The little church around the corner has a guild for actors
going to a party there
how wondrous is NYC
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Scott Cooper Geerds my first grandson born today. This written while Rachelle was in labor.
Good News from Rosary Hartel O’Neill 3.12.09
Message to all playwrights. There is good news in catastrophe. I came to NYC in 2003 to find that my plays about New Orleans were considered “folksy” or regional. But after Katrina, things changed, the same plays became important, politically sensitive, cutting edge. Samuel French, the leading publisher of plays worldwide licensed all my plays in 2 anthologies. (A Village writer friend declared, “Rosary this is huge.”) The only price I paid was losing my entire past. Lesson learned there is victory in catastrophe.
This month, four of my plays are being read in NYC. Theatres are reaching out to new voices to bring energy to their spaces. So though for many institutions it may be a down time, it is an up time for “emerging” artists. We bandits are needed to come in with our untried wares. To burst energy onto the boards. Breathe action into empty spaces. No money means producers take chances.
Artists have always been the life blood of the Village. Today is no exception for where there is daring there is talent. And theatre needs just a great script, great actors and a director with voom.
One play thrilling the Village now is Our Town at the Barrow Street Theatre. Written in 1938, by Thornton Wilder, this Pulitzer prize winning play usually can’t be done professionally because of its huge cast. However it’s being done now “operatically” with over 24 actors. David Cromer stages it in contemporary style in three quarter round. Actors pop out everywhere, in the audience, the aisles, on top of tables and chairs, in the rafters. In this exciting production, the actors and their words resonate greatness.
Our Town is a simple play with a deep message: the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of human experience are profoundly connected. The heroine, Emily doesn’t learn to value life until she has lost it. In the last scene, Emily looks back in time as if through a picture window. The director manages to find a surprising unused area of the theatre for this pop up old-fashioned scene. Emily’s parents, dressed in period costumes, are going through their breakfast ritual while she is present as a spirit among them. She wails to hold her parents once again but they are figments of her imagination. She wonders if people ever appreciate life while they are living it and longs to be part of the daily routine.
But unlike Emily, though times are tough, we don’t have to go back to the cemetery. We can be part of the hustle and bustle of the troubles of life. Right now, I’m waiting to use the kitchen, which is being shared with my son and friend in my small apartment in NYC. I see that sharing can be difficult but I also remember last night’s dinner and know that community can be fun. In the Village, we are crowded together to realize the joy of connectedness and self-discovery.
And there are so many opportunities around the corner. AT HB Studios (HBstudios.org) on 120 Bank Street, enrollment has started for the new spring session: playwrighting, acting, voice, directing, movement, dialects, clown, stage combat, screenwriting, youth classes, Shakespeare. . . the course list goes on. For a few hundred dollars (granted it’s not free but it’s affordable) for several months you can get a powerhouse class. Leading artists like Austin Pendleton and Julie McKee teach tirelessly to students (age 9-90) from around the world and for $10 you can audit a class to see if it fits before you sign up. You can register for one or several courses, and most have no prerequisites. Ah, jewels abound in our bohemian Village.
There are free readings at Rattlestick, Cherry Lane, HB Studios. Discount, student, and senior tickets for most shows. Call up your favorite theatre. There is a new group running the Actor’s Workshop. Check it out. Theatre awaits you around the corner. Are you ready? Time is upon us, and new artists are being born by the hour.
Why be positive in challenging times? I say, why not. The issue is to be ready. To use what’s available. I founded Southern Rep Theatre in New Orleans in 1986, a recession and when people asked me why I did it then, I said because I was alive then.
I’m living in NYC the fantasy city of my girlhood and writing plays and again it is a recession. (Is disaster following me—oh good victory is nearby). What’s the lesson? Now is our best day. Touch and hold this crippled world dear. Thank god we’re alive!! People are listening to us, going to the theatre, watching new plays. Great art is being made now and we can be a part of it. Hurrah!
Message to all playwrights. There is good news in catastrophe. I came to NYC in 2003 to find that my plays about New Orleans were considered “folksy” or regional. But after Katrina, things changed, the same plays became important, politically sensitive, cutting edge. Samuel French, the leading publisher of plays worldwide licensed all my plays in 2 anthologies. (A Village writer friend declared, “Rosary this is huge.”) The only price I paid was losing my entire past. Lesson learned there is victory in catastrophe.
This month, four of my plays are being read in NYC. Theatres are reaching out to new voices to bring energy to their spaces. So though for many institutions it may be a down time, it is an up time for “emerging” artists. We bandits are needed to come in with our untried wares. To burst energy onto the boards. Breathe action into empty spaces. No money means producers take chances.
Artists have always been the life blood of the Village. Today is no exception for where there is daring there is talent. And theatre needs just a great script, great actors and a director with voom.
One play thrilling the Village now is Our Town at the Barrow Street Theatre. Written in 1938, by Thornton Wilder, this Pulitzer prize winning play usually can’t be done professionally because of its huge cast. However it’s being done now “operatically” with over 24 actors. David Cromer stages it in contemporary style in three quarter round. Actors pop out everywhere, in the audience, the aisles, on top of tables and chairs, in the rafters. In this exciting production, the actors and their words resonate greatness.
Our Town is a simple play with a deep message: the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of human experience are profoundly connected. The heroine, Emily doesn’t learn to value life until she has lost it. In the last scene, Emily looks back in time as if through a picture window. The director manages to find a surprising unused area of the theatre for this pop up old-fashioned scene. Emily’s parents, dressed in period costumes, are going through their breakfast ritual while she is present as a spirit among them. She wails to hold her parents once again but they are figments of her imagination. She wonders if people ever appreciate life while they are living it and longs to be part of the daily routine.
But unlike Emily, though times are tough, we don’t have to go back to the cemetery. We can be part of the hustle and bustle of the troubles of life. Right now, I’m waiting to use the kitchen, which is being shared with my son and friend in my small apartment in NYC. I see that sharing can be difficult but I also remember last night’s dinner and know that community can be fun. In the Village, we are crowded together to realize the joy of connectedness and self-discovery.
And there are so many opportunities around the corner. AT HB Studios (HBstudios.org) on 120 Bank Street, enrollment has started for the new spring session: playwrighting, acting, voice, directing, movement, dialects, clown, stage combat, screenwriting, youth classes, Shakespeare. . . the course list goes on. For a few hundred dollars (granted it’s not free but it’s affordable) for several months you can get a powerhouse class. Leading artists like Austin Pendleton and Julie McKee teach tirelessly to students (age 9-90) from around the world and for $10 you can audit a class to see if it fits before you sign up. You can register for one or several courses, and most have no prerequisites. Ah, jewels abound in our bohemian Village.
There are free readings at Rattlestick, Cherry Lane, HB Studios. Discount, student, and senior tickets for most shows. Call up your favorite theatre. There is a new group running the Actor’s Workshop. Check it out. Theatre awaits you around the corner. Are you ready? Time is upon us, and new artists are being born by the hour.
Why be positive in challenging times? I say, why not. The issue is to be ready. To use what’s available. I founded Southern Rep Theatre in New Orleans in 1986, a recession and when people asked me why I did it then, I said because I was alive then.
I’m living in NYC the fantasy city of my girlhood and writing plays and again it is a recession. (Is disaster following me—oh good victory is nearby). What’s the lesson? Now is our best day. Touch and hold this crippled world dear. Thank god we’re alive!! People are listening to us, going to the theatre, watching new plays. Great art is being made now and we can be a part of it. Hurrah!
TRAIN RIDES AND INSPIRATION. March 4, 2009
Fact or Fiction What was the inspiration forMY play WISHING ACES and my novel TROPICAL DEPRESSION
Yes, I did take a train regularly from New Orleans to Ole Miss (but not with a professor I fell in love with). Remarkably, one Tulane graduate student who read the story, took me out for coffee at a pancake house, and she asked me if my tale was a chronicle of her affair? That is so New Orleans!
Did you know that, after Tulane (New Orleanians stress the first syllable when pronouncing that), Ole Miss is considered the most prestigious of the Deep South colleges?
But, you can’t catch a fast train from New Orleans to Ole Miss. You’ve got to take a scabby local that bumps you off in Batesville, Mississippi 30 miles from Oxford, where the University is based. The notion of Amtrak or express travel is absent in the Delta.
As a woman college professor (the first full-time appointment in Loyola University’s drama department), I received fellowships to go to Ole Miss conferences for minorities and women. Sometimes, I drove the lonely hot highways with a colleague, but most times I took the fearful run-down train. I’d grit my teeth imagining a hurricane hitting that train as it slugged over large expanses of swamp.
Still I was grateful for the chance to travel to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss and meet other pioneers like myself teaching across the South. Most of the appointments I have received have been based on institutions wanting to include woman as role models, thank god. Whether it was at Beaver college, Loyola University, or Ole Miss, fellowships that deposit women inside the intelligentsia have helped me.
Ole Miss is in Oxford, Mississippi, and I originally called this novel. “On the Way to Oxford,” because I thought that title heralded depth. The brightest men for centuries have gone to Oxford and sought out mentors and places of inspiration.
In New Orleans, I had a volunteer at Southern Rep, the theatre which I founded. This mother and brilliant housewife agreed to accompany me to Ole Miss just to “go to Oxford.” Isn’t that what women need, a place to ruminate, to let our minds roam free?
The idea of going to Oxford and sitting around talking in the Square Bookshop famous for birthing so many intellectuals was vastly appealing. The bookstore champions Faulkner as does the English Department of Ole Miss that now presides over his homestead Rowan Oak where he wrote so many of his stories and where his cherished black nanny is buried. (No I won’t comment on this.)
On the train to Batesville (watched over by minority women now porters) were mostly drunken college students trying to get into or leaving the Big Easy after a week-end of debauchery. Interspersed were rattled 17-year-olds leashed by parents and traveling with them to interviews at the college.
Back then, and even when I was the 2nd woman to get a PhD at UCLA, I never thought of myself as a minority. Even though when I entered UCLA 59 of the 60-drama faculty was male, I didn’t evaluate what it meant that the only woman professor was one who taught sewing part time in the costume department. Isn’t patriarchy everywhere? I don’t look in the mirror all day long and say, “Oh, I’m a woman and attractive,” and notice doors that enviously or secretly snap in my face.
At that time, I was getting a Ph.D. in case I didn’t become a famous actress. But of course I thought I would. And so when my advisor asked why I was getting a theatre history degree, because an actress didn’t need that,I simply said I need to work. (I was already a mother in graduate school and had some sense of the cycle of death and birth.)
Life is full of little deaths and big births and writing is my way of growing. What’s yours?
I guess I’m always on the way to Oxford, trying to skirt tropical depressions. Most times I’ve had the right person next to me on the train, even if that person was just myself. But usually crisis presents me with unexpected heroes. Strangers suddenly fearless and focused. Ancestors come to memory reminding me to be valiant. Children pave the way and follow me—role model that I don’t want to be but am.
Throughout a tropical depression, I touch my heart and it’s beating. I breathe out and I can breathe in. That’s life. Bring it on!
Yes, I did take a train regularly from New Orleans to Ole Miss (but not with a professor I fell in love with). Remarkably, one Tulane graduate student who read the story, took me out for coffee at a pancake house, and she asked me if my tale was a chronicle of her affair? That is so New Orleans!
Did you know that, after Tulane (New Orleanians stress the first syllable when pronouncing that), Ole Miss is considered the most prestigious of the Deep South colleges?
But, you can’t catch a fast train from New Orleans to Ole Miss. You’ve got to take a scabby local that bumps you off in Batesville, Mississippi 30 miles from Oxford, where the University is based. The notion of Amtrak or express travel is absent in the Delta.
As a woman college professor (the first full-time appointment in Loyola University’s drama department), I received fellowships to go to Ole Miss conferences for minorities and women. Sometimes, I drove the lonely hot highways with a colleague, but most times I took the fearful run-down train. I’d grit my teeth imagining a hurricane hitting that train as it slugged over large expanses of swamp.
Still I was grateful for the chance to travel to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss and meet other pioneers like myself teaching across the South. Most of the appointments I have received have been based on institutions wanting to include woman as role models, thank god. Whether it was at Beaver college, Loyola University, or Ole Miss, fellowships that deposit women inside the intelligentsia have helped me.
Ole Miss is in Oxford, Mississippi, and I originally called this novel. “On the Way to Oxford,” because I thought that title heralded depth. The brightest men for centuries have gone to Oxford and sought out mentors and places of inspiration.
In New Orleans, I had a volunteer at Southern Rep, the theatre which I founded. This mother and brilliant housewife agreed to accompany me to Ole Miss just to “go to Oxford.” Isn’t that what women need, a place to ruminate, to let our minds roam free?
The idea of going to Oxford and sitting around talking in the Square Bookshop famous for birthing so many intellectuals was vastly appealing. The bookstore champions Faulkner as does the English Department of Ole Miss that now presides over his homestead Rowan Oak where he wrote so many of his stories and where his cherished black nanny is buried. (No I won’t comment on this.)
On the train to Batesville (watched over by minority women now porters) were mostly drunken college students trying to get into or leaving the Big Easy after a week-end of debauchery. Interspersed were rattled 17-year-olds leashed by parents and traveling with them to interviews at the college.
Back then, and even when I was the 2nd woman to get a PhD at UCLA, I never thought of myself as a minority. Even though when I entered UCLA 59 of the 60-drama faculty was male, I didn’t evaluate what it meant that the only woman professor was one who taught sewing part time in the costume department. Isn’t patriarchy everywhere? I don’t look in the mirror all day long and say, “Oh, I’m a woman and attractive,” and notice doors that enviously or secretly snap in my face.
At that time, I was getting a Ph.D. in case I didn’t become a famous actress. But of course I thought I would. And so when my advisor asked why I was getting a theatre history degree, because an actress didn’t need that,I simply said I need to work. (I was already a mother in graduate school and had some sense of the cycle of death and birth.)
Life is full of little deaths and big births and writing is my way of growing. What’s yours?
I guess I’m always on the way to Oxford, trying to skirt tropical depressions. Most times I’ve had the right person next to me on the train, even if that person was just myself. But usually crisis presents me with unexpected heroes. Strangers suddenly fearless and focused. Ancestors come to memory reminding me to be valiant. Children pave the way and follow me—role model that I don’t want to be but am.
Throughout a tropical depression, I touch my heart and it’s beating. I breathe out and I can breathe in. That’s life. Bring it on!
February 13, 2009
My father was born 2/4/04. If he was alive he would be 105.
I feel like I have had 2 lives. My life in New Orleans and my life in NYC.
I returned to the West Village midlife to recreate a fantasy I had as a girl. I had studied with Uta Hagen (the great originator of HB Studio) and Herbert Berghoff the genius director from whom HB Studios gets its name. Back then, I wanted to be a famous actress; now I wanted to be an acclaimed playwright. Superlatives still dominate my vocabulary.
Catastrophe and a one-time miracle had spurned this new birth. A divorce, death of both parents, and the exodus of my adult children had left me bereft. I was in New Orleans, had been running a theatre and teaching college for 20 years when miracle of miracles I won a Senior Fulbright Drama Specialist appointment from the American Embassy to teach and have my plays done in Europe. Living in New York, I could travel abroad easily. Fate was pushing me out of New Orleans.
I must confess that two of my four children were studying in New York so my flight was partly nest-driven. But I believe in signs. I had met a scientist on a Southwest plane when going to a playwright’s conference at Sewanee who said, “Go to New York. I can’t think of a playwright not in New York.”
At my daughter’s high school graduation tea, when I told one mother what I was doing, going to New York to be a published playwright, she said, “Do it for all of us.”
Shortly before Katrina hit New Orleans, I sold many of my memories and moved from 4000 sf in New Orleans to 500 sf in Manhattan. I subsequently married the clairvoyant scientist.
I was born and raised in New Orleans. All my family lives or is buried there.
But now I feel like a New Yorker. In the Village one is always young and life is fresh. In the playwriting class I take at HB Studio, students range from 17 to 83. They come from Russia, Georgia, France, South America, England, India, China. All of us are immigrants weaving our lives into tapestries for others.
Most of my plays are now published thanks to catastrophe and miracles. I have lost my past, but found my future. Stories set in pre-Katrina New Orleans resonate with New Yorkers. I have pressed flesh with artists who believed in me.
This cherished enclave of artists in the Village remind me that life is about what is lost and found. I feel the old world I left under my feet in the cobble stones of the West Village.
When I walk down Bank Street I recall the times I took a subway with two suitcases of props and rehearsed near the park on Abingdon Square to get the feel of authenticity that Miss Hagen required from her acting students.
I pass brownstones, which stare at me taunting me to capture their stories, much like the mansions and alleys in New Orleans called to me to pen theirs.
The sameness and vitality of the Village delights me, and I forget that I used to write and produce theatre in the French Quarter (I once was the founding artistic director of Southern Rep) and a full professor (the second woman to be one at Loyola University). I have joined the ranks of the carefree, the nomad playwrights who find delight in the Village. My theatre survived Katrina like HB survived the loss of its founders. The Cherry Lane Theatre’s doors are open, and the Rattlestick Playwrights’ Theatre has already done a reading of one of my plays,
Play readings abound in the West Village with actors and director eager to test out new material. Ah this is after all the Big Apple. And I am in it. As they say in Louisiana, “Laissez le bon temps rouler.” Let the good times roll!”
Joke time: Two seasoned professional actors were performing The Gin Game. One actor kept leaving his seat at the card table and going over and leaning over the actress across the table. I said, “Why didn’t you stay seated, and he said, “They put the tablecloth on backwards, and I had to go over and read my lines.”
On the horizon: Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer masterwork, Our Town (running through Sunday April 12) involves one of the largest Equity casts ever seen off-Broadway, and has led to a complete renovation and redesign of Barrow Street Theater. Discount tix may be available through
tminsider@theatermania.com
I feel like I have had 2 lives. My life in New Orleans and my life in NYC.
I returned to the West Village midlife to recreate a fantasy I had as a girl. I had studied with Uta Hagen (the great originator of HB Studio) and Herbert Berghoff the genius director from whom HB Studios gets its name. Back then, I wanted to be a famous actress; now I wanted to be an acclaimed playwright. Superlatives still dominate my vocabulary.
Catastrophe and a one-time miracle had spurned this new birth. A divorce, death of both parents, and the exodus of my adult children had left me bereft. I was in New Orleans, had been running a theatre and teaching college for 20 years when miracle of miracles I won a Senior Fulbright Drama Specialist appointment from the American Embassy to teach and have my plays done in Europe. Living in New York, I could travel abroad easily. Fate was pushing me out of New Orleans.
I must confess that two of my four children were studying in New York so my flight was partly nest-driven. But I believe in signs. I had met a scientist on a Southwest plane when going to a playwright’s conference at Sewanee who said, “Go to New York. I can’t think of a playwright not in New York.”
At my daughter’s high school graduation tea, when I told one mother what I was doing, going to New York to be a published playwright, she said, “Do it for all of us.”
Shortly before Katrina hit New Orleans, I sold many of my memories and moved from 4000 sf in New Orleans to 500 sf in Manhattan. I subsequently married the clairvoyant scientist.
I was born and raised in New Orleans. All my family lives or is buried there.
But now I feel like a New Yorker. In the Village one is always young and life is fresh. In the playwriting class I take at HB Studio, students range from 17 to 83. They come from Russia, Georgia, France, South America, England, India, China. All of us are immigrants weaving our lives into tapestries for others.
Most of my plays are now published thanks to catastrophe and miracles. I have lost my past, but found my future. Stories set in pre-Katrina New Orleans resonate with New Yorkers. I have pressed flesh with artists who believed in me.
This cherished enclave of artists in the Village remind me that life is about what is lost and found. I feel the old world I left under my feet in the cobble stones of the West Village.
When I walk down Bank Street I recall the times I took a subway with two suitcases of props and rehearsed near the park on Abingdon Square to get the feel of authenticity that Miss Hagen required from her acting students.
I pass brownstones, which stare at me taunting me to capture their stories, much like the mansions and alleys in New Orleans called to me to pen theirs.
The sameness and vitality of the Village delights me, and I forget that I used to write and produce theatre in the French Quarter (I once was the founding artistic director of Southern Rep) and a full professor (the second woman to be one at Loyola University). I have joined the ranks of the carefree, the nomad playwrights who find delight in the Village. My theatre survived Katrina like HB survived the loss of its founders. The Cherry Lane Theatre’s doors are open, and the Rattlestick Playwrights’ Theatre has already done a reading of one of my plays,
Play readings abound in the West Village with actors and director eager to test out new material. Ah this is after all the Big Apple. And I am in it. As they say in Louisiana, “Laissez le bon temps rouler.” Let the good times roll!”
Joke time: Two seasoned professional actors were performing The Gin Game. One actor kept leaving his seat at the card table and going over and leaning over the actress across the table. I said, “Why didn’t you stay seated, and he said, “They put the tablecloth on backwards, and I had to go over and read my lines.”
On the horizon: Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer masterwork, Our Town (running through Sunday April 12) involves one of the largest Equity casts ever seen off-Broadway, and has led to a complete renovation and redesign of Barrow Street Theater. Discount tix may be available through
tminsider@theatermania.com
November 23, 2008
Some notes for you dear Ruby about life at my mother's houae on the Gulf Coast before Katrina.
There were concrete steps on either side of the mansion in Waveland, Mississippi and hydrangeas and oak trees. Dad used to put rusty nails in them to make the pink flowers turn blue.
By the walkway up to the house Dad planted a lemon tree.On the right hand side was a cedar tree and on that tree was wisteria and it smelled so nice and the
porch in front was cracked tile and blue high back chairs that matched the blue shutters on the house. Behind the house was a page wire fence with honeysuckle. Lantana (ham and eggs flowers).
There was an oak tree in back with cement stuck in it because the oak tree had died and where the limbs were gone were stuck in cement.
Pecan trees everywhere. The best pecans were the paper shell pecans. They were the long round corns.Daddy had his bowl of nuts and after every meal he would eat nuts. He used to walk around clipping his flowers and taking a slow watering hose around, leaving it on the plants for six hours for deep watering.
They had camellia bushes about too. There were wild yellow irises in the swamp and cattails and marsh grass.
Then they had the fountain in the front with our lady of Guadalupe. Mom had Louisiana irises planted about. They were blue. They had bamboo and oleanders and when we walked to the left we went through the oleanders. And we would try to cut the bamboo on the right for fishing poles but it wasn’t stiff enough.
St. Augustine broad leaf grass in the front.
Mama found some wild roses somewhere and she dug them up. And she planted them along the page wire fence in back.
Mama was always looking for someone who had scuppernong vines. When she was a child someone had them and they made muscatel.
There was a fig tree in back with low branches that the burrow Daddy bought us to ride as a kid used to
run under to throw us off.
There was a little stream in back that ran from the woods on the right all the way to Favre Lane.
The high woods had the pine and oak and the low woods had the cypress trees and the cypress knees.
Lots of possums. We used to watch them in the pond behind Mary’s house. Possums and raccoons. They raised their children on the island in the pond. We had an alligator in that pond and we watched him grow,to six feet.
The water was very very warm at the time of the hurricane about 90 degrees by the shore. One of the reasons the wild life didn’t survive was there was a drought.
There was an old alligator that lived in the swamp bigger than six feet. I don’t know what happened to him but he just disappeared.
The water had made more inroads. They had boats in the swamp. People paddled all around. Whether it was because people built more houses, there was a lot more water intrusion in the drainage areas. Twice Mary had 3 feet of water from a tropical storm under her house.
Hide tides and a tropical storm brought water in from the Gulf and swamps. The winds pushed the water into the swamps and land that bordered the swamps got flooded. Its scary because you don’t know when it’s going to stop and when it’s four feet you can’t get out. That was just for a tropical storm.
There were many more seagulls and brown pelicans. They roost all over.
Now there is a pollution advisory when they tell you not to swim. Mary thinks it’s the Dupont plant that is doing it. In the middle of the Bay St Louis Bridge to the far left is a chemical plant. It’s always been a problem. People have gotten more environmentally conscious and so they are measuring it.
There was a red algae in the pond for a while. It grew in the pond. We couldn’t get rid of it. Finally it just died and went away.
There was no sign except we hadn’t had a hurricane in a long tine and we were due.
After the hurricane there were no birds chirping for 2 years. You just take bird songs for granted in the country.
Sunrises in Waveland were the prettiest I’ve seen in the world.
Everything was exactly the way I wanted it: state of the art kitchen tile with blue herron behind my stove.
Sound of the birds missing before the hurricane.
I have a picture of a live heron and a dead one after the hurricane.
It was all the oil companies they built these canals to service their oil wells and these canals criss crossed the delta and came up and eroded the land and we lost more and more land every year. The eye didn’t pass over New Orleans it passed over Waveland. So it was marshland that was lost and it also was a very rich habitat for wild life.
We lived inside with the air-conditioning on 73 so you didn’t really notice the outdoors.
We had 15 ducks. We have adolescent ducks we grew from eggs. We evacuated with these ducks But we left them outside but they all got cold and winded and died.
There were concrete steps on either side of the mansion in Waveland, Mississippi and hydrangeas and oak trees. Dad used to put rusty nails in them to make the pink flowers turn blue.
By the walkway up to the house Dad planted a lemon tree.On the right hand side was a cedar tree and on that tree was wisteria and it smelled so nice and the
porch in front was cracked tile and blue high back chairs that matched the blue shutters on the house. Behind the house was a page wire fence with honeysuckle. Lantana (ham and eggs flowers).
There was an oak tree in back with cement stuck in it because the oak tree had died and where the limbs were gone were stuck in cement.
Pecan trees everywhere. The best pecans were the paper shell pecans. They were the long round corns.Daddy had his bowl of nuts and after every meal he would eat nuts. He used to walk around clipping his flowers and taking a slow watering hose around, leaving it on the plants for six hours for deep watering.
They had camellia bushes about too. There were wild yellow irises in the swamp and cattails and marsh grass.
Then they had the fountain in the front with our lady of Guadalupe. Mom had Louisiana irises planted about. They were blue. They had bamboo and oleanders and when we walked to the left we went through the oleanders. And we would try to cut the bamboo on the right for fishing poles but it wasn’t stiff enough.
St. Augustine broad leaf grass in the front.
Mama found some wild roses somewhere and she dug them up. And she planted them along the page wire fence in back.
Mama was always looking for someone who had scuppernong vines. When she was a child someone had them and they made muscatel.
There was a fig tree in back with low branches that the burrow Daddy bought us to ride as a kid used to
run under to throw us off.
There was a little stream in back that ran from the woods on the right all the way to Favre Lane.
The high woods had the pine and oak and the low woods had the cypress trees and the cypress knees.
Lots of possums. We used to watch them in the pond behind Mary’s house. Possums and raccoons. They raised their children on the island in the pond. We had an alligator in that pond and we watched him grow,to six feet.
The water was very very warm at the time of the hurricane about 90 degrees by the shore. One of the reasons the wild life didn’t survive was there was a drought.
There was an old alligator that lived in the swamp bigger than six feet. I don’t know what happened to him but he just disappeared.
The water had made more inroads. They had boats in the swamp. People paddled all around. Whether it was because people built more houses, there was a lot more water intrusion in the drainage areas. Twice Mary had 3 feet of water from a tropical storm under her house.
Hide tides and a tropical storm brought water in from the Gulf and swamps. The winds pushed the water into the swamps and land that bordered the swamps got flooded. Its scary because you don’t know when it’s going to stop and when it’s four feet you can’t get out. That was just for a tropical storm.
There were many more seagulls and brown pelicans. They roost all over.
Now there is a pollution advisory when they tell you not to swim. Mary thinks it’s the Dupont plant that is doing it. In the middle of the Bay St Louis Bridge to the far left is a chemical plant. It’s always been a problem. People have gotten more environmentally conscious and so they are measuring it.
There was a red algae in the pond for a while. It grew in the pond. We couldn’t get rid of it. Finally it just died and went away.
There was no sign except we hadn’t had a hurricane in a long tine and we were due.
After the hurricane there were no birds chirping for 2 years. You just take bird songs for granted in the country.
Sunrises in Waveland were the prettiest I’ve seen in the world.
Everything was exactly the way I wanted it: state of the art kitchen tile with blue herron behind my stove.
Sound of the birds missing before the hurricane.
I have a picture of a live heron and a dead one after the hurricane.
It was all the oil companies they built these canals to service their oil wells and these canals criss crossed the delta and came up and eroded the land and we lost more and more land every year. The eye didn’t pass over New Orleans it passed over Waveland. So it was marshland that was lost and it also was a very rich habitat for wild life.
We lived inside with the air-conditioning on 73 so you didn’t really notice the outdoors.
We had 15 ducks. We have adolescent ducks we grew from eggs. We evacuated with these ducks But we left them outside but they all got cold and winded and died.
Notes about Waveland before the hurricane. November 14, 2008
There were concrete steps on either side of the house in Waveland and hydrangeas and oak trees. Dad used to put rusty nails in them to make the pink flowers turn blue.
By the walkway up to the house Dad planted a lemon tree.On the right hand side was a cedar tree and on that tree was wisteria and it smelled so nice and the
porch in front was cracked tile and blue high back chairs that matched the blue shutters on the house.
Behind the house was a page wire fence with honeysuckle. Lantana (ham and eggs flowers).
There was an oak tree in back with cement stuck in it because the oak tree had died and where the limbs were gone were stuck in cement.
Pecan trees everywhere. The best pecans were the paper shell pecans. They were the long round corns.
Daddy had his bowl of nuts and after every meal he would eat nuts. He used to walk around clipping his flowers and taking a slow watering hose around, leaving it on the plants for six hours for deep watering.
They had camellia bushes about too. There were wild yellow irises in the swamp and cattails and marsh grass.
Then they had the fountain in the front with our lady of Guadalupe. Mom had Louisiana irises planted about. They were blue. They had bamboo and oleanders and when we walked to the left we went through the oleanders. And we would try to cut the bamboo on the right for fishing poles but it wasn’t stiff enough.
St. Augustine broad leaf grass in the front.
Mama found some wild roses somewhere and she dug them up. And she planted them along the page wire fence in back.
Mama was always looking for someone who had scuppernong vines. When she was a child someone had them and they made muscatel.
There was a fig tree in back with low branches that the burrow Daddy bought us to ride as a kid used to
run under to throw us off.
There was a little stream in back that ran from the woods on the right all the way to Favre Lane.
The high woods had the pine and oak and the low woods had the cypress trees and the cypress knees.
Lots of possums. We used to watch them in the pond behind Mary’s house. Possums and raccoons. They raised their children on the island in the pond. We had an alligator in that pond and we watched him grow,to six feet.
The water was very very warm at the time of the hurricane about 90 degrees by the shore. One of the reasons the wild life didn’t survive was there was a drought.
There was an old alligator that lived in the swamp bigger than six feet. I don’t know what happened to him but he just disappeared.
The water had made more inroads. They had boats in the swamp. People paddled all around. Whether it was because people built more houses, there was a lot more water intrusion in the drainage areas. Twice Mary had 3 feet of water from a tropical storm under her house.
Hide tides and a tropical storm brought water in from the Gulf and swamps. The winds pushed the water into the swamps and land that bordered the swamps got flooded. Its scary because you don’t know when it’s going to stop and when it’s four feet you can’t get out. That was just for a tropical storm.
There were many more seagulls and brown pelicans. They roost all over.
Now there is a pollution advisory when they tell you not to swim. Mary thinks it’s the Dupont plant that is doing it. In the middle of the Bay St Louis Bridge to the far left is a chemical plant. It’s always been a problem. People have gotten more environmentally conscious and so they are measuring it.
There was a red algae in the pond for a while. It grew in the pond. We couldn’t get rid of it. Finally it just died and went away.
There was no sign except we hadn’t had a hurricane in a long tine and we were due.
After the hurricane there were no birds chirping for 2 years. You just take bird songs for granted in the country.
Sunrises in Waveland were the prettiest I’ve seen in the world.
Everything was exactly the way I wanted it: state of the art kitchen tile with blue herron behind my stove.
Sound of the birds missing before the hurricane.
I have a picture of a live heron and a dead one after the hurricane.
It was all the oil companies they built these canals to service their oil wells and these canals criss crossed the delta and came up and eroded the land and we lost more and more land every year. The eye didn’t pass over New Orleans it passed over Waveland. So it was marshland that was lost and it also was a very rich habitat for wild life.
We lived inside with the air-conditioning on 73 so you didn’t really notice the outdoors.
We had 15 ducks. We have adolescent ducks we grew from eggs. We evacuated with these ducks
But we left them outside but they all got cold and winded and died.
By the walkway up to the house Dad planted a lemon tree.On the right hand side was a cedar tree and on that tree was wisteria and it smelled so nice and the
porch in front was cracked tile and blue high back chairs that matched the blue shutters on the house.
Behind the house was a page wire fence with honeysuckle. Lantana (ham and eggs flowers).
There was an oak tree in back with cement stuck in it because the oak tree had died and where the limbs were gone were stuck in cement.
Pecan trees everywhere. The best pecans were the paper shell pecans. They were the long round corns.
Daddy had his bowl of nuts and after every meal he would eat nuts. He used to walk around clipping his flowers and taking a slow watering hose around, leaving it on the plants for six hours for deep watering.
They had camellia bushes about too. There were wild yellow irises in the swamp and cattails and marsh grass.
Then they had the fountain in the front with our lady of Guadalupe. Mom had Louisiana irises planted about. They were blue. They had bamboo and oleanders and when we walked to the left we went through the oleanders. And we would try to cut the bamboo on the right for fishing poles but it wasn’t stiff enough.
St. Augustine broad leaf grass in the front.
Mama found some wild roses somewhere and she dug them up. And she planted them along the page wire fence in back.
Mama was always looking for someone who had scuppernong vines. When she was a child someone had them and they made muscatel.
There was a fig tree in back with low branches that the burrow Daddy bought us to ride as a kid used to
run under to throw us off.
There was a little stream in back that ran from the woods on the right all the way to Favre Lane.
The high woods had the pine and oak and the low woods had the cypress trees and the cypress knees.
Lots of possums. We used to watch them in the pond behind Mary’s house. Possums and raccoons. They raised their children on the island in the pond. We had an alligator in that pond and we watched him grow,to six feet.
The water was very very warm at the time of the hurricane about 90 degrees by the shore. One of the reasons the wild life didn’t survive was there was a drought.
There was an old alligator that lived in the swamp bigger than six feet. I don’t know what happened to him but he just disappeared.
The water had made more inroads. They had boats in the swamp. People paddled all around. Whether it was because people built more houses, there was a lot more water intrusion in the drainage areas. Twice Mary had 3 feet of water from a tropical storm under her house.
Hide tides and a tropical storm brought water in from the Gulf and swamps. The winds pushed the water into the swamps and land that bordered the swamps got flooded. Its scary because you don’t know when it’s going to stop and when it’s four feet you can’t get out. That was just for a tropical storm.
There were many more seagulls and brown pelicans. They roost all over.
Now there is a pollution advisory when they tell you not to swim. Mary thinks it’s the Dupont plant that is doing it. In the middle of the Bay St Louis Bridge to the far left is a chemical plant. It’s always been a problem. People have gotten more environmentally conscious and so they are measuring it.
There was a red algae in the pond for a while. It grew in the pond. We couldn’t get rid of it. Finally it just died and went away.
There was no sign except we hadn’t had a hurricane in a long tine and we were due.
After the hurricane there were no birds chirping for 2 years. You just take bird songs for granted in the country.
Sunrises in Waveland were the prettiest I’ve seen in the world.
Everything was exactly the way I wanted it: state of the art kitchen tile with blue herron behind my stove.
Sound of the birds missing before the hurricane.
I have a picture of a live heron and a dead one after the hurricane.
It was all the oil companies they built these canals to service their oil wells and these canals criss crossed the delta and came up and eroded the land and we lost more and more land every year. The eye didn’t pass over New Orleans it passed over Waveland. So it was marshland that was lost and it also was a very rich habitat for wild life.
We lived inside with the air-conditioning on 73 so you didn’t really notice the outdoors.
We had 15 ducks. We have adolescent ducks we grew from eggs. We evacuated with these ducks
But we left them outside but they all got cold and winded and died.
My husbands. October 30, 2008
My second husband Dick O'Neill had a regular government job. Finally I could say I was with a man who was employed. My Mom approved. "If you don't get him," she said, "someone else will." At 27, there was thiS feeling that your beauty years were spent. Dad said, "Ye gods. You're marrying a man who 's not a millionaire again. I though you learned your lesson. When I married Terry, Dad had said," Well I've supported you. I guess I can support him, too."
Dick gave me 2 beautiful daughters. I married 2 charming but brooding Irishmen. Both loved to party and fantasize so my youth was spent working hard teaching full time, running a theatre. I was the provider. It wasn't till I left Dick in 2001 and came to NYC that I got rested and had the time to write.
My Polish husband Bob Harzinski, a self stater from a working class family gave me the courage and provided the space for me to claim myself full-time as a writer.
When I left New Orleans, I left my full time professorship, my artistic directorship at Sourthern Rep which I founded and became the RAW me.
At my daughter Dale's high school graduation tea when I told a few other mothers I was leaving for NYC, one mother who ran her husband's wealthy laundry business said, DO IT FOR ALL OF US.
Dick gave me 2 beautiful daughters. I married 2 charming but brooding Irishmen. Both loved to party and fantasize so my youth was spent working hard teaching full time, running a theatre. I was the provider. It wasn't till I left Dick in 2001 and came to NYC that I got rested and had the time to write.
My Polish husband Bob Harzinski, a self stater from a working class family gave me the courage and provided the space for me to claim myself full-time as a writer.
When I left New Orleans, I left my full time professorship, my artistic directorship at Sourthern Rep which I founded and became the RAW me.
At my daughter Dale's high school graduation tea when I told a few other mothers I was leaving for NYC, one mother who ran her husband's wealthy laundry business said, DO IT FOR ALL OF US.
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