Here's to Harold Pinter on his 75th Birthday

I note with interest and honor that across Britain and Ireland many are gathering to celebrate the 75th birthday of Nobel Prize winning playwright, Harold Pinter.
Pinter has long been a favorite of mine. I was exposed in the early sisties to his one acts and excitedly directed "The Birthday Party" in the 1970's. While in England in the 1980's, I was lucky enough to see the first performances at the Hampstead Theatre of "The Hothouse." Upon returning to Monmouth I couldn't wait to stage it and believe that it may have been one of the first productions of the play anywhere in the United States. I also remember with delight the National Theatre's production of "Betrayal."

On the more mundane level, I saw with amusement that Southern Illinois University administrators have been taken to task for alledgedly plagiarizing parts of its Strategic Planning document from the Strategic Plan of the University of Texas. One wonders how one could determine this as most of those kinds of statements are full of inflated boilerplate pie in the sky educational claptrap.