a cold wind..change is in the air....

Stay with me.....

For your 12th birthday you get a gift, your favorite gift, a knife. Not a pocketknife, what would you call it? A bowie knife? A hunting knife? Any way a good all purpose knife. You treat it with respect, after all ,this is a gift that demands attention and respect, a chance to show the grown ups that yes ,you can take care of things, you can be responsible, you can take a step into adultworld.

Years go by, let's say 15, the knife has been a good companion, you've gone camping and hiking together, been around. The blade has a nick , a chunk , about half way down- since you are responsible , and you love your knife, you give no thought to getting a new one, you find some one who can replace the blade.

More years go by, 8, the handle, which you love, has cracked. Looks crummy and to be honest it pinches your palm when you use it. Hey! The knife guy is still in business, he replaces the handle with an exact copy, good as new.

You and your knife still together after all these years.

question- is it the same knife you were given at 12? You've always had it, right there in your tool box. You use it every summer. Over the years you made repairs- in fact you replaced the entire knife.

so, is it the same knife? hmmmmmmmm. No.

But me, being me, will say.........yes. Or more accurately yes and no.

stay with me...

I have enjoyed the Yankees since I was a little kid. Loved Mantle, Loved Horace Clarke, loved Scott Brosius, Bernie....... I don't live and die by the team ,but I follow them.

God knows the current Yankees bear no resemblance to the "Bronx Zoo" days and they don't even play in the same stadium, but they are still Yankees, no make that they still are "THE Yankees"

Something to be said for constancy, for tradition

My mind has been circumlocuting around this idea for the past few weeks. The Theater that I invested a huge chunk of my life in, is closing down after 33 years. For nearly 20 of those years I was there 7 days a week, Acting, directing, writing, laughing ,crying ,cleaning toilets (the cause of most of the tears)

Ups, downs , highs ,lows- loved it all.

When the announcement was made, my e mail, face book, twitter, etc, was flooded with comments and questions and memories. As I read them all I noticed that the people from 30 years ago have no idea what had been going on in the theater recently. The people who have been performing there in the past few years have no idea about the original owners or the people who worked there twenty years ago.

What they all shared was the memory of "Their" Airport Playhouse. It was important to all these different people, It was a place of discovery and a place of challenge and a place for artistic expression and a place to meet new friends and a place for carnal knowledge in the parking lot . Different decades, different owners, different philosophies. Hundreds of people, hell, thousands.

Different, but the same