December 3, 2007

E-mail late last night:

FirstStage is happy to announce the three finalists of our 2007 One-Act Contest. The winners will of course be contacted by phone and given much more information. There are also several Semi-Finalists and some Honorable Mentions. These will be announced individually later. It was a very difficult decision which the seven Members of the Artistic Committee had to make. Many fine scripts will be given acknowledgment. So... Here they are.

BEFORE THE HOLY TEMPLE by David Brendan Hopes of Asheville, N.C.

CONNECTIONS by Jack McCleland of Jackson Heights, N.Y

STARDUST by Longenbaugh of Seattle, WA

We wish to thank all of you who submitted this year and we only wish we could give you all prizes.

My sister phones early in the morning I see her name on the caller ID and I think Dad’s dead. It was a missdial. She meant to call my nephew David. When my phone rings I think it’s going to be a tragedy and it ends up being a mistake.

Great winds sweep the morning sky. Wind was supposed to come at midnight bearing rain, but it comes now, dry as bones. I feel the air sucking moisture out of my eyeballs.

Roland C is out back as I type, having the Escort towed, finally, matching my blast of impatience with sweet and manly forbearance. I should have been a father. It’s odd to compare a big lug like Roland with my kittens, but they make me smile the same smile.

Broadway Christmas gave me an opportunity to know Eliza T better, an opportunity not as fraught with contradictory vibrations as Gilgamesh was. This second time around I see she is stately and witty and quite beautiful.

Woke last night thinking I couldn’t breathe. I lay there running myself through a battery of calm questions. Are you in pain? No. Is it hard to breathe? No, it just feels like I’m not getting enough oxygen. Does it all feel painful or distressing? No, just sort of– funny. When I got up I went straight to the Y where I did a step aerobics class. Hard and immediate exercise has been--since my heart surgery–the test for whether things have actually gone wrong or my brain is working overtime. It has never failed to be the latter. Nor did it today. Not only was there nothing wrong with me, but any feeling that there might be was blown out on the exercise floor, and I feel like Roland looks, big and broad shoulders and a swaggering twenty.

Chancellor Ponder announces the appointment of Jane Fernandes as our new Provost. When I was last in DC., Gallaudet College was in the news for rising up in arms against their president, who was not deaf enough, or some such thing. That was the same Jane Fernandes. My countenance fell at the thought of a celebrity Provost, but who knows? Give the woman a chance. What a matriarchy we’ve become! The Chancellor, the new Provost (as well as the acting one) and the President of the Senate (not to mention my Chair) are all women. This does represent a distinctive style of administration, but it’s not worth one’s life to try to define it.