Sometimes I can’t decide whether or not I believe in coincidences. Yesterday was the most special treat. About three days ago I got an email from a dear friend of mine, Desiree Burch. Des is a stand up/story teller/solo performer. We met back in 2011 at the Edinburgh Fringe at an opening festival party at the Counting House. She was a fellow New Yorker who had done the fringe a few times already. We hit it off immediately. It was like I had known her forever. We laughed and s

“Wow,” the nurse said as she took the Sphygmomanometer off of my arm. “Why don’t you take a few deep breaths and see if we can get that number down.” The number she was referring to was my blood pressure, and she was right, it was high. “Through the roof,” would have been a more accurate description. I knew it was going to be. Number one, I had just driven two hours from Greenville to Atlanta. And number two, I was about to get the results of my latest CT scan. The first meas

Now begins the week that time forgot. The week between Christmas and New Year. This is my favorite week of the year. In a couple of days I’ll have no idea if it’s Monday or Tuesday or if I’m really a person at all. I will be tethered to no one and no thing. I will become one with my couch and football games and Ernest Hemingway books. I think this week is the true miracle of Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanza. These few days when appointments no longer matter. When our only re

Tonight we celebrate the most spectacular customer service snafu in the history of the world. Two thousandish years ago, or so the story goes, a very pregnant refuge and her husband, who was not the father of the child, tried to get a room at an inn. I’ve always loved that it was an inn. Inns connote warmth. Coziness. It causes me to picture this nice elderly innkeeper oh so concerned that he has to turn these sweet illegal immigrants away. What is he to do? Wait! An idea! “

I got the most lovely email from a student last week. She told me how much she enjoyed my class, how she had a new found interest in the theatre, and that she appreciated my taking the time to ask about her life and other classes. I remember how it started. More or less. At the beginning of the semester, back when the weather was nice, I used to sit outside and drink my coffee before class. This gave me a chance to say hello to the students as they walked into the playhouse,

I was not a great student. I skated through college with a perfect 3.0, bolstered by my many dance and choral classes. The reason I wasn’t a good student was not because of a lack of intelligence. Nor was it laziness. I’m an incredibly hard worker. In fact, I’m a bit of a workaholic, one of the things that makes the current state of my bank account extra depressing. The reason I wasn’t a good student is because I didn’t care about grades. That and I loved weed. But mainly bec

As Winter Break approaches, I thought back to a story of December past. Back in 1997, I was a sophomore at the College of Charleston. My sophomore year was marred by the most painful break up of my life. While my divorce was far more consequential, for the pure, gut wrenching sadness that only a heart break can provide, the end of my first relationship took the cake. In order to cope I spent most of that first semester second year stoned on the floor of my bedroom listening t

Yesterday at the Fine Arts Center, no learning happened. Maybe it did in Visual Arts. Perhaps the Music department imparted information to young minds. But in the black box theatre- there was nothing. We were not learning on purpose. It was their Holiday Party. The students exchanged Secret Santa gifts, ate cupcakes in the shop. They played a PG version of Cards Against Humanity, which is still probably enough to get its own chapter in the on going saga called, Why Davey Got

After the performances of Every Brilliant Thing, the theatre served ice-cream and set out a table for audience members to write down the things they find incredible about the world. Once most of the audience had left, I would read what they wrote. There were some good ones: -Remembering why you walked into a room. -A hot shower on a cold day. -The first sip of coffee. As well as a few bizarre ones: -The way little dogs shake when they poop. -Drinking water after you brush you

My car doesn’t have bluetooth. Well, it does. Kind of. I don’t have a fancy new car with it already built in. I bought my car from my sister and my brother-in-law installed a sound system but I can’t figure it out. I tried syncing it a couple of times but to no avail. Instead I opted for the poor man’s bluetooth. I stuck my phone in the cup holder. It’s been fine. __________ This past Monday night I was driving down Wade Hampton Blvd. Jaimie and I had just left the Fine Arts