Adjust text size:
The World Was Too Much With Them All
I just finished reading Susan Orlean‘s Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Aside from the heart (and I mean heart) of the main story itself, after something like ten years of borderline-obsessive research Orlean managed to weave into the book dozens of little stray details about the lives and personalities of the many [...]
Midweek Music Break: The Band, “Rockin’ Chair”
[The Band (circa 1969), left to right: Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson] I‘ve posted about The Band exactly once, and barely then — tacking “All La Glory” onto the end of a whiskey river Friday post in December, 2008. I’ve not been ignoring them offline; in fact, as with (to take [...]
Plugged Right Between the Eyes
I’ve been following the Letters of Note blog for a good while now. The curator/editor, Shaun Usher, collects samples of real letters — often but not always from “famous” people — on matters of real import, and/or in styles worth sharing. Today’s entry features a 1914 letter from Jack London to a young aspiring writer named [...]
Endistanced
[Video: zooming in from a Milky Way-wide view all the way to galactic cluster NGC 3324, dubbed the Gabriela Mistral Nebula for its resemblance to the profile of the Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet. Music by John Dyson; original video at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) site.] From whiskey river: And as you sit on the hillside, or lie [...]
Midweek Music Break: The Animals, “The House of the Rising Sun”
[Image: The Animals (original image doctored up by Jude Kane and found on Freakoutville Xpress). And they looked like such nice boys...] To get it out of the way right up front: no house in New Orleans called the “Rising Sun” ever existed.* Or rather, more precisely: never definitively, and no one establishment. Furthermore, it may [...]
Midweek Music Break: Collins H. Driggs (on the Novachord), “Estudiantina,” and… Beer
[The Novachord, closed and open (click either photo for an enlargement); both photos per Wikipedia] When you grew up in the US during a certain window of time (and maybe in certain geographic areas, within certain socioeconomic strata), the culture you could absorb from the adult world was this weird amalgam of past and present. [...]
The Propagational Library (3): A Barrel of Monkeys
[Here by accident? You might want to first read what came before: Introduction, Chapter 1: The Finding, and Chapter 2: Kali.] Gabe knew, by now, he had little chance of returning productively to the darkroom for the rest of the afternoon and evening. He was a little hungry, not remotely famished (and not at all sure he saw [...]
Surprise, Surprise
[Video: high-speed footage (1000fps) of an "eagle owl" in flight. This film has apparently been around for a while, but I don't think I've seen it before this week. Chief virtue, for me: shows me something I couldn't have imagined on my own!] From whiskey river: I cannot help you understand. In the realm of [...]
The Propagational Library (2): Kali
[Here by accident? You might want to first read the Introduction and Chapter 1.] After his next hour with them, Gabe sincerely hoped the Lanes would tell him something to summon up his sense of humor. He wondered if he’d ever laugh again. Still not moving beyond the entry hall, Gabe asked them to provide [...]
More Than Enough Room
[Image: postcard, "The Big Shot" (the Big Room, Carlsbad Caverns, NM). For more information, see the note at the bottom of this post.] From whiskey river: Freedom means being able to choose how we respond to things. When wisdom is not well developed, it can be easily obscured by the provocations of others. In such [...]
