CREATIVITY AND THE COSMOS A friend recently wondered if I plotted my writing before I sat down to work. In other words, he was asking, “Do you know where you’re going before you get there?”  I admit when I taught expository writing, I required students to write from an outline

DREAMS AT PLAY AND WHAT THEY COST One of the most powerful works for theater in western literature is August Strindberg’s “Dream Play.” It focuses on the poverty of the human condition and how like a dream life is: a place where cruel events happen without reason or logi

SOMETIMES IT’S BETTER TO LOSE In 2009, Helen Thomas, a 40 year veteran of the White House Press Corp and Craig Crawford, a columnist for Congressional Quarterly’s CQ Politics, collaborated on a book titled “Listen Up, Mr. President.” I know thisbecause I picked up a co

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE NIGHT THE BED FELL  The screenplay for “Thelma & Louise” centers on two women involved with callous men who make their lives miserable. By accident, and partly by choice, they awaken one day to find themselves engaged in a crime spree. As Thelma das

THE MISFITS This morning I looked out my kitchen window to find a crow sitting in the middle of the birdbath. The bird was too large for the receptacle but seemed to refuse to acknowledge this as it continued to sit, fluttering its wings with no hope of stirring the water because the

LIFE’S LITTLE IRONIES Every school child knows the lines from William Henry Davis’ poem, “Leisure”:                  “What is this life if full of care                  We have no time to stand and stare?” I think of that poem on a h

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S LIFE I’m revisiting Germaine Greer’s classic book “The Female Eunuch” published in 1971 and am being reminded once again of her command of vocabulary. I admit, I keep the dictionary beside me because I’m often stumped by a word I feel I should k

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS de SADE* Theatre of the Absurd isn’t fashionable anymore. It’s a style that has faded as surely as 18th century mannerist plays. But I mis

DESSERT VERSUS BROCCOLI  Something there is in me that demands I postpone every enjoyment until every unpleasant chore has been completed. I could blame my father, I suppose. He always exhorted me to eat my vegetables before my dessert. My father was a first generation German which m

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF GARDENS With most of the holidays behind us until Halloween, summer drones on like a lazy bee. There’s not much to do in the garden but weed and feed and water and keep a lookout for my neighbor who, each year, likes to share his bumper crop of zucchinis. Last s