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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
American Folk. Leadbelly
Leadbelly's influence has been felt across the musical spectrum, and his tunes spanned the old folk-blues and contemporary folk music.
Albuquerque Airport Terminal” by Naomi Shihab Nye
After learning my flight was
detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate
4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate
immediately.
Well—one pauses these days. Gate
4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full
traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was
crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service
person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight
was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.
I put my arm around her and spoke
to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti,
stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?
The minute she heard any words
she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.
She thought our flight had been
canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for
some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no,
we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,
Who is picking you up? Let’s call
him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke
with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his
mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.
She talked to him. Then we called
her other sons just for the fun of it.
Then we called my dad and he and
she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten
shared friends.
Then I thought just for the heck
of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat
with her. This all took up about 2 hours.
She was laughing a lot by then.
Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.
She had pulled a sack of homemade
mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with
dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the
women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single
woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from
Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we
were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling.
There are no better cookies.
And then the airline broke out
the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little
girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican
American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were
covered with powdered sugar too.
And I noticed my new best
friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of
her bag, some medicinal thing,
With green furry leaves. Such an
old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted
to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of
late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live
in. The shared world.
Not a single person in this
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about
any other person.
They took the cookies. I wanted
to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.
Not everything is lost.
WHAT SHE DID FOR HIM. A short story
In his mind it was always a brisk autumn afternoon, late in the day, the sun setting to a perfect pitch of comfortable grey and soft blue and delightful red. And because of that he looked on this hot and humid July day as an annoying, tactless intruder. In fact, everything about that day annoyed him, not a lot, but enough to alter his naturally good and happy disposition.
As they walked he frowned at the bit and pieces of trash strewn in the gutter and he silently shook his head in disapproval of the type of people who would toss it there. Then a cloud floated in front of the sun blocking out its rays and he raised his eyes to the cloud in a way meant to imply to the cloud that he was displeased with the cloud and its blocking actions.
“Stupid cloud” he thought to himself but loud enough for the cloud to hear.
“Look” she said pointing to the gutter that was besieged with the litter he so disapproved of.
He stopped and looked and seeing nothing he asked “What?”
“The dandelion” she said. “It grew from a crack in the sidewalk. Look at how pretty it is. Look at the colors”
He looked but didn’t see the dandelion. But that didn’t matter. There would be other dandelions. What mattered is that she saw in him a man who would like to know about tenacious dandelions that grow out of sidewalks. What mattered is that she saw in him a man who would appreciate brilliant colors. What mattered was that when he, in this foreign dark mood of his, saw only litter in the gutter, she saw flowers. And that was why he loved.
By Chance. A Short Story
Shelly spoke loudly into the phone as she walked across the room, “Mommy will be home shortly.”
Reaching a patch of empty hallway near the bathroom doors, she hushed her tone and hissed into the phone, “You’ll get paid when I have the money. I don’t know when that will be.
She paused and listened and then snapped “Then sue me, go ahead. Fine.”
She slammed the phone shut and sighed deeply, her eyes focused on the dingy gray wall in front of her. They were going to turn the phone off any minute now. She was not sure how much more of this she could take, but for the sake of her daughter she would take as much as the world dished out, because she was one hell of a good woman.
“Bill collectors?” a deep voice behind her said. “They try to shake you up. Don’t worry about it.”
Embarrassed, she did her best to muster a weak smile and nodded. She looked into the main dining hall. If he heard her, did they hear her? She would die if they did.
“So I see you’re not wearing a ring over here,” the man said, each word taxed by a strong, guttural accent heard only in the Valley.
Her heart sank. She was in no mood for this. “But I see you are,” she snapped.
Surprised, he looked down at the gold band on his finger and said, “I guess I should take that off, huh?”
She sensed he was not being sarcastic or coy and there was a look of sincere questioning in his eyes, but no one, she reckoned, could be that stupid.
“If I were a cheating piece of scum,” she said brushing past him, “I would.”
He recoiled, stung by her words that lit into him one by one, like burning arrows.
“It’s not like that,” he said, almost shouting, but he did not shout because it was not his way. “I’m separated and not divorced yet. You just—it’s just takin’ it off you know, it’s — um.” He threw up his arms and looked to the left, “I jumped the gun on that one. I’m sorry. I’m new at picking women up.”
She could tell they were honest words spoken by an honest man.
“You laid that on with a trowel.” She smiled but the words came out sounding harsher then she intended and because he was looking at the floor when she spoke, he missed the adjoining smile.
“I didn’t mean picking up women in that sense, what I meant was,” he threw his hands in the air, totally and completely defeated. “I work with my hands.” He showed her his palms. “Words and me, forget it. I’m sorry.”
She felt sorry for him. He was a human being in deeply over his head and he had resigned himself to drowning. He seemed like a nice guy and he was handsome, but— She said softly, “I’m real flattered and all, but I don’t date guys who are separated. I’m sorry but there’s just too much baggage with that. I’m really sorry.”
Sal stood to his full, considerable height, and mustering what little dignity he felt he had left he said bravely, “No problem. No big deal. I understand completely. In fact, that’s a smart move.”
“I have a daughter,” she continued. “It could confuse her”
Embarrassed, he stared across the aisle at a homely, heavy-set young lady in a red dress who seemed to be hiding herself in a booth far in the back.
“I’m not being mean or anything, it’s just that—”
“I understand,” he said with a smile she liked instantly. “Separated people, they got issues and suitcases, like you said.”
“Baggage.”
“Yeah, and luggage, you name it,” he said.
She stopped leaving. It seemed like the decent thing to do. He needed to talk and she felt compelled to listen.
She nodded and gave him the slightest of smiles.
“I hate this singles thing,” he said more to himself than to her. “At my age, and after fifteen years of marriage, you just feel like you should get some sort of seniority rating, privileges of rank. But you don’t. You just have to start over again. And I want to start over again, but I don’t want to. You understand that?”
She had to laugh. She understood it exactly. “Oh, brother,” she said with a wave, “believe me, I do.” She was glad she had stopped leaving.
He didn’t hear her. He was talking to himself aloud. “The thing is,” he said never moving his gaze away from the picture, “I don’t know what happened. Over the years, things steamrolled, and the next thing you know, the entire situation just went too far.”
“Yeah,” she said, “and you don’t know how to make it stop or get it back to where it was. And you’re so dug into your points, your principles on making him try to understand that you don’t hear the other side anymore. You want to go back to what things were and you can’t, and you know that even if you could it would never work, and things would never be the same. You just want it all to go away. We went through so much together and most of it was his fault. Still when it’s over, you’re shell-shocked and at the same time you feel like the whole world sees your failure.”
They fell into a comfortable silence for a second, each staring into different directions. After a couple of seconds, he spoke up, but without looking at her, and said, “I regret everything. For these past two years, that’s all I’ve done, regret, regret, and regret some more. I think the problem with that is, that you can get so caught up in regretting the past you start to forfeit the future. What I resent is that I’m an intelligent, capable person, but I’m in this place that I don’t understand. I’m in over my head. I’m confused.”
“You mean about life?” she asked worriedly.
“No,” he answered, “I mean divorce. It doesn’t come with a roadmap. Neither does life. But you wish it did though, huh?”
She smiled and said, “Listen, about divorce and making sense out of it. I can tell you from my own life, you’ll never understand why you got divorced. And if you spend too much time thinking about it, you become a slave to trying to understand what happened. So when you give that up, you start thinking, “Will I ever love again?”
“What I regret so much is the harm I’ve done to my daughter. I may get over this, but she may never get over this. She’s with my wife, who is good. She’ll bring her up better than I ever could, but I gotta say, she poisoned her against me and that bothers me. When there’s kids involved, there is really no such thing as a no fault divorce. You know what the most hurtful thing that was ever said to me was? My little girl says to me one day, ‘What about your love?’ and I said, ‘It’s over, Princess,’ and she says, ‘No, Daddy I mean me.’ I felt like a knife got rammed into my stomach. Divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there's less of you. I think my ex is crazy.”
“I know my ex is crazy,” she said and then added, “You’re easy to talk to.”
“You too.” “It’s nice to get things off your shoulders, huh? You’re busy and here I am rambling on.”
“It’s okay.”
An easy silence fell over them and he said, “I live alone. It’s very hard for me to be alone.”
“I live with my daughter,” she said. “It’s sort of like living alone.”
“I don’t do alone well,” he added. “I’m a people person. I come from a big Italian family. People all over the place. When I was a kid, I used to wish for just one minute in the bathroom without somebody banging on the door.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “To live without being loved or giving love, it’s not really living, it’s just like surviving, and frankly, I’m scared. I’m man enough to say that, too. I don’t care what people think.”
“There’s no shame in honesty.” Shelly said.
He liked her. She was nice. For the first time in months, he felt his shoulders lower and loosen. “Still,” he said, “you wonder sometimes, why you try..”
“You know what I miss?” she asked. “I miss watching movies with somebody else. Watching movies alone, it’s just not the same thing, you know? I miss movies.”
“Well, look,” Sal said, “you know, you like movies, and I like movies. Maybe if you’re interested—”
“Yeah,” she said, “I would like that. A lot. But I’m still involved with the guy I used to live with. He might move back in. We’re working on it.”
He smiled and nodded and said, “It’s all right, I’ll be around. Let me know if anything ever changes.”
Short story: Jesus Loves Shaqunda
The Diner was open but empty except for a cook and a waitress. It was 6:30 in the morning but the big clock on the wall, with its faded white face and black trim, insisted that it was 12:00. It didn’t insist on A.M. or P.M.
It had taken her forty-five minutes to walk to the Diner through the darkness and then through the dawn and now she stood on the wet tile lobby floor and brushed the rain off her poorly-fitted security guard’s uniform. It fit too tight in places on her but she was used to that. The abundant weight that she had carried all of her twenty-two years made sure that not everything she wore fit.
She took a deep breath to fight off the fatigue brought on by the fourth day of a cold that had attached itself to her.
The bus to New Haven wouldn’t be there for another fifteen minutes. She searched her pockets for change and finding it she dropped the money into the pay phone’s coin slot, dialed the number and waited for an answer. She leaned deeply between the two metal walls of the public pay phone.
“Mama? I had to leave the babies at the house alone.” She waited and listened to the lesson she already knew was coming, and then broke in mid-sentence, “Mama I know he six. I’m his mother.” and then she realized her voice was rising. She did what the doctor at the clinic had told her to do. She took a deep breath and paused, and took in the wonderful aroma of freshly brewed coffee from inside the Diner that wafted across the air. She wanted a cup of coffee but couldn’t afford one. She was calm again. Her heart wasn’t good and she was supposed to stay calm.
“What else I gonna do?” she asked and then listened to the reply and hearing it she said sorrowfully, with a pain that was far beyond her young years, “I’m so tired, Mama. I got to sleep. I can’t. My mind lay down for the night and it don’t turn off. What’s gonna happen next? I got to move. Cops busted into the apartment next door last night, what time was that, three o’clock in the morning, I think. Punks dealin’ their dope. Seen that cockroach walk across the table this morning. I hope to God my baby didn’t see it, but he smart, he sees everything. Mama, can you get over there this morning?”
She waited for the answer and when she heard it, she closed her eyes and whispered a silent prayer and said, “Thank you Mama. I know the bus cost money. I get it back to you.”
She hung up and searched around her pocket for another quarter and finding one, she placed a second call. When he answered, she thanked Jesus for not letting the phone company turn off the service. She said into the receiver, “Tyrone, where you at? At the corner? The babies wif you? I told you don’t leave them babies alone like that!” she yelled, and then, looking around the vacant lobby and into the Diner she whispered, “I know the water’s cold, but you got to be clean. Just jump in and jump out.”
She waited for the protest she knew was coming and said, “I know it’s cold. Take the babies and go in the kitchen, bring the TV wif you. Turn the burners on the stove all the way over until they don’t go no more, it’ll get warmer in there quicker. I’ll call you later. Don’t call here unless somebody hurt. No, you can’t go to school today. Mama got to work today. You go tomorrow. Grandma’s on her way over. Don’t answer the door to no one, understand?”
He said he understood and she told him, “You’re a good boy. Mama loves you so much.” She hung up the phone and sat on the blue plastic bench under the empty coat hooks. She smelled the bacon frying inside the Diner and her stomach growled. It had been a long time since she had eaten bacon, a long time.
“Next month the water be warm,’” she mumbled aloud. She reached into a massive plastic-covered pocketbook and took out a fistful of change and counted out a dollar sixty-five for the bus. “If I wait until after seven I can save sixty-five cents. I know I got 45 cents on the bureau at home, that’s a dollar and ten cents. A box of instant macaroni is a dollar twenty-five.” She counted, “twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” and said, “Thank you Jesus!”
She said, “Jesus, why it so expensive to be poor? I can’t walk all them blocks to that supermarket. I’m so tired but have to wait until after seven to get the reduced fare. It’s so cold, what am I gonna do for two and half hours? Father, they say money won’t bring happiness. Give me a chance to prove that ain’t right. I got faith in you, my Lord, that you gonna come and help me. I know you will ’cause I asked for you in Jesus name to help me. No doubt in my mind you will help me. You got to have faith or you got to have doubt. There ain’t room in the human mind for both, so…”
She paused and wondered if she had left anything out and remembered and said, “One more thing. Please, Jesus, don’t let that toothache come back again today. I can’t wait in the emergency room for eight hours. I axe for this in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
She lifted her head and was surprised to see her reflection in the glass of the entrance door looking back at her. She studied herself and concluded in a soft whisper intended for Jesus. “I could be pretty. I ain’t ugly. He broke my nose and that’s how it got fixed, just growed that way
The smile fell from her pretty face and she said, “Don’t matter none.”
She looked at her nose and touched it gently with the tips of her fingers. “I told him, I said, ‘You can slap my face and knock me around and kick me down and stomp me, but you cannot, I swear God himself, you cannot beat the self- respect out of me!’”
She felt herself growing angry so took a deep breath and erased the bad thoughts from her mind.
She stepped aside from the door and stepped aside to allow a heavy set white girl in a red dress to leave. At 7:00 A.M. a man who looked as if he had been jogging walked in, gave her a smile, entered the Diner and took a seat at the counter. Out in the parking lot a well-dressed man in his early forties sat in a Mercedes.
The bus was on time. The driver was nice, an older man who always waited for her to walk out from the lobby. Walking across the wet parking lot she thought again about that job at the storage company where her brother worked. He said last week that they had an opening. A good job too, good pay, full benefits, everything. And the people up there, they liked her brother. He told her that they said that if she came around, they would interview her. She had a day off on Friday. She’d go out there then.
She paused, stood still for a second and said, “Jesus, I am nothin’ but your humble servant and I know your ass is tired of me begging you for every little thing. But I just don’t know if I can go on. Jesus, if you love me, you get me that job. And I won't never axe you for nothin’ ever again. Amen.” And she got on the bus.
To Stammering—Kenneth Koch
Where did you come from,
lamentable quality?
Before I had a life you were
about to ruin my life.
The mystery of this stays with
me.
“Don’t brood about things,” my
elders said.
I hadn’t any other experience of
enemies from inside.
They were all from outside—big
boys
Who cursed me and hit me;
motorists; falling trees.
All these you were as bad as, yet
inside. When I spoke, you were there.
I could avoid you by singing or
acting.
I acted in school plays but was
no good at singing.
Immediately after the play you
were there again.
You ruined the cast party.
You were not a sign of
confidence.
You were not a sign of manliness.
You were stronger than good luck
and bad; you survived them both.
You were slowly edged out of my
throat by psychoanalysis
You who had been brought in, it
seems, like a hired thug
To beat up both sides and
distract them
From the main issue: oedipal
love. You were horrible!
Tell them, now that you’re back
in your thug country,
That you don’t have to be so
rough next time you’re called in
But can be milder and have the same effect—unhappiness and pain.
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***
JULIUS CAESAR
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Cheryl Faraone
A Middlebury College presentation
A visceral, politically urgent thriller. Shakespeare’s study of ideology, power and populism. Who is listening?
Now streaming through Sunday, September 27, 2020 at 11:59pm on PTPNYC YouTube
This is a free event, but donations of any amount are most welcome. If you make a donation, you will receive a reminder + the link to the performance. All donations will support the ongoing work of PTP/NYC. And 10% of your generosity will support The National Black Theatre, the oldest continuously-operated Black theatre in New York City.
*** DRAMATISTS GUILD PANEL DISCUSSIONS ***
he Dramatists Guild Legal Defense Fund (DLDF) is partnering with The Dramatists Guild Political Engagement Initiative to present two online panel discussions that will highlight BIPOC writers who have previously been left out of significant cultural conversations.
Facing Censorship:
Personal Experiences on Being Banned
Thursday, October 1 at 3pm EDT
Professor Jimmy Noriega will moderate a panel of writers who will discuss their own personal experiences with censorship, the challenges they faced, and their takeaways.
Unknown Legacies:
Black Playwrights in America
Friday, October 2 at 3pm EDT
The DG and the DLDF are proud to welcome professors William Maxwell, Mary Helen Washington, and William J. Harris to discuss playwrights Amiri Baraka, Alice Childress, Claude McKay, Lorraine Hansberry, and Richard Wright, and why these eminent writers are not part of the theatrical canon as we know it today.
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*** PRIMARY STAGES ***
OCTOBER ONLINE CLASSES: Fundamentals, First Draft, and Rewriting Classes Online at Primary Stages ESPA!
Start a First Draft, keep working on Rewriting Your Draft, or learn the Fundamentals of Playwriting. NEW morning First Draft section added with WINTER MILLER (Writer, In Darfur at The Public). Faculty includes NIKKOLE SALTER (Writer, Pulitzer Prize-Nominated In the Continuum), ADAM KRAAR (Writer, Wild Terrain at EST), SUZANNE BRADBEER (Writer, Confederates) and many other award-winning writers who provide practical skills and expert guidance in a collaborative atmosphere.
Flexible, artist-friendly payment plans available.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
21st Century Voices: New Play Festival Submissions
This year, we are seeking submissions of new plays exploring themes of mental illness, wellness and resilience. Plays on these themes should examine characters grappling with, learning about or advancing in their own mental health or the mental health of someone they love. Our intention is to shine a spotlight on mental health and to contribute to the destigmatization of mental illness.
***
Lakeshore Players Theatre is now accepting submission of 10-minute plays for its 2020-2021 season's contest. The ten winners of the contest will be performed for our 17th Annual Festival, in the spring of 2021.
***
The Sauk is seeking short play scripts to consider for production as part of SAUK SHORTS 2021. Scripts may be original works or published works that you would like us to consider. Scripts should have a performance time no longer than 15 minutes.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** AUTUMN PLAYS ***
AUTUMN
By preeminent playwright, screenwriter & NYU professor Richard Wesley, Autumn tells the story of Franklyn Longley, a veteran big city mayor who is in line to become the first Black governor of his state. He suddenly finds his place in history threatened when his party decides to throw its nomination behind a dynamic young politician who is also Black and just so happens to be the Mayor’s protégé. This political drama explores the conflicts that arise when aspirations collide across a generational divide marked by sharply different political agendas.
***
THE BOYS IN AUTUMN
WITH the arrival of ''The Boys in Autumn,'' Bernard Sabath's new play at the Circle in the Square, the 1985-86 Broadway season has reached its official close. While this season never did produce any cutthroat competition for the honor of best play, the worst play sweepstakes is being bitterly contested right up to the final hour. ''The Boys in Autumn,'' a terminally innocuous speculation about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in middle age, almost makes one long for ''The Boys of Winter,'' a Vietnam war drama that had been the prize 1985-86 turkey until this point. Let's be grateful that the season has ended before anyone could write ''The Boys of Spring'' or turn Roger Kahn's good book ''The Boys of Summer'' into a flop musical.
What would Huck (George C. Scott) and Tom (John Cullum) be up to when they have a surprise reunion in 1920's Hannibal? It would be cruel to divulge the evening's bombshells, although I will end obvious speculation by reporting that, pace Leslie Fiedler, the men have not opened a Missouri branch of ''La Cage aux Folles.'' Mr. Sabath has instead given the men lurid secrets that reduce two of the most beloved characters in our cultural heritage to extras in a Harold Robbins novel.
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***
THE AUTUMN GARDEN
Most of the people in “The Autumn Garden,” Lillian Hellman’s 1951 drama of midlife malaise, have reached the age when, as W. H. Auden wrote, “mirrors might be hateful for a while.” The joy and pain of the Williamstown Theater Festival’s absorbing revival, which runs through Sunday, come from watching a top-drawer cast embody a growing, reluctant awareness of receding hair and chin lines matched by receding hopes.
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***
A PICTURE OF AUTUMN
Removing an aged parent or grandparent from a home that’s no longer safe or convenient is never easy. Now just imagine this scaled up a bit, so that the frail relative is clinging not to a 1950s split-level with a nagging set of stairs but to a crumbling 16th-century 18-bedroom mansion, set on 60 acres of unkempt gardens and forest. This is the problem faced by Robert, who responds to his mother’s cranky letters about caring for Winton Manor (not to mention her husband and brother-in-law) by recruiting a potential buyer for the decrepit property — only to find that his mother and clan are not as keen on downsizing as their constant complaints suggested.
***
THE VELOCITY OF AUTUMN
Going gently into that good night, or going gently anywhere at all, is obviously not an option for Alexandra, the heroine of “The Velocity of Autumn,” a slight but genial new play by Eric Coble at the Arena Stage here. Although we first see her slumped comfortably in an armchair, wearing a festively colored dress and listening to a little Berlioz, the 79-year-old Alexandra, played with wonderful grit and wit by the great actress Estelle Parsons, is armed for bear.
***
NEXT FALL
A flourishing member of a precious and nearly extinct species has been sighted on Broadway, looking remarkably vital and sure of itself for a creature so often given up for dead. “Next Fall,” which opened Thursday night at the Helen Hayes Theater, is that genuine rara avis, a smart, sensitive and utterly contemporary New York comedy. The question now is whether theatergoers will recognize that “Next Fall” embodies something they’ve been sorely missing, perhaps without knowing it, for years.
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***
AUTUMN CROCUS
Autumn Crocus is a 1931 play by the British writer Dodie Smith. It was Smith's first play written under the pseudonym of C.L. Anthony. It follows a single schoolteacher who goes on holiday to the Tyrol and falls in love with the married owner of the hotel in which she is staying.
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