Bezos buys the WaPo
The MSM seems to be treating this as a very big story. I can’t imagine why, although for them I suppose it’s a sort of inside baseball. But I’ll provide this thread for those of you who want to talk … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Arts
So Yeats, what were you bellyaching about?
The poet Yeats often wrote about how dreadful old age was, especially its physical manifestations. In the poem “Among School Children“, he describes himself as having looked pretty nifty in youth and terrible at sixty: And I though never of … Continue reading →
Introverts of the world…
…just act like an extrovert and you’ll be happier. Well, of course. I’ve been attempting to do that, with a modicum of success, for decades. I call myself an extroverted introvert. And Rogers and Hammerstein were well aware of the … Continue reading →
Detroit: all the way down the Telegraph Road
Detroit’s declaration of bankruptcy has been discussed in countless articles, both the how and the why of it. One thing nearly everyone agrees on is that it’s been a long time coming. Just how long? Well, if you’d like a … Continue reading →
I guess I don’t need…
…this pillow, because I sleep on my back. I’ve always been a very quiet sleeper, without a whole lot of position changes during the night. When I was a kid at camp, I used to pride myself on being able … Continue reading →
Down a street of molasses
Here’s a song by my man Richard Thompson (lyrics here), featuring his characteristic beauty and bitterness: Those lines “in the dream I’m running/down a street of molasses/in the dream my feet gain no ground” seem an odd but effective image, … Continue reading →
Let’s have some fun…
…and do the Walk of Life: I usually prefer live versions, but for this particular song for some reason I couldn’t find a live version I liked better than the studio one. And here’s one of those “golden oldies” to … Continue reading →
Snowden is starting…
…to remind me of the Flying Dutchman. Or Philip Nolan, The Man Without a Country:
Continue reading →Down Where the Drunkards Roll
I enjoy comparing different versions of songs I like, especially ones that highlight changes with the passage of time, and the variations among interpreters. Here’s a “compare and contrast” of three versions of Richard Thompson’s “Down Where the Drunkards Roll” … Continue reading →
History and immunity
America has been so fortunate, and in many ways so outside of history’s darker corridors, that we have forgotten what we should have known, and neglected to teach it to our children. It’s like a population (think Native Americans before … Continue reading →
They’re dancing in the street (don’t try this at home)
I saw this ad on TV the other day and it stopped me in my tracks because the dancing is not the usual pop stuff at all. The dancers, and the woman in particular, have a nice intensity and what’s … Continue reading →
Philip K. Dick and me
Oh, I was a strange, strange child. And not the least of my strangenesses was that I loved the stories of Philip K. Dick. That was odd in several ways. First of all, it was odd because I was a … Continue reading →