Putting pen to paper and allowing its ball tip to bleed and spill out is a good thing, and helps with the venting as well as needed healing. After all is said and done, following all the missteps and failings, to move on and search for lost love all over again is not only essential but the absolute specimen of a yearning and healthy soul-and the fundamental spirit conveyed in The Sadness I Take to Sea.

By the Naked Pear Tree, a play in verse, was written in the spirit of Steve Allen's unconventional television program, Meeting of the Minds. Our satirical performance begins outside a New Bedford, Massachusetts court house. The year is 1893 and the trial of Lizzie Borden is about to begin. Dispatching his oration, the tragedian, Euripides, stands in the street preaching the merits of womanhood and relating the concerns he has for the outcome of the trial, and how it may corrupt the honor of the fabled heroines he has written about. Not long after we are introduced to Clarence...

Emily White lives with her grandmother, Charlotte, in a somnolent whaling village at the end of Point Road in Westport, Massachusetts-where nothing much ever happens. The year is 1861. Civil War has broken out between North and South and some in town have heeded the call for service to their country. Yet, life at Point Village continues with a quiet routine. Emily loves living in Point Village and finds her adventures in books. She is a dedicated member of the Drift River Readers Club, which has recently taken up a book about the suicide death and hanging of Sarah Cornell in Tiverton, Rhode...