A short entry this week.  Before attending to the title, above, I would like to mention the following small evils as things that are so clearly wrong with the world that “there oughter be a law.”  In no particular order, these are:

 

Mosquitoes

Ticketmaster

Trucks kicking up rocks on the highway

The lock-step of mass culture

Health insurance

Partisan politics

Intrusive waiters

Vapid music

 

About a year ago, my friend Melissa, whom I have known since high school, sent a tidbit about author Dan Levitin who encountered John Pierce, the man who invented the transistor.  Pierce, in his eighties, had never knowingly heard any rock music.  How one can live in a developed nation and achieve this, I do not know, but when Levitin discovered this curious deficit, the two had a little heart-

People have such a habit of asking, “So, what’s new?” but this harmless act of generosity often becomes a genuine puzzler, as it leaves one having to determine just how sincere is the question––Is it something weightier than mere social graces?––and how much information does the questioner really want?  Amongst good but geographically distant friends who see each other only infrequently, a

In one of my favorite Waterboys songs, chief Waterboy Mike Scott writes, “Grandma, we are Jonah––rolling along in the teeth of the whale.”  I was forcibly reminded of this sentiment yesterday.  I’d taken my boys to a playground called Fortress Park, a space dominated by a host of wooden fort-like climbers, and after we’d tired of chasing each other up the stairs and down the slides, I suggested

One thing about theater (and writing in general): There’s hardly ever a rush.  Material makes it into print or onto the stage in its good ol’ time.  So it has been for Nightjars, a piece I wrote almost four years ago now, as it finally wends its way to the stage.  Having now seen a dress rehearsal, I can say with confidence that anyone and everyone reading this should come see.  Granted, metro