It's a pretty town with a lot of couple of hundred years old dwellings. But it's not the same place I first lived in 1962 or '63. It has gone wealthy. My neighborhood is full of Teslas. (Although they were all probably bought before Elon became the jerk that he currently is.)
I guess so. And it's probably better than what's happened to Seattle. Crime is up there. When I was 2, Milton Friedman importuned my parents to let him stay at our house, ostensibly because my father was going away and there'd been a rape on the U. Washington Campus. We were two miles from the campus, and in 1955 Seattle was a backwater where crime virtually did not exists. There was none in our neighborhood, and probably still none there.
But I can't imagine what it must have been like for my mother--whose maternal uncle had run the Colorado Democratic Party for most of the first half of the 20th century--to share a house with Milton Friedman. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to ask her until she was gone.
I have to say, I didn't take the story seriously. One of the punch lines was my jumping into bed with Friedman, which I now think really happened, and the other was--after finding the strange man in the parental bed, beating a hasty retreat back downstairs, finding my mother on the living room couch where she'd spent the night, and saying to her--and this is what my father thought was so funny--"where's the other guy?"
Excellent!! The characters have been there for years. What no one wants to say is a blood bath is coming to America. The good guys have lost and never did anything to stop the Christian Nationalism. That was started shr the thousands of Southern children who who moved out of public schools to whites only racist schools. That is what Trump did. We cannot stop him now. Please believe me.
Who is going to do the score? The choreography? This movement is in dire need of a melody that is whistled on everyone’s lips, coded or not. We need an American Les Miz. Bring it to B’way. Download and share the mp3s! (Remember that folks opposed to Franco smuggled in Pete Seeger’s record and listened to the songs clandestinely.) ✩ 🖇️ ✩
I have no idea why I never thought about music. It should have been obvious. What is resistance without a melody? What is rebellion without a refrain? Vivian would never allow something as essential as orchestration to go unplanned, and Riley, well—she moves like a woman who already has an overture playing in her head.
So yes. A full-throated, show-stopping, standing-ovation yes to music. This movement needs a song. The kind you hum absentmindedly until you realize you’re stirring a revolution in the produce aisle. The kind that gets scribbled in the margins of meeting notes. The kind whistled in defiance, coded or not.
Who will compose it? Who will choreograph it? I don’t know. But suddenly, I want clandestine mixtapes, whispered harmonies, and a song so dangerous it has to be smuggled past censors. An American Les Miz, you say? Yes. Bring it to Broadway, download the mp3s, and let’s make sure the right people are utterly terrified by it.
My wife did theatre in Canada. Not just dabbled—did theatre. The kind of involvement that means she can still recite entire monologues at the dinner table, which is charming until you realize she’s halfway through Macbeth and you’re just trying to eat your soup.
We love theatre. Love it. The kind of love that means when we’re in New York, we don’t just see a show—we see all the shows. Plays, musicals, anything with a stage and a spotlight. We schedule matinees like doctors schedule surgeries. We have opinions about revivals. We whisper things like, “That lighting choice was a crime” while people around us are just enjoying their overpriced wine. And honestly? We wouldn’t have it any other way.
I am all giddy about this!!! Paul, you were Creon! The ruler of Thebes! The man with impossible choices and a tragic fate! You were commanding the stage.
Now I really need details. Did you channel your inner Laurence Olivier? Did you wear a crown? Was your Creon a terrifying authority figure, or were you more of a reluctant, exhausted bureaucrat just trying to get through the day? And how did it feel, at that young age, to stand there and deliver lines about power, law, and moral dilemmas? Did it carve itself into your bones, or were you mostly worried about remembering your blocking and not knocking over the set?
Because, Paul, I have a theory. Once you play Creon, a little piece of him stays with you forever. Maybe it’s in the way you argue a point, maybe it’s in your ability to withstand chaos with a stoic air, or maybe—just maybe—it’s in the way you instinctively know that in every situation, someone, somewhere, is about to make a terrible decision, and you, wise and weary Creon, have seen it all before.
By 1970 my life began to change in many ways. When I moved to Los Angeles, I did write a sort of libretto, or more properly, a continuity script for a musical production of Irving Berlin songs done as dinner theater. I did see it performed, at a Radisson hotel, and it wasn’t bad, but I had no idea what I was doing.
We performed these pieces in modern dress. I remember we rented a gold satin tuxedo jacket for me. I don’t remember much of the excerpt we performed but as best I can recall it was a bit between Creon and his son, I think.
We were a youth group doing rather experimental theater at the time, not normal community theater, a la The Mousetrap. I think this would have been 1966-1969. Our director was John Schneider who found a measure of success with Theater X in Milwaukee.
I had, I thought, some good roles, and some performances that left me drained, as I recall. I think my Creon was the “reluctant, exhausted bureaucrat just trying to get through the day.” I did like the tux, though.
I think one of my best was performing an excerpt from The World Tipped Over and Laying on Its Side by Mary Feldhaus-Weber.
I played the Old Man, and I was wearing a robe for that.
Artists of the past and today have always been known to be Odd, Kookie, Strange, Creative and “Most of All” REBELLIOUS.
When it comes to political issues, artists have been known to get their rebellious message across to the masses through their music.
Examples: Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie - songs about the disenfranchised American.
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sang about freedom, hope, miscarriage of justice and the horror of war.
The satire of a political cartoon or the late night monologue of a TV host.
Then there were painters like Rembrandt or the Dutch Masters who painted symbols in obscurity within their paintings in order to make their feelings known.
Writers and poets who inspired individuals to uplift or inform others.
Artists are individuals who record history and immortalized persons places or things.
The list can go on for ever regarding the importance and value that artists of all artistic disciplines display.
History is a recording of the past to inform…yet more important to warn of a future that could be.
We are in a critical period of America History yet to be written. Some profess it’s 1933 in Germany, the Jim Crow or McCarthy era…perhaps?
As for me personally, I prefer to believe that “We the People” will eliminate the parasite and disease that has infected our system of government. Protect the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Reunite with countries around the world and most of all “Defend America from adversaries foreign and domestic…jc
Oh Gloria! your ability to set a scene right down to a perfectly named perfume Enigme dOr! The young protege in her Oxblood T-strapped heels. ( my faves but oh to own them in Oxblood)! I want this story to be a book I can own. I want us to rise up and end this horrid nightmare of past mistakes coming back like Deja Vu!
Thank you, Ramona. Is it too much—too self-indulgent, too pretentious—to say I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with my own characters? Because I have. Utterly. Helplessly. They are, all of them, the people I want to be—fierce, unshakable, the kind of people who know exactly when to strike the perfect blow against the dragon, the ogre, the monster. Meanwhile, I’m over here still fumbling with the sword, trying to remember if I left the oven on.
Is it haughty? Probably. But if you spend enough time with characters who practically breathe fire, you start to feel a little warmth yourself. And maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe writing is just a way of constructing the world as it should be, shaping characters with all the bravery, persistence, and patience you wish you had but somehow never quite manage to summon at the right moment. A way of making something real—at least on the page—when real life refuses to cooperate.
And this whole thing—this first attempt at writing an extended prose story? It’s exhilarating. And also completely, terrifyingly, stomach-churningly frightening. It’s like deciding to go skydiving because you saw a video once and thought, Well, that looks fun! And now you’re in the plane, strapped to some guy named Chad, and suddenly remembering that you’re terrified of heights. But to be glaringly honest? It’s cathartic. Terrifying, but cathartic. Like standing at the edge of something vast, knowing you could either soar or plummet—and somehow, not being entirely sure which one scares you more.
If this prose story is the beginning of a new approach for you, I encourage you to do more, more, more, and then some more. It's wonderful. Not everyone could pull this off, but you can. You did!
Ramona, I am sick to death of it. Sick to death of the way any woman over 40 might as well be a ghost—unseen, unheard, a relic people pretend not to notice while they step right through her at the grocery store. Sick to death of the fact that straying even an inch from the straight, heteronormative path is treated like a moral crime, as if love needs a permission slip signed by the most insufferable, joyless committee of self-appointed judges. And I am really sick to death of people who don’t care. The ones who shrug, who sigh, who say, “What can you do?” as if apathy were a perfectly acceptable life choice instead of a slow, silent death.
Bring me the fire. Bring me the terror. The exquisite thrill of doing something hard and dangerous and impossible and jumping in anyway—not just with both feet, but with your whole goddamn body, heart pounding, hands shaking, knowing full well it could end in disaster and deciding, screw it, let’s go.
So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m writing. Loudly. Furiously. I could be pilloried, burned at the stake, lined up in front of a firing squad, or—worst of all—ignored completely, my words drifting into the void like an unanswered voicemail. But I’m writing anyway. And I’m yelling while I do it.
Ramona, I have a small ringed notebook I carry at all times. Two pages are the names of the Substack authors I read every day. You are at the top of the list.
I've only been to Ford's Theater once, and I didn't tarry, but if it weren't for the powerful red paint in the photo, I might think myself back there, with John Wilkes Booth about to attack Lincoln in the middle booth before falling one floor down. Where is he now that we need him?
We have a couple of handfuls of excellent candidates! Adam Schiff, Sheldon Whitehouse, AOC, although she may be just a tad young, Pete Buttigieg, and if it were earlier in the evening I could think of another five equally qualified candidates. There are plenty of excellent Democrats.
Where is our revolt? If it exists it is well disguised.
Good question!
It's aborning in our minds. Drink your coffee, everyone, to fuel the flames. If you're already in Lexington, come by for espresso in the morning!
I haven’t been to Lexington in decades. 🩷
It's a pretty town with a lot of couple of hundred years old dwellings. But it's not the same place I first lived in 1962 or '63. It has gone wealthy. My neighborhood is full of Teslas. (Although they were all probably bought before Elon became the jerk that he currently is.)
It’s a common occurrence in present day America.
I guess so. And it's probably better than what's happened to Seattle. Crime is up there. When I was 2, Milton Friedman importuned my parents to let him stay at our house, ostensibly because my father was going away and there'd been a rape on the U. Washington Campus. We were two miles from the campus, and in 1955 Seattle was a backwater where crime virtually did not exists. There was none in our neighborhood, and probably still none there.
But I can't imagine what it must have been like for my mother--whose maternal uncle had run the Colorado Democratic Party for most of the first half of the 20th century--to share a house with Milton Friedman. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to ask her until she was gone.
I have to say, I didn't take the story seriously. One of the punch lines was my jumping into bed with Friedman, which I now think really happened, and the other was--after finding the strange man in the parental bed, beating a hasty retreat back downstairs, finding my mother on the living room couch where she'd spent the night, and saying to her--and this is what my father thought was so funny--"where's the other guy?"
You would be welcome here. Of course, if memory serves you're on the opposite side of the country. I haven't been there in almost a decade.
Yes. We live in the wild and wacky town of Las Vegas. Never a dull moment.
Excellent!! The characters have been there for years. What no one wants to say is a blood bath is coming to America. The good guys have lost and never did anything to stop the Christian Nationalism. That was started shr the thousands of Southern children who who moved out of public schools to whites only racist schools. That is what Trump did. We cannot stop him now. Please believe me.
I do and have always been the same. I grew up in Mississippi and rebelled.
This is a damn good story, Gloria.
Thank you! That means the world coming from you.
Resist with what you have. That struck a chord with me.
It’s what we can do. Each one of us.
Indeed! And . . . . there are more of us than there are of them.
Yes. We must unite.
"Cabarets were weapons."
They still are in Las Vegas. Coco Peru performed at Myron’s in the Smith Center in Las Vegas recently. It was a cabaret we will never forget.
She Who Stirs the Storm
Plots the overthrow
The epic of
Resistance
April 19 1775
Brought once again
To the green grass
Soon bloodied
at Lexington
It’s a challenge.
Well said. In fact the theme I used today , just a little different take. Thank you.
Prose for those who expose the blow …by blow …by blows.
Just pure talent.
I love what you wrote:
“Impeachment 2025 Mass Protests Erupt. : Unprecedented Elected Officials sign on:
Betrayal 2025 …..American Mutany
Get your big boy pants on . It’s a COUP!”
🫶😂
Clearly, your big girl panties have always been on perfectly fine.
Intriguing.
Thank you 🙏
Who is going to do the score? The choreography? This movement is in dire need of a melody that is whistled on everyone’s lips, coded or not. We need an American Les Miz. Bring it to B’way. Download and share the mp3s! (Remember that folks opposed to Franco smuggled in Pete Seeger’s record and listened to the songs clandestinely.) ✩ 🖇️ ✩
Louise—
I have no idea why I never thought about music. It should have been obvious. What is resistance without a melody? What is rebellion without a refrain? Vivian would never allow something as essential as orchestration to go unplanned, and Riley, well—she moves like a woman who already has an overture playing in her head.
So yes. A full-throated, show-stopping, standing-ovation yes to music. This movement needs a song. The kind you hum absentmindedly until you realize you’re stirring a revolution in the produce aisle. The kind that gets scribbled in the margins of meeting notes. The kind whistled in defiance, coded or not.
Who will compose it? Who will choreograph it? I don’t know. But suddenly, I want clandestine mixtapes, whispered harmonies, and a song so dangerous it has to be smuggled past censors. An American Les Miz, you say? Yes. Bring it to Broadway, download the mp3s, and let’s make sure the right people are utterly terrified by it.
You’ve started something now.
—Gloria
Actually, YOU have, my dear. ✩ 🖇️ ✩
OMG, Gloria—my local youth theater group in my hometown performed scenes from Anouilh’s “Antigone” in 1968. I played Creon!
My wife did theatre in Canada. Not just dabbled—did theatre. The kind of involvement that means she can still recite entire monologues at the dinner table, which is charming until you realize she’s halfway through Macbeth and you’re just trying to eat your soup.
We love theatre. Love it. The kind of love that means when we’re in New York, we don’t just see a show—we see all the shows. Plays, musicals, anything with a stage and a spotlight. We schedule matinees like doctors schedule surgeries. We have opinions about revivals. We whisper things like, “That lighting choice was a crime” while people around us are just enjoying their overpriced wine. And honestly? We wouldn’t have it any other way.
I am all giddy about this!!! Paul, you were Creon! The ruler of Thebes! The man with impossible choices and a tragic fate! You were commanding the stage.
Now I really need details. Did you channel your inner Laurence Olivier? Did you wear a crown? Was your Creon a terrifying authority figure, or were you more of a reluctant, exhausted bureaucrat just trying to get through the day? And how did it feel, at that young age, to stand there and deliver lines about power, law, and moral dilemmas? Did it carve itself into your bones, or were you mostly worried about remembering your blocking and not knocking over the set?
Because, Paul, I have a theory. Once you play Creon, a little piece of him stays with you forever. Maybe it’s in the way you argue a point, maybe it’s in your ability to withstand chaos with a stoic air, or maybe—just maybe—it’s in the way you instinctively know that in every situation, someone, somewhere, is about to make a terrible decision, and you, wise and weary Creon, have seen it all before.
I might have been all of 20 years old so I don’t think I had a real grip on exactly what the lines were meant to express
By 1970 my life began to change in many ways. When I moved to Los Angeles, I did write a sort of libretto, or more properly, a continuity script for a musical production of Irving Berlin songs done as dinner theater. I did see it performed, at a Radisson hotel, and it wasn’t bad, but I had no idea what I was doing.
We performed these pieces in modern dress. I remember we rented a gold satin tuxedo jacket for me. I don’t remember much of the excerpt we performed but as best I can recall it was a bit between Creon and his son, I think.
We were a youth group doing rather experimental theater at the time, not normal community theater, a la The Mousetrap. I think this would have been 1966-1969. Our director was John Schneider who found a measure of success with Theater X in Milwaukee.
I had, I thought, some good roles, and some performances that left me drained, as I recall. I think my Creon was the “reluctant, exhausted bureaucrat just trying to get through the day.” I did like the tux, though.
I think one of my best was performing an excerpt from The World Tipped Over and Laying on Its Side by Mary Feldhaus-Weber.
I played the Old Man, and I was wearing a robe for that.
I agree with you.
Artists of the past and today have always been known to be Odd, Kookie, Strange, Creative and “Most of All” REBELLIOUS.
When it comes to political issues, artists have been known to get their rebellious message across to the masses through their music.
Examples: Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie - songs about the disenfranchised American.
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sang about freedom, hope, miscarriage of justice and the horror of war.
The satire of a political cartoon or the late night monologue of a TV host.
Then there were painters like Rembrandt or the Dutch Masters who painted symbols in obscurity within their paintings in order to make their feelings known.
Writers and poets who inspired individuals to uplift or inform others.
Artists are individuals who record history and immortalized persons places or things.
The list can go on for ever regarding the importance and value that artists of all artistic disciplines display.
History is a recording of the past to inform…yet more important to warn of a future that could be.
We are in a critical period of America History yet to be written. Some profess it’s 1933 in Germany, the Jim Crow or McCarthy era…perhaps?
As for me personally, I prefer to believe that “We the People” will eliminate the parasite and disease that has infected our system of government. Protect the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Reunite with countries around the world and most of all “Defend America from adversaries foreign and domestic…jc
James, I am counting on your vision becoming our new reality.
That baboon does not speak for the majority of us, and it’s time already. May the coup begin
Agree!
Oh Gloria! your ability to set a scene right down to a perfectly named perfume Enigme dOr! The young protege in her Oxblood T-strapped heels. ( my faves but oh to own them in Oxblood)! I want this story to be a book I can own. I want us to rise up and end this horrid nightmare of past mistakes coming back like Deja Vu!
LOL. Thank you. I had fun concocting the name of the perfume.
Time to RESIST! Go read this & get ready to ACT! WE THE PEOPLE can STOP this! It's time to #RESIST
https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/the-nature-of-our-power-a-conversation-with-political-scientist-erica-chenoweth/
Stunning, Gloria. You've outdone even you. Going off to share now. ❤️
Thank you, Ramona. Is it too much—too self-indulgent, too pretentious—to say I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with my own characters? Because I have. Utterly. Helplessly. They are, all of them, the people I want to be—fierce, unshakable, the kind of people who know exactly when to strike the perfect blow against the dragon, the ogre, the monster. Meanwhile, I’m over here still fumbling with the sword, trying to remember if I left the oven on.
Is it haughty? Probably. But if you spend enough time with characters who practically breathe fire, you start to feel a little warmth yourself. And maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe writing is just a way of constructing the world as it should be, shaping characters with all the bravery, persistence, and patience you wish you had but somehow never quite manage to summon at the right moment. A way of making something real—at least on the page—when real life refuses to cooperate.
And this whole thing—this first attempt at writing an extended prose story? It’s exhilarating. And also completely, terrifyingly, stomach-churningly frightening. It’s like deciding to go skydiving because you saw a video once and thought, Well, that looks fun! And now you’re in the plane, strapped to some guy named Chad, and suddenly remembering that you’re terrified of heights. But to be glaringly honest? It’s cathartic. Terrifying, but cathartic. Like standing at the edge of something vast, knowing you could either soar or plummet—and somehow, not being entirely sure which one scares you more.
If this prose story is the beginning of a new approach for you, I encourage you to do more, more, more, and then some more. It's wonderful. Not everyone could pull this off, but you can. You did!
It's amazing. Truly. ❤️
Ramona, I am sick to death of it. Sick to death of the way any woman over 40 might as well be a ghost—unseen, unheard, a relic people pretend not to notice while they step right through her at the grocery store. Sick to death of the fact that straying even an inch from the straight, heteronormative path is treated like a moral crime, as if love needs a permission slip signed by the most insufferable, joyless committee of self-appointed judges. And I am really sick to death of people who don’t care. The ones who shrug, who sigh, who say, “What can you do?” as if apathy were a perfectly acceptable life choice instead of a slow, silent death.
Bring me the fire. Bring me the terror. The exquisite thrill of doing something hard and dangerous and impossible and jumping in anyway—not just with both feet, but with your whole goddamn body, heart pounding, hands shaking, knowing full well it could end in disaster and deciding, screw it, let’s go.
So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m writing. Loudly. Furiously. I could be pilloried, burned at the stake, lined up in front of a firing squad, or—worst of all—ignored completely, my words drifting into the void like an unanswered voicemail. But I’m writing anyway. And I’m yelling while I do it.
I applaud you. Yelling is good. So is using words so exquisite, so compelling surely people will listen.
If only…
But please don’t stop. And neither will I.
Ramona, I have a small ringed notebook I carry at all times. Two pages are the names of the Substack authors I read every day. You are at the top of the list.
I'm honored, Gloria. You are often the reason I keep going. I mean that sincerely. Your voice is one that matters most, not just to me but to so many.
But thanks for the boost. We need this.
And, next, The Resistance Musical, with Marin conducting in the pit & soon on tour to the Kennedy Center…
What a marvelous dream.
I've only been to Ford's Theater once, and I didn't tarry, but if it weren't for the powerful red paint in the photo, I might think myself back there, with John Wilkes Booth about to attack Lincoln in the middle booth before falling one floor down. Where is he now that we need him?
We desperately need a leader!
We have a couple of handfuls of excellent candidates! Adam Schiff, Sheldon Whitehouse, AOC, although she may be just a tad young, Pete Buttigieg, and if it were earlier in the evening I could think of another five equally qualified candidates. There are plenty of excellent Democrats.