every now and then.
29 It read “High T 2″. Sound it out.
30 I smiled, and moved into my new place.
31 The Halloween’s followed with some remarkable coincidences: lights going out when I would mention lights going out, massive coincidences at Halloween, too numerous to mention here, and the entire heightened sense that was present in the boys’ dressing room all those years ago.
32 You would need to hit the bharrington@xanga.com link in order to navigate to some of those DN’s. I documented a lot of the things, but I always feared boring people with ALL of the coincidences, so I just kept the greatest hits. For every one coincidence archived, I probably had three or four more that went unreported.
33 I thought ALL of it was fantastic! I’ll go back maybe later tomorrow and check out some of the better ones, but they included bounce-backs from the Starry Night sessions when I wrote a play called Lovebirds. Some Van Gogh things that were absolutely amazing at the time, and when I reported them to the EV students the following year, I opened a Daily Spark journal book randomly during the sessions and turned right to page 81 (numerologically a 9, right?). The page was entitledStarry Night. I had just mentioned Starry Night the day before, as there was a series of remarkable coincidences surrounding that. I also opened my ghost book, the classic Haunted Houses of California by Antoinette May, and it randomly turned to the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. I had just purchased tickets to The Jersey Boys the day before. The Jersey Boys played the selfsame Curran. Those two things happened within seconds of one another. There were more in that brief five minutes, but let’s just let that one marinate.
34 It’s all WAY too much to include in this brief overview, and perhaps some day I’ll report the entire story, up to the minute, because it keeps happening, and I keep loving that whoever Heidi is, she is certainly a spiritual continuem.
35 Always friendly, always there when times would get stressful, and always there rapping and tapping when music is in the air.
36 Too long a story for the uninitiated, but always a grand story. With the addition of Facebook, I now have access to people who were directly there, and therefore a LOT of corroboration, for Heidi didn’t do things in front of me alone; she quite often did things in front of large groups, most of whom would shrug each thing off as coincidence.
37 But sometimes when the “coincidences” move entirely beyond the realm of the causal, we must turn our heads to the acausal, which always makes me smile.
38 Don’t know why, but it always assures me that there is something way more than all this folderol. It manages to steer us to something bigger, perhaps. If you get struck by lightning once, you figure it’s a coincidence. If you get struck by lightning nine times, it’s providence. Something like that.
39 And so it begins. Yesterday I introduced my students to ghost stories, and they are bringing stories from diverse cultures for sharing today. They’ll practice telling the stories in groups, and next week we will have three days of amazing sessions.
40 Heidi will be there. Coincidences and wonderful craziness will ensue. It will get cold in the theatre, as it always has.
41 And it all begins with the seedlings being brought in today.
42 I’ll keep you posted.
43 Thanks for listening, and stay tuned…
44 Peace.
A friend of Heidi, also in the room.~H~
