18 November 2011: Talking Turkey with Sam Brownback

Ostensibly because the end-of-the-year holidays starting with Thanksgiving are traditionally stressful times for families trying their best not to be quarrelsome or dysfunctional, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has issued a proclamation declaring Nov. 17-23 “A Week of Reconciliation.”  He’s urging “all Kansans to contact and attempt to reconcile with anyone with whom they are estranged…

My Harlan Ellison Story

(This is the first in a series of entries about visiting writers I’ve encountered at the University of Kansas back in the 1970s, when I was working on my M.A. in English, and was still quite undecided about what to do with the rest of my life, whether to pursue an uncertain future as a…

Friends Without Benefits

Every week, I am pleasantly surprised and filled with inexplicable nostalgia when FACEBOOK sends me a message reminding me of upcoming birthdays of friends, many of whom I haven’t seen or heard from in years. Usually, because it costs nothing to do it, I send these aging friends an e-greeting of one sort or another;…

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary…

Through the years, I’ve had a strange love/hate relationship with Mary Doveton, the Founding Mother and Executive Director of Theatre Lawrence, formerly the Lawrence Community Theatre.  Mary directed the world premiere of my play Flesh, Flash and Frank Harris (1984); and encouraged me to direct three others of my own at LCT—Hatchet Club (1983), Chambers…