Ladies and Gentlemen...

Rachael Hip-Flores and Bill Galarno in Two Gents

Congrats to Piscataway's own Rachael Hip-Flores who appeared in the Judith Shakespeare Company's recent production of Two Gentlemen onf Verona.  Rachael is back from her engagin role in Anyone But Me, for which she won a Best Female Actor in a Drama Series "Streamy" award for her role as Vivian.

Rachael and her Streamy

The diversity of opportunities for actors is immense, and theperformance venue, though still a challenge certainly, takes many forms. Sometimes great acting appears on this little screen in front of us right now. As a performer, Rachael is a gender chameleon and a bit of a medium-bender, too.  There are lots of new shapes out there that challenge us to bend along with them.

A bit of Jersey writing before we sign off today...


THE cold passed reluctantly from the earth,


and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched

out on the hills, resting. As the landscape

changed from brown to green, the army awak-

ened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the

noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads,

which were growing from long troughs of liquid

mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-

tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the

army's feet; and at night, when the stream had

become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see

across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-

fires set in the low brows of distant hills.

...From The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Newark/Asbury Park

Keep reading and writing,

Maureen

Back after a Summer Blog-Break...

Sorry for the extended break, readers.  I have been awash in a sea of anti-education waves here in the Garden State, one with a very strong undertow.  Nonetheless, I have now washed up on the shore somewhere between the old Casino building in Asbury and the Kohr's stand on the Casino Pier in Seaside.  I'm ready to resume the writes of summer.
Lots going on with great Jersey writers and artists from the complete domination of the New Yorker magazine to Jersey guys Doug and Mike Starn's  "Big Bambu" exhibit on the top of MOMA.  As much as I have avoided any contact with the Jersey Shore reprobates, even I experienced a "sighting" on the boards of two long-haired babes from the cast. (Just lucky, I guess!)

I've been enjoying Mark Diionno's color pieces on Jersey towns and people, but I feel that he's better at writing insight articles for the front page. (just sayin')  Joe Weil has been growing a "garden of verses" near the SUNY Binghampton campus.  We are all waiting for the Dodge Festival in Newark this October, too.

A new spin?  Let's roll with Jerseylicious and Jersey Housewives and all the other nonsense.  It's all silly and insubstantial.  Two weeks ago I had to laugh at the line near the Cake Boss bakery in Hoboken.  (I was told by a local that it's part of the Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty loop for NJ tourists.)  Let's have some fun with all this stuff.  For those of us that are not Italian-American and from New Jersey, let's hold our own, too.  Fist-pump for us, my Irish peeps!
Read some stuff.  Have some fun.  Don't stop writing.
Maureen