Dan Klein's Personal Crap

Photos

Photos of me now on their own page

Photos of birds (taken by me) from the National Aviary, where I am a docent (and birds from other locations, too)

Photos of critters (also taken by me)

Photo at right (with Collared Raven) by Martha Rial / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (6/3/2005)

Music and Voiceover

I write music and I also sing with In Acchord and have produced a CD.

And I also do voiceover work (sick of me yet?) Check out the Android App Sherlock Mysteries (also reviewed on Board Game Geek), where I did all of the voices (some 40 in all).

Acting and Videography

I also act in films, so my theatre resume is here, and here are a few samples of stuff I self-produced:

Coming Clean, a mocumentary about the moon landing.
Erdos Bacon Sabbath Number Reduction, I have the second lowest Erdos Bacon Sabbath Number in the world!
Better Video Conferencing and Presentations I threw this together over a weekend at the start of Covid lockdown to help people be more effective when videoconferencing.

Writing & Blogs

Most of what is here now is about rites of passage – of tumultuous or joyous times in my own life. I humbly offer them here in the hopes that you may find a mirror into which you may gaze at your own soul, and that they will help you through your own passages. Or, that maybe you can just enjoy a good read... I also write a blog for Pittsburgh Opera. It's more a collection of insights and observations than a log of activities, and each article takes me between 3 and 6 hours to write, so there is some research, too :-)

Nietzhe said "That which does not kill us makes us stronger". He may have been an anti-Semitic old bastard, but he wasn't stupid. I'm stronger for the trials I have survived - and if nothing else, I am a survivor!

Actions and Reactions. I don't really know how to preface this – it was a letter I wrote to my Mother, and it explains itself. Well, perhaps it explains itself to a descendant of European Jewish emigrees... When you need to emigrate, you need a sponsor in the country to which you are emigrating (you can usually only apply for asylum when you are already there – to get there you need a sponsor). Without a sponsor, you stay where you are, and in times of trouble, that can literally mean death.
Some of the names in the letter have been changed.
Embarrassing Conversations About Sex is about a conversation with my Mother when I was 12 years old. Just read it, there's no point in trying to explain it here...
Honoring a Friend. My beloved cat "Thing" died on September 15 of 2005. He was 9 years old, just about to the day. And in writing this, I see the word "beloved", and realize that that word has been so overused as to lose much of its significance – it has grown hackneyed and banal. Yet "beloved", at its core, still carries with it the dark power of some other words, like "bewitched" and "enthralled". Words that import a somber and solid feeling. And truly, Thing was beloved. I dearly loved him, he was my dearest, my heart, my soul. Every time I saw him trotting out to meet me, when he raised his head and tail in recognition of me, or when he "whumped" down next to me as I lay down to sleep, my heart beat easier, my breath came lighter, and my soul felt at ease.
After my first wife left me, I used to jokingly call him "my blood pressure medicine", for indeed any time I held him in my arms, I relaxed. And I also knew, as any pet "owner" knows, that my love was returned and redoubled. People who do not know cats may scoff, and say that he was only in it for the food. And it is true that some cats are aloof, skittish, or just plain ornery. But not Thing. He made friends easily, and no one who met him ever doubted that he loved me – I certainly never did!
I could go on about his life, but that is another story, another time. This story is about the day after he died, and a gift I was given that rocked my soul. It all happened two weeks ago, but it is still vivid...
Passover Story. I originally wrote this story in 1980, after my first trip to Israel and Egypt. I was invited to speak at a conference, and this was not a pilgrimage - but after a while, I realized that I indeed had gone through a kind of rite of passage for my own soul.
I used to tell it at the end of the Passover Seder, just before we say "Next Year in Jerusalem". But in 1999, I went to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro Tennessee (you can't imagine how much fun it can be to listen to stories for 3 whole days and nights, but believe me, it was magical). And after the festival, I learned a thing or two, and turned my story into a stand-alone piece that could be told to Jews, Gentiles, Adults and Children. Enjoy!
Diary of a traveller - two bits I wrote while on my second trip to Israel and Egypt in 1985. It is mostly a snapshot of the trip, a set of vivid impressions of the people and the land. My mom had lived in Africa for 6 years, and said much about it. She was right - once you drink from the waters of the Nile, you must return...
My paternal grandfather (with whom I was very close) died in 1987, when I was 30 years old. I wrote down this eulogy for him after I spoke it extemporaneously at his graveside.
The next year, in 1988, my father (with whom I was even closer) died of metastatic coecal cancer. He wanted to die at home, and so we helped him pass as peacefully as possible, surrounded by the people and things he loved (and who loved him). I wrote these a week before he died, the morning after he died, and a year after his death. They were very hard to write, and I still cry when I read them. But writing them also helped me through a difficult time, and have helped other people when they went through a similar rite of passage through their own lives.
In March of 1990, I blew out my right knee - ACL. We tried therapy, but it didn't really help - some people are muscle dominant (their muscles hold their joints together, and their ligaments just "help"), and most people (like me) are ligament dominant - without their ligaments, they don't do so well. After 6 months of rehab, I had a ligament transplant and repair surgery. Shortly after the surgery, I wrote this thank you letter to the donor family. I didn't know who they were - in fact, the Center for Organ Recovery & Education didn't know either, but they published my letter in their monthly bullettin, and invited me to join their speakers bureau (on which I still serve, speaking at health fairs, churches, synagogues, and support groups).
Five years later, I particpated in a follow-up study, and wrote this rather surprised summary of my feelings. Coincidentally, I received a letter from a woman whose son had died in a swimming pool accident around the same time that I had my transplant. She read my letter on the wall of the hospital where she donated her son's body for transplantation. It is impossible to ignore a letter like that, and I called her. It was an awkward conversation - what could we say? But we made contact. Maybe it was her son that walked with me. Maybe not. It didn't matter. Through tissue donation, someone saved my life. She helped to save a lot of people's lives. We've never spoken since, but we made a kind of contact that few can know...
In October of 1990, I went to West Virginia for the first time. I had lived right next door for 17 years, and never been! I fell in love with it on the first day, and wrote this story called Homecoming about a cemetery on the hill that I found while limping on my cane (I was still in rehab from my knee). It seems from this synopsis that all my stories are about death, but really they are all about life!
Recently (we're now talking 2001, 44 years old), I have been experiencing some occasional numbness in the fingers of my right hand. It's not carpal tunnel syndrome. I know this because I had an EMG (electromyelogram), where they test for it, and the results were negative. For good measure I also had another test, and you can read about My Arthrogram. In this story, I take a Dave Barry-like approach to the medical profession (so no matter how bad it sounds, it's supposed to be funny).
9/11/2001 - what can I say? What can anyone say? Something short and a reasoned and possibly unpopular view answering the many calls for retribution.
2004 - I participated in a writing workshop, and tried my hand at fiction. Well, some of it was fiction, and some of it was fictionalized history. The style of writing is called "Flash Fiction", which means you have to tell your whole story in 100-1200 words or so (nobody counts words, and if they do, they're missing the point, which is storytelling, not blind adherence to statistics). Anyway, some brief descriptions are occasionally in order, but try to read the stories first, if you can.
- Signs and Wonders - Actually, I started taking the writing workshop because I had bought my girlfiend admission to the previous workshop, and she loved it (well, I had hoped she would). And we had had some stupid fight about something, and since she had been in the habit of writing, I just slammed out this piece (no, it wasn't revenge, it was my muse telling me to do something productive). And then realized it wasn't half bad, so I refined it, and well... my first piece for the workshop. It's barely based in truth, but it is as true as any reconciliation after a fight. The humor is all fiction, though :-) Oh - the title is from a Primitive Baptist hymn.
- Close Encounters - I had toyed with this idea in poetry ages ago, but it never amounted to much. Flash fiction is relatively easy, but poetry is hard. If you ever want to try something that is fiendishly difficult, try songwriting (I suck at lyrics, but I do "okay" at music). Anyway, wolf meets man (back in neolithic times) from the eyes of the wolf.
- Diamonds and Rust - the truth in this rheumy eyed recollection is that my Grandfather, Grandmother, Father and Uncle did indeed come to the United States on the S.S. Ryndam from Rotterdam. And my Grandmother's name is really Taube (it means "pigeon" or "dove"). And, well... everything else is true too. This piece is all extracts of stories my Grandfather told me. Except one thing - the discourse on Lady Liberty. And I will confess without shame that I borrowed that from a story I heard on NPR, as told by Jerry Springer. He is, in spite of his schlock/shock TV show, a remarkably intelligent, astute, liberal, savvy man. Check out his Jerry for Ohio page, if you don't believe me. He'll run for office in the next election, and if I lived in Ohio, I'd vote for him! Oh, yeah... I know that there is a song by Joan Baez with the same title as the story - it is a great image, and I wanted to honor it.
- And on The Eighth Day - I started this 14 years before I finished it. I was invited to a briss (a circumcision), and I confess that it was my first and last. Don't read this story as being pro-circumcision, but I do try to put things in a fair and honest light. This piece was published recently in "The Compleat Mother", a quarterly publication on childbirth and mothering. Oh, and my mother is a researcher and published author in the field of female genital mutilation, and is now working on male circumcision, too.
- Cheesecake - I did professional improvisational comedy for 6+ years. There is an improv game called "Three Views of a Scene", where three players semi-simultaneously tell a story from three different viewpoints. I was thinking of the famous picture by Sam Shaw of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt blowing up around her (from the film The Seven Year Itch, but check out what the scene really looked like). And I thought about an alternative reality that the picture could have been taken in, and wrote this piece, with three views of that scene.
- Costa Rica Leather Shop - An old poem of mine, cast as a very short story.
- All Hallows, even - Another old poem of mine, cast as a poem!
- ENFJ - my girlfriend had taken some tests (which included the Meyer's Brigg's test and the Strong Preference test - hence the title), and gotten some - uhh... - "alarming" results. Here's a humorous piece based on the first reading of the test results.
- A-ring-a-ding whirr... - when I was four years old, I wanted a Mr. Machine (it was a toy that you could take apart and reasssemble, and it would walk and make noise). Back in those days they cost $18, which was a lot of money for a four year old's toy. So my Mom made me a deal - when I learned to read, I could have a Mr. Machine. To her chagrin/delight/dismay, three months later, I had my toy. Her father (my "Opa") did not believe that I was really reading - he figured that I had memorized Green Eggs and Ham (and Ham wasn't kosher, so that made it worse). My father had a rare comeuppance when he instructed me to read for my Opa - every other word, backwards from the end of the book - which I did, thinking it was a splendid game. I didn't realize that particular family dynamic for years... Anyway, Mr. Machine went the way of all toys, but earlier this year, I found one on eBay (the 1960's version comes apart, and has a metal key - the 1970's version doesn't, and has a blue plastic key). It cost a bunch, but really, it was worth it :-)
- Ring of Fire - Your reaction after reading this story should be "Euwww!". That is what my reaction was after writing it. This was a (non-winning) entry in a short story competition. The theme was "Fire", and Johnny Cash had died a few weeks before, and, well... that's the excuse for the title. The story was pandering to the avant garde nature of the publication that sponsored the contest. Euwww!
- The Lifeguard - For three years (1990-1992), I was a volunteer escort at an abortion clinic. Really, it was much more than that - they did general gynaecological services in addition to abortions, but when I saw the "rescues" on the news (hundreds of protestors blockading the clinic, terrifying the women who needed to get in), I became a clinic escort. I am a night person, so being awake at 7am is rarity for me, yet every morning for three years, I was on the line at that hour. This story is autobiographical, and I am very proud of what I did for those three years.

OperaBlog

I write a blog for Pittsburgh Opera and Opera Theatre of Pittsburgh. If you are thinking of fat ladies in horned helmets and stuffy patrons, you've fallen for the same cliches that so many of us have. If you think of "Moonstruck", you're closer to the mark (but still not quite there). In my blog, I go backstage (and other places). Here are the articles in chronological order.