occasional posts by risa aratyr
thoughts, news, and items of writerly interest
Program Notes For centuries it was theatrical doctrine that while ordinary folks could be the subject of comedies, only those born to the uppermost classes suffered deeply enough to be the subject of tragedies. Except for a few 17th century outliers (maybe four plays, five if you count Othello), it was well past the Enlightenment … Read more Riding the Rails – A Bourgeois Tragedy in Two Acts
Kansas City, Missouri lies smack-dab in the middle of the contiguous United States. Well, technically, “smack dab” is about two miles northwest of Lebanon, Kansas. The spot is commemorated by a small stone monument and plaque, and noted by the town of Lebanon in quintessential, low-key Midwestern style. KCMO is 260 miles/418 km southeast of … Read more From the Heart
I hit my limit months ago. I couldn’t take the incessant pounding, the non-stop barrage of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-environmentalism, war-mongering, collusion, nepotism, self-aggrandizement, and sheer idiocy coming out of the White House and Congress. I couldn’t keep bearing unblinking witness to each and every horrendous, scandalous, apocalyptic thing day after day – not … Read more Life in the Trenches
My Riding the Rails mini-series is apparently missing the mark. Either that, or riding better-run rails for their entire lives has my non-American readers so positively disposed toward train travel, they keep missing my salient points. I said the Silver Star was the best of the lot – my point being, we rode lots of … Read more Riding the Rails – A Comparison
Washington, D.C. was our entire holiday in microcosm: big fun, but over-ambitious. We lived in Baltimore when I was quite young, 1958-1960. DC was a day-trip. Of course our parents took us there, probably more than once. My sister, two years older, retains a vague recollection. But though I remember Atlantic City (Boardwalk, diving horse, … Read more A Day in DC