Duet for One - Dec 17, 1981 - Jan 02, 1982 Royale Theatre, New York, NY

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Nuestra Senora de Pimeria Alta - Our Lady of Tucson

While living in Tucson, I often remarked to people how southern Arizona seemed a special place, a land bought by the United States from Mexico through treaty, the Gadsden Purchase. In other words, it was not seized in war and blood had not been shed in the receiving of the land into the territories of the United States. Just a silly thought perhaps. 

That leads me to say that Tucson and that area of Arizona have a long clean line into its past in terms of politics and war.

While I am writing this, I can remember over 20 years ago my cars, all cars on the northern highway, from Nogales being directed to an off ramp of the highway for a visual check and talk to a border patrol police officer through the winder in order to continue on my way north in this land of the "free". That I and my family passed the look and language checks at this checkpoint Charlie because of race and education etc. So much for needing paperwork back then beyond your state issued driver's license etc.  

I cannot but feel great anguish in which I as an American have become aware of the inhumane way in to which would be immigrants from the south, Mexico and Central America, are being treated in a bully kind of response to an Immigration non-policy that a bunch of lazy crony pols in Washington of both major parties have not been able to settle for the past several decades. That we are a land of immigrants and my heart goes out to children separated from parents in this current impromptu and cruel handing of the situation on the border by the U.S. Government. 

That the image of Mary, the mother of Jesus, seems to be to be present in outline on a mountain overlooking that city near the border. I think it appropriate if you are inclined to a higher power and or the saints of the dominant religion, to ask for intercession through prayer or positive energy for the restoration of harmony, peace and justice in that region to be reestablished along the border regions of the two nations involved in this present tug of war over the popular populist politics of strangers wanting a chance to grasp and contribute to the American dream and democracy, the same opportunity my ancestors sought and achieved 170 years ago before the Civil War.

Losing Our Democracy

While the GOP sold the Gubmint to the Corps for cash and rubles, the Dems gave it away by default while sipping PC caffeine free Tumeric Ginger iced teas at sidewalk cafes on the upper west sides of Manhattan, Berkley, etc.


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2020 - Not just another year?

A year in which classic (not zero sum) balance and sanity to be restored ?


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Some of my Broadway Memories from an Audience POV

The Gin Game - John Golden Theatre - 1978 - Tandy and Cronyn

A touch of the Poet - Helen Hayes Theatre - 1978 - Robards and Fitzgerald

A Duet for One - Royale Theatre - Dec. 1981 - Bancroft and Von Sydow

You Can't take it with You - Plymouth Theatre - 1983 - Robards

The Ice Man Cometh - Lunt Fontaine Theatre - 1985 - Robards

Les Miserables - Broadway Theatre - 1988

Into the Woods - Martin Beck Theatre - 1988

( In high school I can remember three productions that were outstanding in terms of Broadway Theatre quality works. One was Freshman year at my high school of "Finian's Rainbow".  Don't remember the other performances except Junior year with a West Side Story that did not impress me and I left at intermission. Of the other performances, one at fraternal H.S. Father Judge of "Little Me". And last, the most impressive one of all them, that would rival anything on Broadway, was "The Music Man" performed at the girl's high school attached to Holy Name College up on Torresdale Ave. near the county line. )

[may 6, 2020 - also on broadway - "Da" with Bernard Hughes around 1979.]



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Actor's Fund Fair - Madison Square Garden NYC - May 1892

Muddy Construction Site - World Financial Center NYC - 1980s

200 Vesey Street, called American Express Tower when built in mid 1980s, part of world financial center, across west street from World Trade Center, the old one, built by construction company Olympia and York, out of Montreal, now defunct. Also built Canada Plaza, Canary Wharf London. Similar exterior, only 42 feet difference in heights, 739 and 771 respectively. Worked in a complex of trailers, accounts payable, for Amex Building, in a muddy, muddy lot at Vesey and West Streets, now site of Goldman Sacks HQ, for about six months in 1985. O&Y owned then by Orthodox Jews. No work on Saturday allowed on site. Had to work Sunday if I had to work weekends. 16 hour days and an experimental PC that lost and scrambled its exterior "grasshopper" brand main drive every time a cement truck passed by drove me up the wall. Company, a sub construction shell co of Amex. trying to invent and copyright new accounting software for PCs in construction etc. Overtime for clericals like me straight time even if I worked 80 hours a week or "sundays" on "weekends". Screw that. Quit. 


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