On Being Overwhelmed

I haven’t been blogging because I haven’t known what to say. I still don’t. There are multiple conversations in culture that demand attention (just cruise your Flipboard for awhile), and to most of them, I simply say this:  I don’t know the answers to the questions we’re facing. But not long ago, I read a …

Marriage and Aesthetic Unity

When I typed the title of this post, I had to reconsider.  Really?  Marriage and aesthetic unity?   What I mean by aesthetic unity as in what emerges from a strong work of art or a successful theatre production, an attribute of a production's ruling idea, metaphor, or concept, so that all the choices being …

Birthday Season

Birthdays glow.    It's silly, really.  Of course we had to get here through the passage of a particular day in time, at a particular moment.  For me it was 9:20 a.m. in a Lubbock hospital back in 1959, born to a young couple with a daughter and an uncertain future.  A half-century and more …

A Few Thoughts on The Art of Conversation

So Friday night I got together with a few friends for intentional conversation, and the topic was...well, conversation.   We asked questions like, "If you've just had a great conversation with someone, what were the things that made for the greatness of the time?"  "What are conversation killers?"  "What do you expect when you enter …

New York City

The truth is, New York gets a bit less daunting with every visit.  Watching my daughter Amy navigate the juggernaut that is NYC inspires me and humbles me, and at the same time makes the whole NY life seem much more doable, if not completely attractive.  I don't have any great desire to live in …