[Bumped up.] My new piece is up at RightNetwork. In it, I compare the leaders who emerged under two extreme survival situations in South America: the recent Chilean mine accident, and the Andes plane crash of 1972 that inspired the … Continue reading →
…, so why not I?” Joan Sutherland, Australian bel canto soprano, dead at 83. I’m neither an opera fan nor knowledgeable about the subject. But Sutherland was one of the first opera singers I ever saw or heard, back on … Continue reading →
…[drum roll please]: dancers and choreographers. At first this puzzled me. But then I realized that (duh!), although the photo is of ballet dancers, exotic/erotic dancers fall into this category, too. Which would explain a lot.
Continue reading →Joe Biden has asked the base to stop whining. You might as well ask the sun to stop shining. It’s not a great way to get them all voting, But let’s not indulge in premature gloating, Though right now I’d … Continue reading →
Last night was a rare “super harvest moon” (see also this), and I went outside to gaze at the lovely sight. And since I’m one of those people with a lot of poetry rattling around in my head, up popped … Continue reading →
Here’s one of my favorite actors, Kevin Spacey, doing some nifty impersonations. I cannot stand unctuous interviewer James Lipton, but I’ll grit my teeth and bear with him in order to watch Spacey quick-change into each persona. He sets the … Continue reading →
I dunno; how do we talk about dogs? What did Obama mean when he said: Some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time and they’re not always happy with me. They talk … Continue reading →
I don’t ordinarily watch “America’s Got Talent.” But I’ve heard of the 10-year-old singing phenom on the show, Jackie Evancho. She’s a tiny girl who’s not hit puberty yet, with a voice both beautiful and surpassingly strange. What would be … Continue reading →
I’m reading this book of short essays by Jorge Luis Borges that were originally part of a lecture series he gave in Buenos Aires in 1977. Here’s a wonderful excerpt: Emerson said that a library is a magic chamber in … Continue reading →
Enjoy this brief interlude, while they sweat without showing it:
Continue reading →Wow.
Continue reading →A number of people have told me they’re stumped by the title of one of the books in my masthead photo. They can see that the red one on the bottom is The Last Lion, the Churchill biography by William … Continue reading →