The best conversations I have had have often been about the arts, thanks largely to my late husband Theodore Bale. I am to lucky to be able to say that thanks also his inspiration I have often been an arts writer and critic for web and print publications (CultureMap, Houston Chronicle, Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books and others) covering theater, dance, visual arts, television, books and more. Yes, television, too. Why on earth do we watch what we watch? I’m still curious about that. I love what a teacher of mine called the “fast eloquence” of such writing and the urgency of trying, in such a small space, to say something worth hearing about what art is and ought to be. This writing has in turn infused his scholarly writing resulting in essays on choreographic adaptations of Shakespeare (“Of Dance and Disarticulation: Juliet Dead and Alive” & “Dancing Will: The Case of Romeo and Juliet”) and on reality television (“Picking, Pawning, Hoarding, and Storing: Archiving America on Reality TV” with Theodore Bale).