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Rogue Machine’s very first musical, Diane Frolov’s wacky Come Get Maggie, is simply out of this world. And Judith Borne must be the craftiest PR genius on this or any other planet, as she is uncannily promoting Maggie by arranging for the U.S. military to shoot down UFOs, just as this play about flying saucers debuts. Talk about publicity stunts! (Just don’t tell NORAD…)
The eponymous Maggie (Melanie Neilan) has the misfortune of having the brains of a nuclear physicist but living during America’s conformist fifties. Pressured to get with the patriarchal program, Maggie makes an ill-considered marriage to stick-in-the-mud Hugh (Chase Ramsey, who appeared on Broadway in The Book of Mormon and in episodes of Law and Order and Yellowstone). Feeling straightjacketed by her straitlaced suburban existence, hemmed in by the droll “Mothers Militia” and by Hugh’s Auntie Ruthie (Ovation and NAACP Theater Award winner Jacquelin Lorraine Schofield), who all enforce strict adherence to bourgeois society’s notions of norms, Maggie breaks free of this orbit of conventional expectations through the juiciest deus ex machina since Aristophanes: Alien abduction.
“Coup in Dallas” by Hank Albarelli Jr (coauthors Leslie Sharp and Alan Kent) is both the most important and the most difficult book I have read in my 68 years on this planet. The genius of the book is that it investigates the true plotters of the assassination, which occurred at a very high level. Having finished reading it for the second time, I find reviewing it to be as difficult as reading it. Although I have read hundreds of books on the assassination of President John F Kennedy by the National Security State, there are many researchers who have read so many more. For example, Hank Albarelli, who has tied various people and events together in a comprehensive way in this book. He has left no stone unturned, as they say, yet is very careful in his analysis.
Writer/performer Kayla Boyle nails this role as the title character in her one-woman show, Call Me Elizabeth, as – who else? – none other than the legendary Elizabeth Taylor. The one-acter takes place in 1961 in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel where the superstar unspools her personal and professional saga through the plot device of revealing details about her tumultuous life and loves to journalist Max Lerner. He is taping her confessions for a planned biography about the actress who’d go on to depict Katharina in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1967 screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (one of only three movies Taylor ever produced, although she appeared in about 75 silver screen productions).
”Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach.” -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
“Show, by your actions, that you choose peace over war, freedom over oppression, voice over silence, service over self-interest, respect over advantage, courage over fear, cooperation over competition, action over passivity, diversity over uniformity, and justice over all.” -- Anthony J. Marsella, PhD
“It takes only one man to commit a crime but an entire community to conceal it” -- Krishnamurti
“We're not made by God to mass kill one another, and that's backed up by the Gospels. Lying and war are Quotablealways associated. Pay attention to war-makers when they try to defend their current war; if they’re moving their lips they're lying.” -- Phil Berrigan
"The poor tell us who we are; the prophets tell us who we could be,
So we hide the poor; and kill the prophets." -- Phil Berrigan
Though Israel’s past wars on Gaza have often been justified by Tel Aviv as a response to Palestinian rockets or, generally, as acts of self-defense, the truth is different. Historically, Israel’s relationship with Gaza has been defined by Tel Aviv’s need to create distractions from its own fractious politics, to flex its muscles against its regional enemies and to test its new weapons technology.
The Feds Have Attacked Independent Campaigns; The Rabbi Celebrates the Earth
At GREEGREE #125 Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2016 Presidential candidate, schools us in how the Federal Elections Commission protects America’s duopoly.
Stein is being PERSONALLY sued by the FEC for an independent campaign dating to seven years ago. It’s an astounding story of fascism in action with serious implications for grassroots campaigns going forward.
RAY MCCLENDON of the Georgia NAACP and co-convenor JOEL SEGAL confirm the need to transform how we connect with grassroots donors and volunteers to challenge the duopoly’s unyielding power.
“We need publicly financed elections, period,” says Segal.
With Stein’s terrible experience as background, the FEC must be changed to a non-partisan operation. “It’s all about the oligarchy,” says Stein.
TATANKA BRICCA tells us about Exxon now pouring trillions of dollars into Swiss “non-profits” to hide their money while promoting fossil/nuclear fuels which destroy the Earth.
We then hear from CAROLINA AMPUDIA about the fight for progressive policies within the Florida Democratic Party.
Curse that First Amendment! What were the Founding Fathers thinking?
As Ron DeSantis has declared and legislated, the safety of Florida — and, yeah, the safety of the nation — isn’t a matter of gun control (or police control) but speech control, especially in public-school classrooms and libraries, where the innocent minds of our children are developing.