I keep asking myself this question since the US media outlets began announcing that President Obama was preparing to make a special statement.  Ironically, I was watching Donald Trump start to rip Star Jones a new one on “Celebrity Apprentice” (which I never watch), and the first ticker break came through at the bottom of my television screen.  Then my boyfriend texted me saying that he was waiting for the President to speak before he went to bed.

It’s a been awhile since I posted here, as the month of April somehow got away from me.  This marks my attempt to get back on track.

Since the first rumblings of the “birthers,” I’ve been fascinated by how low people will go in order to undermine the strength of a particular candidate for the “highest office in the land.”  Of course, there are examples of dirt digging and mud slinging in every campaign process, but the fact that almost three years later the issue continues to re-surface makes me feel a bit like we’re on the playground at the jungle gym arguing over which girl is Sally’s best friend.

Last week I was talking with a colleague about a piece of writing that we needed to evaluate for inclusion in an upcoming project.  We both read the work and each had some reservations about it for different reasons.  My colleague works as a writing and empowerment facilitator as well as a life coach.  Her response to this particular piece of writing was something like this:

“If this person was in my empowerment workshop, I’d say, ‘You go, girl.’  If she was in my writing workshop, I’d say, ‘Hold on here.  We need to talk about this.’”

Earlier this year when I was working on Plays from the Provincetown Players at the newly renovated Provincetown Playhouse, I was contacted by the NYU Steinhardt press rep to do a live interview on television about the re-opening of the theatre.  The interview was scheduled for early March during the run of the show, but then got bumped because of budget issues in Albany.  The producer still wanted to do the interview, and she said she would be in touch around March 29.  I thought it was dead in the water, but then she contacted me on Monday and said there was a slot for Tuesday.   I went in for an interview during the 7:00-8:00pm news broadcast with Chuck Scarborough on NBC4.  The show appears nightly on the NBC’s NY Nonstop cable channel, as well as several other cable providers.

Every year on March 25, New York City firefighters and labor organizers come together at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street to commemorate the deaths of 146 garment workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that occurred in 1911.  The fire killed many young immigrant workers, mostly women, who were trapped on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the building.  Many of these young workers jumped to their deaths, because their escape was hampered by locked doors, not enough stairwells for egress, and only one elevator.