February 22nd, 2018 | General, Politics, Popular Culture, Society at Large
For a book that has a signal presence within the critique of the Donald Trump presidency, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Henry Holt and Company, 2018) is an abysmal piece of writing. I watched a few televised interviews and found the...
February 9th, 2018 | Family, General, literature and poetry, Popular Culture
No genetically engineered monsters, no exotic locations, no time-travel: #17 of the Pendergast series, The City of Endless Night by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Grand Central Publishing, 2018), is a good, old-fashioned thriller. Truth be told, Doug Preston is...
May 19th, 2017 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, Matters of the Spirit, Memory, Popular Culture, Time Passes, Travel
The novelist Federico Mocci (b. 1963) published a story in 2006 called Ho Voglia di Te (“I want you”), some variation on the star-crossed lovers theme, in which a doomed pair affix a lock to the Milvian Bridge in the northern suburbs of Rome as a symbol of their...
May 13th, 2017 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, General, Popular Culture, Shopping, Society at Large, Travel
Apparently, our neighborhood does not exist. Consult a tourist guide like Eyewitness Paris and there is an empty white space where one might expect to find Batignolles. The teal-green blob of Montmartre floats in a void separate from the colors that identify the...
November 9th, 2016 | General, Politics, Popular Culture, social media, Society at Large
When I went to bed, North Carolina had already fallen and I knew the nightmare was about to descend. When I awoke, I watched the numbers on my clock flip toward 6:15 when the radio would click on with the news on WYPR. And it did. And three or four words in, I heard...
October 12th, 2016 | General, literature and poetry, Popular Culture, Shopping, Travel, United States, visual arts
The Mall of America is… just…horrible. My Dear One suggested we visit. We weren’t in the mood to shop but we were curious about this place that is a destination for visitors from around the world. Parking was well-nigh impossible. There were lots outside and...