In May of 1959, a musical opened on Broadway that became an landmark show. With “Gypsy”, Styne, Sondheim and Laurents created a terrific play with songs that have become standards and a role actresses fight to play like actors fight to portray King Lear. The show was loosely based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee which were, according to her sister, pretty loose with the truth already. What people see...
There’s a shiver I get when I first pick up certain books. Reading is almost an autonomic function for me and nothing is more inviting than the site of a new, fat book but every so often I will pick up a book, read a few pages and get the “Aha” kind of shiver. It’s a reflex of recognition, when my eyes fix on some indefinable thing that says this book is really something special. This is one of...
Ok it’s January, cold, bleak and raining. The decorations have been packed away, the weight from party nibbles has been packed on and I’m uncomfortably aware of the low balance in the checking account and the high one on the credit card. I don’t want to sound ungrateful after all of these winter festivities but I think I need a vacation. I want to go someplace warm where life’s...
I’ve thought a lot about this entry because it falls on a calendar date of some significance. Of course, calendar holidays aren’t usually the ones that make big dents in our memories (unless we’re talking about bicycle gifts for holidays or a wedding celebrated on Valentines). The days you hold on to, good and bad, aren’t marked on someone else’s calendar. And of all of the marked da...
Birmingham, Alabama has a favorite son and I’ll bet they’ve forgotten his name. He was an editor and minister’s son, a foreign correspondence that parachuted into Normandy during World War II and a novelist. Of all things, Joe David Brown was a very good novelist who invented a great loud-mouthed little girl. Her name was Addie Pray. Does that child’s name ring a bell? Probably not i...