e-travels with e. trules

21/07/2024

Save the Date!

28/06/2024

What’s in a hat? you say.

How about an Emperor? An empire? An ambition, genius, and military strategy that changed history, the early 19th century, and the map of Europe?

Or what about these two smiling co-revolutionaries? Cuba’s Fidel Castro in his iconic military patrol cap, and Che Guevera, his compadre, in his black beret with silver star? Both defining an era of “anti-Americanism” in our own hemisphere, and a near nuclear disaster with the failed U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17, 1961, and the soon-to-follow Cuban Missile Crisis by which JFK and the USSR’s Nikita Khrushchev barely “saved the world” with a thirteen-day negotiation in October, 1962.

Speaking of which, equally iconic: John Fitzgerald Kennedy in a top hat - not the first politician to wear one (Abraham Lincoln, Uncle Sam, Winston Churchill,

Woodrow Wilson, FDR) - this photo of the Kennedys, with Jackie in her chic 1960s pillbox hat, not only defined “Camelot”, the storybook era of American politics and culture before JFK was assassinated in November, 1963, after which we all lost faith in politicians and government, but which even today, recaptures it, with the image of two idealized personalities in two perfectly iconic hats.

14/06/2024

I’m here in Santa Fe, and I guess I'm someone important, because… I hear on the news/internet that my friend, Mohadras, has made a public statement that - he’d like to speak to me - by phone - about the situation in the Middle East. Not that either of us are central players - no Bibi, Biden, Sinwar, or Haniyeh - but we’re still two wily and wizened Jewish and Muslim coots who are world-renowned and respected in our own fields, who now somehow stand for an old-school, warm and fuzzy “Peace in the Middle East”.

So… I pick up the phone and call Mohadras directly to complete his outreach and I say,

"Why don’t we just get together and talk?"

"Good idea old Boy, he says. Where?"

"Let’s just meet in New York, ok?"

It’s 3:33 a.m. I just woke up from the first dream I can remember that hasn’t been a gut-wrenching, pyschic-rending, soul-eating nightmare… in about … forever. Because you see, that’s the norm… about six out of seven nights… after having these oh-so-pleasant, Santa Fe pickleball-playin...

19/04/2024

Our Son Turns 17!
And We Go to the Circus Do Portugal

https://trules.substack.com/p/our-son-turns-17

"It was the Cinco de Mayo. May 5, 2015… when the tiny-boned, 50-pound Indonesian immigrant boy came squinty-eyed, up from the bowels of the long dark international tunnel in Tom Bradley Terminal at LAX. He was with his “Bou Ani” (his father Nanda’s younger sister, therefore his “aunt” in Indonesian), pulling his navy blue trolley suitcase that looked far bigger than he was. It and he were an awkward “misfit” there at LAX, arriving on a Mexican holiday, rather than on an Indonesian one, since he was born and raised in Medan, Sumatra, just like his “Bou”, my wife, Surya. He was eight years old, looking fragile and overwhelmed - at the first day of the rest of his life… in America."

And We Go to the Circus Do Portugal

22/03/2024

https://trules.substack.com/p/trules-deceased-parents-come-to-visit

I call Warren Beatty, producer and director of the film, Heaven Can Wait (originally Here Comes Mr. Jordan, 1941), who tells me exactly how to teleport bodies and souls from the afterlife, back and forth to Santa Fe. With just a little help from a guardian angel, and her supervisor, Mr. Jordan, I can choose the exact day and time to have Roz and Joe arrive at the small, nearby Santa Fe Airport, as opposed to the usual Albuquerque Airport, over an hour away, which most out of towners have to really hassle with.

05/03/2024

I previously published this piece on May 3, 2014, the first day I announced my “semi-retirement” from USC (the University of Southern California where I had been a theater professor for almost 3 decades).

I am re-posting it today as a tribute to my great friend and tennis partner/coach of just about the same 3 decades, who just recently passed away from a stroke, after living on the hard-scrabble streets of South Central LA, as a trickster, rabble-rouser, and keen-witted survivor.

NOTE: I previously published this piece on May 3, 2014, the first day I announced my “semi-retirement” from USC (the University of Southern California where I had been a theater professor for almost 3 decades). I am re-posting it today as a tribute to my great friend and tennis partner/coach of ...

23/02/2024

The decade of the 2010s began in the chaotic wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and ended with the impeachment of a U.S. president. The continued explosion of social media fueled mass protest movements like “Occupy Wall Street”, “Black Lives Matter”, and “Me Too”, bringing millions of people together around the globe in pursuit of common objectives. Britain saw a new generation of royals emerge, countries around the world passed new laws legalizing same-s*x marriage, President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, and a beloved baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, ended a 108-year-long dry spell by winning a World Series.

Me? I started the decade with all things in order, the 3 pillars of my life still sturdily in place: the oldest of the three, my USC theater professor job heading into its 24th pedagogical year, the second oldest pillar, my home of 17 years (even though I never owned it) was still holding my hillside palace in place, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Hollywood Sign from the hills of Echo Park, and the third pillar, my unlikely marriage to Surya, an Indonesian woman 31 years my junior, was as secure as ever, going on its 7th year, 9th if you counted the year she actually joined me in 2001.

Of course, if I looked more closely, perhaps I could have seen some cracks in the pillars, some fissures in the masonry: things like another battle or two with my bullying Dean at USC, or an unannounced and hostile rent raise at “Lucretia Gardens”, or maybe even an angry and solo trip back to Sumatra by my wife to visit her family while she was depressed about her unemployment during “the recession”. But hey, who wants to look at cracks and fissures?

2010 to the Present... Finally!