Buzz Bin

by Inlander Staff & r & Ignition Sequence Initiated & r & Ignite! Community Theater is excited -- and not only because they have an exclamation mark in their name. Three weeks ago, they drew 90 listeners to their Readers' Theater production of The Crucible at Auntie's Bookstore, and they're set for their premiere production, Arsenic and Old Lace (Oct. 7-15 in the Cajun Room of the Rendezvous Events Facility, 1003 E. Trent Ave.). Renae Meredith and Kim Roberts will play the little old ladies -- sisters who don't mind dabbling in poison. In addition, Ignite! will offer Saturday classes on stage makeup (Oct. 8) and stage managing (Oct. 15) from 10 am-noon. Cost: $25. Visit & lt;a href="http://www.ignitetheatre.org" & their web page & lt;/a & or call 993-6540.





Old Habits & r & You know how the classics are wasted on youth? Just the other day, a woman we know was lamenting the fact that they made her read A Tale of Two Cities when she was in junior high. Well, here's a passage from Henry David Thoreau's Walden that means more to us now than it did in college:


"We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? ... So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center."





Snapshots in Clay & r & In our Fall Arts Preview, we described Tim Roda's photography as "'American Gothic' as dreamed by David Lynch.'" In one image, a man in a fright wig holds up bags of goldfish with extended arms; in another, a helmeted boy on a bicycle races toward an indoor windmill; in a third, a family lounges among hundreds of ceramic tubes. As Roda relates, "My family life was unconventional, and that has translated into my work" -- which is suspended somewhere between ceramics and photography.


The Tim Roda exhibit runs at the EWU Gallery of Art in Cheney from Sept. 29-Oct. 28. Call 359-2494.





I Lost 1,000 Pounds & r & But not through hypnosis. I'm an African elephant named Maggie, housed at the Anchorage Zoo. I gotta keep moving -- it's pretty damn cold up here -- so they built me a 20-foot-long treadmill. Normally, I just can't resist a good bamboo shoot or sugar cane plant -- I'm a pachyderm who can pack 'em in -- but by exercising sensible portion control with my grasses, I'm down to four tons en route to my target weight of 7,500 pounds. As my keepers say, one day at a time, one hoof in front of the other. I feel like trumpeting my success.