It’s fifty years since I read The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. The book endures as a modern classic in the vein of Alice In Wonderland, Gulliver’s Travels, and the Odyssey by Homer. A few years back, I wanted to re-adapt the stage play of The Phantom Tollbooth into a Story Theater format. A form developed by Paul Sills, the son of my teacher and mentor Viola...
Read MoreI ran away once to Boston for two months when I was sixteen. I hated where I lived. Who I lived with and my whole existence. Ever feel like that? Obviously, I wasn’t happy at home, what with chaotic family dysfunction, an unrequited mad crush on a girl and the usual teenage angst that everyone goes through. So I thought, ‘make a new start’. I had an older, cool...
Read MoreI’m busy picking my jaw up from the floor. I just found a review of a book by Martin Miller, the son of the famed Alice Miller, author of “The Drama of the Gifted Child”, the book that influenced my journey to connect with my authentic self and inspired me to write “The King of Average”. The book is called “The True Drama of the Gifted Child”. It appears that his...
Read MoreMy first Best Friend My very first best friend was Chip Sutton. How we became friends somehow escapes me fifty years later. The first thing I remember about him was his laugh. He laughed explosively, with a hoarse cough. I remember thinking it must hurt to laugh like that. Like having a whooping cough, but it came with such a delightful appreciation of anything I...
Read MoreThis post is devoted to The Rev. Schuyler Rhodes who is one of my lifelong best friends and a PK. (Preacher’s kid for those secular Jewish agnostics)I fancied myself a cynical Jewish agnostic during my teen years. Why not? I felt alienated and knew the only person who could relate to me was Holden Caulfield, just like every other post-modern tween in the mid 60’s. I...
Read MoreAl Franken struck a nerve and made Stuart Smalley’s quotable catch phrases all the rage on Saturday Night Live in the 1990’s. Remember these? I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” “That’s just stinkin’ thinkin!” “You’re should-ing all over yourself.” “I know I’m not perfect…and that’s…okay.” “You’re only as sick as your secrets.”...
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