Do you remember Patty Hearst? This would be in 1974 or 75. She was the newspaper heiress who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. I know, it really sounds like fiction but honest, this happened. The Symbionese Liberation Army—the SLA—was a group of persons dedicated to committing very public acts of violence, with the […]
Archive | Spoken word
Chocolate
I was at the top of Telegraph Hill with my little sister, at the base of Coit Tower. I would be nine or so, and she would be six. We crawled through a hole in the fence and sat on a rough rock at the edge of the cliff, in the wind, and I broke […]
Sheet Music
I grew up not allowed to sing. My father was a jazz musician all his life. He started playing professionally when he was 15, and was still doing that two or three weeks before he died, at age 86. He was a perfectionist, very critical, highly respected in his community, the west coast traditional jazz […]
Bar Mitzvah
Hi, friends. I’m back! Sorry for not posting for so long. This is the transcript of a spoken-word story I told at a Voices for Change concert last year, posted here now by request. The characters are Lily and Ezra of Like Light From Stars, and the story is from a teenaged Lily’s point of […]