Welcome to the Life of Alonzo. I’m a playwright who works as a Communications Specialist at the Johns Hopkins Welch Medical Library. Instead of giving you more info and intro, let’s just leapfrog into stuff…….

In Jury Duty today I finished another Graham Greene book, “Gun For Sale”. I love his writing. I could read Greene, Mosley and early Ishmael Reed anyday. When I first read Ishmael—I thought his writing was incredibly creative in how it invented the world of black-american juju as an actual PLACE. An actual THING that could be possessed. It was like this very real historical jive had crashed into our normal little thingamabob world. It made me feel (as a playwright) that all bet’s were off, and I could go anyplace in the known or unknown universe, and not worry about having the anchor of tradition. Later, I found out that many folks had made (still make) this same journey. While Mosley and Greene are detectives their men (by and large) are always soooooo trapped. But emotionally as much as realistically.They can’t just love or “sex-up” the miscellaneous pretty woman who comes along. They have way too much angst and baggage. And when their characters do for it, it’s usually out of pain.

In court today, we were asked to stand when our number was called. I was #125. I heard my number and I rose and said “here”. When #200 was called they rose and asked “do you go by the numbers in order, like, I have 020″. Yes, I thought, she does have a point. Maybe there’s a case for 020 being 200. Then I remembered, this is Baltimore………