September 5th, 2018 | Education, General, visual arts
The exhibition Modern Times: American Art 1910-1950 just closed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I had been thinking I should go see it since late last spring. I made it on the last day. Good show. Glad to see those works out of the vaults where they normally hide...
September 4th, 2018 | General, Memory, Politics
I remember my mother glued to our old black-and-white television in November 1963 and Kennedy’s funeral procession as it wended its way ultimately to Arlington National Cemetery. I watched some of it—I was eleven—and remember the views of the caisson and the riderless...
August 5th, 2018 | Education, General, visual arts, Women
I have been reading a lot of books that focus on art and Paris from the 1890s into the first decades of the 20th century and these two followed one on the other. What is truly fascinating after a sequence that included Corbett’s Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin,...
June 25th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Europe, Gardens and Gardening, General, literature and poetry, the world and Mother Nature, Travel, visual arts
Every time I pick up a Ross King book, it’s longer and weightier. Brunelleschi’s Dome was a little bit of a thing, perfect for reading on a transcontinental flight. Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling was longer but then the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a better...
June 24th, 2018 | Africa, General, Indigenous Peoples, literature and poetry, Popular Culture, Travel
I do like Gideon Crew–quite a bit more than Preston & Child’s better-known sleuth, Agent Pendergast, whom I find annoying in the southern, courtly, albino-pale, omniscient and omnipotent way. “The Pharaoh Key” (#5 in the Gideon Crew series)...
June 19th, 2018 | Education, General, literature and poetry
Books that explore language, grammar and writing are my guilty pleasure. I consider the injunctions presented as I am absorbed by the text, trying to figure out if the writers are following their own instructions. I also hope that I will learning something from them I...
May 29th, 2018 | Europe, General, literature and poetry, Memory, music, Politics, Popular Culture, Time Passes, transportation, Travel
According to the introduction, Mary McAuliffe produced “Twilight of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Picasso,Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends through the Great War” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) as a sort of conclusion to...
May 26th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, General, literature and poetry, Popular Culture, Travel
Note to self: if there is the chance to drop off luggage before the room has been prepared, drop off everything except for telephone, wallet, camera and guidebook. As we waved hej-hej (that’s “bye-bye”) to Lars the landlord and strolled into town, I realized that my...
May 20th, 2018 | Family, Friends, General, literature and poetry, Popular Culture
The Bright Ideas Bookstore is named for the former lightbulb factory in a slowly gentrifying section of Denver, Colorado, its founders have transformed into a sort of bibliophile’s fortress. It provides a quiet and contemplative environment for its patrons, rather...
May 19th, 2018 | Europe, General, Popular Culture, Travel
I don’t like Rick Steves’ television persona. I find him sanctimonious, arrogant and supercilious, veneered with faux naiveté and faked authority. I don’t like his insistence that the primary and dominant function of travel is “getting to know” the locals—whether or...
