We watched the Oscars tonight.  Lots of fun.  The lightest I’ve felt in a while.  Jimmy Kimmel was genuinely funny.  I loved seeing people truly moved when they won.  I didn’t love Casey Affleck’s speech, but I thought he was amazing in Manchester by the Sea.  A very tough movie with him playing an incredibly…

It is only 9:20 on a Saturday night, but my eyelids are already thick and I keep falling asleep.  This probably has everything to do with getting up at 5:30 this morning to be at the Breakfast Club to cook by 6, followed by two hours of editing before I spent four hours on the…

I have been working since noon.  One of my students has a 25 page paper on the Eugenics Movement.  In case  you don’t happen to know what that is, it was a movement in the early part of the 20th century that was based on two parts: positive eugenics = breeding people with Aryan features…

On A Streetcar Named Success· by TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (This essay appeared in The New York Times Drama Section, November 30, 1947-four days before the New York opening of A Streetcar Named Desire.) Here is the link: Click to access streetstreet_text.pdf I woke up this morning, replaying in my mind, the abject honesty of the essay…

I just had the occasion to read out loud the last five scenes in A Streetcar Named Desire while working with a high school student and I must say that good ole Tennessee was adept at creating tension, presenting nuanced and multi-dimensional characters and providing a plot that didn’t shy away from any number of…

My day in photos in reverse since the battery on my phone is about to die.  Bath time tonight.  A Cake Luna and I Made Luna Nico Taking a Nap

My youngest daughter, Rachael, took me to the Pantages Theater today to see a production called Circus, 1903, The Golden Age of Circus. According to the playbill: The producers of the world’s biggest magic show, The Illusionists have teamed up with the award winning puppeteers from War Horse to present a thrilling turn of the…

Today I worked with one of my UCLA students on a paper centered on Elie Wiesel’s book, Night. This is Wiesel’s first-hand account of being forced to leave his home in Transylvania (along with his entire village) and relocate first to Auschwitz and later to Buchenwald concentration camps during World War II. The volume is slim…

I am very pleased and proud that I have a flash fiction piece that has been published in the Real Women Write Anthology published by Story Circle Network.  This is a wonderful collection of poems, memoir pieces and flash fiction.  To order an anthology here’s the link: http://www.storycircle.org/frmanthology.shtml Here is my story. Intersections Jacob Peterson stared…

Ray and I are heading up to Ojai to spend the night tonight.  This is our Valentine’s gift to each other, to go to the peace of the orange grove until tomorrow afternoon. At that point, we will give each other the second part of our Valentine’s gift, an overnight visit with our two beloved…