27 June 2010: “Not tonight, Josephine!”

If men with erectile dysfunction can reach for Viagra and/or Cialis to make sure they’re “ready when the moment is right,”  it’s only fair that women with libido difficulties should have a remedy of their own.  According to an article in The New York Times, relief is just around the corner.  Right now, the F.D.A.…

25 June 2010: Wake Up, Little Sushi!

Scientists at Ocean Alliance, a research and conservation group, recently released a report which shows that “sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth’s oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals  like cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium.”  Industry dumps these things into the oceans,…

23 June 2010: The Place For Criminals

I’m hooked on MSNBC, which bills itself as “The Place For Politics.”  But why is it that, whenever HARDBALL with Chris Matthews, COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann or THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW aren’t on the air after 10 PM at night, or on weekends, the programming inadvertently turns to something called LOCKUP, a prison documentary about hardened criminals?  Is this a portent…

My Father’s Silence

I wrote a play in 1988 about my mother.  Although my father is talked about a great deal in Mother Tongue, he never actually appears in the play because I always thought he deserves a play of his own and that, one day, I would give him his due.  I still want to, but every…

19 June 2010: Women Beware Women!

It boggles my mind how, in recent years at the University of Kansas, so many of the young women in my classes do not want to be identified as feminists.  They seem to want all the benefits, and actually take all the benefits for granted, but would rather not be identified with the cause, or…

17 June 2010: Big Porno?

Now that BP has made Big Promises to make Big Payments (industry experts say the $20 billion in escrow will grow to $65 billion by the time this is all over), and now that BP has also provided some unintended comic relief by allowing Big People to laugh at the expense of “small people,” we all need to start filling up our…

26 May 2010: “Plug the damn hole!”

Says President Obama to BP. Says the rabbit to the tree after Alice fell into Wonderland. Says American cheese to Swiss cheese. Says the flat tire to the garage mechanic. Says the IRS to all the loopy tax laws. Says the dike to the little Dutch boy. Says the wounded gunman to the Mafia medic.…

My Mother’s Laughter

Although I emigrated to the United States in 1968, my mother did not come to visit me in Kansas until August of 1976, after she had already been in America for four months.  The reason why she decided to make the long journey from the Philippines was because my play Conpersonas was being performed in…

9 May 2010: Big Prawns, Dead Prawns

Back in 1999, when one of my plays was in competition at the Edward Albee Theatre Conference at Prince William Sound Community College in Valdez, Alaska, site of the disastrous Exxon oil spill, there were lots of cocktail parties given by the oil companies for people attending the conference.  Albee himself told us to be…