On the afternoon of 9 May 2011, the English Department of the University of Kansas gave a festive “milestones celebration” in the North Gallery of the Spencer Research Library for three of its new retirees, presided by Chair Marta Caminero-Santangelo, and organized by Administrative Assistant Robert Elliott. The retirees (Mike Johnson, Jim Hartman and I)…
I was smoking up to sixty cigarettes a day when I finally quit in 1994. And now, sixteen years later, when the nurse weighed me at the doctor’s office prior to my annual physical, there was no avoiding the fact that I’ve packed on sixty pounds since my last cigarette. So how did this happen? Let me start…
Since Kansas isn’t exactly a beehive of playwriting activity, beginning playwrights in this neck of the woods are almost always told that, if they write about what they know, and if they choose to chronicle their small-town roots, they could be “the next William Inge,” the playwright from Independence, KS who couldn’t leave his birthplace fast enough but…
Although my brothers and I were born of Chinese parents in the Philippines, the three of us emigrated to the United States, separately and for totally different reasons, when we were all in our mid-twenties. It was in the United States where we all established our professional careers; where John and Peter met the wonderful women they…
Some friends who’ve been journeying through time with me, after looking at the many pictures of ourselves which I’ve posted chronologically on my website, seem startled and dismayed by how we’ve all aged. “My God,” one of them exclaimed the other day, “we were all so young and…” He paused for a long time and, as he…
I’m directing a concert reading of THE DESIGNATED MOURNER, a dramatic discourse by Wallace Shawn, for English Alternative Theatre at the University of Kansas on Labor Day, so I’ve been thinking lately about why Shawn, who is such a fine and accomplished thinking-man’s playwright, is mostly known only for his work in the movies and…