Wally Shawn — in Texas?

David Yeakle in Wally Shawn's A Thought in Three Parts




photo courtesy of Josh Meyer

Wally Shawn and Texas don’t usually appear in the same sentence — but then Austin is an unusually un-Texan place: in the past week it proved itself America’s most progressive city.

Or at least one of Austin’s hundred or so theatres did (The Vortex), where Rubber Repertory produced Shawn’s play, A Thought in Three Parts. Banned from the London stage 30 years ago and never produced in the USA (until now), Shawn told co-directors Matt Hislope and Josh Meyer that if they succeeded in staging the play: “My boys, you’ll be pioneers!”

To discover the real identity of Mr. Frivolous and what Wally said to him backstage....go to TCU Magazine online, and scroll to the final story on this page.

Buxom Cakes & Homemade Sin: Marcel Desaulniers' Death by Chocolate Cake

Don't know a spatula from a Sacher torte? Don't worry. In this aptly named cookbook for chocophiles, (Death by Chocolate Cake) Marcel Desaulniers makes baking your own gâteaux look as easy as pie. Find the rest of the review and a recipe at CompulsiveReader.com

Master Liar

TCU Magazine
Sheila Stark Phillips would rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth. It’s a preference that served her well when she represented the south central US at the biggest confabulator’s conference in the country. She didn’t have to climb a tree, but she did have to travel to the tiny town of Jonesborough, Tenn., where the National Storytelling Festival was held, and lie her head off.

Wasabi Toothpaste?

Herbs for Health Magazine


photo by Henri Li at kronka.com





Hold on to your hat and pile your plate with wasabi: new research indicates that it may be good for your health.

Used for centuries by the Japanese on raw fish as a tasty antimicrobial, recent studies suggest that the incendiary green paste may help prevent blood clots, asthma, and even cancer.

Hideki Masuda, Ph.D., has discovered another use for it. At a meeting of the International Chemical Congress, Masuda reported that wasabi is capable of deep-sixing Streptococcus mutans, one of the primary bacteria responsible for causing tooth decay.

In Masuda’s lab experiments, high concentrations of wasabi interfered with the bacteria's ability to stick to bone and teeth. Masuda says that clinical research will be needed to confirm wasabi's plaque-pouncing powers. Any volunteers?

Zen Calling

Stanford Magazine

It's a raucous morning at the Mozart Café. The jazz is loud; the espresso machine gushes like Old Faithful; a delivery man bangs through the door with a dolly of beer. But Susan Ji-on Postal sips her chai serenely. While other patrons bend close to hear each other through the din, Susan is unbowed by all the chaos. A sweet-faced woman with dark cropped hair, she sits straight and speaks with quiet joy about her life as a Buddhist priest.

Find the rest of the story at: Stanford Magazine.

Wasser Ist Leben

Chesapeake Bay Magazine
What is it that’s so satisfying about living near water? I ask myself this question as I drive happily down a narrow Virginia road, the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers on each side of me like green-skirted sisters eager to link arms and show me the view. Their insistent voices and shining faces encourage me to pull over, stop the car and abandon it, as I’ll someday leave my unwieldy body behind and fall up into that great river above.
This stretch of land, nearly to Windmill Point, is a water-lover’s paradise. But I could say the same about all of the Chesapeake’s watershed: no matter where you live in Chesapeake country, you’re never far from the water and her charms. Some of you can see it from your living rooms; others may have to drive a few miles. Whether it’s a river, a creek, or the Bay herself, it doesn’t matter. You’re all in luck, and you know it. You live more contentedly than dry-landers, that’s all there is to it. I know. I used to live here too.

Light Celebration

The Photo Review



pinhole photograph by Willie Anne Wright




When asked to describe the work of Willie Anne Wright, a visitor to her recent 30 year retrospective nearly succeeds with one word: "elegy."

A mournful poem, yes; lament for the dead, not quite, for the subjects of Wright's pinhole photographs, photograms and composite prints are very much alive. Present with all their associations and concomitant life, Wright's images reside in, as Faulkner once wrote about the South, "a land where the past is not dead; it isn't even past."

Thirty Year Wonder

TCU Magazine

/photo by Loli Cantor









"Sorry I'm nekkid," says Johnny Simons, in a voice as smooth and deep as riverbed rock. As he pulls his t-shirt on, I fiddle in my bag for the recorder, but much as I want to, I don't turn it on. The writer, director and creative engine of Hip Pocket Theatre doesn't like to talk much about what he does.

"I know you don't want to talk about your work," I say, to let us both off the hook. Simons allows that he is a little tongue-tied. So I tell a tale on him instead.


...Read more at TCU Magazine.

Maestro in Mamaroneck

Hometown Media New York

Outside the Big Apple Shoe Repair in Mamaroneck, New York, the ripe red symbol of NYC hangs proud. Inside, busy at his workbench, is a living symbol of what lies behind the city's (and, many would say, the country's) greatness: immigrant, craftsman, small business owner, Isidro Frias.

Bending leather to his will involves smelly chemicals, sharp knives, a fair bit of manhandling and hammering. Mr. Frias does his shoe-repair behind a screen, shielding customers from the grind and push and stink of shoe work. Or maybe he's guarding his secrets, as any good magician does.

New Babe on the Beach

Just 15 miles from Charleston, every day is a day at the beach. Everywhere you look, it's sand and palms, ocean and palms, sunshine and palms.

In the palm of a palm tree is how one feels in designers Kevan and Funda Hoertdoerfer's residential commission on the Isle of Palms. The house stands ten feet high on hurricane-protective pilings, resembling, as one visitor said, a cross between a tree house and a church. And it's true, there's something both sacred and playful about the place, introduced early on by the Jacob's ladder entrance and the cantilevered roof-line that tips its hat to the three-tiered deck.

Size Matters

Labyrinths 11 by Joachim Kersten


In his studio in Nuremberg, Germany, it’s always a gamble whether Joachim Kersten can build a canvas big enough to please him, yet small enough to get down the stairs.

“Size matters,” he says with a grin, opening the massive door to the Rathaus (built in 1572). Inside, the stone walls soar. The floorspace is so vast that viewers shuffle backward to take in his work without bothering to glance behind them.

At last, Kersten’s king-sized abstracts hang in a space that accommodates their girth.