Below are earlier blogs from another (now inactive) website all in one place.
SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2009
Going to the Actors Guild
Beautiful day in NYC
The little church around the corner has a guild for actors
going to a party there
how wondrous is NYC
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!
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
October 21, 2008
I got married in September, 1967 in Waveland, Mississippi at St. Clare's Catholic Church (now leveled by Katrina). My Daddy promised my husband Terry O'Brien and me $10K and an impala convertible if I didn't get married at the Country Club (which cost a lot more). My sister had had a wedding for 1,000 people at the Country Club the year before. For years my mother had kept a file of wedding invitations--so she could send all the people she had sent gifts--invitations to my sister's wedding and get gifts.
I married because that's what you did after college and i wanted to Hollywood and be a movie star and the $10K plus a new impala would get me and my husband there. It was pouring down rain my wedding day and the nurse who had raised me wrapped me and my bridesmaids (Kathie Pearse, Mary Brent, Dale Nix, and Ann Preaus) in sheets to get us from the big house to the limousines out front without being soaked. We had to drive from my parents' house on the Gulf to the Church. Mama had called all over Mississippi to find limousines and finally got ones mostly used for funerals to take us to the Church.
The rain had made me want to cancel the wedding. It was an omen but I married Terry anyway. Should I cancel the wedding I worried and run off to Europe? Yes, my heart told me. But Terry would go with me to Los Angeles and I was afraid to go alone and he was so good-looking people already thought he was a star and that made me feel important and we had had everything but penetration for sex.
The doctors and lawyers that I dated all wanted me to be a Housewife--the word itself made me feel trapped. So Terry who was a dreamer would give me two gorgeous children and go with me anywhere because he really didn't plan to work. In California, friends said they saw him on the beach surfing.
I stayed with Terry seven years for better or worse, always embarrassed when people asked me what my husband did. He was "finding himself" that was the term he used. I came from a family of doctors and lawyers had never known a man who wasn't ambitious and direct so I believed Terry for seven years was looking for work, through a life in Hollywood to a PhD at UCLA. That was easier to nail than a lead role in a Hollywood film.
Then a daughter arrived, Rachelle. I was thrilled as my biggest fear as a southern woman was that I couldn't get pregnant. After we moved to Princeton, NJ and s after my son was born, I evicted Terry when Barret was 3 months old, got a Catholic annulment and started dating my neighbor across the street, another handsome charming Irishman Dick O'Neill.
October 11, 2008
Been missing New Orleans In October. Guess it's like spring there. Here in NYC the tops of trees are dying turning red, yellow, white. And some small bushes are all red. In New Orleans we never had fall. Always oak trees full of greens and lush grey moss. I understand you lost quite a few oak trees during hurricane Katrina. All of the oaks that stood before my parents mansion on the Gulf Coast survived. After Katrina I'm told they looked burnt red and yellow but they made it. i wonder how the trees felt when they saw those 40 foot waves come rolling in. I still 3 years later haven't had the courage to go look at my parent's land now void of all buildings and the strip of destroyed land along the water. In my memory the vision of that beautiful Gulf Coast with its 500 palatial mansions still lives. I'm told now only 5 of the houses in truth remain.
October 9, 2008
Came back from NYC to Rhinecliff tonight on business class on Ambrack such a fast train that took me in less than 2 hours to this darling town. Reminds me of how in New orleans we used to communte weekends to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to my parents brick villa there-6 bedrooms 2 kitchens, 4 baths. I lived in a little cottage on the grounds that my parents built for my family a stucco red brick cottage which I called the rose cottage. Both the mansion (my parents referred to the big house as such) and the cottage were flattened by Katrina.
Anyway my friend Deborah's husband met me at the train and took me to my big house here. Bob wasn't back yet from Canada and in the old New Orleans tradition I was afraid to enter the big old house alone. My Grandma used to have her chauffeur enter her house also a mansion first and check under the beds and inside the closets before he left to be sure no burglar was hiding in the house. Am I reliving grandma or just a girl lady who lilkes to feel safe. I LOVE YOU.
September 22, 2008
It's gotten cold here like 60 degrees, but I went out unprepared--sleeveless top and scarf and light jacket. I remember in New Orleans I didn't own a coat. Got rid of all my heavy wool skirts when I moved home from Princeton in 84.
We so rarely wore anything heavy. I didn't have any pull over sweaters because a day might start cool but usually ended hot. Yuck. Then cardigans weren't worn too much either. Mostly I took a light jacket and wore light cotton shirts. But here in NYC when it gets cold, it dives down and stays. Course that burst of cold does give you energy and makes you discover the seasons. Today was the first day of fall in New Orleans we pretty much had spring summer weather all year. I remember even using the air conditioning on Christmas,
September 17, 2008
The morming of Barret's birth. April 9m1974, I was alone in my apartment, the first floor of a double (really 2 parlors and a back hall) in Princeton, New Jersey. I thought I had gone into labor a few days before. And a friend of Dick's who was visiting came to my house and he was named Joey Butera. And he brought me to my doctor's office in downtown Princeton. Joey Butera had been Dick's best friend in college. He inherited his father's commercial art business in Boston and for some reason was visiting Dick. Dick lived across the street from Terry and me and was our friend.
Anyway I had gained almost 10 lbs with Barret and I had pains in my thighs. These fierce pains so I could hardly walk. I don't know where Terry was or where our car was. So I got Joey Butera to drive me to the doctor's. I don't know whether I went into labor that night but I believe the next morning they had me go the hospital to induce labor.
Jerry O'Brien Terry's mother was coming in from Indianapolis, Indiana. So the morning of April 9th it was a pretty day and I was driven to Princeton Hospital (by Terry I believe) and labor was induced. To do this they shoot some medicine in your veins to bring on labor. They did this but Barret was so big, he wouldn't come out, so they put a mask over my face and put me to sleep and cut me ope wider and took Barret out with a forceps.
i remember wakig up and hearing some nurse at the foot of the hospital bed say, "You have a son." i was so thrilled. I was teaching at that time at Rider College in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Terry was going to school there nights to get his teaching certificate. (He could go free as my spouse). He wasn't working. That had me worried. But Rachelle was about 3 or 4 and I believe stayed with Terry and Jerry Obrien at the house. We lived at 43 Park Place one street off Nassau Street in the heart of Princeton. One ov my students at Rider came from a family that ran a floral shop and I remember being so happy because he and my students made sure that all my window ledge was full of flowers and then they had to bring in extra tables so I could have more.
I remember Barret had such a big head and pale hair and was such a beautiful big baby and how happy I was to have a son. Dick and his fiance Georgie sent me a beautiful spray of orchids and Mama sent me a huge basket of pink roses. And I got flowers from David Greenan and my agent Don Krintzman and all in all it was one of the happiest days of my life. I wore my hair in 2 high pony tails and had a blue nightgown my mother had bought me and I remember feeling sad that Barret would be my last child because Terry and I had thought 2 children was enough. And jerry O'brien was so pleased and said, "Well you have your family now." And Barret was already wearing sixe 3-6mos old yellow pajamas as a newborn at the hospirtal. I put a blue ribbon round his head for the pictures taken in te hospital.
At that time reltives and husbands weren't allowed in the operating room so I was wheeled in there alone.
September 16, 2008
Remembering breakfast on the first days of school in the fall in New Orleans. My famiy lived at 54 Fontainebleau Drive in New Orleans. •
• Breakfast in New Orleans:
The nurse/maid, Ella, made breakfast for four children. My mother slipped about drinking chicory black coffee from a demitasse cup, blue willowware. My sister and I in our upstairs-renovated attic room, raced downstairs, getting bacon sandwiches on toast, hurriedly pressed into aluminum foil. Often, Mary would say no. Aunt Roma (her three girls in the car) was out front tooting to pick us up to take us to Sacred Heart. Smells of bacon, butter, and toast. Mornings, I got up early, Ella would bring grits, bacon, eggs and toast upstairs.
Soon after, Mary and I raced out at 8:05 for 8:20 school. Ella went into the kitchen and set out Dad’s place for breakfast. He ate whenever he got up. Two pieces of fruit, a banana and an orange, dry toast, were carefully set out alongside the folded Times Picayune. The table was a mosaic of Don Quixote with a glass top and a floor to ceiling breakfast bureau on the wall of the dining room.
The kitchen had a swing door and Ella in maid’s uniform would swing in and out of the kitchen. Sometimes the door would hit you in the face if you didn’t hear help coming in from the other side.
On the stove was a cooked pound of bacon, a pot of grits, a tank of slow drip chicory coffee. The cook would make it the night before. You pour boiling water every few minutes into the top of the coffee pot and let is slowly drip. Coffee looked like black mud. It was kept in a jar in the refrigerator and watered down on the stove and heated up in a saucepan.
Sometimes, I would drink coffee with milk—milk mostly coffee in a water glass, room temperature.
September 15, 2008
•About my Aunt Mary. She wasn't an aunt at all. That's the south for you. It was a way to celebrate someone.
I've tried to turn my home on the Hudson River into a reflection of my past. White wicker chairs on my front porch in Rhinecliff mesh close together, paint crusted over. They have been in my family for so many years. And held the seats of the laughing and the sorrowful. Now they are transplanted to a porch not far from a busy street. Hilly land now. No Gulf in front of the house, no asazleas and oleandas growing but it safe to walk down the three faded steps to the car parked by my door. You can rest on the chairs faded orange cushions and feel the river on your face. It's just on the other side of the road and over a cliff.The town is called Rhinecliff. But the Hudson River never swells up and rolls over the cliff into the town.
September 14, 2008
The Gulf of Mexico has just survived 2 hurricanes: Gustav and Ike. When I was a girl, all hurricanes were given girls' and American names like Camille, Betsy. Then they got names like Andrew. As hurricanes became more frequent they got foreign names female and male: Camille, Jose, Katrina, etc.
When I was a girl there were lots of rain storms but few hrricanes. I remember
Sitting on the front gallery of my parents summer home on Gulf of Mexico (an old victorian wooden mansion with blue shutters that went down in 69 in Camille.
I recall pushing back inside the painted white wooded slat chairs listening and feeling a breeze on my face, running a foot over the marble floor to scare off a doodlebug.
White haired Aunt Mary from Ocean Springs often visited. We talkied about fun things to do summers on the Gulf Coast. Big house behind me, dusky smell of blue wood shutters like wings behind me. (You close them over the French windows for a hurricane.) Smells of crabmeat and grilled steak came from inside the house and we waited for a big meal at the dining room table, a bit bored by the sameness of summer, the humidity and the peace of the porch.
9/11/08
Sept 11,2008 Reminds me of 9/11 some years ago when i was living along, divorced in a one bedroom apartment on St. Charles Avenue In New Orleans . My actor son Barret was in NYC and my daughter Rory was at Fordham. They called me before I saw the news on TV or left my apartment.
• I had left my husband after twenty-four years. Packed a suitcase and went down the backstairs. Left my grandmother’s Victorian green cottage on Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans, which I had inherited and he had taken over, and my sixteen-year-old daughter in her pink bedroom, which I had designed. Left with one eighteen inch roller suitcase did if for all the fifty-year-old women who can’t leave their trapped situations, who can’t demand respect, kindness, and consideration from their mate. I gave away most of my clothes all the furs, ball dresses, costumes stored in the attic. All my jewelry: divided it among friends, daughters and son. Donated my library of books to Tulane University, my collection of T. Williams’s tapes to the English Department. Gave all my photos and papers to my eldest daughter, left all the antiques, the paintings, the piano and the china in a 4,000 square foot house in my family for centuries. Took my real jewelry, my laptop, and my soul.
September 10, 2008
Watching Tv in black and white tonight I remember that my family's first TV was only black and white. My parents kept it in the living room and we were only allowed to watch a half hour a night "Father knows Best" I wonder if we had a show today called "Mother Knows Best" whether that wouldn't be thought of as sexist today.
When I stayed at my grandma's at first we would sit out on the screenporch (it was so hot we used no lights and ceiling fans before air conditioning) and we listened to the radio. After TV came and we went inside for that, we didn't sit and talk like before on the screen porch and I guess crime must have gone up in Nw Orleans so we didn't feel safe at night on a screen porch with screen doors locked. New Orleans as I grew up becamse increasingly dangerous as kids dropped out of school and the public schools got worse and worse. Now after Katrina hopefully your skills will be better.
September 9, 2008
Today is the birthday of my first husband Terry O'Brien. He is 65. Terry O'Brien I fell in love with him when I was 18 and a freshman in college at St. Mary's Notre Dame. He had flunked out of college at Indiaa University and he was visiting his best fried Butch Lawrence at Notre Dame. I was going to St Mary's Notre Dame and rooming with Btutch's girlfriend Mary Kay Roberts. Terry was gorgeous. My mama sad he was the best looking 18 year old man she had ever seen. He thought so too and was a confirmed drinker by 18. Ah what he could have accomplished with a little humility and drive. Instead he floated by life living off his spouses and teaching history in safe highschools.
September 5, 2008
Spending a nice night cuddling with Bob. He made me a filet mignon for supper. Wow. I can remember when I lived in New Orleans and we were on a budget while I taught and never had meat that your mama once pointed to a roast we had at her grandma's and said "What's that?" Course she knew what crawfish and gumbo were because those were a staple at even the cheapest meals. I wonder when you will have your first soft shelled crab. Boy are those good in New Orleans. Good night, sweetie or as we say in New Orleans, go fais do do
September 3, 2008
Dear Ruby--
I hear tonight y'alll are in Austin Texas fleeing hurricane Gustav, and New Orleans still has no electricity. Your uncle Buzz brought his family to Baton Rouge and they have no electricity there as well. I can't remember in childhood so many crises. We may have gone without electricity for a day or tow or maybe three but that was the worst. And we always had fans in windows over head and everywhere. Now even with a generator my brother has no fans o put on in the heat. Fortunately the rain cools off the land.
Now for the first time in history we will have a black president or a female vice president. Hopefully global issues will be looked upon more seriously and weather problems will be addressed.
So many changes since you were born already in technology with cell phones and blackberies and can we stop now and think about weather. I hope so.
If New Orleams has to confront a series of hurricanes, will people not leave the city? People have short memories, but hurricanes every 3 years that won't be forgotten.
September 1, 2008
Celebrated my birthday tonight. Also happy that on Sept 2 tomorrow my birthday Hurricane Gustave has not hit New Orleans. Seems like there are 3 hurricanes around new Orleans now. Wow In the forty or so years I lived there we may have had one hurricane every ten years or so, but now hurricanes seem much more prevalent. Is this because of Global warming, offshore drilling, the erosion of the wastelands. Probably a combination of all three things.
Seems like the weather reflects the chaos of the world. We all need to focus down, stay put, and reflect on what we each can do to improve the world and specifically Louisiana.
I saw 2 little one year olds toddling about the fountains and gardens of MOMA and wished one was you Ruby Rose.
Friday August 29, 2008
Three years ago Katrina hit and your Mama tells you and your parents are evacuating tomorrow for hurricane Gustav. Think now for the next few years at the slightest notice of hurricane people will vacate.
Hurricanes give us warning and that is good. Many other catastrophes don't.
My daughter Dale is visiting me and we have had so much fun playing together. Fixing our hair, talking about boys, and school and my writing. I was a very tough Mama--supervised my kids and made sure they got good grades. Brought students over from Germany and Paris to live with us and supervise their studies. They hated me. But now they are all so talented--following their dreams. Your mama has a masters and a BA from a fine school in California and I suspect she will require great studies of you as well. I miss you all. xoxo
August 28, 2008
Very happy in NYC today. It's a cool 72 degrees while I hear it's hot and possibly evacuation time again in New Orleans with Hurricane Gustav nearby on the prowl. Thank god I don't have to worry too much about that. All the times I lived in New Orleans we only evacuated once--about 15 years ago, Dick and I and Rory and Dale and an au pair (who was a psychic and later left during the night--thought our house was haunted) drove to Dallas and then the hurricane spun around and didn't hit New Orleans. Ten years before for Andrew and Betsy my parents lost an oak tree in front of their yard and some shingles off the roof and we lost electricity for a time but no one evacuated. Now after the devastation of Katrina I suppose most people flee right away. The manager of my condo in the Quarter leaves tomorrow for Texas and your Mama says your school is getting out at 11am. i will be happy when hurricane season passes over New Orleans and Sunday prayers at Church don't begin with a prayer to New orleans patron saint from hurricanes Our Lady of Prompt Succor.
August 27, 2008
Hit the city today and it was cool like 70 degrees and the slight feeling of autumn in the air and kids going back to school felt exciting. I entered the street from Penn Station through going to Kay Mart underground.
I have never seen so many different types of back packs and already a floor of ghoolish halloween costumes. Such selections from medieval ball gowns to a man's full bear suit. Your great Uncle Joe used to dress like a were wolf when he was a teenager and he was so tall my father feared when he ran in the woods on the Gulf Coast in his costume someone would shoot him.
Could this NYC Kay Mart be the same Kay Mart I knew on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (which was flooded and wiped out in Katrina). When we used to visit my mother (your great grandmother) at her country home in Waveland, Mississippi, I and your mother and my other children would breeze through K mart for sale clothes and swimming supplies and just lots of beach stuff.
It was a one floor huge building and my mother decided she had to see it once since all her children and families shopped there. So she rented a wheel chair (her legs were weak) and was pushed through from start to finish and then said. "I've seen Kay Mart and I never have to go back there." Grandma liked specialty shops where people knew her name.
Many little shops and drug stores on the Gulf Coat went out of business after the first Kay Mart came there. Of course Kay Mart and then Walmart were wiped out by Katrina although they were 10 miles from the beach. Rumor says they found dead bodies floating inside.
I recall how many people Kay Mart serves in NYC and its 3 floors of choices. Just amazing. They even have 5 fitting rooms for women's lingerie.
NYC continues to astound me at the availability of so much in such a dense space. This is a walking city, Ruby, and when the weather is wonderful it is delightful.
August 26, 2008
Going to NYC tomorrow to a play at irish Rep the leading theatre for Irish plays. I am part Irish. My gradmother Vera Malter Nix (on mama's side) always claimed she was Irish. I think her mother was Irish. Her father was De. Jacob Malter was a doctor and the son of a lawyer who was an orphan but found by a Yankee soldier after the civil war who paid for his rearing and all his education. Grandma Nix was one of 2 girls who were part of the second family of Dr. Jacob Malter.His first wife and 3 children having been lost in a fire. His second wife Ellen Quail (ergo the Irish roots) was a valedictorian of her class as was my mother and grandmother and died young (at 40 f breast cancer) My grandma Vera Nix from whom I get my middle name took care of her father's business affairs (he owned a drug store and real estate-at that time doctors were also pharmacists) from the time she was 18. Grandma had a deathly fear of death and would never let illness or death be discussed in her house. She avoided funerals and hospitals like the plague as if illness was contagious. Good night.
August 25, 2008
Going to bed late tonight. I got caught up in writing and it seized control of my brain and eight became eleven pm in a flash. I hope when you grow up Ruby you will find something you enjoy as much as I like writing. To me it is like one big crossword puzzle--finding the word for the slot for the character for the time and keeping the reader and myself from being bored. Also sometimes I find I know things I didn't know I knew and don't know things I thought I did. Hope you will like school and learning to read too. Your mother always loved books especially the
Cat in the Hat when she was a little girl. Good night my love.
Sunday August 24, 2008
Today i prayed that god would inspire me to use my time to its fullest and not be distracted from my path. After 8am Mass the priest Father Jerry says that the leading editor of Sam Beckett is in church. I have just finished a play on this famous writer. So we met. Thanks to god I had gone to that service and she Martha was just in town visiting for 2 days.
She is editor at Emory Univ Grad Studies Dept and was appointed by Mr. Beckett to edit all his letters. She has been oing this faithfully for 15 years. the first vol. where Sam is young 1929-40 comes out in Feb. My play is set in 1932. We meet tomorrow for breakfast.
August 23, 2008
I have anxiety today in that I can't visit New Orleans till December. So many readings of my books (an answer to prayer) are happening here in NYC. I miss New Orleans end of summer. i know it's hot there, but there is that excitement of school starting and having Loyola Univ and Tulane in the center of the city across from Audubon Park keeps youth and vision in the center of town. Not many cities have a solid center like New orleans and I miss St Charles Avenue and the park. It's a gorgeous park with all those houses on Exposition Blvd opening on the Oak Trees and swamps. Used to love to walk in the park late afternoon and pass the ducks and under those big sweeping mossy oaks.
And I went to Newcomb and Tulane and taught at Loyola and Tulane. My sister, Mama, and Grandma and I went to Newcomb and my brother and niece went to Tulane. My father and uncle and grandfather and your mother my daughter went to Loyola. So many members of our family drove down to those schools and learned from so many brilliant people there.
Those two universities have brought much joy and knowledge and love to the city and I am sure one day you will enjoy knowing people there too.
------------------------------------------------
Remembering how much my daughter Rachelle and Scott yearned for you, a baby. Rachelle told us all she was pregnant on Thanksgiving before you were born in July. I had offered up all my suffering of my breast cancer so Rachelle would get pregnant. Breast surgery and implant removal and chemo and radiationso that Rachelle would get pregnant. And the doctor surgeon who saved my life was Dr. Roses. i prayed for a little girl and God answered our prayers and so your middle name is Rose. And your first name is Ruby. Like the red of a heart and of a red rose. A victory flower which is what you are. And you were due on July 11 and you came on time. I planned to arrive the 10th in New Orleans--my first trip home post Katrina and post cancer--and you came as scheduled. Joy baby that you are.
SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2009
Addendum to letter
It is very pleasant here about 70 degrees in August and some days too cool to wear a sleeveless dress. I keep thinking it's October not August; summer here lasts such a short time and New Orleans has summer almost year round. I wear sunglasses here because of the traffic and dusty streets but in new orleans i wore them because of the glaring sun and sometimes they were blurry from the heat as soon as I went outside and slid down my nose.
Letters to my granddaughter
August 21, 2008
Today is my agent's birthday. I have a theatre agent here Tonda Marton who tries to sell my plays. I am very lucky because in New Orleans for instance you have agents to sell houses and cars and insurance but very few if any literary agents to sell books. One thing I like about New York is it is so BIG and there are people like Tonda who devote their lives to selling the works of artists. This year all of my plays that I have written for the past 18 years were published in 2 books and licensed by Samuel French, Inc, the biggest publisher of plays in the English speaking world. It's like a dream for me because years ago I came to NYC as an actress and bought so many scripts published by Sam French so the idea that all my plays on Louisiana and beyond are published here, it's like a miracle.
Ruby Rose I want you to know that dreams do come true. Bad things like Katrina do happen but also great gifts occur. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But mostly the Lord giveth.
You are a blessing in my life and New Orleans has a great future when young people like you are being born there.
I heard today that your cousin Sophie is going to a French immersion school in New Orleans. Sophie is 4 and this is a public school Since her father is Spanish, she will now be speaking French, English, and Spanish. Wow. This is what makes New Orleans such a great melting pot.
August 20, 2008
second letter to Ruby Rose:
It is nearing august 29th and as you don't recall that is the day 3 years ago that Katrina hit. I am wondering what the weather is like there and remembering that my parents used to have a thermometer about a ruler's length that predicted storms. It would say fair, rainy, stormy, hurricane. And when the pendulum went to hurricane we left the Gulf Coast by car for the city of New Orleans (thinking it was best to leave a house on the water. That house with plenty of electronic warning of Katrina was leveled by 30 foot waves in 2005.
I have a granddaughter who is one year's old and she lives in New Orleans and she never knew New Orleans like I did when I was girl because she is a post Katrina New Orleans Lady.
I'll writer you each day my memories Ruby Rose so you can experience the lush beautiful city that I knew as a girl and also some of the horrors that I also knew living in that decadent but charming city.
First of all I'm sitting here with a new friend from the Ukraine. I said Russia and she quickly corrected me. She has a long braid like your grandmother used to wear at night for she had hair that went to her waist. My friend Vlada is a romantic and I told her to be a New Orleans lady that was a prerequisite. All of my daughters and your mother especially have long beautiful hair. Good luck.
8-20-08 Your grandfather Bob Harzinski's birthday!
I'll tell you his age if he lets me.
==============
