Santa Kid

Whit's play

A reading of the play about Whit's life, his time in prison and his death has been scheduled here (Cincinnati) at the theater for April 10. Whit's birthday. If you are interested in attending, let me know. There will be a rehearsed workshop a few months later, with the full production premiering in the fall.

Jeff

Visitors

New visitors everywhere from Rotterdam, Holland to Portland, Oregon today. Thank you one and all.

Jeff, Whit's dad

I'm not impressed

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45161720/ns/today-today_tech/t/pale-faced-crew-emerges--day-mock-mars-mission/#.TrQ2Y0Mg_lY

"Pale but smiling, an international crew of researchers on Friday walked out of a set of windowless modules after a grueling 520-day simulation of a flight to Mars."

Whit spent 465 days in the hole.

The mock-astronauts will be paid $100,000 for their trouble.

It cost Whit his life.

They spent their time doing research and reading e-books.

Whit spent the time between a rock and a hard place, trying to walk the line between the inmate code and the prison rules, and undergoing constant psychological abuse and the threat of violence from both sides.

The "researchers" left "pale but smiling."

Whit left in a casket.

"If you can't do the time, don't do the crime," many will say. I say, if you want to know what doing the time really means, read my son's blog.

For general comments

Have you read Whit's actual blog, beginning with November 2008 and ending with his last post on March 25, 2009? And maybe some of the things I've posted since his death (photos, excerpts from his memorial service, etc.)? And would you simply like to leave some words of your own but don't know where? Let's use this post for general comments, impressions or questions. I'm really grateful for any and all feedback.

Added 7/23/11:


As it looks now, a play about Whit's life and death will be premiered in Cincinnati in the fall of '12. I know, that's just over a year away, but I want to be sure that anyone within what they consider striking distance of Cincinnati is made aware of the actual run dates when I have them. One way would be to send me a private email (which you can find in the "Contact information and how I post" folder). I'll keep a list, and send out performance dates when I get them.

April 10, 1984

Happy Birthday, dear Whit.

April 4, 2009

From Diane's blog.

http://www.dianedebevec.com/blog.php

Podcast

I recently recorded a podcast for a series produced by a Cincinnati writers' organization called Women Writing for (a) Change. We talked about Whit, his writing and our relationship, and I read excerpts from letters and Whit's blog. The full podcast lasts an hour and can be found here. You can also download their podcasts free to an iPod or whatever from the WWf(a)C space on iTunes.

Jeff, Whit's dad

Unwiederbringlich

Die Ruh' ist wohl das Beste
Von allem Glück der Welt;
Was bleibt vom Erdenfeste,
Was bleibt uns unvergällt?
Die Rose welkt in Schauern,
Die uns der Frühling gibt;
Wer haßt, ist zu bedauern,
Und mehr noch fast, wer liebt.

from: Theodor Fontane's novel Unwiederbringlich

Whit's story on stage

Finally, something I can look forward to posting on Whit's blog. I recently learned that the Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati has committed to producing a stage version of Whit's life and experience for their 2011/2012 season.

I have been in touch with a playwright named Zina Camblin for over a year about this; she had expressed great interest in writing the script for such a play and I had given her sole rights to the material for that specific purpose. The play will be based heavily on Whit's blog, but also on interviews with people who knew Whit both inside and outside of prison. 

The caveat here is that Zina hasn't written anything yet. She now needs to write under a deadline, and I can only hope that she will find the time and circumstance to complete the script in time. The ETC season runs through March, so in any case I anticipate that Whit's play will be scheduled for that last month or possibly a month earlier. If you are within an even conceivable driving distance of Cincinnati, I hope you'll consider attending. 

Jeff, Whit's dad

Whit is published

Today I received a complementary copy of a book titled "Counting the Years," published by The Think Outside the Cell Foundation (it's the 3rd title down in the list at this link). They selected one of Whit's blog entries ("An Oral History of My Future") for inclusion in this volume, one in a series of four to date. The Foundation is an arm of Resilience Multimedia, founded by Sheila Rule, a journalist at the New York Times for more than 30 years before retiring in order to dedicate herself to Resilience. If you're able, support this enterprise - and Whit's legacy - by ordering a copy of "Counting the Years." If it's inconvenient to order (shipping, cost, whatever), just let me know and I'll send you a copy myself (I'm purchasing a dozen or so).


Jeff

Yeah, that's what it's like

In August of 1896, when Mark Twain was 61, his daughter Susy died of spinal meningitis. She was 24, and his wife and another daughter were in Europe when word came first of her illness and then of her passing. Writing – dictating actually – his autobiography in 1906, four years before he himself died, Twain recalled getting the awful news:

It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to realize their full import is mercifully wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss – that is all. It will take mind and memory many months, and possibly years, to gather together the details and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss. A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. He did not realize that it was an essential when he had it; he only discovers it now when he finds himself balked, hampered, by its absence. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.