Monthly Archives: February 2024

02.21.24
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CHITA

CHITA A Memoir with PATRICK PACHECO. The rise of Chita Rivera to Broadway stardom. This book is a must for lovers of the Broadway Theater. It is real and personal. Published in 2023, just months before her death in 2024, it comes to the reader as a timely tribute to her extraordinary life.

CHITA takes you backstage with Anita in the original West Side Story, Rosie in Bye By Birdie, Velma in Chicago, Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman and Claire in The Visit. The personal insight into the casts, producers and directors is genuine and warm. “Lenny” Bernstein, Bob Fosse, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Hal Prince, Stephen Sondheim, and dozens more. And yes, Chita’s lovers are there as well.

Delores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero. Delores, the indomitable teenage Puerto Rican dynamo always present and often in the forefront of Chita’s stardom.

CHITA is a orchestra seat on Broadway. Don’t miss the show!

02.01.24
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THE REBELS/DEMOCRACY AWAKENING

Two recent books are great reads providing insight and understanding into the 2024 election year. DEMOCRACY AWAKENING by Heather Cox Richardson is an insightful narrative into the political rise of Donald Trump dating back to the beginning of Republican conservatism following FDR’s New Deal.Her concise narrative makes abundantly clear as to how and why Trump has taken over the Republican Party. A history that looks back to a mythologized past as the country’s perfect time is a key tool of authoritarians.

THE REBELS- Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the Struggle for a New American Politics by Joshua Green is a another must for the political observer. Green’s historical perspective does not miss one major player in this political drama.

Warren, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez, as detailed by Green, pulled the Democratic Party back to its working class roots. He speculates, We don’t know yet whether history will remember them as harbingers of a new Democratic age or as insurgents who ultimately didn’t change the party as they’d hoped.

Two books, perfect companion reads.