Some people are wondering why on earth I seem so taken with makeovers. What’s the big deal? Besides the obvious desire to get away from the gloom of the election and escape into something seemingly frivolous and entertaining, that is. … Continue reading →
Well, it may not really be poetry—even though it’s a poem by a master of poetry: Robert Frost. It’s more in the vein of light verse, which Frost sometimes also wrote. The treatment is light, that is. Not the subject … Continue reading →
My ex-husband has been going through his papers, and yesterday he found something I thought had been long lost—a poem I had written as a 14-year-old sophomore in high school. How it came to be in his stuff I don’t … Continue reading →
I find I have still more to say about Frost’s poem “Reluctance.” The theme of the poem is the difficulty of letting go, so I guess it’s fitting and proper that I’m loathe to leave it alone after posting the … Continue reading →
I’ve been touched by how many people seem to have empathized with the difficulty of letting go and the sadness over the passing of time that I expressed in the post “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” … Continue reading →
When I was in college, I took a year-long survey course in art history. We began with a deep dive into Greek and Roman art, and then lingered long and hard on the cathedrals of Europe, particularly the Gothic variety. … Continue reading →
On the “literally” thread, commenter expat asked a burning question: Maybe you can help me figure out whether the duck who lives with my cousin’s chickens is literally transspecies. His egg was abandoned by his mother in the creek that … Continue reading →
Recently something reminded me of a book I had first read back in the 1980s, one I would recommend to everyone. It’s called Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, and it’s quite different from most Holocaust literature: An important work of … Continue reading →
Edward FitzGerald’s translation of “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” is justly famous and justly beloved. I studied the poem in high school, and it was one of my favorite assignments—really, a revelation. But FitzGerald was very free with his translation, … Continue reading →
That quote that I used for the title of this post is from Yeats’ famous poem “The Second Coming.” It’s one I’ve quoted many times on this blog, because it’s not only a great, great poem, but also because it … Continue reading →
I have no idea whether this theory known as “Snowball Earth” has any validity at all, but it’s fascinating to contemplate it: The Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that the Earth’s surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen at least once, … Continue reading →
It’s often an empty exercise to mourn what might have been. One reason is that one can never know, because the road not taken is just that: not taken. We are free to imagine any “if only” that suits our … Continue reading →