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Here is a little taster of some of this year's entries - you still have 2 days to submit a piece 🙂 - Maximum 750 words by PM to me or email
The entry below was disqualified for being over the word length but i enjoyed it enough (and with the writer's permission) can share it with you. Comments welcome and if you feel you can do better then you better send an entry in - you have the whole weekend 🙂
Silverstriker
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“Cellphonemania” (A Short Play in Three Acts, Written by Jon Doe, Jr. of Toronto, Canada in 2001)
Playbill Synopsis: It’s late one Friday evening in ‘lilac time’ at the George & Dragon Pub in the lovely village of Turnbridge Wells, Kent, not too far from London. Robbie Andrew Quigley and his fiancée, Katherine Anne Tottlemire, are engrossed in conversation about a book Kate’s been reading. Slightly amused, Phil listens politely to Kate’s musical voice while taken with her animated ways.
Act One: “Tell me again, what’s the title of that book you’re reading”, Rob inquires. “Poison Dart Frogs on Main Street by Lisa J. Guildenstern, Professor of Liberal Arts Studies at the University of Chicago, & Phyllis Sharon Curtinson, Artist in Residence at Yale”, Kate replies. “Sure, I’ll be glad to read the first chapter again right here, right now”. First, though, Bunny Bird (his nickname for her since of college days in London), let’s order another round before ‘last call’. Few minutes later, she begins with Chapter One:
“They were hanging upside down! The seatbelts were cutting into their shoulders. Dust and bits of the biscuits they had snacked on earlier, along with debris from the floor mats swirled down and around from the floor to the ceiling and into their eyes, nostrils and mouths. And then the silence came, broken only by the undercurrent of weird sounds from the jungle around them.
Lesley Norris and Bruce Scott of Ascot, Brisbane, Australia, wriggled out of their seatbelts, crawled through windows, shards of glass from which were now covering the rocks and dirt of the ravine, and lay breathlessly in the moist grass. Looking up they could see what was left of the collapsed bridge that dangled above them. After making sure that they were okay, Bruce helped Lesley scramble up the hill to the road to keep themselves a safe distance away from the vampire bats, poison dart frogs, black caiman crocodiles and other creatures that lived below. There in the Amazon jungle, 200 miles southwest of Manaus, Brazil, they lived on the roadside for two days until Lesley suddenly remembered she still had her cell phone and immediately tried calling home thousands of miles away. Her call triggered a global rescue operation, which international media coverage headlined as “Stuck in the Amazon Jungle&rdquo😉. The cell phone had worked! People had answered from halfway around the world. Yet, in some of the remote suburbs of Brisbane if you were ever threatened by a pack of poison dart frogs on Main Street in front of the pharmacy, your cell phone would crackle, hesitate and die. Cell phones worked sporadically but only in certain areas. Old and sparsely populated areas obviously needed more and taller cell towers.
Cell phones have become the new extension to our arms. These lightweight, compact little devices fit into our palms as if an integral component of our bodies. And they are! The cell phone is the life line for over 310 million people in the United States alone according to Wiki, National Geographic, etc. We walk down the street, drive our cars, shop in stores and live our daily lives… all with a little miracle of technology riveted to our ears. The phones ring during concerts. They ring in the middle of the night. They ring, impervious to protocols of time and place, in churches and synagogues, in bedrooms and bathrooms. We’ve chosen to never be without contact to the larger, outside world. Yet, this connectivity all depends on one very important thing— strategically placed cell phone towers.
A cell phone tower is typically a steel pole or lattice structure that rises hundreds of feet into the air. Its job, night and day, is to forward those tiny little transmitter signals integrated within the miniaturized phone that sends them to another cell phone tower when it’s turned on. Since the transmitter is miniaturized it can only send the signal about 40 or 50 miles. Therefore, the solution is to have signal towers close enough so that cell phone signals can reach the tower and pass them on to the next towers. Instantaneously, you are talking to your veteran missionary Grandma Hilda in Cape York Peninsula, Australia, or your brother Tim in California!”
End of Act One: Crimson curtain closes as the opening night’s packed house audience applauds its obvious bemusement and pleasure.
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Originally posted by SilverstrikerAct Two, Scene 1: Twenty minutes later, with the score from “Love Story’ still lingering softly in the background, the curtain opens lazily on the next morning, which is Saturday, with Rob and Kate leisurely brunching in the glorious sunshine of their enclosed patio. Rob casually folds the morning edition newspaper he had devoured and places it on a side table as he greets Kate, in her new tangerine night gown, rising late and now captivating his attention with reveries of the essence of her feminine pulchritude and charm.
Here is a little taster of some of this year's entries - you still have 2 days to submit a piece 🙂 - Maximum 750 words by PM to me or email
The entry below was disqualified for being over the word length but i enjoyed it enough (and with the writer's permission) can share it with you. Comments welcome and if you feel you can do better then you bet ...[text shortened]... d house audience applauds its obvious bemusement and pleasure.
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“Look at this, Kate, can you believe whatever gods or first cause or creator or evolutionary dialectic there may be would allow or place a creature such as this on earth without, at least, restricting its domain to some remote uninhabited pyramidal food chain mountain, arid desert or uninhabited jungle? Geeesh! Just take a minute to examine it and its family relations closely.”
(1) http://www.google.com/search?q=poison+dart+frog&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-Address&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7SUNA_en
Situated 7 km from the CBD by ferry, with easy road access to the city, Ascot is a prestige suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, which is described in the tourist publications as “A nice place to live because it’s uncommonly civilized and naturally beautiful.” Yet, some residents occasionally feel the sting of isolation because the town does not have a sufficient dedicated cluster of cell phone towers. Consequently, their calls come through intermittently at best and are frequently cut off abruptly or are just plain non-existent while driving or strolling through the center of town. The frustration shows on the faces of the people as they are often cut off mid-sentence and, then, unable to restore the call. You can’t make a call from the local pharmacies. You can’t make a call at the local doctor’s office or from the lobby of the Municipal Offices with any degree of confidence that you’ll be able to complete it. Ascot’s population is coming to a full boil, as they’ve been demanding a solution from their town fathers and politicians for more than seven years.
The overall solution must be a unanimous decision to allow AT&T to build their proposed tower on incorporated land. Once built, other market competitive carriers will in all likelihood clamor to lease prime space from AT&T. Just a few poles and the all area residents’ cell phones will behave reliably. A few 120-foot poles, carefully camouflaged and Bingo! the problem’s solved. Everybody will be able to use their phones for work, pleasure, family time and (most importantly) for emergencies. So it would seem.
The Zoning Board worked hard to allow AT&T to build the tower. Zoning Board Chairman Jim Leigh told the Board last June, “Cell towers are coming. The goal of the board is to put them in the best strategic locations possible”. A New York City based real estate appraiser Willie R. Snyder, speaking for Telecommunications Industry, assured the group that “There won’t be any adverse impact to neighborhood property values. This is a very appropriate location for a monopole. It won’t be an eyesore because it’s very well concealed.” Two years later the hearings are still taking place, and there are no new cell phone towers. Nothing has changed one iota!
End of Act Two, Scene 1: As the curtain comes down (on an aroused crowd already engaged in intense conversation) and the house lights come back on to full illumination of service aisles and concession stands, a genderless yet pleasant voice announces that “Cellfonemania” will resume at half past the hour, reminding the theater goers that all entrance doors will remain closed once the orchestra and cast enter stage center and Act 2, Scene 2 begins.
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Originally posted by SilverstrikerAct Two, Scene 2: On the other side of issue, many investment protective citizens vigorously opposed the project. The opposition raged and dominated Zoning Board Weekly Agendas: “I’ll argue until my dying day that this will drop property values,” warned Sheridan Franklin at that Zoning Board Meeting. “We worked hard to get where we are, and we don’t want it ruined,” she intoned as the group of 77-100 articulate residents moaned and groaned and groused in fervent agreement. “Who’s going to be policing these areas?” demanded Evelyn Charlton. “Kids drink in those woods and there are no street lights…there are already other hushed things going on and this will only make matters worse”. Everybody in that stuffy room was feeling the passion of the moment as it reached a crescendo when Carol Hudson fiercely declared, “We you’d be very unhappy if it was in your neighborhood!” You got that?!
Act Two, Scene 1: Twenty minutes later, with the score from “Love Story’ still lingering softly in the background, the curtain opens lazily on the next morning, which is Saturday, with Rob and Kate leisurely brunching in the glorious sunshine of their enclosed patio. Rob casually folds the morning edition newspaper he had devoured and places it on a si ...[text shortened]... cast enter stage center and Act 2, Scene 2 begins.
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Yet another idea was to build a towers away from homeowners bringing the proposed site nearer the County Conservation land. This caused nearly all of the red hot citizen sentiment to erupt in a flurry of letters to Sir Barrie Byrnes, Editor of The Ascot Times. August feedback included one letter which became pivotal: “It is also an Area of Critical Environmental Concern, containing ‘highly significant environmental resources,’ including the Blanding’s Turtle and Blue Spotted Salamander”, respected Doctor Walter Crowley opined. This dimension of change brought everything to a halt. Recommendation was summarily dismissed; Requests for Proposals abandoned. No one wanted to go up against the precious salamander, at least not this time around. Not an affirmative vote in a carload.
End of Act Two, Scene 2: Curtain closes slowly to a co-mingled standing ovation of raucous laughter and sustained applause.
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Originally posted by SilverstrikerAct Three: “Put it somewhere else,” is so often the attitude of people who are struggling to maintain the status quo of their lifestyle. These thoroughly modern and affluent homeowners have become a perfect example of the all too familiar “not in my backyard” attitude. A study published in the Social Psychology Journal explains the common behavior response in this way, “…a greater sense of vested interest is experienced as a function of increased perceived risk associated with the placement of facilities”. “In fact”, it explains further, “as the perceived threat increases in magnitude, elevated arousal occurs and greater behavioral opposition typically ensues. Hence, this attitude in both small and large communities often succeeds in getting these projects permanently tabled. Indeed, the opponents of a tower really do want a tower—just not near their homes”. One after another of these impassioned letters kept colorfully reinforcing the opposition. One writer named ‘TrueNHonest’ penned, “How the heck is a cell tower going to make drinking in the woods worse? If kids want to drink in the woods they’ll find a way, access road or no access road”. Another writer, ‘Barbie Dundee’ added, “The dead zones “place all of us at potential risk” (2)
Act Two, Scene 2: On the other side of issue, many investment protective citizens vigorously opposed the project. The opposition raged and dominated Zoning Board Weekly Agendas: “I’ll argue until my dying day that this will drop property values,” warned Sheridan Franklin at that Zoning Board Meeting. “We worked hard to get where we are, and we don’t w ...[text shortened]... of raucous laughter and sustained applause.
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Regarding the Blue Spotted Salamanders, luckily there are at least nine proposed sites, and eight of them are far away from the salamanders. So it appears that the solution to the problem lies in two areas: A)The Zoning Board needs to rezone an area for building the towers, and B) Town Officials need to educate the public to convince them that the need for safety outweighs the sight of gray poles in the sky, which are aesthetically less than pleasing. A related study of the cell phone’s use for emergency calls in Sweden found that “mobile communication technologies are becoming a tool associated with protecting vulnerable groups such as women, children, and elderly people”. Access to a cell phone leads to increasing expectations of emotional support in situations people perceive as threatening and dangerous”. This concept alone should be the basis for an ongoing educational program. The motto, “Safety—Ascot’s Most Important Product,” might be a good start.
The next step would be to incorporate the results of the in depth “Not in My Backyard” study, which shows that “Creating an enhanced awareness of vested interest may also be helpful in fostering support in favor of implementation, rather than opposition to, necessary change”. As incredible as it seems, incorporating a heightened view of the feelings of those with vested interests into the education plan could turn them toward an acceptance of a tower. Along with this idea, it would be imperative to stress the ‘self-benefits,’ as noted in a study in the Journal of Marketing which stated “…people behave in a manner consistent with justice principles only when there is some self-benefit to be derived in doing so.” Safety for one’s family is always a noble choice and of great self-benefit.
Finally, an investigation by the Civic Advisory Board into the new mini transmitters as reported in the Huffington Post in 2009 could be the ultimate solution. “Transmitters ‘…some tiny enough to hold in one hand…’ could be mounted on already existing utility poles and buildings, thus making the issue of cell phone towers a moot figment of our imaginations. Whether Ascot, Brisbane has tall, gray towers or mini-transmitters, the need for connectivity is crucial. When languishing in the Amazon or in a ditch in an outlying area suburb, calling for help is just as urgent. Just ask Lesley Norris and Bruce Scott what they think of good cell phone coverage and how it feels to hear the helicopters coming to pick them up. Maybe all the good people really won’t encounter a poison dart frog on Main Street after all—but who knows!
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With Act Three We Conclude Our Presentation of “Cellfonemania” (A Short Play in Three Acts, Written by Jon Doe, Jr. of Toronto, Canada, in 2001). We wish to thank Mr Doe’s publisher for granting permission to produce the play. And we thank you, our attentive audience one and all, for being with us this evening. We hope to see you for our next production in December, 2012.
Kind regards and all best wishes, Sir Barrie Byrnes, Theater Manager who, himself, doesn’t believe in and has never owned what he affectionately calls, ‘Those damn stoopid, miniaturized, pulsating bell me on your celley cellphony sometime telyphones’.
July, 2012
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Originally posted by SilverstrikerPostscript: Back in the village of Turnbridge Wells. Rob Quigley and his fiancé, Kate Tottlemire decided it had been a wonderful day in the sun, and that it was now high time for a memorable candlit dinner to celebrate “Poison Dart Frogs on Main Street” at Rob’s brother and sister’s upscale restaurant, ‘The Longfellow House’. Smiling her patented sidelong pickerel smile Kate said, “Great, I’ll celly him for an eight o’clock reservation for ‘Biggie Bear’ and ‘Bunny Bird’ at their favorite corner table, one of the two with the privacy partition. On them Nathaniel and Lynn display slow random rotations of large prints of works by Grandma Moses (3), including “Sunday Dinner” and other heart warming portraits of an earlier time, from their extensive personal collection on a Vizio High Definition big screen television. In the ‘Longfellow House’ casual Fireside Lounge, there’s a joyful large scale print of “The Dancing Villagers by Breughel”. (4)”
Act Three: “Put it somewhere else,” is so often the attitude of people who are struggling to maintain the status quo of their lifestyle. These thoroughly modern and affluent homeowners have become a perfect example of the all too familiar “not in my backyard” attitude. A study published in the Social Psychology Journal explains the common behavior res ...[text shortened]... ll me on your celley cellphony sometime telyphones’.
July, 2012
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References (the reader may enjoy):
(1) Poison Dart Frogs: is http://www.google.com/search?q=poison+dart+frog&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-Address&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF- 8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7SUNA_en
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(2) Possible Risks Associated with the Use of Cell Phones: http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/OtherCarcinogens/AtHome/cellular-phone-towers
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(3) Primitive Style Works by the Artist Grandma Moses:
http://www.google.com/search?q=paintings+by+grandma+moses&hl=en&rls=com.[WORD TOO LONG]
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(4) “The Dancing Villagers by Breughel”:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File😛ieter_Brueghel_the_Younger_-_The_Wedding_Dance_in_a_Barn_-_WGA3636.jpg
July 9, 2012
