I happen to love these two works of music by Czech composer Leos Janácek, from his piano cycle of thirteen pre-WWI pieces called “On an Overgrown Path.” I love that evocative title. They fit the somber mood of the present … Continue reading →
My favorite composer is Chopin. My love for his music began when I was a four-year-old child in dance class, although I didn’t know it was Chopin at the time. All I knew was that the music I heard—performed on … Continue reading →
I’d planned a long post on what’s happening today, as the Pelosi Congress wheels and deals and tries to pass its gargantuan health care reform bill that, if implemented, would radically change this country in ways that promise to be … Continue reading →
Who are “they?” The Left. What war? Vietnam. What battle? The one that determines who gets to write history. It’s said that history is written by the winners, and that’s true. But Vietnam just may have been the first war … Continue reading →
Mary Travers, of the 60s’ Peter Paul and Mary, is dead at seventy-two. There were three people in that group, but Mary was its beating heart. The two men seemed to be merely her backup singers (sorry Peter, sorry Paul), … Continue reading →
I just love this Leonard Cohen oldie. It was taken back in his Dustin Hoffman lookalike days. Perhaps for Cohen fans only, though:
Continue reading →A friend sent me the following video, which amazed me at the same time it warmed the cockles of my susceptible sentimental heart. Perhaps this birdy theme will become a recurring feature of my blog, replacing for a time the … Continue reading →
I’ve been thinking of FredHjr and what a fine man he was, and how much I and others here will miss him. It’s no exaggeration to say that many of us are grieving. This particular piece by Leonard Cohen kept … Continue reading →
It seems it’s all the cable news stations can talk about right now. The demise of a mega-celebrity—especially if untimely, as so many such deaths seem to be—is treated as the story that trumps all other news of the day. … Continue reading →
I found the Mark Sanford disappearance bizarre from the start. What governor and public figure thinks he can vanish for five days and have nobody notice or care? That fact alone seemed to indicate that there was something very very … Continue reading →
Okay, quick: how many 74-year olds could give a three-plus-hour concert night after night and leave the audience hungry for more? Leonard Cohen, that’s who, and last night it was Boston’s turn to savor the pleasure, and my turn to … Continue reading →
The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. Over forty years after the fact, documents have been unearthed that turn on its head the common understanding of a seminal event in German history: The killing in 1967 … Continue reading →