Am I becoming a Tom Miller?

My hometown newspaper, the Corning Leader, aka “the Misleader” has never been in my lifetime a particularly intellectual forum for thoughtful discourse or prize-worthy journalism. It covers school board skirmishes and rural crime and JV soccer just fine. Anything else was off the AP wire or, well, kind of off the rails. The paper did occasionally yield a few curiosities that have stuck with me. (There’s a very 2020s story to be told about how the Leader is no longer locally owned, and that’s not what this newsletter is about! But it could be! Maybe it’ll turn into that! I’m only in the first paragraph and haven’t outlined this at all!) 

I was an early reader of the newspaper, partly because it had comic strips, but partly because I was curious about literally anything and everything I could read. Also, this wasn’t, like, a difficult text to get through by and large, as you've probably gathered. I remember a trivia column, a few local cranks and opinion-having weekly staff writers, sure, but what stands out in my memory these days is a piece impossible to track down without a LOT of legwork. The piece in question is one letter to the editor circa 1990, 1994 at the latest.  Applause was the topic, specifically standing ovations. You didn't see that one coming, did you? The letter writer, let’s call him Tom Miller, had recently attended a concert of the local philharmonic. After the final piece, the entire audience stood up while applauding. He wrote his letter to the editor to literally just complain about this. Too many standing ovations, these days, in Tom’s opinion. Why didn’t we reserve them for the most special occasions? That was his entire argument. He didn’t have a beef with the performance or the performers, but the audience, dammit, they were too melodramatic, performative sheeple in their display of appreciation. Is Tom right? I don’t know. I think of his letter with an alarming frequency, even during the pandemic when we were just trying various forms of Zoom applause and figuring out what to do at the end of Tiger King. And now as some of us return to in-person performances, how much do we show our appreciation?

In particular arts spaces I’ve been on, including improv classes and storytelling workshops, instructors place an emphasis on applauding damn near everything anybody offers which... I see the point but it feels almost detrimental to the benefits of applauding. (Am I becoming a Tom Miller?) 

Applause gets people to act together, synching up. (At one point seven years ago I was trying to do armchair research on the developmental psychology aspects of clapping - when do babies do it? (I never took a developmental human psychology course, which is a regret) What apes do it, and how and when and why?) 

The standing O takes it to another level. And now you know why, whenever there's a crowd clapping, I think of Tom Miller and the Corning Leader of yesteryear.

Thank you for making your way through this, the most unhinged of my Tinyletter intros. What letters to the editor do you remember? Do you hate standing ovations? 

Reading: I checked out Make Time and The Joy of Movement from the library, neither of which I finished, but I enjoyed both and got what I came for from them. 

Eating: One note I have is “noodles and tofu” and don’t you wish I had more clarity on what kind of noodles and tofu this was that warranted such a write-down? We spent a few nights frying up latkes, and we experimented with a Hello Fresh subscription. Our friends Mo and Brendan came over to make aligot.  We celebrated my birthday at Pumpkin BYO and splurged another night on Kalaya takeout. Kelsey ordered us several Magic Spoon cereals, all of which I enjoyed.

Beating: I'm always interested in mash-up albums, and White Noise released Ruined which is a short-attention-spanned delight. I revisited the Fang Island discography which I always wish had gotten bigger. Binaural Space also had a new album, one with birthday themes, which I coincidentally listened to as my birthday started. Through some podcast interview I discovered the album Force Majeure, which is the loveliest jazz harp you can imagine. Also in rotation: Beverly Glenn Copeland and David Bazan. With friends, Kelsey & I went to see Muna, King Princess, and Kacey Musgraves in concert. 

Deleting: It was time for a pretty deep clean of the fridge. Like, a “let’s place the shelves and drawers in the bathtub” kind of deep clean. What an exciting afternoon that was. 

Retreating: I took a month-long break from checking my Twitter feeds, which was really really really really healthy. (I admit to checking it on my birthday. So vain!) I also started trying a therapy lamp in the morning with coffee and reading. Kelsey & I took a Tu B’shevat art workshop from my colleague-friend Gabby Kaplan-Mayer, and while it'll be a journey to get me feeling comfortable making visual art again by hand, this workshop was an important step. 

Meeting: Philly comedy dudes Danny Getz and George B had me on a recent episode of Feel Feelings to talk about bliss. It’s a sort of freewheeling chat where we come back to the main topic, tell stories, and get accidentally deep. My old friend David Dylan Thomas and I chatted about modern work values for an upcoming episode of his podcast, Lately I’ve Been Thinking About. I’ll do an updated version of my breakfast sandwiches talk at Nerd Nite Philly next week. 

Time to check off "send at least one monthly newsletter" from my March to-do list!