Point Made

 Let's qualify the title by adding the word, Lately. My friend Micelle and I attended the opening night performance of New Age.  The Rep is presenting the world premiere written by Dael Orlandersmith and directed by Jade King Carrol. It features four actors on stage representing women of various ages speaking about their experiences, conclusions about the effect of these experiences, and what matters. We meet the older black woman, who is a writer. Then the middle high society woman (her definition, not mine) who was rejected by her husband because she looked too old. Onward to the forty-something vamp who needs affirmation for her many attempts at being something other than what she is. Finally, we meet the gritty, emerging, the newly adult musician who has a message in song for the world. The characters perform monologues that flit between them with the speed of a team playing catch with a ball. Sometimes one woman ramps up on the previous story, or they put a new thread int...

  Two Dogs Resting Oil by Jeff Jordan 9 x 12 on canvas board For my Granddaughter Violet Referenced a Pastel by Carol Rhode-Curley. The dog on the left could be my Lucy. During my rehab from my four knee surgery. Lucy and I became closer. I always had to watch when I moved because she was near. I don’t fault Maria for putting her down. Lucy was a sick puppy, and it was the right thing to do. I’ve maintained that if we could have cloned her, we could have made hundreds of people happy. The Theater Bad News I will forward the following notice to the marketing and public relations people with the various theater companies in Milwaukee. You, my friends, read it here first. This is to advise you that I am no longer be writing previews for Urban Milwaukee.Com. Urban Milwaukee will continue to publish reviews by Dominique Paul Noth.  I appreciate the help and support that all of you have provided me. I hope you will continue to include me on your mailing lists; however, I can no long...

 I received an email this week from a friend who was putting his frustration and despair on display. There is little doubt that we older folks are leaving behind some problems we might have thought were in the rearview mirror. But unfortunately, recent events have proven that we haven't moved the needle far enough on issues like racism, social justice, gender equality, income disparity, infrastructure neglect, healthcare availability and cost, and voter protection. After forty years of slurping the 'trickle-down economy theory' a teaspoon at a time, we recognize its toxicity too late. We literally drove ourselves over the cliff with the climate crisis. Electing a black man as our president did not make things better for all blacks in our society. In fact, it flipped over the rocks and what crawled out was a layer of animosity and fear that was always there but not exhibited. As a result, our roads, sewage systems, electricity grid and freshwater systems are so far in debt i...

  A musician telling a story about two golfers, a lost ball in the woods, and a magic frog. You have the right ingredients for a country song if you add some whiskey, a friendly dog, and an old truck. Call it football or soccer; Wisconsin has some skin in the game. I'm sure that all the Premier League football fans know that an American manager has taken over at Leeds United. What the rest of Wisconsin should know is Jesse Marsch is from Milwaukee.  Read on. It's All About The Drama. I skew my TV watching toward drama. The genre includes police procedurals, hospital settings, period pieces, fantasy tales, and family crises scenarios. But it's essentially an explanation I heard about opera. The storyline in an opera is that a soprano and a tenor fall in love but are threatened by a baritone.  When watching these shows, the quality comes out when we can freely identify with the couple and hate the baritone. Some of the best acting comes from the 'bad guy." Be that pe...

If you spend anytime online, you’ve encountered attempts to engage you in an activity that can  result in loss of your identity, money, or reputation.  For example, there’s the plea from a desperate individual who needs a short-term loan from you to meet their immediate dilemma. It might be a blatant request with a now or never deadline. It might be someone building a relationship with you for a down-the-line scam. These people are often very sophisticated with their approach. They will tailor their presentation to the type of people they want to approach. Therefore, a fellow my age gets requests on social media to like, follow and chat with young women. The typical approach is to cast themselves as either a single woman or a single mom who is lonely and seeking companionship. The pictures they post feature them seductively clothed and posed.  Now let me make a point here. They are clothed, but everything they wear, from tights to a bikini, is about one and one-half sizes...

 I self-published a book along with some friends in the mid-nineties. It was a collection of fiction, slice of life articles, and poetry. The experience was eye-opening for different reasons. The most disappointing result was we didn't sell very many of them. Also, the editing job we did was not flawless. And then the one I never saw coming. It was people's reaction to what I wrote. More than one person approached me and told me what they got from my fiction. Upon hearing their comments, I thought they had my work confused with something else they were reading. I learned that many of us interrupt stories in ways compatible with our experiences and beliefs. Such factors are going to color how the reader digest the story. When I published my novel, 26 Women, I clarified that my protagonist was not my alter ego, as some of my pre-readers suggested. I stated in the preface that his experiences were not autobiographical.  I learned a writer can use this tendency of readers to writ...

 ...leg.  I'm feeling a dull discomfort in my left leg. At times, it feels like a hamstring strain. It can crawl around the leg to emanate from above my knee or settle near the hip joint. The hip pain concerned me as the self-diagnosis of hip replacement haunted me in the ten days I waited for my appointment with the orthopedic doctor. My new orthopedic doctor showed me why it's happening. Leaving all the details in the file, the pain results from the repair to my patella tendon. The cadaver material they use is stretching with use, and it will not retract. He explained that I could have surgery to tighten up the tendon, but I'd end up with the same problem in a couple of years. So given the surgery, rehabilitation, and the short benefit period, He didn't recommend it, and I agree. So I'm more or less stuck with using anti-inflammatories to control the discomfort. It took me a couple of days to figure out that ibuprofen was raising hell with my stomach, and the Tyle...