Tuesday Mulligatawny

This summer before I got sick I'd hoped to catch up with Sarah Schulman (left), a writer whose writings and activism I really admire, and who gave me (and others) some very useful advice years ago up in Vermont. I wasn't able to, but I have been following one of her recent moves, which, according to Patricia Cohen in the New York Times, has been to co-organize a town hall meeting (it took place Monday night) to protest the paucity of female playwrights on Off-Broadway and non-profit New York stages.

The gathering was organized by the playwrights Sarah Schulman and Julia Jordan, who have rallied their colleagues to the cause, contending that their male counterparts in the 2008-9 season are being produced at 14 of the largest Off Broadway institutions at four times the rate that women are. More than 150 playwrights appeared at a meeting last month to discuss the issue, and all 90 seats at New Dramatists, the playwriting center where Monday night’s meeting is scheduled, are already spoken for, and there is a long waiting list.

I'm curious to see what comes out of this and prior meetings. Will there be concrete proposals on the part of theaters' artistic directors and boards to address the disparity? Will female playwrights be given more and equal opportunities to have their works staged and enjoyed? I'm also curious to know if this is a problem elsewhere, and if there have been similar discussions and gatherings in other major cities, like the second theater capital of the US, Chicago.

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It was gone for a little over a year, but now it'll be back: regresará one of New York's finest Spanish-language bookstores. But only online.



As I wrote at the time of its closing last fall, Que nunca se la olvide, que siempre se la recuerde.

Will Macondo return in virtual form as well?

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Who says pro athletes aren't into the arts? Literature? Poetry, to be exact? Yes, that's a leading question and no, I don't just mean the kind that comes wrapped in memorable melodies and beats (i.e., hiphop, r&b, rock, etc.), but the kind that follows in the wake of 20th century Modernism and warms the hearts of so many? Meet New Jersey's own Obama-supporting Fernando Pérez, of the Tampa Bay Rays:

Are you staying away from heavy plots during the playoffs?

Actually, what helps me a great deal right now is poetry, like Robert Creeley and John Ashbery.

But of course! Now, what would get your and your teammates backs swinging again?

(H/t to Reggie H.)

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Perhaps the only thing better than The Wire starting a new season and surprising the hell out of all its fans is seeing its actors together again, for a good cause.



A colleague mentioned that it was somewhat startling to see Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) and Chris Partlow (Gbenga Akinnagbe), two of the most psychopathic characters not on a reality show to grace recent TV, supporting Obama. I guess I initially saw the actors as themselves, and then I considered that all these characters had some serious ethical and personal flaw--well, the psychopathic duo were really on the outer fringes, to put it mildly--and probably would send Obama running if they were the ones giving their endorsement. I mean, he's not anywhere in the general vicinity of Kwame Kilpatrick, is he?

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Does the global financial crisis demonstrate that Libertarianism as a practical and practiced ideology is dead? (Admit it, you're hoping the answer is yes, even as a struggle rages at the ground zero of its late high priest, Milton Friedman.) Jacob Weisberg thinks so. Ultrarandian Mr. Irrational Exuberance Alan Greenspan appears a mite chastened. And yet, we are on the verge of electing--shhhhh, don't tell the McCainiacs, Palindrones and sad old members of the GOP--a Communist socialist libertarian paternalist, right? I don't think so, and certainly not in light of the mess he'll have to clean up...but Cass Sunstein very well could end up on the federal bench nevertheless.

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And don't say I didn't warn you....

(H/t to Christina Springer)