TheatreMania gives the Source Fest a little love right HERE.

I think I will buy a new dress for the opening, after all.

Carbon Credit

Greetings, Loyal Readers!  Your BloomingtonGirl has been missing in action these past few months.  I can only imagine how the resulting void of my words has been the cause of your aching hearts and troubled minds.  Clearly, I have a very active imagination.

My short play Carbon Credit was read at the Durango Ten Minute Play festival last Thursday evening.  135 plays were entered into the contest and five were chosen.  This was the first time that I did not attend a reading of my work.  I have no idea what they did with the material, but based on the review below, I assume that they may have taken it to some dark places.

The most serious work on the playbill satirized extreme environmentalism. Joni McGary’s “Carbon Credit” looks at the fallout of desperate action on one family. Quinn, Terry Swan and Batchelder delivered strong performances in this essentially dark work.


Mine was not one of the two works selected for full production in the fall by the company, alas.  I was hoping to win the "Grand Prize" of $500.  Winning would have enabled me to say that I am making an annual living "well into the THREE figures." I guess I'll have to be happy making just simply three figures.  (Yep. Your BloomingtonGirl was paid a whole one hundred smackers for the upcoming production of the play in DC.  I joke about this, but I will say that it might be the most satisfying money I have ever been paid in my working life to date. Seriously. Really.  Seriously.)


Carbon Credit goes up as part of the Source Festival in DC on July 8 and runs through July 1.  I'm beyond excited to be included in such a line-up and to have the opportunity to work with such excellent people.  Click HERE to access the calendar of productions if you are interested in going.  Carbon is part of the Redeeming Demons Grouping.  Your BloomingtonGirl will be there en famille  on opening night and might go again solo for the closing performance on July 1.  If you are in the area, I hope you will go.  


If you couldn't tell, I'm proud of this little play.  Further, I'm indebted to Ken Weitzman, my friend who wrote the play (Fire in the Garden) that inspired the work. 


In other news, we are putting our house on the market in the beginning of June.  The plan is to find some property and build an energy zero house in which there will be nothing that is not beautiful or useful.  (Hah!  Let's see if we can part with all of our crap that easily.)  We've got some acreage in mind, but we'll have to see if we can sell this place.  A few of our friends are convinced that it will fly off the market because of our famous and beloved neighbor.  We'll see.  I'm excited to embark on a new chapter.  I'm combing all sorts of uber modern plans for ideas.  Stay tuned.

Source Festival

My short play Carbon Credit goes up in June as part of the Source Festival in DC.  I am very excited about it.  Here's a piece on how the plays are selected.  (Okay...I'm bragging...but hey, I am the first to post my rejections, so why not a little good news, right?)

Source Festival Selection Process

I'll know the actual production schedule soon, so stay tuned.  If you're in the area...

Acceptance Anxiety

From Rejection City to Acceptance Anxiety!

After getting shot down by several theaters recently, this week brought two notifications of good news for your BloomingtonGirl.  Yesterday, I heard that my short play Carbon Credit was selected to be part of the Source Festival in DC this June/July (!!!!) and today I got an email telling me that Fat Girl is a semi-finalist for the Trustus Theatre Playwrights' festival.

I'm so excited and nervous that I can barely swallow food! Loyal Readers, you know what a big deal that is for your food loving BloomingtonGirl. A couple more pieces of good news and I'll weigh ninety pounds.

Not to worry, HoosierMama Brownie lovers, I'm still writing my business plan for LuckyGuy Bakery, though, and toured a commercial kitchen space this morning.  I am in the process of scheduling a phone conference with a food publicist to see what she can do for me and I'm starting to scale up the recipes and look at packaging.  We'll see how everything shakes out.  There is, all of a sudden, a LOT happening for your BloomingtonGirl.

Off to whip up a  batch of Two-Ton-Tessie Toffee for a lucky Valentine and then hop on my bike to calm my nerves.

More to follow!

The Power of a Network of Women

Good Evening, Loyal Readers.  I should be in bed at this very late hour getting my beauty rest, but for you, I will sacrifice my vanity just a little bit to write here an inspiring tale about the power of the female network.

Today, our daughter Kate called from Brooklyn to tell me that her (and my) friend K was having a terrible time trying to breastfeed her newborn (on Friday) daughter.  She was trying and trying and it was very painful and not much was happening in the way of food flowing from mama to baby.  I related to this in a big way having never really produced enough milk to keep Jack remotely sated in the first four weeks of his wailing, starving, miserable life.  (My DD cup mother was right when she said, "How do you think you're going to breast feed with those?" Yes.  I'm adopted.)  I never even got out of an A cup when I was pregnant.  No heaving breasts for me, no.  Just the same old same old paltry...Oh!  I digress....back to our story...

So, Kate called me, full of concern for our wonderful friend K.  I knew immediately what to suggest and whom to contact to make sure that K got the very best advice in her stressful, hormonal, sleep-deprived, emotionally loaded, overwrought situation. (Do I project based on my own experience?  Maybe just a little.)

I told Kate that K needed to find a Very Good Lactation Consultant.  (Not a Very Crummy one like the one I got stuck with. Oh Brother!  She was 38 (my age at the time) and single and just about all she talked about during the sorry hour for which I paid her probably 75 smackers was how she despaired of being single and how much she wanted a baby of her own.  Seriously.  She did this.  I got just about no help from her.

And to make sure that K got a Very Good one, I emailed my friend Ann Marie who works at BABS here in Bloomington.  AM is a Lactation Consultant EXTRAORDINAIRE.  If I had had her, Jack might have been breast fed for more than the short four weeks he was and might not need the therapy he will most certainly need in later life for attachment and insecurity issues.   What?  I digress again?  So sorry, Loyal Ones.

Anyway, within twenty minutes of my reaching out to Ann Marie, Kate and K had a contact on the ground in K's neighborhood to call for help.  Isn't that so completely cool?  I think it is!

It is time for bed now.  Nighty Night, Loyal Ones.

Your BloomingtonGirl Needs You...Okay, She Needs Your Money

Loyal Readers,  you are probably wondering what the picture to the left signifies.  Has your BloomingtonGirl become a baseball player?  A baseball fan?  A photographer of balls on a plate?

No, silly ones.  This picture is part of a promotion for the Bloomington Playwrights Project Annual PlayOffs!  On Friday October 21, nine playwrights will assemble at the BPP in the early evening and will be thrown a "pitch"  consisting a line of dialogue and a prop that must be incorporated into a ten minute play. The playwrights then draft directors and actors to be on their team.  THEN, we head home to write fast because the script has to be submitted by 7AM the next morning so the directors and actors can rehearse.  The play goes up that very same night.  Phew!  It's a whirlwind.

Your BloomingtonGirl wrote (a brilliant short play) for this event a couple of years ago and had a great time doing it.  This time, Your BloomingtonGirl want to raise lots of money because it's a good cause and (mostly) because Your BloomingtonGirl is CRAZY COMPETITIVE!

Here's where you come in, Loyal Ones.  Click on the link below and support me by donating some green to the cause in my name.  Make sure to mention that you are donating because you love your BloomingtonGirl, or if you prefer,  you can donate in the name of my alias, Joni McGary.  Now, here's the exciting part:  (are you ready?)

For each donation of $25 or more, you will receive a dozen of your favorite cookies, brownies or muffins from your BloomingtonGirl's very own

 LuckyGuy Bakery

(Think HoosierMama Brownies, Oatmeal Jacksons, Spicy Chocolate Snaps, Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies, HomeMade English Muffins, Biscotti...)

I will keep tabs on who is donating and contact you OR you can send me an email with your email and your address.

Please do this!  I want to send you cookies and I know you want to have them.  I know it.

Here's the link:

I Want Cookies!

I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I know that you will thank me from the bottom of your tummy.

Green Tomato Cake?

Green Tomato Cake.  Who knew?  I'll be baking up some of this yumminess tomorrow to use up the bags and bags of green tomatoes we have.  Damn the frost, which cares not a hoot for Your BloomingtonGirl and her poor overworked Kitchen Frau Hands.  

Today, Chris and I chopped about 12 pounds of green tomatoes, green peppers, red peppers, onions and cabbage for Linton Hopkins' ChowChow relish, one of the vehicles for the tiresome green tomatoes.  Hopkins'  ChowChow is amazing and delicious - I've made it a few times before - but the prep work is a %$!@#, if you know what I mean.  

We were short on red bell peppers from our garden so we used some red hot peppers that we had.  I donned gloves for that portion of the chopping but the right glove apparently had a hole in it and my right palm is ON FIRE.  If I were an adolescent boy in Catholic school, I'd think I were being punished for you know what and going straight to hell.  

In other news, this weekend has been a whirl of all sorts of things wifely and maternal.  Jack had his birthday sleepover last night.  Five 11-ish year old boys arrived mid-afternoon yesterday and were picked up late morning today.  I'm happy to report that a great time was had by all of the boys.  I'm not surprised but not happy to report that as soon as everyone left, Jack had a complete and profound meltdown.  This happens every time after a sleepover and each time it happens (which is, I remind you, EVERY TIME) Chris and I  say we aren't going to allow another sleepover , and then we forget - well, I forget, more accurately and allow one -  and the cycle continues.  Jack really throws himself into the day-after-sleep-deprived-let-down-from-all-the-excitment "fit", having inherited, unfortunately, Your BloomingtonGirl's impressive TEMPER.  For those of you who haven't experienced my temper first hand, you'll just have to take it on faith that when Your BloomingtonGirl gets really angry, it ain't pretty.  My daughter Meg once said, "When you get mad, you can be a scary little person."  I wish this weren't the case and I really, really (reallyreallyreally) wish that Jack had not inherited this gene, but if wishes were horses....

I suspect that being a woman of a certain age, hormones are playing a role in my volatility, but I've been like this since I was a little kid.  A very wise person characterized me once with that little rhyme...

"There once was a girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead.  

When she was good, she was very, very good.  

And when she was bad she was horrid!"

Good thing I'm a good cook and that good food is very (VERY) important to my husband.  Otherwise, he might not overlook my fits quite as much, right?  

Okay, it's late and time for bed.  I have to get up early and can CHOWCHOW and make Green Tomato Cake.  (Every now and then, I read these sentences and am rather shocked and amazed that Your EAST COAST BloomingtonGirl is living in the HeartLand canning things and making cakes from garden vegetables.  I just felt the need to point out that occasional disconnect.)

Nighty Night, Loyal Readers.