Tag Archives: characteristic

Mountain Community Theater presents magical production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Posted on by
Reply

At the core of director Stephen Phillips’ rich and textured production of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is an enchanting encounter between Scott Kravitz as Nick Bottom and Rebecca Clark as Titania, queen of the Fairies. This brief affair is both hilarious and charming as Clark possesses all of the majestic regality you could hope for from a supernatural royal and Kravitz has the salt of the earth unselfconscious characteristic of the “rude mechanicals.” The product of a practical joke, this union puts the audience in the hands of Puck, a mischievous fairy who delights in the chaos of relationships gone awry. This is superb directing, and the staging elucidates the plot lines and subtexts expertly. The production team at Mountain Community Theater has created a vivid and convincing world for dramatic moments like this to live within. The set itself is a shining highlight of this worthy production. It invites you to suspend your disbelief and to enter the ancient woods outside of Athens for a feverish and imaginative evening. Following the lovestruck paths of four young lovers Helena, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius we enter into a magical realm ruled by King Oberon and Queen Titania. This production uses a framing device that adds a thoughtful element to the story. The play begins with a young boy who is staying with his mother and stepfather for the holidays, and he calls his dad feeling upset about their separation for the holidays. The boy’s parents are played by the same actors David Leach and Clark who play Oberon and Titania, mirroring the custodial conflict. The story that unfolds then becomes the troubled dream of a boy who misses his dad, giving the story its critical edge. Within the surreal world of this dream, the dancing realm of the fairies is led by Sarah Mitchler as a leather-clad Puck. Mitchler is also the movement director of the production and she fills the stage with fun choreography. The character Puck has a lot of attitude and Mitchler’s version is satisfyingly full of mischief. The fairies are satisfyingly otherworldly, giving the play its magical dimension. The four lovers who enter the woods in pursuit of love and fall victim to Puck’s pranks are played with romantic sincerity. Naomi Bowers is charming as Hermia, the original object of both men’s desires. She has to play the rebellious lover determined to be with her Lysander despite her father’s wishes and Athenian law; and then the shocked, scorned lover, showing a considerable range of emotion. Zed Warner continues to show strong leading male energy by claiming the love he’s won from Hermia through his affection and character, that is until he wakes up in the woods with other ideas. Jennifer Stanford plays a humorous Helena, heartbroken but buoyant in pursuit of Demetrius. She embodies Helena’s combination of self-deprecation and amorous ambition with a fun upbeat energy. Gurjeet Bagri gives Demetrius a pleasant gentlemanly air until he tries to threaten Helena to keep her from following him. The acting of these four is good, and it makes the main course of the play a pleasure to enjoy. It is the mechanicals who steal the show, however. Of course there is Kravitz as Bottom who does a great job of being the butt of Shakespeare’s jokes, and during a performance of a play-within-a-play, “Pyramus and Thisbe,” he delivers his lines as Pyramus with great zest. But there is also Trina Quince played deftly by Nancy Martin-Kern, who is the playwright and director of their humble play. Cory Nash plays a satisfyingly innocent Tom Snout, assigned the role of the Wall in their play. Jackson Wolffe is a very funny and sweet Snug who does not scare the ladies roaring as Lion. Ian Dyer infuses Robin Starveling with personality as Moonshine. It is Dimitri Lamendella, however, who transforms the play-within-a-play from farce to something soulful and sweet as Thisbe. Henry Anima plays the changeling boy and the boy who has this surreal and unsettling dream in the frame narrative. He is a sweet child longing for his family to be together during the holidays, a pawn in a power struggle he can’t understand. It is both painful and heartwarming to witness the unconscious worlds his imagination creates in the Athenian woods.
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2025/11/26/mountain-community-theater-presents-magical-production-of-a-midsummer-nights-dream/

This Is The ‘Easiest’ Field Depot In Arc Raiders

Posted on by
Reply

Field Depots are some of the many go-to spots for loot in Arc Raiders. While you’re seldom guaranteed to find something game-changing here, they are valuable locations for topping off your ammo, collecting a fancy gadget or two, and accomplishing quests, feats, and Trials.

Accessing the goodies inside a Field Depot is pretty straightforward: find a Field Crate nearby, carry it to the Field Depot, deposit it, and loot. Oh, and stay alive during this whole trip. Finding a Crate and then safely carrying it to the Depot can prove challenging enough, but there’s one particular Depot that has proven a reliable spot in my 75 hours of play, with good loot opportunities surrounding it and excellent visibility—helping you spot trouble before it arrives.

Best Field Depot Location: Southwestern Corner of Dam Battlegrounds

The Field Depot located at the southwestern corner of Dam Battlegrounds, nestled between the Electrical Substation and Water Towers, is my top pick. Like any place in Arc Raiders, you’re just as likely to die here as anywhere else, but a few features make this Depot a solid go-to:

  • Visibility: The Depot’s characteristic blue tarp and satellite installation make it easy to identify from various angles.
  • Area surveillance: The surrounding wide-open space lets you observe who or what is nearby for a minute or two, a crucial advantage when you’re planning your next move.
  • Cover: Enemies might hide in nearby Water Towers or the Substation, but so can you—and if you’re playing with a crew, it becomes easier to watch each other’s backs.

Finding the Field Depot and Crates

Locating this Depot is simple thanks to its distinct features visible from multiple vantage points. Crate locations, however, are randomized each match. You can often find Crates inside or just outside the Water Towers, or north and east of the Electrical Substation nearby. Other possible spots include near the Swampside Elevator and various sites to the northwest of the extraction point.

However, I’m cautious about hunting near extraction points. These areas tend to attract campers and are usually intense hotspots for conflict. Additionally, the Swampside Elevator often houses a dangerous enemy known as a Leaper. If you don’t find a Crate close to the Water Towers or Substation, it’s wise to pack up and head to other key nearby loot locations instead.

Backup Loot Locations

Backup Plan A: Lookout Spot Southeast of the Water Towers

If things get heated near the Water Towers, retreating southeast is often your best bet. Heading into the swamps northwest is tricky, and the extraction point northeast is typically chaotic. The map boundary limits movement southwest, so southeast offers the safest fallback.

This lookout spot sits atop a hill just southeast of the Water Towers and Substation, offering a superb vantage point of the Depot. It features a zipline for a quick escape and sometimes spawns better loot—grenades, weapons, and ammo—than the Depot itself. While you won’t get credit for delivering a Crate here, it’s an excellent place to resupply if you just need loot.

Backup Plan B: Formicai Outpost

The Formicai Outpost is another fantastic location, especially if you’ve taken heavy losses and need to regroup. Although it’s a bit of a trek to reach, the outpost is easy to secure because it has only one quiet entry point (climbing from the rocky northern outcropping is possible, but noisy). The outpost is also rich with loot, frequently housing weapons cases, gadgets, and grenades.

Backup Plan C: Baron’s Hatch

Just northwest of the Water Towers is a Raider hatch that offers a smooth extraction route. You’ll need a key to access it, but keys are straightforward to craft once you’ve upgraded the necessary workstations or unlocked the Traveling Tinkerer skill tree.

Additional Considerations and a Word of Warning

In this guide, I shared some of my preferred routes on Dam Battlegrounds—a map that tends to see more PvP skirmishes than others, partly because new players are limited to it for a while. So, consider this a fair warning: if you cross my path around these parts, expect a “Hello” and a “Don’t Shoot.” If you don’t respond in kind, well—that’s a risk you take. As I was writing this guide, some attacker jumped out of the rocks and quickly took me down. Karma’s probably coming their way soon.

Regarding other Field Depot locations, in my experience, they generally carry greater risks. Many of these spots are too close to extraction points or high-level loot areas, which increases the chances of hostile encounters. Other maps like Spaceport and Blue Gate are more difficult overall, meaning you can expect tougher competition. Buried City’s smaller size tightens sightlines and escape options, making encounters even more frequent and intense.

Happy hunting, and remember: knowing when to fight, loot, or retreat is key to surviving in Arc Raiders!

https://kotaku.com/arc-raiders-field-depot-crate-off-radar-down-to-earth-2000642525

Democrats Want Open Borders; Most Americans Don’t

Posted on by
Reply

“If you don’t have any borders, you don’t have a nation.” The speaker went on, “Trump did a better job. I don’t like Trump, but we should have a secure border. It ain’t that hard to do. Biden didn’t do it.”

It was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, in characteristic candor.

If, as Milton Friedman argued, you can’t have open borders and a generous welfare state, Sanders, as a self-described socialist, prefers the welfare state. The facts at this point are not in much doubt.

The Pew Research Institute, not an anti-immigration outfit, estimated that there were 10.2 million “unauthorized” immigrants (members of groups not approved for legal immigration) in the United States in 2019, the year before former President Joe Biden was elected, and 10.5 million in 2021, the year he took office.

That number, as Pew’s Jeffrey Passel and Jens Manuel Krogstad wrote, grew to 14 million in 2023, “the largest two-year increase in more than 30 years of our estimates.” The illegal population probably peaked at about 14.5 million in early 2024, when the Biden Democrats, who said they had no alternative to their open-border policies without new legislation, suddenly decided they actually could clamp down using existing legislation.

Let’s put that in a longer perspective. Pew estimated that the illegal immigration population increased from 3.5 million in 1990 to a peak of 12.2 million in 2007-08, the years housing prices and financial markets crashed. Suddenly, net migration from Mexico turned negative, and the illegal population fell through attrition until Biden took office. Then it rose from 10.5 million to 14.5 million.

That number has trended downward since President Donald Trump took office last January.

Earlier this month, in a report for the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes illegal immigration and favors lower legal immigration, analysts Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler estimated, based on multiple government statistics, that the foreign-born population declined by 2.2 million since Trump was inaugurated in January. Presumably, almost all of this change can be attributed to illegal immigrants.

This provides some backing for the Trump Department of Homeland Security’s claim that it removed 527,000 illegal immigrants and that 1.6 million “have voluntarily self-deported.” That’s obviously an estimate, but it’s not improbable.

If 4 million additional illegal immigrants were incentivized to arrive in the first three-plus years of the Biden administration, as compared to a net decline in the 12 years from 2008 to 2020, it’s plausible that 2 million were compelled or decided to leave due to the highly publicized and aggressive actions in 2025.

That’s not an uncontroversial process, of course. Government is a blunt instrument, and no doubt Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have wrongfully detained some genuine citizens and legal immigrants. Some people who have lived quietly and constructively, though illegally, for many years have had their lives overturned.

There’s an argument that Trump officials have acted too aggressively and in disregard of the limited rights that illegal immigrants have. But if some of the moral opprobrium for the harm done belongs to the Trump administration for arguably enforcing the law too vigorously, some moral opprobrium is owed also to the Biden administration, which deliberately refused to enforce the law in a way that left millions of people vulnerable to severe disruption.

My guess is that the current policy will disincentivize illegal immigration long after Trump, as he has conceded this week, leaves office in January 2029. Who will want to make long-term plans that can be ruined by sudden deportation or hurried self-deportation?

Much of the drama around the Trump administration’s enforcement of the law comes from opposition, sometimes forcible, of Democrat governors and mayors who promised, in the tradition of John C. Calhoun, to nullify federal law within their jurisdictions. And from self-starting liberals who use “ICE trackers” to violently impede the agency’s operations.

These people perhaps see themselves in the position of Northern opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act, who joined former Sen. William Seward in proclaiming, “There is a higher law.” But what is the higher law here? Barring people from entering the U.S. is not thrusting them into slavery.

The nullifiers’ legal position is similarly weak. In Arizona v. U.S., the Supreme Court in 2012 overturned parts of a state law that purported to strengthen immigration enforcement, saying federal law was controlling, even when officials were using discretion (as the government often does) to only partially enforce the statute.

Much stronger is the argument that, under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, the states lack the power to prevent federal agencies from enforcing federal law.

In his 2020 campaign, Biden did not promise to reverse a dozen years of policy and welcome in 4 million unauthorized immigrants. He did not argue that every person in the world has a right to move to the U.S.

Yet he did those things, and most elected Democrats continue to support them.

As those “in this house we believe” signs say, “no human being is illegal.”

“Immigration is a blind spot where Democrats focus first on the needs of migrants rather than the needs of Americans,” Democrat analyst Josh Barro wrote. Democrats need to “firmly say ‘no’ and deny access to our country, even to people who stand to gain a lot by coming here—and part of saying ‘no’ requires having an effective government apparatus that deports people who are here without authorization.”

Instead, blue-state Democrats seem stuck in denial. They point to polls showing less insistence on reducing illegal immigration without realizing that, as Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini pointed out, “that may have something to do with the fact that illegal border crossings have plummeted to zero.”

As for dismay at Trump administration enforcement tactics, that’s real, but, as Ruffini noted, voters of all education levels prefer “a party that’s better at getting things done, even if its views are sometimes extreme.”

This gets back, doesn’t it, to Sanders’ words: “If you don’t have any borders, you don’t have a nation.”

—

*COM*

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/11/01/democrats-want-open-borders-most-americans-dont/