Month: August 2026

Rocky Horror at the Orson Welles Cinema and Tim Curry

The Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge was one of those places that didn’t just show movies — it created events. By the late seventies, the midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show had turned into something closer to a weekly pilgrimage. You didn’t just go to see a film. You went to be part of something strange, loud, funny, and absolutely alive.

The theater itself had a kind of scrappy charm. It wasn’t a palace like the big Boston houses. It was smaller, more intimate, a little rough around the edges — the perfect place for a movie that didn’t fit anywhere else. When the lights went down and the opening lips filled the screen, the whole room shifted. People shouted lines, threw props, danced in the aisles. It was chaos, but it was joyful chaos, the kind that makes you feel like you’re part of a tribe.

And of course, Tim Curry was part of that magic. Not in person — he never performed live at the Orson Welles — but his presence filled the room every time Frank‑N‑Furter strutted down that staircase in heels and pearls. His performance in the 1975 film was the heartbeat of the whole thing. Every midnight showing was built around him, around that wild mix of danger, humor, seduction, and pure theatrical electricity he brought to the role. You could feel the crowd lean forward when he appeared, like they were greeting an old friend.

The Orson Welles screenings helped turn Rocky Horror from a movie into a ritual. People came week after week. Some dressed as Columbia or Magenta, some as Riff Raff, and some just came to watch the madness unfold. The shadow cast acted out the film in front of the screen, timing every gesture to Curry’s voice. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t there in the flesh — his performance was the anchor, the spark, the reason the whole thing worked.

By the time the Orson Welles Cinema closed in 1986, Rocky Horror had already become a legend. But for a lot of people in Cambridge and Boston, the real memories weren’t just of the movie — they were of those midnight gatherings, the laughter, the shouting, the feeling that for a couple of hours you were part of something bigger, stranger, and more fun than anything else in town.

And now they’re both gone. The Orson Welles is dust, the midnight crowds long scattered, but Tim Curry’s Frank‑N‑Furter still shines like a spark from a world that will never come again.

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Psychedelics, Prayer, and the Big Question: What’s Really Going On?

I’m scrolling Facebook, minding my own business, and up pops Timothy Leary — yeah, that Timothy Leary — calling LSD a “microscope for consciousness.” And I’m sitting there thinking, Jesus, Tim, that’s one hell of a claim. But it stuck with me. Got under my skin a little. Made me wonder about awareness, perception, and all the ways people try to crack open the hood on their own minds.

Leary swore psychedelics could peel back the wallpaper and show you what’s really going on behind the scenes. But the more I chewed on it, the more I thought: are drugs the only way people get there? Or have monks and mystics been hitting the same level of awareness for centuries without dropping anything stronger than tea?

You look at Buddhist monks — guys who sit still longer than most of us can stay awake — and they talk about slipping into states where the “self” just dissolves. No ego, no boundaries, no noise. Sounds a hell of a lot like what Leary’s crowd described, minus the tie‑dye and the Grateful Dead soundtrack. They get there through breath, silence, and discipline. No shortcuts. No chemical boost. Just decades of showing up.

Then you’ve got Christian mystics writing about ecstatic union with God, Sufi mystics spinning themselves into divine drunkenness, Indigenous traditions using rhythm and fasting to shift consciousness. Different cultures, different methods — but they all end up describing the same thing: a mind cracked open wider than the everyday grind ever allows.

Leary’s microscope was chemical. The monk’s is meditation. The mystic’s is prayer. The Sufi’s is rhythm.

Different tools, same damn question: What is consciousness, really? Is it just neurons firing, or is there something deeper we can tune into if we know how?

Science is still poking at it with machines. Religion is still trying to wrap words around it. And regular people — folks like you and me — are still trying to experience it without losing our balance.

Some take the long road — decades of practice, discipline, devotion. Some take the shortcut — a few hours that feel like a lifetime.

And honestly?

Who are we to say the drugs aren’t the HOV lane to the same destination? Who are we to say the monk and the psychonaut aren’t both touching the same absolute truths — just arriving by different routes?

Maybe awareness has more than one doorway. And maybe every doorway leads to the same room.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not telling you to drop acid or freeze your backside on a monastery rock. I’m just thinking out loud here.

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When We Happened.


I wrote this while remembering how ordinary moments, a laugh, a glance, a shared silence—can feel sacred once we know they will not return. It is not a poem about loss, but about presence: the way two lives can briefly align, then drift apart while still carrying the echo.

Once upon a time
as the story is told
We happened,
knowing our love
would never grow old.

No soft‑spoken whispers,
just cries of longing,
taking each other by storm,
for once, feeling like belonging.
In all our desperate cries
of yearning

We knew our time
would not last for long,
for like the summer’s burning
One would soon be gone.

We threw off the guides.
and let go the tether,
making the most
of our summers together.

This began as a memory of one woman, but it became something larger — a reflection on all the women who, like me, were searching for a place to belong, even if only for a short while. Some loves arrive when they shouldn’t, some fade before they can settle, yet each leaves a mark that time can’t erase. We happened once, and maybe that was enough — a moment that still burns like summer long after the season has gone.

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    Rating: 1 out of 5.

    Howard Phillips Lovecraft-H.P. Lovecraft,

    Born August 20th, 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft-H.P. Lovecraft,

    It’s the birthday of H.P. Lovecraft, born Howard Phillips Lovecraft in Providence, Rhode Island, back in 1890 — a man who somehow turned the quiet corners of New England into a map of cosmic dread. Funny how a place like Providence, with its brick houses and sleepy streets, could produce someone who spent his life staring into the abyss and then reporting back on what stared right back at him.

    Lovecraft wasn’t writing about monsters, not really. He was writing about that feeling you get at three in the morning when the world tilts just a little, and you realize you’re smaller than you ever imagined. He gave that feeling names — Cthulhu, Yog‑Sothoth, the whole tentacled family reunion — but the real terror was always the same: the universe doesn’t care. And he wrote that truth with the intensity of a man who felt it in his bones.

    He lived most of his life broke, anxious, and tucked away in rented rooms, scribbling stories that wouldn’t become famous until long after he was gone. There’s something almost New England about that — the stubbornness, the quiet grind, the belief that the work matters even if nobody’s listening yet. Providence shaped him, and in return he reshaped Providence into a place where shadows have weight and old houses whisper at night.

    On his birthday, I think about how strange it is that a man who rarely traveled farther than the Northeast managed to chart entire galaxies of fear. And how his stories, written in the margins of his own troubled life, still echo through books, movies, games, and the imaginations of anyone who’s ever felt the cold breath of the unknown on the back of their neck.

    Lovecraft didn’t give us hope. He gave us honesty — the kind that crawls under your skin and stays there. And maybe that’s why he endures. Because sometimes the world really does feel bigger, darker, and stranger than we can handle. And he was the one who said, “Yes. It is. And here’s what that looks like.”

    And when you look at the end of his life, it fits the man: a quiet death in 1937, only 46, worn down by illness and poverty, leaving behind stories that outlived him by decades. Today his grave in Swan Point Cemetery has become its own kind of pilgrimage site. The headstone now famously reads “I AM PROVIDENCE.” Visitors leave coins, stones, shells, little figurines, handwritten notes — small offerings to a man who spent his life writing about the vast, uncaring universe.

    And lately, there’s this odd little tradition that’s grown legs: bottles of vodka left at the grave. Lovecraft hated alcohol, wouldn’t touch the stuff, so maybe it’s a joke, maybe it’s a dare, maybe it’s just fans being weird in the way fans get weird. But the strange part is how the offerings sometimes move. A bottle set neatly at the base of the stone ends up a few feet away the next morning. Stones rearrange themselves. Notes shift. Cemetery staff say it’s wind or animals or teenagers, and maybe it is. But standing there, looking at that grave with its quiet declaration — I AM PROVIDENCE — you can’t help feeling that the man who wrote about the thin places in the world might still have one around him. A little ripple. A little nudge. A little reminder that mystery doesn’t always need monsters.

    Just a grave, a name, a bottle of vodka that won’t stay put, and the sense that even now, something old and curious is paying attention.

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    Born Today: August 14th 1943, Mitch Snyder

    I met Mitch in prison, and later we shared a home at CCNV in D.C. That’s where I saw the man behind the headlines—the fire, the flaws, the stubborn heart, and the relentless drive to stand with people the system would rather forget. Anyone who has read my book knows the depth of our friendship.

    Born August 14, 1943, Mitch Snyder was a prominent American advocate for people experiencing homelessness. His life was as complicated as it was impactful, a long arc from troubled youth to fierce activist, from a kid abandoned in Brooklyn to a national voice demanding dignity for the unhoused.

    Snyder’s early life was marked by hardship and rebellion. Growing up in Brooklyn, he faced his father’s abandonment and drifted into criminal activity that eventually landed him in prison. But prison was also where Mitch began to change. Influenced by fellow inmates and by his reading — including the Bible — he joined hunger strikes and work stoppages over prisoners’ rights. He found purpose in resistance.

    During his time at Danbury Correctional, Mitch met two men who shaped the rest of his life: Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Both were anti‑war priests serving time for destroying draft records in protest of the Vietnam War. Their commitment to justice and nonviolent resistance struck Mitch hard. They showed him activism wasn’t just anger — it was discipline, courage, and sacrifice. Mitch joined them in hunger strikes and work stoppages, learning firsthand how fasting could force attention onto issues the powerful preferred to ignore. He carried that lesson with him for the rest of his life.

    After his release, Mitch moved to Washington, D.C. and joined the Community for Creative Non‑Violence (CCNV). The group had roots in anti‑war activism but evolved into one of the most forceful voices for people experiencing homelessness. Mitch’s leadership brought national attention to the crisis. He staged public funerals for people who died on the streets, occupied abandoned buildings, and used hunger strikes to pressure the government into action.

    One of his most famous actions was occupying an abandoned federal building. After intense pressure on the Reagan administration, the building was leased to CCNV for $1 a year to serve as a shelter. It was a symbolic victory — a reminder that the government had responsibilities it couldn’t simply shrug off.

    Mitch’s life wasn’t without controversy. His sacrifices — including leaving his family — and the toll activism took on him were debated publicly. But his commitment never wavered. He gave everything he had to the cause, and the weight of that struggle eventually became too much. In 1990, overwhelmed by the ongoing crisis and the lack of meaningful governmental response, Mitch took his own life.

    His story was later told in the biopic Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story, with Martin Sheen portraying him. But for those of us who knew him, Mitch wasn’t a symbol or a headline. He was a complicated, brilliant, stubborn man who refused to look away from suffering — and demanded the same from the rest of us.

    Mitch Snyder’s legacy is a testament to the power of individual activism and the impact one person can have on society. His life reminds us that homelessness is not a statistic — it’s a human crisis demanding compassion, courage, and relentless advocacy. His work continues to inspire those who believe in giving voice to the voiceless and standing with people the system would rather erase.

    And for me, he remains the man I met in prison, the man I later lived with at CCNV, the man who gave me a home and a safe place when I once again found myself running for my life and helped me begin a new life. And always he will remain flaws and all the man I call my friend.

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    Rating: 1 out of 5.

    August 6th, 1945.

    I grew from birth to the age of ten in the “Atomic City,” Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I even had a wooden carved bomb that read “Dan Sanders Atomic Baby.” Fighter jets and guard houses were my normal views and surroundings. My dad worked for the Manhattan Project that helped create the atomic bomb, and I know he had reservations—hell, more than reservations. I’m sure he had nightmares about how it was used. He often said the first bomb should have been dropped on Mount Fuji as a warning shot, and that killing civilians—children—was an act of revenge, not war, and I agree with him.

    The death toll on August 6, 1945 — the day Hiroshima was bombed — is estimated at 70,000 to 80,000 people killed immediately. By the end of 1945, about 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima, including those who suffered a long, agonizing death from radiation poisoning, which I have seen time‑lapse video of, and it is truly horrifying.

    Sometimes at night when I think about this—and it’s not always on the anniversary, for it has haunted me for as long as I’ve been alive—I picture some kids in an open field, sunny green grass, blue sky, playing soccer laughing then suddenly turned to dust.

    I met a survivor of that bombing many years ago, and he talked about how his life was spared because his house was a few miles from the hypocenter, and he was hunched behind a brick wall working in his garden, talking to his wife standing on the porch. After the blast wave passed over, he looked for his wife on the porch, and all that was left was a shadow left on the wall.

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    Rating: 1 out of 5.

    Poet James Dennis “Jim” Carroll.

    Jim Carroll, born in Manhattan in ’49, on August 1st always felt like somebody Boston would’ve claimed if New York hadn’t gotten to him first. He had that street‑level honesty, that “tell it straight or don’t bother” attitude you hear in corner bars from Dorchester to Eastie. The man wrote like he was peeling paint off a tenement wall just to see what truth was underneath.

    And that line of his — “Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us.”

    That’s not airy poet talk. That’s a guy who’s seen things, done things, lost people, and knows damn well the ghosts don’t stay quiet. They sit with you. They mutter. They remind you who you were when you were too young, too wild, too stupid to know better. Carroll understood conscience the way a Boston dockworker might: not as a halo, but as a reckoning.

    He came up in Manhattan, sure, but he carried himself like someone who’d survived a few winters on the Charles. Basketball courts, Catholic guilt, street corners that could make or break you — he turned all of it into fuel. The Basketball Diaries made him famous, but the poetry is where he really bled.

    And the music — that was Carroll stepping into the fire. The Jim Carroll Band didn’t sound like a polished studio act; they sounded like the Lower East Side chewing on a live wire. Clubs like CBGB weren’t venues, they were battlegrounds: sticky floors, busted monitors, cigarette haze thick enough to write your name in. Carroll walked onstage like a guy dragging his past behind him, letting the amps spit it back out at full volume.

    “People Who Died” wasn’t just punk — it was a street‑corner funeral shouted over guitars that sounded ready to explode. It was raw, sloppy, beautiful noise, the kind that made you feel like the world might crack open if the band hit one more chord. Carroll didn’t sing like he wanted applause. He sang like he wanted the truth to hurt a little.

    Carroll’s voice — on the page or onstage — was raw, unvarnished, and weirdly tender. He could take the wreckage of youth, addiction, bad choices, the whole mess, and make it shine like something worth keeping. He wasn’t afraid of the dark. He walked into it with a notebook or a microphone and came back with lines that hit like a punch and linger like a bruise.

    On his birthday, I try to remember him the way a Boston guy would — a tough‑minded poet who listened to the dead, argued with them, wrote down what they said, and handed it back to the living like a warning and a blessing rolled into one.

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