Tag Archives: Playwright
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Dear Mr. Blitzer, I just watched your interview with General Hayden. As a determined and incisive journalist, you had an obligation to press the general for using, within his June 16th tweet, the photo of the train tracks leading to Birkenau. As a Jew, you were true to your people and your history when you insisted that care be taken with comparisons made between one human tragedy and the Holocaust. As a child of survivors and a grandchild of victims, you were obviously motivated to respond emotionally to a possible casual use of Holocaust iconography. However, I believe it’s time to stop holding the Holocaust sacrosanct. It’s time to consent that the entire period of history, from the mid-1920s until well past the liberation of the camps, must be perceived and used as a lesson of the most profound importance to our entire world today. The general has it right. […]
The headline in The Guardian (June 16, 2018) read: 2,000 children separated from parents in six weeks under Trump policy. As I went on, each sentence was more disturbing than the one before. The events as reported were horrific, but – this may surprise you – the sentence that finally sank its fist into my gut was this one: A small group of reporters were [sic] given strictly controlled access earlier this week to one immigration detention centre where some children forcibly separated from their parents, or crossing the border alone, are being held. Why were the reporters given only strictly controlled access? For the security of the children? I doubt that. If the government was concerned about the children’s welfare, the children would be with their parents. So I ask again, why was access strictly controlled and why were the reporters allowed in only one immigration detention center? Why […]
This past week I’ve received two pieces of mail from Erik Paulsen, my congressman for Minnesota’s 3rd District. The first reads: “Protecting Our Children Fighting Meningitis B” The second reads: “Getting Results for Minnesota Seniors”. In an effort to help Congressman Paulsen be honest with us and himself, I’m checking out these two affirmations by checking out his voting record. I’m looking at Vote Smart (https://votesmart.org/, a site generally considered a valuable and unbiased tool for scrutinizing our senators and congress people. Bill Moyers calls it “a bright light in an often desultory civic culture. Granted, Mr. Moyers is a Democrat but he’s also a deeply ethical man. Check out Vote Smart yourselves. You might be surprised at what is in some of these bills your elected officials spend so much time piddling on. Let’s begin with Paulsen’s assertion that he is protecting our children’s health care, specifically in the fight […]
I would very likely bite anyone who tries snatching this book from my hands. Yesterday morning, 6AM, I’m grumbling, “Don’t bother me; I’m reading!” The other evening, 5PM, I’m whining, “I hope someone’s on top of supper because I’m getting hungry.” This has been going on for days, now. I was awake at 3 o’clock this morning. The house was cold so I curled into a capsule beneath the blankets. I was also under cover so the dogs wouldn’t twig that I was awake and demand a pee and then, as morning follows evening, kibble follows pee, tug follows kibble, and so on. Forgive my awkward segue, but reality isn’t always smooth. The book I am reading is Explaining Hitler by Ron Rosenbaum. It’s not new, originally published in 1998, with an updated edition released in 2014. It isn’t that big, topping out at 630 pages (and I probably won’t […]
Pull it together, for crying out loud! I can’t settle. I can’t write right. Words fail me. My anger feeds my fear and my fear feeds my feelings of insignificance and impotence and that, in turn, feeds the deadening belief that everything I do from here on must be of great significance. I need to write a warning that’s gripping and funny and pithy, and personally momentous, while, at the same time, historically accurate and, above all, true. But, in fact, I can barely see the screen because I can’t stop crying out loud! Literarily. Literally. Then Miriam sent me Sarah Ruhl’s speech. Every artist deserves a daughter like Miriam. Remarks from playwright Sarah Ruhl on accepting the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust Distinguished Playwright of the Year Award at Lincoln Center, New York on Monday, November 14, 2016. Thank you so much. I am so honored, and humbled, […]
