There is a discipline in making a solid argument in words and a grace in the outcome if one succeeds. I admire the genius of Rebecca Solnit. Her "Men Explain Things to Me" is about as good as it gets.
How to Reclaim Plan A
Published in Medium on September 13, 2022
Four Steps to Inventing Your Future
Few us of get it right out of the gate. In our twenties, we find ourselves doing some kind of work and maybe, if we’re lucky, it evolves to be a fit with our flow — it nourishes and provokes growth. But most of us aren’t that lucky. Here’s what I’ve learned from decades of reclaiming my gifts and figuring out how to channel my mojo in concrete ways.
Death? The Second Time’s a Charm
Published in Medium on August 22, 2021
I got one death wrong, very wrong, and I did the second one better.
When my mother died in her late sixties, it was a shock in the wake of a premonition with the kicker that I would now become my father’s caretaker — he who had just received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. I experienced the memorial services as a distant alien who was gathering intelligence on human behavior during stress. My mother was trim, ate healthy, walked miles every day. And yet, earlier decades with cigarettes doomed her.
How Slinging Pizza Set Me Up for Life
Published in Medium on August 20, 2021
Everything I learned about work, I learned as a pizza waitress.
Sometimes opportunity knocks when you’re not putting your best foot forward. Recover and seize it. Let’s say you’re a sassy teenager walking into a random pizza joint to use their cigarette machine. (One of the rites of passage back then was learning how to smoke and, yes, this was a terrible thing but we do foolish things when we are young so we can write about them later.) As I tussled trying to get the machine to swallow the coins, I saw a small woman in a large apron staring at me. “Know any nice girls?” she asked me. Well, wait, wasn’t I a nice girl? I hid the cigarettes in my purse. Maybe they were for someone else.
My Treehouse Life
Published in Medium on August 18, 2021
I didn’t realize it was a treehouse, that it would come at a price.
My first visitor declared it so with her Carolina twang and if you could see past the scaffolding, yes, there were trees and my balcony met them right where they branched forth as if to shake my hand. An elm and a willow oak had been planted in tree pits decades before I arrived on W. 85th and they flourished despite less-than-ideal conditions including crowding, pollution, and dog deposits but then so did the rats, restaurants, and resilient citizens.
Ask August to Fork Up a Fresh Start
Published in Medium on August 3, 2021
August marks us two-thirds into the year. What will we do with this next trimester?
It has a history as a lazy month. Rarely is it said: “let’s wait until August and then we’ll work overtime, straining every nerve, to build something great.” Instead, we take holiday, sleep in, staycate, hibernate, cocoon, rest up, detach, disconnect, and disappear. We anticipate a bolder re-entry in September and that gives us permission to drop out in large and small ways. We expect little of each other and, thus, of ourselves during this month of ripe melon and sweet corn.
How Pandemic Becomes Possibility
Published in Medium on April 12, 2021
Five Questions to a Reboot
Done with Groundhog Day?
We’ll remember how we felt a year ago when the pandemic froze our life choices in place.
Don’t Resolve; Ask Questions Instead
Published in Medium on January 4, 2021
Friends, we transition to a new year with common purpose: to plan for a “better” year — one with more juice, greater authenticity, larger purpose, more outcome. Perhaps, like me, you default to the power of declarative statements. I will walk an extra 20 minutes a day; I will write a new play in 90 days; I will replace my secret adoration of potato chips with crispy celery and spicy salsa.
Why My Mother Threw the Ham
Published in Medium on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2020
My sister Linda and I are convinced she’d had enough of being a mother. Four kids born over the span of 17 years: She was washing diapers, preparing meals, folding clothes, mopping floors and scouring our one bathroom continuously through four different administrations — from Roosevelt to JFK. When my oldest brother graduated high school, my youngest brother was fourteen months old, colicky and not an especially good sleeper. And this was back before diapers were disposable or microwaves existed except in laboratories.
@West85th
Published in Medium on April 9, 2020
I plan and cook three square meals a day. I abstain from sex. I clean my quarters — my toilet sparkles, my counter shines! I use my best penmanship to write notes to people which I then stamp and take to the post box. I search recipes to find something tasty to make out of the beans and tuna which await me in the pantry. I wake up early and thank The Forces that I am alive.
Bread, Guns, and Spanish Doves
April 2017
True story. I am sitting in front of a grenade that is more than six feet high, waiting on two firearms to be released to me. That is, after I pass a background check with the ATF. A few questions first: Am I a fugitive from justice? No. Have I ever been adjudicated as a mental defective? Not really, though perhaps my ex would have an alternate view.
Where Are the Women?
May 6, 2014
As a member of WomenStageTheWorld, an advocacy project of the League of Professional Theatre Women, we believe an important first step is to create awareness. We’re asking theater decision-makers and audiences to consider the question: Who wrote, directed and designed this show? Maybe the lack of gender equity in theater is not part of a systemic conspiracy to deprive talented women of their place in the mix. Maybe the larger truth is that neither decision-makers nor audience members are sensitized to the issue. What we’ve got is a blind spot that demands…a parade!