I've been reading a lot this year. This isn't a complete list by any means, just ones I want to share and/or opine upon. Funny Ladies I just finished Leslie Gray Streeter's Family & Other Calamities, which is charming and hilarious (and touching, too). A recently-widowed journalist returns to her hometown (Baltimore) to find that …
Toronto Redux (pt. 3)
So, Monday was the conference. It was two days of symposia and two days of workshops and, like last year, I had no interest in doing group projects with strangers for two days, so was just there through Tuesday. Everything was pretty much the same as last year, in the exact same conference space. From …
Toronto Redux (pt. 2)
So, I wake up on Sunday in my high-above-the-roundhouse hotel room, whipped open those curtains. Lovely day. I had the whole day open, and had done a lot of basic touristing last year, so could be more specific. I thought about doing a hop-on-hop-off bus thing, which had worked so well for Dad and me …
Toronto redux (pt. 1)
So, last year, I got to return to a city I've loved for a long time, but hadn't been to in decades: Toronto. I almost immediately lost my wallet, but managed to have a good time anyway, including actually enjoying and appreciating the conference I was attending. The conference I attended was so worth-it that …
Catching Up
Christ on a sidecar, I'm so far behind in blogging - mostly because a string of things all happened over the course of several weekends, and I was too busy living life to write about it. So I'm just going to do some bullet points. Grand Duke: a few weeks ago, my old theater group, …
Crappy First Draft
When I was in fourth grade or so, I wrote an essay about the model airplanes I built. And it pretty much read like, "first I did an American Airlines DC-10. And then I did a Pan AM 747. And then I did a Delta 727. And then...." And I got it back from the …
That happy sound rolls over you…
My flurry of spring gigs is over. In addition to March's Jesus Christ Superstar, I've sung in a concert, played horn in another, and music-directed another (those last two over the last two weekends). They all went really well and, most importantly, they were fun. I'd sorta kinda steered away from performing last year, as …
A Little More Night Music
I love A Little Night Music. It took this musical theater queen longer to get to know it than it should have, but, in my mid '20's, I saw a very good community theater production of it in Philadelphia. And then, not long after, PBS broadcast the new New York City Opera production. https://youtu.be/2mwRammv30Q?si=lBV5vYZFvcix4-kv This …
Three Years
Not quite yet, it'll be the 20th. But I woke up at 3:45 this morning, and trying to fall back asleep, I wrote this. I can't remember the last time I wrote a poem. Three Years I fetch socks from your dresserMy dresser nowStanding where you laySurrounded by strangersWorking quickly and professionallyTo try to save …
Knoebel Effort
A nice couple of weekends! The day after seeing Barbiere at the Met, it was Easter Sunday. I don't celebrate Easter myself, and it took me a while to realize that other people do (adults, I mean) and take it quite seriously. Like, Charles would give me an Easter card each year. I was delighted, …
The Toast Point Page 