Year: 2012

Lately I have been remembering a project I was involved with years ago, bringing improvisational theatre activities into a female juvenile detention center in Cleveland Ohio. It was an experience which troubled me then, and continues to trouble me today. It might be because I just read an academic article about a theatre project that… Continue reading The Gang Girls of Cleveland

The house next door was torn down last week. It took two hours, executed by a single excavator with a demolition claw. We could see lamps and carpet in the rubble. The house had been there sixty years, a 1950’s postwar starter home, ranch style with a slab base. Nothing special. Except it happens to be… Continue reading Too Close To Home

This month, the Vatican reprimanded a group of U.S. nuns proclaiming after four years of investigation that the group had “serious doctrinal problems.” Anyone who has been watching politics in relationship to the Catholic Church might have seen this coming, even before the Obama healthcare program. For me, it’s been a troubling case of the political becoming the… Continue reading I’m With the Nuns

A few years ago, a fellow came to work with my team who grew up in Iran. He wasn’t very tall, but he was dark and handsome. He had features like many Southern Europeans—Spanish or Italian or Greek or French—narrow nose, strong brow, sculpted jawline, brown eyes. His hair was silver when we met, wavy… Continue reading Persian Lessons: Heartache for Iran