My mother was an identical twin. My mother was Mary Lavinia . . . sometimes Lynn, sometimes Lindy, sometimes Mary. My aunt to me was always Virginia. Lynn, Virginia, and my father all graduated from high school in Nevada, Missouri, in the same class. My dad, and my uncle Randall, another local Missouri boy, fought […]
Laura Stage Noir at Tacoma Little Theatre
The 1944 film noir classic, Laura, was based on the best selling novel by Vera Caspary. She was also involved in the movie script. Caspary was a writer of novels, plays, screenplays, and short stories. In the film, Laura is played by Gene Tierney. Dana Andrews plays Mark, a detective who investigates her death. Gene […]
The Hub Restaurant Review
For Valentine’s Day Peg and I ordered take out from the Harmon on Pacific Avenue in Tacoma. The results were less than stunning (changes are happening there now). I wanted to make sure that The Hub (a Harmon property in the Stadium District) was maintaining their service and food standards. My wife Peg went with […]
Exceptional Trees
I enjoyed a recent front page article from the Seattle Times. It was about a neighborhood joining together to save an exceptional tree from developers. It’s a tulip tree, which can grow as high as 120 feet (Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY). The Seattle tree is “Nearly 90 feet tall, with a diameter of 44 […]
So You Say . . . Quotations to Live By
When our three children were young, my wife Peg and I picked up on one of their verbal responses to each other, “So, you say!” Meaning of course, “That’s just your opinion.” I knew they could come up with stronger worded comments, but you probably get the idea. More mature responses came later. Words to […]
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown Review
Good grief . . . In the welcome at Centerstage! by Managing Director Angela Bayler and Artistic Director Trista Duval they were constantly interrupted by the characters we would soon meet. The actors did a great job acting like little kids doing their best to deliver messages and remind in character. Sweet. The musical comedy […]
Wide Awake and Laughing – Review of The Drowsy Chaperone
In the 1979 film “Meatballs” Tripper Harrison (played by Bill Murray) is a camp councilor. The camp loses every competition to a rival camp. The next big game is coming up and Tripper gives his opinion of the rivalry and the camp’s chances: “Sure, Mohawk has beaten us twelve years in a row. Sure, they’re […]
Dead Presidents
In the late 1970s I loved watching a television series called Meeting of the Minds. It was the “brain child” of Steve Allen. It was a make believe round table discussion by historical figures. There were no housewives from Atlanta; there were no comic book heroes; there were no viking intrigues. Meeting of the Minds […]
Moby Dick; or The Scale . . .
The book “Moby Dick” “is sailor Ishmael’s narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale that on the ship’s previous voyage bit off Ahab’s leg at the knee . . . Its reputation as a ‘Great American Novel”‘ was established only in […]